Category: Theology

The cult of evangelical celebrity

The cult of evangelical celebrity

“It’s fun to be somebody’s god, for a little while.”

I still remember hearing that line from the lips of a well-known Christian pastor.

It has truth to it. I’ve felt it in rare moments. And he meant it as a warning.

To be a person’s “god” is to be the proverbial frog in boiling water: The hot tub is luxurious, until it cooks you.

In a few months, this same famous pastor would resign amid a cloud of scandal.

In his case (unlike some recent ones), the charges were not of sexual misconduct, but of ego run amok, a lack of accountability for someone deemed “too big to fail,” and a tendency to use celebrity as a “Find and Replace” for integrity when the cameras were switched off.

On second thought, perhaps it’s not so different from the recent sexual scandals involving well-known church leaders.

A common denominator (to misquote Eisenhower) is what I’d like to christen as “The (evangelical) celebrity industrial complex.”

A MUST-READ

In one of the more important blog posts of the year, Andy Crouch submits that it’s time for evangelicals especially to reckon with the insidious danger of celebrity power (Read here).

The reason for the “reckoning” is noted in his Introduction.

In three separate cases [this week] in my immediate circles, a person with significant power at the top of an organization, each one a subject of flattering major media exposure during their career, was confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct and related misdeeds.

All three were […] seen as among the most exemplary Christian leaders of their generation.

Since the article, still more allegations have surfaced against the most famous of these leaders—and he has since resigned while not admitting guilt.

Several of these charges come from high-profile female leaders, one a former CEO of Zondervan, alleging that the well-known pastor pressured them to bring wine and meet alone with him on his private jet, his private yacht, and his private beachside vacation home.

Like Crouch, I choose not to name the leader for at least two reasons. First, I do not know if the allegations are true.  And secondly, to focus on the “Name” may be to perpetuate one aspect of our problem: a fixation on the famous people and their escapades: their yachts, their private jets, their beachside villas.

It sounds like a Jay-Z song.

Like it or not, the church is hardly different than the culture in its celebrity addiction. And the culture is rife with it.

One need look no further than the contexts from which we now choose our leaders–The Apprentice, The Terminator, The Oprah.

Crouch again:

In the Oval Office of our country sits a man [… who] is simply brilliant at manipulating the power of celebrity.

He has colonized all of our imaginations—above all, one suspects, the imaginations of those who most hate him, who cannot go an hour in a day without thinking about him.

HOW CELEBRITY POWER IS UNIQUE

But wait a minute; aren’t all forms of authority prone to such corruption?  “Power corrupts,” said Lord Acton, “and absolut… [yada, yada, yada].”

True enough. Yet Crouch makes a key distinction between institutional and celebrity power, especially as the latter is now driven by technology and social media.

Celebrity combines the old distance of power with what seems like its exact opposite—extraordinary intimacy, or at least a bewitching simulation of intimacy. 

It is the power of the one-shot (the face filling the frame), the close mic (the voice dropped to a lover’s whisper), the memoir (the disclosures that had never been discussed with the author’s pastor, parents, or sometimes even lover or spouse, before they were published), the tweet, the selfie, the insta, the snap. All of it gives us the ability to seem to know someone—without in fact knowing much about them at all, since in the end we know only what they, and the systems of power that grow up around them, choose for us to know.

Crouch’s claim is that “institutions” of power have been largely replaced by individuals—celebrity leaders—whose charisma is both branded and broadcast (via technology) in order to achieve an illusion of intimacy with millions of followers.

Yet in this process, we create idols who behave like monsters—in part, because they both crave and (ironically) resent the fame now thrust upon them.

“It’s fun to be somebody’s god, for a little while.”

“DEAR BROTHERS” ~BETH MOORE

As proof, note how the problem with sexism (and sexual misconduct) often interfaces with the cult of celebrity within the evangelical world, as in others.

Hear the powerful words of the conservative Bible teacher Beth Moore on the subject (here):

About a year ago I had an opportunity to meet a theologian I’d long respected. I’d read virtually every book he’d written. I’d looked so forward to getting to share a meal with him and talk theology. The instant I met him, he looked me up and down, smiled approvingly and said, “You are better looking than ____________________.” He didn’t leave it blank. He filled it in with the name of another woman Bible teacher.

