Category: Theology

In Your Anger, Do Not Sin

In Your Anger, Do Not Sin

Question: How many of your best decisions have emerged from a fit of seething rage?

Last week, as I watched interviews with disgruntled BREXIT voters, a common theme emerged. Several had voted “Leave” as a way of expressing the anger of being left behind by their economy. They were upset, and perhaps for some good reasons.

Yet as the pound plummeted, markets dived, and the (potential) implications of the vote set in, some on the “winning” side expressed regret:

“It was simply a protest vote. I was angry. I felt like no one was listening, and I wanted to voice my frustration. I wish we could have a do-over.”

Comedians had a field day.

Despite the humor, this also brings up a serious point: Anger can be both warranted and dangerous. When we’re angry, we don’t think clearly. We throw off cost-benefit analysis, and sometimes, it comes back to bite us.

Thus the ancient words of Paul:

“In your anger, do not sin” (Eph. 4.26).

Or to paraphrase: “In your anger, don’t be stupid.”

WHY ANGER IS NEEDED

It is important, however, to note what Paul does not say. His command is not “Don’t be angry.”

Anger can be righteous and redemptive. Jesus got angry. And if things like hunger, racism, and gross incompetence don’t raise your ire, then there is something wrong with you.

When guided by the Spirit, anger can be the spark that lights the fuse of righteous action. Yet a controlled demolition of unjust structures is what’s needed, not a random bombing of anything in the vicinity. Anger (like TNT) is capable of both.

WHY ANGER IS NOT A VIRTUE

While anger jolts us out of apathy, it is not a virtue. If seen as one, then we end up assuming (wrongly) that the shrillest voice is that of wisdom. It is not.

Several commentators saw this phenomenon behind the rise of Donald Trump. While other candidates said: “I understand your anger,” Trump yelled “I am the angriest!” and then set out to show IN ALL CAPPS that he was the most fiery option on menu—a habanero amongst bell peppers; a boy amongst men. It worked. For awhile.

But few people enjoy an exclusive diet of habaneros for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are—how shall we put it—digestive repercussions. And the same is true with anger.

MY ANGER ISSUES

I wish I were immune from this.

I’m not.

This is “moving week” for us, which has involved one-hundred degree temps, inspectors who can find safety violations in a bar of soap, a moving company that suddenly does not have the truck we “reserved” (word used loosely), a scheduling mistake by PSO that delayed necessary repairs, and an electrician who turned out not to be licensed, leaving us with an expensive job that the city would not approve. Add to this three small children, a funeral message, a Sunday sermon, and (oh yeah) actually moving, and it was a volatile cocktail.[1]

All this came to a head as I worked to remove belongings from an attic that made Dante’s Inferno seem like a crisp fall day. “Why do we even have this [stuff]!?” I fumed. And instead of carrying said belongings down the stairs, I began to launch them through the attic opening as if I were manning the bomb bay in an old-time Flying Fortress. To complete the metaphor, several exploded.

It felt really good. Until I had to clean it up.

Sic semper ira.

Thus always with anger.

CONCLUSION

 

In sum, this post is simply a reiteration of the apostle Paul, said mostly to myself.

“In your anger, do not sin.” Also:

Realize that some things are not worth getting angry about.

Take a deep breath.

Don’t take things out on innocent bystanders.

And in your anger, don’t make a mess that takes far longer to cleanup than the one you were angry about in the first place.

Now, off to move more boxes…

 

 

[1] In truth, all these problems eventually worked out better than I could have hoped for. But in the moment, things were frustrating.

The house of mourning: a post for those who grieve, in memory of Daniel Berg

The house of mourning: a post for those who grieve, in memory of Daniel Berg

One year ago, I stood next to the bed of my brother-in-law, and watched him die.

Daniel was only thirty: funny, young, and handsome. He was a loving husband to my youngest sister, who is perhaps the kindest and strongest person I know. They were still newlyweds.

Livi and Daniel

This death, and the terrible decline that preceded it, are the worst things I have ever witnessed. ALS is insidious. And despite endless ice buckets dumped on countless heads, no cure exists.

Daniel in couch

Watching Daniel die changed me. While I have no claim to the kind of grief borne by my sister and by his more immediate family, Daniel’s passing stole some measure of my innocence.

In movies, death is valorized and sanitized, but there is one thing the films get wrong: death’s color. On screen, the deceased look like they are merely sleeping. But Daniel did not look like that. While he died painlessly, I could not join others in kissing his face, holding his hands, or stroking his hair.

I just wanted to get out of there—to flee the room, avert my gaze, cover up his body—anything to escape the pallor that had replaced his former complexion. The image scarred me. I still see it.

As the theologian John Zizioulas writes:

“There is no greater contradiction than a dying being” (Being as Communion).

