I have many Calvinist friends, which means that I frequently find myself embroiled in intensely intellectual conversations that tend to drift off into realms of abstract spirituality. One such conversation sticks out particularly in my mind. My friend asked me bluntly, "Are you a Calvinist?" When, after a long pause, I replied, "No," he pounced like a wolverine on a mouse--"Why not? Which of the five points do you disagree with?"
In that moment, I had an epiphany--I suddenly saw that, for my friend, the essence of Christianity was accepting certain propositions about God or men as true. I saw that, for him, the five points of Calvinism represented the boundaries of the gospel, making intellectual apprehension the key to the Kingdom. Finally, I saw that the key to my disavowal lay in my faith in the ultimate authority of Scripture.
As my vision cleared, I slowly formed a response. "Well, it's not that I disagree with any of the points in particular, though I probably would in some places. I'm not a Calvinist because I take issue with the whole idea of boiling the gospel down to a few propositions. It's not just Calvinism--it's Arminianism, and the 'Romans Road,' and the Four Spiritual Laws."
I could see the word "heretic" turning over in his mind, so I quickly sought to clarify myself. "Listen," I said, "you believe in the authority of Scripture, right?"
He nodded slowly, as I might when conversing with a five year-old.
I continued, grateful for some breathing room. "Well, so do I. I believe that God meant to give us a long, messy, paradoxical story about how he is redeeming a good world gone bad. I don't think He meant to write the Five Points, or the Four Laws, but just couldn't find the right phrasing. No, he gave us a story, because only a story requires empathy. He did not give us five propositions to agree with, or a four step formula to follow, but a story to join."
At this point, my friend seemed to recover his former confidence: "So, you're saying you don't think the Bible is true?"
I had to smile: "I believe the Bible is the true story of humanity. The power of the Bible does not rest in the fact that it outlines the nature of God, man, or sin with peculiar clarity, though it often does those things. The Bible carries the redemptive authority of God because it is the true account of how a perfect creation fell from grace and was redeemed by a sovereign God. Let me put it this way: Jesus on the Cross did not create some abstract, spiritual machinery by which men could be forgiven from abstract sins, and freed from immaterial punishment. On the Cross, Jesus confronted the powers of darkness that held sway over the world, took upon himself the evil intended for men, and in so doing, 'swallowed up death forever.'"
My friend seemed to choke on these thoughts for a moment, before asking, "Well, if the Bible isn't primarily something we understand, how can we make any sense of it for today?"
"Well, first, I don't think that systematic views of faith do a great job of making sense of the actual story presented in the Bible. Consider the sovereignty/free will debate: it seems abundantly clear to me that God's sovereignty and man's free choice are both key themes of the Bible. I don't know how you can read passages like Genesis 3, Isaiah 50, Ezekiel 16, Hosea 2, or Colossians 3 without some understanding of free will, any more than you can read Romans 8-9, or Ephesians 1 without an appreciation of God's sovereign choice. Systematic approaches to theology inevitably seem to trivialize one side of the issue, when the reality seems to be that they paradoxically work together.
"Beyond that, when we begin with the narrative revealed in Scripture, we can move towards its contemporary relevance without demeaning the fact of the historical work of God. When we see spirituality primarily in terms of timeless truths, we can have a hard time making sense of the flesh-and-blood reality of God's work. God does not deal principally with the abstract: he enters history, clothing principle in human events. Israel was not merely an example of a people who knew more about God than others; they were the vehicle by which God would bring redemption to all creation (cf. Gen. 12:3). Likewise, Jesus was not some spiritual technician, operating the abstract machinery of atonement; he was God come to earth to defeat the powers of darkness, restore humanity to fellowship with himself, and finally, renew all of creation.
"N. T. Wright suggests that we read the Bible like a play with the middle cut out--we have the beginning, and the very end (which occurs on earth, not in some spritual realm, cf. Rev. 21), and our job is to improvise the middle, directed and cued by the Holy Spirit. That means remaining faithful to the themes we see acted out in Israel's history and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We must seek to live out our vocation as the people of God, moving history towards the renewal and healing we see in Revelation."
At this point, I thought to end with some sympathy. "Listen, I don't hate Calvinism; in fact, I deeply sympathize with a lot of Calvinist thought. When it helps us identify the themes of the narrative, without stealing our attention from joining our daily lives to God's story, systematic theology can be helpful. It's just that, at its best, systematic theology is only commentary. It's like the editor's preface to a story: you only read it so you can move beyond it, to the story itself."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Dry-walling and Career Planning
Dale had a shriveled look about him; at 72, he resembled a dried corn husk, his deep brown skin stretched over bone and tightly-corded muscle, etched with a fine lacework of wrinkles. He could srtetch to 5’6’’, but a now permanent hunch left him stranded at about 5’3’’—on a windy day, I often imagined that Dale might blow away, like a maple leaf dried and driven by autumn.
However, I hadn’t worked an hour under Dale before I realized that appearances deceive: he was the foulest cuss I’d ever met. My first day on the job, as I helped Moses, the Mexican mudder (construction for “drywall finisher”) plaster an outside wall, Dale came around the corner, his gait short, bird-like, his left arm in a sling (he tore his rotator cuff throwing 100 lb. packs of shingles in a dumpster), his right arm protectively clutching a set of plans for the Mission. He let his wide, feral gaze trail across our wall, before wheezing casually: “Gawd, Moses, that looks like shit. That looks like the afterbirth of a bastard rat.” His words had not ceased chasing my stomach into my rib cage, before he resumed his steady progress around the building.
Yeah, Dale was a real character, but, I think my favorite that summer was Allen. I spent most of my days following Allen from site to site: he did whatever the corporate suits deemed unworthy of a subcontractor's time, and I did whatever he deemed unworthy of his time. We erected ornamental pillars, painted pool decks, installed doors, even delivered the boss' furniture.
Dale had a wild look about him; Allen always appeared mildly surprised. I could never tell for sure whether every occurrence actually stunned him, or if his inch-thick glasses merely saddled him with a startled expression.
Allen's ambiguous features notwithstanding, I can speak with authority on his favorite verbal expression: he responded to my lunch menu, and to news of a Cessna crashing into a house a mile away, with the same, semi-alarmed syllable—“Shit.” Allen had a way of milking the burst of profanity: when something truly shocked him, his jaw would hang slack, and the sound would trickle from him, effervescent as the fizz from canned soda. “Sheeet…you serious?” I would solemnly bob my head in affirmation, and he would reply with an incredulous shake of his head, perhaps even doffing his camouflage baseball cap to wipe away the sweat that trickled from his thinning, prematurely white hair, as though the very subject caused him to perspire in agitation.
“Prematurely white” pretty well summed Allen’s appearance—hard work, long hours, and the cares of the breadwinner had aged him before his time. Still broad-shouldered and bull-necked at 55, his hair, bleached white by stress, and his skin, browned and creased by the sun, easily could have passed on a 65 year-old.
I liked Allen, though. I liked him because he was funny, but didn’t know it. Allen had worked just about every job under the sun over his 35 year career, and, to hear him talk, he aspired to undertake the few remaining choices all at once. Allen had worked as a master electrician on an oil rig, a phone lineman, a mechanic, a carpenter, a concrete mixer, a trucker, and a few other jobs that hadn’t merited explanation. When I met him, he had settled in as our resident handyman, doing ten different jobs, and hardly getting paid more than a broom-pusher like me.
Allen spent the majority of our driving time plotting his next career move: he may have dreamed up several entirely new trades during the course of our travels (at least, I hadn’t heard of them). One day, Allen announced matter-of-factly, “I’m thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into fixin’ golf carts.” That’s how these schemes always began, with Allen “gettin’ into” something, much as a ten year-old might land himself in a different scrape every day. After titling that day’s chapter, he would launch into a rapturous description of the intricacies of his new profession, painting visions of hydraulic lifts sending carts skyward, of tiny cranes heaving batteries from the plastic frame. Or, the next day, Allen would be “thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into doors”—he would fabricate frames and stain the heavy oak, if he could only come up with $30,000 in start-up capital. A few days later, he was dreaming about cleaning and repainting grout—except that the work was tedious, and would be brutal on his already-mangled back. During the three months we worked together, I think we tracked up just about every building trade, revisiting our favorite haunts multiple times.
For the first month, listening to him complain about his current mistreatment, reminisce about the past, and dream for the future, I wondered why a guy with Allen’s skill, trying to raise a family, would work for the few pennies he earned. When I timidly asked him why he left his job as an electrician, my voice barely audible over the clanks and groans of his protesting work van, he looked over at me with a faintly puzzled expression. He stared ahead at the road for a minute, scratched his nose, and finally answered, “Well, I don’t know…I reckon I just got restless. I never been fired, but I never worked no job more’n five years. I always got to wonderin’ ‘bout new trades, new places, new people. The road’s always looked invitin’ t’me.” A strange solemnity descended over the van on the tails of that statement: for a long time, I could not look at George, whether from pity or awe, I couldn’t be sure.
However, I hadn’t worked an hour under Dale before I realized that appearances deceive: he was the foulest cuss I’d ever met. My first day on the job, as I helped Moses, the Mexican mudder (construction for “drywall finisher”) plaster an outside wall, Dale came around the corner, his gait short, bird-like, his left arm in a sling (he tore his rotator cuff throwing 100 lb. packs of shingles in a dumpster), his right arm protectively clutching a set of plans for the Mission. He let his wide, feral gaze trail across our wall, before wheezing casually: “Gawd, Moses, that looks like shit. That looks like the afterbirth of a bastard rat.” His words had not ceased chasing my stomach into my rib cage, before he resumed his steady progress around the building.