While this sounds almost tame compared to the exploits of Weinstein and Cosby, it still raises questions for the average, decent person.

“Who talks like this!?  What kind of person thinks this is an appropriate way to begin a conversation, let alone with a woman, let alone with a preacher, let alone with a female preacher you have never met!?”

Answer: a celebrity.

Because part of the business of fame is the conscious and unconscious learning that you get special treatment.

“When you’re a celebrity they let you do it. Grab them by the __________.”

ANOTHER KIND OF POWER

There are exceptions of course.

Not all celebrities leverage fame toward abusive or destructive ends. And it’s easy to be critical  from the cheap-seats. After all, who’s to say how celebrity would affect me?

“It’s fun to be somebody’s god,” until it isn’t.

One point, however, is how different this pursuit of fame and famous people differs from the way of Jesus. At various points in the Gospels, Christ was thrust onto the very cusp of (ancient) celebrity.

In John, after feeding five thousand people, we learn that the crowds had decided to “make him king by force” (Jn. 6.15).

This, after all, is one way celebrities are minted—almost without the permission of the one cast into the limelight. In some cases, a gifted and talented individual wakes up to find (almost to their chagrin) that they have been made into the “face” of an industry or movement overnight, without ever intending to be.

“I never asked for this,” they think – “I was just trying to speak truth, make art, or craft music.”

Too bad.

You’ve been made “king” by force. And the only way off the ride is to push the self-destruct button.

Or is it?

Christ chose a different path. He didn’t self-destruct exactly, but he did intentionally put the kibosh on the celebrity sausage-maker (a very unkosher metaphor).

After this same miracle, he says the following:

I am the bread that has come down from heaven. […] Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part in me.

The publicists stopped calling after that one.

And the next time they “made him king by force,” it involved a crown of thorns.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus flees the crush of the adoring crowds in order to pursue more meaningful relationships, to pray, and to reenter the region of obscurity. Prophets are made in the wilderness, after all, not on the red carpet, and not in the Twitter-verse.

Crouch:

The visible image of the invisible God left no portrait. The one time he wrote, he wrote in the dust (Jn. 8.6). He had a different way of using power in the world, a way that turned out to outlast all the emperors, including the Christian ones.

He offered no false intimacy—his biographer John said that he entrusted himself to no one, because he knew what was in every person’s heart (Jn. 2.24 –25) —but he kept no distance, either.

He let the children come to him. He let Mary sit at his feet and let another Mary wash his feet with her tears. Hanging naked on a cross, he forgave, blessed, and made sure that yet another Mary would still have a son.

His power, truly, was not of this world.

If there is a solution to the evangelical celebrity industrial complex, it’s in reclaiming this strange kind of power.

Abby’s story

Abby’s story

This week I spend some time with one of my students–Abby Powell–talking about how Christ rescued her from an environment of drugs, abuse, broken marriages, and periods of homelessness.

The assumption sometimes is that “ministers” (or ministry majors, as Abby is) come from “safe” Christian homes in which they were taught the gospel at an early age.

Some do.

But not all.

Before feeling called to study ministry, Abby tells how she was homeless, sleeping on a lice-infested mattress, and wondering where God was.

Despite that, she is one of the most joyful and gifted people you will ever meet.

Beyond that, she shares how her encounter with Christ led to a transformation, not only of her own life, but those of her mom and twin sister as well.

Regardless of your story, I hope the interview is a powerful reminder of the radical and all-pursuing love of Christ.

abbypic

(Note: Apologies for some background noise; My university office is not a completely sound proof environment!)

Resurrection and Down Syndrome

Resurrection and Down Syndrome

Last week was Easter.

And in the Gospels course I teach, we spent time reading on the nature of the Resurrection.

As Scripture teaches, Jesus’ resurrected body was both like and unlike his prior one.

It bore deep scars of crucifixion, yet it no longer suffered, died, or was ravaged by disease.  His new body was “glorious” in a sense unlike the mortal one, and it did things—like passing through a locked door—that transcend normal limitations.

