Friday, December 23, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
The Main Point (Do I Have to Be Good?)
Trick question:
You see a cross standing in a Christian church. Whose crucifixion does it represent?
Jesus?
Sometimes!
Sometimes there are three crosses, as you have no doubt seen. That is, there are two other crosses, in addition to the cross of Jesus. Perhaps there is a white cross flanked by gray ones, or a tall cross flanked by shorter ones. Three crosses symbolize the fuller scene of Jesus’ execution, in which he was crucified with robbers on either side (Matthew 27:38). Such a display thus memorializes two people whose names we do not even know. What little we do know is that one of these men turned to Jesus in that moment and asked for forgiveness. Jesus gave it to him, promising a place in Paradise. Luke 23:40-43 records the exchange.
This exchange is among the most radical scenes in all of the gospels. In this one scene, Jesus decimates the prevailing religious belief of the time. He decimates what might still be the prevailing religious belief in our own time. In this scene, he lays to rest the notion that good people get into heaven.
Instead, the message to the thief—the message to us all—is that bad people get into heaven.
After all, that robber had no chance to “make good.” His limbs were secured to wood. He was breathing his last breaths. And he was guilty—he said as much (Luke 23:41). In short, there was no opportunity for this man to commence a righteous life that might be pleasing to God.
However, faith is a substitute for being righteous. Paul’s letter to the Romans explicitly makes this point. Indeed, this point is arguably the main take-away of the entire Bible. None of us has any hope of actually being righteous, but we do have the hope of exercising faith. We can lay our burdens before the Christ and ask him to pick them up. And if we do that, then that very act of heart is allowed to take the place of the righteousness we do not have.
God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him can have eternal life. John 3:16.
By contrast, God did not give his Son so that people who are at least 10% as good as Jesus can have eternal life. Or at least 5% as good. Nothing like that. God opened a door, and bad people are invited to walk through. See Matthew 22:10, in which both the bad and the good are explicitly included.
Jesus provides more than this as well. He provides more than what he could give to the robber. The kingdom of heaven does not have to wait for death. Eternal life starts now.
But there is also, as Jesus said, Paradise. There is the realm and the state of higher existence that transcends earthly life completely.
If anything we could do in our earthly life could ever earn us a place in Paradise, then surely we would have squandered that privilege. Each of us would have already missed the chance. Therefore, the loving God does not even ask us to earn the way. Forget it. He just asks for a choice: Turn to him and believe. Turn to the incarnation of the infinite being who made the world. Turn to Jesus in love, to whatever extent your beaten-up human heart is still able to love.
Stare into the eternal in surrender. Give the eternal your attention. Look to this, and look away from other things. Believe. Do this much, and you are free.
This is the choice represented by the three crosses. Love won for all time not just with a double-cross, but with a triple-cross. God was betrayed into death, death was defeated, and along the way, during the last moment of suffering breaths, the idea was finally refuted that anyone has to ever worry about being good enough to qualify.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Unfair! (Thank God)
The God who watches over us is the like the shepherd who watches 100 sheep, said Jesus. When one of them goes astray, the shepherd goes after that one, and upon finding it, he rejoices over that sheep most of all. See Matthew 18:13.
My question is: How do the other 99 sheep feel about this?
This parable doesn’t address that question directly, but other parables do.
For example, the kingdom of God is likened to a vineyard. The men who work in it all day long get paid a full day’s wage. Yet the men who did not begin to work until evening also get paid a full day’s wage. When the former group complains, the vineyard owner asks, “Are you jealous because I’m generous?” After all, the all-day workers did get the wages they were expecting. The vineyard owner asks, “Can’t I run my business the way I choose?” Or to paraphrase, “Can’t I run my kingdom the way I choose?” (Matthew 20:15).
Then there is the parable of the prodigal son. One son lives foolishly, squandering the wealth he is given and rejecting the prospects available to him. But he repents, returning in full humility. This son is welcomed home and invited into his father’s celebration.