Yeah, Dale was a real character, but, I think my favorite that summer was Allen. I spent most of my days following Allen from site to site: he did whatever the corporate suits deemed unworthy of a subcontractor's time, and I did whatever he deemed unworthy of his time. We erected ornamental pillars, painted pool decks, installed doors, even delivered the boss' furniture.
Dale had a wild look about him; Allen always appeared mildly surprised. I could never tell for sure whether every occurrence actually stunned him, or if his inch-thick glasses merely saddled him with a startled expression.
Allen's ambiguous features notwithstanding, I can speak with authority on his favorite verbal expression: he responded to my lunch menu, and to news of a Cessna crashing into a house a mile away, with the same, semi-alarmed syllable—“Shit.” Allen had a way of milking the burst of profanity: when something truly shocked him, his jaw would hang slack, and the sound would trickle from him, effervescent as the fizz from canned soda. “Sheeet…you serious?” I would solemnly bob my head in affirmation, and he would reply with an incredulous shake of his head, perhaps even doffing his camouflage baseball cap to wipe away the sweat that trickled from his thinning, prematurely white hair, as though the very subject caused him to perspire in agitation.
“Prematurely white” pretty well summed Allen’s appearance—hard work, long hours, and the cares of the breadwinner had aged him before his time. Still broad-shouldered and bull-necked at 55, his hair, bleached white by stress, and his skin, browned and creased by the sun, easily could have passed on a 65 year-old.
I liked Allen, though. I liked him because he was funny, but didn’t know it. Allen had worked just about every job under the sun over his 35 year career, and, to hear him talk, he aspired to undertake the few remaining choices all at once. Allen had worked as a master electrician on an oil rig, a phone lineman, a mechanic, a carpenter, a concrete mixer, a trucker, and a few other jobs that hadn’t merited explanation. When I met him, he had settled in as our resident handyman, doing ten different jobs, and hardly getting paid more than a broom-pusher like me.
Allen spent the majority of our driving time plotting his next career move: he may have dreamed up several entirely new trades during the course of our travels (at least, I hadn’t heard of them). One day, Allen announced matter-of-factly, “I’m thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into fixin’ golf carts.” That’s how these schemes always began, with Allen “gettin’ into” something, much as a ten year-old might land himself in a different scrape every day. After titling that day’s chapter, he would launch into a rapturous description of the intricacies of his new profession, painting visions of hydraulic lifts sending carts skyward, of tiny cranes heaving batteries from the plastic frame. Or, the next day, Allen would be “thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into doors”—he would fabricate frames and stain the heavy oak, if he could only come up with $30,000 in start-up capital. A few days later, he was dreaming about cleaning and repainting grout—except that the work was tedious, and would be brutal on his already-mangled back. During the three months we worked together, I think we tracked up just about every building trade, revisiting our favorite haunts multiple times.
For the first month, listening to him complain about his current mistreatment, reminisce about the past, and dream for the future, I wondered why a guy with Allen’s skill, trying to raise a family, would work for the few pennies he earned. When I timidly asked him why he left his job as an electrician, my voice barely audible over the clanks and groans of his protesting work van, he looked over at me with a faintly puzzled expression. He stared ahead at the road for a minute, scratched his nose, and finally answered, “Well, I don’t know…I reckon I just got restless. I never been fired, but I never worked no job more’n five years. I always got to wonderin’ ‘bout new trades, new places, new people. The road’s always looked invitin’ t’me.” A strange solemnity descended over the van on the tails of that statement: for a long time, I could not look at George, whether from pity or awe, I couldn’t be sure.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Family, Society, and Saving the World
Have you noticed that most activism takes place in the spotlight? To end global warming, activists hold a huge concert (ironically leaving an environmental footprint the size of Massachusetts in their wake); politicians love to declare war on any and every social ill: poverty, drugs, terror. They propose sweeping reforms to end crime, touching small-arms, prisons, the courts, and public education.
Maybe good will come of all the above, but I doubt it. I think change gathers quietly, like the dew’s billion drops collecting to soak the ground. I think change is individuals learning to spend well, consume less, to care about one another, and the earth.
With that frightening truth in mind, I would like to offer you a quiet, even ponderous, yet crucial role to play in the redemption of all creation: get married, have kids, and teach them a better way to live.
No, Pat Robertson has not commandeered my keyboard—I mean this. The sociological data favoring the sacrament of marriage is staggering. I offer you a smattering of the more startling examples from the reams of facts I waded through…
A survey of 108 rapists undertaken by Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky revealed that…70 percent of those describable as 'violent' came from female-headed homes.
Children of divorce were six times more likely than children in
intact families to strongly agree "I was alone a lot as child." : Elizabeth Marquardt
"Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce."
Crown Books (September 27, 2005)
Students from intact families maintained grade point averages (GPAs) 11% higher than those of peers from divorced families. Source: Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 38.3/4 [2003]: 167-185.)
Children of divorce (whose parents divorced while they were children) are 62% more likely than children of non-divorced parents to no longer identify with the faith of their parents when they grow up.
Lawton, L. E., & Bures, R. (2001). Parental Divorce and the "Switching" of Religious Identity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 99-111.
Among long-term prison inmates, 70 percent grew up without fathers, as did 60 percent of rapists and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder.
Source: Wade Horn and Andrew Bush, "Fathers, Marriage, and Welfare Reform,
The divorce rate is just absurd (sitting somewhere between 41% and 52% in 2003, depending on who did the math). More chilling than mere numbers, children of divorced parents are far more likely to commit violent crimes, suffer mental illness, resent their parents as adults, fall away from faith, perform more poorly in school, earn less as adults, and, finally, to experience divorce in their own marriages.
Divorce even affects the environment: in a married family, two adults and two children easily live in one house. A divorcee who leaves his former home immediately finds a new place to live: now the same four people have two houses between them. That’s two electric and utility bills; two TV’s running instead of one; two trips to the grocery store (if my experience serves, divorce does not guarantee that a family will spend less on food); along with the reliance on lower-quality products that comes from a reduction in income, and an increase in stress (during my middle school years, my family ate out as often as three times a week—between work and running around, my mom had no time to cook).
I do not write as a pundit; I have experienced the pain of divorce, lived through the painful dilemma, the tragic necessity, and the brutal consequences. My parents had a terrible marriage: I will not judge whether they should have married, or whether they should have stuck it out. My mom will always remain a symbol of strength and unshakeable resolve to me: she has borne more in silence, sacrificed more quiet pleasures, and committed more love and determination to running her practice, raising my sister and me, and rebuilding our house, than I suspect I could ever know.
Still, I will say this—their divorce damaged something in my nine year-old heart. About six months after the divorce, my dad disappeared, to remain hidden for nearly six years. I don’t remember ever crying after he left: I bottled up the anguish, the fear, the anger. However, these things force their way to the surface—within a few months, I developed a severe case of anxiety, often suffering near-panic attacks if my mom were late to pick me up (this problem was severely exacerbated by her belief that 45 minutes late was just “running a few minutes behind.”). I dealt with these fears by channeling them into obsessive-compulsive habits. Eventually, I went to counseling to work through these issues, but to this day I struggle against a lingering fear of rejection, a persistent sense of unworthiness. Every good thing in my life always seems on the verge of walking out the door. I was the consummate outsider for much of my adolescence, resenting families more whole than my own, and friends better-adjusted than myself.
Now, few of these facts would show up in statistics that would otherwise plot me as a typical bright, upper-middle-class undergrad. I have a girlfriend, great friends, a good relationship with my mom and sister—and I constantly fight to protect them against lies I embraced when I was ten.
I began to think about all this while driving, listening to the song “Teach Your Young,” by Zach Williams. If you want to change the world, tell your kids every day that you love them. Teach your young to love Jesus and follow in his way, to delight in growing things, to suffer and sacrifice for something beautiful. Teach them to recycle, to care for the poor and broken-heated, to love peace. Teach them to spend their money well, to live generously, to yearn for the shalom of the coming Kingdom.
Maybe good will come of all the above, but I doubt it. I think change gathers quietly, like the dew’s billion drops collecting to soak the ground. I think change is individuals learning to spend well, consume less, to care about one another, and the earth.
With that frightening truth in mind, I would like to offer you a quiet, even ponderous, yet crucial role to play in the redemption of all creation: get married, have kids, and teach them a better way to live.
No, Pat Robertson has not commandeered my keyboard—I mean this. The sociological data favoring the sacrament of marriage is staggering. I offer you a smattering of the more startling examples from the reams of facts I waded through…
A survey of 108 rapists undertaken by Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky revealed that…70 percent of those describable as 'violent' came from female-headed homes.
Children of divorce were six times more likely than children in
intact families to strongly agree "I was alone a lot as child." : Elizabeth Marquardt
"Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce."
Crown Books (September 27, 2005)
Students from intact families maintained grade point averages (GPAs) 11% higher than those of peers from divorced families. Source: Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 38.3/4 [2003]: 167-185.)
Children of divorce (whose parents divorced while they were children) are 62% more likely than children of non-divorced parents to no longer identify with the faith of their parents when they grow up.
Lawton, L. E., & Bures, R. (2001). Parental Divorce and the "Switching" of Religious Identity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 99-111.
Among long-term prison inmates, 70 percent grew up without fathers, as did 60 percent of rapists and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder.
