Tag: Following Jesus

Cheap Grace, Judgment, and the Glory of God

Yep, this is a long one. But I hope you will read it in stages, if not all in one sitting, and seriously consider the Biblical evidence undergirding my argument.

Thanks for your patience. I pray that my readers will be challenged and edified, to use an old fashioned word. And share this with your church leaders, if need be.

Now, let’s think about Cheap Grace, Judgment, and the Glory of God.

This past Tuesday provided an opportunity for me to reflect on the all-too-common tendency within the American church for teachers to avoid any mention of divine judgment with the same determination exhibited by a maniacal, bug-eyed cat as it panics at the sight of a soapy bathtub.

Yet, for anyone who pays attention to Scripture, it should be clear that acknowledging the looming inevitability of God’s condemnation of the sin in our lives – yes, a final judgment for every follower of Jesus Christ as well as for the rest of humanity – is the only way forward for anyone hoping to grasp the magnitude and meaning of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.

If there is no threat of judgment, then why must Jesus die? That is the heart of the issue.

Without a straightforward explanation of why God judges universal human rebellion, a rebelliousness which everyone must own up to eventually, whether in this life or the next, it is impossible to understand the blood-curdling “injustice” of the Father’s holy judgment executed against an innocent, sinless Galilean at Calvary.

Far too many church-goers are suckled at the teats of cheap grace, even as they speak admiringly of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s heroism and pass around lightly worn, rarely read copies of his masterwork, The Cost of Discipleship. But the fact is, a cheap misappropriation of God’s grace – if God’s grace is ever truly appropriated at all – is the only brand of faith available when its significance is divorced from the holiness of God and the imperative of judgment.

The reason for the Western church’s love affair with cheap grace is simple.

The Impostor of Therapeutic Religion

American Christianity has become a mercilessly cheerful, feel-good brand of therapeutic religion. The average church service is meticulously orchestrated and stage managed as a place where no one should ever be made to feel uncomfortable, for any reason at all. The projection of a unilateral, universal standard of approval – not of appropriate acceptance, mind you, but of blanket approval – is a therapeutic demand of the many professional pastor/therapists teaching from our pulpits.

Philip Rieff explained America’s new religious reality years ago in his prescient book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. Exploring the rising dominance of psychotherapy in Western society, Rieff observes the West’s thorough-going rejection of such ancient religious values as self-denial, sacrificial obedience, acts of penance, and the confession of true guilt born of personal sin. As a result:

“Western man [sic] could be free at last from an authority [i.e., the historic Christian church and the biblical gospel of Christ] depending upon (the individual’s) sense of sin. Even now, sin is all but incomprehensible to [Western society] inasmuch as the moral demand system [that is, Western culture] no longer generates powerful inclinations toward obedience or faith, nor feelings of guilt when those inclinations are over-ridden by others for which sin is the ancient name” (209-210).

Tragically, in a vain attempt to maintain its “relevance” and attract new members, the Christian church drinks deeply from the same therapeutic fountains and then goes skinny dipping with the same therapeutic sharks that are drugging and devouring the rest of Western society. Rather than behave as the gatekeepers they are called to be, too many church leaders make themselves indistinguishable from the practical atheists (whether religious or not) who trace their therapeutic, or “pastoral,” credentials back to Freud.

As I observe the consistently glib presentation of the Lord’s Supper in our Protestant churches – and no, I am not referring to an absence of “liturgy,” however one defines it, but to the remarkably unserious way in which the sacrament is typically wedged into a tight service schedule and then presented in a manner that barely touches upon the terrible redemptive drama of sin, judgment, and grace found at its heart – I am reminded of Rieff’s summary of another churchman’s defense of therapeutic Christianity:

“Any religious exercise is justified only by being something men do for themselves, that is, for the enrichment of their own experience…What then should churchmen do? Become, avowedly, therapists, administrating a therapeutic institution – under the justificatory mandate that Jesus himself was the first therapeutic” (215).

Rieff concludes, “Both East and West are now committed, culturally as well as economically, to the gospel of self-fulfillment.”

Before leaving this issue, I recently attended a communion service in a mid-western Reformed church. As the pastor offered the two elements to his congregants, no mention was made of the broken body or the shed blood of Jesus. Instead, the bread and the wine were described as the beneficial products, the fruit, of God’s good creation, given to us by the Creator to sustain our lives.

I seriously considered walking out rather than listen to such pretentious, blasphemous, therapeutic drivel.

Naturally, many will object to being tarred with the therapeutic brush. But I will return to the opening of this article and submit as exhibit A in my defense of Rieff’s argument the simple fact that precious few congregations are ever made to confront these two essential, Biblical truths: 1) that divine judgment lies at the heart of the New Testament gospel (for without divine judgment there is no gospel), and 2) that the ultimate purpose for every believer’s redemption is not the forgiveness of his or her sins but the magnification of God’s glory.

In other words, the New Testament gospel of Jesus Christ is, in fact, the most anti-Western, anti-cultural, anti-therapeutic (in the contemporary sense of the word) message in the world. And it always has been.

No, Christians Are Not Delivered from Divine Judgment

First, every Christian must rid him/herself of the pervasive misconception that faith in Jesus’ sacrificial work on the cross will deliver us from eventual judgement. It won’t.

Jesus himself warns the disciples, and anyone else listening, that public shame and embarrassment, that is, future judgment, awaits us all when God eventually reveals our secret, hidden acts of wickedness for all to see and to hear:

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore, consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them. (Luke 8:17-18)

Consider carefully, indeed. I don’t know how else to read Jesus’ words except to understand that all of my sin, beginning with my many secret sins, will be publicly exposed on Judgment Day. Everyone will know the full measure of my guilt.

No sinful act, malicious thought, or evil intention will remain hidden when God’s righteous eternity finally swallows up our fallen temporality. For our holy God intends one day to lay it all bare for public viewing. And He has an important reason for doing this, which I will explore below.

The apostle Paul also anticipates “the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares” (Romans 2:16). Notice that the assurance of future judgment is an integral feature of Paul’s gospel! (For example, see Acts 17:30-31; 28:25-27; Rom 2:1-12). Paul also repeats Jesus’ warning about supposedly “secret” sins never remaining secret before God. Furthermore, the context of Paul’s statement offers no room for distinctions between believers vs. unbelievers. No. The Father’s impending judgment will apply to everyone, equally. No exceptions. And anyone who imagines they are explaining the gospel of Christ while failing to explain the inevitable judgment of God is not sharing Paul’s gospel. Period. Full stop.

Paul also compares that Day of Judgment to a house fire that will burn through everyone’s home, revealing the truth about everyone’s life. Every secret is revealed:

…their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corinthians 3:13-15)

I will have more to say about this passage before I conclude.

And finally, we have 2 Corinthians 5:10:

For we must ALL appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good OR BAD.

The Books Will Be Opened

A common theme in ancient Jewish literature depicts the Last Judgment as the final balancing of God’s heavenly account books. “The books” are opened. God has been keeping an exhaustive record, throughout all of human history, preserving a heavenly balance sheet of every righteous and unrighteous act or thought performed or harbored by every human being who has ever lived.

No one is exempt.

Recall the New Testament’s lengthiest description of Judgment Day in the book of Revelation 20:11-15:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

We must honestly confront the words in this text.