In other words, Christ’s resurrection life is physical sans fallenness. Or in the words of N.T. Wright, it is supra-physical.

This becomes even more relevant to us because, according to Paul, the same will happen to our bodies in the Age to Come.

Christ is the “first fruits” of resurrected humanity (1 Cor. 15.20), hence what happened to him will also happen to his people.  As Paul writes in Philippians:

the Lord Jesus Christ … will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body (Php. 3.20–21).

And in 1 Corinthians:

42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15.42–44).

But what does any of this have to do with Down Syndrome?

WHAT WILL MY SIBLING BE LIKE IN THE RESURRECTION?

In our class discussion, I pointed students to an article written by my friend, Ryan (R.T.) Mullins. He is a PhD theologian from St. Andrews, and his sister (Kelli) has Down Syndrome.

In the article, he interacts with voices from the field of “Disability Theology,” and in particular the theologian Amos Yong.  Like Ryan, Yong’s sibling (Mark) also has Down Syndrome.

But despite a common desire for the church to be more inclusive toward those with disabilities, the two thinkers (Yong and Mullins) come to different views on how the resurrection may transform their loved ones with Down Syndrome.

First, for Yong:

  1. TO ELIMINATE THE DISABILITY IS TO ELIMINATE THE PERSON (YONG)

Following Stanley Hauerwas, Yong contends that to eliminate his brother’s disability would be to eliminate his brother’s unique personhood and personality.  As Yong asks:

If people with Down Syndrome are resurrected without it, in what sense can we say that it is they who are resurrected and embraced by their loved ones?

It would not be a “healing” but a kind of murder.

After all, Down Syndrome is not a “disease” (from which people are “suffer”) but a chromosomal condition that is constitutive of their unique and beautiful humanity.

An analogy might be the extent to which the “XY” chromosomes are constitutive to my identity as biologically male.  To take that away (say, by giving me the “XX” building blocks) would be to erase an important part of who I am—even if it is not the MOST important part.

One strength behind Yong’s point would seem to rest in the sense that many of us have when interacting with persons with Down Syndrome; this involves the feeling that maybe WE are the ones with a “disability” of a different kind—a loss of childlike wonder, a resistance to joy, and a tendency to misplace our pity in ways that dehumanize others.[1]

But I’ll come back to that…

  1. TO ERADICATE A DISABILITY NEED NOT ERASE THE PERSON (MULLINS)

On the other hand, Mullins takes issue with Yong’s extreme assertion (taken from Hauerwas) that “to eliminate the disability is to eliminate the subject.”

As Mullins writes:

I can imagine, perhaps as through a mirror dimly, my sister Kelli without Down Syndrome. This is because she is not identical to her disability. She has various character traits that are shaped by her Down Syndrome, but they are not causally determined by her Down Syndrome.

It is true … that her disability has shaped her personality, but why think that she would need to be continually disabled in order to retain that personality?

A RESURRECTED IMAGINIATION

While there is much more to Mullin’s argument, I want to focus on a single phrase within the quote above: “I can imagine…”

Because while Yong’s treatment of disabilities in the Age to Come seems to spring from noble motives, it may also suffer (at least in my view) from a lack of biblical imagination.

Going back to Jesus, we saw that his resurrected body was both “like” and “unlike” his prior one in certain ways. The marks of wounds were there, but now scarred over. The physicality was real but amplified in power.

Perhaps even his appearance was altered. (Which might explain why some who knew him well apparently had trouble recognizing him [Jn. 20.15; Lk. 24.16].)

There is much we do not know about the life to come.

But that ought not quell our sense of hope and possibility.

EMILY WITHIN THE AGE TO COME 

After class, I brought some of these thoughts to the Dean of my department.

Dr. Weeter is himself a theologian, and the father of a daughter (Emily) with Down Syndrome.   Having known Mark and Emily for years, it was not difficult for my mind to wander to what she might be like ten thousand years from now.

After all, the hope of salvation is for everyone.

Is it possible to imagine Emily (and countless others) with all the beautiful aspects of Down Syndrome, without the accompanying trials? I think so.

