The Virtue of Competitiveness

If the average person is asked to list virtues, competitiveness might not be one of the first ones she or he lists, if indeed it is listed at all. But it is a virtue.

Why it is a virtue, and why it is sometimes a neglected one, is worth asking.

Selflessness and altruism are virtues, and competitiveness, if misunderstood or twisted, can lead to selfishness. But one can be competitive in the interests of others.

Imagine competing to raise more and more money to help the poor. Judah Smith writes:

I think there should be a passion in our hearts to be excellent. In fact, I think that’s part of being human. I think there’s something innate in our DNA that wants to win, and I think that desire comes from God, the ultimate champion of the ages. God is a winner, and we were made in his image and likeness.

God is competitive, and therefore human beings, shaped by Him in His image, are competitive. Sometimes our competitiveness is tainted by our sinful nature. But sometimes it can be used to benefit those around us.

God’s competitiveness displays itself when Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh’s advisers - his ‘wise men,’ sorcerers, and magicians - and Aaron’s staff, having become a serpent, swallows the serpents of the competitors.

Competitiveness is at work when Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal. It’s a head-to-head, side-by-side contest. God wins handily.

Jesus is competitive when debating the Sadducees, Pharisees, and scribes. He scores points in intellectual combat.

Why has competitiveness been underplayed as a virtue? David Murrow hints at the answer: we’ve often mistaken Jesus for a wimp, and His followers as wimpified. Is Jesus merely a soft and cuddly nice guy?

Murrow notes that counselor John Gray has catalogued a list of ‘masculine’ virtues, including:

competence, power, efficiency, achievement, skills, proving one’s self, results, accomplishment, objects, goal orientation, self-sufficiency, success, competition

Correspondingly, virtues conventionally perceived as ‘feminine’ are

love, communication, beauty, relationships, support, helping, nurturing, feelings, sharing, relating, community, loving cooperation, personal expression

Considering those lists, it becomes clear that our culture sometimes misperceives Jesus and His followers as effeminate. The ‘feminine virtues’ correspond to a popular notion of what it means to follow Jesus.

But close reading of the text of Scripture leads to the view that Jesus is equally an exemplar of the ‘masculine virtues.’ We need to reexamine our concept of Jesus to ensure that we’ve included all the virtues, and not merely the ‘feminine’ ones.

One can formulate plausible arguments for the thesis that God is neither masculine nor feminine.

But its is clear that Jesus is masculine and is, in fact, a man. Masculine virtues are, therefore, a priori part of His constitution.

Selfless: Without Self?

Commonly we hear the adjective ‘selfless’ used to ascribe a virtue to someone: altruism. Someone who sacrifices that which is dear in order to help another person is described as ‘selfless.’

Is there another sense of the word? To be without a self: what would that be?

There is a great fascination among humans about the self - both among followers of Jesus, among those who subscribe to the world’s institutional religions, and even among atheists. There is a great deal of talk about the self.

Note how the topic of the self arises in an otherwise unrelated discussion, written by Francis Chan, of having love for God:

It confuses us when loving God is hard. Shouldn’t it be easy to love a God so wonderful? When we love God because we feel we should love Him, instead of genuinely loving out of our true selves, we have forgotten who God really is. Our amnesia is flaring up again.

Chan seems to feel that it’s ideal to love God “out of our true selves.” What would our “false selves” be?

This topic exerts such a powerful hold on the human mind that Richard Rohr wrote a book subtitled, “The Search for Our True Self.”

Rohr begins the book by a considering the reaction of the people who first discovered the Resurrection: they fled. After discovering that Jesus had risen from the dead, they ran away, frightened, and said nothing to anyone. Why? Rohr speculates:

Such running from resurrection has been a prophecy for Christianity, and much of religion, just as in these early Scriptures. I interpret this as the human temptation to run from and deny not just the divine presence, but our own true selves, that is, our souls, our inner destiny, our true identity. Your True Self is that part of you that knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are — but thinking doesn’t make it so.

From Francis Chan to Richard Rohr: a ceaseless rumination on the self. Why? And is this fascination a good thing?

Perhaps instead we might follow the advice of the New Testament, and fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). Maybe Jesus should occupy more of my attention, and I should occupy less of it.

How easily those practices are hijacked - those practices which are intended to help us focus on Jesus, but which are instead hijacked to allow our attention to drift to ourselves: reading, study, prayer, meditation.

Introspection and reflection are good things, in moderation, and are useful in philosophy and psychology. The brilliance of Descartes, Locke, Hume, and others arises from such thought.

But in the spiritual realm, our self may prove to be barren soil. Jesus is far more fascinating. The self, by contrast, seems often empty or confused.

Those who devote effort to searching for the self, or even the “true self,” hope to find something of value. Rohr promises that the found self will be the basis for finding and understanding God:

The clarification and rediscovery of what I am going to call the True Self lays a solid foundation — and a clear initial goal—for all religion. You cannot build any serious spiritual house if you do not first find something solid and foundational to build on — inside yourself.

Do I really want to make the self the foundation of my religion, my belief, my faith, my understanding of God or my relationship to Him? The self isn’t reliable. It is the self, after all, which is affected by original sin, and which further commits its own active sins.

The self is limited in its ability to know, and prone to make mistakes.

Far from being the foundation of spiritual life, the self my prove to be empty, even absent. Are we human beings simply hollow in the middle? Waiting for the Holy Spirit to fill us during our encounter with baptismal waters?

The self is underwhelming. Even more, does it even truly exist?

The search for the self may be doomed to failure, if there is no self.

Is the discovery of the self really the ‘initial goal’ of all religion? That would be to begin the enterprise in entirely the wrong direction. Might we rather not begin by observing God as He approaches us with mercy and grace?

If we observe the self at all, it is only to discover our sin, which then prompts us to return our gaze to Jesus, Who is the only cure for our sinful status.

Jesus is only only omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, but He is simply much more interesting that the self.

Caregiving Trumps Lawgiving

Sometime around 200 B.C. or 100 B.C., the Romans noticed that the Hebrews had a spiritual tradition which was unlike any other: it linked God to morality. It was unlike other cultures in the ancient world because it had one God, not many, and because that God took an interest in explaining to humans how they might act wisely.

History books often call this Hebrew innovation ‘ethical monotheism.’

The polytheisms of Rome, Greece, Scandinavia, and India had deities who were largely amoral, both in their dealings with each other, and in their interactions with humans. The gods of Greek and Roman mythology had no interest in explaining ethical wisdom to humans.

If the Romans erred, two thousand years ago, in failing to connect religion and ethics, perhaps we err, in the twenty-first century, by overly identifying faith with a specific moral code.

In the course of the ‘culture wars’ of the last several decades, more than a few people have come to see the words ‘church’ and ‘Christianity’ as synonymous with the promulgation of a specific morality. The result is a significant amount of toxicity around those two words.

In the New Testament, Jesus spent less time talking about specific moral prescriptions, and more time talking about God’s affection for humans - an affection which, in turn, motivates humans to live in service to each other.

Contemporary followers of Jesus might do well to step back from social conflicts about specific behaviors. Instead, David Brooks writes, they

could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.

Writing in the New York Times in June 2015, Brooks suggests that Jesus followers direct their energy to those distinctive tasks which are characteristically theirs and for which they have a passion:

Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

Such a “step back” from the culture wars of litigation, legislation, and lobbying would not in any way be a compromise of moral standards. Jesus followers would still understand themselves to have a duty to live ethically.

Rather, it would be a living out of those morals, rather than a promulgating of them.

This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority.

David Brooks writes that Jesus followers could be “doing purposefully in public what” they “already do in private.” There is significance in meeting physical needs - food, clothing, shelter - and spiritual needs - counseling victims of abuse or of addiction, grieving with those who’re mourning losses, or helping those with dysphoria or loss of identity. When those needs are met in the name of Jesus, personal and social transformation is possible.

Meeting those needs is an activity which Jesus followers have historically done well.

Leaving behind the conflict-driven style of culture war doesn’t mean abandoning moral standards. David Brooks writes that he doesn’t expect the followers of Jesus “to change their positions on sex, and of course fights about the definition of marriage are meant as efforts to reweave society.”

Rather, there is, and will be, a need for the kind of care which Jesus followers can give. Emotional pain and psychological suffering are real, common, and quite possibly increasing in our society. Spiritual caregiving is, and will be, needed, valued, and respected.

But the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable.

Perhaps the rancor of a political and media-driven culture war can be left to others. There are many Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, and others who are willing to defend life from the moment of conception, and willing to define marriage as possible only between one man and one woman.

Let followers of Jesus, instead, devote their effort to shredding fabric, both of society and of individual souls. David Brooks writes that Jesus followers “are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.”

A New Kind of Culture War

The followers of Jesus add something positive to any community. This is what the New Testament means when it speaks of them being “salt” and “light.” They can make a beneficial contribution to society.

But this is something different than the ‘culture wars’ which have taken place in North America over the last few decades. Those conflicts have proven divisive.

Jesus followers have something better to offer. They can give people a path to wholeness and healing, a path greatly needed in the current state of our civilization.