Each and every person, without exception, will be judged by God according to “what they had done.” Of course, everyone’s account will fall short. When judged according to “what we have done,” no one’s life proves satisfactory or acceptable to the Holy One.

This reckoning with the heavenly books proves once and for all that everyone falls short of God’s righteous expectations. No one is righteous, no not one. Everyone deserves eternal punishment in the lake of fire, including those who have cast their lot with the crucified, resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ.

Even the faithful who receive some measure of reward for their episodic obedience to Jesus – remember Paul’s words about the rewards for obedience surviving the fire of judgment in 1 Corinthians 3:13-15 – still deserve to be separated from God. For no human accomplishments, not even the most righteous acts of the saintliest of saints, can outweigh the overwhelming, immoral landslide of selfish, wicked decisions made by fallen people. And that includes you and me.

But there is a ray of hope.

For there is another book on display – the Book of Life. The pages of this book are not filled with lists of human actions but only with lists of names. And these names are written not with ink but with the shed blood of the crucified, resurrected Lamb of God.

This contrast between the multiple books issuing unremitting, universal judgment vs. the one book securing eternal redemption for everyone whose name is written in the blood of the Lamb is an extraordinarily powerful image. We must interpret this image clearly. Observe that even the redeemed, whose names are inscribed by Christ’s own steady, nail-pierced hand into the Lamb’s book of life, have been judged as deserving eternal damnation by the biographies of wickedness recorded in the previously opened books of works.

But the appearance of the Book of Life explains the difference between judgment and condemnation, for while everyone is judged to be a failure, not everyone is condemned to eternal punishment.

It does not matter how many rewards a Christian eventually receives from the Father. A towering mountain of glittering rewards would never be meritorious enough to rescue a guilty sinner, however saintly, from the lake of fire. No one will ever stand before Christ and say, “I deserve to be here with you because of the many good things I did in your name. Look here, don’t these rewards – from you, by the way! – prove it?” But, then, that is surely one of the damnable thoughts already judged when the multiple books of works were first opened!

I suspect that this very thought is harbored by many of us church-goers because we are all sinners and this is the way sinners think, even if only intermittently. After all, isn’t it a modern, therapeutic mandate to believe in ourselves, to love ourselves, to pump ourselves up by imagining that we can achieve anything when we put our mind to it? Isn’t self-actualization the result of forgiveness?

Insights Brought Only by God’s Judgment

Our heavenly Father, however, appears to be fully intent upon using His Day of Final Judgment to drive home the divine perspective on Christ’s crucifixion, and to make it apparent before the angels, demons, and all humanity.

I cannot point to any one Biblical text that draws together these various streams of theology and puts them all together coherently. But I do believe that my following conclusions are the necessary results of various lines of teaching scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments:

This heavenly moment of moral unmasking and divine accounting will, for the very first time, open the eyes of all humanity to see the Truth of Christ’s sacrifice as the Father had always intended.

For the first time, I will see, feel, and own for myself the full weight, ugliness, destructive power, and wretched blasphemy of the parasitic, destructive thing called SIN as it infects God’s creation and my personal life

For the first time, I will thoroughly understand how horribly deserving I am of God’s condemnation and unending punishment for my sinfulness. I will finally see how deeply offensive, even repulsive, my wickedness has always been to the Holy One enthroned in heaven.

I will finally understand the magnitude of God’s unending grace and mercy as He patiently withheld his judgment from me throughout a frequently rebellious lifetime that so richly deserved His daily condemnation. I will finally begin to appreciate the magnitude of God’s love, care, and patience.

I will finally know something of the full measure of guilt, shame, and condemnation that Christ took onto his own shoulders as he hung from that cross at Calvary. I will begin to see the horror that must have erupted within Jesus’ own being as the perfect, sinless Son of God not only experienced the penalty of his Father’s judgment on human sin but also appropriated the guilt and shame of wicked, human rebellion as his very own, causing the Father to turned his back on His one and only Son.

I will finally understand how and why the crucified, resurrected Jesus is the only mediator between myself and the Father, and how absolutely naïve, ignorant, rebellious, and repugnant is every alternative proposal for a “meaningful religious experience.”

I will finally grasp the incomparable sacrifice made by our heavenly Father when He devised this plan to execute his perfect, eternal Son in order to expiate, to propitiate, the raging, rebellious, blasphemies emanating from the noxious disobedience of every sinner who has ever lived.

The long-suffering patience, care, concern, mercy, devotion, commitment, fidelity, love, and grace of God the Father will finally become apparent to all, blinding the legions of fallen humanity with the brilliance God’s true glory. And all of humanity, including me, will finally give this Savior God the full measure of praise, adoration, and glory that He has always deserved, but never received…until now.

Even condemned unbelievers will glorify God for his righteousness and the fairness of his judgments as they are taken away into the lake of fire. And the demons in hell will welcome them as they all praise the goodness and justice of God together.

God Saves Us to Glorify Himself

Now we are finally at a place where we can appreciate the second biblical truth I promised above as a prerequisite for uprooting the Western malaise of popular, therapeutic religion.

The ultimate purpose of the Father’s gift of salvation in Christ is not the forgiveness of our sins but God’s glorification of Himself. Human redemption is first and foremost about the majesty of the Redeemer, not the good fortune of the redeemed.

Yes, guilty sinners find cleansing and reconciliation through God’s gift of grace available in Jesus. The forgiveness of sin is obviously an important priority in the plan of salvation. But ultimately even this gracious benefit of salvation finally works to recruit us into the army of saved sinners who will spend eternity exalting the glory of their Savior God.

The Old Testament, specifically the book of Exodus, begins this important theme as Israel’s Holy, Redeemer God, Yahweh, rescues His chosen people from their Egyptian slavery. Even as Yahweh promises to rescue Israel, He warns that He will harden Pharaoh’s heart, ensuring that Pharaoh will fight against Israel’s release. In other words, God deliberately creates obstacles to obstruct the accomplishment of His own redemptive plan!

Why would God do such a thing?

The answer: In order to make room for God’s glorification of Himself.

Pharaoh’s hardheartedness gives Yahweh the opportunity to perform His ten mighty acts, beginning with the Nile River turning to blood and finishing with the deaths of the first born on Passover night. Yahweh explains Himself by saying: I will harden Pharaoh’s heart…so that I gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD (Exod. 14:4); I will gain glory through Pharaoh (Exod. 14:17); The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh (Exod. 14:18).

Yes, God dearly wants to rescue his suffering people. But beyond that, redemption’s ultimate goal is the fulfilment of God’s holy desire to “gain glory for Himself.”

No prophet explores this theme more thoroughly than Ezekiel.

Ezekiel proclaimed God’s message to the scattered people of southern Israel, known as Judah, explaining to them why they had been destroyed by the Babylonians and why God was going to restore their fortunes by returning them to their homeland. God’s explanations are not what we would expect:

I had concern for my holy name (says the LORD), which the people of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone. Therefore, say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. (Ezek. 36:21-23)

Similar explanations recur throughout the book. I urge you to read the prophet Ezekiel and look for them sometime.

God punished Judah for its rebellion and sent the people into Babylonian exile in order to protect the “holiness of His name.” Now, God says that He will soon rescue Judah from their captivity, but their coming deliverance is not something He is doing for them as much as it is something that God is doing for Himself.

