bible – fruitful faith

the danger of “I am not like ___” thinking

Mirroring the growing divide in political discourse around the world is a growing divide within the church between ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ believers.

Both would claim to be trying to correctly express and live Christian faith, but it seems to me that ‘progressive’ believers see ‘correctly’ in terms of appropriate correction, adaptation and renovation, whilst ‘conservative’ believers see ‘correctly’ in terms of conservation, perseverance and restoration.

Politically, this (perhaps not always consistently?) tends to make ‘progressive’ believers have a more left-leaning approach, and ‘conservative’ believers have a more right-leaning approach.

If you can anticipate me saying that a ‘both/and’ approach is needed, that would be because that is precisely what I think is needed.

Just as the Gospel cannot ‘fit’ within the political ‘left’ or ‘right’, but instead affirms and challenges both, our understanding of the Gospel always needs both correction and conservation; adaptation and perseverance; renovation and restoration. Continuity and Discontinuity. New and Old. Faithfulness and Innovation. Word and Spirit.

The opposite of this ‘both/and’ approach is the posture that says “I am not like _____”. Two quick examples are a) the Pharisee (Luke 18:11) who was grateful to not be like the sinner, and b) the elite and presentable parts of the body who do not want to associate with the lowly and unpresentable parts.

In other words, we need one another more than we realise, and more than we are comfortable with.

a theodicy of hope

Instead of attempting to use logic and reason to deduce a way to establish a valid justification for God (‘theos’) being just (‘dikaios’) in the light of suffering and evil, it may be more simple…

The following statement of Jesus in John 16:33 is key:

“In this world you will have trouble; but take heart, I have overcome the world.”

This beautiful and terrible world was always going to be both beautiful and terrible. Whatever time is, whether in terms of physics, metaphysics, science or theology, it necessarily entails process, opportunity, possibility and freedom.

On the one hand, God is not an absentee landlord, abandoning our space/time world to descend into chaos, but on the other hand, God is not a manipulative control-freak, exerting hands-on force upon the world, causing and desiring everything that happens in every and all senses of the word ’cause’. God cares. But this does not mean that God prevents every bad thing from happening.

Instead, we are given a promise that God will sort it out eventually, or indeed that in and through Jesus that sorting out has already been inaugurated. If Jesus is really risen from the dead, then God really has already begun to overcome the world with all its trouble.

This is a theodicy of hope.

on the Canon of Scripture

Is Scripture ‘finished’ being written?

Christians believe it is. How so? Catholics and Protestants don’t agree on which books are to be included, and various leaders in church history have thought it best to leave certain books out, such as Revelation or James.

One way to begin discussing the question is to think about the Jewish Scriptures, the Old Testament or the Tanakh. Broadly speaking, this grouping of Scriptures are records of, and reflections on, at least four key, formative, identity-establishing events: a) Creation, b) Election, c) Exodus and d) Exile. You cannot be Jewish and not identify with those events, and thus the Jewish Scriptures would not be complete without records and reflection on all of them.

In the same way, the Christian Scriptures incorporate all of these events into a further climactic Christ Event (which is shorthand for a series of events: Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension). In addition, you have the launch of the Church, partnering with God’s redemptive mission in anticipation of the fulfillment or ‘consummation’ of the coming of God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” Thus the Christian Scriptures, like Christian identity, are not complete without addressing Creation, Election, Exodus, Exile, Christ, Church and Consummation. Whereas hope of a coming Messiah is implicit in the Jewish Scriptures, the hope of a consummated Kingdom is explicit in the Christian Scriptures.

So then, just as the Jewish Scriptures are a complete and coherent witness to the identify forming events of Judaism, so also the Christian Scriptures (with or without the Apocryphal books that divide Catholics and Protestants) are a complete and coherent witness to the identity forming events of Christian faith and hope.

thy will be done

“Thy Will Be Done”

The statement “Thy will be done” is the overarching and simple representative statement of submission. With this statement, we acknowledge that God is God and we are not, and that God’s way and God’s will are better than mine.

For those who accept, submit to, worship and follow an Ultimate Being or God, it’s a simple enough statement, even if it’s not always easy. For most of us, it would be as simple as pulling out of a match with a Professional Boxer – “OK, you win – I’m out! No need to prove whose stronger here!”

But what about relationships between other humans?

“thy will be done?”

