A Reflection for Holy Week

One of the interesting parts of parenthood has been exposure to children's bibles. I'm incredibly appreciative of authors who can distill the biblical stories into a form that grabs children's attention; the times I've attempted to read to my kids from the actual scriptures were over very quickly, toddler attention spans being what they are.

Yet, for the variety of bible story books we have, there's a particular trend that jumped out at us:

When telling the story of Jesus, many of these books go from the Triumphal Entry straight to the Resurrection.

There's a sense in which this is perfectly understandable. It would be irresponsible not to curate the content of scripture to your child's maturity level. A pre-schooler is probably not ready to hear about Sodom and Gomorrah, David and Bathsheba, the book of Judges . . . take your pick.

Still, while I certainly wouldn't show my children Passion of the Christ, there are ways to explain the death of Jesus in an age appropriate manner. We have enough books which manage to do so.

Note the page numbers

Perhaps the issue isn't with the children, then, but with the adults. So many of us don't hide the crucifixion only from our children. We live out a faith that treats it like an embarrassment, or perhaps a temporary bump in the road. A necessary evil to get to the good part.

We admire Jesus the teacher, dispensing timeless wisdom about good morals and better living from the hillside. Jesus, meek and mild, caring for children, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, champion of the downtrodden . . . a paragon of idyllic goodness.

We like the picture of Jesus in the triumphal entry: The king coming into his city! See how his lordship is proclaimed and celebrated! Yes, there is always the shadow of betrayal right around the corner, but for a brief period of time, everything is as it should be, and will be again.

To be fair, Jesus's death does not go unmentioned, but it is certainly over before it began.

We love the Jesus of the resurrection. If death is the oldest enemy of mankind, then God has shown that it can be overcome. The power of God on display for all to see, the promises of ages fulfilled, the new creation set into motion!

Yet in a theology that lacks the crucifixion, we are left with a single question: Why?

I've heard so many sermons over the years talk about our need for Jesus. In trying to explain why you should follow the way of Christ, the preachers would say things like, "Because he is Lord and the resurrection proves it! Because his way is better than man's way! Because your life will be so much better with Jesus!" It's all true, but it's incomplete. It skips over something crucial.

We are lost in our sin. By ourselves, on our own, through our own means, we cannot be right before God. To fulfill the Law, to atone for our sins, to provide a righteousness isn't our own, Jesus came to take the penalty of sin on our behalf. It was our sin, my sin, and the mercy of God, that led Jesus to the cross.

We dare not pass over that too quickly.

Lent, as part of the liturgical calendar, is a time of preparation for Easter. It's not terribly popular with Evangelicals, for various reasons. As a historical practice, Lent has changed much over the centuries. Although it has always been a period of fasting, it was also a season of repentance. In order to prepare for the celebration of the Resurrection, of our freedom from bondage, we must first pass through the desert of remorse, culminating on Good Friday where we remember the work of the Cross.

This isn't guilt-stricken self-flagellation, because Christ has already received our punishment. Instead, sober awareness of the state from which Christ has saved us. The scriptures promise that we are no longer in bondage to sin (see Romans 6). There is, after all, no longer an condemnation for those in Christ. The good news of the Gospel will always fall flat if we don't know how much God has done for us, and we can't know that without seeing just how great our need is.

Book Review - Allah: A Christian Response

You might remember that last year I wrote reviews of books by Nabeel Qureshi. The latter review of No God But One covered a crucial topic for Qureshi: Are Islam and Christianity really all that different?

A friend of mine suggested my next book be Miroslav Volf's Allah: A Christian Response. In fact, he actually bought the book for me; thanks again, friend. 

I think understanding this book starts with understanding the author. Volf's Wikipedia page carries a lot of noteworthy accomplishments and glowing references. Theologian, seminary professor, author, public intellectual, White House advisor . . . the man has a long and reputable résumé. There is a strong theme throughout his work, however, of interfaith engagement, the most relevant work being his crafting of the "Yale Response" to "A Common Word." 

This book seems to have been an outgrowth of that work, though in this case, Volf's audience is fellow Christians, or at least that's what he claims in the book. The central question Volf seeks to answer in Allah is, "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" Nabeel Qureshi answered the question in the negative. Volf, in the course of the book, says, "Yes, we do worship the same God." (If you're interested in hearing these two debate the matter, there's audio of just that.)

Volf spends a lot of time laying his groundwork, but his basic argument follows that of "A Common Word," arguing that Muslims and Christians worship the same God because of their common ground, a faith centered in the love of God and the love of neighbor. He spends a great deal of the book unpacking these ideas. 

I really struggled to finish this book. My first inclination while reading it was to call Volf a hack. That isn't fair or charitable, but it was born out of irritation, and a sense, as I worked my way through the chapters, that Volf was not dealing with the topic in an honest manner. I can't know the process by which Volf reached the conclusions he did; I can't unpack the people he's met or the books he's read. However, I can at least respond to the arguments he's made, and they are not convincing, as far as I'm concerned.

On Origins and the Molecular Basis of Life

I've said on a number of posts, mostly about the possibility of life on other planets, that I don't particularly buy into the idea of a chemical origin of life. This often leads to some awkwardness in my professional life. I have advanced degrees in life sciences; how can I disregard actual science in favor of a purely religious point of view?