Source: Wade Horn and Andrew Bush, "Fathers, Marriage, and Welfare Reform,
The divorce rate is just absurd (sitting somewhere between 41% and 52% in 2003, depending on who did the math). More chilling than mere numbers, children of divorced parents are far more likely to commit violent crimes, suffer mental illness, resent their parents as adults, fall away from faith, perform more poorly in school, earn less as adults, and, finally, to experience divorce in their own marriages.
Divorce even affects the environment: in a married family, two adults and two children easily live in one house. A divorcee who leaves his former home immediately finds a new place to live: now the same four people have two houses between them. That’s two electric and utility bills; two TV’s running instead of one; two trips to the grocery store (if my experience serves, divorce does not guarantee that a family will spend less on food); along with the reliance on lower-quality products that comes from a reduction in income, and an increase in stress (during my middle school years, my family ate out as often as three times a week—between work and running around, my mom had no time to cook).
I do not write as a pundit; I have experienced the pain of divorce, lived through the painful dilemma, the tragic necessity, and the brutal consequences. My parents had a terrible marriage: I will not judge whether they should have married, or whether they should have stuck it out. My mom will always remain a symbol of strength and unshakeable resolve to me: she has borne more in silence, sacrificed more quiet pleasures, and committed more love and determination to running her practice, raising my sister and me, and rebuilding our house, than I suspect I could ever know.
Still, I will say this—their divorce damaged something in my nine year-old heart. About six months after the divorce, my dad disappeared, to remain hidden for nearly six years. I don’t remember ever crying after he left: I bottled up the anguish, the fear, the anger. However, these things force their way to the surface—within a few months, I developed a severe case of anxiety, often suffering near-panic attacks if my mom were late to pick me up (this problem was severely exacerbated by her belief that 45 minutes late was just “running a few minutes behind.”). I dealt with these fears by channeling them into obsessive-compulsive habits. Eventually, I went to counseling to work through these issues, but to this day I struggle against a lingering fear of rejection, a persistent sense of unworthiness. Every good thing in my life always seems on the verge of walking out the door. I was the consummate outsider for much of my adolescence, resenting families more whole than my own, and friends better-adjusted than myself.
Now, few of these facts would show up in statistics that would otherwise plot me as a typical bright, upper-middle-class undergrad. I have a girlfriend, great friends, a good relationship with my mom and sister—and I constantly fight to protect them against lies I embraced when I was ten.
I began to think about all this while driving, listening to the song “Teach Your Young,” by Zach Williams. If you want to change the world, tell your kids every day that you love them. Teach your young to love Jesus and follow in his way, to delight in growing things, to suffer and sacrifice for something beautiful. Teach them to recycle, to care for the poor and broken-heated, to love peace. Teach them to spend their money well, to live generously, to yearn for the shalom of the coming Kingdom.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Targum on Colossians 2:6-15
During the Second Temple period, many Jews throughout the Diaspora, and even some in Palestine, stopped speaking Hebrew, as Greek and Aramaic rose to prominence. To teach their synagogues, rabbis would craft a loose paraphrase of a Hebrew text from the Tanakh, often contextualizing or interpreting it for their audience. They called these works targums. This piece is an attempt to allow us to hear an ancient letter with new ears. (I owe a great debt in this piece to a wonderful book of targums and commentary, called Colossians Remixed, by Walsh and Keesmaat.)
Targum on Colossians 2:6-15
Remember, you gladly received the proclamation that Messiah Jesus has established a new Kingdom, that he, not the next President, or the next cool product, demands your absolute allegiance. If that still holds true, order your lives according to his Way, just as a disciple would follow his Teacher’s every step. Sink deep roots into the soil of Christ’s truth, and your life will burst with fruit; you will be like a house built on the rock, firm and unassailable. From birth, society has demanded unswerving loyalty from you: loyalty to the American Dream, loyalty to unthinking consumption. You were trained to dream of a life of wealth and independence, one in which you could quietly assert your superiority over your neighbor. Well, Christ demands the same kind of faithfulness to his Kingdom, but his subjects follow a different dream: they know that they have received graciously, and thankfulness so wells up within them that it pours out to bless everyone around them.
You know that the world does not control you with its guns; Empire in every guise has always held its citizens in sway by taking their imaginations captive, by convincing them that its rule is ideal, inevitable, and eternal. Do not let the world’s propaganda deaden your heart to the dream of a better Kingdom: the reign of God restoring wholeness to the earth. Do not allow the thousands of corporate logos crowding your brain convince you that your purchases define you. Do not let the roar of idolatrous whispers convince you that man, armed with newspapers, nukes, and Nikes, can promise the hope that only Christ brings.
If you want to see God’s true vision for life, don’t look to the latest philosophy, advertisement, newscast, or wild-eyed mystic—look to Jesus, whose life exemplified the character of God, who showed us how to live in God’s society, God’s economy, and God’s foreign policy. If that’s not shocking enough, remember that Jesus has filled us with his divine presence, by sending us an Advocate to guide us in the ways of the Kingdom. If the Master of the Universe dwells by your side, what other authority do you need to answer to?
If even this royal Advocate were not enough, God has set us apart from the world in another way. Israel circumcised themselves as a sign of their covenant with God; we have received a new symbol: the mysterious burial and resurrection of baptism, the rite that marks our passage into the Kingdom, as we forsake the world and all that it loves. As Christ submitted his body to torture and death for our sake, so we (formerly dead to God because of our disobedience) die to our old ways, never faltering for fear of similar agony that might fall on us, because of our steadfast trust in the power of God that brought Jesus back from the dead after three days in the earth.
Recall your beginnings—you were dead to God, addicted to a lifestyle that was destroying, first yourself, and then the world. The powers of darkness that rule the world as oppressors, merely using thrones, board rooms, and editor’s offices as puppets, have always used the written codes of the world’s laws—whether Caesar’s, America’s, or even Israel’s—to bind our hearts and hands, to mire us deeper and deeper in sin. To set you free, God first had to confront these oppressors, and the systems that kept them in power. Jesus took the worst punishment these laws could muster, and let all their power be nailed on the cross with him, to perish with him. Thus, at the moment when their victory seemed greatest, when their darkness seemed to have crushed even God, Jesus shamed those pompous authorities by returning to life, leaving their power behind him in death. Their worst weapon had become Christ’s power over them—they could only follow meekly in Christ’s wake, watching as he undid the effects of their rule, sowing trust in place of fear, love in place of hatred, even changing an implement of torture to a symbol of peace.
Targum on Colossians 2:6-15
Remember, you gladly received the proclamation that Messiah Jesus has established a new Kingdom, that he, not the next President, or the next cool product, demands your absolute allegiance. If that still holds true, order your lives according to his Way, just as a disciple would follow his Teacher’s every step. Sink deep roots into the soil of Christ’s truth, and your life will burst with fruit; you will be like a house built on the rock, firm and unassailable. From birth, society has demanded unswerving loyalty from you: loyalty to the American Dream, loyalty to unthinking consumption. You were trained to dream of a life of wealth and independence, one in which you could quietly assert your superiority over your neighbor. Well, Christ demands the same kind of faithfulness to his Kingdom, but his subjects follow a different dream: they know that they have received graciously, and thankfulness so wells up within them that it pours out to bless everyone around them.
You know that the world does not control you with its guns; Empire in every guise has always held its citizens in sway by taking their imaginations captive, by convincing them that its rule is ideal, inevitable, and eternal. Do not let the world’s propaganda deaden your heart to the dream of a better Kingdom: the reign of God restoring wholeness to the earth. Do not allow the thousands of corporate logos crowding your brain convince you that your purchases define you. Do not let the roar of idolatrous whispers convince you that man, armed with newspapers, nukes, and Nikes, can promise the hope that only Christ brings.
If you want to see God’s true vision for life, don’t look to the latest philosophy, advertisement, newscast, or wild-eyed mystic—look to Jesus, whose life exemplified the character of God, who showed us how to live in God’s society, God’s economy, and God’s foreign policy. If that’s not shocking enough, remember that Jesus has filled us with his divine presence, by sending us an Advocate to guide us in the ways of the Kingdom. If the Master of the Universe dwells by your side, what other authority do you need to answer to?
If even this royal Advocate were not enough, God has set us apart from the world in another way. Israel circumcised themselves as a sign of their covenant with God; we have received a new symbol: the mysterious burial and resurrection of baptism, the rite that marks our passage into the Kingdom, as we forsake the world and all that it loves. As Christ submitted his body to torture and death for our sake, so we (formerly dead to God because of our disobedience) die to our old ways, never faltering for fear of similar agony that might fall on us, because of our steadfast trust in the power of God that brought Jesus back from the dead after three days in the earth.
