Some thoughts on thoughts

For a while there it seemed that America’s Evangelical Christian sub-culture was obsessed with something called “spiritual warfare”. (Google it if you’re not familiar with the term.) These days, I still hear some people using the jargon associated with spiritual warfare, but it looks like that the fever has cooled a bit. One word that features prominently in the speech of believers in spiritual warfare is “stronghold”. This word, lifted from one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, came to mean any sinful behavior or thought that is particularly difficult to give up. Yet, this doesn’t appear to be what Paul had in mind when he originally used the word. For Paul, strongholds were “arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God”. These arguments are less like the out-right lie that Satan told Eve when deceiving her (“You will not surely die.”), but more like the faulty logic that he put before Jesus when he took Him up to the pinnacle of the temple (If you’re God’s Son, jump. The Bible says that God will protect you.).

Recently, one preacher that I listen to said, “A stronghold is an entrenched pattern of thought…contrary to the truth of God.” As an illustration of such an entrenched thought pattern, he told the story of woman who lived for thirty years believing that she was unwanted and unworthy because she grew up with her father telling her that a) she was unplanned and b) he had hope she would be a boy. Thirty years of dwelling on this in her mind fuelled perfectionism and robbed her of joy.

While I don’t think that this is what Paul was getting at with his use of the word “stronghold”, I do think that he had something to say about such negative thoughts. In the same letter, in the same sentence no less, Paul says that we “take every thought captive to obey Christ”.

That same preacher offered two ways to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of renewing our minds, one of which is basically a way to take our thoughts captive. He said, “We can think about what we think about.” Rather than remain passive when a thought enters our minds, we can seize it and critique it. Hold it up to the light of Scripture, of Christ and examine it. This is easier to do when we have the Scripture in our minds whether by means of intentional memorization or incidental familiarity born of lots of exposure. The more of God’s word (which are God’s thoughts) we have in us, the better we will be able to take every thought captive to obey Christ. In this way, we will not only gain ground against “arguments and pretensions” that are against the knowledge of God, we will also make progress in rooting out those “entrenched patterns of thought” that are “contrary to the truth of God”.

What’s the problem with praying to saints?

Protestants get really uptight about the Roman Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) practice of praying to the saints. Generally, Protestants think prayer is communication with God. Catholics have a broader understanding of prayer. While it can be communication with God, prayer can also be simply asking for something. For Catholic apologists, praying to saints is merely asking dead Christians to do something for you, namely interceding with God on your behalf. They see this as essentially the same thing as asking living Christians to pray for you with the exception that the saints are perfectly righteous. The perfected righteousness of the saints is what makes their prayers on our behalf more effective than our own prayers. Protestants have a hard time getting past the fact that the saints are dead and therefore out of the reach of the living. (They also have a problem with the Catholic concept of “saint”, but we’ll leave that alone for now.)

Both groups appeal to the Bible to support their positions, so who’s right? On this issue, I’m going to side with the Protestants, but with some reservation. While I think Protestantism’s objection to praying to the saints is correct, I don’t think all of its arguments are sound . For example, I heard a well-known Evangelical apologist argue that praying to the saints is forbidden because it is analogous to consulting the dead, which is prohibited in Deuteronomy 18. I was very disappointed by his reasoning. Instead of seeing the prohibition of contacting the dead in its immediate context (divination and necromancy), this Evangelical generalized and stated that God doesn’t want any communication with the dead of any kind. The folks over at Catholic Answers stick with the context saying that there is a big difference between performing necromancy in order to get secret information from the deceased and asking a departed Christian in heaven to pray to God on your behalf. I have to agree. Deuteronomy 18 is not a good proof text for the Protestant position.

Is there a good proof text for the Protestant position? I don’t think that there really is. As they correctly point out, there’s not a single example of anyone praying to a saint found anywhere in the Scripture. How can there be a proof text when the subject simply isn’t ever addressed? At this point, Catholic apologists will likely disagree, saying that there are examples of praying to saints in Scripture and cite a passage from Revelation.

Revelation is a complicated bit of Scripture. It belongs to that unique genre called apocalyptic”. The book’s highly symbolic rhetoric makes it unwise to approach it as though John were a foreign correspondent on assignment in a far away land giving his eye-witness report of historical events. So when Catholic Answers turns to Revelation 8 and points at the angel offering the “prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar”, we should slow down and think this image through. Let’s begin by dealing with the image itself without addressing its meaning. In the image, there is no saint offering prayers to God, but rather an angel. Consequently, this text doesn’t illustrate dead saints praying on behalf of living saints and therefore doesn’t justify its citation. Then there are the prayers themselves. We don’t know the content of those prayers, so how do we know if they are addressed to God or to a saint? We know that the prayers come from “all the saints” but what does that mean? It might mean both the living and the dead ones, or it might mean only the dead ones (depending on what one means by the word “saint”.) The image alone, that is without interpretation, fails to do the job for which the Catholic apologist has employed it. The same applies to Revelation 5 where we see “the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” Who are these “elders”? Are they saints themselves? (If so, would that mean that there are presently only twenty-four saints in heaven?) Again, what is the content of these prayers? The Protestant claim that there is no example in the Bible of people praying to saints is justified.

Without a good proof text, is there a good Protestant argument against praying to the saints? I think there is but I’m not exactly sure how to make it. Since Catholics see Tradition as equally authoritative as Scripture, I would have to know a lot more about Tradition to make a complete argument. However, I think I could put together a good argument from Scripture. My argument would include the simple fact that the Bible isn’t perfectly clear about what happens to Christians when they die. This would probably upset some Catholics and Protestants because they are so sure of what they believe the Bible says. For example, they are sure that the Bible says Christians go to heaven when they die, but does it really? Where? The Bible is clear that Jesus returns at the end of history, that the dead are raised and that there is both reward and punishment. The Bible is not clear about what happens between death and resurrection. In the Bible, we find Jesus telling the thief on the cross that he would be with Jesus in Paradise on that very day. Yet, we also find Paul saying that the Christians who had died before the return of Jesus were “asleep”. (I suppose the thief could be asleep in Paradise, but I don’t’ think anyone on either side is willing to say that.) We read in the Psalms that “the dead can not praise the Lord”. When Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, Moses (who died) and Elijah (who did not die but was “taken”) were there with him. So what’s going on with the dead? Where are they really? What are they doing? Are they conscious, unconscious or semi-conscious? The Bible simply isn’t clear, so why should we believe that the saints are in heaven, hearing our prayers and presenting them to God? Without Tradition, there simply isn’t a good reason to believe this. I suppose that the Catholic response would be “Thank God we have Tradition,” which brings up a different problem Protestants have with Catholics.

I have heard a Protestant apologist argue against the Catholic distinction between “latria” and “dulia”. Catholics say that “latria” is worship which is only due to God, while “dulia” is service which can be given to both God and man. Therefore, prayers to saints are “dulia” while prayers to God are “latria”. I think that the Biblical case he presented was sound, but unfortunately he got very close to being ungracious in presenting it. I would probably want to work that into my argument.

The problem with praying to saints from the Protestant perspective is that it appears too much like worship which is only due to God. Catholics deny that praying to saints is worship. Either way, it’s enough for me that there’s no good Biblical support for the practice, which means that my Protestant roots are showing.

My Catechism: Question 5

Q: Are there more Gods than one?
A: No, not really.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6
4 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

How’s that for a memorable answer? No, it’s not pithy but I think it captures the essence of the verse I’ve cited. On the one hand, we find Paul telling the church in Corinth that idols are not gods. On the other, Paul acknowledges that there might be beings which others refer to as gods and to whom they give their allegiance.

I think we see something similar among Western Christians today. For the most part, we would deny the existence of any gods other than the Father of Jesus, yet at the same time we might bestow a god-like status upon sex, power and money. NT Wright was once asked what were the false gods of our times and these were the ones he spoke about. While not personal beings, these three objects appear to operate like forces which drive, guide and consume human lives. For some, this is what they imagine a god does. Not so for us. The One True God motivates and directs the lives of those submitted to Him, but He doesn’t consume those lives. He enriches, enhances and increases those lives.

My Catechism: Question 4

Q: What is God?
A: God is Spirit, love and light revealed in the person of Jesus and expressed by the Holy Spirit.

John 4:24

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

1 John 4:8

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 1:5

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 Corinthians 3:17

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

While I think this is a valid question, I don’t think it belongs in a catechism. Catechisms, by nature, seek to provide succinct and memorable answers to concise questions. I don’t think it’s possible to answer this question succinctly and completely. Summing up the Divine Being in a pithy sentence or two of finite human language just isn’t possible. Instead, this question seems to be better suited for prolonged meditation over the course of a lifetime. Sure, there are Scriptures (like the ones I’ve referenced) which provide an adjective or an appositive to describe God, but all of them together are still inadequate. After all, how can finite language hope to fully express the infinite? Doesn’t the Incarnation suggest that God found language alone inadequate to express Himself?

My Catechism: Question 3

Q: What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A: The Scriptures principally teach us the answers to the questions; Who is God? Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?

I’ve heard that it’s rude to answer a question with a question. Answering a question with four questions must be quadruple-rude. And not providing any Biblical references is beyond the pale I guess. And if that all wasn’t bad enough; I borrowed my answer from NT Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God pg 132!
I have a great regard for NT Wright and I think that his characterization of the totality of Scripture as imparting a story (as opposed to a systematic theology) is spot-on.

The story is God’s story. God is the Hero. Creation, as represented by mankind, is His Beloved. He loves us because we are His image bearers. We’ve been unfaithful to God and fallen into peril. He must rescue the Beloved and so He chooses a man out of which to make a nation from which He will come Himself in order to restore the broken relationship and heal Creation. This is principally what we find in Scripture. The laws, genealogies, and cultural information are embellishments and details which ultimately serve the story of God’s love for Creation.

My Catechism: Question 2

Wow. Only one question into this series and I’m already struggling. If you’ve read the previous post, you know that my response to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism doesn’t really lead into the second question the way the prescribed response does. What to do? It seems that I have two choices: a) rephrase the second question to dovetail with my response to the first one or b) do my best to answer the second question as it stands. I think I’ll try option “b”.

Q: What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?
A: God has spoken to humanity at different times, in different ways which have been recorded in both the Old and New Testaments, but the greatest communication of the mind and person of God came through the man Jesus of Nazareth whose life and teachings are recorded in the four gospels of the New Testament.

Hebrews 1:1-2
1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The first question is about purpose; why are we here? The second question is about guidance; how do we know what to do? The short answer is revelation. God has revealed Himself to us and the Scriptures record specific revelations so that we may know who God is, who we are, who Jesus is and how to behave accordingly.

My Catechism: Intro and Q1

I don’t have a Presbyterian background, so I was not taught the Westminster Shorter Catechism as a child. Yet, somehow I learned the first question: What is the chief end of man?

In spite of the archaic use of the words “chief” and “man”, I think it would be clear to most people that this is a question about purpose. A fair paraphrase would be, “What is the main purpose of humanity?” Some might prefer the more common question; “Why are we here?”

Since I’m not a Presbyterian, I don’t suppose it would surprise you to learn that my response to that question isn’t the one prescribed by the catechism. Please don’t click away just yet. This isn’t going to be a critique of the catechism. I’m not going to go on at length about why I think the catechism is wrong in one way or another in an attempt to undermine the Reformed theology reflected there. Instead, I’m simply going to answer each question for myself in accordance with my current (limited and fallible) understanding of Scripture as a sort of exercise. I’m sure that there’s something beneficial to be gained by doing this, even if I don’t exactly know what that might be at the moment.

In future posts, I’ll give the question, my answer and cite relevant passages of Scripture…if in fact I think there are any. Yeah, that sounds strange. If you’re familiar with the catechism (or just the Reformed way of doing things) you know that there are Scriptural references for each response. I concede that not referencing the same (or any) passages may amount to a tacit criticism of the catechism/Reformed theology…and that’s how I’ll leave any criticism-tacit, not explicit.

Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end (main purpose) is to be the image of God within Creation, to increase in number, exercise authority over the Creation and to do God’s will on Earth as His will is done in Heaven.

Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Matthew 6:9-10
9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Theology of Disability

Do you have a “theology of disability”? Probably not. I didn’t either until I read Julie Clawson’s post. Julie has a theology of disability and this is what she says about it:

“I want my theology of disability to be that God made me to be me and uses me as I am. But the Bible seems to contradict that and tells me that I am unwanted and incapable of serving God because of my arm. I have chosen to just go ahead and serve God (as a disabled woman that obviously isn’t in the Orthodox church), but some days that choice can be hard to align with scripture.”

The thrust of that post (if you didn’t click through and read it first) is that Julie read Leviticus 16:21-23 and it really disturbed her. It made her ask these questions about disability and God: “How does not being physically perfect disqualify a person from serving God? How does this (disability) make me any less holy than others?”

I originally wrote a post that tried to answer those questions, but I’ve decided not to share it. Instead, I’m going to articulate the beginnings of my (unoriginal?) theology of disability.

In the beginning (because that truly is where everything started) God made human beings without disabilities. No, the Bible doesn’t explicitly say so but there is no reason to assume that Adam or Eve were missing limbs or were disfigured in some way. I’m not aware of anyone ever suggesting this was the case. (However, I did meet a man in Ukraine who thought that Adam and Eve were able to fly!) Then came the Fall. The whole of creation became corrupted both materially and spiritually. Disabilities, deformities and defects entered the picture along with death disease and man’s inhumanity to man.

I believe that generally (which allows for exceptions) God doesn’t make people disabled, defective and disfigured. And while he may allow such things to exist/happen (and on occasion afflict particular people with them) God doesn’t desire humankind to be disabled. Nor do I think that God ultimately rejects people because of their physical imperfections.

What is God’s attitude toward the disabled? I think we need to look at Jesus (the exact representation of God’s being) to find out. When we see Jesus interact with the disabled, we don’t get the impression that they were unwanted by Him. We get the opposite impression: He wanted them to come to Him. He wanted to heal them. (“Lord if you are willing…” “I am willing…”) And I think that reflects God’s attitude toward the disabled. He longs to restore them to the wholeness that humans had before the Fall. He didn’t make humans to be blind or deaf or deformed. He doesn’t make them that way now. True, He allows physical defects but the miracle healings of Jesus point to a time when He will no longer allow the Curse to afflict His people that way. When the kingdom of God comes in its fullness, the people of God will receive their new bodies. Their imperishable and incorruptible bodies. There will be no disabled people for there will be no disabilities. The old things will pass away and He will make all things new.

And that is the beginning of my theology of disability.

Intimacy with God

In July, I’m going to be speaking to/with a group of young Christian leaders about intimacy with God. I’m thinking the topic through and these are some of my thoughts.

What is intimacy?

Intimacy is that characteristic of a relationship which can be called “closeness”. We can think of it as a deep knowing of the other. Often, we associate acceptance with that deep knowing, but not always. Sometimes, that deep knowing results in rejection, which is why intimacy can be frightening.

What is intimacy with God?

God is The Other. The regular word for that is Holy. Separate from all, particularly His creatures. If He is by His nature so completely Other, what are we talking about when we talk about intimacy with God? How is it possible to be close to Him, to have a deep knowledge of Him? I think we are talking about knowing God deeply. Not knowing about Him, but knowing Him. I think this is possible because God wills it. He wants us to know Him deeply and so He reveals Himself to us, becomes vulnerable to us.

How do we know that God desires intimacy with us?

There are many ways to characterize the story we find in the Bible. One way is to see it as the God’s pursuit of intimacy with his creatures. The story begins with God and mankind living together in Eden. After the relationship is fractured and even though He drives Adam and Eve out of the garden, God spends much of the rest of human history attempting to “be their God” and getting them to “be His people”. This is particularly true of Abram and his descendants. The history of Israel is a constant vacillation between being close to God and fleeing from God with frequent expulsions by God. Yet, the promise always remains: one day God will restore the relationship with His creation, with mankind. Then He comes to be Immanuel, “God with us.” Most people call Him Jesus. Jesus lives and dies among us, and then when He is raised to life, He leaves us. Yet, He gives us His Spirit and through His Spirit He is always close: with us even. Finally, when Jesus returns, we read in the Revelation that “the dwelling of God is now with men”.  This is the story of God’s pursuit of intimacy with us.

How can we become intimate with God?

Jesus did not come to show us how to have an intimate relationship with God. He came to make it possible. So, intimacy with God begins with Jesus. Once we become His disciples, He gives us His Spirit and our journey into intimacy with God begins. Pragmatically speaking, we can get close to God in a variety of ways. We draw near to Him through worship, prayer and obedience. We come to know Him through studying the life of His Son and emulating Him. We learn about Him through the stories, songs, poems and revelations found in Scripture. All of these things take time and effort. History is the story of God’s effort to have an intimate relationship with His people. We should expect that our story of intimacy with God will involve effort on our part as well.

(Beginning) Thoughts on Fasting

There’s a chance that I will be speaking to a group of young (in the faith) Christians this summer about intimacy with God. The material that I’ll be using lists fasting as one of the ways we can nurture intimacy with God. As I read through this section of the material, I was deeply frustrated and disappointed with the misapplication of Scriptures to support various statements about fasting and as a result, I’ve been reading and thinking about the subject for the past several days.

Fasting is not something that Western, Protestant/Evangelical Christians as a whole do either well or often. Consequently, coming from neighborhood of Christianity, I don’t know much about the practice. I can only think of one time that I fasted for a spiritual purpose (incidentally, without receiving the desired result). Obviously, I’m not exactly qualified to speak about it, but I have begun to develop some more nuanced thoughts on the subject.

Previously, my lone thought on fasting was that it’s not required. That’s it. Since it’s not required of Christians, it’s not worthy of further consideration. That was before. Now, I still think that fasting is not required of Christians but it’s definitely worth much further consideration. (Funny how having to teach on the subject has been the catalyst for my further consideration of fasting.)  For example, why bother fasting if it’s not required? What are the benefits of fasting? What are acceptable and unacceptable ways to fast? And finally, with regards to the material that I may be presenting in July; does fasting really nurture intimacy with God?

These are the questions that I’m in the process of answering for myself. At the moment, my answers are not fully formed. I can say with confidence that fasting with proper motives and attitude coupled with prayer nurtures intimacy with God. Not because God is enamored with fasting. It’s not something that God finds more or less desirable in comparison to the other activities which also nurture intimacy with Him. Fasting simply is one of many ways we may choose (or not) to draw near to God. And like every imperfect act motivated by love for God and desire to please Him, God responds graciously according to His wisdom.

I’m not planning on taking up fasting any time soon…but I might.

Stewardship and the Tithe

The Bible tells us that “the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein”. This is not only poetry but a fact of the material universe. All matter, space and time belong to Him simply because He is the Creator.

We are His Creatures, along with all of the animals, however we were set apart from them from our beginning. God made humans to “subdue” the Earth and to “have dominion over the fish… birds… and every living thing that moves on the earth”. Our purpose from the beginning is to serve God by ruling His over His Creation and our fellow Creatures. The Earth and all that is in it belong to God (ourselves included), but we have been entrusted with caring for His possession. We are by design God’s stewards and as God’s stewards, we must give an account of our stewardship to Him.

It is with this firmly set in our minds that we begin to think about stewardship of our personal finances.

The Bible affirms that “a worker is worthy of his wages”. The use of our skills, talents and physical labor are genuine contributions that we make to the world and it is right to expect a measure of compensation for them. In the days of Moses, when God entered into a unique relationship with the people of Israel, He required that a tenth of “the increase” of every Israelite be given to God. This tithe was to come from the produce of  their labor. While I know that this ten percent came from their crops  and animals, I think it might have included any cash which made up their “increase”. This 10% was then given to the priests for their use in the performance of their duties before God and for their sustenance. Today, despite the absence of a priesthood and a temple, many Christians believe that God still requires ten percent of their income to be devoted to doing the will of God in the world.  Are they correct?

In the Book of Acts, James tells the church, particularly Paul and Barnabus, that the Gentiles who were turning to God through faith in Jesus should “abstain from the thing polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood”. The giving of tithes was not imposed on Gentile Christians at that time. In fact, at no point in the New Testament, are Christians instructed to give ten percent of their income. However, the apostle Paul does have something to say about giving.

When he wrote to the church in Corinth, Paul praised them for their generosity toward the church in Jerusalem. He explained his reason for sending some “brothers” to them to “arrange in advance for the gift” they had promised to give to the Jerusalem church. His reason was that he wanted their gift to be given willingly, “not as an exaction”. With regard to this specific occasion of giving, Paul says that “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion…” He also goes on to note that the Corinthians’ generous contribution to the needs of the Jerusalem church was directly tied to their “confession of the gospel of Christ” which came from their “submission” (possibly to his apostolic authority or to God Himself).

There is no command here, but certainly there is a principle. That principle may be worded like this: Christians should willingly give of their means to meet the needs of others (particularly other Christians) with the understanding that doing so is an extension of their confession of the gospel.

Some people need more than a principle to guide them on this matter. They want a commandment. Since the Law of Moses gives such a commandment, many Christians are keen to seize upon it, give their ten percent and move on. Personally, I think that setting aside ten percent is a good place to begin when learning the discipline of giving. However, I believe that we should not settle on ten percent without revisiting our giving ever again. As we become more conformed to the likeness of Jesus, we should expect our generosity to increase as well. I think that teaching the tithe as a requirement of God upon Christians today is misguided and prevents many from maturing in their relationship with God.

God, make us more confident in your provision and more generous with what you have provided.

(Im)Perfect Love

I’m not perfect.

You’ve said it. Or you’ve heard this said by someone else. Usually, it’s an excuse. It’s a common attempt to justify a defect in one’s character or a moral failure of some sort. Rarely is it ever a confession.

I confess. I am not perfect. Specifically, I’m not perfect in love…for anyone. Particularly God. Over the past several months, I’ve been made acutely aware of the imperfection of my love for God. Not surprisingly perhaps, this awareness has come about through experiencing intense fear. Deep, gut-churning fear. Fear of cancer. Fear of death.

I’ve been struggling with depression and what appears to be an anxiety disorder for probably more than year. I’ve had panic attacks in connection to some minor illnesses and stress. It began when migraines lead me to fear a brain tumor. A case of pneumonia drove me to obsess over my ability to breathe. Acid reflux in conjunction with my obsession with my lungs resulted in two emergency room visits. An infection in my intestine (like giardia lamblia) had me worried about colon cancer. In sum, no matter how minor or fleeting my illness, in my mind I was terrorized by the expectation (not the mere thought, mind you) of my imminent death.

As I have prayed about and through these experiences, God has comforted me in unexpectedly intimate ways. He has also given me a new insight into our relationship; while His love for me is perfect, my love for Him is not. Eugene Peterson’s rendering of 1 John 4:17-19 says that perfect love leaves no room for fear, particularly fear of death and  fear of judgement. Another translation says that perfect love drives out fear. (I can’t help thinking of Jesus driving out demons.) I can’t help but think that there would be no possibility of panic attacks, irrational fears of impending death, if I loved God as perfectly as He loves me.

When I talk about loving God, I’m not talking about that emotional sensation of affection. I’m talking about the intentional choice to believe that He is set upon doing good to and for me. If I were choosing constantly to believe His promise to raise me up to new bodily life, why would I fear dying? Wouldn’t I be like Paul and say that dying, for me, would be gain? Would be a benefit?

I have confessed to God the imperfection of my love for Him. It’s not been a guilt-ridden confession, but rather an expressed agreement with what He has brought to light in our relationship. And for His part, God has been faithful and just. He has comforted me as He promised he would (faithful) and He has forgiven me as He promised He would (just). The panic attacks have subsided, however the fear has yet to completely abate. But I believe it will. I believe that ongoing confession of the imperfection of my love for Him which leads to my fear (whether in formal counseling or not) will keep me honest before God. And God, in honest relationship with me, will in His own time perfect my love for Him and release me from my fear of decay, decrepitude and death.

I will wait on the Lord.

Who are the Children of God?

A few days ago, I read a news story about the new pope and an address he made to a crowd outside the Vatican. In the story and in his address to that crowd, the phrase “children of God” appeared and it got me to thinking. Who are the children of God?

There are basically two views on that question. One view says that all human beings are children of God. The other view says only some humans are children of God. In the first view, every person on the Earth is a child of God because God is the creator and we are his creation. In the second view, only some people are God’s children because God has made a distinction between those who are his and those who are not. Both views are appealing in one way or another. In the West, we like to say that “all men are created equal”, while at the same time we also like to say that “everyone is special in his or her own way”. The first view appeals to our democratic values while the second appeals to our sense of self-worth. Which view is the correct one? Or could they both be correct in some manner? If there is answer to the question “Who are the children of God?”, I believe it is going to be found in the Word of God.

A simple search of the exact phrase “children of God” over at the Bible Gateway yields only New Testament references from the English Standard Version. Now, I must admit that such a search is hardly scholarly, but it is not without merit. In fact, it’s probably as good as any leaping off point to begin a detailed study of the concept. However, this will not be a detailed study. After all, there is a reason that this blog is called “Armchair Theologian”.

In the first chapter of the gospel of John, we see that the children of God are those who receive Jesus and “believe in his name”. In the eighth chapter of Romans, Paul speaks about those who are “in Christ Jesus”. He says that the Spirit “bears witness” with the spirits of those who are in Christ Jesus (himself included) that “we are the children of God”.  Finally, the third chapter of 1 John says that it is “evident” who the children of God are because they no longer make it a practice to sin.

There is much more that can be said about who are the children of God. I’m thinking particularly about a conversation Jesus had with his fellow Jews about who was his father as opposed to who was their father. Then there’s the question of becoming a child of God. Whatever we may say about the technical aspects of how someone becomes a child of God, we must agree that the Word of God says that those who put their faith in Jesus receive the Spirit of God and are counted as God’s children. Since not all humans put their faith in Jesus, not all humans receive the Spirit of God and consequently are not counted as His children. I’m sure that’s not an appealing view to most Westerners these days (both inside and outside of the church) but I’m also pretty sure that this is the view contained in Scripture.

Letter to the Pastor: Baptism

Pastors and preachers get a lot of hate mail. At least that’s my impression. It’s not uncommon for “brothers and sisters in Christ” to take issue with something said in a sermon and then rip the poor preacher a new one in a vitriolic missive, which may or may not be anonymous. It’s an occupational hazard, I’m sorry to say. However, I too have wanted to address things that were said, but haven’t felt like I had the proper relationship with the person to go to them. On one hand, the pastor/preacher has said something publicly which I feel needs to be addressed. On the other hand, I don’t want to attack anyone. So, I’ve decided to post my e-mail on this blog. Why? First, because whenever we say things in public, then we should expect to have them addressed publicly. Second, what I want to say doesn’t get treated like hate mail and filtered into the Spam folder right away. So, here’s my letter to a pastor I heard recently teaching about baptism. 

Dear Pastor,

At the risk of coming across as a Critic rather than a fellow Christian, I feel the need to address a contradiction I heard in your sermon recently on baptism. I’m pretty sure that most folks didn’t catch it and I expect you didn’t catch it either.

You wanted to make the point that baptism doesn’t save the believer in Jesus. You stated that “baptism is a work”. Later in your sermon, you said that believers must “submit to baptism”. I believe that the second comment reveals a contradiction in your understanding of baptism. I will explain why.

First, I think we agree that a “work” is something that some one does. The idea that you wanted to communicate is that the believer can’t be saved by anything the believer does. Nothing the believer does can result in God choosing to save the believer. However, I suggest to you that baptism is not something that the believer does. As you said, the believer “submits to baptism”. The work is done to her. S/He does not do it. Someone else does it to her.  So in your sermon, you directly stated that “baptism is a work” yet you implied that it isn’t. Why is this important and not just quibbling about words?

The Evangelical way of reasoning about the role of baptism in salvation goes like this:

1. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works.
2. Baptism is a work.
3. Therefore, baptism does not save us.

This reasoning doesn’t hold up once you realize that baptism is not a work; at least, not a work that a believer does.I believe that this confusion about baptism being a work makes it difficult to understand that part in Peter which states that  “baptism now saves you”. How can he say such a thing when Paul says that we are not saved by works?  Paul doesn’t trump Peter does he? Peter doesn’t supersede Paul does he? Of course not. We both know that these two apostles are not contradicting each other. So how can we make sense of this? I think we have to start by letting go of the idea that baptism is a work. Then, we can think again more clearly about the role of baptism in the salvation of sinners. Perhaps we can also think more clearly about the relationship between “work” and salvation as well. After all, what sense does James make if we are “saved by faith apart from works”? What sense does Jesus make when he welcomes people into the”joy of your Master” based upon the good works they did for the hungry, naked and imprisoned? It’s all Scripture, so it’s all got to be true together at the same time.

I hope that you’ll give this some thought and see how baptism is not a work and that perhaps it has a different sort of role in salvation than the one that you spoke about recently.

Why Does a Private US Citizen Need a Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle?

Many people in the US are asking this question in these grief-stricken days following the Newtown slayings. It’s the question that grieving parents and horrified witnesses are asking of anyone who is listening. It’s the question that my wife put to me recently. It is a question that should be answered. I have an answer for my wife and myself, but not for the grieving families and their friends. I do not offer it to the passionately invested. If you are one of them and have stumbled across this post, please consider not reading it. You see, I’m an expatriate American living at a distance from this tragedy. Consequently, my answer will most likely have an emotional quality which may appear cold, perhaps insensitive. I can see how families of the victims might be hurt or offended by the perceived coldness. It is not my desire to hurt or offend. I can only answer from my point of view.

Need. This is the load-bearing word in this question. It is the concept which tilts the question toward a specific answer. After all, we all know that there are things in life which are needed and not needed. Some things are necessary. Others are unnecessary. There are some who pose this question having already decided that a semi-automatic assault rifle is unnecessary. From them, this is a rhetorical question. For them, it is an expression of dismay and disbelief. I am also dismayed that someone would use such a weapon so perversely. Wickedly. But I am not dismayed that someone would own such a weapon. The are some who pose this question as a challenge, an invitation for justification. What I say in response is not an attempt to justify ownership of a semi-automatic rifle or any other firearm.

At this point in US history, I can not think of any private US citizen who needs such a powerful weapon. That does not mean that no citizen does in fact need one. That also does not mean that no citizen will ever need one in the future. I am open to both possibilities. Whether there is a need or not for private American citizens to own such a firearm is truly a matter of opinion. What is not an opinion is the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Obviously the Second Amendment was not added to the Constitution as a direct answer to our question, but it is indispensible in answering it.

If the Second Amendment provides an answer to our question, it seems that the answer is for “the security of a free State”. Consider both wordings of the amendment as found on Wikipedia.

A) As passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

B) As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.^[8]

Apparently the authors and supporters of the amendment believed that the preservation of their new nation required that US citizens continue to own firearms. Yes, I said continue. People already owned firearms. The objective of the amendment was to prevent future legislation which would disarm the populace.  They knew from experience that an armed populace had made it possible to resist King George, whom they saw as a tyrant. Deeply worried about the rise of tyrants, they wrote the Second Amendment. (It’s worth noting that the right to bear arms is second only to the right to free speech, religion, press and assembly.) To their way of thinking: if a State is going to remain free from abusive and oppressive rulers its citizens need to be armed.

So, do private citizens really need semi-automatic assault rifles to prevent tyranny in the United States? I understand why some people think so. I also understand why some other people think not. Whether needed or not, the right to own firearms, and a semi-automatic rifle is a firearm, is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The choice to own one or not belongs to each citizen.

Since this is supposed to be a blog about my thoughts on God, I want to bring this around to what I think Go would want of me (and all Christians) in the US at this time. First, I think God would want me to choose whether to exercise my Second Amendment right or not. Second, having chosen to exercise my constitutional right, God would want me to use my firearm of choice lawfully and morally. That means I would acquire a legal weapon through legal means. I would submit to the required background checks. If I decided to get a carry permit, I would take a handgun training course. If discharging my weapon would protect the life of my family, my neighbors or any other endangered person, I would hope to have the courage and skill to do so effective. Yes, even if that would mean killing another person. I would strive to use my weapon for good, not evil. And if the time came that the Second Amendment were lawfully repealed (there’s a legal process for repealing amendments) then I would pray for wisdom. It is possible that I would surrender my firearm. It is possible that I would not. If I were to surrender my weapon, I would not do so joyfully or with faith in the government to protect me, my family and my neighbors from criminals…or even from tyranny. I would do so with faith in God to sustain me and with the expectation that dark(er) days were ahead.

Look to the Sky

I overheard two colleagues talking recently about the interminable conflict between Israel and Palestine.

One of them expressed a wish for an alien race (like the one from the 1980’s mini-series “V”) to occupy the planet for ten years and resolve this intractable issue on humanity’s behalf.

There are a couple directions I could run with this snippet of conversation. I could talk about a similar plot I came up with for a short sci-fi story. I could riff on the irony of wishing for an invading army to occupy a planet in order to terminate a so-called invading army’s “occupation” of a country. Instead, I think I’ll take note of the following:

In his own way (and I’m sure unintentionally), my colleague has expressed a Biblical truth: humans are incapable of managing our own affairs. We’ve made a mess of things. Everything. Every. Thing. There is no aspect of the material universe and human experience in it that has not be corrupted. All of our relationships, individually, communally, nationally and internationally are broken and dysfunctional. In the film Princess Mononoke by Miyazaki, a wandering monk tells the hero, who is on a journey to remove a curse that is upon him, that there’s nothing special about his curse. He states flatly, “The whole world is under a curse.” It’s a curse that humanity has brought upon itself.

I couldn’t help thinking about Jesus when I heard this man’s comment. One day Jesus is going to come from “above” like an alien invasion, take control of the Earth and put an end to this same curse. It won’t be for a mere ten years, or even a thousand years. It will be forever. As it says in the digital copy of the Scots’ Book of Common Prayer on my iPod, “world without end”. And his rule will be on humanity’s behalf, for our benefit. In fact, it will be his humane rule that will establish the context in which genuine humanity will thrive.

I could leave it here, but I think it’s important to note that Jesus’ return won’t be an invasion. He’s not a an alien, a stranger, a foreigner. He’s the True Man and the world’s True King. He’ll be coming back to claim what it rightfully his. His return will be a reclamation.

Shoulding on Seth

Seth Godin says “There are no shoulds in the market, just reality,” but he doesn’t really believe that. How do I know he doesn’t believe that? Because he goes on to suggest $20 as a “ ‘moral’ ceiling” on the price of the commodity in discussion, namely e-books. Did you notice the quotation marks around the word ‘moral’ in his article? Imagine him speaking and making air quotes with his fingers. It’s not that he personally believes there is anything immoral about charging more than $20…but doesn’t he? Doesn’t he have some sense that charging more than twenty bucks is wrong at some level? Nah, not wrong morally but just bad for business. But doesn’t Seth (and everyone in the business world) believe that one should not do something that is bad for business? Or to put it positively, doesn’t Seth think one should do what is good for business? Aren’t good and bad moral decisions?

Obviously, I disagree with the Mr. Godin. There are shoulds in the market. Two crucial shoulds that are foundational to the existence of the market are a) “I should get paid,” and b) “I should get what I paid for.” I can’t imagine Seth not getting paid, shrugging his shoulder and saying, “That’s reality.”

Here is some more reality: people don’t like shoulds, at least they don’t like when shoulds get between them and what they want. I don’t know what Seth specifically wants with regard to the price of e-books. I assume he wants to make money by selling them. Does he want a fair price or does he want a maximal price? Are these two mutually exclusive in this case? I can’t say. But I can say that the reality is shoulds are unavoidable in the market, as in life.

One challenge is identifying them. Another is conforming to them.

This is supposed to be a blog about theology. So what’s the connection? Well, if theology is about God and God’s relationship to the world, then the connection is this: God, as creator, has made humans to reflect his image within the material universe. We are to be like him in all our relationships and the market is a form of human relationship. Humans are to reflect his image in the market. God is good. We should be good. God is just. We should be just. God is truthful. We should be truthful. When humans fail to reflect God in the market, all manner of things go wrong. One sign that things have gone wrong is an outrageous mark up…particularly on e-books.

Favored are the…

Adam said that to be blessed was to be “the recipient of divine favor” and that got me thinking. I began to restate the beatitudes in my mind this way:

God favors

•                 the poor (in spirit)
•                 the mourners
•                 the meek
•                 the persecuted
•                 the peacemakers
•                 the pure (in heart)
•                 the merciful
•                 the hungry and thirsty for righteousness
•                 the insulted and accused

Usually, we long-time church-goers think that the word “blessed” is just as effectively rendered “happy” because at some point we heard a preacher say as much. (Any Robert Schuler fans out there remember “The Be Happy Attitudes”?) And so we tend to hear Jesus say “Happy are the poor…” and “Happy are the mourners…” and so forth.  We accept that “happy poor” and “happy mourners” are paradoxes, which is what we tend to expect in religion, then wonder what’s for lunch. But when Adam uttered the words “divine favor”, my mind went in an unusual direction.

Jesus was talking to a crowd of God’s chosen people. He was addressing the children of Abraham, the people of Moses, the descendants of David. They were the one nation of all the nations  which God had taken to be his own. In other words, he was talking to people who saw themselves as favored by God.

Within their own favored community they had some clear ideas about who among them were favored by God. Wealth was considered a sign of his favor. Conversely, poverty was seen as a sign of God’s disfavor. The healthy were favored. The sick were disfavored. Those with many children were favored. Those with no children weren’t. And the list goes on. Jesus has his own list of people favored by  God and it doesn’t match his audience’s list.

As I reflect on this, I feel  there’s something weightier about having God’s favor as opposed to a paradoxical happiness. Maybe it’s because I once heard a preacher say that happiness is the product of our circumstances. As our circumstances change, so does our degree of happiness, which implies that bad circumstances result in unhappiness. But with this idea of “blessed” meaning “favored by God”, there is no paradox. There’s no question of happiness.  The poor, who are in bad circumstances, have God’s particular attention. They, who have nothing, are receiving everything from God. The mourners, who are obviously unhappy, have God comforting them.  The meek, pure and persecuted  have God defending them and their cause. All of these people feel and know just how far out of sorts the world is  and they all have God assuring them that He is sorting the world out.

Jesus’ listeners expected God to sort the world out one day. They expected God to send someone like Moses to tell them in no uncertain terms what God wanted from them. They expected God to send someone like David to defeat their geo-political enemies and restore their political freedom and power. They expected someone like Elijah to wield divine power on their behalf. And when that person showed up and did all of these things for God’s favored people, then the world would be sorted out. What they didn’t expect was that the favored ones were those on Jesus’ list and that Jesus himself was the one God had chosen to put the world back in order.

Nice One Derek

I want to be able to revisit this: http://covenantoflove.net/christianity/protestant-christianity/r-c-sproul-n-t-wright-and-the-scarecrow/

Give It Up Grump!

I heard a preacher say that when money is given “dutifully and begrudgingly”, the person who receives the money still gets the blessing, but the giver doesn’t. When we give money to some charitable activity, the hungry are blessed with food, the naked are blessed with clothes and the lost are blessed with the good news of Jesus, but we, the grumpy givers, are not blessed…hmmm…

The preacher wasn’t a “health and wealth” evangelist. He wasn’t implying that God was going to punish any of his children who didn’t have a smile on his when he put his money in the plate on Sunday. But this idea that grumpy givers were not blessed by their dutiful donations struck me as mistaken. I suppose that’s because I have grudgingly given to those in need and I think that I’ve been blessed by it.

It would be inappropriate to give details but here’s a broad outline of what happened. A couple of thousands dollars came my way which had not been worked into the family budget. My wife and I were excited about the possibilities that this money afforded us. We talked about investing, saving for a replacement car, tending to various household expenses and even having some fun with the kids. Then we found out about a co-worker of mine who was in a very bad situation. He and his family were in serious need. The question was not whether to help. The question was how much money were we going to give. We budget for charitable situations so we knew that whatever was allotted for that month would be given, but the man’s predicament was bad. He needed more than what we had budgeted…and we had an unallocated surplus.

We knew that it would be a great blessing to give all of that surplus to my co-worker. We knew that it would be a very Godly thing to do. We knew that we didn’t really want to give it all, and we knew that God knew it. So, we prayed. We told God what he already knew; that we wanted to keep it, that we could use it to tend to the legitimate needs of our own family, that we were ready to let the money go but that we were not going to be able to do it cheerfully. Then we let it go.

I think that the most immediate blessing that we experienced in giving that surplus cash to that needy co-worker was a loosening of the grip that money had on our hearts. Another blessing we got from giving in spite of our lack of enthusiasm was an increase in moral muscle mass. You see, I believe that just as we gain strength in our physical muscles by applying effort against some resistance (i.e. gravity), we  also gain strength in our moral character when we go against our own resistance and do what we know is right. The result is that with each decision to do what is right, doing the right thing becomes easier. In regards to giving money, I think that our decision to go ahead and give, albeit reluctantly, has resulted in our being able to give larger sums and to give them (at times) cheerfully…or at least (at other times) less reluctantly.

God loves a cheerful giver, but he also loves the begrudging giver. So, of course, God wants the begrudging giver to learn to be cheerful in his giving. For this to even be possible, there has to be some giving going on.

Chosing (un)Belief

Have you heard of TED Talks? Probably. If not, you can learn something about them and participate in the post at this same time by checking out this one by Alexander Tsiaras. Take note of what he says in the the first 2 minutes of the talk (around 1:20-1:23) about the nature of collagen in the cornea of the human eye and divinity.

I’ll spare you the snarky, mental comment which (I’m sorry to say) popped into my mind first. Instead, I’ll share my second response, which was “I guess we believe what we want to.”

You probably can’t tell from just reading it, but my second response was simply an observation. It’s probably not a novel one to you. You’ve probably noticed that we believe what we want in some situation or other. You might have been in discussion/debate/dialogue with someone who doesn’t believe in God and had this person tell you that you believe in God simply because you want God to exist. The implication is that you, the believer, are ignoring reasonable (perhaps irrefutable?) evidence against God’s existence and that your faith is merely a product of your own lack of intellectual ability or integrity. Or perhaps you’re just obstinate. Or maybe you’ve been in conflict with someone who didn’t believe you were telling the truth about a particular incident or subject. In your frustration you told the other person, “Believe what you like!” Maybe it wasn’t an expression of frustration, but just a statement of dismissal to show that you weren’t going to allow your belief in your own integrity to be shaken. In both scenarios there’s something negative assumed about the connection of a belief to a desire to believe. It’s almost as if there’s a tacit understanding that wanting to believe (in) something corrupts the belief in some way. You’re supposed to either believe it or not. Wanting to believe somehow compromises/nullifies the belief itself.

Consider what Tsiaras is doing when he says that “it was hard not to attribute divinity to” the “perfectly organized structure” of the collagen in the cornea. He’s sort of confessing that he was moved at some level of his being to believe that a deity was the origin of what he was seeing. And in spite of the difficulty, he chose to persevere in his disbelief. When confronted with evidence which indicated “divinity” at work, Tsiaris willed to disbelieve. To put it another way, he chose to believe in “no-divinity”.

I think the Bible corroborates this idea that people’s beliefs frequently follow their wills/desires. Consider the parable Jesus told about the rich man and the beggar called Lazarus. In the story, the rich man and the beggar are “on the other side”. The rich man is in “torment” while the beggar is with Abraham, (who is the Father of the Faithful)so in a good place. The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus be sent back to warn his brothers who apparently are headed for the same hellish destination. Abraham says it doesn’t work that way, but the rich man pleads saying that sending someone from the dead would convince them to change their ways. Abraham tells the rich man plainly that if his brothers would not believe the warnings of (the Law of) Moses and the Prophets, then they wouldn’t believe the warnings of someone raised from the dead. To see this parable come to life, take note of how the Jewish leaders responded when an actual Lazarus was in fact raised from the dead by Jesus. The leaders had witnesses. They knew it was a genuine miracle. None of them denied it. So, why didn’t they believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be and respond appropriately? Because they did not want to believe. They did not want this Jesus to be their Messiah because he wasn’t doing the job correctly. In the face of the miracle, they believed what they wanted to believe-that Jesus was a fraud.

Then there’s the story of a man who asked Jesus to heal his son. The boy had been afflicted by an evil spirit since childhood and no one had been able to help him. Even the disciples were no help. If the disciples were no help, could the master be any better? The evidence was solidly on the side of unbelief. But he was desperate. “If you can…” the man said. Jesus laid it out for the father, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” The man had to make a choice. He cried out, “Lord I believe!Help my unbelief!” It’s Tsiaras’ choice made in the opposite direction.

Does Obedience Have Spiritual Value?

The topic was parenting. The issue was something called First Time Obedience (FT0). The blogger was critiquing FTO. Her comments got me thinking about the “spiritual value” of obedience.

It’s a tricky phrase “spiritual value”. Her comment was “Obedience, to have any spiritual value, must come after a personal encounter with Jesus, not before.” After thinking about this statement as it was delivered (as opposed to how it was probably intended), I came up with this question:

Does obedience (particularly of children to parents) have any spiritual value to the obedient before he/she becomes a follower of Jesus? I’m still thinking about it, but feel free to share your comments until I’m ready to elaborate on mine.

Nearly 24 hours later…been thinking about this question.

I suppose that obedience is a spiritually neutral behavior. It seems that it’s not inherently beneficial or harmful and that its value is dependent upon several additional factors. I would have to assume that this applies to the obedience of children to their parents…and yet…

The Old Testament tells children to “honor your father and your mother”. Paul in the New Testament essentially repeats this as: “children obey your parents”. Paul goes on to say that this obedience is “right” and “pleases the Lord”. So, is the Lord only pleased when Christian children honor/obey their parents? Is He ambivalent when non-Christian children obey their parents? Is it not also “right” for non-Christian children to obey their parents? If children obeying parents is “right” and “pleases the Lord”, isn’t there some sort of spiritual value to doing what is right and pleasing to the Lord?

In the original context, I think the blogger really meant to say that teaching our children to obey us (the parents) on the first command (as opposed to constantly having to nag and/or negotiate with them) does not have any soteriological value. That is to say, our kids aren’t going to become obedient to Jesus just because we manage to get them to be obedient to us in the manner of First Time Obedience. And perhaps she’s right on that point. Perhaps not. I can’t say because I’ve been too occupied thinking about what constitutes “spiritual value” and whether or not obedience has any.

Suffering: What’s that about?

The tag line of the blog says “posting about things to wonderful for me” and this time it really applies. Thanks to a comment from Dave X on my post about “Why God Kills Babies”, I’ve been thinking about the nature of suffering. It takes great confidence (or arrogance?) to hold forth on suffering because it is a mystery that God simply has not opened to many (if any) folks. It certainly is still a mystery to me. Even so, I still stated in my back-and-forth with Dave X that suffering is an intruder into God’s good creation. Now, I wonder if that statement is true.

I presupposed (as many do I’m sure) that suffering is inherently evil…but is it? Is suffering something that has a moral property? Or, is suffering morally neutral? Could it be possible that suffering is only as evil (or as good) as its product? Is it possible that there are in fact some kinds of suffering that are completely evil while other kinds of suffering are completely good? Instead of being some sort of “intruder”, is it possible that suffering is the logical consequence of a particular moral choice? (Sounds a bit like karma doesn’t it?) Sadly, all I really have are the questions. There are no answers to come in this post.

And why should there be? Job calls God on the carpet for his own (and representatively all humanity’s) suffering and comes away without an answer. (At least not one that satisfies most folks.) How can I possibly improve upon that Biblical book?

One thing that I can say with certainty is that suffering is temporary, which is not to say that it is unimportant. Neither is it to say that suffering is illusory. I believe that God validates the importance and reality of suffering by alleviating and experiencing it in Jesus. All I mean to say is that the biblical narrative tells us that at “the renewal of all things”, when there is a New Heaven and a New Earth, there will be no more tears, no more pain and no more crying. So, even if there is something inherently good about suffering (and I’m not saying that there is or there isn’t), it is only a limited good. When it has reached its limit, whether it’s the limit of its harm or its benefit, suffering will cease to be.

So, perhaps the human desire to avoid suffering isn’t a sign of moral weakness. Even Jesus asked if it was possible to accomplish God’s will some way other than death on the cross. But saying that the desire to avoid suffering is not a weakness does not and can not mean that it is in fact a moral virtue. We’ve heard of too many cowardly acts which have been committed in order to avoid suffering to believe that. Maybe the human urge to flee from suffering simply rises from an inherited memory of that state of being prior to The Fall when there was no suffering. Perhaps our attempted flights from suffering are also attempted flights back to the garden, only seen from this side of The Fall.

I’m just thinking out loud here.

I don’t know.

The Point of Religion?

Skip the article and go directly to the final sentence. This is what the author ultimately wants you to remember.

“What we believe doesn’t in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live.”

Now, think about the inherent contradiction in that sentence. If Mr. Gray didn’t believe in the importance of that sentiment, would he have bothered to articulate it? If Mr. Gray didn’t believe that his subject matter was important, would have have taken the time to write the article? (Perhaps, but at the very least he believed that keeping a job was important and so took the time to turn in something for publication.)

How we live is based upon what we believe. We live selfishly because we believe that there is no one else more worth living for. (Yep, that’s a Rush lyric right there.) We live selflessly because we believe that our happiness is bound up with the well-being of others. What people believe about their deity is manifest in their deeds in relationship to others. And the case can be made that what people really believe is best seen by how they live their lives.

Mr. Gray and countless Christians (and other folks) have divorced belief from action in their thinking and have lost a critical piece of the human puzzle. James spoke in terms of “faith” and “works”, but the meaning and the end result is the same: one without the other is dead.

Perhaps you should’ve skipped this post and just read the book of James instead?

Not Ashamed…Not Really

I was embarrassed.

The conversation had meandered and I had mentioned that I’d lived and worked in an Eastern European country in my mid-twenties. My co-worker asked me what I was doing there. I choked…sort of. I said something about teaching. She probed further and asked me how I ended up there. Again, I mentally seized-up, not really wanting to say that I was there primarily as a missionary. But, she wanted a story and so as I told the story, truncated though. Then she wanted to know about my religion.

I began to cast about in my mind thinking of terms to avoid without misrepresenting myself or my faith in Jesus. You see, she’s Irish and therefore her frame of religious reference is a very particular sort of Catholicism. And she’s also from a post-Christendom European culture. To say that I’m a Christian wouldn’t have told her much. Saying that I’m a Protestant might have said more, but it wouldn’t be a fair (to my mind) categorization of my views. I’m not an Evangelical, despite having spent the last decade in an expatriate Evangelical faith community, so I would never claim that moniker even if I thought it would have any meaning to this woman. In the end, I said awkwardly that I’m a follower of Jesus, which apparently didn’t really help her much at all because she asked more questions.

The conversation went into a couple of different directions and became less about me before we got to work. After I dropped her off and went to park the car, I began to ask myself why I was so embarrassed. Was it Christ that I was embarrassed about? Was I ashamed of Jesus? Was I worried about being negatively judged by this person? Or was I embarrassed about something else?

Honestly, I was somewhat worried about being negatively judged but not because of Jesus. I’m not embarrassed by Him. I’m embarrassed by his followers…and I have to say that I embarrass myself at times. After all, every time a Harold Camp pops up and spouts off, Christians look pretty stupid. Every time a priest gets hauled into the spotlight for molesting a choirboy Christianity looks wicked. Every time a Southern Baptist pastor bar-b-ques a Qu’ran, Jesus gets a black-eye. Every time I let my need to be “right” overpower someone’s need for compassion Christians, Christianity and Christ all take a hit.

Now, I’m embarrassed for being embarrassed.

Good Stuff from Justification

“It is therefore a straightforward category mistake….to suppose that ‘Jesus obeyed the law’ and so obtained ‘righteousness’ which could be reckoned to those who believe in him. To think this way is to concede, after all, that ‘legalism’ was true after all-with Jesus as the ultimate legalist.”

“It is not the “righteousness” of Jesus Christ which is ‘reckoned’ to the believer. It is his death and resurrection….Paul does not say, ‘I am in Christ; Christ has obeyed the Torah; therefore God regards me as though I had obeyed the Torah.” He says: ‘I am in Christ; Christ has died and been raised; therefore God regards me-…-as someone who has died to sin and been raised to newness of life.”

So writes NT Wright in his book Justification.
What I find so satisfying about this exegesis is that it works with what Paul says as opposed to bringing in a descriptive term from outside the text. After all, Paul doesn’t ever say that Jesus’ righteousness is “imputed” to his followers.

Don’t misunderstand. There are times when descriptive terms which do not appear in the text of the Bible are useful. Trinity is a good example. The word never appears yet it does a good job of representing the Biblical testimony that God’s nature is a three-in-one sort. However, there are also times when outside terms prejudice a reading of the text toward a particular doctrine which may not actually be in the text. Rapture is a good example. This word never appears in the text and it’s used to misrepresent what actually is. It would seem that “imputed righteousness” is another one such term.

And I think that NT Wright’s critics/opponents get hung up precisely at the point (as well as others) because they have this term “imputed righteousness” and this is what they go looking for when they go to the text. If they don’t find righteousness being imputed, they shut down.

Everyone does this to some degree, in some way, about some favored doctrine. And God in his great mercy and grace allows for this, so it seems, because these hang ups of ours do not prevent us from experiencing some measure of spiritual success. We still find encouragement and/or strength to live in God-pleasing, Jesus-honoring, Spirit-empowered ways.

And that’s good.

Was Justice Really Done in Abbottabad?

A Christian said, “I’m not rejoicing over the man’s death. I’m rejoicing that justice was done.”

Was justice really done? The killing of OBL by the US military may or may not have been a just act. We’ve seen that some say that it was while others say it wasn’t. NT Wright, a Christian whom I admire greatly, has indicated that if there has been any sort of justice in this situation, it is a “crude” and improper sort. He may or may not be right. But, the question has to be asked. Christians, particularly those who feel compelled to rejoice publicly, need to consider whether or not OBL’s death is truly the outworking of justice, divine or human. Why? Because it is important that we “avoid the appearance of evil”, that we do not allow “what we call good to be called evil” and that we do not rejoice when our “enemy stumbles”. As the people of God, our response to the demise of OBL reflects upon our God and His Anointed. We must be wise.

Personally, I’m not certain that justice was done in that house in Pakistan. It seems that there is an appearance of justice. A violent man who lived a violent life died violently at the hands of men trained in violence. A murderer was murdered. A sinner received his wages. However we choose to phrase it, there is clearly a symmetry in OBL’s life and death. But, I’m not sure that symmetry is a synonym for justice. I’m not certain that a “just” end can be achieved through (possibly) unlawful means. I question whether or not a “proper justice” (whatever that means) was even possible in this situation.

And because I’m not certain that justice has in fact been done, I do not rejoice. However, I believe that justice will be done. I believe that when Jesus judges the world and all of its people, he will do what is right. So, I’m not refusing to rejoice in God’s justice. I’m simply postponing the celebration.

Bumming Out Bob Geldof

It was clear as Sir Bob spoke that the continent of Africa is critical to the question of global food security. He told us that its borders contain 60% of the world’s arable land which is vital for producing the crops needed to feed the swelling population of the world, particularly of those nation-states categorized as developing. He pointed out that consequently the political stability of Africa is paramount. He noted the increase of democratic countries in Africa from just 9 in the 1980’s to 19 today and the interviewer said, “So you’re optimistic about Africa?” Sir Bob replied that he was, with two caveats. They were the rising influence of Wahabism in the north and “fundamentalist Christianity pushing up from the south”. These two factors were the only things he mentioned which mitigated his optimism for the political stability of what is certainly to become the Garden of the World.

Wouldn’t it be great if Sir Bob (and the rest of the world) could see the spread of Christians as a reason to be optimistic rather than cause for pessimism? And yet, I wonder if that’s actually possible? Jesus didn’t engender universal optimism by his presence. Some shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” at his arrival while others shouted “Away with him! Crucify him!” at his departure. Some had even shouted both within the same week. I suppose we should expect the same for those who wear his name. In the end, I guess that what’s true of people in general is true of Christians in particular. They spread joy wherever they go: some by coming and others by leaving.

What does the empty tomb add?

“What does the empty tomb add?”

Marcus Borg posed this question in regards to the Easter narrative…I can’t remember if I heard it on a podcast or read it in a book. In other words, the importance of Easter is in no way diminished if the tomb was not in fact empty. For him, the spiritual value of Easter is not connected to or dependent upon a historical event commonly called The Resurrection. Wow.

The traditional greeting in many Christian communities on Easter Sunday is “Jesus is risen!” The response is “He is risen indeed!” Indeed…in fact…historical fact. If not, why bother?

The empty tomb adds nothing. It is the essence. If the tomb was not empty, then there’s no story. If Jesus didn’t walk out of that tomb, then there is no story. At least, none worth dying for…as so many have done. And a story that isn’t worth dying for isn’t worth living by either.

Why Did Jesus Die?

“Jesus died on a cross so that I could eat Starbursts today.”

I recoiled a bit when I read this status update of a Facebook friend today. I’d known the guy in high school. Not real well, but well enough to know that he wasn’t a friend of Jesus. We went our separate ways when I graduated a year before him, and then through mutual friends on FB, we reconnected in a small way.

“Does he hate Christians now?” This was my first question. I don’t remember him as hostile to Christians. But then, growing up in a small town with the stereotypical “dyed in the wool” believers as we did could certainly have made him hostile. It wouldn’t be an usual story if it was true.

“Is he just being funny?” I remember that he’d always been a clown. Nothing was off limits when it came to making jokes. Maybe he was just being the same irreverent joker I had known from Speech class.

“Is he telling the truth?” This was my last question before leaving his FB page and getting on with my business for the day.

And that’s where my thoughts remain. Perhaps, either wittingly or not, my classmate from long ago was speaking the truth. But what sort of truth? Is it a “truth” as he sees it, has seen it and experiences it still? Could it be a bit of subversive truth? An unwitting bit of prophecy charging the people of God with syncretism or trivialization of the Greatest Story Ever Told? Does he speak as one who has missed the plot or as one who has gotten the plot from muddled narrators?

The only way to get any answers is to ask him.

Do I dare?

Parts Prayer

“For we know in part…”

…some of us know larger parts. Others know smaller parts.

God, help me to remember that I only know in part and not to be concerned with how large or small my part is.

God and Stuff

I saw this car as I was driving to work.

Toys for the Big Boys was written on a bumper sticker. It’s the name of an expo that “brings together the latest technologies and the biggest brands along with high impact entertainment features, all packed into four days of non-stop action and sheer excitement.”

The juxtaposition of the bumper sticker and the “Jesus fish” made me think about my own struggle with a love of STUFF and my commitment to Jesus…who just wasn’t into stuff.

I struggle.

Bell, Hell

I wonder if Rob Bell’s new book “Love Wins” is going to get people talking about Hell like NT Wright’s book “Surprised by Hope” got people talking about Heaven? It’s certainly got a critic in common with Wright’s book. (You probably know who I’m referring to.)

Is Bell a Universalist? Does he believe that all humans eventually get out of Hell and into Heaven? Or is he an Annihilationist? Does he believe that God mercifully annihilates the damned instead of letting them suffer forever? Is he a traditionalist? Does he really believe in a place of never ending torment filled with the majority of humanity whose “worm dieth not”? I don’t know…and I’m not really interested. That said, reading some of the hype/controversy on Bell’s ideas about the topic got me to thinking about my own understanding of Hell.

The Bible isn’t all that forthcoming on the “afterlife”. There are no drawn out descriptions of what lies ahead for the saved or the damned. (Not like in the Qu’ran, anyway.) The saved are given everlasting life. The damned aren’t. Going beyond that quickly turns into speculation (I think). Yes there are passages about a “crystal sea” and a “lake of fire”, but it has to be acknowledged that these are not intended to be viewed through the same grid that one reads a travel narrative.

Reflecting on passages of Scripture dealing with Hell, I remembered something Jesus said in Matthew 25. He’s describing the final judgment. He’s not describing the administrative details, but rather is simply saying that people will be divided into two groups: saved and damned. When he rewards the saved, Jesus tells them to receive “the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”. When he condemns the damned he says “depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”. Let’s leave aside what we could say about “eternal fire” and focus on its intended recipients. Jesus says that this Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. Not humans. Hell is not for humans. Hell may very well have been created prior to the material universe (i.e. the world) but it was never intended to receive humans, because God intended to give humans a kingdom, a context for the exercise of power and authority.

If Rob Bell is right in saying that what we Christians believe about Hell “exposes” what we believe about who God is and what God is like, then let us believe this about God: that His purpose for human beings is to give us a kingdom, a context for exercising power and authority that He has given us, or to put it in the same terms as we find in Genesis, to be “in the image of God”.

Safety First

John Piper is not (to borrow the Biblical metaphor) my servant. He works for Jesus. It’s up to Jesus to evaluate Piper’s performance in His service. I’m not about to call him out or criticize him in any way (although doing so might mean some more traffic for this blog), but I am going to hi-jack a thread from Preacher Mike which consists of a video of Piper answering a question. See it here.

I’m not a pastor but I’m going to take a shot at answering this person’s (probably a woman) question:

Safety first. Abuse, whatever its form or degree is essentially harming another person. When faced with potential or actual harm, the appropriate response is to seek safety. Not retaliation. Not revenge. Safety. So, if a woman is being abused by a man, her chief need is safety. Nothing else matters until she is safe. The same applies to Christian wives being abused by their Christian husbands. Safety must come first.

It is not a sin to seek safety from an abuser. A Christian woman who separates herself (and children) from an abusive husband has not sinned in doing so. She has not violated the apostolic teaching regarding wives’ submission to husbands. To invoke this teaching as justification for abuse is a sin that will be judged by Jesus when He returns.

As you can see, I’m not really answering the question as it was worded and the reason is simple: I can’t. The wording of the question betrays a certain confusion about priorities. It’s like having someone with a gushing head wound going to see a dermatologist and asking if a mole on his nose looks cancerous. Cancer is serious but at the moment, the head wound takes precedence. Likewise, the Biblical teaching regarding submission (to God, human authorities, parents, husbands, wives etc) is important and needs to be addressed but only when the abused is delivered from the abuser. Only in a safe context, probably after some healing, is it appropriate and wise to seek to understand what it means for followers of Jesus to submit in the various contexts in which we are called to submit.

Obviously

Sometimes, when I read the Bible, I fail to ask the most obvious questions of the text. This self-incriminating truth was brought home recently while I listened to a sermon about Peter walking on the water. While the preacher was making his point (about acting on faith, I think), I found myself asking, “What was Peter thinking?” I didn’t mean (start scholarly tone now) “What existential question was the apostle attempting to answer by requesting a miraculous experience in this time of personal and corporate crisis?” (end scholarly tone.) Instead, I meant “Whaddya, nuts?” Think about it: it’s a dark and stormy night on the sea. The disciples have been battling the wind for a long time and they’ve got to be getting tired. Suddenly, one of them starts screaming something about a ghost on the water. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, imagine what it would be like for someone who does to think they’re seeing one. Especially when thoughts of dying were probably on the surface of everyone’s thoughts. Then, above the rushing sound of the wind, the voice of Jesus comes across the water to them. He’s saying something about not being afraid. Dark night. Stormy sea. Ghostly figure. Don’t be afraid. Right.

It seems to me that a reasonable person would NOT have asked the ghost on the water anything, but rather redoubled his efforts to put as many waves between the ghost and himself as possible. A different, yet also reasonable, response would have been to say, “Master, save us!” Peter himself had already experienced one storm with Jesus. He might have at least said, “Thank God you’re here Lord! Tell the winds and the waves to pipe down like you last time.” Those sound like reasonable response to me. Instead, Peter asks if he can take a walk on the water.

How long did it take for the other disciples in the boat to realize what exactly was happening? Once Peter threw his first leg over the side of the boat, did anyone grabbed his arm and say, “Whaddya, nuts? That could be an evil spirit out there calling you to your death! Can’t you see the wind and the waves?” What about when Peter pulled his second leg after him and stood up straight on the water? Did anybody shout, “Get back here before you get yourself killed!” Or, did they all simply stare slack-jawed at the insane scene of Peter gingerly stepping across the tops of the waves heading toward a wind-blown Jesus?

Sometimes, obvious questions have obvious answers. Peter was thinking exactly what he said; if it’s Jesus out there, he can command me to walk on the water and I’ll be able to do it. After all, as noted earlier, Peter had already been with Jesus on a stormy sea. He had seen Jesus, roused from a nap in the front of the boat, stand up and order the wind and the sea to heel like a faithful dog. And when they did, Peter, like the others in the boat that time, asked himself “Who is this man that he can command the wind to stop and the sea to calm down?” Only God has the power and the authority to control nature. Here’s Jesus controlling nature. Peter put two and two together, so to speak, and came up with the obvious answer to his own obvious question: Jesus is God, the Son of God. And now, with Jesus standing on the water calling to the disciples, it was time for Peter to check his sum. “If it’s you Lord…”, he says.

Peter was right. He was thinking it was the Lord calling to them from the sea and it was. Peter was thinking that Jesus was God and could suspend the laws of nature for his salvation and he could. Usually with this story, we concentrate on Peter’s moment of doubt and his sinking into the sea, but not this time. This time, let’s leave Peter walking on the water, confirming the obvious answers to the obvious questions.

What Do You Expect?

Matt Litton’s reflection on Advent pointed out that Jesus failed to meet a lot of people’s expectations. The Jews were looking for a leader who would unite the people and lead them to a military victory over their Roman oppressors. This God-appointed King was supposed to re-establish the throne of David and put God’s chosen people on top of the whole world. The nations were to be subjugated, the Temple cleansed and fit for the return of God’s glorious presence, and the Torah was to go out into every corner of the Earth. Universal peace was to become a reality by this leader’s hand. And Jesus offered none of that; at least as far as they could tell. Matt finished off his reflection by exhorting his readers to let Jesus “invade our expectations of what it means to live a life of faith”. After reading Matt’s post, I asked myself “What are my expectations of God/Jesus?”

To be honest, I don’t have many. It’s not an easy thing to admit, but I think it’s true. I pray to God asking for various blessings (not necessarily for myself) or changes in circumstances (not always my own), but frequently I don’t expect to receive what I’ve asked for. To mask my faithlessness, I wrap it up in some pious language about God’s will being done and the inscrutability of his will, but the truth I’m just trying to insulate myself against disappointment and the temptation to accuse God when the blessings don’t come and the circumstances don’t change.

This is not to say that I have no expectations of God. I cling to the belief that if I “seek first his kingdom” then all the other necessities of life will be provided by him as well. And I do expect him to do something when I pray. I just don’t usually expect him to do what I ask. Again, I don’t want to ask for someone to be healed only to be disappointed when they die. I don’t want to ask for certain realities to change only to be disappointed by more of the same as days turn to weeks, months and years. In other words, I often set the bar very low for God. It’s like I’ve invited the King of Creation into the story while offering Him my arm to lean on as He toddles across the threshold like a fragile old man. Absurd isn’t it?

Paul says that God is able to do more than “all we ask or imagine”. If you’re like me, you may need to ask God to reawaken your imagination and give you a set of expectations which He can exceed. Then, when we ask Him into our story, perhaps we should stand back…just in case He decides to burst onto the scene.

Blair vs Hitchens: a comment

Mr Hitchens, 61, said: “Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well.” Telegraph.uk

I can think of one religion in the world which is somewhat represented by Mr Hitchens’ statement (there may be others), but it’s not the Catholic Christianity of his debate partner Tony Blair. It certainly isn’t representative of the narrative found in the Bible.

The Biblical story says that God made humanity “good”. In fact, the male/female aspect of humanity is described as “very good” by the Creator. Whatever the original Hebrew words means, it is highly unlikely that they have any connection to something negative like “sick”. Yet, Mr. Hitchens is (unwittingly?) right: humanity is sick. How did we get this way?

The Christian answer is called “The Fall”. It’s the story of how the first humans (called Adam and Eve) disobeyed God thereby introducing sin and death into the story. Staying with Hitchens’ metaphor of physical sickness: humanity’s choice to disobey God resulted in our exposure to the infectious disease of sin. The ultimate prognosis for sin is death. The good news is that there is a cure. And God, as the Healer, dispenses the cure freely to those who come to Him in order to get well. God’s doesn’t command humans to be well, but rather offers them the cure. It’s up to humans to avail themselves of it.

Consider Mr. Hitchens’ own illness. He has cancer. He can either submit to the various therapies or he can refuse. Both choices come with a set of consequences which are directly dependent upon his decision. True, the end result ultimately will be that Mr. Hitchens dies. However, if he submits to God’s prescription for both his physical and spiritual illness, then as Jesus said, “Even though he dies, yet he will live.” And that is really the Creator’s plan: that whosoever calls on the Lord will be saved from the sickness of sin and death.

God or Godette

The Facebook status read: “The Hebrew word Ruach (Spirit) is of the feminine gender. Weird”

When I saw it, not many folks had commented. As a person who makes his living in part due to his limited knowledge of linguistics, I thought of cautioning folks about putting too much stock in the “gender” of words. Then I decided that I might come across as condescending and refrained from any comment…but not from thinking about the gender(s) of God.

Jesus once told his audience that God is spirit. He wasn’t instructing them on God’s gender so much as he was telling them what type of worship this spirit-being wants. My first inclination is to leap upon the word “spirit” and say that spirits don’t have gender and therefore neither does God. Yet, as I think some more about it, I don’t know that I can confidently state that spirits don’t have gender. When the Bible speaks about spirits, it seems to assume a fundamental understanding of what’s being talked about and leaves off anything like a definition. So, perhaps I’m wrong and spirits, like humans, are gendered beings. Going back to my friends Facebook status: perhaps God is female because God is spirit and spirit in Hebrew is a word in the feminine gender…but I don’t think that’s the case.

God, whether or not he actually is a he, has allowed himself to be represented in the Scriptures as male. That’s clear enough. When God incarnated in Jesus, he came as a male. Also clear. When Jesus referred to God, he referred to him in male terms like “father”. All this seems to be enough for me to say that in so much that a spirit being has gender, God’s gender is male…except for when it isn’t.

Sounds contradictory? Perhaps. But God is a trinity; three distinct persons comprising a single being. Perhaps not all persons in the trinity share the same gender? Maybe that person we call “God the Father” is male while that person we call “God the Spirit” is female.

Does it matter if God is male or female? Well, I suppose that what we say about God and the way we talk about God is quite important. At the very least, it says something about what we believe to be true about God, and what we believe about God certainly impacts our behavior toward other people. And yet, is it really important to refer to God in gender specific terms? Are we sinning if we deviate from Scripture (and tradition ) and begin to speak of God in either feminine or neuter terms?

The Path to Peace

A Muslim community in Tennessee has plans to turn a discount cinema into a mosque. A friend of mine was posting disappointment about it on Facebook. This person’s disappointment was shared by some, but there was a voice of …well, not so much dissention. This person was challenging everyone in the thread to seek peace and understanding with this Muslim community. He suggested joining in their worship and rituals as an “act of peace”.  He urged the readers to refrain from uncritically receiving negative press about Muslims and to seek “the path of understanding”. And he got me to thinking…

Does the path of understanding ultimately lead to peace…with anyone? I don’t know where it came from originally, but like you, I’ve seen the quotation “Seek first to understand” on display in a variety of ways. Again, I’ve no idea what the original context was for this aphorism, but it seems that I’ve always encountered it in the context of interpersonal relationships. It’s as if the underlying assumption to this admonition is: if we can understand The Other Person, then our conflict will wither and fade or we will see clearly the actions needed to resolve our conflict with The Other Person. If we could simply understand one another, then we would be able to build a peaceful community.

Certainly, understanding is a good thing, but is it a necessary thing? Is it true that we must understand our neighbor, our enemy, our Others in order to be at peace with them? I don’t think it is. I think that there are times when understanding leads most swiftly and directly to conflict  and even hostility. So, if the path of understanding doesn’t infallibly lead to peace, what does? Does anything? Can anything? Perhaps it’s not a question of any thing, but rather of any one. Can anyone lead people to peace?

Do you feel like you’ve been set up? I mean, you can see what’s coming next right? This is the point at which I talk about Jesus. I might even invoke the title “Prince of Peace”…and I’d be right to do so. I could also talk about how his suffering brought us peace with God, and again it would be right to do so. There’s also good reason to work in that thoroughly Biblical phrase “peace which passes understanding”. But instead of doing all that, I want to look to Jesus to instruct us in the nuts and bolts of how to be the peacemakers he wants Christians to be.

Jesus never said, “Understand your neighbor as you understand yourself.” He never told his hearers “Understand your enemies, bless those who curse you.” He also did not instruct us to “understand our brothers seventy times seven”. Instead, Jesus said to love our neighbors and our enemies and to forgive our brothers…and sisters as well. Love and forgiveness. These are the acts of peace. These actions can lead to peace between people. After all, if God’s love for us and His forgiveness of our sins against him can lead to peace between the Creator and his Creation, then certainly it can lead to peace between the creatures.

Sinners in the Hands of a Weeping God

At some point in my academic history I was required to read Jonathan Edwards’ (in)famous sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. All that remains of it in my memory is the title and a somewhat cartoonish image of a large hand holding a thin thread at the end of which dangles a human being over raging red-orange flames. (Probably not the exact image Edwards employed, but I believe the implied sentiment is accurate.) These two things came ironically to my mind as I recently read about Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem. Perhaps you see the irony?

Luke tells us that Jesus was about to enter Jerusalem for the last time before his crucifixion. As he approached the city, Jesus was overcome with deep sorrow for what was happening and what was soon to happen. What was happening was the long awaited return of God to his people and his Temple. This was supposed to be a joyous occasion the likes of which had not been known, but it wasn’t. Israel wasn’t prepared. They had not accepted the testimony of John, the one who came before the Lord. And now, they would not accept the Lord. Not only had they not accepted him to this point, they would soon have him killed, yet this was not why Jesus was weeping as he neared Jerusalem. He was weeping for the destruction that was going to come upon Jerusalem and God’s people as a result of rejecting him. “Yes, the days are coming when your enemies will surround you…”

The thought of this brought no joy to Jesus. He did not gloat over the city even though he knew that God was going to vindicate him first by raising him from the dead and second by bringing the destruction that Jesus predicted. He did not rage at the wickedness of Israel, but rather he wept over it. He longed to save them…but they were not willing. He ached for them but they despised him. And when the destruction of Jerusalem came as Jesus said it would, he was not angry. He was grieved.

That’s how it is with all of us. We’re sinners . Certainly. But we’re not in the hands of an angry god. We’re in the hands of a grieving god. But his grief is not like ours. We grieve for what we have lost. He doesn’t grieve for what he has lost. He grieves for what we have lost, for what would have brought us peace.

Original Muddle

Recently, I realized what a muddled way of thinking I have when it comes to the doctrine of original sin. Depending on how the question is put to me, I might on one occasion indicate that I believe in the doctrine while disagreeing with it on a separate occasion. What does it matter? Well, apart from my preference for being consistent, I think my views on original sin matter because they reflect what I think about God. And, what I believe about God affects my behavior.

I became aware of my conflicting views while listening to Dr. Craig answer a question from a European atheist. The atheist was taking issue with the Christian doctrine that man is accountable before God for his sins. For the atheist, this belief was troubling because: if God is the creator and it is his standards of morality that man is violating when he sins, then the problem is God’s. Either God’s standards are too high for his creatures or his creatures are too flawed. Either way, these things are under God’s control and not man’s, therefore the problem is God’s. In his answer to this man’s critique of God’s creation, Dr. Craig stated the following:

“There’s nothing about human nature, as such, that is sinful or has the proclivity to sin and the evidence for that would not be merely the first human beings, but Jesus Himself. Jesus was truly human. He had a complete human nature and yet he was sinless. So there’s nothing about being human, as such, that means we fall short of God’s standards.”

Before listening to this podcast, I would have agreed with that bit of the doctrine of original sin which says that man is born with the “proclivity” (to use Dr. Craig’s work) to sin. I would have agreed with those who say that the evidence of this is the whole of human history from the Fall to the present. And yet, I also would have disagreed with the logical extension of this belief in man’s warp toward to sin that man is so utterly “depraved” (in that Calvinist sense of the word) that man is unable to have “saving faith” in Jesus. Since listening to this podcast, I’ve been trying to get my thinking straight on the matter.

You see, while Dr. Craig didn’t  say this explicitly, it seems to me that the subtext of his statement is something like this: Jesus was fully human and therefore had a human nature. If there is in fact a natural tendency of human beings toward sin, then Jesus by virtue of his human nature also had a tendency toward sin. Since Jesus was sinless, he must not have had such a proclivity and therefore we can infer that all humans are also without this same proclivity. If I’m reading something into Dr. Craig’s statement that isn’t there, it’s only because I’m trying to make sense of his statement.
The problem I’m facing is this: if humans are not born with a proclivity to sin as a product of the Fall, then why do all men choose to sin? Actually, my real question is: how did Jesus manage not to sin? And if Jesus, the fully human person, lived a sinless life, why hadn’t anyone else prior and hasn’t anyone else since?

I definitely believe that Jesus was fully human and fully God. I still believe that he lived a sinless life. I’m just trying to make all of the necessary logical connections and untangle my beliefs on man’s culpability for sin before God.

God’s Sovereignty and Jonah’s Choice

I think the story of Jonah is a good example of the interplay between the freedom of humans to choose and God’s sovereignty over human life. To put it succinctly: the prophet Jonah is told to go warn the people of Nineveh to repent of their wickedness or face destruction at the hand of God. Jonah refuses to warn the Ninevites and attempts to make a break for it. God hunts him down and puts him in a position where Jonah grudgingly submits to his assigned task. After Jonah dispenses with his duty, he sits outside the city and waits hoping that the Ninevites will ignore his message and that God will destroy them. The Ninevites repent, God doesn’t destroy them and Jonah is left to stew.

God’s sovereignty is clear. He commissions Jonah to deliver a message. The message is God’s ultimatum; repent or perish. He not only has the authority to issue the ultimatum, he has the power to carry it through. Not only that, but he also has the resources to ensure that even his uncooperative (rebellious?) messenger will in fact deliver his message. He commands a storm on the sea. He commands a fish to swallow Jonah, and vomit him back out. He withholds the destruction of Nineveh. He causes a plant to grow and sends a worm to eat it. God is obviously and powerfully in control.

Human freedom is also clear. God tells Jonah “Go” and Jonah says “No”. Apparently, God did not put a burden on Jonah’s heart for the people of Nineveh. Not only does Jonah refuse to take the message, he heads off in the opposite direction. Yet, God doesn’t take control of Jonah’s legs and welds him to the spot. Neither does he have Jonah goose-step back to Nineveh. Rather, God puts a storm in Jonah’s path which requires Jonah to choose again. This time, Jonah chooses to not to call out to his god like the sailors asked. It isn’t until he’s been identified by the cast of lots that he admits who he is and who God is. Humans are faced with another choice now. The sailors do not want to follow Jonah’s instructions and toss him overboard so they try to save the ship and themselves by ejecting the cargo. When Jonah is finally tossed overboard and gets some alone time with God in the fish’s belly, notice that he chooses to hold on to his hatred of the Ninevites and God doesn’t force him to relinquish it as a prerequisite for saving him from the sea. In fact, instead of supernaturally giving Jonah a new disposition toward the wicked Ninevites, God attempts to guide Jonah into the correct attitude. As the story comes to an end, despite all of God’s displays of power and mercy, we don’t see Jonah come around to God’s view of the Ninevites. Apparently, God allows Jonah to choose how he will view them.

This is how it is between God and man. He commands and we either obey or we don’t. He responds to our choices and we comply with his will or we don’t. He guides and we either follow or we flee. He teaches and we either learn or we don’t. Ultimately, God’s purpose prevails and we either cooperate with him or we don’t…and take the consequences.

New Mind,then New Body

The Bible teaches Christians to “be transformed by the renewing of” our minds. It also teaches us that when Jesus returns, we’ll be given a new body “like His glorious body“. Yet, it seems that we strive more to transform our bodies than our minds. The interesting thing is that we’re told to be the former and promised to receive the later. Why then do we expend so much energy trying to earn what’s been promised and so little doing what we’ve been commanded?

Do You Want to Know the Truth?

Whether or not we want something to be true has no impact on whether or not something is true.

However, it can determine whether or not we’re receptive to the Truth.

I pledge allegiance to…

A commenter posted this on a news piece from ABC News: 

Here’s a question for you all:Is your primary allegiance to the United States of America and the Constitution, or your religion, be it Christian, Judaism, Deism, Islam, etc.?I am a Deist ~~ my primary and unconditional allegiance is to the USA and our Constitution!!!What is your answer???
CinemaNoir 12:38 AM 

This person has asked a poignant and highly relevant question. Where is your allegiance? CinemaNoir offers the two choices that are most relevant to the article, but these are not the only choices. The competition is not only between one’s nation and one’s religion. There are many many other competitors for our allegiance. If we had to attempt to categorize all of them, I think we could divide them between Self and Other. If you’re primary allegiance is to your Self, then you will invariably choose to do what is most beneficial/advantageous for you. If you’re primary allegiance is to some Other, then you will invariably choose to do what is most beneficial/advantageous for that Other, whether it is a nation, a religious community, a spouse of even an ideal. 

Interestingly, Jesus dealt with the same two competing allegiances mentioned by CinemaNoir. However, in His Jewish context, there was no neat separation between national allegiance and religious allegiance. The two were inextricably intertwined and not clearly discernible to our modern way of thinking. Frequently, when Jesus’ enemies attempted to find a charge against Him, it was with regard to His allegiance. Was His allegiance to Moses? The Law? The Pharisee’s school of Judaism? Caesar? It was as though the subtext to every attempt to trap Jesus by His words was the question that Joshua put to the angel who visited him before the attack on Jericho: “Are you for us or for our enemies?” And like the angel, Jesus pledged His allegiance to neither. In fact, He called His hearers to pledge their allegiance to Him. Perhaps this is most clear in His statement: 

 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

 Or perhaps when He says: 

³²“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. ³³But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. 

This is what is means to become a Christian: to accept Jesus’ call for allegiance. When a person becomes a Christian, he pledges his allegiance to Jesus. NOT to Christianity. NOT to the Church. NOT to a particular expression of faith. NOT to a nation which claims to be “Christian” or even “under God”. Granted, that person may have affections for these things, but whenever a conflict arises between them and Jesus (and such conflicts DO arise), then the Christian must invariably choose to remain loyal to Jesus. 

I have pledged my allegiance to Jesus. Certainly, there are challenges to my allegiance. Sometimes, I rise to them and sometimes I don’t. However, Jesus (unlike other “liege lords”) forgives my infidelities and allows me to renew my pledge to Him. He does this because, (also unlike others) He is faithful to those who have given their allegiance to Him.

Bruggemann’s “alternative imagination”

“…when the local congregation meets, we are engaged in an act of alternative imagination.”
Walter Bruggemann
I’ve never read Bruggemann. I really have no idea what he’s about. If NT Wright hadn’t mentioned him in his work, I’m sure that I would never have heard of him. So when I saw that Homebrewed Christianity has an interview available with him on their podcast, I took a listen. He was talking about his book “Prophetic Imagination” and relevant connections between the prophetic practice found in Scripture and contemporary politics. To be honest, I tuned out for much of it, but I heard him say the quotation of above and it captured my attention.
What exactly are we, the local congregation, imagining when we come together? As I mull this over, I come up against this word imagine and it gives me trouble. The trouble is that the word is frequently employed to talk about something which only exists in the mind, couldn’t possibly exist in the world. Imaginary things are not real things and therefore lack weight. But, it’s obvious that Bruggemann doesn’t use the word “imagination” to mean creating a fantasy. So, even though I think I know how to use the word, I’ve gone to the dictionary and found this:
to form a mental image of (something not actually present to the senses)
Jesus said that when two or more are gathered in his name, he is there with them. His form is not perceived by their eyes. His voice is not heard with their ears. His presence is not felt with their hands. Yet he is there. And in his spiritual presence they imagine him. They form a mental image of him…or they should. We should. But how is forming a mental image of Jesus an alternative imagination?
Perhaps it’s an alternative imagination because we form a mental image of one who is alive, as opposed to those who count Jesus as dead. Whatever mental image they form of Jesus, he is a dead man for them, whereas to the local congregation, he is alive with God in heaven.
Maybe our meeting together helps us to form a mental image of the Kingdom of God. I haven’t done it often, but I have stood in front of a congregation of believers here in the Middle East and I’ve taken note of all the different nationalities of the people present. Others who have done the same have commented from the podium that they’re looking at an example of what heaven will look like, when the saved of all the nations are gathered into it. Maybe the alternative imagination that we enact is a unified world, but I don’t think so. A unified world is imagined by many people. What makes our mental image different is that we picture the world unified under the sovereignty of God’s appointed king, Jesus. In our mental image, the one at the head of a united humanity is not an elected official, an appointee of the United Nations or a victorious freedom-fighter. Maybe that’s what makes our mental image alternative.
I can’t confidently say that I understand what Bruggemann is saying in his quotation. I suppose I should try to get him on the reading list in order to find out.

Anne Rice, Organized Religion and Jesus

Anne Rice has left Christianity. After reading the Facebook status that announced her decision and listening to an interview from Homebrewed Christianity, I’m pretty sure that I understand her. There have been times when I wanted out as well. She has my sympathy. Consequently, nothing I say here is intended to be an attack on her in any way. I simply want to reflect on something she said and (predictably?) disagree.

In the interview, Mrs. Rice tells Chad Crawford “Christ comes off in the gospels to me as a radical. And he’s against organized religion, that’s clear.” While I can certainly agree that Jesus comes across as a radical, I don’t think it is at all clear from the Bible that Jesus was against organized religion. Here’s why I think so.

Like Mrs. Rice, I believe in The Incarnation, which is another way of saying that I believe that Jesus was God in a body-fully human and fully divine. So, when God entered the world, he entered a family, a community and yes, an organized religion. (We can all agree that Judaism as we find it in the Bible is an organized religion, can’t we?) When he was in the world, Jesus participated in this organized religion. He participated by both critiquing it and fulfilling it. While with us, he demonstrated how to “do” this organized religion correctly. When he left us, he gave us his Spirit to guide us, which includes guiding us in organizing our religion.

According to the Gospels, Jesus was born to a Jewish couple in Palestine and was consequently a Jew. Scripture tells how Mary and Joseph had Jesus circumcised on the eighth day following his birth, according to the Law. When obeying the Law regarding the giving of the first born child to God, they also presented the appropriate sacrifices in accordance with the Law. (The Law is the organizing system of the Jewish religion, which Jews unshakably believe was given by God to Moses.) Clearly, the Bible demonstrates that Jesus was born into Judaism, a religion organized by means of the Law.

When Jesus was a grown man, the Bible tells us, it was his habit to go to the synagogue, a place of worship and learning in Jewish communities away from the temple in Jerusalem, which was the center of Jewish worship. The Bible tells us that Jesus went to the temple on more than one occasion, just as we would expect from a “practicing Jew”. (I’ll say more about what he did at the temple later.) In the Bible, we find him observing the Passover feast with his disciples. The Bible also records that  when Jesus healed lepers, he ordered them to obey the Law by showing themselves to the priests in order to be declared clean and welcomed back into society. Clearly, Jesus was an active participant in Judaism.

In the famous Sermon on the Mount recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus clearly states his position on and his relationship to the Law in this way: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” All that Jesus said and did can be understood as his intentional fulfillment of the Law, including his criticism of the way the Pharisees, the Scribes and the priests either practiced or failed to practice it. Jesus never taught the people to forsake the Law, to leave Judaism and express their faith-relationship with God according to their own conscience. Instead, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he told them how to follow the Law correctly. He also showed them what following the Law correctly looks like through his interactions with everyone.

By following the Law correctly, Jesus was in conflict with those who didn’t, particularly those who went beyond simply getting it wrong to wickedly manipulating it for their own purposes. For example, there were pious people who stood on the street corners and prayed aloud so everyone would see them. Jesus’ corrective was to tell people to pray in secret. He didn’t say abandon the temple and the synagogue and to stop all public prayers. He was addressing impure motives. Another example is Jesus’ actions in the temple. When he cleared out the money changers and the livestock sellers, he didn’t tell everyone to get out of the temple and to quit making sacrifices.  Instead, he condemned the abuse of the temple and the exploitation of the sacrificial system for financial gain at the expense of the poor. There are more examples, and they all show Jesus righting wrongs and correcting the misuses and the abuses of the Law. Unlike everyone else, particularly the hypocritical leaders, Jesus kept the Law faultlessly: he did organized religion the way it is supposed to be done, which was certainly radical to all of those around him who didn’t. Some people saw this and accepted that he was God. Others saw it and said he was breaking the Law and subverting the nation. In the end, part of the reason he was killed was because of the way he kept the Law, the way he did Judaism.

The Scriptures document what the risen Christ did through his apostles following his ascension into heaven. In the book of Acts, we see Jesus give the Holy Spirit to the disciples. In the power of the Spirit, the apostles exercised the  authority Christ had given them before his crucifixion. Acts tells us how they appointed people to serve the believers and commissioned people to preach. Those missionaries set up communities (called churches) which were devoted to the teachings of the apostles, eating togetherand prayer. In the book of Acts we see decisions made about doctrine and we see disciplinary actions taken within the community. In short, we see the followers of Jesus, under the authority of Jesus, filled with the Spirit of Jesus organize themselves and their practice of following Jesus.  And now, the risen Jesus, through the same Spirit works in his followers to transform them into his likeness. As this happens, the world is set straight and so is organized religion right along with it.

When I look at the Bible, I only see organized religion. I don’t see any other kind. Specifically, I see Judaism and its Law. I don’t see Jesus opposing this organized religion, this Law. I see him oppose the misuse and abuse of the Law. I see him oppose the manipulation of that Law for evil purposes, especially the oppression of the poor. Ultimately, I see him fulfill the Law thereby becoming fit to serve as both atoning sacrifice and High Priest on behalf of his followers. I can’t look at the Bible and agree with Mrs Rice that Jesus was clearly against organized religion because he wasn’t.

Ramadan Reflection

When people around here want to help non-Muslims understand the emotional magnitude of Ramadan in Islam, they often compare it to Christmas. These two seasons are believed to be characterized by goodwill, feasting and an overall elevation of personal mood and perhaps even piety. If we wanted to be cynical, we could point out that both seasons are additionally marked by increased anxiety, displays of wanton consumerism and regrettable weight-gain. If we wanted to appear a somewhat intellectual, we might point out that both seasons mark the coming of the Word of God into the world. In Islam, Ramadan is the month in which Allah is said to have given the Qu’ran to Mohammed, while Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, whom John refers to as the Logos-the Word. Despite these apparent similarities, there is a profound difference which bears noting.

Ramadan is a time of elevated personal (and communal) piety. As one Muslim woman was quoted to say in a local paper, “Ramadan is when God gives us all a chance to cleanse our souls.” Yes, a chance. Muslims seize that chance by abstaining from food, drink, smoking and sex from sunrise until sunset every day of the month. Additional acts of piety which are purported to earn Allah’s favor, blessing and forgiveness are special prayers, charity, memorizing the Qu’ran and an all night vigil toward the end of the month. Performed properly, these pious acts could earn Allah’s forgiveness. Could. No Muslim I know would ever say (to me) that they are certain that they’ve been forgiven. To do so would be presumptuous and impious. Instead, all they can do is perform the rituals as best as they can and take what comes. Certainly, there is a similar line of thought in historical Christianity. However, this fatalism never rears its head in connection to Christmas.

Christmas is characterized as a season of hope. When the angel announced to the shepherds that the Messiah was born, he announced the arrival of what Israel had been hoping for. They had been hoping for a King who would do God’s will on Earth as it is in Heaven. When Mary and Joseph took their baby boy to the temple in Jerusalem, the prophet Simeon told them that Jesus was the “light to the nations.” As King, Jesus was the One in whom the non-Jews would hope. So both Jews and non-Jews hope for God’s King to set the world right which is what Jesus came to do. And part of that task is securing the forgiveness of sins.

Allah does not promise to forgive sins. He gives you a chance at forgiveness, but he doesn’t confirm it. God not only promises to forgive sins, He comes into the world in Jesus to secure forgiveness and then gives us two signs/symbols as evidence of it. First, He gives the physical act of baptism. Second He gives the spiritual action of the indwelling Holy Spirit. These two serve as witness and guarantee that our sins are forgiven and that we are/will be part of the world-set-right when King Jesus returns to Earth.

In this way, the month of Ramadan and the Christmas season are radically and profoundly different. The former is a time of increased striving at a chance with an uncertain outcome. The later is a time of celebration of the One who strove on our behalf in order to guarantee the result.

God, grant that we will be grateful and not arrogant as a result of this great difference.

The Saddest Story Ever Told?

The story of the rich young ruler is much sadder than I originally thought.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but now I realize that the well-heeled young Jew wasn’t just turning down the blanket invitation that Jesus gave everyone within the sound of his voice. (Though, that’s sad enough.) When Jesus told that devout man to “Come follow me”, this wasn’t “whoever would come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” This was the same invitation that He had given Peter, James and John! Especially John! John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. This rich young ruler was being invited to be as close to Jesus as John, the beloved disciple. The text says that Jesus “looked at him and loved him”, but the man went away sad because he was so wealthy.

Middle-age seems to be the time when people look back over the first half of their lives and take inventory of the opportunities lost. That’s where I am and most likely as a result, the great tragedy of this story is no longer simply that the young ruler didn’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah. (After all, it’s possible that following the resurrection, he did come to faith.) Now, it seems to me that the great tragedy here is that the rich young ruler didn’t join the Lord’s closest circle of friends while He was on the Earth. He didn’t travel with Him, sit around the fire and talk with Him, go fishing with Him and celebrate the Last Passover with Him. When Jesus rose from the dead, this man was not one of those who saw Him in the upper room or ascend back to the Father on the Mountain of Olives. God stepped into history and invited this man to be at hand when He changed its course and he declined because he loved…stuff.

Stuff…

I Love You. Now Go Away.

NT Wright has said (and I think he credits others as the source) that there is “still more light to break forth” from Scripture, despite the many, many years of scholarship built up around it. I’m sure that he’s right because on a personal level, I occasionally experience “more light” breaking forth from a story that I know quite well. This happened to me this morning on the way to work.

The podcast is called Bible Stories My Kids Love. I was listening to it because I didn’t have anything else on the mp3 player that I really wanted to listen to. The story was from Luke 17 and it was about ten men with leprosy who were healed by Jesus. The woman telling the story was not a professional voice actress. Her presentation, though earnest, wasn’t particularly captivating. Yet, I was attuned to her well enough that I saw the interaction between those men and Jesus in my mind…and then I saw something I’d not seen before.

The text says that the men “stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice”. (Lepers were not allowed to get near people because the disease is so contagious.) Jesus, from far away, hears them, sees them and then tells them to go show themselves to the priests. (It was the priests’ job to declare people clean of leprosy so they could return to the community.) It’s not immediately obvious from the text, but Jesus had to shout this command to them. They couldn’t draw near to him lest they infect those who were traveling with Jesus. Jesus couldn’t draw near to them…or could he? He couldn’t have been afraid of catching the disease. He’d touched a leper before. He could have told people to move aside if he had wanted to pass through a crowd to touch these lepers, and they would have certainly, even if uncertainly, moved. For whatever reason, Jesus chose to remain where he was; therefore He had to shout to them.

The lepers were outcasts. Their disease had separated them from family, friends and all human community except their own. And in this far away state, they heard the far away voice of God. He didn’t say “Come to me. I accept you.” He said, “Go to the priests. Let them accept you.” While it certainly takes faith to approach God; faith in His existence, His goodness, His willingness to accept you: it must take even greater faith to go at His command when there is no evidence of His acceptance, His presence. These men were not yet healed. Surely, they looked at themselves and at one another, saw the sores and scabs and thought “Why bother? We’re still leprous. The priests will just run us out of the temple.” Surely, at some point between Jesus and the priests, the lepers thought they were wasting their time and effort for what was sure to be a bad result. But, as people with no other options and nothing to lose often do, they took the only option given to them and they headed off to see the priests.

“And as they went, they were cleansed.”
The Bible focuses on the one man who returned to thank Jesus. It doesn’t tell us about the other nine, but let’s assume that they did precisely what they were told to do. Let’s imagine that they went to the priests and showed themselves to them. At some point, these nine men had to tell the priests their story, they had to testify that Jesus was the one who sent them, who healed them and the priests had to respond.

Perhaps in those times when we feel estranged from family, friends and even God, He calls to us across the distance. He doesn’t run to us like the father ran to meet his prodigal son. He doesn’t call us to come to Him, take us into His arms and welcome us like little children. Maybe sometimes, when we cry out in our desperate isolation, God sends us away to testify to His goodness among those who do not know Him. And as we go, He cleanses and restores us so we can rejoin the family, friends and community that we long for. And Jesus is made known in the process.

Invisible Service

I’ve heard it said that when it comes to a computer, you want the operating system to be invisible. You want to simply fire up the machine and do whatever you like without thinking about what the microprocessor is capable of doing or how to interface with the programs. Recently, I read someone’s praise of the iPhone for this very reason: users can simply open the box and get it to perform because the OS is so  intuitive, so invisible.

Just as a hallmark of a good OS is practical invisibility, the same is true of a good servant. Surely that will offend some readers, but that’s because we citizens of modern democracies don’t have a comprehensive understanding of servanthood. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, The Remains of the Day, a “perfect English butler” of the post World War I era, comments that it is a sign of professionalism to be essentially invisible when serving dinner to a gentleman and his guest(s). To be noticeable is to do one’s job poorly.

When Jesus got up from the dinner table, removed his outer garments, wrapped a towel around his waist and set about washing the feet of his disciples, he was performing the duties of a servant. For Christians of all types this story gives the archetypal image of what is popularly known in Christian communities as “servant-leadership”. The Master becomes a slave. We ought to do the same. No, we must do the same. Jesus says, “I’ve given you a pattern so you can do the same…” and that pattern is servant-shaped.

Yet, it frequently appears that God’s call on people’s lives is to a high-profile ministry, a more prestigious appointment, a more lucrative position or some other position that is relatively higher than the one they currently occupy, either inside or outside of the church. When we hear each other talk about God’s call on our lives, do we ever hear ourselves say that we’ve been called to a service which renders us virtually invisible? When have we ever said or heard ourselves say that we were called by God to lead a quiet life and work with our hands? Who do we know that quietly exercises the spiritual gift of menial labor?

Jesus gave us a servant-shaped pattern to follow and he wasn’t invisible when he did it. In fact, he intentionally drew our attention to it and in a dramatic way. He had to draw our attention to it in this way, because when a servant is doing his job well, he is, like a good operating system and a “perfect English butler”, practically invisible to those who benefit from his service.

My Own Personal TULIP

In 1610, Reformed Churches gathered together to defend John Calvin’s views of soteriology against the criticism of the Protestant Reformer James Arminius. In response to his five points of disagreement, the synod produced five points of their own which are (in) famously known by the acrostic TULIP. Recently, I was reflecting on how the only post at this blog which gets any traffic is the one titled “What’s Wrong with Calvinism?” I revisited my thoughts on the subject and as part of that; I have come up with a TULIP of my own. It is not exactly a response to criticism, but rather it is an articulation of my thoughts with regard to Christian soteriology. I’m sure that there are flaws in the articulation, but I think the exercise has been worthwhile and beneficial.

AMTOG’s TULIP

Total corruption: no aspect of Creation has remained untainted by sin. In humanity, sin has marred the image of God and rendered human beings incapable of fulfilling their divinely appointed task of bearing God’s image to His creation and exercising His dominion over it.

Unacceptable condition: God finds the corrupted state of his Creation, particularly his image-bearers, to be unacceptable. His response is a “new creation” with humans bearing His image and exercising His dominion as originally intended.

Living Word: As God created in the beginning by the power of his Word, so God brings the new creation into existence through the Living Word, Jesus. For humanity, this means that those who receive the Living Word are saved from death and decay, given new life, made into new creations capable of fulfilling the task of bearing God’s image as was His purpose for them in the beginning.

Indwelling Spirit: When individual humans become new creations, God restores his image in them through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in them. The Holy Spirit fuels and  guides renewed humans both individually and corporately so that they are transformed into the likeness of Jesus, who fulfilled the divinely appointed role of Image-bearer and exercised God’s dominion over Creation throughout His life.

Perseverance of God: God has not abandon his “old creation” to the corruption of sin, nor will he abandon his new creation as it comes into being. For humans, this means that He will keep all of His promises, both individually and corporately, whether to bless, forgive or condemn. God perseveres and ultimately prevails, which is another way of stating that God saves.

Infinity Desire

“We desire infinity and we can not imagine it. How can we expect it to be granted?”

 Mr. Andrews by EM Forster

So Mr. Andrews comments as he surrenders his disembodied heaven, his flowing white robe and his golden harp in order to be dissolved into the “world soul” which appears to be the author’s personal term for Nirvana.

I suppose you could say that I desired infinity when I was younger. And to some degree, despite the religious teaching I received, like Mr. Andrews, I found it unsatisfying.  At times, I found it actually repulsive. Not in the sense that I was disgusted by visions of clouds and harps and golden streets. Rather, the images repelled me instead of drew me. I was terribly frightened of being disembodied, of knowing –but-not-knowing people (a bizarre doctrine whose origin I can’t trace) in that caricature of heaven. The whole idea of the afterlife as I had inherited it felt wrong to me which is probably why I was so receptive to NT Wright’s teachings about “life after life after death”.

God created everything and it was good. Then we ruined it. But God, not willing to let his good creation be undone set about restoring it. In the end, God’s good creation will be liberated from corruption, the mortal will put on immortality and our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus’. The material universe will be good again and we shall all be good in it. That’s the infinite world that I desire now.

What do you do with foreigners?

Show them hospitality.

Give them justice.

Hold them accountable.

I believe that these are the answers one can come to by reflecting on the Law of Moses and the life of Christ.

When Christians living in a representative democracy go to vote on laws regarding immigration, I think they need to ask the following questions before giving or withholding their support:

Does this legislation exhibit hospitality to immigrants?

Does this legislation deal justly with immigrants?

Does this legislation hold immigrants accountable before the laws of the state/country?

Christians may not all vote the same way, but we should all share the same standards for deciding how we should vote.

What if…

…The Fall had never happened?

What if Adam had gently taken Eve’s hand and said, “C’mon. What does a serpent know ?” and the two of them went and made love in the grass? What would our lives look like?

Really, it’s almost unimaginable. All we’ve ever known is this messed up world. Humans have tried to imagine such a world ever since we squandered it in Eden, but I don’t think we’ve ever gotten it right. However, we should try because the mental exercise might lead us to some power insights about the life we have now and the life we’ll have when Jesus returns.

When I was thinking about this question last night, it occurred to me that parenting is something that we would still be doing even if the Fall had not happened. I don’t think I can say that about my current job. So what? Well, like a lot of folks, I get pretty discouraged about my job. In the movie Julie and Julia (that my wife and I watched two nights ago), Julia Child’s husband was looking back on his career in the US foreign service and he essentially asked “What was all of that for?” At age 40, this is precisely the question that I ask myself with increasing frequency about my own job and wider life: “What am I doing this for?” It’s a different phrasing of the question, “Do the things I do have any greater meaning?” In reflecting on the initial question at the beginning of this point, I realized that parenting has much much greater meaning that I normally think it does. After all, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be teaching English (no Fall, no Babel, no language issues), but I would still be a father. It would still be one of the ways in which I would bear the image of God in the  creation. It would still be one of my priestly (gotta read NT Wright to understand adjective) tasks.

So, now I have at least one thing that I do which I don’t have to ask “What is this for?” or “Does it really matter?”

Say you want an insurrection?

Well, you know…that’s not really what Jesus was about.

I came across an artist who is currently on tour in the US who is likening belief in the resurrection to an insurrection. It’s a metaphor and so it probably shouldn’t be scrutinized very closely. However, is it a good metaphor? Was Jesus really leading an uprising against the established authority? I guess that depends on what you believe about that established authority. There’s also the question of whether or not believing a truth claim can be meaningfully equated with taking some sort of action against an established authority.

I think the metaphor of insurrection is a bad metaphor. Jesus was not leading a rebellion. He said so. He also wasn’t acting against an established authority. After all, He was God’s anointed king of the world. He had (and has) all authority in heaven and on earth, so what was there to rise up against? Jesus even told those who thought that they were the established authority that their power over him comes from “above”.  Even Satan had to admit that the kingdoms of the world had been given to him to be given to whomever he chose. (One wonders if he was telling the truth or if that was just the father of lies speaking his native language.) If it was given, then it had to be given by someone. No, the metaphor doesn’t make any sense in light of Scripture. It’s incoherent.

Jesus didn’t come to lead an insurrection. He came to inaugurate the new creation. It started with his resurrection and continues to this day.

Lying, Theiving Christians!

I know plenty. They’re brothers and sisters who download movies from the internet from pirate websites or through services like bit torrent. I’m not sure what they’re thinking. Perhaps they think that the services are legal. Maybe they think that media companies are rich enough and that it’s okay to deprive them of revenue. Maybe they think that the copyright laws are unjust and so they’re not obligated to obey them. Maybe they think that living in another country where copyright is not enforced makes it okay for them to access these movies. Whatever they’re thinking, they’re wrong…and so am I.

No, I don’t download movies from pirate sites. I use a virtual private network in order to access hulu and the BBC to view their content. What’s  wrong with that?  Both of these services  restricted their  use to only those located in the US and the UK respectively. It’s stated clearly in their terms of service that users agree not to access content from outside of these countries.  Yes, I actually read the terms of service…eventually.

I suspect that there are some who still do not see the sin.  I’ll try to make it clearer. The content providers state that use of their service constitutes agreement with the terms of service. (Some actually say something to the effect of “If you don’t agree to these terms, do not use the service.”)  Occasionally, like with iTunes, some content providers actually request that you tick a box to indicate that you agree to be bound by the terms of service. So, when I use these service, tacitly agreeing to the terms of use, without any intention of abiding by them, I am essentially lying. It’s like telling my children that I’m going to take them to the pool when I get home from work knowing full well that I’m going to purposefully come home late and then use that as an excuse not to do what I said I would do. It’s lying, and for a while now I’ve been lying. So, I’m going to stop. From now on, I will not be using my VPN to access content from hulu and the BBC.

But I want to! This isn’t an easy decision. I want to continue watching specific programs. I want to enjoy special holiday shows that aren’t available to me outside of my home country.  I want the option of watching programs when I want to and not just when they’re broadcasted. I want all of this, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t have a right to it. I certainly have the means of obtaining it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s my right to have it. Besides, as much as I want access to the content at hulu and the BBC, I want my integrity more. I want to be like Jesus…even when I don’t really want to be like Jesus. So, to paraphrase Paul; it’s (past) time for me to put off lying and act truthfully on the internet.

But, why now? Why this attack of conscience (or to put it more evangelically; why has the Holy Spirit convicted me now)? Because I have a good wife who, after several weeks of wrestling with the issue, raised it again last night and I simply couldn’t ingore the inconsistency of my behavior any longer.

Where’s the sign?

You have a message that you want to get out there to the people. So, you make a sign. You make it larger than life, then you post that sign outside of the city. You put it up far away from the masses in the desert. But wait…why would you do that? You have a message for people. Shouldn’t the message be delivered where the people are? No, you wouldn’t put your sign out in the desert…unless, location was part of the message.

John the Baptizer was God’s sign posted in the desert. He was posted outside the crowded streets of Jerusalem, far beyond the walls of the temple. Anyone who wanted to hear God’s message had to take a trip into the desert, into a place known for its emptiness.

Sometimes, to hear God’s message, we have to go into the desert.

An Answer

There was an answer.

As Job sat in the ruble of his former life, covered in the ashes, he asked God the most fundamental of human questions: why? Why did this happen to him? Why did he out-live his children? Why did his lose all of his wealth? Why was his wife nagging him? Why did his friends turn on him? Why was he sick? Why couldn’t he sleep? Why did God do this to him? Why wouldn’t God answer his prayers? Why had God forsaken him? Human questions. Our questions.

Then God shows up…and He doesn’t give an answer. But He could have. He could have told Job what was going on in the court of heaven. He could have told Job that the Accuser had challenged Job’s integrity before God. He could have told Job how all of those horrible things were allowed to show the Accuser and the heavenly host how faithful Job was. He could have told Job how pleased He was with him because he had withstood all of that misery and never abandoned his faith or integrity. He could have told Job how he would be forever remembered for his patience and faithfulness.

Sometimes, no answer is given but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Nazis, Homosexuals, Jesus and Me

You know the old dilemma:

Nazi Germany. Jews are being rounded up and shipped off to the gas chambers. You’re a German citizen and, by law, required to report Jews to the government. You’re in the position of either lying to protect a Jew’s life or telling the truth and giving a Jew into the hands of his executioner. What do you do?

It seems that this dilemma is usually presented to demonstrate that there are no absolute values. In this case, the implication that lying is good when it’s done to save an “innocent life”. The further implication then is that if lying is good in this situation, it can be good in others and therefore the moral quality of the act of lying is relative and not absolute.  When presented with this rhetorical dilemma, the assumption tends to be your choice is between “good and evil” or “right and wrong.” However, this assumption is incorrect. The choice is actually between “bad and worse”, or if you prefer a positive articulation, the choice is between “telling the truth and saving a life”.

The world is so messed up (“fallen” as evangelicals like to say) that it is possible for a good action like telling the truth  to result in a bad outcome like the murder of a human being.  However, the world is not so far gone that a bad action like lying can’t result in a good outcome like the preservation of a human life. Furthermore, creation is so utterly corrupted that the aforementioned situations are possible. The question then is how to navigate through such a thoroughly polluted sea of human existence? The answer is by following Jesus.

When Jesus was faced with healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (Mark 3), He rightly discerned the situation.  His enemies were taking the good law of the Sabbath, which was given by God for the preservation of human life, and using it to destroy human life. So, He asks them the question, “Which is lawful to do on the Sabbath? To save life or to destroy?” Jesus’ decision to heal the man isn’t a denial of the goodness of the Sabbath law, but rather it is the affirmation that human life is more valuable than legal compliance.

Lying to the Nazis to protect the Jews in your attic is the appropriate choice because preserving human life is more important than good standing with the authorities or even preserving one’s integrity. The decision to lie isn’t a denial of the sinfulness of lying, but rather it is the affirmation of the value of human life, something which Jesus also affirmed.

While the case of Nazi Germany is so remote as to be almost purely academic, there is a current situation in Africa which certainly raises the same questions. Homosexuality is against the law in Malawi and the government is prosecuting men and women convicted of breaking the law. The Guardian reports that Uganda is considering the death penalty for homosexuals under certain conditions.

Now imagine that a Christian has a homosexual neighbor. Late one night, the homosexual comes to the Christian’s house and says, “I have a friend in the police. He called and said that they’re coming to get me. They’re going to kill me! Please, hide me!” What should the Christian do? How does the Christian decide?

There are no…

…cousins in the family of God.

A Father.

A First Born.

Brothers.

Sisters.

Why God Kills Babies Part 2

This blog doesn’t get much traffic, yet one of the two most visited posts here is the one called Why God Kills Babies. Those few folks who have left a comment tend to be  skeptic/atheists who are repulsed by the story of God and the death of the Egyptian children during the time of the Exodus. While I don’t think that I am up to offering an adequate response to charges that God/Yaweh/Elohim is either evil or non-existent because of the crimes against humanity that he has committed, I do think that William Lane Craig can and does.

So, if you’ve found yourself here and are interested in a rational commentary on the question of whether or not God is guilty of atrocities, you may appreciate listening to this.

Jesus and Empire

Jesus didn’t come to abolish Empire.

He came to claim the Empire his Father had given him.

Archetype? Not Quite.

I was in the school library today and came across a book called “The Hero Within” by Carol S Pearson.

She opens a chapter on page 275 with the following quotation:

“Nor should it be forgotten that moral law is not just imposed upon man from outside…it expresses a psychic fact. As the regulator of action, it corresponds to a preformed image, a pattern of behavior which is archetypal and deeply imbedded in human nature.” Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic

Imago Dei.

The Latin Phrase didn’t come until just now, but the concept leapt to mind instantly. This Jungian “preformed image” that is “deeply imbedded in human nature” is an attempt to articulate the Biblical truth that man is the image-bearer of God. I know next to nothing about the fullest expression of Carl Jung’s psychology so I won’t attempt to make the connections too firmly, but the bits that have filtered through various media into my mind linked up with those bits of Scripture that are most compatible with them the moment I read the above quotation, and it was pleasant.

God is not a product of the collective subconscious, but perhaps as the Creator of the collective and consciousness, He has left a sort of marker there for Jung and his students.

A Guilty Guide to Bible Study

There are several jokes about guilt. I’m thinking particularly of “Catholic guilt”…or even “Jewish guilt”. There is such a thing as evangelical guilt but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any jokes about it. Evangelical guilt tends to revolve around “quiet time”, a phrase that means “time spent reading the Bible and praying”. Now that I think about it, I’ve heard far and away more evangelical Christians grieve their negligence of “quiet time” than their greed, lust or pride. That being said, it was my “Evangelical guilt” over not doing “enough” personal Bible study that motivated me to Google the phrase “how to study the bible” just a moment ago.

One hit lead me to a page of the Navigators, a group that I don’t really know all that much about. I knew someone associated with the Navigators who had similar personality to mine, so I followed the link to see what they advised. At the top of the page, it is implied that the “inductive” method of Bible study is something suitable for those who are no longer “infants” in the faith. What follows is an example of an inductive approach to the first chapter and verse of 1 Timothy.

As I read through the example, the approach seemed reasonable until it came to the point of Personal Application, which reads:

“I must begin to see myself in the role of Christ’s ambassador who has been authorized and sent out with a divine message. The authority of my witness will only be as effective as my awareness of my mission.”

Now, I don’t really disagree with the affirmation that Christians are representatives of Jesus and that we are charged by him with the message that Jesus is God’s chosen King of Creation. My problem is the tacit equation of my role as an “ambassador of Christ” with Paul’s role as apostle. The fact is that neither I nor Mr Hill, the author of this piece, were given our commissions during a personal conference with the resurrected Jesus. Paul saw Jesus and received his apostleship from Jesus. In fact, the Bible is clear that Paul was chosen to be the one who would take the message of the King to the Gentiles first. I guess what I’m getting at is this: evangelicals tend to think that EVERYTHING in the Bible has a “Personal Application”; consequently we tend to force verses to say something which they probably don’t. Again, Paul was “an apostle…by the commandment of God”…and I’m not… and neither are most of the Christians who have ever read those words.

Well, I’ve done the easy part: criticizing Mr Hill’s inductive approach to Bible study. Now, I need to get down to the hard work of actually studying the Bible…and dealing with my own guilt for having been both negligent AND critical.

Thinking…

…about “cultural homogeny”.

LCC is hosting a conference on the subject and I recently got their call for papers. I’d love to be able to submit a proposal and present but I don’t see it happening…simply, it might be a bit out of my depth.

That being said, I’ve thinking a lot about the concept and particularly one of questions posed in the announcement of the conference. The question reads “Is globabl oneness a desired good?” I guess “global oneness” is a kind of synonym for cultural homogeny…? Anyway, my thoughts are turning around this pivot for the moment:

Cultural homogeny is not only a desired good, but it is a fait accomplii…at least according to my understanding of the Biblical narrative. To put it succinctly: the final scene of the Revealation shows the One God ruling His One People for the New Jerusalm in the context of a New Heaven and a New Earth. This is the fullfillment of the Kingdom of God, so what other cultures will there be? We could say that the “nations”  and “the kings” who bring “their splendor” into the Kingdom represent the inclusion of other cultures; however its apparent that they will all be under the rule of God. Whatever culture exists at the end of human history, it will have no competitors vying for a dominant position. There will only be one culture, Kingdom Culture…at least, that’s how I see it for the moment.

Can Christians Acknowledge the Qur’an to be the Word of God?

The title of this post is also the title of an upcoming seminar at the University of Durham (UK) presented by  Professor David Burrell, current of Notre Dame.

I don’t know anything in the world about Professor Burrell, so I have no idea what his answer will be, so this will not be a criticism of the professor’s position in anyway. Instead, I thought I’d just post the following comment:

Since this is the topic for a seminar, I’m sure that  there will a long lecture/discussion, however I am also sure that there doesn’t need to be. In fact, my decidedly unscholarly answer to the question is as follows:

No.

Christians can not acknowledge the Qu’ran to be the Word of God because the Qu’ran denies the divinity of Jesus. Christians, whatever else you may wish to say in order to define us, are people who believe that Jesus is God come to Earth. This is flatly denied by the Qu’ran. To claim to be a Christian and to acknowledge the Qu’ran as the Word of God are contradictory actions and absolutely incompatible.

Consequently, I confess, it seems like an odd question to address in a seminar.

 

 

Shedding Our Shoulds

In a conversation on the meaning of words and their power in written form, a friend of mine recently told me that “we do well to steer clear of continually “should”ing on ourselves and others.” I realize that the connection isn’t immediately clear but it doesn’t have to be to follow this post. I want to reflect upon this idea of “shoulding on ourselves and others.”

My friend sees something unseemly about discussing what people should or should not do. In this case, the question was whether or not one should allow meaning which comes from “beyond the text” to supplant the author’s intended meaning. At least that was my question. However, my friend demurred, attempted to “do well” and encouraged me to do the same. (Or to say it more clearly, he refused to enter into the discussion because he didn’t see that “shoulding comes into play” here.)  But do we really “do well” when we avoid conversing and/or thinking in terms of “shoulds”?

There are some who might  say  that shoulds are wicked and cruel chains which enslave us to expectations to which we can never aspire. Consequently, we can only be free once we shrug our should-ers and their burdensome shoulds. Others may concede that shoulds are always with us while advising that they be trained in the art of silence, lest their incessant chattering  disturb our communion. I understand why some would think this way. I am a witness to the harm done by shoddy shoulding. Yet, I disbelieve that we do well by steering clear of the shoulds, and I do not believe that we do well in attempting to silence the should-ers. Instead, I think we do well when we learn to discern the shoulds from the suggestions.

I haven’t done any research into the matter, but I sense that Jesus didn’t tend to should a great deal. Instead, I suspect that he tended to speak in simple commands. He had the authority to do that. However, he did occasionally should his audience. When the disciples requested  a seminar on prayer, Jesus said “this then is how you should pray” and gave them  a demonstration. After explaining how some folks are so intent upon the Kingdom of God that they avoid marriage, he told the audience “The one who can accept it should accept it.” When he rebuked the hypocrites for neglecting the “weightier matters of the law”, Jesus said to them “You should have practiced the former without neglecting the latter.” Finally, in a lesson on  fear, Jesus told his disciples that he would “show you whom you should fear”.

Admittedly, seizing upon the translations of Jesus’ words which employ the word “should” is not exactly a scholarly method. (It would be interesting to know how the Greek expresses the concept translated as should, but honestly I lack the energy and resources at present.) Yet, I think it’s helpful in thinking about the problem of “shoulding on” others and ourselves. Here we have Jesus, the True Human, the most free human and he did not avoid shoulding his listeners.  Jesus, who came to set the captives free, does not appear to regard all shoulds as manacles upon humanity. Nor did he completely silence the shoulds for fear of their effect on his communion with others. However, he did not merely should his hearers. He shouldered the shoulds himself and instead of shedding the shoulds, he shed his blood.

We do well when we attempt to follow Jesus by discerning the shoulds while shouldering them as well.

“Holy Hostility”

That’s what John Stott calls God’s wrath.

Lately, I’ve been surfing blogs, podcasts and websites of folks who, burned by “the institutional church”, “organized religion”, “evangelicalism” or various other expressions of Christianity in the West, have taken to calling God “Dad” and talking about His great love. I’m not against that per se. I just find that at times it’s a bit reactionary and therefore unbalanced. These folks seem to be rushing from abject terror of the Cosmic Cop into the awaiting arms of a great Celestial Softy.

I think Stott’s commentary “What is God’s Wrath?” can help to restore balance. Afterall, since “Dad” is so crazy about us, then shouldn’t we expect Him to be hostile toward whatever and whoever would harm us? (Romans 1:18-32. 1) What is the wrath of God?

If we are to preserve the balance of Scripture, our definition of God’s anger must avoid opposite extremes. On the one hand, there are those who see it as no different from sinful human anger. On the other, there are those who declare that the very notion of anger as a personal attribute or attitude of God must be abandoned.
Human anger, although there is such a thing as righteous indignation, is mostly very unrighteous. It is an irrational and uncontrollable emotion, containing much vanity, animosity, malice and the desire for revenge. It should go without saying that God’s anger is absolutely free of all such poisonous ingredients.
The desire to eliminate any notion of God’s personal anger, as being absolutely unworthy of him, is usually associated with the name C.H.Dodd, whose commentary on Romans was published in 1932. He argued that ‘Paul never uses the verb “to be angry” with God as subject’, although he is often said to love, and that the noun *orge* (anger) is used only three times in the expression ‘the anger of God’, whereas it occurs constantly as ‘wrath’ or ‘the wrath’, without reference to God, ‘in a curiously impersonal way’. Dodd’s conclusion is that Paul retains the concept ‘not to describe the attitude of God to man, but to describe an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe’. A.T.Hanson elaborated this view in *The wrath of the Lamb* (1959), maintaining that God’s wrath is ‘wholly impersonal’ and is ‘the inevitable process of sin working itself out in history’.
But the argument based on the comparative absence of the expression ‘the wrath of God’ in favour of ‘wrath’ or ‘the wrath’ is weak. For Paul treats grace similarly. At the end of Romans 5 he writes both of ‘the grace of God’ (15), and about ‘the grace’ which he nevertheless personifies as both ‘increasing’ (20) and ‘reigning’ (21), and which is the most personal of all God’s attributes. If then ‘grace’ is God acting graciously, ‘wrath’ must be God reacting in revulsion against sin. It is his ‘deeply personal abhorrence’ of evil.
The wrath of God, then, is almost totally different from human anger. It does not mean that God loses his temper, flies into a rage, or is ever malicious, spiteful or vindictive. The alternative to ‘wrath’ is not ‘love’ but ‘neutrality’ in the moral conflict. And God is not neutral. On the contrary, his wrath is his holy hostility to evil, his refusal to condone it or come to terms with it, his just judgement upon it.

Everybody ought to know

V is a friend of my son.

S has known her for the last three years. In a few days, she’ll be moving back to her home country.

V came over for one last play date. All of the kids were sitting at the table having a snack. S asked her, “Do you know Jesus?” V said she didn’t. S asked who her God is. V didn’t seem to understand the question (but she may have just not wanted to answer) so to clarify S and his brother M asked, “Who do you pray to at night?”

At this point I intervened and said, “Guys, she may not pray.”

Before abandoning the inquiry all together, S commented “Everybody ought to know who their God is.”

Yes, everybody should.

God’s Particular Will

In a commentary on Ephesians, particularly chapter 5, John Stott says:

“Secondly, *wise people discern the will of God*. They are sure that, whereas willfulness is folly, wisdom is to be found in God’s will and nowhere else. *Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is* (verse 17)…Moreover, in seeking to discover it, it is essential to distinguish between his ‘general’ and his ‘particular’ will. The former is so called because it relates to the generality of his people and is the same for all of us, e.g. to make us like Christ. His particular will, however, extending to the particularities of our life, is different for each of us, e.g. what career we shall follow, whether we should marry, and if so whom. Only after this distinction has been made can we consider how we may find out *what the will of the Lord is*. His ‘general’ will is found in Scripture; the will of God for the people of God has been revealed in the Word of God. But we shall not find his ‘particular’ will in Scripture. To be sure, we shall find general principles in Scripture to guide us, but detailed decisions have to be made after careful thought and prayer and the seeking of advice from mature and experienced believers.”

Pardon my presumption, but I would add two things to Stott’s commentary at this point. First, while it is true that we will not find God’s particular will for ourselves in Scripture, we will find His particular will for others. (Consider God’s will for Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Paul.) Why bring this up? I’ve noticed that there is an assumption that many Christians have when it comes to discerning God’s particular will for their lives which is rooted in their attitude toward God’s revelation of his particular will to these and other people in Scripture. The assumption is that, just as God had a particular call on these people’s lives, He has a call on each and every individual. Note that I use the word assumption for that is what it is. The Scriptures never say that God has a particular will for each and every individual beyond being delivered from death to life. Second, I’d like to add that even after we think carefully, pray earnestly and pursue good counsel from “mature and experienced believers”; we still can not claim to have flawlessly divined God’s particular will for our individual circumstances. We can say that we have used the resources available to us and commended our decision to God who “in all things, works for the good of those who love him”.

I think many Christians are unnecessarily burdened with the task of finding God’s particular will for their lives. I’m not thinking of those folks who tramp through life confident that they’ve rightly understood various impressions, leadings and “burdens” on their hearts or faultlessly interpreted the results of “fleeces” they’ve “lain out”. I’m thinking of those who are constantly wondering if they are “in the center of God’s will” or who, due to a change in their circumstances, feel oppressed by the guilt of having “missed God’s will”. For those people, I would ask God to help them reach the point where they can rely on His revealed general will and the wisdom that He provides to make particular decisions, ultimately confident that God is at work, mysteriously, on their behalf.

A Muslim asked a Christian…

…the following question:

What are the Christians’ deterrent from sin?

The Holy Spirit is the Christian’s deterrent from sin. While there is debate as to the precise point at which this happens, the Holy Spirit is given to the believer and begins a “new creation” in him. This new creation is a process which is completed at the return of Jesus or the resurrection, whichever comes first. Throughout this process, the “old man” is “put to death” while the “new man” grows in life. The new man loses his desire for sin. It no longer appeals to him. Yet, he sins because he is not yet fully a “new creation”. When he sins, he is sorrowful and repents. God graciously forgives him and the relationship remains firm. As the Christian grows, a deterrent in the form of external punishment isn’t necessary.  The threat of Hell or of any other punishment is motivational in direct proportion to the maturity of the Christian. The more immature the Christian, the less he understands the love of God and the more easily motivated by fear of punishment he is. Conversely, the more mature the Christian, the more he understands the love of God and the more he values the relationship with God, so that he flees from sin.

Remember, the Christian knows that God did not make man sinful, therefore the sinful state must be reversed for mankind to be what God originally intended. This is only possible through a new creation, which (like the first creation) involves the Spirit of God.

Questions from Teens

I’m afraid of teenagers. Always have been. Even when I was one.  Patrick Mead, on the other hand, isn’t. He’s a preacher for a church in Rochester, Michigan who goes to local schools to speak with teens about Christianity. I recently saw a post at Patrick’s blog where he lists ten questions that teens in the public schools tend to ask him. I thought it would be a good exercise for me to try my hand at answering them. Of course, blogging answers is not the same as giving them out in real time but it’s still good to think about the kind of response I might give.

From Patrick’s post, 10 questions from teens:

1. Why do Christians hate gay people? Can gay people go to heaven? What’s so bad about being gay?

A) Some Christians hate gay people because they don’t understand gay people, God or themselves. I think a better question is, “Does God love gay people?” The answer to that is “Yes.”

B) It might surprise you to hear this, but the Bible doesn’t actually say that people go to heaven when they die. Seriously. Look it up. So you don’t think I’m dodging the question entirely, let me reword it slightly. “Do gay people live forever with God when they die?” People who live with God forever are no longer gay…or selfish…or dishonest…or sinful in any way.

C) Homosexuality,  like all sin, keeps us from living out the purpose for which God made us; namely to be His image in the material universe. All sin defaces that image. Homosexuality is no worse than any other sin in this regard. It just seems like it is because it gets a lot of attention from the media.

2. Why did you choose Christianity over the other religions?

Well, it’s not like I went online to GodMart.com, selected several religions for consideration, hit the “compare” button and then , after closely reading the resulting table, chose the one I liked best. Like you, and everyone on the planet, much of what I think, believe and know about everything has been inherited; I got it from someone or somewhere else like TV, music, books and even family and friends. I’ve chosen  Jesus over other deities and prophets because I think he was telling the truth about God, himself and humanity.

3. Will people who don’t believe in Jesus go to hell? How is that fair? How can God be loving if he sends people in Third World countries to hell just because they never got to go to church?

A) Jesus said that no one can come to God except through him. Now, this statement is either true or false. I accept it as true because I believe that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. Consequently, I have to accept that people who try to come to God through any other way will not reach Him. This is why it is so important to Christians to tell people about Jesus.

B) How is it fair for Jesus to be the only way to God? It’s better than fair. It’s loving. When we say that someone isn’t being fair, we tend to mean that they are not giving others their rights. You have to understand that God doesn’t owe anyone anything. He doesn’t owe anyone life or happiness. He gives life and happiness because he loves. When humans hurt Him by their sin, he doesn’t owe them forgiveness. He forgives because he loves. God doesn’t owe life forever with him, so God’s provision of  a way for us to be with him at all is an act of love. Choosing Jesus to be that way for us to be with him is his decision, not ours and it’s one he made in love.

C) God does not send people (from the First, Second or Third World) to hell because they never got to go to church. People go into hell because they reject God’s love. The question is, how can they accept God’s love if they don’t know about it? They can’t, which is why Christians think it is important to tell the story of Jesus through out the world. So, what will God do with those folks who never heard the story of Jesus and got the chance to accept God’s love? The Bible doesn’t address this question. In light of what God’s having made a way in Jesus for people to be with him forever, I trust that he is loving and wise and will do what is good.

4. Do you believe in creation? How can you believe the Bible and science?

A) Yes, I believe that God created everything.

B) The question assumes that they contradict each other. I don’t think that they do.  I think that the Bible and Science either address the same questions from different perspectives or different questions entirely. I think the real problem comes when we try to get our answers to certain questions from the inappropriate source. For example, when I’m hungry and I’m in a restaurant, I ask for a menu to help me decide what to eat. I don’t ask for a biology textbook so that I can learn how my food is digested and converted into energy.

5. Why did you become a minister/priest/pastor?

I didn’t. I started a blog instead.

6. Do you have doubts? What are they?

A) Certainly, I have doubts.

B) I sometimes ask myself “What if…?” What if I’m wrong?  What if  God doesn’t exist, or what if he does and he’s not going to forgive me of my sins? What if this group is right about God, Jesus, faith and I’m wrong? I don’t tend to think of these as doubts. I tend to doubt reports of miracles even though I believe that God can work them.

7. How many sacraments do you have? Why?

A) Um…not sure. I think two.

B) Of the seven sacraments of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, I see Jesus requiring only two of his followers, namely baptism and the Eucharist.

8. What does it mean to be a Christian?

To be a Christian means to follow Jesus. I’m still learning what all that entails.

9. Is there a heaven and hell? What are they like?

A) The word heaven has a couple of different jobs in the Bible. Sometimes it means the place where God is. Sometimes, it means the sky as opposed to the ground. It can also mean the space beyond the sky where the stars are. We know what the sky and space are like. As for the place where God is; I assume that it’s a good place. Hell on the other hand is a place without God and so I trust it is no where I want to be.

10. How can you say you are right and everyone else is wrong?

Understand that for the most part, people don’t make up their religious beliefs. They inherit them or they choose them. In some respects, it’s like joining Facebook or MySpace: you don’t register and then start ordering the network to function the way you want it to. Instead, you figure out what is acceptable use and decide whether or not you will follow the policy or not. If not, you either use another social-networking service or you start one of your own. You could say that I registered with “FaithBook” and friended Jesus…, but you probably shouldn’t. 🙂 One of Jesus’ status messages reads,  “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”  I believe him. If someone says to me, “All paths lead to God,” it’s impossible for me to say he is right, but so is Jesus. It is dishonest to God and an insult to your intelligence. After all, you know it’s impossible for “one way” and “all ways” to both be true.

I don’t know if these are good answers…persuasive answers…helpful answers, or not. But they’r what came to mind this time around.

“Indwelt” vs. “Spirit-filled”

Is there a qualitative difference between these two concepts regarding the relationship between a Christian and the Holy Spirit?

Having been away for so long, it’s a bit foolish to expect a response in the comments but I cast the question into cyberspace and let it land where it may.

I pose the question because of a lesson  by Dr. William Lane Craig about the Holy Spirit, in which he said more than once that being indwelt by the HS is not the same as being filled with the HS. I’m not sure I agree with him, but I do think it’s an interesting thing to discuss.

Begging to Differ

I recently found myself doing something that I almost never do, namely disagree with something written/said by NT Wright. 

His book on justification is coming out (or has come, I don’t know) and Intervrsity Press has an interview with Wright transcribed and available online. Somewhere along the way he appears to wholly endorse a Reformed sentiment that I’ve yet to fully come to terms with. It’s the whole bit about faith (the saving sort) being from the Holy Spirit as opposed to something that humans bring to the God-sinner relationship. Wright says:

“Many doctrines of justification through the years have actually kept the Spirit a bit at arms length and have not factored in what for Paul is
absolutely vital, that when somebody becomes a Christian, even the faith by which they believe, Paul says, is the result of the Holy Spirit’s working through the grace-filled preaching of the gospel of Jesus. I’m thinking of 1 Thessalonians, I’m thinking of Galatians and many other passages we could call in at this point.
The result is that when somebody then lives the kind of life which in Christ is honoring to God, it isn’t that they are earning their final justification by their own efforts; it is already given; it’s a datum; it’s part of who they are in Christ from the moment they believe and are baptized. Rather it is the Spirit working in them, through them, so that they are freely choosing to do what the Spirit wants them to do.”

I’ve long had a problem with the Reformed articulation of  this area of Paul’s teaching. The idea that the Holy Spirit unilaterally forces himself upon a person in order to save him/her has always felt wrong to me. After all, what kind of relationship can be established by coercion, even divine coercion? Love has to be given freely or it’s not love. And now here is a personal theological hero of mine saying something that sounds like the Reformed theology that I reject…or is he?

The difficulty here is understanding what it means for the Holy Spirit to work through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus. The Reformed position that I reject is the one which says: the Spirit first regenerates the sinner so that he is capable of (saving) faith, which is aroused by the preaching of the gospel. As I see it, this is effectively the Holy Spirit playing both sides of the gameboard. Is this really what Wright is saying? If so, then I genuinely don’t agree with him.

I tend to believe that through the preaching of the gospel (whatever form “preaching” takes) the Holy Spirit “knocks at the door” of the sinner’s mind and heart, asking to be allowed in. No matter how shabby and depraved a hovel the sinner’s life is, the doors are still his to open or shut as he desires because this is the way that the Carpenter designed and built it. Of course, one must be careful with metaphors; reading, writing and applying them.

I doubt that this point will be addressed at length in the new book and I don’t really need it to be. My disagreement won’t keep me from buying and reading it.

What Do You Say?

I’m a Christian; not one of those Left Behind evangelicals who see the talons of Satan behind every migraine or flat tire or even failed business venture in life. That being said, I can’t help but wonder if that’s not a hint of brimstone I smell in the air these days.

I ‘ve been given three months notice. As of June 30^th, we are jobless, homeless and insurance-less. We knew it was a possibility but we had thought that we would dodge the bullet. We were wrong. Of course, three months is plenty of time to hear back from one of the many places that I’ve contacted looking for work. However, this is the in-between time when the acrobat slips off the tight-rope and is waiting to hit the circus floor.

Later, on the day that the news about my job came, when my wife went to pick up our son from school, a boy chased a soccer ball into the street. She wasn’t moving very fast. When she heard the thud of his prepubescent body strike the side of the van, she saw the boy bounce off and shake himself into recovery. All the same, visions of death (the kid’s) and incarceration (hers) flooded her mind and she had to be lead into the Director of the school’s office and calmed with tea and assurances that all would be well.

When she got home, our daughter was covered in red spots. A case of chickenpox was reported at the school, so we expected that it was going around and had hitched a ride home on one of the boys. As the evening wore on, the spots became blotches and my wife took our little girl to the doctor. The much needed good news was that she was probably having an allergic reaction to something she ate. Two days later, there was no sign of recovery so we made an appointment with a dermatologist. The next day, the blotches were fading so we skipped the appointment. Then we discovered that some of them had turned purple.

About an hour ago, my wife was finished with the doctor and told me that he suspected that our little girl has a blood disease called anaphylactoid purpura. No one knows what causes it. There is no medication to treat it. It isn’t exactly deadly, but occasionally it leads to liver and/or kidney damage. We’re waiting on tests to find out if either has occurred in our little girl.

So, let’s recap: we’ve lost a job, struck a child with our van and had our two-year old daughter diagnosed with an uncommon blood disease all in less than one week. While the ball-chaser is fine and it’s unlikely that our daughter will die from this disease, we still have to bear the burden of uncertain job prospects…in difficult economic times at that. What does one say at a time like this?

Expressions of shared sadness are appreciated. Advice is not. Silent, supportive presence is priceless. Ignorant yammering about the mysterious outworking of God’s will or the pernicious work of the devil and his henchmen are worthless. A prayer would be the most helpful thing you could say. After all, when you want action, you always talk to the one in charge…and regardless of how things look, or feel, I still believe that God is in charge.

Nothing but the blood

It was story time.
M. was sitting on the bed picking a scab on his ankle until it bled.

Looking at the blood he said to his brothers, “Hey touch my blood and you’ll be delivered from sin.”

S., his older brother, replied in a credulous tone, “Really?”

Abortion Plan A

This is an open letter to every Christian who is worried about the legal status of abortion under President-elect Barak Obama.

Dear Christians,
For the love of God, for the love of the unborn and for the love of the daughters of America, have compassion on mothers who are either considering an abortion or have aborted their babies. Why?

Hear the word of the Lord:
1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”
5 Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”
10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4 NIV)

God is compassionate, even to those so ignorant, so confused, so wicked that they do not know “their right…from their left…” Since you are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18) who in his very nature is God (Philippians 2:6), then you too ought to be compassionate.

You can show compassion by countering ignorance with education. Teach women about the nature of the unborn child inside them. Teach them about the physical and psychological effects of abortion on all involved. Show compassion by alleviating confusion through gentle guidance and attractive alternatives to abortion. Resist wickedness by doing good. Provide these mothers with food, clothing and shelter. Offer them accepting communities where they can safely heal. Welcome these women and their children into loving homes. Have compassion on these people just as God had compassion on Nineveh.

In the US, citizens have the right to petition the government and to vote on issues but that’s not the way it is everywhere. If you didn’t have the right to lobby against abortion, what would you do? Give up and leave these women in ignorance, confusion and wickedness? Or would you concede compassion feeling like it was a lesser course of action? For God, the lesser course was judgment. His first action was to send Jonah to warn the people so that He might have compassion on Nineveh.

Christians, you are God’s first option. He sends you compassionately to those who don’t know right from wrong because He cares about them. Please, reprioritize your options in the battle against abortion. Let lobbying and legislation be your Plan B.

Make compassion Plan A.

Identity Crisis

Last night, E came into the bedroom crying. Grabbing J around the legs, he looks up at her and says, “Mama, S. says I not Jesus!”

J, looking down into his tear-streaked face, says “Honey, you’re not.”

E let go of her legs, stepped back and in a tone signaling his great surprise and consternation at the news said,  “What!?”

The End

It’s been a while in coming.

As I said before I left on summer holiday, my life is about to get very busy. So, instead of blogging, I’ll be working on resumes, networking and generally concentrating on all of the things that I need to do in order to repatriate to the States. I’m going to keep this WordPress account though. Perhaps, after a year or so, I can return to this blog and make it better in some ways. 

We’ll see…

Oh yeah, thanks to anyone and everyone who has visited AMTOG.

Bentley and His Brain

Summer, for me, is over.

The days of this blog are numbered.

While you’re waiting for the “farewell” post, may I recommend reading something by David Bentley Hart, like this and this. Over the summer, at the suggestion of Wonders for Oyarsa, I read his book The Doors of the Sea and I’ve taken an interest in his work. (I might even be learning to appreciate it.) Warning: DBH has a really big brain, thinks really deep thoughts and writes really long sentences that use really difficult words to talk about…stuff. His prose takes some getting used to if you’re used to reading…practically anything else, particularly blogs.

All Rebellion is Sin but…

…not all sin is rebellion.

The first time this thought occurred to me was in the earliest days of parenthood. My wife and I had been reading different books in order to prepare ourselves as best we could for what was coming. I’m not sure what well-intending, misguided soul lead us to read the Ezzo book but it didn’t take either of  us long to realize that we had a different idea of God’s way of raising children. Like a lot of evangelicals, Ezzo sees children as not just little sinners but little rebels. For him and those in his camp, to be sinful is the same as being rebellious. Consequently, God’s way of parenting is less about nurturing life and more about putting down a rebellion in the home. Even if that is an overstatement, it’s not an overstatement to say that the parent-child relationship portrayed in this book was combative. As we read it, we felt like children were seen as the (rebellious) enemy who need to be taken firmly in hand and have the rebellion squeezed out of them. While neither of us were inclined to deny that humans are born with a sin nature, we also were not willing to look upon our gift from God as the enemy. We refused to believe that every time our child misbehaved (i.e. sinned); he was acting rebelliously toward our God-given parental authority.

This past week-end, in a conversation with another Christian, I noticed that this person held the opinion that all sin is rebellion. The comment that revealed this had something to do with The Fall, the event in which Adam and Eve sinned/rebelled against God. I pointed out that I don’t think that all sin is rebellion and derailed the discussion just a bit. Come on, think about it…

I’ll assume that you know the story in full and pose the rhetorical question; did Eve rebel against God when she ate the forbidden fruit? As boring and/or sophomoric as it may be to do it, I’m going to take a moment to define the terms. The biblical word translated as “sin” can mean “to miss, to miss the way, to go wrong, to incur guilt” and the nearly-clichéd meaning “to miss the mark”. The biblical word translated as “rebel” can mean “to be contentious, refractory, disobedient”. The difference between these two concepts is that the first (sinning) can be either intentional or accidental, while the second (rebelling) can only be intentional. So, was it Eve’s intention to reject God’s authority and repudiate His love? Perhaps we can’t really know the answer to that but I’ll base my opinion on Paul’s characterization of Eve’s state of mind.

On two separate occasions (2 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Timothy 2:14), Paul made the comment that Eve was “deceived” by Satan.  On both occasions, the root of the words translated as “deceive” are the same and carry the idea that Eve was “cheated” or “beguiled”. She was lied to by the serpent, and for her part, she believed the lie. Believing the lie was wrong. Eating the fruit was disobedient but was it contentious? Was she contending with God or was she simply failing to think through the implications of her decision to trust the serpent and ignore her own experience of God? I’m inclined to think that Eve, without the knowledge of good and evil, had no idea that the serpent could have a sinister intent and so she was not on her guard. The devil was cunning and he “beguiled” her, leading her astray. Eve missed the goal of obedience but I don’t think that she contended with God. The word “deceived” just doesn’t carry the concept of intention(ality?) and making it carry that concept is forced. I suppose it could be argued that there is sufficient overlap between the concepts of sinning, disobeying and rebelling to allow for the position that all sin is rebellion but I think that doing so requires ignoring significant nuances. After all, words are chosen because they signify particular meanings and not other meanings. It’s not “just semantics”.

Why God Kills Babies

Chances are good that if you come from a Christian background, at some point in your life you had an encounter with this Bible Story book. This is the one that I’ve been reading to the kids from lately. (We have several that I’ve been rotating through.)

If you popped over to Amazon and took a look at it, you noticed right off that it’s a “serious” kid’s book. The illustrations are not quite photo-realism, but they’re not cartoons either. The people smile when they’re happy and frown when they’re sad, unlike this one where you’ll find a grinning Jonah kneeling in prayer on a comfy looking bit of whale innards. Obviously, the Egermeier book attempts to “keep it real”, which is why my wife and I recently had to have a discussion about reading the story of Moses to the boys.

If you know the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, you know that God had to afflict Pharaoh and all of Egypt in several different ways before Pharaoh obeyed God and released the Israelites from their slavery. One of the plagues that God visited on the hard-hearted Pharaoh and the complicit Egyptians was the death of all their first-born children . As far as I can tell, the plague killed all of the first-born whether infant or elderly, however I suspect my children would only think about the little ones. The challenge in telling this story to our little ones is reconciling for them why our Good and Loving God would kill Innocent Babies. My wife and I have had this discussion before and I’ve even posted about the time my oldest son quizzed me about why God wanted Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. My wife and I didn’t come to a unified position on whether or not to read the Egermeier version, which doesn’t shy away from the facts, however we agreed that it’s not a bad idea to have an answer in mind should the kids ask why God killed the Egyptian babies. So, I went off, grabbed a notebook and pencil and began to write an imaginary conversation with the kids in order to come up with some kind of answer that is both true and understandable for kids. Here’s something akin to what I came up with that night:

Kids: Daddy! Why did God kill the Egyptian babies? That’s mean!

Daddy: That’s a good question. Let’s think about it: Do you know what a slave is?

Kids: Someone who works.

Daddy: Yeah, sort of. You see, a slave is someone that other people treat like animals. The Israelites used to be neighbors with the Egyptians but then the Egyptians took them, made them slaves and began to treat them like animals. Think about that: Where do animals sleep?

Kids: Outside? In barns? In houses?

Daddy: Ok. Where do animals go potty?

Kids:(laughter) In the potty!

Daddy: No, they don’t. Animals don’t have clean places to go potty. Some animals on the farm tend to potty in the same place where they eat and sleep…or just anywhere they can find. What kind of food do animals eat?

Kids: Grass!

Daddy: Yeah, some do. Do people eat grass?

Kids: No! Yuck!

Daddy: The Israelites probably didn’t eat grass, but they didn’t eat nice food like you and the Egyptians either. What are animals good for? What are chickens good for?

Kids: Eggs! Nuggets!

Daddy: Exactly. Does anyone ever offer to give the chicken money for their eggs? No. We just take them. As for nuggets, before you can make chicken nuggets, you have to kill the chicken. Do you go to jail if you kill a chicken?

Kids: No!

Daddy: That’s what the Egyptians did to the Israelites. They made them live in dirty places like animals and gave them simple food like animals. When the Israelites had babies, the Egyptians took their children and sold them like they were animals. Remember that the Egyptians even killed the Israelite babies and nobody put them in jail for doing it. Should the Egyptians have been punished for this?

Kids: Yes, but not the babies!

Daddy: God gave the Egyptians 400 years to stop being mean to the Israelites, but they didn’t. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, He told Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. If Pharaoh had listened, then the babies would not have died.

Kids: But the babies didn’t do anything wrong! God should’ve killed Pharaoh!

Daddy: You’re right; the Egyptian babies didn’t do anything wrong and neither did the Israelite babies that the Egyptians sold and killed. God sent Moses to give the Egyptians a chance to do what was right: to release the Israelites and to stop treating them like animals. God tried to give them mercy but they didn’t want God’s mercy.

Kids: What’s mercy?

Daddy: Mercy is when we get something good that we don’t derserve instead of the punishment that we do deserve.  Justice is getting the punishment we deserve for the bad things we’ve done. God offered Pharaoh and Egypt mercy but when they said No! He gave them justice for killing the Israelite babies. Just like the Israelites lost their babies, so the Egyptians had to lose theirs because they would not accept God’s mercy.

Kids: But what about the babies? Doesn’t God love the Egyptian babies? Couldn’t He give mercy to the babies?

Daddy: Yes He does. In fact, God loves those babies so much that when Jesus returns, God is going to give those babies new bodies and new life. They’ll live with people who love each other and don’t treat people like animals. They won’t learn how to be mean like the Egyptians that God punished for treating the Israelites so badly.

Of course, no conversation with my kids would ever last this long. They’d get bored and begin to make jokes. In fact, I’d probably lose them completely once I brought up the idea of animals going potty. Additionally, my kids would constantly interrupt with additional questions. Yet, having gone through the exercise I think I’ve come up with a condensed answer.

God loved both the Egyptians and the Israelites and He was very unhappy when the Egyptians took the Israelites and started being mean to them. Remember, the Bible says that the Egyptians killed Israelite babies. God sent Moses to give them a chance to stop being mean but Pharaoh and the Egyptians would not stop. When God saw that they would not stop, He gave them the same trouble that they gave the Israelites: He took away the Egyptian babies just like the Egyptians took away the Israelite babies. When Jesus returns, the babies of both the Egyptians and the Israelites will be given new life and there will be no more killing.

I don’t know if the kids would understand that or not. I think they might. They may not remember it either. I just know that I’d rather give them an honest, if difficult, answer instead of avoiding the subject entirely. I’d really love to give them THE CORRECT ANSWER but honestly, I don’t think I know that that is.

Bow Down or Boogie?

Over at The God Journey, Brad and Wayne were talking about Chuck Colson’s criticism of the book The Shack. Colson criticized that The Shack’s low view of God and the Bible, pointing out that Isaiah, John (the Revelator), Paul et al fell down in abject humility before the glory of God while the main character of The Shack ate collard greens with God and called her “Papa”. The conversation eventually turned to discussing who God is. Is God High and Exalted as experienced by Isaiah or is He Meek and Lowly as experienced through Jesus. Is God our Sovereign Lord or is He our Abba? On the Day of Judgment, will we kneel in reverence before His Majesty or will we be giving high-fives all around?

In the conversation on The God Journey podcast, Colson represents the God Most High attitude. The most intimate word that he could use for God would be the formal Father, but only because it’s in the Bible. Approaching the other end (if not completely on the other end) are Brad and Wayne. They would prefer to use Jesus’ word “Abba” to address God, a word that is supposed to be roughly equivalent to our “Daddy”. Colson thinks the appropriate relationship to God requires falling on our faces and proclaiming “How Great Thou Art” before the throne while Brad and Wayne want to play in God’s lap the way that little children did with Jesus. Which is appropriate? Should we grovel or should we dance before God?

The Bible shows God as “Most High” and “Most Nigh”. In the beginning Adam and Eve took walks in the garden with God. After the Fall, they fled from His presence. Abraham haggled with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. The Israelites cowered at the foot of the mountain begging that God not speak to them. Moses and the elders ate and drank in the presence of God. Isaiah fell prostrate and confessed to be a “man of unclean lips”. David called God his “shepherd” and described Him lovingly in the famous Psalm. When God came in the man Jesus, He dandled children on His knee and turned over tables in the temple. Sinners were drawn to him. Roman soldiers “drew back and fell to the ground” before Him. After the resurrection, Mary threw her arms around Jesus while Saul of Tarsus fell to the ground and called him “Lord”. The appropriate concept of God is one that is able to accept the all of these expressions. Some folks groveled. Others danced. Some responded in other ways. Relationships are complex as the Bible shows.

I don’t know if it’s necessary or not, but it seems to be fairly common that people who are growing in their faith go through a period of extremes. Someone grows up with God Most High, finds out that he is free in Christ and rushes toward God Most Nigh. Another one starts out with Big Daddy, Junior and The Spook in the commune only to end up with The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost at the Orthodox Church. Some folks need to experience greater intimacy with God. Others need to experience greater reverence for God. Some need to hear that they can approach the throne boldly. Others need to realize that it’s a throne and not a Lazy-Boy recliner.

If it is an error to tend toward one of these attitudes or the other, I tend to err toward the throne forgetting that the One seated there is Love. There are days when I boogie when I should bow. There are other days when the reverse is true. Some day, I’ll see God and I’m confident that whatever attitude I have then will be the appropriate one…for me.

MiniEarth

Watch this video and then think about these questions:

How would “MiniEarth” be different if there were 0 Christians or 18 Christians or 66 Christians?

With 33 Christians in “MiniEarth”, why are there 13 hungry people and 14 people who can’t read?

Would one of the 33 Christians also be the 1 with HIV? Would that 1 be able to tell the other 32 without being afraid?

How many churches/denominations would there be in “MiniEarth”? Does that idea bother you for some reason?

If the 6 people with 59% of the wealth were all Christians, would any of the numbers related to poverty, military spending or aid change? In what way?

I’m just thinking…

 

Justice or Mercy?

What do you do with a student who is .6 points away from passing the course? If you’re a teacher, your mind is already filling with additional questions, withholding your answer until you’ve gotten a fuller picture. “Why is she only .6 points from passing?”, “Were there any outside factors like illness?”, “Was she absent a lot?”, “Were the assessments fair/valid?” and so forth. All valid questions and whatever the answers to them are, there comes a moment of decision, a moment when you will either choose to act justly or mercifully. How do you decide? How do you know when to be just and when to be merciful?

A student from my class finished the year just .6 points away from a passing mark. As is customary in the host culture, other students approached me to intercede on her behalf. One day, Student .6 waited outside my office door with a group of about eight supporters to speak with me about her situation. The next day, I got a visit from the Program Director who wanted to know “what we could do” for Student .6. At the end of that day, as I sat on the bus headed home I began to think about the question of justice versus mercy. As a Christian, I’m supposed to be transformed in my thinking and conformed to the likeness of Jesus who always knew when to be just and when to be merciful. Should I have been just with Student .6 and let the failing grade stand or should I have been merciful and rounded her mark up to passing?

No answer came to me until I got home and was changing out of my work clothes. It was a light bulb moment and I’m not sure of the reasoning that brought me to my answer but here it is: give people what they ask for. Student .6 came to me complaining that it wasn’t fair for her to fail the course when she was so close to passing. She reasoned that it would be a waste of her time to repeat the course for want of 6/10 of a point. She asked me for justice, not mercy, which lead me to another realization: mercy is only possible where there is confession.

Had Student .6 come to me and confessed that she had not taken the course seriously, the situation would have been different. Had she confessed that she spent more time talking to her friend and daydreaming during class, that she chose to do other things instead of studying for the tests, that she had memorized bits of texts to use in her assignments instead of producing original work, then there would have been an opportunity for mercy. She would have seen herself rightly and understood that the passing mark was not the product of her clever argumentation, her meritorious work or even my weakness of character.

Maybe I’m wrong, but perhaps this is why confession is so important when it comes to receiving mercy from God. (Don’t get confused. I’m not using mercy as another word for grace. I see that as something significantly, though not altogether, different.) We are not ready to receive mercy from God until we rightly understand that we are justly condemned. Confessing our sin, our failure, our mark-missing is the sign of our understanding of our situation. Sure, Student . 6 could have “confessed” while thinking to herself, “I’ll say what he wants to hear if it means that I get what I want”, but that only works with humans. God, knowing the heart, knows when a confession is an attempt to manipulate and when it’s sincere. Without a confession, it’s impossible to receive mercy. Mercy may be shown, but it may not be perceived as mercy. Should mercy be shown even when it will not be perceived as mercy? I think only God really knows and we just have to do the best we can.

As for Student .6, she came to me looking for justice and I think that is what I gave her. Sadly, decisions may be made higher up which will subvert justice. Happily, one day God’s justice will prevail…which is why I’m asking for mercy today.

Convincing, Converting, Manipulating Authentically

“…and convincing is all about manipulating…our job was not to convince, not to convert. It was to live authentic lives and to help people who want to know the Jesus I know.” http://www.thegodjourney.com/audio/2008/0328h.mp3

I’ve been giving “The God Journey” podcast a listen and this is a quote from one of the hosts. (I don’t know which one said it as I have not placed the names with the voices yet.) It’s neither my desire nor my intent to take issue with either of these two former pastors. I just want to interact with this statement.

“…convincing is all about manipulating…” This is certainly true of some folks. There are religious people who NEED to convince us so that they might control us. Sounds sinister doesn’t it? If you knew what hackles were, you would get them up about now wouldn’t you? However, I think that there is a class of religious people whose motivation to manipulate isn’t so much sinister as it pathetic. They need to shore up their own doubts and insecurities by creating numbers (of people) in which to find their strength. They’re not interested in having power over others so much as creating security for themselves. It’s still wrong, but it’s pathetically wrong and not aggressively evil, don’t you think?

“…our job was not to convince, not to convert.” I think that there is a sense in which the job of those who follow Jesus is to convince which leads to conversion. The problem is motive and method. Do I try to convince others because I am insecure and need their conversion to make me feel secure? That’s a bad motive. Do I try to convince others because I love them and want them to “know the Jesus that I know”? That’s a good motive. Biblically, we see God invited his people to reason with Him; we see Moses giving signs to the elders convince them that YHWH had sent him; we see Elijah having a showdown with the priests of Baal in order to convince the people who was really God; we see Philip explaining from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah to an Ethiopian; we see Paul in debate/dialogue with Jews and Greeks in order to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah/Christ. I think our job is to live and interact with folks convincingly so that they might come to see Jesus as King, just as we do. Of course, we first have to see Jesus as King ourselves.

“…to live authentic lives and to help people know the Jesus I know.” Authenticity is highly valued in our culture. We immediately understand what it means when applied to works of art and collector’s plates but do we instantly grasp what an “authentic life” is? Do you live an authentic life? Do I? I think that the term authentic means genuine or even transparent when it appears along side the word life. People who live authentic lives are more than earnest or sincere. They are transparent. What we see is all there is. In matters of religion, people living authentic lives openly express doubt, frustration, anger and other “negative” emotions about God and / or His people. What I wonder is this: when we think of authentic lives, do we also think of people openly expressing faith, contentment, joy and other “positive” emotions about God and / or His people. I’m afraid that this idea of authenticity is only applied whenever someone is in the negative category and not in the positive. It’s the same trap that we fall into whenever something bad happens and we say that “real life is like that” or “Welcome to the real world!” as if only the negative is real or authentic. Is there room for something good to happen in an authentic life?

Again, I just want to interact with the statement. I mean no criticism of the one who made it. I have no agenda against anyone associated with The God Journey podcast. I just wanted to express some thoughts that burst into my mind when I heard these words.

Graven Literature?

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a chance to read The Shack while I’m home this summer. I first heard about this book in a sermon by Mark Driscoll. Mark, within the larger context of a sermon about God, was discouraging his audience from reading the book because it contains …let’s say erroneous doctrine. One particular fault that Mark brought up as an example was the way in which the author, William Young, represents God the Father in the book.

From what I can gather over at Amazon.com, the main character of the book has a conversation with the Trinity in a shack somewhere in Oregon. God the Father is represented as a black woman named Papa, Jesus appears in the form of a Middle Eastern man and the Spirit appears as an Asian woman. Mark’s issue with the representation of God the Father in this book is the way, from his perspective, it violates the commandment against creating a “graven image”. I think that Mark’s objection doesn’t hold water.

I’m going to trust the scholars behind a couple of different translations and not get bogged down with the original Hebrew. So, here’s Exodus 20:4, the commandment Mark referred to, in 4 separate versions:

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (King James)

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (English Standard-the one Mars Hill Church prefers)

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (New International)

“No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.” (vss 4-6, The Message)

It sounds to me that the commandment is dealing broadly with worshipping other (and therefore false) gods and explicitly with the common practice of making an idol for the purpose of worship. In both contexts the idea that the people are not to worship these idol-gods is central.

Obviously, a literary representation is not a “carved” image or a cast “idol”. If that’s a bit too legalistic or literal of an approach, consider Deut. 4:15-19. Even looking at the fuller expression of the commandment from Deut. 4:15-19, I think that the heart of the issue here is worship. Without any evidence one way or the other, I’m going to assume that the author of The Shack is not inviting his readers to enter into the worship of a black woman called Papa and so I can’t see how Mark can apply this commandment to the character of God the Father from this book. But that doesn’t answer the wider question: is it a sin to represent God the Father as having a body in a piece of literature? As far as I can see today, the answer is no, so long as this literary representation isn’t presented as an object for worship. I suppose it could be argued that “Papa” is being offered an object of worship at which point the author would need to speak up about his intentions and I don’t think he’ll be reading my blog…so, it’s not really germane.

Maybe The Shack is chock-full of doctrinal error, bad theology and out-right heresy. Maybe not. Either way, I’m not discouraged from reading it by Mark’s example simply because I don’t agree with his position and his reasoning.

A Sermon Illustration

Come on! Can’t you just hear it? Maybe if you read the description…

A Poem…

…perhaps.

I’m tired of groping in the darkness of Your shadow.

So, I sit with crossed legs and wait for You to turn around,

to let Your face shine upon me.

“Follow me” You said, and I did.

You never stop.

You never rest even though I grow tired.

Your stride is too great and I feel that I have to run at times.

So, I’m tired.

Your shadow is shade to me,

but I’m alway having to shift to stay covered.

“Take up your mat and walk” You say from somewhere far ahead.

The darkness of Your shadow advances, taking Your shade and exposing me.

(You never stop.)

I feel the heat return.

And the thirst.

What choice do I have…really?

“You have the words of Life.”

I’m tired from groping in the darkness of Your shadow…

“Callooh! Callay!”

“He chortled in his joy.”

Shortly, I’ll be spiriting my family away for our summer vacation in the states. My access to the web will be infrequent and limited which is probably a good thing.  If I get the chance, I’ll put a few posts in the cue but I probably won’t be able to respond to comments until I’m back in the host country in mid-August.

“Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel. May the wind take your troubles away.”

Where’s God When You Need ‘im?

“Well, he never saves me.”

This is what my oldest son said when we finished reading The Little Golden Book, “Why Should I Be Afraid?” It’s a nicely illustrated version of Psalm 27 with pictures of a hand of golden, celestial light saving a little “crusader” from all sorts of scary shadows, storms and other dangers.

“What do you mean? What danger are you ever in?” I asked.

“Well, he never saves me from spankings…”

 

What’s That About?

Last night was a rough night.

Apart from my baby girl waking up about every two hours crying, I had a rather odd dream that has left me wondering, “What’s that about?”

I was in a church building somewhere standing behind the audio mixer. The mixer was set up outside the auditorium so all I could see were these two double doors. There was a young guy not only running the mixer but he was single-handedly providing the praise and worship music.

This kid had plugged a microphone directly into the mixer and was singing along with a karaoke track. The music was actually pretty good (not the cheesy 7-11, jazz-hands friendly fare so common in the American mega-church of today) but the kid was singing “skippy dippy do” and other nonsense over and over. Just before I was wakened by my little girl’s cries I remember really getting into the music but feeling appalled at the junk coming out of the kid’s mouth.

Perhaps this is what happens when a Christian reads a biography about Frank Zappa.

A Comment for Ben Witherington

Unfortunately, Dr. Witherington’s Blogspot blog only allows Blogspot bloggers to blog er, comment so I thought I’d cast my comment upon the blogosphere and hope he gets it.

He’s written a post that I rather appreciate, which you can read here. If you do, you’ll notice some typos and some confusing use of language. Out of my appreciation for it, I’ve edited a bit. (I’d hate for folks to miss what he’s saying.) I’d hoped Dr. Witherington might be able to simply cut and paste the edited version into his blog, but I guess not. Anyway, here’s the comment that I wanted to leave along with my revision of the post.

I imagine that you are a very busy person who doesn’t have time to go back and edit this post, so out of appreciation for what you have written, I’ve gone through and edited it. I’m an English teacher by profession, so doing this is almost second nature for me.

I hope that you approve…but understand if you don’t.

Thanks for a good post.

One of the more interesting subjects to discuss is the freedom of God. What exactly is God free to do or not to do? Is God’s will the primary and controlling divine attribute such that even God’s knowledge is dependent on God’s will in the first place? Are there things that a sovereign God cannot do? For example, is God free to sin? Or is God’s behavior determined by the unalterable divine nature? That is to say, is God subject to the same sort of determinism some Christians believe applies to human beings? These sorts of questions and their answers all have a bearing on how we ask and answer the question about human freedom and its nature.

A few preliminary points are in order. Firstly, I take it that the primary attribute of God is not God’s will but rather God’s love, which is a holy love. Not holiness without love, and not love without holiness. I say this because God’s will has primarily to do with his doing, but what is prior to that is God’s being or character, and in my view God’s willing is dependent on his character. There are certain things which, while theoretically God might be able to do, God would never do because it would be ‘out of character’. For example God is light, and in God is no darkness at all. I take this to mean that God would never do evil nor commit sin. Of course there have been theologians who have argued that the terms good or evil are simply defined by what God does or does not do and sanction. I think there is a problem with this whole approach. The moral order of the universe and, more specifically, the image of God in human beings are meant to tend in a particular direction, namely conformity to the character of God. God says “be ye holy as I am holy”. There is supposed to be a reflection of the divine character in us, and indeed in all of creation. This in turn means that God, having set up the universe in a particular way, is not free to be capricious and redefine the meaning of holy in the middle of the game. God has chosen to express the divine nature in a particular way and has chosen to limit himself such that God as well as all of his creation is subject to certain standards of truth, holiness, love, and so on. This is a complicated matter, but the bottom line is that once God set up the universe with free agents other than himself, God is not free to do just anything without violating his revealed character and will. This is not an absolute limitation. I am assuming God could set up a definition of sin and could violate it, but if God did, he would cease to be the good God of the Bible. It is the last refuge of a scoundrel to say that God, who has already defined darkness and light, can change the definition along the way so that “whatever is, is right, because God has done and said it”. This is one of the reasons why it is terribly false to attribute to God sins that he prohibits us from doing, say for example destroying innocent human lives for no good or appropriate reason. But I digress.

I assume that when human beings were created in the image of God this meant, among other things, that Adam had libertarian freedom to either obey God or not. It is not appropriate to judge this matter on the basis of the attributes of fallen human beings who indeed in various ways can be said to be in bondage to sin or addicted to sinful behaviors. No, the question is: how did God make us in the first place, and how in Christ does God restore us in Christ as we are renewed in the image of Christ? Does grace restore the power of contrary choice in redemption or not? Of course much depends on one’s view of grace. Some people think grace works rather like an escalator– it does all the heavy lifting and we are just along for the ride. I disagree with this. Grace is not irresistible, it is rather a form of enablement from a gracious God which gives us a further chance to freely love and obey God. In other words, we must indeed work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God’s grace does not do it all for us and in spite of us.

Another of the major issues which affects this discussion is the nature of love. Now, I understand love to be the most personal act of either God or human beings. Furthermore, it is the most free and freeing act of all beings. It must be freely given and freely received. It cannot be coerced, co-opted, manipulated, and it most certainly does not work in an impersonal manner, like say the way iron filings are attracted to a magnet. God is not a magnet and he does not treat his creatures in an impersonal way that makes their behavior inevitable. If he did, it would cease to be personal and loving behavior on our part for sure.

This leads me to a further point. Ethics in the Bible are largely what are called “virtue ethics”. They are not intended to be exercises in futility or frustration. Nor is the function of ethical enjoinders to simply give us a clear picture of our impotence compared to God’s omnipotence, though it must be said it often has such an effect. Now, virtue ethics require that a person has the capacity to be virtuous, by which I mean, the person has the capacity to either freely behave in this way or not. Otherwise there is nothing virtuous about the behavior. The pure “fight or flight” instinct of a deer is not an example of making a conscious choice to “do the right thing”. I am utterly convinced that the Bible calls us to be virtuous beings, or as Paul suggests in Phil. 4, to be creatures who can not merely reflect on what is noble and excellent, but seek and attempt to do it. The commands to love as we are loved, to forgive as we are forgiven and so on, presuppose that grace actually enables us to freely attempt to imitate Christ and do what he commands us to do, at least approximately. God is an ethical being and he wants Christians to reflect the highest and best behavior a human being can muster. Indeed, he commands us to do it, but as Augustine says, God gives what he commands; he enables us to believe and behave as we ought to do.

In short, the discussion of the freedom of human beings should never be undertaken in isolation from the discussion of the freedom of God, and the ways God has chosen to limit himself in order to allow us a limited measure of freedom, and so be a small reflection of the divine character. Here we must return to the matter of God’s will and knowledge. Notice how in Rom. 9-11 God foreknows things that he did not will, for example the apostasy of Israel and the rejection of its savior by most early Jews. Not only did God not will this, but his heart is broken by it just as Paul’s heart is. What this tells me is that Calvin was wrong about the relationship between God’s will and God’s knowledge. God does not merely know it because he wills it. There is some other relationship between knowing and willing in God and they are not inexorably linked. At the end of the day, I believe whole heartedly in what John 3.16-17 says: God loves the whole fallen world and Jesus died for the sins of all human beings as 1 Tim. 2 also says. This in turn means there are other agents in play in the matter of redemption, human agents who can either positively or negatively respond to the Gospel, and the eternal lostness of some is in no way willed or destined by God. Were the matter otherwise, our God would cease to be a good God by his own definition of goodness. One final reminder– as the prophets told us, God requires of us that we reflect the divine character– to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. What God requires of us, he enables us to do, so that in small measure we may reflect the virtuous and free character of our God.

Not Jealous

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I subscribe to the John Stott Bible Study. It’s been a while since I’ve actually read a complete commentary that I’ve received in my e-mail, but today I did.

Today begins a study of Romans which is good because it’s the book that I’ve been reading bits of most recently. The study for today begins with commentary on Romans 1:1-7. In his commentary Stott says that Paul was motivated to reach the nations with the gospel because he was zealous that the name of Jesus be glorified. Stott says that Christians should be “ ‘jealous’ (as Scripture sometimes puts it) for the honour of his name – troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honour and glory which is due to it.” (italics mine)

After reading this, the first thing I thought was “Yeah, but…” followed by an attempt to moderate the statement in order to make myself feel better about the fact that I am neither troubled nor hurt by ignorance of Jesus, nor indignant when my peers spit out his holy name as part of a curse, nor anxious and determined that the name of Jesus be given proper honor and glory. At least, not as a rule. Why is that?

Why am I not troubled and hurt by ignorance of Jesus? To reply that I simply don’t care doesn’t really answer the question. At the risk of coming across as insincere, I think that the following quotes from the Bible truly do provide the answer. I do not “have the mind of Christ”; I have not been “transformed by the renewing of” my mind; I have not attained the “fullness of Christ”, that is a full appreciation of who he is and what he has accomplished on my behalf and the behalf of everyone on the planet.

Why am I not indignant when people around me speak the name of Jesus as a curse? To some degree, it’s because I expect it. Or more accurately, I don’t expect people around me to honor his name because I don’t see that they honor anyone. They may admire someone for something they have, but I can’t think of anyone whom my peers honor. For that matter, I’m not sure who it is that I honor. Just because I say that I honor the name of Jesus, doesn’t mean that I do. I’m not exactly sure what honoring someone looks like. Honor is a concept that is very difficult for Westerners to grasp, whether we’re Christians or not.

Why am I not anxiously determined to see the name of Jesus honored and glorified in the world? Perhaps the answer is found in examining what I am anxious and determined about. These days I’m anxious about repatriating to the US next year. I anxious about providing for my family. I’m determined to make the move in spite of all of the adversity that this move will entail. I’m anxious about my children and my relationship with them. I’m anxious about getting traffic at this blog. (How embarrassing that is to see in writing!) I’m determined to get out of my host country as smoothly as possible. So, it appears that I’m anxious and determined when it comes to me and my world, but not when it comes to Christ and the wider world.

So, how do I become troubled, hurt, indignant, anxious and determined regarding the honor of Jesus? How do I go about acquiring the “mind of Christ”? How do I come to understand the meaning of honor? Should those emotions actually rise up within me at some point, what is the proper way to express them?

Let us pray…

Something Reformed This Way Comes

Living outside of the US as I do, it’s difficult to follow the cultural trends, particularly those related to church/religion. Yet, for a while now I’ve gotten the impression via the internet that there’s been an increased interest/awareness/enthusiasm for Calvinism back home. Recently, that impression was strenthened by Justin’s post.  (And it was just now strengthened even more as I’ve just found out that Scott McKnight was aware of this resurgence of Calvinism as far back as August of 2006. Take note of the posts under his category Post-Calvinism located on the right side of the page.) I appreciated Justin’s post because he affirmed those aspects of “New Calvinism” which ought to be affirmed while encouraging caution.

My experience as of late indicates that these NeoCals tend to see theology in two camps: Calvinists and Arminians. (Perhaps they also see Papists but that’s a speculation on my part and not an experience.) I would like to add to Justin’s caution that the NeoCals remember that both theology and humans are more complex than that. Immediately assuming that non-Calvinists are Arminians and treating them with contempt does not encourage dialogue. For that matter, calling folks Pelagians and/or  Semi-Pelagians isn’t good for communication either.

Perhaps someone more in tune with the culture in the states could post some advice as to how to recognize a NeoCal from a distance thereby giving the rest of us the option of avoiding praying against for them.

What Would Jesus Say to Mohammed?

Someone I know sent me this video of a lecture by Jay Smith, a third generation Christian missionary, who attempts to answer the question I’ve used to entitle this post. To be sure, I know too little about Islam to be able to deliver the kind of lecture that Jay gives. However, when the above question was posed at the beginning of the talk, this was the first thing to come to my mind; “Who do you say that I am?”

If you’ve watched the video, you know that this is not the question that Jay comes up with. Instead, he has Jesus asking Mohd questions about the legitimacy of his claims to prophethood and the name of the god that he represents. It just seems to me that, as interesting as the answers to those questions are, Jesus would cut to the heart of the matter and simply pose the same question that He put to his disciples. After all, Mohd’s religion makes some clear claims about Jesus’ identity by means of the Koran.

I suspect that Mohd’s answer would be , “You’re a prophet of Allah. You are the son of the virgin Mariam. You are the bringer of the Injil (Gospel)”. The first response isn’t too far from the answer Jesus got from his disciples regarding what the “crowds” were saying about Him: “Some say you are John the Baptist, others Elijah or one of the prophets.” Mohd would fit somewhat neatly in with the crowd…until perhaps the second response.

I’ve tried to imagine how the conversation would play out and simply can’t. Would He tell Mohd. “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”? Would he say, “You do not know Me or my Father”? Would Jesus tell Mohd. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”, or would He declare “I am the Alpha and the Omega”? Would Jesus simply say, “Depart from me…I never knew you”?  I just don’t know.

On the other hand, I’m confident that He would not respond to Mohd’s answers the way He responded to Peter’s confession; “Blessed are you…for my Father in Heaven has revealed it to you.”

In Memory of…

Today, this blog keeps a respectful silence in the presence of the suffering of the Chapman family who lost their 5-year old daughter Maria about a week ago.

 

I join the Chapman family in the hope that Jesus will raise Maria to New Life.

Ability Before and After the Fall

As I understand Calvinist/Reformed doctrine;

1) As are result of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden (Gen. 3) aka “The Fall”, every aspect of creation is corrupted by sin, particularly the human will.

2) The will is enslaved by sin and as a result it is unable to do anything good, especially have faith in Jesus through the Gospel.

3) Consequently, faith is only possible after the Holy Spirit regenerates the sinner.

4) Once regenerated (i.e. born again) the will is no longer enslaved,

5) which is why the regenerate are able to have faith / believe in Jesus.

RC Sproul puts it this way, “before a person can choose Christ his heart must be changed. He must be born again…one does not first believe, then become reborn”.

Among the Reformed, there is this idea that not only are the “reborn” enabled to have (saving) faith in Jesus, but they also inevitably will have (saving) faith in Jesus. Again, as I understand it, the faith of the regenerate is inevitable because God is Sovereign and His call is consequently efficacious.

Consider this:

Since the enslavement of the will to sin is one result of The Fall, it is reasonable to think that Adam was created with an un-enslaved will (aka a “free” will), one capable of believing God. However Adam, with his unbound will, chose to disbelieve God, instead believing his wife (also in possession of a yet-to-be-bound will) who had believed Satan’s lie about God. As a result, we see not just one (Adam’s) but two (Adam’s and Eve’s) wills unfettered by sin choosing to disbelieve and disobey. Furthermore, God’s command was not efficacious as evidenced by the fact that both Adam and Eve did not obey. Consequently, it appears that faith is not inevitable even though the will is not enslaved to sin. If this was the case for our first parents, why should we assume that this is not the case for their descendants?

If the Reformed position is correct, and the regenerated will inevitably chooses faith in Jesus, then it would appear that the post-lapsarian, freed will is less free than Adam’s pre-lapsarian, uncorrupted will. After all, Adam was able to exercise his will so as to reject faith in God whereas Adam’s regenerated descendants are apparently unable to reject faith in Jesus. Said another way, there seems to be less freedom (of choice) for those in Christ than there was for Adam prior to The Fall.

Comments are open. Bring your own tar and feathers.

Armchair Apology

Last week, I wrote that I had an “apology” in the works. This is it. It’s an apology in both senses of the word: I express regret for my intellectual sin and I provide an explanation for why I sinned in a particular manner. Here goes.

A while back, I took issue with Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. I stated my opinion that his arrival at this doctrine was the product of a flawed hermeneutic. I contended that the specific nature of the flaw was that Calvin’s hermeneutic failed to see the Scriptures, particularly the writings of Paul, from an Eastern/Jewish worldview. Deservedly, this wording drew criticism from someone in the Reformed Theology camp. Since that post, I’ve come to the point where I would like to make some corrections to the statements which represented my understanding at the time followed by a defense of my conflation of some important concepts.

First, I would like to address my comment regarding Calvin’s hermeneutic. In my original post, I was wrong to write out of my ignorance. I’m sorry. However, thanks to this summary of Calvin’s hermeneutical principles by Pastor Biggs, I am no longer ignorant. While it is apparent to me now that Calvin attempted to take into account both the intent of the author and the historical context of the Scripture, I still believe that Calvin’s understanding of the author’s intent and of the historical context was shaped by his Western/Gentile worldview. Originally, I reasoned this way:

Calvin was a product of Western/Gentile culture. He was influenced by Augustine, another product of Western/Gentile culture (by way of Greco-Roman culture). Therefore, Calvin did not try to understand the Scripture from the perspective of a first century Palestinian Jew, which Paul certainly was. Had Calvin tried to understand Scripture with an Eastern/ Jewish perspective in mind, then he probably would not have articulated the doctrine of predestination as he did, if at all.

Now, I understand that Calvin was influenced not only by Augustine, but several other church fathers. As is pointed out by R.Ward Holder in this paper concerning Calvin’s exegesis of Romans 7, “Augustine was not the only Father who influenced Calvin. Especially in his exegetical writings, Calvin frequently considered the opinions of Ambrose, Origen, and Jerome, among others. But the citations to Chrysostom far outstripped these.” Each one of these men were Gentiles by birth and (with one possible exception) Western in so much that being products of Greco-Roman culture made one Western. Consequently, I continue to believe that my earlier position is not entirely unreasonable and without merit. (See this and this if you’ve got the time.) For clarity’s sake, I’ll restate my position: I believe that Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is NOT the product of interpreting the Scripture (particularly Paul) with the Eastern/Jewish worldview of the authors in mind. Instead, I think that he comes to the doctrine of predestination partly as a result of the Western/Gentile worldview which both he and his main influences possessed. I suggest that attempting to interpret Scripture with the Eastern/Jewish worldview of the authors (and some, but not all, intended audiences) in mind, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is not an unavoidable theological conclusion. (Which I suppose is obvious because not everyone has come to hold Calvin’s views on predestination.)

The second issue that I want to address is my erroneous conflation of the following three doctrines: predestination, determinism and fatalism. Since my original post, I’ve been learning about these three doctrines and I believe I understand why the conflation of these three concepts was a mistake. At the very least, I certainly understand now why Calvinists/Reformed theologians would find fault with saying that they are the same things, which I did. However, I would like to demonstrate that the mistake is an easy and understandable one to make.

Even though I think that the Wikipedia has to be taken with a grain of salt, I’m going to gladly accept its support on this point and quote the following:

Concerning predestination:

“Predestination may sometimes be used to refer to other, materialistic, spiritualist, non-theistic or polytheistic ideas of determinism, destiny, fate, doom, or karma. Such beliefs or philosophical systems may hold that any outcome is finally determined by the complex interaction of multiple, possibly immanent, possibly impersonal, possibly equal forces, rather than the issue of a Creator’s conscious choice.”

At other times, it may be used to refer to the issue of a Creator’s conscious choice.

Concerning determinism:

“It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans have no influence on the future and its events (a position known as Fatalism);”

So, I’m not alone in my error. In fact, lots of people make it.

Concerning fatalism:

“While the terms are often used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism, and predestination are discrete in emphasizing different aspects of the futility of human will or the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines share common ground.”

Of course, all bolding is mine.

Again, the Wikipedia may lack credibility, so I have to say that I didn’t really feel my confusion on these doctrines was validated until I read excerpts from the Belgic and Westminster confessions.

The Belgic Confession of Faith of 1561 states:

“We believe that all the posterity of Adam, being thus fallen into perdition and ruin by the sin of our first parents, God then did manifest himself such as he is; that is to say, merciful and just: Merciful, since he delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom he, in his eternal and unchangeable council, of mere goodness hath elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without respect to their works: Just, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves. (Art. XVI)”

Take note of the word “unchangeable”. The definition of fate is that the outcome is unchangeable. In this confession, God’s council is unchangeable, that is to say that God’s decision on the matter can not be changed. He has decided. Humans can not avoid their destiny, be it heaven or hell.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1643) says this about predestination:

“God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected . . . are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power. through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His Sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.” (Chap. III — Articles I, III, VI and VII)

This confession goes a bit further than just individual salvation and says that “whatsoever comes to pass” has been decided by God beforehand and “whatsoever” is “unchangeable”. So, even these documents, important to Reformation history, use language that can be easily understood by the uninitiated (me) as fatalistic (in the sense that the future outcome is unavoidable) and deterministic (in the sense that there is an external agent moving humans to a particular end).

Even this summary of Calvin’s Institutes uses language reminiscent of fatalism and determinism: “God once established by His eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive unto salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, he would have to devote to destruction.” Though it was certainly an error to conflate the doctrines of predestination, determinism and fatalism, I believe that I’ve demonstrated that it was an understandable one to make.

To sum up: my original assumption concerning Calvin’s hermeneutic was based on ignorance and I was wrong to conflate the doctrines of predestination, determinism and fatalism in the manner that I did in that post. I apologize. I’ve learned better and I am learning still and it seemed right to me to say something publicly about that since I made my errors publicly in that original post.

AMTOG2K

Today I’m celebrating more than 2000 hits.

Thanks to the following for their comments:
Really Robin, Kyle, Anonymous, Joe Arant, Wonders for Oyarsa, Dave Carlson, Rereblabe, Lancey, Mike F., lionelwoods7, abdulmomin, Sukran, Bobby Goat GRUFF! and Bad (aren’t you two the same guy?), John Shore, eblack, Chermone, Manas, Teresa, -30-, Natasha, Mark, Gabriel Somoza, lovesleftovers, brahnamin, and Steve.

Thanks also to my wife, who reads but never comments…online.  Thanks to the visitors who have wandered by, yet have not commented. And finally, thanks to all the spammers and spambots who, despite filters, have helped to make 2000 plus hits possible. 🙂

What does the future hold for AMTOG? Retirement.

I don’t know when exactly. I just know that the coming year is going to be stressful and busy as I get ready to return to the states with my family. Without a loyal readership, there isn’t any pressure to post regularly and I understand that irregular posting is a really good way to kill a blog, so I’d rather euthanize the blog myself as opposed to leaving to die of neglect. But, that’s some time in the future. I’ve still got a least one “apology” post to publish and some other ideas to express before I turn in my keyboard.

Until next week…

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Is it appropriate to be proud of someone when they do what they ought to do?

I’m proud of my wife today because she was faithful. She’s been grappling with her weight problem for years, but recently the struggle has intensified. Like a lot of folks, she has used food to comfort her and has turned to it instead of turning to God. For the past six months she has been changing this relationship with food and has lost forty (plus) pounds without dieting, without demonizing fat, carbs or starch. She eats what she wants when she is hungry. She doesn’t eat when she isn’t hungry. She stops when she’s no longer hungry. She prays when tempted to eat for reasons other than hunger. Sadly, for the past week or two she hasn’t lost any weight. She’s plateaued. She’s felt a bit frustrated that folks other than me haven’t noticed the weight loss and she hasn’t seen much progress. You might think that now is not really a good time for her to “testify” to the goodness of God in this process.

While visiting the doctor with our baby girl today for vaccinations, the doctor noticed my wife’s weight-loss and asked how she did it. My wife told this Muslim woman about her problem with emotional eating and explained that she has been turning to God for comfort and not to food. She told her that as a Christian, we believe that God loves us and wants to be the one who comforts us. She also mentioned how she prays and reads Scripture for encouragement in this struggle. Another Muslim woman doctor noticed that my wife has lost weight and so she got to talk to her in the same way.

So here’s my wife, feeling frustrated by a lack of recent progress in changing her relationship with food, feeling discouraged because so few people have seen a difference in her shape and she’s basically being called upon to testify to God’s faithfulness. It would have been really easy for her to answer these two women glibly, “I’m eating less.” But instead, she opened up to them, confessed her weakness and told how God is changing her. This is what Christians are supposed to do.

I love my wife.

What Kind of Car Would Jesus Have Driven?

Jesus would have driven a minivan.

Sound like heresy? I don’t think so. I know he never married and never had children, but he had 12 disciples with him practically everywhere he went. Granted, there isn’t a minivan on the market today that can hold twelve people but remember, people were probably smaller back in Jesus’ day as a result of (mal)nutrition. (I see examples of this almost everyday. Here in the host country, Indians from poorer areas of India are significantly shorter and thinner than those from more modern areas.) He could have taken out the second and third rows of seats and easily fit 12 disciples in the back. But he wouldn’t have done that. Not everyone would have been able to wear a seat belt. So maybe he wouldn’t have driven a minivan. Well, whatever Jesus would have driven, I’m confident that he would have chosen the safest vehicle on the market and I’m sure that he would have paid cash for it.

What I need to know is; if Jesus had 8,000 USD to spend on a used minivan and he had to choose between an older Japanese car (like a 2000 Honda Odyssey) and a newer American car (like a 2004 Chevrolet Venture), which one would he choose? Would he go with the older vehicle with the better reputation or would he go with the newer vehicle with the worse reputation?

Yeah, this really is all about me. We’re planning on buying a minivan when we visit the states this summer and we’re having a tough time figuring out what the wise path is. I’m certain that the wise path is not to go into debt for anything, especially a car, that is certain to go down in value. Beyond that I just don’t know. As I’ve been praying about it, I’ve come to see that a wise thing to do is to buy the best that I can afford…but I don’t know how to evaluate “best”. Over at MSN Autos, the “experts” rate the Odyssey high (9/10) and the Venture low (7/10), however owners who have commented score the Venture high (8.7) and the Odyssey slightly lower (8.3). Odysseys are much more expensive to repair than Ventures according to Consumer Guide Autos. If we start considering the 2000 Toyota Sienna at this point, the issue gets a little more clouded. The Sienna is ranked below the Odyssey and above the Venture by experts and only slightly below (8.6/10) the Venture by users. Repairs are still more expensive than the Venture but less than the Odyssey. The Odyssey and the Sienna have much better safety ratings than the Venture. So, if I go back to what I said earlier about Jesus buying the safest vehicle he could afford and paying cash for it, I guess I have to choose between the Honda and the Toyota.

I wonder which one he would choose.

Shameless Attempt at Traffic

I recently read that Ben Stein’s upcoming documentary Expelled was the biggest buzz in the blogosphere on a particular day in March…sorry, but after looking through my history folder in Explorer, I can’t find the website with the story that gives the exact date. I believe you can find out on Technorati…but I digress.

With so many folks being interested in this film about how “educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature” I figured I ought to jump on the bandwagon and write a post about it. The only problem is, I don’t really have anything to add to the conversation.

However, desperate for traffic to this blog as I am, I thought I would share something that those who are better informed than I am might have missed.  Scientific American’s 60-Second Science podcast recently devoted just over three minutes to a criticism of Stein’s film. Here’s what Steve Mersky had to say after seeing the film…twice.

If my shameless capitalization on a controversy to draw traffic to this blog works, would those of you who come by please leave your answer to the following questions:

Does Steve’s “rebuttal” effectively negate the filmmakers’ point? Does the rest of the quote really lead “to kind of the very opposite impression of Darwin that the filmmakers want you to take away”? Why do you think so?

Thoughts on Slavery

I recently told a Christian co-worker about my plan to return to the states at the end of the next academic school year. We got to talking about how intimidating it is to return home after being away for almost 9 years. I mentioned that the next year and a half would be spent saving up money to buy our first home. At this point, in a sincere attempt at being helpful, my brother suggested that I go into debt to flip some real estate on that the local market in order to build up even more money for a down payment on a home.

Since I was introduced to Dave Ramsey and my family worked its way out of debt, I can’t hear about such “investment opportunities” without thinking of Proverbs 22:7, “The borrower is slave to the lender.” This time was no exception. All I could think about was being enslaved to a mortgage for a piece of property in this host country where it is not uncommon for the laws to work against foreigners and fail to protect them, particularly from locally sponsored ventures. For me, it’s one thing to go into debt for the house that I’m going to live in. It’s another to put nearly all of my savings at risk on a property deal for a chunk of sand in a place that I’m trying to leave in the hopes that the overly inflated market is going to yield a 20% or more return on my investment. I think the financial term for this is “too risky”, but I’m not sure.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about slavery and what the Bible says about it. At first glance, it appears to some folks that the Bible isn’t exactly against slavery. One point that I’ve heard people use to criticize the apostle Paul, the Bible and Christianity is that none of them, in their own ways and times, opposed slavery as strongly as they should have. Particularly with regards to Paul, who gets credited by these folks as the “real” founder of Christianity, I’ve heard people say that he should have encouraged Christians to resist Rome on the issue. While I’m certainly not sympathetic to the detractors, I do see that the argument does capitalize on a fact: there is no Biblical condemnation of the practice of owning slaves. There is plenty of condemnation for the abuse of human beings, both slaves and free people. There are regulations in the law of Moses for the proper treatment of slaves, which includes both setting them free and retaining them for life. Paul teaches slaves and their masters how to relate to one another under the lordship of Jesus, while encouraging those Christian slaves who can gain their freedom to do so. I would sum up the Biblical position on slavery this way: Freedom is better than slavery, but slavery is not the worst thing that can happen to a human being.

I don’t say that glibly. My wife and I recently watched “Amazing Grace”, the story of Wilberforce’s efforts to abolition slavery in the British Empire. I comprehend the atrocious abuse which attended the slave trade as it was depicted by the film. However, not all instances of slavery in the Bible describe a similar existence for slaves. Joseph, from the time he was bought from his brothers until the time he was put over Potiphar’s house was a slave. It’s reasonable to assume that the quality of his life, if it was ever so bad as that shown in the Wilberforce film, improved quite dramatically…apart from that stint in prison. Daniel and company were slaves in Persia and it seems that they also lived fairly well in spite of it. Basically, some slaves had horrible lives and some didn’t. A slave with a master who followed the law of Moses or who exercised his authority bearing in mind that he must answer to Christ, his own Master, may not have seen his circumstances as being all that bad. It’s not uncommon for people to give up freedom for security, even today. Conversely, a slave with a lawless master may have wished for death daily until it finally came. Even the Israelites found slavery in Egypt, where they had food, clothing and shelter, more appealing than dying in the wilderness.

Perhaps I should look more closely at the Bible’s perspective on slavery.

Jesus Hears a Who

Perhaps the seed for the question was planted by the most recent adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who” which I took my children to see about a week ago. There’s a moment in the film when Horton, speaking to the mayor of Whoville speculates that perhaps “we” (being he and the audience) are also living on a speck which is currently being viewed by someone much larger, just as Horton is doing. Perhaps this is what was driving the question that my four-year old son asked me on the way to church recently. He said, “Dad, are we a play set?”

I didn’t immediately understand the question so I repeated it to him. “Yeah, are we a play set?” What did he mean by “play set”? As I so often do when I haven’t a clue, I turned it back on him and said, “What do you think?” He said that he thought we are but that he didn’t know who was playing with us. At this point my six-year old chirped up. “I know who’s playing with us; Jesus!” The four-year old said, “But I don’t see Jesus over those cars. He’s not a kid.” Then I realized that by “play set”, my son meant something like the Legoes that we have in our house with buildings and people (Spiderman, Mary Jane, a cop and Venom!). As the philosophical depth of my child’s question dawned on me, I heard him say, “Dad, is Jesus playing with us?”

Hmmm…

Forgive or Forget About It

In one way or another, I’ve said this before: there are teachings in the Bible that are difficult to understand and there are others that are difficult because I understand. While I’d like to place the following teaching in the first category, I’m afraid that it actually belongs in the second.

I’ll paraphrase: According to Jesus, if we want God to forgive us of our sins, we must forgive the sins of other people. Or we can word it in the negative and say: If we don’t forgive people when they sin against us, God will not forgive us when we sin against Him. (Read Matt 6:13-15, Matt 18:21-35, and Luke 6:36-38.)

Recently, I listened to a sermon by a guy out of Texas whose response to this teaching was, “Did Jesus really mean that?” That’s what I’d like to know. I mean, what about being saved by grace through faith; what about removing my sin as far from me as the east is from the west; what about no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? Does Jesus really mean that God’s forgiveness of my sin is contingent upon my forgiving others? It certainly sounds that way, doesn’t it?

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, so he gave them a model to follow. Matthew’s version shows Jesus finishing the prayer and then adding an aside, so to speak, as if to say: “By the way, you need to understand that before you ask God to forgive you of your ‘debts’, He expects you to forgive the ‘debts’ owed to you.” The idea being, of course, that our sin creates an imbalance in God’s moral economy. When we sin, we owe God something, namely our lives. (Rom. 6:23) I taught this
model prayer to my sons and to this day my four-year old still says, “Forgive us of our sins if  we forgive those who sin against us.” Textually inaccurate, but theologically sound…right?

Jesus capitalizes on the debt concept again later in Matthew 18 when he tells the story of a servant who owes the king and insurmountable debt. The king mercifully forgives the servant who then goes out and prosecutes a fellow servant for a miniscule loan the man owes him. When the king hears about this, he revokes his forgiveness and requires the first servant to repay the massive debt. At the end of the story, Jesus spells it out; “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” Jesus is telling God’s chosen people, the one’s with the Law and the sacrifices to atone for their transgressions of that Law, that God will do exactly as the king in the story: revoke forgiveness and require payment, whenever they do not sincerely forgive their brothers.

Before we get distracted by a discussion of who those brothers are, let’s take a look at what Jesus said about praying in Mark 11:24-26. Jesus tells Peter and company as they’re heading into Jerusalem together for the last time, that when they are praying they must forgive “anyone” for “anything” that they have against them. In this way, Jesus makes it clear who these brothers are. He also gives the reason they must forgive; “so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Since we are also his disciples, isn’t Jesus talking to us too? Yet, weren’t our sins forgiven when we believed with our hearts and confessed with our mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord? Weren’t we told that when God forgives us of our sins, He forgives ALL of them, past present and future? Doesn’t that include the sin of withholding forgiveness?

I don’t want to be disingenuous and leave the impression that my questions indicate that I’m afraid of “losing my salvation”. (I don’t believe we lose it but rather that we repudiate it, but that’s a post for another time…or not.) It’s just that as someone who has been churched almost my whole life, and a Christian almost as long, I often blow right by bits of Scripture without a thought. When that Texas preacher paused and asked if Jesus really means that we have to forgive in order to be forgiven, I thought that it’s an important question to take the time to think about, especially since my thoughts and prayers focus so heavily on receiving forgiveness, as opposed to giving it.

 

Blogging Grace

Gracious speech is easy enough to recognize when folks are face to face. However, when our conversations occur in writing, as is the case with blogging, then gracious speech can become difficult to recognize. A visitor to this blog asked me to explain how someone can recognizably “offer grace” when blogging. After mulling this over for a bit, I think I’m ready to attempt an answer.

Before I get started, I need to say the following: when I use the word “blog” as a verb, I’ll be referring to both posting and commenting. I think that most people simply mean posting. Additionally, I’m not always a gracious person, either in speech or in writing. Consequently, I’m a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable advising folks on how to blog graciously. I suppose I could take comfort in the fact that, judging by the number of hits so far, I’m writing mostly to myself.

In order to communicate grace when blogging, I think we need to be mindful of the obvious. Bloggers are writers. Every writer has a voice and every voice has a tone which communicates an attitude. Grace is a “heart-attitude”. When the attitude of the heart is not gracious, the writer is unable to offer grace through his words. Said another way, “Out of the overflow of the heart…” the blogger blogs.

Grace is widely defined as “unmerited favor”. Favor can be understood as “friendly or well-disposed regard, goodwill”. Often we express our goodwill toward someone or something by saying that we are “for” them. Consequently, a gracious attitude can be characterized as being “for” someone without that person giving you a reason. To offer grace through our blogging, we have to be “for” the reader.

When we blog, it’s a good idea to check our attitude to see if we are “for” our reader, keeping in mind the following: It is possible to disagree without disdain. Expressing confusion over some point or issue is not ungracious but expressing contempt for the reader is. Disapproving of a method, a mode of reasoning, a conclusion or even the poor expression of a position or point is not ungracious. However, disapproving of some one because of these things is ungracious, especially among Christians. To blog graciously, we have to strive to communicate that we are “for” the reader even though we may be against his methodology, reason and / or position.

The Bible says that “wholesome speech” builds up the listener. I think this applies to gracious speech, (spoken and written) as well. Since gracious blogging builds up the reader, we ought to ask ourselves  “Does what I write build my reader up?” There are many ways to build up one’s reader. The following are a few that I’ve thought of thus far.

One way to build up the reader is by using appropriate language. An expert edifies his amateur/novice readers by avoiding unnecessary jargon and providing lots of explanations. He doesn’t expect the reader to rise to his level of expertise and writes accordingly. A gracious blogger expresses understanding of why the novice (erroneously) thinks the way he does, and then explains why his understanding is erroneous. If a blogger presents himself as being knowledgeable and obviously isn’t, we are not justified in using the language of our expertise to pummel him into silence or shame. Sure, lofty egos need to be torn down but we must pause and ask if we really are the ones to do it. When we catch our fellow blogger in the sin of pretense and fallacious argumentation, we must remember what Paul said to the Galatians .

Another way to build up the reader is by avoiding sarcasm. As a teacher, I’ve seen how sarcasm not only shames a student but also creates an obstacle to communication, effectively shutting down the learning process. While it may be fun to write and entertaining to read (when not aimed at us), sarcasm tends to tear down, not build up. Jesus never used it against is disciples, and neither should we.

As I said earlier, offense is unavoidable. Despite our good intentions, we’re bound to offend someone at sometime and so gracious blogging is apologetic, without being defensive. When we become aware that we have unintentionally offended someone, we ought to be quick to apologize for the offense, not to defend our words. When we go on the defensive, we demonstrate that we are “for” ourselves more than we are “for” the offended. However, a timely and genuine apology (followed by a clarification of point if necessary or beneficial) shows that we are “for” the reader and builds him up. Sometimes, when my little sons are playing they accidentally hurt one another. When they do, my wife and I make them apologize immediately. Their instinctual response is to defend their actions/egos by crying out “But I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”. It’s as if they’re saying “I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t need to apologize!”  We then explain that the apology is a way of accepting responsibility for our actions and showing genuine care for the hurt person. Caring about the physical and emotional hurts of others is gracious.

Bloggers, especially God-bloggers, tend to be passionate about their subjects. Consequently, our emotions tend to run high. The Bible affirms both zeal and anger in their proper places, not that these are our only two emotions. However, above these two and all other passions (and virtues for that matter), the Bible exalts love, so when we blog graciously, we love.

Certainly, there are others who have blogged about this more succinctly and more eloquently than I have. Even so, just working through this has been good for me. Hopefully, if you’ve also worked your way through my prose, it’s been good for you too.

Doctor, My Brain Hurts!

I’m just posting to say that I won’t be posting this week. (Feeling a bit woozy from the Buick 🙂 )

Instead, I thought that I’d share some links to some interesting things that I’ve read and listened to over the past 2 weeks.

From Reformed Perspectives Magazine- a critique of Sola Scriptura (found this by accident!)

From Stand to Reason-“Bad Arguments Against Calvinism”

By way of Theopedia-a lecture on Calvinism’s take on salvation (really appreciated this!)

Steve, a former Calvinist, offers this.

Fred, a current Calvinist, explains why Steve is wrong.

I know that it’s pretty lame to post a bunch of links like this, but I need the break and if nothing else, I now have a place where I access these things again at a later date if I want to.

And if you’re curious, when next I post, it won’t be about Calvinism, Calvinists, and/or Reformed Theology… and if it is…(whimpering) help me. 😦

What’s Wrong with Kyle?

My guess is; not much. He’s a bright young man, married to “the most beautiful and talented girl in the world”, studying philosophy while being “trained up for ministry” in the Presbyterian church. He’s intelligent, educated and, I’m certain, extremely well-read in all matters which mean anything to him whatsoever, particularly Reformed Theology. You really ought to visit his blog. When you do, I think it’ll be obvious that between us, his opinion is better researched and informed than my own.  For his opinion about what I think is wrong with Calvinism, read this.

For my considered response to his comment, read on:

Kyle,

I took some time to read your comment slowly and check your biblical references. I seriously considered what you said and I also took some time to look at your blog to get an idea of who you present yourself to be. Honestly, I’ve come away from your comment feeling a bit like a fly being swatted with a Buick. I’m okay with that though. I can take it.

I’m also okay with much of what I said. There are some things that I would alter but mostly I don’t feel the need to recant my core beliefs (even if they are badly expressed). My point is/was that it is better to try to understand Scripture from the perspectives of the author and the audience than it is to try and understand Scripture from the perspective of another interpreter. When reading Paul (the Jew and the Pharisee), it is better to try to understand his writings from an Eastern/Jewish/Pharisee perspective as opposed to a Western/Gentile/Christian perspective of early church fathers (Origen, Augustine) and previous theologians (Calvin, Luther, et al.). This still makes sense to me.

My miserably expressed belief is that Calvin (but actually, I confess that in my mind I was thinking “present day Calvinists”) came to certain theological conclusions because he (they weren’t) wasn’t attempting to view Scripture in light of Paul’s Jewish worldview and Pharisaical education. Granted, if I presented myself as anything more than an “armchair theologian”, I would be remiss not to support this accusation through scholarship.  However, as I do not present myself to be anything greater than a blogger who likes to read think and write about theology, I don’t feel compelled to commit myself to the serious work of research and referencing at the same level of a student and future pastor like yourself. Again, you need to consider the author of this blog (“armchair theologian”) and his audience (realistically speaking, mostly himself…oh, and that nice guy Wonders for Oyarsa).

Of course, I realize that sounds like I’m advocating poor reasoning/scholarship but I’m not. I’m advocating that you and other readers of this blog use some discernment and adjust your expectations according to who I represent myself to be.

Nothing that you referenced in your comment indicates beyond question that Paul’s Jewishness and Pharisaical education was vaporized that day he met Jesus on his way to Damascus, nevermore to influence his writings. So, for now I’m content to believe that Paul, the Jew and former Pharisee, would not necessarily recognize his own beliefs regarding predestination in the theology of Calvin’s current disciples (and possibly even Calvin himself).

You were right to point out that I invite criticism by posting my (ill-conceived) opinions for all to read.  Additionally, you’re right to suggest some serious scholars for me to read and learn from. You have given me precisely those things which I had hoped would come from writing this blog. However Kyle, what you have not given me is “grace”. There is nothing gracious in the tone of your comment or the style of your prose. You did not attempt a gentle correction and so your invocation of “Grace” at the close of your comment rings hollow and leaves me cold.

I chose “What’s Wrong with Kyle?” as the title of this post because it neatly refers back to my previous post “What’s Wrong with Calvinism?” I didn’t choose it to be vindictive, although I certainly understand why someone might choose to read it that way. Yet, I’m sure that Kyle would tell you that there are plenty of things wrong about him which the blood of Jesus covers by the grace of God…and, like his observation that my post is “flawed in multiple ways”, he’d be absolutely right.

The End

He’s right.

I quit.

You should too.

😉

Exodus 2009

The decision has been made. At the end of academic year 2008-2009, my family and I are going to leave the host country and return to the US. It’s time.

Truthfully, it’s kind of a scary time. If you’ve ever moved house before, you know that change is not easy. Moving internationally is especially difficult. Particularly when it involves four small children and a large degree of uncertainty. We own no home in the states. We have no car. At this point, there is no job waiting for me to take on. At times, the whole situation looks more like immigration rather than repatriation.

Now is not a good time for well-meaning Christians to pelt us with talk about God’s will, but they do. A sister from church that I really like said to me recently something about “If it’s God’s will…” and I just winced. Sure, God is Supreme and His will is ultimately done. I’ve no argument with that. The problem is that much of the time, my evangelical brothers and sisters pronounce “God’s will” over events and circumstances when, to be blunt, they haven’t the slightest clue what God’s will is. Later, when circumstances change, (usually from positive to negative) they retract their comments and revise their pronouncements, as if it is never God’s will that anyone ever go through some sort of negative experience. The fact is that sometimes it is God’s will that folks go through hard times. Jesus showed us that and yet so many Christians divine God’s will based on degrees of adversity or outward signs of “success”. When it’s easy, when it’s successful, God has paved the way. When it’s hard, we’re outside of God’s will. That sort of thinking is just plain wrong.

So where is my comfort in these anxious times? If I can’t confidently say that this move and all of its accompanying changes are God’s will for my life, where will my wife and I find peace? I trust in God. Good, bad or indifferent, I trust in God. I pray for opportunities for work. I tell Him what I’m afraid of. I ask for His comfort, strength and wisdom. I wrestle with the verse that says “Seek the kingdom of God first and all of the other stuff will be added as well”, and try to understand how that applies to my circumstances. There are times when I feel peaceful and there are times when I don’t, and that’s an acceptable way of life. It certainly seems to be the way it was for so many of the people we read about in the Bible. Moses had his good days and bad days. Joseph experienced triumph and tragedy. Pretty much any major character you choose to focus on in the Scripture can be seen going through both good and bad, certainty and uncertainty and God is always there. Sure, some of those people were blessed to have God say in clear terms precisely what He wanted from them, but not everyone experienced that. God never told Joseph that he was made a slave in Egypt to save his family from starvation. God never told Esther that she’d been made queen to protect the Jews from annihilation in Persia. Yet, in their anxious days filled with questions about their future, they trusted in God. I should follow their examples and do the same.

What about “God’s will for my life”? His will is clear enough. Seek the kingdom first. Love my neighbor as myself. Love my wife as Christ loved the church. Raise my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Do all for the glory of God, without complaining. I could go on, but I think you understand what I’m getting at: God’s will for my life is clear. The context for living out His will for my life is what’s hidden, or perhaps it is not hidden. Perhaps, God gives me the right and responsibility to choose the context for living out His will that I know. This is what I believe and honestly, it’s really difficult. Taking responsibility, at least for me, is always a challenge. Sure God could speak to me from flaming shrubbery, but I’m much more likely to grow and mature in my faith if I’m allowed to struggle with taking responsibility for my life and choosing the career, the relationships, the culture in which I am to obey the will of God that He has already made clear in Scripture.

What’s Wrong with Calvinism?

I’ve never been a fan of Jean Calvin’s theology.

Even before I learned who Calvin was or what his five points were all about, I was in disagreement with him by way of his theological descendants on such things as “once saved, always saved”. As a young adult, I took an interest in Reformed Theology when a friend of mine became active in a Presbyterian church. I made a point of understanding the debate between Arminism and Calvinism and what I found was that Calvinism is a biblical doctrine. No, seriously. I had not realized that Reformed folks held a high-view of Scripture and that the “Doctrines of Grace” where thoroughly rooted in the Biblical text. That being said, I believe that a doctrine can be biblical and still be wrong. How? Flawed hermeneutics.

Calvin and company viewed Scripture through a flawed hermeneutical lens which resulted in seeing such things as ‘predestination’ and ‘perseverance of the saints’ when a different lens would have revealed something else. Thanks to a sermon by Mark Driscoll, I realized one evening not long ago that my problem with Calvinism is this metaphorical lens through which it views and interprets the Bible.

Mark was teaching about the doctrine of Predestination in his series “Religion Saves + 9 Other Misconceptions” when I had my epiphany. After a reference that he made in his lesson to two ancient church fathers; Origen and Augustine, I found myself thinking, “What about Jewish theologians?”. I realized that Mark was citing two people from Gentile backgrounds who read the Scriptures with Greco-Roman eyes. (See this and this.) As I thought about it some more, I understood that this is my problem with the doctrine of Predestination as well as Calvinism as a whole: it is the product of a Western/Gentile worldview and not an Eastern/Jewish worldview. Consequently, I went in search of Judaism’s take on predestination aka “determinism”(For an interesting discussion on God’s sovereignty and philosophical determinism, see this. For one rabbi’s attempt to answer questions on determinism, see this.) . Here’s what I found.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived comfortably in the lap of the Roman Empire wrote for his Roman patron(s) that there were three main sects of Judaism in his day and that one of the ways to distinguish them was by their deterministic views. According to Josephus, the Sadducees were the least deterministic, believing that God had given man free will and left him to get on with life. The Essenes were the most deterministic, holding that all is mapped out. No choices. No freedom. All is decided. Between these two poles were the Pharisees who held that while God sovereignly rules his creation, he permits humans the moral freedom and responsibility to choose between right and wrong.1

The Bible is clear: Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee. In fact he was a rather “successful” Pharisee, meaning that he was very good at doing and being whatever it was that made one a Pharisee. Why not then assume that Saul held typical Pharisaical views of theology? Furthermore, when Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul, why believe that his Pharisaical education evaporated and was replaced with Calvin’s systematic theology? It seems to me that when we read Paul’s statements about God’s “foreknowledge”, “predestination” and “election”, we should strive to understand them from the perspective of a first century Pharisee and not St. Augustine via Calvin and other Reformers.

I believe that Calvin’s systematic theology goes wrong because it interprets the Scripture from a Western/Greek perspective. Fate is a Greek concept; not a Jewish one. (Note: fatalism is not a feature of Calvinist theology, however it seems to me that it is a common error among Calvinists.) That isn’t to say that there weren’t Jews who held ideas which were similar to “fate”. However, there is not much reason to believe that the Apostle Paul was one of them. In fact, there is reason to believe that as a Pharisee, Paul held a sort of middle position which acknowledged the sovereignty of God without relinquishing the ability of men to make genuine moral choices (as opposed to predetermined moral choices). Consequently, any interpretation of Paul which sounds more like hard-determinism is, in my opinion, suspect. That would include Calvin’s doctrine of predestination.

NB: In the interest of transparency and honesty, readers should know that everything in green was added following comments by Kyle. They were not present in the original post which his comments address.

Catholic-Islamic Dialogue

“VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Muslim representatives and Vatican officials begin talks this week that they hope will lead to an unprecedented Catholic-Islamic meeting. ”

So, once they get the logistics worked out and everyone is in the same room together, I imagine the dialogue to go something like this:

Muslim: We agree that there is one God, right?

Catholic: Right, one God in three Persons.

Muslim: Um, no. Just one God who is not a “person” like we are people. Agreed?

Catholic: Agreed: one God, the Father who is not a person like we are, one God, the Son who is a person like we are and one God, the Holy Spirit who is also not a person like we are. Exactly right.

Muslim:Ok, let’s come back to that one later on.  Mohammed is the final prophet sent from God.

Catholic:Mohammed claimed to be a prophet of God, yes.

Muslim: Sorry, not just “claimed to be” but “truthfully claimed to be” and not just “a prophet”. He’s the final prophet. God did not send any others after him. Only the revelation Mohammed received matters now. Any others have been ditched. Agreed?

Catholic: (silence….blink, blink.)

Muslim: Um…okay. Jesus! He was a prophet, right?

Catholic: Right! Jesus was a prophet….and a priest…and King.

Muslim: No, not a priest. We don’t have priests. And not a King. He had no caliphate, er I mean kingdom.

Catholic: Yes he did. It’s called “the Church”. The Church is his kingdom. We are his subjects. God made him King because Jesus is His son. His mother Mary was a virgin you know.

Muslim: Yes, we know. Mariam was indeed a virgin, but just because God made her pregnant does not mean that Jesus is God’s son. God doesn’t have any sons, so Jesus can’t be one…or “THE ONE”. God doesn’t have anyone ruling the universe on his behalf either. He takes care of everything himself.

Catholic: Right, God takes care of everything, including taking away sins through the blood of Jesus. Did you know he died on a cross to take away sin? The best part though is that God raised him back to life three days later. The Bible says so.

Muslim: Ah, right. The Bible. The Book of the Christians. You do know that it’s been corrupted, right?

Catholic: How’s that?

Muslim: It’s been corrupted. The devil has added lies to the Bible to trick you. The Qu’ran says so.

Catholic:That’s your “Holy Book” is it, the Qu’ran?

Muslim: Yes. God has kept it from being corrupted like your book. Your book has been corrupted by the devil. You really can’t trust anything it says.

Catholic:Really? None of it?

Muslim: Well, I suppose you could trust those bits which are also in the Qu’ran, but the rest of it is rubbish.

Catholic:Right…anything in the Qu’ran about the resurrection of Jesus?

Muslim:Not really. You see, Jesus wasn’t actually crucified. It was Judas, made to look like Jesus. So since Jesus didn’t die, he couldn’t have been resurrected now could he?

Catholic:That’s in your Qu’ran?

Muslim: Yep.

(long silence…)

Muslim:So, let’s sum up then. God is numerically one; not three.

Catholic: There is only one Triune God.

Muslim: Mohammed is the final prophet from God.

Catholic: Mohammed said that he was a prophet from God.

Muslim: Jesus was a prophet, born of a virgin but not a priest and certainly not a king and he most definitely was not God’s son.

Catholic: Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, is the only begotten Son of the Father who has made him the Head of the Church and appointed him to mediate between God and man.

Muslim: The Christian Bible is corrupt while the Qu’ran revealed to Mohammed is the perfectly preserved final revelation to all men from God.

Catholic: The Bible is the Word of God. The Qu’ran is…your “holy book”.

Muslim: Isn’t it time we took a break for lunch?

Catholic:Absolutely! Since you’re our guests here in the Vatican, The Pope thought it would be a good idea to serve a traditional German meal of bratwurst, saurkraut and beer.  Dig in!

Apart from the patently offensive offering of pork and alcohol to the Muslims, this is precisely the kind of conversation that ought to take place, provided that all parties remain loyal to their beliefs. The essence of Islam is belief in the (cardinal number) one God and the prophethood of Mohammed. It is impossible for there to be a trinitarian Muslim who believes that Jesus wields greater spiritual authority than Mohammed. Conversely, the essence of Christianity is the belief in the (ordinal number) one God and the sovereignty of His Only Begotten Son Jesus. It is impossible for there to be a Christian who does not believe in the primacy of Jesus, which is His by virtue of being the uniquely divine Son of God.

As long as the two parties hold on to these core beliefs, any conversations between them ought to be similarly brief, and perhaps equally productive.

The Well Has Gone Dry

I had a burst of energy there for a while. I wrote several posts in advance, cued them up and then let them publish automatically. Now, I’ve run out of those surplus posts and it’s coming up on my self-imposed deadline.  It’s not like I haven’t been thinking and reading all that time. I have. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to order my thoughts into a readable bit of prose during the preceeding weeks.

I’ve been revisiting my views on Calvinsim, particularly its doctrine of predestination. From time to time, I do this because I tend to be drawn to Reformed types of preachers/teachers. They tend to be a cerebreal bunch, which appeals to me. And since they also tend to hold a high view of Scripture, I feel more drawn to them than to other Protestant preachers/teachers. Concsequently, I hear something impressively supported by Scripture, sharply disagree with it and then feel the need to revisit my views.

That’s what I’ve been doing these past several weeks as the post auto-published. I’ve been reading and thinking about predestination and trying to articulate why I believe that the Reformers have gotten wrong. Eventually, I’ll get it written but it won’t be today.

Sorry.

I’ll try to have something more substantial written next week.

Saved by…

Are Christian’s saved by faith or by works?

If you ever want to see an ecumenical meeting erupt into the theological equivalent of a West Texas cage fight (aka session of UK Parliament), then toss this question out for discussion.

Once long ago, I took out a concordance and I made a list of all the things that I found in the Bible which “saves” us. Here’s  a sample from just the New Testament:

standing firm

belief and baptism

human testimony (about Jesus)

calling on the name of the Lord

a message (about Jesus)

believing in the the Lord Jesus

the life (resurrection?) of Jesus

confessing

handing over to Satan (didn’t see that one coming did you?)

grace

God

childbearing (still haven’t heard a good explanation of that one!)

washing and renewal

baptism

Yes, I know that piling up verses in which the word “save” appears in one form or other is not a good way to do biblical exposition, however the point is not to nail down a single answer. The point is this: since all of these saving actions/agents are mentioned in the Word of God, there is a way in which they all save us. As someone said before, Peter does not trump Paul. When Peter says that we are saved by baptism, he is not contradicting Paul when Paul says we’re saved by grace through faith. They are both apostles of Jesus and they are both right. When Jesus says that we save our lives by losing them, he’s right too. When Peter tells the crowd to “save yourselves from this corrupt generation” we have to conclude that there is some way in which we are capable of / responsible for doing just that. We’re saved by everything and in every way which the Bible says we are. Simple and yet not.

Instead of feeling like we have to be loyal to one of these two positions (or some third one I’ve left out), we’d be wiser to broaden our loyalty to the whole Scripture and leave room in our rhetoric and doctrine for all of the saving actions/agents which God tells us about in His Word.

St. Valentine’s Day 2008

I hate Valentines’ Day. 

I’m sure that I’m not the only one. Undoubtedly, the web is replete with articles and blog posts by people who are, to varying degrees, in agreement with me: Valentine’s Day is one of the worst holidays on the calendar. Perhaps there are many who feel the same way that I do for the same reason: Valentine’s Day is a yearly reminder of various inadequacies on my part. 

First I have a poor memory. Despite obscene amounts of marketing and its annual appearance, Valentine’s Day invariably sneaks up on me unawares. Of course, one excuse I could (legitimately?) make is that I live outside of the US in a Muslim country where it is unseemly, at best, to celebrate a holiday named for a Christian saint and extols the virtues of romantic love. And after making this excuse, my wife would be stricken mute and immobile, unable to chose between guffawing and bawling at the at the absurdity of it. It’s not like she doesn’t do all the shopping for the family and hasn’t noticed the abundance of heart-shaped candies, trinkets and teddy bear feet. No, local retailers may not assail us with circulars emblazoned with “St. Valentine’s Day is February 14^th!”, but they know all of the gift-giving occasions of all of the cultures represented here and they make sure to have the appropriate gifts prominently displayed at the appropriate time. In short, my poor memory is no excuse for not getting J. something on Valentine’s Day. 

Second, I’m selfish, which is probably the underlying cause of my poor memory. Again, it’s not like remembering the holiday is all that difficult. There are numerous reminders available. The date is noted on our calendars. Hearts adorn our preferred search engine website during the month of February. Holiday related spam floods our e-mail accounts. And, even here, there are plenty of retailers pushing holiday-themed merchandise without invoking the name of the departed saint. With all of these reminders, the only excuse for “forgetting” the wretched event is that I’m just too self-absorbed to notice. My mind is preoccupied with the important events on my calendar. I am practically blind to superfluous decoration both on and offline. I never ever read anything that ends up in my bulk mail folder on my e-mail account and I block out all attempts to sell me anything that I don’t already want. The whole point of Valentine’s Day is to shower someone other than myself with attention and gifts and that is not easy for me to do. 

Third, I’m financially constrained. I’m not poor and I’m not in debt. (Seriously, absolutely no debt at all!) However, all of our money is spoken for. Our budget at this stage includes nearly no frills so we can save up for our repatriation to the states in the coming year. Consequently, the gift options for my wife are simply pathetic. Jewelry is too expensive. Candy doesn’t move her. Flowers do, but they’re expensive and often are not in very good condition when they’re available. I refuse to add to the grotesque amount of plastic baubles that have followed our children into the house simply because it’s Valentine’s Day. (If he wants plastic knick-knacks inscribed with his name, he’s welcomed to them!)  

Apparently, I am not only lacking in disposable income, but also in romantic sentiment and creativity. Great! Even more defects. Yet, for all of my inadequacies (and this is such a small sample) I have a really good woman who loves me. She accepts me where I am but not as I am. At first that may sound like a bad thing, but think about it. She knows that I have a bad memory, but instead of leaving me to flounder, she reminds me of things, and not just those things that are important to her. She reminds me to call my mom, write my brother, give special attention to one or all of our children and other things which are important to other people. She knows that I’m selfish, but instead of punishing me in various ways for it, she draws me out of myself and makes me aware of how I affect other people by what I say and do. She knows that money is tight but instead of nagging me about climbing the corporate ladder or badgering me to make more money; she respects the budget and looks for ways to maximize what we have. All of this requires some sort of sacrifice on her part, not the least of which is the sacrifice of her ideal husband. Don’t sell that sacrifice short. We all cherish our dreams, whether they are of perfect careers, perfect children or perfect mates. Letting those things go in order to genuinely love someone who is so obviously and painfully imperfect is a great sacrifice worthy of admiration.  

I really hate Valentine’s Day, but I really, really love my wife.

AMTOG on Brian on Franklin

You know how you’re reading one of the blogs on your list and it leads you to some other blog or article and then it sets off a response that you want to blog about? Well, that’s happened to me.

From the Charlotte Observer by way of the Tall Skinny Kiwi comes this quote from and interview with Brian McLaren, famous Christian guy. (Brian seems a little worn out by being the poster-boy of the emergent church so I thought “famous Christian guy” would be a nice euphemism.)

Q. I’ve been surprised in this job about the antipathy I’ve heard from a lot of mostly conservative Christians toward Islam. Franklin Graham voiced their concerns when he said it was an evil religion, that Allah is not the God of the Bible. What do you say to people with that view?

I do think we really have to dialogue about this.

I believe that there is something like a form of racism going on right now among well-meaning, but misguided and misinformed evangelical Christians. It’s becoming acceptable to create stereotypes of Muslims that are inaccurate.

The problem is, Muslims are just like the rest of us. They’re like Christians in this regard. There are wonderful, kind-hearted Christians and there are mean-spirited Christians. There are sincere Christians who live with integrity. And there are hypocritical Christians who are just out for a buck. We’ll find that kind of diversity among every group of people.

One of the unfortunate things — and one of the messages I’d like to get through to my evangelical brothers and sisters — is that when we try to make peace, we’re not being unfaithful to Jesus Christ, we’re being faithful to Jesus Christ.

And when we try to practice Jesus’ teachings about loving our neighbor and even loving our enemy — when we practice those teachings toward our Muslim neighbors, we are not being unfaithful to Jesus Christ, we’re being faithful.

But when we create stereotypes of people and when we are ready to call a person an enemy and have nothing to do with them, at that point we are being unfaithful to Jesus Christ. This is one of my calls to evangelicals. And when I’m with Muslims, I try to provide a better example.

Brian is right. Christians, stop it! Whether you consider Muslims as enemies or not, Jesus is clear: love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Love your neighbor. These are non-negotiable. Stereotypes are damaging and we must rise above them.

That being said, let me remind the reader that I am living in a country that is over 95% Muslim and the religion informs the law. As an example, by law I am not allowed to eat or drink in public from sunrise until sunset during the month of Ramadan when Muslims are required to fast. I can be fined or even tossed in jail. It’s serious. So, as a Christian living in a Muslim world, I think I have something to say about Franklin Graham’s comments that Brian chose not to address specifically.

Allah is not the god of the Bible…at least not the New Testament. Islam is clear that Allah has “no partners” and that Jesus is not the son of Allah. The NT is clear that Jesus claimed YHWH as his father. Ignore the variation in proper nouns and let each statement stand. Allah has no son. Jesus says YHWH is his father. Let’s give Muslims and Christians the same respect and take them as “experts” of their own religions. They are not worshipping the same deity. Of course, anthropologists and world religion scholars might disagree but that’s because they are outsiders to both groups. When these two groups talk about their deities, there are some apparent similarities but they are just apparent. At the end of the day, the Muslim god has no son and the Christian god has Jesus. They’re not the same god.

As to Islam being and “evil religion”…perhaps. I’m not sure that there’s any way of knowing. Apply the same theory to the “prophet” Mohammed that C.S. Lewis applied to Jesus: he is either a liar (because he says things that are not true about God), a lunatic (because he made claims that mentally healthy people do not make) or he is Lord (because he is exactly who he claims to be). Granted, Mohammed can’t fall under the Lord category because that’s a contradiction of the religion he taught, but he can be “exactly who he claimed to be”, meaning a prophet of Allah bringing the word of Allah to the people. (I don’t know if Mohammed claimed to be “the seal of the prophets” but that is certainly the teaching of Islam.)

Was Mohammed a liar? When he claimed to have had visions of the angel Gabriel dictating the Qu’ran to him, was he simply making it up for some self-serving purpose? Was he afflicted in his mind and hallucinating? Was he receiving a genuine revelation? There’s no empirical way of affirming any answers to these question. If he was a liar, then we can say that the religion he taught was evil because it was intended to deceive and manipulate. If he was a lunatic, then I don’t think we can say it was evil in the same way that calculated deception and manipulation is evil. If he was exactly who he claimed to be we still couldn’t affirm that the religion is evil until we learned how the religion defined evil. One other possibility is that Mohammed did have a metaphysical experience with a spirit-being who was not divine but demonic. Again, impossible to prove empirically, but that would definitely make the religion he taught evil.

Whatever the case may be, nothing is changed. Christians must follow Jesus. Jesus loved his neighbor. He blessed and did not curse. He loved his enemies and prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers with his dying breath. Regardless of who Muslims pray to and the nature of their religion, Christians are to love them with the same kind of love that Jesus loved them, loved us all.

The Hardest Thing to Believe

As you might have noticed, I’ve really enjoyed listening to Mark Driscoll as of late; particularly the series of lessons called “Religion Saves + 9 Other Misconceptions“.  In the series Mark addresses a set of questions put to him by the members of the Mars Hill community (and beyond?). By the time I post this, I will have heard lesson #6, but before I do I thought that I would tap out my own response to the question. 

01/27: #6 “Of all the things you teach, what parts of Christianity do you still wrestle with? What’s hardest for you to believe?”

The parts of Christianity that I still wrestle with are the ones that are transparent. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is not eschatology (end times), soteriology (nature of salvation) or any other hard to grasp “-ology”. Sure, we could hold forth on the various types of love signified by different Greek words and then try to identify exactly who my “neighbor” is, but in the end we would find that the statement stands as is. Love others  as I love myself. I wrestle with that…and I often lose. There are lots of other teachings that are equally plain like; “husbands love your wives as your own body“, “fathers, do not exasperate your children“, “give to him who asks of you“, “bless and do not curse“, “do not store up treasure on earth“, “be doers of the word and not hearers only” and the list goes on.

As trite as this may sound, the hardest teaching of Christianity for me to believe is that God loves me. When I first began to think about what I would write in this post, this thought didn’t occur to me. Originally, I thought that that the hardest thing for me to believe was that God is more interested in my conforming to the likeness of Jesus than my “sound doctrine”. Then I asked myself why I spent so much energy on “getting it right”, that is pursuing right-thinking and I realized; at a gut-level, I still think that God will love me (more? better?) if my theology is right/good/sound. In short, after more than 20 years of belonging to Jesus, there’s a place deeper than my intellect where I don’t believe that God loves me…really…”Just As I Am“. While I know that God loves me (and all of His creation), this truth has not so fully penetrated my heart that it keeps me from emphasizing “sacrifice” over “mercy”. 

Check back with me in another 20 years and maybe by then I will have finally gotten it.

Talking Theology on Tuesday

I like to blog these stories shortly whenever they come up, if for no other reason than to have them recorded for posterity…to be brought out many years later and shared!

As I was taking Son 1 and Son 2 to school this morning, we were listening to the Karen and Kids podcast.  Hearing someone say something about Jesus and Him saving us, Son 1 asks me from the backseat, “How will Jesus save us?” Pouncing upon the opportunity to summarize the four theories of atonement discussed in this book reviewed by Trevin Wax, I started out by saying…

No. I didn’t. I did what I normally do when my kids ask me such questions. I smiled, took a deep breath and took my best shot at answering. This is something akin to what I said:

There are many ways that Jesus saves us, and one way is when he comes back to be King on the Earth. When he comes back, he will take all of those people who are happy to see him, who love him and want him to be King and he will take away all of their bad stuff. He’ll take away all of their sins, all of their bad thoughts and their sickness and make them good. He will take away every bad thing so that those who love him can be with him forever.

Son 1 said that he loves Jesus and that he wants him to be King. Son 2, who was listening and finding it hard not to interrupt with his own questions finally got his chance and asked, “When Jesus comes, where will he sleep?”

Obviously, he’s welcomed to crash at our place.

Yea, crash Lord Jesus!

Brother Mark

In one of his sermons (readily available from the church’s website) Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, remarked that people could be separated into two categories: Those Who Were Offended by Him and Those Who Had Not Yet Met Him.

As an interested observer of the emergent church scene, I’d heard Mark’s name in a variety of contexts but had never bothered to Google him or learn any more about him than I had heard, until recently. After having watched a couple of his sermons (Mars Hill video podcast rocks!), I believe  it is possible to separate people into three entirely different categories: Those Who Love Him, Those Who Hate Him and Those Who Have Not Been Exposed to Him.

I love the guy. Of course, I don’t know the man beyond the image on the computer screen. I’ve not read his books. I don’t keep up with his blog (although I might start). I don’t know anyone who knows him…or perhaps I should say that I don’t know that I know anyone who knows him; but I might. So, what’s the deal? Have I been charmed by his charisma? Have I been duped by slick video production and a purposefully cultivated image of “hip-itude”? For the sake of humility, I should say that those are possibilities…but here are some other possible reasons that I love Mark Driscoll.

I “get” him. Mark and I are the same age. We belong to the same generation. When he makes a fleeting reference to Ren and Stimpy in the sermon, I know what he’s talking about and I’m amused.

Mark is serious about God and Jesus but not about himself and Christians. I tend to think of myself as being like this. (It’s like Erwin McManus said, “We like people because they’re like us and we like ourselves.”) As insiders to the church, we know how ridiculous we can be and how it’s a good idea to “take the piss out” of some of us from time to time. He’s good at it too!

He’s brave. In the two or three sermons that I’ve watched, he has liberally used the word “repent” which is a churchy word that I’ve not heard preachers use from the pulpit in probably a decade or more. In this time when so many churches are striving to get away from “churchiness”, which includes churchy language, Mark pulls out the word “repent” and puts it to good use. Not only does he tell his audience, “If you are X, then you need to repent” but he also tells them, “I am guilty of Y and I repent.” The man is not afraid to call folks to repent and he’s not afraid to repent before them.

Finally, he’s good at his job. Thanks to podcasting, I listen to a lot of sermons over the course of year. I’ve heard preaching since I was about five years old. I’ve developed a taste for it, I guess you can say. Mark is a good preacher who obviously takes great care in preparing his lessons. He can go multimedia or he can do it “old school” (sans gadgetry) and it’s good either way.

Last night, my wife and I watched his sermon on Predestination and I seriously disagreed with his opinion of what the key questions are and his choice of analogies. He’s a Calvinist and I’m not, and that’s okay. Like he said, the debate over Predestination is a family discussion. We belong to same family, which is in itself reason enough to love the guy.

Test Question

About a week or so ago, before turning out the lights and putting the boys to bed, I read the story of Abraham and Isaac from their children’s Bible-story book. The story that I’m talking about is where God, after making good on His promise to give the elderly Abraham and his elderly and barren wife Sara a son, tells Abraham to sacrifice the boy…literally; to tie the boy up, place him on an altar and cut his throat the way that was typically done with an animal. Of course, being a children’s book, the gory details are omitted, to my second son’s disappointment I’m sure.

As I opened the book and began to read, I knew that my six-year old son would ask me the obvious question and I dreaded it: Why did God (the Good and Loving) ask Abraham to kill his son? This is a particularly bothersome question for him to ask because his mother and I are in the process of trying to get him to understand why it’s not appropriate for him to look to one of us and say “Kill him!” whenever his younger brothers do something that upsets him. (Where does that come from?) Of course, as kids tend to simplify things, my oldest son abbreviates my admonition against killing people just because they irritate you to “killing is bad”. And now, “Our Father who is in Heaven” is telling Abraham to kill his only child, the same one that He gave to Abraham in order to build a great nation of his descendants. Sure, the kid is confused…and, judging from the look in his eyes, saddened and perhaps even a bit frightened.

Generally, whenever my children ask me a question, particularly a tough one, I make a sincere effort to answer them. I don’t often put them off, but instead I try to make my honest response comprehensible for them. In this case, I really wanted to give my son an answer but, since it was bed time (when he tends to be at his least rational) I didn’t want to get into a long discussion.  I mean, I suppose I could have shared with him the conversation between BBC journalist John Humphrys and Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks in which Sacks explains to Humphrys that the whole affair was a poignant object lesson to teach Abraham that God is not like the pagan gods he had always known, desiring human sacrifice…

I told my son that God wanted Abraham to know just how much that Abraham trusted God. Yes, the proper nouns in the previous sentence are in their correct places. Read it again if you need to and then think about it: God, the All-Knowing, doesn’t need Abraham to prove his love and trust to Him as if He was in doubt. (Yet God does say “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” I wonder why?) No, God knew that Abraham would follow through with the sacrifice if He allowed it. So, what was the point of putting Abraham and poor little Isaac through that?

The writer of the book of Hebrews holds up Abraham as an example of what faith looks like and he focuses on this incident with Isaac. He says that Abraham trusted God so thoroughly that “he reasoned that God could raise the dead”, which is precisely what He was going to have to do in order to keep His promise to multiply Abraham’s descendants through his son Isaac. Some might seize this bit of text to say that the point of the whole ordeal was for our benefit, to teach us something about the nature of faith. But I don’t think that’s really it.

Honestly, I don’t know why God tested Abraham in this way. As a result, I took for my answer to my son’s question what I thought was a reasonable outcome on Abraham’s part and made that my answer. Without any Biblical support, I guess that Abraham made the long journey with Isaac to the mountain asking himself repeatedly “Can I go through with this? How can I go through with it?” Without further Biblical support, I imagine that Abraham walked down that mountain with his son with no further questions about his ability to follow through on the commands of his God.

I rushed that answer by my little boy and put him to bed as quickly as I could manage, but I’m sure that the day is coming when we’ll talk about it again. Maybe he’ll want to cross-examine me or maybe the next child in line will bring it up. However it comes about, I’m actually looking forward at getting another shot at giving a better answer to that question. I hope I have one by then.

Light in the Darkness

This is something that I wrote a long time ago. Not sure exactly when. The image that I refer to is long gone, but I remember it well. You can probably find it or one like it online somewhere. After all, I’m sure that’s how I got it originally. Anyway, I was cleaning up the PC at work and found it. I thought I would give it a new home here on the blog.

I have a great image on my desktop computer at work. It’s a composite image of some satellite photos of the entire earth. Night has come upon the entire planet. Oceans are black beneath inky blue continents. The nations are illuminated causing the surface of the globe to look like various constellations have been dislodged from the heavens and fallen to the ground. The wonder of the photo is the brightness of mankind’s wealth and achievement. The US glows brightly on its coasts then dims a bit in between, yet Europe remains ablaze. Japan is so thoroughly illuminated that it’s hard to imagine there’s anywhere on the island that one could sleep without a light shining in your eyes.  An incredibly large portion of our globe has been electrified merely in the last century. All the same, my eye is drawn to the various voids.

Greenland is dark, as is much of Northern Canada. South America has a black interior. Australia is barely discernible. In the center of the screen, the overwhelming majority of Africa remains in darkness.

I imagine how this image might be altered if it were comprised in a slightly different manner. What if the cities and the nations were not illuminated by electricity, but rather by the presence of the kingdom of God? What if the darkness indicated the territory under the ruler of this world? How might the picture change? Would North America become barely perceptible against the black backdrop of the oceans? Would Europe simply vanish as though it had fallen into the sea? Would Africa change at all? Where would God’s presence be most visible?

The Archbishop of Canterbury on the death penalty

After listening to the BBC interview of the Archbishop of Canterbury by John Humphrys, I visited his website to learn more about him. In a different interview, which took place prior to the execution of Saddam Hussein, that is linked there, I read this:

ES One pressing question in Iraq at the moment is of course is that of Saddam Hussein’s execution; do you believe that he should be executed?
ABC Once again, I’m not a believer in the death penalty as a general principle. He’s being tried under a jurisdiction which has the death penalty; he seems to be undoubtedly guilty of what he’s been charged with but I think I’d have to separate out the morality of the death penalty from ‘should Saddam Hussein be hanged?’, because I don’t believe in the death penalty. I think that Saddam Hussein is manifestly someone who has committed grave crimes against his own people and grave breaches of international law. I think he deserves punishment, and sharp and unequivocal punishment; I don’t think that he should be at liberty, but I would say of him what I have to say about anyone who’s committed even the most appalling crimes in this country; that I believe the death penalty effectively says ‘there is no room for change or repentance’.

I have to say that I don’t fully understand the Archbishop’s comment in light of something he said in his more recent interview with John Humphreys. It appears that his position could be stated this way:  The death penalty is immoral because the condemned is not permitted an opportunity to repent and change. This implies that the Archbishop believes that repentance and change is only possible in this life. At least, it implies that this was what he believed at the time of the interview quoted above.

Yet, when speaking with John Humphrys about God’s relationship with people after death, the Archbishop said, “God has an eternity with which to go on working…” In this particularly case, the Archbishop was referring to a little girl who died of cancer and her distraught parents. Now read this exchange about Humphreys’ own post-mortem state:

John Humphrys: What happens to me ultimately if I don’t open that door?
Rowan Williams: If you don’t open the door you’re not fully in the company of God. And it’s your choice.
John Humphrys: And after death?
Rowan Williams: What I’d love to think of course is that after death a possibly rather unusual experience might happen in which you’d say Good god, I got it all wrong.
John Humphrys: Too late then.
Rowan Williams: No.
John Humphrys: After death?
Rowan Williams: I think we continually have the choice of saying yes or no.
John Humphrys: So that death is not the end of us?
Rowan Williams: Death is not the end of us. I think that’s rather axiomatic for a religious believer.
John Humphrys: Quite so.. but I said ‘us’ meaning ‘us non- believers’.
Rowan Williams: Non-believers?
John Humphrys: Yes.
Rowan Williams: God alone can judge how much of your resistance to God is culpable, to do with selfishness, laziness of spirit, bloody-mindedness, and how much is just due to whatever it is that gets in the way. God alone can judge that. The willingness, the openness of the heart, even the wish to believe, God can work on that.

The implication here is that there is still a hope for Humphry’s change even after his death. Granted, the Archbishop treads lightly but I believe the implication is still there. And it would make sense to me if it were. After all, CS Lewis, also an Anglican, implies as much in his book The Great Divorce.

The problem for me is this: how can the Archbishop assert that the death penalty is immoral because it prevents the future repentance and change of the condemned while believing that there is hope beyond death that God continues to work on people? If death is not the end, if there is hope for “healing” and the changing of “no” to “yes” after one dies, then doesn’t that mean that the execution of someone does not prevent his repentance and change? If so, then the moral objection is eliminated. According to the Archbishop, even though a society says that it’s not willing to consider repentance and change for the condemned, that  does not mean that society has the final word in the matter.

On the one hand, I agree with the Archbishop; the death penalty does effectively say that there is no room for repentance and change… in our society for this crime. However, on the other hand I think that the death penalty makes another statement. It says that our society places a high value on human life. It says that those who are prepared to use their moral freedom to deprive someone of life must be prepared to compensate with their own lives. This is a principle found in the Bible and I do not believe it is immoral.

Additionally,  I’m not convinced that there is hope beyond the grave for those who leave this life outside of a relationship with God through Jesus. That’s not what is indicated in the Scripture as far as I can tell, but I confess that I’m nowhere near as intelligent or well-studied as the Archbishop of Canterbury. I could be wrong about this…and that would be just fine with me if I am.

Mithras, Osiris and Jesus! Oh My!

In his book “They Like Jesus But Not the Church”, Dan Kimball attempts to challenge leaders of churches to engage with the “emerging generation” (folks in their late teens to early 30’s with a heavy emphasis it seems on the twenty-something crowd). Kimball repeatedly tells the reader that this demographic is open to dialogue about Jesus but is not interested in the church. He draws primarily on his personal conversations with members of the emerging generation to explain why they like Jesus and why they dislike, distrust or are simply disinterested in the church. One conversation that Kimball refers to is with a young man named Dustan. This young man is apparently educated and open to talking with Kimball, a pastor, about Jesus. In their conversation, it becomes apparent that Dustan has identified aspects of the Jesus story which look and sound exactly like elements from the myths of the pagan gods Osiris and Mithras, which he points out, predate the Christian story by thousands of years. With this in mind, Dustan wants to know why Kimball accepts the Jesus story as something other than a myth like the ones Christianity has so obviously co-opted. Kimball includes this conversation to make the point that the emerging generation wants intelligent answers to these kinds of questions, not the traditional “The Bible says it, I believe it. Case closed.” sort of response that comes too easily from many Christians. He also says that he’s going to have to do some studying on his own to be able to articulate a response since he, like most of us I’m sure, isn’t all that familiar with the similarities between Christian doctrines and the myths of ancient Egyptian and Persian deities.  

I decided that I would take a look into the so-called similarities myself and see what kind of semi-intelligent response I would make if I were put in that position. So, I started with trying to learn something about the Egyptian god Osiris who, according to the story, was killed and raised from the dead. In the search results that I got from Google for the terms “god Osiris”, I came across a link to a paper written by Martin Luther King which is housed on a server at Stanford University. The title of the paper is “The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity” and it set me back a bit. I wasn’t unsettled by the assertions that Christianity had borrowed heavily from pagan religions (which contributed to its triumph over them) but rather I was surprised that Martin Luther King Jr. had made those assertions. Perhaps, because I’m not a trained theologian or a scholar of human religions, I don’t know how to read a text like this one, but there were times in my reading when I thought, “Did MLK see Christianity as just another human religion? As a Baptist preacher, did he not really believe in the Truth of the story of Jesus? Was he simply invoking the religion and its metaphors in the service of his pursuit of justice in Americafor black people?” I finished reading the paper without formulating a theoretical answer for those questions. It’s not particularly important to me if MLK was a “true believer” or not, although it is a terribly interesting distraction. And a distraction is precisely what it is. The question that I want to answer is, “How would I address Dustan if I were having Dan Kimball’s conversation with him?”

After about a day of thinking about this off and on, I realize now that the heart of Dustan’s question is simply “Why do you believe the story of Jesus is true?” Taken at this level, the answer is fairly easy to summarize but, for me, very difficult to expound upon. The short answer is that I believe the Jesus story is true because I trust in the credibility of the witnesses. Then I would probably need to explain who (and what) those witnesses are and why I believe that they are trustworthy. Somewhere in there I would need to say something about the historical aspect of the story: that elements of the story of Jesus are rooted in time and space in such a way that can be, has been and continues to be investigated and often verified. These bits would be the parts that would give me great trouble since, although I’ve read plenty, I don’t get to have such discussions so frequently that I can effortlessly recall what I’ve read. Harder still would be offering some kind of intelligent explanation for accepting that Jesus is “The Son of God” when the same title was applied to Mithras thousands of years before.

 Of course, it’s possible that no answer that either I or Kimball could give to Dustan would move him from the category of Jesus-fan to Jesus-follower. And that’s fine. Just being willing and able to engage in the conversation in an intelligent, respectful and humble manner could go a long way in overcoming some of the (well-deserved) negative stereotypes that Dustan has of Christians, thus setting the stage for more conversations and deeper relationship which could ultimately bring him to choose the Jesus story over the Osiris story on his own. I think Dan Kimball would agree.

Loaded Question from My Oldest Child

Here’s an extra post just because I think my child is cute.

Sometimes, kids ask grown-ups a question which they want to be asked in turn. This is what my six-year old son did to me not long ago. The conversation went something like this:

“Dad, next year, what do you want for Christmas?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“C’mon, what do you want for Christmas?”

“I guess I want everyone to be together and happy…?”

“Nooo! That’s for Jesus (to take care of) ! What do you want for Santa (to give you)?”

“Nothing I guess.” (long pause…I refused to be “baited”.)

“I know what I want.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“I want a new bike.”

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t expect Jesus to get it for him. How many of you think that’s a good thing? How many of you think that’s bad?

God, Show Yourself

I started this post three weeks ago and have been so busy with life outside the blog that I haven’t been able to finish it. Now that I’ve got some time, I’m not sure that I should even try.

It all began with this post about Phillip Pullman’s views on God as he’s expressed them in various interviews. When asked whether or not he was interested in theology, he said that he was. Pullman commented that he was very interested in the “big questions” of theology such as “Is there a god?” I made the point then that I think theology’s first question is not “Is there a god?” but rather “Who is god?” Originally, I had planned a post that would expound on that question. I did some very limited reading and then the end of the semester and the holidays came upon me. Today, I looked back at some of what I’d written and realized that I’m not up to the challenge.

Of course, I think I know something  about who God is, but I don’t think I know everything about who God is. I don’t even think that’s humanly possible. Yet, I do believe that it’s possible to know specific things about God. Those specific things are known and knowable as a result of God’s self-revealing actions.

Several years ago, I was having dinner with a self-described “overly-educated” atheist and we were discussing God. He challenged that if God exists, why doesn’t He just show Himself to everyone. This question/challenge comes out in different ways in different circumstances but I think it is rooted in the “Who is god?” question. It’s like saying, “Come on, show yourself so we can know exactly who you are. So we can have someone to acknowledge as existing and real.” My answer to this guy was utterly forgettable (as evidenced by my having forgotten it) yet it occurred to me recently that God has, according to the Scriptures, on occasion done exactly that. God has shown up.

He showed up in Egypt to deliver the descendants of Abraham from slavery. When Pharaoh heard God’s command he responded, “Who is the Lord that I should obey him?” God proceeded to answer that question by systematically undermining the so-called gods of Egypt by demonstrating that it was He who actually controlled the Sun, nature and even the revered Nile. God showed up repeatedly ever after in other ways, but another dramatic appearance was on Mt.Caramel during the reign of a king called Ahab.

At that time, there was a sort of question as to who the people ought to worship. The choice was between God, who delivered their ancestors from Pharaoh, and someone called Baal, a god reportedly imported from along with Jezebel, one of Ahab’s wives. A contest was proposed: Elijah, God’s prophet to Israel, and the priests of Baal would both set up altars to offer an animal sacrifice to their respective gods. The deity who showed up with fire to light the sacrifice would obviously be god. In the end, God showed up and Baal didn’t.

Of course, as a Christian, I believe that God showed up again in the man Jesus. I also believe that my friend will ultimately get what he asked for; that God will show Himself so that everyone will know empirically that He exists. The interesting thing is that God’s periodic appearances in the meantime, as we can see in the Bible, aren’t really enough to bring people to believe in Him. God’s revelation of who He is may move people from the category of atheist to theist, but it won’t necessarily move people to trust in Him, to give Him the honor and respect that are His due. Pharaoh was a witness to the plagues and yet he still gathered his troops and chased the Israelites into the desert. Ahab saw the fire of God consume the water-soaked altar, animal, stones and all and yet continued to defy God until his death. Jesus himself said that His own resurrection from the dead would not change the hearts of some people.

Along side of my former colleague, there is John Humphreys, the BBC journalist that I posted about last week. In his interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Humphreys says that he wants to believe in God, that he has “gone down on his knees night after night” trying to talk to God but he has “failed”. Still, he does not believe. God has not shown Himself to John Humphreys in spite of his prayers. Why? Why hasn’t God put in an appearance for someone like Humphreys who so desperately wants to believe in Him? I have no idea and would not venture to guess. However, based on the examples given above, I can’t help but pose the question for my former colleague, John Humphreys and others, “If God did show up for you personally, would you change? Would you worship Him or would you interrogate Him? Would you follow Him or would you continue to go your own way?”

In Search of God

Last week I intended to address what I believe to be the primary question of theology, “Who is god?” but I wasn’t able to. I was going to pick up with that theme this week, however, since it’s a rather hectic combination of the end of term at my school, the Christmas holidays and the attending end of the year chaos, I won’t be able to complete my post in time for my self-imposed Thursday deadline.

However, I don’t want to send you away empty-handed so I’ll share this with you. While I was running an errand, I was listening to the local broadcast of the BBC World Service in the van and tuned in ( a bit late) to a great interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The interviewer is John Humphreys and the program is called “In Search of God“. The gist of the program is simply this: crusty old journalist interviews heavy hitters of the big three monotheistic religions in an attempt to regain his lost faith in God. I thought it would be a good idea to listen to the interview and see what impact it might have on the thoughts that I’ve been trying to put together and write about here.

Technical note: it’s streaming media via RealPlayer, which I’m sure you have. I wish it were a podcast, but it isn’t.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to post for real next Thursday and perhaps after listening to this, I’ll have an even better post than I’d originally planned.

My Apologies

If you happen to be keeping up with my commitment to post once a week, then I owe you an apology.

It’s a long weekend here in the host country and I’m not in the office, which is where I usually post from. I accidentally left this week’s post on the office computer and since I won’t be in before next week…well, I don’t have a post this week.

I’ll make it up next time though…

Phillip Pullman’s (A)Theology

I will not see the film, The Golden Compass, nor will I read Phillip Pullman’s books upon which the movie is based…until the movie is available on DVD and I can borrow His Dark Materials from a library…perhaps sometime this summer when I’m back in the states on vacation.

I’m pretty sure that the film will be released here in the host country (possibly severely edited, possibly not) but my wife and I find it too hard to go the cinema now that we have four children aged 6 and under. As for the books…well, there are no good libraries here for us and I don’t think I care to the own books until I’ve read them. Nevertheless, I’ve taken some interest in the controversy that both the film and the books have stirred up. Consequently, I’ve spent this week visiting Pullman’s website and reading the interviews that he has linked there. Predictably, he has made some interesting comments in those interviews.

In one interview, Pullman is asked “Are you interested in theology?” and he responds in this way: “…yes, it’s an interesting question. The most important questions of all are the big religious ones: Is there a God? What is our purpose? And so on…” Today, that part of my brain which was processing this comment suddenly announced to the other parts of my brain, which were focused on getting a good cup of tea, that this is not actually the question that most people on the planet are asking. In fact, most people living today (as well as those who were living yesterday and the days before) do not ask the question “Is there a god?” but rather “Who is god?” (At least, that’s how I understand this.)

Yet, Pullman’s question remains: Is there a god? Of course, he’s thought about this a great deal and he has an answer ready should anyone ask. In the interviews linked to his website, the answer varies just a bit according to how the interviewer phrases the question. To one person who asked “Do you believe in God?” Pullman replied that he doesn’t see any “evidence for his existence”. However, confessing the limits of his own knowledge, Pullman conceded that god might very well exist. To another person who asked “Why do you hate God?” Pullman responded that he does not hate god but rather simply doesn’t believe he exists. In another interview, in answer to a separate question , Pullman offered that his “own belief is that God is dead”, which I guess is another way to say that God doesn’t exist.

Another comment from the interviews available at Pullman’s website which my brain has been processing this week goes like this:

“The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive.”

I’ve been wondering why it is that someone, who is as devoted to good story-telling as Pullman apparently is, finds a scientific answer to “the most important questions of all” more convincing than the highly dramatic Christian narrative? The answer seems to be that Darwinian evolution is more credible intellectually, yet Pullman, like all of us is much more than an intellect. One article I read described him in this way; “emotionally involved. He sits in the shed and makes it up and he weeps, yes, weeps copiously at the tragedies that unfold. He frightens himself and upsets himself and makes himself laugh.” Obviously, Pullman is a man with a heart as well as a brain.

So, I thought “Why would I prefer the scientific narrative over the Christian narrative?” I have an answer, but I confess that sharing it at this point would be unseemly. I’m afraid that in sharing it now, I would leave the impression that I was projecting my ideas onto Pullman, and I don’t want to do that. Generally, I disagree with the practice of attempting to psychoanalyze an author based on his works or even interviews about his work. While I certainly understand the temptation, I just don’t think I should do it.

Instead, let’s just leave off with the observation that, based on his comments in interviews, it’s easy to see how Pullman is a magnet for controversy.

NB: Last night while waiting for my son to finish at a friends birthday party, I sat in a restaurant reading an essay by CS Lewis. In it, I found him to be an unexpected admirer of what he called “the scientific outlook”, a story which is essentially the Darwinian story which Pullman says he finds so compelling. Leading into a dramatic summary of the scientific outlook, Lewis says,”Supposing this is a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imgination has yet produced?” I would reproduce the description except that it’s rather long. If you’re interested, you can read it in a collection of essays called, “The Weight of Glory” in the essay entitled “Is Theology Poetry“.

I’m beginning to think that Pullman is actually Lewis’ alter ego from an alternate universe.

How Theology Matters

For the past week, I’ve been thinking about the question: “What good is theology?” I started thinking about it after skimming this post by Michael Spencer. Later, when I had the time, I went back and read what he said more closely and began to think about a similar (yet rhetorical) question that he posed: “How does theology matter….” particularly to Christians?

I think one way to understand how theology matters is to look at some specific theological positions (opinions, beliefs, etc) and examine their impact. Attempting to answer the question in this manner runs the risk of being perceived as overly pragmatic. By that I mean that some might get the impression that so long as the impact is positive (an admittedly subjective term) the theological position in question is acceptable, without regard for whether or not it is Biblical and / or true. This is not what I think, but I’ll follow this tact and take the chance of being misunderstood.

Before looking at the impact of specific theological positions, I want to take a moment to explain what I mean when I use the word “theology”. Theology is one of those words that get a lot of use within certain communities where people assume that they’re talking about the same thing but they really aren’t. For example, “theology” to some is an academic term used to speak about a particular kind of study, perhaps even a course or program of study. For others, “theology” is whatever opinions / beliefs that a person has about God and / or religion. Recently, I read one blogger who seems to use the word “theology” to speak about a particular way of living one’s life. For the sake of clarity, I think it’s important for me to state up front that I’ll be using “theology” in the academic sense…unless I decide to use it in the sense of an opinion because doing so serves my purpose. 🙂

Let’s start out by looking at the Pharisees. The theology of the Pharisee articulated an understanding of God as one who loved Jews and hated Gentiles. They characterized God as favoring the ritually clean over the ritually unclean. they also saw God as one who materially and physically rewarded righteousness while inflicting poverty and illness upon the wicked. To put in the KJV vernacular, they considered God a “respecter of persons”. Jesus apparently thought that the Pharisees’ theology mattered enough to address it in both His actions and His speech. To counter their erroneous theology, Jesus touched the unclean, ate with sinners and took on the religious establishment’s misuse of the temple. He also characterized the impact of the Pharisees’ theology as tying “heavy burdens and laying them on they people” while they were not interested in bearing the same burdens themselves. Jesus also said that the Pharisees on one occasion “condemned the innocent” and characterized converts to their religious views as “twice the son of hell that you are.” The theology of the Pharisees mattered because it left people who followed them burdened, condemned and cursed.

Christians do the same thing to each other today with our ill-conceived theology. A contemporary example of a poor conception of God and its impact on Christians can be found in the book, “The Power of a Praying Parent” by Stormie Omartian. One anecdote in the book tells of her teenage son’s survival of a horrible car accident which she credits to her diligent prayers for his safety which began at his birth. Ok. The problem comes when she says;

“Of course, Satan can do a lot of damage if we don’t teach our children God’s ways and God’s Word and help them to respect God’s laws, and if we don’t discipline them, guide them, and help them learn to make godly choices. The Bible tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”. When we don’t do these things, our children can fall into rebellion and make choices that take them out from under the umbrella of God’s protection. Prayer and proper instruction in the ways and words of God will make sure that does not happen…”

While it is entirely possible for a parent to do all of the things stated and still have children who “fall into rebellion”, you don’t get that impression from her. Instead, she leaves the clear impression that God protects those children whose parents do these right things and pray for them. Conversely, it sounds like God won’t protect those children whose parent don’t do these things. Doesn’t it sound a bit like the Pharisees’ belief that God afflicts the religiously deficient and the wicked, while He favors the pious?  So, what happens if the child of the devout parent turns “bad”? Is the fault with the parental training? With the parental prayers?  To be completely fair, Omartian makes a statement in her book that she doesn’t mean to say that failure to pray “against” specific evils in her childrens’ lives will result in God not protecting them. Yet, this is precisely what she seems to indicate repeatedly. God comes across as a meticulous micro-manager whose hands are tied until we say a prayer. Until we do our children are vulnerable. Consequently, when we fail to pray, we are culpable when bad things happen to our children and ourselves. Again, the impact of the theology behind these teachings is Christians who are “harassed and helpless”.

Despite how it might seem, theology does have a positive impact on Christians. Predictably, the best illustration of this is Jesus who fully manifested the character of God when He lived among us. In the miracles of Jesus we see that God is powerful. In His choice of companions, we see that God is welcoming. In the teaching of Jesus we see that God is wise. Through the parables we learn that God is both loving and just. Jesus unburdened those who trusted Him. Their guilt was erased and their shame was taken away. As it was when He lived in a body, so it is today when He lives through His Body, the church…at least, when the Church is at her best. It’s easy to see why Michael Spence advocates a Christocentric theology.

Theology is necessarily limited. Some aspects of God are knowable through nature. Other aspects are only knowable by revelation. Eternity will be spent experiencing other aspects of God’s character which are not knowable by mortals as we are now. Yet, despite our limited ability to comprehend God, theology is important because what we believe about His character affects how we relate to His creation, particularly His “new creations”, our fellow Christians.

How Can God be Trusted?

I can’t believe that I’m doing this. I mean, how foolish is it for an “armchair theologian” to attempt to say something meaningful and intelligent about the Book of Job on his first day back at the blog in nearly a week? It’s not like Job isn’t one of the most difficult books in the Bible for the “professionals” to get a grip on; at least that’s what I’ve read repeatedly over this past week. Anyway, it’s what’s been on my mind so here goes.

Dave Carlson of Fresh Read has recently been looking at the book of Job. While visiting over there, I invited Dave to take a look at something that I wrote about the vindication of God as a theme in Job. After reading it, he left the following comment:

“I am not sure  the Lord feels the need to vindicate himself-perhaps that is why some critics of the ‘God Speeches’ don’t feel satisfied.”

His comment set off a series of thoughts that went something like this: Since God feels no need for vindication (assuming that’s true, which is a thread to follow another day), why is His vindication in the text? Why is the vindication of God important? And to whom is it important? For nearly a week, I’ve been reading, thinking and writing my way through these questions. Since I have a self-imposed deadline to write on Thursday of each week, here’s what I’ve come up with this far.

The vindication of God is important to Job because it is his vindication as well. This is essentially what I said in the post which Dave read and commented upon. (Wonders for Oyarsa appears to agree with me, for what it’s worth 😉 .) God says Job is “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil”. Satan says Job is not. He accuses God of buying Job off with blessings and safety. He says that Job will turn from God if these things are taken away. The trial begins but in the end Job remains righteous and God is proved right. Job, like God, also claims that he is innocent of sin. His friends see his suffering, believing that only the guilty suffer as punishment from God, and accuse him of lying. Job maintains his integrity and refuses to sin against God. When God shows up, He approves of Job as one who has “spoken of me what is right” and makes Job a mediator (or even a priest) between Him and the three “friends”. Job’s righteousness both vindicates God and is vindicated by God.

In his essay “The Cohesive Issue of mishpat in Job” , Carl Schultz says that divine justice is the central theme of the book and I followed his argument easily enough. However, as I thought about it more, it occurred to me that the questions accompanying divine justice are the questions of earth, not heaven. Why do the innocent suffer? How can a just God so cruelly afflict His creature, whom He says is “blameless”? Where is justice when the wicked live well and the righteous suffer and are killed? These are Job’s questions from his earth-bound perspective. They are the questions of earth, and certainly they are important questions. However, the text does not answer them, not really. When God speaks with Job at the end of the story, He doesn’t explain why Job suffered and He does not offer any defense of or insight into His justice. Instead, the only questions that are answered in the story are the questions of heaven. The questions of heaven are: Who is right about Job’s character, God or Satan? Who knows the heart of Job specifically (and men generally) better? Which of these two are more credible? Who can be trusted? The affliction of Job is permitted in order to answer these questions and it is their answers which demonstrate why the vindication of God is important to the reader.

God’s vindication is important to the reader because it shows that He is worthy of trust. If Job sins in his affliction, God is proved wrong and Satan is proved right. God may be powerful, but He is shown to be self-deceived about His own creation. God’s credibility is compromised. How can the “sons of God” trust His wisdom and judgment ever after? So, God initiates a public trial of his credibility for the benefit of His creation, both those inside the story and those outside reading the story.

Job trusted in God. In the beginning, he believed as his friends did; that God is just and that He inflicts suffering on the wicked for their sins. By permitting Satan to bring horrible suffering  upon Job, who knew his own innocence, God created the circumstances in which Job’s trust in Him would be tested. Job’s choice was to either trust in his own limited and uninformed understanding of his circumstances or in the omniscient sovereignty and justice of the Lord. The reader of Job is faced with this same choice.

In a sense, I think that the choice for the reader is complicated by his knowledge of the back story. Job doesn’t know what’s going on in the heavens. He doesn’t know that His suffering is actually a result of God’s praise of him before the heavenly court and Satan, rather than God’s condemnation of Him for some secret sin. But the reader knows and, like Job, his trust in the Lord is assaulted. While Satan may bring the accusation and commit the crimes, it is clear that God is responsible. He staged the drama and He never once rebuked Job for giving Him the credit for the action of the story. As a result, Satan is given an opportunity to raise in the mind of the reader the same questions raised in heaven in the first chapter: Can you trust a God who is more concerned with His own credibility than He is with the life of Job; a man that God Himself says is righteous and fears Him? How can you believe in such a “monster…who is more interested in the wager than Job?” How can God be trusted?

The answer is found in Job.

Changes

Yep, even more of them.

Some of you might have noticed the new template, the revised name and even the revised About page. The explanation is simple: I’m having an identity crisis. At least as a blogger.

What kind of blogger am I? What kind of blogger do I want to become? You know, the standard questions that folks eventually ask before deleting a blog and going outside for a walk only to come home and start another blog all over again. (You know you’ve done it.) Well, this time I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to delete this blog. (Especially since I’ve managed to come up with a name that uses the letters A M T O G in my URL.) However, I would like to start again, if only mentally.

I know that I’m not a theologian or even a seminary student, but I do enjoy thinking, reading and writing about theology. I realize that I’m just educated enough to think that I’ve got something to say, when in fact I should probably just keep my blog shut and listen, however I tend to do my best learning through writing and discussion. So, I’ve decided to continue to post, but to do so less frequently. By allowing more time to pass between posts, I’ll be able to write longer pieces that I hope are better researched and thought-out. I’ll also be more conscientious about grammar and mechanics.

So, this is advanced notice for those few who check in from time to time: the next time I post will certainly not be two days from now. And when I do post again, I hope to have something more worth reading.

Post of Substance?

A friend of mine and I were corresponding a while back about blogging. He passed along some things for me to read about what constitutes good blogging, which I’ve tried to incorporate ever since. Some of the advice that I’ve tried to follow since reading it is to post concisely and frequently. A quick look through the archives will show that I don’t tend to have long posts and they come about every other day. Consequently, the quality of the posts is not always consistently good. Perhaps that would make AMTOG a good candidate for “Blog Euthanasia”, a term that comes from a lecture given at a recent Godblogger Convention in the states.

 

I learned about both the convention and the lecture over at Scriptorium Daily. Several of the writers associated with that site presented at the conference, but the one who spoke about “Trafficking in Substance: The Case for Blog Euthanasia” was Dr. Paul Spears. I’ve listened to the lecture twice now and I have conflicting feelings.

 

Spears has a high-view of blogging. He says toward the end of the lecture that  “Our job (as Christian bloggers) is to articulate the majesty of God in a way that’s properly evoking to our readers.” (italics mine) Everything up to that quote explained by analogy how to go about articulating the majesty of God and I agreed with and saw the good sense of all of it. The conflict arises when I think about where this person posts.

 

To me, Scriptorium Daily is not a blog. While it may use a blogging software to publish, I don’t consider it to be a blog because the comments are disabled. As I understand it, the key feature that transforms a static webpage into a dynamic blog is the comment utility. If readers cannot comment upon what they read and engage in a public discussion with the writer (and other readers), then the website in question is something other than a blog. So here is someone who lectures for nearly an hour about how to craft (a word that was used often) a blog of substance yet writes for a blog that, to me, isn’t a blog. I feel an important disconnect here.

 

I recommend that Godbloggers listen to the lecture. Despite my conflicting feelings, I am considering acting on some of Dr. Spears’ points. Particularly, I’m thinking about posting less frequently in order to have time to think more deeply and write more reflectively and to edit more conscientiously.

The Called and the Chosen

About a week or so ago, I was thinking about the concept of being “called” by God; what it means when Christians say it and whether or not this is what it means in the Bible. In my thoughts, the verse from one of Jesus’ parables rose to the surface; “many are called but few are chosen”. The verse comes from a parable about a wedding banquet which I found  in the book of Matthew. I read it again carefully. Here’s what I found.

Matthew chose to place this parable in with a couple of others which, it seems, Jesus was telling to his audience in an effort to say something about God’s authority (which had been given to him). He had just told his listeners that he would not tell them the source of his authority because they would not acknowledge that John the Baptizer came from God. However, he does tell them about their current relationship to God and His authority. The first parable gives them an example of a son who submits to his father’s authority and one who doesn’t. Through it, Jesus implies that his listeners are like the second son. In the second parable, Jesus tells what will happen to those who do not submit to this authority: they will be destroyed. Finally we come to the parable in question; the parable of the wedding banquet. I think that this parable was intended to show the audience that as a result of their rejection of Jesus’ authority (God’s authority) and their punishment for this rejection, the way would be opened for Gentiles to become part of “the people of God”.

The king in the parable is God. The son is Jesus. The banquet is the rule and fellowship of God through Jesus as foretold by the prophets. The invited guests are the children of Israel, the Jews, Jesus’ audience. The servants are the prophets that God sent to the people. The people on “the street corners”, “the good and the bad” are the Gentiles, the rest of the world. The under-dressed man whom the king had bounced from the party represents one of the “bad”, those who attempt to enter the kingdom on their own terms instead of on those of the king.

The call that Jesus refers to when he says “many are called” is the call to fellowship with God. That fellowship is predicated on Jesus. The whole reason for the party in the first place is to celebrate the joining of the Son of the King to his betrothed, the one(s) promised to him. Obviously the call to fellowship goes out to the whole world; Jews (the invited) first and then non-Jews (the uninvited). Good and bad folks (whatever those terms mean) from both groups are called to come. The call is not to a mission, a job or a Divine course of action. It’s a call to dwell with God just like mankind did in the beginning.

So, who are the chosen few who get to be where God is and party with him and his Son? It seems from the story that the chosen few are the ones who came dressed for the occasion. They had showered and shaved, and were wearing their party clothes. Surprisingly, Jesus uses one man to represent the majority of folks who attempt to crash the party and come to God on their own terms, unclean, unshaven and undressed. The king in the story doesn’t allow gate-crashers to ruin the party for the other guests and neither does God.

Same Blog, New Name

As I said recently, I’ve never been completely satisfied with the name of this blog, so I’ve decided to try on this new moniker.

Since I’m not trained or educated in the discipline of Theology, I think the new name is a more accurate reflection of who I am (today) as a blogger…and it allows me to continue using amtog in my URL for a little longer, which will avoid confusion among my myriad readers. 😉

Speaking of old bloggers with new names, my wife discovered that Lionel of Black and Reformed is now blogging with two other folks over here. I’m glad he’s not entirely gone.

I Need a Muslim

Truth Booth is a blog by Stefan Rosty, a Muslim who seems to advocate something akin to a “Sola Scriptura” approach to Islam. His position and/or plea is available here. I’m hoping that either Stefan or another writer on his blog will pay a visit to AMTOG and answer this question for me:

• What does the Qu’ran say is the reason that the Jews wanted to kill Jesus?

The question is worded this way purposefully. I’m familiar enough with Islam to know that the story from its perspective is that Jesus was not crucified, but rather someone, whom Allah caused to look like Jesus, was crucified in His stead.

This is not an invitation for a debate or a “Christian-Muslim Dialogue” (Christian came first because it’s my blog and I asked the question. 🙂 ) It’s a sincere request for information. I figured I’d get an answer quicker than if I tried to hunt it down in an English language Qu’ran myself.

Thanks

Vanished

The blog Black and Reformed has been taken off the blogroll.

Sadly when I’ve tried to visit there lately, I’ve been getting a dead end. I don’t know if he’s quit or if Blogger is malfunctioning.

It’s too bad. I’d hoped to be able to check in from time to time for a perspective that I simply don’t have and would never hear from if I didn’t read his blog. If Black and Reformed passes this way, leave a comment and let me know what happened.

It’s About Time

When I decided to start this blog, I thought that “All My Thoughts on God” was a clever title. I thought that it had a sort of pop-culture vibe as a result of being lifted from a popular song by a group that, honestly, I never cared all that much about. (I just liked the one song, and really I only liked the music and that one bit of verse since I didn’t understand any of the other words…but I’m getting off topic.)

A quick run through the archives will show that I actually don’t write about God. Not really. In fact, the section at the top of the right column called “AMTOG is…” sums up this blog far more accurately than the title. However things are about to change. I think it’s time that I have a post that is about God. So here it is.

Sort of.

I’m not actually going to write my thoughts on God. Instead, I’m going to link to some other posts about God for you to enjoy while I try to put the baby to sleep. Once she’s snoozing away in her swing, I’m going to kick back and watch a movie while the wife is at a farewell party for a friend. Later, when I’m able to fully digest these two posts, I may take a stab at writing some commentary of my own about them or I may go fix myself a cup of tea (with milk, sugar and pinch of masla!) and see what interesting podcasts I can download on iTunes.

So, here are two posts filled with (someone else’s) thoughts about God.

One

Two

I should probably think about changing the name of the blog…

Come As You Are

I recently read through Yahoo news that San Francisco is considering providing places for intravenous drug users to shoot-up. Of course, the supporters of such a program say that this is the humane thing to do. The assert that those people need a safe place and the competent hands of a trained nurse to administer the various drugs to which they are addicted.

Jesus is like those kind-hearted folks in San Francisco. He accepts folks as they are, where they are. However, Jesus doesn’t perpetuate the inhuman condition in which people come to Him. He doesn’t keep them addicted, dependent and weak. He restores their lives, makes them dependable and strong.

“Safe” places for drug abuse may be a human response, but it most certainly is not humane.

It’s a Metaphor

I enjoy reading the blogs and apologetic websites of folks in the Reformed Theology camp, which is good because there seems to be a lot of them out there. Yet, there are times when I get a bit frustrated with Calvinists. Most recently, I felt this frustration with an Australian Presbyterian pastor whose sermon I was listening to.

The sermon was on the doctrine of Total Depravity, which essentially says that there is absolutely nothing in all of Creation that has not been broken (corrupted) by the Fall of Adam and Eve. When it comes to humans, the Calvinist position tends to be that we are so corrupt that we are incapable of having a faith that results in salvation (aka “saving faith”). The metaphor that is used to illustrate this comes from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. (Eph. 2:1-2)

The pastor argued that just as a material corpse is non-responsive to external stimuli, so is a spiritual corpse. Before the dead spirit can accept the grace of God, it must be brought to life by the Spirit of God.

I think this is simply forcing the metaphor to say more than what Paul meant for it to say.  It’s a metaphor! The letter to the Ephesians is full of them. Gentiles are said to be “far away” from God, while Jews are said to be “near” and yet it’s clear that Paul isn’t talking about distance. He’s making a statement about relationship. Paul says in Chapter 2 that Jesus made “one new man out of the two”, but no one would suggest that Paul was saying that Jesus physically fused two male human beings. He was referring to classes of people; insiders and outsiders or simply enemies and their reconciliation.  Later in Chapter 5, Paul says to the Ephesian Christians “You were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord.” He didn’t mean: people =  darkness  or even people= light. Even the phrase “in the Lord” is a metaphor. Metaphors are limited and do not indicate a direct 1 to 1 correlation.

When he says that we were “dead in transgressions” Paul is simply making a strong statement about the abhorrent state of humans apart from Christ. Without Christ, we are as good as dead because when Jesus comes to judge the world, we will be separated from Him who is the Truth and the Life. (I tend to think that the expression here is similar to the one that we’ve heard in other contexts where someone ominously threatens to kill someone by saying, “You’re dead meat!” ) Whenever someone lays hold of this metaphor of the human condition apart from Christ and makes it say that humans are as responsive to the call of God as a dead dog is to the call of it’s owner, I think they’re saying something that Paul was not saying.

The View from Outside

Take a moment to read this article about American Evangelicalism’s relationship with the phenomena of divorce.

I don’t know if David Van Biema, the author of the above article, is a Christian or not but I’m going to take a guess and say that he’s not.

So what?

Nothing really, except that sometimes I find the perspective of outsiders interesting. The reason that I believe he’s an outsider to the Christian community is his choice of words, his phraseology. Take this sentence as an example:

The heated controversy provoked by the story showed how Biblically flexible some Evangelicals can be – especially when God’s word seems at odds not just with modern American behavior, but also with simple human kindness.

Consciously or not, Bieman has effectively identified two opposing sides in the debate on divorce: God and humans (particularly “modern American”s). It appears that from his perspective, God (as represented by Evangelicals) is both out of step and unkind in his opposition to divorce while Americans are both “with it” and kind by comparison. Or perhaps, his position is that Evangelicals are finally doing the smart thing by facing up to the facts and changing their position on the issue of divorce and then reinterpreting their holy book accordingly. These are two perspectives that I would expect from an outsider.

Another example of what seems to me an outsider perspective is in this sentence: “Evangelicals define themselves as being tightly bound by scripture.” Bound, like bondage. Slavery. Deprived of freedom. I can understand how an outsider might feel that Evangelicals are enslaved by their belief that the Bible is God’s word.

Don’t most slaves want freedom? Don’t the majority of them want to escape? From Bieman’s perspective, the article by Instone-Brewer in Christianity Today, “appeared to be its editors’ attempt to offer Evangelicals an escape from a classic dilemma.”

Finally, look at what Bieman suggests that a softening on divorce among Evangelicals could lead to;

“Flexibility on divorce may mean that evangelicals could also rethink their position on such things as gay marriage, as a generation of Christians far more accepting of homosexuality begins to move into power. “

As a Christian with one foot in the Evangelical community (and the other foot in his mouth) I can say with some confidence that Bieman has misinterpreted the situation. An increase in compassion toward homosexuals is not the same thing as an increase in the acceptance of homosexuality. Admittedly, it’s an easy mistake for an outsider to make.

I’m curious: How would insiders to the Christian community reading this post attempt to address what I’ve called an outsider’s perspective on:

• the character of God and how it is revealed in the matter of divorce
• the relationship between Christians and the Bible (pertaining to divorce)
• the current attitudes of younger Evangelical Christians toward homosexuality

The comments are open.

Christians and Atheists Still Agree

In the practice of Arbitration and Negotiation (both professional and personal) , the principle of identifying “common ground” is expressed often and in different ways. The idea being that recognizing commonality builds rapport and empathy thereby allowing the conflicting parties to move more smoothly toward a resolution. As the atheists of the West (e.g. the USA) become more vocal in the media and conflict with theists (particularly Southern Baptists Christians) increases, I thought I would offer this post listing the beliefs shared by both groups. Of course, it’s impossible to speak accurately on behalf of each and every member of either camp, so please don’t pummel me with the deviants exceptions.

• Christians and atheists believe in absolute truth.
• Atheists and Christians believe that morality is innate in humans.
• Christians and atheists believe that the material universe exists (which is something that not all theists believe).
• Atheists and Christians believe that life in the material universe matters.

On the common ground of these shared beliefs, it is possible for Christians and atheists to meet…just before attempting to utterly annihilate one another.

Confession

I confess that I covet my neighbors’ blog traffic.

I’ve known for a long time that if I want readers for this blog, I’ve got to be a reader (and commenter) on other blogs. It’s hard to do simply because I feel like I have to scrabble for time just to post every other day on my blog, which I understand is a way to keep readers once you have them. But, I do try to visit the blogs on my blogroll and leave a comment or even post my thoughts here with a link to them. However, there are times when reading other peoples’ blogs and seeing the volume of comments that they get just brings me down.

Yesterday I visited Suddenly Christian for the first time in a while and enjoyed this funny post. Then I saw that there are 44 comments and I thought, “My blog sucks.” Last week, I visited the iMonk and again I saw the massive amount of comments that he tends to get on his rather long posts and again I was discouraged.

That’s the thing about coveting; it saps me of my drive. I tend to covet other people’s lives more than their possessions.  When I look at other folks and see their exciting careers, formidable intellects, and genuine talents, I tend to say to myself “Why bother?” and want to quit doing the things that I do. Especially when they are similar to the one’s that I covet.

This probably comes across as rather lame and perhaps I would be more embarrassed than I am for posting it if I thought more than 10 people would see it. Then again, do I really need 44 comments from folks saying, “Yeah, you’re right. You are lame.”

By the way, that’s a rhetorical question…but I leave the comments open just the same. 🙂

Christians and Atheists Agree

A while back, I published a post asking for atheists to leave their responses to a question that I had. Since then, I’ve read other, more intelligent posts and comments in the ongoing discussion/debate between theists and atheists at other blogs and I’ve realized something that I would like to share with the Christians out there.

When discussing the source of morality, I’ve heard atheists contend that a deity is not necessary. One atheist said (lost the blog, can’t link to it) that morality is simply hardwired (my term) into people. We’re born knowing what is right and wrong. I’ve noticed that the tendency for Christians  in this discussion is to be so focused on trying to prove that God is the source of morality and that He is necessary that they fail to see that the atheist has just said something that is completely in agreement with the teaching of Scripture. I’ll let you go back and read that wordy sentence again in case you missed what I said….

At least in the particular instance that I’ve described, we have an example where Christians and atheists are in agreement: both believe that morality is part of the make-up of human beings.  When Paul was attempting to explain to the Roman church that all humanity is under condemnation for disobeying God’s law, he alludes to this innate morality:

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) Romans 2:13-15

Christians,we need to realize and remember that atheists have the moral law of God written on their hearts. They know what is right and wrong just like we do, and they experience guilt just like we do. Don’t get so caught up in the need to prove that you’re right and the atheist is wrong that you fail to see that even the atheist testifies to the truth of God’s word.

And if Christians and atheists can agree that morality is innate in humanity, what other things can they agree upon?

Jesus Christ, Therapist

Not long ago, I came across a blog called Apprising Ministries. The blogger had taken it upon himself to critique and criticize various ministries and their key personalities. As you might predict, the tone is often less than charitable, which (for me) makes anything the guy writes suspect. I took a look at what he had to say about Erwin McManus and the Mosaic church and I was unimpressed. I’ve been listening to the podcast from Mosaic for about a year or so and while I’ve often disagreed with Erwin’s take on various topics, I tend to believe that he’s a follower of Jesus and not a heretical, self-serving play-actor.

When I disagree, it tends to be along the lines of the call of God and purpose of life. He tends to be melodramatic and to speak like every one of us has a call in this life on the same order of the likes of Moses. Today, as I read the following, I began to see that this is the kind of message I tend to hear from Erwin:

THE CONTEMPORARY THERAPEUTIC GOSPEL

The most obvious, instinctual felt needs of twenty-first century, middle-class Americans are different from the felt needs that Dostoevsky tapped into. We take food supply and political stability for granted. We find our miracle-substitute in the wonders of technology. Middle-class felt needs are less primal. They express a more luxurious, more refined sense of self-interest:

• I want to feel loved for who I am, to be pitied for what I’ve gone through, to feel intimately understood, to be accepted unconditionally;
• I want to experience a sense of personal significance and meaningfulness, to be successful in my career, to know my life matters, to have an impact;
• I want to gain self-esteem, to affirm that I am okay, to be able to assert my opinions and desires;
• I want to be entertained, to feel pleasure in the endless stream of performances that delight my eyes and tickle my ears;
• I want a sense of adventure, excitement, action, and passion so that I experience life as thrilling and moving.

The modern, middle-class version of therapeutic gospel takes its cues from this particular family of desires. We might say that the target audience consists of psychological felt needs, rather than the physical felt needs that typically arise in difficult social conditions. (The contemporary “health and wealth” gospel and obsession with “miracles” express something more like the Grand Inquisitor’s older version of therapeutic gospel.)

In this new gospel, the great “evils” to be redressed do not call for any fundamental change of direction in the human heart. Instead, the problem lies in my sense of rejection from others; in my corrosive experience of life’s vanity; in my nervous sense of self-condemnation and diffidence; in the imminent threat of boredom if my music is turned off; in my fussy complaints when a long, hard road lies ahead. These are today’s significant felt needs that the gospel is bent to serve. Jesus and the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained, and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches.

The therapeutic outlook is not a bad thing in its proper place. By definition, a medical-therapeutic gaze holds in view problems of physical suffering and breakdown. In literal medical intervention, a therapy treats an illness, trauma, or deficiency. You don’t call someone to repentance for their colon cancer, broken leg, or beriberi. You seek to heal. So far, so good.

But in today’s therapeutic gospel the medical way of looking at the world is metaphorically extended to these psychological desires. These are defined just like a medical problem. You feel bad; the therapy makes you feel better. The definition of the disease bypasses the sinful human heart. You are not the agent of your deepest problems, but merely a sufferer and victim of unmet needs. The offer of a cure skips over the sin-bearing Savior. Repentance from unbelief, willfulness, and wickedness is not the issue. Sinners are not called to a U-turn and to a new life that is life indeed. Such a gospel massages self-love. There is nothing in its inner logic to make you love God and love any other person besides yourself. This therapeutic gospel may often mention the word “Jesus,” but he has morphed into the meeter-of-your-needs, not the Savior from your sins. It corrects Jesus’ work. The therapeutic gospel unhinges the gospel. (full article)

The Mosaic community is overwhelmingly 20-something and single. I think that plays a part in the popularity of Erwin’s perspective on the Gospel and the Christian life. After all, it’s a very self-centered phase of life and it would appear that the “therapeutic gospel” is also self-centered. As the writer of this text says, there’s a legitimate time and place for therapy both physical and spiritual, but there is also a time to grow up and go on to maturity

…and I’m struggling with doing just that.

EPILOGUE: In his recent sermon The Conflict (part 3 in the series about leading an original life), Erwin departs from the above description of the therapeutic gospel by addressing sin….which supports what I said in refutation of the assessment of his ministry at that Apprising Ministries blog.  (Nov. 6, 2007)

Choose your own mountain

In his sermon, the preacher told the audience that he was ready to take on several challenges for glory of God. He told them that his last child was going away to college soon and that he’d asked God to be able to finish preparing his son for the big change coming his way, and then he said;

“…after that I am open to anything….If God wants us to move to Africa or South America to medical missions; I’m there. If he wants me to drop my nice healthcare company job and go into some full time ministry; let’s do it! If he wants us to go and teach or train and mentor at some Christian college to encourage students to look for a God-thing to do with their lives and move to some un-churched, non-Bible belt places so that God can use them to plant and evangelize and serve in those places, then I’m up for that. If he says, “Tom, come back to Maine. There’s still stuff I want you and Jeannie to do there;” man, we’re all over that mountain! If he says, “You know, now I need you to sell that big ol’ , kid-empty house and move into some inner-city ministry dwelling, which means you might have to take a pay cut, but you’ll be better able to take the gospel and authentically live it before the very folks that Jesus came for, the ones who are poor, who are beat up, who are hungry, who are scared, who are defeated: Tom, this is where I really now need you.” If that’s my mountain, then here we go.”

The mountain that the preacher refers to is a metaphor for a God-honoring activity that challenges and shapes the course of the life of a follower of Jesus. It’s taken from the King James version of this story in the Old Testament.

As I listened to this litany of God-honoring activities, I asked myself, “Why would God not want the preacher to do any one of these things?” Think about it for a moment: which one of those activities is God against? None of them. Every one of them would be pleasing to him, especially done with the enthusiasm that was evident in the preacher’s voice and demeanor. Let’s assume that God does not “call” the preacher to quit his job and move to South America to do medical missions, but he does it anyway: would God really refuse to allow anyone to come to faith in Jesus because the preacher was doing a God-honoring service to which was not called? Where’s the logic in that?

As I see it, God saves us and sets us free in Christ to do good works. He give us some principles (i.e.-“Do unto others….”) and some specifics (i.e.- feed the hungry, visit the prisoners etc) and then lets us decide what we’ll do. We’re free in Christ to choose our good works and to make plans. That’s what Paul did. He made a plan to preach Christ in places where no one else had done it. He prayed for “an open door”, meaning opportunity. Sometimes the Lord opened a door and sometimes he closed one, but he never told Paul to change his plan, to quit preaching.

Waiting for God to tell us exactly what to do is a bit immature on our part. Think about it; do you want your grown-up children calling you every morning with questions like, “What should I wear today?”, “How should I get to work this morning?”, “How much money should I give the homeless guy who washes my windshield when I stop at the red light?” God is the perfect father. He’s told us what pleases him. He even sent Jesus to model what pleases him. Now we are free to do as we’ve been told in Scripture and to follow the example of the One and Only Son. So, instead of waiting for God to give us a mountain, we need to choose one for ourselves and ask God to give it to us.

Wrong Hand

This one has been sitting in the queue so long that I don’t remember exactly how I came across it. I just remember that Mr. Hand has said something profound…and misguided.

A while back, I changed my religion. I used to be an Atheist. Now, I’m an Evolutionist. It isn’t that I’ve suddenly started believing in non-existent beings. My position on things metaphysical is essentially unchanged. I still uncategorically deny the existence of any deities. I still think that people who believe in deities (or just one deity) are incorrect in their beliefs. However, I’ve realized that that particular infection with an erroneous notion isn’t an especially damaging one. This is a kind of cheerful state of affairs. The simple fact is that belief in a deity is simply not even vaguely important to any of the things that really do matter. (emphasis mine)

In a sense, Mr. Hand is right. (Not what you might expect a God-blogger to say, right?) Believing in a deity (of whatever sort and/or multiples thereof) is not especially damaging to anyone provided that the belief doesn’t inform the way a person lives (and that the belief is in fact incorrect).  You might refer to this as “functional atheism”. Instead, what really matters are the specific beliefs that one has about the supernatural being(s) in question.

Without any appeal to some kind of authority, Mr. Hand says  that “Being mostly nice and often thinking carefully are important.” In order to keep things moving, lets agree and say that these two things are important. Who exactly should a person be nice to and what precisely should that person think carefully about? There are some in the world who believe that the deity to whom they belong requires that they should only be nice to other believers. Conversely, those people do not believe that it is important to be nice to non-believers. Furthermore, there are some people who believe that the deity in question is pleased whenever they are not nice to unbelievers. In fact, some people believe that their deity is pleased whenever its followers kill unbelievers. And so we have an example of how belief in a deity generally and specific beliefs about that deity are “especially damaging”. After all, I’m confident that Mr. Hand would agree that killing people who do not share one’s beliefs is not being nice.

I’m also confident that Mr. Hand would agree that the killing of “unbelievers” is not the product of careful thinking. However, I would disagree.  In fact, it is my experience that we deists have to do some very careful thinking to either justify our un-nice actions or to execute them. This is particularly true of those deists who believe that their deity will distribute some kind of reward or punishment at some point in the future based upon their actions; such people tend to think very carefully more than merely often.

Obviously, what people believe about God, god and/or gods is more than vaguely  important to the two things that Mr. Hand says are important, that matter. Consequently, we can guess that such belief (erroneous or not) is important to other things that matter as well.

“True Self”

In this video by Emergent Church personality Rob Bell, he talks about knowing who we really are. The video concludes with a slide at the end which is not readable through YouTube, so I’ve added it below. Watch the video and read the slide.

 

What does Rob mean by really knowing “our true selves”? How will knowing our true selves help us to live the life God wants for us? What exactly is this life that God wants for us?

While these are great discussion questions for the church youth group, I can’t help but wonder what Rob’s answers would be. Afterall, the phrase “true self” doesn’t appear in the majority of translations available at the Biblegateway. (The Message is the noteworthy exception.) I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the absence of such a phrase is because the true self is not something that we know, but something that we develop.

Paul talks about an “old self” and a “new self”. The old self is the corruptible one that we come into the world with. It is the one that is contaminated by The Fall and enslaved to sin. By choosing to live by the principles of this world, we contribute to the development of the “old self”. We turn away from God and become progressively less like him in whose image we were created. The “new self” is the incorruptible one that is set free (by God)from sin.  By choosing to believe in and submit to the Authority of Jesus, we turn toward God and become progressively like him. Our “true self” is directly dependent upon our relationship to Jesus, our as Paul puts it, whether or not we are “in Christ”.

So, knowing our true old self may actually propel us toward God through Christ. Or, perhaps knowing our true new self may encourage us to continue moving toward God in Christ. Is this what Rob is getting at?

Reposting-He Said, He Said 5

Concerning Guidance and God

Mohammed says:

“Thus God leads astray whom He pleases, and guides him He pleases:” Chpt of the Covered v11

Jesus says:

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4

Here we can see two different attitudes toward  God and His role is guiding people. From Mohammed, you get resignation. God guides or misguides and people are utterly powerless.

From Jesus, you get encouragement. In this model prayer, Jesus demonstrates that his followers should ask for God’s guidance (and deliverance) with the expectation of receiving it.

One teacher is resigned. The other is expectant.

Reposting-He Said, He Said 4

Concerning Marriage in the Hereafter

It’s been a little while since I posted my reflections on the differences between specific sayings/teachings of Mohammed and Jesus. Here’s one that I’ve had in the queue a while.

Mohammed says:

“Verily, the pious (shall be) in gardens and pleasure, enjoying what their Lord has given them; for their Lord will save them from the torment of hell. ‘Eat and drink with good digestion, for that which ye have done!’ Reclining on couches in rows, and we shall wed them to large-eyed maidens. And those who believe and whose seed follows them in the faith, we will unite their seed with them;” Chapter of the Mount vs 5-7 (italics mine)

Jesus says:

“Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” Mark 12:24-26 (italics mine)

Both teachers speak about resurrection and the day of judgement, however Mohammed says far more about the nature of the hereafter than Jesus does. In fact, Mohammed gives much more detail about both heaven and hell; who is there, why they are there and what happens to and with them there. Conversely, Jesus never teaches that people go to heaven when they die, so there’s not much reason for him to talk about what it’s like there for them. (We can unpack Jesus’ statements about “Paradise” and “being where I am” another time.)

Mohammed clearly says that in heaven (aka Paradise) the believers marry virgins and they are even reunited with their children who believe. However you may choose to look at it, there’s an indication that the relationships of wife, father and child are preserved in Paradise. This is not the case according to Jesus. He clearly contradicts Mohammed when he says that marriage relations are not part of the resurrection life. It’s logical to assume that if the categories of husband and wife become irrelevant, so do the categories father, mother, son, and daughter for these all depend on the first relationship between husband and wife.

NB:Jesus only addresses this issue because it was put to him as a test. If you’re not familiar with the incident, read the whole chapter of Mark 12.

Reposting-He Said, He Said 3

Concerning Those Who Do Wrong to You

Mohammed says:

“And shouldst thou ever fear from any people treachery, then throw it back to them in like manner: verily God loves not the treacherous.”  Chapter of the Spoils v40. (italics mine)

Jesus says:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go with them one mile, gow with him two miles. ” Matthew 5:38-41 (italics mine)

and

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemies.’ But I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven.” Matthew 5:43-45 (italics mine) See also Luke 6:27-36

Not much commentary necessary for this one. Mohammed clearly advocates tit for tat. Jesus doesn’t. In fact, Jesus says that acting with love and praying for (not against) one’s enemies makes a person  like God, who also loves those who hate him.

Two teachers. Two messages. Same source? I don’t think so.

Reposting-He Said, He Said 2

Concerning Giving

Mohammed says:

“Make not thy hand fettered to thy neck, nor yet spread it out quite open, lest thou shouldst have to sit down blamed and straitened in means. Verily, thy Lord spreads out provision to whomsoever He will or He doles it out. Verily, He is ever well aware of and sees His servants.” The Chapter of the Night Journey beginning vs 27.

Jesus says:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” Luke 6:30.

Even without the fullest context for either quotation, I think it’s fairly clear that the attitudes of both speakers are not the same. Mohammed essentially says, “Give, but not too much,” while Jesus simply says “Give, and don’t demand.” One is self-serving:one is other-serving. There can be no doubt that these two are reading from different scripts.

Reposting-He Said, He Said

I’ve got the next several days off, and I expect that I won’t be able to keep up my posting routine (1 every other day), so I’m going to repost some things that I wrote at my former URL. Another reason that I’m reposting these particular pieces is that I saw a blog recently which touched upon these things. I left a comment, so perhaps the owner may come by and find these post interesting.

Anyway, here’s the first of the series just to let you know what’s coming:

He Said-He Said

I don’t know if such a book would be truly useful, but I know that a book which places the teachings of Jesus beside the teachings of Mohammed for the purposes of comparison would get my attention. Perhaps there is already such a book. In fact, I’m pretty sure that some of the pamphlets I’ve seen from Muslim societies already do this to some degree. It’s such an interesting idea to me that I’m actually doing my own comparisons. I’m not so ambitious as to seek to make a book out of it, but I intend to write a bit here about what I find.

Of course I’m biased, but I don’t intend to write a polemic. Such a thing wouldn’t be beneficial for anyone, including myself. Instead, my aim is to demonstrate that there is no real continuity between the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed. While Islam lists Jesus among the prophets of Allah, it does not acknowledge the New Testament as a reliable witness to what Jesus said and did. For that reason, I don’t expect anything that I write will impact any Muslim’s thinking. Even so, I do think it’s worthwhile to point out that these two people were not singing from the same hymnal in any meaningful sense.

One of the biggest obstacles to this personal investigation is reading the Qur’an. Whenever I’ve tried, the English is practically incomprehensible. (Is this what it feels like to read the Bible for some folks?) I’ve not found very much that reads like a narrative and the copious “blessings” really mess with the flow of the English text. That being said, what little I’ve managed to read has contained some divergent messages which are worth commenting on…which I’ll do later.

Vindication of God

A while back, Wonders for Oyarsa chimed in on a post of mine and shared a link to a podcast that he took part in. (Check it out here.) In it, he speaks with the host, Emery, an atheist, about the book of Job. In their conversation, Wonders points out that God is vindicating Job in front of Satan, which might have been a point that was lost on Emery, I’m not sure. While I think that’s true, I don’t think it’s the primary vindication of the story. (Maybe Wonders doesn’t either, I dont’ recall him saying.)

The primary vindication is of God. God, creator of men, holds up Job as an example to Satan. It’s like God says, “I know you think men (whom I made) are worthless, but have you seen Job? He’s an excellent example of what men can be.” So, Satan attempts to show God that He’s wrong and accuses Job of merely seeking the gifts and not the Giver. His questioning of Job is really a questioning of God’s wisdom in creating men and lavishing his love attention on them.

God allows Satan to inflict all kinds of suffering on Job within specific limits. When Job stands his ground and refuses to be disloyal to God and dishonest about himself, God shows that all of Satan’s accusations were without merit, vindicating his wisdom, love and affection for men.

I think God, in his love, then turns and vindicates Job before his “friends”, who (like Satan) accused him of being secretly wicked in some way and too arrogant to confess it.

For the Sake of Relevance

Deeply concerned about the amount of media attention given to the Emergent Church Movement and afraid of losing large numbers of Generation Y from their own churches, several mainstream denominations are secretly considering “re-branding” themselves.

Insiders to each of the following groups have anonymously claimed that:

Southern Baptists are in negotiations with the Regular and Freewill Baptists to become known collectively as “The Submergent Church”.

United Methodists, Churches of Christ (Uniting), Congregationalist and Unitarian Churches are discussing the possibility of forming a single “Convergent Church”.

Taking note of the rise of “new monasticism” and an increasing interest in the mystery of Eastern Orthodoxy among Generation Y Christians, patriarchs from the various Orthodox Churches are considering the moniker “Resurgent Church”.

Speculators in the web domain market have already registered the following domains in the hope that other Christian denominations will purchase them once they’ve decided which names best suit them.

www.divergentchurch.org

www.insurgentchurch.mil

www.urgentchurch.org

Dating God

Preacher Dean in Nashville, Tennessee is doing a series of sermons from Exodus. Last week, he reached the point of the story when Moses goes up on the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments from God. In order to make his point, Dean reminds his listeners that the inclusion of those 10 Rules are not a non-sequitor but rather they are part of the narrative. His point is that the part they play in the story of God’s rescue of Israel from slavery is this: they are the marriage vows of God and Israel.

Now, if the giving of the law at Sinai was like the taking of wedding vows, then was God’s first date with Israel a camping trip?

What do you think?

The Consensus on Abiogenesis

Thanks to the noteworthy success of the theory of Global Warming to achieve wide-reaching acceptance in the West, the way has been paved for a new school of inquiry that we shall call “Consensual Science”. Through the application of the fundamental ethic of Consensual Science (“If enough people say it’s true, it is true; especially if they have really expensive advanced degrees in subjects that most people can’t pronounce correctly.”) , I would like to investigate the complex subject of abiogenesis.  Since I am not a scientist, I will avoid unnecessary, sciency jargon, like the words “sciency” and “jargon”.

For those who may not know, the word “abiogenesis” is a big word with a definition which can be used to impress people at parties. You should look it up before you read any further.

While there is some debate among scientists regarding the specifics, the vast majority of humanity has reached the following consensus: some things are alive while other things are not. There also seems to be further agreement among most folks that the easiest way to make a living thing is to begin with at least one living thing, however two living things is often preferred since there tends to be the possibility of a tax break in most states. Yet, within the scientific community, there is speculation about the possibility of combining non-living things in such a way as to produce living things, but so far there have been no successful attempts at doing so…at least none which the overwhelming majority of humanity would recognize as belonging to the category of “living thing”.  So, for the moment there are two explanations of where living things come from. Let’s look at them in more detail.

One says: “Under the right conditions, with the right stuff and given the right amount of time, non-living things will make living things. We believe this is true because it has happened at least once in time as demonstrated by our being here today.” The other explanation says: “Since it takes living things to make other living things, some living thing(s) had to make the living things we see around us. We believe that an intelligent Living Thing of unimaginable power made living things as demonstrated by our being here today.” Again, the consensus among most people in the world seems to be a version of the second explanation, taking into account some variables, such as the possibility of multiple intelligent living things. Despite their opposing views, supporters of both explanations have tended to enthusiastically agree that the other is completely bonkers. (Yeah, I know I promised not to use sciency jargon.)

Both positions are very compelling, but they can not both be correct. So which one is? The answer is the explanation provided by the overwhelming majority of people on the planet. This I know because Consensual Science tells me so.

Whose Child is This?

The Professing Professor doesn’t keep his blog updated but I’ve been listening to a podcast of his sermons for several weeks now which is available through iTunes. In a recent sermon given in respect of Dedication Day (a day for the parents and the church community to dedicate themselves to raising new babies born into the community), he said something that I wish he would expound upon. The Prof said that all children belong to the Kingdom of God. He said that Jesus doesn’t say, “These are my children and those are yours,” but that all children belong to Him.

It’s a bad habit (I know) but I still find myself questioning who belongs to the Kingdom and who doesn’t. Whenever I visit that question, it tends to be with regards to adults, not children. I know that there are some doctrines in Christianity which attempt to say something about the status of children before God, but I have not given as much thought to them as I have other topics. The reason that I’m provoked to do so now is because the Prof and I come from the same church heritage and what he says sounds different from what I grew up hearing and I wonder what he’s learned. Of course, he’d have to explain what he thinks the term Kingdom of God means and what (if any) connection that has to “being saved”. In fact, the term “being saved” would need to be unpacked a bit.

So, I’m wondering are children automatically born into the Kingdom? Are only some children born into the Kingdom while others aren’t? (If so, which ones and why?) If children are born into the Kingdom, at what point and for what reasons do they end up “outside” and need to hear the good news of the Kingdom?

Again, I know that there are some complex doctrines out there which say something about this and I’m familiar with some of them, but maybe someone will have something to offer that I haven’t heard yet. Radical Congruency and iMonk, are you listening?

Of course, if the Prof could chime in, that would be great…

Thank you Atheists

First, for introducing me to John Shore. I’ve added this writer’s blog to the blogroll and I recommend paying him a visit. However, I feel that I should warn you of the following:

1) John Shore is a Christian

2) he gets lots of comments

3) which means whatever you might have to add to a conversation will probably get lost in the crowd…

so, please just leave your comments here. 😉

Okay, you’re right. That was my lame attempt to siphon off some traffic from a successful and more articulate blogger. I apologize, John.

Anyway, if you’re going to visit John Shore’s blog, allow me to direct you to this post. It’s called What Atheists Taught Me. In it, John pleads with Christians to listen to the atheists, really listen. And to respect them.

But how? How can Christians respect atheists?

(Hint: the same way we can respect everyone.)

I’ll elaborate on this later.

And second, for teaching me that I can up the number of visitors to my blog by simply adding the tag “atheist” to it. I promise I’ll not abuse this knowledge in the future.

For What It’s Worth

I got great response from the no-god camp on this post. Everybody expressed themselves in a civil manner and it was good. No debate. Just folks laying their perspective out there for my education.

I’ll be honest; it was hard not to attempt to defend and/or apologize for Christians and Christianity. It would have been wrong to do so, especially after saying that I wasn’t interested in debate. Yet, there are certainly some things that were said that I’ll probably want to revisit in later posts, after I’ve had some time to digest it all.

One thing that I won’t put off until later is an apology; not in the sense of a reasoned defense of a held belief, but instead in the sense of an expression of remorse for wrongs committed against another. There are some (a lot?) in the no-god camp who have been wronged by Christians and while I seriously doubt that anything I can post in my obscure blog could mean much to those folks, I still feel like I have to say:

I’m sorry that we Christians have treated you as though you were not human. I’m sorry that we have not been kind in our exchanges or civil in our debates. I’m sorry that where you were not our enemies at one point in time, we made you our enemies by failing to obey the God we claim to know and serve. We have dishonored you, our God and ourselves. I apologize.

Talk is cheap and words on blogs are perhaps even cheaper, but I felt I ought to put that out there. Also, I know that there are Christ-followers who live lives much more closely conformed to the likeness of Jesus than the ones you’ve met. I hope you meet them some day. Heck, one of them even writes a much better apology.

Beyond the Wall

Walls are everywhere in my host country. I don’t mean fences that you can see through, hop over or dig under. I mean solid masonry of one sort or the other. They are a fixed feature of every private domicile.

I don’t know if walls are a hold over from the days of tribal raiding or if they’re built to maintain privacy within the context of the relatively new urban lifestyle that people have these days. One thing I  do know is that walls are not only useful to keep things out, but they are also useful to keep things in.

The main compounds of Christian worship in my host city are all behind walls. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything sinister about this. As I’ve said, walls are just part of the architecture around here. However, I think that upon closer examination we might find that the walls have been very useful to the local authorities to keep Christians from exercising much influence within the culture.

While the law does allow for Christians to worship in designated compounds, absolutely no proselytizing is allowed. Additionally, Christian literature and media are permitted inside the walls of the compound but may not be sold or distributed outside the compound. These and other restrictions which are not especially aimed at Christians have, I believe, boxed in our thinking…at least the thinking of the leadership of the group where I’ve been worshipping for the past several years.

No one inside the walls of our church compound talks openly in our assemblies of doing anything outside the walls of the compound. I’m not talking about hassling folks with pamphlets or anything overtly evangelistic. I’m talking about organizing an effort to alleviate some of the suffering that is all around us. When I pressed one of the church leaders about this idea, he told me that there are such things going on but that they are not talked about. The reason they’re not talked about is because a culture of extreme caution has been cultivated. As someone once told a friend of mine here, “It’s better (for the church) to be here and do nothing than to not be here at all.” Whatever good we’re up to, it needs to stay inside the wall.

Recently, I’ve learned about something going on outside the wall that I hope to get involved with. It’s an organization that seeks to help some of the poorest and most ill-treated people around by giving them food and clothes along with other kinds of aid. While the organization was started by a Christian couple, it is certainly not a bait and switch operation that lures folks and then tries to stuff religion down their throats. (They wouldn’t be allowed by the government to operate if it were.) All the same it is an opportunity to get beyond the wall and be Jesus to people, which is good for everyone involved.

Persecution in Eritrea

The BBC has a documentary about the persecution of Christians in Eritrea that you can listen to here.

I know that I don’t have a large audience but I’m asking any Christian blogger who visits my blog to post a link to this documentary on their own blogs so that as many people as possible will be aware of what’s going on. It’s important (especially among Western Christians) that we do not forget that there are brothers and sisters who are being persecuted and killed for their trust in King Jesus.

What Would Solomon Say?

The Bible tells us the following about the wisdom of Solomon:

 29 God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. 32 He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33 He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. 34 Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom. (1 Kings 4:29-34)
 

Notice that verse 33 demonstrates that Solomon was, at some level, a scientist, a biologist even.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that one of Solomon’s proverbs reads as follows.

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
       to search out a matter is the glory of kings. (Proverbs 25:2)

Which is precisely what Solomon did.

While it would be great hubris to disagree with Solomon, I do think that, some kings (read “governments”) might be better off to leave some matters concealed.

…and yes, I was looking for a way to include a link to this post on this blog. Sorry if it’s a bit forced. I guess this is an example of proof-texting. 😉

God’s Answer to yOur Pain

I heard this in a sermon.

Look at the verbs from this passage of Scripture:

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”(http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%203:7-10;&version=31)

When God entered into a conversation with Moses that day in the wilderness and sent him to Pharaoh to resuce the Israelites, he showed us something about what he does in answer to human suffering.

He sees.

He hears.

He is concerned.

He comes down.

He sends you and me to do something about it.

Some Questions are More Important than Others

Since the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, Americans have been attempting to answer numerous questions about Islam. What is this religion? Who are these Muslims and why do they hate us so? Is Islam a “violent religion”? How do we deal with these people?

Christians in America are no different. I recently came across a Christian blogger who posted his thoughts as to whether or not Islam is a violent religion. There are several more I’m sure. As an American Christian living in a Muslim country I think I have something to say about this particular question as well as the host of others.

First, Christians need to ask other more pertinent questions than those about the the teachings of Islam pertaining to violence. The most important question for us is “What (if anything) does Islam/Qu’ran have to say about Jesus?” The clearer we are on this point, the easier it will be to absorb other information about Islam. I say this because our expectations of this religion and its adherents will be more accurately guided by that information than any other. Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet, that he did not die on the cross, that he was not raised from the dead and that he did not claim to be the Son of God. The Qu’ran contains some information about and words attributed to Jesus, but Muslims know little or nothing about the teachings of this person they accept as a prophet. Consequently, we can expect there to be significant disagreement between Christians and Muslims.

After this question, Christians need to ask how to communicate the good news of reconciliation to God through Jesus to Muslims. Honestly, I don’t have an answer to this question. Also, I’m pretty sure that the answers that apply in the States are not the answers that apply in other places of the world. Wherever we are, one answer that applies is simply this; be Jesus to them. Treat them as you want to be treated (even if they don’t reciprocate), love them and do good to them (even if they persecute you), and forgive them. Of course, we already know this, so I suppose we ought to be praying for the character of Christ to be fully formed in us so that we can be Jesus to them…and everyone else as well.

Knowing whether or not Islam is a violent religion, why they hate us (Christians and/or Americans) and whatever other answers we’re seeking will not ultimately change how we ought to relate to Muslims.

NB-But, if you’re still interested in one Muslim’s perspective on the question of Islam and violence, you can look here.

I Need an Athiest

Atheism seems to be in the media more lately than it has been in the past decade. (I choose the word “seems” because I’ve been out of the states for almost a decade and I don’t think I really know what’s going on back home.) As a result, the more thoughtful Christians among us are curious and are attempting to pose serious questions to atheists about their beliefs. I don’t know if Cat Juggler is a Christian but he puts this question into the “world wide weird” for atheists to answer. Like him, I need an atheist or several to answer a genuine (meaning “not rhetorical”) question:

What contributions has atheism (or atheists) made to the good of humanity?

As a Christian, I know both the good and evil that we’ve done in the world, but as an outsider to atheism, I can’t say that. So, I’m seriously asking any atheists who might find their way here to fill in the gaps of my knowledge by answering the above question. I’m not looking to debate, just to learn something.

New Blogroll Addition

It’s listed on the right.

 Check it out.

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/

And for some edgier (perhaps less redemptive) religious humor, here’s the Colbert Report: http://www.ifilm.com/episode/22853 . Look at #2 on Rabbi Fish.

Global Warming Blasphemy

I disbelieve in the theory of Global Warming. Not for scientific reasons. Not for religious reasons. One could argue that I don’t even disbelieve for logical reasons. I disbelieve for visceral reasons: my gut tells me that whenever there’s an apparent majority opinion about some great cataclysm that is soon to befall the country, the planet, the universe, it’s wrong. Distopic predictions about the future of the world have been part of my whole life and none of them have come to pass.  Not Soylent Green, Not the Day After, not the Killer Bees or the Second Ice Age (anybody growing up in the 70’s remember hearing about this one?). Every prediction of annihailation and doom for all of mankind in my lifetime has missed the mark. People simply don’t know as much as they think they do and can’t see nearly as far ahead as they believe they can. If the weatherman can’t get the five day forecast right much of the time, why should I believe he’s going to accurately predict planetary destruction 50 years from now?

If anyone should know the limitations of human knowledge it ought to be Christians. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of examples of “pride going before a fall” in the Bible. Consequently, it distresses me to read something like this. So, let me make this plea to those who would represent Christianity on the world stage with regards to Global Warming: Please don’t endorse this theory. Confess that we Christians have been poor steward’s of God’s world because a good case can be made for that. But don’t go along with the crowd on this nihilistic, fear-mongering crusade to “save the planet” from a threat that probably doesn’t exist.

Facing the Truth

Earlier today I was thinking about certain truths that I’ve had to face up to as I’ve gotten older. Just the fact that I’m getting older is one of those facts. The attending degeneration of my aging body is another one of those facts. (Yes, a simple strain in the back is enough to turn me morose.) And as I was turning over the phrase “face the truth” in my mind, a scene from the life of Jesus came to my mind.

It was the night of his betrayal. He had finished praying in the garden with his disciples and was admonishing them for their weakness when Judas and a mob showed up. According to John, Jesus asked the mob who they had come for. They replied “Jesus of Nazareth” and then something strange happened. Jesus said, “I am he” and the mob “drew back and fell to the ground.” Why? What did Jesus say that drove back an armed mob and caused them to fall to the ground?

There’s a good theological answer to that, but I won’t attempt to give it…today. I think the reason that this scene came to my mind is because it sort of mirrors what happens whenever people have to face truth, particularly difficult truths about ourselves.

We go charging about convinced and intent just like the mob in the garden that night. Then, like them, we come face to face with truth and it knocks us back on our heels, or even flat on our backs. And then, we must choose. Do we get up and continue our charge, even more convinced and intent or do we approach the truth and embrace it, learn to deal with it on its own terms? Wasn’t that the mob’s choice: to continue with their plans to arrest Jesus and drag him before the rulers for a bogus trial or to admit that they were in the presence of “I am” and learn from Him what to do with The Truth they were face to face with?

No, really. This is how my brain works sometimes…

Have You Seen This?

My cousin passed this internet goodie along to me. I thought it might be a decent little filler until I can get a real post in a little later on. (Back is better. Sitting is easier.)

Looking at it reminds me of song that we taught our kids:

My God is so big

so strong and so mighty.

There’s nothing my God can not do!

I’ll teach you the hand motions and melody later!

Taking a Break

Since I injured my back recently, I won’t be able to sit and blog for a bit. I should be back in a few more days.

What’s in a Name?

Many of the numerous labels for identifying specific types of Christians and Christianity have never felt right on me. Being raised in a non-denominational community (as opposed to the Non-Denominational community) bred a dissatisfaction with any name other than “Christian” no matter how useful it may be at times to choose a buttonhole of my own for the sake of discussion. In more recent years, I’ve tried on “follower of Jesus” and “believer” as a way to distance myself from negative connotations that have been attached to the name “Christian” in Western culture…and even in the Middle East where I live.

Here in the Middle East, people still see the West as “Christian” and themselves as “Muslim/Islamic”. The idea of a “Post-Christian” nation/culture is inconcieveable. To them, Hollywood is making Christian movies. Chew on that for a minute. The point of view expressed by American media is Christian as far as they’re concerned. This makes sense since everything in their corner of the world is ordered according to their understanding of Islam…or at least the understanding of Islam which those in power have. Western values are Christian values in their eyes. Here, being a Christian doesn’t align you with the Savior of the World but rather with the evil West or even the “Great Satan”. As a result, whenever it’s appropriate (which isn’t often) I try to avoid the term “Christian” in favor of something that will more clearly and immediately identify that my loyalties are with the Kingdom of God and not the West.

God’s Will for the Traffic

Perhaps one of the best books I’ve ever read is “Decision Making and the Will Of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View“.  While there were some stylistic choices which didn’t appeal to me, I liked it so much because it echoed back to me a clearer and more articulate understanding of my own views regarding God’s will and how to find it.  (I think that if people are honest, they’ll admit that this is often the reason why books become their favorites.) A decent synopsis of the book can be found here. If you read it, the rest of this post will make more sense.

While reading it, I made an effort to change the way I was praying. At the time, I prayed like so many others, asking for God to reveal what He specifically wants me to do with my life. I wanted the burden of the responsibility of choosing the course of my life taken off my shoulders. Afterall, if God revealed to me that it’s His will for me to do X, then any consequences could be laid at His door. However, praying this way never seemed quite right. Even though I asked for God’s supernatural leading in the details of my life, I never really believed that Scripture indicated that He worked that way. As I read Friesen’s critique of what he calls the “traditional” view of God’s will, I stopped asking God for signs and leadings (meaning highly subjective emotional predispositions) and started asking for opportunities, wisdom and courage to do His will that I already knew.

Yesterday, while driving to pick up my son from school, I was praying about the upcoming month of Ramadan. Honestly, it is my least favorite season in my host country.  One of the main reasons is that people drive much more dangerously during those 28 or so days than at any other time of the year. (I don’t drive after sundown now if at all possible because the streets are unsafe.) People are more discourteous and make more rash decisions during these days of food, water, caffiene and nicotine deprivation than at any other time in the year. Several times last Ramadan, my wife and children were almost involved in some serious accidents going to and from school. So, I was asking God to make the roads safer this year than last year. It occured to me that I was asking for His Divine intervention, possibly asking Him to override the wills of the free people He created and I wasn’t sure if I believed that God works this way. Then I asked God to show me how to pray about this problem.

I’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer with my sons each night before bed for a while and this phrase came to me; “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Right, so Jesus says that I ought to pray for God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Next I thought, “What is God’s will for these drivers?” and it was clear. God’s will is that people drive considerately, thinking about how their actions affect others. The Bible states it this way, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, “Deny yourself and follow Me”, and “Think of others” etc. Consequently, I prayed that during this Ramadan people would drive carefully, aware of those around them and concerned for the safety of others. This is certainly God’s will, especially for me since I say that I love Him.

Of course, everyone on the road is free not to do God’s will, however, Jesus’ model is still valid. So, I’ll continue to pray that God’s will is done on the streets of Earth as it is in Heaven until it is.

PADD

Prayerful Attention Deficit Disorder.

Do you have it? I do. Essentially it means that I can’t keep my mind focused on my prayers. I start talking to God about something and almost immediately my mind wanders off and I’m no longer talking to God. Instead, I’m thinking about how to handle  the situation that I was praying about or I start planning the class that I want God to help me with or whatever.

If my memory is correct, CS Lewis once wrote that silent prayer (praying in one’s thoughts) practiced through out the day is an advanced form of the discipline. He went on to say that he personally saw the real benefit of kneeling in prayer (a practice he saw as an elementary one) because it kept him in a proper frame of mind. I think he was right as I tend to experience my PADD while trying to pray silently in the shower, in the car and other “public” spaces.

Yesterday, I actually went into a private office, closed (and locked) the door and prayed aloud. Apart from the two phone calls that distracted me (and I had to answer), I found that I had no trouble keeping my mind on God and the subject of my prayer.

I guess it’s sometimes necessary to revisit the basics.

Church and Gospel II

I’ve been thinking about the following statement: The Church is part of the Gospel.

The statement was made to me by an Orthodox priest in the context of a post on his blog and a comment that I made about it. My comment had erroneously left him with the impression that I believe that the Gospel and the Church are not linked to one another; that one could receive the Gospel without receiving the Church. While I do not believe this as I’ve worded it, I do believe that the Gospel is not the exclusive property of any particular expression of the Church.

The reason that I’ve been struggling with the statement of the priest is because the word Church does not necessarily have the same connotation for me that I believe they have for him. In my life, I’ve interacted briefly with the Ukrainian and the Ethiopian Orthodox expressions of Church. Additionally, I’ve done a small amount of reading about the Orthodox Church and it is my perception that the Orthodox Church sees itself as the ONE TRUE CHURCH and others are not. There are RIGHT ways to fast and WRONG ways to fast and it matters. There is a PROPER way to perform the sign of the cross and an IMPROPER way to perform the sign of the cross and it matters. Consequently, when I hear that “The Church is part of the Gospel” what I understand the priest to say is “The expression of the Church called THE ORTHODOX CHURCH is part of the Gospel and those other guys are not.” I simply cannot accept this, even though I fully understand it.I grew up in a Protestant expression of church (sectsounds like such an ugly word) that also saw itself as the TRUE CHURCH to the exclusion of all others. Whenever my mother spoke of someone as a “member of the Church”, she meant the particular tradition to which she gave allegiance. As a young adult, I abandoned that belief.

Thinking about the priest’s statement lead me to this question, “How is the Church part of the Gospel?” I’ll give that some thought and post on my ideas another time.

Asylum III

This is the third part in a series of posts about a friend of mine seeking religious asylum in the West. Part I is here. Part II is here.

Again, time passed so slowly in the cold detention hall. My heart was breaking as I watched my wife shiver from the cold. I prayed, “Lord, we are in need of your touch. We need a miracle of yours. Please make it easy on my wife.” I can’t remember the moment I fell asleep in my chair. I only remember my wife waking me up saying, “…I was flying in such a peaceful and warm dream! It was a wonderful dream. The Lord was telling me that we will get out today. You’ll see. We’ll got today. God is telling me so.” We didn’t see the woman again that night. As I thought about that woman and the coming interview, I figured it meant that God was going to send us a miracle.

At 9 am, the woman appeared again holding two files. Officer B, the friendly officer from the day before, was with her. He opened the door, looked into the hall and when he saw us, he said “Once I saw your names, I was shocked! I really can’t understand why you are still here, but I’m going to find out now!”

After ten minutes, a new woman came and called my wife. They were done for almost an hour. When the door finally opened again, I saw my wife looking refreshed and hold a sandwich. It turned out that the tough woman who went to “look for a translator” the night before didn’t meet with my wife. Instead, a nice and sweet lady did the interview. Why? For no other reason than the plans of our faithful and gentle Lord. There were times when the new lady was tough with my wife, but she told her “I am sorry but this is my job.”

Officer B. came again and said, “Guys, I am really sorry what happened. Ever since I came today I’ve been working hard on getting you out of here. Just give us some more time.” I think, my wife and I, will remember those words till we die. This time we couldn’t hold back our tears of happiness. We closed our eyes and prayed for him to stay in our story. Then he took us to another hall, gave us temporary ID’s, and explained to us what will happen once we left from there.

He said. “Some one will come to pick you up at 5pm. You’ll go into the city, have a good sleep and tomorrow you’ll be moved north will you’ll learn more details. You should wait in the detention hall until the someone comes to get you, but I feel so bad about your spending the night here last night that I’m letting you go now if you promise to be at the assembly point on time.”

B. took us to collect our bags, and at the gate of the holding area he said to the security guards, “Say bye to these nice people!” Everybody said bye! It was really funny and made us laugh. Then he told the guards to keep the woman who interviewed me posted.

We followed him to the arrival area.Huge emotions were storming in our hearts. We were thankful to God, happy and anxious for the chance to witness for our almighty Lord regarding what had happened to us.

At the arrival area, B. said, “This is as far as I can go with you. I wish you all the luck in the world!” As he walked away smiling he say “Make sure that you’re at the assembly point at 5pm! Don’t let me down!”

My wife and I stood there looking at each other wondering if it had all been a dream. We started walking around the airport just to be sure that we were really out. We found a corner, sat down and prayed. All I could say was, “Thank you Lord!” over and over again.

At 4pm, we were standing at the assembly area, and at 4:15 two guys came and told us, “Let’s go!” We walked with them, and very nice and gentle guy took us to a van, which took us out of the airport.It took almost one hour to reach an amazing, old church that had been turned into a huge house for refugees. In this place we had another touch from our faithful and gentle Lord that I will tell you about in my next email.

Church and Gospel I

The Orthodox Priest wrote:

If you have lived your Christian life and never heard the story of our relationship with God put in the sort of terms used above, then you have missed out on hearing most of the New Testament. You have missed the story as told by the Fathers of the Eastern Church (which means, most of the Church Fathers). It is possible that you have heard such a distortion of the Christian faith that you have wanted nothing to do with it.

But if what I have described above sounds like good news – then the news is very good – because this is the teaching of the New Testament and the Church founded by Jesus Christ and which continues to be proclaimed by the Orthodox Church.

I’m having a hard time with this concluding statement and the reason is because it comes across to me as a plug for the Orthodox Church. It feels to me as if the priest is saying that the good news is proclaimed by the Orthodox Church and not those other guys. I admit the possibility that my biases have caused me to misunderstand the man’s point.

I wanted to leave a comment but I didn’t want to presume to lecture a priest about the Bible or the Church so, in my caution, I ended up saying something that utterly failed to communicate what I wanted to say. I wrote ,

The news is very good not because it’s delivered by the Orthodox Church (or any body of believers) but because it is TRUE…as one day, all who are called by His Name will see.

Consequently, the priest percieved that I was divorcing the Gospel from the Church, saying that the Church is part of the Gospel. How does that sound to you?

The Church is part of the Gospel.

I’m going to chew on that some and post about it later…but until then I would like to hear how others respond to that statement.

Where is God?

Mosaic is a community in LA where the noted speaker and writer Erwin McManus is the pastor. I’ve been listening to their podcast off and on for a while and occasionally I take a peek at the blog . After  listening to a sermon given not too long ago about the spiritual reality that affects our material world, I cruised over to the blog and found this comment.

To be honest, I think that the best thing to do would be to meditate on this for a while and then write something. In fact, it would be best to write something, edit it and then post. Instead, I’m just going to share what popped into my head.

“And lo, I am with you always. Even unto the end of the age.”

Pardon the archaic language but apparently that’s how it’s stored in my memory. Jesus said this (or something quite similar) before returning to God. Between then and now, Satan and those aligned (wittingly or not) with him have gone about testifying in a variety of ways that God has checked out. Jesus says, “I am with you.” Satan says “He’s outta here!” Someone is lying.

Honestly, there are times when it looks like Jesus is lying, doesn’t it? When you look at the evil that is crushing the world and the people in the world, it’s understandable to think that God has abandoned us. According to a recent news article, even Mother Teresa, God’s servant to the poorest of the poor in India for so many years, lived in a dark shadow dispairing of God’s presence in her own life.

Then there are times when light dispells shadow, when we are awestruck by an expected selfless act of kindness. Teresa’s life, regardless of her inner turmoil, is a testimony to the presence of God in the world, for she was motivated by nothing other than her desire to serve Him…even when she did not feel His love or appreciation of her devotion.

What other stories of God in the world can you tell if you stop long enough to think about it?

(NB: for the sake of “full disclosure”, I didn’t manage to write this post in a single go, but I assure you that I did not give it the meditation that I said that I think it deserves.)

Asylum II

This is the second part in a series of posts about a friend of mine seeking religious asylum in the West. Part I is here. 

A different officer came to speak with us. His name is B. He was God’s man in our story. Gently B. said, “Please guys, help us so we can help you. All we want is the truth,” then he went away. A third officer came to take us to get our bags. He opened each one of them and checked every single item. He kept my papers, documents, phonebook and my mobile phone, then he took us to a holding area. The holding area was a secured place with iron doors and angry faces. We waited for five minutes then B., the friendly officer, arrived. He took us to an office where he registered our names, nationalities, date of birth and the country of our departure. He also took our fingerprints. He asked, “What are you running away from?” We told him the main points of our story, then he said “You will be held while we check that your documents are not fake.”

We were taken to another small room where my wife was  thoroughly searched. As I was waiting for my turn, an older female officer spoke with me. I was struggling to keep a grip on myself so my wife wouldn’t see me cry, but once the older woman asked me why we were here I broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. She said, “Don’t worry brother. I am a Christian and I will be praying for you both.” Then it was my turn to be searched.

When it was over, we were offered something to eat and drink. We declined. Back in the detention hall, it was cold and silent. A TV was on with the sound turned down. Time passed so slowly. We had no idea what was going to happen next. After about an hour, they took us to a clinic in the airport where x-rays were taken and we were asked some medical questions. When we were finished there, we went back to the detention hall.

Hours crawled by. My wife was shivering from the cold. I asked the security guard if they could adjust the temperature in the hall. Instead, he gave us each a large sheet of some kind of paper to cover ourselves with. We tried it, but my wife was getting worse. I asked if she could be moved to somewhere warmer. I was afraid that she might be getting sick. The guard replied rudely , “She’s sick? She should’ve stayed home! Why did she come here!” I hugged her closely and tried to warm her up. Then they called for me.

to be conintued…

Uncomfortably Numb

There was a time in my life when I felt much more intensely than I do now. About what? Practically everything, but especially about religious things. I can remember being in my early 20’s, hanging out with someone on an old Civil War battlefield and being moved to tears as I thougt about denominational division in the Church. Then there was a time in my mid 20’s,  when I lived with a missionary couple in Ukraine in close community with brothers and sisters and I had a feeling that I would have described to you at that time as “homesick for heaven”.

I’m in my late 30’s now and I simply don’t feel those kinds of things any more. If I ever think about the fragmentation of the Body of Christ, I feel resignation. It’s not going to change in my lifetime. As for that homesick feeling; it doesn’t come any more. I’m so occupied with thoughts of what’s going on here.

Granted, I can get emotional, especially when it comes to my children but in general I feel as though a great deal of my passion has burned away with my youth.

Why do you suppose that is?

Asylum I

This is the first in a series of posts about a friend of mine. I met him here in the host country early in his conversion from the dominant religion of the region to Christianity. He’s since fled the country with his wife.

The following is adapted from an e-mail. I’ve omitted information which might compromise their safety and I’ve cleaned up the English for readability. For the sake of the narrative, I’ve preserved his voice. This is a true story.

The flight was delayed three hours. Those three hours were so long, so heavy and tough. We were so tired and sleepy, and still affected by the stress we were under until we could leave in peace. All we did was pray and pray. We were both so worried but we didn’t show each other how we really felt. Honestly, I thought that things would not go well but we had no other choice. As I took a nap in my chair, the sound of my wife crying woke me up. She was shaking. I tried to be strong. I hugged her saying “Don’t worry.” We prayed again. I was praying in my heart to my Savior:“Lord, you have been with since I was a Muslim. You brought A. into my path to teach me the faith. You were with me when my family was angry with me. You were with me when I lived on the streets in a foreign country. You used me to bring my wife into your kingdom. You were with us in an amazing way last month. Please, help us now. Your children need you.” I didn’t yet feel that things would be fine, but believe me, I felt like the Lord told me that there was a lesson in this  experience that we both needed to learn. As we boarded the plane, the security guard asked to check our passports and visas. I wondered if he could see how anxious we were.

The flight was almost seven hours long. We couldn’t eat anything during the flight. I kept praying. My wife read the Bible. I could sleep only for an hour at a time. She was awake the whole flight. We didn’t talk to each other even though I hugged her closely. Yes we were scared, so scared, when we should have trusted the Lord’s promises in our life. When we finally landed in our new host country, I said in my heart, “Lord, could this trip have been any longer?”

We went out of the plane hand in hand, afraid of what might happen. We walked with everybody to passport control, where we waited in the line with almost one hundred other passengers. Fifteen minutes later, we moved to the counter to have our passports stamped. When we reached the lady at the counter, I opened the two passports, and told her, “We want to apply for asylum!” The lady looked at us both and said, “Oh God, what a day! Ok don’t worry, come with me.” She picked up two small forms and took us to a separate place in the passport control area. She left and five minutes later returned holding what appeared to be two files. An officer was with her. Holding up my passport, he came to me and asked “Is this your document?” I said that it was. The woman looked at my wife and asked “Who is she?” I told her. She signed the two forms and then disappeared with the officer for a while. We were treated so rudely by the woman and the officer that my wife started crying silently. I wanted to cry too.

to be continued…

Coming…

I’m still setting up house here. I’m playing with themes, headers and widgets, trying to figure some new things out.

I’m not sure when I’ll make the move…probably this week.

Please Stand By

This blog will become active in the near future.