Depression, substance abuse, domestic violence, and even suicide are the symptoms of a directionlessness which plagues many Americans. They’ve lost, or never had, a larger conceptual framework in which to view their lives.

Some of them are trapped in a prison of subjectivity, captive to the emotion of the moment. Others have been desperately wounded, but lack the knowledge to describe their wounds or to seek healing.

Writing in the New York Times in June 2015, David Brooks describes how society can benefit from the Jesus followers in its midst:

We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.

Followers of Jesus are equipped to communicate about the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of each individual human. To be human is to be flawed, and therefore to need help: to need forgiveness.

The news that such forgiveness is freely, joyously, given by God is the core of the message of Jesus. People can’t, and don’t need to, earn God’s mercy. God offers forgiveness without humans having earned or merited it. This is the meaning of the word ‘grace’ - “let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”

This favor, which God so freely dispenses on humans, places life into a new perspective, and gives fresh motives and fresh energy to people in their daily lives. That’s good news.

By stepping back from the nastier combat in the ‘culture wars,’ Jesus followers wouldn’t necessarily compromise their integrity. They wouldn’t be stepping back from their convictions, but merely from the aggressive promulgation of those convictions through media, politics, and legislation.

The ‘culture wars’ might - surprisingly - continue without the Jesus followers. There are many Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, and others who are working, and will work, to defend human life from the moment of conception, or to defend the normal concepts of marriage and family.

Somebody else can manage the culture war for a while. Jesus followers may have more important work to do.

Being a Follower of Jesus: Life-Long Learning

When do you know enough about Jesus? What if you’ve read the New Testament cover-to-cover several times through? Read the usual assortment of Christian books and magazines, heard sermons, attended Christian music concerts, and gone to conventions with nationally-known Christian speakers?

What would it even mean to “know enough” about Jesus? “Enough” for what?

To truly know about Jesus is to know Jesus, and to know Jesus is to be known by Jesus, and to be known by Jesus is to be transformed.

Condoleezza Rice is a brilliant woman. She’s eloquent in French and Russian, and plays piano so well that Yo-Yo Ma enjoys her accompaniment. With a doctorate from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies, her skillful mind analyzes the complex chess game of international politics.

Someone like Condoleezza Rice might be smart enough to know “enough” about Jesus. She writes:

So much has been written about our Lord that one is tempted to ask if there is anything more to say. As the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, I have been a follower of Christ since birth.

Yet even Secretary of State Rice finds surprises when thinking about Jesus. After an intriguing sermon, she recalls,

I turned to my cousin (also a Presbyterian minister’s daughter) and said, “I never thought of it that way.” Thankfully, our Lord’s story continues to be revealed by inspired teachers who tell it in language that brings it to life for our modern, troubled times.

Even a professor of theology who can read in Hebrew and Greek will find that he always has more to learn - which means, Jesus will find more and new ways to transform him.

If knowing about Jesus is to be transformed by Jesus, then the fact that we always have more to learn about Jesus means that there are always aspects of us which Jesus is transforming.

Indeed, nobody could “know enough” about Jesus, because Jesus is still at work. Jesus is active in our present, but He’s also got plans unfolding in our future. We can’t even know what they are yet.

The data about Jesus and His actions are still only partly known; much has yet to be revealed, as Rice phrases it, about

the impact that Jesus has had on human history, on the human condition, and on our understanding of the obligations of one human being to another.

So, keep your eyes - and your mind - open. Jesus is at work, now and in the future. Watch Him direct events, in both the micro and macro, as His effects on the world manifest themselves.

Taking a Break from the Culture Wars

The net result of America’s ‘culture wars’ over the last few decades may simply have been the accumulation of a fair amount of toxicity around the words ‘Christianity’ and ‘church.’

Quite aside from what these terms properly mean, there is the matter of what many people think they mean. And many people have concluded that these words stand for a set of moral views, and the more-or-less organized efforts to promulgate these views.

2,000 years ago, when Jesus began walking the rural back roads of the Ancient Near East with twelve assistants and a few other hangers-on, His goal was not to invigorate standards of public decency.

The followers of Jesus certainly strive for moral behavior, and do not endorse amoral approaches to living; but these questions are not their central focus.

The distinctive and unique mission of Jesus followers is to proclaim the unearned, freely-given love of God to all people.

Moral questions are important, but presenting this message about God is more important.

Over the last few decades, the news about God’s generous attitude towards humans has become diluted, even hidden or forgotten, amidst the battles of the culture wars. So much so, that ‘Christian’ is no longer seen as a synonym for ‘Jesus follower.’

Perhaps the time has come for Jesus followers to intentionally take a step back from the culture wars.

This is not to in any way compromise their moral standards. This is merely allocating their energy according to their priorities; time and effort should be put toward that which is most important.

Christians might also experience a pleasant surprise if others step unto the breach. There are Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and others who are willing to defend the cause of life from the moment of conception.

Among those working to protect the institutions of marriage and family are many who are explicitly non-Christian. Not every person working to rid society of the poison of pornography is a church-going, Bible-reading Christian.

In June 2015, New York Times journalist David Brooks wrote:

Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.
Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.
Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

Some of his assertions might be arguable, but perhaps Jesus followers would be well advised to redirect their energy to the causes of meeting the spiritual and physical needs of their fellow humans.

Those groups which have long followed that pattern have earned respect from friend and foe alike: the inner-city ministries which house countless homeless people and distribute free meals are seen as blessings to the community, even by those who don’t have significant spiritual leanings.

Proclaiming the unmerited forgiveness which Jesus offers to all humans is more central to the proper understanding of ‘church’ than lobbying Congress or funding lawsuits.

There is no compromising morality: Jesus followers fully understand that every human has fallen short, every person stands convicted and guilty before God, and every man or woman on earth is condemned with no chance of helping himself or herself out of a most unpleasant judgment.

If more people learn who Jesus is, and what He does, then it might even happen that some of the moral questions parsed in the culture wars will take care of themselves.

When the followers of Jesus do what they do best, they distribute meaningful help to others - to any and to all - not only to those who believe exactly as they do, but rather also to those who explicitly reject the beliefs of Jesus followers, and even to those who persecute Jesus followers.

In seeing this unconditional help given by Jesus followers, people see the personality and mentality of Jesus. That is an attractive thing.

Christianity Out, Jesus In?

Can one equate Christianity with a bloc of values which constitutes one side in America’s ‘culture wars’? Whether or not this is a proper understanding of Christianity, it is a common one.

One can wrestle sincerely and with great effort about the definition of ‘Christianity,’ but net result of the culture wars seems to have been to associate a fair amount of toxicity with that word.

In June 2015, David Brooks wrote in the New York Times that

Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

His assertions are not without some controversy. But if most of them are true, as is probably the case, they are still not cause for despair.

The ‘culture wars’ have consumed too much attention - especially the attention of those who would be followers of Jesus. Discovering, articulating, and promulgating morality is not the central task in the life of a Jesus follower.

Disciples of Jesus are certainly called to ethical living, and are called to avoid amorality. But other tasks are more urgent.

We know that all humans have sinned; all are fallen; all are guilty; all stand condemned and are unable to help themselves in regard to their guilt.

Debating moral question is merely working out the details about who’s guilty of which sin. It doesn’t change the foundational reality that the entire human race needs forgiveness and redemption.

The words ‘church’ and ‘Christianity’ have accumulated a certain virulence because these institutions, originally founded to be the embodiment of the practice of following Jesus, have strayed from their original mission and gotten ensnared in the social conflicts of the era.

Perhaps Jesus followers might step back from the culture wars for a bit. They might be surprised to learn that others will engage. Among those who seek to protect the life from the time of its conception there are many who quite explicitly identify themselves as not Christian.

Stopping the poison of pornography, and protecting the institutions of marriage and family, are tasks which occupy many Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, and others.

While Jesus followers are not the only ones to advocate for a moral or ethical worldview, they are the only ones who are called to certain other tasks. Those other tasks, which are exclusively and uniquely theirs, are therefore of a greater urgency than those tasks which are shared with others.

The culture wars will continue, with or without Jesus followers. But the task of proclaiming the unconditional love of God toward each and every human, the task of proclaiming that unearned and unmerited forgiveness is freely given by Jesus to all people, is a task which only the the followers of Jesus do or can do.

If Christianity as a human tradition withers, but a true understanding of Jesus flourishes, it is really a loss? If churches as human institutions languish, but communities of Jesus followers go about their business of showing unconditional positive regard toward all people, is that a tragedy?

If ‘Christianity’ and ‘church’ are mere human cultural products, then they are expendable. If these words point to the authentic practice of following Jesus, and to communities which concretely express in deeds His care for people, then these words mean something different than, and apart from, a belligerent in the culture wars.

It may well be time for Jesus followers to take a break from the culture wars, indeed, to deliberately distance themselves from the culture wars, not to in any way compromise their morality, but rather to focus on tasks which are more important than morality.

Being a Christian should be something more than, and different from, simply being moral. Being a follower of Jesus certainly is something different than merely being moral.

Morality is important. But for the follower of Jesus, there are other things which are more important.

How Shall We Organize Ourselves?

