The Jesus Paradigm

Some Reading Hopes for the New Year, and the Book of Luke

2012-01-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm not one for new year's resolutions, but I have been finding myself assembling some intentions for reading in the next 6 months to a year. Here's what I've got so far: Frank Viola's Epic Jesus, Tullian Tchividjian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything, N.T. Wright's Simply Jesus, George MacDonald's Phantastes, the Auralia's Colors Series by a guy named Jeffrey Overstreet. I'm deep into the very intriguing Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, the first in the Mars Trilogy, a sci-fi series about the colonization of Red Planet.

As far as the Bible is concerned, I plan on spending most of my time in the book of Luke. I've spent a long time in the book of John, and then Matthew. My plan has been to do this with each Gospel- spend a couple of years just getting to know it, learning it like a new job or a best friend. So this year begins (actually it's begun already) the book of Luke.

My thoughts so far begin at the end. Though we just had Christmas, what has been on my mind has been the Resurrection narrative. I'm haunted by the tail end of the earthly ministry of the most interesting Man that ever lived. We get, in these last few pages, a look at what must have been the most startling, unbelievable, eye-opening, paradigm-shattering event in the lives of his young followers. Jesus of Nazareth lives, though he was killed, executed only days before.

Let me start by saying this. In the presence of the Risen Lord, it would have been nearly impossible for a disciple to want to talk about their joblessness, or the rising cost of health care. The text says they stood their gawking, "with joy and amazement." At a time like that, it would have been patently absurd for Thomas, having touched the hands and side of the Savior to have turned around and said, "you know guys, we really ought to try and think positive, because our thought life is going to affect how we behave." In fact, Thomas may not have been able to take his eyes off of Jesus, standing their radiant with the New Creation. If he could say anything after picking his jaw up off the floor, it probably would have been something like "He lives! He LIVES!" There were the disciples, coming off a couple days of fresh grief, listless, unsure of what to do next, afraid of being hunted down, and probably weighed down by some serious guilt. And there was Jesus, the world's True Light, untouched by sin and death, opening the Prophets to them, showing them how the Kingdom has come, and telling them that though he was about to leave once again, he would be with them until the end of the age.

Each time he shows up, it is completely surprising. And each time he shows up, he says a few words, and then vanishes, just as unexpectedly. I think there's something to be said about this, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to verbalize it yet. This is Resurrection we're talking about. This is not normative humanity as we been conditioned to see it, but it's also not transcendence above humanity- it's True Humanity. He's real, he's eating fish, but he's coming and going as he pleases. He's showing them their doubts are unfounded. He's directing the future of the Church. He is now absorbing all the glory and honor that creation has to give. He's telling them that he's won.

In the last portion of Luke we get a portrait of the eschatological Kingdom, coming forth from the tomb, going among the people, and then seeming to disappear, yet staying present. Jesus rises, Jesus presents a never-before-seen humanity to the disciples, and then Jesus leaves. Yet he doesn't leave. He's still in the flesh. He's still "here." At the end of Luke we get a brilliant picture of eschatology- that which is so expected and hoped for in the future that it actually becomes real now, only to let us know that the "real" thing is still yet to come. Like an uncle we dearly love that is coming to visit after a long absence. Though we know it'll be today, we're not sure of the exact time of his arrival, and so the preparation grips us- the cooking of a meal and the selecting of just the music for the occasion. And the expectation overwhelms us- the joy of imagining his face at our door, his voice greeting us joyfully. The remembering of things he said and did in times past. These things take hold of us so tightly that it's hard to remember that he's still not here yet. Because he...well, he is here. Isn't he?

Pastors and Presence, and a Bonhoeffer Quote

2011-12-15T09:10:00.000-08:00

There's been some good back and forth lately about the nature of pastoring, with different models being proffered, and some discussion over which type of pastor is needed at this moment. Mark Galli got things rolling with this. Tod Bolsinger argued against more chaplains, in favor of a new kind of missionary-leader. Then Chaplain Mike wrote in praise of the chaplain pastor.

Certainly not my area of expertise, but my two cents is, this is not like personality types. Many are going to say that if a guy has the gifts and persona to grow a huge church, then that's what he should do, and the tasks of meeting with everyday people-- to know them and shepherd them-- can be secondary. This is not going to cut it. To this idea, in happy contrast for the little people, stands the very word "pastor." A pastor pastors, or else he's not a pastor, it would seem. Jesus' "big" work was interrupted many times by the "small" work of individual attention, of paradigm shifting for the everyday people. This can't be over-simplified as one particular task, but one thing it's not is carelessness for the sheep, or de-personalization of the work at hand. One pastor I know recently said he doesn't want his church to get bigger than will allow him to know everyone personally. This warmed my heart.

I would sum this up as the ministry of presence, and it's central to the yearning of Advent, and the celebration of Christmas. Being there is the Way of Jesus, of the Incarnation. The awareness of Jesus' here-ness is what changes us, and this is accomplished by his Coming. That's what the Kingdom announcement is all about. For myself, this is a very attractive alternative to the subject I've been haunted by in the last few posts.

Bonhoeffer, in no uncertain terms, makes the issue's weight quite clear (can't he ever just lighten up?) through Matthew 9-10. The last paragraph has much to say about this:

The Savior looks with compassion on his people, the people of God. he could not rest satisfied with the few who had heard his call and followed. He shrank from the idea of forming an exclusive little coterie with his disciples. Unlike the founders of the great religions, he had no desire to withdraw them from the vulgar crowd and initiate them into an esoteric system of religion and ethics. He had come, he had worked and suffered for the sake of all his people...

Where is the good shepherd they needed so badly? What good was it when the scribes herded the people into the schools, when the devotees of the law sternly condemned sinners without lifting a finger to help them? What use were all these orthodox preachers and expounders of the Word, when they were not filled by boundless pity and compassion for God's maltreated and injured people? What they need is good shepherds, good "pastors." "Feed my lambs" was the last charge Jesus gave to Peter. The Good Shepherd protects his sheep against the wolf, and instead of fleeing he gives his life for the sheep. He knows them all by name and loves them. He knows their distress and their weakness. He heals the wounded, gives drink to the thirsty, sets upright the falling, and leads them gently, not sternly, to pasture. He leads them on the right way. He seeks the one lost sheep, and brings it back to the fold....

No man dare presume to come forward and offer himself [as a laborer for the harvest] on his own initiative, not even the disciples themselves. Their duty is to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers at the right moment, for the time is ripe...

They are not left free to choose their own methods or adopt their own conception of their task. Their work is to be Christ-work, and therefore they are absolutely dependent on the will of Jesus. Happy are they whose duty is fixed by such a precept, and who are therefore free from the tyranny of their own ideas and calculations.

This Stuff Needs to Get Out

2011-12-07T11:52:00.001-08:00

Iwas going to write another whole post on the subject of the last twoposts, but I'll just throw out some quotations I've run across. Fromthe NewReformation Press, a Lutheran blog:

Ican’t imagine being on a never ending treadmill of “maintainingmy salvation through my own constant active efforts to be better thanthe sinful guy I was yesterday”!

Youcan say that again.

MichaelHorton wrote arecent Christianity today article, on why Jesus as ahistorically separate person from ourselves remainsthe substance of Christianity, and not some hazy, ill-defined"Jesus-power" inside of the believer, leading us by our ownreason and moral conviction. Jesus as Incarnation, that whichwe celebrate this season, marginalizes our constant need to resort toinwardly focused spiritual adjustment programs in the service of whatwe've deemed as sanctification:

Ourinner self is not the playground of "spirit," but thehaunted plains on which we build our towers of Babel. In other words,our hearts are idol factories, in bondage to sin and spin.

Themistake we make is that "now that I'm born again, my heart iscorrected, so I can go ahead and whip all that sin in my life." Epic fail. The heart is still a "haunted plain,"and while the Spirit takes ground on it gradually, it'ssafe to assume that your default position is idolatry, that onlydeath will free you, and that you can't be trusted to "work foryour sanctification" as many assume. The end result of this is not some worm theology, it's joy in who Jesus is and what he's done.

Here'swhat Gerharde Forde says about this:

Talkabout sanctification is dangerous. It is too seductive for the oldbeing...

Theresult of this kind of thinking is generally disastrous. We aredriven to make an entirely false distinction between justificationand sanctification in order to save the investment the old being hasin the moral system. Justification is a kind of obligatory religiouspreliminary which is rendered largely ineffective while we talk aboutgetting on with the truly “serious” business of becoming“sanctified” according to some moral scheme or other. We becomethe actors in sanctification. This is entirely false. According toScripture, God is always the acting subject, even in sanctification.

"Holinesshype" is the lemon juice in the eye of a Gospel conversation. If there's anything that's going to kill joy and awe over thegospel, it's being told that there's a danger that we're going tobackslide if we don't tie up all the moral loose ends in our life,and that it won't happen without our devotion and effort. Thiscan be subtle. A simple shift in emphasis. Think aboutthis the next time you're in one of these conversations. Seehow quickly it degenerates from Jesus Christ, the Risen and exalted King, into talk about us and our faith or our progress. What would happen if, every time someone decided tomove the subject from "Jesus is amazing" to "how wecan fix ourselves and our faith," we pointed it out and broughtit back to Jesus. One could become unpopular very quickly. Butever since I've begun to notice these subtle, uncalled-for shifts,it's been like sand grating into my eyeball. Hopefully, this won't be too painful...

Spiritual Progress & The Sanctification Mistake. Aka "Grace is wonderful and all, but what about becoming holy?"

2011-12-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

Gotta admit, the Mockingbird blog really has some fine content.

There's a piece today on The Rhetoric of Progress. It's a good follow-up to my last quotation from Tullian Tchividjian's book Jesus + Nothing = Everything. It covers a theme I gravitate towards, partly because it's where I've come to recently, and also because I know several people that are affected by this rhetoric, some pretty seriously. On some level I suppose, it's what affects all of us. I've certainly made the sanctification mistake a time or two, and will probably make it again, it rings true to me that "rhetoric of Christian progress" is largely based on mythology. Meaning that when we begin to talk about our "progress in whatever," we are very noticeably talking about...ourselves! And that's the exact opposite of what sanctified people do, most of the time. But when we are engulfed in the sanctification mistake, Jesus is a footnote in our lives, and our personal holiness is far more interesting than his.

Here's a section from Mockingbird piece:

The logic underlying the rhetoric is the same across traditions even if the actual words are not. Evangelicals speak in a progress rhetoric equally well-developed and theologically imprecise. They talk of “going deeper” and “growing stronger,” of “godly living” and “taking the next step,” of deriding “spectator Christians” and urging people to “get connected.” Some Reform-minded Christians, guarding against the impression that the disciple’s works contribute to progress, speak of “growing in faith” or “deepening one’s understanding of faith.” Yet they simultaneously emphasize the importance of intentionality and obedience, which pours an unintended meaning into their phrases of choice.

One way that unintended meaning speaks to us, my friends, is through our conditioning by a consumer culture and the Christian celebrity-mania that drives much of public ministry. Preachers, speakers, singers, revivalists. The American Idol complex awaits the progress Christian- "I'm constantly on a stage, and I'm being measured by my performance." (And naturally, the guys we watch doing this, the guys who make a living onstage, are used to looking pretty good. They're trained to do so.) "When I 'get there' I'll look and feel just like [insert Christian pop icon here]." And we have a mind-boggling array of "ministries" that will assist us in the worship of progress, using any means possible.

But then we do something that Awesome Preacher Guy would never do, and it becomes painfully clear that we haven't made it. Yeah, God might approve of me and all, but I should still try to put my faith into practice, and people are supposed to be able see the fruit. Back to square one.

Those of us who are far more hip than this may word things differently, and present a more nuanced me-centrism, but the principle is the same. I'm the point, God's looking at me, and it's important that I at least try to be good. Define being good as you please. Line up all the requisite principles, methods, and imperatives that make it sound "not legalistic." The ringing voice of the Father that said "This is my Son with whom I am ever delighted," now seeks to say the same thing about me, though he may not if he finds a problem. Or even if he does, my church friends might not. The notion is that the "Christian ideal" we're running after is basically characterized as a position or responsibility we fulfill (or ought to) and that part of that responsibility is dwelling on our personal progress.

Take K for instance. K plays in a Christian band, faithfully attends church, reads his Bible, and seeks to have an edifying presence among his brothers. And he often does. He's sharp and witty, but he's nearly always aware that he may be violating someone's standard of how far is too far, of some boundary that must not be transgressed. He'd like to write a novel, but wonders how he could incorporate themes of his faith into it, as a testimony. He's smart, but he's aware that one can become "too intellectual" and thus walk in what is simply "head knowledge." Deep down, there's a constant question of whether or not his life, his desires, his actions, are lining up with the Christian ideal. This type of scrutiny is commended by his peers as "sanctification."

But these questions don't lead us anywhere that's creatively honest, or faithful to our own story. They are, quite honestly, a compromise, in that their destination is perpetual self-involvement. We stand at the edge of our imagination and see it as a vast chasm into which we dare not leap because someone might object to a cuss-word, or call us lazy or something. We might justify this as a "concern for our weaker brothers," when what would really make the weaker brother strong is seeing our relentless freedom to be human. But usually the real reason for not offending another with the human reality of our lives is that we're desperately grabbing for the nearest fig-leaf. We're self-important, it feels good, and it's justifiable under this banner of progress and holiness.

To be gloriously imaginative without a thought as to whether our work is describably "Christian." Or to how it will be received, what will happen to our reputation. Or to be a mess, if that's what we are- to be a mess in a world for which Jesus was crucified and rose. That would be honesty. And it would be the groundn on which it's possible to make more of Jesus than ourselves. The seasons come, the seasons go. Yet this "progress theology" asserts that "If I'm truly seeking with all my heart, spring will come a month early." Foolishness. Utter folly. Not only folly, but narcissistic folly.

And that narcissism is labelled, as often as not, sanctification.

I've often heard it said that those words "this is my Son, with who I am delighted," are for us now that we are in Christ. And that this is the "big secret" to progress in sanctification. Well, they are true, but they're not the key. They won't get us where we're headed because in time, this notion will only feed the narcissism that we never wanted to let go of to begin with. You see, we're still the center of the picture. No, I'm afraid we must, like John the Baptist, disappear from sight altogether.

What God the Father does is he still looks at Jesus, and still says of him "I am always delighted in my Son. Isn't he amazing? He is the Man I have been waiting for." That's what he says about Jesus, and will keep saying about him, forever.

Quote from Tullian's Book

2011-11-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

Thank you Tullian Tchividjian, for this clear picture of a common false dichotomy that is so often presented to us. From Jesus + Nothing = Everything (discovered at Mockingbird):

It’s part of a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace… This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace.

I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”)… Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.

When we believe, deep down, that God’s blessing depends on how well we’re behaving, we wither and groan under the heavy burden of self-reliance. In this performancism, we eventually figure out that being the star of our own show actually makes life a tragedy. When life is all about us—what we can do, how we perform—our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves leads to despair not deliverance.

I've said this before, though maybe less clearly. It's a theological stall-out of disastrous proportions to frame this issue with "two possible mistakes" requiring that we do a balancing act between them. Jesus is all. The Cross answers every type of sin you can think of. There is no other way but grace, and everything is riding on it, or else everything burns to the ground. No matter what problem we're talking about.

Too many people wimp out big-time when it comes to holding forth on this glorious truth as it comes under attack. Tullian doesn't seem to pull the punch in this book, as most are inclined to do when speaking of the grace of God in Jesus. Reminds me of Brennan Manning. Nice.

Also here's the story of Tullian's trial by fire at Coral Ridge Presbyterian where he succeeded culture war icon James Kennedy as pastor, in which an all-out slander war was waged against him and his family for things like, you know, not preaching politics. And not wearing a robe. Church-wrecking things like that. A true tale of the triumph of the gospel. That's a storm I wouldn't want to weather, brother.

I find it compelling that the phrase "Jesus + Nothing = Everything" seems to have led his church to eliminate the 2 service "contemporary vs. traditional" split, instead of accommodate people's cultural preferences. Interesting.

Favorite quote from the interview: "There is a fresh I-don't-care-ness that accompanies belief in the gospel."

Maybe I'll go to this conference in February.

World's Funniest Blogger Alert

2011-10-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ok. The "Whatever Happened to..." award of the decade goes to:

Brant Hansen.

So out of nowhere, I stumble upon a Frank Viola link to the blog in my Facebook feed. It leads to Brant Hansen's NEW BLOG, called "Brant's Blog." (Actually, how new is this? How long have you been hiding from us?) People, this is like Christmas in October. Brant Hansen, the world's funniest blogger, formerly thought to be extinct, IS STILL BLOGGING!!

Check out his recent commentary of Christian video games. Rare form, Brant. Rare form.

Sidebar, you just got a lot awesomer.

The Sweep of the Story

2011-10-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Well Scot McKnight, who I come to admire more the more I read, seems to be getting it right these days. I haven't read his latest book, King Jesus Gospel, but it's a good bet that I will (aside: a book without airbrushed faces, waves crashing on a beach, or someone with their hands raised on the cover = probably a bit more intelligent than the average reader is going to bother with. Hopefully not, though) The gist of this recent post is the subject of the book:

Now I want to press this harder: the fundamental orientation of the soterian gospel is about the benefits “I” get if I respond. The fundamental orientation of the Story gospel is not about “my” benefits but about Jesus. Embracing the Story gospel brings benefits, to be sure, but we embrace this Story because we embrace Jesus, not because we get something. The entire soterian approach is shaped by benefits.

If the fundamental proclamation is "personal" salvation-- of any kind (sorry, Calvinism vs. Arminianism has never been the issue here)-- than the life that proceeds from that starting point will be notably and sub-Biblically "personal" in its orientation. Can you say me-centered? When the Gospel is about Jesus, for Jesus, people will only be found looking at their "saved-ness" when the Story happens to take us there, and even when that does happen, there is no chance that it will leave us there, because it's got a Jesus-saturated conclusion that it's driving towards (listen up, John MacArthur).

What does this mean for the practice of the church? I think, and I'm just being arbitrary here, there could be a lot of things to say about this, but I think it means that Christians will have to (re-)discover an interest in history. In the unfolding story that includes, for the most part, other people's lives that aren't really dependent on our choices at all, and how they as a whole relate to God in Jesus Christ. And the slack-jawed wonder that provokes. The Gospel, if it belongs to God (as I think McKnight and others are suggesting) is something that we are not to see as locating itself "in" our lives with us at its center. IOW, for thousands of years the redemptive, salvation sweep of the Trinity's mission in the world has been surging forward under its own power. That is, the power of God. Any time you present people with personal choices to "believe" it, or "make it real for your life," or "get from your head into your heart," you may be effectively suggesting that Moses' deliverance from Egypt for instance, or better yet- Jesus' Incarnation, is dependent on your choice to believe God, or to be good, or to order your spiritual practices correctly, or to walk in the Spirit, or whatever. The absurdity of this thinking is humbling, but it's something a lot of people are going to have to come to terms with.

Stick that in your "apply the Bible to your life" pipe and smoke it!

A Rather Long Post On Love, The Law, Mr. ASP, Jesus the Man, Sin's True Nature, and the Lesson From John the Apostle

2011-10-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

Well I just read Craig Bubeck's post entitled No Stinking Up God's Place! at the iMonk blog, and I'd have to say that it's a piece worth blaring from the rooftops. The iMonk himself would be proud to read words like this on his venerated website. The thrust of the post could perhaps be summed up this way:

Perhaps most significantly, we tend to want to make sin about performance, rather than relationship—we want to exclusively see sin as a verb... The real evil of sin is far more than falling short of rules and laws—it is that anything should be done on one’s own, independent from God. It’s my independent will, not merely my short-falling actions, that deeply offends God.

In other words, the God who hates sin, as we're told, hates it because it is, ultimately, hatred for Him.

Let me say something that will reveal something about my theological position (or whatever), and possibly be the kind of thing that offends people who fancy we ought to "get the 10 commandments back in schools" and such: I think it's fantastic that God gave Israel the ten commandments, but he sure didn't give them to me.

You heard me.

Perhaps I should have started with what the Law IS: it's a fascinating portion of the Great Story, it's a crucial part of God's self-revelation to his people at the time, it's a fairly low-res picture of the character of God himself and his will for humanity, and it's an interesting commentary on the nature of morality in human society, particularly the human society through which God planned to bless all nations. But it is not the thing that is set before me as a moral compass.

What Craig gets at in his post is that the defining factor of sin (and conversely anything we could lump under the label of "holiness") is not the violation of ordinances but in the rejection of a Person.

Now interestingly, I can go to any number of churches and hear a bunch of rhetoric about relationship. That's not rare. I pretty much expect that in the culture of American evangelicalism. What's sadly comical is that I can turn around and the same person who uses the relationship mantra will be found consistently measuring sin using a yardstick other than God in Jesus Christ. Despite that this is the yardstick that he himself used.

Christ crucified. That's right, you knew it was going to come around to this, didn't you? Let's do a case study: Angry Street Preacher at a downtown festival. We have loads of them every year where I live in the Bible belt. They're the talk of the town for the following 2 weeks or so.

The gist of the rant by Mr. A-S-P is that we've fallen short of God's holiness, and deserve eternal suffering (presumably anyone attending these festivals who is not preaching is summarily going to hell). We deserve hell. We are going there in fact, and quickly, because we've done things like drink too much, or sleep around, or what have you. The eventual nod is given to Jesus Christ as being the Savior in whom we must trust to escape hell, but more is made of hell than of Jesus. Now, I understand that Jesus saves me from hell. I wouldn't exactly argue that. Here's where it gets sticky: Mr. ASP has used the Hebrew Law (usually the 10 commandments) to define our sin. We've coveted, we've committed adultery, we've lied, and therefore we've fallen short of God's requirements-- we're sinners.

