If you visited here to see the response to the question in Grace’s bulletin, here’s the quick response:
- Haven't we run out of questions yet? Well, no. Exploring questions about my faith help me better understand what I believe and don’t believe, and bring me closer to God. The questions evolve and, even if they don’t, the answers often do.
- Are we going to keep asking and exploring questions through the summer? I’m not sure how many folks from Grace actually read the blog (the recent Adult Discipleship evaluation suggests not too many), if blogspot’s stats are to be believed, several somebodys are checking things out each week. So, we'll give it a try for a while longer.
That was going to be the quick Memorial Day weekend post since a lot of folks will probably be kicking off summer and won’t be checking blogs (or at least that’s how it should be). But, in the aftermath of the tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma, some Christians made declarations along the lines of the tornadoes being part of God’s work either to punish us for something we've done or to call us to repent. We've explored whether natural disasters were part of God’s wrath after hurricane Sandy hit the east coast. Not that we “resolved” anything, but I want to look at a different question… or at least point you to a post that does just that.
Chaplain Mike provided a good write-up this week about the controversy stirred up by a couple of tweets by John Piper and the reactions to those tweets at the Internet Monk. Referring to the book of Job, he says that what we should be offering is “expressions of solidarity and mutual grief,” not theological explanations or moralizing (what makes for miserable comforting):
Even with both tweets, perhaps especially because of both tweets, Piper represents a “miserable comforter” who, remarkably, still has not learned the wisdom of Qoheleth: there is “…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Eccles. 3:7).
I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?
- Job 16:2-3 (NRSV)
By steadfastly refusing to be silent, to take his place by the side of those who are suffering with mouth shut and heart open wide, he misses the point of the very Bible book he cites in a misguided attempt to bring theological perspective to the Oklahoma disaster.
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.- Job 2:11-13 (NRSV)
This is the high point of the three companions’ friendship and ministry to Job. Silence. Tears. Presence. Symbolic expressions of solidarity and mutual grief.
Once they opened their mouths, it was all downhill. They became “miserable comforters.” It is not simply a matter of timing. The friends’ words came after the accepted period of silent mourning. Their words were wrong. And so it is with John Piper. It is not as though Piper’s words, inappropriate in the tender moment, would be appropriate once wounds have healed somewhat, once things have calmed down and we have time to gain perspective on the tragedy. No, his understanding and application of the book of Job is wrong. He has taken his place with Job’s friends, not with the argument of the text.
Chaplain Mike describes Job as one of those “conversations in God’s kitchen” where a variety of viewpoints are presented and argued (one of the reasons we’re called to engage with the Bible). He argues that the book of Job counters the concept of God as vengeful enforcer of the law:
The argument of the book is that the approach of Deuteronomy and Proverbs is too simplistic, too pat. God is bigger than the sovereign, retributive monarch that those traditions made him out to be. His ways are more complex, mysterious, and unexplainable than obedience – blessing/disobedience – curse.
Why do so many some Christians feel compelled to espouse this view of a God who continues to punish us for our wayward ways? [I’m not sure it’s a majority, although the ones espousing this view are very vocal and visible]. Is that really what we get from Jesus and the gospel?
How should we respond? How would Jesus respond to such a tragedy? How would he respond to those who say either God is punishing us for our sins? Shouldn’t we do the same? And how should we respond when we think that something being espoused as a "Christian response" conflicts with the Gospels?
This may be coherent, but I just spent the weekend on a camping trip with energetic boy scouts, so there’s no guarantee. First, some background and questions bouncing in my head, partially strained for extraneous digressions:
There are probably as many reasons to pray as there are people praying, but I want to focus on those prayers in which we ask God to intercede or bring about a change in some event (often an illness). In a post called Does Prayer Change God’s Mind?, Scot McKnight wrote:
Any reasonable examination of “intercessory” prayer admits of two explanations: either we are seeking to bend God’s will to ours — or seeking to change the mind of God — or we are merely aligning ourselves with God’s will in the act of communing with God.
Do you believe it’s possible to change God's mind through prayer? Or do you believe that, instead, God uses prayer to align our wishes with God’s will? Some might argue that it is possible to change God's mind as long as what we're asking for is aligned with God's will, but if that's the case, are we really "changing" God's mind?
