1. Remembering a journey.
One summer over two decades ago, I journeyed to the summit of Mount Whitney. It’s 14,505 feet above sea level. As I climbed I exhaled all of my strength into the thin air. The long last effort to the summit was painful. It was hard to keep going. I wanted to quit.
My face was a mask of agony. Except that a mask conceals what is beneath it. But the mask of agony that I wore exactly showed what I felt in every square inch of my body and psyche.
Then I got to the top. It was a joy to be there. I felt grand and happy.
On the journey down from the summit, I met people going up with faces that were, like mine before, masks of agony. That was everybody that I met.
I said what I could to encourage them. I wanted them to succeed. I wanted them to know that the joy of the destination made the agony of the journey completely worthwhile.
2. Journeys of the Bible.
The Bible is a book of journeys.
Adam and Eve journey from Eden to exile with a cherubim with a flaming sword behind them barring the way to the tree of life. The patriarch Abraham journeys from his home to the wilderness to make a pact with God. His grandson Jacob flees from his other grandson, angry Esau. Jacob flees rather than stay to be cut down. After many years, he journeys back to a joyful reunion with Esau. Along the way, he wrestles with God.
He and his children journey to Egypt to escape a famine. His son Joseph journeys there first, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. The rest of the family follows after.
After four hundred years, Moses murders an Egyptian and flees to Midian. Then God reveals himself to Moses in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Moses journeys back to Egypt to lead his enslaved people out of Egypt.
The children of Israel journey in the Sinai for forty years. When it's time for that wandering to end, God stops the waters of the Jordan River, and they cross over dry river-bottom into their inheritance.
The Israelites stay in one place for hundreds of years. In that time, they fall away from God. Then the Israelites go on a new journey – into exile and captivity. After seven decades, a remnant journeys back to the land of their ancestors.
Jesus was itinerant. His story begins with his mother Mary, with child by the Holy Spirit, journeying to visit her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the child who will become John the Baptist. Jesus is born after his parents journey to Bethlehem. The spirit of God tells Jesus’s earthly father Joseph to take his family and flee to Egypt. After the death of King Herod, they journey from Egypt to Nazareth.
Jesus in his time of ministry does not stay in one place. He journeys from city to city, from town to town, and into the wilderness. He journeys to Jerusalem to die.
Mary Magdalene journeys to Jesus’s tombs with spices to make fragrant his corpse. There Jesus, risen from the dead, greets her. He tells her to go and tell the others. A number of disciples journey to see the empty tomb.
The Book of Acts is a book of journeys. It largely chronicles the journeys of Paul to spread the good news of Christianity. It ends with Paul’s journey to Rome, where by tradition his journey ends in martyrdom.
3. The journey to the golden city.
Some Christians believe that heaven comes to them. But Christianity is a journey, a journey like the journeys described in the Bible. It’s a journey to God.
It’s a journey that begins with the decision to make the journey.
On the journey, most pilgrims meet up with other people also making the journey. Such a caravan of pilgrims is called a church.
On the journey, the pilgrim gains skills for the journey. The pilgrim learns about the journeys of others by reading the Bible and in other ways. The pilgrim learns things useful for his or her own journey.
On the journey, the pilgrim learns to pray. Prayer enlists the help of God in the journey; it can help others, too. It may lead to the pilgrim being consciously guided on the journey by God.
Some pilgrims end their journeys too soon. Some stop believing in the heavenly city that lies at the end of the journey. Some think that the journey is a waste of time – they think that God will be along for them with no effort of their own. And that might or might not be true, but that doesn’t mean that God wants his pilgrims to stop advancing on heaven. (But there are seasons of rest.)
Some of us journey in the wrong direction. Some of us journey in circles. Some of us give up or get distracted or grow complacent. I have known giving up.
When we finally give up the ghost, if God finds us along the way where he wants us to be, that is an act of his grace – grace in guidance, grace in strength, grace in faith, and just plain grace.
For each of us, our life, if it is lived well, is lived in movement. That journey might at times be uphill and hard. Mine has been. Life has been like that for many of my friends. But there’s joy at the summit.
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Wildness and the Word of God
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. [Proverbs 26:4 (NIV).]
Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. [Proverbs 26:5 (NIV).]I accept that all of scripture is "God breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16.) So I wrestle with what it means that the Bible says one thing in one place, but another thing in another place.
1. Apology.
Let me be clear: I’m fine with anyone who takes the Bible as historically accurate in all its parts, and without contrast from one part to another. I respect that person. I crave that person’s prayers. I am not superior to that person; I know that, and God bless him or her. I know persons who know the Bible better than I do, and they accept it as literal, perfect history and completely consistent throughout. That’s fine.
Arguments over Biblical literalness and consistency might be like the "foolish controversies" condemned by Paul. (Titus 3:9.) I have no wish to press against anybody a "foolish controversy".
This is written for people who read the Bible, like me, and who find contrasts among its parts. This is for people who wonder: what does this mean?
2. Historical contradictions.
These are examples of what I’m talking about. History in the Bible varies from one part to another.
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 differently describe the creation of the world. For example, in chapter 1, animals were created before man, and man was created to have dominion over them. In chapter 2, man was created first, and the animals were then created to be companions to him. Also, note that in chapter 1 God separated the light from the darkness twice.
David met Saul under two circumstances. A mighty warrior, he was called to sooth King Saul’s tormented spirit with music. (1 Samuel 16.) This is the first description of their meeting. But in 1 Samuel 17, David came to Saul because, as a lad, he slew Goliath.
In Matthew 27, Judas the betrayer hanged himself. In Acts 1, he pitched forward in a field, and his intestines spilled out.
3. Doctrinal differences.
Biblical doctrine also varies from one part to another.
a. Prayer.
Different Gospels say different things about prayer. This is Matthew chapter 6, which encourages short prayers:
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. [NIV.]And yet, Luke chapter 18 has the parable of the persistent widow. An unjust judge gave her justice because she gave him no rest from her petitions. Jesus compared her to believers who come before God with prayer:
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. [NIV]b. God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked.
The speeches of Job’s accusers aren’t wrong. Scripture does say that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Compare Psalm 34 to Job 36 (speech of Elihu). Compare Psalm 112 to Job 8 (speech of Bildad the Shuhite). Compare Proverbs 12:21 to Job 22 (speech of Elipaz the Temanite). Yet Job was righteous, and Job was afflicted. This was true despite these scriptures and the words of Job's accusers. That’s the point of the Book of Job.
c. The Laws of Moses.
Then there is the controversy over what parts of the Law of Moses survive in the New Testament era. Here’s Matthew chapter 5, where the Law is preserved intact and in its entirety:
For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[NIV.]Contrast the letter of the Apostles and Elders to believers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, about whether those believers should accept circumcision and follow the Law of Moses (from Acts 15). This is a pocket-ready version of the Law:
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. [NIV.]d. Faith or faith and works?
And then there is the question: is salvation by faith, or by faith and works? Romans 3:28 says:"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." (NASB.) James 2:24 says: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." (NASB).
Martin Luther believed that these passages could not be reconciled; he wondered if James belonged in the Bible. Attempts to reconcile James and Romans spew like sparks from a fountain-style firework. (Go ahead, Google it.)
As to faith and works and James and Romans, I don’t know if this part of Matthew ties the twain, or if it makes a middle ground:
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. [Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV).]But reconciliation might not be needed.
4. Plausible explanations?
There are plausible explanations for these differences.
a. Scope to the writers.
All scripture is God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16.) But that doesn’t mean scripture is God-dictated. God gave scope to the writers for their own personalities and opinions and traditions to enter into what they wrote. And because their personalities and opinions and traditions differed, the writings differed.
b. The Bible is pastoral.
