Random Biblical Thoughts Part 2

A bit of Biblical comedy: Sarah laughs when God tells Abraham he will have a son by her. God thus names the child "Isaac", which means something like 'laughter'. Yet more proof that God has a sense of humor, and that laughter is divine.

More humor: the midwives that Pharaoh instructed to kill off the Hebrews complain that the Hebrews are too good at giving birth to stop.

How did Moses ever grow up in the Pharaoh's home? Did they know that he was Hebrew (they seemed to)? How did this work, given the attempted murder of the Hebrews? Maybe they thought just one more didn't matter. The stuff we don't know about his early life seems so very important to me. Moses had a stutter, did this contribute to his resistance to God's call?

 Moses comes off as mousey through much of the Bible, yet he fights off the men who threaten Jethro's daughters. In the Ben Kingsley TV movie version of the story, Moses outwits them, rather than physically fights them off. It is a convincing theory.

What is the relationship between Moses and the religion of the Midianites? There is one theory that the name Yahweh derives from the Midianites' religion. Something definitely happened out in that wilderness.

Moses resistance to God's call for him to free the Hebrews is another bit of comedy. Moses' stutter is given as a reason. Some suggest the earlier murder was the reason, but the Bible doesn't really present that moment as making much difference after Moses flees.

Aaron is the first parish communicator.

The conflict with Pharaoh can be seen as two ways. Either Pharaoh is merely the puppet of God, who God uses and manipulates to reveal the Divine Glory of Yahweh, or he is a minor god who resists Yahweh, and who Yahweh does battle with to show his superiority. Pharaoh is the first satan, the embodiment of all the dark and turbid powers that resist the goodness of God in this world.

The first plague, turning the Nile to blood, would be a sigh of God's superiority over Pharaoh.

The Passover has roots in Canaanite harvest and fertility festivals. But the historical experience of the Jews changed the context of the ritual. Ritual informs history, and history informs ritual.

The cleaving of the Red Sea is similar to the cleaving of the waters of chaos at creation. The vision of God splitting a body of water is very much like the cutting up of the sea and river gods by God in some Canaanite myths. All of this is related to Sumerian mythos and the defeat of the watery serpent before the creation of the world.

The Song of Miriam paints the Exodus as a battle between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt. This is significant.

The Hebrews first wander in the Desert of Sin. I wonder if the name of the Desert is given because the Israelites sinned, or do we get the word 'sin' from the name of the Desert? Something to investigate.

The complaining of the Hebrews about not having enough to eat, and later about not having enough variety in their diet, is so full of a deep and persistent truth. We are all such whiners, always wanting more, more, more. It reminds me of Ben Franklin's proverb "those who trade freedom for security deserve neither". Also speaks to Dostoevsky's GRAND INQUISITOR story. We will give everything up for comfort and security. Yet God calls us away from comfort and security. Hence the tension of sin.

God punishes Moses severely for not calling on His Name when getting water from the rock at Kadesh. The punishment seems severe for such a small crime. Perhaps being so close to God puts extra responsibilities on one's back? From the one to whom much is given, much is expected.

Moses' relationship with his Midianite father-in-law seems very close in Exodus. Strange the conflicts that later arise with the Midianite clan.

The great Theophany of Exodus 19-20 should be read by every believer. It is so very important. It is everything. God comes down and directly tries to dwell with His people, and to lead them directly with His laws written on their tongues and hearts. They can't handle it. They (and God) learn that not all people are cut out to be prophets. The greatness of God reduces us down, crushes us almost. We ask God to leave, and to work through intermediaries. But God wants direct relationship. Makes a lot of sense of Christ, if you think about it.

That a people whose entire religious experience centered round freedom from slavery could then condone slavery is beyond me. It makes no sense.

God sometimes talks of He Himself going with the people, other times He talks of His "Angel" in whom God's "Name rests". What does this mean? What does it mean for God's "Name" to rest on an angel? And why is the angel so violent and dangerous? Strange, yet there is something deep and important here.

Christians talk about the "New Covenant" all the time, but what do they know about the Old Covenant? Little, in my experience. Christians should read Exodus 24. It really sheds an interesting light on the Eucharist.

The Ark of the Covenant, God's throne when He travelled with the Israelites. There is something so mysterious, so mystical about it. The thought of it holds my soul in awe. The idea of John saying of Jesus that in Him God 'tabernacled' with humanity, this image struck deep into the Hebrew collective memory. And for good reason. It is the idea that the infinite sits down and maintains intimacy with the finite.

The Story of the Golden Calf seems very out of place in Exodus. The sequence seems off. This adds to the evidence that this is a later story edited in. It is a commentary, many think, on the Northern Kingdom of Israel and her setting up images of bulls and calves that are said to represent Yahweh. The injunction against idols was not as strong in the North. There it was believed that Yahweh could be represented by a calf or bull. The south saw this as a terrible apostasy, but none of the Northern prophets like Elijah are directed by God to oppose or criticize this activity. It is polytheism, not the representation of God with a bull, which Elijah hates. Iconoclastic arguments have persisted since this time to the present.

Moses' deep intimacy with God is so very moving. Moses becomes more than a man but less than a god. It is no wonder he gained such prominence among the Jews of today, holding an almost semi-divine status. Moses intercedes with God on behalf of the Hebrews.

I love that one of the gifts of the Spirit of the Lord in Exodus is artistic ability. Creativity has a divine quality to it.

God dwelled in a tent. The totality of goodness, the very Spirit of the Universe, the eternal, the infinite, the Great One came and sat on a throne in a tent. Not in a palace, not in a Ziggurat, but in a tent. Yea, that is truth. That is itself the Word of God: "God dwelled in a tent."

Visions & Revelations

Reference: 1 Corinthians 14:1-25 & 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Paul wants us to seek the spiritual gifts, and boasts of his own revelations. He is elated by his visions. Yet that elation is tempered by some darker, more sinister vision that assaults him. I can relate on both counts. I have seen heaven, and I have seen hell. Last night was a bad night, last meditation a good meditation, the night before a good night, the meditation before a bad meditation. One can see the darkness of one's soul or the light of the image of God within one. What does all this mean? One wonders. Is life a heaven or a hell? Both at the same time? Faith is believing that the Heaven is greater than the hell. Yet life is experienced as both. I want to have the pure joy, the pure Presence. Yet perhaps the visions of evil are, like Paul, ways to remind me that I am a worthless sinner still, reliant on God alone. I have heard no voice yet that tells me that the darkness is for my own good, yet my conscience sounds like the voice of God when it tells me this is so. The voice of God comforts and wards off the evil. The evil tempers the spiritual pride that accompanies God's presence. Maybe it is all for my good. But I cannot live that way. I seek the higher and fight the lower. I look for a place where God's light fills me and the darkness is kept forever at bay. I will deal with life and try to understand life as it is in the meantime, but I must seek an absolute peace. If like Paul I am denied this to the end, so be it. But I'll never stop looking.

Side thought: doesn't Paul's thorn prove that discomfort and unease is not necessarily unChristian. Peace, yes, but peace within the storm, not outside of it.

The Christian Myth-stic

I am not opposed to myth and legend as something that detracts from Christ, quite the contrary. I believe in myth human beings reach out with mind, heart and soul to some reality outside themselves. Myth is human beings reaching out to the reality called 'God' in an imaginative way. In Christ, in that simple human being, that reality reached back out to us.

A Depressing Christian Tract

I recently read this tract attacking Dungeons and Dragons, and RPGs in general. It was a genuine Christian tract, and the entire message was so stupid, so closed-minded, so superstitious. It depressed me. I enjoy D&D, and I love Jesus Christ. How these two things are inconsistent is beyond me.

A Bit of Snobbish Advice

Excuse me if this comes off as intellectually pompous, tis not my intention. Scienticians (those who believe in scientism) seem to operate on the assumption that survival is enough of a motivator when it comes to morality. If we convince people that the survival of the human species rests on them undertaking certain actions (ecological conservation, for example), then this will motivate them to act. If we convince them that it rests on them accepting certain moral limits to their behavior, we will have a moral society. In point of fact, mere survival of the species will never be enough for people AS people, and not as abstracted individuals. My reason for acting must be more than mere survival, for it really to be a reason at all. Explaining why this is can't be done in the space of a few pages or a blog post here and there, just read Dostoevsky, and then you will understand. Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Notes From The Underground, these explain this fact through story and argumentation much more effectively than I can.

Off-Topic: A Few Words On Logic

The real reason to adhere to logical rules when engaging in discourse is respect. In any debate, there must be some rules, without them real discourse is impossible. Logic is, for me, those rules that help ensure that debate is morally grounded, as much as anything else. The either/or fallacy, for instance, makes it possible for someone to cut off debate from a great number of people by making a particular issue about one of two positions. "Religion is either about morality or it is about nothing." What about those who think religion is about happiness, or truth, or any other number of things? Are they just out in the cold now? Why is their position reduced to 'nothing'? Pointing out logical fallacies is not rude, it is a way to stop rudeness. If you speak in contradictions, then you have cut off my ability to respond. I cannot really say anything at all, in response to you.

Yet the world does not fit into nice logical little boxes, either. There may be times when our language cannot be used to express an ideal exactly, but must rather kind of 'point' to the idea behind the language. Sometimes I have to kick the ladder of logic aside, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. The important thing is to be up front about what game one is playing. If I have left logic aside, I cannot demand that I be taken with the same precision as when I am being strictly logical, nor can I expect my words to have the same air of authority or certainty. It is being honest about when one is dialoging and when one is pontificating. Sometimes no interlocutor is being addressed, or imagined. Yet even here, one must be careful. There are some fallacies that should never be committed, the example given of the either/or being one example. Not because they necessarily get one closer to the truth, but just because they are plain rude.

