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.”