Meanwhile, his brother, the other son, is also invited inside. But this other son refuses. He had stayed and obeyed. Rather than joining the celebration now, and being just as much a part of it as his brother, he withholds himself. He remains outside to seethe (Luke 15:28).
These parables seem to offer a message that we might imagine our sterner grandparents saying. Namely: Life is not fair. Insisting upon so-called fairness is insisting upon something that is different from the way of God. In fact, “fairness” is an idol that points to a false god, and that false god we are revering is ourselves. When we claim that our portion is “unfair” compared to another’s, we are presuming that we ourselves ought to judge what the correct portions should be. Do we have the right to make that judgment? Do we even have the capacity to make that judgment?
If we really do believe in eternal life, then the search for fairness ought to be irrelevant. Within the life that spans eternity, the extent of this worldly portion is just the minutest sliver. We see something of this kind of belief in Jesus’ encounter with a Greek woman. She seemed to understand that worldly status is fleeting, while the Lord is supreme. In this seemingly strange episode (which has a historical context outside the point of this post), Jesus refers to the woman as a dog. Her response is essentially to embrace this premise. If the Lord of all creation assigns her the status of a dog within this world, then she has the status of a dog (Mark 7:28). Such complete acceptance and surrender may sound shocking. However, an authentic faith in the authority and mercy of God both permits and entails this acceptance—the acceptance of our allotment, whatever that allotment might be. For the extent to which this woman stood on her faith in this way, she saw her afflicted daughter cured.
Alongside Jesus, we are all unworthy. We are all dogs, no matter how highly we might wish to regard ourselves. If life really was fair, then the Divine would not have died as a human so that humans could come alive within the Divine.
When a stern parent or grandparent says Life isn’t fair, we know they are warning of the potential for loss and unexpected pain, and the way this world is hard.
However, when Jesus says in his parables that Life isn’t fair, he means something altogether different. In the kingdom of God, people get something more and better than what they have coming to them. The unfairness of Jesus does not consist of undue suffering. It is the way to undue joy.
***
Photo: Scott Liddell
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Back Then
“Nothing exists beyond what can be measured or observed.” That’s what I used to believe. I got a note from a friend, and a member of the e-mail list, who found himself in a polite argument recently in which he confronted this very assertion.
In other words, the universe is what it is only by accident—or so the assertion goes. It is not that God definitely does not exist. Rather, whether God exists is irrelevant, because no God is involved. We might not know all of the precise mechanisms by which the universe accidentally arose, but that is what happened. The beginning of everything was just a vastly unlikely event that, in a vastly unlikely moment, did occur. Then, over time, the random collisions of particles eventually lined up in just the right way to produce self-sustaining life. Then, over still more time, the random accumulation of circumstances affecting that life gave rise to a machine-building and civilization-building lifeform—us.
In all of this, God has no place in the conversation, no matter what your scripture says. God is not needed. Again: So the assertion goes.
However, my own scripture says that—in this conversation—it is the scripture itself that is not needed. Really. That is: God is so obvious from what we know of the material world that no scripture is required to see him.
Personally, I find this to be a wonderfully self-effacing fact for a scripture to make plan. Using that idea as a starting point (specifically, Romans 1:19-20), I pursued the question of how we can know God is real. I hope you enjoy the argument. You can find the series of posts on that subject starting here.
In a way, though, that argument is beside the point. We all do need our arguments for why we believe in the God we do. We all need apologetics—see I Peter 3:15. Yet back when I believed the assertion at the very beginning of this post, no argument by itself could have shaken that belief. Our beliefs do not begin in the place that argument touches. Our beliefs do not take root in our thinking brains—much as we would like to think this is the case. Our beliefs instead begin elsewhere. In my own case, I had read the gospels before without meeting God in them. I had read them solely as literature. The breaking point in my system of belief came when I made the seemingly small choice to accept helplessness, admit vulnerability, and allow my heart to be changed. God swept in through this space. Only after that did I read the gospels with different eyes.