I don't reject a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life on purely religious grounds. Even in the absence of a motivating faith, the ideas regarding the chemical origin of life don't inspire confidence. Frankly, I find it requires more faith to believe that life arose out of a primordial soup than not, a conclusion in search of evidence to support it, and the evidence is wanting.

In all of the posts where I've mentioned this, I've said that I ought to explain why at some point. This is an attempt to do so, and like the theory itself, this explanation is complicated.

Chasing the Wind: Of Pain and Sovereignty

In my last entry of the series, I didn't dwell on the text of Ecclesiastes in order to present some arguments that I'd need to return to later. In retrospect, my discussion on God's sovereignty would have been all the better for consideration of the following text, although it was already lengthy enough. My purpose last time was addressing the criticism that our actions and lives cannot be meaningful if they cannot actually change the outcome. God's sovereignty, in that consideration, prevents us from having Meaning because nothing we do matters.

Although I did address this argument, it turns out there's another aspect of God's sovereignty which weighs on the heart.

For everything there is an appointed time, and an appropriate time for every activity on earth: 

A time to be born, and a time to die;
     a time to plant, and a time to uproot what was planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
     a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
     a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones;
     a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to search, and a time to give something up as lost;
     a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to rip, and a time to sew;
     a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate;
     a time for war, and a time for peace. 

What benefit can a worker gain from his toil?  I have observed the burden that God has given to people to keep them occupied. God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time, but he has also placed ignorance in the human heart so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives.

I have concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live, and also that everyone should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all his toil, for these things are a gift from God. 

I also know that whatever God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken away from it. God has made it this way, so that men will fear him. Whatever exists now has already been, and whatever will be has already been; for God will seek to do again what has occurred in the past. - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 (NET)

Missionaries to Mars

Every time there's exciting news about space, whether it's missions of exploration, the discovery of new celestial bodies, or an advancement in relevant technology, speculation starts flying about extraterrestrial life. One variant of that you don't see very often popped up in the Wall Street Journal: "Could Aliens Have Souls That Need Saving?"

Post title shamelessly stolen from Albert Mohler.

(If you don't have access to the WSJ, the discussion of said article over at Get Religion is worth reading.)

The question at hand: If alien life were discovered, would Christians have to share the Gospel with them? It's not a new question, although it's usually expanded to consider the role of cosmology in Christian theology as well. CS Lewis wrote a series of books about it, for example.

There's a few ways of looking at this.

• The positive case would state that, since Adam's sin caused the Fall to ripple out through all of creation, then aliens would also be in need of redemption. 
• The negative case would state that, since any alien life would not be descended from Adam, they would not be inheritors of Adam's sinful nature and thus not bound by the details of Christian theology. 
• The demure case would state that, since the Bible says nothing, positive or negative, about life beyond Earth, then speculation about the theological ideas surrounding it is improper. 

Dr. Mohler argues the latter case, incidentally. 

As for me, I'm a contrarian on this topic. The question is hypothetical, but I'm convinced that the possibility of alien life is so poor that it's not worth taking seriously. Allow me to explain.

Chasing the Wind: Our Story

I mentioned in the first entry for this series that I've been re-reading some philosophy books. In A.J. Ayer's essay, The Claims of Philosophy, I came across this paragraph:

But for now, it may be objected, suppose that the world is designed by a superior being. In that case, the purpose of our existence will be the purpose that it realizes for him; and the meaning of life will be found in our conscious adaptation to his purpose. But here again, the answer is, first, that there is no good reason whatsoever for believing that there is any such superior being; and, secondly, that even if there were, he could not accomplish what is here required of him. For let us assume, for the sake of argument, that everything happens as it does because a superior being has intended that it should.

 . . . The point is, in short, that even the invocation of a deity does not enable us to answer the question why things are as they are. 

I've left out the details of the argument, and Ayer goes on like this quite a bit more; Kai Nielsen repeats Ayer's argument in his essay, Linguistic Philosophy and "The Meaning of Life." (I don't recommend the latter. Linguistic Philosophy, as a field, seems like endless pontification on what the meaning of "is" is with the assumption that such navel gazing is profound.) There's much to say in response to this line of argument, but it becomes easier to do so in the context of the Christian world view. In other words, the response to all of these different formulations and perspectives on Meaning becomes understandable in the light of the story Christians tell about the Meaning of Life.

Maybe this comes off as surprising to some. Christians have an answer to the question of Meaning? What is the Christian answer here?

We were made to be in relationship with God.

Does that seem too simple? It really isn't. To make the most sense of this, we have to go back to the beginning. Before that, really.

There's No Place Like Home

"Howdy neighbor!" Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

I've got another post in the works on topic of Meaning, but it's been almost two weeks since my last post went up, and I wanted to break the silence with something that's a bit easier to write.

There's been quite a bit of news about the universe lately. First, there was the short-lived bit of excitement about SETI detecting a radio burst from deep space. Then we detected an "Earth-like" planet around our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri. A scientist even wrote a recent piece for the Boston Globe about directed panspermia, the theory that life on Earth originated, indeed, was specifically seeded, from extraterrestrial sources.

Most of this is nonsensical. The SETI signal is most likely Earth-based interference, or at the very least random noise amplified by natural phenomena. Proxima B, even if it's located in the "Goldilocks zone," is unlikely to be able to support life as we might appreciate it for all kinds of reasons.  Even the author of the panspermia piece recognizes that it's not a particularly compelling theory, and it only moves the goalposts when working out the problems with the chemical origin of life. (That's a topic I've been meaning to address someday.)

