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>Walking on Water

>Last week I admitted to not believing in the supernatural [link]. For those that are still on the fence regarding this issue, the concern seems to be that there are some pretty crazy miracles in the Bible.

So let me just say that I believe in miracles. That is not in question. Miracles happen every day and they are amazing and divine and God at work. I am a big fan of miracles.


Let’s look at one of the most famous miracles: We read the story of Jesus walking on the water and he climbs into the boat and calms the storm which which in turn calms the disciples nerves. He says “fear not”
 (or ‘be not afraid‘) in the version of John 6 (he also walks on water in Mark 6 and Matthew 14).


Here is my question: What is the ‘take away’ from this story of Jesus walking on the water?  That God is lord even of the natural world and so we need not ‘be afraid’. That’s beautiful.


So what is the application of Jesus walking on the water?
Well … it is not for us to walk on water.


even if I believe that Jesus walked on water- I have never walked on water. I’ve never seen anyone walk on water. We don’t encourage or demand that people walk on water.


The application is to trust in God (or believe in Jesus) and “be not afraid”.




Here is what I am proposing: I want to move our application up a step and make it our interpretation.


There are three major benefits to doing so:

  1. People fight to defend that Jesus actually walked on the water – then don’t do anything with it. It becomes a stand alone fact. There is no application. There is no ‘and therefor you should walk on water too’.  It is a one-dimensional fight. 
  2. Since the application is the same wether you listen to a preacher who insists that it literally happen or one who thinks that it was figurative… this lets us skip all the rancoring.  Otherwise it is a lot of fighting over something that we are not going to do much with. 
  3. Since walking on water is not an issue, we can focus on the point of the text. If we get all caught up in the physics and metaphysics behind the text then we lose the focus OF the text. The point of the text – what we are suppose to take away from it – is not that Jesus defied the laws of physics. That is not the point and so we we should not make it the point . 



The end is not to do what Jesus did (walk on water) but to do what Jesus said “be not afraid”.


I can guess that the major objection to this reading will be. “If he didn’t really walk on water then how are we supposed to trust and not be afraid.” If he really did it , then we can really trust…


We need to be careful about something: The gospels are narrative works – they are works of literature. They are not newspaper reports, physics textbooks or modern biographies.


It is important to remember that the Gospel writers were telling us a story – and that the way they told that story matters.   We should not demand of them the kind of detail and accuracy that a post-Indusrtiral Revolution or scientific texts would have. We need to be careful of reading them through an exacting Enlightenment lens – back through Greek dualism of the physical & spiritual and then impose them on a Jewish story.


In the end, what I am suggesting is that we move our application – (which is the same for fundamentalists, conservatives, liberals, charismatics, and evangelicals) –  up one step and make it our interpretation.


The simple fact is that we no longer live is world where ‘supernatural’ is a sustainable or verifiable worldview. The phrase ‘supernatural’  A) is not Biblical and  B) is not believable in the world of electricity. There is no sense in doggedly sticking to something that is both foreign to the text and incompatible in our age.


This would mean that what we DO with the story, we would call the POINT of the story – that the response it is designed to elicit IS our interpretation. It is not that big of a jump – and it changes our reading of the Bible to be consistent with the world as we know it to be while being authentic to the tradition that we have inherited (by trusting in God).

2

>why are they walking away?

>My friend Rachel Held Evans – the amazing author and blogger – posted this on Facebook:

Lots of folks are talking about the future of young, disenfranchised evangelicals. I’d love your thoughts on this. What is driving them away? Where are they going? (Working on a post that explains the phenomenon from my own perspective – as a young, disenfranchised evangelical myself!) 🙂

I started to respond and it just took off!  So i thought that I would post it here and see what anyone else had to say.


For me it comes down to two things: epistemology and dualism.

The evangelical epistemology is rooted in an individualism that does not resonate with the worldview/cosmology that the Bible was written in. This Bible is suppose to be God’s Word (an elusive concept) and does not ultimately (long term)  provide the coherence of worldview, the continuity with tradition or the cohesiveness of experience (burning bushes etc.) that satisfy.
It feels disconnected after a while if you are thinking about it at ALL.