“I am not saving you for your sake, people of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name,” says the LORD.

In other words, our Savior God keeps his promises, first and foremost, so everyone can know that God always keeps his promises. And, oh yes, by the way, we get the added benefit of knowing that we can trust in God’s faithfulness as a result, BUT that is a secondary benefit of God’s faithfulness. The primary benefit is God’s final exaltation, his glorification by all of creation as The Supreme, Holy Promise Keeper.

Personal Salvation is Intended to Glorify God

Ezekiel’s theological evaluation of Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian exile is no less true for the gift of God’s one and only Son and the final revelation of God’s holiness and justice at the Final Judgment. Our heavenly Father sacrificed his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, in order to glorify himself as the one and only merciful, gracious, redeemer God who willingly suffered on behalf of his people.

The fact that all those who have faith in Jesus will receive the forgiveness of their sins is gravy, folks. Pure, gracious gravy dripping over the edges of God’s spacious banqueting table. But the main meal is God’s exaltation.

We are not the centerpiece of God’s story. God is. And ALL of God’s works, but especially Jesus’ suffering on the cross, eventually point back to the Father and find their fulfilment in him as they glorify HIM.

But, of course, none of this is particularly therapeutic.

In fact, many find it deeply offensive. Doesn’t this perspective paint God as the supreme ego-maniac, a heavenly narcissist sitting on his preposterously ostentatious throne demanding that everyone kiss his ring? What type of God stages history in such a way as to make everything point back to him as some kind of heavenly hotshot?

Alternatively, we have the people, including Christians, who make jokes about how boring heaven will be if we are expected to sing never-ending praises to God for all eternity. How mind-numbingly inconceivable that would be!

In fact, such unimaginative, banal, and ultimately ego-centric protests – for they really are protests against God’s nature, not questions in search of clarification – reveal several things:

that we have no concept of what it means for God to be God;

that we have no concept of what it means for God to be Holy;

that we have no concept of what it means for us to be guilty sinners;

that we have no concept of what it meant for Jesus to suffer and die as our substitute on the cross;

that we have no concept of what it means to be a sinner saved by God’s gift of grace.

For only on the day of Final Judgment will all these pressing, existential, spiritual concerns be made clear. And only then will we all sing with full-throated adoration that it is only right, and true, and just, that the ultimate goal of our salvation has never been the forgiveness of our sins, but has always been the magnification of the glory, honor, worship, and praise of the eternal, holy Savior God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who devoted themselves to the redemption, not only of humanity, but of the entire creation.

In that moment, we will praise God for issuing his judgment over our fallen lives because it was only through his revelation of judgment that the scales fell from our eyes, allowing us to see the Truth of who we are in the presence of the Holy One.

Only then will we be equipped enthusiastically to join with the angels in singing:

“‘Holy, holy, holy

is the Lord God Almighty,’

who was, and is, and is to come.”

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

Dave Ramsey Has Become a Demonic Voice Within the Church

Some time ago I blogged about the public complaints made by some of Dave Ramsey’s (former) employees. Most of their charges accused him of an  authoritarian, even dictatorial, management style that intruded into employees’ private lives.

Most recently Mr. Ramsey has come to the attention of several independent news podcasts because of his advice to landlords about raising rent and evicting tenants from their homes because “the market” is dictating rent increases.

Watch the video below called “Should Landlords Feel Guilty.” I offer my reaction below:

The most important thing to notice in this video is the way Mr. Ramsey has surrendered his conscience and his behavior to the requirements of our capitalistic “marketplace.” 

When it comes to his economic, investment decisions the marketplace is sovereign over Mr. Ramsey’s financial life. If the market “demands” that he, as a landlord, evict families from their rental homes, then he apparently has no choice.

The rules of capitalism and the “free market” command his allegiance.

Never mind that the country is experiencing a housing crisis with its dire lack of affordable housing.

Never mind that large corporations are in a buying frenzy scooping up foreclosed properties in order to rent them out at top dollar prices, thus maximizing their bottom line and the profits paid to corporate shareholders.

Never  mind that the homeless population continues to grow at a shocking rate.

Oh sure. Mr. Ramsey assures his listeners that they need to be kind and thoughtful in their personal relationships with other individuals. But this is a disingenuous smokescreen typical of American evangelicals whose morals are so enslaved to American individualism that the larger, collective questions of system evil never cross their minds.

Ramsey flippantly throws out Christian sounding language that serves only  to distract from the colossal compromise of both character and conscience revealed by his abject submission to the laisse faire market forces that obviously have gained Lordship over his life.

At this point, Mr. Ramsey’s economic advice is more demonic than it is Christ-like.

Not long ago I argued that the primary way in which we experience “demonic temptation” is through the corrupt power structures that surround us. To catch up on that analysis I urge you to revisit my blog post.

It’s important for the current discussion.

Because he exists within a supposedly free-market, capitalist, economic environment, in which anyone who questions the system is vilified as a Marxist (or worse), Ramsey obviously accepts this system as, at least, morally neutral, and perhaps even, virtuous.

Thus, surrendering to the dictates of the market, and behaving as any good capitalist would, obviously has no bearing on Ramsey’s Christian confession. He can remain a “good Christian” while ejecting people from their homes into an uncertain, competitive, laisse faire, dog eat dog housing market.

Yep. It’s a cruel world, but that’s the way the capitalist, cookie crumbles.

On the other hand, as I have argued extensively on this blog and in other writings, if we understand the Christian life in terms of our citizenship in the kingdom of God, then Mr. Ramsey has made himself the poster child for the besetting sin of American Christianity: Cultural Captivity.

Rather than critiquing our cultural environment; rather than analyzing, evaluating, and then criticizing the various power structures in which we find ourselves — as serious citizens of God’s kingdom should — we have a lamentable tendency to roll over and play dead in the face of society’s structures of power.

We accept our corrupted, and corrupting, systems of power and control as normal, inevitable, unchangeable, and even preferable to their alternatives. Yet, I am convinced that it is through these normalized systems of power, control, and domination that the Evil One is more successful in tempting and corrupting humanity.

In the face of “what is normal,” the ethics of Jesus and the lifestyle required of every citizen in the kingdom of God all become “unrealistic and unmanageable” given the nature of the world we live in.

I am sure that this is what Mr. Ramsey will say were anyone to challenge his highly dubious ethics of landlordship. Making people homeless when I have the opportunity of higher income in the face of higher expenses is, after all,  normal.

We need to take a lesson from the early Christian church about how to deal with such ideas of “normal.”

For the first several centuries of Christianity, church leaders insisted that no church member could ever work for the police, the military, or the judiciary. (For more on this issue, check out my book I Pledge Allegiance.)

Anyone in the church who did happen to work for any of these three power structures had either to quit their job or be excommunicated from the church.

Why?

Because the early Christians understood — far better than most Christians do today — that Jesus taught his disciples to live lives of non-violence. Thus, no follower of Jesus had any business being party to violence or coercion.

And anyone serving in the police, the military, or the judiciary would eventually have to be involved with violence and/or coercion in the course of fulfilling their “normal” responsibilities.