In nations which have the right “peaceably to assemble,” people constantly organize themselves. Even in nations which don’t explicitly have this right, people create patterns of interaction and social institutions.

As Aristotle said, after all, human beings are social animals.

Followers of Jesus are no exception. In fact, they necessarily live out their beliefs in community. By definition, being a follower of Jesus is an activity done partly with others.

A spiritual life includes both solitude and camaraderie. One meditates alone. Prayer and study can be done alone or in groups. Fellowship, confession, and corporate worship are always done with others.

When working together, groups choose patterns by which they will organize themselves. Over various times and places, we see a broad spectrum of organizational styles: authoritarian, democratic, flexible, rigid, codified, spontaneous, bureaucratic, chaotic.

Naturally, the question will arise: which is the “right” way to structure a community of Jesus followers?

Although there is an urge to believe that God prescribes some organizational pattern, scholar Hermann Sasse notes that Jesus followers have an “understanding of the divine Word, of the distinction between Law and Gospel, that it finds no laws in the New Testament about” how a community should structure itself.

The followers of Jesus should consider questions of “polity as adiaphora, as ritus aut ceremonias ab hominibus institutas” (“rites or ceremonies instituted by” human beings). Jesus followers “may and must claim freedom, since” Jesus “is not the legislator for a human” spiritual “society, and the Gospel contains no law defining a correct” spiritual “polity.”

The work of Jesus followers requires that they organize themselves: to feed the hungry, care for the poor, educate children, make peace.

There is no doubt that they must organize; the question of how they will organize remains open.

God gives great freedom in this matter. He calls His people to deeds of mercy: Jesus followers give aid to everyone and anyone, and pointedly to those who believe quite differently. God requires Jesus followers to tend to the physical needs of the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists, and others.

The followers of Jesus are free to consider whichever organizational pattern they find most effective to carry out this work. God does not write bylaws or define who may be on a board of directors.

The spiritual mandate is quite clear: it is the distinctive mark of Jesus followers that they render aid to all types of people. But there is no mandate concerning governance models, as Hermann Sasse notes. The impact of the “basic theological principle of strict separation of Law and Gospel becomes clear when one observes how” Jesus “has given His” followers “no law” concerning governance.

Sasse goes on to say that “every form of” organizational “government is feasible which leaves room for a proper administration of the means of grace, which imposes no restrictions upon their administration.” As long as the work of Jesus is being done, many structures are possible and permissible.

This great freedom has been in place for 2,000 years. The earliest examples of the Jesus movement manifest this liberty: “It is worth noting how modern historical research into the beginnings of” the Jesus movement “has confirmed the profound exegetical insight,” which is “that the New Testament knows of no specific polity of the” Jesus followers “and therefore could not give canonical sanction to any such polity.” The history of the Jesus movement shows that in “polity the origins do not indicate singleness, but rather a manifold variety of form.”

This requires a humility on the part of those who advocate for one governance model or another. We may not present any such pattern as the only permissible one or as the one required by God.

Serious study of the text reveals an absence of specific direction for organization, despite occasional concrete examples of such. “No one who considers the statements of the Bible will in these days be so bold as to claim to have discovered in the New Testament a complete system of” organization for Jesus followers. “There existed in the” earliest phases of the Jesus movement “of the New Testament a number of possibilities as to the manner of organizing the spiritual ministry.”

If rendering service to others is the distinctive mark of Jesus followers, then the clear proclamation of the Good News about Jesus and the administration of sacraments are the distinctive marks of a community of Jesus followers.

A follower of Jesus helps others, and helps them with no regard to their spiritual beliefs. A community of Jesus followers declares His freely-given love, directed toward all human beings; this community administers the unearned unmerited forgiveness to people.

In sum, there are things which a community must do and must be in order truly to be a community of Jesus followers; but none of those requirements are organizational or constitutional in nature. This is God’s gift of free to His followers.

(The quotations from Hermann Sasse are taken from a three-volume edition of his letters, published by Concordia Publishing House, 2013/2014)

God Answers a Prayer (Psalm 51)

This psalm has long been honored as the great penitential song. The persona confesses his sin, and begs for mercy. We can construct an absolution for the psalmist by rephrasing segments of the text:

God has had mercy on you,
according to His unfailing love;
according to His great compassion,
He has blotted out your transgressions.
He has washed away your iniquity,
and cleansed you from sin.

More than removing sin, God goes a step further: He not only takes away something bad; He gives something good. God takes away guilt, and gives joy. He declares us innocent.

He has cleansed you, and you are clean.
He has washed you, and you are whiter than snow.
He's caused you to hear joy and gladness.
He's healed your crushed bones, and caused them to rejoice.
He's hidden His face from your sins,
and He's blotted out all your iniquity.

The joy which God gives along with His forgiveness is no mere superficial passing worldly happiness. It is a spiritual eternal joy. It is the reshaping of our character, which can even include moments of pain. Here is a mystery: God shapes the purest joy in us, using a process which sometimes allows us to endure times of suffering.

God has created a pure heart in you,
and renewed a steadfast spirit within you.
He did not cast you away from His presence,
and He did not take His Holy Spirit from you.
He restored to you the joy of His salvation,
and granted you a willing spirit to sustain you.

The grace which God gives is a multitude of gifts, in response to a single plea for mercy. God's generosity is such that He gives more than what was asked.

Jesus points out (in Matthew 5:21-22) that God even forgives each of us of murder!

God has delivered you from the guilt of bloodshed,
He has opened your lips.

God is ever dealing with us on two levels, the individual and the corporate, simultaneously. His absolution to the individual is at the same time a blessing to the community.

God has done good to Zion in His good pleasure.
He's built up the walls of Jerusalem.

As He strengthens His relationship to one person, so He blesses the community of which that person is a part.

We see, then, how active God is! He is ever at work, blessing and forgiving. So we "fix our eyes on Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2), to see what He's doing now.

Life in the Midst of Conflicting Patterns: the Tension Between the Spiritual and the Worldly

To be a spiritual being living in a physical world is to experience tensions. There are separate, different, and even contradictory principles which structure the spiritual realm and the worldly realm.

Yet to be human is to be simultaneously in both.

In the worldly realm of politics, independence is a high value - perhaps one of the very highest; politically, individuals and societies seek independence and liberty. Yet in the spiritual realm, humans come to recognize that they are dependent; indeed, dependence upon God and interdependence with other humans are spiritual goals, as is the awareness thereof.

Likewise, control is a value in the political world: indeed, it is all too often the goal of the entire political process. It is a natural human desire to be able to be in control of situations, processes, things, and even other people. In a spiritual perspective, however, the goal is giving up the illusion of control: the realization that, in many situations, we have choices, but we don’t have control. When we do have control, we’re often called to surrender that control, or to use it not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others.

Goal oriented behavior in general is different in the two domains. In worldly thought, one sets one’s goals: they may be selfish or altruistic; and in worldly thought, one then pursues those goals. Success or failure is determined by one’s achievement, or failure to achieve, those goals.

Following Jesus on a spiritual plane, one allows God to set one’s goals: concretely, this can mean deferring to others to set goals or deriving them from Scripture. Success or failure is not based on achieving those goals, but rather on faithfulness in following Jesus.

We are called, then, to live in a political and worldly realm, and operate by the principles of that realm, while simultaneously living in a spiritual realm and operating by a different, and even diametrically opposed, set of axioms.

The economy of the world is based on earnings. One earns not only money, but respect, credentials, affection, fame, and many other things.

The economy of Jesus is based on unearned gifts. We humans are flawed, imperfect, even corrupt. We are sinners and we are sinful. Yet God gives us so much more, and so much better, than we deserve.

This does not minimize real and significant human suffering. But the principle stands: God gives unmerited blessings.

The strength of the tension between the very different principles of worldly thought and spiritual thought is so great that it is one of several reasons that rational reflection is forced to embrace the concept of mystery.

Reading Medearis

The sheer volume alone of books produced by the Christian publishing industry ensures the occasion for controversy as the reading public attempts to digest the continuous deluge of text. The book titled Speaking of Jesus, authored by Carl Medearis, is no exception.

The book has attracted enthusiastic praise and harsh condemnations; this is the case for most such books. But Speaking of Jesus has had more sales, and more attention, than most titles in the spiritual publishing industry.

Medearis himself is a bit of a shadowy figure: the usual biographical information (where he was born, where he studied, etc.) doesn’t easily pop up on an internet search.

One of the main points that he makes in the book is that many Christians aren’t aware that words like ‘Christian’ and ‘church’ have gained toxic connotations among many non-Christians.

For the average Christian, these words evoke peace, charity, friendship, altruism, humane charitable efforts, conflict resolution, tolerance, understanding, and a rich cultural heritage. For many who do not consider themselves Christians, these words can evoke the very opposite.

So when the well-meaning Christian wants to explain the benefits of ‘Christianity’ to his worldly neighbor, the message has been set up for failure, for misunderstanding, from the beginning. The same is true for the word ‘church.’

One can take the tactic of trying to patiently explain that all the negative connotations which have adhered to these words are really misplaced: that atrocities which might have been committed in the name of Christianity were actually the precise type of thing against which true Christianity stands.

