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>Jesus is not Violent

> When we talk about God as Christians we are not talking about a generic conception of God. As Christians we believe in a very specific concept of God, one that was most fully revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

 For people that believe in Jesus and call themselves Christians, I think that it is important that we get something strait: Jesus was not violent. That is the first proposition. The second theory flows out of that: since Jesus was not violent, maybe his people should not be violent either. 


I know that there are those who will object. Some of them will even point to verses in Scripture. I will try to look at each of the objections that I hear as best I can as quickly as I can.
Old Testament
I think that it is important to recognize that we are not GOD-ians, or Spirit-ians. We are Christians.We would take our cue from Christ.

Here is my concern: Every time some Christian wants to be violent and can not find a way in Christ to justify it – they reach back into the Old Testament in order to do so. This is a bad way to read the Bible.  Sometimes, when christian ministers speak, it almost comes across as if Jesus never came.  When I say “Jesus was not violent” you can’t just jump backward and say “In the Old Testament God…” That is not the right way to do it.

Turning over table in the Temple
Whenever I say that Jesus was not violent, almost without exception the first thing someone says is “what about when he cleared the Temple?”  In passages like John 2:15, Jesus makes quite a ruckus in the Temple – driving out the animals that were for sale and turning over the tables of the money changers. 
I would just point out three things: A) it was the only time that he did something like this. It was an exception. B) he did not harm any human or living thing. He cracked a whip and turned over tables. C) this act was in protest of those who had made religion big business, profiting from the vulnerability of others. 
So often I hear this verse used to justify supporting violence and ironically it is by those who have made the christian religion big business and make a handsome profit off of it. That should tell you something.
The Book of Revelation

in chapter 19 of John’s Revelation you hear this: 

11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:  KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS

Somehow this becomes permission to be violent to other countries and to people of different backgrounds or persuasions. 
The error is threefold:


1. To derive doctrine from apocalyptic literature in difficult at best. The very nature of the genre is poetic, fantastic, and explosive. It really should not be read like the rest of scripture. I am firmly convinced that each genre should be read in ways that are appropriate to the nature of that genre. The Histories of the Hebrew Testament, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles (or letters) and the Apocalyptic all need to be read in distinct ways.     


2. To miss that his sword is a non-sword – it is his Word !  I call this “the problem of jesuSword”  and though it can be confusing, it’s important to see that it is not Jesu’s Sword  but Jesus’ Word !!   What brings the nations to submission is not a sword but Jesus’ Word – or the word of the Word (if you prefer). To miss this is to miss the point all together. It is to think that the Romans did the right thing is nailing Jesus to the cross. It is to miss that Jesus was killed unjustly and the injustice pains the heart of God.  There is poetry in that Jesus told Peter to “put away” his sword (jJohn 18:11) and said that if his kingdom was of this world that his followers “would fight” (John 18:36). The implication is that his kingdom’s power does not originate with this world* and therefor his followers will not fight. 


3. Some people justify violence by saying “Jesus even said that he came to bring a sword”   but think about the whole sentence… what did he say? 

Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—   37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

 Here is the important thing: swords were meant to guard families. To protect me, my things, and those close to me! Jesus says that his sword it to divide up families – and I think he was being ironic !!  Because  in his day swords were actually for defending one’s family – for guarding me and mine. In this sense, Jesus’ “sword” is an un-sword… or an anti-sword. It does the opposite of what human swords are used for.  Jesus’ sword is not for defending family but for dividing family. Jesus did not come with a human sword but the opposite!! 

The Kingdom suffers violence
In Matthew 11:12 Jesus says that the Kingdom “suffers violence” and that the violent “try to take it by force”.  I know that this is a tricky passage. Some people see it as saying “you have to be aggressive to enter the kingdom” but I think it is more appropriate to read it as “violent men try to seize to use for their own purposes”.  Regardless, either reading does not give us permission to be be violent and advance the kingdom of Christ “by the sword”. 
Clarification
I am not a pacifist.  I am not passive.  I am actively and passionately non-violent.  I believe that violence begets more violence. Sometime – a person who wants permission to be violent in Jesus’ name will pull out the big two examples and ask me either “what about the Nazis” or “what if some guy broke into you house and was going to rape your wife”?   These are always the big two and I will deal with them next week in “Breaking the Bell Curve”.  Suffice to say – barring those two examples, most of what we are talking about with burning heretics, Godly nationalism, and militarized violence does not primarily fall into those two famous categories. They are just all too normal human violence baptized in Jesus’ name. 
Example
Let me get down to the heart of the matter. Here is an example of exactly what I am talking about. There is nationally known pastor in Seattle, Washington who is famously quoted as saying “Jesus is a cage fighter with a tattoo on his thigh and a sword in his hand, determined to make someone bleed”. He said this in reference to the fact that he “could not worship somebody that he could beat up.” 
Some people dismiss statements like this and chalk it up to testosterone fueled, overly inflated, pumped up hyper-masculinity.  I think that there is something much deeper and much more sinister involved. I think that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God and the interpretation of Christian scripture. 
What is noteworthy is that in Revelation 19, the sword is not in Jesus’ hand but it comes out of Jesus’ mouth. That seems important in the poetic nature of Revelation. This sword is not your average sword. It is not in Jesus’ hand and that makes you wonder if the way in which this sword “strike down” the nations is not in bloody violence but in a kind of destruction that would happen as a result of a sword that proceeds from the mouth of God?  Let’s ask ourselves “is there something that comes from the mouth of God that radically impacts or consumes peoples and nations?”  Is there something sharp that comes from the mouth of God … something sharper than any two edged sword? 
_____
I am suggesting that we need to be open to consider at least three ideas:
1. that since that time in church history when the church rose to Roman power and began to kill people (burn, hang, and behead) what we often call Christianity has been very different than the initial vision of Jesus and the precedent set by the early church when Jesus was killed by Romans and the church suffered violence. 
2. that when groups of nationals are invaded by violent foreigners who mix commerce and religion with genocide and ethnic cleansing, that maybe the rejection by the indigenous population of the alien religion can not be called a rejection of christianity. Maybe when groups like the Native American tribes who were assaulted by European invasion were not actually rejecting what you and I would know as the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
3. that when preachers get stuff like this wrong, that it essentially changes the message and thus the addition of violence to the gospel makes it a different enough message that they are not preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ anymore but a different gospel. Maybe he doesn’t just quote this passage wrong, maybe he has Jesus all wrong.
Now usually people say “no no it is not a different gospel – it is just an adding of something to the gospel.” It is the gospel plus violence. 
But I would ask, if the example and model of Jesus and the apostles is essentially and fundamentally  non-violent, and one adds violence to it… does it then essentially and fundamentally transform the gospel into something that is then not the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
But is it possible that this preacher did not just get a detail wrong but is actually portraying Jesus wrong. That he is not just adding something to the gospel but is preaching a different gospel and thus is not preaching the gospel? 
I guess a fun example would be : if I write a book about how English is the best language and how everyone should speak English. Then someone translates that my book into French… that would be complicated. But what if they then appropriated the message and said that French was the best language and everyone should speak French… would that then be a different message?   Even if it were based on my original book, had the same title and used all the same stuff – it would be a different message.
I think that they would not just have translated my message but would have changed my message. Essentially and fundamentally they would be saying something different than I was.  They would not be promoting my same message. 
This is the exact situation that I think we often have. People use Jesus’ name, read from the Holy Book and even put crosses on the outside of their building and on their stage. It has all the markers of a Christian message. Here is the problem – it has a fundamentally different message and motives than Jesus did. It uses Roman models and methods and thus it is not in keeping with the Spirit of Christ. 
Jesus was not violent. jesuSword is not Jesu’s sword but Jesus’ word. It’s not a sword – it is an un-sword or an anti-sword.  When we miss this detail, we miss the message.
* the phrase “not of this world” does not mean that Jesus power has nothing to do with this world, but that it does not originate with this world (unlike Herod’s or Pilate’s). It definitely impacts the world and is for the world. “Not of this world” does not mean that it has nothing to do with this world and is for a “world that is to come”. It means that it is fully IN the world but that the source of its power is not OF the world.  

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>Relationship

>

I posted this quote on Facebook this week “ The Faith began as a relationship. In Athens, it became a philosophy. When it went to Rome, it became an organization. In Europe, it became a culture. When it came to America, it became a business.” 

my friend Russ Pierson (who has started a world traveling Dmin of Global Leadership at George Fox) and I had an interesting conversation about Ecology. He had asked the twitterverse why the giant split between Theology and Ecology.  I replied that  i thought it was a natural consequence of the Greek Dualism inherited by western European thinkers and over the centuries morphed into the present worldview. 

my friend Nathan Detweiler (who just started a Mdiv at Alliance Theological in Nyack – where my dad teaches) and I were talking about the Didache – or Teaching of the 12 –   and we were both gobsmacked at how much Christianity changed after the year 300. (Tony Jones wrote an accessible guide to the Didache if anyone is interested [link])
my friend Joe Paprone (who just so happened to recently begin a world traveling  Masters in Global Mission with Fuller)  and I were catching up after his return from Big Tent Christianity and the  topic of the Gospel’s relational nature came up.
when I talk or email with friends and family from Albany to Alberta, from Kalispell, MT to Claremont, CA … this theme of relationship in the gospel comes up over and over again. 

    I have heard Dr. Larry Shelton (my first seminary professor) say that it is “relationship all the way down” . This has impacted me greatly.  Shelton’s book Cross & Covenant: Interpreting the Atonement for the 21st Century Mission [link] is a tour de force on the historical development of thought and direction for the future. 
   I have a number of quotes that I thought about using here 
– but let me get right down to it: 
Stated in the Positive:  Here is why I think that Relationship component of the Gospel is so important. I am convinced that relationship is essential (it is central) to Gospel. I am suspicious that the gospel IS relationship. 
Stated in the Negative: after 300 C.E. the focus of the Gospel seems to have moved from relationship and shifted to A) substance and B) status.  This was the Greek & Roman  shift (influence) on Christian thought. 
    Let me just say that it is not my intention to be critical of the Greco-Roman period  but simply to point out that 1) it is very different than what came before it and specifically the  Hebrew influenced writings of Scripture. 2) That if one, in the Post-modern conversation , wanted to return to a more relational reading of the scripture that person would not be unfaithful to Christianity. 
    Without getting bogged down in heavy arguments and endless details (that will come in subsequent weeks) let me just point out four examples: the Trinity, Jesus, communion and salvation. 
Trinity: after 300 there is great concern to get straight the Order & Structure of the Trinity. Who comes first and who is the origin of who.  This is Status.  But this does not seem to be the concern of the writers of Scripture who, in fact, didn’t even use the world Trinity. In fact, their concern seems to be the relationship between the divine actors and the form is narrative – not creed or formula. I think that this is important. The Bishops and Councils of the threes, fours and five hundreds seem to want much cleaner lines and much clearer flowcharts than the writers of scripture provided in the narrative. (If you want to see how important this turned out to be – just look up the Filioque [link] in a Church history book and look at the brew-ha that followed.) 
Jesus: after 300 there is a great concern over the Ousia – the substance of Jesus.  Was he of the same substance “homo-ousia” as the Father?  This is where our classical “Fully God – Fully Human” formulation comes from.  That’s fine.  I just want to point that the Gospel writers seem much more concerned with Jesus’ relationship to God than the nature of his substance. 
Salvation: the whole Calvinist – Arminian debate , besides being exhausting and endless, is a product of a set of questions that the Bible does not seem to be concerned with and thus does not even attempt to answer.  In what way is God sovereign? and how does that mix with Human free will? can someone lose their salvation (status)? and what is the nature of someone who is saved in this life but continues to sin (substance)?  The reason those are debated round and around is that the writers of the Bible are not concerned with them.  They seem to be concerned with a believer’s relationship to God and relationship to others. 
Communion: Notice the modern fascination with what is communion (substance) and who is allowed to take it (status) and who is allowed to serve it (status & substance). The Bible never says.  In fact,  Jesus actually has the meal with someone that he knows will turn on him.  But Jesus invites him to the table and breaks bread with him – in relationship – seemingly not concerned with his status or his substance…. 
    My only point in all of this is that even if someone did not want to go all the way intoRelational – Process thought [link] like my school does, they are not going against traditional Christianity to step away from focusing on Status and Substance and instead focusing on Relationship.  They are just getting back to their roots. 
Like I said I am not advocating a new type of Christianity, as much as  I am acknowledging that  Christianity is always being made new.  Well, in this case – everything old is new again. 


to listen to the podcast [link ]
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>God isn’t who we thought

>God isn’t who we thought- 3 problems with the Big 5 God:

1.When we make God too big and too pure and too heavenly – the Incarnation becomes impossible. It just doesn’t make sense how God could have bridged that gap. Maybe it’s not that we’ve made good too big but that we have over emphasized the gap between Spirit & Matter, Heaven and Earth, God & the Creation.

2.If that God is all powerful then he is not all loving. And if he is all loving then he is not all powerful – and no amount talk bout ‘mystery’ or ‘tension’ is going to cut it. Sunday school answers about just ‘trusting that He knows what is best’ don’t work in the face of the atrocities that we saw in the 20th century. Either we outgrew that god, or he died or he isn’t who we thought he was.

3.Even if we do believe in that old concept of God (and keep in mind – I am not talking bout the God of the Bible. I am talking about the God that emerged in the first three centuries around Christ and continued to evolve throughout church history). If we do stick with that God then we have to address the the obvious question: where did he go? He hasn’t done much in a while. Maybe after Jesus and the writing of the Bible his work was done and now it is up to us to figure it out. Maybe technology, education and civilization steal his powers and he can only work where those things are not.

Now of course – and I hope that this is obvious – I don’t believe that. I believe in God and God’s present work in the world. But this concept of God is incoherent and irrational as well as impractical in the modern world. I don’t mind taking things by faith. I am a person of faith. But I am not going to use the ‘Faith’ card on something that is nothing more that a poorly conceived construct.

The thing that I want tell you, in the way of good news, is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

Next time… we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

OK – so there it is in the new format. Short and sweet. I jammed it into a couple of short paragraphs!

If you want to stick around for Overtime -I will unpack it a little bit and flesh it out. But there you have the seed here and the framework.
___________________________

Overtime: the old style big Essay (or just go to post a comment at the bottom)

I know that it is a new year so I hate to start it with a negative but I have some unfinished business from the past year. So…

I want to start this year with a confession.
I don’t believe in this configuration of God: Omni-potent, Omni-present, Omniscient, Impassable, Immovable.
It doesn’t matter whether you call him the God of the Creeds, the God of Church History, the God of Orthodoxy or of ‘Classic Christianity’. It’s just not who I pray to, who I sing about or who I participate with… not when it’s configured like that.
And here is why. Here are my 3 big problems with the Big 5 God.

The Incarnation becomes an Impossibility.
When we focus too much on God’s transcendence, try to make God too big and too ‘Other’ we paint ourselves into a corner and it actually become logistically impossible for Jesus to have come in the flesh! When we talk about God in too grandiose terms we often borrow for Gnostic language and say that ‘God can nothing to do with this sinful world’ and then someone says ‘what about jesus ? If he was fully God and fully man, how did he bridge this massive gap that you have set up?’ And the answer that is given rings hollow. “It is a Mystery.” Now listen , I am ALL about mystery and the mystical and the supernatural… but I object to using ‘mystery’ to defend our illogical and incongruent conceptions of God.

Which brings me to my second point…

Theodicy – “a response to the problem of evil in the world that attempts logically, relevantly and consistently to defend God as simultaneously omnipotent, all loving and just despite the reality of evil.”
In the past this has been a real problem. If God is all powerful and God is loving and he’s just then why is he evil allowed to persist? And this IS a real problem. I just have two quick thoughts about this:
The 20th century was brutal for God. Not only did he take a beating in the classroom (and sometimes in the courtroom) but he was often nowhere to be found outside of evangelical and Pentecostal worship services. But in a very real sense we saw a what evils people were capable of in the name of God. In movements like the the Nazis of Germany, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia ( Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia) and the god-soaked language of African atrocities in Darfure a(not to mention the cults of Jonestown and the Brach Davidians among countless others) we saw little difference from the godless regimes of Communist Russia, the Fascist, the Totalitarians and the Utopians. God was seemed to make little difference is how we treated enemies, combatants
We have much better ways to think about this now! Ya know – we are not limited to the way is that they thought about God in the second and third centuries. We are not limited to the constructs of the plagues any crusades of the 1100’s. we aren’t not limited to the constraints in thought of the 16th and 17th century. This is a new day. And there are much better options now for thinking about how the universe is constructed and how reality functions, how history progresses and where humanity participates.

Theodicy is a problem of constructs and conceptions of the past. when you beef God up too much and over-inflate your portrayal of your conception, you have to come back and defendant at construct when things don’t go well. We have concepts and frameworks now that incorporate the evils of things like the second world war and the atrocities of the 20th century into a working configuration that integrates the presence of evil with the way of the world actually works and the belief in a loving God. We are not limited by the way people have thought about and talked about God in the past. There is a progressive, emerging, innovative and thoughtful way to approach this.

The old God is nowhere to be found.
This is perhaps my biggest problem with the old big 5 God. He hasn’t done anything in a while. Either he did some really cool stuff in the Bible and then he retired, or he is a regional deity that can do cool things with the weather and some miraculous things in a very small locations with small groups of people.
People who voraciously defend the literalness of the Bible run into a problem if they do not have those kind of experiences to detail of biblical proportion. If you want to say that the kind of things that we read about in the Bible literally happen, that’s fine. But there had better be a self validating expression and experience that coincides with it. It does no one any good to have a passionate defense of the literalness of the biblical account if there are no self validating evidences in the community. Some people split history into dispensations and say well that was then and this is now, and that really happened then but it’s not going to happen now. So that’s kind of a dead-end. Apparently the big five God changed. After he did his big impressive stuff he retired into some recess of the universe — having written a bestseller with the Bible he had enough to live on for the rest of history. but these people usually come back and say “God never changes – he is the same yesterday today and forever” so that gets confusing. because while God never changes apparently his interaction with the world does. He doesn’t change but the times do. So the fact is hard to figure out.
Other people say that everything we read about in the book of acts is available to us today. But the really awkward question quickly surfaces. Why do so many of this god’s miracles seem to happen in places of poverty, no electricity and little education. Is it that he prefers these out-of-the-way places where people haven’t figured out not to believe in God yet or is it that way electricity & education show up his power diminishes.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here. I believe in God. I believe in the miraculous. I believe in Jesus and the Gospel of grace. I am a believer. What I am saying is that our conceptions of God from the third century the 11th century and the 16th century may not work for us in the modern era. We live in “ a world come of age” and our conception of God has to grow up too. we live in a world that is progressing and changing and evolving into something that it has never been before. Our faith has the capacity to speak to, interact with and to learn from that world in a way that is mutually edifying and empowering. But that will not happen if we insist on remaining and reinforcing these constructs and conceptions of God of centuries past.

Here’s my bottom line: it hasn’t worked to bring about either the world we hope for or the one that we promised in our message. We have, up with lots of ways to explain it away – most of these focus on human sinfulness,the fallenness of mankind or the work of the devil.

The only thing that I can tell you in the way of good news is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

OK – I just needed to get that off my chest. and now I can move on and get down to the task at hand!!

Next time we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

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>God’s Weakness in Haiti

>This is a conversation that I was having at the Website with Dan

Dan:
I find the conversation here at Everyday Theology very helpful and incredibly interesting.  Before I ask my questions though, let me say, as gently as possible:  God is not the author of death.  He is not sending anyone a message through the earthquake in Haiti.  If there is a spiritual component to this horrible event it originated in Hell, not Heaven.  Don’t worry, the Pat Robertson’s of the world will continue to marginalize themselves by saying anti-Christian things like his latest, until no one is listening to him anymore.

I do however have a couple of unresolved questions.  ET says that this disaster was caused by shifting tectonic plates and unresolved poverty.  Yes, this is the vehicle through which death was delivered.  But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this event.  I am not sure what it is, but I suspect it has something to do with Satan’s desire to kill, steal and destroy and my failure as a follower of Jesus to bring redemption to the people of Haiti.  Is there a spiritual component to this disaster?

Second question:  While Jesus displayed a glaring lack of human power he did display an incredible amount of heaven’s power (healing sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead and so forth).  While the weakness of Jesus has got me thinking about what the Gospel really is and how it is totally and utterly opposed to empire, I still see a power offered to his disciples that inserted the impossible into human tragedy.  Where does this authority over sickness and death fit in this emerging theology?

Me: – wow. you have quickly gotten to the heart of the matter. I really like what you said in your first paragraph. Powerful statements.

First question: I can only tell you what I think. I think that the tectonic plates are ‘natural’ in origin. I think that the systemic poverty is ‘human’ in origin. and I think that IF there is anything ‘spiritual’ that it is people’s response to tragedy and hurt. Christ’s body reaching out, holding the hurting, healing wounds and reaching into the wound.

second question – this is a tough one. I want to believe. I do not want to be a cynic. If we have the power to raise people from the dead and heal the sick, why are we not flying ‘miracle teams’ over there to raise the dead and heal the sick? IF EVER we were going to step up into an ACTS like authority and take ‘dominion’ (as someone else has said) then THIS would certainly be the time do that!! The world is watching – it would be publicized on GLOBAL TV. The world would SEE and BELIEVE.

please understand me. I have seen miracles. I believe. I just don’t know that it is predictable enough to ‘go public’ with it. I think that we:
1) show up
2) love without condition or judgment
3) serve
4) pray and see what happens.
That really is the best I have right now. I mean, if you feel called to get on an airplane and fly down … or better yet – just pray from where you are that the dead in Haiti will get up and start to tell of God and his power, you can do that right now.

I am just saying that I do not think that is that way it works. I think that God is weak. I think that God loves weakness. I think that God works in our weakness. That is why I think we go (in weakness) and serve (in our weakness) and embrace others weakness and that is how God is made manifest, in our weakness.

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>3 ways to think of God

>The Simple Way to talk of God

Some things are complicated. Admittedly, this is not always fun or desirable. It is so nice sometimes when things are simple: like There is one God. Some like to say “there is no name under heaven or earth by which men can be saved” .Or as our ancestors said “Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one”. Or like our religious cousins say “There is no God but one and this is his prophet”.
And we see that even amongst the Abrahamic faiths, this one simple confession has already made things unimaginably complicated.

I have to admit, I think that it is better if things are realistically reflective of how complicated and complex things really are! I don’t think that it serves anyone when we overly simplify something that is, by necessity, complex. Like when we say ‘pray this little prayer and you will go to heaven’ or that “grace is the free gift of God” without mentioning that the free gift will cost you everything – like a free download that once downloaded unzips itself and re-formats your entire hard drive, replaces your operating system and deletes all your favorite files. ( That, by the way, is what most people refer to as a virus – but that is for another day)

But today is about the Name of God, or should I say the Names of God. This is one of those areas that you do not want to over simplify and that we do a great disservice to by boiling it down to a bare minimum. There is such richness is a study of the multiplicity of Names for God – even just those that are found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Three quick groupings of these:

First, there a number of lists and resources that will show you a whole array of these names. Some will catalogue the Hebrew names for God is Scripture – Jehovah, Elohim, Adoni, Ancient of Days, Jehovah Jireh, etc. Some will detail names for Jesus or titles he inherited in our ‘old’ Testament. These a great photo albums of different snapshots of God’s story.
The only thing to be mindful of is that they are lifted out of a narrative and are thus missing their context that so often gives them their meaning.

Second grouping is Titles that we know well but may not know where they come from. For instance, many people know that Jesus is called both the Son of God and the Son of Man. But it is helpful to ask ‘Is Jesus the only person called the Son of God” and the answer is ‘No’. Many people in the Bible are called Son of God. It was a political term and it turns out that Israel may have borrowed it from Egypt, Babylon or Rome – all of which had it in their records before it shows up in Israel and we know that Israel had contact with these places.
The Son of Man, though is interesting because it is a prophetic title that Jesus borrows from the book of Daniel and other Hebrew writings that are not in our canon. Jesus uses it so many different ways and if you only did a study that focused on that phrase, you would probably learn so much and have such a developed picture of how Christ embraces it’s many facets.

The third grouping is phrases or ideas that are lost in translation. They are concepts that did not come over when the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic transitioned to English. It’s like how there are seven Greek words in the New Testament for love , but in the KJV, New American and NIV they all come out simply as ‘love’.

Well, there are all sorts of interesting words left back in the pre-translation texts like for instance ‘Wisdom’ words like Hokma in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, or how Spirit in Hebrew is Ruach. The interesting thing in these examples, as in many other places, is that these words of feminine. The fact that in the original language used in the texts of scripture has both Spirit and Wisdom not just with feminine words but contain feminine word pictures and concepts.

It may be helpful to recognize that other things have been lost in translation too and some of them contain gender issues. The phrase ‘help mate’ is often used of the relationship of Eve to Adam or of a wife to her husband. The word is ‘paraclete’. This phrase though only occurs one other time in scripture. The other time, it is about God. Holy Spirit is promised to us as a ‘Helper’. That word is a God word and reflects God’s relationship to us: Helper.

So, no – things are not simple. But, if you embrace that complexity, you can actually emerge into a place where there is great clarity and perspective. It won’t be any simpler , but it will more accurately reflective the complicated nature of the reality that we are dealing with.


Say God three times

I got permission to pick out two clips of a conversation between Elizabeth Johnson (author of “She Who Is”) and Tripp Fuller (of Homebrewed Christianity) to help us really appreciate the classic formulation of the Triune God .

We listen to Elizabeth Johnson and take the opportunity and say God’s name 3 times in 3 different ways.

God beyond us
God with us and
God within us

John 14:16-18
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth … you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Dancing with God

One of my favorite pictures of the relationship of the Trinity ( the Triunes Godhead if you prefer) – is found in a word picture that pre-dates the formulation of our New Testament. It is called the Perichoresis (it is popular in the Eastern tradition and dates back before the 4th century but it was not the preferred picture of the Three Fold nature of God for the Roman West and thats why so many of us Protestants have never heard of it) and I have to tell you – it has revolutionized my prayer life, my Bible reading and my view of society.

The term Perechoresis comes from two words: Peri (where we get our word perimeter) and from the same word that we get Choreograph from. So Perichoresis means that dance of God or the movement of God and it is a picture of the relationship that is a little different than the Father sitting on the throne, the Son at his right side and the Holy Spirit doing all of the work. It is not static – it is dynamic and full of motion.

One of things you will run into in early church history is that there are hundreds of ways to picture the Trinity incorrectly. There were so many councils and creeds that tried to address all of the wrong ways to picture this and talk about. It you read a theological dictionary you will find names and titles for all sorts of errors and heresies regarding these formulations. You are not allowed to say that the Son proceeded from the Father or that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and Son. They all have to be equal. The Son was begotten but not made and comes from the same substance as the Father but is not the same person. You can not say that they are 3 substances in one person but you have to be careful with them being one substance in 3 persons. On could go on and on about how complicated and complex this is, but suffice to say that when you are done with the whole exercise… you want to be left with more than a Organizational chart detailing the hierarchy of the Godhead.

That is why I love Perichoresis. It has movement – is sees God as a divine Community – as Relationship in it’s purest and best and that for which all other relationships are but shadows and reflections. It is the fountain from which all our expectations for community flow and the source of our relational expectations.

Here then is how it works:

It is coordinated dance (choreography) around the perimeter. It is each member taking it’s turn to move into that central place and then deferring of defaulting to the others. It is the Father saying “this is my son” then the son saying “I do only that which I receive from my father” and of the spirit “I will send you another who will teach you all things” and Spirit calling back to our memory “everything that Jesus said”.

It is the humility and patience of God to not occupy that central place and to rotate and turn around the others, moving to allow the other a place to come and be central. It is a chance to prefer and find importance in other. I love this picture. It speaks to me. It moves my soul. It inspires me to community and relationship.

It want to take it further, you can go ahead and ask the question. If they are moving around the outside (the perimeter) then what is in the middle?
And that is the question. What is in the middle? If you know me and how I construct these essays – you can probably guess.
It is Sophia. The wisdom of God for humanity is that place. But here is the thing: It is not an empty space. It is actually a pregnant place, for it is the womb. It is Mary saying “may it be unto me as you have said” in daring response to the initiation of God. It is place that the Bride is held. It is not an empty space but a place of possibility and potential. The womb is where the knowledge of God is born. Sophia.

Isn’t that an amazing picture? It is such a gorgeous metaphor for the moving of God. For humble community and dynamic relationship.

So, In closing. I just want encourage you to try something new. That might be researching the Names of God, or the background of just one of the Names.

Or, you might trying what Elizabeth Johnson suggested and try saying God three times each time you invoke the Name in prayer : God who is beyond us – God who is with us – God who is within us.

Or, you might close your eyes and let images of God dance in your head and in your heart as they move and turn and dip and recede in coordinated humility and preference. You may even want to go that extra step and incorporate the picture of the womb, the ministry of Spirit as ‘Helpmate’ , Jesus’ mother heart or God as She.

We end where we began: this is not simple and trying to make it so is dangerous. It is messy and necessarily complicated – just like life and exactly like faith

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>Is God a Man?

>God as She – Some people get upset if others refer to God as ‘she’ when they are talking.

and I kind of see why, as I think I use to be one of the one that would twinge, but in the end I just chalked it up to the person either wanting be novel and cutting edge, or irreverent and challenging.

But there are two things that that come out of the Bible that have made me reconsider this
(and a third thing out of church history that almost convinced me).

The first thing to notice is that God is bigger than gender definitions or human parameters that we have. In the beginning, it says, he made them male and female, he made them in his image: both male and female are in God’s image. If we were to draw a Venn Diagram (those overlapping circles) and put “male” in one circle (yellow) and “female” in the blue, we would notice two things right away: first, there is an overlapping section (let’s call it ‘green’) of share traits between the genders and this is shared humanity. In my opinion, this green section is very large as I think that males and females have more in common as human than they do that is distinct to their gender.
But it is the next thing that really makes you think. Not only would you have these three categories of Human, Male and Female but you would also have a fourth category called ‘other’ or ‘none of the above’ and that is the area around the two circles. This represents the things that are true about God that are not contained in humanity. Because I think that we could all agree that God is bigger than God’s creation and that saying ‘God’ is not just saying ‘human’ loudly. God is not just the collection of all our best hopes projected onto the heavens. So while God made them – male and female – in the image of God , God is not entirely defined by what they show or reveal about God. While they reveal something about what it is ultimately true, what is ultimately true is not shown in it’s totality in them.

Women are created in the image of God. Men are created in the image of God. Humans show some of what God is like, but God is not only or entirely found in or defined by what we see in humans.

The second thing to notice in the Bible is that the authors used masculine pronouns when talking about God and even where the original language might gender neutral the translators into English went ahead and used the masculine ‘He’. Now some people let it rest there and say ‘Jesus called God “father” and that is enough for me’ as there capstone. Cased closed. Period.

It is also interesting to notice what else the Bible calls God. More than 40 times the Bible says that God is a rock. It is interesting because we would not say that God is a cold inanimate object. We don’t think that God is actually a rock! We know that is metaphor, it is a word picture, a language device – some call it ‘Theo-poetics’ or the way we talk about God. The Bible also says clearly that ‘God is light’ (1 John 1:5) but we don’t think that the Sun is God. We don’t flip the light switch on and say ‘oh God is in the room’. It is a metaphor – a word picture. It’s how we talk about God. It is not revealing the totality of what is true about God. Other places in scripture talk about God having wings (5 times in the Psalms alone) but we don’t think that God is a bird. We don’t have hearing about what kind of feathers God’s wings are adorned with. There are not denominations that insist on pictures of God being in flight and others that prefer the flightless picture of the penguin version of God. Come on -that would be silly. It is a word picture – it is metaphor – it is the way that we talk about God. So we understand these as cultural expressions of different conceptions of God in their language. Yes God is Father , just like God is a rock. But God is not actually a rock! and that Rock is not God. It is Theo-poetics. Yes, God is light – but God is not actually defined in totality by light. It is a world picture. I could add tons of more examples and I’m not trying to get ridiculous, but if we hold too tightly to these, we have a picture of the Rock Father flying with his wings at the speed of light – or something.

We all know, at some level, that this is the gift of language. It allows us to use comparatives (whether metaphors or parables) to say ‘I will use this thing that you know to tell you something that you don’t know.’ That is the message.

Bottom Line : God is bigger than our conception of God and it not totally defined by our ability to conceptualize or communicate it.

Some people are going to object. They are going to say
A)the Bible reveals God as male and
B)B) when Jesus came, he came as a man. (a big ole’ hairy man)

But I would just like to point out that A) the Bible is the expression of a culture and time. It is a story and not everything in that story is good. Sometimes God’s people do things that God is not sanctioning or validating. It is simply telling us what people in that time and place thought. It was a very patriarchal society and some of the views express that. We need to be careful we don’t make women second class citizens in our churches and families BECAUSE they were when the Bible was written. If we do that, we might be missing the entire trajectory of the story: that redemption…and restoration… and reconciliation had come to earth and that after the veil was torn in two (the first symbol of what was to come) and then the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the people of God were dispersed (Diaspora) – they were not to import the old order but to initiate a new order. That would even outgrow that Apostles writings (the Epistles) as this message crossed rivers and into new lands it was to invite the Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Unfortunately – it got co-opted by actual Kings and brought into the kind of hierarchy and authority structures that earthly Kingdoms are defined by and built upon.

But that is a story for a different day.

B) As far as Jesus coming as a man… well – that is really something worth considering!
Stop and think about why that might be so important.
Is it because God is a man? No – we know that everything that is feminine is also found in God.

Is it simply cultural? No, I think that is too simple and misses that point entirely.

Could it be that Jesus came as a man to give us new model for masculine?
An invitation to a different way to be a man?
The possibility for a new picture of humanity?

I think that it is noteworthy that if Jesus came as a women and did the sort of things that he did in the culture to which he came, two things would have happened. A lot of people would not have even noticed. Women were expected to serve and take care of the hurting and be compassionate. Most people would not even have marked how remarkable it was that God had come as a parable – to use something we know in order to show us something that we did not know.
Some people would have confused the message and would have focused on the fact that God was female and would certainly elevated Female to god and began to worship the feminine. Missing that that too was a metaphor and would have thought that it was the message. This was a common conception the cultures all around Israel- Babylon to the East, Egypt to the South West and Greece & Rome to the North West. This was actually a real danger in that region in ancient times.


I think that it is significant to note two things about Jesus in this regard:
1) The gospels record at least 4 significant interactions with women. In all four of these cases, Jesus challenged or broke the cultural expectations, boundaries and barriers. He clearly was not that interested in reinforcing, maintaining or even abiding by the gender categories of his culture. (see John 4, Luke 10, Luke 7, John 12 – Mark 14- Matt 26)

2) Jesus’ radical non-violence, his heart for service (I came not to be served but to serve Mark 10:45, Matthew 20:28) his use of mother hen imagery “Oh Jerusalem Jerusalem how I longed to gather your children like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” Matthew 23:37) borrowed from the prophets, and so many other examples portray Jesus as a different sort of man. It is actually a portrayal that gets some people quite riled up. I have actually heard two different pastors – both nationally famous – say recently that this portrayal of Jesus bothers them. One said that if Jesus had come as a women and did the sorts of things that he is reported to have done, most people would not have thought much of it. That is what we, generally speaking, expect from women : self sacrifice, service, etc. I don’t think that he meant it in a bad way. The other guy however… said that he hates the modern portrayal of Jesus as an effeminate and the bottom line is that he can not worship someone that he could beat up.

Here is the thing. This isn’t the 1600’s anymore. You just can’t pine for the old days and claim that you are being faithful to traditions of the faith. The core of this religion we call Christianity is this thing called the Incarnation. It is a manifestation of God in a given place in a specific time. We have to manifest that message in this place at this time… and Jesus modeled for us how to do that. He not only showed us what God is like, told us what God values but he released us to do the same in our context in our community.

Having said all of that, I close with this. Women are made in the image of God. They show something amazing about God. They are not second class citizens.
God values women just as much as a man. Sure, our physiology is different. Biologically there is uniqueness. We have different parts. We play different roles sometimes… but in the end – with generalities aside – every human contains, reflects or portrays the Image of God (choose you language). God created them , male and female, in God’s image. Yes, the Bible may use the masculine pronoun in reference to God. and we can debate if that was cultural or if that was simply limitation of language. But in that debate – to say that God is Father is no more of less true than saying that God is a rock or that God is light or that God has wings or that God is love or – if someone were so inclined – saying that the Great I Am is not the great unknown but is instead – She who Is… That the I am who I am and the Un-namable Ground of All Being is one and the same with ______ . Whatever language you choose… is no more true of false than saying that “Jesus lives in my heart” or that “God is on the throne” or whatever else you want to say.
In the end this is Theo-poetics (at some level).
This is metaphor and parable and word picture.
These are not exact formulations or legal expression of definitions in their totality.

God is a much a Mother as He is a Father. My mother is as good a picture for me of what God is like as my father is. My wife is far more like God than I am – and anyone who knows me will know that that is true.

We are missing something about God because of the way we think about God.

Our communities are missing something because of the way we talk about God.

Our world is missing something that it desperately needs because of the way that we think and talk about God.

So in summary :
God is bigger than God’s creation.

God is bigger than our conception of God.

God is not defined by or contained in our ability to talk about God.

I look forward to hearing from you on this. I welcome you posts, emails and comments.

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>3 Gods we Pray to

>Since I am just getting started over here on Blogger – I thought that I would transfer over one blog a day from my site. If I do one a day, I can get them lined up.

I have had the privilege that I get to hear a lot of people talk about prayer. Whether it is at seminars, in small groups or one on one I have over the last 15 years been able to survey countless people in the area of prayer.

It is my observation, as I listen to these different perspectives and experiences, that it almost seems as if there are three different gods that you can pray to.

So I’ve looked into it. It turns out there are actually three different gods that people pray to. Well, more like three different conceptions of God that people pray to.

This doesn’t bother me at all. I get it. We each conceptualize and participate in our religious community, our unique expression and with our individual experience. This is bound to produce multiple manifestations and allusions to this transcendent being or greater reality or central axis of life.

What is somewhat concerning to me is how jumbled, muddled and incoherent the mixing and amalgamating seems to be. I’m concerned that we may be approaching this with a thoughtless or careless approach. So what I would like to do is take a look at each of the three gods — or conceptions of God — individually. Then talk about how one would pray to each one of these unique constructs and address why it is potentially not helpful to mix and match gods with approaches.

The first God is the classic god. This God is transcendent, omniscient, omnipotent and all the other things we want A divine being to be. When we talk about this God we say ‘ He know the future’, and ‘God is in control’ or (if you prefer) Everything Happens for a reason ’.

The second God let’s us have free will. This is a God who somehow let’s us be flawed human beings and somehow still maintains the ability to be God. We don’t know how – it’s a mystery.This is the god of possibilities. Somehow… this God has scripted the future. He has outlined a ‘perfect will’ and somehow planned for every subsequent contingency with a ‘less than perfect will’ or acceptable will. This is a God that has accounted for everything.

Whereas the first god has ‘seen’ the future or ‘knows’ the future, this second god has scripted a preferred future – it is not necessarily going to come about exactly in the way it was designed… but this god is still able to salvage what was desired in the midst of our human frailty, fallenness and failure. (3 F words you hear all the time in with this God).

The third God can be called Emanuel – God with us. This is a picture of God who is here… in the midst of us. This is the God of the process. Who is amongst us in the midst of the moment. This is the God of presence and incarnation.

These are three different concepts of God. They are three different constructs or conceptions. We may have gotten used to mixing them or jumping between them as needed, but they are definitely three different pictures of God that come from three different stories in three different eras.

And when it comes to prayer, the differences really come to the surface!

For instance: if you believe in God #1, since he has seen the future, you pray that he might clue you in as to what the future might be so that you can get ready. Praying to this God is trusting in what is Predestined or fated. You can’t change the stars but it is comforting to know that this God knows and is in control.

If, you believe in God #2, you are praying to the God who has scripted the future so you are hoping that that He tells you what he wants from you so that you don’t miss his perfect will. You ask this God to change things. Since this God is powerful and in charge of the future, but has somehow allowed us free will.. we ask for direction, do the best we can, we have faith and we turn over the rest.

Praying to God #3 is a little different. In the world of this God, there is no future. I don’t want to get into all the technicalities of Einstein, meta-physics and cosmology but – just trust me there is no such thing as the future with this God. It does not exist. and what we think of as Prophecy is actually the Providential promise of God’s participation and an intimate knowledge of our creaturely propensities. Praying to God #3 is not to be clued in or not to miss the way, but is to be available in the moment to what God is doing among us.

This is Emanuel – God with us. This is God who is among us and when we pray to this God we are creating the future. The future is created by us participating with God’s will – which is neither like a movie that God has seen or a script that God has written. It is a plot that is currently unfolding. It is determined by our actions and participation.

You may be listening and think ‘you are making too many delineations and categories’. And I might agree with you… if it were not for the fact that when I hear people talk about God, it sounds one way – and then when they pray & it sounds an entirely different way – when we act, we behave as if god is a third way.

People talk as if God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all..everything. Then they pray that they ask this God to heal this person, change this circumstance and bless what they are doing. Which is fine if you believe in free will – but then , let’s stop talking about God as in the way the the early Greek philosophers did and get rid of all the omni-scient omni-potent and omni-present, unmovable and unchangeable talk. (5 Biggies)

I don’t believe this Greek God Theos. I believe in the God of the Hebrew narrative. This is a god who regrets, changes minds and enters in. This is the god who is here with us now! Emanuel – god with us. Not a god who was incarnate one time on the first Christmas but a God is who incarnate in his people every Christmas – every day between Christmases.

We talk as if with God things are set. Fate is written, God is in control and everything happens for a reason.

Then we pray to a God who compensates for our our free will and fallen nature by asking for things to change and bend to the ways things are and the way that we are.

We talk about about God in one way and then pray to God in a second way.

And if those were the only two options… that would be one thing.

But I actually conceive of God in a different way (a third way). This is isn’t about whether the future has been seen or scripted but about being here in the moment. This is about being the person who is available now.

Praying to god #1, for whom the future is set, is to be clued in so that we are prepared for what is coming.

Praying to god #2, who accounts for our free will, is so that we don’t miss the script and he can adjust things that don’t bring about his greatest good.

Praying to God #3 (for whom the future is not a vision or script but a possibility) is an exercise in availability – to create them and participate in things as they are becoming.

For some people, the formulations of the Dutch in 1700s really work. The all-knowing God is in control and you can trust him. Pray that you may know his will.

For others, who believe in Free Will, prayer is a powerful influence to ask the Father for his will to come on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Others of us who struggle with the thoughts of the early Greeks and superstitions of the centuries past wonder if if isn’t time readjust the way that we talk and think about God. But most of all – we want to make sure that we pray in ways that are consistent with our formulations of God.

There is no sense in talking about God one way, praying to god another and then hoping for the outcome of another.

If this was a mystery or a paradox – that would be one thing. But there is no sense in trying to cover over ancient concepts of god with modern practices and then hoping for fantastic future results.

There are mysteries in the universe. There are paradoxes to explore. But what we are dealing with is a simple incongruence between conceptions of god from different eras and inceptions.

If we talk about God in one way – Pray to God another and then behave in yet another… the incongruence will eventually catch up with us. In fact, I think that it has for many people and this is why some have given up and gone a different way. Others have become disgruntled and bitter. Others have stuck with but are a little bit bored and disinterested.

This is obviously a huge concept and a massive conversation – I just wanted to introduce the idea that they way talk about God and the way the pray and the way that we live may be 3 totally different ways.

and I am not sure that is working so great for us.

We will obviously return to this in the New Year –

May the God of peace guard your heart and mind as we travel the road together.

If you want to listen to the Podcast instead of read this : PODCAST LINK

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