Also, the Bible is pastoral; it leads people to God and salvation. Contrasts could be explained in that vein.
So differences among writers in the Bible might reflect differences among believers or circumstances. It might be important for some believers to pray persistently and at length, like the widow who sought justice from the unjust judge. But God might want to assure other believers that he will not neglect their prayers only because their prayers are brief.
Smug believers might need to hear that God will judge them by what they do or by what they don’t do. Struggling believers who labor and strive and become disheartened by their perpetual failure might need to hear the word of grace.
c. Tethering to the Holy Spirit.
God might not want us to be solely tethered to a book, even the Bible.
The Bible is very, very important to a believer. A believer who doesn't travel deeply into the Bible neglects a resource that can draw him upward to God.
But God might not intend for us to rely upon the Bible to the neglect of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. The mysteries of scripture bring us to God in prayer, and certainly it is a mystery why the Bible says one thing in one place and another thing in another. When we come to God in prayer, that invites the Helper to guide us. And that help might be so important that anything that brings us to it is a boon and not a detriment as some see it.
5. The vitality of the word.
Here’s a thought: maybe the whole issue of consistency and inconsistency needs to be hissed at.
The Bible is a book apart. The Word of God has a unique brilliance. In its brilliance there is something wild and unmanageable.
In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis said of his Christ-figure, the lion Aslan, that he was "not a tame lion." Maybe if we worry about contrasts in the Word of God, we err by trying to impose on it a buttoned-down quality, a tameness.
So in judging the Word of God like we might judge a witness in a theft trial or a mere philosophical essay, we fail to see its wildness and its vitality. This is a vitality that no mortal mind can contain. It stops us from judging the Bible as we might judge lesser literature.
6. The writers weren’t troubled.
The holy persons who wrote scripture fully knew of the contrasts among its parts. The two proverbs at the beginning of this piece, about answering a fool, appear literally side-by-side. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are sequential chapters. The two ways that David met Saul are only one chapter apart.
If making the Bible less mysterious were the first goal of the writers of scripture, the solution would have been easy. They simply could have deleted one version or the other.
But that wasn’t done. And that tells me that the writers of the Bible were not unduly troubled by what might trouble a modern believer or by what might excite an unbeliever looking for a reason to un-believe.
The writers of the Bible saw and believed. Believers today can read and likewise believe.
7. The final word is God’s.
Perhaps it’s right to think of the Bible, at times, as a debate about God and about God and history. In a way, this debate is like the debate among Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu. None of them were per se wrong. But the winning word, as in the book of Job, will be God’s.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Bible on Itself
The Bible says a lot about itself.
1. (Imperfect) knowledge.
In scripture we know God, but our knowledge will be imperfect.
So says the apostle Peter in his second letter. He speaks of the "lamp" of scriptural prophecy that shines in the "dark place" of our times. He contrasts that lamp shining in a dark place with the coming light of dawning day. 2 Peter 1:19 (ASV):
The imperfect quality of our present knowledge is also told elsewhere in scripture. The apostle Paul says:
The Bible makes clear that scripture is important to the believer. 2 Peter, quoted above, makes this point well when it speaks of the scriptural prophecy as a lamp in a dark place. Other biblical passages also discuss the believer’s need of scripture.
Scripture is useful for our learning, and it gives us comfort and hope. Romans 15:4 (KJV):
3. Potentially dangerous.
But the believer must approach scripture humbly and carefully. Jesus in the desert answered the devil according to scripture, but also the devil used scripture to tempt him.
2 Peter 3:16 cautions the believer against being misled by scripture. Peter speaks of Paul’s letters and of scripture:
4. Moved by God and God-breathed.
The Bible speaks of divine influence in the origins of the Bible. 2 Peter speaks of prophets – "holy men" – speaking as God "moved" them to speak. 2 Peter 1:20-21.
Elsewhere, the Bible speaks of itself as being "God breathed". 2 Timothy 3:16 (ASV):
Sometimes it means the destructive power of God. So, for example, 2 Thessalonians 2:8 (ASV) says:
5. God-breathed like humanity.
Here are my imperfect thoughts on the meaning of God-breathed.
Whatever else God-breathed means, it means that scripture reveals God. Paul says that the Bible is God-breathed; the Bible says that Man was created by the breath of God. Breath and breath. God-breathed Man is God’s likeness. (Genesis 5:1; James 3:9.) Just so, the God-breathed Bible reveals God.
I don’t think that God-breathed means that God himself created scripture in the sense of Psalm 33:6, where the "breath of God’s mouth"created the stars. I don’t think it means that God created scripture in the same way that he created the Ten Commandments. Exodus 24:16 says that God wrote the Ten Commandments and gave them to Moses:
Scripture doesn’t start with the words: "God said:" It doesn’t end with the words, "So said God." Where it quotes God, or it quotes Jesus, it makes clear that it is quoting. When that is not made clear, we are left with poetic words moved and God-breathed to describe God’s role in shaping the words of the Bible. For all we know, that poetic language means different things in different parts of the Bible.
6. Not from the Lord.
God is a moving force behind scripture. But perhaps not all of scripture.
Paul, if fact, makes a point of saying that some of what he says in his letters is not "from the Lord": 1Corinthians 7:10-13 (ASV):
7. Sufficient.
Maybe the Bible says as much about the origin of scripture as we need to know. Maybe the Bible itself must be a mystery, like the mystery of the meaning of many of its parts. Maybe in the brilliant compactness of the Bible, a hint of the Bible’s origin is sufficient.
There are other places to go to learn about the mechanics and origins and inspiration of the Bible. History books can tell us about why certain books were put into the Bible and others were left out. People study the history of the Bible for decades, and among them there is widespread common ground that sometimes even a single book of scripture is spliced together from the writings of more than one author. People have studied non-Jewish texts from before the Hebrew Bible was written. These people have seen a likeness between those texts and parts of the Bible such as some Psalms and Proverbs.
But the Bible does not lay out these mechanics and origins and inspiration. Perhaps this is because these things are external to the purpose of the Bible: they do not make us "wise unto salvation".
8. Conclusion.
I started out talking about Peter’s second letter, which suggests that our knowledge will be imperfect in this world. Paul supports this. And John.
So if scripture is like a lamp compared to dawning day, if we see as through a glass darkly, if we are as children until we come into God’s presence, so be it. We can plumb scripture from youth to old age, and never reach its depth, or the depth of God, in this world.
Paul had a bodily ailment that he prayed for God to cure. But God told him, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthinas 12:9 (ASV).)
I hope I don’t stretch scripture too far to say that God’s word to Paul could apply the same way to our imperfect knowledge from the lamp of scripture. We might want answers more exact than the Bible gives us. But God’s power is made perfect in weakness.
1. (Imperfect) knowledge.
In scripture we know God, but our knowledge will be imperfect.
So says the apostle Peter in his second letter. He speaks of the "lamp" of scriptural prophecy that shines in the "dark place" of our times. He contrasts that lamp shining in a dark place with the coming light of dawning day. 2 Peter 1:19 (ASV):
And we have the word of [scriptural] prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.Peter’s point that scripture illuminates and his point that it does so (relatively) dimly are expressed elsewhere in scripture. For example, Jesus appears unrecognized to certain disciples, after his resurrection. He explains to them how his sufferings were foretold in scripture. He reveals himself, he leaves, and his disciples said, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32 (ASV).) This shows the illuminating power of scripture.
The imperfect quality of our present knowledge is also told elsewhere in scripture. The apostle Paul says:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).)And the apostle John says that we are children compared to the adults that we will become in the presence of God. 1 John 3:2 (KJV):
Beloved, now are we the sons (NIV:children) of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.2. Important to the believer.