What's implicit here is that sin is best described as behaviors. Bad behaviors, like riding bikes naked through town to protest Republicans and such. Lustful, idolatrous behaviors that break rules. We were doing just fine, then we sinned, and now we're "sinners." I would submit that this is far beneath what we learn in Scripture. Break rules we certainly do. But what we learn in Scripture seems to be that God is not really pointing to the violation of his moral code in order to convince us that we're sinners. No, just like everything else we are to be convinced of, he is pointing to his Son, for whom the moral standard is an icon.

That the Son is simply a dispenser of pithy advice or encouraging sound bytes is one of the most devious crimes we commit against him. Among so many other things, we are convicted of our sin- of its ultimate consequences- by the crucified King. The passion of Christ has been to bear our sin. In other words we are, by sinning, extra-temporally hurting him. This, if we use him as the canonical reference point for every truth in Scripture (as we ought to), is what we truly find when we look at the Law, i.e. the 10 commandments.

The inevitable ASPy outcome of this is a remarkably predictable legalism/gnosticism in which he doesn't go far enough in his condemnation of sin (isn't that interesting?). Christ crucified is not seen as the measure of man's sin...Instead, satisfied with whiny do-right statements and schizophrenic behavior adjustment programs, he will, once given a convert or two, only encourage them to lazily lounge far behind the driving, pulsing drumbeat of the New Testament, that we have crucified God (and that he won anyway), in favor of "what should I do in such-and-such a situation" type questions.

Lets compare the "you broke the 10 commandments" technique with the book of Acts. I'll just hit my observations quickly and let you do any further research if you'd like. In Acts, there is a clear announcement that is going forth from the Apostles. It's something on the order of this:

this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

"This Jesus whom you crucified" it says elsewhere. This is the sin of Israel, and by extension, the world- that God visited us, and we murdered him. Not only that, but he's so much bigger than our rejection- our murder!-- of him, that the evil we dished out to him didn't really do its job correctly. (Evil isn't just not good, it's also not very good at being evil!) And here we come to Mr. ASP's second, perhaps even more serious watering-down of the message. There is no announcement of the triumph of God over the death we delivered to him. "Amazing! This crucified Christ was raised from the dead? How can this be! A miracle must be afoot!" ...is noticeably not really present, or at least not a major theme, in what we hear at these rantings-into-the-megaphone. I might suggest something disturbing about this: the implicit effect of refusing airtime to the Resurrection may be that we aren't actually convinced Jesus was crucified...at least not humanly, not in the same sphere of existence as we are. Not "in our neighborhood" as the Message puts it.

Doubt this? How often do we come across ideas of the cross that are so epic-ly divinized and spiritualized that they generate a near fairy-tale image of Jesus in the mind? Jesus the super-human dying to work some sort of magic, or to present us with a cosmic choice, or perhaps to represent the broader theme of human suffering and redemption mythologically, or perhaps literally dying, but only to accomplish some sort of theological feat...Jesus with a strange glow about him and angels flying around. No wonder Todd Bentley got a footing. What need is there for a resurrection when your image of the Son is that he "theoretically" died on some cosmic plane, as many of these scenes suggest? This is not what happened, folks. The slaughter of the Lamb was just that, a slaughter. It was a heinous crime committed by somebody, against somebody. Somebody who, were you to see a photo of him a few months before, you would not have thought remarkable at all. That's because he was perfectly human. Likewise, the Resurrection was not some sort of ghostly, spiritual, energy reconstitution that we "take part in" when we do as we ought to- it was the body of a dead man that became alive again. This is the glad announcement of Easter- that God raised Jesus from the dead, vindicating him as the victim of mad injustice, source of forgiveness and salvation, and worshiped King for eternity! Death has died! Why would I worship anyone else? Unless I never really hear about the Resurrection...

That Jesus is a man, the True Man, may be one of the most implicitly ignored realities we've been given, and to our own peril. The church has discovered this the hard way a number of times in her history, and it's nothing short of stupidity to remain aloof from it- let gnosticism in the door, and you'll soon be dealing with personality cults, body-spirit dualism, fabricated tales of wild phenomena, super-spiritual narcissism, and the rubric for every kind of indulgence the flesh can dream up. And all while your street preachers are "preaching against sin." The irony is so, so thick.

Now, what does all this have to do with my original point, that I'm really not interested in being measured against the 10 commandments? Or of Craig's declaration that sin is a violation of love, not behavior standards?

The key is in the Man- that the law is summed up in love, and that Jesus is the embodiment of the one we ought to love, the one we rebelled against. Therefore the conviction, and the reversal, must come from Jesus himself. He is now the measure of sin, and of obedience. The effect of faith on the conscience is not really to fix our eating habits or to keep us from making babies when we shouldn't. At least not until we see these things as decisions driven by the engine of love. It's to convince us of our complicity in the crucifixion of the One sent to us, and to change our minds, and to provoke thanksgiving that he would submit to such a death in order to reach across the divide and reunite man with God. In other words, to love Jesus is to obey, and thus to keep the Law.

Is it really a surprise that John the Apostle is the one who declares this to us in technicolor? That "this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." After all, who was it that stood at the foot of the cross (out of all the apostles) and saw his master die? Who was it that tore across the field to the tomb where his dearest friend was laid, finding it empty? Who stood with the Human one, Christ, ate with him, was washed by him, learned from him, was rebuked by him, watched him bleed and suffocate, witnessed him risen, and finally watched him depart to be with the Father? It's no accident that John is the one who was considered Jesus' closest friend, that he is the one who watched him die, the one defending the fledgling church against gnosticism, the one summing up righteousness and obedience in the word love. To future readers of John's story, the cause-effect connections here will be clear as a bell. God-as-Man provokes a human reaction, and it's by this that our holiness, or unholiness, is measured.

This revelation is at least three things. It's good news to anyone who has heard that obedience is law-keeping, the meeting of a list of extraneous requirements which endlessly compound themselves on one another like Rabbinic midrash. That diets, datebooks, and debt payoff are the essence of the good life. It completely up-ends the notion of holiness as winning, getting rich, maintaining comfort, garnering approval, becoming more spiritual/religious, "staying pure until marriage," or being more doctrinally informed. It's good news that the privilege and life of the believer is to know and love the Jesus who bothered to show up. That the only requirement is that which we knew all along was the most satisfying thing we could ever have. Thank God!

Second, it's devastation for anyone who has built the church's "house" of wood, hay, and stubble. In fact, it's the torch to the pyre of deeds that are designed to do anything but glorify the Risen King. Glory is not shared, it is all his own, and the works of the law will be reckoned with lawless ones. Only love will survive.

And may I suggest that, lastly, it's an excuse look once again at Jesus. To discover him afresh, to find that the True Law himself is really as interesting, as gripping, as lovely to behold as all the old hymns tell us he is, and much more. That the stretch of history lies within him, that the smell of sin is swept away by his fragrance, and that his love is something into which angels long to look.

The Angled Mirror: "Behold the Man!"

2011-09-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Been watching some NT Wright videos in the last couple days- and found a couple of really interesting observations that are new to me:

1.) Genesis 1, read by an ancient near-easterner, would be understood as a description of the building of a temple. God, in the six days of creation, is building himself a place to dwell. As temple-goers would note, the final work he does in creation is to create an image of himself, an eikon, and place it in the temple. This image would assist the worshippers by reminding them of who it is they are there for, of what the goal of their worship is. (In addition to the spiritual motif, you could see a political version of this, Wright says, in the far reaches of the Roman empire, where statues of Caesar were erected to remind the colonies of whom they owed allegiance to.) This eikon, in Genesis, is Adam. Man is the "royal priest" who rules creation by dispensing the will of God, and reflects creation's glory back to it's Creator in praise of God. Man, in Genesis, is designed to be an "angled mirror," then, reflecting God into creation, and Creation back to God. Remember, this happens on the sixth day.

2.) Fast forward to John 19. Jesus' final day. The Preparation for the Passover. Friday. The sixth day of the week. Jesus stands accused. He has been brought before Pilate. The torture has already begun, the crown of the thorns pressed onto his head, the purple robe draped over him in mockery. Finding no guilt in him, Pilate brings him before the crowds and declares "Behold the Man!"

Mindblowing.

(Side note on Pontius Pilate: This stuff gives us a perspective on him as being way out of his league without even knowing it. I always want to hold out hope for this unwitting Roman mogul whenever I read about him in the Gospels.)

The "temple" being built now is the architecture of salvation, the new creation, a community of saints with Jesus as the eikon, the final placement, the image of God, presented to the inhabitants for worship. A temple of living stones, in which Jesus will dwell. The true Man does what Adam failed to, what Israel failed to, and like an angled mirror reflects the glory of God (the suffering savior) to the temple goers, and reflects the praise of the worshippers back to God. The true Royal Priest is here.

if you care to watch the whole thing, here it is:

Alan Hirsch on Centralized Power Structures, Communitas, and Disciples vs. Consumers

2011-09-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know why no one's said this before, but it makes perfect sense: "centralized structures are more vulnerable to heresy than de-centralized structures. A centralized structure attracts people who like power...and magnifies their influence throughout the system."

Communitas: a community formed in the context of an ordeal, a challenge, a mission...

Middle class obsession with safety and security, indeed Alan!

On the "disciples" that the world is making..."trillions of dollars are put into it to manipulate our sense of self...this is the task of advertising is to create desire...You cannot build a church on consumers."

My favorite one:

A Sanctification Lecture (not)

2011-07-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Romans 4:5

Well, it seems apathy for a blog can't contain the need to write, so here goes again. 'Sbeen a while. And I'd like to try serving a bit of the stew that's been simmering lately, actually for a number of years, but I don't feel I've communicated it real well yet in any form.

It seems that the wider discussion on the way of Jesus, on the life of faith, the Christian's life, is peppered with urgent statements from concerned onlookers about "living the life," or however you want to put it. Incarnating the character of Christ might be a pretty inoffensive way of saying it. Some of the more crass, ridiculous and sub-scriptural ways of putting this involve elaborate methodologies, legalistic programs and guarantees of results if steps 1-5 are followed just so. Even so far as to introduce pathetically false goals like getting richer or being more well-thought of. Snake oil. Horse-vomit.

It's a bit of a hard message to hear, really, that we shouldn't be bothering with these kinds of nonsense. But we did this at church last Sunday, and have been doing it for a long time. And what I'd like to put on the table here is that, in at least one way, there is no legitimate discussion about 'sanctification,' as we call it. It's all idolatry.

Now wait a second, the discussion about sanctification doesn't have to be idolatry. Ok, ok, maybe. But I'm tempted to say it's idolatry if the the subject of the lecture/discussion is sanctification. The worthwhile discussion about sanctification is actually a discussion about Jesus. And I'm nearly convinced that spiritual discussions about living the Christian life are games of Russian roulette, ones in which you may not blow your own head off with expectations for results and pragmatic attention to your own work, or the "part you play" in the process, but there's a pretty good chance that you're practicing a me-centered form of spirituality, even if undetectably, and therefore, doing your best on some level to commit suicide by relating to God under the law. This issue is a perpetual source of conflict throughout the history of the church I realize, and I'm not going to reintroduce it as if it's something new, or as if we haven't heard all the arguments yet, but I am going to put my cards on the table here. What I'm trying say is....

There's a difference between acknowledging that sacntification(or whatever you wanna call it) happens, and having lengthy discussion about its nature, delving into the psychology of it, formulating plans for it, and giving it your commitment. The first is Scripture. The second is, most likely, idolatry. And one of the most pandemic forms of Christian idolatry I can think of, no less.

Let me give one more qualification, and then give you the rub on sanctification, and I'll try not to commit idolatry. We all practice a form of learning, of growth in our understanding of "how to." But the playing field is real life, not church meetings or spiritual discussions. If I don't water the garden, the plants will die. I better change the oil in the car. Who's going to do the laundry?-- I'm busy cooking dinner. How much flour do I put in this cake?

That, as far as I can see, is sanctification. Or it's the way we should be talking about it if we're going to bother talking about it at all. And what's more, if we're attending to our growth, especially the "deeply spiritual" kind, during the church meeting, the Bible study, etc, then we can probably pack it in. There's no real reason to believe that worship is taking place. If, that is, sanctification or any of its parts, packages, or practices, are preoccupying our attention. (how's that for alliteration?)

What we do anywhere from 40-80 hours a week is to try and make life happen. The way we want it to. Even laziness has this as its goal. These goals, and how to make them happen, preoccupy our minds, and much more deeply our existential outlook, subconsciously conditioning the manner in which we go about everything in our day. They are constantly giving me a reason to do(or not do) what I'm doing (or not doing) and act on these convictions, mostly without thinking. The goals are seeds that produce fruit containing their own DNA. The taste of the fruit testifies to the good or evil of what we've sown. We reap what we sow.

No one really denies this. But here's where the moralist gets separated from the Christian, or the mature from the immature. The new creation from the flesh. The immature moralist (flesh) takes this condition and says "So we should change our outlook! Have a positive attitude! Set your mind! Reform your goals! Give generously! Be upright in your thoughts! We reap what we sow, so we'd better sow good seed!"

This is a sanctification lecture. It's the content of most Christian books on the bestseller list and, I daresay, most sermons. What's ironic, I find, is that in almost any case you want to look at, such-and-such a teacher and their respective movements are crowing about the failure of Christians everywhere to "live consistently with their beliefs," or "put feet to their faith" or some such. Even as all the other ones are saying the exact same thing and presenting their case for how it's done. It's downright comical. It's crowd of people shouting at an empty room to quiet down. It's a chorus of harmonies with no melody, and therefore an unrecognizable song.

If I'm going to worship God- through word, sacrament, music, liturgy, or anything-- it's going to be a God who commands and compels my attention, and the attention that we give to our sanctification is quite noticably not on this God. Christ, while he certainly does sanctify his people, is designed to be the object of attention. What he gives is not given to be an object of attention. Just a signature- something that draws attention back to him. In other words, why are we talking about your pornography problem? Or the fact that you overcame your pornography problem? These may be slightly interesting, but...

...not as interesting as Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. I will say this categorically about everything you can possibly experience in life. Tongues, prophecies, healings, helpings, victories, defeats, epiphanies, blindnesses, baptisms, and burns. The life more abundant is his life, not yours. And you think far too highly of yourself.

I really don't care what version of the sanctification lecture your giving, or whether you use the hard edge or the soft, easy-going one, this is always the case. And even given the prospect of a perfectly correct paradigm, a thoroughly exciting discussion, and quality results, I'm still not interested. Not, at least, during the church meeting, in the Bible study, in the time of worship. Certainly not during communion. And while we're at it, how bout we cancel it in the form of "spiritual talk" altogether, and just talk about how to operate the lawnmower? That would be sanctification, as I see it, moreso than devising a psychology/spirituality of repentance for behavior correction. And this is coming from someone who has read a rather tall stack of books on the matter. Including some good ones.

Here's the rub, people, here's why this is hard to hear:

If the best you can do when Jesus is displayed as crucified and risen is to wonder what's in this for you, or "how do I 'take hold' of this so that I'll bear fruit?" then you are operating squarely in the category of enemy of God.

As I've said before "yeah-but"-ing the Gospel is always idolatry. Because it's effectively like being in the position of John the Disciple - before the cross, watching his friend and teacher and savior die - and in that moment of blinding tragedy, demanding things of him. Utterly ludicrous. But it's flabbergasting how frequently I hear talk that amounts to this, whitewashed as spirituality, holiness, and sanctification. Maturity. Growth. Mark my words, the one who places value on sanctification in any form, but is able to change the subject when presented with the Gospel is categorically a liar. If we are ever presented with Christ crucified, and manage to ask something like "yeah, but how can I really believe this, so I can see the fruit?" then the case, for that moment, is closed. We have chosen to despise the God who showed up. Can there be any sanctification in such a person?

This condition of hardness towards the Gospel is, of course, all of us at some point in time, and many of us most of the time. Thankfully, mercies are new every morning, and the next moment(the next sin?) is another opportunity to see Christ crucified, and to be crucified with him. I believe, Lord help my unbelief!

Another irony of all this is that ignoring sanctification in favor of the grace of God in Christ is often considered an easy way out, whereas trying to figure out holiness is thought to be a more serious Christianity. The reverse is actually the case- the sanctification lecture is nearly always a watering down of the faith. Why? Quite simply, because it's far more difficult to watch a man die and realize that you're responsible, that his blood is on your hands, than it is to change an addictive behavior. That is why it's not the easy way out. This is the choice we're presented with. Over and over.

I believe Dietrich Bonhoeffer has it here. If you'd like to see a proper treatment to the problem of wishy-washy grace, let me refer you to chapter 1 of The Cost of Discipleship. The issue in these situations is nearly always a "de-Christ-ified" version of grace. A cross-less savior. Not, as people will throw around, this notion of "license."

And that's why sanctification is, basically, irrelevant.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,¹⁰nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Cor 6:9-11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgZjARAykjk

Four More "Of's" and the Face of God

2011-02-10T13:10:00.001-08:00

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Cor 4:6 ESV

"Let there be light" was what God said in the beginning. It dispelled the darkness. The Creator, in the flesh, said "let there be light" to those whose lives were shrouded in the darkness of sin. What is this 'light?' Knowledge. What kind of knowledge? Of glory. Who's glory? God's. Where is this glory seen and known? The face of Jesus Christ.

What's in a face? I surmised awhile back that Compassion International puts the faces of orphans in need on their advertisements because nothing is really compelling like another human being. People will more likely come to the rescue of a face, than a number, a statistic, or even a verbal description. Really, you can see this method at work in any good advertisement. Faces- laughing, smiling, satisfied faces. This is how you extol the qualities of a product- show the face of someone who has used it and is satisfied.

This gets at something much deeper in the psyche- something fundamentally human- the need for connection with other humans. The need to been seen and accepted by others, and the need to pour out one's own love and acceptance out to others. This is why the Gospel is human, not merely a method or a mechanism.

I heard it again yesterday. A well-known, best-selling pastor got the Gospel wrong. Not only is he well-known, he's well-known for being smart, Biblically able, and conservative. And he said that the Gospel is...and then he described something having to do with what an individual's faith should look like. Faith is not the Gospel, Jesus is. Not quite conservative after all, eh?

The Gospel is the human face of God, Jesus Christ, experiencing everything that humans experience, and then saving us by dying and rising. In the flesh. He did this so that we might know him, because we cannot "know" an interior posture(like 'relationship'), or an airy God-concept (like 'sovereignty'). His command is to know him and abide in him. Yet this is not the Gospel. The Gospel, the face of Jesus Christ, is what is before us when we are abiding. There can be no mistake. Neither do we abide in our relationship with him. 'Relationship' is merely a descriptor. We only see people, not our relationships with them.

Rest assured, what converted Paul, and what struck him blind, was the face of Jesus. And when we go to be with him, we will see...not a list of statements, or the nature of true faith, but a human with a face looking back at us, one that has endured crucifixion so that we could be there.

The Four "Of's"

2011-02-09T09:17:00.001-08:00

The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Cor 4:4, ESV

Q: What's the Gospel like? A: Light (blinding light, to some)
Q: What does the Gospel do? A: Give glory to Christ
Q: How does it do this? A: Makes Christ seen
Q: Who is Christ? A: The image of God

For what we proclaim is not our awesomeness...(v. 5)

One Focused Center

2011-01-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. 2 Cor 5:14 The Message

The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity. 2 Cor 10:4-6 The Message

Thought, emotion, impulse. It's what's left when you strip away the exterior "tent" which is decaying. Your body may be weakened by age, failing, unable to take care of itself. Yet your inner life remains- the thoughts, emotions, and impulses, often seen only by God, will be the expression of a spirit dedicated to...whatever it's dedicated to. Jesus Christ, in places where he has taken root

It's this kind of mind that is able to write things like "He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own." It's the firm decision to work from this center. It's not simply a decision to work, because everyone is doing that(It's worth noting that no one is not working hard and emphasizing obedience to something). It's the conviction that conformity is to a particular something, something profoundly Important in the mind of the one conforming. Their thoughts return to it frequently. Their emotions are set ablaze by it. It produces an impulse to act in one way, and not in another. For Paul, this is the death and Resurrection of Christ.

A practical note, in the way of deconstruction. In a comment on a blog I observed this of my experience with Bible study and general "spiritual talk":

I can’t tell you how hard it is to find people in a Bible study, or even a simple conversation, who will not simply stay on the subject of Jesus himself and not shift it as quickly as possible to a “therefore, we should…” type observation about our personal lives. Aside from the practical tips that most want to reduce him to, there seems to be a constant temptation to shift the focus of the dialogue onto ourselves. Even if it’s in a positive, uplifting sort of way. In this kind of environment, it’s nearly impossible to be wounded by the Lion of Judah, much less revere, follow, befriend, or worship him. If I can’t be bothered to maintain any kind of rapt attention to Jesus, how do I expect to follow him where he’s going?

Are you beginning to get a picture of what the "work" of shaping one's "thoughts, emotions, and impulses" according to the Cross and the Resurrection means? It's a bit of a paradox, but the primary "work" we need to engage in, it seems like, is the work of de-emphasizing our work in favor of an emphasis on Christ's work. Because an emphasis on our own work inevitably conforms our work to...our image, not his.

Example: in chapter 8, in the midst of a long exhortation to give generously to a particular need in another church, he quotes this standard for how the community of Jesus looks:

Nothing left over to the one with the most, nothing lacking to the one with the least.

Now, before all the warnings about communism start flooding in, let's ask "how does this expectation proceed from a mind determined to work from the 'focused center,' a mind that is 'fitting every loose thought...into the structure of life shaped by Christ?' One passage that comes to mind is the prophetic announcement of John the Baptist, who gives us a word-picture that acts as one way of summing up the ministry of Jesus:

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight,

and the rough places shall become level ways,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

Luke 3:5-6 ESV

In an earlier post I said that "Daily life lived as if a resurrection were coming tends to look very different from the surrounding culture." One of the mountains that is made low by Jesus Christ is the inevitability of death. Since death is an obstacle that has been overcome, a minor blip in the radar, a mere change in scenery, those whose thoughts are taken captive by the Resurrection do not fear that they will lack anything. They also don't crave the status that comes with having much. What follows the leveling of these mountains is a different kind of life- one in which no one goes without, at least not while another has plenty. Now if the death and resurrection of Christ are so important that he overcomes these kinds of mountains, what other "focused center" would you prefer to work from?