Still, people get very excited about the idea of life on other planets. It's certainly been a staple of science fiction since the genre came about. Given all the recent talk related to that idea in the news, I wasn't surprised to see this article: What will it take for humans to colonize the Milky Way?

Book Review: No God But One

A few months ago, I received a copy of Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward for review. Written by Nabeel Qureshi, it was a brief examination of jihad in Islam and the Christian response to it.

I was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of Qureshi's third book, No God But One: Allah or Jesus? as well. If his first book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, was the story of how his heart changed in his conversion from Islam to Christianity, then No God But One is the story of how his mind changed.

In No God But One, Qureshi takes the time to unpack two primary questions central to someone seeking to know God:

1. Are Christianity and Islam really all that different?
2. Can we know whether Islam or Christianity is true?

These are both questions of profound importance. There is no sense in choosing between one faith or the other if they are not meaningfully different, but if they are different, then how can you know which one to choose? This is not a process of elimination, either; they must stand or fall on their own merits. As Qureshi says of his own experience:

For me, it's been a decade since I made the decision to leave Islam, and the fallout of my decision haunts me every day. I knew it would, well before I ever converted, but I also knew that I was sure. I was sure that Islam and Christianity are not just two paths that lead to the same God, but two very different paths that lead very different ways. I was sure that I had excellent historical reason to believe the gospel. I was sure that, though I loved Islam, I couldn't ignore the problems that plagued its foundations. But most of all, I was sure that following the one true God would be worth all trials and all suffering. I had to follow the evidence and the truth, no matter the cost.

Chasing the Wind - A Legacy of Knowledge

A while back, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was speaking in front of an audience, and was asked, "What is the meaning of life?" This was his answer:

So — what is the meaning of life? I think people ask that question on the assumption that 'meaning' is something you can look for and go, 'Here it is, I found it. Here's the meaning. I've been looking for.' That scenario, however, doesn't consider the possibility that 'meaning' is something you create. You manufacture it for yourself and for others. 

So when I think of 'meaning' in life, I ask, 'Did I learn something today that I didn't know yesterday, bringing me a little closer to knowing all that can be known in the universe?' If I live a day and I don't know a little more than I did the day before, I think I wasted that day. So the people who, at the end of the school year, say 'The summer! I don't have to think anymore!' — I just don't know. To think brings you closer to nature. To learn how things work gives you power to influence events. Gives you power to help people who may need it — to help yourself and your trajectory. 

So when I think of the meaning of life, that's not an eternal and unanswerable question — to me, that's in arm's reach of me everyday. So to you, at age six-and-three-quarters, may I suggest that you explore nature as much as you possibly can. And occasionally that means getting your clothes dirty because you might want to jump into puddles and your parents don't want you to do that. You tell them that I gave you permission.

His questioner was six years old, so you can see how this is an answer for a child on some level. He might just as well have added, "Eat your veggies and drink your milk." You can also see the post-modern perspective in there as well, replacing Meaning with "meaning," where "Whatever gets you through the day" is meaningful. To each his own, etc. I'll have to address that another day.

All the same, Tyson is a scientist (well, depending on who you ask), and this is definitely a scientist's answer on the question of Meaning.

Chasing the Wind

I've been working on one of those "Read the Bible in a year" plans for ... well, for a while now. I might finish it at some point. Earlier this year, I found myself in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's not a book most people are familiar with; after all, it's the Wisdom Book that isn't Proverbs, and much of what it says comes off as strange, to say the least.

Yet, after reading it, I went back and read it again. Then a third time. Something about this was really sticking in my mind for some reason. Why was it so familiar?

It took a while to hit me: Ecclesiastes is a philosophical text about the Meaning of Life.

Book Review: "Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward"

As I said before, I received a review copy of Nabeel Qureshi's latest book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward several weeks ago. I shared a few thoughts on the book then, but I have much more to say now.

Although Qureshi converted to Christianity several years ago, the "question" of Islam and Muslims is no less important to him. As he puts it, "Ignoring the reality of jihad endangers my nation, while responding with fear endangers my Muslim family." Helping others to understand the "how" and "why" of Islamic radicalization isn't just a religious conviction, but a deeply personal matter as well, and it shows throughout the book.

The book is divided into three parts, each addressing a general area of inquiry: The origins of jihad, jihad today, and jihad in the Judeo-Christian context. Each of these sections is then further divided into "Questions," wherein each chapter addresses a specific issue. This makes it possible to jump directly to subjects of interest, such as, "Why are Muslims being radicalized?" or "Does Islam need a reformation?" I still found it most useful to read straight through; Quereshi does a wonderful job explaining the subjects in his particular style, and he builds on each successive topic through the book. You may or may not agree with his answers on some of the Questions, but reading everything will certainly help in understanding how he came to the conclusions he reaches.

It's worth reiterating that the book was written as a primer on these things. Each Question could itself be the subject of a book. One does get the impression of only scratching the surface in each chapter, but Qureshi recommends further resources throughout the book.

Book Preview: "Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward"

I've got a review copy of a book, so some of you might find this interesting.

Two years ago you might have seen Nabeel Qureshi's book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. If you didn't read it, it was an American Muslim's story of finding Christ by trying to commit himself to Muslim Apologetics. Quereshi graduated medical school, but took up the path of Christian apologetics afterwards. In the entirety of his time doing so, he's been getting lots of questions about jihad and radical Islam. Apparently he's been rather demure on the topic, because it's kind of a hot issue.

