In defense of the church, part IV: Jesus

I started doing these posts "in defense of the church" (as you can see from parts I, II and III) in large part because I think the church takes a lot of flak that really isn't fair; granted that there are a fair number of congregations out there which are truly poisonous (any pastor can tell you that), and a fair number more which are thoroughly dysfunctional (ditto), and another pile on top of that which are preaching something other than grace, to move beyond criticisms of specific congregations to dismissal of the church as a whole seems to me ungracious and unwarranted. Hence my three previous posts in this irregular series.

I have others of that sort I could add to them, and I may well, at some future point; but lately I've felt God poking me that there's something else I need to say first, something that comes out of a place where he's convicted me in the past. The most basic thing to say in defense of the church, the first thing that needs to be said, is that Jesus loves the church; in Ephesians 5, Paul describes the church as the bride of Christ (and says that we husbands are supposed to love our wives as much as Christ loves the church—remembering always that Christ was crucified for the church). We'd best be careful, I think, what we say about the church, because I've never met a groom yet who took kindly to people ripping on his bride; I don't imagine Jesus does, either.

Which is not to say that criticism of particular congregations (or denominations, for that matter) is out of line; as noted, there's a fair number of them that have gone fair wrong. I come out of the Reformed tradition, which makes a point of the three marks of the true church; from our perspective, just because something calls itself a church doesn't mean it is in any meaningful sense. (If anything, my theological forebears were probably a mite too willing to declare churches to be false churches.) And for that matter, fair, reasoned, gracious critique is important for all of us, as individuals and as the people of God, to grow, and so that's never out of place or inappropriate. But when we go so far as to denounce "the church" and suggest that God doesn't like "the church" any more than we do—no, that's too far. Jesus loves the church, and that isn't going to change.

Yes, this even means that he loves the people in it who hurt us and make us miserable—he died for them just as he died for the soldiers who crucified him, praying as he died, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing."  As brutal hard and painful as it is, he wants to bring us to the point where we can love them, too, even as he commands us to love all the rest of our enemies. The love and grace of God are hard things, because they go as much to the people we want cut off as they do to us; if we're going to accept them for ourselves, we have to be committed to showing them to others. (Which is not to say that we have to be able to do so right away; forgiveness takes time. There are people in my past that I can't forgive yet, so I know that full well. But we have to be committed to getting to that point, as we heal.) Jesus loves the church—and yes, that includes that pastor, that elder, that deacon, that member; which means we'd best be careful what we say about it, and about them, and in what spirit we say it.

I was going to link to this song, which I posted as song of the week over a year ago; but I think I'll just post it again here. I like this one a lot, in large part because it continues to convict me, and to call me back to a proper heart for ministry; and because it gives me hope that someday, we as the church will live up to the love Jesus has for us.

Jesus Loves the Church

You say that you believe in us—at times, I wonder why;
You say you see the Father in our eyes.
But I think if I were you, Lord, I'd wash my hands today,
And turn my back on all our alibis.

For we crucify each other, leaving a battered, wounded bride—
But Jesus loves the church;
So we'll walk the aisle of history, toward the marriage feast,
For Jesus loves the church.

We fight like selfish children vying for that special prize;
We struggle with our gifts before your face.
And I know you look with sorrow at the blindness in our eyes
As we trip each other halfway through the race.

Chorus

I want to learn to love like you; I don't know where to start.
I want to see them all but through your eyes.
For you believed enough to live amidst the madding crowd,
Enough to die before our very eyes.

Chorus

And as you hung in naked grief, bleeding for our crimes,
You saw our fickle hearts and cried,
"I love you—you are mine."

Words: Sheila Walsh; music: Phil Keaggy
© 1989 Word Music/Sebastian Music
From the album philkeaggy, by Phil Keaggy

Praying on the front line

Something else I've been meaning to post is this passage from Tim Keller:

Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal is corporate, prevailing, intensive and kingdom-centered prayer. What is that?

1. It is focused on God's presence and kingdom. Jack Miller talks about the difference between "maintenance prayer" and "frontline" prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:
   

   a. a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves
   
   b. a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church
   
   c. a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory. . . .

2. It is bold and specific. The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:
   

   a. Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. . . .
   
   b. They then begin to make the big request—a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory/presence of God ("that I may know you"—Exod. 33:13); 2) for the people's experience of the glory of God (v. 15); and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people (v. 16). Moses asks that God's presence would be obvious to all: "What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" This is a prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God's power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.

3. It is prevailing, corporate. By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. . . . Sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for—to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through.

This is the kind of prayer the church needs to practice, and the kind of prayer meeting it really needs to hold (not that there isn't value to maintenance prayer meetings as well, as part of the pastoral care of the church); it's the kind of prayer which I'm working to encourage in the congregation I serve, which means first of all in myself. It's hard; it takes faithfulness and commitment and attention; but I do believe the fruit is more than worth it.

HT: Joyce

This week's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us

(to borrow from Sports Illustrated, since it's an old SI writer)

I'd call this unbelievable, but that's not strong enough; it's been a long time, even in this culture, since I've seen anything this despicably dishonorable. In this year's Georgia Class AAA high school baseball championship game, the pitcher and catcher of the losing team (Cody Martin and Matt Hill, respectively) colluded to bean the plate ump with a four-seam fastball (this just a few minutes after said ump called strike three on the pitcher's brother, Dodgers first-round pick Ethan Martin).

I agree with Rick Reilly: What are we turning into in this country, anyway?

Sarah Palin for VP

So far during this craziest of presidential-election seasons, I haven't been right about much of anything yet (though I take solace in the fact that neither have many other people). Still, I keep hoping that will change; and in that spirit, I'm officially hopping on the Sarah Palin bandwagon. Gov. Palin isn't all that well known as yet, since she's the governor of Alaska, which isn't exactly a media hub, and an Alaska native to boot; that's the one argument against John McCain choosing her as his running mate. The rest of the arguments all line up in her favor. Ann Althouse points out a few, Jack Kelly of RealClearPolitics adds some of his own, while Fred Barnes' piece in The Weekly Standard, though written last year, lays out a few more, and they're compelling; aside from the fact that she's not from a populous, media-heavy state, she's about as perfect a fit for Sen. McCain as one could imagine. (Update: Beldar thinks so too, as does Jonah Goldberg.)

One, she's young, just 44; she would balance out Sen. McCain's age.

Two, she has proven herself as an able executive and administrator, serving as mayor, head of the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and now as governor; she would balance out Sen. McCain's legislative experience (though he does have command experience in the Navy).

Three, she has strong conservative credentials, both socially (she's strongly pro-life, politically and personally) and fiscally (as her use of the line-item veto has shown); she would assuage concerns about Sen. McCain's conservatism.

Four, she's independent, having risen to power against the Alaska GOP machine, not through it; she's worked hard against the corruption in both her party and her state's government. She would reinforce Sen. McCain's maverick image, which is one of his greatest strengths in this election, but in a more conservative direction.

Five, for the reasons listed above, she's incredibly popular in Alaska. That might seem a minor factor to some, but it's indicative of her abilities as a politician.

Six, she has a remarkable personal story, of the sort the media would love. She's a former beauty-pageant winner, the mother of five children (the oldest serving in the Army, preparing to deploy to Iraq, the youngest a Down Syndrome baby), an outdoorsy figure who rides snowmobiles and eats mooseburgers—and a tough, take-no-prisoners competitor who was known as "Sarah Barracuda" when she led her underdog high-school basketball team to the state championship, and who now has accomplished a similar feat in cutting her way to the governor's office. No one now in American politics can match Sen. McCain's life story (no, not even Barack Obama), but she comes as close as anyone can (including Sen. Obama); she fits his image.

Seven, she would give the McCain campaign the "Wow!" factor it can really use in a vice-presidential nominee. As a young, attractive, tough, successful, independent-minded, appealing female politician, though not well known yet, she would make American voters sit up and take notice; and given her past history, there could be no doubt that she would be a strong, independent voice in a McCain administration, should there be one.

Eight, choosing Gov. Palin as his running mate, especially if coupled with actions like giving Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal the keynote slot at the GOP convention, would help the party going forward. The GOP needs to rebuild its bench of plausible strong future presidential candidates, and perhaps the best thing Sen. McCain can do for the party is to help with this. The party needs Gov. Jindal to stay where he is for another term or two (as, I believe, does the state of Louisiana), but in giving him the convention slot that launched Sen. Obama to prominence four years ago and putting Gov. Palin on the ticket, Sen. McCain would put two of the GOP's best people and brightest hopes for the future in a perfect position to claim the White House themselves; in so doing, he would make them the face of the GOP for the future.