It’s easy to submit to someone you know is going to win. But with human relationships, the question of submission gets very tricky. If my will for a situation seems – to me at least! – to be better, then it’s very tempting to assume that “thy will be done” is a mistake, and instead try to find a way for “my will” to be done. This attitude, insisting on finding a way to ‘win’, is responsible for a great deal – or maybe all – of the chaos on the world.

What about situations where ‘better’ is not, or maybe can’t ever be, known? Do we just take turns getting our way? Do we always ‘meet half way’ so that nobody ever purely has “their will” done? Do I seek to let others have “their will” done more often than mine? Who wants to be a door-mat?

Some of this will inevitably be a matter of conflict resolution, patience, getting to know and trust one another, or doing your best and sorting out any arising problems as best you can. But I think that Christ gives us a compelling model to follow…

“Not my will, but Thine be done.”

In the Garden of Gethsemane, preparing himself for his sacrificial death, even though he carried the knowledge that he would rise again, Jesus asked his Father in prayer for another way. At some real level, Jesus was not looking forward to drinking the cross-shaped cup of suffering that he was destined for.

Crucially, he didn’t just push his will down into his subconscious and skip effortlessly into “Thy will be done.” He had the courage to voice it out. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), each in their own way, depict Jesus as being in an extreme emotional state: “exceedingly sorrowful unto death”, sweating blood-like drops in “agony”. Here Jesus meets humanity at our most desperate. He is with us when we are at the end of ourselves, when things are not going our way, when it is painfully and brutally clear that “our will” is not going to be done.

Jesus is neither a rebel nor a doormat. Like Mary at the annunciation, who has a few questions before she will “let it be”, Jesus adopts a posture that is both assertive and submissive. It is the posture of a Servant.

I don’t know about you, but I know my own passive-aggressive tendencies enough to see how much I need to embody the posture of Jesus.

Lord, help me be assertive and honest about what I want, but give me strength to surrender it in order to do what You want, even when I don’t want to do.

god’s theology

Theology is literally a ‘word’ (logos) about ‘God’ (Theos).

Some scattered bits of experience, mine and others, over the last few weeks have reminded me that various positions, discussions, debates and statements that would be labelled ‘theological’ can be unhelpful. Yes, truth will divide at times, and so it should, but too often theological battles can separate what God has joined together. They can wrongfully offend, make too much of small things, speak too little of grand things, and so on.

Of course the opposite is also true. Theology done well does just what it was meant to do, enable and equip the people of God to be who they were intended to be in God’s world, through acts of selfless solidarity, breathtaking generosity, persistent service, courageous prophetic witness and so on.

How do we distinguish between good and bad theologies? This is where the uniqueness of the Christian faith comes in.

What makes Christian faith Christian is the person of Christ. All of Christian theology stems directly from the person and work of Christ. Christ is the revelation of God. All ‘God-words’ meet their pass or fail by testing them against the ‘God-Word’ that is Jesus Christ. Christ, after all, is God’s Theology, the Word who was with God and who was God.

I will hold my own theologies lightly, and hold to, and be held by, God’s own Theology. It is not my knowledge of God that matters, but God’s knowledge of me.

narcissism and image

All Humans Are Narcissists

I want to suggest that all humans, like Narcissus, look at their reflection and make too much of it. This is obvious in some behaviour and more discreet in others.

In my own experience, my narcissism is easily spotted when I think, feel, talk and act as though my own thoughts, feelings, words, opinions (blog posts!?), needs and achievements are – even a little bit – more important than others. In a less obvious way, my narcissism can hide behind all the ways in which I down-play myself. Narcissism is being increasingly recognized as lying behind many – of course not all, or even most – forms of depression.

In sum, I’m suggesting here that when humans play themselves up or push themselves down, some form or degree of narcissism – passive or active – is probably at work.

The Middle Way of the Imago Dei

Narcissism constitutes a form of idolatry. The self is made into an idol in an obvious way when we put ourselves on a pedestal. However, arguably, the self is just as much an idol when the self is abased. When we tell ourselves grand stories of how ‘low’ we are, we can still be making a big deal out of ourselves; we can see ourselves as being just as great as our suffering.

Charting the “Middle Way” between the narcissistic extremes of idolatrous self-aggrandising and idolatrous self-abasing, the Judeo-Christian tradition has the provocative notion of the Imago Dei. As scholars of the book of Genesis have contended, the opening chapter of Scripture depicts the Creator God building a temple, three days of forming the tohu (formless) and three days of filling the vohu (empty/void); and rather than finishing it off with a idol, the Creator God made humans (male and female) in God’s image.

