“Baa’s” and “Nee’s”

 

With the popularity and unpopularity of Jordan Peterson almost constantly in the news, his ideas are certainly worthy of discussion. Fan or foe, he does speak to rouse discussion on many fronts.  And thankfully he straddles the line between science and philosophy.  As a clinical psychologist with many years of dealing with the ugliness that goes on in the minds of people, he has seen first hand the destruction we do to one another and to ourselves.  He has taken what he has observed in his practice, to lay out what he sees are the fundamental issues troubling mankind.  (Well, not really all of mankind because only those nations rich enough to be troubled of their own identity have the luxury of challenging their identity.  Mankind in less than luxurious circumstances can’t be bothered with such ethereal pondering when they don’t know where their next meal is coming from.)

I must say at the outset, I have not read Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life.  Interesting though it may be, my “to read” shelf is not bearing up well under the weight of the books I already have placed there.  But having read it or not, doesn’t really matter for what I want to discuss.  I watched a video of his interview with Dennis Prager to hear what he had to say about people asking him if he believed in God.  His comments were fascinating.  “Who would have the audacity to claim to believe in God?”  To make such a claim “means you have to live it out fully” which is an “unbearable task”.  He says in a nutshell, “unless you act it out you better be careful about claiming it”.  His bottom line is to say “I try to act as if God exists.”

In view of his comments, it is obvious that he is caught up in the notion of having to earn ones salvation, that we have to behave properly before we can be saved.  He doesn’t say this explicitly, but it is there, I believe.  In the inimitable words of Frank Valli “So close…so close and yet so far.”  While Peterson is close to the truth in that we don’t have a right in our own work or power to claim to believe in the Creator of the Universe, we do have an advocate who claims it for us.  So he is right…but then wrong.  It is unbearable for any human being but then Christ was not just any human being.  It is audacious but our boldness resides in Christ who endured the cross for our sake.  And by him we can boldly claim it, because Jesus “acted it out”.  As followers of Christ we have entry into the presence of God and can be audaciously and vociferously confident to call ourselves Christians.

But then there are those…who say that we ought to deny our Christian title.  Why?  One reason I heard argues by putting labels on ourselves we define our differences as way of pigeon-holing people.  On the surface, yes, we want unity of people.  God does not want chaos but peace and orderliness.  At all costs?  No…only at the cost of the blood of Jesus.  Apparently defining ourselves as Christians shuts down meaningful dialog. Really?Labels don’t shut down dialog, people do and we often do it aggressively.  Why?  Selfishness, pride, greed, uncertainty, powerlessness, jealousy…you name it and we have a reason to justify it. Jesus tells us there are sheep and there are goats that will one day be judged according to their status (Matthew 25).  The lack of ability to discuss issues civilly, winsomely, and intelligently is not a factor of what we claim to be, but a  factor of what our self-centered, hyper-sensitized, and overly indignant ideological  minds claim to be true–apologies to Shakespeare, we are “hoisted by our own” wretchedness.  And where is that status established?  Here on earth–right here, right now, we are either sheep or goats, Christians or pagans. Choose this day…

 

 

 

 

Ear Tickling

Weddings, weddings!  Yes I sat through the most recent royal wedding to see all the festivities, pomp and circumstance, and general brew ha ha over Harry and Meghan.  And naturally, as this is a theological blog, I zero in on the firey sermon given by Bishop Michael Curry.  But alas, to no avail.  It was yet another syrupy dalliance with the effervescent nature of global love that would make Rob Bell proud.

A minister of the gospel, a pastor of a flock, and an American to boot, is given the stage to speak to the world and what does he do?  Uses his time to talk of “LOVE” and how it is the most powerful thing and can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Stephen McAlpine nailed it in his latest blog “A Tale of Two Royal Weddings”. “A wedding that looks as grand spanking Royal as Charles and Di’s ever did. But a wedding that still needs a cross at the centre – under the surface of it – like theirs needed, but sadly failed to contain. Not just the love of Jesus as he lived, but the love of Jesus as he died.”