This is why, even though I have spent paragraph upon paragraph on arguments in this blog and elsewhere, I also know that we should not put too much hope in the weight of our arguments alone. I do not think the weight of just our arguments can reach people. Over top of the arguments of the thinkers, we also need the prayers of the faithful. In the end, it is not the sheep who save sheep. It is not even the lost sheep’s own bleating that saves sheep. A lost sheep is saved when the Shepherd moves.
I was not merely being “logical” when I committed to a godless worldview. In fact, I was not being “logical” in any way. The assertion at the beginning of this blog post actually fails by its own standard. The claim, “Nothing exists beyond what we can observe” is an example of a negative statement—and it is logically impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, this seemingly “logical” assertion is one that cannot be tested by logic.
In other words, it’s not just that my logic was incomplete. It’s not just that I needed to add something else to the structure of my thinking. That was not the extent of it. To cling to and insist upon an assertion that is fully unproveable is a commitment—and a different sort of commitment than we imagine we are making when we presume the cover of logic.
Back then, I was pretending to be logical, though at a deeper level I was holding a particular assumption in a place more sacred than logic. Back then, in other words, I was exercising a faith. I was staking out the bounds of a religion.
In other words, the universe is what it is only by accident—or so the assertion goes. It is not that God definitely does not exist. Rather, whether God exists is irrelevant, because no God is involved. We might not know all of the precise mechanisms by which the universe accidentally arose, but that is what happened. The beginning of everything was just a vastly unlikely event that, in a vastly unlikely moment, did occur. Then, over time, the random collisions of particles eventually lined up in just the right way to produce self-sustaining life. Then, over still more time, the random accumulation of circumstances affecting that life gave rise to a machine-building and civilization-building lifeform—us.
In all of this, God has no place in the conversation, no matter what your scripture says. God is not needed. Again: So the assertion goes.
However, my own scripture says that—in this conversation—it is the scripture itself that is not needed. Really. That is: God is so obvious from what we know of the material world that no scripture is required to see him.
Personally, I find this to be a wonderfully self-effacing fact for a scripture to make plan. Using that idea as a starting point (specifically, Romans 1:19-20), I pursued the question of how we can know God is real. I hope you enjoy the argument. You can find the series of posts on that subject starting here.
In a way, though, that argument is beside the point. We all do need our arguments for why we believe in the God we do. We all need apologetics—see I Peter 3:15. Yet back when I believed the assertion at the very beginning of this post, no argument by itself could have shaken that belief. Our beliefs do not begin in the place that argument touches. Our beliefs do not take root in our thinking brains—much as we would like to think this is the case. Our beliefs instead begin elsewhere. In my own case, I had read the gospels before without meeting God in them. I had read them solely as literature. The breaking point in my system of belief came when I made the seemingly small choice to accept helplessness, admit vulnerability, and allow my heart to be changed. God swept in through this space. Only after that did I read the gospels with different eyes.
This is why, even though I have spent paragraph upon paragraph on arguments in this blog and elsewhere, I also know that we should not put too much hope in the weight of our arguments alone. I do not think the weight of just our arguments can reach people. Over top of the arguments of the thinkers, we also need the prayers of the faithful. In the end, it is not the sheep who save sheep. It is not even the lost sheep’s own bleating that saves sheep. A lost sheep is saved when the Shepherd moves.
I was not merely being “logical” when I committed to a godless worldview. In fact, I was not being “logical” in any way. The assertion at the beginning of this blog post actually fails by its own standard. The claim, “Nothing exists beyond what we can observe” is an example of a negative statement—and it is logically impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, this seemingly “logical” assertion is one that cannot be tested by logic.
In other words, it’s not just that my logic was incomplete. It’s not just that I needed to add something else to the structure of my thinking. That was not the extent of it. To cling to and insist upon an assertion that is fully unproveable is a commitment—and a different sort of commitment than we imagine we are making when we presume the cover of logic.