Death is an affront, or as Paul writes, an “enemy” (1 Cor. 15.26). It is an intruder in God’s good creation.

A GRADUATION FALSEHOOD

That is why I wriggled uncomfortably in my chair last month as I heard a graduation speaker (and pastor) affirm the words of the late Steve Jobs:

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

This may sound nice at first, but when applied to actual people–a son or daughter, a spouse or friend–it is insulting and absurd.

“Skubalon,” as Paul would say (Php. 3.8). Excrement.

It is wrong because it treats human beings like excess inventory at a used car lot: Act now! – older models must go! 

Skubalon.

Death is not Life’s best creation, and while Jobs said it, he did not actually believe it. If he had, he would not have fought so furiously (and valiantly) to fend off this great “invention.”

For those who mourn—and there are many—such platitudes don’t wash against the image of a departed loved one.

The bony hand of death cannot be manicured, bejeweled, and made pretty. It is always ugly, always cold, always an offense. True, we are often glad to know that a loved one is no longer suffering, and that they are “with Jesus.” But it is not death we celebrate; it is the cessation of pain, and their presence with God.

Death remains an enemy combatant.

A DOUBLE CRUELTY 

And then there are those left behind. For the bereaved, a double cruelty of death is that the wider world simply continues on as if nothing much has changed. A continent has been wiped off the map, and the cartographers have scarcely noticed.

“It’s as if they are erasing him,” my sister said once to me, amid the flood of paperwork to change her marital status, her mortgage listing, her tax information. But the people sending medical bills remembered.

This “double cruelty” is poignantly depicted in Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, All the Light we Cannot See. In a scene set in World War II, a young French girl stands in the empty room of a departed loved one:

[It] smells of peppermint, candle wax, six decades of loyalty. […] German sailors sing a drunken song in the street, and a house spider over the stove spins a new web every night, and to [her] this is a double cruelty: that everything else keeps living, that the spinning earth does not pause for even an instant in its trip around the sun.

Here, to quote a further line, God can seem like

“only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon, poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, blinking, as [one] is gradually pounded into dust.”

Despair lurks.

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN

The question then is this: Is there an alternative to these two dead ends? First, the delusional attempt to say that death is “life’s best invention.” And second, the lonely despair that finds no comfort.

Perhaps one alternative is a certain kind of grief.

As Paul said, “we do not grieve like those who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4.13). But we do grieve. And that is for the best.

As Nicholas Wolterstorff states in a tribute to a son who died:

“Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved. That worth abides” (Lament for a Son).

Or as Tennyson writes:

            “Let love clasp Grief lest both be drowned” (In Memoriam A.H.H.).

Such words ring truer than false attempts to whitewash death as “Life’s best invention.”

DEATH BE NOT PROUD

Yet more is required to fend off despair.

We need not merely to grieve honestly, we need hope that death is not the end—that the “brief candle,” as Shakespeare called it, shall reignite and “run like sparks through the stubble” (Wis. 3.7).

Death is cocky after years of sway. Understandably.

Yet in the empty tomb of Jesus, there is a hint that “the blood-dimmed tide” (Yeats) has already turned, almost imperceptibly.

“Death, be not proud,” as Dunne wrote, “though some have called thee.”

“One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”

THE EMPTY TOMB

In the months after Daniel’s death, I had a chance to visit Israel with my sister (his widow) and my father. Daniel had always wanted to go. We stood together in the empty garden tomb at Gordon’s Calvary, and cried, and smiled.

emptytomb

Inside, a simple wooden sign reads: “He is not here – he is risen.”

And behind those words, I heard those of Francis Spufford:

“More can be mended than you know.”

For those who mourn as Christians, that hope provides a balance to the bitterness of death. Some sweet wine mixed with the gall. It does not take away the sting of death, but it allows us to walk on, limping. And that limp, like Jacob’s (Gen. 32), is evidence that we have been touched by someone real, someone good, someone eternal.

So if you grieve today, hear these final words of Kate Braestrup:

“Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning; for grief is just Love squaring up to its oldest enemy. And after all these mortal human years, Love is up to the challenge.”

Not here

~In loving memory of Daniel Berg.

 

Why I won’t be attending the evangelical “meet-cute” with Donald Trump (even though I wasn’t asked to)

Why I won’t be attending the evangelical “meet-cute” with Donald Trump (even though I wasn’t asked to)

Last week, it was announced that a veritable troop of “evangelical leaders” has been invited to a closed-door meeting with Donald Trump. The reason, according to Tony Perkins, is to “have a conversation that could lead to a better understanding of what Trump has to offer the country.”

Sadly, I will not attend.

Trump Bible

One reason is that I was not invited. That part is understandable. I am not that important. Then again, my absence is probably for the best. Because unlike Perkins, I have seen quite enough of what Mr. Trump “has to offer the country.”