The Language Barrier In Theology

A Biblical Studies professor once told me that reading the Bible in translation, as opposed to in the original language, is like kissing one's wife through a veil. There are entire UNIVERSES of meaning and value that are hidden to we mere mortals who do not speak ancient Hebrew and/or Greek. You realize this as you become more educated in Biblical studies and theology. A single word can lead to an entire page of exegesis for those who are skilled in the Biblical languages. The Hebrews were brilliant wordsmiths. I don't think there was a more word-centric religion anywhere in history, than the ancient Hebrew religion(s). Puns are everywhere, a word is chosen because it 'parallels' with another word somewhere else in the text. More advanced study guides will take you through a labyrinthine maze of linguistic turns which are completely hidden in English.

Joel talks about the rain in one verse, and in the next stars talking about our 'teacher'. Hidden is the fact that 'teacher' and 'rain' sound very much alike, indicating that Joel was taught something by the rain. The blessings upon Abraham are mirror images of the curses set upon Adam earlier in Genesis. Not a fact that we are likely to pick up on when reading the text, but clear in the original Hebrew. Psalm 91 uses the same language as the serpent 'striking' which is spoken of in Genesis 3, linking the darkness to the serpent. Job references this connection. The darkness becomes, in Job's hands, the living serpent, the primordial dragon that was said to be slain by God before the beginning of time.

It goes on and on. I have come to realize that my ability to make new theological insights, based on the Bible itself, is soon to hit an upper ceiling. To really expand my skills I am going to have to learn the languages eventually. As soon as I am done with my current schooling, this will be my next goal, alongside memorization of the New Testament (which I will discuss in a separate post). I currently use computer programs and Bibles that are big on translation to help me, but this can only take one so far. Theological skill is an ongoing endeavor. It takes a lifelong commitment, and a lot of work. It is not enough to be good at knowing the Bible, even in the original languages, you must have some deep experiential background, and strong analytical skills. Creativity is a must to be good at theology, and so one must have a touch of the artist within them (in my case it is just at ouch). Yet this creativity is bracketed by fact-and-figure type Biblical knowledge and a whole slew of practical skills. Biblical studies is one of the hardest PhD degrees to get, because you have to become skilled at the languages.

Great theology comes from the soul, and from the mind. I am committed to greatness, which I know can only come from God, ultimately. Yet it requires a lot of work as I prepare for that moment, whenever and if ever it comes.

On Biblical Conversations Around Women: From My Unpublished Book

            In recent years, theological movements have grown up that center around specific moral issues. Less concerned with Biblical interpretive models or metaphysics, they instead focus reflection on God on key ethical struggles. Biblical scholarship has revealed an important fact about Jesus, something that has long been lost on most Christians: the specificity of Jesus' message. Jesus' brand of preaching was not highly abstract. He was a particular person, of a particular time, with particular pressing ethical and political issues he dealt with. We have good reason to believe that the historical Jesus was Jewish-centric in His message and that He had a particular concern for the plight of the Jews (CONVERSATIONAL LOOK-UP). The Kingdom He was trying to usher in was a Kingdom that would include and center round the Jewish people and would supplant the order that had been put in place by the Romans. Yet Christianity has tended to focus on the parts of Jesus' message that can be abstracted and applied to all people all the time. We have de-judaized Jesus so that we can more easily appropriate His teachings. By re-acquainting ourselves with Jesus' struggle within the political and cultural milieu of His own day, we can begin to appreciate the importance of doing theology within the context of specific struggles and needs. In that way, we prevent our religion from being divorced from our real lives, and we allow the community to find God within the very fabric of their lives, rather than forcing a vision upon them that is cooked up on a computer at a seminary or at home (yes, I'm aware of the irony).

            Thus liberation theologians have brought the Christian message to bear on the specific issues that concern third world and oppressed peoples. They have discovered in Jesus' Jewish-centric message of liberation a mirror for their own underdog status, and their own struggle for freedom and prosperity. Politically active Christians have used Christian imagery to energize movements for specific political issues of varying stripes, realizing that Jesus was dealing with specific political problems, they have been inspired to do the same, not shying away from the political realm because of the moral dangers involved. Two movements of this type that will be particularly important for our discussion of the Holy Spirit are feminist theology and eco-theology.

             Feminist theology's main goal has been to champion the cause of women in a world where women too often and for too long have suffered from abuse and oppression. It has rightly identified religion in general and Biblical religion in particular as partly culpable for this evil, and has sought to act as a corrective. Jesus' fight against specific oppression inspires the feminist theologian's protest against paternalism in much the same way it served to inspire the struggle of oppressed races, countries, and classes through liberation theology. In some ways feminist theology is a branch of that same movement. However, feminist theologians tend to focus much more on Biblical theology, because the Bible itself struggles with the role of women in society. Much of the Bible is misogynistic. In the Old Testament, women are identified as the main cause of man's betrayal of God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:4-6, 3:16), they are treated as property and given lower rights than men in marriage (Genesis 34, Deuteronomy 24, Hosea 3:2), and the Wisdom writings are constantly warning against the evils that women bring upon men, but little about the evil men can bring upon women. God is almost universally identified as male, and there is at least the implication in this identification that somehow the male experience of life is closer to the Divine than the female experience of life. Over and against this tendency to exalt maleness are a few individual protests, voices that proclaim the importance of women for God, and their value alongside their male counterparts. The stories of Deborah and Judith run counter to the subordinate roles women are seemingly assigned by God in much of the Old Testament (Judges 4-5, Judith chapters 8-15), and their place as God's soldiers and messengers decry the idea that somehow women don't have an equal share of the Divine within them. Even the story of Eve's creation tends to run counter to the subordinate position women are said to have in most of the Old Testament. In the first Genesis Creation Story, God makes male AND female in His image. In the Second Genesis Creation Story, contrary to popular translation, God does not make Eve out of Adam's "rib". The word traditionally translated "rib" actually means something like "side". What happens is that after God tires of trying to make mankind a suitable animal companion (Genesis 2:18-25), He gets frustrated and splits Adam in two, resulting in a male and female human dynamic.

            But the biggest 'feministic' protest against misogynistic tendencies in the Old Testament is the Book of Ruth. The book is focused almost entirely on the relationship between two women who are left to struggle with a world where they have little rights, trying through their love for each other to find a way out of utter despair. The most striking imagery in the book can be found in chapter 4 verse 15, which claims that Ruth is of more value to Naomi, her mother-in-law, than seven sons. This seems to me to be a clear commentary against the prevailing male-centric voice of the Bible.

            The New Testament has a lot more to commend itself when it comes to women's rights. Women play a big role in Jesus' life, and Paul often speaks highly of women leaders in the early church, like the deaconess Phoebe, and female Apostle Junia (Romans 16:1, 16:7). Paul's own view that ultimately through Christ all are given equal access to God, also tends to de-emphasize gender distinctions. However, there are other places where Paul seems to reinforce the subordinate role of women. A big example is 1 Corinthians 14:34. Some people have suggested that this particular passage seems out of place when put in context, and was probably edited in later. The cadence and subject matter of the passage just doesn't match up with what surrounds it. When I read the passage I definitely get the feeling that this is the case. I'm inclined to think that the passage is a later redaction. The subordination of women just doesn't match up with Paul's overall vision, one where we all become one with Christ through the Holy Spirit. Gender distinctions may make sense 'in the world', but not inside the church. Other passages found in Timothy and elsewhere that seem to express similar sentiments to the 1 Corinthians passage are widely believed to be written pseudonymous long after Paul's death. That doesn't change the fact that they are part of the canon, and that the New Testament also has a strong misogynistic tradition, but it does mean that this does not necessarily begin with Paul or Jesus.

            None of the women-friendly passages amounts to much when put against the general thrust of scripture. This 'conversation over the role of women' is downright depressing. The very fact that women's equal status under God was ever questioned at all would be disgusting enough. More abhorrent is the fact that the main voice in the conversation speaks to the lesser status of women. Feminist theologians have done us a service by helping us focus on those lesser voices of protest against this prevailing view, and their criticism of that prevailing view is equally important. 

One More Time, With Feeling: "The Bible says..."

...nothing, and many things. The Bible does not talk, it is not alive. It records what other people (and beings) said. God says things. Yes the Word of God lives, and it is incarnated in Jesus Christ. But the Word of God is not simply the words of the Bible. God says things all the time to His people, even today. That Word, that proceeds from the mouth of God, is alive. I don't doubt that some of the Bible's words are the words God spoke, and so ARE the living Word of God. But discerning this isn't as simple as reading whatever is there are proclaiming it to be God's Word.

The Bible is not a book, it is a collection of books. And those books, incidentally, are actually usually collections of other sources, mostly oral traditions. Whenever fundamentalists or atheists quote the Bible, they almost inevitably commit the same stupid mistake. They say things like "The Bible says,". The fundamentalist then quotes whatever part of the Bible they happen to agree with and give it the authority of the divine. The atheist then quotes whatever part any sane person would disagree with and then act as if I am forced to giving it the authority of the divine. In both cases they sound pretty ignorant, to me. For most Biblical scholars know that the Bible is an anthology and that in any anthology one is likely to find a variety of positions on important matters. The collection we call The Bible was written over 1500 years by hundreds, yes HUNDREDS of writers. Isn't it prima facie unreasonable to believe that a unified message on almost any important subject is unlikely to be contained in such a text?