Gone would be the heart defects, the vision challenges, and hearing loss that so often come with the condition.[2] Yet gone too would be my sense of misplaced pity or superiority when I and other (so-called) “able-bodied” persons sing next to her within the heavenly choir.

Gone might be certain mind-related limitations in both of us.  But who’s to say who might need more transformation. For Paul, the “darkened mind” had nothing to do with ACT scores; and Christ’s words were that “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18.3).

With that as a pre-requisite for resurrected life, it seems possible that my own transformation from perishable to imperishable may be more dramatic than that of many image-bearers with Down Syndrome.

How recognizable will I be to my loved ones?

Whatever answer there may be to such speculative questions, the hope of Christ remains the same for all:

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep [in death], but we shall all be changed (1 Cor. 15.51).

 

 

On the subject of Resurrection, I’ve been loving the new Andrew Peterson album (Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1):

[1] Credit to my student Sam Thomas for bringing up this point in class.

[2] Thanks to Rylee Kelly (a nursing major) for pointing out these accompanying aspects of trisomy-21 in class discussion.

For more on this subject, see:

Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Waco, 2007).

R.T. Mullins, “Some Difficulties for Amos Yong’s Disability Theology of the Resurrection,” in Ars Disputandi, Vol. 11 (2011), 24–32.

What Seven Thunders Spoke: Why some revelations ought to go unpublished

What Seven Thunders Spoke: Why some revelations ought to go unpublished

The most anxious moment for a blogger is the second just before one hits the button labeled “Publish.”

It is a point of no return.

And it can raise nervous questions:

Will someone try to get me fired for saying this?

Will it be misunderstood?

Could I have phrased this better?

Come to think of it: Is the very exercise of “blogging” only slightly less narcissistic than a suggestive teenage selfie, emblazoned with an out-of-context Bible verse?

(Shut up inner voice! I rebuke you in the name of #Jeremiah_29.11!)

ON PRIVACY SETTINGS

Of course, such questions are not entirely unique to bloggers.

We all wrestle with our “privacy settings.”

And we all hit “Publish” in one way or another.

Hast thou a mouth that thou canst speak?

Hast thou a camera on thy smartphone?

Despite the mild anxiety, the wrestling match can be helpful. Because strange as it may sound in our age of TMI, some “revelations” ought to go unpublished.

Here’s what I mean:

THE SEVEN THUNDERS

In the trippy tell-all book of Revelation, John of Patmos says this about the so-called Seven Thunders:

4 And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down” (Revelation 10.4).

The command seems somewhat odd, since John is elsewhere ordered to “Write” what he has seen, regardless of its strange or controversial content. Yet in this one instance, just as he is about to click the button labeled “Publish,” the voice of God chimes in–“Don’t do it!!!”

“Do not write this thing that is simultaneously TRUE and NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.”

Did John bristle at the prohibition?

After all, he is not even told the reason for the divine censorship.  He simply gets a very pressing prompt: “Do not write it down.”

Whatever could this have to do with us?

WHY THUNDERS SPEAK TODAY

As most people acknowledge, we badly need a better ethic when it comes to use of social media these days—whether in The White House or the hands of certain mal-adjusted Junior-Highers (*tries hard to ignore the irony in that sentence).

None of us do this perfectly, including me.

Yet as I’ve thought about the button labeled “Publish” in my own life, there are some obvious reasons why certain “Thunders” might deserve to go unpublished.

Here are just a few:

  1. When the point is expressed in a way that is un-necessarily hurtful or sensational. 

In Romans 14, Paul delivers an interesting command with regard to a first-century squabble over food and drink. While agreeing with those (“the strong”) who saw nothing wrong with eating meat and drinking wine in moderation, he also gave this warning to those who were theologically correct:

20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but … 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

In essence, it’s possible to be “Right” in your view, and yet “Wrong” as you press them to the point of harm.

And while this is not a blanket condemnation of all sharp rhetoric (see Jesus, Paul, and pretty much any other biblical prophet), it is a caution against words that are intended merely to get a rise out of others.

  1. When the motive for the telling has been twisted.

Another danger of the Internet is our ability to track how much attention we receive for any given action.