But aside from not being invited, and not needing more info on what Mr. Trump is “offering,” I also have a third reason for not attending:

I know a“meet-cute” when I see one.

And the outcome of this one feels, sadly, predictable.

What, you ask, is a meet-cute?

THE MEET-CUTE

According to Google—a trusted source for university professors like myself—a “meet-cute” is a scene from romantic comedies in which an odd couple (two people who would never normally see eye-to-eye) comes together through a zany encounter, and finds unexpected chemistry.

In this case, picture John Cusack from Serendipity, except older, orange, and with a comb-over that defies Newtonian physics. Burn that image in your mind. Meditate upon it. Selah.

And as for the meet-cute between Trump and evangelicals, the movie trailer writes itself. (Pro tip: Use that special movie trailer voice).

This summer:

They’re so different! He’s a foul-mouthed billionaire, with misogynistic tendencies, xenophobic tirades, and a penchant for conspiracy theories.

She’s a small town good girl who likes Chris Tomlin records, Beth Moore Bible studies, and has long since “kissed dating goodbye.” It should never work!

But then the unexpected happens. And as Paula Abdul told us, opposites attract.

Coming June 21st (since that’s the date of the meeting).

MY PREDICTION

All kidding aside, I can’t say for certain what will happen at this pow wow between Trump and evangelicals. Perhaps it’s just a chance to speak truth to power. Still, I do have an unfortunate prediction.

My guess is that in the weeks that follow, we should expect an increasing number of statements like the following from the “evangelical leaders” in this romantic tragedy:

While we’ve had differences with Mr. Trump in the past, we were very encouraged by our time together. He really listened to us! And we feel confident that our goals align in many areas.

In the end, this election is just too important for evangelicals to sit out. We must defeat Hillary Clinton in November. And that is why I am prepared to pledge my support to Donald J. Trump for Sultan, I mean, PRESIDENT of the United States.

Sincerely, Dr. Faustus.

Or as a clever cartoonist captioned recently, the revised baptismal declaration runs as follows:

“Do you renounce Satan and all his works?”

“I do. But I’ll still support him if he’s the nominee.”

I’m having a bit of fun with this, but the prediction about more evangelicals endorsing Trump (after the meet-cute of course) is serious. And I hope I’m wrong.

IF I WERE ATTENDING

But since I’m not attending, there are a few things that I would like someone to have a “conversation” about. So if you were invited (Russell Moore; were they brave enough to invite you?), feel free to pass this along.

Or just tweet it.

I’m sure @realDonaldTrump will give a thoughtful response, per usual.

Here goes:

Mr. Trump,

You’ve been reported as saying that “Laziness is a trait in blacks.”[1] Did you mean to include Mexicans in that? Or do you see them as hard working “rapists” and “murderers”?

And about your theology: You brag frequently (as only you can) about your Christian faith. Jerry Falwell Jr. even likened you to Jesus! That’s huge Mr. Trump. Jesus is like the Steve Jobs of the evangelical org chart. I know, I know, you prefer Messiahs who didn’t get captured, but still, take it as a compliment.

Anyway, given all that Christian fervor, Mr. Trump, how is it that you claim NEVER to have asked God for forgiveness? Not even once!? That’s impressive. Maybe you are more Christ-like than even Mr. Falwell thinks. (He can ask you for forgiveness later.)

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of the misogyny, the vulgarity, the extramarital affairs, the over-the-top boasting of sexual prowess, the recent and vocal support for things like abortion, Planned Parenthood, and, oh yeah, Hillary Clinton (as late as 2012).

Then there’s the way you repeatedly misspell the word “White” in your campaign slogan (Seriously, “G-R-E-A-T” isn’t even close, but I guess spellcheck wouldn’t catch that). And the way you repeatedly incite supporters to acts of violence in exchange for legal fees. Classy stuff. Very Christian.

512px-maga-svg

I could go on and on.

But I realize now another reason why I was not invited to the evangelical meet-cute:

I would totally kill the When-Harry-Met-Sally buzz.

CONCLUSION

In closing, I must clarify that this post is not a veiled attempt to support Mr. Trump’s opponent come November. I’m sure that will be the pushback, but it doesn’t fly. Because fears of “the alternative” do not justify complicity with the kind of shameful nonsense detailed above. And endorsements equal complicity.

Likewise, I do not begrudge anyone for attending the meet-cute. I hope they do. (Especially folks like Russell Moore; we need them there.) And I hope they tell Trump, more graciously than I have, why they can’t support him.

But that hope does not change my above prediction.

Whatever happens, one point stands supreme: As Christians, we must remember that the Kingdom of God—and not some partisan loyalty—is our true political affiliation.