The tumult of the last year was evidently too much for him, and he decided to take up the topic in writing. In fact, he wrote a book on it in three weeks, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward.

But was it true? After years of investigation, I had to face the reality. There is a great deal of violence in Islam, even in the very foundations of the faith, and it is not all defensive. Quite to the contrary, if the traditions about the prophet of Islam are in any way reliable, then Islam glorifies violent jihad arguably more than any other action a Muslim can take. - My Fork In The Road - An excerpt from Answering Jihad.

Qureshi's target audience for this is Christians, but some of the material could be useful to wider audiences. The book is presented in three parts. In the first part, he discusses the nature and historical basis for jihad, how it relates to the Quran, the Hadiths, and Muhammad's life. In the second part, he talks about the modern development of radical Islam and the basis of Islamic violence, both against the West and against fellow Muslims. In the third part, he explores jihad in the Juedo-Christian context: Whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God, comparing the teachings of Jesus to those of Muhammad, Old Testament warfare in comparison to jihad, and so on.

The conclusion to the book, though, is a call to answer jihad the way Jesus would have: In love, even a self-sacrificing love.

I enjoyed it, although it was a very fast read. Qureshi admits the book is a primer, and he does recommend resources throughout for exploring certain topics in greater depth. Still, if someone wanted a book with good answers for various questions about Islam, radical Islam in particular, the book would be a great resource.

The book is only available for pre-order at the moment, but if you pre-order the book, you get access to bonus materials, including videos of Nabeel discussing various chapters of the book in greater depth.

This conclusion led me to a three-pronged fork in the road. Either I could become an apostate and leave Islam, grow apathetic and ignore the prophet, or become “radicalized” and obey him. The alternative of simply disregarding Muhammad’s teachings and continuing as a devout Muslim was not an option in my mind, nor is it for most Muslims, since to be Muslim is to submit to Allah and to follow Muhammad. Apostasy, apathy, or radicalization; those were my choices… - My Fork In The Road - An excerpt from Answering Jihad.

Later on, I'll have a full review of the book here, but for now you can (and should!) explore the Answering Jihad website for more info on the book.

Paul vs. Jesus

Earlier today, I posted this to my Facebook account:

Made with the Bible app YouVersion. What interesting times we live in.

I posted it because, well, Paul doesn't mince words. American culture tends towards the milquetoast, especially when it comes towards criticizing someone else's behavior, but Paul was unabashed in his criticism of the church at Corinth.

Verses like this aren't very popular. It's not the warm, fuzzy face of Christianity. It warrants difficult decisions. It's problematic, especially in a world where we'd like to get along with people who we'd really like to reach with the gospel, and they don't appreciate all this talk about sexual immorality. "Why can't people be nice, like that Jesus was? Jesus loved everyone. He's the one Christians worship anyhow, right? Who cares about this Paul guy? " It's not a new criticism, but it does deserve consideration. Although as I see it, it's actually two different arguments that need to be addressed:

• Shouldn't Jesus be given primacy over Paul?
• Jesus loved the sinners in his midst; so why are Christians so hung up on sin?

"Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

The funny thing about this first argument isn't that it was addressed ages ago, but that it was Paul himself who did so. 

Now I mean this, that each of you is saying, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” or “I am with Cephas,” or “I am with Christ.” Is Christ divided? Paul wasn’t crucified for you, was he? Or were you in fact baptized in the name of Paul? . . . What is Apollos, really? Or what is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, and each of us in the ministry the Lord gave us. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused it to grow. So neither the one who plants counts for anything, nor the one who waters, but God who causes the growth. . . . So then, no more boasting about mere mortals! For everything belongs to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. - 1 Corinthians 1:12-13, 3:5-7, 3:21-23

Paul was addressing divisions within the church at Corinth, but he certainly didn't understand himself  to have been preaching a different gospel than the one Jesus taught. Nor did the apostles who formed the church in Jerusalem and interacted with Paul frequently over the years.* Nor did the early churches which circulated copies of Paul's letters. Nor did the ecumenical councils which established the canon of the New Testament.

Ignoring any issues about authority or canonicity, was Paul actually being harsh where Jesus was lenient? Was he holding people to a higher standard than the actual Messiah? 

"And you are proud!"

Paul wasn't just addressing divisions and factions within the church of Corinth, but deep misunderstandings about sin and Christian living. 

It is actually reported that sexual immorality exists among you, the kind of immorality that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you have been deeply sorrowful instead and removed the one who did this from among you? - 1 Corinthians 5:1-2

It's not clear from the text why they were proud of this; in 6:12, Paul addresses popular sayings of the Corinthians in an effort to correct them. It's plausible that the particular group being addressed here had a rather exaggerated sense of "Christian freedom" to the point that they were inviting scandal and celebrating their ability to sin so freely. 

In chapter 5, Paul is exhorting the church that letting sin fester in its midst is harmful. Like an infection, it can spread and cause misery throughout the entirety of the church. Thus, deliberate, ongoing, unrepentant sin shouldn't be tolerated in their midst, but be removed from fellowship.