The Bible makes clear that scripture is important to the believer. 2 Peter, quoted above, makes this point well when it speaks of the scriptural prophecy as a lamp in a dark place. Other biblical passages also discuss the believer’s need of scripture.
Scripture is useful for our learning, and it gives us comfort and hope. Romans 15:4 (KJV):
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.Scripture gives wisdom. Paul speaks to his disciple Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15 (KJV):
[F]rom a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.Jesus was led to the desert to fast. After he had fasted for 40 days, the devil came and tempted him. Every time, Jesus answered the devil with scripture. Matthew 4:3-10(KJV):
And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.Even before he began his ministry, we see Jesus immersed in scripture. Jesus’s parents left him behind in Jerusalem, realized their mistake, went back, and found him in the Temple, with the teachers. Luke 2:46-47 (ASV):
And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking them questions: and all that heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.So scripture is a lamp; it gives us hope, comfort, and wisdom unto salvation; it gives answers.
3. Potentially dangerous.
But the believer must approach scripture humbly and carefully. Jesus in the desert answered the devil according to scripture, but also the devil used scripture to tempt him.
2 Peter 3:16 cautions the believer against being misled by scripture. Peter speaks of Paul’s letters and of scripture:
[I]n [Paul’s letters] are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. [ASV]So scripture can lift up, but it can also cast down.
4. Moved by God and God-breathed.
The Bible speaks of divine influence in the origins of the Bible. 2 Peter speaks of prophets – "holy men" – speaking as God "moved" them to speak. 2 Peter 1:20-21.
Elsewhere, the Bible speaks of itself as being "God breathed". 2 Timothy 3:16 (ASV):
Every scripture inspired of God (NIV: "God-breathed") is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.This is poetic language. It’s meaning is not obvious. In the Bible, the breath of God has different meanings.
Sometimes it means the destructive power of God. So, for example, 2 Thessalonians 2:8 (ASV) says:
And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth . . ..Also, for example, Isaiah 40:7 (ASV):
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of Jehovah bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass.And Ezekiel 21:31(ASV):
And I will pour out mine indignation upon thee; I will blow upon thee with the fire of my wrath; and I will deliver thee into the hand of brutish men, skilful to destroy.Other times, the Bible speaks of the life-giving breath of God. For example, Genesis 2:7(ASV):
And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Also, Job 33:4 (ASV):
The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.Sometimes the breath of God is the act of creation. Psalm 33:6 (KJV):
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.So the breath of God can stand for a number of things.
5. God-breathed like humanity.
Here are my imperfect thoughts on the meaning of God-breathed.
Whatever else God-breathed means, it means that scripture reveals God. Paul says that the Bible is God-breathed; the Bible says that Man was created by the breath of God. Breath and breath. God-breathed Man is God’s likeness. (Genesis 5:1; James 3:9.) Just so, the God-breathed Bible reveals God.
I don’t think that God-breathed means that God himself created scripture in the sense of Psalm 33:6, where the "breath of God’s mouth"created the stars. I don’t think it means that God created scripture in the same way that he created the Ten Commandments. Exodus 24:16 says that God wrote the Ten Commandments and gave them to Moses:
And Jehovah said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayest teach them. [ASV]Exodus shows that the Bible can say that God wrote something – like it says that God wrote the Ten Commandments. But it makes no such claim in general about scripture.
Scripture doesn’t start with the words: "God said:" It doesn’t end with the words, "So said God." Where it quotes God, or it quotes Jesus, it makes clear that it is quoting. When that is not made clear, we are left with poetic words moved and God-breathed to describe God’s role in shaping the words of the Bible. For all we know, that poetic language means different things in different parts of the Bible.
6. Not from the Lord.
God is a moving force behind scripture. But perhaps not all of scripture.
Paul, if fact, makes a point of saying that some of what he says in his letters is not "from the Lord": 1Corinthians 7:10-13 (ASV):
[U]nto the married I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord, That the wife depart not from her husband (but should she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife. But to the rest say I, not the Lord: If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her. And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave her husband.This is another reason to be careful with scripture.
7. Sufficient.
Maybe the Bible says as much about the origin of scripture as we need to know. Maybe the Bible itself must be a mystery, like the mystery of the meaning of many of its parts. Maybe in the brilliant compactness of the Bible, a hint of the Bible’s origin is sufficient.
There are other places to go to learn about the mechanics and origins and inspiration of the Bible. History books can tell us about why certain books were put into the Bible and others were left out. People study the history of the Bible for decades, and among them there is widespread common ground that sometimes even a single book of scripture is spliced together from the writings of more than one author. People have studied non-Jewish texts from before the Hebrew Bible was written. These people have seen a likeness between those texts and parts of the Bible such as some Psalms and Proverbs.
But the Bible does not lay out these mechanics and origins and inspiration. Perhaps this is because these things are external to the purpose of the Bible: they do not make us "wise unto salvation".
8. Conclusion.
I started out talking about Peter’s second letter, which suggests that our knowledge will be imperfect in this world. Paul supports this. And John.
So if scripture is like a lamp compared to dawning day, if we see as through a glass darkly, if we are as children until we come into God’s presence, so be it. We can plumb scripture from youth to old age, and never reach its depth, or the depth of God, in this world.
Paul had a bodily ailment that he prayed for God to cure. But God told him, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthinas 12:9 (ASV).)
I hope I don’t stretch scripture too far to say that God’s word to Paul could apply the same way to our imperfect knowledge from the lamp of scripture. We might want answers more exact than the Bible gives us. But God’s power is made perfect in weakness.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Faith that Trips
The pastor's sermon was very good. It was about the apostles. Among the apostles, he talked about Judas, the betrayer. His teaching about Judas was sensitive and thoughtful. But it was, in part, false.
Maybe he thought his hearers would lose faith if he spoke the truth. Maybe he feared they would lose their loyalty to him if he spoke factually.
Or maybe he could not choose between truths. Maybe he could not choose between saying the Bible is true and saying what the Bible says. So he tried to finesse the point, but failed.
1. Different reports of Judas’s death.
Because the pastor said, "We all know how Judas died." Er, no. Based on the Bible, we don’t know how Judas died. Because the Bible gives two different reports of Judas’s death. In Matthew chapter 27, Judas regrets delivering up Jesus. He takes his blood money back to the temple, he throws it into the temple, and the he leaves and hangs himself. The priests collect the blood money and buy a field. The field becomes known as the Field of Blood.
But Acts chapter 1 gives a different report. With the silver he earned by delivering up Jesus, Judas buys the field himself. Then he pitches forward in that field, and he bursts open, and his intestines spill out. Acts agrees with Matthew that the field became known as the Field of Blood.
Here’s the point. We don’t know how Judas died. If we believe Acts, we can’t believe Matthew. If we believe Matthew, we can’t believe Acts. The pastor did not choose between Acts and Matthew, nor did he state both reports. He made as if there were no differences about the death of Judas in different books of the Bible.
2. Different versions of creation.
The Bible seems unworried about telling different stories. The Bible’s first differing stories come early, in its first two chapters.
You can ask yourself: which came first, animals or persons? If you say persons, you disagree with Genesis chapter 1. There, both are created on the sixth day, but animals first. But if you say animals came first, you disagree with Genesis chapter 2. Because there, God creates man first, then livestock, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air. These turn out to be not-good-enough helpers for man, so God creates woman.
3. Different versions of how David met King Saul.
If you still think that the Bible is seamless, read 1 Samuel 16:14-23. Then read 1 Samuel 17. These are different reports about how David met King Saul. 1Samual 16 says that David was a grown man, a good fighter, and he came to Saul to play his harp to sooth Saul’s demon-provoked spirit. 1 Samuel 17 has David too young to accompany his older brothers to war. But when he brings food to his brothers, he kills Goliath. This brings him to Saul’s attention.