Compare this with what is often assumed to be "obedience into maturity": creating and maintaining a life in which all your material needs are met, in which comfort is the goal, and in which it is clearly on display that you are a strong, capable person. Sound like something you've experienced? In contrast, the standard Paul offers for the community of Jesus is one that witnesses that no one is really any stronger or more capable than anyone else("...that puts everyone in the same boat.")- that in all and through all the Spirit moves, that riches equal the knowledge of Christ, and that it "smashes the warped philosophy" of self-sufficiency, not provides for it. That obedience into maturity means giving what you have away because you've already got everything, not gaining what you've always wanted for yourself. The mountain being made low here is the self-preservation and self-sufficiency instinct in every one of us, a problem brought on by man's rejection of the provision of God in favor of an order in which "by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." Possibly on grandest display in the "haves" of the community. The have-nots, on the other hand, show us the valley that is "filled in" by the economic justice taking place in Gospel-aware people.

Far from being some kind of easy way out, making the Gospel the "focused center" from which you work imposes a constant vigilance of seeing, tasting, hearing, and feeling it, and will quickly crucify anyone daring to do so. One thing it is not, however, is a laundry list of issues or practices, each addressed severally as we try to hold together an ever-increasing number of threads, or an emphasis on "what comes after the Gospel." Seem too simplistic? Try knowing it(John 17:3). One focused center. Not pep talks disguised as exhortation, or ticking off bullet pointed "ought-to's" that all suspiciously start with the same letter. But that one man died for everyone.

Alan Hirsch- "Missional, Incarnational"

2011-01-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

This is profound. Listening to this guy is like a breath of fresh air. For more, try his book ReJesus.

In The Presence Of The Son of Man

2011-01-18T10:18:00.000-08:00

Been blogging on 2 Corinthians lately. I'm going to take a break and jump over to Luke and then I'll be back to 2 Corinthians.

On a certain Sabbath Jesus was walking through a field of ripe grain. His disciples were pulling off heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands to get rid of the chaff, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, "Why are you doing that, breaking a Sabbath rule?"

But Jesus stood up for them. "Have you never read what David and those with him did when they were hungry? How he entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? He also handed it out to his companions."

Then he said "The Son of Man is no slave to the Sabbath, he's in charge." Luke 6:1-5, The Message

Just a brief word or two on this. Here we have food imagery, something common in the Gospels. Besides the self-involved hyper-detail of the application of Sabbath law going on here, these Pharisees are as usual missing what's in front of them- Jesus, the fulfillment of the Sabbath. The Son of Man, as he refers to himself, is perfectly balanced in his work-sabbath ratio, thank you very much, and if he wanted he could go plow a field all by himself and it would not violate the Sabbath. However, I think it's providential that they are eating grain here, because once again we get the food message and a glimpse into what God is doing in the sending of Jesus.

Challenged with law-breaking, he seizes the opportunity to refer to the Old Testament. David, this time, is his subject, and it seems that he trotted directly into the Temple, up to the table which stood in the Holy Place, and ate the Bread of the Presence which was reserved as an offering for God.

Jesus, like David, enters the temple and "takes and eats" the bread and then "hands it out" to his disciples. The bread that is reserved as an offering, to be consumed only by consecrated priests. Allow your imagination to dwell here for a minute- what is the bread that he's handing out? Could it be his Presence? I think so. The Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath comes to those under the Sabbath Law and gives them- Himself- the bread of the Presence, reserved only for those who are holy. He brings dirty, stinking, unrefined men who slept on the ground last night into the Holy Place, and feeds them holy food, the kind that God eats.

The real sabbath here is Jesus himself- the one who rested after creating the world and all that is in it. His aim now is to bring the Holy to the unholy(or the unholy into the Holy perhaps), to break the Sabbath, strictly speaking, in order to fulfill it. To show God to those who can't see. To give food to those who are not on the guest list. To extend love to those for whom love was believed impossible. His Presence. They welcomed it, and by doing so vindicated themselves from the scrutiny of Sabbath-rule. Because everything done "in the Presence" of the Son of Man is holy.

The Bread I Will Give For the Life of the World

2011-01-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

Nice rant over at Internet Monk on the subject of "practical tips" type ministries. I post this because it has much to do with my last couple of blogposts, and a subject that greatly interests me. This is a good opportunity to repeat that if the Gospel is just information that we hear once when we're born again, and then is occasionally trotted out as a "reminder" or a "back to basics" message so we can maintain a Christian veneer for our ministry, then it certainly doesn't matter that you don't preach it that often, or that you treat it as one of many subjects to be expounded on in church, among them weight loss, financial practices, and improved marriages. It turns out however that it is the "bread that I will give for the life of the world." I don't recall a time where I felt "I already ate last week, so I don't need to this week." This is the basic principle behind Jesus' "abide in me" statement- not simply a hearing of information, but a consistent drinking from a well. It seems like if the book of John were the lens through which we regarded things of a practical nature, we wouldn't have the problem one commenter has when he says:

You seem to think the gospel is magic. It is not. Presenting the gospel to an alcoholic who can not get sober does little good.

The numbness evident in this statement is what needs to be constantly warred against in onesself. The fact is, presenting an alcoholic with the Gospel, consistently, engagingly, creatively, and humanly (that is to say, in Word and Sacrament) is the only way an alcoholic will get sober in any way that is not simply "wood, hay, and stubble." For the sake of charity, we can assume statements like these are coming from a mis-characterization of the Gospel as a packet of information that people sit in a pew to hear from a preacher and then squint, clench their jaw, and just buh-lieeeeeve!! with all their might. Of course that scenario doesn't really produce the fruit or disciples that are expected in John 15, but then again that's not what the Gospel is. Herein may lie the difficulty some are having. Thinking they have already heard and affirmed it, it is now time to get a lesson on baking a cake, or being a better me, or whatever. The need of the hour is for people who don't assume Christ, and don't present him as a means to a practical end, but present him clearly and thoroughly, with the only goal of knowing him more in mind. Given the human heart's propensity to seize whatever foothold it can to embrace sinful motives and goals, forgetting or assuming this is not just a slip-up or a minor error, it's an active subversion of Christ's call.

Notice I am not against using a recipe to bake a cake. When it's time for practical instruction, I'll be ready to eat it up. Practical instruction is not, however, the "bread from heaven" and shouldn't be treated as such. Here's a Matt Chandler clip that illustrates my opinion pretty well. The good part starts at 3:11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5YzI7b92L8

Some More Good News About Tents

2011-01-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

We know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like "tents" and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven-- God-made, not handmade-- and we'll never have to relocate our tents again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move-- and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what's coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we're tired of it! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what's ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we'll never settle for less. 2 Cor 5:1-5, The Message

So we have more tent-imagery, this time as a reference to our mortal bodies. You'll recall in my last post, I likened the "makeshift arrangement" to the Tabernacle, which was taken down eventually and replaced by the Temple. Symbolically, of course this represents a shift from Old Covenant to New, or pre-Jesus history to Jesus-history. In other words, the temporary "vessel" for God's meetings with people was a system, centered around a building known as the Temple. Now, we've got one more application of the metaphor thrown into the mix. Our current bodies are a "makeshift arrangement" as well (as if anyone who's feeling their age needed to be told that). They will be "taken down like tents and folded away" no longer used. We will, like the generation that entered the Promised Land, fold up the Tabernacle and never revisit it again, except maybe in memories. It's purpose fulfilled, the time for its usage passed.

I wonder what happened to that thing, anyway?

Were there fond recollections of the old Tent? Did the priests ever go into the warehouse and trace a finger along its disassembled parts or brush the dust off the furniture? Or was it simply all destroyed, in a ceremonially respectful way? I ask because this is what our tendency seems to be with our covenant- to step away from the New (oh, just for a minute!) because the Old is more familiar, and is capable of sustaining an illusion of self-confidence. We lived in that tent for so long. Likewise, what will our days before the throne be spent doing- wistfully remembering what a glorious old tent we once lived in?

In the last case, I doubt it. While the culture of youth-worship that offers some temporary satisfaction for the young(and an unfortunately, self-hatred for the old), would like to convince us that our current physical state is endless, it remains an "unfurnished shack" no matter how healthy and strong we appear(ask a Haitian in light of this year's earthquake). Yet the "Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what's ahead." What's that taste, I wonder? Physical healing? In Jesus' ministry, it appears that was one of the "tastes." While some of us might enjoy the blessing of being physically healed, what about those of us whose physical existence doesn't seem to include much physical regeneration?

Of course the primary taste we have is the Resurrection- Jesus' permanent "putting away" of death and sickness in his own body. To be "firstborn from the dead" is quite an office. And to his disciples, I would suggest that this is the thing that tore down and replaced the "temple" in their minds of how God was working, what a "Messiah" was, and what kind of future God had planned for a human community that, by all the evidence, looked like such a dreadful mess. A little further down the page in 2 Corinthians it says "He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own." This is the amazing generosity of God- to maintain and promote his own glory and perfection while simultaneously welcoming the worship and relationship of rather inglorious and imperfect people.

One more "taste." It's clear that the Resurrection of Christ has redrawn the plans in the disciples' minds. God's image is becoming clearer and clearer. But of course, their image of God isn't the only thing that changes. The way they work, play, create, eat, converse, and cultivate are all now "made in the image" of the Resurrected Savior also. The new community is differentiated from the old community in this- there is a pervasive sense of relief, a lifted burden, that decay and death are not here to condition them to despair, but, like Solomon in Ecclesiastes couldn't do, to draw their attention off of themselves and onto a future that looks not unlike the Jesus who they saw in the days after the crucifixion.

There follows, to put it lightly, an enormous re-thinking of priorities. A new way of "investing." They look at one another and know that, one day, they too will look like he did. Daily life lived as if a resurrection were coming tends to look very different from the surrounding culture. They are now part of an eternal community surrounded by non-eternal tools. Everything they have to work with now- their hands, they're plows, their harps, their pens -- all are merely tools for expressing how important-- how vastly important!-- they are to one another. This must be what the Master meant by the Kingdom of God- life lived under the sway of the Resurrection. The Temple is rendered unnecessary because all is worship; anything done in the glorious Light of the Risen One is now the sacrifice that was once known only in the slaughter of bulls and goats. To the chagrin of the religious and those infatuated with their current state of wealth and power, microcosms of the future resurrection begin springing forth in the new community like weeds- people forgiving and reconciling with one another, people de-prioritizing wealth and progress, and even dying for this Name they refuse to stop speaking. It's a taste of what's to come, and a threat to what's already established. Religion dies, crucified, and a Kingdom commences where even the least and lowliest are enabled to do God's will- to love one another.

On the Government of Living Spirit

2011-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

Most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus' costly grace. -Tim Keller (via Jared Wilson)

The Government of Death, its constitution chiseled on stone tablets, had a dazzling inaugural. Moses' face as he delivered the tablets was so bright that day (even though it would fade soon enough) that the people of Israel could no more look right at him than stare into the sun. How much more dazzling, then, the Government of Living Spirit?

If the Government of Condemnation was impressive, how about this Government of Affirmation? Bright as that old government was, it would look downright dull alongside this new one. If that makeshift arrangement impressed us, how much more this brightly shining government installed for eternity? 2 Cor 3:7-11, The Message

The "makeshift arrangement" in this passage is Law of Moses, the older covenant. But the phrase makes me think of the quite practical aspect of worship that involved a tent, back in the wilderness days of Exodus. This was a "makeshift arrangement" for worshiping Yahweh. It was packed up from time to time, moved around, and eventually abandoned altogether as the people of God moved into the promised land. This arrangement was impressive (I mean, have you read all those specifications for the Tabernacle?) but not permanent. Nor was it as impressive as what was to come- the Temple. If we run with the metaphor, the Temple was much less makeshift than the Tabernacle, but then the Temple as well turns out to be makeshift in comparison to what comes next. Solomon's Temple, in all its splendor, was too a "chasing after the wind."

The permanent dwelling place (for that's what 'tabernacle' means) is of course, Jesus. His is the "Government of Living Spirit" which far surpasses all other governments, whether that of the Law of Moses or any new law man has installed since. Its splendor exceeds the brilliant craftsmanship and beauty that went into the Temple, or the just governing power and authority that was exercised by the Law. I don't think it's a huge leap to say that by instructing his disciples to "dwell in me" in John 15, he is referencing their national history, a time when their wilderness wandering involved transporting a great big pile of hides and fabric and poles and whatnot around in a desert. So that they could meet with God. "Makeshift." A Jew knows what is meant by a "dwelling place."

Thankfully, the transfer of power has taken place. We no longer look to buildings or tents for anything except to meet the simple needs of keeping our bodies warm and dry. This is because the glory is fading from everything, except the face of Jesus, who, on the Cross proves his worthiness to Govern all of creation and history. The words "forgive them" are cannon shots fired at an elaborate Parliament of ruling-class policymakers, meeting in an elegant palace which, for all its splendor, keeps people poor, afraid, starving, sick, and perhaps worst of all, uninspired. It's the beginning of a Revolution which can't be lost. He has usurped the Government of Death, and all governments but his are looking rather dull, even as their halls of power crumble. While some will stubbornly stand inside as the stone and mortar crash down around them, mumbling that it's not really happening, a few will run out to join the thankful, rejoicing peasants, newly liberated, now dwelling in a new Government, one that leaves them unimpressed with anything else.

Christmas Irony

2010-12-20T09:40:00.000-08:00

This must have been pointed out somewhere, I'm sure.

Santa Claus myth: Good people get presents, bad people get nuthin'.

Jesus story: Good people are actually bad, and the greatest gift imaginable has been given to bad people.

hmmm...diconnect?

"Showing Up" to Gatherings and Prayer

2010-12-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

David Fitch, whose blog is called Reclaiming the Mission says that one of the best things our Sunday morning gathering can do is bore the hell out of us. I must say, I wondered what he meant, but when I got to reading, I discovered a interesting balance to my growing conviction that Sunday morning doesn't really matter at all, and that it's totally arbitrary and if it continues to exist, it should at least be de-emphasized. Here's a small quotation:

"Go to the gathering. Not to get pumped up and inspired. Not to take some notes on the three things you can do to improve your Christian life. NO! Go to the gathering to shut down from all the noise – to submit yourself to Christ – the practice of confession – the listening to the Word – the submission to the receiving of the gift for life at the Table..."

Yeah, I can dig that. I need gatherings. I need lots of them probably. And I need at least one intentional way of clearing my mind of workweek clutter and sub-eternal cares that get caked on periodically. That's what Sunday morning can do. Bore me out of thinking about receipts and budgets and things. The eating of Word and Sacrament in community is the best way I can think of to kill my desperate desire to make my life "work." Of course, if the gathering is not centered around Word and Sacrament, or has more to do with self-improvement imperatives than with Jesus Christ, that's another story...

A confession: I haven't been showing up to prayer lately. For a long time. I rarely ascribe things to the "voice of God" anymore, but this conviction was clearly his voice. Not that I haven't been praying- I've made a habit of praying periodic, short prayers that don't consist of much throughout the day. Rarely out loud. But to "show up" to prayer, to intentionally be focused on my conversation with Jesus, is a rare thing indeed with me. The thing that strikes me about "out loud" prayers is that at some point in eternity, we're going to have to pray out loud because --get ready for a stunning theological assertion-- Jesus has ears. Seriously, praying, like anything I do as a new creation, is an establishment of new humanity, and my new humanity includes proper use of things like tongue, voice, and eardrums.

My failure to pray out loud (with the exception of certain meals where I get "chosen" to say a blessing) and give prayer an time of intentionality, I think, is a product of what Fitch identifies in his post as "organizing God out of our lives." Words take energy, and time, and so does intentional "showing up" to pray. This is energy that, in the scheme of things, could be used towards a more happy, productive life. I could secure more benefits. Speaking "into the air" as it often appears to be, doesn't really contribute to the categories I've deemed valuable. So I do it in my mind, while driving to the post office, and say "good enough. I'm a pray-er."

So we'll see how this awareness of shortcoming works itself out in practice. In the meantime, I'm going to add David Fitch to the blogroll on the right. I like him.

Scot McKnight's New Book

2010-12-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

Well here's a great interview by Frank Viola with Scot McKnight, author of a new book called One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. I must say, the interview makes me wanna read it. Check out the question about Kingdom- when asked to define it, he says:

You simply can’t say “kingdom” in the 1^st Century and not think of a King, and a Land, and a citizenship and a Law that governs the citizens. You can’t get by with thinking it is nothing more than the personal experience of God as my king.

In short, a place with certain characteristics. Contrast this with the average assumption in many post-modern readings, which generally concerns itself with Kingdom as an experience, a warm-fuzzy thing that happens to you inside. Interesting.

He also highlights "communities shaped by the Lord's prayer" as a theme for the book. Scot is one of the more Jesus-y thinkers on the web these days, and it seems like with this book he's trying to push discipleship towards Jesus-shaped communities. Sounds like a plan.

How?

2010-12-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

In Acts 24-26 Paul goes to trial for stirring up trouble in Jerusalem as a member of the Way. Eugene Peterson has this to say:

The trials in Acts 24-26 force us, if we're to stay true to the story we're reading, to give up the notion that the Christian community can catch the admiring eye of the world if we just live rightly and obediently. We have ample documentation by now to disabuse us of such thinking. God's revelation is rejected far more often than it is accepted, is dismissed by far more people than embrace it, and has been either attacked or ignored by every major culture or civilization in which it has given witness: magnificent Egypt, fierce Assyria, beautiful Babylon, artistic Greece, political Rome, Enlightenment France, Nazi Germany, Renaissance Italy, Marxist Russia, Maoist China, and pursuit-of-happiness America. The community of God's people has survived in all of these cultures and civilizations, but always as a minority, always marginal to the mainstream, never statistically significant.

This gives us pause. If we, as the continuing company of Jesus, have achieved an easy accomodation with our society and culture, how did we manage to pull off what Jesus and his community of followers failed to accomplish? How has it come to pass that after twenty centuries of rejection, we assume that human acclaim is tantamount to divine approval?

...Our Piety Forgets About Us...

2010-12-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

The first thing to remember is that we must never separate the benefits (regeneration, justification, sanctification) from the Benefactor (Jesus Christ). The Christians who are most focused on their own spirituality may give the impression of being the most spiritual … but from the New Testament’s point of view, those who have almost forgotten about their own spirituality because their focus is so exclusively on their union with Jesus Christ and what He has accomplished are those who are growing and exhibiting fruitfulness. Historically speaking, whenever the piety of a particular group is focused on our spirituality that piety will eventually exhaust itself on its own resources. Only where our piety forgets about us and focuses on Jesus Christ will our piety nourished by the ongoing resources the Spirit brings to us from the source of all true piety, our Lord Jesus Christ.

~ Sinclair Ferguson

It's Not Like This Is A New Idea...

2010-12-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

But we might as well say it again, and Mike Leake does just that at Borrowed Light:

If our view of Scripture is akin to Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth then I doubt very seriously that we will be compelled to open its pages. At least not until something goes wrong...Do you realize how hard it is to convince people to find Life in the Scriptures when this is our view? It’s like trying to convince people that if they want to really enjoy food they should become acquainted with their refrigerator’s manual of operation. That is just silly.

What if instead we started viewing it as a compelling story told by the Creator of the universe or as a drama that is acted out and then explained by God about God?

Rather than reading it to discover Jesus, says Mike, we're looking for "an answer." To a problem, like "what qualities should I look for in a wife?" Or, dare I say it "how should I go about my relationship with God?" Which is fine, as long as you're willing to admit that crack-cocaine gives people "an answer" too. And often a more satisfying one, depending on where you're at.

Confonting the god-phantasm

2010-11-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Says Peter to Cornelius:

And we saw it, saw it all, everything he did in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem where they killed him, hung him from a cross. But in three days God had him up, alive and out where he could be seen. Not everyone saw him-- he wasn't put on public display. Witnesses had been carefully handpicked by God beforehand-- us! We were the ones, there to eat and drink with him after he came back from the dead. He commissioned us to announce this to the public, to bear solemn witness that he is in fact the One whom God destined as Judge of the living and the dead. Acts 10:39-43, The Message

This is part of a message that Peter brings to Cornelius and his family, the first Gentile believers. A shocker to Peter and the Jews present, who had assumed up to this point that the Gospel was for Israel exclusively.

But the question is, why did Jesus choose a certain few, the apostles, to eat and drink with, to do the things of everyday life with, having risen from the dead? The risen Jesus obviously desires that the message of his Kingship, his conquering of sin and death, go throughout Galilee and Samaria and Judea and to all the nations, so why not appear intentionally to as many people as possible? Why just the few "apostles?"

It occurs to me that the "ends of the earth" to which his disciples are to take the Gospel includes the far reaches of time- the future. So we're dealing with a message that is passed on, person to person, for thousands of years. Long after Jesus has ascended and awaits his return, long after the apostles's bodies have turned into dust. These future disciples (us) are going to be prone to a certain type of false thinking. It goes something like this: people of Jesus' day were special because they had him walking and talking right in front of them. So of course their faith was stronger, better, different, more effective. In fact, maybe we shouldn't really be that interested in Jesus at all, because he's so far in the past. Maybe we're supposed to look for a newer, more current version of God to worship, to follow.

Cornelius and the gentiles would've been faced with a similar issue: we're not "chosen." We're not God's special people, so we need to go get circumcised, start observing a bunch of dietary rules...or maybe we're outside the circle altogether and the Gospel isn't for us.

We seem to struggle with this. We seem to think that our faith is somehow different than those folks because Jesus was right around the corner from them. They actually saw Jesus. We don't, so we have to follow some invisible god-phantasm that we're left to imagine, since he's not visible. And of course he ends up looking like whatever we want him to.

