Thomas Jefferson thought it was hard to read the Bible because there were so many unbelievable things in it, so he made a new one. He took the 4 gospels and literally cut everything supernatural out of it, creating his 46 page book Morals and Teachings of Jesus of Nazereth. He said this in a letter to John Adams in 1813:
In extracting the pure principles which [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled…I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently [Christ’s], which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.”
Jefferson liked the morals of the Bible, but didn’t really like the Bible itself. I think this is a problem for lots of reasons, but this is the one I want to address in these three posts: Jefferson thought it was hard to read the Bible because it was wrong and he needed to cut things out of it to make it right, but the Bible’s answer is that it is hard to read because we are wrong and it needs to cut things out of us to make us right. You might say, of course that is what the Bible’s answer is, it is speaking of itself. But look at what Jefferson did closer and it begins to unravel.
The prerequisite for doing what Jefferson did was attaining a certain height of knowledge form which he can look down and discern right from wrong as he looked at the Bible, from which he would be able to separate that “diamonds from the dung.” That is exactly what he was claiming with his scissors, that he had reached this height of omniscience. That is what every culture thinks, whether it be 18th century Enlightenment, Easter Buddhism, the worldview of the American New Age spirituality, Postmodernism, etc. Every worldview and every culture thinks it’s finally hit on the truth, and every culture is wrong. Every culture is wrong.
No culture in any time period has had a stranglehold on truth. If this is true of a culture, it is certainly true of an individual. Jefferson wasn’t speaking out of omniscience, he was just speaking from cultural arrogance. He was a product of humanistic (counting man as the center of all things), rationalistic (all things can be known through the reason) Enlightenment thinking which discounted the supernatural from the beginning. He made the mistake of assuming the boundaries of his knowledge were the boundaries of all knowledge and he cut out what didn’t fit his preconceptions.
What of the Bible’s answer to the question “Why is it hard to read the Bible?” It says that the Bible itself is not what is wrong, but it is we who read it that need correction. The truth of this answer is in its humility and its realism. It’s humble because it recognizes that no one culture or individual is omniscient. If we are too see beyond the horizon we need someone from that country to return from there and describe it to us. There is always much we do not know. It is realistic because it assumes that we don’t want to hear what we don’t want to hear. The engine of censorship doesn’t’ stop just because we are reading the Bible.
So what needs to be re-thought? Rather than scissors, we ought to approach the Bible with that same humility and realism, living with the questions and holding out the possibility that it may be we who are wrong, not the Bible.
[Series: Rethink the Bible (2), Rethink the Bible (3)]
Showing posts with label Best of the Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best of the Blog. Show all posts
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Adventures in Rest
In her article, “Bring back the Sabbath,” Judith Shulevitz speaks of the “eternal inner murmur of self-reproach.” When I came across the phrase it struck me as an elegant and insightful way to speak of the voice I often hear within myself that tells me to doubt my own worth unless I can pay for my own way. It is an anxiety that makes it feel like the question of whether or not my life is justified is never concluded. When driven by that inner murmur work is only a means to prove that I am not a bum, and rest is only exhaustion. It calls to be satisfied, but it will never quit – not ever – through satisfying it. If the murmur ever ends, it is through stilling it at the root. It requires a quiet of soul in which activity can cease because all the work that needed to be done is already completed. This is exactly the kind of quiet the gospel leads us into.
At the outset, however, entering that quiet feels like dying. It feels like putting our very worth at stake because worth so often hangs on work and activity. But if we console ourselves with productivity when that death knocks on our door we will flee something that could be a teacher.
The bottom line is this: to be driven by that murmur of self-reproach flies in the face of a basic truth of the gospel - I don’t mean basic in the sense of elementary, but basic in the sense that if you do not understand it you may not truly understand the gospel or what it really means for how life has to change - that is, you cannot save yourself. At the heart of the gospel lies the staggering idea that all the work that ever needed to be done has been done. If this is true, then all the work we do is free to just become work again, not currency with which we try to buy our worth. And rest just becomes rest, not a sign of weakness, but a sign of humanness and that is a good thing. Ceasing ceases to feel like death but becomes an act of obedience, a discipline of faithfulness for hearts driven mad by the gospel of work.