4. The Bible’s makers intended to record these different stories.
What do these different stories mean? Were the makers of the Bible unaware of these differences? Certainly not. I am unshakably sure that scripture’s makers knew exactly what was in it.
They could have made the Bible seamless. They could have kept out Genesis chapter 1 or 2; 1 Samuel chapter 16 or 17; and parts of Matthew chapter 27 or parts of Acts chapter 1. But they chose to keep everything in.
I even think that they were content to have in the first two chapters of Genesis two stories that did not mesh. It sent a signal. It made clear at the beginning that the reader should not take every Biblical word literally. It made less likely that readers would impose upon scripture a literalism that its makers did not share.
As to the David stories, it is interesting that the makers of the Bible put the version with David as a man and a fighter before the version with David as a youth. It’s as if the makers wanted to make clear that they included two distinct traditions about the first meeting between David and Saul. The Bible's makers could have first told the story of David the youth, and then the story of David the man; then, it would be easier to read one as a continuation of the other. But the Bible’s makers did not do that.
5. A blessing that the makers could not have foreseen.
There is no reason to treat these different versions like a spouse’s petty-theft conviction that we don’t want anybody to know about. The differences among parts of the Bible are an aid to faith. The conflicts in Genesis and in other books have become important in ways that the Bible’s makers could not have known about in the times that the books of the Bible were made.
Theirs was an age without science as we know it. The Hebrew Bible was written thousands of years before scientists could peer billions of years back in time and trillions of miles into space. It was written thousands of years before geologists studied Earth’s strata to learn how ancient is our world. It was written long before palaeontologists studied fossils.
The Hebrew Bible was written long before our forebears knew that the earth was round and suspended in a void, against the Genesis description of earth separating the waters above and the waters below. It was written long before Galileo discovered that Earth circled the Sun, against the witness of Psalms, Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes.
But Genesis makes the Bible’s lack of accord with science alright. We don’t have to choose between science and the Bible. Because in its first two chapters, the Bible itself makes it clear that it is not a literal description of creation. It does this with unworried contradiction. Before there was science, the authors of Genesis, 1 Samuel, and Matthew/Acts wrote as if to sooth the mind troubled by knowing science and reading scripture.
5. True but not literal.
None of this make scripture less true.
As to Genesis, putting science at the beginning of the Bible would serve neither God nor us. Because an account of the Big Bang theory and natural selection would tell us nothing of the truth that the first chapters of Genesis really are about. This is the truth they tell: that God was immediate to, intimate with, and in control of the creation of the universe and everything in it.
It would not lead to salvation to know that the universe began with a colossal explosion. Nor that genetic mutations over time produced more advanced creatures. Nor that the earth is round instead of flat with waters above and waters below it. Nor that the Earth circles the Sun. These do not help a person get to heaven (but they do not hinder, either). So there was no reason to put these in a book that is really all about God, persons, and salvation.
But to know that God is the beginning of all that there is is useful for salvation. This is especially true if that knowledge is joined with awe.
So Genesis is true, even if it is not literal. And the Bible’s makers had no problem with making clear that it was not literal. This does not take away from its truth.
The truth beneath the two David stories or the two Judas’s-death stories is unclear to me. But that’s the Bible for you. Its basic message is so simple that a young child can grasp it. But you can plumb the Bible from youth to old age, and you will never find the bottom of it.
6. The comfort of literalism is certainty.
Now, to get back to the pastor. He is a man I respect. His sermons make me think. He knows more than I do.
But he encourages his hearers to read the Bible literally, and they encourage him. His hearers applaud when he says things like, "We are not Calvinists; we are Biblicists." His hearers approve when he says, "I don’t want to know what John Calvin says. I want to know what the Bible says." (Note to pastor: John Calvin interpreted the Bible.)
And, of course, his literalism caused him to slip around the fact that Judas dies differently in Matthew than in Acts.
Literalism is attractive because literalism is certain. I have argued before that certainty is valued in America in our time. The security of our lives cocoons many of us, leading to a sense of certainty about the world, and, by extension, about other things. (See below, "Certainty and Uncertainty.") So, in a way, certainty is not a choice we make but a choice that our culture has made for us.
People won’t shake off certainty for no reason. Nobody wants to shake off certainty until it discomforts more than it comforts. I believe that people find so much comfort in certainty that, to hold onto it, they will tightly clasp what they must know is impossible. The church I go to really does believe in the Bible, and I have no doubt that many members read it carefully and often. Many of them have read the passages that I talked about here. But their looking is colored by certainty, so they do not see obvious contradictions.
7. The problem with literalism.
If literalism is a path to salvation, I should not argue against it.
But I do. For one thing, even though I take it less literally than many, I think the Bible is fundamental to guiding people to salvation. And the better people know it, the better it guides them. Literalism is wrong, so it may lead people off-path. If you read something in a way that it was not meant to be read, you might miss something that you might learn if you read it right.
If we read Genesis as a natural history of creation, we might miss its message of God’s immediacy to, intimacy with, and control over creation; not to mention unnumbered other truths that the first two chapters of Genesis hold.
If we think the Bible is always simple and always literal, we don’t understand how deep and rich the Bible is. Then we might to approach it solely by the power of our minds. We are less likely to approach it humbly, prayerfully, and dependently. We need to depend upon God, prayer, and humility, not only the power of our minds, to plumb the Bible.
Also, literalism can harm the weak-in-faith. Based on literal reading of scripture, early missionaries to China calculated for Chinese rulers the date of the creation of the Earth. They were not believable, because Chinese dynastic records predated the supposed date of creation. Likewise, when we tout Biblical literalism, we become a rock of stumbling for people who believe in science.
It can harm the weak-in-faith in other ways. We want believers to read scripture. But their faith might be harmed if they read Genesis, Samuel, Chronicles, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Matthew/Acts and nobody can explain the differences between the passages, or the differences between the Word and the known world.
Biblical literalism should have been officially buried in 1992, when the Catholic Church apologized to Galileo. I regret that it lives on, because it harms.
8. Shedding certainty.
The Bible was not beaten, scourged, and nailed to a cross to die for all and to rise. The Bible points to God, but it is not God.
We should not read into it a literalism that its makers did not share. Instead, we should see it for what it is: simple but rich, straight but complex, all true but not necessarily all literal. We should be ready to read it for a lifetime, but also ready to know that, at the end of our lives, it still will have mysteries. The mystery should provoke us to make more earnest study and to hope in immortal joy with the one who can make clear all that now we see through a glass darkly.
Maybe he thought his hearers would lose faith if he spoke the truth. Maybe he feared they would lose their loyalty to him if he spoke factually.
Or maybe he could not choose between truths. Maybe he could not choose between saying the Bible is true and saying what the Bible says. So he tried to finesse the point, but failed.
1. Different reports of Judas’s death.
Because the pastor said, "We all know how Judas died." Er, no. Based on the Bible, we don’t know how Judas died. Because the Bible gives two different reports of Judas’s death. In Matthew chapter 27, Judas regrets delivering up Jesus. He takes his blood money back to the temple, he throws it into the temple, and the he leaves and hangs himself. The priests collect the blood money and buy a field. The field becomes known as the Field of Blood.
But Acts chapter 1 gives a different report. With the silver he earned by delivering up Jesus, Judas buys the field himself. Then he pitches forward in that field, and he bursts open, and his intestines spill out. Acts agrees with Matthew that the field became known as the Field of Blood.