But that tactic, while logically and intellectually sound, simply doesn’t get much traction with the ordinary person. Eyes glaze over when someone tries to explain the difference between “real Christians” and “those who simply call themselves Christians but are really doing the exact opposite of what a Christian would do.”

If the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ are tough sells, the word ‘church’ is even tougher. Even Christians don’t want to sit through a detailed explanation of how the church is an organization which is supposed to be devoted to the teachings of Jesus, but because it’s made up of ordinary imperfect human beings, it sometimes does the opposite of what Jesus would do.

In some cultures, and in some parts of the world, if you use the words ‘Christian’ or ‘church,’ you’ve simply lost your listeners from that point forward.

What Medearis suggests, reasonably, is that we stop using those words, at least when we’re talking to those who haven’t publicly declared themselves to be Christians. Hence the book’s title: instead of talking about church and about Christianity, we avoid those loaded words, and talk instead about Jesus.

Both prima facie and after consideration, his suggest has merit. That is, after all, what Jesus and His followers in the New Testament generally did. The word ‘Christian’ is rare in the New Testament, and ‘church’ is used as a term with insiders, but not with the general public.

If this is largely what his book denotes, then why the controversy? He’s simply presented a suggestion about how we talk to nonbelievers, and a reasonable suggestion at that. What’s the problem?

First, it’s worth noting that there’s always someone who’s willing to disagree with a new book. So a few of the detractors are there simply for form’s sake, offering resistance purely on principle.

Beyond that, however, are those who find fault with the book for more substantive reasons. One of those reasons may be that Medearis sometimes uses unfortunate verbal formulations, in part perhaps because he’s trying to writing in an approachable casual style, in part perhaps because he sometimes takes a bit too much pleasure in playing the provocateur.

On the other hand, some of those who evaluate the book may be guilty of sloppy reading. They see things in the book: things which simply aren’t there.

So Medearis may have done some sloppy writing, and his critics may have done some sloppy reading.

Early in the book, Medearis writes that

I’ve never seen a religion save anyone. All religions are great at laying out some basic rules - dos and don’ts - that are good for our lives, but they don’t really provide hope or any kind of eternal security. It seems religions end up causing more trouble than solving anything.

Some pious readers are troubled to see Medearis speaking dismissively of religion. Yet this is a rather traditional and orthodox view within Christianity: religion is a man-made system of ideas and traditions and institutions, and Christians endure religion but hope to get past it. They hope to get to a relationship with the one true real living God. “Relationship, not religion” is even a theological slogan in some circles.

Jesus is the incarnation of this one true real living God; He lived a human life on earth, while being fully divine, preached His good news, was killed, and came back to life again three days later. That’s not religion: that’s an account of events.

Jesus loves people, cares for and about people, and offers His saving grace freely to all people. That’s not religion: that’s how Jesus relates to us.

So, with the understanding outlined above, it’s OK for Medearis to jettison religion. In fact, it places him in the mainstream of Christian thought. The events surrounding the life of Jesus and they way in which He is interacting with people today are more important than cultural traditions and institutions which are the essence of religion.

Medearis also writes:

I’m not sure how the religion I grew up in would or should deal with terrorism. But I do have some thoughts how Jesus might deal with terrorists because He had two with Him in His inner circle of friends. A Zealot and tax collector. A political insurgent and an economic terrorizer of common folk.

Now, naturally, Medearis will be able to claim that he’s factually correct in his description of Simon and Matthew. But he may be a bit too cute. Yes, we can ponder the social impact of Zealots and tax collectors during the first century in the regions surrounding Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley; and, yes, there may be ways in which they are vaguely analogous to modern, twenty-first century terrorists.

But Medearis is failing to respect the task of an author, which is to know his audience and address it effectively. He succeeds simply in repelling many of his readers.

The fix wouldn’t have been difficult. Medearis could have written something like, “As much as we love and revere folks like Simon and Matthew, it’s possible that they seemed much less lovable to their first-century contemporaries; in some ways, they were like outlaws or terrorists … ”

Instead of bluntly and flatly equating Christ’s disciples with terrorists, Medearis could have worked his way up to the simile in a way which would have been less off-putting to his readers.

In a longer passage, Medearis writes:

In my experience, sharing Jesus is not all that difficult, even in a hostile environment. I don’t tell people that they’re sinning and that they’re going to go to hell unless they believe what I believe. I just talk about Jesus. If, on the other hand, we believe that the gospel is a systematic explanation of Christianity, we have to own up to all the faults and failures of Christian history, while convincing people that Christianity really is better than whatever they believe.

Here’s a few of the scenarios that “Christianity” brings to mind. The Irish Rebellion. The Protestants versus the Catholics. The religious genocides in Africa and the Balkans. What about the persecution of scientists like Copernicus and Galileo? What about the Inquisition? What about the Holocaust, slavery, and the modern white supremacy movement?

If you want to test this, simply ask natives of any continent what they think of when you say the word Christian. They could say anything. Crusader. Slave master. Warrior. They’ll point to Cortez, de Gama, the armies of Constantine, and many others who came to the native lands, stole, ravaged, killed, and spread disease. All of these “Christians” came to ripe and plentiful lands and yanked the rug out from the indigenous people while forcing the “pagans” to convert, often at the tip of the sword or the muzzle of a musket.

Again, Medearis seems to delight in dumping ice water on pious readers. And again, yes, he’s got some relevant and important facts on his side, although this time, he’s gotten a bit sloppier with history, and few small corrections need to be made.

There are times and places at which it is appropriate to prod readers who may be a bit too comfortable. But some authors are tempted to play the provocateur for the mere sake of shocking or annoying, and Medearis verges on this vice here.

He properly raises of the matter of what “we believe that the gospel is.” So what is the gospel? He answers a few pages later that

The gospel is not a what. It is not a how. The gospel is a Who. The gospel is literally the good news of Jesus. Jesus is the gospel.

While he is correct, Medearis must then be patient with the reader who has not yet internalized that Jesus is not Christianity. Medearis does not help his own cause by presenting his points in reverse order. He could have first informed the reader that Jesus is the gospel, which would then allow the reader to embrace the notion that the gospel is not an “explanation of Christianity.”

Medearis also does not succeed in casting much of this as a global misunderstanding: his prose fails him. Certainly, there are many people for whom ‘Christian’ or ‘Christianity’ does in fact elicit these negative associations; and these people are not unreasonable in making such associations. But they are also not correct.

This is a world-historical tragedy: how something which is unambiguously good came to be associated with so much evil.

On a ‘micro’ level, there are many minutiae, and much needle-threading, to be done with the historical data: there were faithful missionaries in South America and Central America who pled the cause of the natives against the godless and worldly conquistadores. Anyone familiar with the propaganda of the Nazis, familiar the preemptive actions of the Nazis to neutralize the Christians who were the only solid resistance to the Holocaust, and familiar with the networks of Christians who both smuggled Jews out of Germany to safety and who sabotaged Hitler’s systems, can hardly plot a simple connection between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Holocaust.’

Granted such connections exist in the minds of millions. Christians must acknowledge this reality: but it must also be acknowledged as a misunderstanding.

Medearis would have gained more traction with his readers if he had prefaced such paragraphs with “sadly, millions of people have been misled into believing that … ” and “for this reason, we must avoid … when presenting Jesus to them.”

In sum, Medearis should have written a bit more carefully.

He properly exercises some humility, and attempts a clarification, when he writes:

I’m not a brilliant theologian. I could preach endless sermons and write numerous books and never say any of this stuff exactly right. Let’s simplify by making two generalized distinctions. For the duration of this book, I’ll use Christianity as the catchall term for the Western model. Western Christian history, doctrine, theology, Western-style churches, reason, dogma, and denominations are all products and parts of Christianity.

While recognizing the need for elucidation, Medearis is still painting with a brush that is a bit too wide. The baby is still in the bathwater. Is ‘Western-style reason’ something good or something bad? Does it give offense to folks in the Third World, or to Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists? Is it necessary to encountering Jesus, or can it be safely cast aside? These questions, and more, go unanswered.

Twice, separated by several pages, Medearis speaks, approvingly, of people “trying to follow Jesus.” This phrase, sadly, misplaces the emphasis onto the humans. In the final analysis, what “we” do - we humans - isn’t as interesting or significant as what Jesus is doing. Human effort is the great ‘red herring’ in theology. God’s actions are decisive.

So what’s to be done? On the one hand, Medearis makes some insightful and valuable suggestions about how “we” Christians should speak to the those “in the world” who are not explicit followers of Jesus. It makes good sense to avoid words like ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ and ‘church’ when talking to those whose experience and belief system have no good connotation for those words.

Medearis suggests that we use phrases like “followers of Jesus” as replacements for “Christians,” and in these contexts, he’s right.

But serious, faithful, and pious readers have walked away from his book, commenting that he “denigrates the church” and “undermines Scripture.” His critics allege that Medearis “under-defines” Jesus: Medearis wants us to talk about Jesus, but what exactly does this Jesus do, about Whom we’re supposed to talk? What is His nature?

Some antagonists see Medearis as involving his own ego: is he the hero of his own story? Others wonder if Medearis is all-too-aware of his own failures in ministry - he recounts such failures himself in the book - and projects them onto the church at large.