To come back around to the argument at hand, people like to imagine that Jesus was not judgmental, not like this. Except:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, so that at the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile or a tax collector. - Matthew 18:15-17

Paul is echoing Jesus's specific directive here. As he makes clear, he's already written to them about avoiding sexual immorality, and this scandal was apparently so notorious that word of it had spread to Paul from beyond the city of Corinth; it was likely part of the reason for division within the church. Jews did not associate with Gentiles, and tax collectors were seen as Roman sellouts, so Jesus was not advocating familial responses to fellows who refused to stop sinning. Jesus may have kept company with the disreputable, but the message here was clear: If someone within the church acts like someone outside the faith, you treat him like someone outside the faith. 

None of this is to say that the church which casts this fellow out is perfect. Both Paul and Jesus recognize the struggle with sin and temptation. Still, it is one thing to wrestle with sin, and another to wallow in it. 

Even so, perhaps Paul is still too harsh. After all, Jesus was silent on a number of subjects, and he didn't talk about sexual sin too frequently. He preached against divorce and adultery, but that was it, right? If Jesus isn't all hung up on sex, why should we let Paul get away with it?

The problem is, Jesus set a high bar for sexual sin.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. - Matthew 5:27-28

Jesus makes it clear in his teaching, it's not just about actions, but what is in the heart. It is, after all, "deceitful above all things." (Jeremiah 17:9)

Fine, but that's just for adultery. Did Jesus preach about any other forms of sexual sin? Yes, as it turns out:

Then he called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What defiles a person is not what goes into the mouth; it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person. . . .  But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a person. For out of the heart come evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are the things that defile a person; it is not eating with unwashed hands that defiles a person." Matthew 15:10-11, 18-20

That term, sexual immorality, is one Paul uses as well. It is often translated as "fornication," understood as sex between unmarried individuals. 

As for other sexual sin, talk of homosexuality never appears in any of the gospels, it is true. A full explanation of why this is irrelevant is too much for this post; consider the arguments being addressed here, here, here, or here, just as a start. Suffice it to say that no first century Jew would have understood homosexuality as anything other than a sin due to Levitical teaching, and it would have gone against the entirety of a scriptural understanding of the nature of marriage and sexuality as given by God; Jesus didn't preach about it much because his ministry focused almost entirely on Israel, where (presumably) homosexuality wasn't up for debate.

Jesus runs with a bad crowd

Even so, Jesus did hang out with sinners. It was a charge repeated by his critics multiple times. These weren't purely social visits, however. When Jesus taught, he called these people to repentance.

When the experts in the law and the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this he said to them, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” - Mark 2: 16-17

We don't often know how these dinners with sinners played out, but we can assume Jesus did not treat the conversation lightly. Consider how things turned out for Zaccheus:

And when Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, because I must stay at your house today.” So he came down quickly and welcomed Jesus joyfully. And when the people saw it, they all complained, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he too is a son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:5-10

Compare that to the Pharisees. Jesus reserved some of his harshest language for these men. They were also called to repentance, but their response to Jesus was considerably less enthusiastic.

Paul the father

In the end, Paul didn't write the verse in question above, or any of the first letter to the church at Corinth, out of animus or hatred. He did so out of love.

 I am not writing these things to shame you, but to correct you as my dear children. - 1 Corinthians 4:14

Paul loved the Corinthians, as he loved every church he planted or visited along his travels. He only wanted what was best for them. Knowing how destructive sin could be if left unchecked, he urged them to remove it and spare themselves any further consequences from sin.

Paul's advice is specifically for the church, too. Expanding the original quote:

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. In no way did I mean the immoral people of this world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or verbally abusive, or a drunkard, or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Are you not to judge those inside? But God will judge those outside. Remove the evil person from among you. - 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

In Matthew 18, Jesus makes clear that the course he is laying out is for those within the fellowship of the faithful. What would bringing the person to the church mean otherwise? The command is not to disassociate from sinners in the world; how else can we reach them? It is also not for those who struggle with their sins and temptations. Indeed, in the very same chapter, Jesus tells Peter to forgive his brethren not seven times, but seventy times seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

No, this advice is for the church in dealing with those who remain in sin, deliberately returning to it, celebrating it, exulting in it. It is for the church in addressing those in its midst who would put their sin on display for the world to see, refusing to turn from, apologize for, or make amends for it.

*I find it deeply amusing that Paul is often criticized as being too strict or harsh compared to Jesus, when Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem thought that Paul was too lenient. After all, he was baptizing all these Gentiles without first having them follow the Mosaic law. Quelle horreur!

Holy Conversation - Week 3

^8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. He asked him, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”^8:31 The man replied, “How in the world can I, unless someone guides me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:30-31)

Have you ever given, or received, an evangelistic tract? I consider them to be something akin to street preaching, not a particularly effective tool but not one I can say is 100% ineffective.

Sometimes those things make us look bad. Sometimes they make us look really bad. Take, for example, this old Jack Chick tract. Although Dungeons & Dragons isn't a particular bugaboo these days, you'll still find folks who think Harry Potter is going to indoctrinate their children into the occult. All the same, the RPG community still passes around poor Blackleaf as a joke. I realize that even the most genuine attempts at evangelism can open a person up to ridicule, but I think we can all agree that something that sticks around as the butt of a joke for 30 years is a problem.

The point of the chapter for week three was that evangelism is almost entirely about relationship. Most tracts are used in a "fire and forget" manner, shoved into the hands of passersby on the street in the hopes that someone will read it. What if they do? Who explains the meaning of the text to them? Who helps them find a Bible to actually look up the things that are said in the tract? Who helps them connect to a body of believers in their area? Who helps explain to them what being a Christian even means?