Here’s the point. We don’t know how Judas died. If we believe Acts, we can’t believe Matthew. If we believe Matthew, we can’t believe Acts. The pastor did not choose between Acts and Matthew, nor did he state both reports. He made as if there were no differences about the death of Judas in different books of the Bible.
2. Different versions of creation.
The Bible seems unworried about telling different stories. The Bible’s first differing stories come early, in its first two chapters.
You can ask yourself: which came first, animals or persons? If you say persons, you disagree with Genesis chapter 1. There, both are created on the sixth day, but animals first. But if you say animals came first, you disagree with Genesis chapter 2. Because there, God creates man first, then livestock, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air. These turn out to be not-good-enough helpers for man, so God creates woman.
3. Different versions of how David met King Saul.
If you still think that the Bible is seamless, read 1 Samuel 16:14-23. Then read 1 Samuel 17. These are different reports about how David met King Saul. 1Samual 16 says that David was a grown man, a good fighter, and he came to Saul to play his harp to sooth Saul’s demon-provoked spirit. 1 Samuel 17 has David too young to accompany his older brothers to war. But when he brings food to his brothers, he kills Goliath. This brings him to Saul’s attention.
4. The Bible’s makers intended to record these different stories.
What do these different stories mean? Were the makers of the Bible unaware of these differences? Certainly not. I am unshakably sure that scripture’s makers knew exactly what was in it.
They could have made the Bible seamless. They could have kept out Genesis chapter 1 or 2; 1 Samuel chapter 16 or 17; and parts of Matthew chapter 27 or parts of Acts chapter 1. But they chose to keep everything in.
I even think that they were content to have in the first two chapters of Genesis two stories that did not mesh. It sent a signal. It made clear at the beginning that the reader should not take every Biblical word literally. It made less likely that readers would impose upon scripture a literalism that its makers did not share.
As to the David stories, it is interesting that the makers of the Bible put the version with David as a man and a fighter before the version with David as a youth. It’s as if the makers wanted to make clear that they included two distinct traditions about the first meeting between David and Saul. The Bible's makers could have first told the story of David the youth, and then the story of David the man; then, it would be easier to read one as a continuation of the other. But the Bible’s makers did not do that.
5. A blessing that the makers could not have foreseen.
There is no reason to treat these different versions like a spouse’s petty-theft conviction that we don’t want anybody to know about. The differences among parts of the Bible are an aid to faith. The conflicts in Genesis and in other books have become important in ways that the Bible’s makers could not have known about in the times that the books of the Bible were made.
Theirs was an age without science as we know it. The Hebrew Bible was written thousands of years before scientists could peer billions of years back in time and trillions of miles into space. It was written thousands of years before geologists studied Earth’s strata to learn how ancient is our world. It was written long before palaeontologists studied fossils.
The Hebrew Bible was written long before our forebears knew that the earth was round and suspended in a void, against the Genesis description of earth separating the waters above and the waters below. It was written long before Galileo discovered that Earth circled the Sun, against the witness of Psalms, Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes.
But Genesis makes the Bible’s lack of accord with science alright. We don’t have to choose between science and the Bible. Because in its first two chapters, the Bible itself makes it clear that it is not a literal description of creation. It does this with unworried contradiction. Before there was science, the authors of Genesis, 1 Samuel, and Matthew/Acts wrote as if to sooth the mind troubled by knowing science and reading scripture.
5. True but not literal.
None of this make scripture less true.
As to Genesis, putting science at the beginning of the Bible would serve neither God nor us. Because an account of the Big Bang theory and natural selection would tell us nothing of the truth that the first chapters of Genesis really are about. This is the truth they tell: that God was immediate to, intimate with, and in control of the creation of the universe and everything in it.
It would not lead to salvation to know that the universe began with a colossal explosion. Nor that genetic mutations over time produced more advanced creatures. Nor that the earth is round instead of flat with waters above and waters below it. Nor that the Earth circles the Sun. These do not help a person get to heaven (but they do not hinder, either). So there was no reason to put these in a book that is really all about God, persons, and salvation.
But to know that God is the beginning of all that there is is useful for salvation. This is especially true if that knowledge is joined with awe.
So Genesis is true, even if it is not literal. And the Bible’s makers had no problem with making clear that it was not literal. This does not take away from its truth.
The truth beneath the two David stories or the two Judas’s-death stories is unclear to me. But that’s the Bible for you. Its basic message is so simple that a young child can grasp it. But you can plumb the Bible from youth to old age, and you will never find the bottom of it.
6. The comfort of literalism is certainty.
Now, to get back to the pastor. He is a man I respect. His sermons make me think. He knows more than I do.
But he encourages his hearers to read the Bible literally, and they encourage him. His hearers applaud when he says things like, "We are not Calvinists; we are Biblicists." His hearers approve when he says, "I don’t want to know what John Calvin says. I want to know what the Bible says." (Note to pastor: John Calvin interpreted the Bible.)
And, of course, his literalism caused him to slip around the fact that Judas dies differently in Matthew than in Acts.
Literalism is attractive because literalism is certain. I have argued before that certainty is valued in America in our time. The security of our lives cocoons many of us, leading to a sense of certainty about the world, and, by extension, about other things. (See below, "Certainty and Uncertainty.") So, in a way, certainty is not a choice we make but a choice that our culture has made for us.
People won’t shake off certainty for no reason. Nobody wants to shake off certainty until it discomforts more than it comforts. I believe that people find so much comfort in certainty that, to hold onto it, they will tightly clasp what they must know is impossible. The church I go to really does believe in the Bible, and I have no doubt that many members read it carefully and often. Many of them have read the passages that I talked about here. But their looking is colored by certainty, so they do not see obvious contradictions.
7. The problem with literalism.
If literalism is a path to salvation, I should not argue against it.
But I do. For one thing, even though I take it less literally than many, I think the Bible is fundamental to guiding people to salvation. And the better people know it, the better it guides them. Literalism is wrong, so it may lead people off-path. If you read something in a way that it was not meant to be read, you might miss something that you might learn if you read it right.
If we read Genesis as a natural history of creation, we might miss its message of God’s immediacy to, intimacy with, and control over creation; not to mention unnumbered other truths that the first two chapters of Genesis hold.
If we think the Bible is always simple and always literal, we don’t understand how deep and rich the Bible is. Then we might to approach it solely by the power of our minds. We are less likely to approach it humbly, prayerfully, and dependently. We need to depend upon God, prayer, and humility, not only the power of our minds, to plumb the Bible.
Also, literalism can harm the weak-in-faith. Based on literal reading of scripture, early missionaries to China calculated for Chinese rulers the date of the creation of the Earth. They were not believable, because Chinese dynastic records predated the supposed date of creation. Likewise, when we tout Biblical literalism, we become a rock of stumbling for people who believe in science.
It can harm the weak-in-faith in other ways. We want believers to read scripture. But their faith might be harmed if they read Genesis, Samuel, Chronicles, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Matthew/Acts and nobody can explain the differences between the passages, or the differences between the Word and the known world.
Biblical literalism should have been officially buried in 1992, when the Catholic Church apologized to Galileo. I regret that it lives on, because it harms.
8. Shedding certainty.
The Bible was not beaten, scourged, and nailed to a cross to die for all and to rise. The Bible points to God, but it is not God.
We should not read into it a literalism that its makers did not share. Instead, we should see it for what it is: simple but rich, straight but complex, all true but not necessarily all literal. We should be ready to read it for a lifetime, but also ready to know that, at the end of our lives, it still will have mysteries. The mystery should provoke us to make more earnest study and to hope in immortal joy with the one who can make clear all that now we see through a glass darkly.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Certainty and Uncertainty
The apostle Paul saw and heard the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel. He is a hero of the biblical book of Acts. We study his life and letters two-thousand years later.