The gospel of work goes against the grain of our humanness. As Edith Schaeffer said, “It is not a sin to be limited.” The gospel of work goes against the fabric of the universe. God is the one who feed the birds and clothes the flowers and makes his people worthy and righteous and his work stands. And it forgets that our happiness lies in our simply being creatures before the Creator – not in getting as far ahead in the game as possible, not in making ourselves shiny and worthy alone, not in climbing the mountain of human potential - but in resting in Christ, for that rest is the very peak of the mountain of humanness. That is where the inner murmur ceases and all our love and joy can rise, for that is the place we were made for. When Christ said, “It is finished” it was. The rest is polish. The deep work is done and cannot be added to and cannot be taken away from.
At the outset, however, entering that quiet feels like dying. It feels like putting our very worth at stake because worth so often hangs on work and activity. But if we console ourselves with productivity when that death knocks on our door we will flee something that could be a teacher.
The bottom line is this: to be driven by that murmur of self-reproach flies in the face of a basic truth of the gospel - I don’t mean basic in the sense of elementary, but basic in the sense that if you do not understand it you may not truly understand the gospel or what it really means for how life has to change - that is, you cannot save yourself. At the heart of the gospel lies the staggering idea that all the work that ever needed to be done has been done. If this is true, then all the work we do is free to just become work again, not currency with which we try to buy our worth. And rest just becomes rest, not a sign of weakness, but a sign of humanness and that is a good thing. Ceasing ceases to feel like death but becomes an act of obedience, a discipline of faithfulness for hearts driven mad by the gospel of work.
The gospel of work goes against the grain of our humanness. As Edith Schaeffer said, “It is not a sin to be limited.” The gospel of work goes against the fabric of the universe. God is the one who feed the birds and clothes the flowers and makes his people worthy and righteous and his work stands. And it forgets that our happiness lies in our simply being creatures before the Creator – not in getting as far ahead in the game as possible, not in making ourselves shiny and worthy alone, not in climbing the mountain of human potential - but in resting in Christ, for that rest is the very peak of the mountain of humanness. That is where the inner murmur ceases and all our love and joy can rise, for that is the place we were made for. When Christ said, “It is finished” it was. The rest is polish. The deep work is done and cannot be added to and cannot be taken away from.
"The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways it cannot intend
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended,
By what it cannot comprehend.
Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it."
-Wendell Berry
In ways it cannot intend
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended,
By what it cannot comprehend.
Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it."
-Wendell Berry
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Why We Must Think Rightly About God (1)
This morning I was re-reading a wonderful chapter from A. W. Tozer’s book, Knowledge of the Holy, and wanted to post some quotes from the chapter as well as thoughts about them.
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us… That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.” (p. 1,2)
Tozer makes a connection that is rapidly dissolving in the minds of some Church people today; the connection between theology and life. This connection is a sword with two edges, cutting in the direction of two errors we make in our thinking about theology. On the one hand is the danger of thinking that head knowledge is the whole of the Christian life, without that knowledge ever really “becoming true” of us. Tozer undercuts that mistake by insisting that the nature of our picture of God is such that it has a direct and immediate call on our actions/values/thoughts in our actual day-to-day lives. If the connection isn’t flowing that direction it is possible that you haven’t actually begun to worship the real God; it is the most important thing because an encounter with the real God does not leave us the same as it found us. Tozer speaks to the opposite error as well. If you listen, you'll hear both errors in the air today, but this one seems to gaining popularity. It is the idea that theology is esoteric. We must preserve the idea that theology means not less than simply “what we think about God”. The Christian life is like finding pieces of the picture of God and putting them in their right places, like a mosaic. Tozer is saying that this mosaic – what it holds and what it does not hold – is life and death. Everything flows out of that mosaic (and not just in some “spiritual” realm of life, but in all of life). If those are the stakes, then every piece matters. There is a not a category for “accessories” when it comes to theology. Everything matters.
“We tend by a secret law of the heart to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing things about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent that her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” (p. 1) Christians, as a body of the Church and as individuals, are continually bearing witness, both intentionally and accidentally. It cannot be stopped. This is a very comforting thing and a very challenging thing. It is comforting because it seems, at least for me, to take weight off of the enormity of the calling before the Church, as it shifts the focus from “go and DO” to simply go and BE”. If the Church is there is cannot hide its witness; it just needs to be what God made it to be, to love God, worship him with its life, to enjoy him, to love and care for what he has made. This being speaks with a loud voice, often louder than any words. But if Tozer eases the burden in one place he underscores its weight in another. He says the Church is responsible not only for what it is, but what it is not. The task before the Church is to love what God loves as a reflection of his character, and what the Church fails to be, it proclaims that God also is not. That’s a sobering reality, and what human community is equal to the task of embodying an infinite, holy God? But that is the calling nonetheless, and that is the lens we should examine ourselves with.