I've been all over the board on this but the following passages (and several more like it), in which, Jesus talks about praying with persistence, keep me pondering (my emphasis in bold):
"Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'
"Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
- Luke 11:5-10
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
- Luke 18:1-8
Jesus tells his disciples to pray persistently. Does that mean that, if we are persistent, God will give us what we’re asking for? As I interpret it (and maybe I’m being selective), God will respond with what we need (not the same as what we want). Not material goods, not physical healing, but something with deep spiritual significance… something that brings us closer to God.
There's one other aspect that steers me away from “Why would we think our prayers might change God’s mind?” to “Why wouldn't it, if the circumstances are right?”. If we are called through Jesus to be a part of God's work on earth now (and I believe that), is it all a one-way interaction? If we are called into a relationship with God (through Jesus or through the work of the Spirit), is it a one-sided venue where God calls all of the shots? Or can it be a collaboration? Is it possible that God doesn't have everything laid out for us in advance but is open to our suggestions?
“In order to become a disciple of Jesus …one must believe in him. In order to develop as his disciple one must progressively come to believe what he knew to be so. To enter his kingdom, we believe in him. To be at home in his kingdom, learning to reign with him there, we must share his beliefs.“As his apprentices, we pass through a course of training, from having faith in Christ to having the faith of Christ (Gal 2:16-20). As a proclaimer and teacher of the gospel of his kingdom, I do not cease to announce a gospel about Jesus. That remains forever foundational. But I also recognize the need and opportunity to announce the gospel of Jesus (Mark 1:1) – the gospel of the present availability to every human being of a life in The Kingdom Among Us. Without that, the gospel about Jesus remains destructively incomplete.” Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God, p. 319-320
If you dropped in expecting to encounter the question listed in this week’s bulletin at Grace, this isn’t that question. Shortly after I sent out the bulletin blurb, I heard that Dallas Willard died after losing a battle with cancer. Willard wrote about spiritual formation and the kingdom of God. A few years ago, after deciding to spend some time studying the Sermon on the Mount, I came across Willard’s book The Divine Conspiracy almost by accident (or divine intervention). That book led me to view the Sermon on the Mount not as a collection of laws and sayings but as a teaching on what it’s like to live in the Kingdom of God now.
Not only did that encounter become the inspiration for an adult education discussion class on the Sermon on the Mount and a later foundation for our youth group’s exploration on the sermon, it continues to nudge me into finding more ways to better orient my life toward participating in God’s work now.
According to Willard, the good news is about more than being good and sinning no more. It’s a growing process in which our whole lives – not just some “spiritual segment” we set aside from our day-to-day lives – are transformed through the Holy Spirit. Being good and sinning no more are not obligations for being Christian or even measuring sticks to see how Christian we are. We move away from sin when we align our will to God’s and participate in God’s kingdom now. They are not the quality of our lives but point to a quality in our lives that comes from God.
The call to repent “is a call for us to reconsider how we have been approaching our life, in light of the fact that we now, in the person of Jesus, have the option of living within the surrounding movements of God’s eternal purposes, of taking our life into his life.” (p. 16)
Jesus’ call is about far more than future salvation from hell. It is about joining in God’s kingdom now, participating with God now, acting now, following God’s lead now. And, in so doing, we move farther away from a hell that comes from the absence of God… a hell that is also going on now. And, hopefully, with God’s help, we can bring others along with us into God’s kingdom now and in the future.
“We get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard life from the kingdom of the heavens now – the eternal kind of life – as the target. The words and acts of Jesus naturally suggest that this is indeed salvation, with discipleship, forgiveness, and heaven to come as natural parts. And in this he only continues the teachings of the Old Testament. The entire biblical tradition from beginning to end is one of the intimate involvement of God in human life – or else alienation from it.” (p. 47)
“It is left unexplained how it is possible that one can rely on Christ for the next life without doing so for this one, trust him for one’s eternal destiny without trusting him for ‘the things that relate to Christian life’.” (p. 49)
Instead of an “arrangement that can get us into heaven,”
“'the gospel' is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through reliance on Jesus the Anointed.” (p. 49)
“The eternal life of which Jesus speaks is not knowledge about God but an intimately interactive relationship with him.” (p. 50)
Willard wrote that if we view Jesus’ teachings – his illustrations of what it means to live in the kingdom of God – as laws to follow, then we fall into the trap of being like the Pharisees. If our focus is on keeping the laws, we soon struggle with the challenge of that task. We either take the attitude that we can do it alone (and can be righteous based on our deeds) or we find ways to bend or redefine the rules.