The dualism of us/them, in/out, heaven/hell, right/wrong, creation/evolution, republican/democratic, et al.  is so disjointed from our experience of the world that it becomes untenable to continue pretending that we believe something just because we were “told”.  It seems ridiculous. It gets to be embarrassing. SO instead of undertaking the arduous task of deconstructing without destructing – and then subsequently rebuilding… many just walk away.   Plus, where would you live during the renovation ?

 When you take these two and multiply them by things like the evolution of Finney’s new measures (alter calls) and the ‘christian music industry’ that many people have not heard about but somehow can SENSE the formulaic nature of modern christian religion … it gets – not just incrementally but -exponentially more challenging to hold onto it.

For me this gets no better when we try to ‘return’ to the past with yearly schedules, antique liturgies, and outdated lectionaries. That is no better. It may FEEL more mystical for a time but… in the end there is no more congruence with our ‘real life’ than being an End Times- Rapture ready – Bible thumper waiting to go to heaven who sings passionately on Sunday that God would ‘come down’ – as if God was not already ‘down’ and that the Copernican view got rid of the 3 tiered universe.

That’s the kind of realization that leads people to walk away.

[I was so fired up I forgot to mention two other huge issues: hermeneutics (knowing how to read books like Jonah or Revelation) and gender issues.]

– So that is why I think that many young people are walking away… why do you think that this is happening. 

6

>Reading the Bible Better: Talents

>

We have all read the parable of the Talents
Matthew 25:14-30 (New American Standard Bible)
Parable of the Talents
 14 For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them.
 15″To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey.
 16″Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents.
 17″In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more.
 18″But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
 19″Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.
 20″The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.’
 21″His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave You were faithful with a few things, I will (I)put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
 22″Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained two more talents.’
 23″His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
 24″And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.
 25’And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’
 26″But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed.
 27’Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.
 28’Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’
 29″For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.
 30″Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.


 Here’s the thing:  what if we have not understood the environment and the context that Jesus was speaking to enough to understand what is going on in this parable?


 Several weeks ago I put forward two theories about our understanding of the Bible:

  •  we would benefit to know more about the first century context
  •  we would benefit to know more about the genres that the Scriptures were written in
 This parable is a perfect example of those two ideas.
 A talent was the largest denomination of currency available in Jesus’s day. It weighed 72 pounds and required several servants to carry. It was used once a year to pay estate taxes.
 When Jesus says that some servant received several talents his first century audience would have known that this was absurdum.  They would have known immediately that this was a political or economic lampoon.
 It is also interesting to note that the Jewish rate of interest was capped at 12%. Anything more than that was considered unethical.
 So when we listen to Jesus tell this fictitious story, there are two things that may not be obvious to us as 21st-century listeners:

  • The first is that those servants that are applauded/esteemed in this parable would have been perceived as villains and potentially booed or jeered by the original audience.
  • The second is that the servant that buries his treasure was the hero in this story!
It is possible that the servant who buries his treasure is the good guy both as Jesus tells the story and as it was heard by the first century audience!  Keep in mind that this is in an agrarian society  and that by sticking his money in the ground he has demonstrated to his master that money does not grow and will not feed his family. 
 In this sense, he is sticking it to the man by saying that participating in an predatory economic system of profit does not feed me and those I care about.  Money does not grow and you cannot eat it.  This guy might be the hero of Jesus’ story. 
Now-  Somebody might object at this point and say “he is called a wicked and lazy servant”, but I would point out that Jesus does not call him that… Jesus is telling a story where the evil landlord is calling him that.   This is a huge distinction.
Just because of the phrase “evil and lazy servant” appears in the text does not mean that Jesus is assigning it to the man. And this is where our lack of knowledge about the genre of parable betrays us.  If we do not know how to read a parable then we are in danger of mis-reading the parable. 
 It might be interesting at this point to note that the word “talent” did not come to mean what it does in our modern definition until somewhere around the 13th century.  This is one of the first instances we have of a word’s definition actually coming from an interpretation of Scripture.  Talent came to mean skill or ability in the 13th century because of this very passage.  Before that it had never meant what it means in our contemporary understanding.  Talent was a Roman denomination of money.  When Jesus told this story he was clearly meaning it as an economic teaching.
At this point, we have to be willing to come to terms with the fact that we may have been reading this parable exactly the opposite as Jesus meant it.