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us… That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.” (p. 1,2)
Tozer makes a connection that is rapidly dissolving in the minds of some Church people today; the connection between theology and life. This connection is a sword with two edges, cutting in the direction of two errors we make in our thinking about theology. On the one hand is the danger of thinking that head knowledge is the whole of the Christian life, without that knowledge ever really “becoming true” of us. Tozer undercuts that mistake by insisting that the nature of our picture of God is such that it has a direct and immediate call on our actions/values/thoughts in our actual day-to-day lives. If the connection isn’t flowing that direction it is possible that you haven’t actually begun to worship the real God; it is the most important thing because an encounter with the real God does not leave us the same as it found us. Tozer speaks to the opposite error as well. If you listen, you'll hear both errors in the air today, but this one seems to gaining popularity. It is the idea that theology is esoteric. We must preserve the idea that theology means not less than simply “what we think about God”. The Christian life is like finding pieces of the picture of God and putting them in their right places, like a mosaic. Tozer is saying that this mosaic – what it holds and what it does not hold – is life and death. Everything flows out of that mosaic (and not just in some “spiritual” realm of life, but in all of life). If those are the stakes, then every piece matters. There is a not a category for “accessories” when it comes to theology. Everything matters.
“We tend by a secret law of the heart to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing things about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent that her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” (p. 1) Christians, as a body of the Church and as individuals, are continually bearing witness, both intentionally and accidentally. It cannot be stopped. This is a very comforting thing and a very challenging thing. It is comforting because it seems, at least for me, to take weight off of the enormity of the calling before the Church, as it shifts the focus from “go and DO” to simply go and BE”. If the Church is there is cannot hide its witness; it just needs to be what God made it to be, to love God, worship him with its life, to enjoy him, to love and care for what he has made. This being speaks with a loud voice, often louder than any words. But if Tozer eases the burden in one place he underscores its weight in another. He says the Church is responsible not only for what it is, but what it is not. The task before the Church is to love what God loves as a reflection of his character, and what the Church fails to be, it proclaims that God also is not. That’s a sobering reality, and what human community is equal to the task of embodying an infinite, holy God? But that is the calling nonetheless, and that is the lens we should examine ourselves with.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Why I am a Christian (1)
Every now and then I get asked the question "Why are you a Christian" by friends. It is a good question to be asked and to ask yourself. When I take the question seriously I come away with a greater confidence that the Christian faith is the truth, and that there are good reasons to hold to it. I want to take some time and put a few of my answers to that question up on the blog, starting with this one:
One of those reasons is that the gospel tells a story that reconciles God’s justice and his mercy without resulting in a world that is unlivable.
The Bible depicts God as both perfectly holy and perfectly loving. His holiness means that all his actions serve justice. His love means that there is infinite mercy to be found in him. This is fine as long as there is no sin, but that's not the world we live in, so we have a problem. At this point the question enters: which side of God's character wins out?
It seems there are three options:
1. God's love trumps his holiness. His mercy wins out and nothing is unforgivable. We do not get the justice out actions deserve. There is no judgment for evil.
2. God's holiness trumps his love. Justice is done and only the people who are holy like him escape getting what they deserve. There is only judgment for evil.
3. God denies neither part of his character, but both his love and holiness are upheld and fulfilled in something marvelous and unexpected.
People often wish for the first option and become angry at God that he is not more lavish with his love, and then reject him. When there is anything which carries even the slightest hint of divine judgment God is often also painted as the second option, and then rejected. The real Christian gospel tells a story of how the third option miraculously came true, and when I understood this, rather than causing me to reject God it became an anchor to my faith.
1. The God Who Is Only Mercy.
The wish for a God who is only mercy goes hand-and-glove with a culture who hates judgment and who defines tolerance as never saying anyone else is wrong. At first it is logical to long for this (isn't unconditional, all-encompassing mercy a good?) but when you look closer the wish for God to be like this is wishing for God who is terrible and a world that is unlivable. This is to wish that God were not holy, or wish that his holiness did not matter to him so much. But who wants to live in such a world? Aren't we all secretly banking on God's holiness and his justice in the end? That there would be equality in the scales? That all the unpunished evil that has wrought such havoc and suffering throughout history did not go unseen by Heaven? That there is someone who has the power and goodness to make it all right again? Who also saw all the unpraised and unthanked goodness that has gone on in the world and will not forget it? Of course we are. If you have a God who is only mercy then there is an infinitely elastic line between right and wrong. God saves, but he does it by a shrug - by sweeping it under the rug of his mercy, which is there for the taking. It would go against his very nature to condemn evil in any real way that would amount to more than just shaking his finger at it. Who wants to live in this world?