But early Christian leaders insisted: It does not matter what society and its power structures have normalized for this world. Certain behaviors are always unacceptable for Christians because the Lordship of Jesus Christ always defeats the secular attempts at material lordship this fallen world tries to impose upon us.

I suspect that Mr. Ramsey’s cultural captivity may have begun with his extraordinary success which led to his great wealth and influence.

For all of these things, wealth, success, and power, have a sly, corrupting, acidic effect on the conscience if we do not guard ourselves against them.

Consequently, I want to suggest that it is time to excommunicate Dave Ramsey from the Christian church. Or, at least, to depose him from any leadership or teaching roles.

His financial advice is becoming demonic.

 

 

Are You Being Tempted by Satan? I Doubt It.

I recently had coffee with a new friend from church who listens to the podcasts of a well-known, influential mega-church pastor.

My friend began to tell me about this pastor’s latest sermon on temptation and the role of wicked thoughts in the Christian life. The preacher’s main point was calling people to recognize that evil thoughts or fantasies are never my own. Rather, such temptations are planted in my mind by the devil.

He urged his listeners to tell themselves, “These aren’t my thoughts; they are the devil’s thoughts. So, devil, get away from me!” That was his recipe for dealing with temptation.

I hear this kind of thing a lot in Christian circles. You have probably heard it, too. I sometimes get the impression that a certain brand of church-goer imagines a demon lurking behind every bush, waiting for another opportunity to harass the hapless Christian and sabotage her life.

Don’t misunderstand me.

I believe in a personal Satan. Defeating demonic powers was an important aspect of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Such work was central to Jesus’ message about the coming kingdom of God.

The question is, what does that mean for Christians today?

When I told my friend that I thought the radio pastor was wrong and that he was giving his listeners very bad advice, his reaction was predictable. He immediately quoted 1 Peter 5:8b, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Don’t Peter’s words prove the pastor’s point?

The answer depends on what we take Peter’s words actually to describe. What specifically does he mean? I don’t believe he means that every individual’s struggle with sin and temptation is the direct result of personal demonic interference.

My first problem with this popular misunderstanding is that it lets the Christian off the hook. In other words, we shift the responsibility for sin and temptation in our lives away from ourselves and onto an invisible, (apparently) ever-present force we call the devil. As the comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “The devil made me do it!”

Or, at the very least, the devil made me think about it!

Not only is this mantra that way too easy, but it also underestimates the significance of my own personal sinfulness.

Blaming the devil for my personal temptation and sin creates a serious spiritual hazard because it fails to take my “sinful nature” as seriously as it deserves. I am a sinner. So are you. I am born into this world as a fallen creature with a predisposition to disobey God and rebel. I don’t need to face demonic temptation in order to consider evil and to do wrong.

I am very good at tempting myself and embracing wickedness all by myself, thank you very much. I don’t need the devil’s help to be a sinner. It comes naturally to me, as it does to you. The world has been this way ever since our first parents rebelled against the Creator in the Garden.

Yes, Genesis 3 gives us a story about a personal Satan personally tempting Adam and Eve. But the result of their first rebellion was the thoroughgoing corruption of all creation, including every human being. At that point, Satan’s goals had been accomplished. He didn’t need to tempt each and every individual personally for the rest of history. The sinful inclination had taken up residence within us just as Adam and Eve’s failure had thrown a monkey wrench into God’s original design for the world.

Satan was free to sit back, sip a martini, and watch human history fall apart all on its own.

****

Furthermore, I can’t help but notice the absence of any clear, New Testament evidence instructing Christians to view their lives as an ongoing contest against the devil.

Two New Testament passages explicitly discuss the inner turmoil caused by temptation. They are Romans 7:7-25 and James 1:12-15. Both passages have at least two points in common.

First, neither text says anything about the devil even though both of them offer a perfect opportunity to do so had the apostles imagined that the devil played a significant role in personal temptation.

Second, both texts place the blame for temptation and sin squarely onto the sinful inclinations that dwell within us all. Again, the devil is most noticeable by his absence.

Paul exclaims, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He does not say, “Who will rescue me from this demonic harassment?”

James explains, “Everyone is tempted when, by his/her own [fleshly] desires, he/she is dragged away and enticed.” Again, I can’t imagine a better context for making the devil’s role in temptation clear, if indeed he has any role at all. Yet, that’s not what James says, either.

Both apostles tell us to focus upon ourselves. We are the problem, not the devil.

****

What about Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness? Isn’t this story the final proof that Satan does attack Christians individually?

I am not arguing that personal demonic temptation may never happen. But can we really compare ourselves to Jesus? Are any of us as important to God’s work of redemption as he is? I think that Christian humility demands that we recognize that I am not the most important component in God’s cosmic plan. Many others are more important than I am. Personal attacks may happen at times to some. But it is certainly not the normative experience that so many make it out to be.

It’s also important to understand that when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he confronted Satan as the new Adam – an important New Testament theme.

Jesus had to succeed where the first Adam had failed.

If Satan could derail Jesus’ mission and personal identity before it even got started – as he managed to do with Adam and Eve – then perhaps he could once again sit back and sip another martini for the rest of time. God’s plans for recreation would be as hamstrung as were God’s intentions for the initial creation.

Particularly important, I think, is the explanation Satan offers to Jesus for why he is able to tempt Jesus as he does. In the gospel of Luke, Satan shows Jesus “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” and then explains, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me.”

In some mysterious transaction that is not explained, Satan’s victory over Adam and Eve allowed him to go on to dominate every human society throughout history. The devil’s power to pervert has permeated “all the kingdoms of the world” such that “their authority and splendor” are all his.

Evangelicals have traditionally limited their public concern for this demonic dominance to three areas: sex (read pornography), money (read tithing to the church), and alcohol (read tea-totaling). But these individual concerns only scratch the surface of our larger social problems, in ways that are not always helpful.

Satan’s boastful words open the door on how God’s people confront demonic temptation on a daily basis, in the all-pervasive authority structures of our dazzling but corrupted societies and cultures.

When wickedness is made normative, it becomes normal to accept wickedness as, well, normal. So normal, in fact, that it is not recognized for what it truly is.

For American Christians – at least for those who fail to take seriously their proper place as citizens in the kingdom of God – such wicked abominations as manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, nationalism (especially religious nationalism), militarism, white privilege, systemic racism, neo-liberal economics, commercialism, consumerism, competitiveness, multi-generational poverty, a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and a host of other structural, authoritative networks of evil influence, all conspire to deform God’s purposes in our world.

When we cooperate, we surrender to sin and incur guilt.

We “give in” to these degenerate forces because it’s all so normal. It’s what everyone else does and believes. The devil doesn’t need to do a thing to any of us personally, or individually, because he has already done the greatest part of his evil work corporately, collectively.

He has succeeded in making evil look normal. And if it’s normal, it can’t be evil. Right? After all, it’s the way the world works. It’s the air we breathe. It generates the system that sustains us as Americans in our Americanisms.

One of our problems in this country is that we are far too individualistic and melodramatic. I suspect that these, too, are wicked features of the way Satan has structured American culture.

The Christian love of melodrama habituates us to the excitement of fighting as “warriors,” typically as “prayer warriors,” in the cosmic battle of righteousness against wickedness.

Personally defeating, whether by calling out, or standing against, or binding, or exorcising, or naming, the demonic powers attacking me makes me a “victorious” Christian.