Recall your beginnings—you were dead to God, addicted to a lifestyle that was destroying, first yourself, and then the world. The powers of darkness that rule the world as oppressors, merely using thrones, board rooms, and editor’s offices as puppets, have always used the written codes of the world’s laws—whether Caesar’s, America’s, or even Israel’s—to bind our hearts and hands, to mire us deeper and deeper in sin. To set you free, God first had to confront these oppressors, and the systems that kept them in power. Jesus took the worst punishment these laws could muster, and let all their power be nailed on the cross with him, to perish with him. Thus, at the moment when their victory seemed greatest, when their darkness seemed to have crushed even God, Jesus shamed those pompous authorities by returning to life, leaving their power behind him in death. Their worst weapon had become Christ’s power over them—they could only follow meekly in Christ’s wake, watching as he undid the effects of their rule, sowing trust in place of fear, love in place of hatred, even changing an implement of torture to a symbol of peace.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Reflections on Beauty and Suffering
I don’t understand how people become so bored with life. I guess I empathize, since I often join their ranks, but I can’t quite grasp the vanity and laziness that blinds a man to the miracle of existence—millions of men march over the sidewalks of this city in the shadows of impossibly tall buildings, delicate towers of steel and glass that grope for heaven and catch the sun in their panes and paint their faces for evening like girls out on the town. These same men wend their way around equal millions of beautiful women—divine strangers, all soft skin, soft smells, soft curves, mysterious eyes, and secretive lips—as though running an obstacle course. Some may cut through the Park, crushing blades of grass underfoot and dodging trees as they would lamp-posts, as though they walked on dead, silent ground, rather than swam through a sea of life—billions of tiny cells changing sunlight to sugar, and sugar to ATP, building and packaging and shipping proteins, warring with one another, passing messages, growing and expanding—a microscopic civilization nestled with a green—green! the wonder of the simple fact that plants are green and not a plain tope or charcoal!—blade that any passing giant might smash into nothingness.
Life has such a precarious quality, almost as though the universe were simply a soap bubble drifting through God’s kitchen, a fragile beauty captured in a momentary form. Every skyscraper seems an inch from breaking apart like a child’s Lego tower, and indeed, it is a miracle of God that it doesn’t. Skeptics bluster that laws and science account for this happy accident—but who says that laws and science are necessary and essential? The very fact that we can conceive of them as being different than they are seems to suggest that they are not. I cannot imagine a world where 5 + 5 = 9, but I can very well imagine a world without gravity, or, to quote Friends, a world in which “I’m being pushed onto the ground, not pulled.” Perhaps I only imagine this because I haven’t yet looked as closely into the universe’s gear-box as I have into the laws of logic, but I doubt it. I think that the universe is a beautifully arranged machine, and that its hardware runs very efficiently, maybe even in the best possible way, but like all machines, it could be built very differently and still accomplish the same purpose, or even accomplish a very different purpose.
All this speculation on the essentiality of physics and other nonsense only brings me back (I must wander the entire circumference of my face to find my nose—forgive me) to my original thought—the universe is a precious, wonderful piece of ingenuity. Every flower is filled with the glory of the God, and modern man seems to know nothing of it—he spends his life blindly stumbling from place to place, banging his head against his neighbor’s and cursing him for it, occasionally catching a glimpse of light or form—enough, anyway, to keep him moving—and his explanation of this insanity is that the universe is insane, that all is void and formless. Materialism is the newest and worst idolatry—Man renders himself vast by shrinking the universe to so many coincidences and chance collisions, but finds that he is king over nothing but smoke and mirrors. He tried to burn the Throne of God, and found that the ravenous fire licked up his house, too.
I think that the easiest way to refute a materialist is to lie down in a meadow and stare up at a blue sky through a lacework of trees, or stand on the roof of a skyscraper and look out on the steel peaks, and let the glory of God well up in you. For, the materialist has no answer for beauty—he can break it into its constituents, discover the molarity of its solutions, describe the vector movements of its pieces, map its chemical pathways, but for all that, he has no answer for the poetry of a first kiss.
I know this is an old idea, but like all brash young fools, I believe deep in myself that I am the first to discover it. That’s the hilarious part about truth, and the place where I resonate most deeply with old G. K. Chesterton—we stumble upon it blindly, thinking ourselves the blazers of a new trail, only to find that it is well-worn path leading to an eight-lane highway—“there is nothing new under the sun.”
I am beginning to piece this vision of a rare and beautiful Creation together with a darker concept. In at least one respect, the Materialist seems to have a formidable argument against the form and order he so hates—for this world is also a dark and terrible place. I see this so clearly in New York—half the time, I walk with my head craned to the sky, entranced by the mammoth buildings that hedge the streets, and the other half, I glance uncertainly from side to side, from panhandler to panhandler, from the maimed and blind to the drunks and the emaciated crack-addicts who plead for handouts and mercy. When I think about these poor creatures, my heart sinks within me, and the universe contracts, becoming small and grey and bleak. Sometimes I stop to buy one of them a sandwich, and as I listen to him talk about his struggles with addiction, or with unfeeling family, or some evil corporation, or an impersonal government, I can muster only one thought as I nod along encouragingly—“You were not meant to live like this.”
I have a good measure of respect for agnostics who reject religion because the world seems too evil. I have absolutely no respect for those who reject religion because they claim that men need no objective code of values, or that the human race is perfecting itself through its own efforts—a deadly fork in the road, one path leading to Subjectivism, or a diffuse Existentialism, the other leading to an illusion called “Progress.” Both flavors of Materialism exalt man to a god-like status, giving him ultimate authority over his existence. These beliefs have lead man, respectively, to the sort of depravity common to American culture today, and to the atrocities perpetrated under social theories of Progress in Fascist and Communist states.
To me, anyone who claims to disbelieve in man’s sin nature—a universal gravitation towards evil, a default position of corruption—either lies to himself, or suffers delusions. Every culture in history has wrestled with the evil that grows like a fungus on every flowering of man’s heart, and all have identified certain uniform aspects of that failing—he tends toward self-worship, cowardice, violence, covetousness, heedlessness, deception. To call a man sinful implies some kind of absolute (objective) standard—you may only call me a mediocre surfer if you can conceive of a great surfer. There’s simply no way around this—people who claim to embrace an “individual, personal morality”—one that does not impose its values on others—are liars, plain and simple. That claim is impossible to live out. Perspective is key in this instance—if all individuals must determine their own morality, then no one has any right to call Hitler evil—he made his choice, just as I made mine. Silly, just silly.
As I said, I really respect those few who recoil from the idea of God with horror in the face of starvation, war, and AIDS in Africa; child sex-trafficking in Thailand; and the billions of petty hurts men inflict on one another daily. If this world is really that magical, wondrous place that enchants me daily, it seems that it is a realm under evil dominion, a place where good is constantly struggling to survive the unrelenting attacks of evil.
Once, my cousins and I dammed up a tiny stream just short of where it trickled into the Pacific on the Oregon Coast. We used nothing more than our frantic arms to shovel sand into the creek-bed, at times strategically placing a tiny boulder to hold the dam’s shape. The dam went up pretty quickly, thanks to our exuberance and some real ingenuity from a couple nine year-olds, and the stream seemed beaten—for a few precious moments, only a thin trickle escaped over the sides. However, the water quickly chewed through the dam’s foundation, sweeping the sand away, dislodging the rocks, opening fist-sized gaps. We worked for more than an hour, trying to repair the walls, but all we managed was an agonizing retreat before the power of nature. Sometimes I think sin is like that—it meets us at every turn, defying our every resolution for good, seeping through cracks in what we thought were airtight defenses.
Now, many brilliant theologians and philosophers have undercut this idea by pointing to God’s providence, his promises of eventual restoration for Creation and righting of all wrongs. I won’t be so arrogant as to disagree with men wiser than I—rather, I generally agree with and respect them—but I don’t think that a five point argument explaining the relationship between man’s spiritual Fall and his estrangement from the rest of Creation carries a great deal of weight with a starving Sudanese child.
I think there is a much simpler, more relevant unity of good and evil than the intellectual solutions we dream up. First, I must accept certain facts of man’s history. Fact One: Man was created as a perfect being, but he chose self-worship over love of God, and wrecked himself. God allowed man to do this because He wants to be loved, not merely worshipped, and love is always a choice. Fact Two: The Fall devastated all of Creation—man became estranged from God, Nature, other men, and himself. Ever since Adam, terrible things have abounded on the Earth. Fact Three: God has an amazing habit of reaching into to this broken place and restoring some of its former beauty—He very often turns the worst things to great glory. As Isaiah says, God gives “all who mourn…a crown of beauty, instead of ashes, the oil of gladness, instead of mourning, and a garment of praise, instead of a spirit of despair.”
If you step back to the context of chapter 61 in Isaiah, he’s expounding a prophecy about the Messiah (Jesus actually reads these verses in a synagogue and applies them to himself)—he will “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” a time of restoration and blessing for all who have been “brokenhearted” or “poor.” I love this passage, not just for its poetry and its grand scope, but for its treatment of suffering—Isaiah doesn’t try to justify suffering; he doesn’t try to nullify it, or hide it behind some smoke-and-mirrors trick that God pulls. He simply accepts evil’s existence, and then shows how God brings goodness into being in its midst.
Today, it seems like Christians have a burgeoning inferiority complex regarding evil—they are constantly talking about how God will use every famine and plague for some grand design yet to be revealed, or how every instance of pain is God’s way of teaching someone a lesson about life or spirituality. I recently talked with a friend whose sister is a recovering crack-addict. He related how a relative of his had suggested that this poor girl’s ten years of addictions might have served to teach him (the brother) to forgive, and to restore her relationship with their father. Listening to this argument, I could only bury my head in my hands in sheer wonder—how incredibly arrogant can we be? In his providence, God may well be weaving their tragedies into a beautiful harmony with the rest of history, but I have to believe that his designs are beyond me, that they make sense only from an eternal perspective. I refuse to sit in judgment on another’s pain, to see the anguish in my friend’s eyes and dryly intone, “God works all things to his glory.” I don’t doubt that he does, but suffering will ever be an incomprehensible, heart-breaking consequence of the Fall to me.
I think that Isaiah’s is a healthier view of suffering. The year of the Lord’s favor does not commence with a discourse justifying the world’s suffering; it begins with the Messiah coming to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives.” It seems to say, “Yes, there is evil, but there is also God.” I can understand God’s allowing sin, and I can conceive of God turning sin to good, but my heart leaps within me when God comes to Earth to take man’s sin on himself, to respond to sin, not just with vague promises and argument, but with action, sowing grace and mercy and hope into the despair of the Fall.