It is the pathology of analytics, and it breeds “tricks for clicks.”

There is thus a constant pressure to say things that will maximize “exposure.” And in some cases, exposure is precisely the right word: as in a cause of death for mountain climbers, and a misdemeanor involving the “indecent.”

In truth, our motives are almost always mixed.

And our aims are often hidden from us.

Is there not a certain irony in this very blog post!? (Inner voice, I warned you!)

As a one of my old professors used to say: “We are a bundle of contradictions”—wanting simultaneously to be seen and to stay hidden. Thus we lock ourselves in the Panopticons of Instagram and Facebook, while grasping feverishly for fig leaves.

Come to think of it: How do I turn off notifications for the Seven Thunders…?

  1. When the “Publishing” may do more harm than good.

I joked in a prior post that the Hebrew word blogger translates roughly to “Not helping.”

And like all humor, it’s only funny if there is truth to it.

On that point, I often wonder if some Christian attempts (including my own…) to “speak prophetically” do not actually make the situation worse (See here for more along those lines).

In such moments, we end up as the theological equivalent of those trying to ban books. The result is always a bestseller, even when the book is lame.

On the other hand, this so-called “Hippocratic worry” can lead to dangers of its own. It may mean cowardly silence in the face of injustice or a dangerous equation of positions that are actually quite different (See here on how this happened with white pastors in the Civil Rights era).

The fear of offending may also lead to a weak-kneed, boring style of writing that lacks punch, humor, and engagement with issues that actually matter.

“I never discuss anything but politics and religion,” remarked Chesterton, “There is nothing else to discuss.”

While that’s not quite true, it is certainly true enough to discourage the politico-religious equivalent of spaying or neutering our public discourse.

Sometimes we should speak up (as the saying goes) even if our voice shakes.

CONCLUSION

Despite such qualifiers, the reminder of Revelation 10 is both simple and profound: Some points are not (yet) meant for public consumption, despite their honesty or truth-value.

And so we end as we began: in that moment just before the “Publish.”

Listening for revelation, and for the quiet voice that might say “Do not write it.”

Still learning how to say “Perhaps”

Still learning how to say “Perhaps”

Over the past few months, I’ve been working up a book proposal based on a blog post from 2016:

“Christian, learn to say ‘Perhaps'”

It’s about reclaiming what I call the sacred middle ground between “Doubt” (pervasive skepticism) and “Dogmatism” (abrasive certainty).

The alternative is something that I’ve dubbed “Faith seeking imagination” (fides quaerens imaginationem).

I’m excited about the project, and I hope to hear back from a publisher this month.

In the meantime, I had the chance to preach on the topic last Sunday–using the story of Gen. 22 (Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac) as a guide.

My big idea was fairly simple: Sometimes, believing in God’s supernatural providence means learning how to say “Perhaps.”

Priscilla versus John Piper

Priscilla versus John Piper

An Open Email from “Apollos of Alexandria”

Is it too much to wish that our departed saints might occasionally return to Earth in to “weigh in” on our contemporary issues?

Probably.

The heavenly commute can be a doozy.

Still, I found myself wishing this past week that “Priscilla” of the early church might come do for John Piper what she once did for another gifted but ill-informed male preacher.

Namely:

“[explain] to him the way of God more adequately” (Acts 18.26).

I speak specifically of Piper’s recent claim that women should NOT be allowed to serve as seminary professors.

A CAVEAT

Before adding yet more fuel this fire (after all, the Hebrew phrase for “Not helping” is pronounced Blogger), a brief caveat is in order:

I do not think that all so-called “complementarians” are the sexist trolls that they are sometimes painted as — many are just trying to be true to Scripture.

And I am thankful for John Piper’s ministry in certain ways.

His book Desiring God was a game-changer for me.  I respect that he holds true to his convictions even when he knows they are unpopular.  And I’ve greatly appreciated some of his statements on racial reconciliation and the need for evangelicals to proclaim the gospel over (say) partisan politics.

I don’t dislike Piper.

But I do disagree with what he said last week.