Not too long ago I attended the wedding of wonderful friends in Christ.  The pastor who spoke used the opportunity to speak of the couples love and vowed commitment to one another, yes, but it did not rest there.  He pushed on toward the meaning and purpose of marriage for the man and woman, how it is to challenge them to live for the other because this is what Christ did; challenge them to love even when the other is not loveable, because this is what Christ did; and challenge them to honor even when the other is not honorable, because that is what Christ did. He spoke of God’s design for marriage, between one man and one woman, and their responsibilities toward one another.  It was a true celebration of not just the marriage of the couple, but of its representation of Christ and the church.  This is what marriage points to and what Bishop Curry missed. Where did Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon take us?  In case you missed it, the Cross was not in sight.

He spoke as if the love we feel for one another, puppy, at first sight, or any other, is the love that represents God Himself.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  When we raise love above all else we find ourselves loving at all costs, even those things that ought not to be loved.  And we do things that ought not to be done, for the sake of this selfsame love.

Many people like to quote 1John in their effort to highlight the superiority of love above all else.  What they miss is that what we call love, what we experience as love, what we define as love, misses the mark, try as we might.  And we all know what missing the mark means—sin.  We cannot compare our view of love to God’s because His love is nothing like ours.  It might point to His but we never quite makes it there.

Quote from the VOX about the wedding  “But one of the most striking elements of the royal wedding was also among the most unexpected: the fiery, impassioned, and theologically-charged sermon of American Episcopalian bishop Michael Curry.

“Most theologically charged sermon…”?  Really?  Without mention of the cross?  This is an example of moralistic therapeutic deism of the finest sort.  And I hate that I must bring this up because there is beauty and majesty in love, but it is a love that has been exposed to and rubbed against a splintered cross in a brutal and beautiful way.  It is a love that makes us hang our heads in shame able to raise them only because of the humility of the cross.  It is love we should fear because it demanded the cross. It is a love we should practice because it required the cross.

Bishop Curry had a world stage that few theologians and preachers get…and he blew it.  When he could have spoken to a world (especially Great Britain and the rest of the Western world) of Christ, his love, his sacrifice, and his triumph, instead he spoke of a “Rob Bellian” love that fails to satisfy.  When this love of which he spoke, no longer reigns supreme in the marriage, where is the couple to go?  When it is no longer producing the fire of which he spoke, what should the couple do?  When it fades into comfortable co-existence, what will the couple do to kindle a new kind of love, more real and enduring? His was a world audience thirsting for truth and Bishop Curry gave them a drop of water when he had a whole river of truth from which to draw.

The Cross…I am convinced that every sermon, in life, in marriage, and especially in death, must draw us inextricably to the Cross.  Otherwise, nothing makes sense, or in the words of Solomon, “vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” (As you can see I am still stuck in Ecclesiastes.) The Cross is the sticking point for all of Christianity.

John Stott magnificently describes in his book The Cross of Christ, 4 affirmations about the cross from which we can then, and only then, touch upon the subject of love (or righteousness or humility, or grace or mercy, or…).

1. The Cross is the ground of our justification.
2. The Cross is the means of our sanctification.
3. The Cross is the subject of our witness.
4. The cross is the object of our boasting.

The cross…the cross…this should have been the subject of Bishop Curry’s sermon.  He had the opportunity of a life time to speak wisdom and instead chose to tickle our ears.

 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:² preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. ³ For the time is coming when people will not endure sound^[a] teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, ⁴ and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2 Timothy 4:1-4

 

 

 

Love means…

…never having to say you are sorry. Blech! Who remembers that line from the 70’s tear-jerker of a romance novel/movie Love Story and spoken by Ali McGraw, the worst actress to ever grace the screen? Anyway, it’s a silly adage because, of course, love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. I guess the point of the line is to suggest that you and your partner (of whatever flavor) know each other so deeply and entirely that a word of apology is unnecessary because the offended partner knows it already. Well, I am here to tell you that after 33 years of marriage, a heartfelt apology softens the hardest hearts created through miscommunication, anger, or doubt. So my recommendation is to apologize freely and frequently—it doesn’t cost anything and it creates…well…love.

If love doesn’t mean “never having to say you are sorry” (apologies for the double negative), what does it mean? We are directed in the scriptures to “love one another”. How? What does it look like? In John 13:34-35 Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus gives us a clue how to love each other when he says “just as I have loved you…”. So how did Jesus love the disciples and others who sought him out? What did he say or do to them that showed his love? He certainly never said, “I love you” or at least there is nothing recorded to that effect. Nearly every interaction Jesus had with people, disciples or Samaritans, he spoke directly to their hurts, to what was causing them to stumble, physically or spiritually. While he healed many diseases and injuries, more often than not that was not the “real issue” plaguing the individual. Lurking behind their physical ailments was always something of a spiritual nature that needed attention.

If we are to love like that, addressing spiritual issues rather than physical, wouldn’t we be called out as judgmental? To think that we might see in another person some item of behavior or thinking that might need some attention, while all the time jockeying to see them in spite of the plank in our own eye–how dare we? How rude to think that some unconfessed sin in the heart of a fellow sinner might need attention! Healing the physical ailments was merely Jesus’ attention grabber, and while challenging, painful, and debilitating, they are not our real ailment in light of eternity. Our real ailments are those things that separate us from God. Our physical challenges in whatever shape they take on, do not act to create disharmony with the Lord but our sins do. So if we are to love people with the love of Christ, we must do what Jesus did that demonstrated his love.

A perusing Jesus’ interaction with people reveals that he invariably invokes change—change of heart, mind, body, spirit, attitude, belief, thoughts, ideas, world view. Never, ever does an encounter with the Messiah leave the person in the same state as before.

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Jesus looked at the man, loved him, and zeroed in on his “ailment” —the idol of manna, money, or riches. The rich young man who professed to having followed the commandments since a youth, was challenged to re-think who (and what) he worshiped—The Living God or his riches. He went away sad but thoughtful nonetheless. We do not know how he may have altered his life or his bank account.

The woman at the well thinking she would have a quiet morning collecting and hauling water, instead encountered Christ who knew the issue on her heart and did not waste anytime but asked directly about her “husbands”. This is love? Not by today’s standards. We, as Christians living in a post-modern and hostile-to-the-faith world, are admonished for the sake of love not to challenge the behavior or language of others, but this is in fact counter to what Jesus did.  Here is what Dr. R.C. Sproul has to say on the subject from his Tabletalk magazine: “On the one hand, it’s correct that we must always do what love requires. Love is the linchpin of God’s law, the very fulfillment of the commandments (Rom. 13:10). But love isn’t a vacuous feeling; it’s something objective. Love is defined by God Himself, for Scripture tells us that “God is love” (1John 4:8) And the God who is love has given us a law that defines and applies what love looks like in concrete situations. For instance, Paul lays out the principle that we must “walk in love,” but then he immediately tells us that “sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (Eph. 5:2-3). God defines love as being the rejection of sexual immorality, impurity, and covetousness. Anything that includes such things cannot be love even if the designations of love is claimed.” (“Principles and Situations” June 2016)

Peanut butter and jelly, hamburger and French fries, Baseball and glove, men and women…some things just go together and so too with love. Love does not “rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” (1 Cor. 13:6) Love and truth are inextricably connected and inseparable. To attempt to do one without the other is unloving or untruthful. Love without truth is pablum, and truth without love is a poke in the eye.  Truth is the message and love is the manner in which that message is delivered.  Let’s be about Christ’s work in the way he would have done it, leaving no encounter with a fellow sinner void of truth steeped in love.  And always ready to say, “I am sorry.”

No Exit in Hell

I read a play a long time ago, in my existential period between high school and university by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled Huis Clos or No Exit. I thought at the time I was being quite avant guarde even though I do not think I really understood what existentialism meant at the time, and if I were to be bare-bones honest, I am not entirely sure of the concept now, mainly because it leads nowhere but down—in spirit and emotion, no hope only despair. I believe that is where it left Jean-Paul but I don’t know for sure. In any case his drama ultimately comes to the conclusion that hell (if he can even use that term remains to be seen) is other people. He writes of three dead people being escorted to a room in which they proceed to maintain their earthly façades used when alive, but eventually reveal the reason for their presence in the room. Most of their interaction is of a sexual nature on the surface but bubbling underneath is the futility of their current context and the despicable actions that sent them there. Anyway, all this is to come ‘round to the infamous phrase for which the play is known, that of “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or Hell is other people.

With that crude synopsis it leads me to thinking of hell—what is it like, who is there, who is not there, and of course what is the temperature. Recently at Crossroads Marcus Reeves and his pastoral team engaged in a thought-provoking sermon series on heaven and hell. More recently than that the subject was broached at an evangelistic program called Jesus on Life. It seems to be quite a concern for those inquiring about Christianity, new believers and even this “old” believer. So I thought…and thought.

Before examining hell, let’s return to life on this earth. Life on this earth it is messy, at best, violent and murderous at worst. We sin, we hate, we steal, we are sexually immoral, we covet, we worship other gods, etc. And these sins of ours while personal on one level they are quite public on another. While we may lie to our next door neighbor, the sins we commit reverberate through life because, as we were lying to our neighbor, our 6 year old child heard every word and logs that into his memory to be regurgitated in his own life. I think Abraham and Isaac demonstrate this well when they profess that their wives, Sarah and Rebekah respectively, are not their wives but their sisters in order to save their own hides and essentially offer up their wives to placate their hosts. Thankfully the hosts realized what was the state of things and returned the women to their husbands (See Genesis 12, 20, and 26). {As an aside, the bible doesn’t hold back in exposing the sins of even the great patriarchs. They too sinned and did so mightly.} But are we as bad as we could be?

The common phrase heard these days, as in days of yore is “She is a good person.” When I hear that I cringe because Jesus tells us specifically “No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:18). So let’s not kid ourselves any more. But are we as bad as we could be? Probably not but that is only due to God’s grace and His ability to restrain sin. In the book of Job we see clearly that God controls what Satan is and is not able to do and restrains him in his actions upon the old patriarch.  John Piper addresses the restraining nature of God  in a 2009 article entitled Satan, World, Providence, Christ (http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/satan-world-providence-christ.)  Piper states: So in the providence of God, the world does not sink into as much wickedness and misery as it would if it were given over entirely to the power of the evil one. The world does not have any power in itself to resist the devil, but God in great patience restrains the evil one and prompts much good behavior.

So now let’s return to hell. Quite possibly, and I do not know for sure, Sartre is right, hell is other people but with one caveat—sin is no longer restrained. Those consigned to eternity there will experience the full nature of sin unleashed. People will do all that they want to do, when they want to do it, no matter the consequences, because when you are in hell, what greater consequences are there??? It will be a perpetual state of rape, murder(?), assault, cheating, lying, stealing, disobedience, malice, etc., because this is our true nature. Hell is other people and it is ourselves. We are our own hell, and we will be left to revel in it, without Christ, because this is what God does. God “gives [us] up” to the lusts of our hearts, to dishonorable passions, and to a debased mind. (Romans 1:24,26,28). He actually gives us our hearts desire when our hearts are not captive to Christ. May I suggest instead, accept a captivity to Christ, be his slave because in this rests your freedom.

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

 

 

Pivot Points

This is a concept that I have not completely fleshed out but thought I would put it out there. I played basketball, briefly in my youth, and know pivoting is one of the game’s fundamentals. One foot is cemented to the ground allowing the player to pivot around that one point. Moving the foot that the player establishes as his pivot foot constitutes a foul and he gets called for traveling.

Inhabiting a world run amok, we are faced with numerous decisions to make—work here, work there; live here, live there; say this, say that; believe this, believe that; do this, do that; support this, support that. Shall I go on? These decisions take us one way or another, sometimes in opposite directions, some just slightly different (see Course Corrections blog). In any case there seems to be a pivot point that determines whether we go one way or another and it is this point that I want to discuss.

Given the nature of some of the decisions we make in our lives, colleges, marriages, babies, houses, burial plots, they can be quite momentous and so entirely life altering making the pivot point the difference between one baby or three, or living in Springfield, Virginia or Canberra Australia. Those are big differences. As Christians, what is our pivot point? What is the point that moves us one way or another? Well, the answer is obvious, it is Christ and the cross.

Sometimes, while the pivot point is surely Christ, we are provided lee-way. What I mean is that within the church, for example, there are many ministries where we can put our voices or our hands to good use and God receives the glory, as He surely must. Whether we opt to join the choir which practices on Thursday evenings or work at a homeless shelter on that same evening, sometimes the choice is really ours. God sometimes does not say specifically what He wants us to do because He allows us to choose where we would like to spend that evening, because in the end, He knows that He will be glorified in either case. Sometimes that choice lasts for a season and then He decides it is right for us to do something else. Through prayer and study we “get the message” that He wants us to move on.

At other times these decisions are not ours. When we have the scriptures laid out before us, many decisions are much easier to make. Others, however, not so much. For instance, whether to live in Springfield or Canberra. In one sense, it doesn’t matter in that God can use us where ever we are. In another, it matters tremendously if he doesn’t want us in Springfield, but instead wants us in Canberra to be useful to Him there. So the decision of whether or not to pack up and move to another part of the world pivots on the desires of God and the only way we can know His desires is through prayer and the scriptures (and the occasional sermon smacking us between the eyes).

Now, I have to pick up a thread from another blog, the one entitled Deconstructing Jenga. Followers of Christ have a decision to make as to whether or not to attend same-sex weddings. A friend has invited us to attend his/her wedding to his/her partner. If our pivot point is Christ and the Cross, the decision is rather an easy one—we do not attend because of all the reasons mentioned in the previous blog. If, on the other hand we opt to attend the wedding of a same sex couple our pivot point changes. In the case where our friend decides not to get married, we don’t have a wedding to go to because obviously there is no wedding taking place. If, however, this loved one does decide to get married, and we decide to go, then this friend becomes our pivot point—we don’t go because he/she will not be getting married; we go because he/she has decided to get married. Put simply, whether or not some Christians attend a same-sex wedding is decided by whether or not their friends are having a wedding. Our decision is made based on what our friend does and not upon what Christ has already done. In basketball parlance—we have changed our pivot point, committed a foul, and will get called for traveling.

It does not end well when members of the body of believers choose any pivot point other than Christ and the cross. Our moorings wander and we are like “a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”  I realize I am mixing my metaphors but this is dangerous stuff and such linguistic fouls are called for to address biblical fouls.  Lost souls bobbing around can get picked up and tossed by any wave that comes along driving them farther away from their proper mooring point, the immutable Christ.

Standing with our friends in their same-sex wedding, will necessitate our standing by when /if they choose to adopt or go through IVF depriving the child/children of a mother or father, by definition.  Standing with our friends in their same-sex marriage will necessitate standing with them when/if they or heterosexual friends want to broaden their family unit to include a third party.  What argument could we possibly give to decline?  And if we stand with our same-sex friends in their wedding, won’t we stand with another friend who wants to marry his sister, or brother, or mother, or father, or aunt, or uncle…?  Surely they want what everyone else has in a committed and loving relationship.  It is their right, certainly. On what basis could we possibly say that their relationship is not suitable?  What pivot point will we choose since we have already moved away from Christ? Where does God receive the glory?  Where is the gospel proclaimed? Where is Christ’s sacrifice celebrated?  Where is repentance? Where is love?  Gone, all gone. And we have stood by to heap sin upon sin and propel this world into greater corruption. We do not deserve Christ–never have, never will. Thankfully, it is not up to us and what we deserve we could not endure.  Christ and Christ alone takes what we justly deserve thereby saving our skins for His service.

Shirts and skins, anyone?