I go one step further. Not only do I think the Bible is an anthology, I think it is something like a collection of theological debates. I do not think it is just by chance that Jeremiah contradicts Deuteronomy when he says that a true prophet is either a prophet whose prophecies come true OR a prophet who tells you what you do not want to hear. No, I think that Jeremiah knows of the Deuteronomic tradition and adds to it to speak to his own direct encounter with God. Jeremiah is saying in essence, "Deuteronomy is incomplete on the issue of true prophecy. It is more complex than just 'being right'."

People are arguing all the time about whether the Bible is God revealing Himself to mankind, or mankind reaching out to God. Is it God's thoughts, or man's thoughts about God? This seems like a false dichotomy to me. Remember, fallacies of bifurcation are the most common when it comes to religion (black/white, all/nothing, false dichotomy). Barth solved this problem a long time ago. The Bible is not the Revelation of God, but the record of God's revelation. God revealed Himself to people. Really revealed Himself. People wrote and thought and talked in response to that revelation. They struggled with what they had just encountered. God is infinite, is it any wonder that an encounter with Him spawned conversations that often contradict. Even physical objects lead to contradicting theories in science.

So the Bible is both God and man. Figuring out which is which, is not easy. But it takes a familiarity and a study of the entire set of texts. Each book is like one person putting their hand on one small part of God. They do what all humans do, and extrapolate beyond their experience and build bigger and more overarching pictures. The correct way to really understand God is to look at ALL those pictures and use your reason to try to tease out what it all means. It is more like a mosaic than a photograph. You have to step back and look at the overall. Historical study helps, as it can give you some perspective on the biases of the person writing. Those biases may be positive or negative (not all biases are bad, I am biased to believe that tomorrow will be in many important ways very much like today, even though technically this is not logically, necessarily true; but this bias is not a bad bias, it makes induction possible). Using your own reason, your own personal religious experience, simple ethics, faith, the Holy Spirit, other people's perspectives, and more, to weed through the books to get a good picture, well this is just the work of being a human being. God is infinite, you are not.

The Language of Life

Christianity is Truth. It is not some system of rules or some ethical guidelines, it is life laid bare. It is every moment, and all moments. Jesus Christ is God revealed. The cross, the resurrection, the "failed" messiah who triumphs by the Spirit, that is all of life, that is the world laid bare. It is just what it means to really live, to be a real human being. That is what Bonhoeffer was driving at, I think.

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's LETTETS & PAPERS FROM PRISON

"All 1 want to do to-day is to send you a short greeting. I expect you are often thinking about us, and you an always pleased to hear we are still alive, even if we lay aside our theological discussion for the moment. It's true these theo­logical problems are always occupying my mind, but there are times when I am just content to live the lift of faith without, worrying about its problems. In such moods I take a simple pleasure in the text of the day, and yesterday's and to-day's were particularly good (July 20th: Psalm
20.8: Romans 8.31; July 21st: Psalm 23.1: John 10.24). Then I go back to Paul Ger­hardt's wonderful hymns, which never pall.

During the last year or so I have come to appreciate the worldliness of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo relgiosus, but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus was a man, on par with John the Baptist anyhow. I don't mean the shallow this-worldliness of the enlightened, of the busy, the comfortable or the lascivious. It's something much more profound than that, something in which the knowledge of death and resurrection Is ever present. I believe Luther live a this-worldly life in this sense. I remember talking to a young French pastor at A. thirteen years ago. We were discussing what our real purpose was in life. He said he would like to be­come a saint. I think it is quite likely he did become one. At the time I was very much impressed, though I disagreed with him, and said I should prefer to have faith, or words to that effect. For a long time I did not realise how far we were apart. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life or something like it. It was in this phase that I wrote the Cost of Discipleship. Today I can see the dangers of this book, though I am prepared to stand by what I wrote.

Later I discovered and am still discovering up to this very moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must attempt to abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a churchman (the priestly type, so called!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness - taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves into the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metonoia and that is what makes a man and a Christian (cf Jeremiah 45) How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

I think you get my meaning, though I put it so briefly. I am glad I have been able to learn it, and I know I could only have done so along the road I have travelled. So I am grateful and content with the past and the present. Perhaps you are surprised at the personal tone of this letter, but if for once I want to talk like this, to whom else should I say it? May God in his mercy lead us through these times. But above all may he lead us to himself!

I was delighted to hear from you, and glad you aren't finding it too hot. There must still be many letters from me on the way. Did we travel more or less along that way in
1936?

Good-bye. Take care of yourself and don't lose hope that we shall all meet again soon!"

Saved Yet Sinner

We are saved as sinners. God has to use bad people for his purposes...it is all He has. We are shaped into God's image, yet we are never free of the state of being sinners. Embracing life, accepting humanity, forgiving people, accepting that life crushes us down, embracing a sinful humanity, this is being conformed to God's image. Accepting ourselves as nothing, we become everything.

Humility

"Nobody speaks humbly of being humble."- Nietszche

The Pharisee said to God, "thank you for not making me like this publican". The publican said, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Christians now pray, "God thank you for making me like the publican.", which, of course, misses the point. God can make you humble, but you cannot know God has made you humble.

Inspirational Lines From Songs Part 1

"So I walked upon high, and I stepped to the edge, to see my world below. And I laugh at myself, as the tears roll down. Because it's the world I know. It's the world I know."- WORLD I KNOW, Collective Soul
Comment: This is the world in it's essence. The world is both supremely fun and funny, and supremely sad, all at the same time. This is reality laid bare. I do not think this is simply a human projection or how I FEEL about the world, I think my feelings correspond to reality. The world is wonderful and terrible. Christianity is the only religion I've found that speaks to this truth in all of it's depth.

"Oh you don't understand who they thought I was supposed to be." - DOWN IN A HOLE, Alice In Chains
Comment: Whenever I hear this line,  I think about Jesus and the circumstances around His death. Everyone expected the political messiah, the warrior-messiah. His rejection of this role was His greatest downfall, and His greatest triumph.

"You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time. You can run on for a long time, sooner or later God'll cut you down. Sooner or later God'll, cut you down."- GOD WILL CUT YOU DOWN, Johnny Cash
Comment: Not a universal truth but a general truth. For most people, most of the time, their dark secrets will catch up to them, eventually. This reminds me of something James Russell Lowell said, "The arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

"And crying she knelt by the manger, for her gift was unworthy of Him."- THE GIFT, Aselin Debison
Comment: Gets me teary eyed when I hear it, quite often. The little girl's humility is the real gift. The only one who really gives is the one who realize how insignificant their gift is.

"Nail in my hand, from my Creator, You gave me life, now show me how to live."- SHOW ME HOW TO LIVE, Audioslave.
Comment: This is one of the purest prayers I've ever heard or read. This is my prayer all the time. God just show me what to do, God help me be who I am supposed to be. Life is a gift, yes, and I want to live as one who knows what it cost. But doing that is easier said than done. Reminds me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's poem, WHO AM I?

"The sharp knife of a short life."- IF I DIE YOUNG- The Band Perry
Comment: One of the best lines in any song ever. The death of the young hits me hardest. It is not death per se, but the randomness of death that is an affront to our very humanity. Death is not something to be simply accepted, but to be fought against, and to be opposed, especially when it comes to children.

"There's demons from my past that haunt me every night, and I just can't get through it. If I could forget them on my own, I'd let go and just move on, but Heaven knows, I am only human...and that's why I pray."- THAT'S WHY I PRAY, Big & Rich
Comment: I cannot explain my reasons for believing without giving my personal story. Only in the depths of total despair, and in the dredges of sin, did I find some reason to believe. Others may be better people than me. But I cannot move past my past without help. God gave me that help. I'll never forget it, and never leave Him behind, if I can help it.

"God great, beer is good, and people are crazy."- PEOPLE ARE CRAZY, Billy Currington
Comment: I don't agree with the second proposition but the other two are so true they drown it out.

Random Biblical Thoughts Part 1

Passing thoughts on the Bible:

The first and second creation story are pretty radical in their differences. In the one God is wholly other and in absolute control, knowing all before it happens. In the second God is very much living inside the world He has created, and that world forms some kind of limitation on Him. He experiments, He learns and He is frustrated. Both of these stories have important theological truth, I think. Reconciliation is difficult, but with complexity of thought a truer picture than either gives on it's own can emerge.

I love the story of the Nephilim. It is so weird and mythic in it's scope. Angels mate with human women, giving birth to demi-godlike figures. People often ignore the strangest parts of the Bible, but I'm with Albert Schweitzer in that I think we should enter fully the 'strange, alien world' of scripture.

I despise the way rape victims are often treated in the Bible. The Bible is unambiguous that rape is a great evil, but the way that evil is handled is almost just as bad. There is to excusing it.

The ancestors of the Canaanite tribes are often accused of incest. The implication being that these tribes are descendent from (usually) a child's rape of their own father. It seems fairly clear to me that these actions are far out of step with human nature. Isn't it obvious that polemics against the ancient enemies of the Jews have been included in the text?