Lordship is a political concept after all–and we follow the Lamb. Not the Elephant. Not the Donkey. Certainly not the Donald.

So while many evangelicals may be swayed by the caviar and cocktails (er…, iced tea) at the upcoming meet-cute, I will not be.

And not just because I’m not invited.

Vicit Agnus noster; eum sequamur.

 

 

 

 

[1] Unlike all other quotes in this post, this one alone cannot be corroborated with video evidence (hence the qualifier, “You’ve been reported as saying”). The quote comes from the former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel, John R. O’Donnell, in a Trump biography. When asked about the allegations, Trump did not deny them, saying that “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true. The guy’s a f*#king loser.” This acknowledgement came in Trump’s 1999 interview with Playboy. Again, all very classy.

The Naked God: The Cross and Body Shame

The Naked God: The Cross and Body Shame

The Romans crucified their victims naked.

Indeed, the Gospels may even imply this when noting that soldiers cast lots for Christ’s clothing. Still, the thought of a naked Jesus splayed out before the world is uncomfortable to us. And rightly so. You will not find this painting in your Christian bookstore.

Along these lines, I recall (years ago) a fellow student asking a professor about the possibility that Christ hung naked on the cross. The teacher was incensed. “Of course not! To even think so is offensive!”

While I appreciated the concern for modesty, I remember thinking that the whole nailing-an-innocent-man-to-a-cross part was pretty offensive too. Yet it happened.

To reflect on this nakedness, however, does seem crass, unless there is some insight to be gained. And I think there is.

It has to do with bodies, shame, and those who have been made to feel less than human.[1]

5661613189_65be533432_b
P: Claudio Ungari

DEFINING SHAME

According to psychologists, we feel guilt for wrongs we have done. Yet we feel shame for who we are at some deep level. The concepts are related, but distinct.

Unfortunately, while guilt can be atoned for by punishment or making amends, shame clings to us more tenaciously. It lodges in our minds and in our marrow. It is the difference between “I have done wrong” and “I am wrong.”[2]

For Gershen Kaufman:

To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished sense. The self feels exposed both to itself and to anyone present. [It] is the piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deficient in some vital way as a human being.[3]

While certain forms of shame may be warranted, this pervasive kind is deadly.

SHAME AND NAKEDNESS

In the Bible, shame is linked to nakedness. It didn’t start this way (Gen. 2.25), but when Adam eats the fruit he feels exposed. He was never clothed, of course, but now he feels it. So he seeks to cover himself. Enter fig leaves. In fact, the stated fear is not punishment, but being seen undressed.

“I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid” (Gen. 3.10).

The problem is shame, but the feeling is a body that we want to hide.

BODY SHAME

Today, the trend continues. In our culture, a common cause of shame is the body itself, especially as it fails to conform to rigid standards of perfection: models, magazines, ubiquitous pornography, and the crucible of comparison. These days, not even the perfect people are perfect enough, as evidenced by the need to airbrush them.

So while the apostle Paul once assumed that “no one ever hated his own body” (Eph. 5.29), our culture shouts back: “Speak for yourself!”

It is unsurprising then that so many of our shame words relate to the body.

  • fat,
  • weak,
  • pudgy,
  • plain,
  • pock-marked,
  • bald,
  • scarred,
  • flat,
  • freak,
  • repulsive,
  • and many racial slurs I will not write.

Whatever postmodernity is, it is definitely post-Eden.

SEXUAL SHAME

Then there is the realm of sexual shame.

The statistics are staggering: Twenty-five percent of girls will be sexually abused before they turn eighteen. One in five women will be raped, and 325,000 children will be victims of sex trafficking this year.

For many of us, the numbers include faces that we recognize. Indeed, the pain becomes more personal when listening, as I have, to a student say the following: “I was raped by my first boyfriend. We met at church. No one believed me.”

Shame.

Increasingly, the “Hunting Ground” for sexual assaults are college campuses (see here), where a mix of alcohol, partying, and attempts to hush or blame the victims often combine to add one shame upon another. Over such campuses, the question tolls like a funeral bell: “Where can I go to be rid of my disgrace?”

And that is not to mention the myriad of consensual encounters that leave one or both persons feeling objectified, used, and cast aside.

It is not called the “walk of shame” for nothing.

CHRISTUS NUDUS

But what does this have to do with the shameful nudity of Christ upon the cross?

Everything.

8307135748_44fe6af8f7_z
Ancient graffito, mocking Christians. Note the naked buttocks of the Christ-figure, with the head of a donkey. P: Jason M. Kelly

As one scholar writes:

The whole point of Roman crucifixion was to reduce the victim to the status of a thing, stripping him of every vestige of human dignity, in order to discourage any challenging of the might of Rome.[4] 

The key idea is this: We do not have a Jesus who merely bears our guilt and sin. Nor merely one who conquers death and devils. Nor merely one who loves without exceptions.