Medearis wants us to talk about Jesus. But what are we supposed to say? He alludes to “Jesus the folk hero.” This may be a good starting point, but it’s only that. More is needed. We should talk about Jesus: agreed. But in Carl’s system, is there room for Jesus to do anything? To talk about Jesus is to make Him the grammatical object in the sentence. To talk about Jesus doing something is to make Him the grammatical subject in His own clause. Does Medearis give us enough material to do that?

The only book that’s all true is the Bible. Any other book is a mixture of truth and error. Medearis has much of value to offer the reader. Charity dictates that we sift the wheat from the chaff. We take what is good from Carl’s book - and there is much good - and we quietly discard the bad, thanking Medearis for a challenging read.

Don’t Worry - Psalm 37

Author Jan Karon observed that “the first two words” of Psalm 37 are “an entire sermon.”

Those two word are “fret not.” In other translations, they are rendered as “don’t worry.”

In one brief text, chapter 6 of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells us not to worry or to be anxious six times.

Yet we worry.

Despite the clarity of this imperative, we worry. Despite the fact that it’s for our own good not to worry, we worry. Despite the fact that it is possible not to worry, we worry.

The command stands: fret not.

God, true to His nature, is kinder to us than we deserve. Despite our faithlessness, our lack of imagination, our timidity, or our passiveness, He gives us unmerited blessings:

he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.

Note the irony in the Psalmist’s use of the word ‘reward’ - did we not establish our unworthiness? We’ve failed to live with faith and confidence, yet God glues a label on us, a label that says we are righteous.

The text goes on to say that we “will inherit the land.” The action of inheriting is in fact no action at all. The action is on the part of the bequeather.

God sees, knows, and responds to our situations. When we worry because of obstacles and problems,

the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he sees that his day is coming.

The ‘wicked’ at whom, or at which, God laughs can be a situation, a disease, a memory, or anything which would rob us of our peace.

Those things will have an end; they will not go on forever. But God ensures that we will go on forever: we will be preserved and outlast our pains and sufferings and sadnesses.

The Lord upholds the righteous.
The Lord knows the days of the blameless,
and their heritage will remain forever;
they are not put to shame in evil times;
in the days of famine they have abundance.

We will enter into times of difficulty. But in the midst of our sorrows, God will give us ‘abundance’ - His grace, which sustains us. The Psalmist says, about a person facing suffering, that

though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the Lord upholds his hand.

Here is a mystery: God, we learn, loves justice. Yet His grace is so great that it seemingly violates justice. We are given something much better than we have earned.

For the Lord loves justice;
he will not forsake his saints.
They are preserved forever,

We are, from time to time, attacked: depression, loneliness, sickness, overwork, and others, are the ‘wicked’ ones who attack us.

The wicked watches for the righteous
and seeks to put him to death.
the Lord will not abandon him to his power
or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial.

The Psalmist tells us that the Lord will ‘exalt’ us. We will be elevated above our circumstances.

The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord;
he is their stronghold in the time of trouble.
the Lord helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them.

God is constantly at work to save us and to bless us. To our minds, this is not at all obvious. Sometimes, we can see only misery and hardship. There is a deeper and more profound reality: Jesus is the friend who is “closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Even as we suffer, He is preparing something much better for us.

The Hebrew Bible - But in Which Order?

The Hebrew canon, known often as either the Tanakh or as the Old Testament, is a collection of thirty-nine books. The number is somewhat arbitrary, because some books, like I Samuel and II Samuel, were divided into two merely because of the typical length of a scroll.

These books are further grouped into three sets. The first set is called the Torah, or the five books of Moses. Properly speaking, therefore, the Torah is not the same as the Old Testament. The Torah is merely one part of the Old Testament.

The word ‘Torah’ is often (mis)translated into English as ‘law,’ but ‘instructions’ or ‘directions’ might be more accurate. These five books are also called the ‘Pentateuch.’

The second segment of the Tanakh is called the ‘prophets’ or Nevi’m (also transliterated as Nebiim). This group is subdivided into the ‘earlier prophets’ (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and the ‘later prophets’ (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve ‘minor’ prophets).

The third segment is the Ketubim (also Ketuvim) or ‘writings.’ This group includes Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, Esther, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Ezra, and Chronicles.

The order of the books in the Hebrew Bible varies: in the Tanakh the books are presented in the three groups described above. Most English translations of the Old Testament follow a different order, a pattern first found in the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, made by the Jewish communities in Egypt sometime between 300 BC and 100 BC.

Franz Delitzsch and Johann Friedrich Karl Keil coauthored an exhaustive analysis of the Tanakh. They write:

The prophetic histories are followed in the Old Testament canon by the prophetic books of prediction. The two together form the middle portion of the threefold canon.

Delitzsch and Keil note that definition of the words ‘prophet’ and ‘prophecy’ need to be examined. The middle third of the Tanakh is called the ‘prophets,’ but isn’t Moses a prophet, too? Yet he and his words are recorded in the first third. Arguably, some texts in the final third are also prophetic.

The Torah is indeed also a prophetic work, since Moses, the mediator through whom the law was revealed, was for that very reason a prophet without an equal (Deu. 34:10); and even the final codification of the great historical law-book possessed a prophetic character (Ezr. 9:11). But it would not have been right to include the Torah (Pentateuch) in that portion of the canon which is designated as “the prophets” (Nebiim), inasmuch as, although similar in character, it is not similar in rank to the other prophetic books. It stands by itself as perfectly unique — the original record which regulated on all sides the being and life of Israel as the chosen nation, and to which all other prophecy in Israel stood in a derivative relation. And this applies not to prophecy alone, but to all the later writings. The Torah was not only the type of the prophetic histories, but of the non-prophetic, the priestly, political, and popular histories also. The former followed the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic type, and the latter the Elohistic. The Torah unites the prophetic and (so to speak) hagiographical styles of historical composition in a manner which is peculiar to itself.

Comparing the groupings and orderings found in the Hebrew Tankah with those found in the English Old Testament is a worthwhile and thought-provoking task.

Finding the Eternal

As followers of Jesus organize those aspects of their life which are corporate, they ask, “how should we live?” (Luke 3:10, II Peter 3:11).

Because people have been following Jesus for around 2,000 years, there’s a wealth of patterns and examples to study. How do we make the best use of a previous generation’s experience?

In this context, the question of tradition is hotly debated. Those who find worthy examples in the past are accused of being woodenly and slavishly bound to tradition. Those who depart from patterns of the past are accused of blindly rejecting experience’s wisdom.

With a couple of millennia behind them, the followers of Jesus have experimented with, rejected, and accepted a diverse assortment of models. What might be called traditional in a North American Pentecostal church would be seen as a break with tradition in the Armenian Orthodox church, and vice-versa.

But God asks each generation of Jesus followers to reexamine these matters and sort them out again. Why? Perhaps He wants them understand, and engage with, whichever order they inhabit. He doesn’t want them to merely go through the motions of some organization.

How do we distinguish, in tradition, between what is valuable and what should be cast aside? How do we determine which innovations are salutary and which are wasteful? Noted scholar Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called for innovation and insight.

In making a distinction between ‘tradition’ and ‘traditionalism,’ Pelikan is giving us a bit of advice. A truly beneficial tradition is part of a living faith: it engages with the lives of the believers, and with the lives of the rest of the world; it brings the eternal into the present. Mere formulaic activity is not a living faith. Merely replicating a pattern, with little thought to its meaning or purpose or its points of contact with current life, is not a meaningful tradition, but rather a dead traditionalism.

Bound, as humans are, by living inside time, humans tend to make a great distinction between the past, the present, and the future. This difference may not be so great for God, because He lives outside time.

In 1979, when the Episcopalian church in the United States experienced animated debate about the adoption of a revised prayer book, a comment was made to the effect that God is neither old nor new, but eternal. (The reader is advised to search the periodicals of that time for an exact quote.)

The danger in a discussion about tradition is that one can be easily sidetracked into a consideration of concrete external symbols, which are not as important as the eternal meanings which such symbols are supposed to carry into contemporary daily life.

Phrasings, wordings, types of music, architectural and garment are, of themselves, of little value. They are the “jars of clay” (II Corinthians 4:7) which carry the wisdom of God into our hearts, minds, and hands. Richard Rohr writes:

Many religious people seem to think that God, for some utterly unexplainable reason, loves the human past (usually their own group’s recent past) instead of the present or the future of this creation.

Whether one maintains tradition or departs from it, in either case this choice should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. The goal is neither to preserve tradition nor to violate it. But such preservation or violation can be a step toward a goal. Rohr continues:

We can do much better than substituting mere traditionalism for actual God experience.

Obviously, the locus classicus for this theme is Mark 7:8, as Jesus says, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Another relevant text is found in John’s Revelation (3:2): “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.”

If the goal is to “strengthen,” then we choose to follow, or depart from, tradition as that goal dictates. Richard Lenski explains that this passage

means to take strong, immediate, effective measures. “To make decisively firm” all that is ready to die completely conveys the idea of establishing it with new life and vitality so that it may be able to shake off this creeping death and to stand solidly against its inroads.