The man who buried his treasure may actually be the hero of this story! And the servants who derived income from a double percentage gain may have been a wicked participant in an oppressive system. 
A capitalist reading of this passage may actually result in an exultation in the exact opposite purpose for which Jesus meant it.  This is a grave realization. 
If the man who buried his treasure is indeed the hero of this story and he is – by means of a prophetic act – demonstrating the fatal flaw of an opportunistic (predatory) economic enterprise… then we may have been sold a  faulty view of both the kingdom and the financial enterprise of this world.  This is a sobering possibility.
Most people that I talk to do not know that the talent was a denomination of money. They do not know that it weighed 72 pounds. They do not know that it required several servants to carry. They do not know that it was used as an estate tax once a year. This is information that radically changes the way we read the parable.
I am not a fan of either/or, this or that, in or out, us or them, dualism and binary thinking. That is well-established. In this one instance, however, it is clear to me that these are two very different readings and that one reading supports the status quo of Imperial economics and the other is a subversive reading that undermines the way things are and the ‘powers that be’ !
Jesus does not call the servant who buries the money a “wicked and lazy servant” he puts that phrase in the mouth of the wicked landowner.  When people say to me that “the Bible says… that man was a wicked lazy servant” they are misunderstanding the very purpose for which the parable was spoken. We must acknowledge that it is the wicked landowner who calls the servant by that title.
On a side note –  think about what we are saying about God if we think of the wicked landowner as God.  We are saying that God is absent. We are saying that God us harsh. We are saying that God is ruthless.  Is this really what we want to say about God?
 Is this what we think God is like?
I am not blaming those who have been taught to read the Bible this way –  but the simple fact is that it is not how Jesus meant it in the first century nor is it how his original audience would’ve heard it. 
 If we are going to read the Bible better we have got to know more about the first century and we have got to know more about the genres that Scripture is written in.
 This is simply a snapshot of how our ignorance of those two areas … and how 2000 years of dust have blurred the original picture. 
0

>a hellish week

>

Well this backfired! Last week was “hellish” and I was so excited to tackle the subject that I re-arranged the next month of posts to get to it!  

We were having a wonderful conversation here about it last week and then on Friday, the Rob Bell “Love Wins” rumors started and I researched all weekend and followed the buzz. I was all ready to go to town in this week’s post. Here is how it was going to start:
Do you need to believe in Hell to follow Jesus?
Do you need to believe in Hell to be a Christian?
Do you need to believe in Hell to go to Heaven? 
Is there a difference between following Jesus, being a Christian, and going to heaven?

The answer the that last question is “yes” there can be a difference between those three.  
This is a very tricky set of questions and I want to be careful with how we chat about it.
Let me say right up front where I am on the issue. 
  1. I do believe in an existence called “hell”… mostly because of the verses in the Bible.
  2. I do not believe that it is necessarily what has been pictured in Dante’s Inferno or what has been described in Fire and Brimstone sermons over the years.
  3. I am not sure that all the humans souls that I was taught would go there will end up there.
  4. I am not convinced that Hell is only a place after you die.
  5. I do not think that the Gospel is to get you to pray one prayer, one time, so that one part of you (your soul) will not go to hell after you die. 
I was off to a good start. 


I read posts by Rachel Held Evans, and by Tony Jones , a whole bunch of conservative blogs and then this one on hell. 
I was rounding the corner – I was going to talk about how Hebrews 9:27  “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” does not settle the matter in a single verse.
I was going to try and connect with historical views of Biblical words and concepts that have so much variation and how exciting it can be to think outside of the one dimensional “Heaven and Hell” we have been given to see that God’s love and God’s justice are not two different things.
I got in Facebook debates where I said things like 

“ It comes with a deep misreading of the NT texts and especially the Apocalyptic literate of books like Revelation. but that is for another conversation…  as far a Bell’s book goes: what if he comes out and says that God’s love seethes in a holy judgment against injustice and burns away our sin and shame in the end? That would be cool.”

and 

I am not a universalist. I am not saying Rob Bell is right. I am not saying that Love Wins. I am simply saying that A) maybe it is not as cut and dried and we have been told and that B) maybe we missed the good news of the Gospel and think that it was the suit & tie preachers say through the microphone.