“I SUFFER NOT A WOMAN”

And while I understand his argument, I couldn’t help but note that it might come as a surprise to the greatest (male) preacher of the early church: Apollos of Alexandria.

As the book of Acts implies, Apollos received his “seminary education” partly from Priscilla, who took his gift for persuasive rhetoric and combined it with what he lacked: a more nuanced theology (Hmm…).

Could she not do that for someone else?

Say, a Baptist from Minnesota?

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Piper would listen to Priscilla.

After all, she is a woman.

Perhaps though it might be possible to get a letter through—or at least, an email. Not from Priscilla, but from the famous man that she helped train for ministry: Apollos.

Would Piper listen to him?

Thankfully, it just so happens that I’ve “found” just such an email.

And lest some doubt its authenticity, consider this:

  1. It resides on the same (non-existent) email server as all those Bible verses that say women can’t be seminary Profs.
  2. It came from an “AOL” account, so I know it’s from the first century.

Subject: RE: “I suffer not a woman”

Date: Friday, January 26, 2018 at 3:04 PM CST (Celestial Standard Time)

From: Apollos of Alexandria (Apollos_Creed777@aol.net)

To: John Piper

Attachments: The Book of Acts

 

Dear John,

Can I call you John?

I realize it may sound informal, but when you’ve been on a first name basis with “Paul,” you mostly drop the honorifics.

I’ll get right to it; I think you know why I am writing.

While I respect your attempt to be faithful to those passages that might seem to prohibit women from the full usage of their Spirit-given gifts, you know full well that there are other (well-supported) readings of those texts (see here, here, here).

My goal though, John, is not to swap proof-texts (of which I have my own…).

Instead, it is merely to recount my story, because as you will see—WE HAVE MANY THINGS IN COMMON:

  1. Like you, I was highly educated: While you got your PhD in Germany (Meine Glückwünsche!), I was trained in Alexandria. No biggie, but our old “school library” was way more famous.
  2. Like you, I was steeped in a patriarchal culture: If people think you value “male headship,” they should have seen me in my day! (That is, before I met a certain female teacher.)
  3. Like you, I became a gifted preacher—with scores of loyal “fan boys.” I don’t like to brag, but I’ve been called the greatest preacher of the early church. And while YouTube wasn’t there in the first-century, I’m confident that my “followers” rivaled yours in zealotry. Almost. (See 1 Cor. 3: “I follow Apollos…”).
  4. Like you, I brought my baggage with me to the task of biblical interpretation: We all do. So while you moderns often think you’re obeying the “literal” and “plain sense” word of Scripture, the reality is (sometimes) more complicated.
  5. And like you, I had not fully grasped the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit. As you know from the book of Acts (see attached), my great shortcoming was that I “knew only the baptism of John.”

Despite my gifting and my influence, I had not yet fully realized the change that happened as God’s Spirit was poured out “on all flesh” (Acts 2.17).

On all flesh, John.

In Acts 2, it specifically, it says that “sons and daughters,” “men and women” will join the ranks of God’s prophets. (Have you not read of the daughters of Philip? Have you not heard of Phoebe’s role as a the first interpreter of Romans? Have you not heard of Junia, the apostle?)

To be blunt, my friend, I fear that in this sense (though not in others), you too “know only the baptism of John.”

Which brings me to Priscilla.

“PROFESSOR” PRISCILLA

Let me remind you about her:

She was a Gentile, high-born, and well-educated.

She was a member of the Roman nobility, and better schooled than most all women of the period. (Picture: Lady Mary from Downton Abbey. You know you watched it, John).

Yet she married a Jew, who was a former slave.

It was not only an interracial marriage, but also a union across classes.

“Aquila” wasn’t even his real name.

As ancient records show, it was likely the name of her family—which he took on through marriage

Did you catch that John? He took her name. (I know!!!)

Their marriage showed the full extent to which the Spirit transformed boundaries between race and class and (yes) gender!

The couple was, of course, from Rome—but they moved East as refugees when Claudius expelled the Jews.

Since Priscilla wasn’t Jewish, she could have stayed amongst her family, wealth, and privilege. But she didn’t. Talk about mutual, voluntary submission!