Aside from the fact that I am convinced this is rarely an accurate description of a Christian’s struggles in life, such a focus on personal, spiritual melodrama effectively blinds the Christian to the real, overwhelming, systemic dangers that have entangled us all in their web of corruption and deceit.

So, we bow to the authority of our preferred political party and behave accordingly, treating others as the enemy because that’s what politics does to us nowadays.

We approve of another US military intervention, and cheer on American forces as they slaughter foreigners who also are made as the image of God.

We look forward to buying the bigger, better, shinier, more expensive, upgraded model of whatever it is we want because that’s the normative behavior for an American consumer. Never mind the corrosive, personal, spiritual effects of our habitual, often addictive, acquisitiveness.

We stand with everyone else in opposing low-income people of color moving into our neighborhoods because it will lower property values. It’s only the wise, economic thing to do.

The examples and illustrations are endless. And through all of it we are  blissfully obtuse to the multitude of ways that we remain spiritually stunted, immature, and overwhelmingly guilty of normalized sins that contradict everything we ought to understand about life in the kingdom of God.

Yet, we never consider these types of behaviors as demonic. They aren’t wicked temptations, we tell ourselves; they are opportunities that smart people take advantage of. Or they are responsibilities that every good citizen must fulfil.

Yep, the devil has us exactly where he wants us, behind the spiritual eight-ball, when we behave “normally” like the average, civil, well-behaved, successful, patriotic American.

I can see Satan now, sitting back, legs up, taking long sips on another big American martini.

News Flash: CBN Actually Stands for the “Capitalist Broadcasting Network”

David Doel, host of The Rational National

Canadian commentator, David Doel, host of the YouTube program Rational National, is right to mock Pat Robertson’s cold-hearted, uninformed, slanderous, Republican propaganda report on the CBN program, The 700 Club. Watch Doel’s comments below as Pat Robertson spouts neoliberal nonsense about the recently passed Senate Infrastructure Bill:

It is clear, as if it wasn’t before, that the CBN abbreviation actually identifies this channel as the Capitalist Broadcasting Network, or perhaps the Conservative Broadcasting Network.

There certainly is nothing Christian about any of THIS. (Robertson’s remarks conclude at the 4:20 mark):

This, folks, is neither news nor informed commentary. It IS hard-core, right-wing propaganda of the worst sort.

Of course, faithful Christians can be politically conservative. But God’s people cannot confuse lies, misinformation, slander, propaganda, or blind partisanship with honest, informative communication. 

From all that I can see, neither Pat Robertson, the 700 Club, nor CBN are able to distinguish truth from falsehood much less integrity from manipulation.

Whether or not you watch CBN, I am sure everybody knows by now that Congress has passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill with a $3.5 trillion dollar price tag.

That may sound like a lot of money, but it really is pocket change when compared to the cumulative expense, contributing to the national debt, that piles up annually from our:

  • ever-expanding military budgets,
  • continual war-making around the world (I have never heard Pat Robertson, precious few conservatives at large, nor many Democrats for that matter condemn the many wanton, US military adventures we carry out around the world),
  • government subsidies paid out to America’s largest corporations (otherwise known as corporate welfare — Come on. Am I really supposed to believe that companies like Exxon haven’t yet figured out how to make a profit on their own dime?),
  • tax cuts consistently given to the largest US corporations,
  • additional tax cuts given to the wealthiest members of society (Remember, Trump’s big tax give away?),
  • the trillions of dollars the IRS estimates is lost by the US treasury each year through tax fraud and evasion among the richest Americans and corporations (Remember that Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, paid no income tax last year!).

The list could go on…

Now, in the face of so many obscene, public injustices, all of which drain the public purse to the tune of billions if not trillions of dollars annually, conservatives are lamenting a direly needed infrastructure bill that will improve essential services for the poor, elderly, and working class members of our society.

Oi vey!

The Dangers of Absolute Truth

  • I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a serious dilemma for conservative Christians.

One of the messier lessons to be learned – or to be reminded of – by the rise of Trumpism in America is the powerful allure of authoritarianism to conservative Christians.

American evangelicals are especially susceptible to falling in love with authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump. It’s true that this tendency hasn’t been limited to the Christian church. In fact, the majority of registered Republicans, whether religious or not, remain loyal to Trump and still believe that he won the November election.

This rigidly predictable overlap between conservative politics and conservative religion (I am hesitant to call it theology) has long been the crippling, besetting sin of the evangelical wing in the American church. We have always had great difficulty in separating our social, economic, cultural preferences – dare I call them prejudices? – from our conceptions of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the gospel of God’s kingdom.

We should never underestimate the preemptive power of human socialization to squelch the development of a distinctly Christian conscience. Believers beware…

Sadly, there is nothing surprising about this coincidence of secular and religious allegiances, for there is really nothing coincidental about any of it. This alliance in outlooks is no accident. As the linguist and cognitive scientist, George Lakoff (at UC Berkeley), explains in his several books on neuroscience and political decision-making, conservative personalities tend to view the world through a binary framework: there is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, with little if any room for the grayish hues of nuance, ambiguity, or uncertainty.

The conservative view of human relationships also places an authoritative father-figure at the top of this binary framework. Thus, authority figures are always to be obeyed, whether that figure is the father in the home, the police officer pulling you over, or the president in the White House. These authority figures are the ones who get to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Sure, the authority figure will insist that he/she is merely the human face of some ultimate law or code that stands above everyone regulating all of our behavior. But it takes very little life experience to learn that these “codes” rarely apply to authority figures in the same way that they apply to regular folks.

There is a good reason that Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd was hailed as an all-too-rare victory in the fight against the excessive use of force, especially against people of color, by American police officers.

One would hope that the Christian’s habitation by the Holy Spirit would provide abundant testimony to a Christian counter-culture winding its way throughout secular society, infiltrating, subverting, weakening, overturning, even strangling secular ways of thinking and behaving among God’s people and the rest of society.

It does happen, but not nearly enough.

I do believe the Holy Spirit is alive and that he transforms disciples of Jesus into counter-cultural people. But not everyone who calls him/herself a Christian is a disciple. As Jesus predicted, those numbers are small and only “a few” walk the path of discipleship faithfully.

Furthermore, as if the challenge of brain chemistry were not enough of a problem, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a unique complication for conservative, religious personalities (which, remember, seems to describe the majority of evangelicals).

When I believe in absolute truth, I will become an absolutist, at least in those areas of life that I believe are touched upon by that truth.

Don’t misunderstand.

There is nothing inherently wrong with absolutism. If only Nazi Germany had contained more humane, Christian absolutists willing publicly to decry Nazi crimes against humanity, standing firm to the point of death in defending all their fellow citizens. Being absolutely committed to following Jesus is the Christian ideal. So, no, religious absolutism per se is not the problem defacing American evangelicalism.

Rather, our problem appears in the fusion of our belief in absolute truth with our innate tendency to seek out and identify with authority figures who will enforce those absolutes (as we perceive them) in this world. After all, we all want the world to work for us.

Many habits of the Christian church are easily exploited by both (a) those who are eager to exercise authority over others as well as (b) those happy to remain subject to another’s authority. Thus, preachers who elevate themselves as God’s singular mouthpiece may often discourage (or never encourage) small group Bible studies throughout the congregation where others can learn from God’s word for themselves, without the pastor’s immediate input.