I talked to friends and family on the phone about it. Then I rounded the corner into the week and …  I just petered out.  I start my new job this week. I have several projects coming due at school and with different partnerships I have been developing… and I  just don’t feel like constructing the smorgasbord I had planned on. I am just not feeling it. I lost the steam. 
I mean – I could say again that I think it is odd how the Apostle Paul never – not even once – in all of his letters or sermons in Acts – uses the word ‘hell’ and that it does not seem to be a motivating factor for him for preaching the gospel or for the work of salvation.  
I could reiterate the verses about Christ’s work of reconciliation that seem far more relevant this week than they even did last week when I used them.

  • Colossians 1:20 “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

  • Romans 5:10  “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”

  • 2 Corinthians 5:18  “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”
I could go a number of directions with it… but in the end I guess I will just put it out there and see if anybody has an aspect of this that they are especially interested in talking about?  
… otherwise I will just wait for the “Love Wins”  book to come out at the end of march and we can take it up then. 



6

>Friday Follow up: thoughts on following

>What a great week of discussion! After honing this down a bit, I wanted to post it and get some thoughts:

In John 14:6, when Jesus says  “I am the way”  – that Jesus’ way is the humility that we see in John 13 (washing the disciples’ feet)

When he says “I am the truth” – that Jesus in the revelation of God.

When he says “I am the life” that it is Jesus’ life that reconciles ALL things to God.
I get that from verses like:

Colossians 1:20 “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Romans 5:10 
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”

2 Corinthians 5:18 “
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”

When he says “no one comes to the Father but through me” – he is saying ‘everyone who comes to God comes through me’. Jesus reconciled ALL things to God.

This is built on the previous understanding that:

In was in response to Thomas asking about “where you are going”. Thomas would not have had the concept of the after-life that we have. He was a first century Hebrew.

So Jesus says ‘it’s not about the way to where I am going – I am the way’. Jesus is clearly not talking about “life after you die”. 
When Jesus says “no one comes to the Father” – IF we think that the Father lives in heaven (3 tiered Universe) , then we think that Jesus is talking about Heaven only he is saying ‘the father” . So the Father = heaven.
But I don’t believe that ANY of that is what is going on in that passage!
Just think about these 4 ideas:
  • the word Hindu does not appear in the Bible. So the Bible has nothing to say about Hindus. If we do… then we are INTERPRETing things that are in the Bible and APPLYing them to Hindus. 
  • as a 1st century Hebrew, Thomas was not asking about our concept of heaven.
  • Jesus was not talking about “life after you die”
  • Jesus was talking about a KIND of relationship with God (the way he had) before you die. 

Instead, it was an invitation to a caliber of connection with God that is only found in Jesus’ way (servanthood) and Jesus’ life (that reconciled all things to God). 
Now, some have asked about the possibility of this verse being about both the relationship here and also affecting eternity.  I could go with that… as long as we begin by acknowledging that it is not primarily or even initially about eternity.  
That passage in John 14:6  is about how we live now (Jesus’ way), the radical impact on our whole existence (Jesus’ truth) and  the entrance to that (Jesus’ life).  
14

>Black Women, Jews and Hindus

>We need to address how we read the Bible. There is a whole study of how we interact with and interpret texts – it’s called Hermeneutics. Many of us (most? ) are taught one way to read the Bible – that can be devotionally, ‘literally’ *  or allegorically, etc.

There are many ways of reading the Bible – I am not going to pretend that every way is good or that any interpretation is equally valid, helpful, or faithful.  This is why we need to talk about how we read the Bible.

Last week we talked about Jesus and Rome –  pigs and water.  [link here]

I would like to try and build on that for our conversation here.

 Jews

One of the truly horrific aspects of Christian History is the anti-Semitism that has plagued the Church
for 1900 years.  It started early on in the 2nd century** and it peaked in the Holocaust of WWII. There is no way to escape the incriminating evidence of nearly two millennia but I would like to address something rather odd in the argument that lies behind it.

The Jews did not kill Jesus.  This accusation that ‘the Jews killed Jesus’ has been around for 1800 years.  It is ridiculous.

Let’s be clear about two things:

  1. Jesus laid down his life willingly.  In that sense no one killed Jesus. In John 10: 17-18 Jesus says “ The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
  2. If anyone did kill Jesus (which we already established that they did not) it would be the Italians. Romans are the one who nailed Jesus to the cross! The Italians killed Jesus (if anyone did).