2. The God Who Is Only Justice
So if we do not see (and should not wish for) a God who is only mercy, then does Christianity present a God who is only just? No. You can have a relationship with the Christian God, and you could not with a God who is only just. Why? If that were true of God then you would only be left with a judge. If he is an omniscient one, then he would know all the ways you have fallen short, even more than you know. If he is an infinite one, then even the smallest cruelty you commit against your fellow man is an infinite rebellion. Our sin would fit his magnitude, not ours. And if he is a just one then we would receive from him only punishment, for that is justice. Our sin does not seem to us to be such a terrible thing to merit such a judgment, but that is because we are handicapped by the fall. We are unable to see clearly either the ugliness of our sin or the glory of God's holiness. If we could see our sin as God does, we would see that if God were any kind of holy at all he would have to be infinitely removed from that kind of darkness. But infinitely distant from a God who is only justice is not where the Christian gospel leaves us.
3. The Something Unexpected
Either of the first two options leads to God denying part of who he is, but this is not how any true mercy or justice is achieved. God is one. He cannot deny himself or any part of himself. If there is to be mercy or justice at all it must be in both his holiness and his love being upheld simultaneously, and that is exactly what the gospel says took place on the cross. As C. S. Lewis said, "On the Cross justice and mercy kiss". God himself, in Jesus, pays the penalty his justice requires, which his creations earned for themselves but could not pay for themselves. Now his love is lavished on those very creations and his mercy is achieved at the price of his own wounds.
Christianity tells a story that errs neither to the left or to the right. It is neither only justice nor only mercy because it is both. And this makes a world that is worth living in. It is one where there will be judgment for evil, where there is a moral standard higher than ourselves and all will bow before a holy God. Then when that moment comes the hammer of judgment does not fall because God, in love, took the hammer's blows on himself. This makes Christians both uncompromisingly moral and lavishly, radically loving.
One of those reasons is that the gospel tells a story that reconciles God’s justice and his mercy without resulting in a world that is unlivable.
The Bible depicts God as both perfectly holy and perfectly loving. His holiness means that all his actions serve justice. His love means that there is infinite mercy to be found in him. This is fine as long as there is no sin, but that's not the world we live in, so we have a problem. At this point the question enters: which side of God's character wins out?
It seems there are three options:
1. God's love trumps his holiness. His mercy wins out and nothing is unforgivable. We do not get the justice out actions deserve. There is no judgment for evil.
2. God's holiness trumps his love. Justice is done and only the people who are holy like him escape getting what they deserve. There is only judgment for evil.
3. God denies neither part of his character, but both his love and holiness are upheld and fulfilled in something marvelous and unexpected.
People often wish for the first option and become angry at God that he is not more lavish with his love, and then reject him. When there is anything which carries even the slightest hint of divine judgment God is often also painted as the second option, and then rejected. The real Christian gospel tells a story of how the third option miraculously came true, and when I understood this, rather than causing me to reject God it became an anchor to my faith.
1. The God Who Is Only Mercy.
The wish for a God who is only mercy goes hand-and-glove with a culture who hates judgment and who defines tolerance as never saying anyone else is wrong. At first it is logical to long for this (isn't unconditional, all-encompassing mercy a good?) but when you look closer the wish for God to be like this is wishing for God who is terrible and a world that is unlivable. This is to wish that God were not holy, or wish that his holiness did not matter to him so much. But who wants to live in such a world? Aren't we all secretly banking on God's holiness and his justice in the end? That there would be equality in the scales? That all the unpunished evil that has wrought such havoc and suffering throughout history did not go unseen by Heaven? That there is someone who has the power and goodness to make it all right again? Who also saw all the unpraised and unthanked goodness that has gone on in the world and will not forget it? Of course we are. If you have a God who is only mercy then there is an infinitely elastic line between right and wrong. God saves, but he does it by a shrug - by sweeping it under the rug of his mercy, which is there for the taking. It would go against his very nature to condemn evil in any real way that would amount to more than just shaking his finger at it. Who wants to live in this world?