The up-shot of this is that when we look at another human being, or more to the point, when we look, like Narcissus did, at our reflection, we should not merely see and fall in love with ourselves as he did, but rather should also see – and also love – the Creator God.

possibility and surrender

I met a friendly man today who, learning of my religiosity, asked me about my views on science and faith. It was a good chat, not too long, and remained wonderfully amicable.

The man was, by global and local standards, wealthy, educated and articulate. At least some of the time, such a demographic can tend to view the ‘God’ topic primarily as an interest, a curiosity; certainly not a matter of life and death.

During the conversation, I remember thinking, “Oh wow, the science-and-faith conversation. Is this still a popular topic for people? Usually it’s hell or homosexuality.” I have no idea of his intentions, but very often many Christians feel like such conversations have little if anything to do with someone’s genuine interest in (or pursuit of) faith, and everything to do with some kind of justification of their unbelief. The theological out-clauses are many: global suffering and evil, hypocrisy in the church, science and/or evolution, hell, homosexuality, ‘the Old Testament’, etc.

This leads me to another thought, which emerged from my reflections. It is the reality that if an ultimate invisible and limitless being is real, then that kind of opens up literally anything and everything as being possible. A ‘god’ could be very controlling and hands-on, more distant and deistic, or somewhere in the middle; evil, good, impatient, patient. If people just start believing in ‘god’ willy nilly, well they might start believing just about anything about that ‘god’. This ‘god’ might send 99.9999% of humans to hell, gays first of course, and save only the members of Westboro Baptist Church. Or this ‘god’ might be the mamby pamby, everything-and-everyone-is-great, domesticated, flaccid (and frankly boring) deity… Anything is possible if there is a ‘god’!

The truth behind all this is precisely this: Yes, you and I don’t get to say what God is like. God may have attributes we don’t find pleasant or popular in our time and culture.

This is where a little notion called surrender comes in. This is where we stop trying to be more moral than God. This is where we let go of all our controlling questions and submit to the reality of an Ultimate being, far stronger and higher than us.

The good news, literally, is that in the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to wonder – or fear! – what God might be like. We have a Creator and Saviour who is radically committed to the creation, humans in particular. So much so that this God is long-suffering and hell-bent on saving us, despite our almost continual rejection, rebellion, apathy and downright selfishness.

Anything is possible with God; and what a good possibility it is with the God we know through Jesus Christ.

on calvinism

Why a Blog about Calvinism?

Today I learned – much after the fact – that Derek Webb no longer identifies as a Christian. This has some emotional significance for me, as I have been a follower of Caedmon’s Call (in which he played), and of his more recent solo musical projects.

Instead of discussing what it feels like to have a musical hero of yours lose his faith, I instead want to reflect here on Calvinism. The video in which I learned this discusses – or rather proposes – a relationship between Calvinism and atheism. Webb seems to be rejecting a thoroughly Calvinistic Christianity, as he understands it.

It is the understanding of Calvinism that I wish to dare to discuss below. My aim is to avoid academic jargon and to express the gist of what Calvinism is about, and to do so in a way that expresses Calvinism in what I believe to be it’s best form, whilst also hoping to show extremes that can arise along the way. I will use the long-established, and much-debated acronym T.U.L.I.P. as a framework.

What I hope to show is that, in its best form, Calvinism – like Scripture – aims to showcase the God of Grace as the ultimate agent at work in Salvation. This aim can be expressed in ways that perhaps do not show the emphasis that Scripture also puts on human participation with God. Likewise, rebuttals of Calvinism aim to recover a proper sense of human freedom and responsibility within God’s plan. In so doing, perhaps God’s ultimate sovereignty can be obscured to lesser or greater degrees. A simple, clear reading of Calvinism may be difficult, so wish me luck!

T – Total Depravity

The total depravity of humanity is about the devastating scope of the damage that Evil and Sin have done in humans. Few would try to deny that humans have their defects, but the key idea here is seen in the word ‘total’. Human failure goes all the way down, from head to toe. This doctrine is a way of resisting the idea that there is a basic, perhaps hidden, part of us that is untouched and good. And more to the point, that this part of us makes us worthy enough to deserve salvation, because God ‘owes’ it to us.