Abraham fights the enemies of Sodom and Gammorah to free his captive nephew Lot. The scope of these battles is presented as mighty and great. Yet the text reveals that only 318 men accompanied Abraham on his raid to save his nephew. This number seems very believable, and so I'm convinced there is historical truth here. Yet the scope of such a battle seems much smaller than the way the whole event is described.

God is called El Roi by Hagar when she is lost in the Desert. It means 'The One Who Sees'. There is something simple and beautiful in that name.

I love the way Abraham is willing to 'bug God' with his questions about God's punishment of Sodom and Gammorah. It is a hilarious scene, with Abraham simply asking the same question over and over again, avoiding the direct question about Lot. It says a lot that God lets him go on this way without just telling Abraham what God already knows Abraham wants to hear. God is silly sometimes.

Genesis 21:9 says that Ishmael was 'playing with' Isaac, and this was what angered Sarah. It is not clear whether this means Ishmael was 'picking on' Isaac or playing with him like a brother. Was Sarah mad that Isaac was being picked on or upset that Isaac was deferring to Ishmael in some game?

There are so many GOOD interpretations of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. I am convinced that God would never ask a man to do this. I am equally convinced that there is some divine, cosmic lesson behind this moment. There is something numinous about it. It captures me as revelation. Yet I am repulsed by some of the details.

The Hittites played some important role in the background of the story of the Bible. Individual Hittites become important in the story, and they are encountered in deals with the Israelites from time to time. But it is more than that. The Hittite concept of covenant is the model for the covenantal system in the Bible. I don't know enough about the Hittites. It is a gap in my Biblical knowledge that should be closed.

The story of Sodom and Gammorah seems parallel to the horrific story of Judges 19-20. It seems obvious to me that the Judges story is the one closer to actual history. It is one of the most terrible things in all of scripture. Few are familiar with it. Read the two and tell me you don't come to the same conclusion, that the Genesis story is a re-working of the Judges story.

The story of Jacob is one of my favorites in all of scripture. His early sinful ways, the way those sinful ways come back to haunt him, his wrestling with God and then re-acquaintance with his brother in whose face he sees "the face of God", it all comes off as so genuine. There is the historical and the physical and the spiritual truth that lies behind it, all easy to point out and easy to re-live. It is the way God really works, at least in my life. I identify strongly with Jacob, the frail and sinful reluctant holy man.

Jacob wrestling with God and being re-named "Struggles With God" is one of the most important moments in all of scripture for me. I come back to it over and over again.

There is something Christologically significant about Joseph. He is one of the most heroic figures in all of the Bible, that is for sure. I know that he was particularly important for Rene Girard, and rightly so. The Scapegoating theme is clear. So is the theme of sibling rivalry, which is so very powerful in Genesis. That theme has long interested me. Why such a concern with brothers?...I wonder if Alfred Adler ever reflected on this. Surely it has something to do with Israel's often-downplayed connection and roots as a Canaanite tribe.

It is really amazing that Potiphar doesn't just kill Joseph. The TBS BIBLE MOVIE series took this as a sign that Potiphar didn't really believe his wife, and remained affectionate towards Joseph. This seems plausible, to me.

Can you imagine what that moment was like when Joseph was revealed to his brothers? It would be wild to have been a fly on THAT wall...

One-Post Wednesday: Homily On Meaning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72KzvH8kdmU

Off-Topic: Superman

There is this scene in the first SUPERMAN movie where Superman reverses the spin of the earth which allows him to go back in time and save Lois Lane after already having saved New Jersey (oh, the countless jokes that bubble to the surface after having written that). Many consider this the stupidest part of the film, and visually it is pretty week. But it is actually symbolic of an important truth about the Man of Steel: his power is even greater than we think it is. The reverse-spin was just a way to explain how he did something so huge. In the film, Superman's act in this case violated a limit his father placed on him. Jor-El had told Superman there were some things he could not do, this was one of them. In the comics these limits are self-imposed. The infinite imposing limits out of respect for humanity is the essence of the Superman story.

Redemption & Christology in the Book of JOB

My recent re-examination of the Book of Job has brought to light just how relevant the book is to Christology. Job feels like God's transcendence makes genuine relationship with Him all but impossible. He cries out in horror at the evils of the world, and is confident that innocent suffering is a genuine problem for those who believe in and worship Yahweh. Yet the existence of God is not something Job can give up on. He says repeatedly that he is not throwing his lot in with 'those sinners' who give up the idea that there is a God or that God pays attention to them. Quite the contrary, Job is incapable of giving this up. He openly complains that he still feels God's watchful eye upon him. He would give anything to be ABLE to sin with impunity, to be free of the burden of God's presence.

In the end it is God's transcendence which is the problem for Job. Job agrees with his friends that God is 'wholly other', so transcendent that next to him we are but nothing and all of our moral accomplishments are 'but filthy rags.' This is, however, exactly the problem. For God then seems all but indifferent to the relative moral problems of life in this world. The weak man still has to deal with the fact that he is preyed upon by the strong man. The sinner whose life is so difficult has to deal with the fact that other sinners, many of whom are by comparison far worse, seem to prosper so completely. All Job really wants is to be near God, for God to show that He cares for His people. So here's God, who puts this supreme moral demand upon each person. Some people try to reach, some don't, but all fall short. Yet, there is no gradation of suffering relative to the evil of each person. God exists, then, simply AS moral demand, without the hope that in the end justice will prevail, that the quest will really be worth it.

If God at least gave His presence in a special way to Job, then this at least would show the world that indeed  God cares about the struggle to do better. In the end Job gets his wish, but when he is making his complaint, he does not know this. Throughout the book Job frames his vision in the language of the courtroom. He imagines God giving him a hearing, so that Job can 'make his case' for his own innocence. As for Job's sinfulness, he wishes for an advocate, a person that God respects or considers an equal, that can make the case that in spite of Job's weaknesses he is worthy of God's love. Job talks about the need for an intermediary between God and man, for a redeemer in the legal sense of someone who can 'buy back what was lost.' In the end Job cannot see how God could make a sinful human race and leave us with no way to find meaning and love in our sinfulness. It is this desperate desire for a defending attorney, or a redeemer, which forms the backdrop for most of Job's speech.

Certainly any Christian can see just how relevant Jesus is to all of this. For no being could act as an equal to God other than God Himself. Yet it is just God with whom Job needs reconciliation. In the end, God redeemed Job by becoming Job. God showed the world for all time, just how deeply involved He really is, and how much He cares about those who struggle for the good. Jesus with His sacrifice buys back and redeems our sinful lives. Jesus is the imminence of God, His presence with and next to us. We need a God who is, in part, beyond change and yet who is also vulnerable to it. Without both sides, the picture is incomplete. What pained Job most, I think, was that on some level he realized his picture of God was incomplete. The Revelation he receives at the end of the book gives some hint to the real answer to his complaint. Indeed only God can act as redeemer. But how God can reconcile His redemptive role with His justice was never clear to Job. For Christians, it should be.

Meet Alvin Plantinga

It is distressing to me that so few theologians know of Alvin Plantinga. The man is without a doubt the most important person alive in Christian PHILOSOPHY today, and arguably one of the most important thinkers in philosophy period. Plantinga really got the ball rolling on modern analytic Christian philosophy with his book GOD AND OTHER MINDS, where he compared the teleological argument for the existence of God to similar arguments that philosophers have tried to use to justify our belief in other minds. The so-called "problem of other minds" refers to the fact that I only really know that I am conscious, since I have no direct access to your consciousness. Plantinga argued (very persuasively to my mind) that the process by which we come to believe that other people have conscious experience is very much like the process by which theists come to believe in God. If beliefs about other minds are justified, argued Plantinga, then so is belief in God.

Most atheist philosophers will admit that even if GOD AND OTHER MINDS isn't convincing (and to an atheist, I would suppose it isn't, but it certainly is for me), that the process Plantinga used, the way he did philosophy, should set the tone for anyone really interested in the field. Plantinga's influence goes well beyond religious philosophy. When modern analytic philosophy took a turn towards the metaphysical, and towards modal logic, Plantinga helped lay the groundwork for epistemology in the modern era. It was Plantinga who set out the parameters for the epistemology of modal logic, which is vital to understand what modern philosophers even DO, in his book THE NATURE OF NECESSITY. It was also there that he modernized the ontological argument, putting it on as firm a footing as it had ever been. His ability to take positions that had long been thought of as outdated or irrelevant and update them using modern turns in logic, and perhaps more importantly to show how they revealed important issues in modern logic and metaphysics, was simply groundbreaking. Simply put, Alvin Plantinga is one of the biggest names in American philosophy.

So how can theologians, who often wax philosophical, know little or nothing about the man? It is insane. Anyone who even ponders the question "why believe in God?" should know who he is. His work culminated in a trilogy of books known as the WARRANT series. The last book of that series is one of the best works of apologetics possibly ever! Plantinga demonstrated, for my money demonstrated for all time, that concepts like justification and rationality, any picture of what it means to KNOW anything, supervenes on a particular picture of human nature, on philosophical anthropology. In that sense the turn that had dominated philosophy since Descartes, where epistemology was done before metaphysics, was ended by Plantinga. Philosophical anthropology is a branch of metaphysics, of ontology, and what a person IS, is a question that can never be answered in a certain, beyond-all-doubt way. Since religious believers and atheists have different pictures of human nature, each supervening on at least some unfalsifiable assumptions, what knowledge amounts to, or what is or isn't rational, isn't something that can be settled simply through evidence and argumentation. Plantinga's rather Christian philosophical anthropology is what grounds out his convincing argument that belief in God can be, for some people, rational.

Beyond that Alvin Plantinga did important work in pneumatology, which is connected to his work in philosophical anthropology and epistemology. Any modern pneumatological musings should include at least some examination of his work on the matter. Why isn't he studied more? I dunno, it is beyond me. But I commend his work to you. He is one of the greatest minds that Christianity has ever produced. Sad that most Christians don't know his name.

A Homily On The Book of Job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVlCKyQq5hI

Self-Interest, Selfishness, Good & Evil

Many people confuse self-interest and selfishness. The two are distinct. All selfishness is a form of self-interest. Not all self-interest is a form of selfishness. Selfishness supervenes on a misunderstanding of what the self really is. The self is not atomized and individualized. Who you are is in part only discovered in your relation to the whole of things. You are a part of a whole. As a part you must seek some self-satisfaction as a part. As a part of a whole, you must also find self-satisfaction IN the whole. A part that acts as if it is not a part but the whole is ultimately self-destructive.

A cell must seek nourishment for itself. If it doesn't it won't survive. And if enough cells die, the body too dies. If the cell doesn't do it's part to keep the body alive, it fails to properly account for it's own self-interest. For if the body dies, so does the cell. Truly finding your place as a part of the whole is to discover how to maximize your own benefit. But what is your 'own' benefit is, in part, the benefit of the whole. Selfishness, as I see it, is simply acting without proper regard to one's place as a part of an organic whole, as indeed a part of God Himself. When we give ourselves to God, we must find a deeper self-satisfaction, a more complete wholeness of self, or else our very impulse to reach outside is lost. We reach beyond because we find the life of the atomized individual, as only inclusive of 'just so much' to be inherently unsatisfying. It is only by giving ourselves to a vision of the overall that we finally, truly, find our place and a more complete satisfaction. Thus other-interest is a type of self-interest.

But there is all the difference in the world between this other-regarding self-interest and the self-interest that is selfishness. Selfishness is living a lie. It is to act as if some subset of the world less than the totality of it is the limit of one's own soul. In truth, one's own soul empties out into God. Yet we are not the whole, we are a part of the whole. We must regard ourselves as part, and as part of. When I brush my teeth, I am being self-interested. I am doing something for myself. Yet I am not being selfish. For brushing my teeth is a maintenance that is necessary for me to contribute my proper part to the whole of things, not unlike that cell that must nourish for the body to survive. If I hit your car while it is parked, yet fail to leave a note, then I am being selfish. I am acting for myself, but to the detriment of you, I am acting as if you and I are discreet individuals, when in fact, we are two parts of the same whole. We are different parts, but interconnected. Something of myself is lost if I act this way, a deeper satisfaction that can only be found in awareness of the overall, in relationship with the center of the complete whole, God.

The martyr is not completely other-seeking even while they give all of themselves to God. For what they give themselves too is in truth a very important part of themselves. This kind of deeper satisfaction is demonstrated in the joy they often express in making such a profound statement of faith as martyrdom, and in their confidence in an afterlife, where they will find the ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment. There are easy cases, and in truth most of the moral quandaries we face are easy. We simply make them hard. But there are more difficult cases. Organ donation is an example. If my life is shortened, so that yours is lengthened, who is to say what the whole loses or gains? If I stop a robbery by killing the perpetrator, similar questions arise. It is at the grey area of the boundary between me and God, and between me and the other, that serious and difficult questions arise. I am confident, that there is, ultimately, some God's eye view, some final judgment on the rightness of these matters. The principle remains. Evil, as I see it, is simply to act in and for oneself or some subset of the totality that is God, over and against that totality, over and against God and the other parts of God. Good, as I see it, is to act in harmony with the whole of things, with the Ultimate Self, with God.

Undeserved Love

The world is a cesspool of sin. Yet I find great joy in it because I know God's love. In fact, the evil of the world only makes God's love that much more of a marvel. So sin does not lead me to despair. The Cross robs it of its victory. The greater the sinfulness of the one loved, the greater the love of the Lover.

No Reason Needed

Dostoevsky explored the concept of freedom perhaps better than any other writer. Part of that exploration included an exploration of evil. People are always looking for "reasons" why people do evil. But perhaps doing evil, like doing good, is an end in itself. Perhaps people commit evil acts simply because they want to do something evil.

More On My Re-Reading The Book of Job

As I said in another post, I'm re-studying Job, using Robert Alter's translation and commentary, which is excellent by the way. Job is so iconoclastic, and so revelatory of the true, conversational nature of scripture. Job is speaking directly to the prophetic tradition's point of view on suffering, and trashing is using biting sarcastic humor and poetic derision. I realize now that this book needs to be read out loud, and moreover performed. It really is like a musical. Perhaps a service with a dramatic reading of JOB would be in order?

Death As Demonic

One of the Hebrew words for death is the name of a Canaanite god. Death in the Bible is not simply an inert force, but a living reality, a dark power that oppresses the world. This is an important point that relates to a great many Biblical passages and themes.

The Healing Power of Purpose

"A man can take any how, if you give him a why." - Nietzsche.

Viktor Frankl observed this truth in the concentration camps. He developed an entire psychological theory based on it, logotherapy. I highly recommend his writings.

Facing Horrors

Horrors will come, but they will pass. Suffering is ever-present, but a kind word or a good joke can rob it of its power, if only for a moment. Most of the universe is ordered and good, and evil is present only in a small slice of it. And God is always with us. A cosmic perspective is good for the soul. Better still a divine perspective.

A Biological Parable

One heart cell is talking to another. He remarks that the activity of their home, the rhythmic vibration, the way everything interacts, is a clear mark of design and purpose. Isn't it clear that their world was made by God? The other cell insists that this is not a necessary assumption. The mechanics of everything that they experience in their home can be explained by blind, purposeless order. Their lives, as their home, have no purpose. Of course, the truth is subtler and more complex than either realizes.

Not-Really Off-Topic: Superman

Today is the 75th anniversary of the issuing of Action Comics #1, the first appearance ever of Superman. 

Superman remains one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. There are many people nowadays who look on the character as quaint, or outdated. People prefer the darker, grittier characters, or the characters who are more morally flawed, like Batman. Some complain that Superman is too impossible, and requires too much of a suspension of disbelief, but in reality, at least in the comics, Batman is as unlikely a character as Superman. Batman is like Albert Einstein, Chuck Norris, Bill Gates, and General George S Patton all rolled into one. He is literally unstoppable, given enough prep time. I remain to this day a bigger Superman fan than Batman fan.

Let's put aside the fact that he started it all, that all comic book heroes exist in part because of the success of Superman. What really attracts me to Superman is the deeply theological themes that animate the character. Siegel and Shuster were Jewish boys who grew up very poor in Cleveland. Their parents were immigrants. Their personal experience growing up Jewish in a Christian nation, and the immigrant experience of the time, deeply influenced the creation of the character. 

Superman is an attempt to create a secularized or rather science-fictionalized version of Christ. Superman is a cosmic messiah. He is sent by his father to this world, where he has great power. He hides among human beings, and uses his great power to not only protect them and fight the forces of evil that threaten them, but also to inspire them to be their best. Superman is also the ultimate immigrant, coming from another planet but being adopted by human, American parents and winding up completely enculturated while also having a keen sense that, ultimately, he comes from somewhere else. This messianic figure is also Americanized, embodying the ideals of the American Dream, and the values of the common midwestern family (of the time).

The interesting thing is how all of these elements mix together. You have a rather Jewish conception of Messiah in all of this. Superman is in many ways the messiah Jews expected: super powerful, having all the qualities we naturally incline to: good looks, strength, invulnerability, the ability to live above everyone else (originally by great leaping ability and later by flying), aloofness, fame, so on. As Superman became more and more powerful, he became more and more like what we naturally associate with God. Think about this in relation to all I write about God-in-Christ. Christ is about vulnerability, giving up power, love, living among everyone else, etc. So while Shuster and Siegal were appealing to Christian sensibilities about messiah, the messianic vision they portrayed was essentially Jewish.

But Superman lives among normal human beings. He 'hides' within the life of Clark Kent, who in many ways is everything Superman is not: common, weak, disrespected, and unsuccessful with women. In this way the character Superman captured the basic Christian idea of God walking among us. In many ways, it is the conception of Christ that dominates Christianity. God CONDESCENDS to become one of us. Behind the commonality of Jesus is the true nature of Divinity, which roughly corresponds to everything Superman is: invulnerable and beyond the concerns of mortal men. Most Christians, whether they realize it or not, have not moved far beyond the simple messianic hopes of ancient Judaism. This is roughly the Judaistic Christian Superman of Shuster and Siegel.

Over time, more mature Christian conceptions came to bear on the character. Superman's power level grew to super-cosmic proportions. Yet Superman self-limits, not only because he fears he cannot control the full breadth of his power, but because he doesn't want to over-interfere in the human right of self-determination. He respects our freedom, and so he refuses to use the full breadth of his physical might nor to impose himself on us politically. This decision to self-limit out of love and respect for humanity roughly corresponds to later Christian theological reflections on the real nature of God-in-Christ, whether done consciously or not. A great examination of the whole breadth of this evolution can be understood by watching the animated films: ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE, both fantastic movies in their own rights, and both based on very popular and critically acclaimed comic books. I highly suggest watching them together (and what better day to do this, than on Superman's 75th Anniversary?)

