Reverence & Irreverence

Irreverence is perhaps the most honest form of reverence, and irreverence is only honest or powerful when directed towards those things we revere. For irreverence shows that you realize the true breadth of what you revere, it is the nervous laughter of one confronted by realities too grand to fully comprehend. Additionally, if you show irreverence to that which you don't actually revere, your irreverence has no power, no ability to wake anyone up to anything, and there is little real courage in it. But to act irreverently towards that which you revere, shows the object of your reverence to be more powerful. To speak coarsely towards a God you believe in is to show that you think God is big enough to "take it". The surest proof of all this is the Book of Job. Job's irreverence was the highest form of reverence man is capable of.


Note: I find myself incapable of fully relating to those Christians who do not grasp this on some intuitive level.

Words & Experience

Most human experience is beyond words, literally unspeakable. But therein lies the writer's greatest strength...for the combinations of meaning and sounds an experience can honestly inspire is nearly limitless.

Re-Post: The Gospel According To Earl

Both our junior and senior high youth groups are using the TV show MY NAME IS EARL to study the Bible. With its rather low-brow humor, it may not seem like the ideal choice, but in reality the show is full of moral and religious musings that make wonderful fare for a good discussion of various Biblical passages and principles. Some may also be upset that the show's central religious theme is Buddhist, rather than Christian. Earl, the show's main character, is obsessed with karma, the idea that what goes around comes around. In it he tries to balance out all the bad karma he's built up by making up for many of the mistakes he made in his rather shady past. This would not sit well with many Christians, who see karma as something antithetical to the Christian message. But, truth to be told, the Bible itself has a tradition within it that is very much like the Buddhist concept of karma.

The Deuteronomistic interpretation of history, which predominates in many of the historical books, the Book of Deuteronomy, and many of the prophets, interprets all historical events in the light of God's justice. Suffering is supposed to be the result of our own past sins or the sins of our ancestors, and success (by the Deuteronomical lights) is similarly the result of fealty to God. This insistence that suffering is the result of our own behavior, inculcated into the prophets a sense that all difficulty must be met with increased trust in God and personal virtue. Eventually, other members of the Israelite community began to criticize this worldview. The Book of Job, the Book of Ecclesiastes and prophetic books like Habbakuk, essentially are a turning to the prophets and saying 'hey God, hey prophets, the world doesn't really work that way. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. The world is more complicated than you seem to say it is'. Much of what is written in the Bible is an affirmation of, or a protest against, a karmic view of destiny.

The issue is a difficult one because in one sense, what the prophets were saying we should DO in response to suffering was, for the most part, correct. The prophets encountered a God that was so good that next to Him all human goodness looks like, in Isaiah's words, 'but filthy rags'. The idea that the only proper human response to our encounter with God is humble worship and repentance, and the idea that suffering must be met with faith, are largely correct. But the problem is that any rudimentary examination of the world will find that most events, good and bad, are not tied to anyone's behavior. Moreover, however true it is that all people are equally distant from God in terms of morality, it is not true that all people are equally good or equally bad, any more than the fact that both 7 and 8 are equally distant from infinity means that 8 isn't greater than 7. Relative moral judgments have to be made in the world, and if God can't guide those, then He can't guide the ethics of our lives here and now. 

Figuring out how to reconcile the prophets' experience of God as infinite goodness, our need to meet suffering with faith, and the fact of evil within the world, is one of the primary challenges for any person of faith. The truth is life is not as simple as it is made out to be in MY NAME IS EARL. But examining what life would be like if it were, and what that means for us as people in the here and now, is something that is very fruitful for any Christian. It is no wonder that our discussions during this study have been particularly stimulating.

Guest Post & Response 2- More On Universalism

[Again, Nathan Jowers posting with responses by me in italics. Nathan is responding to this post: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2011/03/defense-of-universalism.html]

I read through your posts on Universalism today and had a few ideas that I thought might be good to discuss, if not for any value they have in themselves, then for the learning experience of discussing them. I am not too acquainted with writing arguments, so forgive me if my writing is less than clear at some points.

First, I feel like your Biblical argument is a little bit of a stretch. Not that it is exactly wrong, but that there are many other possible ways to interpret those passages such that they would be ambivalent to your conclusion, severely limiting the strength of the argument. I am sure you are aware of the different ways people have tried to deal with them, so I am not here going to offer any possible interpretations. I do think, however, your argument gives a possible way for a "No Man is an Island" type of thinking to be within the scope of the bible, but I don't agree with you that Universalism is a necessary conclusion of this outlook.

There are other ways to take the passages written of. I've posted on some of them. But I think the exegesis is on firm ground. Additionally, the idea that self-hood is corporate permeates scripture. The idea of individual self-hood is at best a shadow throughout the scriptures, a minor voice and one that is all but 'screamed down' by competing converationalists. Israel is always treated as a unified entity, the corporate being the center of all sense of self. The church functions in a similar way. For an examination of the particular passages I listed in the original post, and the approach I take, I strongly suggest MYSTERY WITHOUT MAGIC by Russell Pregeant. Pregeant will help illuminate the vast problems with self-hood in theology and philosophy as a whole. I also suggest THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr. What is needed here is a developed philosophical and theological anthropology.

I will begin by saying that while we indeed participate in all of reality and trying to draw lines between things is a tentative business, we do still experience a certain centrality to things. While I still participate and partake in of the pain in others, I do not experience it as pain centered in me. The pain is their pain that manifests itself in me, the difference being that there is now empathy or love or some other quality attached to it. It does not manifest itself in me as my pain would, but has to be conveyed to me through some, generally emotional, medium. The medium it travels through plays a significant role in how it manifests itself in me. If I hate someone, their pain manifests itself as my joy. If I have love, their pain hurts me as well. Love is the only intrinsically unifying medium (I suppose that mutual hate can do so in a round about way, and only so long as there is an object to hate), but it is still a medium, still a connection between things. While there might be parts of me in other people, these parts are more or less central in the same sense that it may be said that an arm is less central than the heart or brain. I feel, because of this, we can still talk of being saved in a meaningful sense. Even if I am missing a few fingers, I am here.

I think an engagement with Buddhism is fruitful here. Buddhist philosophers, and Marxist philosophers for that matter, have expounded in various ways the problem with talking about any kind of individuated, consistent self. For just one example of such a problem, consider the Ship Builders Paradox here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus . Does anyone want to try to take on this massive project of attacking our sense that the self event exists? I don't. It seems to me the acme of foolishness to deny the insights these philosophers provide. Their arguments are too good and too convincing. However, equally convincing are the arguments of those who argue for some kind of individuated self. The existence of the self is as evident as it's non-atomization. Theologically, you have the same problem (see above). The only answer, it seems to me, is to find a higher synthesis of both positions. Nathan makes too much of immediate experience, without reflecting upon the REASONS why we talk about 'self-hood' at all. One could just as easily say that the very act of making a statement like "I feel pain" simply begs the question. Bertrand Russell argued forcefully that all of this stems from a misunderstanding of being-verbs like "is". For instance when we say 'it is raining' we make the same mistake. More precise language would be 'rain is going on'. In the same way, one can deny there is any 'you' at all, and say that all you really know is that 'pain is being felt'. Additionally, Nathan now has to try to solve the whole mind/body problem. There have been suggestions, for instance, that the best way to understand how pain works is to say that we are simply sharing in the experience of the nerve cells themselves. This is the best way to explain how physical processes give rise to experiential responses. If that's true, then the entirety of Nathan's personal experience may just as easily be one part of a larger participation. The nerve cells in no way 'know' that Nathan is participating in their pain, and that their personal experience is a part of a larger, more global effect. Why not just say that Nathan's pain, or hate, or anything else, is simply one part of a more global, social experience?

That said, there is certainly a sense in which the salvation or non-salvation of another has a profound affect on us. Even if you did subscribe to a purely atomized view of the individual and cared none for your fellow man, certainly your love for God would require you to participate in God's pain for those who were lost. So if someone is eternally lost, and we do not suppose that God at some point stops caring for those who were lost, there shall also be an eternal pain at the non-salvation of another. Wether this pain will have qualitative shifts like it does in us, or remain consistently like a fresh wound, I do not know, but the main point remains either way.

Even then, though, I don't know if you can say that the parts of you in them are not saved. As you love them, so God loves them, and as you have pain, so does God have pain. Those parts of you still have the effect of unifying you with the life of God, and while the love cannot flow to its intended object, it nonetheless creates further bonds between you and God, imparting to it some meaning. 

I suppose this does mean that we can strike wounds in God that will not heal, that though we cannot kill him, we can nonetheless hurt him in a way that will stick with him through all time, that God is not only vulnerable to temporal pain, but a form of eternal pain, in fewer words, that God is ultimately vulnerable. This is consistent with God's nature as love. I think why I cannot personally believe Universalism is that I would feel his vulnerability, and therefore his love, is incomplete without there being the possibility of ultimate rejection. This rejection requires us to destroy ourselves, sure, but it is nonetheless a rejection that will not leave him, the him in us forever existing as an unrealized potentiality.

My biggest problem with this is that it is like a denial of the resurrection, or it makes a theology of the cross supreme over a theology of glory. If there is no place where God's pain ends, then what of the hope of the end of the Book of Revelation?

 

Guest- Post & Response

[This is a guest post by Nathan Jowers, with commentary by me in italics. Nathan is commentary on a post found here: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2015/04/re-post-relying-on-grace.html]

The debate between universalism and conditional salvation interests me, so I'm going to try my hand at another critique.

In the post you say "For if what is required in reliance on God and God alone to save us, then that was possible before Jesus died." and then "So if people are even capable of "relying on God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross." Against this I have three points.

1.      If it was necessary that Jesus' death tear down the structures of sin before any criteria for salvation is exist, it is not necessarily the case that the criteria being reliance on God's grace means that salvation was possible before Jesus' death. It could be that Jesus' death was exactly the thing that set the criteria up in the first place. That said, the prophets do seem to indicate that salvation is possible through this method before Jesus' death, or at least that the people before the cross can be saved, so this argument is largely mute.

The question is why one should believe this to be possible. WHY do we think that Jesus’ death was necessary? If the answer is that this is because of God’s own justice, which is the most common Christian answer, one may ask whether such a God can, in any way, be love, as scripture says He is in 1 John. If the answer is because of satan, one can ask why a sacrifice is necessary to defeat satan. If God is all-powerful, then why not just, you know, defeat satan. Additionally, if God can account faith as righteousness, as both Genesis and Roman claims that He can, then why not just account faith as righteousness, and leave it at that? Why not just forgive us when we try to rely on His grace?

Of course one can say that God’s entry into the world leads inexorably to the Cross as such is God’s nature. But then that just brings up the very problem I’m pointing to. If sin simply IS the pain of God, if God’s response to sin IS the Cross, then what more is there to say about it than that? What is justice, or mercy, or anything else, against such a pain?

But, really, that is just a side note. It seems to me that Nathan has missed the central argument of the entire post he’s referring to, which is found here:

*The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's word. For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word. Well those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing, according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless. The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross.*The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's word. For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word. Well those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing, according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless. The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross.*

The point is that the prophets are saying that IF you rely on God’s grace, salvation is assured. They deny that anything else is needed. The point is that Jesus only becomes necessary if the prophets were wrong about God’s grace or if mankind was simply incapable of doing what the prophets asked them to do. Jesus’ sacrifice makes sense in light of the Old Testament when you look at the Old Covenant as having failed to do what it was intended to do. How did it fail? By the law being unable to save us? Uh-uh, that was already established by the prophets. They already KNEW that animal sacrifices and following every law wasn’t enough. The question is what does Jesus bring to the table? Where is the failure or limitation in the Old Covenant?

2.      That salvation was possible before Jesus' death does not mean that salvation was possible without Jesus' death. Anticipation or promise of a future event can affect the conditions present. All of reality (or at least the parts involving salvation) was formed around Jesus' redemptive action, formed with the anticipation of it in mind. The anticipation of at least the general form of Jesus' death and resurrection would be enough to allow for some of the soteriological framework that would result from it to be in the place from the beginning. While our anticipations may or may not come to pass, because Jesus was God's anticipation, because everything was framed around it, salvation could proceed with surety that it would come to pass. Now, if it were to happen that did not come to pass, then stuff would have gotten really bad really quick, but because God was behind it there was a sureness to its occurrence. The prophets would be living in the "now and not yet" of Jesus' death and resurrection, even as we are living in the "now and not yet" of his enactment of the Kingdom of God. In other words, we act at time in ways that make it seem the Kingdom of God is already fully here, like evil has already been cast out. So they could have acted at times like the cross (or some similar thing) had already come to pass.

This does not mean that everything that is possible due to Jesus' death and resurrection was possible before it, that there is no before and after. It may have been sure in its eternal generality, but it was not sure in its temporal particulars (assuming open theism or something like it). The actualization of its temporal particulars would allow for some new possibilities that could not have been before it the death and resurrection, Pentecost being one of them.

I don’t really have a problem with this, but the question is about the content of the prophets’ message and the limitations of the Old Covenant. Where is all this stuff about the need for a sacrifice in what they are saying? If something other than reliance on God’s grace was necessary, why didn’t they say so? But taking what they say as the Word of God, then it seems to me that there is no reason to just stick Jesus in as a medical adhesive strip to bridge the gap. Either reliance on God’s grace is possible in any way, and God can just choose the bridge the gap as the prophets said He could and would OR there is no way we can put our faith in faith. It isn’t enough, and can’t be enough. Whence does this sense of an add-on come?

3.      If, however, the above idea is completely bunk and we must assume that salvation was not at all possible before Jesus' death, we can still say that salvation for those people who came before still happens after the death and resurrection. The traditional concept of the judgement takes place at the end of days, with the resurrection of everyone. If it is at that point that salvation happens, those who acted in accordance with the salvation criteria even before the cross could be covered by it. Or, if there was some sort of cosmic waiting room for the righteous (which is more or less the Catholic interpretation of 1 Peter 3:18-20 and the 5th article of the Apostles Creed) he could have then saved those who followed before the cross.

I don’t think there is any reason to think the above is ‘bunk’.

As for your assertion that we do not live like we truly believe the cross, that is somewhat true, though I do not feel to the degree you make it out to be. While we may have fallen from being the image of God, we still have something of it in us, however muddied and battered. While we may be hopeless to break the chains of sin ourselves, we are still enough ourselves to hold the chains out to be broken by the Holy Spirit. We still choose to follow Jesus, and while we may still believe only momentarily, we would have believed not at all without that decision.

I do not believe in total depravity. Nor do I think we are in all ways incapable of relying on God’s grace. I just think our reliance is too weak to support our salvation. If it were, then one would wonder why Jesus has to die. Why can’t our meager attempts simply be completed by the Will of God? Additionally, there is a paradox here. If I rely on my reliance on Grace as a feature of my salvation, then it seems to me that I am relying less on Jesus Christ, than if I simply accept Jesus’ sacrifice as full and sufficient unto itself. The irony is that the universalist, in my opinion, is relying more on God’s grace than the conditionalist.

The best,

Nathan Jowers

P.S. While I may disagree with the man on many things, Kierkegaard can write.

I, of course, agree.

Re-Post: "Relying On Grace"

One objection to universal salvation is that if there is no threat of Hell, we do not find ourselves 'relying totally' on God's grace for our salvation. In other words, for these people, salvation has two parts: the giving of God's grace (which is ostensibly a free gift), and the receiving of that grace, which is us relying on it. So there is indeed something for us to do in the economy of salvation: we must rely totally on God's grace.

Now for the believer in universal salvation recognizes, hopefully, that it is only by God's power that we are saved, and specifically God's power as demonstrated on the Cross and through the Resurrection. It is God acting through Christ in life, in suffering and death, and then in life beyond death that salvation takes place. But, the question becomes can everyone be saved by that grace? Is heaven open to all as a result of those acts and that God upon which I rely?

The simple fact of the matter is that any belief that human reliance on grace is a factor in salvation betrays the very need for the cross. For if what is required in reliance on God and God alone to save us, then that was possible before Jesus died. The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's word. For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word. Well those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing, according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless. The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

No, people are all but incapable of relying on God's grace except for moments and then only by His grace. People, all of us, are faithless swine who are elevated above the angels by the miracle of Jesus Christ Himself. There is no moral or subjective solution to the problem of sin, if there were then no Incarnation would've been necessary. I do not rely on God's grace, Jesus relied on God's grace, I do not have faith, Jesus had faith.

I've said it before and I say it again. If you or I truly believed that every time we sinned our own child or mother was tortured by a nail through their hand or wrist, our lives and world would look far different than it does now. But the conviction of Christians is that someone closer to us, that we ostensibly are closer to than either of these, retroactively receives just this kind of consequence for every sin we commit. If we really believed that, our lives would like different as they would if our relatives were so punished for our sins. Does your life look like that? Mine doesn't. "Faith", ha, that's a laugh.

But there is a paradox wherein accepting just this kind of need for Jesus Christ does amount to a kind of trusting in grace. That kind of trust, however, is receivable only AS a paradox. And so it can only rest in a kind of solidarity with the sinfulness and lostness of all of mankind. As soon as some distinction is made, in terms of salvation or anything else, that paradox is destroyed and that trust lost. In the end that, too, is a gift, and nothing that comes of me.

To believe in grace in light of the cross is to believe in it as a gift that I can in no way earn or take up as my own. The subjective side of salvation is lost necessarily in this acknowledgement. This leads us inexorably to a universalist outlook.

The Rainbow Connection

I love this song, it is simple and childlike but profound. I especially like this verse:


Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors.
The voice might be one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that I'm supposed to be

.....It sounds like the writers are familiar with hypnogogic hallucinations. 

The Insomniac's Prayer (A Psalm)

Is that you God?

Are you even real?

I'm so tired I don't know what is real, anymore. 

Are these visions before me just tricks of the mind?

Or are they glimpses of Something More?

If the former, how can I know that You aren't more of the same?

If the latter why don't you drive the darker ones away?

I want to cling to the Cross now, Lord.

Help me do that.

For dying if only for a moment seems a most supreme blessing.

Because all I want to do is close my eyes, and rest.

I need to sleep, God...I need to sleep.

Send Your Son, Send Your Spirit, Send Your Peace which passes understanding, send whatever you have to..

But please Lord, I need to sleep, I just want to sleep.

Amen

Love and Eternity

Living with my wife is an entering into Heaven. I love to live with someone I love. Living with God every day, is also a joy beyond compare. But guess what? It isn't enough. It isn't enough because there isn't enough time. It isn't enough because life ends. And it isn't enough because I love so, so many people in this world so deeply and I don't get to soak up every hour with them. I cannot live in a world where love ends, and where love is limited. Love demands eternity, and infinity, and without those it is utter tragedy. I can only live into the fullness of love if I can believe in the promise it gives, the promise of forever. The problem of death oppresses me. And so does the problem of sin. I do not deserve that which I demand of life. I do not even deserve the moments of love that I get. I am not worthy of the promise of love. Yet I cannot go on without that promise fulfilled. How do I live with myself knowing I demand what I do not deserve? How can I live without receiving what I demand, what I need? "Oh wretched man that I am!"(Book of Romans) But thanks be to God, the must needs of my heart and life are fulfilled. Because of Christ, the unworthy is accounted worthy, and so can ask for what he needs. Because of Christ, death is overcome, and what he needs will be given. "I prayed a very selfish prayer, and it has been fulfilled through you, I pray I become more worthy of it" (Lilies of the Field)

How I Live And Die

This is how I try to live, and this is how I want to go out. For me, all the darkness of the world, whether it be suffering, death, depression, or sin, is a terrible dragon, that stands defeated yet tries to harm as much as it can as it moves to it's now-assured doomed, thanks to the Cross of Christ (Revelation 12). No matter what happens, I fight. I will fight against whatever oppresses me internally or externally. I refuse to ever, ever, ever give up. Faith, hope and love sometimes bring me to the summit, sometimes they are my lifeline that allows me to survive, either way, they are a sword that helps me in the fight against the dragon. I will live every day this way, whether happy or sad, whether living the Cross or the Resurrection, And when I pass from this world it will be kicking and screaming, trying to get in one more blow against the evil one for God. The one thing I will not do is let the darkness take me, at least not without one heaven of a fight.

Wonderfalls Bible Study Week 7

Episode 7- Barrel Bear

Proverbs 17:9

Whoever would foster love covers over an offense,
    but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

2 Corinthians 10:12-18

We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. ¹³ We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the sphere of service God himself has assigned to us, a sphere that also includes you. ¹⁴ We are not going too far in our boasting, as would be the case if we had not come to you, for we did get as far as you with the gospel of Christ. ¹⁵ Neither do we go beyond our limits by boasting of work done by others. Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our sphere of activity among you will greatly expand, ¹⁶ so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. For we do not want to boast about work already done in someone else’s territory. ¹⁷ But, “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” ¹⁸ For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

1 Peter 3:20-22

to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, ²¹ and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Ecclesiastes 9:12

 Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:

As fish are caught in a cruel net,
    or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
    that fall unexpectedly upon them.

Proverbs 11:6

The righteousness of the upright delivers them,
    but the unfaithful are trapped by evil desires.

Reflect on the Bible passages in light of the episode.

Do you think Alex really cares about Jaye’s success?

Reflect on this quote: “most really successful people are on a solid career track by your age.”

Do you believe Alex really ‘covers’ for Jaye? Why or why not?

Is it ever okay to make an employee look like they are better at their job than they are? Why or 

why not?

Do you think the Proverbs passage rightly comes to bear on this question? Why or why not?

Do you agree Eric that the messages he receives are not really his anymore?

Can a Christian escape guilt by looking at themselves as a new person from what they were before? 

Why or why not?

Reflect on this quote: “Marriage is not the institution it used to be.”

What do you think of ‘hometown pride’?

Reflect on this quote: “You just did that one little thing, and it got you out of here.”

What ‘one thing’ happened to those who followed Christ and how did it get them ‘moving’ out from where they started? Where do we see evidence of this kind of movement in the 2 Corinthians 

passage?

What does Millie say about her ‘family’?

Why does she miss signing autographs so much?

How does Paul try to disavow this kind of concern in the 2 Corinthians passage?

Do you think Paul succeeds in disavowing it? Why or why not?

Why doesn’t Mahandra buy that Jaye is just trying to be nice?

What do you think of Jaye’s explanation?

How does the arrival of Vivian complicate Jaye’s newest message, ‘give it back to her’?

What complications does Paul face in living out the message given to him, in the 2 Corinthians 

passage?

Reflect on this quote: “She’s just trying to tear down a legend.”

Why does Paul think the other apostles and workers for Christ get involved in this business?

What would it be like to have someone steal your thunder like Millie did?

What do you think of Millie’s claim that she contributed more than Vivian did?

Why does Paul say he doesn’t take credit for the work of others?

Why does Millie’s lying bother Jaye so much?

Why doesn’t bother Mahandra?

What does Jaye say about who Millie is?

Reflect on this quote: “She’s protecting the legend for future generations.”

Reflect on this quote: “She decided what she wanted to be and damn the facts…you can’t get more 

American than that.”

Why is Mahandra proud of Eric?

Reflect on this quote: “You are new baptized in enchanted waters.”

What does Peter say about baptism and how it changes us? What do you think of this?

Why is Vivian so unwilling to stand up for herself publically? What has happened to her as a 

person?

Is Jaye an Nihilist? Why or why not?

What does Vivian say that finally gets to Millie and why does it get to her?

What is Vivian seeking from going over the falls?

How is this similar to baptism?

Why is Mahandra supportive of this?

Reflect on this quote: “Its destiny, I was never meant to get out of here.”

How does Jaye argue to Vivian that she needs to care more about what has happened to her?

What question does Jaye struggle over as she tries to get her car out of the mud?

Reflect on this quote: “you’re never going to get your car out of this metaphor in time.”

What do Proverbs and Ecclesiastes say about being ‘trapped’?

What is Proverbs’ solution to being ‘trapped’?

How does Ecclesiastes bring this solution into question?

Which passage is Jaye living out and why?

What do you think of Millie’s plan to ‘make it right’?

Reflect on this quote: “it’s not too late…it’s never too late to change things.”

Why do you think the writers had Millie die?

Why does Mahandra blame Jaye for her madness? What do you think of this?

What do you think of Jaye ‘coming clean’ to Mahandra?

Why doesn’t Mahandra believe her?

What do you think of the way the group deals with the Vivian/Millie situation?

What did “give it back to her” end up meaning?

What did you think of the words said around Millie’s ‘funeral’ at the Falls?