You can easily see how a doctrine like this can be – and has been! – taken to extremes. The doctrine itself aims at correcting the extreme of an overly positive view of human nature, and all corrections can become over-corrections. Scripture often says two things that need to be held in tension, rather than having to choose between them. On this topic, Scripture portrays human nature in both its positive and negative expressions. One scholar described this picture of humans as being simultaneously “resplendent with glory and awash in shame”.

In my own experience, this doctrine is helpful to keep me humble. And I have found that it is unhelpful or even dangerous to split myself too neatly into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts of myself. As I see it, even the parts of myself I thought were ‘good’ are tainted by selfishness, insecurity and pride. This doesn’t negate positive traits like intelligence, gifting or anything else, it just means that all of me, from head to toe, needs help from outside myself. The good news of salvation is not about me being smart enough to sort myself out, but about God being loving enough.

U – Unconditional Election

The unconditional election of God’s people is trying to say two things at least: one, that God has ‘elected’ or ‘chosen’ people, and two, that this ‘election’ or ‘choice’ flows entirely from his own graceful, merciful and loving wisdom, rather than a choice that is based on some quality that those people had, or didn’t have.

The very notion of ‘choosing’ or ‘electing’ some people is unpopular as it implies that the rest are not chosen, and thus have no fair chance at becoming one of God’s people. But the point being made here, and by Scripture as I understand it, is not that being chosen is to be contrasted with being ‘not chosen’, but rather that ‘election’ is to be contrasted with ‘selection’. God’s choice is free. It is free of influence from anything other than God’s own just, loving and gracious nature. Thus ‘election’ is not ‘selection’, as though God’s choice amounts to a choosy selecting of the ‘best ones’.

There are Bible verses that seem to say two things here. Some seem to show humans as choosing God, others depict God choosing humans. Again, rather than choose one or the other, I think the point is that both dynamics are at work. The point that Calvinism is making here – and it does square with Scripture as I understand it – is that God takes the initiative, not us.

L – Limited Atonement

The limited atonement of Christ is, again, focused on God as the active agent of salvation. The Church here is pictured as a bride which Christ pursued and died for. It is purposeful and intentional, rather than accidental or random.

Again, this has been taken to imply that God never cared to save people outside the Church, an idea that would not square with all of Scripture. God’s desire is for all, and Christ’s sacrifice was ‘unlimited’ in the sense of being enough for all. The language of ‘limited’ has to do with the specificity of those who end up benefiting from that sacrifice.

This is a point of doctrine that I think is best expressed at a very simple level. Too much word-play seems to over-complicate the simplicity of what is being said here. God took a people to be God’s very own, and this was ultimately accomplished through the atoning work of Christ. It was purposeful, and not an accident. God does not sit, nail-biting in heaven wondering who will partake of the salvation offered in Christ.

I – Irresistible Grace

The irresistible Grace of God is again focused on God as the active agent in salvation. This doctrine resists the idea that some are good, humble or clever enough to figure out Grace, whilst others aren’t. Rather, it is God who is seen here as casting a net of Grace, from which no human fish can escape.

Again we see the tension between God’s work and our participation – or in this case the possibility of our rejection of his work. In its best form, I don’t think Irresistible Grace is about finely tuned philosophical arguments about volition and human agency in conflict with divine initiative and sovereignty. I don’t think the point is that some people were created as Grace-resisters and others were created as Grace-accept-ers. The simple picture is of Grace doing precisely what it was given for.

Nothing in this doctrine, as I understand it, should conflict with our experience of human efforts appearing to result in human decisions for Christ, or with human choice appearing to choose against God and his forgiveness in Christ. It’s about the ultimate effectiveness of Grace.

P – Perseverance of the Saints

The perseverance of the Saints is linked with Irresistible Grace, in that it is picturing God as both the author and finisher of salvation. The idea being resisted here is of a God who gives us a nudge to get us going, and then abandons us to sort ourselves out the rest of the way. Rather, God is purposeful and powerful, initiating and completing the work of Salvation.

The problem for many is that we know that some people do – at least apparently – start out in the faith only to drop out – at least apparently – later. Again we are dealing with invisible realities here. Only God knows God’s choice, and I would also add that only each individual knows their choice. For me, this does not negate the reality of what we experience when someone – apparently – turns away from faith. God is simply and lovingly pictured here as a Shepherd who maintains and keeps the sheep.

Concluding Remarks

There are more than a few minefields to avoid in all this, but I suppose such is the way with any good idea. T.U.L.I.P. is said to express the ‘doctrines of Grace’, and it is that active Grace of God, from the beginning to the end of Salvation, which these doctrines seek to give ultimate credit to.

Freedom is an essential aspect of God’s nature. God is not ‘conditioned’ by anything outside of God. Nothing outside of God makes God the way God is. All of this is very logical and squares with Scripture. The mystery of the God of the Bible, however, is that God is also relational, to the point where God takes flesh and unites to human nature in Christ, taking the form of a slave. God permits us to describe divinity using our little human words. Somehow, without ceasing to be free, God has eternally chosen to be the kind of God who is ‘both/and’: God is both the sole agent of salvation from start to finish, and yet God will not force salvation on anyone and requires – even at times pleads for – their participation in it. There is something deeply ‘illogical’ about the Gospel. The One who is by nature limitless, unconditioned and free, nonetheless chooses freely to operate in relation to humans in all of our weakness, sin, complicity, willfulness, indecision, and sputtering flights of kindness. God has chosen for salvation to be completed through his divine hand, grasping on to little human hands that think they are grasping on to his.

Humans participate in salvation through believing, obedience, fellowship, worship and mission, but it is God and God alone who is the Saviour. Without the Saviour, there would be no salvation which we could participate in.

world + flesh + devil

The world, the flesh and the devil.

These three entities have been said to be the three sources of sin and temptation for Christians. That is to say that when we get it wrong, we can point to the influential lure of culture (the world), the weakness of natural desire (the flesh), and the overarching conspiracy of evil (the devil).

I say ‘and’ instead of ‘or’ because I don’t see these three as mutually exclusive. When a person does something wrong – let’s say: gossip at work – they can point to a) the culture of gossip at their work or in the ‘world’ generally, b) their own tendencies to want to stay ‘in the know’ about what’s going around the workplace, and c) a trans-historic, trans-cultural, quasi-personal gravity gently and subtly pulling people away from healthy and honest communication.

If we neatly point to just one of these three, we open the door to a) victim-hood (“Poor me, it’s so hard to be good in this world/workplace…”), b) shame (“Why am I such a horrible gossip?”) or c) blame (“It was an outright spiritual attack…”).

Acknowledging all three can help us to appreciate afresh the need to stand apart from culture (Romans 12:1-2), the need to acknowledge our culpability for our actions (1 John 1:9), and to be on guard against the old serpent up to its typical schemes (2 Corinthians 2:11).

grace and human effort

At the heart of the Christian faith is a conviction that salvation is God’s doing. God takes the initiative in establishing, maintaining and perfecting the relationship with all of creation, and humans in particular. Without God, there would be no salvation. Period.

This conviction has tended to be accompanied by an emphasis that downplays the importance of human effort. Most of all, it seems that in order to defend Grace, some feel the need to oppose any prescriptive statements about what Christians ‘ought’ to do, particularly when those statements are a) specific, b) all-encompassing, or c) strong.

I’m not going to get into the broad issues of biblical theology despite how relevant they are here. Instead I want to focus on the basic compatibility of Grace and human effort. And none of the following has anything to do with being under the Jewish/Mosaic “Law” (i.e. keeping kosher, observing Sabbath, or males being circumcised).

Augustine perhaps said it best: “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.” (Google it)

Like a loving parent whose love moves them to refrain from doing everything for their children, God seems to require our active participation in our growth. “God will not” do things for us against our will.

This not only means we must participate with Grace, but also that being exhorted, instructed, urged, or encouraged to do specific things should be a normal part of our training and instruction in Christian community. This happens through preaching, teaching, discipleship and mentoring. We need to be told what we should be doing.

Trusting in Grace doesn’t mean resisting being told what to do. Quite the contrary, actually.

Yes, it is possible (and too common, actually) that “telling people what to do” is done from a negative posture of power, ego and control that runs against the values of the Gospel. But it is also possible (and more common than we may admit) that “telling people what to do” is resisted simply due to our pride and arrogance of not wanting to do what we should.

The Grace and Love of God is so overwhelming, beautiful and true that it should cast out all forms of fear, including the fear of being told what to do.

Being told what you are doing wrong and what you ought to do instead, can indeed be a “gift”, and expression of Grace. It can be a very practical way that God offers the power, assistance and help toward the transformation, healing and growth that all disciples of Jesus should experience.