By including this point in Peter's message to the first Gentile disciples, Luke(the writer) is letting us know that we're no different than the people of Jesus' day, even people who saw him. That Jesus is just as "present" with us, and in the exact same way, that he was in the world of the 1st century. Meaning he's alive and reigning. No need to invent a new faith, or recast it in the image of some other man, like the local god-guy who makes a lot of noise about visions and voices. Jesus' life is still as relevant and relatable as...your children's lives, your spouse's, you're best friend's. He's here, he's alive, he's destroyed the power of sin and death, and he's knowable. Still. Look nowhere else.

...one Lord, one faith, one baptism...

J. Lee Grady Gets Hungry For Jesus Content

2010-11-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

There's hope for Charisma Magazine yet! From a recent J. Lee Grady article:

Many charismatics have developed the attitude that a simple focus on Christ isn’t enough. We’d rather go to a “prophetic encounter” to hear what Obama’s chances are in 2012, or experience some exotic spiritual manifestation (gold dust, gems falling out of the ceiling), or ask Rev. Flash-in-the-Pan to pray for us for the sixteenth time so we can receive yet another “special anointing” that we will probably never use.

In the midst of all this charismatic gobbledygook, where is Jesus? Am I the only one out there who is weary of this distraction?

No Lee, you're not. Thanks for this long-needed article. The only problem is that he suggests Jesus-content is "back to the basics." Hopefully, we're recognizing that he's that, and everything else as well...

Some Poetry

2010-11-23T08:59:00.000-08:00

Found this fantastic poem at Faith, Fiction, Friends:

The Stoning of St. Stephen

He barely noticed the first,
hitting his left shoulder
at the arm,
face, shining.

He looks upward as the second
pointed, sharp, tears skin
on his neck,
voice, calling.

The third and fourth together
herald the rock torrent
piercing, tearing, ripping,
wind, rushing.

The fourteenth aimed precisely
smashes the right side of his face,
absorbed in blood and light,
body, falling.

He murmurs forgiveness
through broken teeth,
his spirit soaring into
sky, darkening.

Why Was Jesus Baptized?

2010-11-19T16:27:00.000-08:00

What's the deal with Jesus' baptism? I've never really heard much on why this actually happened, perhaps cause I haven't looked for it. But it doesn't seem to be something people talk about frequently, other than to say it happened. But we're told about it in three of four gospels, and in the fourth, John, we're told a bunch about the Baptizer himself, if not the explicit news of Jesus being baptized. Sooo, evidently something important happened there. Not to mention we're told that the heavens were torn open and the Spirit descended on him, and the audible voice of God drew serious attention to the man being baptized. Attention! All eyes on Jesus! This is my beloved Son!

I'm going to try to make some sense of this, though I don't pretend that this is all why it happened. Beyond having attention drawn to him by supernatural events, an obvious, unmistakable fact that is not dependent on cultural context(I mean, a time traveller from a completely unevangelized culture would find that interesting), we also have John baptizing him. Now, if I were to read this without any sort of context or knowledge of Hebrew history, I would say that John's baptism signifies a sort of “group effort.” I would say that God has lots of folks walking around, agents if you will, and there happen to be two of them here doing...holy things. Like God's people do. You know, baptizing, wearing robes, saying “thee” and “thou” a lot, that kind of stuff. Jesus and John were some real good guys. And that's what history is- some bad people, some good ones, and you choose whether you wanna be good or bad, and hopefully you'll choose right. Or something wretched like that.

Two things. First, John says what's obvious to us, but not perhaps to the people watching, or someone who's never heard of Jesus: “You're better than me. I shouldn't be baptizing you, you should be baptizing me. I'm not worthy of you.”

Second, the people watching are Jews, temple-going, Torah-reading, tradition-saturated, children of Abraham. Of their history, practice, heritage, and corporate dealings with God, they are richly aware. John is one of these people God sends, one of these prophets that is given the mantle of speaking for God. To people. Of acting and speaking in such a way that displays God's opinions, his plans, his character, his judgments, etc. These are God's mouthpieces to Israel. John, a full-on, prophet in the style of the good old days and the mold of Elijah is here to preach repentance, baptize, and perhaps do some of what prophets do best: call attention to sin.

So we have a man who is dubbed(later) the “greatest man born of women” by Jesus. In his time the greatest prophet, the last Old Covenant “mouthpiece” the one who has, evidently, the “spirit of Elijah,” which I take to mean something like, “he's cut from the same cloth” or “he has a calling that is as great or greater than Elijah's.” It's a superlative, which would be something like saying “so-and-so is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.” And here he is baptizing Jesus. Calling himself unworthy to tie Jesus' shoes.

What I think God intends to happen in the minds of Jewish onlookers, and by extension in us who are reading about it, is something like this: “Our Fathers, our Law, our sacrifices, our prophets, our entire testimony of God's work among us has come down to this: Jesus. Here is John baptizing him- it's as if the entire canon of saints from Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, all are being drawn towards the baptized one as iron filings are to a magnet. The entire divine revelation up to this point is commending Jesus as superior than itself, more worthy, a greater King, Prophet, Judge, Priest, Law, and Temple, through the Baptist. Indeed the Baptist himself is greater than everyone up to this point for this reason-- he's the one who gets to step aside and “diminish” in Jesus' presence, having prepared the way for him and made his path straight. The baptism of John is God's way of witnessing to Jews that the mantle of all that has happened up to now is being placed on Jesus' shoulders. Through John, the entire Old Testament is baptizing Jesus.

This baptism is to “fulfill all righteousness(Matt 3:15).” That is: 1) inaugurate Jesus' earthly ministry which will lead to the Cross and through it the Resurrection(which is his righteousness), and 2) give this whole event a wide “viewership,” a kick-off that will get people's attention, so that hopefully, they'll still be paying attention when he gets crucified and they'll first “believe” and then “abide”(which is the the Church's righteousness). God wants the watching Jews to get this, that Jesus is the one for whom the Old Covenant has been “preparing the way.” He wants these people to continue to read their Bibles, the Law and the Prophets. And he wants them to read it correctly. He wants the history of the Kingdom of God- the Hebrew nation- to be understood as having one purpose- to make a straight path for Jesus. So that when Jesus does what he's about to do, namely gets crucified, they won't be stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to reconcile this supposed “son of God” with all that they already know. They'll see the Cross to which his ministry led as the centerpiece of their own history, and they'll have new prophets explaining to them(with words and actions, as prophets always do) “all that the (old) prophets have spoken.”

Of course a whole bunch of them don't listen anyway. But if we listen, we can probably be rooted in a historic salvation rather than just a theoretical one. After all, that's why this whole thing took place.

To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

C.S. Lewis on Forgiveness

2010-11-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Glad to see this C.S. Lewis passage over at Trevin Wax's page. I read this passage awhile back and it really reoriented my thinking about sin:

There is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.”But excusing says “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.” If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites....

Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.

There's much more at his blog.

WWJD? sung by Brad Yoder

2010-11-14T13:04:00.000-08:00

Discovered this song this weekend, written and sung by the incomparable Brad Yoder:

If We Don't Find The Gospel Interesting...

2010-11-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

...it's not the Gospel's fault. Jesus is certainly enough to make short work of the relentless temptation to make various self-helpisms, moral standards, and abstract God-concepts the object of our attention. Honestly, I don't see what is so cool about a bunch of mental gymnastics that are supposed to lead to self-improvement. The only good thing they seem to do is show me that I'm really inadequate, and cause me to find someone else's performance sufficiently fascinating. That is if I'm on my toes and recognize it for what it is. Now this, for instance, is fasincating:

It has been testified somewhere, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.[Heb 2:6-8]

The submission of Jewish Scripture(and everything else!) to Jesus, the humanity of Jesus and his kinship with us through the experience of death. He's accessible- there's no way to mistake Jesus for some vague cloud of God-ness or some such. Which is essentially what's behind all this "taking advantage of the grace of God," or whatever it is that people warn about when you preach the Gospel like it matters. Remember the snakes in the wilderness? The people complained against the Lord, and so he sent fiery snakes to bite them and kill them. And then God said to Moses:

"Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live."[Num 21:8]

When he sees it, he shall live. Behold! That's really all it takes to be fascinated by it. Yep, if that doesn't do the trick, well that's just a sign of my screwed up priorities, not of the Gospel's weakness. Just remember this- Jesus found the Gospel fascinating:

And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. [Luke 24:25-27]

The Humanity of the Truth

2010-11-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

First of all, go and read this.

This is what stories do: bring humanity to the Truth. Because people who think they know the truth, but don't hear of it in terms of happenings, are incapable of seeing.

Jesus happened.

Search for Significance?

2010-11-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

This election day, my vote is going to Mark Galli, for this excellent article. From Insignificant is Beautiful:

I have a good friend who has been caring for his elderly mother. She sits in a wheel chair, complains a lot, and requires constant attention — to the point of cleaning her up after regular bouts of diarrhea. What my friend and his wife are doing is heroic, virtue with a capital V. But it is hard to see how it is "world changing" as we normally think about such things. Such an act doesn't even change the mother's life, only makes it less miserable. It's not even "significant," by our usual calculation, but "merely" an act of love.
When we think of making a difference, we think about making the world a better place for the next generation, not taking care of people who have no future....As usual, Jesus turns this whole conversation on its head....His is an ethic that glorifies giving a mere cup of water to a thirsty soul (Matt. 10:42), praises the relatively worthless donation of an indigent widow (Mark 12:41-44), visits those who have disappeared from history, and honors the one who changes the diapers of the incontinent.

The Cocoon Reality: I'm Awesome

2010-11-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Michael Horton relates this one in an interview with Christianity Today(via Mockingbird blog):

Someone asked Martin Luther what we contribute to salvation, and he said, 'Sin and resistance!'

I also pretty much concur with Jeff Weddle on this one:

Christians are not very well-informed on their church history, which is why we keep falling into the same stupid beliefs and heresies.

And they are stupid. I might be the culprit[hand raised]. Every once in a while something I once said to someone comes to mind and cringe, thinking "I said that?" But then, we're all growing into maturity I suppose, not yet mature. Michael Spencer once related how he would revisit recordings of his old sermons, lamenting that sometimes, he put his head in his hands.

Anyway, here's one particular stupid belief that has been rearing it's ugly head lately: I'm awesome, and that's why I'm so committed to _________.

In reality, we stink at ________, and it's an amazing mercy of God that he hasn't stripped it away from us altogether. Jesus did it much better, and it really is more satisfying to look at his achievement of _________ than anyone else's. But then, if you're grid for judging something's quality is you're own feelings, or what you've experienced, or what you see around you, instead of the holiness of Jesus, then naturally you'll spend more time gazing at your own achievements. Someone said that anytime we use Scripture to justify ourselves instead of convict ourselves and display Jesus as better, than we're misusing it. Ditto for the Holy Spirit. Compare the "I'm awesome" message to John the Baptist(who was decidedly more awesome than you) "He must increase, but I must decrease."

On that note, the reason I'm posting today is because I was able to be part of a phenomenal gathering of believers yesterday in which a very normal guy sat with a group of people and, without pretending to be awesome or creating glitz and fanfare, taught about Jesus from the Scriptures. He used the book of Jonah. It was an experience unlike I've had in awhile, sadly, (and I blame at least half of that on my own lack of intentionality); the Holy Spirit spoke very clearly to me as he hasn't in a long time. What did he say? Well, the same general thing as he always does- in so many words "You're not awesome, Jesus is." I've realized, I'm starving for this. And despite the fact that I live in a town where there are approximately 8 zillion churches(seriously, I hear about a new church plant almost every week), most of them church plants of youngish people with some kinda ambition, often stated as such, to "be a different kind of church,"(a silly pursuit I'm now convinced), despite this, the jury's still out on whether Jesus is a major figure in the minds of these zealous folks. In fact, my default judgment is basically that, until proven otherwise, churches/Christians I run into are probably in the "I'm awesome" category, rather than the "I must decrease, He must increase" category. Just experience speaking.

Anyway, back to this gentleman who was teaching Jesus from Jonah. Something he said whirled around in my mind for the remainder of the day after he said it. Paraphrasing: "We're all trying to create this cocoon of reality around us in which we are able to say 'God's not here.' There's just so much we wouldn't say or do if Jesus was sitting right next to us." I can't tell you how much this statement is borne out by my experience.

Jonah. Running from God's call, refusing to obey, assuming his fear and hatred for Ninevites are qualities more suited to judging right than the command of a holy God. Hoping that God will simply find someone else. That's us. "God's not here," is the ultimate mantra of those who are convinced they're awesome. And why would we want him here? We're awesome, that's all that's necessary. Jesus, on the other hand, points the finger at people again and again and displays to them why they are not awesome. And why he has come, which is to be awesome for us. In light of Jonah, he comes to be the truer and better minister of Yahweh to the lost, brutal, pagans(us).

Jonah and I will occupy the same space in the history books. Jesus isn't remaking me in his image so I can gaze on myself. He's doing it so I can gaze upon him.

The Passages That Crank My Engine

2010-10-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Haven't been too active on the old blog lately. Been real busy and plus I often think I should post more often but then realize I don't have much to say. At least not that doesn't deserve to be seriously scrutinized and filtered(Hah!) But I have desired to get back to writing, if only occasionally.

Last night I embarked on a process of re-memorizing some passages that are very important to me. By "re-memorzing" I mean polishing up my ability to recite them. Having once memorized them thoroughly, they had fallen into disuse and therefore needed some oil to flow freely once again. My method has previously been to read and then recite, over and over again, until the words are embedded in my mind. This time however, I tried typing/writing the words out repeatedly, with much quicker results. I found myself memorizing longer passages more quickly.

They're my favorite passages because they're Christological. Highly Christological. They're passages that are full of exaltation for the Jesus "for whom and by whom all things exist." To be honest, for me this practice has probably taken the place of the worship music phenomenon, something I was once highly addicted to, and thoroughly convinced was at the heart of belonging to Jesus, following Jesus, knowing Jesus. (I'm now convinced that more often than not it's an exercise in sub-Gospel narcissism, and completely non-essential to knowing and following him.)

I welcome other passage suggestions to be added. I have not already memorized all of these, and I suppose I'll keep expanding the list to outdistance any sort of final success to be expected on my part. I think I may embark on the project of writing a bit on each of these passages as well. Here are the passages(addresses only, I'll let you look them up):

John 1:1-18. Should be at least as well known as John 3:16. Radically exaltating. To begin a book this way leaves no room for doubt about intentions, about whom it is that is being worshipped.

John 6: 47-58. Everything's here: the Gospel, in poetic, prophetic language(v. 51), A Jesus-tinted interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures(v. 49-50), an allusion to Eucharistic practice and what's at its heart, and Jesus' fixation on making himself out to be the most satisfying thing in the universe. If he's not God, he's a complete megalomaniac.

John 15:1-17. I suppose I could simply put the entire book of John on my "to memorize" list. This chapter, set in the longer discourse of ch. 14-18, has been for me the blueprint for what it means to live the Jesus-life, to walk the Jesus-way, to expect a Jesus-shaped imprint of the hidden God. The abide chapter. Obedience is loving him. The law is summed up as loving one another, and the way to obedience is being fascinated with him. Truly this kind of Gospel is accessible to all, even the most undisciplined or sin-sick.

Colossians 1:13-29. Jesus-saturated. Again, no room for interpretation about what lies at the center of a believer's life. The Jesus-exalting language is heart stopping. Try reading it with a vocal emphasis every time the words "he", "him", or "Jesus Christ" appear. Now where are the worship song lyrics that sound like that?

Hebrews 1:1-4. A lovely beginning to what seems to me to be one of the most highly Christological books of the NT. Establishes some serious identity questions in a very worshipful manner.

Hebrews 2:10-18. Solidifies, like much of Hebrews, the expectation of suffering for his children. It also gives them a grid for accepting redemptive suffering. Cross-shaped living. The fear of death is the problem. The Resurrection, which has destroyed the works of the devil, is the solution.

Pastors are Laymen Too

2010-08-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

I found this at Blogotional. I SO resonate with the sentiment. He's responding to a specific statement by a pastor, basically saying pastoral ministry is the highest calling in the world, yada yada(in other words: "vocational ministry" people are more spiritual than "laymen"):

I hate to break this to you, but you are not THAT special. And the sooner you realize that, the better your ministry will be. You are not smarter than the rest of us. You have a heavy burden, but then so do we all. YOU are not here to save us, or the church - that is God's business - you are just a tool in the effort - AS ARE THE REST OF US.

By the way, that should, LIFT a burden, not lay one on. Hee hee.

Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Unapproachable Light

2010-07-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

The other day Wikipedia yielded me a rather academic explanation of Schrodinger's Cat. The phrase had jumped out at me twice in one day and I figured I better look it up, since I have the information superhighway at my fingertips. After Wikipedia and a little digging from friends on Facebook(SUCH reliable sources!) I discovered the what the thought experiment known as “Schrodinger's Cat” is all about.

Schrodinger was a physicist and a contemporary of Einstein. In fact they were friends. Evidently due to some radical physics discovery of their day, related to the theory of relativity, it's understood that a particle, say an atom's nucleus, actually has multiple simultaneous positions, in a given system at a particular moment in time.

…

Yes, what I just said was, it's in two places at once.

Or maybe more than that- it may actually be in an infinite number of places at once, or something. Please forgive my lack of education on this, if I get facts wrong, it's cause I'm running with something I just read about for the first time in a field that's way over my head.

If I understand correctly, light shined through piece of cardboard with two slits in it, if conceived of as a particle, can be shown to have passed through both slits simultaneously. So what theyr'e saying is, the position, actual place where a particle seems to be is not as cut and dried as we thought. Physics tells us this, it's not speculation.

Back to the cat. Schrodinger imagined a box in which a cat was placed, and which also contained a vial of poisonous gas. A hammer has a fifty percent chance of breaking the glass in five minutes time. The hammer is hooked up to a Geiger counter which is monitoring a piece of plutonium whose half-life is 5 minutes, should it decompose, the hammer falls, and breaks the vial, poisoning the cat.

Or something like that. The idea is that in five minutes, the cat might die or might stay alive. The box is closed so the observer cannot see the “system” enclosed. The idea Schrodinger postulated was that, given the discovery of matter being “relatively” positioned, meaning that it's position sort of depends on whether or not it's being observed, the radioactive particle, with respect to the scientist, is both in a state of decomposition and not simultaneously. Meaning that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

Poor thing. It would be so much more comfortable if it made up its mind. Seriously though, this is the conclusion he came to based on the particle theory(which I have such a weak grasp on) that was being worked on at the time.

I might have a bunch of this wrong, and you can look it up yourself, or correct me if you're a physicist, but I think I understand that the experiment, while speculative, is a fairly accurate picture of the implications of the theory. In other words, reality is much less “definite” than we thought.

Heisenberg said something similar. Evidnently if you try to measure a particle's position and vector simultaneously, you can't do it. If you pinpoint it's position at a moment in time, the vector(a statistic based on velocity and direction) is immeasurable. If you accurately find it's velocity and direction, it's actual position becomes fuzzy, and eludes perfect measurement. It appears to be in multiple positions at the same time. The implication is the same: matter isn't necessarily where you think it is. The more definite you try to become the more it evades your definition. The car driving past me down the road is technically in a number of places at once, depending on your position. It's not “relativism” it's “relativity.”

There's an connection here that I haven't heard made yet, perhaps because until recently it was so rare to find theistic people interested in the hard sciences.

The Orthodox have a way of approaching deity that is called “apophatic.” This means that in order to accurately speak of God, you can not quite describe him, you have to describe what he is not. You sort of have to describe the space around him, and then begin to pick up a shape that is suggestive of who he is. He's in the “negative space” of what is not being described, so to speak. God is not created. He is not male or female. He does not have five senses therefore he does not "see" as we do.

He dwells in unapproachable light. The cloud of unknowing that the mystics speak of.

Of course, for the Christian he has been “pinned down,” that is, interpreted perfectly for human minds. This is what Jesus is- the “one mediator between God and man.” He is the way men may know God, and what his intentions are. The problem being, we humans have the funniest way of naming Jesus according to our own designs. He is the “I AM,” the self-identifying one, the one who no one must presume to form in their own image. Yet we do just that, and disastrous things result. Each iteration of the Church has begun with a grasp on a very important “picture” of who Jesus is, what the Gospel means, and what the Kingdom of God looks like. And it manifests in a particular way. But in time, with what one sociologist called the “routinization of charisma,” the order gets reversed. God, we begin to think, serves our particular manifestation. He's bending to our will. We've got this particular way of doing things, and that's the way God wants them done. He must think very highly of us, since we've got things down so well.

And off it goes all to hell, these golden calfs that are designed to glorify God and end up being tools for rebellious people to remake him in their own image. The I AM. He can't be defined, except by himself. Which is why Jesus himself is the definition of God, but human faith-response to Jesus and it's fruit, while expected and inevitable, do not define God. Nor do they need to always stay the same in order for God to be present and at work redemptively. When the defining of God becomes the business of spirituality, things go off the rails. Why? Because it's not God's design to be simply known about. Even the demons do that. His design is that we love him.

Why does the particle elude having its position defined? Why is reality so much sketchier than we thought- at least when one tries to pinpoint its exact position? Because the Maker didn't design it to be defined. He designed it to be enjoyed. Taste and see. It's good. It testifes to the goodness of the Maker. It's his way of showing us how much he loves us. It's proves his intentions aren't malevolent. But the closer one intends to get to knowing the exact nature of something is the closer one gets to misusing it and committing idolatry. It shouldn't take too long to think of examples of this from all over the religious spectrum.

It's like the parable of the tribe of curious seekers in the wilderness who had cut open the antelope to try and find out where the life came from. Obviously, they would have been better off simply watching and wondering at the thing as it bounded through the fields. True science begins with delight.