In addition to all this, Christ also enters into our deepest experience of shame and nakedness. He was mocked and laid bare not only before tormenters, but before his weeping mother! It does not get more shameful.

So hear this: To the bullied teen who cowers in the bathroom stall, to the victim of sexual assault who feels blamed for someone else’s crime, and to all others made to feel the weight of heaped-on shame, Christ says: “I KNOW.” I have been there.

I am Christus nudus (“the naked Christ”), not merely Christus victor (“Christ the victor”).

The cross is “God’s shame-bearing symbol for the world.”[5]

Upon it, the second Adam assumed the nakedness of the first, for as Gregory of Nazianzen wrote: “The unassumed is the unhealed.” We need a God who bears our shame. And we have one in the naked Christ.

CLOTHED WITH CHRIST 

But it does not end there.

After the resurrection, the New Testament pictures salvation as being clothed. Yet the clothing is not of earthly garments, but “with Christ” (Rom. 13.14). Paul saw this as taking place at baptism (Gal. 3.27).

Thus the early church even began what may seem like a strange practice.

Converts were baptized naked in imitation of a Christ who hung naked on the cross. In response to this, Saint Jerome’s (347–420 AD) oft-repeated motto for the Christian lifestyle read as follows:

“nudus nudum Jesum Sequi” (naked to follow a naked Christ).

Because of Jesus, the metaphor of nakedness was transformed from a mark of shame to a metaphor of purity, innocence, and life-giving vulnerability (on that last bit, see here).

This is so because, on the cross, Christ not only bore our shame, he “scorned” it (Heb. 12.2).

This is indeed good news.

Christus nudus; Christus victor.

 

———–

[1] For a mountain of research on this topic, see the published doctoral dissertation of Dan Lé, The Naked Christ: An Atonement Model for a Body Obsessed Culture (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012).

[2] See T. Mark McConnell, “From ‘I Have Done Wrong’ to ‘I am Wrong’,” in Locating Atonement: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, eds. Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).

[3] Gershen Kaufman, Shame: The Power of Caring (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1985), ix–x.

[4] Philip Cunningham, Jesus and the Evangelists (New York: Paulist, 1988), 187.

[5] Robert Albers, “The Shame Factor: Theological and Pastoral Reflections Relating to Forgiveness,” Word & World 16:3 (June 1, 1996), 352.

Christian, learn to say “perhaps”

Christian, learn to say “perhaps”

Tucked away on page 1,351 of N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, there is this gem of statement:

            “To believe in providence often means saying ‘perhaps’.”

In context, Wright is speaking of the fact that for Paul, moments of unambiguous divine revelation were rarer than we might guess. They happened, but not constantly. Whereas pagans believed in divination, consulting the entrails of animals, and any number of other techniques for receiving certitude, for Paul it was different:

“As often as not, Paul sees the divine hand only in retrospect. For the present, the attempt to discern divine intent carries a ‘maybe’ about with it. Maybe, he writes to Philemon about Onesimus, this is the reason he was separated from you. To believe in providence often means saying ‘perhaps’.”

For me, “perhaps” is intriguing for a slightly different reason.

It seems to occupy a kind of sacred middle ground between the two extremes of doubt and false certainty.

widest

THE ALTERNATIVES

On one extreme, we face the arrogant temptation of claiming to know more than we do. This can lead to dogmatic pronouncements on things that should probably held more tentatively. After all, in theology especially, we are talking about a mysterious and unseen God, not plotting the schematics for a circuit breaker. As Neil Plantinga writes, “besides reliability, God’s other name is Surprise.” And as Paul proclaimed, “we see now as through a glass, darkly” – we know “in part” (1 Cor. 13.12).

Yet the opposite extreme is equally unsavory. Across from false certainty is the sinkhole of pervasive skepticism. After the Enlightenment, empiricism demanded quantifiable data for every aspect of one’s worldview, and many were swallowed in an ocean of unbelief. In my view, this is not appealing either. Nor does it succeed in meeting its own criteria for verifiability. Here, the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet still have force: “There are more things in heaven and earth [O Richard Dawkins] than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

But the irony is this: Both certainty and skepticism have something in common: both bow before the idol of “proof” and make their sacrifices.

And in the middle, sitting quietly, is “perhaps.”

DEFINITION

What exactly do I mean by this? In truth, one could easily locate faith or trust as the midpoint between doubt and certainty. This makes sense. Yet for my purposes, I take trust to be an act of the will (or heart), whereas perhaps is more an exercise of the imagination. Faith says “yes” to core convictions of the creed, while perhaps stands upon this platform in order to peer into more uncharted territory: the blank spaces on our maps.