The popular confusion of church with society – a lingering ghost of western Christendom that continues to haunt US evangelicalism – leads conservative Christians to support leaders, whether Christian or not, who would make selected points of conventional, Christian morality equally authoritative for everyone else in the world, regardless of their attitude towards Jesus.

We want the world to be convenient for us.

The more authoritatively a public figure insists on universal conformity to his/her view of ethics, the more popular that authoritarian will become in evangelical circles.

When I was a teenager, one of the poster children for fundamentalist authoritarianism was Bill Gothard whose Institute for Basic Life Principles filled sporting arenas to overflowing with Christian devotees searching for someone to tell them how to live their lives. Holding Gothard’s thick IBLP binder open on their laps, the ultimate religious father-figure would direct them through the tiniest details of what a proper Christian life should look like.

I suspect that Jordan Peterson’s rapid rise to fame in evangelical circles provides a more contemporary example of the same conservative urge to seek out and surrender to an authority figure.

Frankly, every public figure I have ever listened to representing the Religious Right has struck me as an authoritarian personality. I am thinking particularly of people like Tony Perkins, Gary Baur, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed, to name only a few — all avid Trump supporters, by the way.

The allure of Donald Trump was like a pan of beer laid out for a garden full of slugs. Irresistible to evangelicals.

Never mind that he told the graduating class at Liberty University that they ought to throw out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. His commencement advice was “to get even” with very sharp elbows. Stab your competitors in the back. That’s what Trump advised an auditorium of right-wing, Christian graduates. But it was all ok. After all, Trump is a strong authoritarian who implied that he meant to impose conservative Christian values onto the rest of society, whether they liked it or not.

Fortunately, brain chemistry is not destiny, although far too many conservative Christians appear unaware of that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit, combined with the life and teaching of Jesus, mediated to us through the New Testament (and especially the four gospels) can mold a Spirit directed life, as opposed to an authoritarian directed life.

Lovers of authoritarianism who remain enamored with enforcing Absolute Truth forget that the Christian’s absolute truth is not a law or a code. It is not contained in a manual or a binder.

For the one and only Absolute Truth in this universe is our Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our Absolute Truth is a Person – or a Trinity of equally divine Persons.

We don’t learn about absolute truth by memorizing the minutiae of a legal code.

We don’t honor absolute truth by riding herd over society’s degenerate, wayward cattle.

We only know Absolute Truth by surrendering ourselves to Jesus Christ. For he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Jesus never manipulates, coerces, bullies, or publicly shames anyone, especially not for his own advantage.

The Absolute Truth of Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant; the one who “came to serve, not to be served;” the one who gave his life and was crucified as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of my sins; this is the only Absolute Truth for real disciples.

Jesus has little patience, I suspect, for evangelical authoritarians.

Who are the Sheep and the Goats on Judgment Day? Reading Matthew 25:31-46 in Context

In a previous post, I reviewed the book, Decolonizing Christianity. I mentioned that the author, Dr. de la Torre, roots his critique of “white Christianity” in an ancient, but completely erroneous, interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46).

Here is the follow-up post that I promised where I will explain the proper interpretation of Jesus’ parable. Yes, there are right and wrong ways to read scripture.

According to the interpretive tradition of the sheep and the goats followed by Dr. de la Torre, the exalted Jesus will determine who is and who is not received into his eternal kingdom according to the good works they performed for the poor, the needy, and the imprisoned (see verses 35-36). Here Jesus identifies himself with the disenfranchised:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

The sheep respond by asking, “When did we ever do such things for you, Lord?” (verses 37-39).

Jesus offers this famous response:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

The message is clear, or so it appears: the resurrected Jesus identifies himself so completely with those who suffer in this world that whatever we do for them we also do for Jesus.

Jesus frequently taught that his true followers will be recognized “by their fruit” (Matt. 3:10; 7:16-20; 12:33); that is, the obedience they demonstrate to Jesus’ teachings (the parable about judgment in Matt. 7:24-27 is comparable to Matt. 25 in this way). So, it is conceivable that the message of Matthew 25:40 could be integrated into this “faith without works is dead” perspective that characterizes Jesus’ teaching.

However, when taken on its own – which is typically what happens when people read the gospels – this interpretation suggests that the major criteria for eternal judgment are our works of charity. Period.

This conclusion is curious, however, since there is nothing else comparable to it in the gospel of Matthew. Furthermore, nowhere else does Jesus make such an immediate, personal identification with the poor qua poor.

What should we make of this?

If we read the entire gospel of Matthew attentively and consider this parable in Matthew 25 as part of the book’s concluding episode, then several items will catch our attention and resonate with earlier episodes.

[Sadly, too many Christians read the Bible as if it were a collection of Hallmark greeting cards. When we do that, we blind ourselves to understanding the Bible correctly and grasping the depth of any book’s intended message. We must learn to read each book as a whole, literary unit. Every passage must be interpreted within its larger context.]

The key phrases and issues to notice are:

Who are the “brothers (and sisters) of mine” with whom Jesus identifies?

Where else has Jesus suggested that doing things for someone else is the same as doing things for him?

Are there other places where Jesus identifies with people who are imprisoned, are strangers, or hungry and thirsty?

I will give you a hint about where this is going. In Matthew’s gospel all of these traits and relationships apply only to Jesus’ disciples. Jesus is telling us that he will eventually judge the world on the basis of how it has treated his followers, the church.

Note that this outcome is the very opposite of the way Mother Teresa, de la Torre, and many others have read the parable.

Here are the crucial observations to make while reading Matthew’s gospel:

First, Jesus radically redefines family relationships. His brothers, sisters, mother, and family members are exclusively those who accept and follow him as their messiah. No one else is ever called a brother or sister in Matthew. Jesus explains this shocking redefinition of family in 12:46-50 where the context makes it clear that “doing the will of the Father” means allegiance to Jesus (also see 28:10):

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Second, when Jesus commissions the Twelve to preach his gospel to others throughout Israel, he warns them that many will treat them with hostility. In fact, he admits that he is sending them out “as sheep among wolves” (10:16). Righteous people will open their doors, receive the gospel, and care for the needy disciples. But many others will reject them and even ensure that they are imprisoned (10:11-20).

By implication, only those who received Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom, and have become disciples themselves, will be interested in helping Jesus’ missionaries by feeding them and visiting them in jail.

In fact, while warning his missionary-followers about the rigors of discipleship, Jesus also comforts them by describing his essential, intimate identification with those who suffer on his behalf:

Whoever acknowledges me before others [while on trial], I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others [to save their own skin], I will disown before my Father in heaven. (10:32-33)

Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” (10:40-42)

On the basis of this literary evidence, I am convinced that the long-standing interpretation promoted by Dr. de la Torre and many others, including Mother Teresa, is the last thing in the world this parable could mean. It is wrong because it does not read Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in its literary context.

Jesus’ parable envisions the Final Judgment when all humanity is called before God’s throne. The goats are all those who ranged from politely indifferent to openly hostile to the gospel of Jesus. Their antagonism was expressed by failing to assist Jesus’ disciples when they needed help in fulfilling their mission.