You’d think that such a man would believe that he knew what he knew. But no. Paul knew that his knowledge was narrow and hindered by life in this world:
We Americans today are unlike Paul. At the risk of simplifying: spiritually, we are a People Who Know. We do not, like Paul, know the limits of our knowledge. The Unknown is a stranger to us.
Instead, we make a friend of Certainty. We are certain about religion. We are certain about scripture. We are certain that scripture is inerrant. And we are certain about our interpretation of scripture. We believe that scripture is easy, and that to interpret it, we need only to "believe" it, which often means to read it literally. Sometimes, a biblical answer is as simple as finding a Bible verse on an internet-Bible search engine.
Because we are certain about scripture, and because we are certain that we understand it, we are certain about our salvation. We quote Acts 16:31:
We are certain because our world seduces us into false confidence. Technology hides spiritual risk behind the mirage of easy living.
See how we live. Jets whisper us to far places. Computers in our cars warn us about engine problems before we are stranded on the freeway. Unemployment insurance protects us from the economic wreck of job loss (somewhat), and social security and 401(k) plans shelter us in old age. Police and firemen are a 9-1-1 call away, and 9-1-1 also summons an ambulance to rush us to an emergency room. Please do not infer that I am against these things; I say only that they hide the uncertainty of life in this world by making our lives more cocooned than the lives of our forebears.
Our forebears were moved to accept uncertainty by the uncertainty of the lives that they lived. In this country, they might leave behind what they knew and travel for months by wagon to the unknown. Death along the way was a known risk – death by heat, cold, hunger, thirst, sickness, injury, or attack. Pioneers carried guns because government protection was days or weeks away. Their wagons carried supplies that they would need, because chances to re-supply were few. A lame animal could doom a family.
Even urban life in times past had risks that are rare in our time and in our country. In times past, doctors could help only if you did not get too sick. A wound that modern medicine easily treats could be deadly in the times before antibiotics. Doctors did not wash their hand or clean their surgery tools before cutting into flesh, because they did not know about germs. Pregnancy came with danger, and birth came with only a hope that the child would live to adulthood. This was important, because children were the chief hope for livelihood in old age.
There was no social safety-net.
Diseases regularly decimated populations.
So the lives of our forebears were filled with risks that our own are not. Our benign world must affect the way we see our God, our lives, and ourselves. It leads us to see differently than we would see if we lived in the harsh world of our forebears. The ease and seeming-certainty of our material world mask the danger and uncertainty of the spiritual life.
The world of our forebears taught the right lessons; ours misleads us. They were hardscrabble; we are rich. And riches, we know, deceive. (Matthew 13:22.)
We are all on a countdown to the end of life. This countdown has no visible clock that tells us when our time will be up. That uncertainty is a metaphor for the uncertainty, corporeal and spiritual, of our lives. We turn away from this broad uncertainty at our own risk.
This is the beginning of my argument that we should bind uncertainty to our hearts.
You’d think that such a man would believe that he knew what he knew. But no. Paul knew that his knowledge was narrow and hindered by life in this world:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).)Paul freely confessed the limits of what he knew.
We Americans today are unlike Paul. At the risk of simplifying: spiritually, we are a People Who Know. We do not, like Paul, know the limits of our knowledge. The Unknown is a stranger to us.
Instead, we make a friend of Certainty. We are certain about religion. We are certain about scripture. We are certain that scripture is inerrant. And we are certain about our interpretation of scripture. We believe that scripture is easy, and that to interpret it, we need only to "believe" it, which often means to read it literally. Sometimes, a biblical answer is as simple as finding a Bible verse on an internet-Bible search engine.
Because we are certain about scripture, and because we are certain that we understand it, we are certain about our salvation. We quote Acts 16:31:
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (KJV)We are more certain than we should be.
We are certain because our world seduces us into false confidence. Technology hides spiritual risk behind the mirage of easy living.
See how we live. Jets whisper us to far places. Computers in our cars warn us about engine problems before we are stranded on the freeway. Unemployment insurance protects us from the economic wreck of job loss (somewhat), and social security and 401(k) plans shelter us in old age. Police and firemen are a 9-1-1 call away, and 9-1-1 also summons an ambulance to rush us to an emergency room. Please do not infer that I am against these things; I say only that they hide the uncertainty of life in this world by making our lives more cocooned than the lives of our forebears.
Our forebears were moved to accept uncertainty by the uncertainty of the lives that they lived. In this country, they might leave behind what they knew and travel for months by wagon to the unknown. Death along the way was a known risk – death by heat, cold, hunger, thirst, sickness, injury, or attack. Pioneers carried guns because government protection was days or weeks away. Their wagons carried supplies that they would need, because chances to re-supply were few. A lame animal could doom a family.
Even urban life in times past had risks that are rare in our time and in our country. In times past, doctors could help only if you did not get too sick. A wound that modern medicine easily treats could be deadly in the times before antibiotics. Doctors did not wash their hand or clean their surgery tools before cutting into flesh, because they did not know about germs. Pregnancy came with danger, and birth came with only a hope that the child would live to adulthood. This was important, because children were the chief hope for livelihood in old age.
There was no social safety-net.
Diseases regularly decimated populations.
So the lives of our forebears were filled with risks that our own are not. Our benign world must affect the way we see our God, our lives, and ourselves. It leads us to see differently than we would see if we lived in the harsh world of our forebears. The ease and seeming-certainty of our material world mask the danger and uncertainty of the spiritual life.
The world of our forebears taught the right lessons; ours misleads us. They were hardscrabble; we are rich. And riches, we know, deceive. (Matthew 13:22.)
We are all on a countdown to the end of life. This countdown has no visible clock that tells us when our time will be up. That uncertainty is a metaphor for the uncertainty, corporeal and spiritual, of our lives. We turn away from this broad uncertainty at our own risk.
This is the beginning of my argument that we should bind uncertainty to our hearts.
Friday, October 22, 2010
God, Madness, and Me
Madness changed the way I see myself and the way I see God.
Madness for me was foraging in dumpsters and looking for places to sleep out of the wind. (Orange groves are bad. Bushes next to freeways are good.) It was disembodied voices and a terrible vision. It was lying strapped to a gurney, howling while a hospital staff-member taunted me. It was hard, degrading, and scary.
I’m well now.
I won’t tell much about my life as a homeless lunatic. Not now, at least. Truth is, before today I've told this story to few people, and I've told the whole story to nobody. I worry that people will look down on me.
But if I keep the larger part of the story to myself, I will at least tell you a truth of its effect. This trauma led me to reject some beliefs that I shared with most American Christians. It fundamentally changed my cozy, easy ideas about God. It shifted the earth under me, and it cleared my mind.
My madness did not draw me closer to God. It did sharpen my belief in him. I know that he exists like I know the lines in my hand. But my experience was the opposite of rapture. It brought me no joy. It deepened me; it sobered me.
My Christianity was not cursory before my madness. I was a long-time churchgoer. I was a deacon at my Presbyterian church. I tithed. I took courses at a theological seminary in Pasadena. I left a career as a public prosecutor to travel to China, where, under an American Christian-service organization, I taught law at Chinese colleges and universities. I spent years absorbing scripture daily, sometimes for hours. I had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation several times in several translations.
After my madness, I lost my hunger for scripture. Lately, the Bible has seized my attention again. I don’t know where this inspiration comes from, but I welcome it.
I haven’t gone without biblical musings in the years between my trauma and now. Based upon years of study, I could draw upon a pool of knowledge. These musings confirmed an accord between the Bible and what I learned from my season of madness. I believe that still as I test my beliefs by studying the Word.