"Preach grace, brothers"

Some time ago, I listened to a colleague in ministry give his testimony, and came away amazed that he had ended up a pastor—and in fact, amazed that he was even a Christian. He had come to Christ when he was six, but the church he attended was extremely legalistic, so much so that by the age of ten, they had him firmly convinced (and completely terrified) that he was going to Hell. He described his adolescence and early adulthood as a process of holding God as far away as he possibly could while still holding on enough to keep from going to Hell, which was his overriding concern; at one point as he was talking, he wondered if he might not have been better off "just going prodigal for a while," though he knew he'd been too afraid to do so.

In the midst of all this, though, God was at work on him, reaching out with his grace by his Spirit, slowly peeling away the layers of fear around his soul "like an onion" which that church had left there, calling him first back into the church, and then into the ministry; gradually, gradually, God has been setting him free from that fear, teaching him to trust—and teaching him to share that healing with others, to preach the good news of Jesus Christ so that people may live.

I'll never forget him looking at us and saying, almost pleading, "Preach grace, brothers. Preach grace." I do, or at least that's my intent and desire, and I think I can say that's true for all the others there; but I don't think I've ever been reminded so powerfully, or had it sink in quite so deeply, just how crucial that is. I'll never forget it.

China as an island

Check this out from Strange Maps:

If you're at all interested in geopolitics and the future of our nation's relationship with China (and if you aren't, you should read a few of James Fallows' articles in The Atlantic), it's worth diving into the analysis that accompanies the map; it's a summary of a longer article, "The Geopolitics of China," which I haven't yet read but definitely intend to read. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, too many Americans have grown accustomed to thinking of this as a unipolar world with America the only superpower; leaving aside whether that's ever really been true (Vladimir Putin might well disagree), the rise of China will be changing that before too long, if it hasn't already. China's large, powerful, and—to most Westerners—mysterious; the more we come to understand them, the better.

HT: my wife

Morning prayer

For the first showings of the morning light
and the emerging outline of the day
thanks be to you, O God.
For earth's colours drawn forth by the sun
its brilliance piercing clouds of darkness
and shimmering through leaves and flowing waters
thanks be to you.
Show to me this day
amidst life's dark streaks of wrong and suffering
the light that endures in every person.
Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul
that I may see with eyes washed by your grace
that I may see myself and all people
with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day's light.

—J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 40

Out of the past, in the present, toward the future

Joyce over at tallgrassworship has a post up that I've been meaning to comment on, asking the question, "How Can An Older Congregation Live Into Christ's Future?" (In her case, she's talking about one service in her congregation, rather than the congregation as a whole, but as she notes, it's all the same issue in the end.) I appreciated her post, and especially this quote she pulled from Bishop Will Willimon's blog:

No existing, older churches can be revitalized without risk, commitment, and a determination to be faithful to the mission of Christ no matter what.

If your church is in decline and not growing, it is because your congregation has decided to die rather than to live (alas, there is no in between when it comes to churches). The majority of our churches are not growing, thus we have a huge challenge before us. Still, our major challenge is not to find good resources for helping a church grow and live into the future; our challenge is to have pastors and churches who want to do what is necessary to live into Christ's future.

Bishop Willimon's dead right in his analysis: revitalizing churches isn't primarily about programs, skills, or doing this or that; at the core, it's about the willingness of the congregation to choose life over comfort, "to be faithful to the mission of Christ no matter what," even though the one we follow is the one who had no place to lay his head. That's why Joyce is right to emphasize "a deeply felt and theologically sound spirituality, lived out in an outward focus, a welcoming and inviting atmosphere, flexibility, and willingness to embrace change for the purpose of reaching and assimilating newcomers" as the signs of a church that has chosen life, because those are marks of a church that's primarily about its mission rather than about itself. (Incidentally, from this angle we can see that it isn't only older churches that need revitalizing, nor only smaller churches; I've known a few large congregations with plenty of money and plenty of younger folks that weren't in very good shape spiritually. It may be harder to get churches full of older folks to embrace change—but I'm not sure that's necessarily so.)

It's interesting to me that Bishop Willimon describes this in terms of "living into Christ's future," because it seems to me that it requires us to take a different attitude toward time, past, present, and future, than we often do. First, I think, for a church to be revitalized, it must live out of its past—neither living in the past, as so many dying churches do, nor cutting itself off from its past, but rooting itself in the successes and lessons of the past in order to meet the challenges it faces. Second, in doing so it must live in the present—which is to say, in the present reality as it actually is, not as we wish it were. In order to be faithful to carry out the mission of Christ in our world, we have to understand where the needs are, and how to make our message heard clearly and faithfully. Third, it must live toward the future—not simply seeking to maintain itself, but working toward the goal Christ has set before it, reaching out to draw in new people and address new ministry needs. There must be roots; there must be an understanding of the environment; and there must be a clear sense of purpose.

Pillow diplomacy

So, the State Department, which under Bush 43 has made the fight against international sex trafficking a major part of our foreign policy, has now had to issue a formal directive telling its employees not to hire prostitutes. Who knew? It sounds like somebody needs to clue some of our foreign-service folks in that this isn't what the US means by "international relations" . . .

Reflection on Amos 5 worship, for a thoughtful friend

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light,
as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
“I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a wadi that never dries up.”

—Amos 5:18-24 (ESV, alteration mine)

Thus says the Lord:
“For three transgressions of Israel
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,
because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals—
those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
and turn aside the way of the afflicted;
a man and his father go in to the same girl,
so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down beside every altar
on garments taken in pledge,
and in the house of their God they drink
the wine of those who have been fined.”

—Amos 2:6-8 (ESV)

It can be tempting to take verses like Amos 5:21—“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies”—as if we can just lift them right out of Amos and apply them to the church today, or to parts of the church we don’t like. Certainly, we may feel, there are an awful lot of churches whose worship can’t possibly be pleasing to God—and this is the word of God, so it applies to us just as it did to Amos’ neighbors in Tekoa; it’s tempting to rise up in the prophet’s place and pronounce the damnation of God on all that we see is wrong in the church. It is, however, a temptation which must be resisted, for our own sakes; it must be resisted because it's an abuse of the Scripture, and it's abuse of the Scripture that opens the door to all the other abuses we see in the church. It must also be resisted because it leads us away from humility, and into the trap of spiritual pride.

Amos 5 does indeed say something very important about worship, something which clearly applies to us today—but it doesn’t say that God hates all the worship offered him by the Western church, or that all the services and conferences and organizations and rallies are despicable to him. Some of them no doubt are; but this is not a blanket condemnation, except for those who are guilty of the sins of which Amos condemned his contemporaries. To understand why he denounces their worship so powerfully, we need to understand what he’s denouncing. We need to understand the real problem.

First off, to be clear, the problem wasn’t that Israel wasn’t worshiping God, or that they weren’t doing so correctly. It’s not that they weren’t a religious people—by any standard, they were considerably more religious than we are. God doesn’t complain that they weren’t showing up to church. They were keeping up their duties, showing up to the temple on the great holy days, offering their sacrifices, playing their music, and so on; they knew the stuff they were supposed to be doing, and they were doing it—all the right words at all the right times, all the right sacrifices done all the right ways, all down pat.

The problem wasn’t what they were doing—the problem was why. Their worship may have been directed to God, but it wasn’t about God, it was about them; specifically, it was about dotting all the “i”s and crossing all the “t”s necessary to get what they wanted from God, keeping up their end of the bargain so that God would have to keep up his. That’s why, just to make sure they had all their bases covered, they didn’t just worship the one true God, they worshiped a number of other gods, too—being quite sure, no doubt, to get all those forms just right as well. Of course, the Bible calls that idolatry, and makes it quite clear that God won’t stand for it; but his people just didn’t see the problem. After all, wasn’t it all about getting their needs met? If worshiping another god or two on the side helped them get their needs met, why should God mind?