2. The God Who Is Only Justice
So if we do not see (and should not wish for) a God who is only mercy, then does Christianity present a God who is only just? No. You can have a relationship with the Christian God, and you could not with a God who is only just. Why? If that were true of God then you would only be left with a judge. If he is an omniscient one, then he would know all the ways you have fallen short, even more than you know. If he is an infinite one, then even the smallest cruelty you commit against your fellow man is an infinite rebellion. Our sin would fit his magnitude, not ours. And if he is a just one then we would receive from him only punishment, for that is justice. Our sin does not seem to us to be such a terrible thing to merit such a judgment, but that is because we are handicapped by the fall. We are unable to see clearly either the ugliness of our sin or the glory of God's holiness. If we could see our sin as God does, we would see that if God were any kind of holy at all he would have to be infinitely removed from that kind of darkness. But infinitely distant from a God who is only justice is not where the Christian gospel leaves us.
3. The Something Unexpected
Either of the first two options leads to God denying part of who he is, but this is not how any true mercy or justice is achieved. God is one. He cannot deny himself or any part of himself. If there is to be mercy or justice at all it must be in both his holiness and his love being upheld simultaneously, and that is exactly what the gospel says took place on the cross. As C. S. Lewis said, "On the Cross justice and mercy kiss". God himself, in Jesus, pays the penalty his justice requires, which his creations earned for themselves but could not pay for themselves. Now his love is lavished on those very creations and his mercy is achieved at the price of his own wounds.
Christianity tells a story that errs neither to the left or to the right. It is neither only justice nor only mercy because it is both. And this makes a world that is worth living in. It is one where there will be judgment for evil, where there is a moral standard higher than ourselves and all will bow before a holy God. Then when that moment comes the hammer of judgment does not fall because God, in love, took the hammer's blows on himself. This makes Christians both uncompromisingly moral and lavishly, radically loving.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 10)
In the last post we looked at the Bible’s challenge to those who would hold both timeless truth and ministry methods in closed hands, allowing neither to change in the name of relevancy. This post is about the Bible’s challenge to the approach which opens both hands and allows both the way the message is communicated AND the content of the Christian message to change. It is done in the name of relevancy – running from the error of the two closed hands, isolation of the church, but it doing so it commits the opposite error.
The first question to ask when both hands are opened is: who gets to determine what truths stay and what truths go? The answer is the culture. When both hands are opened relevancy is raised to the highest priority and the gospel is effectively anchored to the culture. If this happens, then the culture calls the tune of the gospel a wolf has entered wearing sheep’s clothing.
The danger is this: the gospel is now a thing that must be adapted to fit the hearers, and the ever-shifting culture sits over the Bible as judge and becomes the final authority in determining what truths remain and which must be discarded. Is there something in the Bible that the culture doesn’t understand, approve of, find helpful or progressive? It can go. Does the idea of a just and holy God who has wrath toward sin offend the culture’s sensibilities? Then portray a Jesus who is nothing but love and who shares the culture’s understanding of tolerance and acceptance and moral relativity. Does what the Bible has to say about controversial issues such as gender, sexuality, and marriage seem archaic and backward? Then preach about other things and omit the God’s words on that part of the human condition. Has the culture learned a distrust of absolute truth and authority? Then reduce the Bible to “a member of the congregation” whose voice must be heard just the same as any other voice in the congregation.
It’s not hard to spot the things that would be the first to go. Postmodernism is not unique in this, every culture humans have ever created has no shortage of areas where the Bible’s truths will rub against the grain of its preferences. But why should those preferences be given the power to determine what things the Bible teaches are retained? We can look at other cultures across the history of the world and do not find it difficult to spot things we judge to be blind spots or backward thinking. We modern people look down on the gladiatorial contests of the Romans or the propriety of Elizabethan England, and feel that we have advanced beyond such things. There are as many examples of this as there are cultures in the history of the world. If we would deny any culture in history has ever had a perfect understanding of truth, why give our own that credit? Why entrust the gospel to our postmodern sensibilities? Human culture is fickle and fallen and will fail if given such a precious task as the final stewardship of the gospel. Because of this if the hand which should grip the timeless truths of the gospel is opened and the culture is given the authority over it then the seeds of error have been sown into the church.