The Spanish painter Francisco Goya became deaf. After his deafness, he produced paintings that were literally and emotionally dark, even monstrous. My theology after my madness became dark like Goya's paintings after his deafness.
From this dark place, I see a tidal wave coming. It's like madness taught me to reckon water that pulls back to sea that foretells a destructive wave to come. I worry for people, that they don't see this, that they don't talk about it, that they don't take steps to live and not to die.
Instead, I sense that America makes happy-talk about God and salvation. We are an optimistic people, and our theology is optimistic: God is kind, salvation is easy, and Hell is a place for people worse than us. Our material comfort fools us into a false sense of a benign universe and a tolerant God. God is tolerant, but only to a point.
This is because the stakes are supremely high. We want the world to be a pleasure boat, but it's a liberty ship trying to take us to safety through a sea filled with a dangerous enemy that seeks our harm. A liberty ship demands sterner discipline that a cruise ship.
So I speak out to warn. I feel like the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem. He started on a voyage that seemed at first ordinary. But he and his fellow seamen were swept to a far-away, harsh sea. He sinned grievously. All died on this supernatural voyage but the mariner. He returned to the living to tell his sobering tale. It’s not a perfect simile, but like the "grey beard loon" of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I think my journey gives me something important to tell. I have done this a little in past posts, and I plan to do it more in the future.
And yet:
Madness for me was foraging in dumpsters and looking for places to sleep out of the wind. (Orange groves are bad. Bushes next to freeways are good.) It was disembodied voices and a terrible vision. It was lying strapped to a gurney, howling while a hospital staff-member taunted me. It was hard, degrading, and scary.
I’m well now.
I won’t tell much about my life as a homeless lunatic. Not now, at least. Truth is, before today I've told this story to few people, and I've told the whole story to nobody. I worry that people will look down on me.
But if I keep the larger part of the story to myself, I will at least tell you a truth of its effect. This trauma led me to reject some beliefs that I shared with most American Christians. It fundamentally changed my cozy, easy ideas about God. It shifted the earth under me, and it cleared my mind.
My madness did not draw me closer to God. It did sharpen my belief in him. I know that he exists like I know the lines in my hand. But my experience was the opposite of rapture. It brought me no joy. It deepened me; it sobered me.
My Christianity was not cursory before my madness. I was a long-time churchgoer. I was a deacon at my Presbyterian church. I tithed. I took courses at a theological seminary in Pasadena. I left a career as a public prosecutor to travel to China, where, under an American Christian-service organization, I taught law at Chinese colleges and universities. I spent years absorbing scripture daily, sometimes for hours. I had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation several times in several translations.
After my madness, I lost my hunger for scripture. Lately, the Bible has seized my attention again. I don’t know where this inspiration comes from, but I welcome it.
I haven’t gone without biblical musings in the years between my trauma and now. Based upon years of study, I could draw upon a pool of knowledge. These musings confirmed an accord between the Bible and what I learned from my season of madness. I believe that still as I test my beliefs by studying the Word.
The Spanish painter Francisco Goya became deaf. After his deafness, he produced paintings that were literally and emotionally dark, even monstrous. My theology after my madness became dark like Goya's paintings after his deafness.
From this dark place, I see a tidal wave coming. It's like madness taught me to reckon water that pulls back to sea that foretells a destructive wave to come. I worry for people, that they don't see this, that they don't talk about it, that they don't take steps to live and not to die.
Instead, I sense that America makes happy-talk about God and salvation. We are an optimistic people, and our theology is optimistic: God is kind, salvation is easy, and Hell is a place for people worse than us. Our material comfort fools us into a false sense of a benign universe and a tolerant God. God is tolerant, but only to a point.
This is because the stakes are supremely high. We want the world to be a pleasure boat, but it's a liberty ship trying to take us to safety through a sea filled with a dangerous enemy that seeks our harm. A liberty ship demands sterner discipline that a cruise ship.
So I speak out to warn. I feel like the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem. He started on a voyage that seemed at first ordinary. But he and his fellow seamen were swept to a far-away, harsh sea. He sinned grievously. All died on this supernatural voyage but the mariner. He returned to the living to tell his sobering tale. It’s not a perfect simile, but like the "grey beard loon" of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I think my journey gives me something important to tell. I have done this a little in past posts, and I plan to do it more in the future.
And yet:
Come now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that. [James 4:13-15.]Still, these are my plans.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Christians, Nut Up.
We Christians are wont to hiss like punctured air hoses when we are criticized by outsiders. We cast a baleful eye at celebrated mockers like Bill Mahar, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. We resent films like Religulous
and books like The God Delusion
and God is Not Great. Books and films like these make us ache for the quick return of the Lord, so that these Christian-mocking miscreants speedily will be separated from their smug sense of superiority. "Amen", we say.
1. Placing the blame.
But these architects of anti-faith have powerful allies. Their allies are us. Jesus said,
2. Knowing our natures.
I think this places blame where it belongs. We are soiled. Increasingly, I nod grimly when I think of the biblical prophet Isaiah saying, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .." (Isaiah 6:5 (ASV).) Lies are commonplace in our culture, from bottom to top.
And we love our money and our comfort. We live without qualm to the limit of our means, or beyond it. We buy cars big enough to host hockey games in; now that America is retreating from vehicular behemoths, it is not religious restraint that drums retreat, but the high price of gasoline. We squeeze into the pews of churches that assure us that God wants us to be rich.
Our love of money and comfort crowds out our love of God because we are rich. In America, the rich don’t repose only in Bel Air; compared to people in biblical times, virtually any resident of Colton, California is rich. And among nations, America is a rich nation.
Therefore it is dangerous for us to ignore how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. But we don't worry; we clamber upon our camels and amble toward the eye of the needle that stands between us and the kingdom. (Mark 10:25.)
We don't know the Bible as we once did. Instead, we draw our principles from what we put in front of ourselves. We learn ethics from eight seasons of the television series "24", rather than from an equal number of seasons with the Bible.
The Bible instructs that:
3. Changing our thinking.
Reckless before chasm-sized topics, I suggest, as a start, three modifications of modern American theology.
First, we need to reevaluate our understanding of God’s grace. We seem to believe that salvation is like buying software online, putting a checkmark in the box next to "I agree". So easy.
Here’s a bleaker simile: we are like diners satiating ourselves at the table of sin, and when the grim reaper presents the tariff, we jerk our thumbs over our shoulders and say, "Give that to that guy over there, dying on the cross."
Theologian Dietrich Bohnhoeffer surveyed the doctrine of grace in his native Germany before the outbreak of World War II. He saw a country like ours, awash in belief in cheap grace. We all know how that turned out then: Christianity in Germany did not resist the war, and it did not resist the mass murder of the Jews.
Bohnhoeffer wrote a study of grace called The Cost of Discipleship
. It’s no light read; it requires much time and close attention. But it rewards the reading of it.
Second, we must learn to fear God. This is so biblical that it cries out from the pages of scripture. For example, "[Jehovah] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; He also will hear their cry and will save them." (Psalms 145:19 (ASV).) And "Jehovah taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his lovingkindness." (Psalms 147:11 (ASV).) And "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge . . .." (Proverbs 1:7 (ASV).) And "[B]e not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (ASV).)
Some mornings as I go into the courthouse, I hear lay preachers preaching hellfire and brimstone to the people lined up to go through the metal detectors. I confess, I groan inwardly. This is partly my reaction to the indecency of forcing a biblical harangue upon a captive audience. But it’s also partly that I don’t think that these lay preachers really fear God; they reveal more condescension than love and trembling. Fear of God must be more than lip service; it must be a holy dread.