Yet throughout this Supermessiah is unabashedly American. He believes in the underlying ideals of this nation and what it can stand for. He sees the country not for what it is, but for what it could be, and he tries to live as a symbol for what it could be. He is the American Dream worked into one's conception of God. While there is something idolatrous about this, it is not purely idolatrous. (To get a wonderful examination of this tension between the idolatrous and non-idolatrous American Dreams, read Reinhold Niebuhr's BEYOND TRAGEDY, Chapter entitled "The Ark and The Temple".) To the degree we are capable of disentangling the good from the bad, there is something of great value in all of this. If nothing else, Superman confronts us with our usually subconscious tendency to idolize the American Dream. Watching that play out in some very sophisticated stories like SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE is entertaining and instructive.

Superman is more than just another comic book character. He is a whole set of very ancient ideas come to life in a modern context. The enemies he battles are of a cosmic scope, and threaten the whole of the planet, and beyond the planet. In that sense Superman represents the apocalyptic vision that I find has such great value, and I have argued for here many times. This is the idea that we are all involved in the cosmic clash of various forces of enormous scale. But whereas the good people of the DC Earth can do nought but sit back and hope that Superman will once again save the day, we in the real world are all our own Supermen, empowered by a loving God to take part in the not-never-ending-but-currently-ongoing battle against evil. We are the children of the cosmic God, we are the sojourners and immigrants from Somewhere Else, here on Earth to help make it more like the world from which we came, a world that, unlike Superman we are destined to return to. I have been inspired on just that level by the figure of Superman in comic books, in movies and in television. I hope to be inspired for a long time to come. And for all those reasons, and more, I say, "Happy Anniversary, Superman!"

Here are a couple of quotes, one from the original Christopher Reeve film, and one from the upcoming MAN OF STEEL with Henry Cavill, both are supposed to be quotes from Superman's father Jor-El, and illustrate beautifully the things I've said here:

"It is now time for you to rejoin your new world, and serve as collective humanity. Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you..."

"You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders...What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?..You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish wonders."

One-Post Wednesday: The World Cruciform

Everywhere I look I see Christ. Over and over again, the simple message of God-as-man on the cross and resurrected seems to help make sense of life in all of it's wonder and horror. It permeates our culture even as our culture claims to be so secular. I know many Christians want to shut out popular culture altogether, but I find that if we can build bridges instead of walls, we do Jesus Christ a much greater service. There are, no doubt, many cultural products that are all but incompatible with our faith. But the process of shutting out must be very slow, very deliberate, and very thoughtful. We must listen before we shut our ears.

Let me give just one example. Nikki Sixx was a very hard-partying member of the VERY hard partying-band Motley Crue. He struggled through a terrible heroine addiction, but found a way through it. His very history may turn many Christians off, but I would suggest that his song LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is something that Christians could well embrace. I could preach a sermon on just one line from that song:

"There's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home."

Isn't that the very essence of the message of the Cross? Aren't all Christians following a 'trail of blood' to 'find their way back home'? Yet this is from a very secular rock n roll song. I guess the connection can be just shrugged off as coincidental. I have no idea whether Sixx has any religious beliefs at all. But I do not think the freedom he found through suffering could be his had he not grown up in a Christian culture. I do not think he could've written these words if not for the Cross of Christ and it's influence on the western mind.

Now I don't mean to say that Sixx may be a Christian 'in spite of himself', but what I am saying is that just cutting off rock music or alternative rock whole cloth because of the general drift of that culture results in a very important missed opportunity. I can find an endless line of similar connections from many bands Christians might be loathe to open themselves up to. But it's there, if you listen, if you think about it. Build bridges where possible, walls only when absolutely necessary. That's my motto, anyways. I want to bring Jesus to the world, not keep Him in a cage.

A Great Mystery

After all the thinking, and praying, and reflection is done, I keep coming back to one simple paradox. It seems radically true to me, and yet at the same time I cannot understand it. And yet, I know at every level how useless and silly it is to say that the incomprehensible is true. If I do not understand it, I cannot say it is true. Yet incomprehensible it remains, and true it seems. I reflect on it, I try to come up with the best approximation in my own mind of what it MIGHT mean, but in the end I stand in darkness before it.

It is a truth that I first encountered in Fyodor Dostoevsky's great works. It is stated explicitly in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and is illustrated most succinctly in THE DREAM OF THE RIDICULOUS MAN. It is this truth: "that all men are responsible for the sins of each man, and each man is responsible for the sins of all men."

Here is a line from BROTHERS: "And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality."

Dostoevsky thought that once we all take responsibility for the sins of all others, we will be free. Moreover, when the individual comes to accept this truth, he can see, finally, that heaven is already here. That despite appearances heaven is all around us, and in us, and through us. 

Father Zossima, one of the main characters in BROTHERS, having come to see this radical truth about himself, goes on to see the life-giving truth about the world: "look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep."

This, on the face of it, is terribly irrational. For it seems a foundation of rational ethics that one cannot be responsible for what cannot do. Kant called this the "ought implies can" principle. If I cannot do it, it is not incumbent on me. If I can do it then it is at least possible that it is obligatory for me. The impossible cannot be obligatory. We all live this way most of the time, and we cannot but live this way most of the time. It seems like this is true to me. But it also seems true to me that Dostoevsky is on to something. In fact I spend time meditating on the idea that I am responsible for the sins of the whole world. This may seem morbid or self-mortifying to some, but it is strangely freeing. Having accepted responsibility for all, I can repent for all, and repenting for all I feel the world renewed. 

The secret Zossima learned has been a very liberating truth for me. Yet, I cannot live moment-to-moment as if I am responsible for the sins of the world world. I can believe this for moments, but it cannot permeate my life. This is a big problem for me, as one of my reasons for being religious is to bring my living and believing together. So most of the time I live as if I do not know, what I in fact do know, that I am responsible for the sins of all, and thus life is Heaven. I cannot preach this nonsense, though I will discuss it from time to time. I hate the idea of true nonsense. Yet true nonsense it seems to be. 

Actually this may be more in line with a Jewish sensibility. After all, rabbis confess the sins of the entire community to God as a way to seek His forgiveness. They proclaim each sin as their own, in order to overcome them. Moreover, there is a similar paradox at the heart of Paul's teachings. For Paul teaches that while Adam is the man through whom sin came, each person is responsible, held accountable for that sin. May this not be an idea lurking behind the Original Sin? Perhaps the attitude of being the cause of all sin, as if we are are all Adam, hides the truth that Dostoevsky is pointing towards. No doubt Paul influenced Dostoesvsky on this point. Not that this helps much. For it means that the Ought Implies Can principle, foundational to rational ethics, is absent from Christianity. The paradox, then, reigns supreme. 

So I sit with this problem, I meditate on it, and I am freed by it, even as I on another level abhor it and run from it. Perhaps it is not for me to know, but simply to live, in this case. 

The Prophetic Voice For The Pastor

One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my ministry is opening myself up to criticism. I try to have time when my adult and youth leaders can openly criticize whatever they think I am doing wrong. With all there is to do in this job, it cannot be an open channel at all times. It is too hard to do what God calls you to do, against the machinations of the evil one, with people constantly harping on what you are doing wrong. But if you are never told what you are doing wrong, then you will never grow as a minister. My solution, and I think it's a good one, is to have specific times when I gather people together to critique my overall job.

While major criticisms are rare, real course corrections are sometimes necessary. There have been many times when my ministry has waned in vigor or in terms of numbers, and the critique meeting leads to some change in strategy or behavior on my part, and this leads to invigoration of the ministry. This is how a church allows the prophetic voice to operate within it's walls. Every prophet is a critic, and rightly so. There are two sides to God's outreach to us. On the one side you have the priesthood, which sees in human endeavors a symbol or sacrament which points to a deeper reality. Most of what we do is partially of God, for humanity  has the image of God within them. So only the most heinous of acts completely voids out God's presence within the moment (and even at that time, God remains present in the victims of the act). Priests, ministers, they see the partial good in the human experience and present God's 'yes and amen' to those acts. In the priestly voice, God says 'yes' to what we do.

However, this yes must always be qualified. For the same human heart that houses the Image of God also houses the sin of Adam. All human acts are filtered. There are very few purely godly acts. We can rarely even worship God purely. Much of the time what we pretend to be God is really just God+our own ego. I think idolatry can be transcended, but only for moments, and not as often as we'd like to see. Thus the 'yes and amen' of the priestly voice is only a partial 'yes and amen'. The prophet speaks God's voice as well, and that voice is a much less qualified 'no'. The no is more important than the yes, because idolatry and egotism are always greater dangers for sinful man than despair and self-negation. Most people will find islands of meaning in the darkness, and we are good at locating them, generally. But it is much harder to see past the light of our own souls and to recognize the shadows they cast. The 'no' of God must be present for every person in every generation. The 'yes' of the present generation must always be held lightly, for we know that even the best human endeavor has the seeds of sin within it and those seeds and germinate and corrupt easily. So, pace Reinhold Niebuhr, God's word is to humanity a partial 'yes' but an eternal 'no'.

Yet the minister's role is to encourage and build up, more than to destroy and break down. Prophets can stand at the pulpit, but they cannot dominate it. For the sinful human suffers in his sinfulness, and the minister breaks down and prophecies at the risk of passing judgment, and this cannot be done endlessly without beating down the sufferer, and the ministerial role must always be one of succor and grace. But without a prophetic voice, the priest is subject to the worst kind of egotism. It threatens to sacralize even that which God hates. So, generally speaking, the minister speaks the divine language of the priest, but cannot maintain his place without the critique of the prophet. The winds stand at cross-purposes.