The stakes here become apparent: if we become sidetracked, then spiritual death will ensue.

Inevitably, we will become sidetracked. We will embrace tradition when we should depart from it, and we will violate tradition when we should preserve it. We are sinners and we are sinful.

Jesus reaches into our blind and confused fumbling, and He directs us. Despite our best efforts, not because of them, He will lead us according to His will.

He will forgive us for our bad corporate choices as well as for our bad individual choices. His Holy Spirit, not our squabbling among ourselves, will call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the followers of Jesus on earth.

James Writes about Grace

In James’s letter to the early followers of Jesus, written around 50 AD, he writes that God “gives generously to all without reproach.” James is using the concept called ‘grace’ - the concept of unearned, unmerited, freely-given gifts.

God is in the habit of giving people something better than what they deserve. George Stulac writes:

By instructing his readers to ask for wisdom, James is pointed them to God’s grace. This is one example of what underlies the whole epistle - James’s confidence in the grace of God and his intense desire for his readers to place their own reliance there.

To be human means to be flawed and imperfect. It means even to be sinful and corrupt. Human beings are born into a bad situation, a situation out of which they cannot get themselves.

The abstract concept of grace take a specific and concrete form in the person of Jesus. The core of His message is to tell people that they can’t earn their way into heaven, and should stop trying to do so.

Jesus presents Himself as offering, freely and equally to all, admission into heaven. That which we can’t earn for ourselves, He gives as a gift. George Stulac continues:

James then leads his readers into God’s grace by calling attention to four facets. As they come in the Greek word order, first God is the one who “is giving.” The word is didontos, a present active participle; it is God’s constant nature to be gracious and giving. Second, God gives to all (pasin). The call to live by faith is extended to everyone, and no one is left without an invitation to trust in God. Third, God gives generously (haplos), emphasizing that God gives freely and without reserve. Fourth, God gives without finding fault, or without reproaching.

The ability to display grace - to be gracious - is not only ethically good, but is also a display of power. Only a powerful being can give gifts which are so good and so many.

Thus we see that Jesus is not only generous, but is in control. The title ‘Lord’ indicates that Jesus is powerful as well as graceful. Ed Potoczak writes:

Our Lord’s nature is entirely about forgiveness. He loved us and forgave us before we even knew him. He even died for us before we were born. We can be brave and strong, but we are also called as knights of the King’s court to forgive those we live with, work with, and meet on a daily basis. By relying on Jesus and his strength and peace we can work out our differences and if the other party will not reconcile with us, we can forgive him or her as a follower of Christ and move on. The God of mercy expects his knights to be sincerely merciful.

Grace, then, is not a product of weakness, but rather flows from strength. God’s omnipotence is the source of His grace.

The ability to give many and great gifts belongs only to a most powerful Being. The vassal can be gracious, but the king much more so, and the vassal's graciousness is empower by the king’s.

James Describes God's Character

The letter written by James to early followers of Jesus, around 50 AD, contains, among other things, a sketch of God’s character. Who is God? What does He do all day long? What is His personality like?

Early in the text, James tells the reader that God “gives generously to all without reproach.”

Parsing this phrase, we note that God “gives,” i.e., He does not ‘pay,’ and it is not a quid pro quo, but rather an unearned, unmerited, freely-given gift or present. This is the meaning of the word grace.

God gives “generously,” giving more than is necessary or usual or expected. This is kindness. If God gave us merely our physical bodies and enough sustenance to keep us alive, that would already be a gift. But He gives more than that.

He gives “to all,” emphasizing that God cares for each person. Every human being is the object of God’s affection. George Stulac writes that, as James formulated his letter, one

fact of God’s character was his grace. He gives good gifts. We imitate God in this trait by graciously giving good gifts to others - even to those who are causing the trials in our lives, for we will give “generously to all without finding fault” (1:5). When we are treated unjustly and hurtfully, we will take our stand here: to rely on God to provide good gifts for us while we persevere in loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us and praying for those who mistreat us (Lk 6:27-28).

James continues by saying that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” Not only is a God a generous giver, but everything which is given or received finds its original and ultimate source in Him.

Not only does grace characterize God, but He is the unique initiator of grace in the universe. God is gracious, but He is also merciful. Ed Potoczak offers a familiar formula for defining ‘mercy’:

Justice is when someone receives what he or she deserves. Mercy is when they do not get what they deserve, but instead, they receive forgiveness.

Because all humans are imperfect, we all need forgiveness; God shows mercy to all. One aspect of God’s character, as described by James, is that He is a wellspring of both grace and mercy.

Dust, Breath, Soul

Jesus presented, among other ideas, a conception of what it means to be a human. After 2,000 years, that idea continues to stand in tension with competing conceptions, notably, with versions of Platonism and Neoplatonism.

The Hebraic worldview refuses to fit neatly into either a Cartesian dualism or some type of monism. In Deuteronomy, we see heart, soul, and might listed as different aspects of a human being. We must not, however, picture these as separate components which are capable of isolated examination:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

The human being is more than the sum of her or his parts. The Semitic thought of Holy Scripture rejects the Cartesian view of the human who is a mind and has a body. Instead, the Hebraic conceptual framework offers a human who is the intersection, or union, of soul and body.

The Greek text of the New Testament adds a fourth noun to the total, substituting ‘mind’ and ‘strength’ for ‘might’:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Perhaps it is best not to regard these substantives as clearly distinguished modules of a human being, but rather to conceive of them as varying aspects or facets of single indivisible entity. These four traits are therefore perhaps not completely separable from each other.

Like the proverbial two sides of a coin, a human can’t be disassembled into parts. Author Wendell Berry offers his analysis:

The formula given in Genesis 2:7 is not man = body + soul; the formula is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope.

To be sure, it is operating at a disadvantage to discuss these matters in English. A study of Hebrew and Greek are indispensable. The name ‘Adam’ is simply a linguistic variation of the word for dirt. The text tells us that with the breath of God, Adam ‘became a living soul,’ which begs the question, what exactly is a non-living soul?

We must note, in passing, that Wendell Berry is not a trained philosopher or theologian, although his engagement with spiritual matters seems to be informed and sincere. His analysis of what it means to be human continues:

The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. “Soul” here refers to the whole creature.

There might lurk, however, a danger in the honorable attempt to do justice to the Hebraic anthropology. In trying to do justice to the text and its Semitic vision of human nature, and in trying to avoid Neoplatonism, it is possible to veer too far in the opposite direction, and lapse into something akin to materialism, which could unwittingly deny the immortality of the soul.

There is a paradox in the fact that soul and body are not simply detachable from one another, and yet eternal life is possible even when the body has returned to the state of scattered dust.

Paradoxes are, however, exactly what we should expect when trying to understand a design produced by the mind of God, who says

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

On the one hand, we wish to reject a Platonic view that an immaterial soul and a physical body are essentially separate and distinct, and merely happen to coincide for a segment of time. But on the other hand, we must be careful not to identify the human being too closely with the physical body, because that body does eventually end up as dust.

Among some followers of Jesus, the Cartesian formula, “I am a mind and I have a body” has become too influential and nudged them away from the ontology of the text. The Hebraic metaphysic of Scripture might be closer to something like “a human being is a mind and a body.”

A document written by the CTCR correctly moves away from Neoplatonic dualism, but does it, in citing Wendell Berry, embrace too materialistic a worldview? If, as Berry writes, “body + breath = soul / living creature,” then what becomes of the person when the breath stops and the body disintegrates? Has Berry gotten rid of Plato at the expense of eternal life?

Platonism has often been associated with the immortality of the soul, while materialism has been associated with a concept of personhood which ends at death. How do we conceptualize an eternal soul which is somehow inherently bound to a material body? The CTCR writes:

Not only did God form us from the ground but He made us “nephesh.” Nephesh has often been translated in the past as “soul,” but it is often more accurate to render it as “living creature.” Again, we start with Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature [nephesh].” This is an important text for it describes our nature as human beings. Wendell Berry rightly observes that this text does not support a dichotomous view of the human creature that consists of two discrete parts glued together. He notes that the formula is not: body + soul = human creature. Instead, the formula is body + breath = soul / living creature. “He [God] formed man of dust; then, by breathing His breath into it, He made the dust come alive ... Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together but as a single mystery.” The theme continues. “When his breath departs, he returns to the earth” (Ps 146:4; Ps 104:29).

By embracing Berry’s formulation, does the CTCR somehow open the door to an interpretation which has no room for life beyond the death of my current physical body?

The challenge of articulating the Semitic worldview of Scripture is compounded by the fact that Scripture itself seems, at some points, to drift toward some type of dualism. Consider the book of Ecclesiastes:

The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

One starting point for this investigation would be a word study of ‘body’ and ‘bodies’ - and their Greek equivalents - in the New Testament. The human being seems to be intrinsically linked to the notion of having a material body. This would do away with the Platonic image of heaven as an afterlife of disembodied souls.

But while the human being seems necessarily to have a body, it may not necessarily need any one particular body. Hence the New Testament’s image of souls receiving new bodies (II Corinthians 5).