It's not even just tracts. When I was in college, we used to hand out food as a means of "ministering" to our community. The hope is that someone receives some free food, sees the love of Christ behind that action, and becomes curious enough to probe further, offering an opportunity to share the gospel. We used to make care packages (instant drinks, ramen noodles, candy, etc.) for the new freshmen. We'd hand out snowcones at the festival showcasing all of the student groups. We'd hand out hot cocoa to people during the winter. In the spring, we'd hand out Poptarts. I was part of that for four years, and I can probably count on one hand the number of people who even stopped to ask why we were giving away food, much less wanted to ask about this "Jesus" fellow.

From PRC's study on the "nones"

It only compounds the problem further that Christianity is becoming much less "standard" as far as cultural knowledge goes. As the general public moves away from church, it's much less likely for anyone to even know the basic Biblical stories, much less what specific terms of theology mean. As with Philip and the eunuch, how can they understand if there is no one to explain it to them?

I won't discount the potential for one person to sow while another person reaps. However, so much of the world views us as uninterested in the person we are talking to, instead seeking another notch in our belt, another conservative voter, another tithe in the church coffers. If we want people to take our attempts to share our faith seriously, our attempts have to look genuine. If evangelism is like a meal, we need to sit down and grab a menu, rather than hitting up the drive-thru.

Holy Conversation - Week 2

The subject for week two of the study was on the value of stories during evangelism and spiritual conversations. Illustrative stories can be very helpful for explaining an idea; Jesus always seemed to have a parable at hand to explain the nature of God or the Kingdom. Paul began his speeches before gentile audiences with stories. It's just a well known idea, people like stories. There's no faster way to draw in an audience than with stories.

More specifically, however, this chapter looked at stories from your spiritual journey. This can be a tricky area. It can be easy to ignore, overlook, or even ridicule the stories others have of experiencing the supernatural. They can be brushed off as coincidental at best and signs of mental illness at worst. The experiences are no less meaningful to folks, however, so it's important for Christians to understand how to respond to these stories and use them as tools of evangelism. Incidentally, it's not just Christians who have stories of the supernatural or spiritual experiences.

From PRC's 2009 study of the rise of the "nones."

One of the points we discussed was just how important being able to share these stories can be. I thought I'd use this week's post, then, to share one of my own stories, one in which I almost died.

(Continue reading)

Holy Conversation - Week 1

Last year, I was in charge of my church small group discussions about Calling. I decided to write about the material in addition to leading the discussion. (All of those posts should be available here.) I'm leading the group again this fall, so I thought I would write about it again. This year, we're going through the book Holy Conversation by Richard Peace.

The overall point of the book is that evangelism is in a wayward state in our current cultural climate. For a lot of people, it means tracts and pamphlets, brimstone condemnations, self-righteous judgment, that sort of thing. Even if you dial that back, just the act of telling someone that their beliefs are wrong or their actions sinful is the worst possible social blunder, impolite at best and offensive, bordering on a human rights violation, at worst. On the other end of it, many Christians have taken such cultural frowning on proselytizing to heart to the extent that even talking about their faith is uncomfortable. The goal of the book is to move back towards a model of relational evangelism, purposeful and personal without being offensive.

I'm not unsympathetic to the idea. Drive-by, shotgun-style evangelism is a net with very big holes in it. I can't say it doesn't have a place, but it's not going to catch a lot of fish. Religion has become a very personal thing, not a public expression, in the last several decades (for better or worse.) Even Pope Francis is on the same page:

He smiles again and replies: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good."

I feel like the Pope is a bit too heavy handed with the Universalism-angle in this interview, but that could be the translation. The bottom line is that conversion is a different process for everyone, and that makes it a very personal thing. Formulas and presentations aren't necessarily the way to go, but a direct relationship can make for a much more natural progression.

The first week focused on the idea that everyone is on a spiritual journey, and half the battle in having a productive conversation about faith is understanding where your friend is on their own path how to address them in that place.

Frankly, I think I missed the point of the study in the first week. The goal of the study is to help make evangelism a natural process, getting away from heavily religious terminology that might scare or confuse folks, working on a personal level. What did I do? I prepared a discussion that tried to form a biblical basis for the idea that everyone is on a spiritual journey. I tried to establish a connection between the ideas Peace was laying out for the conversion process and traditional theological ideas. If you're used to thinking in technical ways, it's hard to break away from that.

Hopefully the coming weeks will be more natural. It's frustrating to me so far that each session is very light on material; preparing an actual "lesson" seems counter-intuitive to the goal of the study, but hoping that three pages of material focused on a single idea can generate 1-2 hours of conversation seems overly optimistic to me. Still, I look forward to seeing how the study turns out.

Heeding the Whisper - Epilogue

This post comes about five months late.  Part of this is because working on a D&D campaign has left me rather apathetic about writing in other arenas.  A significant part of this, however, is that I was also reading Frank's dissertation, the source of the entire series, and I wanted to finish it before I wrote this addendum.  I'm not that slow of a reader, just a lazy one.

In any case, the dissertation was a real eye-opener.  It's interesting how something can transform from the original, academic document into the Bible-study style product that resulted.  Frank indicated an interest to do more with the project; I do hope he turns the dissertation into a book, it's very well written.