The sheep, on the other hand, are all those who opened their doors, hosted, believed, and assisted Jesus’ disciples as they endured the hardships of testifying to the gospel in this hostile world.

Typically, it is only fellow believers who are willing to visit their imprisoned brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. I have heard more than one story about entire churches ending up in prison together as members persisted in visiting those who had been arrested.

When read within its Matthean context “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” can only refer to one group of people: the disciples of Jesus who are suffering for their faithful witness.

I realize that those who embrace the “social gospel” alternative interpretation of this parable are likely to be offended by the church-community reading I am advancing here. They will see it as an abandonment of the church’s calling to care for society’s poor and needy. They will see it as an expression of privileged and chauvinistic religion, promoting in-group, religious believers above all others.

But then, a great deal of Jesus’ teaching is rejected by people for one reason or another – even by those who profess to be disciples. It is not my place, or anyone else’s, to rewrite Jesus’ teaching. Allow me to make a few counter arguments:

  1. Matthew 25 is not the sole basis of the Christian church’s teaching on social responsibility. This is a prominent theme throughout all of scripture which does not stand or fall on the basis of this one passage alone.
  2. The need for Christians to prioritize their care and concern for fellow believers is another important theme throughout the New Testament. Jesus is beginning an emphasis that will be continued by the apostle Paul (Gal. 6:10; 1 Tim. 5:17).
  3. Jesus assumes that suffering for the cause of the gospel, and finding oneself in need of kindness and generosity from others, will be a common experience for his disciples. Reflecting of this issue and its relevance to our own lives is an ever-present challenge for anyone calling him/herself a Christian.
  4. Nothing in this alternative reading limits the scope or the diversity of those who become Jesus’ brothers and sisters. By the time a reader gets to Matthew 25, the gospel mission has opened up to include those Gentiles and Samaritans who were previously excluded. In fact, Jesus’ final words in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-25) anticipate an inter-racial, multi-ethnic, international community of brothers and sisters from all classes and walks of life prioritizing their devotion to each other as Jesus’ exemplary New Humanity.

A Christian Philosopher Reflects on Faith, Depression, and Persuasion

Jamie Smith is a friend and former colleague at Calvin University. He has

Philosophy professor at Calvin University, James K. A. Smith

written an autobiographical, meditative essay at The Christian Century reflecting on his slow but steady transformation as a Christian philosopher.

A serious bout of depression was pivotal in shaping Jamie’s newer perspective on the Christian’s role in influencing the world around us.

Jamie’s work is always well worth reading. His recent meditation on the power of human “affections” in contrast to intellect offers the mature insights of a wise man.

The essay is titled, “I’m a Philosopher. We Can’t Think Our Way Out of This Mess.” Below is an excerpt. Or you can click on the title to read the entire piece:

. . . There is a deep consonance between rhetoric and love, a longing that is the poetry of the affections. “The mind is drawn by love,” Augustine affirms in his Homilies on the Gospel of John. Thus he pleads, “Give me a lover and he feels what I am saying: give me one who yearns, give me one who hungers . . . give me one like this, and he knows what I am saying.” God’s revelation, he goes on to say, is not a message in a bottle, like bits of information sent across the abyss to be received by the intellect. Rather, God’s self-revelation is a magnet for desire. “This revelation is what draws. You show a green branch to a sheep and you draw her. Nuts are shown to a boy and he is drawn. And he is drawn by what he runs to, by loving he is drawn, without injury to the body he is drawn, by a chain of the heart he is drawn.”

What does it look like to bear witness to the truth in a way that is a tractor beam of the heart rather than a conqueror of the intellect? To write with allure rather than acuity? Writing that is revelatory not because it discloses but because it draws—pulling, enticing, inviting souls that are feeling their way in the dark to grab hold of the hand of grace? I have the sneaky suspicion this looks more like poetry than philosophy, that such work is accomplished more by novelists than theologians.

This change of mind is bound up with a vocational change of heart. Even early in my academic career, I had an unarticulated sense that part of my calling was to be a philosopher whose scholarship would serve wider audiences. Some describe this as the work of a public intellectual. I prefer to describe it as a kind of outreach scholarship, the hard work of translating philosophical insights for the sake of the church and the world. . . 

More Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths, Part 2

[This is my second post addressing the problems of political divisions in American churches. You can read the previous post here.]

In the New Testament passages that I cited in the last post, Paul warns his young friend Timothy about the dangers created by church members who believe in mythology, promote mythology, and stir up divisive controversies and squabbles as they spread their favorite mythologies.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is simple: Don’t tolerate any of these things.

In 2 Timothy 2 he says, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels . . . Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Let’s notice several issues in these letters.

First, what are the “myths” Timothy must combat? We can sidestep the debate over the specific content of the myths confusing Timothy’s churches. For our purposes, it is enough to understand what a myth was and how it functioned for those who believed it.

A myth was an invented story that explained why things are the way they are for those who believed it. Myths ordered a believer’s view of the world, bringing a sense of meaning and purpose to the devout.

For Christians, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth, is to accomplish all of these same things. But, of course, Christians believe that the Gospel is not a “myth,” in the common sense of that word, because we believe that the Gospel message is historical fact.

Second, we see that the contest between fact and fiction in religious debate is an ancient one. It is particularly dangerous to organize one’s view of the world around fancifully invented stories. As a Christian, I’d say that this is the problem with non-Christian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism, to name only a few.

Third, anyone hoping to share the Gospel effectively with people devoted to mythology would do well to know the myths themselves and have some ability to point out their errors. Share the Gospel and knowledgeably point out the falsehoods of the myth. In other words, from a Christian perspective, replace fiction with facts. Then call for confession, repentance, and conversion.

Allowing a lie to shape the course of one’s life never pleases God.

Fourth, recognize the fact that not everyone will be willing to repent and change. Some people will prefer their mythology to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Here the leader/teacher must have wisdom. Recall, that Timothy was dealing with “church members” who claimed to be Christians.

They probably claimed to have a “new insight” that somehow enhanced or added to their Christian life. It would be tempting for a leader to think, “well they have some odd ideas, but they still confess Christ, so I’ll leave well enough alone.”

Bad idea.

People who cling to mythologies while continuing to profess faith in Christ are usually eager to share with others how much their mythical beliefs had added to their lives. Faith in Jesus is supplemented, and eventually usurped, by the mythology as the all-important elements of faith.

No faithful church leader can tolerate such compromise. No falsehood is EVER compatible with the truth of the Gospel. Controversy is inevitable. Paul judges it all very harshly. He concludes that such people have fallen into the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Division in the Body of Christ, foolish quarreling, replacing the centrality of worship and service to Jesus Christ with other competing priorities, causes, leaders, or belief systems is all the devil’s work. He loves to see it happen. Wise, godly leaders will respond accordingly.

Fifth, the Christian church is not intended to include anyone and everyone. It is, after all, the Body of CHRIST. The church must reach out to everyone, hoping to persuade everyone, but will finally recognize that the Family of God only includes those who surrender their hearts, minds, and wills to the Lord Jesus.

And this family never entertains mythology and lies.

So, when people choose to reject the burdens and responsibilities of Christian discipleship; when they cling to their mythologies and continue to spread contentious lies inside the church; when they decide that pastoral correction infringes upon their freedom to believe what they want, and they eventually decide to leave, the church has not been split. The wheat has been sifted from the chaff.