This attitude bore all kinds of bad fruit. God is just, and his law set high standards for how the rich and powerful were to treat the poor and vulnerable, and yet his people felt free to come to worship with the blood of injustice on their hands, as we see both in Amos 5 and in Amos 2 (and in fact in lots of places throughout the prophets). The people of Israel thought they could buy God’s favor by showing up at the temple at the scheduled time and going through the motions, then go back into the “real world” and do business however they pleased. They didn’t understand that real worship begins with surrender—with giving over to God our plans, our ideas, our desires, our fears, our dreams, our visions, our conceptions of justice, our expectations of mercy, our wants, even our needs, and saying, “This is what I would do, but your will be done”; they just wanted to show up on Saturday morning, go through the motions, and walk off with the assurance that God was happy with them for showing up and would, in consequence, give them whatever they might happen to ask for.

And that, God says, is false worship, and I loathe it. “I hate, I despise your festivals; I take no delight in your church services. Take away your sacrifices—it makes me sick to look at them. Stop singing and put down your instruments—I can’t stand to listen to your noise.” All their worship was just an empty, cynical production; they were keeping up the shell of their religion, the ritual and the outward conformity, but without any reality at the center—and it made God madder than if they’d never bothered to show up at all. They shouldn’t have bothered, because they were essentially committing religious fraud, and God can’t and won’t tolerate that. Instead of all their show, what he wanted, and what he wants from us, is what he’s wanted all along: for his people to live lives of worship, for what we say in church on Sunday to be reflected at work on Monday.

He declares this in one of the most powerful and striking verses in the Bible: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a wadi that never dries up.” “Stream” doesn’t really capture the point here; as one commentator put it, “A wadi in the Middle East is a narrow valley, often a deep channel, through which rapid torrents of water gush during the rainy season, but which may have only a trickle of water or be completely dry in the summer.” When it flows, it brings life and color to the land, which then returns to desert when it dries up. But where a real wadi would flow only sometimes, God calls for justice and righteousness to be like a wadi that never stops flowing, but pours out ceaselessly in a mighty, thunderous flood, bringing life to the nation.

Now, in tying true worship to justice and righteousness, is Amos saying that the purpose of worship is to change our behavior? No; but true worship will, nonetheless. Worship brings us into the presence of God to focus on his character, on his beauty, and on all that he has done in creating this world and in saving us as his people—and the more time we spend looking at God, the more we will desire God, and thus desire his holiness. Worshiping God transforms us; spending time focusing our attention on God changes our priorities, our preferences, and our outlook on the world. It’s a gradual change, to be sure, not something that happens overnight, but no less real for all that; the proof of the pudding, so to speak, is whether our daily life, as individuals and as a community of believers, demonstrates and reflects the justice and righteousness of God. When that isn’t in evidence—as it wasn’t among Amos’ fellow Israelites—it’s a sign that however highly we might think of it, there’s something wrong with our worship.

Unfortunately, we don’t look at our worship the same way God does. We don’t judge our worship by whether or not our lives are characterized by justice and righteousness, or whether they look like the picture Paul paints in Colossians 3; we don’t examine our hearts to see if we, like the Israelites, are guilty of idolatry, worshiping our false gods of money, pleasure, ambition, and self-fulfillment right alongside the one true God. Instead, we ask, did we have a meaningful worship experience?—Did we enjoy the music?—Did we get something out of it?—Did it move us?—as if whether we found it meaningful was all that mattered, as if this is all about us. When those are the only questions we ask—when our only concerns about our worship are for ourselves and our own opinions and desires—we’ve gone off the rails. Our worship is about God, and what matters first and foremost is whether he is pleased, whether we’ve been focused on praising him, giving him glory, doing him honor; if not, if our concern is more for ourselves and what we think and feel than for God, then we aren’t really worshiping him at all.

The bottom line of our worship is this: God calls us to gather together as his people to praise his name, to honor him as our God, to hear him speak to us through his word, to confess our sins and affirm our faith, to lay our needs before him in prayer—and to go out again resolved and empowered to live out his justice and righteousness in a lost and broken world so loved by God. He calls us to take everything we have—yes, even our pain, even our struggles, even our anger, even our grief, just as much as our joy and our faith, our money and our talents—and give it to him, give it completely to him, as our offering. He calls us to give up trying to bless ourselves—let him take care of that!—and instead to bless his name with everything we have, with our words and with our lives, because he is worth it. He’s worth everything we have, and everything we are, and far, far more. If we understand worship in this way, if we seek to worship God in this way, it will change us, and it will change how we live; and so the proof of our worship, if you will, is in the fruit.

When are we justified in applying Amos 5:21 to the worship of the church? When the life of the church looks like Amos 2.

Wronging rights and depressing the oppressed

Last month, the PC(USA)'s Office of Interfaith Relations put out an excellent paper titled "Vigilance Against Anti-Jewish Ideas and Bias"; to the surprise of many, it was (and is) an excellent piece of work, searching and honest in its examination of the ways in which Presbyterians have been guilty of "anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish motifs and stereotypes, particularly as these find expression in speech and writing about Israel, the Palestinian people, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and steps toward peace." Consequently, it garnered considerable praise from evangelicals in the denomination.

Given the way things tend to operate in the PC(USA), the cynic in me is tempted to think that someone saw that praise and decided they must have done something very, very wrong; whatever the reason, the original paper has now been strangled in its bath and replaced by something very different under a revised title: "Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Bias in the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace." The actual concern for vigilance against anti-Jewish bias is, to say the least, much more muted in this new paper; there is, however, a great deal of concern for how awful Israel is. It's also far more self-congratulatory, to the point of arrogance, as Viola Larson notes; where the first document was an honest confession of denominational sin, the new one is effectively a frontal assault on that confession. That's a shameful thing for those who are called to follow the Way, the Truth and the Life. I think the Rev. John Wimberley, of Western Presbyterian Church in D. C., said it best in his letter to Presbyweb:

I simply don't know how we can release a document, receive high praise from the Jewish community, withdraw it and release a new document which profoundly angers the Jewish community and all of us who have spent a lifetime trying to build trust between Presbyterians and the Jewish community. This is beyond bad process. This is bad ministry. Who will trust our words in the future? Why should they?

Tim Russert, RIP

This is a shocker. Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and chief of their Washington bureau, is dead at 58, apparently of a heart attack. According to the New York Post, "the network allowed itself to be scooped by other media outlets as it tried to contact Russert's wife Maureen and son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College"; it's good to know someone had their priorities straight. Too bad the rest of the media didn't.

As Newsmax noted, "Washingtonian magazine once dubbed Russert the best journalist in town," and he probably deserved that label as much as anyone. Raised Catholic and trained in Catholic schools, he consistently stressed the importance of both, in such venues as commencement addresses at the Columbus School of Law (part of the Catholic University of America) and Boston College, and a fundraising dinner for the Catholic schools in the Fall River diocese. Russert, like most Washington media, was well to my left, but from where I sat he always seemed worthy of respect, both professionally and personally, and someone it would have been enjoyable to know. Requiescat in pace, Tim Russert; the decline of TV news just accelerated.

(Update: I had to add a link to this excellent reflection on Russert by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal.)

On being Reformed and missional

At this year's General Synod (our annual national decision-making assembly) of the Reformed Church in America, the delegates were blessed to hear three addresses from the Rev. Dr. Richard Mouw, currently serving as the president of Fuller Seminary. Those three addresses, with the discussion questions that followed each, have been combined into a single video. Taken as a whole, it's a long one—almost an hour—and I wish they'd been posted separately, but they weren't. Don't let that stop you from watching Dr. Mouw's messages, because there's excellent material here. The first address, which focuses on the "Reformed" half of the equation, is about twenty minutes, while the second, which focuses on the "missional" half, runs another thirteen or so; the third, which brings the two together, takes up the rest of the video. They're excellent, and if you're interested in these matters, when you have the time to listen to them, I commend them to you.

(Technical note: it's my understanding that some versions of IE have had problems with this video; if you run into difficulties, you might try clicking the "Google Video" button in the lower-right corner, which will take you to the Google Video page for this clip.)

Update: I was pleased to find this post on the same subject on the blog Pursuing Truth (a blog I hadn't tripped over before this); it's not an interaction with Dr. Mouw's addresses, but rather a separate consideration of being Reformed and missional (and an excellent one).