Jesus Alerts Us to Dangers

We humans have bad spiritual eyesight, and are not capable of seeing the dangers around us. For this reason, God enlightens us.

God advises us, in the same way as traveller’s information, offered through your GPS, warns you of road construction, accidents, and traffic jams.

God’s enlightenment functions like the radar which helps a pilot avoid mountains while flying in zero-visibility conditions. As Webb Johnson writes,

In the same way, Jesus came to reveal the truth to us, to show us how things truly operate in the world. He came to remind us of the powers that run things behind the scenes, and expose their lies. His vision for us was not to condemn the sinners among us and offer them threats, but to expose the dark forces that seek to cloud men’s minds and mock God.

God offers us His guidance through His written word; through the study, preaching, and discussion of that word; and through the regular consumption of His body and blood, which is found in, with, and under the bread and wine.

Eventually, He will clear our spiritual vision, when He remakes the universe with a new heaven and a new earth, and gives us new bodies.

Until then, our groggy state makes us incapable of spiritual progress on our own. It is not we, but God who brings us forward (cf. Galatians 2:20). In salvation, man is passive and God is active. As Jeremiah writes:

Behold, I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob
and have compassion on his dwellings;
the city shall be rebuilt on its mound,
and the palace shall stand where it used to be.
Out of them shall come songs of thanksgiving,
and the voices of those who celebrate.
I will multiply them, and they shall not be few;
I will make them honored, and they shall not be small.
Their children shall be as they were of old,
and their congregation shall be established before me,
and I will punish all who oppress them.
Their prince shall be one of themselves;
their ruler shall come out from their midst;
I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me,
for who would dare of himself to approach me?
declares The Lord.
And you shall be my people,
and I will be your God.”

This same divine action which wrought corporate and physical salvation, described in Jeremiah’s text, also works individual and spiritual salvation, for which Jeremiah’s text is an intentional metaphor.

Tempests in Teacups

The publishing industry gushes forth a seemingly infinite stream of spiritual books. Some of these attract both passionate fans and animated detractors.

Authors like N.T. Wright, Rob Bell, Charles Spurgeon, Joel Osteen, Carl Medearis, Gene Veith, Max Lucado, Beth Moore, Philip Yancey, Rick Warren, Karl Barth, R.C. Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, and many others keep the Christian book business profitable.

In many cases, each book which falls from the pen of these writers has been both praised and condemned by various reviewers. A single book may instigate articles and more books in response. If one critic finds fault with a publication, another rushes to its defense.

Huge amounts of time and ink are spent in the process of responding to responses. At which point does this effort become a waste of resources?

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he writes:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

We may conclude that Paul is asking us sort through those writings which come to our attention: “test everything.” This is an imperative toward careful examination and close reading. When we find something “good,” we are to retain it.

Paul does not, however, explicitly indicate what we should do with something which is not “good” - what do we do with something that is bad?

Paul does not tell us to carry on an extended polemic against those things which we find to be bad. The cottage industry which produces printed vitriol against items in the continuous flood of books which falls from the presses of the Christian book industry is not instituted by Scripture.

One might instead conjecture that Paul wants us to devote thought and attention to that which is good. In written analysis, so with ethical behavior: it is more important and valuable to do good than to condemn evil. He writes in his letter to the Philippians:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things.

It might be that Paul would instruct us, when we find something which is not good, to ignore it, discard it, or pass over it in silence.

To produce endless reams of verbiage identifying and condemning the heresies may not be the most productive or constructive use of one’s time and ink. Merely because heresies are printed does not mean that followers of Jesus are required to catalogue and explain each error.

Building the Kingdom of Heaven is a constructive, not destructive, activity. Speaking the truth is not synonymous with refuting error, and sometimes the best refutation is to simply assert a truth without specifically explaining the error.

One may unwittingly or unintentionally assist an error by dwelling on it too long. Paul speaks of “the ability to distinguish between spirits” in his letter to the Corinthians, but he does not instruct us to dwell on the details of error at length.

It is true that it is occasionally necessary to identify heresy as heresy. But having so diagnosed it, let us then move on to other, more edifying matters.

Theological disputes and debates can make valuable contributions to the knowledge-base of Jesus followers. But when these discussions morph into a continuous stream of articles and books which endlessly parse the sentences of one’s opponents, and which are motivated by an unhealthy passion which verges on hatred, then they have ceased to be productive.

Those who write, or habitually read, such Streitschriften are likely to overestimate the importance of their squabbles, likely not to see that they have eventually become irrelevant, and likely not to understand that the rest of the reading public has simply moved on to something else. They have reduced themselves to trivia, and look foolish as they fight battles which manifest themselves as exercises in nitpicking and oblivious misunderstanding.

There is no need for animus in the analysis of texts; we are obliged to view their authors, even authors of heresy, with compassion. There is no need for fear; in the long run, heresies never triumph, and truth always does. We may proceed with calm assurance, a “peace which passes all understanding,” which allows us to not remain stuck in the endless cycle of verbal retaliations and repeated clarifications.

Mark and His Rooms

Who is Mark, the author of the Gospel which bears his name? It is a commonplace that he wrote in Rome, and that what he wrote was largely the content of Peter’s preaching. He is sometimes known by the double name John-Mark, assuming that the man mentioned in Acts chapters 12, 13, and 15 is the same as the author.

Scholars are conflicted: some see Mark as the earliest of the four Gospels, while other view Mark as an epitome written after the others had been fixed. Richard Lenski writes:

Mark is first mentioned in Acts 12:12, where he is named only incidentally to distinguish his mother Mary from the other Marys mentioned in the New Testament. Peter, released from prison by an angel, went to the house of this woman, which seems to have been near by. This was in the spring of the year 44, at the time of the Passover. The fact that this is called her house indicates that she was a widow at this time, but how long her husband had been dead, or what name he bore, is not known. Mark was very likely present among the many who prayed for Peter. It is worth noting that here, where we first hear of Mark, it is in connection with Peter; the last we hear of him, when he wrote the Gospel in Rome, shows him again in closest association with Peter.

Because Mary’s house is mentioned in Acts, some readers have assumed that a special significance is to be attached to it. Is Mary’s house in Acts, mentioned with its “upper room,” to be identified with “upper room” narratives in the first five books of the New Testament?

Yet there must have been, at that time and in that region, thousands of houses, and other buildings, which had “upper rooms.” Probability is against the identification, even if we reduce the field to those in and around Jerusalem.

Much has been made of this house of Mary’s. It is made the house in which Jesus ate the last Passover and instituted the Holy Supper; likewise, the house to which the eleven returned after the ascension of Jesus, and where ten days later the Spirit descended upon the assembled disciples (Acts 2:1, 2).

There are two different words in play. In Mark 14:15, one Greek noun is used for the upper room; in Acts 1:13 a different noun is used. Some English translations obscure the fact that two different words are used; other translations make it more obvious.

Both words mean “an upper room,” and in the latter passage the article refers to this room as one that was well known. The man bearing the pitcher of water is supposed to be Mark’s father. Mark is said to have been present at the Lord’s last Passover and at the institution of the Supper. He is also supposed to have followed to Gethsemane, with only a linen cloth cast about him (Mark 14:51). All this is ingenious enough but hardly convincing. We cannot believe that, if Mark had been present fully dressed in the upper room with Jesus, he would have left the house and gone through the streets out to Gethsemane clad only in a linen sheet. Every detail in the story of the last Passover leaves the impression that no one was present in the upper room except Jesus and the disciples. Mark was not there to wash the feet of the guests, Jesus himself had to wash the feet of the Twelve.

Does any doctrine or article of faith hang on the question about these rooms? Probably not. Mark’s narrative is known for its speed. Would it be in Mark’s character to introduce subtle allusions? If Mark wanted to draw our attention to the upper room, would he have given it a more prominent role in his narrative?

Perhaps it is worth noting that an upper room was usually quieter and less likely to be disrupted. Both in Mark 14:15 and in Acts 1:13 (and possibly Acts 12:12), God placed the followers of Jesus, not in a busy market square in the center of town, but in place appropriate to His plans for them.

Wrangling about Wright

The writings of N.T. Wright are long and complex. These texts have attracted passionate fans and animated detractors, who in turn write their own long and complex texts. Nicholas Thomas Wright, responding to them, writes more long and complex texts, and so we descend into the swamp of polemic theology.

Theologians in disputation tend toward hyperbole, and so the reader might want to be wary when he is assured that a certain text is “orthodox” - it will probably contain a dash of heresy. Likewise, a text advertised as “heretical” will probably include a fair dose of orthodoxy.

Setting aside both real and feigned controversy, a look at Tom Wright’s words can, in any case, be an occasion for reflection. The wrangling about Wright and his critics will perhaps eventually be forgotten in a century or two, but meditation on Jesus and His Word is always worthwhile.

In a 2009 book titled Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, Wright sets out the book’s program in a preface. He writes that the concept of justification is contentious because

the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen “salvation” as meaning “going to heaven when you die.” I and others have argued that that is inadequate. In the Bible, salvation is not God's rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself.