Remember that Paul also says:

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10-11)

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. (2 Thess. 3:14)

The apostle John says about those who leave the church (rather than correct their false teaching) that “they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” (1 John 2:19)

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:19 Paul even goes so far as to say, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.”

To show which of you have God’s approval…

You may have noticed by now that “church splits” are not what concern me most at this point in America’s post-Trump history.

The greater problem, I believe, is the way in which Trump’s presidency exposed the infantile “spirituality” of American evangelicalism, the widespread failure of evangelical leadership, the lack of deep, meaningful kingdom discipleship among so many who call themselves Christians.

The evangelical wing of American Christianity must take our recent political history as a wake-up call.

Unthoughtful cries for “church unity” are NOT what is most needed in this moment.

Instead, the more necessary cry is It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up?! Evangelicalism’s wholesale devotion to Donald Trump; the continuation of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric within the church (and much more) all demonstrate the failure of meaningful discipleship development inside our churches.

We don’t understand the Lordship of Christ.

We don’t understand the nature and meaning of the kingdom of God.

We don’t understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek God’s kingdom first.”

We don’t understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

We don’t grasp the all-encompassing upside-down, inside-out nature of Jesus’ ethical teaching.

Don’t be distracted by the superficial calls of distress, wailing superciliously about the dreaded dangers of division.

Focus instead on meeting the needs of the hour: It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up!

[In the next post on this subject, I will finally get to the article that initially prompted my thoughts. Thanks for reading.]

When the Powers-That-Be Decide Whose Religious Liberty is Worth Defending

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

The wildly different responses of the Republican party and the Religious Right to the religious convictions of Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Rev. Raphael Warnock demonstrate the hypocrisy of our political debates over religious liberty.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett that she was worried about how” loudly the dogma lives within” Judge Barrett, Republicans went bananas in deriding Feinstein’s “assault” on Barrett’s religious freedoms.

Barrett became the latest poster-child illustrating the supposed liberal hatred of Christianity and the Democratic party’s continuing attacks on religious liberty in America.

But now the tables have turned.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock is a Democratic senatorial candidate in Georgia,

Rev. Raphael Warnock

where he is waiting for the run-off election in early January. He has been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005.

Now, the Republicans are deriding Rev. Warnock as unfit for office because . . . wait for it . . . you guessed it: because the dogma lives too strongly within him.

Having gone through the pastor’s old sermons, the Republicans are calling him unfit for office. Listen to Warnock’s most offensive words:

Setting aside the abortion issue, the simple fact of the matter is that pastor Warnock is being condemned for proclaiming the words of Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear: no one can serve both the military and God, neither can anyone serve both God and money (Matt. 6:19-34).

The conservative hypocrisy in this backlash is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

CBN News continues to demonstrate that it is nothing more than a “Christianized,” civil religion cut-out of Fox News as it carries water for the Republican party.

The whole escapade is really quite disgusting.

I have very clearly demonstrated in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America, (Eerdmans, 2018), just how biblical Rev. Warnock is when he decries Christian involvement in the military. He represents an ancient Christian tradition.

And Jesus’ condemnation of excessive wealth is a signature trait of his teaching. Remember, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25).

In this respect — not forgetting that Warnock is an African-American running for office in the southern state of Georgia — those who condemn this southern, black pastor are imitating the godless leaders who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to hang on a cross.

We are seeing a vivid example of what happens when the truth of the gospel confronts sinful human beings.

It also exemplifies how difficult (if not impossible) it is for a faithful, Christian witness to flourish in the midnight garden of political power.

 

Let’s Put an End to Baseless Calls for “Unity”

The call has gone out for unity. Public figures are talking about the necessity of unifying a divided nation. Religious leaders lament the divisions within their fellowships. Somehow or another everyone is now supposed to find a way to come together, to put their differences aside, and to find common cause.

But the question is, What is the unifying cause?

Unity for unity’s sake is doomed to failure. Its fabric is too thin to hold. The innumerable differences that distinguish us one from another are too sharp. They will not long remain suppressed by the artificial gauze of abstract  mantras like “unity.”

Genuine unity, like authentic community, emerges as the byproduct of a common purpose, a shared mission. Why are we here? What moves us? Where are we going? How do we get there? Why is it worth the effort?

The many Trump supporters who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their leader know how to answer those questions. They are already united, and they have little if any interest in compromising their political principles – however unprincipled anyone else may think them to be.

The fusion of white evangelicalism with conservative, Republican politics – especially with devotion to Donald Trump – means that millions of church goers now measure spirituality by the yardstick of fervor for a particular set of political outcomes.

Working for those outcomes, such as prayer in school, outlawing abortion, denying homosexuals the right to marry, is what unifies political conservatives and white evangelicals in their spiritual mission. They labor together for (what they believe is) a righteous cause.

No “true believer” is going to compromise their conservative commitments for unity. Unity smunity! That kind of unity is actually compromise in the world of the Religious Right.

White evangelical faith now most powerfully appropriates the immaterial realm of conspiracy theories, evidence-free assertions of election fraud, and the ipsissima verba of Donald Trump. The most important moments of  fellowship throughout the week occur as everyone sits at the feet of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart, and Infowars. These are the prophets and spiritual leaders of white, American evangelicalism.

I heard a sermon a few months ago calling the church to unity. “We need to come together!,” we were told. But we were never told why or how.

The New Testament, however, is very clear in addressing those issues.

Scripture tells us that the adoration, service, and glorification of Jesus Christ is the purpose for unity in the church.

A community of saved sinners collectively overwhelmed by God’s abundant grace, working to conform themselves to the example of Jesus of Nazareth, ready to suffer, to serve “the least of these,” to lift up the downtrodden, and to cultivate humility, that is the brand of unity pleasing to God.

So, when I am told to seek unity within the church, my first question is, “Which Jesus are we linking arms around?” Is he the suffering, crucified Jesus of the gospels or the gun-toting, warlord Jesus who attacks his enemies in the streets? Is it the Jesus who “came not to be served but to serve” or the macho Jesus who ridicules others with demeaning nicknames. cursing, and licentious hands that assault innocent women?

I am sorry. Genuine unity is a function of a common cause, a shared adoration. And I simply do not find that commonality with the vast majority of the white evangelical church today. We are now worshiping different God’s. We serve different Saviors. Our expectations for sanctified living have drifted eons apart.

The evangelical church has crossed a watershed in this nation’s history. The Religious Right has proven itself victorious; victorious in convincing far too many that exchanging their devotion to the kingdom of God for a bowl of secular, political pottage is the right thing to do.

No, now is not the time to call for unity.

Now is the time to call for confession and repentance.

Now is the time for real leaders to require authentic discipleship in following the real Jesus of the New Testament.

Now is the time to emphasize that neither patriotism, nationalism, militarism, nor American exceptionalism have anything to do with service in the kingdom of God. In fact, they are all enemies that work to undermine God’s kingdom, every last one of them.

I cannot be “unified” anyone who does not understand these basic theological truths. I can help them to understand, if they are willing to learn. I can teach the scriptures to them. I can pray with them as we together seek the Holy Spirit’s correction and maturity.

But shapeless, amorphous, contentless calls for abstract unity…well, that’s just a waste of time.