Living life flat-out for Christ

Ray Ortlund, in a post in memory of his father, sums up the most important lesson he learned from his dad this way:

There is only one way to live: all-out, go-for-broke, risk-taking, pedal-to-the-metal, ferociously joyful and grateful enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus Christ. Halfway Christianity is the most miserable existence of all. Halfway Christians know enough to feel guilty about themselves but haven’t gone far enough to get happy in Christ. Wholehearted Christianity is very happy.

How could my dad get there and stay there? He really, really knew that God loved him and had completely forgiven all his sins at the cross of Jesus. I saw dad in repentance. But he did not wring his hands and wonder what God thought of him. He believed the good news, his spirit soared and he could never do too much for his Savior.

Amen.

Our Swiss-cheese Bibles

Scot McKnight has a piece up on the Leadership section of CT's website about (and linking to) the hermeneutics quiz devised by BuildingChurchLeaders.com. I don't actually find the quiz all that interesting, though I think they did a good job putting it together—the quiz informed me that I'm conservative, but moderately so, which wasn't exactly news to me—but I thought Dr. McKnight's comments were.

For some reason of late, I have become fascinated with the portions of the Bible we don't tend to read, passages like the story of Jephthah. Or how God was on the verge of killing Moses for not circumcising his son, and his wife stepped in, did what needed to be done, and tossed the foreskin at Moses' feet, and God let him alone.

I'm curious why one of my friends dismisses the Friday-evening-to-Saturday-evening Sabbath observance as "not for us today" but insists that capital punishment can't be dismissed because it's in the Old Testament.

I have become fascinated with what goes on in our heads and our minds and our traditions (and the latter is far more significant than many of us recognize) in making decisions like this.

What decisions? Which passages not to read as normative. The passages we tend not to read at all.

If we're all subject to selective perception, at least to some degree, it's important to recognize what we tend to miss or gloss over, especially if we're church leaders.

He goes on to credit the quiz with helping us do this, which I don't really think it does, to any significant degree; but I certainly agree that this is something we need to address, because it leads to us missing and misunderstanding what God wants to say to us. It gives us a truncated gospel—one which, funnily enough, usually tends to be truncated neatly to fit our comfort zones.

There are, I think, several reasons for this. In churches that use the lectionary, a lot of this is done for you, as the folks who put the lectionary readings together did a nice job of trimming around all the troublesome spots. We do it ourselves, because dealing with those spots takes work—we can't just toss out the pat answers we've all learned, we have to wrestle with the text and put thought and effort into it. What's more, dealing with those sorts of passages carries an emotional cost, as we come face to face with the fact that we don't worship a nice, comfortable god who wants us to live nice, comfortable lives. In some cases, as Jared Wilson points out, the Scriptures tell us things we just flat-out don't want to hear; it's no shock that we tend to avoid those passages if at all possible.

And so we end up with Swiss-cheese Bibles, with great voids in them, and we take our nice neat slices with their nice neat holes in them, and we end up with a much less messy and much less discomfiting faith as a consequence; but then, it seems to me, we end up with a faith much less able to deal with the messy and discomfiting parts of life—they go sailing right through the holes. We need to make the effort to fill in the holes, to consider what parts of the Bible we're avoiding, and why, and take them head-on; we need to open ourselves up to listen to, and proclaim, the whole counsel of God.

On the power of stories to teach, part II

I've been meaning for several days now to get back over to Dr. Stackhouse's blog, having gotten a couple weeks behind on reading his posts; I was interested to find there a four-post consideration and defense of the novel The Shack, which has generated quite a bit of interest and comment, both positive and negative. I haven't yet read the book, and given the events that drive the book's plot, I'm not at all sure I'm going to read it, either, at least in full; but given the responses it's generated (both positive and negative), I definitely want to know as much about it as I can from reviewers who are both fair and perceptive. That's why I appreciated his four posts addressing the book's genre, some theological concerns, and some praiseworthy aspects of the book.

In light of my post this past Sunday, I was also interested in the first of those posts for another reason. Dr. Stackhouse writes,

It seems to me important that authors of fiction defend art as needing no justification on some other grounds. From a Christian point of view, a well-rendered novel—or short story, or poem, or song lyric—needs only to be good in and of itself. It does not have to explicitly praise God or testify to Jesus or draw people closer to the gospel or attract people to Christianity—although the paradox is, I suggest, that inasmuch as it is authentic and true to both the artist and to reality, such fictional writing does indeed do all those things implicitly. Still, art needs no justification, as H. R. Rookmaaker’s book title reminds us, and it is good that art is free from the obligation to perform some other service.

To assert that principle, however, is not to assert the corollary that art must not ever serve more than one purpose, and in particular must not “preach,” as Atwood says. One can defend art “for art’s sake,” as Wilde put it, without restricting oneself to aestheticism in which art is only for art’s sake. . . .

So, yes, if you want to preach, write a sermon—which is a truism, in fact. But if you want to depict your concerns in a fictional way you hope will render them plausible, even cogent, to a reader, then the weight of western civilization is on your side.

Lest anyone think this is a Christian defense of propaganda, here’s the late Dr. Isaac Asimov saying something very similar:

But in every worthwhile story, however long, there is a point. The writer may not consciously put it there, but it will be there. The reader may not consciously search for it, but he’ll miss it if it isn’t there. If the point is obtuse, blunt, trivial, or non-existent, the story suffers and the reader will react with a deadly, “So what?”

The danger of propagandizing is very real, of course, for the writer who consciously desires to communicate their understanding of truth through stories, through fiction; the question of when one has crossed the line is very real. Dr. Stackhouse argues that that point comes

when the fictive art is compromised for the sake of the ideological message. When dialogue becomes stilted, when characters become inconsistent, when events become implausible, when a deus ex machina saves the day—in sum, when “what would happen” is sacrificed to “what should happen.”

Or, to put it another way, it comes when we as sub-creators cease to be thinking “primarily about what is best for this thing we are making” and let the good of our agenda trump the good of the creation; it’s when “what’s best for us or what we want to do” becomes the primary consideration.

Song of the Week

As I said last week, I'm on a bit of a Steve Taylor kick. For this one, I'll let Taylor's own words (in the booklet for the boxed set Now the Truth Can Be Told) explain my reason for posting it:

Ah, to have the Bible's sense of balance.

My goal with "A Principled Man" was to write a song that inspired me to live a principled life. The seed came from a "tree motif" in the Book of Psalms: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water . . ." (Psalms 1:1-3)

But lest principles become an end unto themselves, we have in Ezekiel the dark side of the tree metaphor: "Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Because it towered on high, lifting its top above the thick foliage, and because it was proud of its height . . . I cast it aside." (Ezekiel 31:10-11)

This song still inspires me. May it continue to do so for all the right reasons.

A Principled Man

Under a flag they swore a bond;
Caught under fire they ran.
Are you the one standing your ground?
Are you a principled man?

Followers fall, blinded by kings,
Lost in the lie of the land.
Are you the one sworn to be true?
Are you a principled man?

Now . . . begin—come alongside it,
Seize the wind—come along, ride it.
One day it will be you believing
There is a principled man.

Who goes there? Do you belong, lad?
You know there is a new dawn, and
One day to say, "Stick with me, baby,
I am a principled man."

Many's the man grounded by greed,
Leaning on power and land;
Show me the one lost in the stars—
Show me a principled man.

Chorus

Bleeding and hushed, hung between thieves,
There the foundation began,
Are you the one taking your cross?
Are you a principled man?

Words and music: Steve Taylor
© 1987 Soylent Tunes
From the album I Predict 1990, by Steve Taylor

Malcolm Reynolds, patron saint of not-quite-lost causes

—or at least, so he would be if he were ever actually canonized, which of course is a rather remote prospect. First the fight against the Alliance, which he could never quite stop fighting, then the "Can't Stop the Signal" campaign after Firefly's cancellation—the man positively collects them, and keeps on flying.

Which reminds me: there's a rally at the Federal Courthouse in Seattle at 4:30 pm on June 16, part of the campaign to stop that modern-day robber baron and keep the Sonics in Seattle where they belong. . . . Anyone in Seattle have Nathan Fillion's number?

(Update: the rally drew over 3000 people and earned serious attention from ESPN. Way to go, guys—you rock. Can't stop the signal!)

