On The Meaning of Worship

Read: John 13:1-17

It often strikes me that Christians in general fail to appreciate the full ramifications of God's Incarnation in the man Jesus. One area in which I find this reflection lacking is in the meaning and purpose of worship. Most people think of worship as a kind of automatic response to the glory and majesty of God. God is so great, on this view, that He commands our worshipful response.

I think there is truth in this attitude, but it brings up some problems, including the argument from autonomy. But more precisely, I think Jesus forces us to rethinks what worship is all about. The John passage illustrates the point I want to make. Jesus is a statement from God. The message must be understood in the New Testament juxtaposition between Christ and Caesar. 

The Gospels say to us, " The world finds God in the halls of power, in fame, in money and control. But the world is wrong. God is found in an ordinary family in a backwater town, in the Suffering Love of the Crucified Carpenter."

In John God In A Man takes the lowest position possible. In all of our lives, as we cram for power and control, for recognition, for 'the top', we all make a pretense to godhood. The irony is that in this quest we leave Godhood behind. For it is not found in power and control, but in vulnerability and self-emptying. It is not at the height, but in the depths.

On this view, worship is about imitation of God. It is returning to God the attitude of service and respect He gives to us. We drop to our knees, and there find God. Through worship God shapes to be more like Him and helps us find the Ultimate Power, which is paradoxically found only in radical vulnerability. That's a different understanding of worship, and also changes our concept of WORTHINESS of worship. On this view, both become consonant with Jesus actions in John 13. But it is something that I think escapes most people, even most Christians.

The Problem Is Not In Our Laws, It Is In Ourselves

The talking heads are already exploiting this tragedy for a political agenda. Oh how easy it would be if some simple piece of legislation was the answer. But the guns, my friends, are not the problem. Switzerland has comparable gun ownership without the same level of gun-related deaths. No, the problem is not the gun laws, not in my opinion. I think the real problem is what I saw on the 6:00 news. A relentless focus on every detail of the event. A sensationalization, a morbid festival. In a society bereft of a sense of transcendent meaning, meaning is found by influencing HUMAN history. This is a consequence of what Victor Frankl called the 'existential vacuum'. These people want to make a mark, and that they get what they want. 

The change that needs to take place is not legal, it is cultural. People who do positive things must be given the attention. Good must be spotlighted, not evil. WE are the problem. It is the problem highlighted by the "self-destructive man" in the film WAKING LIFE: "A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers."

This destructive need is what I would call a symptom of original sin. The only cure I see is if we become something totally new, if we finally take the idea of Suffering Love as Ultimate Reality seriously. The Gospels are the only thing that can blow this thing sky high. But until that happens the media showing a little restraint may be a good idea. 

The Argument From Evil

When I heard about the school shooting, I felt a pang of despair and faithlessness. Then clear as day I heard a quote from the film DUSK TIL DAWN (edited for inappropriate content): "[I never thought much of God] until those creatures came into this room. I know for sure that those creatures are demons from hell. And if there is a hell, and those things are from it, then there's gotta be a Heaven, there's gotta be."

The Two Views

Read: Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Genesis 2:4b-25

There are two main views on the nature of God and His relationship with the world that run throughout scripture. The Bible is not primarily one, but two, stories of God that have been interwoven together. These views compete and continue to compete to this day. Most people live their lives in both visions, bouncing from one to another back and forth without any real integration or, for that matter, reflection.

You see these two views right in the first two versions of the Creation Story. People have known for a long time, since before Jesus' time, that Genesis retells the story of Creation in two vastly different ways. In Genesis 1, man is the last creation of God (1:24-27), and is the crowning of the creation of the world. Man is the telos, or goal, toward with creation has been moving in the preceding verses. The creation of plants and animals precedes mankind (e.g., 1:11). What's more in Genesis 1 God creates by divine fiat. He doesn't in any way have to act to create things, rather, He simply commands things into existence. God's control over, and knowledge of, His creation is complete and absolute. Everything that happens is according to His will, and the entire outplaying of history is the outplaying of the divine plan of God. This is one of the primary threads that runs throughout the Bible. Everything that happens is taken to be the Will of God, and all events whether good or evil are the results of His divine plan, and so must be brought into line with an understanding that preserves the our vision of a perfect God.

This view is behind Joseph's proclamation that his brothers' evil towards him was really an outplaying of God's divine plan (Genesis 50:20), in the proclamation in Deuteronomy that God always intended Israel to have a king (17:14-2), in the proclamation of Job's friends that Job is responsible for his suffering (see: Book of Job), or in the prophets' proclamation to Israel that her oppression was the result of the idolatry of her people. And on, and on in the Bible, over and over we see a God who is changeless, who is in absolute control of all that happens, and who has a complete and total understanding of the world He has created.