And no, this is not a diatribe against science or discovery or the research that led to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and other fascinating laws of physics. I think these things should be enjoyed:)

Yes I just used a smiley face.

Prophecy and Jesus Christ

2010-07-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

As soon as I finish Mere Churchianity, I plan on gettin all up on Jesus Manifesto by Frank Viola. A question(and answer) that brings a sigh of relief from the latest on Viola's blog. The interviewer(Kelly Deppen) is a member of a charismatic prophetic ministry:

Deppen: A hard line, tough love quote from Manifesto: ”This is a profoundly grievous misuse of the Bible.” [To use the Bible as a recipe book, a formulation and pat answer for God across all situations, across time.] The implication is to make God predictable and manageable by man. In the past two decades many in the Prophetic Movement have made a similar misuse of the rhema/prophetic Word of God. Much of the prophecy was self-aggrandizing—prophecies of personal success, Swiss chalets, and world-wide apostolic anointings. I take the liberty to re-phrase: “This has been a profoundly grievous misuse of the Revelation of Holy Spirit.” I feel a personal mandate to return Prophetic Ministry to the unadulterated Testimony of Jesus Christ. Frank, what is your advice for this turn-around? What breed of leadership will this require as you see it?
Viola: The Holy Spirit has one main job: It is to reveal, to glorify, to magnify, and make real and living in one’s life the Lord Jesus Christ. All the arrows of the Spirit point to Jesus. We show this quite clearly in the book.
True prophecy, therefore, will always reveal Christ in some way. John said in the book of Revelation, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
What was the content of the Old Testament prophets? It was Jesus. So today, when someone prophesies under the Spirit’s anointing, the content of their prophecy will reveal, glorify, exalt, make known and living the Lord Jesus Christ. This truth is often missed among certain movements today that have put “prophetic ministry” on the throne instead of Jesus Himself.

Shaped By Jesus

2010-06-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

I had to repost a bit that Chaplain Mike did over at Internetmonk, on being Jesus-shaped:

It’s the pastor of the small church who visits the sick, the sorrowing, and the shut-ins. It’s the housewife who takes soup to her elderly neighbor. It’s the carpenter, plumber, and painter, who take their work seriously and pursue excellence in their crafts. It’s the single woman who reads stories to kids at the library. It’s the grandmother who prays for her family every day. It’s the husband and wife who are struggling in their marriage, but who decide to stick it out. It’s the nurse who does the little things to make her patient feel cared for. It’s the employer who pays fair wages and cares about those who work for him. It’s the worker who refuses to cut corners. It’s the funeral home director who leaves a flower on the bed after removing a loved one’s body from the home. It’s making an anonymous gift to a friend who’s out of work.

It’s extending cup of cold water, speaking a kind word, knowing when to keep quiet, dropping by to say hi to a lonely friend, writing an encouragement note, sitting with grieving parents, saying, “I’m sorry,” asking forgiveness, and looking the other way when you are wronged. It’s the Samaritan stopping, the widow dropping her last penny in the box.

This is not rocket science. There is no spiritual technology to be mastered. No degrees are required. This is all about love, kindness, generosity, sensitivity, honesty, diligence, and unselfishness, all practiced right out there in the real stuff of daily life. It’s about good works done from a heart of love for the glory of God for my fellow human beings. It’s about watching Jesus at work, and allowing him, by his Word and Spirit, to work through us.

On Michael Spencer, and the Jesus Disconnect

2010-05-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

Michael Spencer's posthumous book comes out in June, Mere Churchianity. Towards the end of introduction (which you can read here) he says of his early days in the church: "Far from being Jesus-shaped Christians, we were church shaped. In fact, we were deniers of Jesus. We were frighteningly close to being Judas."

Michael is probably the voice that has shaped my understanding and spirituality most in the last five years. He handily drew me to agreement with his perspective on Scripture, Jesus-centered spirituality, ecclesiology, and more. His rants intelligently voiced all my concerns that I was never able to put into words. The breadth of his knowledge of the Church stunned me, but not simply cause I admire high IQs. I was shocked at his super-informed way of charity for denominations not his. I was also enchanted by his ability to both intelligently and cuttingly critique the problems with nearly any expression of Christianity there has ever been. That's what the Gospel does I guess, equips us to distinguish light from darkness. It was a charity that could only come from being painfully broken of theological/denominational arrogance. He was firmly protestant and yet knew Catholicism intimately, and not so he could write them off as "not really Christians." He categorically accepted no one particular dogma. Yet he always retained and based his scrutiny on a search for the seed of the Gospel. Just anger was clear in much of his writing, along with patience and forbearance with those among whom Jesus was clearly walking and working.

The question remains for many of us now that Michael has passed. Having the benefit of his example, how do we approach problematic Christianity when the papers are all in order? Because you don't have to be an outright heretic to have a low view of Jesus and a spirituality shaped by church. Lots of people who are saying "all you need is Jesus" are certainly acting as if they really, really need church and an attractive, white, rich preacher-guy too, and by the way isn't the contemporary worship music awesome? This stuff isn't coming from the ranks of the heterodox. It's not as if no one's throwing around the language of "on fire for God" or don't have "solid Bible teaching." Yet it's effective heresy. It's sweet-tasting poison. It's a gross perversion that needs a good bashing-in. Yet when you say these things, you can easily be seen as "divisive," "not on board with the vision," "against church growth," or "opposing God's work." Shame is often the wages of reservations expressed.

Church-shaped spirituality, at least for those not familiar with Michael's work, is not easily identified because most of it is coming from places where the proper boxes are checked, and there's enough fruit of some sort for people to be able to believe that God's blessing is there. There's enough commitment to the basics to keep it from being easily repudiated. Yet it's distracted, self-medicating, pseudo-spirituality, and no one should be ashamed to say so. Once Michael gave me a nod on his blog for a rant that I wrote concerning Todd Bentley and the complete carnival that ensued surrounding his meteoric rise to super-stardom and super-gnosticism. He was an easy target. Even I can nail that one. It was a neat buzz to get on Michael's radar for a few seconds, I'll admit. But what about when the more difficult ones come along? The ones who start by agreeing that the Gospel is everything but subtly insinuate that commitment to the program is also a measure of one's faith. What about the vulnerable who think p&w choruses of "I lift my hands to you Lord" means that a church is good enough to get their allegiance even when there's rancidity and abuse below the surface?

This is not about writing off entire churches, people as individuals, or movements. It's about repudiating lies. Exposing terrible priorities and not worrying about it too much if the stupid thing crumbles as a result. As shiny as it was, that doesn't mean God wanted it there. It's about calling functional heresy what it is, even when there's a visible affirmation of orthodoxy. (I don't think Michael ever used the term "functional heresy" to describe churchianity, but I just did.) It's about refusing to let superficial results dictate what's valuable to us.

Calling the baby ugly is one thing Michael did well. And fearlessly. Sometimes relentlessly. As an SBCer (with no intention of going anywhere) he was able to render the stock phrases of that particular brand of church-lust in order to ridicule what often amounts to Jesus-absent Christianity. Those that are "there every time the doors are open" are often the ones posturing in compensation for the deepest spiritual vacuity. In the four part series "The Coming Evangelical Collapse," Michael prophesied(he wouldn't use that word) that in 20 years evangelical Christendom in the west would be house deserted of half its occupants. The reason? Spiritual vacuousness is completely unsustainable. As soon as fast cars, reality shows, crystal meth, or Islam produces a more entertaining lifestyle than preachertained McChurches do, that's where the "on fire" people will go. Because that's what brought them to "evangelicalism" in the first place, not Jesus.

With all this on the table, there ceases to be much room to criticize or condescend to people who've dumped church. Because adoration for Jesus and commitment to church increasingly have nothing to do with each other. Despite many ongoing attempts to "relevantize" and "radicalize" things, it usually smells like a pleading sort of "We REALLY like church, what can we do to make you like church too?" kind of like the way they peddled "church can be fun" to us with pizza and board games in youth group long ago. Only now it's for grown-ups. And amidst all of it, the goals and priorities in such environments don't require Jesus Christ to have ever entered history. Sadly, as Brant Hansen has noted, while outsiders "like Jesus but not the church," the ranks of Christendom often "like church but not Jesus." The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. But they are prevailing against much of what passes for it.

In the intro to his book, which I plan to pre-order, Michael called himself and the youth group he pastored as a young adult "an ungrateful gang of spoiled suburban brats, (who) ignore the people who served us, leave a mess behind, and still feel we were authentic representatives of Jesus because we were 'good church people.'" He wrote that the book is his repentance. Any true critique of this foolishness will have to have true repentance at the heart of it. And anyone who dismisses such a critique had better be ready to reap tears and regret.

Ascension

2010-05-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a post quoting a passage from Eugene Peterson's Practice Resurrection, part of his five book series beginning with Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places. The passage is about the undercelebrated Ascension. As usual, he pretty much knocks it over the fence. A paragraph or so:

Ascension is the opening scene that establishes the context for everything that follows: Jesus installed in a position of absolute rule – Christ our King. All men and women live under the rule of Jesus. This rule trumps all other thrones and principalities and powers.

Knowing this, with the knowing elaborated and deepened in worship, the church has the necessary room to live robustly under the conditions of resurrection. If we don’t know this, the church, its imagination conditioned by death and the devil, will live timidly and cautiously.

That "Love Thy Neighbor" thing...

2010-04-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a really good bit by Dan Edelen, and not just cause he quotes me quoting Bonhoeffer.

And that graphic of the billboard....!!

Bankrupt the Idol-Makers

2010-04-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

On the often debated issue between theological conservatives and liberals over social justice, Jared Wilson has this to say:

In Acts, we see the personal gospel taking hold of individuals, which grew the counter-culture of the church, which resulted in all sorts of cultural and social fallout, from care of the poor to the bankruptcy of idol-makers.

I like the term "social fallout." It implies that what Jesus did was like dropping a nuclear bomb on the world. It's an apt metaphor. The Gospel of personal salvation is simply too explosive not to transform a social order. How the Gospel of Christ for personal salvation became considered separate from James' "religion that is pure and undefiled before God" is probably a sadder story than I care to investigate right now. But Jared does a pretty great job(though brief, as a foretaste of his next book) at not losing either end of the deal.

If it's good news that Christ atoned for my sin personally so that eternal union with him could be mine, than it must be good news that he expects the Jesus community to "remember the poor." This is not medicine that's good for you but tastes bad or something. This is what people who have passed from death to life do. As a matter of deep desire and conviction. And in the process of valuing the people around us more than whatever the newest $20-a-week fad, the idol-makers go bankrupt (that includes the Christian music industry, btw).

The way I understand it, the Gospel of personal salvation continues to be a Gospel of personal salvation day to day, forever. The question to us is, do we still think it's Good News, or have we found better news since then in the promise of having control over our lives and being well-respected by our in-laws? If Christ is as valuable as the Gospel suggests he is, then it's not only possible to "sell everything you have and give it to the poor," it might even be fun. If, that is, we really think it's good news.

But before we go joining a church or creating a ministry designed to give help to the homeless, do we know any homeless people as it is? Before we introduce a new cog into the church machine to help the lowly, is the church itself made up of the lowly? Is "mercy ministry" a way of "reaching down" to those who are implicitly understood as inferior and in need of our help, or is it horizontal "seeing and reaching towards" people who, in the shadow of the Cross, look much like we do?

Because if the face of Christ's suffering for us is the suffering of individuals, and because the injustice of men that crucified Christ is the macro-implication of the injustice that inflicts suffering on all human victims of sin, presently incarnated as the poor, then what we do about the suffering poor implies and displays our posture towards the suffering Christ. And the suffering Christ will not be ignored. An "I don't care" is outright rejection. A "that's someone else's job" is a hard-hearted refusal to consider Christ himself worthy of our attention. A Gospel that is witnessed as that which gets you into heaven, but does not continue to challenge (no, condemn!) man's kingdom and point to Christ's Kingdom is soon an obsolete Gospel in which personal salvation itself will cease to mean anything compelling. I don't know how many generations. One...maybe two.

Many of us who are saying this are fairly middle-class, white and priveliged. We went to college. These things don't come naturally for us. We're struggling to, at the least, allow Scripture and our own humanity to keep us uncomfortable with the way things are.

The missional movement is seeking to correct a mistake that evangelicals have been making for a century or so. The best of the movement will remain both Gospel-centered and embody the Kingdom of God now. There's no lasting fruit produced by removing the Cross from the ministry of justice. There's also no authentic interest in the Gospel itself (of the Kingdom or for personal salvation) if a human display of compassion for the weak does not proceed from faith. These are not negotiable. Both errors are compromises on the very thing that correct faith depends on.

Easter: The Non-submission of Jesus to Our Designs

2010-04-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Chaplain Mike notes (again) that Easter is a season, and there's a reason for that. The Risen Christ walked the earth for several weeks, having been dead for days, until his ascension recorded in the book of Acts. While the liturgical church observes the Easter season, I have mostly come to know Easter as a single day, one we often associate with springtime, chocolate eggs, flowers around the altar, churches packed with folks in the best clothes who normally never show up, feasts of ham.

So why a season? Christmas has a season too- the joyful anticipation of "God with us." Easter? The slack-jawed, stunned walking, talking, eating, and abiding with Jesus after he has died. That the man you spent the last 3 years with, who was brutally crucified and most definitely dead, is now alive in the flesh.

One good way I can think of to remove my attention from my personal problems is to see a dead man walking. For 50 days straight, no less. The Resurrection, and thus the "programming" of the church year with a season devoted to it, is designed to counteract the effective gnosticism that most of us are wallowing in when it comes to spirituality. Instead of seeing "God in my life," it is now myself who is being located in God's life. By way of illustration, imagine the tides, or the phases of the moon. There's nothing we really do to cause these things to happen, nor could we prevent them if we tried. We are "located" within those realities. We don't make them submit to our lives. In other times, cultures were shaped by these natural rhythms, bending and shifting to shape the life of the people around the ordained principles of the earth. Like harvest time, nighttime walks under the full moon. We could do three bad things with objective realities like winter, or the Resurrection: stand, eyes shut tight, in denial that there is a rhythm and design to the universe that we don't control. Ignore them, as if they didn't matter. Or we could consider them to matter only as far as they're capable of serving our personal designs. This is the category we find ourselves in America's 21st century.

The Risen Christ among us marginalizes the petty distractions we like to prioritize and the designs we want to subject him to. Like liberalism. Or seeing healing miracles. Or how to get our churches to "reach out" more. Jesus' brilliant and sovereign choice to appear to his disciples in the flesh for several weeks gives them, and us, the gift of sight. Not of "spiritual" sight. Sight in the flesh. That's what the Easter season is for: for us, the Church universal beginning with the first disciples, to see with our real eyes, the in-the-flesh reality of Jesus' Risen presence in the physical world in which we find ourselves.

Talking About the "De-Churched"

2010-04-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

Two BRILLIANT posts about the "de-churched" at Out of Ur:

Part 1
Part 2

Martin Luther Beats the Offering Plate Over My Head

2010-04-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

As someone who's knee-jerk response to talk of tithes and offerings is to break out in hives and start frothing at the mouth, I think I benefited a little bit from this Martin Luther quote over at Christ Is Deeper Still:

“I understand that this is the week for the church collection, and many of you do not want to give a thing. You ungrateful people should be ashamed of yourselves. . . . I am sorry I ever freed you from the tyrants and the papists. You ungrateful beasts, you are not worthy of the treasure of the gospel. If you don’t improve, I will stop preaching rather than cast pearls before swine.”

Riches

2010-04-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. 33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! Romans 11:32-33

If the riches of God's mercy in Jesus Christ were enough for me, I would see there is nothing I can lose that can take away what he has gained, and nothing I can gain that can reverse what I lost in my disobedience. And then I would fear no pain, no man, nothing.

pre-Easter, Easter, and post-Easter

2010-04-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:22-24

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened. Luke 24:1-12

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. Hebrews 2:14-15

1. God instituted and ordained death as a preventative measure- kill them before they eat of the tree of life and live forever in their state of God-rejection. Problem: sin. Consequence: death(physical).

2. In a backwoods corner of the greatest empire on earth, unseen by the prestigious and powerful, Jesus physically rises from the dead exalts himself as King, reveals himself as the True Adam, validates his sin-killing work on the cross and reveals God's ultimate plan to abolish death. Given Genesis 2's handling of death, his conquest of sin must be a conquest of death, sin's consequence, as well. It is an objective fact, not a metaphor for the pious to become sentimental about. Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and never died again.

3. For milennia, the fear of death has haunted humanity, throwing it into a continuous self-perpetuating spiral of sin- rejection of God, his design, his character, his will. All because mortal humans can't come to terms with the idea that life will end, all because of a multi-generational conditioned reaction against this final affront against the life they consider good. Forgetting that God himself ordained it, refusing to trust that the God who committed this mass homicide is in fact good and that there is ultimate design in this curse. Exceptional cases are those like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago.

But now the truth is out: Jesus Christ, born of a woman, has submitted to death and come out the other side. (side note: if you're thinking of resurrection as a "spiritual" reality, you'd better be giving a lot more airplay to the literal fact of Jesus' Resurrection.) The result: He has disarmed Satan who has been wielding the fear of death against the children of flesh and blood for millennia and conditioning them with that fear. By rising (in the flesh!) from the dead, he proves to any bit of humanity bothering to watch that God's design truly is good, that death is a speed bump, that fear is completely unwarranted, that the sin that caused death in the first place has been crucified, that dying is easy, far easier than being afraid of death ever was. Fearlessness of pain and death, in the service of the Jesus-exalting, love-manifesting Kingdom, is now the norm for those who love him, and love the Resurrection "happening."

I know someone who climbs trees and jumps out of them. Awhile back, she broke her wrist doing this and had to have a metal pin inserted to insure proper healing. The whole process had to have been pretty painful. Recently, after months of a broken wrist, the doctor pronounced her healed and removed the pin. So what now? She's climbing trees and jumping out of them.

People who see Jesus risen, and rejoice over him, say things like "I will burn alive in a furnace before I will act out of the fear of pain and death, for that is the worship of idols."

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The Jesus-Centric Practice of the Remembrance Feast of Communion: A Manifesto

2010-02-13T10:34:00.000-08:00

Luke 22
4 And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him.15 And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said,“Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

The Passover was the yearly feast, within a host of traditions, laws, festival, sabbaths, and prayers, that functioned for the Hebrews as the anchor, the flag in the ground, the existential declaration of their national/cultural/religious identity. The nature of that identity at its core, reflected in the purpose of the Passover, was the fact of God's salvation of them as a people out of slavery. In history. It happened in the literal days of time which they passed together and on the literal dirt which they walked together. The imperative behind the Passover celebration was clear, resounding "Remember!" Remember that our God has saved us. And so they told the story, over and over for generations, and so they celebrated the meal, over and over for generations.

National identities are tricky things. In the early days of the United States of America, European culture-critics scoffingly pointed to this nation's lack of such an identity. Icons like Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, the push westward and the sense of manifest destiny, sketched out and solidified that identity. Now we might add baseball, apple pie, and country music to the mix. But the Euros were correct early on. Comparatively speaking, the infant US did not have a heritage, a hearty sense of their national personality compared to say, France or China. There was nothing shouting to American citizens "You are American! Remember!" And it's true that any nation with a strong sense of identity has things, things that are are a part of their history, part of the rhythms of their life, shouting their name to them. Describing them, telling them who they are.

This is what the Passover celebration did. It shouted to the Jews. As a yearly feast observed for millenia, the message and purpose of the Passover became the blood that ran in their veins. Exodus 13:3 provides the content of what the Passover shouts, to this day, to a Jew:

Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place.

Now, this has all been groundwork. This is all simply prerequisite to any conversation about communion. The Church's historical tradition of communion, whichever one you find yourself in, is less important in speaking its meaning to us than the Exodus salvation story and the institution of Passover. That's because Jesus was working with that tradition, not thinking up a new one. It was what he and his friends knew, it was in their bloodstream as Jews. It's what he clearly had in mind at the Last Supper.

He was not establishing a new tradition, however he was building on an old one, describing it more vividly in terms of what he was about to do. Or rather, he was showing his disciples that their tradition, that which ran in their veins as a result of God's historic salvation of Israel out of Egypt, described him. He was adjusting the focus in the salvation picture. This time, it's God single-handedly saving his people from the slavery of sin, and the destruction of Israel's enemies through Jesus' submission to death and the wrath of God.

What is the tradition of the Lord's Supper shouting to us? What identity is the church through ages established in? The fairly obvious answer is found in Jesus' own words:

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."

They are to identify existentially with the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ. The lifeblood, identity, and existential self-knowledge of the Church established through centuries of corporate practice, is as the people for whom Christ "by a strong hand brought out of Egypt," only this time it's the Egypt of sin. First by stepping in front of the freight train of God's wrath that threatens to obliterate all that is identified with sin. Second by revealing the nature of this salvation to the church in such a way that commands and compels attention, allegiance, and affection such that all others are subverted or submitted. He removes, in the act of submitting to death and the wrath of God, both the guilt and power of sin which rested on and controlled God's people, and threatened to destroy them. The parallel between Passover and the Lord's Supper is clear:

Subject? God.

Object? people.

Event? salvation.

Response? remember.

Is this "remember," best described by "believing in your heart?" Not really, though that command is in the story too. No one really says that they believe in their heart that they were born...they simply were born. It's existential self-knowledge rooted in an experience from their personal history. Allow me to paint a picture.

What Jesus is doing in Luke 22:4-20 is taking a multi-thousand year long rope, and tying it around his waist. Then he's taking the other end, tying a stone to it, and hurling that stone forward in time to the end of history, and he's saying to his church "grab ahold." If and when the church holds on to the rope, they are tugged around, shifted, influenced, by his movements. As he goes to the cross, those holding the rope feel the shivers and jerks in the rope as he is beaten relentlessly, dragged up a hill, and nailed to a piece of wood. They feel a series of slightly decreasing tensions and releases as he gasps for his final breaths. If they are holding tightly enough, and solemnly silent enough, they can hear him cry out that he is thirsty.