Back then, I was pretending to be logical, though at a deeper level I was holding a particular assumption in a place more sacred than logic. Back then, in other words, I was exercising a faith. I was staking out the bounds of a religion.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Try Surrender
In the book of Acts there is a magician who tried to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit. He wanted to buy it for a price, through a cash transaction (Acts 8:18-19). His proposal sounds absurd. And yet, don’t we sometimes seek to do the same thing?
I do. The Spirit provides love, joy, peace, and other fruits (Galatians 5:22-23)—fruits that I often feel are missing. The Spirit provides an informing, uplifting, transforming power, and when I feel that I am lacking in that power, I want to more aggressively go after it. I want to figure out the steps or formula for finding, chasing, and capturing the Holy Spirit, just so I can willfully follow through with that formula. I want to bottle the Spirit like a jar of fireflies so I can take it back with me into my own darkness.
Yet the language of scripture is more passive than this. We are to “be filled with the Spirit.” That phrasing—very familiar to many—implies a couple of things. First, it implies that the pouring is already being done. We just have to “be filled.” Second, it implies that we already have the capacity. We just have to see our own waiting capacity get filled with the right thing. Indeed, this second point is more than just implied; it is explicitly stated. Scripture cites being “drunk on wine” as an example of something to get out of the container so that the Spirit can more completely fill it (Ephesians 5:18).
In other words, finding God via the Holy Spirit is not a matter of striving. It is not a matter of active and energetic attainment, and not a matter of paying a sufficient price. It is not a matter of these things—no matter how much I might like the exchange to work this way, during the times when I am so sullen and closed-in that striving and paying prices are all I can think to do. Rather than what we actively attain, the Spirit is found in what we passively deny. It is found in what we give up. Indeed, I seem to relearn this each time I finally do reach the bottom of despair. Hitting the bottom one more time again, I give up.
I give up.
That is, I give up on seeing the aims of my personal pride realized.
I give up, finally, on the hope of seeing the slights against me avenged.
I give up on expecting the various rewards and indulgences to which I feel I am entitled.
Once I reach the point where these things are no longer the demands I revere, then more space is left for the Spirit to fill me. Try it yourself. Try surrender, and when you do this, see if love and peace do not find you as if by accident. God is doing the pouring.
***
Photo: Pedro J. Pérez
I do. The Spirit provides love, joy, peace, and other fruits (Galatians 5:22-23)—fruits that I often feel are missing. The Spirit provides an informing, uplifting, transforming power, and when I feel that I am lacking in that power, I want to more aggressively go after it. I want to figure out the steps or formula for finding, chasing, and capturing the Holy Spirit, just so I can willfully follow through with that formula. I want to bottle the Spirit like a jar of fireflies so I can take it back with me into my own darkness.
Yet the language of scripture is more passive than this. We are to “be filled with the Spirit.” That phrasing—very familiar to many—implies a couple of things. First, it implies that the pouring is already being done. We just have to “be filled.” Second, it implies that we already have the capacity. We just have to see our own waiting capacity get filled with the right thing. Indeed, this second point is more than just implied; it is explicitly stated. Scripture cites being “drunk on wine” as an example of something to get out of the container so that the Spirit can more completely fill it (Ephesians 5:18).
In other words, finding God via the Holy Spirit is not a matter of striving. It is not a matter of active and energetic attainment, and not a matter of paying a sufficient price. It is not a matter of these things—no matter how much I might like the exchange to work this way, during the times when I am so sullen and closed-in that striving and paying prices are all I can think to do. Rather than what we actively attain, the Spirit is found in what we passively deny. It is found in what we give up. Indeed, I seem to relearn this each time I finally do reach the bottom of despair. Hitting the bottom one more time again, I give up.
I give up.
That is, I give up on seeing the aims of my personal pride realized.
I give up, finally, on the hope of seeing the slights against me avenged.
I give up on expecting the various rewards and indulgences to which I feel I am entitled.
Once I reach the point where these things are no longer the demands I revere, then more space is left for the Spirit to fill me. Try it yourself. Try surrender, and when you do this, see if love and peace do not find you as if by accident. God is doing the pouring.