The best prophets come from within the community, and outside the proper minister position. Thus every good minister must seek the prophetic voice from within the community. When that voice comes, it must be considered and listened to. But it is hard. Ministers are people too. Who wants to hear what they are doing wrong? I have no illusions about myself. I know I am prone to people-pleasing and perfectionism. I don't want to hear about my mistakes. It is just because I don't want to hear about them, however, that reveals how important it is to listen. The prophetic critique must never be pushed out of the way. One must listen and be willing to change. Evangelicals talk about the heart being 'convicted' and it is a good vocabulary and useful theology. We must be ready, willing, and able to have our heart 'convicted'. If we are not, we are truly lost.

This principle must not be taken too far, however. For sometimes one must listen to God's voice through experience and within the heart over and above His voice in the community. How does one draw this line? No one can tell you that for sure. No perfect map can be drawn. It must be worked out over time, with 'fear and trembling', prayer, reflection, and study of scripture. What is sure is the confidence that what one has received one has received 'from God' cannot always over-ride the voice of the community. After all, Christ is present in the Church body in total, not solely in the heart of the pastor.

Eastern Orthodoxy

While I dislike some aspects of Eatern Orthodoxy, especially in regards to the unchanging traditions and the attitudes towards women, I have found much of the theology of the east to be very enlightening. Christians would do well to look east for some new insights into old issues. I like their views on atonement, for one.

In the west atonement theology has tended to be very juridical, that is, tended to use the language of trial. Punishment, payment, prosecution and defense are the vocabulary of atonement. It is all about sin as a human moral problem, and guilt. Jesus is punished for our sins, etc. In the east they tended to use the language of combat. The devil, not sin, was the primary problem. Jesus rescues us from darkness. The suffering is the consequence of battle and of God sort of turning the world upside down. As my readers can easily deduce, this view has had a deep affect on me.

Eastern Orthodoxy has tended to focus more on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is an active, personified member of the Trinity, helping us to become more like Christ. Theosis, that is conforming manto the image of God, is a central idea in the east in a way it never has been in the west.

Relatedly, Orthodoxy values mysticism in a way the west never has. Mystics contribute to the life of the church, even in worship. The goal is mystical union with God, people who have led the way on that journey are honored and imitated.

I theorize in the future Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy will merge. My reasoning behind this theory will make a good future post. Right here let me simply suggest that the east's basic theological outlook has a vitality I think will long endure. Truth has a way of doing that.

Rehash, Or, "God These People Annoy Me"

I know that this is a rehash of something I posted a few days ago, but I am so sick and annoyed when people tell me that the reason someone fell or failed is because they trusted too much "in their own power" and not enough "in the Lord's". This is the most self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, judgmental garbage that ever proceeds from the mouth of people. It is pharisaical, and relies on a few select passages while ignoring entire BOOKS that say the exact opposite. It is taking the position of Job's antagonistic 'friends' rather than the blameless job. I am tempted to say something like "oh, that is very insightful Eliphaz, or should I call you Bildad? Or Zophar?" It is also, paradoxically, revelatory of a character that is very egoistic. For such a person is proclaiming their faith not in God, but in their own trust in God.

The only group of Christians who truly recognizes total reliance on God recognizes that even their faith and their trust in God are gifts, not something is able to achieve or not achieve under their own power. In which case the 'cause' of the person's failure is not their own lack of trust, but God's unwillingness (or in my theology, inability) to always grant said trust. For me, the reason God cannot always give the gift of faith is life, and the dark powers that infect this world, are able to stand between God and man sometimes. The gift of faith requires a little luck for delivery to take place. I write about this in my unpublished book on the Holy Spirit. The believer in absolute omnipotence as classically conceived will have a bigger problem than I do, but the evils of those who just stand there and yell 'just have more faith' should be apparent to everyone. Is it any wonder why I am so impressed by Calvinism?

Worth Repeating

I've said it before and I'll say it again: people are sinful morons. We barely are able to put our shoes on the right feet in the morning. Do you really think God is going to leave something as precious as your immortal soul in your own hands? I sure hope not.

From My Book "Breath of God"- On The Gift of Faith

The Spirit & Faith

            One of the 'gifts of the Spirit' Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12 is faith (vs 9). Much of the New Testament is guided by the view that faith in Jesus Christ, is the result of the activity of the Spirit. Paul explicitly says that no one can proclaim Jesus Lord without the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). This kind of view is not universal throughout the New Testament. For instance, when Peter has what is probably the most famous confession of faith in the New Testament, it is the Father and not the Spirit that is named as the Source (Matthew 16:13-20). But throughout the Church's history, the idea that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit has often been dominant, especially among protestants, and I am definitely a protestant Christian.

            Much of my reflection on faith has been rather intellectual and volitional. One has certain experiences, and reflects on those experiences. Having reflected fully, one realizes the possibilities those experiences indicate, what they might mean, and it is very big indeed. However, these experiences are not the type that can give one certainty, and so one must take a risk, and go out on an adventure, seeing how far they can push those experiences and finding out where all they leave. One makes a commitment to the reality those experiences seem  to point to, God and the Church, and walks down the life of faith. As one walks down that life, one is confronted with some difficulties or problems, like the problem of evil. So confronted, one must choose what kind of faith life best deals with them, and I argued in my last book that Christianity looked the best.

            I think that a lot of this is true so far as it goes. But it must be remembered that volition includes more than just the mind, it includes the heart and the imagination. The adventure of faith is something we take because, through certain experiences, we feel called to it, and we feel empowered to make a decision to leap into uncertainty and risk, on the hope and the considered possibility of finding something truly 'better' in life. Whitehead describes the nature of the religious experience and commitment succinctly when he says, "In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty. The spirit at once surrenders itself to this universal claim and appropriates it for itself. So far as it is dominated by religious experience, life is conditioned by this formative principle, equally individual and general, equally actual and beyond completed act, equally compelling recognition and permissive of disregard." The religious experience, the call of God, always comes to us as something that might be vastly important and yet something that we have the option to throw away if we so choose. But it is the choice, and the experiences that bring about faith, it is the sense of being called to anything at all, that gives us a place for the Spirit, and an important one.

            And as it is for faith in God, and in religious experience, so it is with faith in Jesus Christ. We can only become Christians if we feel called to it, if we feel ourselves 'nudged' a certain direction. No doubt, reflective, intellectual reasoning plays a role in this, but no reasoning, no power, no inspiration is possible without the Spirit anyways, so we don't have to dichotomize our lives between that which the Spirit affects and that which it does not. So the Spirit is the Source of faith in the following ways:

            First of all, the Spirit prepares our hearts and the hearts of all humankind for faith through what I have called elsewhere (look up), "mundane religious experiences". These are encounters with the world, ways of experiencing the world, that everyone shares. When we sit and reflect on what these experiences are like, what philosophers would call their 'phenomenology', they give us some indication that there is more to life than meets the eye. Some of these experiences include artistic and aesthetic sensibilities, play, humor, our experience with the concept of perfection, the experience of innocence, hope, and as I've mentioned in this book, certain skills that strike us has having come from a higher source. When we live into the moments that are defined by these experiences we get the sense that there is more to life than meets the eye. There is an inspiring quality to them, they move us to consider certain things and perhaps to live in certain ways. That inspirational quality can only come by the Spirit, the Spirit is inspiration and motivation. In this way the Spirit prepares the heart for faith.

            Second the Spirit prepares the heart for faith in Christ specifically through repentance. By confronting us with an ideal possibility, what we could be in each moment, the Spirit also reveals the imperfection of the world. This gives us our sense of God as transcendently good, it is how the Spirit brings Yahweh's transcendent goodness and confronts the world with it. This is the source of our sense of the otherness of God. This reveals our need for something other than ourselves to save us, it makes us aware of our dependence on the goodness of God. It also enlightens the problem of evil, since this encounter with God makes us keenly aware of the evil in the world, and we are forced to try to reconcile this goodness we encounter in and through the world, and the evil that seems to define so much of it. Bringing to bear ideals of mercy and justice, it also enlightens the 'prophetic problem', the problem of how we are to reconcile God's mercy and justice. By confronting us with our own sinfulness, the Spirit makes us aware of our need for God, by confronting us with the sinfulness of the world, it makes some solution to the problem of evil necessary, by confronting us with mercy and justice it makes us aware of the prophetic problem. To the degree that these problems demand a solution which Jesus Christ seems to give (and I argued extensively and I think persuasively in my last book He did), the Spirit's gift of repentance is the gift of faith in Christ Jesus. John the Baptist must baptize with the water of repentance before we can receive the Christ.

            Finally, to the prepared and receptive heart the Spirit can give the call of faith, it can give us a role that includes belief in Jesus Christ. But we must be very careful here. It is so easy to go around judging people who do not believe or do not believe as we do, especially if what we think God has chosen to deny them the gift of the Spirit. I do not think that this is the way we should understand the Spirit or its role in our faith-life. It is not meant to be used as weapon, a dividing line, or a law book whereby we can judge others as less than ourselves. We are not to aggrandize ourselves as having received faith through the Spirit nor judge others as having been judged unworthy by God. This is antithetical to the unity which defines Her, and the humility that defines Christ.

            We need to keep our eyes on the mystery that is the Spirit, and the Spirit's work. We cannot know all that is going on in a person, nor why it is that the gift of faith has not been given. Honest people reject belief in God for honest reasons. Faith is a matter of 'seeing' and we can't ever be sure why it is some people see and some don't but we should not just assume that God has judged them unworthy. In the vision of the Holy Spirit given here, the Spirit is limited by what is going on in the world. The image it gives is of the 'best' the world can do, given the facts on the ground as they are. The free choices of the past place a limit on the Spirit's power. It can only offer roles, and empower people, in relation to what situations people find themselves in. And our situations are not just an external matter, they include our states of mind and abilities. Who we are is largely our responsibility, but it is not completely our responsibility. If a person, because of the horrors of the world, or because their mind has been hardened by past experiences into a purely empirical relationship with the world, cannot give themsel ves over to faith, it is not always in the Spirit's power to countervale this situation. They may just be too far along a given path for a singular and 'all-at-once' leap into faith. The role they are called to may not include belief in God or Christ, at least right now. I don't doubt that the Spirit, in the end, in the long term, wants to bring all people to faith in Christ and even Jesus Christ, but a person may not be in a place where that is psychologically possible for them, right now.

            Things cannot 'jump' into an absolute perfection. Perfection is a process. The Spirit's ultimate goal may be to make all people believers, but it can't do that until a process of transformation begins. A person's heart would have to be worked on, and the world they see around them would have to change. The next 'moment' the Spirit calls the person to, the completion the person is called to, is limited by what the person is now. So in the next moment the atheist may be called to do something or see something that would, given enough time, bring him or her to faith, but that doesn't mean that the next moment is one in which the atheist will have faith, necessarily.

            In fact, the best the world can be right now may include athiests. If an atheist, for instance, can defend the goodness of Christianity as an institution to other atheists without being a Christian themselves, such that their fellows won't be militantly opposed to it, it may be that this position makes them a better ally to the work for the Spirit than they would be if they came to belief. As such, the call they have received, though they would not understand it as a 'call', might not yet include a call to faith. We cannot box the Father in, His plans and ways may be broader than our own limited vision. We also need to be careful not to underestimate (nor overestimate, for that matter), the pervasiveness of sin. A parent who claims to be a Christian may also be an abuser of their child, should it surprise us that the child or those who claim solidarity with that child may, right now, be literally unable to accept the faith call? And in such a case it would do no good. There are some things that are impossible, even for God, even in relation to the human soul.

            There are certainly some people who probably recieve the call of faith and reject it. We cannot know for certain when we are dealing with one situation or the other, and we should be very wary of labelling anyone the devil, believer or non-believer. Rather, let us rejoice for the gift that we have been given in the form of a call to faith and the power we have received to respond to that call, testifying to the fact that nothing we accomplish is possible without God's help. Our response to the atheist should not be hatred or rejection, and certainly not rejection in the name of God. The Book of Job explicitly speaks against this kind of approach. Rather we should seek solidarity with the sufferer, even when their suffering leads them to rejection of God (Job 6:14), and try to make the world the kind of place that reflects the truth we believe: that God is real and that God cares about us. Lets seek not to judge the work of the Spirit, but rather to grease the wheels so the Spirit can bring all souls into Her wondrous Truth.

             We should also remember that faith is not the only gift of the Spirit. Faith is a wonderful gift, but relationship with God is more important than faith, and the Spirit ensures that God relates to all beings, all creatures, all objects, whether they know it or not. An atheist may be gifted in healing through means other than miracles, or in kindness or faithfulness, or in hospitality, to degrees greater than we are. And they may be recipients of the greatest gift of all, prophecy. There are, no doubt, many atheists who have spoken God's Word without even knowing it. There have been non-believers who have spoken on issues in ways that are truly Holy, when believers have kept darkly silent.

            In my last book I made a distinction between the "Institutional Church" and the "Hidden Church". I said that the Institutional Church's job was to make Jesus Christ's existence presence to the consciousness of the world, to help people experience Christ's life, death, and resurrection. The Hidden Church, I contended, is where God is working in the world, bringing about the Kingdom. We could never identify its workings, because it was animated by an ever-mysterious Spirit. While I have distanced myself from the idea that the Spirit is in all ways mysterious or uknowable, I still maintain that the Spirit is Holy Mystery. I want to re-affirm my Hidden Church/Institutional Church distinction. The Institutional Church's job is to embody the Spirit by pointing the way to Christ, through the man Jesus. We bring Jesus into people's lives through sacraments, by bringing the Disciples' experience of Jesus Christ, and ours, to more and more people. We ourselves also re-acquaint ourselves with Him continuously. The Hidden Church is the true Body of Christ, the places in the world that have been brought in line with the Character of Christ, with the Mind of the Universe. This may happen through Jesus, and it was for this reason in part that Christ came into the world as Jesus, but it can also come directly through the Spirit. It may be in the Church's food bank, or in the atheist's gift to a homeless man. Any moment that is in line with the behavior of Jesus, is Christ with us. It is important to remember that Jesus identified His family as those who do the Will of His Father (Matthew 12:49-50). It is about action, not belief. In the process of becoming the Body of Christ, on the road to theosis, an atheist may be farther along than I am.

            But belief does matter. It is through faith in Christ that we deepen our relationship with The Spirit. Faith helps the Spirit empower, and sustain us. Harold Kushner in WHO NEEDS GOD once suggested that the main difference between the average morally committed atheist and the average believer may be that day after day, as the 'long, hard slog' that is the war against sin drags on, the atheist may find that the well of power that he finds within him has dried up. Whereas the believer has an Infinite Well to turn to, to be refreshed from, to gain strength from. The Spirit's ability to empower the individual may be limited by our unwillingness to turn to God, to pray, to find faith. The atheist may find that the role he or she is called to is one that they can no longer fulfill, without the gift of faith. Hopefully at that point, the heart will be ready for the gift, because we need all the warriors we can.  

            The upshot of all this is that Christ's body extends beyond the Institutional Church. It no doubt includes not only atheists, but even moreso other religious movements as well. Balaam, in the Bible, is a pagan, but he is able to receive the Spirit of God for the benefit of the Israelite people (Numbers 24:2). The Spirit works in all movements for good in the world, and doubtless other cultures and other faiths have had access to the Spirit in countless ways. The Spirit loves variety, and it may have prepared the world for Christ by expressing God's reality to the world, in vastly different ways in all of the world's great religions and cultures. No Person of the Trinity can be boxed in too tightly. Nearly every religion includes conversations that have been moved along by the Holy Spirit, and may include insights from the same Spirit that are superior to the ones found in the Bible. There may be conversations that the Bible doesn't include at all, that are important in their own right. But we must, as Christians, see all of these religious movements as pointing the way towards Christ. We should proclaim the Spirit-led truths that we find in any religion, and yet also proclaim the Spirit-led truth of Jesus Christ. We need to learn, through theological dialogue, philosophical reflection, and by helping people experience Jesus, to bring Christ to bare on all that the Spirit has done throughout the world. But we must, as with the atheist, respect the decision any person comes to, knowing that we are not in control of all that happens to the world, and that not even God is. To do otherwise is to be an enemy to freedom, and thereby to remove from ourselves the image of the Spirit that we are supposed to be taking  on.

            The Church should also consider the idea that it is Christ that we need to be pointing people to, and this may not mean that we have to point them to Jesus. I am not saying that we should stop proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Man-God, quite the opposite. What I am saying is that through Jesus people may experience Christ and accept Christ without accepting Jesus. Harold Kushner does not believe in the Trinity, nor in Jesus as God, but he does accept a vision of God as Suffering Love, as limited and creating/redeeming through a process much like crucifixion and resurrection. Alfred N Whitehead did not believe in the Trinity, but he saw Jesus as a reflection of Who God is. He coined the succinctly Christian phrase: "God is the co-sufferer Who understands". To the degree that these people, and others, have allowed a Christian vision of God to shape their theology (though I'm not sure Kushner is fully aware how indebted to Christianity he is for his vision), I believe they have accepted Christ without becoming Christians. I think that God's goal in and through Jesus Christ has been fulfilled in them. Jesus the man cannot become a stumbling block to accepting the Son. Jesus IS the Son, to accept the one is to accept the other and vice versa. We need to quit worrying so much about historical and philosophical formulations. If our proclamation of Jesus Christ brings the world to a vision of God, of various cultural expressions, that is Suffering Love, I'd say that we will have fulfilled our call to baptize 'all the nations' 'in His Name'. One consequence of this, however, is that there are a lot of Christians who need converting to Christ. There are so many who claim solidarity with Jesus Christ but who believe in a God that has no relationship to the Image we receive from Him. Harold Kushner is more a Christian than they.

            I want to make one modification to the Hidden/Institutional Church idea here. I said in my last book that the Institutional Church could never move with confidence that is the selfsame Hidden Church, except in hindsight. I want to amend that, I think now that The Institutional Church can move in confidence that is the Body of Christ in one way: during worship. When it takes the position of the nothing, giving all glory to Another, proclaiming its own sinfulness and its absolute dependence on Christ and the Spirit, it can have some confidence that it is moving as the Body of Christ, and moreover as a reflection of the reality of the Spirit. There are so many ways the Church tries to express that reality, so many arguments as to when worship has truly reached the summit of the Spirit's world. So many ways in which the Church has claimed to be a community of the 'Born Again'. Those arguments will form the backbone or our next section.