Firefly, Tolkien, and narrative theology

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, from "Mythopoeia"

It has been my custom, while using my rowing machine, to watch episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, which I consider one of the two greatest television shows I've ever seen. (I don't believe TV as a medium has produced much true art, or many truly great stories, but I do believe both are possible.) Lately, however, I've been watching other things while I row, and this week, I started in on the other greatest series I've ever seen: Firefly. It's the first time I've watched any of the episodes since the movie came out; what Joss Whedon did with the movie hit me too hard. That's also why I haven't posted about being a Browncoat, or linked to fan sites like "Whoa. Good Myth." Rather like being a Mariners fan these days, it's just been easier not to stress about it too much.

Now, this might seem like an odd and pointless thing to get worked up about—so a TV show was canceled after fourteen episodes—so what? It's still a TV show, after all. So Fox handled it badly, gave the show no real chance, and canceled it unfairly soon; is it really that big a deal? Well, it was that big a deal for all the folks who worked on the show, for one thing. Beyond that, we all have our reasons, and I'm sure mine aren't the same as everyone else's; but for me, it's the story, or rather, the stories, which were untimely cut off, and the lives of the characters in those stories. Whedon, Tim Minear, and their crew of writers had a great world and a great set of characters and stories going, both enjoyable and deep; to have that brought to an untimely end is a great loss.

That's why I rejoiced when the movie deal went forward; which meant that what Whedon did with Serenity really hit me hard. I think he put his own ideas of what is artistic ahead of what was best for his creation—not only the story and the characters, but also the communities he had created, most importantly the actors, writers, and crew, and also all of us who call ourselves Browncoats. Tolkien speaks of us as sub-creators, people who create what he calls "Secondary Worlds," creations which are real within their own laws, to the best of our ability to make them real; we create in reflection (or, perhaps better, as refractions) of the great Creator who made us, because we were made like him. The desire to be gods ourselves may have been what led us into sin, but it was not perhaps a wholly wrong one, properly channeled—for when we create, we are in a sense small gods to our creation.

If we take Tolkien's point of view, however (as I believe we should), this has a significant implication for our creative activity: we have the responsibility to be, as best as we can, good gods to our creation. Our work has to be primarily about what is best for this thing we are making, whatever it might be, not merely about what's best for us or what we want to do. On my read, from the things he's said, Joss Whedon violated that with Firefly/Serenity; he was a bad god to his creation.

Still, though, you might say: does this matter? Wasn't it, after all, still just a TV show? Yes, of course it was a TV show, but no, it wasn't just a TV show. Nothing is ever just anything—especially not people; and thus, especially not stories, to the extent that they're true stories about people. By that I don't necessarily mean factual; there are biographies and histories which are factual but aren't really true, because they miss the heart of the matter, while many historical fictions, though they depart from the facts, are far truer because they give us real understanding of people and events. Indeed, many novels about things that never happened and people who never lived are nevertheless true stories in that they broaden our awareness of ourselves and of others, open our eyes and minds to things we have not before seen or realized, and deepen our knowledge of what it means to be human.

Stories are powerful things. It's one thing to express an opinion, or to set forth a proposition about how the world works; it's quite another thing to bring that opinion or proposition to life in a story. People who might reject, or at least argue with, your position if it were plainly stated may find themselves influenced by it, if your story is powerful enough and sufficiently well-crafted; and those who wouldn't understand it intellectually in a propositional form may well get it intuitively and affectively if you bring it to life in a story. That's what stories do with our ideas: they bring them to life, incarnating them in the lives of the characters we create, making them not merely intellectual realities, but human realities.

This is one reason why the greatest of all Christian theologians is not Paul, but Jesus himself. (There are others, of course, such as the fact that Jesus was original, while Paul was derivative of Jesus.) This is something too often missed, as Dr. Kenneth Bailey points out (and as Jared Wilson has also said, though his emphasis is a little different), because we tend to see Jesus as a nice moral teacher telling quaint stories; we don't really believe that those stories can be theologically profound and powerful. In fact, though, they can, and they are; the more overtly "theological" works in the New Testament, profound as they are, are simply developments, explications, and applications in propositional form of the truths already communicated incarnationally through the parables of Jesus, and also through the broader narratives of the Gospels, Acts, and the Old Testament. God doesn't give us a three-point outline, he gives us a story—from which to learn, and in which to live.

Of course, it's possible to take this too far; there are those who would overbalance the other way, exalting the biblical narratives to the extent of diminishing or even discounting the NT epistles (and other non-narrative portions of the Bible—but the epistles, and particularly Paul, usually seem to be the main target). That's not right either. What we need to remember is that the epistles, though not themselves narrative texts, are nevertheless part of a narrative; their context is a story. They were written for particular reasons to particular human beings in particular situations dealing with particular things, even if we don't know all those particularities (in some cases, we have a pretty good idea; in others, we can only speculate); and when we read them, we read them in the middle of our own story as God speaking to us in our particular situations and issues. We need to understand them accordingly—and we need to understand that that fact is the reason why they matter.

Stories matter. They matter because they're the stuff of our life, of our reality and our nature, and the expression of the creative ability we've been given by (and in the image of) the one who made us—and we matter. They matter because they affect us, moving our emotions and shaping our view of the world, both for good and for ill. And as a Christian, I affirm that they matter because everything we do matters, because the best of what we do will endure forever. And if they matter, then we need to take them seriously, both as readers and, for those of us so called, as writers—for our sake, and for everyone's.

Worldly heavens make me ill

My wife already commented on this, but I think I need to as well, because it's disturbing me more and more the longer my backbrain has to chew on it: "Heaven Is An Amusement Park That Never Closes." It's the latest thing up on Strange Maps (which is a great blog, if you're a map geek like Sara and I are), and it's both brilliant and sick. The brainchild of a California comic artist named Malachi Ward, it certainly does a brilliant job of capturing the vague cultural idea of what "heaven" is like, to the extent that it gets beyond clouds and harps and pearly gates; in the process, it also shows just how sick that idea really is.

Of course, I could be taken to be biased on this point, since, as I've posted before, I firmly disbelieve in the whole popular idea of "heaven"—but I don't think so. Rather, I think any notion of what God has for those who believe in him that a) makes any sense in earthly terms and/or b) makes any sense apart from the overflowing light and presence of the Triune God, God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is theologically appalling. I think any such idea of heaven both distorts and impoverishes our faith—even the best-intentioned versions. As for cultural ideas like the one Malachi Ward so powerfully captures (and satirizes? I hope): may the God of all truth deliver us from such poisonous rubbish.

Skeptical conversations, part VI: Relationship with God (or not)

Continuing the conversation . . . Parts I-V here.

R: One thing that I think you can see clearly from those four definitions is that they are all, in one way or another, relational language: through his death and resurrection, Christ brought about a new relationship between God and his people. This really speaks, I think, to the contemporary concern (at least among Generation X) with alienation; because it’s true, our sin alienates us from God, who is the source of life, and from our true selves, the people he created us to be—and, for that matter, from each other, as our sinfulness warps and breaks our relationships with each other. Jesus restored our relationship with God, he brought healing to our self-alienation, and in setting us free from sin he brings healing to our relationships with those around us.

Having set out what Jesus’ atoning work accomplished, the other point which must be made is that it is limited, not in its value but its application; as I’ve heard it said, the atonement is sufficient for all, but efficient only for the elect, for those whom God has chosen.

A: So you believe that God chooses to save some and not others. Wouldn’t that logically mean that he chooses to send people to Hell?

R: In some ways, I suppose; but not really. Let me explain. You’ll remember that earlier I mentioned the doctrine of total depravity, that everything in us and consequently everything we do is marred by sin, and thus that we cannot do anything truly good.

A: Yes.

R: Another name for this is “total inability,” that we are utterly unable at every point to will and to do what God wants us to; thus we cannot choose to turn to him on our own. We cannot go seeking him unless he moves our hearts to do so, and we cannot overcome the sin in our lives without his help. Therefore, we are utterly dependent on the grace of God to save us. But he does not simply offer his grace and leave it up to us to take it or reject it, for two reasons. One is that such an offer would not address our inability to accept it, and as such would be meaningless. The other is simply that God’s grace is far more powerful than that—it is completely irresistible. It is not a matter of saying “yes” to him, because we cannot say “no.”