So the question has to be asked: why have the Italians not come under condemnation and persecution for the death of Jesus?  The answers to that are revealing.

The seat of Catholic power (the Vatican) is in Rome… said another way – those who are in power are in charge of the narrative
It is difficult to punish descendants for the actions of previous generations. (unless they participate in the same oppressive activities)

The reason that the Italians get off scott-free tells me something. It tells me that Jesus and the Bible have almost nothing to do with the treatment of the Jews in Church History. This is one of those cases where we do what we would have done anyway and just find Bible verses to hide behind.

 Hindus

Whenever other religions come up in conversation, somebody will invariably go immediately to John 14:6 where Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Now, I love this verse as much as the next choir-boy [I have written about it multiple times]  but there are a couple of things that need to be addressed before it is applied thickly to whatever religious wall we are erecting.

Jesus probably did not know about Hindus and definitely did not know about Muslims***.  Therefore we can say with a fair amount of confidence that Jesus was not – in any way – commenting on whether Hindus or Muslims had a relationship with God.

Look – Jesus was not commenting on Hindus or Muslims! He was making a positive statement about the potential of having a certain caliber of relationship with God – he was not saying something negative about Hindus or Muslims … ALL that I am saying is that you can NOT use John 14:6 for a proof-text of something that Jesus was absolutely NOT addressing.

Go back and read the story in context. Ask yourself “what was Jesus saying – what was he talking about”.  Then draw a circle around it and on the other side of that circle write “everything else” and that is what Jesus is NOT addressing in John 14:6.

 Black Women

There is no easy way for me to ease into this. There is no clever anecdote for me to wade into the subject, so just let me spit it out.

Times have changed… things are different … and we need to learn to listen.

Now, we can all agree that the Copernican Revolution affected the way that everyone – even modern Christians – see the universe (cosmos).  Then there is the influence of people like Newton who deeply impacted our understanding of the world and how it works. Said another way …

between the Telescope and the Microscope we know that the world works very differently than those who wrote the Bible thought that it did.

And that is ok! We are fine. Faith is still possible and the church is still intact. We can deal with new realities and we can adjust to new information.

All of this is to say that we know that the world works differently and we admit that things are different than they were when the Bible was written. This is why it is so important that we listen to people when they talk to us about the impact that the Bible has had on them and their communities.

When women talk about passages in the Bible that have been oppressive or hurtful to them…we need to listen.

When African-Americans talk about passages in the Bible that validate or at least assume slavery… we need to listen.

They are telling us something. They are telling us that the world is not the same as it was in the 1st Century and though it may be less ‘scientific’ than the microscope or telescope – it is not less profound, impactful or true.

I have lots to say about how Paul was (in my opinion) a voice of liberation and progressive freedom in his day.  But what I have to say about Paul in the 1st century is not as important as what black women may have to say about the impact of those same  passages in the 21st century.

*   we have discussed over & over again how no one actually reads the Bible literally.

**  there are many scholars who say that it started in the Apostolic age already in the 1st century.

*** Islam started in the 7th century.

18

>Friday Follow Up: the death of Job’s God

>What an amazing week of conversations on the Blog, Facebook and email!  Thank you all for your contributions.  I have much to think about.  Next week we will address the nature of Divine Power.

Here are the three things that I want to say: 

God is always being incarnated

God is always dying

God is always conquering death

in this sense:  there is a perpetual new life, there is a ongoing crucifixion, and there is constant resurrection.

We are always embodying God. We are forever dying to ourselves. We are continuing to rise (baptized) into a new life.

For the Christian, it is always Christmas, it is always Good Friday and it is always Easter Sunday.

Here are three exchanges I wanted to follow up on:

Dave:  Meister Eckart – “I pray that God would rid me of God”.

Me: This line of reasoning is SOOOOO explosive!

We love it when the Apostle Paul said “through the law I died to the law” in Galatians 2:19
but we may not like it as much as when a John Caputo says “through religion I died to religion” or something similar.

Sara: I’ve been thinking about this idea all day. Was wondering your thoughts on how this play out in our relationships, For instance because Christ died for me and my sins ( including the one where I felt he failed me) Did he not also die for the people in our lives that did not meet our expectations? And because they failed us we hold back our love. (conditional love). God does not conditionally love us so are we suppose to conditionally love other people?