I find a similar response to evil in Habakkuk, a tiny little book in the Minor Prophets. Habakkuk comes to God and asks Him to justify himself—“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?” God begins by pronouncing various woes and censures against the wicked and against idols (almost as though he is simply agreeing with Habakkuk, with a faint trace of irony in his voice). After paragraphs of this, he abruptly switches tracks, and finishes, “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”
I love this—God catalogues all the evils of the world, and then simply says, “But, I am still here.” To the problem of pain, he offers no argument, but rather, himself. Habakkuk is so struck by this that he abandons his aggressive questioning and launches into a prayer of adoration, climaxing with, “though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food,..yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
God needs no argument against suffering. He brings himself into the midst of suffering and heals every wound, loves the abandoned, dies for those enslaved to sin. Our theology need not consist in a mud-slinging campaign mounted on God’s behalf against evil. Evil exists, but by the grace and glory of God, goodness exists alongside it, able to comfort and restore the greatest of despair.
Life has such a precarious quality, almost as though the universe were simply a soap bubble drifting through God’s kitchen, a fragile beauty captured in a momentary form. Every skyscraper seems an inch from breaking apart like a child’s Lego tower, and indeed, it is a miracle of God that it doesn’t. Skeptics bluster that laws and science account for this happy accident—but who says that laws and science are necessary and essential? The very fact that we can conceive of them as being different than they are seems to suggest that they are not. I cannot imagine a world where 5 + 5 = 9, but I can very well imagine a world without gravity, or, to quote Friends, a world in which “I’m being pushed onto the ground, not pulled.” Perhaps I only imagine this because I haven’t yet looked as closely into the universe’s gear-box as I have into the laws of logic, but I doubt it. I think that the universe is a beautifully arranged machine, and that its hardware runs very efficiently, maybe even in the best possible way, but like all machines, it could be built very differently and still accomplish the same purpose, or even accomplish a very different purpose.
All this speculation on the essentiality of physics and other nonsense only brings me back (I must wander the entire circumference of my face to find my nose—forgive me) to my original thought—the universe is a precious, wonderful piece of ingenuity. Every flower is filled with the glory of the God, and modern man seems to know nothing of it—he spends his life blindly stumbling from place to place, banging his head against his neighbor’s and cursing him for it, occasionally catching a glimpse of light or form—enough, anyway, to keep him moving—and his explanation of this insanity is that the universe is insane, that all is void and formless. Materialism is the newest and worst idolatry—Man renders himself vast by shrinking the universe to so many coincidences and chance collisions, but finds that he is king over nothing but smoke and mirrors. He tried to burn the Throne of God, and found that the ravenous fire licked up his house, too.
I think that the easiest way to refute a materialist is to lie down in a meadow and stare up at a blue sky through a lacework of trees, or stand on the roof of a skyscraper and look out on the steel peaks, and let the glory of God well up in you. For, the materialist has no answer for beauty—he can break it into its constituents, discover the molarity of its solutions, describe the vector movements of its pieces, map its chemical pathways, but for all that, he has no answer for the poetry of a first kiss.
I know this is an old idea, but like all brash young fools, I believe deep in myself that I am the first to discover it. That’s the hilarious part about truth, and the place where I resonate most deeply with old G. K. Chesterton—we stumble upon it blindly, thinking ourselves the blazers of a new trail, only to find that it is well-worn path leading to an eight-lane highway—“there is nothing new under the sun.”
I am beginning to piece this vision of a rare and beautiful Creation together with a darker concept. In at least one respect, the Materialist seems to have a formidable argument against the form and order he so hates—for this world is also a dark and terrible place. I see this so clearly in New York—half the time, I walk with my head craned to the sky, entranced by the mammoth buildings that hedge the streets, and the other half, I glance uncertainly from side to side, from panhandler to panhandler, from the maimed and blind to the drunks and the emaciated crack-addicts who plead for handouts and mercy. When I think about these poor creatures, my heart sinks within me, and the universe contracts, becoming small and grey and bleak. Sometimes I stop to buy one of them a sandwich, and as I listen to him talk about his struggles with addiction, or with unfeeling family, or some evil corporation, or an impersonal government, I can muster only one thought as I nod along encouragingly—“You were not meant to live like this.”
I have a good measure of respect for agnostics who reject religion because the world seems too evil. I have absolutely no respect for those who reject religion because they claim that men need no objective code of values, or that the human race is perfecting itself through its own efforts—a deadly fork in the road, one path leading to Subjectivism, or a diffuse Existentialism, the other leading to an illusion called “Progress.” Both flavors of Materialism exalt man to a god-like status, giving him ultimate authority over his existence. These beliefs have lead man, respectively, to the sort of depravity common to American culture today, and to the atrocities perpetrated under social theories of Progress in Fascist and Communist states.
To me, anyone who claims to disbelieve in man’s sin nature—a universal gravitation towards evil, a default position of corruption—either lies to himself, or suffers delusions. Every culture in history has wrestled with the evil that grows like a fungus on every flowering of man’s heart, and all have identified certain uniform aspects of that failing—he tends toward self-worship, cowardice, violence, covetousness, heedlessness, deception. To call a man sinful implies some kind of absolute (objective) standard—you may only call me a mediocre surfer if you can conceive of a great surfer. There’s simply no way around this—people who claim to embrace an “individual, personal morality”—one that does not impose its values on others—are liars, plain and simple. That claim is impossible to live out. Perspective is key in this instance—if all individuals must determine their own morality, then no one has any right to call Hitler evil—he made his choice, just as I made mine. Silly, just silly.
As I said, I really respect those few who recoil from the idea of God with horror in the face of starvation, war, and AIDS in Africa; child sex-trafficking in Thailand; and the billions of petty hurts men inflict on one another daily. If this world is really that magical, wondrous place that enchants me daily, it seems that it is a realm under evil dominion, a place where good is constantly struggling to survive the unrelenting attacks of evil.
Once, my cousins and I dammed up a tiny stream just short of where it trickled into the Pacific on the Oregon Coast. We used nothing more than our frantic arms to shovel sand into the creek-bed, at times strategically placing a tiny boulder to hold the dam’s shape. The dam went up pretty quickly, thanks to our exuberance and some real ingenuity from a couple nine year-olds, and the stream seemed beaten—for a few precious moments, only a thin trickle escaped over the sides. However, the water quickly chewed through the dam’s foundation, sweeping the sand away, dislodging the rocks, opening fist-sized gaps. We worked for more than an hour, trying to repair the walls, but all we managed was an agonizing retreat before the power of nature. Sometimes I think sin is like that—it meets us at every turn, defying our every resolution for good, seeping through cracks in what we thought were airtight defenses.
Now, many brilliant theologians and philosophers have undercut this idea by pointing to God’s providence, his promises of eventual restoration for Creation and righting of all wrongs. I won’t be so arrogant as to disagree with men wiser than I—rather, I generally agree with and respect them—but I don’t think that a five point argument explaining the relationship between man’s spiritual Fall and his estrangement from the rest of Creation carries a great deal of weight with a starving Sudanese child.
I think there is a much simpler, more relevant unity of good and evil than the intellectual solutions we dream up. First, I must accept certain facts of man’s history. Fact One: Man was created as a perfect being, but he chose self-worship over love of God, and wrecked himself. God allowed man to do this because He wants to be loved, not merely worshipped, and love is always a choice. Fact Two: The Fall devastated all of Creation—man became estranged from God, Nature, other men, and himself. Ever since Adam, terrible things have abounded on the Earth. Fact Three: God has an amazing habit of reaching into to this broken place and restoring some of its former beauty—He very often turns the worst things to great glory. As Isaiah says, God gives “all who mourn…a crown of beauty, instead of ashes, the oil of gladness, instead of mourning, and a garment of praise, instead of a spirit of despair.”
If you step back to the context of chapter 61 in Isaiah, he’s expounding a prophecy about the Messiah (Jesus actually reads these verses in a synagogue and applies them to himself)—he will “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” a time of restoration and blessing for all who have been “brokenhearted” or “poor.” I love this passage, not just for its poetry and its grand scope, but for its treatment of suffering—Isaiah doesn’t try to justify suffering; he doesn’t try to nullify it, or hide it behind some smoke-and-mirrors trick that God pulls. He simply accepts evil’s existence, and then shows how God brings goodness into being in its midst.
Today, it seems like Christians have a burgeoning inferiority complex regarding evil—they are constantly talking about how God will use every famine and plague for some grand design yet to be revealed, or how every instance of pain is God’s way of teaching someone a lesson about life or spirituality. I recently talked with a friend whose sister is a recovering crack-addict. He related how a relative of his had suggested that this poor girl’s ten years of addictions might have served to teach him (the brother) to forgive, and to restore her relationship with their father. Listening to this argument, I could only bury my head in my hands in sheer wonder—how incredibly arrogant can we be? In his providence, God may well be weaving their tragedies into a beautiful harmony with the rest of history, but I have to believe that his designs are beyond me, that they make sense only from an eternal perspective. I refuse to sit in judgment on another’s pain, to see the anguish in my friend’s eyes and dryly intone, “God works all things to his glory.” I don’t doubt that he does, but suffering will ever be an incomprehensible, heart-breaking consequence of the Fall to me.