In doing so, it offers a hopeful, humble, and biblically-informed “what if?” Yet unlike the proof-obsessed alternatives of doubt and dogmatism, perhaps does so with the proviso that “this could very well be wrong.”

It is a kind of sacred speculation, on the basis of more firm convictions.

THE DANGERS 

In fairness, there are times when perhaps is not a helpful word. It can be used to indulge absurdity or unbridled speculation. “Perhaps, as some say, the earth actually sits on the back of a giant (unseen) turtle,” and if asked what this turtle stands on, the answer is straightforward: “it’s turtles man, all the way down.” Yeah… I doubt it.

Likewise, as a Christian, I choose not to endlessly mull over the “perhaps” of questions that have already been decided in my own mind. Thus I do not agonize continually over the possibility that “Perhaps God is not Love,” “Perhaps Christ did not conquer death,” or “Perhaps ‘morality’ is just an evolutionary adaptation.” While such questions are quite real for many, the anchor of my own faith keeps me from endlessly rehearsing them.

WHY IT MATTERS

Yet in other instances, the ability to entertain unlikely possibilities can be crucial.

Imagine, for instance, that you are a first century Jew who has been taught (from the Bible) that Yahweh is “One” (Deut. 6), that only God can forgive sins, and that no human should be worshipped. Then a traveling Rabbi visits your town, and starts saying things that seem to rub against all this.

“Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn. 8.58);

“I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10.30); and

“[I have] authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mk. 2.10).

What do you do?

Apart from God’s Spirit, and a profound ability to say “perhaps,” the answer is clear: You reject the strange Rabbi, you join the throng of confident doubters, and you cite Bible verses to show that it is justified.

Simply put, none of the earliest Christ-followers could hold on to both monotheism and the worship of the risen Jesus without the ability to do some fairly thorough reimagining. At some point, they had to say something like the following: “Well…this doesn’t seem to fit at all with what we’ve been taught, but perhaps God is doing something we had not expected. Perhaps we shouldn’t just reject it.”

For my own part, this thought experiment is particularly convicting. I am a theology professor, which means that if I had lived in the first century, I might have been one of the “teachers of the Law” who frequently interrogated Jesus. Given this, I sometimes wonder what my response would have been to this strange Rabbi saying strange things.

I know myself. I am not optimistic.

I too have trouble remembering that God’s other name is “Surprise.”

CONCLUSION

So while sacred speculation is not without pitfalls, there is justification for Wright’s pregnant sentence:

Sometimes, to believe in providence, means learning how to say “perhaps.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone Reviewed my Book! (And Some Thoughts on Good Criticism)

Someone Reviewed my Book! (And Some Thoughts on Good Criticism)

Well, it happened.

Last week, I learned that my recently published doctoral thesis had been reviewed in an academic journal (Augustinian Studies). For seasoned scholars, such things are hardly news. You write a book. It gets reviewed. That’s how it works. But this is my first academic book, so for me the news was met with two equal and opposite emotions:

  • “Sweet!  Someone actually read it!” And:

  • “No!  I bet they torched it!”

Actually, the review was fantastic (full text below; reposted with the Journal’s permission):

Lincoln Harvey, of London, was both thorough in his treatment of my book, and incredibly complementary toward it, calling it “something of a manifesto against all-or-nothing readings of both Augustine and Gunton.” Mission accomplished.

But that’s not the only reason for this post. If it were, I’d feel an uncomfortable proximity to this story from the Babylon Bee: “Christian Author Models Humility by Retweeting only 75% of Compliments.” (To be clear, that’s not me. I’ve reposted 100% of my positive reviews.)

Here’s the serious point: All of us who make things—whether art, or websites, or handcrafted Amish furniture—crave honest feedback on our work. We need it. Yet the process of being critiqued is scary. Indeed, at the popular level, this is truer than ever, especially in the age of that dreaded invention: the “internet comment box” (acceptable literal translation of the Greek word “Gehenna”).

Sadly, in our culture, the thoughtful summation and evaluation of ideas is increasingly replaced by bombastic rhetoric, and a desire to distort others in exchange for points in a game that doesn’t actually exist. Of course, this also happens in academia (just with better grammar), but perhaps there are some lessons that the internet, or the world at large, could learn from the more cordial world of academic journal book reviews.

None of these are creative, but they are important:

  1. Before responding, try to understand.

This should be a no-brainer, but alas it is not. To understand takes time. And we feel dangerously short on that. After all, there are viral videos to watch. No need to read the article; just post a comment. It avoids the hassle of actually thinking.