Me: Here is how I would answer this.

1. Jesus died not just FOR our sins but BECAUSE of our sins. We are to blame too.
2. God loves us unconditionally. We are not God. We love conditionally.
3. In Christ (!) we move toward a MORE unconditional capacity to love. We grow, develop and mature in that direction. It is not a destination. It is not a pass/fail assignment. It is not a trick or a test… It is a direction that we move in Christ.

They fail us, we fail God, God forgives us, we forgive them. Let mercy flow, let justice reign, and let kindness ring all around!!

Philip: Gods die, or perhaps more to the point, Gods evolve. The Israelite god does this before our own eyes as we read scripture. But perhaps more interesting is that this evolution takes place in a particular narrative, and only evolves as the people telling the story change. This is interesting to me because it deals less with some ontological change in God and more of a change in us, the storyteller.

That isn’t some lazy excuse like: “god is the same yesterday, today and forever” that’s bull crap. God clearly changes, or at least, when you look at our account of god over a long period of time, you see a character that is not stagnate but incredibly dynamic in how he/she is portrayed. But that’s kind of my point, when we say “that is what God is like” we are using our language, which only makes sense in a certain social context to describe something rather profound. It is inevitable that the character would change as the storyteller changes.
Perhaps if we began to see god as truly “with us”, and not in the “like a best friend” kind of way, but in a way that connects us to god in a real and profound way that blurs the lines of distinction, then that might takes us down a road where our views and descriptions of god are not the process of uncovering the one true god, rather they are the process of expressing the god within and surrounding us (collectively and individually) and the interaction that takes place there.
           



Thanks Bo for the rich and nuanced take on this issue.
ps. I was talking to a older conservative family member who was shocked that I didn’t think God was in control of everything, because as he said ” it brings me great comfort to know that a tragic event happened for a reason” I replied more or less like this “That view of god doesn’t bring me comfort at all, rather that god makes me mad, if God had a reason for a 5 year old being raped then God is a mad man.” Needless to say that conversation didn’t go over very well.

Me:   Philip, thank you for being so honest and clear. Two things I want to respond to:
– You are right that it is not ‘god’ who changes but it is WE who change and our understanding that evolves. That is important, I have been having amazing conversations all week with people telling me about their previous conception of God dying. NOW – it was not the Living God who died but their understanding of God. 


This is important because we are not saying that “there is no God” but that the former conception of “God is dead”. I say this because I believe that the Son of God died and that many conceptions of God died on that Cross.

 

- I got in trouble with someone who was talking about “God being in control” of everything, then later was sad about the passing of a friend. I said “Jesus must have been mad at that guy to kill him like that.” They objected. To which i responded “you can’t if both ways”.



I also wrote about this for Football Jesus [link].

Next Tuesday, the post is on Divine Power. This is what I will tackle.

2

>Friday Follow up: Mashing Christmas into Easter

>Just a couple of reflections on this week’s conversations, posts, and emails:

1) The biggest response was to the idea that “Christmas reminds of this every year: live in the place, speak the language, love the people, and show the way.  It’s called incarnation and it is how God works in the world.” I am always intrigued by what draws the most responses and this one really got me thinking. I wrote my Master Thesis on this topic and so it is an everyday aspect of my thought life… but it dawned on me that I have not said or done much here with the idea.  I will have to build this into more of the posts down the road – since it is the thing that I care the most about in real life!

2) Mashing things together is a real problem.  several examples surfaced this week after the Pod was recorded.
– Like saying “worship” and meaning what happens on Sunday morning when we are together and singing.  That is such a shallow definition of worship.
 Worship is a whole life response to God’s gracious love and lordship.  Trees worship on Tuesday nights as much as I do when I sing on Sunday morning. A nursing baby worships in the early hours of morning with her mother – who is also worshipping in the same act of offering. The mechanic worships when he does an honest estimate for a transmission repair.

Thank God for honest mechanics and nursing mothers and trees as the grow toward heaven.

– When we say things like  “God showed up”… I know what we are after but,  it is such a bad understanding!  God was already there and at work long before you showed up , in fact – it might be WHY you showed up.  God was calling.  SO to say that we did this, sang this, prayed this and then God showed up is bad language and worse theology.