I think that Isaiah’s is a healthier view of suffering. The year of the Lord’s favor does not commence with a discourse justifying the world’s suffering; it begins with the Messiah coming to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives.” It seems to say, “Yes, there is evil, but there is also God.” I can understand God’s allowing sin, and I can conceive of God turning sin to good, but my heart leaps within me when God comes to Earth to take man’s sin on himself, to respond to sin, not just with vague promises and argument, but with action, sowing grace and mercy and hope into the despair of the Fall.
I find a similar response to evil in Habakkuk, a tiny little book in the Minor Prophets. Habakkuk comes to God and asks Him to justify himself—“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?” God begins by pronouncing various woes and censures against the wicked and against idols (almost as though he is simply agreeing with Habakkuk, with a faint trace of irony in his voice). After paragraphs of this, he abruptly switches tracks, and finishes, “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”
I love this—God catalogues all the evils of the world, and then simply says, “But, I am still here.” To the problem of pain, he offers no argument, but rather, himself. Habakkuk is so struck by this that he abandons his aggressive questioning and launches into a prayer of adoration, climaxing with, “though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food,..yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
God needs no argument against suffering. He brings himself into the midst of suffering and heals every wound, loves the abandoned, dies for those enslaved to sin. Our theology need not consist in a mud-slinging campaign mounted on God’s behalf against evil. Evil exists, but by the grace and glory of God, goodness exists alongside it, able to comfort and restore the greatest of despair.
The Blind Man
This is a bit of fiction I wrote a few months back; I don't remember why, but I had a minor obsession with blindness for a few days. If you figure out what it means, let me know, and I'll try to finish it...
THE BLIND MAN
The blind man perched rigidly on the park bench, the contours of his body all sharp angles, his back held straight and unsupported, his shoulders square and level, his hands clasped contentedly around the cane in his lap. His skin was dark, the color of wet asphalt, and took on an ironic purity against the filthy stains that covered his white shirt and tan pants. His hair grew wild, curly strands jutting up haphazardly, like hands clawing from a great crowd, and all of it shot through with streaks of gray.
In spite of the fall wind that swept across the lawn in Bryant Park and gnawed passerby to the bone, he wore no coat, and seemed not to notice the chill. Indeed, a careless observer might easily have thought him some new addition to the Park’s statuary, or a mannequin forgotten after Fashion Week, so static was his aspect. His posture belied a powerful, almost yogic, concentration of will, the force of which strangely seemed to emanate from his eyes, black and depthless as a nighttime mountain pool. He wore no glasses, and his tilted head seemed to focus those eyes on the flowerbed across the path, but they burned through the tulips, hinting at unseen mysteries. Rather than the slovenly and vulgar slackness of most blind eyes, these narrowed and crinkled with life and purpose; they suggested not a handicap, but rather a superior awareness, a piercing of the veil, if you will.
These disparate, wild impressions blew across Tim Jones like blades of grass in the wind, and some of them brushed his mind before hurrying on, leaving him with a faint spine-tingle that had nothing to do with the cold. Tim Jones was a student at an obscure college in Manhattan, as well as a self-styled philanthropist, bequeathing turkey sandwiches and coffee to a misfortunate denizen of the midtown park every Thursday.
As those startling, unsettling impressions saturated his unconscious, Tim paused, cocking his head and pursing his lips appraisingly. Finally, he nodded, as though to say, “Yeah, he’ll do.” Tim walked toward the man, his stride confident and even, seemingly made to echo down marble corridors and conquer wide staircases. Reaching the bench, he sat down a couple feet away, and angled his body towards the blind man, formulating a gentle greeting.
As he inhaled the proper word order, the man leaned slightly his direction, a movement startling even in its minuteness, and spoke. “Can I help you?” he intoned, his voice resonant and deep, and faintly gravelly, like a blues singer’s. His eyes never lost that distant meditation, but his body suddenly directed its attention to this unknown presence, his shoulders and hands and forehead all tightening visibly.
Taken aback, Tim seemed to choke on his words for a moment, likewise stiffening with surprise. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I—I thought you might like to have lunch with me. I have sandwiches. Turkey. And coffee,” he finally managed, trailing off lamely.
The man seemed to chew on those words for a moment, as though sampling Tim’s voice and inflection for character flaws. He swung his torso completely towards the boy, placing his left elbow on the bench’s back, and his broad features split in a slow smile, the whiteness of his teeth shocking against his skin. “Well, now, lunch, hmmm? Turkey sandwiches and coffee. What brings these here sandwiches to my bench, son?”
Tim smiled in reply, feeling that he was back on familiar ground, and spouted off something about grace and how Jesus wanted him to bless others as he had been blessed. Tim spoke quickly, his words tripping over one another in their eagerness to be heard, and his eyes seemed to dwell on every phrase as it zipped across the gap, as though he were a spectator for his own performance, evaluating his delivery and intonation for future displays.
When he stopped, slightly breathless, the blind man smiled once more, this time a quieter smile, one that touched his eyes and dimmed their mystical luster. “I’m sure that’s true, son. Something like that,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that echoed in the ears and seemed clearer the second after one heard it. After a moment, he shook his ragged head as though waking himself after a deep sleep. “Anyway, I’m hungry as hell. Haven’t eaten all day, matter of fact. So, yes, I’ll eat your turkey sandwich, son.”
Tim made some noise expressing agreement and elation, and extended his hand, saying, “I’m Tim Jones.” Though the blind man gave no hint of awareness of the waiting hand, Tim, in mulling over the conversation later, had the unsettling feeling that he had been summarily known and ignored. The hungry man paused in tearing the cellophane skin away from his sandwich, his face projecting puzzlement, as Tim sheepishly withdrew his hand. “I’m Jenkins. George Jenkins. I don’t put much stock in names, though. I’ll probably forget yours before we’re through talking. I’ve been blind so long that labels don’t mean much anymore. I think about good or bad, mean or sweet, hard or soft—everything else is just shiny bows and wrapping paper.”
Tim tried desperately to think of some intelligent reply to George’s abrupt remark, but his mind could find no traction. He began to feel some measure of panic as seconds stretched towards a full minute and his companion seemed content to munch his sandwich in peaceful silence. Finally, like a falling man catching at any branch he can reach, even the tiny and rotting, he blurted out—“How long have you been blind?”
George stopped in mid-bite, his teeth delicately pinching the sandwich like a tigress sheltering a cub. He softly set it down on the bench, and leaned back, taking a long swig of coffee and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s a mighty strange question for you to be asking me, son…Do you know why?”
His mouth full of turkey, Tim made a negative sound and fought the vague sense of panic that erupted in his chest.
George continued softly, his words reverberating in the eddies of the breeze. “Well, I’ll tell you about these eyes I’ve got here. Some 20 years ago, I could see everything you see, but these here eyes only wanted to see one thing: flesh. Son, these eyes was darkened lamps, and my deep-soul was filled with darkness, so Gawd struck these here eyes blind so that the darkness would stop a’tricklin’ in through ‘em.” He finished heavily, his voice slowing and fizzling into nothing, and he hunched over a little, as though physically exhausted.
The wad of bread and meat in Tim’s mouth suddenly turned to charcoal, and he fought two conflicting urges—to choke to death, or to vomit his entire meal onto the pathway. After a moment, he mastered both, and grimly forced the bite down his esophagus, launching into an exaggerated bout of coughing to gain some time before he must reply. Finally, seeing that George, who had resumed his abnormally stiff posture and sat chewing loudly, had no intention whatsoever of carrying the conversation forward, Tim put forth a timid reply. “So…You think that God blinded you so you couldn’t lust?” He tried fruitlessly to keep the incredulity out of his voice, but it crept in like water through a cardboard box.
George hardly seemed to hear Tim’s response; for many seconds, his only reply was to raise his coffee to his lips and slurp loudly, spilling some of the warm liquid down his chin, where it dripped onto his collar.
Tim was fighting the urge to wipe George’s chin when the blind man suddenly turned and narrowed those dark eyes at him with so piercing an expression that Tim doubted his blindness for a moment. “Ain’t God ever taken something from you, son? Ain’t no Christian out there who God ain’t taken something from, that’s damn sure. It was my eyes—could be something else for you.”
THE BLIND MAN
The blind man perched rigidly on the park bench, the contours of his body all sharp angles, his back held straight and unsupported, his shoulders square and level, his hands clasped contentedly around the cane in his lap. His skin was dark, the color of wet asphalt, and took on an ironic purity against the filthy stains that covered his white shirt and tan pants. His hair grew wild, curly strands jutting up haphazardly, like hands clawing from a great crowd, and all of it shot through with streaks of gray.
In spite of the fall wind that swept across the lawn in Bryant Park and gnawed passerby to the bone, he wore no coat, and seemed not to notice the chill. Indeed, a careless observer might easily have thought him some new addition to the Park’s statuary, or a mannequin forgotten after Fashion Week, so static was his aspect. His posture belied a powerful, almost yogic, concentration of will, the force of which strangely seemed to emanate from his eyes, black and depthless as a nighttime mountain pool. He wore no glasses, and his tilted head seemed to focus those eyes on the flowerbed across the path, but they burned through the tulips, hinting at unseen mysteries. Rather than the slovenly and vulgar slackness of most blind eyes, these narrowed and crinkled with life and purpose; they suggested not a handicap, but rather a superior awareness, a piercing of the veil, if you will.
These disparate, wild impressions blew across Tim Jones like blades of grass in the wind, and some of them brushed his mind before hurrying on, leaving him with a faint spine-tingle that had nothing to do with the cold. Tim Jones was a student at an obscure college in Manhattan, as well as a self-styled philanthropist, bequeathing turkey sandwiches and coffee to a misfortunate denizen of the midtown park every Thursday.