Looking back at the series as a whole, an interesting picture begins to emerge.  The problem we have, not just as Christians but as a society, is that we idolize work.  It becomes a locus of identity, we expect it to be meaningful and fulfilling, both financially and personally.  We extol the pursuit of passion and denigrate labor.  We spend years of our lives and accrue incredible debt in the pursuit of degrees which facilitate work.  Any efforts to change that path and pursue a new career seems daunting, enough to invoke indentity crises.  On top of this, the people who are there to offer spiritual guidance frequently have a very different view of what it means to seek a career than those in other professions; a pastor describing how and why he chose to go into ministry is going to tell a story that sounds surreal to someone explaining why they chose to become an interior decorator.

It's really no wonder to me we have a screwed up perspective on vocation.  We expect much of it, and yet treat it as an entirely separate category of life from faith.  We frequently expect God to bless it as a venture without treating it like a consecrated activity.  If this entire series could be summarized in one point, it would be that our career, our job, is supposed to be an extension of our faith.  It is a powerful vehicle for serving God and loving our neighbor.  When we forget this, we turn our vocation from a means to an end.

This is the very heart of the struggle I had in college, and I suspect many people feel the same way in that situation.  You're trying to figure out what to do with your life.  You expect the clouds to open up and a divine proclamation reveals the answer.  There's a very real fear that missing out on this will not only mean you have missed out on God's intent for you, but that you are not truly serving him as you were meant to.  How much of that thinking stems just from the way we talk about "calling?"  It completely misses the point.  It's not about what  you are doing, but why, and how.  A quote from the series, whose attribution I can't remember anymore, said, "God loves adverbs.  He doesn't care how good, but how well."  (Google tells me it might be Charles Taylor who wrote this originally.)

When this series started, I was cautious.  In the aftermath of it, I'm thirsty for more.  The entire approach helped me think about calling in ways I wish I would have ten years ago.  I'm eager to explore it further, and I can't wait to see what Frank does with the material.

Heeding the Whisper - Week 7

I may be almost a month behind, but at least this series will finish up before the new year.

In the final session of the Called study, titled "Sneak Previews," we discussed what a calling should mean to people who look forward to eternity.  We discussed three somewhat-related topics:

The primary idea of the topic is that our calling is not just a temporal, earthly concern, but one that will carry importance and meaning into the new Jerusalem.  When the prophets talk about the redeemed creation, they paint a picture of a place where life still happens, where commerce and culture are active and thriving.  The popular notion of heaven frequently involves white robes, fluffy clouds, and endless noodling on the harp, but the biblical picture is that we'll still be living and working.  Work itself was never itself cursed, but when creation was cursed, work became a toil.  It wasn't bad, it was just difficult.  When all things come to fulfillment, what we did in the here-and-now will be important.

This does raise the question, what will we do in the redeemed creation?  I'm not sure we'll have an answer until we get there.  There are a lot of jobs that only exist because this world is fallen and imperfect.  As a scientist, I have a particular interest here, because my job involves discovering hidden truths of the world and using that knowledge to make it better.  When all truth is made plain by the light of Christ, when all flaws have been rendered from the world, what will that leave for me?  I don't know.  I can't wait to find out, though.

The second idea, which flows directly from the first, is that we have a responsibility of working towards the renewal and redemption of creation.  This is not to say that Christians can bring about "heaven on Earth," but we abandon our charge to be the "salt of the earth" by leaving the world around us to rot in corruption.  Of course, what this means is an entirely different can of worms.  A lot of people have thrown their hats in with politics as the means of living out this principle, but there's a lot more to it than that.  I still think the most effective way of redeeming the world around us is through the gospel, one heart at a time.

The final idea that came out of this session involved the impact of our calling and our life.  There are a lot of people who see most of the impact from living out their calling right away; a doctor, for example, sees patients recover and walk out the hospital door.  For the rest of us, however, the true reach of our lives may never be fully realized until we leave this life behind.  One example used is Ruth; in the book of Ruth, there are no miracles, only the story of a faithful woman who finds love in a foreign land.  Yet Ruth is counted in the genealogy of Christ, making the mundanity of her life more significant in retrospect.

A truly interesting example Frank gave for this was the story of Rodriguez, as told through the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. Rodriguez was a guitarist whose music never found fame in the US; he did, however, develop a huge following in South Africa.  The man lived most of his life in obscurity, and his fans in South Africa didn't even know he was still alive.  Some time ago, he was "re-discovered" and invited to South Africa for a concert.  Imagine his surprise, coming onto the stage to an audience of thousands, cheering fans who knew the words to his songs better than he did.  It's a remarkable story, and its connection to our calling is significant.

I'll have one more post on the series to wrap up the various ideas that have floated around, and I hope to have it out before January.

Heeding the Whisper - Week 6

I realize this post is incredibly late at this point.  The series has actually ended; well, sort of.  Scheduling conflicts and holidays pushed back my small group's completion of the study until next week.  My own tardiness in putting up this particular post has more to do with figuring out just what I wanted to even say about the topic.

Week 6 of the study involved the role of "calling" as a tool in evangelism.  This series has dealt with the implications of living out your faith every day of the week, which means treating work as an extension of faith.  It's not just that work is something separate from the life you lead on Sunday morning, but it should be an integrated part of that whole.  Since sharing the gospel is the highest privilege and responsibility in the life of faith, work must also be an integrated part of evangelism.