  1. Don’t distort.

When interacting, we should be able to summarize another’s argument so accurately that they will at least know that they’ve been heard. One thing I appreciated about Harvey’s review, apart from the positive comments, is that he had obviously read my book, and then accurately represented it. The alternative is called “bearing false witness,” and it is a sin regardless of how many “likes” you get for doing it.

  1. Affirm something.

Almost every academic review finds something to affirm. I even read one that praised the quality of the pages and book binding. (Not a joke.) Some of this is mere politeness, but imagine how different our political or social discussions would be if we implemented this approach. Maybe I can’t agree with the economic policies of, say, Bernie Sanders, but I can at least affirm that he believes them, and that he feels a moral obligation to follow through on them. That’s more than I suspect of many candidates. (FYI: Don’t take that as an endorsement.)

  1. Critique the idea, not the person.

Some ideas deserve to get hammered. And there is even a place for satire and sharp retort. Just read the Hebrew Prophets. Moreover, when someone’s rhetoric has become dangerous or abusive, they deserve to be lambasted and even lampooned (see here).

Yet a further point that book reviews tend to model well is the general rule that we ought to critique ideas, and not people. To thoughtful observers, ad hominems reflect more poorly on the speaker than the target. And when the Bible calls us to “Judge not” it is often speaking of the unseen motives of another heart. We can’t know those. So we shouldn’t presume. Colin Gunton called this “the disgraceful Freudianizing of one’s opponents.” And he was right.

  1. Recognize that flawed ideas are sometimes the most interesting, and the most needed.

Boredom is a form of evil. And when arguments persist in hugging the shallows of conventional wisdom, that’s what they are—boring. In my own field, some of the most needed and interesting works have been deeply flawed. Gustaf Aulen’s Christus Victor is a prime example. The history is reductionistic, and the theological implications are dubious at certain points. Yet it was sorely needed. Despite weaknesses, it awakened scholars to a neglected theme of the atonement (Christ’s victory over the forces of evil), and that was what mattered.

A work can be manifestly flawed in certain ways, and yet profoundly helpful in others. Thus we must move beyond the gladiatorial options of “thumbs up” (winner!) or “thumbs down” (kill him!). Caesar did that. And he’s not Lord.

Conclusion:

In the end, I’m glad for a positive review. But I’m even more thankful that someone took the time to model the above points. May we do likewise.

Does God “forgive” if Jesus pays our penalty (Part 2 of 2)

In part one of this post, we highlighted a claim by Greg Boyd about divine forgiveness.

As Boyd argued, the idea that God forgives our sins, and the idea that Jesus paid the penalty for them cannot both be true.  They are incompatible, at least as he sees it.

His argument involved the following analogy:

“If you owe me a hundred dollars and I hold you to it unless someone or other pays me the owed sum, did I really forgive your debt? Yes, you got off the hook. But forgiveness is about releasing a debt — not collecting it from someone else.”

For starters, there are several things that I appreciate about Boyd’s work. We both have disagreements with aspects of Reformed theology (though I am not an Open Theist), and his book The Myth of a Christian Nation has great points about how (according to the subtitle) “the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church.” In addition, Boyd does a fantastic job of communicating theology in ways that are understandable to the average person, and his emphasis on the Christus Victor model of atonement is often very helpful. I like him.

Yet on the present subject, I think there is good reason why this is not a particularly common argument (are there others who make it?).

The main problem, in my view, centers on a false assumption about what forgiveness entails.

The crucial question is thus: Does the forgiveness necessitate that no punishment may be handed down for the offense? Boyd assumes so, but this seems obviously wrong.

Consider, for example, the parents who (incredibly) choose to forgive the murderer of their child. While this is an amazing act of grace, it by no means implies (as Boyd seems to assume) that all penalties must be waived for the crime. Indeed, no thoughtful person would respond to the parents’ action by proclaiming: “Well, it’s very nice that you did that, but it is not forgiveness, because the criminal is still in jail.”

In this regard, Boyd is simply wrong about what forgiveness means. It need not be antithetical to all legal consequences.

Moving back to the many biblical examples, it is telling that Israel’s absolution often comes after (or alongside) the enactment of certain covenantal penalties—things like exile, or a defeat at the hands of enemies. Here too forgiveness need not imply a total lack of punishment. Often, as with Christ, it comes through the shedding of blood (Eph. 1.7). And in the case of penal substitution, the assumption is that divine faithfulness to the covenant means that our forgiveness comes because God himself decides to bear the curse of the Law.

In the end, Boyd’s claim seems to misunderstand both the meaning of forgiveness in our contemporary culture (e.g., the example of the forgiving parents), and its meaning within the biblical and covenantal narrative. Of course, this does not prove that penal substitution is correct—it could well be wrong for many other reasons—but it does show that this particular claim has some false assumptions.