As those startling, unsettling impressions saturated his unconscious, Tim paused, cocking his head and pursing his lips appraisingly. Finally, he nodded, as though to say, “Yeah, he’ll do.” Tim walked toward the man, his stride confident and even, seemingly made to echo down marble corridors and conquer wide staircases. Reaching the bench, he sat down a couple feet away, and angled his body towards the blind man, formulating a gentle greeting.
As he inhaled the proper word order, the man leaned slightly his direction, a movement startling even in its minuteness, and spoke. “Can I help you?” he intoned, his voice resonant and deep, and faintly gravelly, like a blues singer’s. His eyes never lost that distant meditation, but his body suddenly directed its attention to this unknown presence, his shoulders and hands and forehead all tightening visibly.
Taken aback, Tim seemed to choke on his words for a moment, likewise stiffening with surprise. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I—I thought you might like to have lunch with me. I have sandwiches. Turkey. And coffee,” he finally managed, trailing off lamely.
The man seemed to chew on those words for a moment, as though sampling Tim’s voice and inflection for character flaws. He swung his torso completely towards the boy, placing his left elbow on the bench’s back, and his broad features split in a slow smile, the whiteness of his teeth shocking against his skin. “Well, now, lunch, hmmm? Turkey sandwiches and coffee. What brings these here sandwiches to my bench, son?”
Tim smiled in reply, feeling that he was back on familiar ground, and spouted off something about grace and how Jesus wanted him to bless others as he had been blessed. Tim spoke quickly, his words tripping over one another in their eagerness to be heard, and his eyes seemed to dwell on every phrase as it zipped across the gap, as though he were a spectator for his own performance, evaluating his delivery and intonation for future displays.
When he stopped, slightly breathless, the blind man smiled once more, this time a quieter smile, one that touched his eyes and dimmed their mystical luster. “I’m sure that’s true, son. Something like that,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that echoed in the ears and seemed clearer the second after one heard it. After a moment, he shook his ragged head as though waking himself after a deep sleep. “Anyway, I’m hungry as hell. Haven’t eaten all day, matter of fact. So, yes, I’ll eat your turkey sandwich, son.”
Tim made some noise expressing agreement and elation, and extended his hand, saying, “I’m Tim Jones.” Though the blind man gave no hint of awareness of the waiting hand, Tim, in mulling over the conversation later, had the unsettling feeling that he had been summarily known and ignored. The hungry man paused in tearing the cellophane skin away from his sandwich, his face projecting puzzlement, as Tim sheepishly withdrew his hand. “I’m Jenkins. George Jenkins. I don’t put much stock in names, though. I’ll probably forget yours before we’re through talking. I’ve been blind so long that labels don’t mean much anymore. I think about good or bad, mean or sweet, hard or soft—everything else is just shiny bows and wrapping paper.”
Tim tried desperately to think of some intelligent reply to George’s abrupt remark, but his mind could find no traction. He began to feel some measure of panic as seconds stretched towards a full minute and his companion seemed content to munch his sandwich in peaceful silence. Finally, like a falling man catching at any branch he can reach, even the tiny and rotting, he blurted out—“How long have you been blind?”
George stopped in mid-bite, his teeth delicately pinching the sandwich like a tigress sheltering a cub. He softly set it down on the bench, and leaned back, taking a long swig of coffee and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s a mighty strange question for you to be asking me, son…Do you know why?”
His mouth full of turkey, Tim made a negative sound and fought the vague sense of panic that erupted in his chest.
George continued softly, his words reverberating in the eddies of the breeze. “Well, I’ll tell you about these eyes I’ve got here. Some 20 years ago, I could see everything you see, but these here eyes only wanted to see one thing: flesh. Son, these eyes was darkened lamps, and my deep-soul was filled with darkness, so Gawd struck these here eyes blind so that the darkness would stop a’tricklin’ in through ‘em.” He finished heavily, his voice slowing and fizzling into nothing, and he hunched over a little, as though physically exhausted.
The wad of bread and meat in Tim’s mouth suddenly turned to charcoal, and he fought two conflicting urges—to choke to death, or to vomit his entire meal onto the pathway. After a moment, he mastered both, and grimly forced the bite down his esophagus, launching into an exaggerated bout of coughing to gain some time before he must reply. Finally, seeing that George, who had resumed his abnormally stiff posture and sat chewing loudly, had no intention whatsoever of carrying the conversation forward, Tim put forth a timid reply. “So…You think that God blinded you so you couldn’t lust?” He tried fruitlessly to keep the incredulity out of his voice, but it crept in like water through a cardboard box.
George hardly seemed to hear Tim’s response; for many seconds, his only reply was to raise his coffee to his lips and slurp loudly, spilling some of the warm liquid down his chin, where it dripped onto his collar.
Tim was fighting the urge to wipe George’s chin when the blind man suddenly turned and narrowed those dark eyes at him with so piercing an expression that Tim doubted his blindness for a moment. “Ain’t God ever taken something from you, son? Ain’t no Christian out there who God ain’t taken something from, that’s damn sure. It was my eyes—could be something else for you.”
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Capitalism and the Kingdom
To begin, we must straighten out some badly warped facts: what exactly is a “free market?” As I understand it, a free market merely implies that men must make their exchanges of competitive (limited) goods by mutual consent, to mutual benefit; a free market excludes stealing, cheating, extortion, or wheedling. Some conservatives treat the market as though it were a talisman, imbuing every human situation it touched with dignity, freedom, and well being. However, a free market is only an environment—it determines how men exchange values, not what values they exchange.
I believe America’s economy (from the Greek economon, meaning “household rules”) reels under a grave illness, called consumerism. The blame lays not primarily with evil corporations, but within the society itself, within the increasingly fragmented, disconnected, rapacious collection of individuals, who seem content to sacrifice anything good and decent to better worship the idol of our era, the Dollar.
Let me explain: I take no issue with money as money, as a medium of exchange, as a concrete representation of a greater value. I take great issue with money as a standard of value, which inevitably means money as Idol, money worshipped as a god.
Look at the covers of our popular magazines, and deny that we live in a culture infatuated with wealth. Look at the weekly sales figures of Starbucks, Macy’s, or McDonald’s (first among the vendors of frivolity), and pretend that Americans can live without furious consumption. I heap just as much judgment on myself as on any other individual—even as I outlined this, sitting next to a peaceful mountain lake, I astonished myself to look down at a Diet Dr. Pepper clutched in my hand, which I had bought for a dollar, with scarcely a thought to the fact that I was neither thirsty, nor rich!
We have equated health with wealth, and so enslaved ourselves to a lifestyle (note the singular tense—consumerism largely means the end of imagination) of endless accumulation. We have embraced a myth called Progress—if we can only have next bigger, shinier, newer, trendier house, car, laptop, phone, shoe, outfit, latte, our lives will fill with meaning, and our souls with peace.
I believe the gospel offers a stunning alternative to consumerism. Remember yesterday’s post—the gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation. The Hebrew word for God’s renewing the harmony between Himself, men, and His earth is shalom, which we generally translate “peace,” though “wholeness” probably fits more clearly. Shalom is health—every part living in harmony with the whole (cf. Ezekiel 34 for a biblical instance of this idea).
The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
Now, many see free markets as irreconcilable enemies of this vision, as though consumerism and greed were the only values up for exchange. I think that free markets allow men to choose shalom over greed—but greed is easier than shalom, so few will. “Narrow is the way that leads to life…”
When we order our daily lives, our values should be those of the Kingdom. We should eat food that honors creation, food that grows in a sustainable, healthy harmony with its surroundings. When we need them, we should buy clothes produced by generous entrepreneurs, crafted by workers permitted to lead lives as full as they choose to pursue. We should limit (and, perhaps, eliminate) our use of fuels and vehicles that wound the planet, or contribute to the oppression of our neighbors. Above all, we should not spend our money on anything that does not bring the Kingdom to life. If a trip to Starbucks, H & M, or Apple deepens our consumerist worship, then it is money ill-spent. Jesus spoke lucidly when he called woes on the rich—most Americans wield spending power far beyond their capacity to use wisely. Every dollar is a weapon, wielded either to break the hold of darkness on our hearts, or to strike out against the Kingdom. We will not find a middle ground—there is no “frivolous purchase.”
As Christians, we must employ our wealth in building the Kingdom. This means spending towards Kingdom values—community, generosity, freedom, healing, truth, environmental stewardship. This does not mean isolating some portion of our income to throw at whatever bum or charity first solicits us, so that we can guiltlessly purchase any triviality catches our eyes, whether a $4 latte, or a $70 pair of jeans. No, the Kingdom demands much more than that—Christians must spend their every dollar on redeeming the world. This means investing in the right business venture, the right education, the right social action, the right vehicle, even the right coffee.
I believe America’s economy (from the Greek economon, meaning “household rules”) reels under a grave illness, called consumerism. The blame lays not primarily with evil corporations, but within the society itself, within the increasingly fragmented, disconnected, rapacious collection of individuals, who seem content to sacrifice anything good and decent to better worship the idol of our era, the Dollar.
Let me explain: I take no issue with money as money, as a medium of exchange, as a concrete representation of a greater value. I take great issue with money as a standard of value, which inevitably means money as Idol, money worshipped as a god.
