Obviously, I disagree with the head of Amazon.com. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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?

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.

“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.