Have you ever watched someone die? I haven't, but I'm sure I would never be the same. And I'm sure this death, were I watching, would change me like no other. And by practicing the remembrance meal, that is what we do each time: together, we watch the Son of Man die. And each time we die with him. And then, on the third day as the mysterious Church Universal grieves what they have just seen, all of us throughout history will feel a gentle tug on the rope, first imperceptible. Then, unbelievably, we begin being dragged about, with forceful purpose and energy. He's alive, he's strong, and he's shoving the stone out of the way with his bare hands. Incredulous, the church feels the movement and intention of the Risen Glorified Christ as he exits the grave leaving death inside.

Again, most of us haven't seen a man rise from the dead. But we are given the chance, in partaking of the remembrance meal, to have the Resurrection of history be the event that sets up and compels our own history. Should we choose to respond to the "remember" of Luke 22, we will begin being dragged into an unshakable conviction that we too will rise from the dead, and that death is as irrelevant as a penny on the railroad tracks. Not merely our minds and hearts, but our history has changed. That is one of the boldest statements one can make, and the more suffering you have gone through, and the more sin you can see in yourself, the bolder it seems and the more glorious it is if true.

The essence of establishing onesself, or the "churchself," in a faith that matters with any historical significance and bedrock conviction is to remember. And here's where we start offending people that are too tightly identifying with the wrong traditions: one does not remember a doctrine. Nor does one remember a subjectively arrived at conviction based on an experience with some numinous or invisible sense of love or joy. One remembers an event. Thus we have the heart of the Gospel- the event of a man, the God-revealing man, to be exact. And the invitation it poses to us: to be shaped by that man's history, by those events. He did not invite us to believe a set of propositions or feel a shiver and tingle. He invited us to look into his eyes as the lash tore through his flesh, to put our hands on his body as his muscles tensed and relaxed for the last time, to press our ear to his chest and listen to his heart stop beating.

One final observation, and then a couple recommendations.

**Observation**

The practice of communion, and more deeply the way of understanding it in evangelicalism, is existentially irrelevant. It is sickly and anemic. It doesn't matter, and that's because we've decided it doesn't matter. And that implies something much more thoroughly disturbing: we've decided that Jesus Christ doesn't matter in any meaningful way. The reported tide of "ex-evangelicals" sweeping into Catholic and Orthodox churches testifies to this communion-anemia quite convincingly. Conclusion? Among the myriad of things that can be said, and are being said very loudly, about the problems in evangelical/protestant Christianity, at rock bottom is the way this branch of the church thinks about(or doesn't think about) the historical Jesus-event itself. That way of thinking is directly causal with the way we think about and interpret our own past, and thus what how we existentially function. Functionally, most of us are merely philosophers, universalists, shamanists, spiritualists, or agnostics. The question that will probably bring most of us to our knees, if we ask it searchingly and deeply enough, is this: Do we remember Jesus Christ as a person who made contact with our corporate past? Or do we merely consider him a theory, a theology, a philosophy, a love-y notion, a moral code, or an emotional experience? Because if we haven't considered the Gospel a man, or if we've sidelined this because we feel that other things are more effective, then we have offended and despised him, and we have said to him, in the very death throes we feel as we grasp the rope, "you are not that valuable." We have stood on the road to Calvary and jeered at the lacerated man walking past us, shouting "I want nothing to do with you!"

Weep, sons and daughters of Israel.

**Suggestions**

I have two simple and perhaps vain suggestions for the Church in the way of correction. First: When you and your church partake in this historic (and historical) identity-shaping feast in remembrance of Him, don't begin with, don't even say anywhere in the service, "this is a symbol." Because what that does is devalues the nourishment for the receiver; it fogs the window communion provides to the Son of Man's personhood in real time and on real dirt. It begins to pry people's fingers off the rope. In effect what you're saying is "don't remember, admire." The celebration becomes pretty, not effective. Jesus didn't say it was a symbol, neither did the record of the earliest Church history. Calling it a symbol is not as far as you think from telling people that Jesus was an encouraging myth. I'm not advocating magic tricks. I'm saying the cross was not a symbol, because symbols don't absorb wrath. And meals aren't symbols, because you can contemplate symbols all day and still die of hunger.

Second: Make an event of it, and include what all meals include- conversation. And let the purpose of this conversation be the intentional abiding, dwelling upon, and remembrance of, Jesus Himself. Do not talk about God, for this hour or so, except in relation to what is found in Jesus' personal history. That means do not talk about God's presence, power, or providence in your personal life(charismatics and baptists, this is going to be hard!). If you must do this, send your story into orbit around the personal history of Jesus Christ. Tell the story of Jesus for its own sake. DO orbit around him. DO make Jesus the subject of conversation, not yourselves. DO make the story of the Cross the culminating moment of the meal as you consume the bread and wine together. DO stand in awe. DO it often.

Because the only thing worthy of the kind of attention and priority and love we are designed to give is Jesus Christ. By "eating and drinking" of him consistently, our cellular composition begins to consist of him, of his substance. We begin to see that we and everything else orbit around him, not vice versa. Our practice is one of knowing Him. Food is a picture of Him. The community has Him as its firstborn and cornerstone. Creation is a display of His genius. Redemption is His work alone. Scripture tells His story. The Spirit is given to unify the body with Him as the head. Life is given and sustained by Him. In the practice of communion He is the subject, the church is the object. Remember this.

What Humans Do Is Love Other Humans

2010-02-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

At Expository Thoughts:

I’m not a pollster but I suspect that many fresh out of seminary types immediately begin their preaching ministry with a series in one of the epistles (I did). They then preach a series about the church and then return to preach another epistle. Call it a hunch but I suspect it’s close to the truth.

The post's core assertion is that no books have been written, at least in our lifetime, on the subject of preaching NT narrative. The above passage highlights what author Paul Lamey assumes is a trend at least among recent seminary grads. I'm going to go a little further and say it's not just a trend in recent grads. I'm going to confess that I have a hard time thinking of a time I've heard the NT preached as narrative in person(not including the prolific access we have via the internet to a huge number of sermons). Gospels or Acts. I'll also confess that I don't generally think of theology, or of the practice of knowing God, in terms of what's on display in the Gospel narrative.

This isn't a blog about preaching, nor is this post. So keep following me... I've been on the subject here at the blog -- over-simplifying things a bit -- of Jesus as a man. That the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, came into history and acted as God-revealer to humans who are contained in physical flesh. That we need to see, hear, and be presented with revelation in real time, not an abstraction, not merely the statement that "God is good." God sent Jesus into history because immortal, invisible God-only-wise is just that, invisible. Outside of perception.

Jesus is visible and knowable existentially. If there's a way to convey Gospel truth to beings encased in flesh, it's to present it in flesh. That is, existential shift can only happen when the "message" is really a being that is existentially like those to whom the message is being brought. What is the problem with preaching epistles without narrative? The answer is simple: the epistles don't describe the event, they describe the theology of the event. Or at least that's how we use them. I can't love the doctrine of election(sorry Calvinists). But if a MAN elected me, I'll probably love HIM. The historical fact of Jesus' humanness is crucial to the transformation of our humanness. He did after all refer to himself as the Son of Man more often than Son of God. As Michael Spencer over at Jesus-Shaped Spirituality showed me, more importantly than that Jesus is God, the Gospels display that God is Jesus. If the Gospel is ideas, we just get our ideas transformed. If God "floats" a theology of grace my way in the form of a really sophisticated philosophy, I'll probably get high on it for a little while, and something might indeed change, but some major things aren't going to change, particularly things tied to my existential human condition.

The Gospels and Acts record the historical event of the Gospel, in the real time, enfleshed person of Jesus Christ, who's not here any more(see two posts ago). The epistles describe the nuances of the event(the man, more specifically), they interpret it for us, give us a way of thinking about it. That's why thinking and preaching that is exclusively mines epistles(or the Gospels used as philosophical texts rather than historical narrative), quickly floats into the clouds. How many times have you heard someone, on a mad run to try and describe truth perfectly in words, go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of hyper-qualifying each assertion and then even qualifying qualifications to try to hone the statement in accurately. Yes, I've done it too. It's philosophy, for all intents and purposes. Not Christianity. Disengaged from Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, theology and practice are simply a fruitless scramble to try and articulate what can't adequately be articulated in words. We go after concepts like "not legalistic" or "obedient" or "dependent on God" as if we can describe our activity or mindset. We can't. They are attributes of Jesus, and thus can only be described and entered into properly with him as reference point. Disengaged from the Son of Man, they are no less than eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Take the subject of the Holy Spirit. This has been the source of a great deal of confusion for me personally in the past. How about the phrase "walk in the Spirit." Exactly what does that mean? Divorced from context, nothing, because we can't see, feel, control, manipulate, or manage the Holy Spirit. But frequently that phrase will get thrown out there as if it's practically helpful. It's not. :) Now the "woman of the city who was a sinner," of Luke 7:36-38, who broke open a jar of expensive ointment for Jesus, and washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, she was walking in the Spirit. What exactly was going on there?.... well, she saw Jesus and reacted with affection. She certainly didn't see the Holy Spirit, or set out to walk in the Spirit. And she didn't see theology, in the sense that many in Protestantism think of it. She didn't see her transformation or faith or salvation, she saw a Man. And in light of what this particular man was doing, she did what humans do-- loved the other human.

Let me use another illustration in closing: what does Compassion International put on its ads in the hopes that you will sponsor a child? Faces. Faces of children, particularly. So that you will feel sympathy, or compassion, or love, all of these and more. So that you will be compelled. Humanness compels, because it is what most deeply resonates with ourselves. We are designed to love the other person, most fundamentally. As N.T. Wright put it, we're not saved by believing in justification by faith, we're saved by believing God in Jesus.

I have no idea if that's where Paul Lamey was going with it, but that's where I went with it.

Young Man on the Ground

2010-02-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

I read something today where someone expressed that they "do not believe that God is an old man in the sky." By the context the speaker was implying that she thought hers was an unusual perspective, one that her audience may not have encountered.

I for one have never met anyone who believed that God is an old man in sky. I'm not sure where this came from. When I hear people say what this woman said, I have to wonder, "who exactly does believe God is like that?"

Interestingly, I realized while reflecting, that while I do not believe that God is an old man in the sky either, I do believe that God is a young man on the ground. :)

Jesus Is Not Here

2010-01-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

I am accepted. I am loved. I am a new man. Brennan Manning is right: God loves me as I am, not as I should be. These are the statements that we are given to saying as part of our gospel paradigm. And I've been given many good examples of the use of statements like these. They've helped me immeasurably. But I've felt a growing dissatisfaction with the place that they've occupied in myself and in the understanding of a large number of people who are reacting to "nasty old fundamentalism" and it's ilk. And the conclusion that I'm coming to is that these are not central statements to the paradigm we're given by Jesus. They are a point along the way, certainly. But the new paradigm that I have been working with is this: Jesus is worthy because, among other things, he accepts, loves, and makes a new man out of someone like me. Do you see the difference? Those three statements at the opening are true, but the subject is me, and my condition. What I look at is the "new creation," and I rejoice, because a wonderful work has taken place. However with time, and with this as the mainstay, I become confused about the source of the Gospel, and will probably struggle with being sure of my salvation, or with believing that God really loves me. And I will certainly craft a spirituality that concerns itself basically with personal experiences, unhealthy individualism, you know....the "personal Jesus" that Depeche Mode sang about. Ironic, isn't it? The more I concentrate on amorphous "God loves me" statements, the more his love gets lost in the fog. Here's why: "Creation" implies creator. Just like the New Creation implies something like a "New Creator.” I'm thinking of the parallel between John 1 and Genesis 1. If the condition that I've come to, the glorious perfection I now have, doesn't start and end with the Perfector, and gets bogged down in a fascination with my identity in light of the Gospel, the goal will inevitable fade from view.

An awesome brother and friend gave his testimony in church on Sunday, and while I'm very scrupulous not to pick apart what people say when they're giving they're heartfelt testimonies, he illustrated this point very clearly. In describing his conversion(conversions, actually. Like many today, he "got saved" five or six times), he identified the moment where he "finally made himself right with God." Obviously, anyone with any theological understanding has red flags going up everywhere at a statement like this, and there's a good chance if confronted on the statement, he'd admit that he misspoke. But I only want to use it to illustrate my point: my friend went into detail a few times about how he struggled terribly with condemnation, had been told many times that he was destined for hell because he couldn't get things right-- surely we've heard the drill before. My thought was, "is it any wonder, in an evangelical culture in which creating personal experiences of salvation, where one can 'get saved' half a dozen times and 'make themselves right with God' in these experiences, that our lives are paralyzed by guilt and condemnation, as his was and is? This happens because we think our salvation, our condition before God, is the mainstay of the Gospel. It's not.

Is the connection clear? When the story orbits around what happened at 3pm on June 14th, 1993, it's up in the air as to whether Jesus is consuming my attention. When we believe a message which promotes primarily the state of the individual getting saved, their belovedness, their identity as a new creation, their perfection, we are still concentrating on something other than the source. Jesus himself alone is worthy of the kind of all-consuming attention we are designed to give. Our redeemed selves are not. It matters what my eyes see. Thus when I look at myself, and try to understand the gospel in terms of what I see there, no matter how true it may be that I'm redeemed, my eyes do not tell me that. We are not simply spirits, we are bodily(which leads us to something far different than what the docetists would have had us believe). And so my understanding of my condition inevitably rests on what I see myself doing day in and day out. And therein is not always found a great argument for a new creation. That's why Jesus was incarnate, and didn't simply pronounce forgiveness and atonement from the "spirit-plane" of being. Born of a Virgin. Suffered. Was Buried. Now my eyes can rest on him.

The simple reason this confusion happens, I suspect, is that we are here, and Jesus is not. So I can't see him. This statement sounds offensive to many at first. "Jesus is in my heart" is the oft-repeated line that we have used to convince ourselves of his work. He's here. I guess I won't say that's a useless statement, but if that's the foundation we're working with, we're doomed. Is Jesus not omnipresent, since he is one with God? Certainly, but the revelation to us of God-ness, is not found in the omnipresence of God, or in our new creation, or his "presence" in and among us, at least not most fully. It's found in Jesus. So in a way that's very important to Gospel-shaping our paradigm, he's not here. Yet my hard-wired nature is for my attention to be riveted by that which my eyes can see and my ears can hear. So in my zeal to sense Jesus as a present being, my eyes have no choice but to rest on something that's here...and that isn't Jesus. Something that isn't as worthy of my attention. So what I have to remember, and what is crucial to the Gospel, is that someone did see him; that the Gospel is in fact the relation of a historical event, no better yet, of a man. Jesus came to people, talked with them, and displayed the glory of God with hands and feet, amid sweat and dirt. Incarnation is communicated through incarnation. Thus through the ages, the Church carries on the practice of telling. Of relating the event. Amid sweat and dirt. Christmas. Easter. Eating his body and drinking his blood. I know Jesus, the man who isn't here, because someone for whom he was there told someone, who told someone, who told someone....He's not merely a spirit-being, and in a very real sense he's not here. Could this be the reason Luke began the book of Acts with Christ's ascension? To show us that what the apostles did, and what Jesus-people through the ages do, is done in remembrance of his coming, and in anticipation of his coming back. It's done in light of events. Or as Luther said "live like Jesus rose from the dead yesterday, and is coming back tommorrow." To know him is to know him now, but the one who I know now is known through historical events laid down in text.

This could be the resolution to a number of ongoing debates, I suspect. I'm thinking of Catholic vs. Protestant views of justification, Calvinist vs. Arminian uber-fascination with the moment of salvation...but I suppose that's for another time.

You could go on and on with the implications(which is why it's a paradigm). Is the celebration of communion designed to focus on the effect of his broken body and shed blood....or on objective fact of his broken body and shed blood? When I read the Bible, is the paradigm essentially "give me bits of information that apply to my life," or is it "show me Jesus, so I may know him, for knowing him is eternal life(John 17:3)?" It is only when Jesus himself fascinates me that I begin growing out of different soil.

That's why Jesus became something we can look at. So we would look at him.

The Agape Paradigm

2010-01-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

What is the agape paradigm?

The word "paradigm" suggest that we're getting at something that lies behind what you see. Like the gears inside of a clock. To a child, the hands just move. But for a watchmaker, there are precisely measured, finely tuned inner workings that produce the movement on the watch face. My paradigm drives what you are seeing in my behavior, my facial expressions, my choice of work, etc.

The agape paradigms suggests that everything I choose to do, everything I consider to be part of my active following of Jesus, of being an inhabitant of the kingdom on earth, should be driven by agape love springing forth from the well of my being. If I am instructed to give money, wash dishes, or fix a car, there are a number of ways I could do that. And if the standard for judging an action is to bring one's action itself into conformity with the expected norm, or the correct way of doing things, I can find a rather easy way out of following Jesus, but still maintaining a facade of being "spiritual," or exemplifying obedience, or whatever.

Words like Matthew 22:37-40 are often used to comfort, to assuage the unnecessary guilt of those who have not measured up in some way or another, according to accepted behavior norms. Well they should. They should also strike fear into our hearts.

If my idea of doing things in a Christian way amounts to (and to some extent, this is true for everyone) checking off boxes, or preserving stability, or making things pleasant, or increasing comfort and pleasure, Matt 22:37-40

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

asks a cutting question. A devastating question: have you loved the one in front of you? Have you placed their well-being above your preference, your comfort, and your convenience?

No, I haven't. And that's why I'm afraid. Afraid that I'm going to continue in a pattern of hurtful, or apathetic, or ambivalent behavior in such a way that paints a picture of well-being. I'm afraid of continuing as before, placing a band-aid on the gunshot wound so I can't see it, mentally blocking out the pain, and saying “all better!” with a big smile.

Of old, this meant putting on religion as if it made us righteous. Newsflash: our sin is savvier than that now. Religion is out. Don't be religious, says everybody. Don't just go to church for the sake of ritual. Right, well who exactly is doing that, these days?

So now, my un-religious behavior is still geared towards self-preservation, still places comfort, security, and convenience above the well-being of the person in front of me, and still does a masterful cover-up job on the vile inner reality of my self-centered appropriate behavior. Still just as much potential for agape-less behavior. Still a lot of pretending.

Agape must come, it must convict, it must destroy the mask. It must then consume me with desire to see good come to the person in front of me and drive out the priority of my comfort, ego, convenience, image, or momentary cravings. Come Lord. And then I will go back to the temple and offer my sacrifice.

Agape and Church Services

2009-12-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

Pardon the absence. Breaks from blogging allow me to collect thoughts, recenter, and make sure I'm not just engaging in logorrhea.

Sharing some stuff at the Wednesday night gathering at my church tonight. My topic is going to be, a la Michael Spencer, Jesus-shaped discipleship vs. Church-shaped discipleship. I came up with a few contrasts as far as what how I see the two differing. The thing that I find myself being drawn to is the prevalence of agape as the driving theme behind what the church "does" as an entity on the planet. As a Jesus-community, it seems impossible to think of ecclesiology, church services, and the "what do we DO?" question without having a central regard for the concept of agape love. If you're not familiar with that term, It will probably show up more in my posting to come. Here's a few of my contrasts. For any avid blog-reader, they probably aren't new ideas:

Discipleship

Church-shaped: Being busy in church, attending events, being committed to programs

Jesus-shaped: Loving Jesus and people per John 14:15, Matt 22:37-40

Commitment:

Church-shaped: Commitment = tying up resources in programs and institutions.

Jesus-shaped: Commitment is agape-driven, therefore relationship-contextual and person-oriented instead of organization/program contextual.

Service Content:

Church-shaped: The necessity of keeping people around and happy, in order to validate the local church as an entity, dictates that services are entertainment oriented. The Spirit and following Jesus are equated with louder music, a flashier show, prettier faces, and more media-worthy events. Attention-getting is equated with evangelism. Emotional manipulation is called spiritual experience. Worshippers' attention is generally drawn to a couple of talented people up front.

Jesus-shaped: Services are Jesus-saturated, gospel-driven, inspire agape. Worship focuses on the God-initiated unbreakable love-bond between God and his people, and does not necessarily look the same all the time, nor does it consist of only/primarily one activitiy, i.e. singing songs. People coordinating worship actively work to deflect attention from themselves.

Value of the service

Church-shaped: Qualitative reflection is dictated by results, numbers, the entertainment value of the show, the eloquence of the speaker, the wattage of the sound system.

Jesus-shaped: Value of Sunday morning is seen in relational interconnectedness, agape-incarnation, knowing and loving one another in a Jesus-like way

Disciple's progress:

Church-shaped: Moral/spiritual success of individuals measured by proper engagement with prescribed events/programs/ministries

Jesus-shaped: Spiritual success measured by Jesus' work. Moral progress is understood as only one aspect of discipleship, and is pursued/measured as a function of knowing and loving the God who sent Jesus to do the original work. John 17:3

We'll see what they say about it tonight.

Coolest Instrument Ever

2009-10-24T11:11:00.001-07:00

In the hands of Mike Marshall(on the left):
And PLEASE, if you can't watch the whole thing, take a minute to watch Chris Thile's solo beginning at 3:04...

And one from the Balkans:

How Jesus Really Did Have Something To Do With The Communal Church in Acts 2

2009-10-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number by day those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47

Gonna do something I probably shouldn't.

Gonna blog on a piece of Scripture about which people consistently say things that make me want to call them a idiot.

Here's the formula we use here at the Jesus Paradigm. We ask the following question: “How does this passage reflect the inspiration and person and work of Jesus Christ?” Far-fetched, I know.

Sorry, I'm just tired of engaging over Scripture in a constant whirlwind of tail-chasing qualifications over what things should and shouldn't look like. If you do that, cut it out. Cut it out right now. It's much easier to just shove everything through the Jesus Paradigm and quit wringing your hands about the social gospel or whatever.