In particular, the idea of "calling" can be useful in evangelism.  It's something that a lot of people will find familiarity with, even if they don't understand it in the way that Christians understand it.  (Well, to the degree any of us even understand it.)  Just like Paul taking the altar to the unknown god and turning it into a vehicle for the gospel, so we should use calling to find and reach people where they are.

Frank has said that this was the entire basis of his thesis, which was itself the basis for this series.  It's sound advice.  If you believe that God is reaching out to every person, the way a person wrestles with purpose and calling can definitely be an opening for the gospel.  They hear God, even if they don't understand it.  (Or, in Paul's words, "Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.")

This is probably much more complicated in practice, though.  This area runs up to a problem Christians have been having since New Age spirituality became so prevalent in the West, in that the language used by Christians has been co-opted to mean something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike it's original meaning.  The shared language doesn't just extend to the idea of a calling, but to what that should mean as well.  Most of the world understands morality through the lens of "good deeds;" it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you're a "good person" who does "good deeds."  The "calling" a person wrestles with then becomes a matter of finding something you enjoy doing and/or being able to do "good deeds" through it.  It's not entirely divorced from the ideas we've been discussing the last several weeks, but it's certainly a bastardized version of it.  

The heart of the matter is that our calling is God inviting us to participate in his work.  Expressing that to a world that wonders whether such invitations are possible . . . well, that's the hard part.  I'm not really sure I have anything profound to add that wasn't already said by Frank in this series.  Avoiding formulas.  Listening.  Humility.  Explaining ourselves.  Everything that evangelism is supposed to be.  

Heeding the Whisper - Week 5

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:11-13
New International Version (NIV)

This is the week that I both anticipated and dreaded.  The possibilities were multitude:  Controversial, enlightening, unhelpful, etc.  Frank went with the latter, unfortunately.  I don't blame him, there's only so much you can do with thirty minutes of sermon and 20 minutes of video.

The ultimate question to be addressed by Frank this week was to ask, "How do I know my calling?"  Which sounds an awful lot like, "How do I know God's will for my life?"  Frank's answer was to that there's no real rule for this, that one must simply pay attention.  Not particularly helpful.

In the past when I've looked at this, there were a number of sign posts, so to speak:  The Bible, mature counsel, inner witness, circumstances, personal desires, common sense, and special guidance.  Let's break these down:

• The Bible:  Pretty obvious.  Everything we understand about God's calling is done so in light of revealed truth.
• Mature counsel:  There's a lot to be said about the advice and wisdom of those around you, whether it's people with experience, experts in a field, those who know you best, or elders in the faith with good discernment.
• Circumstances:  There's that old saying, "When one door closes, another opens."  You can tell something about God's calling by your circumstances.  I'm not going to be running a bible study for high-powered executives anytime soon, for example.
• Personal desires:  Another obvious one.  The heart of man is prone to foolishness, so it's worthwhile keeping a tight leash on this sign post.  Still, the best servants are those who serve gladly.  "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." --Frederick Buechner (via Frank)
• Common sense:  Still obvious.  God's not calling you to be a missionary to Mars colonists, at least not at the moment. 
• Inner witness:  This is the still small voice.  The Holy Spirit dwells within the hearts of believers, and it offers God's testimony and guidance to those receptive to it.  Many describe this as a voice heard not with the ears, but with the heart, or God speaking directly to your soul.  The verses in 1King above are frequently quoted in this regard.
• Special guidance:  This is the audible voice, the "road to Damascus" type event.  Paul experienced a lot of this, as did the prophets.  Think John writing the book of Revelation. 

Interpreting the signs is tricky.  As Frank said, this is going to be different for everyone, and you can't really know how to read these signs unless you're in the moment.  Even then, sometimes it takes someone from outside the circumstances to help interpret them (see mature counsel).  The problem, as far as I see it, is in the last two parts of the above list.

First, and most obviously, special guidance is not normative.  This really should go without saying, but so many situations from the Bible are used as examples of inner witness when they are clearly special guidance. 

The bigger problem for me is the haziness of inner witness.  My best understanding of the scriptural basis for it requires a rather generous interpretation of the verses; it's not exactly clear that the thing Christians describe as "inner witness" is the same thing the justifying verses are describing.  Plus, truly interpreting such a thing is incredibly complicated.  It is, by definition, an inaudible voice.  The inner witness ought to be an obvious phenomenon, but a great number of Christians ask how they can be sure they're "hearing" the voice of God in their heart.  Even worse, it acts as a trump card for many people, both internally and externally.  Short of special guidance, it trumps all other sign posts as it's "straight from the horse's mouth," and many Christians will use it as a bludgeon against other Christians.  It's an embarrassment when two arguing Christians both declare that the Holy Spirit has told them they're right.

Why don't I just write off the matter entirely?  Because the idea that the indwelling Holy Spirit has no interaction with us stretches credulity.  What that actually looks like is far more than can be adequately covered in a blog post, but to reject it would be to reject any level of mysticism or sacredness in the faith.  This form of spirituality may look like foolishness to an unbelieving world, but there are people out there absolutely hungry for such things in their lives.  We make the same mistake as the naturalists to reject anything that cannot be empirically analyzed or quantified.

I have no real conclusion, here.  This week's message brought me no closer to a satisfactory answer than I was before.  Perhaps Frank will tackle it some other time.