***
Photo: Pedro J. Pérez
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Becoming a Tree
The blessings of Jesus Christ extend even to those who do not give much thought to Jesus Christ at all—those who are (so it is said) “as free as a bird.” That is my reading of the parable of the mustard seed, in which Jesus says (according to Matthew 13:31-32):
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made the point that God provides for the birds of the air—taking care of them though they don’t seek or notice this provision. God loves not just human beings, but also the smallest bird (Matthew 6:26). Now, in the parable above, we learn that the kingdom of God starts as something even tinier than a bird. Indeed, it starts as a mustard seed, a seed that is tiny alongside other seeds. But just like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God flourishes.
Mustard grew wild in Jesus’ time, a ragged bush that was regarded more as a weed than as a crop. Certainly it did not grow in cultivated rows planned by men. Like this bush, the kingdom of God advances in unpredictable ways. It grows “greater than the herbs.”
But there is something else, a further stage. The parable offers another striking detail. This flourishing spice that is greater than the herbs goes on and “becomes a tree.” In nature, a mustard seed will never produce a tree, yet this mustard seed does. The very nature of the plant transforms, the plant making a (literally) supernatural change. Through this change, it becomes something different than the wildly flourishing spice. Now, it is an organism strong enough, stable enough, and tall enough to be a comfort and a shelter to the birds of the sky.
Oswald Chambers wrote, “The final stage in the life of faith is attainment of character.” That word, character, offers the sense of a reserve of strength great enough that some of it can be offered to others. Character implies stability, the stability of being rooted, just like a mature tree.
By contrast, to be unrooted, like a bird, is not to be free. Not really. Birds can fly, but their flight is a physically demanding effort that the birds must perform in order to find safety and food. Birds also sing, but many of the songs you hear through your window are actually bullying assertions of territory. Smaller birds are hectored by bigger birds. To be any bird except the very largest is to live a life circumscribed by fear. It is in the very midst of this flying and crying that we are called to serve.
Specifically, those who have heard the call of Christ in their lives understand that it is indeed a call—a call to play a role, to continue the work that Jesus began. We aspire to provide the branches, somehow—stable perches for those among us who might otherwise be lost in the sky. We aspire to be the tree.
The reason to do this is not because we expect anything in return from the birds. We do so instead because we have been invited to love as Jesus loved. He was God come into the world. He was God come to serve. The Lord on earth was simultaneously humble and tall, just like the tree. And his life and love both continue to advance for as long as the forest continues.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made the point that God provides for the birds of the air—taking care of them though they don’t seek or notice this provision. God loves not just human beings, but also the smallest bird (Matthew 6:26). Now, in the parable above, we learn that the kingdom of God starts as something even tinier than a bird. Indeed, it starts as a mustard seed, a seed that is tiny alongside other seeds. But just like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God flourishes.
Mustard grew wild in Jesus’ time, a ragged bush that was regarded more as a weed than as a crop. Certainly it did not grow in cultivated rows planned by men. Like this bush, the kingdom of God advances in unpredictable ways. It grows “greater than the herbs.”
But there is something else, a further stage. The parable offers another striking detail. This flourishing spice that is greater than the herbs goes on and “becomes a tree.” In nature, a mustard seed will never produce a tree, yet this mustard seed does. The very nature of the plant transforms, the plant making a (literally) supernatural change. Through this change, it becomes something different than the wildly flourishing spice. Now, it is an organism strong enough, stable enough, and tall enough to be a comfort and a shelter to the birds of the sky.
Oswald Chambers wrote, “The final stage in the life of faith is attainment of character.” That word, character, offers the sense of a reserve of strength great enough that some of it can be offered to others. Character implies stability, the stability of being rooted, just like a mature tree.