Here's the deal, I won't say stupid things like “careful now, don't take this text like it's an imperative for all churches to live in community,” and you won't worry that my not saying it is an encouragement to give nuclear secrets to China. Because Scripture doesn't tell its story with a sensitivity for 21st century America's petty fixations on politics, possessions, and the freedom to live completely separated from the inconveniences of having other people around. Let's get something straight: YOU live in community. It doesn't matter whether you try to or not. The question is to what extent, with which aspects of your life, to what end, and with what extent of intentionality? Are you married? You live in community. Do you have children that aren't grown? You live in community. Do you live on the same block as other people? You're sharing space, and therefore you live in community. If we didn't live in some form of community, we would die, because we are interdependent for emotional and physical well-being. I simply can't give myself surgery. So I gotta pay someone else to do it, in which case I've entered an agreement with another person involving mutual dependence, with the expectation of mutual benefit.

If you're worried about socialism at this point in my analysis, please wipe the froth off your mouth and hear me out to the end.

Back to our question: How do Jesus and the gospel have anything to do with this church's decision to all get crazy and move in together and threaten our American values?

Well, what happens when Jesus transforms someone into a new creation and gives them a new mind is they value things differently. They value, for instance, Jesus. Himself. They value him so much that they think the XBox over which they had a fist-fight with another Wal-Mart customer the day after Thanksgiving is.....optional. They also value the things Jesus values. Like people. I mean real people, the people in front of them, not the people on Dancing With the Stars. They actually, by some devil-magic, find themselves willing to lose in the practical matter in order to win in terms of sacrificing for someone else's good. That kind of stuff happens. It really does. (Usually it's not in testimonies of How I Came To The Lord though. I've noticed. “some guy willingly took a bullet for me and with his dying breath said 'Jesus is all in all'...so I became a Christian.” I don't really hear that one too often.)

So if I value Jesus, and the things Jesus values, more than anything including my own desires, goals, possessions, and well-being, that makes it so that it's a lot more difficult for people to offend me and make my life miserable. I'm not constantly worried that someone's gonna break my stuff, because really, even when they screw up, even when it's difficult, I like them. The person is my priority. And even if I were to lose everything I own, even the respect of my peers, I would still have Jesus.

If I'm convinced of the gospel promises, the life of the world to come, the constant availability of joy in the Father, in knowing Jesus, the freedom from worry that follows the conviction that “He upholds the universe with the word of his power,” then I won't be all that concerned with maintaining things that in and of themselves have no lasting value. If I don't consider myself deserving of anything, or the owner of anything, if I've received everything as a gift from a gracious God, then it's no big deal to give valuable items away to those in need. Just guessing, but they might have had that kind of conviction in Acts 2, right after the resurrection, the abolition of death.

When that happens, living close to people is not this fringe, terrifying, Josef Stalin thing where we invent hermeneutical gymnastics to say “actually, the Acts 2 church wasn't doing what God wanted at all in that case”...it's simply the most practical, and the most enjoyable, way to do life. It's also lends itself to structuring one's life in such a way that resources normally tied to maintaining your stretched Hummer are freed up to do Jesusy things like this.(apologies if you have a stretched Hummer. If so, you should do Jesusy things with it. Like give this guy a ride.)

The bad news for some is, to live like they did in Acts 2, you do have to like people. If you must make sure that you never see anyone of a different socio-economic status than yourself, you might not like knowing your neighbors, or the folks down at the park. If you need to be seen by others as a productive, bread-winning, one-person self-supportive mechanism, you might not be comfortable being the guy in a group living situation who just keeps the grounds, washes dishes, cleans the bathroom, and fixes leaks.

But just remember, the fear that drives us is not invincible.

Advent Conspiracy

2009-09-28T12:20:00.001-07:00

Since it's now almost October, that means I'm almost two months late in getting ready for....you know it...CHRISTMAS! Now you may be thinking "whoa, Christmas isn't till December!" If so, you obviously haven't realized that America considers the last 4-5 months of the year "the Christmas season." Because that's approximately how long it takes for the average American to earn the amount of money they will spend on Christmas gifts. Heck, one business I worked for that was really on the ball put the Christmas trees up in July, and began selling ornaments in August(that's five and six months ahead of time for those of you keeping track)!

So even though we're a little late in starting the Christmas season here at The Jesus Paradigm, it's still my duty is to make the holiday season as full of Christmas cheer as I can for everyone. This video by Advent Conspiracy has some bright ideas:

How Jesus Talks About the Bible (part 2)

2009-09-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

**Read the first installment one post below this one, if you haven't yet.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:44-49

The disciples on the Emmaus road have just had their minds blown. There is a clear purpose for this new awe-inspiring knowledge of Scripture the disciples have been given, which is in fact now a living knowledge of him who they've been walking and talking with for some time: proclamation. “I'm telling you this so you can announce it everywhere. Tell everyone. Sing it, pray it, shout it. Do dangerous things to make it known. Preach it in the synagogues and the temple. But not yet....wait.

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. Luke 24:50-53

Luke's finale shows us the response of the newly illuminated followers of Jesus. Now I may be stretching things a bit, having no training in Greek nuance, but I'm not sure Luke isn't referring to the same redefinition of worship Jesus gives us in John 4:21: The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. Are they “continually” in the brick-and-mortar temple, or the dwelling place God has prepared in each of them(John 14:23), having received the abiding Word, Jesus Christ? I'm inclined to think that when Jesus illuminates the logos for these two, it brings to life in them something that was merely "information" before. And this new "indwelling" provoked a state of worship, which had previously been an activity centered on the temple. He relocated worship from temple to the human spirit, made alive by his own. A brief word on "spirit": the spiritual shift that took place and caused worship was, or at least was accompanied by, a conscious shift in thinking and knowing. It was not some fuzzy, formless, esoteric thing. It was caused by information which was centered on a person.

The in-Spiriting of the logos provokes worship, and compels proclamation.

So Cleopas has had a paradigm shift concerning worship. It seems that worship is a response to the Word(Law and Prophets) in-Spirited by the Living Word(Jesus' person and work.) Cleopas saw what Jesus did in 33 AD(and prior), allowed it to interpret his cultural history(the OT) and was paradigmatically reshaped in such a way that would eventually compel him to take the News of the Event far and wide.

In other words, worship is generated by Word (not affect) and compels as its primary overflow proclamation (not emotion/experience). Worship necessarily involves a “seeing” of what happened here at this climax of history. And worship goes out, not in.

And then Luke reiterates this in his next book:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:6-8

Twice now we have this pattern stated: wait for the Holy Spirit(you'll know when) and then proclaim. Jesus opens the Scriptures, tells them to wait for the Spirit, and then tells them to speak this Gospel to the end of the earth. Word (opened) + Spirit (sent) = proclamation of the Gospel. No doubt many other things take place on the righthand side of this equation. But the one Jesus talked about -- TWICE -- was the proclamation of the Gospel. And this will be what disciples do now that he has ascended. His work finished, theirs begun. Their work a declaration of his work.

Power. Flame. Tongues. The sound of wind. It's impressive. It lends itself to all kinds of fanciful ideas about what the Holy Spirit came for. But if we stick to the pattern, we should be able to get it straight. As they are beginning to realize, the story is about him, not them. So confirms the newly poured out Holy Spirit. As the Nazarene rabbi told them, the Spirit brings to their remembrance all that he told them. He bears witness about Jesus. Far from being some divine blank check to own all sorts of powers and miracles, a resurrection takes place. The resurrection of their spirits, in light of the News that has come to them concerning the crucified and risen one. The nature of this resurrection is spiritual-- meaning that the physical fallenness of their state does not disappear. It empowers them to do that which Jesus commanded(dwell in and proclaim the Word) without fear of death or suffering. If I may insert my personal commentary here: That is a more powerful resurrection than one that insists on improved physical or emotional circumstances, but which relaxes on the lifting up of the Gospel.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. The Spirit at Pentecost, the great moment of empowerment, was speaking words like “forgiveness of sin,” “reconciliation with God,” and maybe “fulfillment,” and “substitute.” Perhaps “wrath diverted.” No doubt many images and words concerning Resurrection, eternal life, and the new irrelevance of death. Their adoption into the family of the Father. In other words, the full impact of Jesus' death and resurrection, all the ways that it redefined life for God's people, along with the full significance of the Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom, fell into place...in technicolor. Let me quote Graeme Goldworthy here: They "recognize[d] in Jesus Christ the goal of all things including the goal of the history of redemption."

Have you ever in a flurry finished a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that you've been working on for weeks? The picture finally coming clear, the sense of rest and the need to just look at it. It might have been something like that. There was a completion about it- their knowledge was filled up. John the beloved suddenly knew that in this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Peter saw the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. They knew God in Jesus now. They knew themselves and their recreated condition in his death, burial, and resurrection. They saw with utmost clarity the significance of Genesis-Malachi. They understood the reason for Israel. Their mission came clear. Guilt faded away. Death lost its sting.

My friends, these are what we need to expect the Holy Spirit to do.

We ought to know by now what happens next. According to the pattern, they preach the Gospel. They've had the Word opened, the Spirit clothes them, now they proclaim the truth about “this Jesus you crucified.”

And just as Jesus did for them, being among Jews, they go straight to the Old Covenant. to be continued...

How Jesus Talks About the Bible (part 1)

2009-09-11T14:31:00.001-07:00

I think a key to many doors may be in Luke 24. Here is where Jesus himself does for his disciples what they must have done to them before they can effectively join his mission. To understand the people and the mission properly we need to look at where the guys in Luke 24 are coming from, story-wise.

They came from Jesus' ministry. This ministry could be summed up as teaching. Certainly there were healings and signs, compassion and power, but all of this would serve the greater goal of teaching the men, “ordinary untrained men,” blue-collar folk, of no particular intellectual skill or status. Training them in the ministry of the kingdom of God, and all that that means.

Because of their lack of rabbinic training, which is I'm assuming an intentional choice on Jesus' part, the disciples were relatively “clean slates.” Like all good Jews, they probably attended synagogue, read the Scriptures, worshiped in the temple, etc. But we do not have here a group of great swelling OT exegetes.

Instead, setting off with him for three years, we have a group that is strikingly shape-able. They are wonderstruck at times. They are slow to catch on. But they want to see-- they are beset by a love for their teacher, one that produces a genuine desire to learn. One wonders if perhaps these were the criteria Jesus looked for in his choosing them: men who were able to be overcome with love for him. Men who would want to be around him. This would make great minds unnecessary. It would even marginalize any particular religious piety. Here were people who could come home after a day's work and enjoy eating dinner with you. They could enjoy conversation, and they would want to know a man like Jesus, no matter how peculiar or blasphemous he seemed.

And they watch him as he heals, teaches, extends compassion. Tells cryptic allegorical stories. And above all it seems, as he constantly circles back to this “kingdom of God” theme. They are puzzled. Sometimes they “catch” a thing or two. Gradually the light goes on, bit by bit, concerning his Messianic identity. What “Messiah” may during and directly after Jesus' life is still a formative (perhaps misinformed) seed in the minds of the disciples, just as “kingdom” is a rather fuzzy notion as well. “God” seems to be a clear enough word, although some days Jesus almost seems to be making some sleight-of-hand references suggesting that he somehow is God. Perhaps their very definition of “God” is being challenged at its root. Whatever the case, there is a haze, though perhaps clearing little by little, concerning what it is exactly that they have got themselves involved in.

Then the end comes. Tragedy strikes and all their expectations about Jesus' work seems to unravel in a few hours as he is arrested, tried, crucified, and buried like so many pretenders to Messiah-ship. This one seemed so different. Notwithstanding a strange report days afterward of his tomb being found empty, the disciples on the Emmaus road are crushed. And you would know it by looking at them.

Into this situation the risen Christ steps, at first keeping his identity veiled. The “stranger” on the road, hearing their story, seems to preach:

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:25-27

And he goes on. And on. And what he does is what Jesus did-- teaches them and fills them and illuminates meaning. He educates them, meaning he "educes", or draws out of them, that which dwells latently within them already via their Hebrew identity. His subject matter is something they've heard before, but probably not this holistically. Page by page, he takes them, as a learned expert in the Scriptures, through the canon of Law and Prophets, Psalms and Wisdom. And in reference to the horrific death of their best friend and teacher, he shows them exactly how this death was foretold, making clear the fulfillment of Messianic promise in Yehshua. From (this is crucial) the Bible. He spoke of the serpent in the wilderness. He recalls David's mysterious handling of Lordship in Psalm 110. He cites Joseph's mistreatment at the hands of his brothers. Of the Law and the Temple. Of the Exodus.

On and on he teaches. Gradually, the Word became “flesh” and dwelt among them. Jesus, it seems, is the real point of this whole enterprise; his death not only necessary, but intended. It is not the end of the story but the basis from which the new chapter will now proceed. Remember, we are not yet at Pentecost. We are not at the point at which tongues of fire descend and power is given from on high. We are at a teaching moment. We are still in the classroom. We are in the Hebrew Bible. Remember that these disciples don't have a theology of the cross, they're simply grieving it. Again at the inn in which Cleopas and his friend find themselves, bewildered and captured by his words

The he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:44-49

“I already told you this,” he says. “But you didn't believe me. Everything God spoke to your fathers concerned me. My coming. My dying. My rising. This story is about me, not you.” This illumination is one of the foundations for the book of Acts. The Apostles must have this happen if they are to take the Gospel of the Kingdom to all nations. They must see Jesus as the centerpiece of the Story of God, of God's ongoing conversation with his people. They must associate the previous Friday with Messianic prophecy and identity. Pentecost cannot happen until they are seeded with the Word. (Mind you, this is a Word that they have “known” from their youth. It's part of synagogue life. It's embedded in the Jewish cultural consciousness. It's just not alive yet.) Because this will be the Spirit's tool for awakening them, and clothing them with power.

Continually In the Temple

2009-09-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Dan Edelen, who got called a "religious totalitarian"(by a Christian) for his commitment to the teaching of the Bible, writes a piece in his Equipping the Saints series on knowing Scripture, or rather, knowing God through Scripture.

Also, Michael Spencer's latest in the "Evangelical Liturgy" series entitled The Public Reading of Scripture. In an age of trying to make church cool enough for the skaters and easy enough for jello-minded media addicts, he makes a very needed point.

In fact, I think what you will see around here at the Jesus Paradigm is a more concerted commitment on my part to eat the Bible.

A la Eugene Peterson.

And in a public sort of way, here on the blog. I'm certainly not a Bible teacher, but then again I've been losing my confidence in the practice of using trained professionals to mediate God and his Word for us for quite some time now. Setting out in this direction on the blog, I am convinced of several things:

1. God is Jesus, and what we need to know of God, we find in Jesus alone.

2. Knowledge of Jesus is found in Scripture alone. We connect with him personally in a "now" sort of way through relational conversation, but the knowledge "about" him comes from Scripture alone.

3. We don't need professionals to tell us what Scripture means. In fact, the cult of the "professionally spiritual" in church culture stinks of gnosticism and belittles God's revelation by concealing a person's ability to know God for themselves with the Biblically revealed Christ as the only mediator. While tools are necessary for interpretation, and individuals may possess tools of knowledge that are useful, there is no "spiritual oligarchy" that anyone needs to submit to in order to really get it.

4. There is no growth in the knowledge of Christ, and thus no transformation, without the consistent "eating" of Scripture. In church, by the church, and as a church, as well as by individuals. To eat Scripture is different than to study it, to read it, or to know what it means. Satan knows what it means.

5. There is no possibility of being "on mission" with God in his creation without the Word being made alive in us by the Spirit. As in Luke 24, and at and following Pentecost.(This will be the subject of the next blogpost.) This means involving Scriptural text and principles in public life, where people can see it. It means comforting and reconciling with it. It also means offending people with it. And at some point we should expect to be abused for it.

Let me end with the last bit of the book of Luke:

52 And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, 53 and were continually in the temple blessing God.

How much do you wanna bet that "continually in the temple" has little or nothing to do with "The Temple?" to be continued...

The News Itself Is Your Teacher

2009-08-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

1 John 2:18-27

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. 20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us —eternal life.

26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

This last bit makes the top 10 list for Bible passages that don't ever get mentioned. The ESV Study Bible note is clear to point out that "you have no need that anyone should teach you" is not to be applied too broadly, for John himself is teaching them in this letter. Wouldn't want to undermine anyone's authority or anything. Those leaders are so important.

But what John is saying, and what is simply unpalatable to about 97% of a culture enamored with celebrities, faces, sound bites, and media appearances, is not something primarily about the presence (or absence) of teachers. It is a statement about "his anointing."

We who have brushed elbows with the charismatic movement at any time have heard plenty of stuff about anointings. "So and so is anointed for this," and "we are anointed to do such and such a ministry." In fact, everyone were as anointed as they claimed to be, we would probably be drowning in oil. But John seems to be doing something slightly different than doling out spiritual tasks and ritualizing one's appointment to an office or role(NAR anyone?). The anointing John speaks of squarely roots the anointing in Jesus Christ himself.

Far from being some libertine statement about how these "children" are to be untaught and untethered, it's a libertine statement about their freedom to be mastered only by the anointing itself. John is locating the source of their growth, the teaching that comes to them, in the person of Jesus, not in the authority of men. The dreaded conviction, that "you have no need that anyone should teach you," is given in contrast to the coming of the false teachers. Because what must a false teacher do to validate his or her own conviction in order to gain influence but invalidate Christ, his message, his authority, and his necessity? If Christ himself is not the authoritative message that teaches us, then we have need of special folks. We need people who are better than us. Educated, elevated people whose spirituality proceeds from their inborn or trained contact with a higher plane than the rest of us. Closer to God.

I'll take John at his word when he seems to dispense with the necessity of teachers, because it frees me to throw out people like Todd Bentley and the shamans who endorsed him, whose essential goal is to demand my allegiance and subvert my devotion to Jesus. The point here is that there's no need for this teacher or that prophet to come to me and give me "special impartation" because the logos itself is doing that. These fools can be snuffed out in an instant, their credibility undermined, their careers ruined. Is Lakeland, FL important anymore, a year or so later? No, it's the butt of irreverent jokes. If Jesus' anointing was the power at work, if the News held sway over people's imaginations, would a leader's fall would not reduce the anointing, the rejoicing, the salvation, the teary worship. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. "Leaders" and "prophets" who decide that the gospel isn't enough and claim that their super-powers are the newest and best antidote, serve their bellies and deny the Father and the Son.

A true teacher, on the other hand, when faced with this statement, that "his(Christ's) anointing teaches you about everything" will rejoice. Because it is the anointing of Christ that taught them at first. Nothing originates with them, nor does it require them to sustain it. And now it is the anointing of Christ that teaches others, which they bear witness to. A true teacher doesn't crave attention, because he is not directing it to himself or his "wisdom" in the first place. True teachers act as if "He must increase, but I must decrease."

So how does "his anointing" teach us? It's impossible to overstate how deeply the Gospel itself, taking root in our psyche, transforms and brings life. It rips up old assumptions. It deconstructs motives. News: God has come in Christ. He has defeated the power of sin and will one day destroy it altogether. He has slain death. He has risen in the "body of flesh" giving us a testimony of the power of God to raise the dead, and the promise that death cannot stand between us and the glory we were designed for, which will be revealed in the consummation. It has happened. It is no new philosophy we preach. It is a historical/future event.

The anointing John is referring to, as if it were a person in itself, with intention, teaching the children, is the news of events that transpired surrounding the coming of Jesus Christ. This news is passed along from person to person, mouth to mouth, and carried throughout the realm as the message of the great, triumphant victory of God over sin and death. Those who hear it and receive the news as indeed good, great news, can never be the same. Their imagination is transfigured. Death has no sting. Guilt is buried. All may now be lost in the service of this King, because all has been gained on their behalf.

The anointing of Christ that teaches the children is the message of the anointed-- the Christ-- and his victory that irrevocably shifts the thinking of the hearer, if indeed he/she decides it is true.

So why don't I need anyone to teach me? Because the message itself has changed me, and continues to change me. "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him."(Col 2:6) Dramatically. Irrevocably. The implications are endless. This is what it means for the anointing to teach you- to have the gospel message dramatically reshape all spheres of the mind, and thus the motives and deep inspirations, and thus the life lived. Applied perennially, watering the ground daily with this news: the event of the coming, death and resurrection of Christ, the only anointed one.

ReJesus on How You Should Be Reading Scripture

2009-08-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Update: Forgot a particular quotation from the book that must be included in this post:

In any genuine encounter with Jesus, we can either respond in faith and
obedience, cut and run, or take the fire out of the issue by reinterpreting the Bible to suit our understandings. Ever heard yourself saying, "Oh it's not what it means literally, Jesus is actually saying..." Just see what most preaching does with the kingdom way expressed in the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, or the rich young ruler--we emasculate the text by spiritualizing it or domesticating its direct implications.

Finishing up ReJesus by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Today I read one of the most compelling chapters that I've read in any book in a long time. I'll quote a few chunks, but first I'll say that the chapter has to do with Hellenistic vs. Hebraic approaches to Scripture. The basic goals of the one in nearly exclusive use(Hellenistic) is called into question by the approach Frost/Hirsch call us back to(Hebraic). I must admit, I've had sneaking doubts about the approach to the text that dominates most of our reading and interpretation. I've found myself applying my knowledge to Scripture rather than vice versa, reading Scripture instead of "letting Scripture read me." Here's a common discussion pattern found among Christians, especially in debate, goes as follows:

Christian A: The Bible says God_____________. Therefore we should__________.

Christain B: No that's not true, after all Romans says ____________.

Christian A: Yes but what about in Hebrews where it says________?

Christian B: Isaiah chapter 40: __________

Christian A: You just don't understand what the Bible says...