This truth is that we become more like what we orbit around. Opening both hands sets Christianity on a course to be conformed to the culture. In that case it will cease to be Christianity at all, but will just become “paganism in Christian language.” Yes, Christianity is, in a sense, changeable, but it is also possible to change the gospel until the gospel is lost. The approach of closing both hands errs in that it produces a church that isolates itself from the world so the world doesn’t get to see the gospel. Opening both hands ends in the exact same destination; it only takes a different path to get there. This sets Christianity on a course of assimilation. The values of the culture so influence and infiltrate the church that Christianity begins to preach only those things the culture already approves. Either way the world still doesn’t get to see the gospel
The ironic thing is that it is the very impulse of compassion, to give the world a message it can understand, which tempts the church to open the second hand. But the charge before the church is not only to be understandable. The second half must not be lost: to preach the gospel. It is not compassion which enters the hurt, broken places of this world, but fails to call them to the only place there is healing. It is not love that gives the world a message it understands, but that message does not help it to understand what God has done for it in Christ. Nor is it faithfulness to be unclear where the Bible is clear, and to seek not to wound where the gospel calls us to make wounds in love. In failing to do so the church might not anger men, but it will betray God.
The first question to ask when both hands are opened is: who gets to determine what truths stay and what truths go? The answer is the culture. When both hands are opened relevancy is raised to the highest priority and the gospel is effectively anchored to the culture. If this happens, then the culture calls the tune of the gospel a wolf has entered wearing sheep’s clothing.
The danger is this: the gospel is now a thing that must be adapted to fit the hearers, and the ever-shifting culture sits over the Bible as judge and becomes the final authority in determining what truths remain and which must be discarded. Is there something in the Bible that the culture doesn’t understand, approve of, find helpful or progressive? It can go. Does the idea of a just and holy God who has wrath toward sin offend the culture’s sensibilities? Then portray a Jesus who is nothing but love and who shares the culture’s understanding of tolerance and acceptance and moral relativity. Does what the Bible has to say about controversial issues such as gender, sexuality, and marriage seem archaic and backward? Then preach about other things and omit the God’s words on that part of the human condition. Has the culture learned a distrust of absolute truth and authority? Then reduce the Bible to “a member of the congregation” whose voice must be heard just the same as any other voice in the congregation.
It’s not hard to spot the things that would be the first to go. Postmodernism is not unique in this, every culture humans have ever created has no shortage of areas where the Bible’s truths will rub against the grain of its preferences. But why should those preferences be given the power to determine what things the Bible teaches are retained? We can look at other cultures across the history of the world and do not find it difficult to spot things we judge to be blind spots or backward thinking. We modern people look down on the gladiatorial contests of the Romans or the propriety of Elizabethan England, and feel that we have advanced beyond such things. There are as many examples of this as there are cultures in the history of the world. If we would deny any culture in history has ever had a perfect understanding of truth, why give our own that credit? Why entrust the gospel to our postmodern sensibilities? Human culture is fickle and fallen and will fail if given such a precious task as the final stewardship of the gospel. Because of this if the hand which should grip the timeless truths of the gospel is opened and the culture is given the authority over it then the seeds of error have been sown into the church.
This truth is that we become more like what we orbit around. Opening both hands sets Christianity on a course to be conformed to the culture. In that case it will cease to be Christianity at all, but will just become “paganism in Christian language.” Yes, Christianity is, in a sense, changeable, but it is also possible to change the gospel until the gospel is lost. The approach of closing both hands errs in that it produces a church that isolates itself from the world so the world doesn’t get to see the gospel. Opening both hands ends in the exact same destination; it only takes a different path to get there. This sets Christianity on a course of assimilation. The values of the culture so influence and infiltrate the church that Christianity begins to preach only those things the culture already approves. Either way the world still doesn’t get to see the gospel
The ironic thing is that it is the very impulse of compassion, to give the world a message it can understand, which tempts the church to open the second hand. But the charge before the church is not only to be understandable. The second half must not be lost: to preach the gospel. It is not compassion which enters the hurt, broken places of this world, but fails to call them to the only place there is healing. It is not love that gives the world a message it understands, but that message does not help it to understand what God has done for it in Christ. Nor is it faithfulness to be unclear where the Bible is clear, and to seek not to wound where the gospel calls us to make wounds in love. In failing to do so the church might not anger men, but it will betray God.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Save Their Bodies or Save Their Souls?
I heard a speaker at last year’s L’abri conference tell a story about something he saw while spending some time in Africa. He went to a missionary compound and it was obvious to see the quality of the facilities there that they had invested many resources on their bright buildings. He also saw that just outside the missionary compound there were Africans living beneath tarps strung up between trees. His point in telling that story was that often when the gospel has gone out it has focused solely on spreading a message of spiritual redemption and any kind of physical redemption has been completely neglected. The story is made particularly poignant (and tragic) by the fact that the missionaries had been there for thirty years. In thirty years their faith had driven them to do many things (and probably most of them were very good things) but had not compelled to provide a better shelter than tarps for the people within arms reach.