Third, we would do well to have less confidence in our own salvation. This walks against the wind of popular "assurance of salvation." And yet I find nothing in scripture that establishes assurance of salvation. Instead, I read of a mere remnant of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to their homeland from Babylonian captivity. I read of many disciples abandoning Jesus when he teaches hard things. (John 6:26-66.) I read Matthew 7:21-23:
4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines.
Those are suggestions about how to think about our God and ourselves. What then do we do? This is another mountain, one that I’ll try to scale in two paragraphs.
When a flight attendant gives instructions about emergencies, she tells the passengers to put the oxygen cup over their own air passages before helping other passengers. That’s probably pretty good advice for spiritual growth.
Therefore study. Learn. Grow. This, like almost everything else I have touched on so far, is a huge subject, not exhaustible in a blog post. So I’ll just say where to get direction. Aside from the Bible, I recommend three books. Richard Foster wrote a modern classic called Celebration of Discipline
. One great thing about Foster’s book is that he lists other resources. I also recommend Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Don Postema’s Space for God 
is good for group study.
5. Conclusion.
I have said grim things. Maybe I’m a crank. But I urge an antidote to the free, easy, empty Christianity of our time. Who wants to spend a lifetime in church and an eternity apart from God? I fear that too many of us will be mocked in Gehenna for our unfinished towers. (Luke 14:28-30.)
John the Baptist said to the multitudes who came to him to be baptized, "Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Luke 3:7 (ASV).) Forget who warned us; let's be warned.
I started out this post by mentioning our dislike of criticism by professional skeptics and others. But here is a saying: "Take care of your character, and your reputation will take care of itself." This should be the Christians' response to our critics.
Note:
I cite books, from the rank to the sublime, in the text. Where I cite a book, I usually provide a link to that book on Amazon.com. I provide the link only for your convenience. If you want the book, great; but it doesn’t matter to me where you get it.
and books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Books and films like these make us ache for the quick return of the Lord, so that these Christian-mocking miscreants speedily will be separated from their smug sense of superiority. "Amen", we say.1. Placing the blame.
But these architects of anti-faith have powerful allies. Their allies are us. Jesus said,
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. [Matthew 5:13 (ASV)]The simple, sorry truth is that when enemies of faith tread on people of faith, it is because we have lost our saltiness. The would-be debunkers aren’t to blame; we are. When our adversaries tread us under foot, they only prove that Jesus was right.
2. Knowing our natures.
I think this places blame where it belongs. We are soiled. Increasingly, I nod grimly when I think of the biblical prophet Isaiah saying, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .." (Isaiah 6:5 (ASV).) Lies are commonplace in our culture, from bottom to top.
And we love our money and our comfort. We live without qualm to the limit of our means, or beyond it. We buy cars big enough to host hockey games in; now that America is retreating from vehicular behemoths, it is not religious restraint that drums retreat, but the high price of gasoline. We squeeze into the pews of churches that assure us that God wants us to be rich.
Our love of money and comfort crowds out our love of God because we are rich. In America, the rich don’t repose only in Bel Air; compared to people in biblical times, virtually any resident of Colton, California is rich. And among nations, America is a rich nation.
Therefore it is dangerous for us to ignore how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. But we don't worry; we clamber upon our camels and amble toward the eye of the needle that stands between us and the kingdom. (Mark 10:25.)
We don't know the Bible as we once did. Instead, we draw our principles from what we put in front of ourselves. We learn ethics from eight seasons of the television series "24", rather than from an equal number of seasons with the Bible.
The Bible instructs that:
[W]hoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea. [Matthew 18:5-6 (ASV).]But the Catholic Church had to take costly instruction from secular courts about protecting children in their care. This is only the most dramatic religious scandal in a society that grows accustomed to religious scandals, or accustomed to scandals of the pious.
3. Changing our thinking.
Reckless before chasm-sized topics, I suggest, as a start, three modifications of modern American theology.
First, we need to reevaluate our understanding of God’s grace. We seem to believe that salvation is like buying software online, putting a checkmark in the box next to "I agree". So easy.
Here’s a bleaker simile: we are like diners satiating ourselves at the table of sin, and when the grim reaper presents the tariff, we jerk our thumbs over our shoulders and say, "Give that to that guy over there, dying on the cross."
Theologian Dietrich Bohnhoeffer surveyed the doctrine of grace in his native Germany before the outbreak of World War II. He saw a country like ours, awash in belief in cheap grace. We all know how that turned out then: Christianity in Germany did not resist the war, and it did not resist the mass murder of the Jews.
Bohnhoeffer wrote a study of grace called The Cost of Discipleship
. It’s no light read; it requires much time and close attention. But it rewards the reading of it.Second, we must learn to fear God. This is so biblical that it cries out from the pages of scripture. For example, "[Jehovah] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; He also will hear their cry and will save them." (Psalms 145:19 (ASV).) And "Jehovah taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his lovingkindness." (Psalms 147:11 (ASV).) And "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge . . .." (Proverbs 1:7 (ASV).) And "[B]e not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (ASV).)
Some mornings as I go into the courthouse, I hear lay preachers preaching hellfire and brimstone to the people lined up to go through the metal detectors. I confess, I groan inwardly. This is partly my reaction to the indecency of forcing a biblical harangue upon a captive audience. But it’s also partly that I don’t think that these lay preachers really fear God; they reveal more condescension than love and trembling. Fear of God must be more than lip service; it must be a holy dread.
Third, we would do well to have less confidence in our own salvation. This walks against the wind of popular "assurance of salvation." And yet I find nothing in scripture that establishes assurance of salvation. Instead, I read of a mere remnant of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to their homeland from Babylonian captivity. I read of many disciples abandoning Jesus when he teaches hard things. (John 6:26-66.) I read Matthew 7:21-23:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. [ASV]Acts 2:21 superficially seems to contradict Matthew 7:21-23:
And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.In light of Acts 2:21, what of those of Matthew 7:22 who prophesied, cast out demons, did mighty works "by thy name", and were not saved? On the day of judgment, they could only say "Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:22), not the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21). The reconciliation of these two passages is this: not all who claim Jesus in their lives on Earth will be permitted to call on the name of the Lord on the day of judgment.
4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines.
Those are suggestions about how to think about our God and ourselves. What then do we do? This is another mountain, one that I’ll try to scale in two paragraphs.
When a flight attendant gives instructions about emergencies, she tells the passengers to put the oxygen cup over their own air passages before helping other passengers. That’s probably pretty good advice for spiritual growth.
Therefore study. Learn. Grow. This, like almost everything else I have touched on so far, is a huge subject, not exhaustible in a blog post. So I’ll just say where to get direction. Aside from the Bible, I recommend three books. Richard Foster wrote a modern classic called Celebration of Discipline
. One great thing about Foster’s book is that he lists other resources. I also recommend Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Don Postema’s Space for God is good for group study.5. Conclusion.
I have said grim things. Maybe I’m a crank. But I urge an antidote to the free, easy, empty Christianity of our time. Who wants to spend a lifetime in church and an eternity apart from God? I fear that too many of us will be mocked in Gehenna for our unfinished towers. (Luke 14:28-30.)
John the Baptist said to the multitudes who came to him to be baptized, "Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Luke 3:7 (ASV).) Forget who warned us; let's be warned.
I started out this post by mentioning our dislike of criticism by professional skeptics and others. But here is a saying: "Take care of your character, and your reputation will take care of itself." This should be the Christians' response to our critics.
Note:
I cite books, from the rank to the sublime, in the text. Where I cite a book, I usually provide a link to that book on Amazon.com. I provide the link only for your convenience. If you want the book, great; but it doesn’t matter to me where you get it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)