“The key… is to aim at the heart and its transformation… We do not aim just to control behavior, but to change the inner castle of the soul, that God may be worshiped ‘in spirit and in truth’ and right behavior cease to be a performance. We want to become the kind of person who is not dominated by anger and who truly loves and respects others… This means, of course, that the teaching cannot be captured by rules…Anger and contempt toward others is only removed by the vision and experience of God being over all, ensuring that all is well with me and that others are his treasures.”(p. 364-5)
In Jesus’ teaching, it is love that transforms us – God’s love and the love we reflect to others. We respond to others with love because God loves us.
I could go on (and probably have gone on longer than usual). Instead of asking specific questions, I ask you to reflect on these snippets from Willard. You may say “Amen!” or you may debate them. Either way is good if it moves you to wrestle with what it means to be a follower of Jesus. If you haven’t read The Divine Conspiracy, please consider doing so. It won’t be a quick read – not because it’s filled with dense theological jargon (it isn't) but because it will inspire you to think and contemplate and pray over it – but it will be worth it.
If you have read any of Willard’s books, or heard him speak, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that, among other things, God created us in God’s image and that “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” [Genesis 1:31]. But the idyllic relationship between humans and God, depicted in the Garden of Eden, soon crumbled (call it pride, a lack of faith or trust in God, the temptation of Satan, the consequence of free will, or original sin) and everything went downhill after that.
The rest of the Bible chronicles our up-and-down, off-and-on relationship with God. Different people often choose different emphases on the themes: Some focus on the sinful nature of humans and our need to repent; others focus on God’s persistence in reaching out to us and bringing us back into a relationship that began in Eden. Perhaps illustrating our brokenness, great arguments break out over which emphasis is “doctrinally” correct [as an aside: “doctrine” comes from the French word for “doctor” and refers to a “healing teaching” meant to help us better understand God and not to a means of excluding others based on the “correctness” of our thinking.(1)].
Along comes an event like the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon. Some see it as another sign of how utterly broken and depraved humanity is, while others see for the acts of good that happened in the midst of the chaos. Bryan Berghoef reflects on these reactions on his Pub Theology blog and on the Huffington Post (my emphasis added in italics):
The consensus [among a group of folks who discussed this at a recent Pub Theology gathering] seemed to be that humanity tends toward acts of goodness and heroism more so than toward acts of barbarism and evil. We also discussed the possibility that even an act that on its face appears evil may well be prompted by what the perpetrator senses is toward a just cause or a greater good, and so in his or her mind, must be carried out.
There is also the theological perspective, which various biblical texts support, that despite being made in the image of God, human beings inevitably "fall short" of God's glory, and are created a "little lower" than the heavenly beings. One such approach goes so far as to claim that humanity is totally depraved, and apart from God, the heart of man is inclined toward "only evil, all the time."
“Total depravity” is one of the five points of Calvinism:
Total Depravity (also called Original Sin, but OULIP doesn’t have the same catch)
Unconditional Election (based on God’s will and not on what we do)
Limited Atonement (Jesus died for the elect)
Irresistible Grace (those elected, or called, by God cannot resist God’s grace)
Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)
This has led to some theological constructs that I have trouble accepting (see, for example, You might have a soterian gospel if you… ), but those may be more reflective of the people promoting them than what Calvin intended. Let’s focus on the concept of “total depravity” for now.
Are we totally depraved? Are humans are inherently incapable of doing good? If so, why do we see so many people tend toward acts of goodness? What exactly did Calvin mean by "total depravity"? For that, I pulled out my handy Calvin for Armchair Theologians. According to Christopher Elwood, Calvin meant pretty much what it sounds like:
Human sin, in [Calvin’s] view, creates a condition whose effects are “diffused into all parts of the soul.” The “total” in “total depravity” means that there is no part of the human personality that is free from sin and its impact. [p. 66]
Calvin (as well as Luther) was countering the idea that humans, on their own, are capable of doing good and making moral progress apart from God [p. 67]. The emphasis is on God’s grace and not on our deeds. There are those who take offense at the idea that humans are inherently evil and incapable of good apart from God. They point to those with no apparent belief in God who strive to do good and help others out because, as one humanist quoted in Berghoef's article said, that’s what makes life worthwhile.
Do you agree that humanity tends more toward acts of goodness and heroism than acts of evil? Is there an inherent goodness in humans that leads us to help others and try to make the world a better place? Or do you think that, apart from God, we’re unable to do good, even if we try? If so, is it possible that God sometimes uses people who don’t explicitly believe in God to accomplish that good?
(1) The concept of doctrine as a healing teaching comes from Diana Butler Bass, quoted in Brian McLaren’s book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?