The second view of God begins in the Second Creation Story, found mostly in Genesis chapter 2. There God's main reason for creation is not mankind, but His Garden (2:5). Plants, not humans, are God's main goal in creation. Water and mankind are created so that God can have this garden of a world (2:6-7). And man is created not by divine fiat, but by God getting His hands dirty (2:7). Plants are created after, not before, people here. What's more, God doesn't seem to fully understand what it is He has created, in the case of humans. He first tries to solve the problem of human loneliness by creating animals (2:18-2-0). He is 'experimenting' with His new creation, and trying to figure how best to deal with it.

The creation of mankind is an ongoing process from that time forward. God walks with Adam, but Adam falls. God fears the consequences of Adam eating from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22), and so expels him from the garden. But he remains in communion with Adam, as he sews clothes to protect both Adam and Eve (3:21). He becomes something of a voice in the sky, but as the result of this new relationship Cain kills Abel (Genesis 4), then God withdraws from the world and gives rulership to angels, who then are corrupted by mankind, and fall (Genesis 6). Then God floods the earth, having regretted his decision to make man at all (Genesis 6:6). After the flood, God realizes that man is inherently sinful, and so must be dealt with accordingly (8:21).

On this view, creation didn't end with Genesis. It is an ongoing process, that continues with the confusion of languages, and the on to the creation of a particular people, through which God will repair the world. This is a view of God needing other people, as He needed a helper before He could create a garden. It a view of God creating in and through another, and often doing battle against forces of evil that oppose him. This is the view that animates 1 Samuel when it proclaims that God never wanted Israel to have a king, and when God changes His mind on the matter in response to the prayers of the people (1 Samuel 8). This is the view that allows Jeremiah to say that God never imagined that children would be sacrificed by Israel (Jeremiah 7:31), that allows the Psalmist to suggest that the innocent suffer because God sleeps (Psalm 44:14-27) or another Psalmist to proclaim the problems of the world are the result of lesser divine beings that God is going to have to replace (Psalm 82). And this is what allows Daniel, in opposition to the prophets, to proclaim that it was demonic beings, and not God, that animated the great empires of the world when they oppressed Israel (Daniel 7).

The point is of all this is: there are not one, but two primary views of God in the Bible. In one God is not only all-mighty, but all-controlling. In the other God is a being that lives in and with other beings, and all that kind of relationship entails. One is not trapped by one view or the other. Some synthesis may be possible. In fact, it may be that Christ came to finally bring these two views of God together once and for all. This kind of synthesis may be what is behind John the Revelator's vision of Christ as the Lamb with seven horns that looks like it had been slain (Revelation 5), or that this Lamb was "Slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).

Either way, one must, in the final analysis, ask how one is going to judge and analyze the events of life in this world. Are we doing to attribute EVERYTHING that happens to God, or will we proclaim that there are forces that God either does not or cannot completely control, at least not without giving up the very love that is his substance and being? The consequences for this on one's theology and relationship with God are huge. I know which way I tend. But when I tend that way, don't claim that I'm being unbiblical in my vision of God.

The True Vs The False Prophet

Deuteronomy 18:19-22 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” 21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
 

Jeremiah 28:1-9 In the fifth month of that same year, the fourth year, early in the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, the prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, said to me in the house of the Lord in the presence of the priests and all the people: 2 “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. 3 Within two years I will bring back to this place all the articles of the Lord’s house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon removed from here and took to Babylon. 4 I will also bring back to this place Jehoiachin[a] son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and all the other exiles from Judah who went to Babylon,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’” 5 Then the prophet Jeremiah replied to the prophet Hananiah before the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the Lord. 6 He said, “Amen! May the Lord do so! May the Lord fulfill the words you have prophesied by bringing the articles of the Lord’s house and all the exiles back to this place from Babylon. 7 Nevertheless, listen to what I have to say in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people: 8 From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. 9 But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true.”
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 These two passages deal with an important issue in some parts of the Bible: who is the true prophet? The position of prophet was an amorphous one. There is some indication that the royal court had prophets who worked for it. The role of prophet was, at least sometimes, an official one, much like that of priest. But there were other people who became prophets through less official means. They simply had a call from God, and started to speak in his name. Amos is probably the most famous example (see: Amos 1:1-2) Problems arose because sometimes prophets' contradicted one another. The Jeremiah passage quoted above may be the most famous example of this. So how do we know the true prophet from the false prophet?

 Deuteronomy gives a fairly straightforward answer: if a prophet makes a prediction and it comes true, then that prophet is really speaking for God. If it does not come true, then he is not speaking for God. In point of fact, though, many prophets spend very little time actually talking about the future. Most of the prophets comment more on what is immediately going on around them, then making predictions about what is to come. Putting that aside, though, Deuteronomy gives us a simple and easy answer to the problem of true prophecy.

Interestingly enough, when Jeremiah wrestles with this question, the answer he gives is significantly different from the one given in Deuteronomy. The context for the passage is straightforward and clear, which is rare in the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah has been wearing a yoke like a dumb beast, to symbolize the success of Babylon over Judah, and the need for Judah to accept the burden of subjugation. But Hananiah breaks the yoke, and proclaims that God has told HIM that the lesser exile (which has already occurred by this point) will end early, and that Judah will not long be under Babylon's thumb. Jeremiah is taken aback. He says in essence "wow, the way you talk sounds just like the God I hear all the time. I hope you are right and I am wrong." Then Jeremiah takes up the issue of false verses true prophecy. He says that there are two kinds of prophets: prophets that tell you what you don't want to hear, and prophets that tell you what you want to hear. The Deuteronomy rule, that a prophecy must come true, only applies to prophets of good news. In other words, anyone who tells you what you don't want to hear, always speaks for God. But the person who says what you like to hear must be right, or they don't speak for God at all.

So what you have here, simply put, is a Biblical contradiction. Jeremiah and the Deuteronomy passage are inconsistent with each other. They cannot both be true. In the end, there are only a few ways to get around this. One is to prejudice the discussion by denying a straightforward reading of the Jeremiah text. But the text isn't hard to understand, anyone can read it and see what is being talked about. A second position, and one that I think has merit, is to see in the Bible an evolution of this doctrine or idea. Jeremiah could in essence be saying 'the Deuteronomy passage is right, but incomplete, yes a prophecy has to come true, but only for the prophet or peace, the prophet who brings moral discomfort always speaks for God, no matter what.' On this view, our understanding of God evolves as the Bible moves along. When Moses is speaking, he is speaking only what he has gleaned from God at that time. Jeremiah, who has the advantage of living among a people who have known God a lot longer, has a clearer view of God's message on the matter.

It would be like the connection between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Yes, in a sense, Einstein contradicted Newton. But in another sense, he was simply another evolutionary step along a path that began with Newton. It isn't like Newtonian physics has no validity any more, it is just incomplete.

Another more radical view, is that Deuteronomy, long held to be written by Moses, is actually a later reworking of words Moses actually said, and so it contains later reflection. Many Biblical scholars date Deuteronomy around 700 BC, and hold it to be just this kind of reworking. On this view, both Deuteronomy and Jeremiah are speaking about the same time period. Jeremiah is criticizing the Deuteronomic view as incomplete. They are two different reflections upon the implications of what God has revealed to the Israelite people. On this view, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah are arguing against one another, in a process of dialogue and critique. God reveals, man writes and reflects. These reflections are different. It then becomes incumbent on us to choose which view is more likely correct.

 Either the evolutionary view or the dialectic view may be right. The first has the "advantage" of kind of imposing one particular answer on us. It makes sense to choose in the direction of the later evolution of doctrine. Either way, the Jeremiah view makes the most sense to me. The prophets main role, as I read it, is to confront mankind with a God whose goodness so transcends our own, that all human goodness are but 'filthy rags' by comparison. It is to confront us with the reality of God, a reality before which we can only respond in the words of Job's contrition "God I have uttered things too wonderful for myself, that I understood not, and wherefore I abhor myself in dust, and ashes" (42:3,6). Any word that strikes us down, that cruses our ego, that threatens us with the Truth of what is Ultimately Real and Good, is a prophetic word for us. It is truth no matter the packaging. All other truths must be subject to the test of predictive efficacy. But those truths that bring us into contact with the reality of God point beyond the mere content of their prediction. They are the very substance of truth, not merely signposts on the path.

Finding God In The Conversation

Reading the Gospels, it is hard to shake the feeling that one is listening to one side of a telephone conversation. So much of what is written is really Jesus speaking ‘at’ people, rather than ‘to’ them. Sure there are questions peppered in, but they seem more like excuses for Jesus to go off on His own tangent, more like literary devices than the words of real people.
The reason for this is simple: the Gospels are based on an oral tradition that rose up around the person of Jesus. Since what was retained was primarily what He said, and not what was said to Him, the Gospels come off too often as a series of sayings and events rather than as the life of a concrete individual. And His lessons seem more like sermons, rather than one part of a broader conversation, which they probably were.
There are a few exceptions to this tendency in the written Gospels, and one can be found in Mark 12. Here we have an example of Jesus in conversation, and while it still feels like a lot is being left out, we get a much more organic picture of Jesus’ interaction with those around Him. There is a particularly beautiful exchange with one of the teachers of the law in verses 28-34, where Jesus gives the Greatest Commandment. Jesus is impressed by the young man and you can almost feel Jesus smiling when He tells the man that he is ‘not far from the Kingdom of God’.
This image of Jesus as someone who engaged in dialogue and dialectic is of supreme import to me. For me the primary picture of Jesus is God in this everyday person, just talking to people, having conversations with them. In and through those conversations lives, and ultimately the world, were changed. It must have been an experience like no other: to just be able to sit and talk to God in human form, like He was any other person. It is in conversations with others that I personally have had the most profound encounters with Christ, and so that image of Jesus is the one that I cling to most.
This has been the very nature of the youth groups I’ve led: just sitting with a group of individuals focused on important moral, religious, and theological issues and through that conversation finding God. One person brings up some point, another comes along and criticizes it, or bolsters it, and through it all we are trying to reach out to Something Bigger than ourselves. In those moments, through these people at this time, just talking these matters through, I feel lifted up to some Higher Place, and I know that we are all reaching out to something Ultimately Real, and that it is also reaching out to us. It is not like God is one factor within the conversation. The Revelation of God takes place in and through the conversation itself, through the struggle, the self-examination, and the directing of hearts and minds toward the Divine. That is what Christianity, and revelation, is all about to me. This transcendent experience, found in and through dialogue and community, has colored my entire view of the Bible. I see scripture as a dialogue between God and man, and between man and man, and I see God’s Revelation as being within the very fabric of that dialogue.
When Jesus is called “The Word of God” I take that to indicate that we are in conversation with the Divine, and that Jesus is the center of that conversation. Whenever people of good conscience come together to try to discover who they are in their relationship with each other and with God, and use dialogue to overcome their isolation and find something deeper, higher, and better, if you look with the right eyes, you can see the very Incarnation of God. You can see Jesus Christ. I know I do.

The Double-Edged Sword of Apocalyptic Language

One of the great spiritual 'advances' I've made in my own life in recent years was to become comfortable, really comfortable, with apocalyptic imagery and to come to a real understanding of it's value. When I talk of 'apocalypticism', I'm speaking of the kinds of images one finds in Zechariah, Daniel, and especially the Book of Revelation. When people talk about these books and the imagery contained therein, they usually focus on the prophetic aspect of the writing. But it is particularly the Combat Motif that has both bothered me, and intrigued me, for some time now.

The Combat Motif is the theme of there being some evil counter-force in the universe working against God. In contemporary Christianity this is imaged as something like a fallen angel. The idea of a devil is bothersome to most mainline protestants. We emphasize a juridical model of atonement, and so success or failure to receive salvation is based on the fulfillment of some moral demand: either in action or more commonly in terms of our beliefs. We are expected to do or believe something specific and our success and failure in life, at least spiritually, is based on us living up to this expectation. We believe in free will, and we want to take responsibility for our own actions. I am also inclined towards belief in free will and I'm big on personal responsibility. I don't like the possibility of giving someone the excuse 'the devil made me do it'. Plus generally speaking modern people don't like to sound silly or childish, like we believe in the boogeyman or something.

But as I've come to respect Eastern Orthodox visions of atonement, whereby Jesus Christ breaks the power of satan through his sacrifice, a healthier respect for the Combat Motif, and for apocalyptic language in general, has developed within me. I think that while we've recognized the danger of fleeing from responsibility, forgoing apocalyptic language altogether has robbed us of part of what we need to talk in a fulfilling way about the meaningfulness of life, the reality of evil, and even the glory of salvation. I wonder if part of the reason for the success of the more evangelical faiths, over the more mainline protestant and catholic movements, is because they are able to speak much more naturally about the cosmic battle between good and evil. By placing our own internal and social moral struggles within the context of truly cosmic forces within the universe, they speak to life as it is actually experienced by us. They have a phenomenological reach, if you will, that the more common denominations seem to lack. The reality is that the Combat Motif reaches back to antiquity, and it plays an important role both explicit and implicit throughout the Bible. This issue is big in my current unpublished book BREATH OF GOD. And many churches just don't do a very good job of really wrestling with its place in our lives.

William James once said that life 'feels like a fight'. I'd tend to agree with him.
Apocalyptic language continues to be relevant because it speaks powerfully to that fact. It can distort the nature of the fight, and it is a danger that we will spend so much time fighting monsters under our bed that we will fail to fight the ones in our own hearts. But without it, I'm convinced that the full measure of life as it is lived, and the actual meaning of life in the world, can be concealed. There is a reason it is called "revelation".