It was around that time that I met them.

As you can relate, I had come into the local “pulpits” with a heady mix of knowledge, boldness, and a penchant for robust debate (Sound familiar?).

But there was one thing I lacked—a fuller understanding of the Spirit’s work.

Ironically, given my great learning and my patriarchal background, it took a female “seminary Prof” to teach that to me.

As a fellow Jew, “Aquila” also helped. (I don’t want to discount his role!) But as you might guess, it was Priscilla who had the academic pedigree to explain to me “the way of God more adequately.”

Their union was a parable for what the New Covenant looks like.

God brings together different races, classes, AND GENDERS for the work of training and equipping Christian ministers.

Actuality implies possibility, John.

And the fact that God used this gifted and well-educated woman to train me shows that he can do it for others—even you.

In fact, to deny this (fittingly, on account of your own name!) is to prefer only “The baptism of John.”

 

Sincerely,

Apollos of Alexandria

 

For a related post, see “The Other Phoebe: Why an alleged chauvinist chose an ordained woman to deliver the world’s most influential letter” (here).

Note: Evidence on the family background of Priscilla and Aquila was taken from Reta Halteman Finger, Roman House Churches Today for Today, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

Is beauty a guide to God?

Is beauty a guide to God?

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.”

Thus begins the poignant novel by Julian Barnes (Nothing to Be Frightened Of).

The story represents a wrestling match with mortality in a post-Christian age. Yet my interest in it pertains to a much narrower topic: what one might call the Aesthetic Argument for faith; that is, the argument from beauty.

The question runs as follows:

Can the experience of beauty be a guide to God?

The possibility is raised by James K. A. Smith in his recent book, How (Not) to Be Secular. In his words:

[Barnes] seems, if not tempted, at least intrigued by an aesthetic argument […] : that religion might just be true simply because it is beautiful. “The Christian religion didn’t last so long merely because everyone believed it,” […] It lasted because it makes for a helluva novel.  

“A helluva novel.”

While there are several classical arguments for God’s existence (see Aquinas’ Five Ways), it should not surprise you that this isn’t one of them.

Yet consider also the words of a very different source, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). As he writes:

The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb.

For the former Pope: sainthood speaks to “goodness,” while artwork points to “beauty.”

Yet as Rod Dreher notes (here), neither goodness nor beauty are, strictly speaking, arguments at all.  But they can be gateways to truth—like what Francis Schaefer called “pre-evangelism.”

They are, to use the phrase of N.T. Wright, “the echo of a voice.”

The idea, for both Barnes and Benedict, is that even atheists and agnostics have moments in which they are—for lack of a better word—ambushed by an aching beauty.

And more specifically, a beauty that bespeaks Transcendence.

Amidst doubt and skepticism, there comes a haunting sense that the world is “charged with the grandeur of God” (Hopkins).  And at certain moments: “it will flame out like shining from shook foil.”

Behold the (non-)argument for God from beauty.

EVOLUTIONARY ART 

But surely there is a natural explanation for this feeling. Right?

Indeed, several thoughtful ones have been proposed.

The most popular evolutionary argument (see here) for how art emerged has to do with its benefits in attracting mates. We have art, so to speak, because the artist got the girl and produced offspring

(That’s true actually.  Just ask my wife.  Incredibly, my youthful musical skills managed to mask both my acne and my near total lack of long-term earning potential. We have four kids.)

Still, there is a problem with the purely evolutionary argument.

In short, it tells us why artists might a procreative advantage now, but it fails to show why anyone should have found such art beautiful or moving in the first place.

As should be obvious, the meaning must precede the mating, or there is no evolutionary advantage to such artistry.

And to all appearances, this beauty-conciousness is hard-wired into us.

To be human is to be unique as homo artifex.

And there are few analogues within the animal kingdom. My dog leaves the room when I pull out the guitar, and she was mostly “meh” on last year’s Oscar nominees.

We alone seemed awed by beauty. Perhaps, then, the former Pope and the agnostic author (Barnes) were on to something.

Life itself is, to quote Barnes, “a helluva novel.”

But do not all novels have an Author?