Another story (that I can’t help but think of paired with the story of the missionary compound) happened one night after a friend and I saw Blood Diamond and we got into a long conversation afterwards about what the responsibility of Christians was in light of the fact that there is so much injustice and suffering happening in the world, like the things going on in the film. He was frustrated with the fact that sometimes Christians can act like physical things don’t matter and said that it was pointless to act like all the problems were fixed if you share the gospel with someone who is starving and then walk away without giving them any food. “They don’t need Jesus,” he said, “they need food!”
Both stories illustrate a message of what the Christian’s priorities should be in the world. One message is that the spiritual is what is most important, and the gospel should heal people’s greatest needs, which are first and foremost spiritual needs. The other message is as the gospel goes out it should focus on the physical needs and have the healing of those as the first and foremost priority of Christians, as it is the foremost priority of the gospel.
I want to say that both viewpoints taken to the extreme are distortions of the gospel and in danger of committing opposite errors. It should never be a choice between either physical or spiritual needs and, in a sense, we have already gone wrong if the debate is even going on. It is a false dichotomy and an unbiblical one. But before I go on, let me add that in saying that I don’t mean that it is never appropriate to correct the one with the other. That is, perhaps, what is needed in cases where Christians have gone so far down the one direction they are completely neglecting the other. For example, what whoever makes the decisions in that missionary compound needs is to see is that they are misrepresenting the gospel by only caring for spiritual needs at the expense of the physical and begin to repent of that distortion of the gospel, starting with doing what they can to provide those people living in tarps with four walls and a roof. But that does not mean that it would be best for them to turn 180 degrees and commit the opposite error, neglecting people’s spiritual needs. What they need is to return to the practice of biblical Christianity!
As I said, I think it is a false dichotomy that is not present in the Bible. Look at the life of Jesus, who alone lived perfectly in line with God’s agenda for the world. What do we see him doing with his life on earth? We see him healing lepers, restoring sight to the blind, raising up people crippled for their whole lives, feeding thousands, casting out demons, having compassion on the pain of others, and showing that God cares for the physical hurts, afflictions, and suffering of all people. We also see him correcting people’s theology. He calls 12 men and travels everywhere with him for 3 years and teaches them about the kingdom of God. He gives sermons to thousands proclaiming the truth and correcting their false beliefs. He gets into countless conversations with people who come to him with questions and challenges them (with narrative AND propositionally…) to believe more truly. He shows that God cares about the landscape of every individual’s beliefs and the kingdom of God is one where people are growing in their theology and learning the truth more and more.
The two ways of thinking of the kingdom of God are really part of one whole, and to divorce them from each other is to distort the truth. Jesus can be used as a banner for each side of the debate. Those most concerned about the spiritual side of the gospel will make sermons that show Jesus trouncing the Pharisees and telling people that the he is the Good Shepherd and meditate most heavily on the passages where he preaches against he lies he encounters (a good thing). Those on the other side of the debate will make sermons showing that Jesus was deeply moved to compassion at seeing people hurt and basically walked around the countryside looking for people to heal and will pray to be more like Christ in this and try to reflect it in the way they live (a good thing).
The danger is not that there are no good aspects of either one; the danger is that neither is a complete version of what the kingdom of God is. They are Biblical in the sense that both of them site parts of the Bible as sources, but not Biblical in the sense that neither represent the unity of what the Bible teaches about what the kingdom of God looks like, nor how Jesus embodied it.
The task before the Church is to fight all the brokenness and injustice in the world and to do it zealously, as Jesus did, while not forgetting what our greatest enemy really is. Our greatest enemy is the sin that separates us from the source of all good, God, and we desperately need to be reconciled to Him and we need that infinitely more than we need food. The truth is that Christians are called to fight sin wherever it appears, whether that means institutional sin (injustice, poverty, homelessness, slavery) or confronting false belief in individuals and proclaiming the truth against the lies that set themselves up against God. The Bible does not give room for the church to abandon either front, and the world suffers when it does. The truth is that the kingdom of God is where the will of the King is done, and where that kingdom grows all things will begin to be aligned to that will. God cares about every inch of creation. God cares about every facet of what it means to be human. God cares about our struggles, our suffering and pain, our confusion, the lies we believe and our mistaken theology. There is not one inch of it over which he does not say “Mine.” And as the church does not care about any of those things it falsely represents God to the watching world.