Exactly who is making any worthwhile points here? This kind of discourse could go on for days with no one actually citing anything that gives their flippant use of Scripture any weight. The problem is, with the widely understood "way of knowing" that we use, nobody's wrong here. This is a perfectly acceptable discussion, even though it leads nowhere. Cite a passage, draw a conclusion, "apply" it to life. Of course, this pedantic, less-educated version of the problem is an easy target, but arguably what many studied and acclaimed scholars do is similar- citing a Biblical text, giving the Greek scholarship along with the sentence construction and historical context, and move from text to conclusion in order to make an abstract point about Christian theology or practice that is divorced from the actual narrative and persons and history that are the substance of what the Bible actually communicates. While the tools of scholarship are valuable, I believe Frost/Hirsch are arguing that we have to ask "who is reading who, here?" Are we coming to the I Am and applying our knowledge to judge who he is, throught the matrix of Scripture, or are we being judged by the Unchanging One himself?

According to Jacques Ellul, at some point theologians began to

regard the biblical text or known revelation as points of departure for philosophy... Very soon the developments in philosophical thinking became stronger than the biblical truth that they sought to retain. The theologians had forgotten the essential point that God does not reveal himself by means of a philosophical system or a moral code or a metaphysical construction but rather enters human history and accompanies his people.

Frost/Hirsch continue the thinking:

The history-anchored worldview values the action and word of God over a philosophical construct of his character. It also requires obedience in order to truly comprehend what is being revealed...Under the new Hellenistic worldview, the Bible is approached differently. God's revelation was interpreted as the climax of the teaching of Socrates, and the Bible was interpreted by the intellectual tools of Greek philosophy. The Torah, for example, is seen merely as a moral code, not unlike the Twelve Tablets, a Greco-Roman legal code. What resulted was of decisive importance. Instead of listening to the text as it was, theologians tried to draw from it a coherent philosophical system, whether modeled after Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, or Epicurus. It all came to the same thing. The biblical stories were treated as myth from which one had to draw some abstract, universal thought. And so the Christian theological tradition empraced a philosophical approach alien to Jewish epistemology(ways of knowing). the Hebraic framework for the true comprehension of revelation was thus discarded in favor of the Hellenistic.

Ellul:

Some will tell me that we have no option but to use our available tools of knowledge even to understand a history. This is true. But I reply that Hebrew thought had its own tools of knowledge that are fully set forth in the language. We should bow and submit and convert to these instead of forcing God's revelation into the strait jacket of Greco-Roman thinking.

This really has jaw-dropping implications if I'm reading it right. Essentially, what many philosophers-turned-theologians(which is all of us who read the Bible in the Hellenistic tradition, btw) do is treat the text as if its purpose is to make metaphysical statements rather than communicate the history of God's interrelation with his creation. The inevitable result is essentially the doctrinal equivalent of what Judaism did with the Talmud- to endlessly qualify statements, split interpretive hairs, and forever add on labrythine abstractions in order to get to the real, objective meaning. The effect is that there ceases to be one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus(1 Tim 2:5).

In fact, there was an exchange at Acheivable Ends that illustrates this quite well. Bill Kinnon answered one commenter who stated that "the foundation for ministry is sound doctrine" by saying no, in fact "the foundation for ministry is Jesus." To which the commenter replied "which Jesus? Doctrine defines what we believe..." At that point, if the commenter is right, he needs to go all the way-- doctrine according to whose interpretation of the text? If we agree on an interpreter(let's say Calvin) whose interpretation of Calvin's words are correct? And what if this new interpreter's words are vague when we apply them to current context...now we need yet another way of showing what this "copy of a copy of a copy" really means for us now(think the bee-wathcer). Down the rabbit hole we go, canonizing the words of whoever we please the entire way. What the "which Jesus" question might actually betray is a distrust of the Holy Spirit, and an unwillingness to let the individual Christian with a Bible go to God without any mediators but the Christ of Scripture himself. You end up at the conclusion that no one but scholars and people who have access to what scholars are saying can "get" the word of God. This is why the reformers repudiated the necessity of "Popes and councils" in interpreting Scripture for the "mere laity." Only now, doctrine replaces the Pope. God comes through Christ, comes through doctrine, comes through so-and-so, comes through so-and-so's reading of so-and-so, and feel free to continue adding so-and-so's as you like.

Of course, doctrine will happen, but if you start saying "doctrine" where you should be saying "Jesus" things go awry. Scripture understood rightly, which is to say as the Hebrews did when they were writing it, is a text to be read as a story, populated with persons, who had certain experiences and interactions with the chief character, God himself. We then allow ourselves to be located in the text(not the other way around) and be shaped by the story(not the other way around). This of course guarantees a subjective reading of the text. That's not a problem. Because the endless search for objectivity is futile when inherently subjective beings pursue it.

I believe Eugene Peterson has been saying these things for quite some time, but I don't know how well I got it until now. There's a lot more to be said here, but you'd better go read the book. ReJesus by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

A Jesus Manifesto

2009-08-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

And also....I would like to sign my name at the bottom of this.

Repent and Believe the Gospel

2009-08-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

The tagline of this blog is the first statement Jesus makes in the book of Mark. "Repent and believe the Gospel" is, I believe, the framework for Jesus' entire ministry- the basic point, if you will.

There is a common sentiment I've been hearing/reading a lot lately, that I'm sure is not new. That's that grace minus repentance equals license. "You can't just believe the Gospel, you have to repent of sin and 'turn away' from it." Sometimes this effects the person's view of salvation, other times it's just a strong recommendation for how you should live after you accept the grace of God in Jesus. Either way, the underlying assumption is, we can't have a bunch of immoral Christians running around, and this methodology(of preaching a qualified gospel) is supposed to take care of that.

Remarkably, this may miss the most important thing in the whole issue. It's that to believe the Gospel is a repentance. We are all born humanists, so to speak, and the basic repentance that needs to take place is the change of paradigm from "I can be good," to "I need Jesus to be good for me." In other words the initial faith in Jesus is not possible without repentance, when we understand the word "repentance" correctly.

So my issue is that Jesus, in the first chapter of Mark, says "repent and believe Gospel" not "believe the Gospel and repent." I'm guessing this is because he is a wily psychologist. He knows that the paradigm shift that it takes to believe the Gospel is the same shift that is necessary to produce the "turn" away from sin. Could our lack of understanding here be the reason that we keep saying things like "now that you've accepted the grace of God, you need to, additionally, repent and turn away from your sin," as if they were in separate categories? Which, in turn, consistently produces converts who accept Jesus as a matter of "getting right wth God" or "going to heaven when you die" but not disciples who continue to bask in the glow of his grace in such a way that drains the desire to return to addictive, self-serving behaviors. Pretty much because they've been taught(implicitly, by the command "now that you're saved, you should also repent") that it's possible to believe without repentance. And thus simultaneously(I see this all the time) act and talk moralistically about others' lives and see no change in their own destructive behaviors?

Just some thoughts. Conversation welcome.

Here's What They Said

2009-07-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

The determining factor of my existence is no longer my past. It is Christ's past. -Sinclair Ferguson

From this guy Michael Horton I've been hearing about on the blogosphere:

For Paul, such gifts are given immediately in Christ and worked out in the believer's life, while for many today as in every age, these gifts are the prize for the believer's success.

And:

A gospel that "works" for zealous perfectionists one moment merely creates
tomorrow’s disillusioned and spent supersaints.

How 'bout this from the Internet Monk archives(the rest of the post is quite gleeful as well):

Martin Luther would have beat up your prissy pastor and poured beer on him.

How 'bout Luther himself:

You are an advocate for these most barbarous soul-murderers, who fill the world with hypocrites, and with such as blaspheme God and hate him in their hearts, in order that they may restrain them from a little outward sin. As though there were no other way of restraining, which makes no hypocrites, and is wrought without any destroying of consciences.

Or this:

Let us equip ourselves against the accusations of Satan with this and similar passages of Holy Scripture. If he says, "Thou shalt be damned," you tell him: "No, for I fly to Christ who gave Himself for my sins. In accusing me of being a damnable sinner, you are cutting your own throat, Satan. You are reminding me of God's fatherly goodness toward me, that He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In calling me a sinner, Satan, you really comfort me above measure." With such heavenly cunning we are to meet the devil's craft and put from us the memory of sin.

C.S. Lewis on hell

2009-07-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

He Said WHAT?

2009-07-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

Honestly, it's as if I just read 2 blogs and then regurgitate what they're saying, or just link to it. This time it's Gospel Driven Church again...

I will be throroughly surprised if people all over the blogosphere don't start gesticulating wildly and shouting "Did you hear what he just said?"

Here's a touch, then go read the rest:

I still have some basic objections with the message communicated in the use of video preaching.... one reason against it that I haven't blogged on is this: A preacher on a TV screen can't be murdered.

I guess he wasn't kidding when he titled his book Your Jesus Is Too Safe...

Grace Does Not Equal a Sweet Tone of Voice

2009-07-22T07:42:00.000-07:00

Jared Wilson has an incendiary post, including an incendiary clip from Mark Driscoll to close it. The clip was the subject of some "hand-wringing" as Jared notes in the beginning. I won't post the video clip and don't really have a comment on it, but I do have an opinion about the assumption of many of the hand-wringers...

Truth is stranger than fiction...a website(www.AshleyMadison.com) devoted to expediating adulterous affairs? I guess it was just a matter of time, but honestly it's hard for me to imagine the shamelessness it takes to bring an idea like that into reality, and to premeditate an affair to the point where you are using something like that. As if pornography wasn't proof that unbridled capitalism will legitimize whatever kind of depravity that people will pay for...but this isn't a post about political ideologies.

I used to want to say things like "where's grace?" in response to opinions like Jared's and clips like Driscoll's. I would have expressed that the love of God covers even such sins as these, and that the primary need is for forgiveness to be extended to the sinner. I would not even now disagree with those last two. My question now would be "what's grace?", not "where's grace?" In other words, what exactly does the grace of God look like for someone who is in the position of, say, Mark Sandford or John Ensign(pols who recently admitted to affairs) or better yet, a Christian pastor who has cheated on his wife?

In a recent post, I expressed that I believe the Gospel alone is responsible for sanctification, and I will hold forth on that until I die. But honestly, it would be nice if us "grace-people" questioned our judgment about what love and grace look like in a given situation as quickly as we question judgmentalism of the moralists. Where exactly to do admonishments like "now, now, God loves sinners; don't be too harsh; don't judge; remember to have grace; nobody's perfect"...etc, come from exactly?

Let's put this in perspective: if I witnessed a small child being brutalized and murdered, or dehumanized as a slave to increase the profit of some ruthless, money-happy dictator/pimp, what should my first reaction be?

"Awwww....now we can't be too judgmental, after all God loves this poor guy" ???!!!

Probably not. In fact, it could be argued that someone with a reaction like this is as criminally insane as the one perpetrating the sin.

The point isn't to apply the law so that people will obey. But to apply the law for what it was originally intended for- to crush man's poisoned and poisionous will. Death precedes resurrection. The Gospel that transforms is not simply one that forgives, but also brings God's character so close that sin looks like exactly what it is: despicable, repulsive, worthy of death, and deserving of being called into the light so all can see what it is that God hates and is doing away with via the Gospel. Are people going to get upset? Yep. Embarassed? You bet. Scream and cry and say "you're no better than me?" Of course I'm not, and may I be equally crushed and embarassed over the sin in me. So that I can be transformed. Remember the scene in the Great Divorce with the lizard on the guy's back? (no? well, go read it...) Let's correct a misjudgment that seems to have permeated some people's understanding: The application of grace = creating happy, comfortable circumstances (i.e. don't get mad) for the sinner.

To paraphrase one un-famous pastor I know, if walk out of the grocery store only to see my best friend slashing my tires in the parking lot, then hastily running off before he's caught, my first reaction is going to be anger, indignation, and regret at making such a person my friend. But when I discover that there's a bomb attached to my ignition, and that had I been able to drive the car, I would have been blown to bits, my opinion of that friend and his actions drastically changes. The only difference is, in the adultery situation, the deadly danger is something that I've done, not something that's been done to me. Honestly now, if your three-year-old daughter were running towards a busy highway, would you speak softly to let her know that she shouldn't go in that direction?

Is every word Driscoll said right on? Was his anger perfectly sanctified and loving? Who knows. Probably not. Does anger, raised voice, application of the law, and calling sinners "fools" and "unworthy" qualify as gracelessness? Not really. You need a lot more to go on then that, like say, the content of the rest of the rebuker's sermons, life, and paradigm.

www.AshleyMadison.com CEO says "people cheat because their lives aren't working for them." Wrong. People cheat because they don't work. And they need to be convinced of that by whatever means necessary, not consoled and given victim status.

Some Repeating Thoughts That I Have

2009-06-20T06:06:00.001-07:00

It is easy to slip into the notion that there are multiple different categories of sin. This is the idea behind "acceptable sin" and "unacceptable sin" that most people embrace most of the time. The thinking that certain sins are worse than others, in such a way that place sinners in different categories with respect to God than other, is fueled by a lack of the understanding that all the sin that humanity has ever committed belongs to the same category. Sexual sin does not inhabit a different realm of immorality than gluttony, anxiety, speeding in traffic, or stealing cookies.

Do you think you are different? Most people, most of the time will read the New Testament this way: The Pharisees, those despicable, arrogant opposers of Jesus, represent the religious establishment. They oppose the righteousness of God when it comes to them, they legalistically split hairs on the basis of over-educated obsession with Scripture, and they come down with condemnation for those who don't live up to their standards.

The tax-collectors, prostitutes and adulterers, however, were on Jesus' side. They received what he had to bring them, he befriended them and revealed an affection for those cast off by society as "immoral." This(and here's the big lie) is because their sin is of a different type than the Pharisees.

What's actually going on in this paradigm is a lot more tricky and sinister than a first glance gives away. We construct a view of sin that allows us to place others, those we disapprove of, in a place that we are not: having uniquely violated the law of God. (Isn't it strange how rarely people who talk of Pharisees will locate themselves in that position?) This gives us the ability to place ourselves in the category of "approved" or at least "not so badly condemned." Ever heard this: "Yeah, I'm not perfect or anything, but at least..."

The big secret that few people want to admit about the New Testament is that the Pharisees and the "sinners" with which Jesus ate are actually the same people. That's extremely important. That's also devastating to a lot of people, including the part of you that has embraced this paradigm: that the Pharisees are "those people, the religious establishment, the people that have their lives together, the people who dress religiously..."

So two categories of sin are created, moralistic vs. senusal. Legalism vs. licentiousness. The understanding once you've constructed this Scylla and Charybdis paradigm is that if we go too far in one direction, we will slip into the category that we weren't concentrating on. The key to being aware of both and navigating a perceived middle ground. The solution is to blend of two different concepts in your teaching: don't be too legalistic, but don't only concern yourself with the grace of God either(because grace is primarily a sweet tone of voice and an uplifting word, and how is that ever going to deter sinners from their iniquity?) God wants to apply a "don't be bad" solution to one and "don't be judgmental" to the other, as if the sexually immoral person and the one judging that person were doing something fundamentally different. The message of gospel comfort for one sinner and the law for the other. Or better yet, two different kinds of moralism: one custom-tailored for each, and the Gospel is altogether history because, hey, they're already "saved."(whatever that means)

The implications of this are staggering: the Cross is sufficient for one of them, not both(or all, if we continue down the road logically and endlessly divide up sin into millions of categories, with a different approach to dealing with each), and therefore the Gospel should only be preached, at most, half the time. For those who seem not to heed the proclamation of the Cross, or who take the initial "faith step" but don't seem to be walk in transformation, we need to add things, adjust the message.

I'm certainly all for a nuanced understanding of what the Gospel sounds like in different situations. But it remains just that: a sounds like. Substance does not change.(This incidentally gets to the bottom of any and all conflicts concerning cultural engagedness and how we express ourselves as "separate" and not in conformity with the world. For Dr. Peter Masters, who may normally have useful things to say, in this case doesn't seem to grasp that his culture of Puritan "old" Calvinism is just as much derived from worldly sources as the culture of "new" Calvinism that contains t-shirts and hip-hop music. Again, sinful t-shirts or sinful suits?...take your pick.)

What possibly could be at work in the mind that thinks in the Scylla/Charybdis categories? Maybe it has a completely befuddled definition of grace and the Gospel. Or maybe it doesn't actually believe the Gospel, simply wants to be understood as a godly and moral person. Maybe it doesn't grasp that the difference between justification and sanctification is philosophically useful but actually nonexistent. Maybe it is so concerned with its external perception and its subjective categories that it thinks there are actualy multiple problems at work in the world causing humanity's suffering, and therefore multiple solutions are required. Whatever the case, the end result is always the same: man is able, by force of intention and will, to cleanse himself from sin, and therefore Jesus is an unnecessary afterthought.

Rocket Attacks

2009-06-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

Read the whole convo: Mount Jesus

Sorry I haven't been around lately, it's been hard getting access to blogs/email in the semi-wilderness of Texas!

I'm really liking the way the last few posts have been piggy-backing off one another, and you've both made a point that I have never thought of concerning the beatitudes: that they are states of being, not doing. Something I've been noticing lately is the negative situations or events I witness, the negative parts of myself that reveal themselves....what sort of reaction is designed to meet these things? This seems fairly obvious for someone who doesn't break everything down the way I do, but I've been asking "When someone or something afflicts me, what emotion, or state of being does that produce?" Because there is a tendency in me to create an image of what a "spiritual" person feels about something, and then try to feel that way. If someone cuts me off on the highway(and I believe I've heard John use the exact example), many will teach that we are to "pray for" and "bless" those people. Which would certainly be a nice thing to do. The problem is it's usually a manufactured response, because very few people who know about the verse "bless those who curse you" actually have any kind of inclination to do so. And I certainly don't. What if instead I let fly with the finger for that person? Aaaah, very unspiritual. Unfortunately, it's the more honest choice in 90% of situations.

These undesirable states of being listed in the beatitudes- it's seems, as you've both brought to my attention, that we can't flex a muscle and "do" them. We simply are. Or aren't. Poor in spirit for example. The question is then, what brings the disciples, we who are sitting with the Master on the hilltop, to a point where we are self-sufficient, spiritually knowing, "great men of God,"to being poor in spirit? I have an idea, and I think it has to do with the sort of "noticing" that I find myself doing(above).

Jesus continues a little later in this sermon to describe the true nature, the true depth, of sin. It's not only to commit the act of adultery, but even to look. It's not only to withhold from giving, but to give grudgingly. I recently heard someone expound on the nature of covetousness- and it came to me that what if it not only describes a desire for someone else's belongings, but what about an attachment to your own that prevents you from quickly giving them away?

The upshot of this, for many in the do-oriented mindset, would be statements like "well, of course we need to quit doing those sins...we need to be more_____". Is that Jesus' logic here? I'm going to submit that his descriptions of sin and righteousness is to further "rocket-attack" our paradigm about the position that we occupy. It's as if to say "you think you're holy? You think you have no or only a little sin? Let's see if you measure up to this." And he proceeds to list an absolutely impossible standard for living in the Kingdom of God. For living as his disciple.

And at the end of his sermon, I would be left somewhere. Perhaps changed. I would have my self-sufficiency and my paradigm about who's "in" and who's "out" severely rattled. It would leave me, at least beginning to be, poor in spirit.

New Blog

2009-06-15T15:10:00.001-07:00

Here's a great new blog for any and all interested in a few thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount. It's a group effort between myself, my homeboy John, and the indispensable Dad. Dad of course blogs over at Wilderness Fandango, formerly In The Clearing. This is John's first blogging exploit to my knowledge, but certainly not his first writing, or deeply engaged thinking process about following Jesus and exploring the Kingdom of God.

Should be a hoot, please feel free to engage us in the comments section!

Off To Jubilee Partners

2009-04-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

Jubilee Partners is a refugee community in Comer, GA. I'll be there for a week or so.

Some Merlefest Finds

2009-04-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest discoveries from Merlefest 2009. Some I picked for particular songs, some are bands that I hadn't seen before.

The Duhks do a wonderful song Dance Hall Girls, which was apparently a hit in Canada. Someone put it to footage from beauty and the beast. Speaking of the Duhks, it's not evident in this song, but their new(ish) lead vocalist might be my favorite singer anywhere.

John Cowan Band doing King of California with Jeff Autry:

Bearfoot doing John Hartford's "Tall Buildings"

The Belleville Outfit swings it on "Exactly Like You":

More to come!

My New Favorite Preacher?

2009-04-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

It All Keeps Comin' Back to Bob(not Spencer)

2009-04-13T08:43:00.001-07:00

From one of the greatest prophets of the twentieth century:

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you'd just be one more

Person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole that he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

New album April 28. He's still going:

Spencer-fied

2009-04-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a quote from the latest Michael Spencer post, which concerns atheists and Christians co-existing:

Look at America in 2050 if that growth rate continues at even half that speed: a third of the country will be “godless.”
If evangelicals and other Christians had their heads about them, they would welcome this development. No religion beats meaningless adherence to religion every time(italics added). I see this every day. I work with dozens of students with a cultural adherence to a particular “Christian” religion. They overwhelmingly know almost nothing of Jesus, nothing of the Bible, nothing but a collection of cultural traditions, legends and superstitions about Christianity, but they consider themselves Christians.

When it comes to my job as a Christian communicator, give me the students who are “non-religious” over sorting through cultural adherence and dead superstition...But evangelicals have spent a large part of the post-war era villainizing atheists and the non-religious. Sometimes out of manipulation. Sometimes out of ignorance. Sometimes out of fear. Always out of an abandonment of a Jesus shaped view of those who are not Christians.

He doesn't restrict the accusation of hate rhetoric to Christians though. He follows this with some suggestions about decreasing animosity. Worth paying attention to.

On the Road

2009-03-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the absenteeism. A lot has been going on.

First, the National Folk Alliance captured my attention for a week or so.

Now, I'm on tour with someone I met there. I may jot down some things at Jesus Paradigm from the road, but I'll mostly be taking a break for awhile.

Here's a video of Steven Bacon, the songwriter I'm on tour with. I'll put up a video of both of us as soon as we get one: