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Preaching on Satan, demons, water walking and feeding 5,000

Two weeks ago I posted a progressive take on demons and explaining evil. Last week a guy named Nithin took up a fantastic response complete with critique. I answered him and then Deacon Dan Hague voiced some concerns. Here is my response to both them (including the quick recap).

Nithin said “to simply make the devil a poetic device does not take the text seriously is may impose a western, rationalistic values on a text that does not have that.”

Two things:

  1. my approach is not a western rationalistic but an literary-textual question. I am asking first not “how does the universe really work” but “what is going on in that text” or how does it function.
  2. Instead of imposing something ON the text I am instead trying to bring something OUT of the text.

My Hermeneutic Suggestion: when preaching, we take what we usually call the application and we bring it up into our interpretation. Think about the two examples of ‘feeding the 5,000’ and ‘Jesus walking on water’.  The point is never A) you can feed 5000 people with 3 loaves, or B) you can walk on water. Our application is never literal. It is practical-poetic : something like “trust god” or “take risks”. I am saying (as a progressive) to simply take that application and move it up in the process and make it your interpretation. When Jesus calms the storm, the point is to hear the word of Christ to “be not afraid” – not that we can boss storms around.
When we come to the temptation of Christ and the showdown with the devil …. think about what is going on in that text – what is its function? It is to refine or clarify Jesus’ ministry at the beginning. Its not ‘if’ he is the messiah, but to realize that it is ‘since’ he is … what kind will he be?
The devil was with Jesus in the desert. I honor what the text says. Its just that I don’t think there is a cosmic bad guy overlord called ‘the Devil’ who is a being in charge of evil. Another way to say it is : The devil is not a creature. But there is a devil.

There seem to be two major objections to my suggestion: 

  1. It is said that those who wrote these texts (and the Creeds … I found out) surely really meant them and believe them to be taken the way that they are taken today.
  2. If they are meant to be taken this way, then we had better not stray or we will lose the power of the texts and then we will have nothing.

Now the second one I call the Christmas Problem. When people first learn that there is no Santa Clause and that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th – it would be like saying “then Christmas is meaningless”. No, Christmas is full of meaning! Just not the meaning that you had originally ascribed to it. People who read Genesis 1-3 literally are a good case study of reading a text only one way.

To the first objection, I have stated elsewhere my suspicion that we may not mean the same thing when we say ‘devil’ or ‘demon’ as those of previous centuries or those in other cultures who speak other languages. A post-enlightenment exacting use of language is not the same as a pre-modern (or non-modern) narrative expressive use of language.

Once we stop being afraid of what we lose – here is what we gain:
When we preach on the feeding of the 5,000 (men, since women didn’t count) we never say ‘So we don’t need to buy bread any more’. We never show up for Communion Sunday and ask “who brought some crumbs – we are going to multiply it”. That is never the application. We never set up a wedding dinner and just start with a couple of items and trust for the rest.
So why not just move our application ‘to trust God’ up into our interpretation?

The application of Jesus walking on water is never to fill the baptismal and ‘try it out’. We know that is not the point of the text! It is ‘take risks’ or to ‘trust God’. So why not just make that our interpretation? It is not about the physics of water walking!

When it comes to Jesus being tempted in the desert, why not focus on the economic, political and religious aspects of the story – and the function that they will play in the remainder of the gospel text?

It seems to me that we have little to lose and a great deal to gain by letting go of the wooden literal reading and trying to prop up a pre-modern metaphysic.

I have one favor to ask: please don’t bring up Bultmann. I am not demythologizing and unlike Marcus Borg I do believe in miracles. I am trying to point out the significance of the literary nature of the text and how it functions in our faith communities.

In summary –

  • My concern is the literary nature of the text
  • and how it functions in our faith communities

My suggestion-

  • move our application up into our interpretation
  • recognize that without Santa Clause or the historic literalness of December 25th, Christmas has lots of meaning.

How does that sit with you? Does that work for you?  Too radical or adventurous?  Let me know.  -Bo 

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Explaining Evil: 3 Unique Takes

Earlier this week I wrote about Dealing with Demons – a progressive take, and in it I mentioned that the Devil was a personification of when evil is too big and too bad for us to comprehend as a human result … we outsource to an ancient, cosmic bad guy.  Many were able to track with the demon thing but some hit a snag with the Devil thing.

Then what is evil?  Where does it come from? Is it real? Is it ontological? 

Let me entertain the 3 suggestions that were brought up by responders to the blog: Augustine, Process and Relational Reality.

Augustine had a theory called “privatio boni”. Back in my apologist-evangelist days I would explain it like this:  Evil isn’t something, it is the absence of something. Like darkness is not a thing, it is simply the absence of a thing. Wherever you do not have the presence of light, you automatically have darkness – so where God’s will is not obeyed, you automatically have sin and evil.

Of course, the problem with this is that it predicated by God being “all powerful” or omnipotent. Augustine explains:

For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

An alternative to that comes from Process thought – which does not see God’s power as coercive (able to unilaterally act however God wills) but persuasive, engaging the possibilities of each moment, complete the contingencies of the past, to bring forward the possibility of a preferable future. John Cobb explains in Process Perspectives II that there are many factors that create the multi-layered web of evil. Human sin is just one element. He also names

  • Chance and Purpose
  • Survival instinct
  • Communal Identity – and fear when it is threatened
  • Deep held but mistaken beliefs
  • Institutions
  • Obedience of authority

among others, as potential ingredients in the creation of evil.

 I want to make it clear that the systemic evil of degrading the Earth in our current situation is not primarily the result of individual sins of unnecessary wastefulness by those who know they are falling short of the ideal. The systemic evil results from our industrial-economic system. This system came into being out of a great mixture of motives. Some of them were narrowly selfish, and some of the decisions people made in the process were no doubt sinful. But not all. Some people rightly saw that the development of this system brought prosperity to nations and eventually to most of their people…

Since I believe that to some extent we all miss the mark or fail to fully actualize the initial aim, I do not exclude sin as a causal element in the establishment of this system. My point is only that to explain the rise to dominance of this system primarily in terms of sin is extremely misleading. The evil results from a mixture of good intentions, ignorance, and sin. It is also profoundly brought about by the power of the past in each moment of human experience. (p. 135)

 A third option for thinking about this is a Relational Approach. I first encountered this through reading Native American approaches to theology with my mentor Randy Woodley (who’s new book Shalom and the Community of Creation  just came out).

If you go back to the story of Eden and can resist the temptation to retroject a Greek understanding of ‘original sin’ and substance into the story, you will see that it is primarily about relationship. What happens in Eden is a fracturing and a resulting alienation in 3 directions:

  1. humans from God
  2. humans from each other
  3. and humans from the earth that sustains them.

As Genesis continues, the fractures stretch out and the impact of the alienation is greater and greater. Soon brother kills brother, generations are fractured … then tribes, peoples and societies.

I love this approach! Once you get away from the substance/material approach the whole Gospel reads differently!  God’s relational covenant with Israel and the resulting Law, Christ’s relationship to the God and ushering in a new covenant which radically altered (and began to repaired) our relationship to God – to each other – and to the earth which sustains us (where do you think bread and wine come from?)

The gift of Holy Spirit re-connects us in an inter-related family of God. The perichoretic reality of the Trinity is about the relatedness of the Godhead and not primarily about matters of substance and matter (ousia). Evil in this picture, is that which results from brokeness and fracturing, which leads to alienation, and is then complixified through  exponential increase of family systems, tribalism, social structures, societal realities and institutional frameworks … it becomes so big and so bad that it is nearly unimaginable to our mind. At this point we are tempted to outsource the badness to an ‘entity’ which is the personification of evil.

So those are three really good ways of beginning to address the problem of evil. They all have strengths and weakness – but in the end, they are better than saying ‘the Devil made me do it’.

I will end by quoting Cobb again:

 The ways in which even what is good in human nature and society can and does become destructive are so numerous and so effective that the mystery is how good sometimes triumphs over it. This is where I see the need to emphasize God’s directing and empowering call to novel forms of goodness.

John B. Cobb Jr.. The Process Perspective II (p. 137). Kindle Edition which sells for $7.63

originally posted at HBC with an amazing follow-up conversation

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Sorting through the ‘super’ natural

Mike Horn asked a great question on the Tim Tebow post this week:

I was hoping you could elaborate more on this … 1) What are the “interventionist assumptions behind a supernatural world view?; 2) the antiquated relics of a pre-modern understanding, which are untenable in the 21st century? I read the “pentecost for progressives” summary but didn’t see anything that really explained questions (1) and (2). Does my belief in the supernatural make me a “pre-modern” in my thinking? “Post-modern emergents” don’t believe in praying for the sick? What does “untenable in the 21st Century” mean? I was hoping you could elaborate further. I love the conversation. Thanks!

A couple things as we begin:
a diagnostic question: If you have the following formula anywhere in your faith “If its good – its God, if its bad then you don’t have enough faith … unless you do, then its the devil.”  then I am talking to you.
OR
if you think that God talks to your heart and are comfortable talking about demons and spirits and the enemy, then I am talking to you.
OR
If you think that world works the exact same way as it is described in the Bible ie. Gender roles and that science proves that a man can live the belly of fish for 3 days, then I am talking you.

Now, to your question:

The assumptions behind a supernaturalist worldview can be framed in a 3-tiered view of the universe. God is up (in the heavens) and this transcendent God is so good and so pure that ‘He’ can have nothing to do with our sin and fallen dirtiness.  NOW – we quickly run into two problems:

  • How was Jesus fully God and fully man? Traditional Answer: it is a mystery.
  • How does God answer prayers and work in the world?  that is the problem

The way around the problem (if you insist that God is only transcendent) is a mechanism called intervention – what I call interference. Continue reading “Sorting through the ‘super’ natural” →

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A Progressive take on being Pentecostal (or Charismatic)

In a recent Homebrewed Christianity podcast episode Mike Morrell interviews Leif Hetland, a charismatic signs & wonders Pastor. Afterward I got to talk with Tripp about my thoughts on reconciling the best of Pentecostal practices with a Progressive Christianity.

Here are my two big points:

 What Pentecostals have to say to Progressives

Jesus laid hands on people, the Disciples laid hands on people and the letters of the New Testament tell us to lay our hands on people. If you have bought into a brand of Christianity that does not have you laying your hands of people and praying in expectation that something would happen – you may want to revisit the reasons why.

If your faith is primarily intellectual, abstract, and conceptual … it may not be the religion that the writers of the New Testament called us to. The early church was a hands on movement and prayed with expectation.

What Progressives have to say to Pentecostals

Being delivered from personal demons is great and praying over whole cities to break or bind the ‘strong man’ that holds people in bondage is fine. There is a vital missing element that needs to be added. Its not just about the personal (mini) and the heavenly (meta) – that leaves a gap that must be filled. In the middle is the address of systems, structures and institutions (what Walter Wink calls ‘The Powers the Be”).

If you faith is primarily personal-congregational and supernatural-heavenly, then you might want to revisit some understandings of Scripture and the address of systemic sins (like injustice).  Otherwise you are in danger of being so heavenly minded that you actually reinforce and empower that very structures that you say you are praying against.

The 21st Century

I think that it is important to have these two camps are in conversation. Continue reading “A Progressive take on being Pentecostal (or Charismatic)” →

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