Another story (that I can’t help but think of paired with the story of the missionary compound) happened one night after a friend and I saw Blood Diamond and we got into a long conversation afterwards about what the responsibility of Christians was in light of the fact that there is so much injustice and suffering happening in the world, like the things going on in the film. He was frustrated with the fact that sometimes Christians can act like physical things don’t matter and said that it was pointless to act like all the problems were fixed if you share the gospel with someone who is starving and then walk away without giving them any food. “They don’t need Jesus,” he said, “they need food!”
Both stories illustrate a message of what the Christian’s priorities should be in the world. One message is that the spiritual is what is most important, and the gospel should heal people’s greatest needs, which are first and foremost spiritual needs. The other message is as the gospel goes out it should focus on the physical needs and have the healing of those as the first and foremost priority of Christians, as it is the foremost priority of the gospel.
I want to say that both viewpoints taken to the extreme are distortions of the gospel and in danger of committing opposite errors. It should never be a choice between either physical or spiritual needs and, in a sense, we have already gone wrong if the debate is even going on. It is a false dichotomy and an unbiblical one. But before I go on, let me add that in saying that I don’t mean that it is never appropriate to correct the one with the other. That is, perhaps, what is needed in cases where Christians have gone so far down the one direction they are completely neglecting the other. For example, what whoever makes the decisions in that missionary compound needs is to see is that they are misrepresenting the gospel by only caring for spiritual needs at the expense of the physical and begin to repent of that distortion of the gospel, starting with doing what they can to provide those people living in tarps with four walls and a roof. But that does not mean that it would be best for them to turn 180 degrees and commit the opposite error, neglecting people’s spiritual needs. What they need is to return to the practice of biblical Christianity!
As I said, I think it is a false dichotomy that is not present in the Bible. Look at the life of Jesus, who alone lived perfectly in line with God’s agenda for the world. What do we see him doing with his life on earth? We see him healing lepers, restoring sight to the blind, raising up people crippled for their whole lives, feeding thousands, casting out demons, having compassion on the pain of others, and showing that God cares for the physical hurts, afflictions, and suffering of all people. We also see him correcting people’s theology. He calls 12 men and travels everywhere with him for 3 years and teaches them about the kingdom of God. He gives sermons to thousands proclaiming the truth and correcting their false beliefs. He gets into countless conversations with people who come to him with questions and challenges them (with narrative AND propositionally…) to believe more truly. He shows that God cares about the landscape of every individual’s beliefs and the kingdom of God is one where people are growing in their theology and learning the truth more and more.
The two ways of thinking of the kingdom of God are really part of one whole, and to divorce them from each other is to distort the truth. Jesus can be used as a banner for each side of the debate. Those most concerned about the spiritual side of the gospel will make sermons that show Jesus trouncing the Pharisees and telling people that the he is the Good Shepherd and meditate most heavily on the passages where he preaches against he lies he encounters (a good thing). Those on the other side of the debate will make sermons showing that Jesus was deeply moved to compassion at seeing people hurt and basically walked around the countryside looking for people to heal and will pray to be more like Christ in this and try to reflect it in the way they live (a good thing).
The danger is not that there are no good aspects of either one; the danger is that neither is a complete version of what the kingdom of God is. They are Biblical in the sense that both of them site parts of the Bible as sources, but not Biblical in the sense that neither represent the unity of what the Bible teaches about what the kingdom of God looks like, nor how Jesus embodied it.
The task before the Church is to fight all the brokenness and injustice in the world and to do it zealously, as Jesus did, while not forgetting what our greatest enemy really is. Our greatest enemy is the sin that separates us from the source of all good, God, and we desperately need to be reconciled to Him and we need that infinitely more than we need food. The truth is that Christians are called to fight sin wherever it appears, whether that means institutional sin (injustice, poverty, homelessness, slavery) or confronting false belief in individuals and proclaiming the truth against the lies that set themselves up against God. The Bible does not give room for the church to abandon either front, and the world suffers when it does. The truth is that the kingdom of God is where the will of the King is done, and where that kingdom grows all things will begin to be aligned to that will. God cares about every inch of creation. God cares about every facet of what it means to be human. God cares about our struggles, our suffering and pain, our confusion, the lies we believe and our mistaken theology. There is not one inch of it over which he does not say “Mine.” And as the church does not care about any of those things it falsely represents God to the watching world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
