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?”