And so God chose whom he would save, unconditionally—not on the basis of what he foresaw any of us would do, since without his gracious intervention none of us could do anything to deserve to be chosen. Our faith in him is nothing for which we can claim credit, because even our faith is a gift from God. When Jesus died on the cross, his death was effective at that moment to save all those whom God had chosen; he purchased freedom by his blood for all those whom the Father had given him. The result is a permanent change in status for those whom Jesus redeemed—we have been bought at a very great price and reborn as new people, and there is no going back. Salvation is not a matter of making a choice which we can later change, nor is it merely receiving a token good for one admission to heaven, something we can lose on the way there. It is a permanent change in life, and going back would be as impossible as a bullfrog turning back into a tadpole, or a butterfly into a caterpillar.

That is, at any rate, the Reformed understanding of salvation, and it is the one to which I hold, because I think it best reflects the teaching of Scripture. One last point remains to be made, or at least to be underlined: all this is through Christ alone. We do nothing to earn it, nothing to add to it, and nothing that can replace it.

A: You still haven’t answered my question: doesn’t this mean that God chooses some to be saved and others to be damned? And it raises a second question: how does this fit with your earlier insistence that human beings are free agents who make their own choices?

R: The answers to those two questions fit together; but I’ll warn you, we’re venturing into the realm of paradox again. You’ll remember I argued earlier that of everything we do, it is right both to say that God willed that we do it and that we made the decision to do it.

A: Yes, and it even made a little sense.

R: Thanks. Anyway, if that’s true, it’s true at every point, and that includes the point of salvation. It’s also true, I would affirm, to say that God is not capricious. No, his choice of whom he will save is not dependent on any foreseen faith, as though such a thing were possible apart from his gift of grace; but it isn’t random, either. Those whom he does not choose to save, he allows to choose to reject him. Why that is, why some and not others, I don’t know; this is one point where it comes back to the question, “Can God be trusted?” From what I see of his character and his wisdom, I affirm that the judge of all the earth will do right, and that his choices are good and just.

A: That isn’t enough. If it’s simply a matter of God choosing to save some, why doesn’t he choose everyone? Why would a loving God choose to condemn anyone to Hell?

R: Well, to answer your second question first, it isn’t exactly true that God chooses to send people to Hell; rather, he chooses to allow people to send themselves there. It isn’t as if he took our lives, weighed up the good and the bad, and then sentenced us to Heaven or Hell in reward or punishment, as if our life in eternity were somehow disconnected from our life here on earth. No, if our path on earth is away from God, if we reject him, then in the end our choice is fixed for eternity—and that is Hell, or the essence of it. The real question isn’t why would a loving God choose to condemn anyone to Hell, but rather why we would expect a loving God to condemn anyone to Heaven.

A: Huh?

R: If someone has rejected God for their entire life, and then at the end of it found themselves spending eternity with the God they had rejected, would that really be a heaven for them?

A: I see your point. I can’t say as the notion appeals to me all that much.

R: Exactly. Now of course you could say that God could change your heart so that you would want to spend eternity with him; but I don’t suppose that would appeal to you a great deal either. But coming back to your first question, true, if it is simply a matter of his choosing to save some, theoretically he could choose to save everyone. The logic of the system permits it; and perhaps the greatest theologian of the last century, Karl Barth, came very close to affirming universal salvation (and maybe did—it isn’t clear). The only problem is, the Scriptures make it clear that though God desires to save all people, only some will be saved. Why that is, I don’t know; but I trust the wisdom and the heart of God, and I’m quite certain that it isn’t because God likes the idea of condemning people to Hell.

In any case, our salvation isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning, though some Christians would seem to think otherwise. Our justification before God comes through the work of Christ, but having been made right with God, it still remains for us to try to follow him and to be made holy as he is holy; that process is called sanctification, and it means that there is a purpose to living life as a Christian beyond doing the same things everyone else does and waiting for heaven. We have been given new life inside, and now the Holy Spirit is at work, you might say spreading that life all through us, changing us from the inside out.

A: You wouldn’t know it by watching some people. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been cut off on the freeway by a car with one of those Jesus fish on it?

R: I can guess. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have anything like that on my car—I’m not such a good driver that I want my driving to be part of my Christian witness. But anyway, sanctification only happens by the power of the Spirit.

“Doubting Thomas”?

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

—John 20:24-31 (ESV)

Doubt’s a funny thing, sort of a grey area between belief and unbelief—between, you might say, two different kinds of certainty. It can be paralyzing, leaving people unable to act because they don’t know what to do. Sometimes, it can be liberating, freeing people to let go of a false certainty to seek a true one. It can be unhealthy, especially if it becomes obsessive; but it can also be a healthy thing, reminding us that we might not know quite as much as we think we do. Of course, doubt can be dishonest, really a mask for a determination not to believe something—or, in some cases, for a refusal to commit to any belief at all; but honest doubt, doubt which is truly open to belief and truly seeking understanding, can be an important prelude to true faith. The problem is, it’s all too easy to lose sight of that, and so you find churches that treat doubt as a sin—as if believing in Jesus and following him are supposed to be easy, which they often aren’t—that fail to see the difference between doubt that doesn’t want to believe, and doubt that does.

The story of Thomas is a corrective for us in that respect, if we actually read it. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories we already think we know; even people who’ve never knowingly been within fifty feet of a Bible know what a doubting Thomas is. Just for grins, I Googled the phrase “doubting Thomas” and found 903,000 hits, including a page on Dictionary.com which informed me that a doubting Thomas is “one who is habitually doubtful.” That’s our picture of Thomas, based entirely on this passage, as if he were the sort of guy who wouldn’t believe you if you told him the sky was blue.

Is that really fair, though? Does he really deserve to be universally known as “Doubting Thomas”—to be a cliché? He’d been off on his own, away from the other disciples, and while we don’t know for sure why that was, it seems likely that he reacted to grief and loss the same way many of us do: he pulled away from other people, shut them out, and tried to work through it by himself. The Scottish New Testament scholar William Barclay notes that England’s King George V used to say, “If I have to suffer, let me be like a well-bred animal, and let me go and suffer alone”; this seems to have been Thomas’ approach. When he got to the point that he felt he could bear to be around the other disciples, he joined them, expecting to commiserate and reminisce with them—and instead they fed him the most implausible story he had ever heard. Put yourself in his shoes—would you have believed it?

Of course, part of the reason Thomas picked up his label is his response to the other disciples, with his statement that unless he could see the wounds and put his hands in them, he would never believe that Jesus was alive again; if you read the commentaries, you’ll see that they treat his statements as if he made them calmly and rationally, as if he were matter-of-factly stating the terms which would have to be met before he would believe. Stop and think a minute, though—do you really imagine that Thomas, confronted with this ridiculous fairy tale, tugged on his beard, carefully considered the situation, and then set forth the conditions on which he would believe the story, as if he were a philosophy professor grading a blue-book exam? No! He responded the way many people would have, with anger, sarcasm, and hyperbole: “You expect me to believe that? Why, unless I see the wounds in his hands—no, unless I can touch them myself—there’s no way!” OK, so maybe it’s not an admirable response; but really, which of us would have done any better?

The fact of the matter is, Thomas was no more a doubter than any of the other disciples who didn’t believe until they saw Jesus with their own eyes, and the Bible never portrays him as such. We do know that he was something of a pessimist, and that he loved Jesus greatly; in John 11, when Jesus announced his intention to go to Jerusalem, setting his feet on the road to the cross, Thomas told his fellow disciples, “Let’s go with him, that we may die with him.” He was sure the worst was coming, but he made no excuses; better to die with Jesus than to abandon him. In the event, the worst happened and Jesus was crucified, but Thomas survived; he had seen it coming, but was still broken-hearted at Jesus’ death. If he hadn’t cared, he no doubt would have had an easier time believing in the resurrection; as it was, his grief was too great for belief to come easily.

To be sure, Thomas does come across as something of a skeptic—but there are skeptics and there are skeptics. There are certainly those who are “habitually doubtful,” who refuse to believe anything anyone tells them, whether because they’re suspicious and distrustful, because they’re contemptuous of others, or for whatever reason; but Thomas doesn’t fall into that category. Thomas doubts, yes, but he doubts because faith comes hard. How much of that is grief and how much is his natural character and temperament, we don’t know, but he just needed more, some sort of tangible proof. He was willing to believe, but he needed more than just a crazy story; he needed to see Jesus himself.

Given that, it does need to be said for Thomas that at least he was honest about it. When the others told him they’d seen Jesus, he didn’t try to play along or try to humor them; he was completely honest, telling them straight out that he didn’t believe their story. What’s more, he didn’t leave, either; it must have been a little uncomfortable—they were celebrating the resurrection, he was still grieving the crucifixion—but he stuck around. Thomas doesn’t get credit for either of those things, as a rule, but both say a great deal for him. The text doesn’t tell us, but I can only think that he stayed because his fellow disciples were his connection to Jesus; he stayed because he wasn’t giving up on them, because he wasn’t giving up on God. As for his honesty, how many of us are hon-est enough to admit we don’t understand, or believe, something when we don’t? Better someone like Thomas, who insisted on being sure and was open and forthright about his doubt, than someone who just plays along, mouthing the words and pretending to believe. As Barclay noted, “It is doubt like that which in the end arrives at certainty,” while those who just pretend never get anywhere at all.

It also needs to be said for Thomas that he didn’t do anything by half measures; when he doubted, he doubted, and when he believed, he believed. Once he saw Jesus—and you’ll notice, for all his talk, Thomas didn’t need to touch him, just to see him—his doubts were gone, his belief total. Faith didn’t come easy for him, but once he was sure, once he had counted the cost, there were no halfway measures, and no holding back. Perhaps that was part of the reason for his skepticism; it’s easy to make commitments, after all, if you only make them half-heartedly, but that doesn’t seem to have been an option for Thomas.

We can see that in the statement he makes when he sees Jesus, which is really pretty remarkable. It’s been said that this is the key moment in the entire gospel, the key statement about Jesus, and I think that’s true, because Thomas here moves from several steps behind the other disciples—disbelieving the resurrection—to a step ahead of them; in an instant, he sees what the resurrection truly means, and from his heart he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” The disciples had been calling Jesus “Lord” for quite some time, but that’s a word that can cover a lot of ground; on the one hand, it was the standard Jewish substitution for the name of God, but on the other, it was a standard form of polite address, meaning roughly “Sir.” Somewhere along the line, the disciples started to mean more than that by it—they clearly realized that he deserved more than the ordinary level of respect—but how much more is impossible to say.

For Thomas at this moment, however, it’s very clear exactly what he means by “Lord”: he’s giving it all the meaning it can bear. In putting “Lord” and “God” together, he’s joining the two great Old Testament names for the Creator—Elohim, which we translate as “God,” and the personal name of God, often rendered in English as “Yahweh” or “Jehovah,” but which the Jews substituted with Adonai, “Lord,” because no observant Jew would speak it. In calling Jesus “Lord” and “God,” then, Thomas is affirming Jesus as YHWH Elohim, the God of Israel, the very God of all creation, deserving of all worship and obedience. His realization is the cornerstone of our faith now, but then it was a new and radical statement; for a Jew who had been taught in no uncertain terms the vast difference and separation between God and his creation, even human beings, to come to understand that God had stooped to cross that divide by becoming human was a truly remarkable and world-expanding realization indeed.

Jesus responds by approving Thomas’ recognition, and then goes on to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Some people think that Jesus is rebuking Thomas here for his unbelief—that fits in with the whole “Doubting Thomas” thing, after all—but if so, it’s a very gentle rebuke, and one addressed to the others, not just to Thomas; after all, there were very few at that point who had believed without seeing Jesus with their own eyes. Jesus isn’t singling out Thomas for rebuke, and I’m not at all sure he’s rebuking anyone, since he doesn’t say “More blessed.” He simply blesses all those, both then and throughout time, who had and would come to believe without visual confirmation. He pronounces a blessing on, among others, us.

Now, if Thomas’ confession is a critical moment in this gospel, I think Jesus’ response is almost as critical. Remember that John chose to include these words for a reason—none of the other gospel writers did so—and notice that they are followed immediately by verses 30 and 31, which set out the purpose for this book: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who believe without seeing, and the purpose of this gospel, the reason John chose to write it, is to bring people into that blessing, to bring people who have never seen Jesus in the flesh to believe in him anyway.

In that light, I think it’s worthwhile to ask why John tells this story; and I think one reason is to show us vividly that faith didn’t come any easier for those disciples than it did, or does, for anyone else. Modern skeptics know how hard it is for them to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead, and they tend to assume that it must have been easier for the first disciples, or else they never would have believed such a crazy tale; but Thomas shows us otherwise. As we’ve seen, he’d expected the worst, and the worst had happened, and that was just too powerful, too real a thing for him to set aside just because the other disciples told him he should. These were his friends, the people with whom he had walked the length and breadth of Israel who knew how many times—these were the people he trusted if he trusted anyone—but his pain and loss were too real and too great for him to hear. Their testimony wasn’t enough; Thomas had to see Jesus for himself before he could believe.

And here’s the key: that doesn’t disqualify him. His doubt doesn’t rule him out. Instead, he cries out for a reason to believe—and God gives it to him; and after all this, it’s Thomas, not any of the others, who makes the great confession which is the climax of this gospel. It’s Thomas, who spells out his inability to believe in great detail, whose doubt persists longer than any of the others, who then makes a statement of faith which goes beyond that of any of the others. It is the one who went through this period of doubt, who heard the story of the resurrection from those who had seen Jesus alive again and declared, “I don’t believe you, and I’m not going to believe until I can touch him for myself,” who then called Jesus both Lord and God. It was out of the dark soil of his doubt and grief that the bright flower of his great confession grew.

This is no accident; it’s no mere coincidence that Thomas made this statement; rather, it’s a lesson for us. We often tend to treat doubt and faith as opposed, as if doubt were the opposite of faith—but that isn’t true at all of honest doubt, like that of Thomas. Rather, doubt can be essential in working our way through to deeper faith. If we never doubt because we never ask questions about our faith, if we never doubt because we never really face the hard times in our lives, if we never doubt because we never admit to ourselves that we might have reason, then we don’t have more faith—we have less; we aren’t exercising our faith, we’re protecting it, and that means we aren’t really trusting God. Part of having real faith in God is trusting him enough to doubt him—I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Faith doesn’t mean never doubting, it means trusting him enough to believe that if we express our doubts, as Thomas did, that God will respond and give us reason to have faith in him.

I think we sometimes tend to be afraid of our own honesty, afraid of admitting what we really think and feel, and we need to understand that God isn’t. True faith in him means trusting him enough even in our doubts to believe that God can handle our doubts just as well as he can our professions of faith—and that if we bring our doubts to him, they will be answered, and we will find that we really can trust him.

Politics in a state of grace

(Warning: I hadn’t realized until I put this up just how long a post this is, and while it doesn’t exactly ramble, it’s something of an exploratory post. Call it variations on a theme . . . or maybe “Rhapsody in Red and Blue.”)

Anyone who’s spent any significant amount of time around this blog is no doubt aware that I have a definite political point of view; I come by it honestly. I’m the son of a decorated Navy pilot and a Navy nurse, and the nephew of a Navy doctor. I grew up around the military, in a church that was half Navy (the other half was Dutch; it was an interesting mix), in a family and community from which I absorbed the firm belief that patriotism is a virtue. I’ve been raised to be proud of this country and of all she has done for the world, her inevitable failures notwithstanding. I took my shape from an environment that was and is profoundly conservative, politically, theologically, culturally, and personally, though fortunately evangelical in form rather than fundamentalist. I was for a while a card-carrying member of the Republican National Committee, and I thought that was a good thing. I’m not the same person I was then, certainly, but I’m still conservative, politically and theologically, and a lot of people would reflexively brand my forehead with the scarlet “R” (for “religious right”) and figure they had me labeled.

Those folks would be wrong, though. Not because I'm not conservative, or because I don’t usually vote Republican; it’s not a matter of policy differences, or differing views on moral issues. I do, however, have a major problem with the whole approach to politics taken by many conservative Christians. I’ve argued before that American politics is idolatrous, in that it leads people to find their identity in a political party rather than in Christ; in that same post, I noted that patriotism can be an idol, and for many people, I think it is. Yes, our country is a wonderful gift to us, and yes, we’re richly blessed to live here—but it’s God’s blessing to us, and when we start to value the gift as much as we value the giver, that’s idolatry.

We need to understand that as Christians, our political loyalties can never properly be primary loyalties—not even our loyalty to our country is properly a primary loyalty—because our primary loyalty needs to be to God. Arguably the primary theme in Scripture, and certainly the primary political theme, is that God is the one true king over all creation; all human authorities are secondary. We as the church acknowledge him not merely as Lord over our nation, but as Lord over the church; we are directly under his rule. 

When Paul says in Colossians 1:13 that we have been “transferred . . . into the kingdom of his beloved Son,” we tend to understand that in purely spiritual terms, that we have been saved and set free from death and sin, and that is certainly his main point; but it isn’t the only point. Paul has in mind here a complete transfer of allegiance, as verses 15 and following make clear, for we are now under the rule of the one who created every power and every authority, whether in heaven or on earth; thus we are no longer to understand ourselves primarily in relation to human governments, nor are we to define ourselves in human political terms. Instead, we are to understand ourselves as citizens of heaven, serving here as ambassadors to the people and nations of this world—and note the message we’ve been given to proclaim: not a message of war or hatred, but the message of reconciliation, that Jesus came to make peace between us and God through his sacrifice on the cross.

The founding principle of any truly Christian politics must be the absolute sovereignty of God. God is king over all the earth and the source of all true political au­thority; we owe our allegiance to him first and our country second. Yes, this is our country, but only for a little while. That’s why Scripture describes us repeatedly as strangers and foreigners, wanderers and exiles on this earth. The paradigmatic verse for us in this respect is Jeremiah 29:7: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” We’re here because this is where God has planted us, which means we need to take this as our home for as long as we’re here, and to do what we can to promote the welfare of the community and country to which we belong—as God defines that, not as any earthly political group does. We must never forget that when we say “my country,” we do so not with a sense of ownership, nor indeed with a sense of true belonging, but simply because this is the country in which God has placed us to serve him. Our primary place to belong is the kingdom of God, and our primary allegiance is to him; all other allegiances must be understood in that context. We’re called to serve Christ as our one and only Lord, in every aspect of our lives, including those which our culture labels “public,” “political,” and “secular.”

This is not to say, however, that we’re free to ignore our government at will; God has established governments for a purpose, and we have to bear that in mind. Paul makes this clear in Romans 13:1-7. Note, however, that he phrases his argument very carefully. “Every person,” he declares, is to “be subject to the governing authorities.” On the one hand, this is a very strong statement—there are no ifs, ands, buts, or exceptions. This means everybody, period. On the other hand, he doesn’t say, “Every person is to obey the governing authorities.” This means everybody, but it doesn’t mean that everybody has to do everything the government orders, period. Rather, the point here is that we all must acknowledge as a general rule that the government and its officials have authority over us, for God is the source of all authority and is the one who has instituted all human authorities. This will usually require that we obey whatever our governments tell us to do, but there are exceptions; Paul’s choice of the verb “be subject” reminds us that we are called, ultimately, to be completely subject to God in every aspect of life, and that human authorities are contingent, not absolute.

When it happens that a government is bent on rewarding evil rather than good, then we must follow God rather than government. That’s part of seeking the welfare of the country to which he has sent us: any authority which is in direct conflict with the expressed will of God must be resisted in whatever manner is appropriate. Any such action must be taken with humility, not giving ourselves too much credit; and again, it must bear in mind the fact that the ends don’t justify the means, and that unjust actions corrupt just goals; but if, like Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhöffer, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Niemöller, and others, we find ourselves in the path of injustice, we are obligated to resist it to the best of our ability. “I was just following orders” wasn’t an acceptable defense at Nuremberg, and it isn’t anywhere else, either.

In general, however, we are to submit ourselves to the governing authorities, because God has established them to carry out his work in the world, whether that be the town council or President Bush—or, for that matter, whether the next president be Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama. (After all, neither one could possibly be as bad as Nebuchadnezzar was, and Jeremiah made it clear to the exiles that they were to submit themselves to his rule.) Certainly, while our government is imperfect, it generally strives to reward those who do good and punish those who do wrong, and thus is generally in line with God’s purpose for it; for in that way, we are encouraged to turn away from evil and do what is right. As such, we’re called, for instance, to obey the speed limit to avoid punishment—a ticket, in that case—but also, Paul says, “because of conscience”—in other words, because our laws and police are part of the structure by which God brings order to the world for our good. And of course, this means that we’re called to pay the taxes the law requires, for that is the most basic way in which we submit ourselves to the authorities over us; the power to tax is the fundamental power for any government.

Is it enough, however, to obey the laws and pay taxes? Perhaps it was in Paul’s time, or in Jeremiah’s time; but not in our time, and especially not for those of us who live in democratically-based societies. The underlying point in this passage from Romans is, I think, that we are called to be good citizens, and good citizens who remember that our government’s authority rests on the God who created it to serve his purposes, whether our government remembers that or not; and in democratic nations, being a good citizen carries a few more responsibilities than it did in the days of the Roman Empire. Similarly, if we truly believe that the command to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you” applies to us, that means we need to take those responsibilities seriously.

You’ll notice that nowhere in this is any command to seek the welfare of one’s own political party, nor is there any defense of a spirit of polarization. Polarization as a fact appears to have its advantages, but the spirit of polarization, which brands those who disagree with us as enemies and exalts winning for one’s side ahead of the good of the whole, is another matter altogether. Our differences are real—I’m not making light of them, nor am I saying we should play them down or pretend they’re unimportant—but I am saying that we need to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. Or at least, if we’re going to see them as enemies, we need to remember that Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Either way, we need to love those with whom we disagree, not treat them with automatic hostility; we need to respect them enough to believe that in most cases, they’re trying to do the right thing as best they see it, rather than assuming that if they disagree with us, it can only be from ignoble motives. We also need to recognize that we aren’t perfect either, and that our own motives are never as pure as we’d like to think.

That means that we need to learn a hard lesson: winning isn’t the most important thing (let alone everything). You’ll notice in his prayer for the Colossians, Paul’s requests aren’t for anything we’d identify as worldly success; rather, he prays that they would know God deeply, that they would live holy lives, that they would be patient, that they would be joyful. Yes, if we’re concerned about a cause, we’re going to be concerned whether it succeeds or fails—but we need to remember that ultimately, that isn’t our responsibility, it’s God’s, because he’s the one in charge. We also need to remember that it might not be in his plan for our cause to succeed, for one reason or another; making that determination isn’t our responsibility either. Our responsibility is to “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him,” in every aspect of life; it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important than political success, and that the ends don’t justify the means; and, dare I say, it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important in our leaders than whether or not they advance our political agendas. (If you don’t believe in the importance of character in leadership, by the way, just talk to any church that’s ever called a pastor who was high on gifts and low on integrity, and you’ll see what I mean.)

Finally, it needs to be said that if our founding political principle is the sovereignty of God, then his word must have final authority for us—which means we must seek as faithful and unfiltered an interpretation of his word as we can. Too often we seek to conform the word of God to our pre-existing biases, causes and agendas, rather than simply letting the Spirit speak; if we want it, God must want it for us, and if somebody objects, well, “God is doing a new thing.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, or in defense of how many different agendas. That’s not the biblical model. The biblical model is that God is the judge of all the earth, he is the one who determines what is just and right, and our job is to conform, whether it suits our preferences or not. Our political efforts should be guided by what he desires and commands, whether we like it or not, whether it’s comfortable or not, whether it’s convenient or not, whether it’s easy or not. We need to resist the temptation to hear what we want to hear, and seek as best we can to hear honestly what he’s saying.

Song of the Week

My post last Wednesday set me off on a Steve Taylor kick; this song of his seems an appropriate bit of reflection for a Sunday morning. (I do wish he'd just written "want to," though . . .)

I Just Wanna Know

Life's too short for small talk,
So don't be talking trivia now;
Excess baggage fills this plane—
There's more than we should ever allow.
There's engines stalling and good men falling,
But I ain't crawling away.

I just wanna know—am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to You.
I just wanna stay angry at the evil;
I just wanna be hungry for the true.

Folks play "follow the leader"—
But who's the leader gonna obey?
Will his head get big when the toes get tapping?
I just wanna know, are they catching what I say?
I'm a little too young to introspect,
And I surely haven't paid all my dues,
But there's bear traps lying in those woods—
Most of 'em already been used.

Chorus

Search me, Father, and know my heart,
Try me and know my mind,
And if there be any wicked way in me,
Pull me to the rock that is higher than I.

Chorus

Words and music: Steve Taylor
© 1985 Birdwing Music/C. A. Music
From the album On the Fritz, by Steve Taylor