NOT PROOFS, PERSISTENT WHISPERS

In the end, my own view is that there are no ironclad “proofs” of God’s existence—much less of the more specific question of “Which god?”

Metaphysics doesn’t work that way.

And perhaps it’s for the best.

Because in the worst cases, such “proofs” come into conversations like Elijah’s earthquake on the mountaintop. They thunder through the internet and through theology textbooks.

But as with Elijah:

“the LORD was not in the earthquake” (1 Kings 19).

If you want proofs, take math.

The Christian God desires trust sans certitude.

Hence, as with Elijah: He comes (often) in the “whisper” (1 Kings 19.12).

Thankfully, however, in moments of transcendent beauty, such whispers can be annoyingly persistent.

“The lower classes smell”

“The lower classes smell”

Why our ideas matter less than we think.

Back in 1937, George Orwell claimed this about the divisions within British society:

The real secret of class distinctions in the West can be summed up in four frightful words: The lower classes smell (~Road to Wigan Pier).

The statement sounds offensive and reductionistic. Perhaps it is.

Yet Orwell’s goal was actually to challenge his fellow highbrow socialists on whether their ideas about dismantling the class structure were actually strong enough to work in the field—where people live, and sniff.

In the words of James K. A. Smith (citing Wigan Pier):

Orwell’s point is that the root of class distinctions in England is not intellectual but olfactory.  The habits and rhythms of the system are not so much cerebral as visceral; they are rooted in a bodily orientation to the world that eludes theoretical articulation, which is why theoretical tirades also fail to displace it. … “For no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a physical feeling.”

In other words, you cannot solve a gut-level problem with a philosophy.

The visceral trumps the voluntary; fundamental dispositions are more caught than taught; and the “nose” (now speaking metaphorically) is mightier than the brain.

Now the kicker:

Almost every other kind of discrimination could be countered theoretically, with the weapons of facts, ideas, and information, “But physical repulsion cannot.”

What does this have to do with us?

Just this:

In America, we seem to have entered a cultural-political climate in which both sides are “physically repulsed” by one another. Sickened, even.

And sometimes for good reason.

Yet if this is so, then one should strongly question our ability to bridge the gap with education, rational discourse, or (gasp) blog posts. Orwell’s point is this: revulsion trumps reason every time—try as we might to overcome it.

In short, our “ideas” are not nearly as important for the way we engage the world as we would like to think.

As Smith argues, we are not primarily “thinking things” as Descartes posited. Nor even “believing things” as much of Christian culture claims. Even demons believe (Jms. 2.19).

For Smith, both of these mistaken anthropologies place too much emphasis upon the cognitive realm (“ideas”), whereas the Bible focuses more upon reforming the heart, the gut, or even “the bowels.”  (Even the biblical references to renewal of the “mind” are not given in a Cartesian sense.)

We are primarily loving-desiring beings.

And as such, much of our behavior is the product of pre-cognitive, affective, gut-level, and visceral reactions.

“The lower classes smell.”

But how does one disciple the olfactory senses?

How do “the bowels” get redeemed?

Next time.

 

See James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (here). For a less academic version of Smith’s argument, see You are what you love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (here).

Jesus + Wine

Jesus + Wine

I’ve been behind on blogging lately as I’ve been working on other writing projects (more on that soon!).

As a partial remedy, here is a sermon that I preached Sunday on one of my favorite passages: Jesus turning water into what would have amounted to 757 bottles (do the math) of the choicest wine (Jn. 2).

Contrary to popular portrayals of Christianity–both by detractors and adherents–one takeaway is this: The pursuit of Christ (and holiness) is simultaneously the pursuit of Joy. 

Jesus is not the celestial equivalent of Ned Flanders; he is not a cosmic killjoy.

He is Lord of the Feast, and the bringer of overflowing life.

The wedding feast at Cana proves this, along with many other fascinating things.

As I note in the message, the outline takes cues from Tim Keller’s fantastic sermon: “Lord of the Wine.” Also, for more of the Bacchus / C.S. Lewis connection, see my prior post (here: “Saving Bacchus”).

Hope everyone is having a feast-worthy week!