Look at the covers of our popular magazines, and deny that we live in a culture infatuated with wealth. Look at the weekly sales figures of Starbucks, Macy’s, or McDonald’s (first among the vendors of frivolity), and pretend that Americans can live without furious consumption. I heap just as much judgment on myself as on any other individual—even as I outlined this, sitting next to a peaceful mountain lake, I astonished myself to look down at a Diet Dr. Pepper clutched in my hand, which I had bought for a dollar, with scarcely a thought to the fact that I was neither thirsty, nor rich!
We have equated health with wealth, and so enslaved ourselves to a lifestyle (note the singular tense—consumerism largely means the end of imagination) of endless accumulation. We have embraced a myth called Progress—if we can only have next bigger, shinier, newer, trendier house, car, laptop, phone, shoe, outfit, latte, our lives will fill with meaning, and our souls with peace.
I believe the gospel offers a stunning alternative to consumerism. Remember yesterday’s post—the gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation. The Hebrew word for God’s renewing the harmony between Himself, men, and His earth is shalom, which we generally translate “peace,” though “wholeness” probably fits more clearly. Shalom is health—every part living in harmony with the whole (cf. Ezekiel 34 for a biblical instance of this idea).
The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
Now, many see free markets as irreconcilable enemies of this vision, as though consumerism and greed were the only values up for exchange. I think that free markets allow men to choose shalom over greed—but greed is easier than shalom, so few will. “Narrow is the way that leads to life…”
When we order our daily lives, our values should be those of the Kingdom. We should eat food that honors creation, food that grows in a sustainable, healthy harmony with its surroundings. When we need them, we should buy clothes produced by generous entrepreneurs, crafted by workers permitted to lead lives as full as they choose to pursue. We should limit (and, perhaps, eliminate) our use of fuels and vehicles that wound the planet, or contribute to the oppression of our neighbors. Above all, we should not spend our money on anything that does not bring the Kingdom to life. If a trip to Starbucks, H & M, or Apple deepens our consumerist worship, then it is money ill-spent. Jesus spoke lucidly when he called woes on the rich—most Americans wield spending power far beyond their capacity to use wisely. Every dollar is a weapon, wielded either to break the hold of darkness on our hearts, or to strike out against the Kingdom. We will not find a middle ground—there is no “frivolous purchase.”
As Christians, we must employ our wealth in building the Kingdom. This means spending towards Kingdom values—community, generosity, freedom, healing, truth, environmental stewardship. This does not mean isolating some portion of our income to throw at whatever bum or charity first solicits us, so that we can guiltlessly purchase any triviality catches our eyes, whether a $4 latte, or a $70 pair of jeans. No, the Kingdom demands much more than that—Christians must spend their every dollar on redeeming the world. This means investing in the right business venture, the right education, the right social action, the right vehicle, even the right coffee.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Dreaming Reality
As a child, I dwelt in dreamworlds; I drifted from fantastic adventure to adventure, undertaking furious quests against cosmic enemies. I think something deep within me yearned for mystery, magic, mortal danger. Everywhere I turned, men were shrinking the world: we landed on the moon, and found no Man; we stole the thunderbolts from Zeus' very hands; we traveled the world, and found no dragons (only alligators, rendered thoroughly unexciting through their ubiquity in Florida). I wanted no part of such a dull world, a world where no one really ever did anything, because everything was just an accident in the end. I was driven into dreams, hoping for a better world.
As I grew older, I left my dreamworld behind. I began to take "real life," more seriously--school, friends, and, most signficantly, the gospel of Jesus. However, this nagging uncertainty stayed with me, whispering that life should be more, more even than the gospel I knew seemed to offer. The Bible surely seemed to be "good news;" it just wasn't very exciting. If you became a Christian, you essentially agreed to be a good person, which meant giving up many things I, as an adolesecent boy, enjoyed very much. Of course, there was some rumor of a fair exchange, of "riches in heaven," of a sense of "peace that passes understanding" (which, predictably, I didn't understand).
For a long time, it never occurred to me to ask whether the gospel might encompass more than "atonement and sanctification," or if those were even the best lenses to view it through. As often as I heard Jesus' words--"Become like a little child"--I never considered that he might have spoken of my fairy stories. Yet, some months ago, an idea wandered into my head, and has followed me around ever since--I think I have discovered a true story that offers a more thrilling quest, a more unsearchable mystery, and a deeper magic than any I had invented. I found it beneath my very nose--it is the gospel.
Let me tell you this story, perhaps differently than you have heard it before. The gospel begins with a hopelessly beautiful creation, a place of peace, innocence, and joy, a place where God Himself could walk with men. Then, something shatters this harmony--men betray God, tricked by an Enemy, lead on by their deceptive hearts. Men betray God, and the world is broken, the harmony shattered--man to earth, man to man, and man to God, all estranged. The world is broken, left in bondage to the powers of darkness. God, with unfailing devotion, calls together a group of men, entrusting to them a terrible, wonderful secret of a better way to live, a way back to Eden. He calls them to proclaim this secret, until the day when He Himself would come to defeat the powers, and redeem creation. When the time was ripe, He launched this daring rescue mission, entering into the heart of darkness, taking on the likeness of one of his captives. After he had announced and enacted the return of the Kingdom of God, he took on the enemy, absorbed his worst blow, submitted even to death. For three days, death seemed to have triumphed; on the third morning, with the suddenness of a Hollywood explosion, Jesus arose once more, "swallowing up death forever," shaming the powers, breaking once and for all the chains that bound men. He is now leading all men who will follow him out into a new kind of life, through the power of his resurrection, in preparation for a time when he will powerfully restore all of creation to beauty and wholeness. Even as I write, the Kingdom is breaking out, pockets of light erupting in darkness. Awaiting the fullness of redemption, we, his followers, go forth into the world as ambassadors of this better Kingdom, proclaiming Christ's victory, and inviting all men to join in the great Rebellion, this new humanity.
The gospel tells the story of a terrible quest, full of mystery, magic, danger. This might seem novel even to many Christians, but I can assure you, it far predates our atonement theologies. The early church loved to speak of something called "Christus Victor;" it was their way of proclaiming that Christ's resurrection achieved the ultimate victory over evil. The New Testament overflows with this mood: read Colossians 2, Ephesians 1 and 6, 1 Cor. 15, just to name a few places.
The way of Jesus is not dry, reductionistic, or preachy. The way of Jesus is the way of the unsearchable mystery of God's love for us, the magic of the shards of God's glory glimmering in a fallen world, and the terrible danger and suffering of the Cross.
As I grew older, I left my dreamworld behind. I began to take "real life," more seriously--school, friends, and, most signficantly, the gospel of Jesus. However, this nagging uncertainty stayed with me, whispering that life should be more, more even than the gospel I knew seemed to offer. The Bible surely seemed to be "good news;" it just wasn't very exciting. If you became a Christian, you essentially agreed to be a good person, which meant giving up many things I, as an adolesecent boy, enjoyed very much. Of course, there was some rumor of a fair exchange, of "riches in heaven," of a sense of "peace that passes understanding" (which, predictably, I didn't understand).
For a long time, it never occurred to me to ask whether the gospel might encompass more than "atonement and sanctification," or if those were even the best lenses to view it through. As often as I heard Jesus' words--"Become like a little child"--I never considered that he might have spoken of my fairy stories. Yet, some months ago, an idea wandered into my head, and has followed me around ever since--I think I have discovered a true story that offers a more thrilling quest, a more unsearchable mystery, and a deeper magic than any I had invented. I found it beneath my very nose--it is the gospel.
Let me tell you this story, perhaps differently than you have heard it before. The gospel begins with a hopelessly beautiful creation, a place of peace, innocence, and joy, a place where God Himself could walk with men. Then, something shatters this harmony--men betray God, tricked by an Enemy, lead on by their deceptive hearts. Men betray God, and the world is broken, the harmony shattered--man to earth, man to man, and man to God, all estranged. The world is broken, left in bondage to the powers of darkness. God, with unfailing devotion, calls together a group of men, entrusting to them a terrible, wonderful secret of a better way to live, a way back to Eden. He calls them to proclaim this secret, until the day when He Himself would come to defeat the powers, and redeem creation. When the time was ripe, He launched this daring rescue mission, entering into the heart of darkness, taking on the likeness of one of his captives. After he had announced and enacted the return of the Kingdom of God, he took on the enemy, absorbed his worst blow, submitted even to death. For three days, death seemed to have triumphed; on the third morning, with the suddenness of a Hollywood explosion, Jesus arose once more, "swallowing up death forever," shaming the powers, breaking once and for all the chains that bound men. He is now leading all men who will follow him out into a new kind of life, through the power of his resurrection, in preparation for a time when he will powerfully restore all of creation to beauty and wholeness. Even as I write, the Kingdom is breaking out, pockets of light erupting in darkness. Awaiting the fullness of redemption, we, his followers, go forth into the world as ambassadors of this better Kingdom, proclaiming Christ's victory, and inviting all men to join in the great Rebellion, this new humanity.
The gospel tells the story of a terrible quest, full of mystery, magic, danger. This might seem novel even to many Christians, but I can assure you, it far predates our atonement theologies. The early church loved to speak of something called "Christus Victor;" it was their way of proclaiming that Christ's resurrection achieved the ultimate victory over evil. The New Testament overflows with this mood: read Colossians 2, Ephesians 1 and 6, 1 Cor. 15, just to name a few places.
The way of Jesus is not dry, reductionistic, or preachy. The way of Jesus is the way of the unsearchable mystery of God's love for us, the magic of the shards of God's glory glimmering in a fallen world, and the terrible danger and suffering of the Cross.
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