On a related note, one thing I have appreciated in the recent growth of analytic theology—as exemplified by folks like Tom McCall and Oliver Crisp—is a concern to be a bit more careful about such issues of terminological precision and argumentative rigor.

While this concern is not unique to analytic theology, it is sometimes stunning (as in the above example from Boyd) how quickly theologians make sweeping conclusions without ever clarifying or mounting an argument for what a given concept actually means. In fairness, most all of us have been guilty of this.

Thankfully, though, there is one thing that Boyd’s argument get’s right: with God there is forgiveness.

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On a related note, if you are interested in an introduction to analytic theology, Tom McCall’s new book (An Introduction to Analytic Christian Theology) is a great read.

Does God “forgive” if Jesus pays our penalty? (Part 1 of 2)

Does God “forgive” if Jesus pays our penalty? (Part 1 of 2)

For those who are interested in theology, here is another atonement post with a question to consider:

In the Bible, God is a forgiver.

As Psalm 130 states:

If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,

Lord, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness (vss. 3-4a).

Dozens of passages could be added to this, but as Alexander Pope wrote: “To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

So here is what may seem like a strange question:

  • Can we really say that God “forgave” sins if Jesus paid the price for them?

For many Christians, one meaning of the cross is that Christ willingly bore the penalty that we deserved. Therefore, there is “no condemnation” for us (Rom. 8.1), because Jesus was condemned in our place. This is referred to as “penal substitution,” and it sometimes focuses on the idea that sin’s price was paid in full.

Yet for the contemporary theologian Greg Boyd, this runs counter to the Bible’s claim that God “forgives.”

As Boyd argues, forgiveness is “the release of a debt.” Yet:

“If God must always get what is coming to him in order to forgive (namely, “a kill”), does God ever really forgive?”[1]

Boyd thinks not. And for him, this is yet another reason to abandon penal substitution for more coherent understandings of atonement (see more here ). As he explains:

“If you owe me a hundred dollars and I hold you to it unless someone or other pays me the owed sum, did I really forgive your debt? Yes, you got off the hook. But forgiveness is about releasing a debt — not collecting it from someone else.”[2]

So what do you think? Does Boyd’s point resonate with you? Why or why not?

While I would not claim that penal substitution is somehow the “most important” model of atonement, I am currently looking at some objections to it for a chapter in a larger book. Hence the repetition of the penal substitution questions.

This question builds on two previous posts (here and here), which examined a related objection  involving the parable of the Prodigal Son. If you are new, see those prior posts for further context.

 

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[1] Gregory Boyd, “Christus Victor Response,” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, eds. James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 104.

[2] Gregory Boyd, “The Danger of the Penal Substitution View of Atonement.” Re|knew. November 20, 2014. Accessed April 2, 2016. http://reknew.org/2014/11/the-danger-of-the-penal-substitution-view-of-atonement/.

In defense of piggyback rides

 

This week, my wife and I got a touching note from a former student. Amongst other things, it said this:

“I feel beyond thankful for your loyal friendship… I think my faith took a ‘piggyback ride’ on yours for awhile there, and it made all the difference.”

As a dad, I am something of an expert on piggyback rides.

But that line has me thinking of the concept in the realm of friendship.

Can tired faith climb aboard the shoulders of another person? 

I hope so.

getting_children_out_of_the_fields_and_into_school_8424375496

In opposition to this notion, some think of faith as a completely individual possession.

It’s like underwear and toothbrushes. You don’t share.

After all, you can’t believe for someone else. Thus, preachers often (and rightly) emphasize the importance of each person deciding what they will do with Christ. And I don’t disagree with that. Yet the Scriptures also say things that call into question our culture’s rampant individualism, even when it comes to faith.

I could cite lots of examples, but I’ll stick with one.

Consider this passage about a paralyzed man who is “piggybacked” (er… carried) to a house where Jesus is. After his friends dig a massive whole in the building’s roof, the lame man is then lowered down to be with Jesus.

Mark’s version, says it this way:

“When Jesus saw their faith [that is, the faith of the men who had just ripped open the roof and lowered down the mat], he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’” (Mk. 2.5).

Reread that. When Jesus saw the faith of the man’s friends—the ones who had carried him to Jesus—he forgave (and healed) the paralytic. The commentators are unanimous.

Now, I don’t doubt that the lame man also believed in Christ. Especially when he started walking.

But the passage doesn’t emphasize that. The passage emphasizes the faith of the man’s friends.

So what’s the takeaway?

I don’t know the exact distance or extent that faith can be “piggybacked.”

I’ll leave that to God.

But I do know this:

I’m grateful to have some friends who would–beyond a shadow of a doubt–rip off the roof, risk felony charges, and rain down drywall on the Son of God if they thought that it would help me.

That’s friendship.

Piggyback on.

“Greater love has no one than this,that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15.13).