By contrast, to be unrooted, like a bird, is not to be free. Not really. Birds can fly, but their flight is a physically demanding effort that the birds must perform in order to find safety and food. Birds also sing, but many of the songs you hear through your window are actually bullying assertions of territory. Smaller birds are hectored by bigger birds. To be any bird except the very largest is to live a life circumscribed by fear. It is in the very midst of this flying and crying that we are called to serve.
Specifically, those who have heard the call of Christ in their lives understand that it is indeed a call—a call to play a role, to continue the work that Jesus began. We aspire to provide the branches, somehow—stable perches for those among us who might otherwise be lost in the sky. We aspire to be the tree.
The reason to do this is not because we expect anything in return from the birds. We do so instead because we have been invited to love as Jesus loved. He was God come into the world. He was God come to serve. The Lord on earth was simultaneously humble and tall, just like the tree. And his life and love both continue to advance for as long as the forest continues.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
You
During a recent period of rest and solitude, I went a different way. I made a right-angle turn in my heart.
It simply occurred to me that, throughout the course of my belief so far, God has always been beside me or above me. That is the place I’ve assumed for him. I have been focused on my challenges and aims. I would call out thanks to God for the victories, or I would call out to God for help when I felt in peril. Either way, I have called out to God.
The right-angle turn consisted of looking at God instead. Making him the focus.
The turn consisted of seeing my life such that those challenges and those objectives are now to one side of me, not him. He is in the front. My challenges might not be overcome in this world. My aims might not be met. Yet he is in control. He has a plan, he has somewhere to take me in this world, he has things he wants to impart—and I am less interested, now, in being distracted.
With this turn, with this shift in focus, certain verses now make more sense than they ever made before. “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) is one of those verses. The Lord, I realize, is continually creating—making everything around me, every part of my experience. If I look for him, if he is my focus, if I am attentive to his active choosing of what he wants to show me, then we are unceasingly communicating.
“Seek my face” (II Chronicles 7:14) is another such verse. That sphere of experience all around me is part of God’s face. It is part of the expression God wears on his face—the expression God wears toward me. Such a face is at least as rich with expression as any human face could ever be. Think of how people’s faces communicate. Facial expressions are so subtle, so nuanced, that they send meaning right into our hearts that words cannot contain. Now consider how much more elaborately expressive the face of God must be.
I find the most basic consequence of my turn toward this face, the Lord’s face, in the softer and simpler way I now address him. I used to call him “God.” I used to call him “Lord.” I still do. But when you look at someone, they know to whom you are speaking. More often now, I find myself simply addressing him as “You.”
It simply occurred to me that, throughout the course of my belief so far, God has always been beside me or above me. That is the place I’ve assumed for him. I have been focused on my challenges and aims. I would call out thanks to God for the victories, or I would call out to God for help when I felt in peril. Either way, I have called out to God.
The right-angle turn consisted of looking at God instead. Making him the focus.
The turn consisted of seeing my life such that those challenges and those objectives are now to one side of me, not him. He is in the front. My challenges might not be overcome in this world. My aims might not be met. Yet he is in control. He has a plan, he has somewhere to take me in this world, he has things he wants to impart—and I am less interested, now, in being distracted.
With this turn, with this shift in focus, certain verses now make more sense than they ever made before. “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) is one of those verses. The Lord, I realize, is continually creating—making everything around me, every part of my experience. If I look for him, if he is my focus, if I am attentive to his active choosing of what he wants to show me, then we are unceasingly communicating.
“Seek my face” (II Chronicles 7:14) is another such verse. That sphere of experience all around me is part of God’s face. It is part of the expression God wears on his face—the expression God wears toward me. Such a face is at least as rich with expression as any human face could ever be. Think of how people’s faces communicate. Facial expressions are so subtle, so nuanced, that they send meaning right into our hearts that words cannot contain. Now consider how much more elaborately expressive the face of God must be.
I find the most basic consequence of my turn toward this face, the Lord’s face, in the softer and simpler way I now address him. I used to call him “God.” I used to call him “Lord.” I still do. But when you look at someone, they know to whom you are speaking. More often now, I find myself simply addressing him as “You.”
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