3) Incarnation is HOW god works.  I agree with John Cobb when he says : I think that is it a BAD understanding of power to say that God does whatever he wants in the world and however it is is how God wanted it. 

  Saying that the world is the way that God wants it is not true.  God is not that kind of powerful.. God is a different kind of powerful. I say that God is weak. Some people do not like that I say that.
Some say that God self-limits (I get what they are doing with that).
Some say that God is persuasive rather than coercive (I agree).
Others say that God is sovereign like a King is sovereign – unable to control every move and decision of every member of their Kingdom… but in charge of it (I like this).
Still others say that God is storing up his judgment for the End (I worry that they might be disapointed with how gracious God is in the end).

However you come at this, I think you have to admit three things:
a) God does not do whatever God wants
b) The world is not the way that God wants it
c) as Christians, we should look to Jesus as our model when we look at God’s methods

4) This is why I keep saying that it is almost as if Jesus did not come!  When Christian ministers, theologians and lay people talk about power or love – it is almost as if this was done without reading the Gospels of Jesus Christ.  Most of the definitions are about some ancient conception of God or some philosophical assertion about God – but what they clearly are NOT, is reflective of the revelation of God in Jesus.

I know that it is probably too cynical to say that Jesus came into a world where the Powerful reigned, he presented a vision of humility, and then the Powerful co-opted Jesus and went back to being Powerful only now it is in Jesus name.

I look at organized religion and think to myself “it is almost as if Jesus never came”… when you look at Priest centered – Temple worship and then Roman power structures, it is tough to see sometimes what difference Jesus makes.

Sure – the TOPICS are changed and the SUBJECT is different, but the motives, the methods and the models are almost unchanged… but like I said , that is too cynical.

OK  until next Tuesday – I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and I pray that you are safe in your travels this Holiday season!

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>The Kingdom Comes : in 3-D !

>Buried deep in the hot & heavy give and take of this weekend’s conversation – in the fallout of the Friday followup was something that I really believe and don’t want to be lost as comment #10 in a 20 deep running tally.

 I have modified it slightly so that it doesn’t read like an answer but like an idea.

There is a moment when we jump from being two-dimensional drawings in the pages of a novel and we become the real-life Heroes of the Kingdom who live and move and have our being in the Prince of Peace!! This is where we walk in the land of the living and move out of the land of the dreaming (sin) and move beyond the realm of talking (doctrine).   Now we act!

The jump happens because of a simple realization: we are not the world. We are in the world but our power is not from the world. IN FACT – we are the world’s only chance to realize that it is the world!

The people of God being the Church is not the kingdom but is suppose to be a “coming attractions” of what it will be like when God is in charge of all of our lives. The people of God being the Church is the only chance that the world has to see that it is the world… and repent.

The problem is that we are JUST like the world. We make the mistake of saying that we are “Not of this world” thinking that it means ‘meant for another world‘ (which is not the Biblical word or idea) and this mistake then leads to us living exactly like the world while we wait to go the next world.

This is why our credit cards are at the same levels of debt, our divorce rates are the same, we shop for Christmas presents the same, we vote in roughly the same proportions, we own the same number of cars, our teenagers get pregnant at the same rate, … you name it. Those inside and outside the church are nearly indistinguishable by almost any statistical measure – amounts spent on makeup, clothes, or movies. (not that I want to judge anyone of any of those in particular) You get my point.

It is not enough to say “I am just like you – only I believe in Jesus … and so I will go to heaven after I die.”

But when it comes to violence… we are the same too. And this is a travesty! Because Jesus did not participate in the ordinary human violence of his day during the Pax Romana. We have an opportunity to stand up for the right thing in the right way and to show the world that it is the world ! SO THAT it may see it’s reflection in our mirror (as we reflect Christ) and recognize what it is NOT and come to terms with what it IS.
Our truth is the world’s only chance to escape it’s lie -the world is deceived and it lives in a lie.

But when the church is too much like the world then the world does not see and the church has nothing to say. 

It’s time to move from the two-dimensional characters on a page and walk into our 3-D destiny. This is how the Kingdom comes – one life at time making one decision at a time.  The kingdom comes where God’s will is done.

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