While it is true that many lay Christians casually or superficially equate salvation with entry into the afterlife, a diverse spectrum of informed theologians, who might otherwise agree on little, concur with Wright. He acknowledges that he is offering a truism. He contends, however, that while this truth is widely acknowledged, the full implications of it are rarely calculated.

Another way of stating this problem is to note that the word ‘salvation’ has a wide sense and a narrow sense. Those who preach to the common man are fond of saying that “there’s nothing more to salvation than Jesus, but there’s more to Jesus than salvation.” If we understand this slogan to be using ‘salvation’ in the narrow sense, i.e. restricted to the question of how one gets into the afterlife, then it’s expressing a sentiment similar to what Wright is expressing.

One might point to the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, where Paul writes about Jesus that

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

If the word ‘salvation’ means ‘reconciling all things in heaven and on earth to God,’ then ‘salvation’ refers to a bit more than simply getting individual humans into the afterlife. So at least part of what Wright is saying here is that we need sort out the broad sense and the narrow sense of the word ‘salvation’ and the various contexts in which we use that word.

It is progress to clarify that the word ‘salvation’ has both a broad sense and a narrow sense, but there is more to the matter than that. Further investigation into the question will, however, be helped by more careful and consistent use of vocabulary. Instead of ‘salvation,’ for example, one could say either ‘entry into the afterlife’ or ‘God’s project to reconcile all aspects of creation to Himself.’

If the first task in Wright’s preface to this particular book is to ask about the ‘what’ of salvation, the next task is to ask about the ‘how.’ He writes:

Second, the question is about the means of salvation, how it is accomplished.

To this question, Wright answers with some variation of the common notion of substitutionary atonement, organized by God’s grace and accessed through faith. Here, too, Wright has lots of company, and in one, or more, major currents of theology. But he adds that many instances of this common theme underemphasize or underappreciate the role of the Holy Spirit.

Some formulations of atonement, substitutionary or otherwise, make it the activity of the Father and the Son, and give the impression that the Holy Spirit was out playing golf while the whole thing happened. Wright argues that the Holy Spirit is an integral part of salvation. Wright could have helped himself here to Luther’s phrasing: the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies” the followers of Jesus. Wright does not quote these words of Luther, but it seems that he is reaching for a similar concept.

The next task which Wright sets for his book is about the nature of justification and its relation to salvation. Again, definition of words is a central part of the task.

Third, the question is about the meaning of justification, what the term and its cognates actually refer to. Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.

There is certainly nothing new about asking provocative questions related to these topics, or initiating debate about them. That’s been going on for 2,000 years. Is Wright saying anything new? He would probably give the traditional theologian’s answer - that, no, he’s saying something very old - as old as the text of the New Testament itself.

It is nearly pointless to attempt to analyze who - Wright or his critics - is ‘orthodox’ or ‘heretical’ - because those words, in turn, have ever shifting definitions.

Wright does seem to be working to contextualize Jesus as a Jew, as placed within a Heilsgeschichte which took place, at least for its first 2,000 years, in a Hebrew cultural context and an Israelite social context. In this, too, he is neither alone nor the first. Already in the late nineteenth century, theologians who followed the concept of the Heilsgeschichte to its logical conclusion understood the need for exploring the context of Jesus, including His Jewishness.

In exploring the interrelations between, and the definitions of, salvation and justification, the playing field for both Wright and his opponents must be a clear statement of grace - that which is unearned, unmerited, freely given: a gift. In layman’s terms, the usual avoidance of speaking about the individual “accepting” Jesus, and to speak rather of “receiving Jesus,” and in general to speak not about what believer does, but rather about what Jesus does and did.

There is room for substantial variation and divergence, even mutual exclusivity, on that field. To stray from that field, however, is to be clearly out of bounds.

The word ‘justification’ in New Testament Greek has legal overtones - to have been justified in a court of law - and Wright will point to key passages in the New Testament which emphasize the courtroom image. The problem for us is, of course, that we are not justifiable - we are sinners. We are born with a corrupt and flawed sinful nature, and we further go on to commit actively, or omit passively, our own sins. We are guilty. What can it mean, then, that we are justified? How can God treat us as innocent? This has led to endless theological wrangling along the lines that God attributes to us a justified status - He labels us ‘just’ - a notion sometimes called ‘forensic’ justification.

To use a simple analogy: if a man owes a large debt, one which he can’t possibly pay, and another man pays it for him, the clerk will mark the first man’s paper with the word ‘paid’ - even though the man did not pay his bill. The payment has been attributed to him.

To gain insight into justification and salvation, Wright urges the reader to consider that

Paul’s doctrine of justification is about the work of Jesus the Messiah of Israel.

Whatever Jesus did then, and whatever he’s doing now, Wright tells us, He did and does as the Jewish Messiah. The fact that He’s generous enough to include Gentiles in no way entails a repudiation of His Judaism. Here, naturally, we speak of a first-century Judaism, not of what might be called ‘Judaism’ 2,000 years later. Jesus finds His context in a robust Judaism which was willing to consider the supernatural, willing to consider an afterlife, and willing to at consider Jesus and His teachings - many of the adherents of that Judaism also became the first adherents of Jesus, and they saw no internal contradiction in doing so.

The second step which Wright takes in exploring the relation between justification and salvation is to examine the concept of covenant as it unfolds in the Heilsgeschichte. Taken as one continuous narratives from the call of Abraham to Christ’s resurrection and to the day of Pentecost, ‘covenant’ is an essential concept in any version of the Heilsgeschichte.

Paul’s doctrine of justification is therefore about what we may call the covenant — the covenant God made with Abraham, the covenant whose purpose was from the beginning the saving call of a worldwide family through whom God’s saving purposes for the world were to be realized.

A third step in Wright’s exploration of the connection between justification and salvation is the exploration of the courtroom image. As already noted, ‘justification’ is a bit of Greek legal jargon. But beyond this, there are other courtroom vocabulary in the New Testament - an extended legal metaphor.

Perhaps, however, this legal talk is not so metaphorical. God is a judge, humans stand accused, there is an accuser against the humans, and there is an advocate for the humans. This is, literally, a trial.

Paul's doctrine of justification is focused on the divine lawcourt. God, as judge, “finds in favor of,” and hence acquits from their sin, those who believe in Jesus Christ.

The fourth and final step which Wright outlines for his project is to look at the end: the Heilsgeschichte does not end with the day of Pentecost, it continues into the future, to a day when God unveils a new heaven and a new earth.

Paul's doctrine of justification is bound up with eschatology, that is, his vision of God's future for the whole world and for his people.

Any version of the Heilsgeschichte which fails to include some version of a finite end to the Heilsgeschichte - which is at the same time a concrete beginning of a new paradise - is incomplete. The starting point of this Heilsgeschichte, a covenant made with Abraham, includes already a vision of the renovation of all creation.

The project which Wright sets out for his book is, at first glance, neither new nor very heretical. But, as theologians say, taking delight in their deliberately ironic use of a common idiom, the devil is in the details.

Freely-Given Grace

God is habitually about the business of given people something better than what they deserve. Yet we humans are ever tempted to think that somehow we have persuaded God, by our good behavior, to give us something - or we’re thinking that we have a right to request something from God because of what we’ve done.

Facing this repeated error - arrogance, really - on the part of people, Moses gave a stern lecture to the Israelites as they were about to enter the Promised Land. He wanted them to be clear about why they were going to occupy or possess this land:

After Yahweh your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “Yahweh has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that Yahweh your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiffnecked people.

To make sure that that the people understood what Moses was trying to say, Joshua, who led after the death of Moses, reminded the people of this fact, and gave more details. Joshua was speaking around 1406 B.C., but cited events that happened prior to 1446 B.C.:

Joshua said to all the people, “This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods.’”

Joshua is directing the people’s attention to the starting-point of their history: the beginning of the Heilsgeschichte, the beginning of salvation history. Abraham was called by God to be a foundation of the redemption process, not because Abraham was so righteous, but because God wanted to display His ability to defeat sin, death, and the devil.

Around 2091 B.C., God chose Abraham to be the head of tribe. This tribe, through a long and complex history, would become a nation. That nation would host the Messiah.

God chose Abraham to launch the process by which the Messiah would arrive. It was not because of Abraham’s righteousness that God chose him. Abraham lived in the city of Ur, east of the Euphrates, a part of the Babylonian region. It may be difficult to reconstruct exactly which belief system Abraham held prior to God’s call. But we can say with certainty that Ur was a civilization thoroughly steeped in polytheistic paganism, featuring gruesome human sacrifices.

In any case, Joshua informs us that Abraham’s father, Terah, worshipped idols.

When God rescued the people from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, around 1446 B.C., it was not because they had been so faithful and righteous. During the 400 years of the their time in that country, they had also worshipped idols. Joshua says,

“Now fear Yahweh and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve Yahweh.”

What is the impact of these texts 3,000 years later? We are reminded that we do not have our blessings - our material possessions, our spiritual faith, or our personal relationships - because we’re such nice people.

We are sinners. We are doubly sinful: once because we’re born with a corrupt nature, and twice because we commit our own sins.

But God gives us things far nicer than we deserve. The only reasonable option we have is to thank Him. We can sometimes do that by praising Him, and sometimes by serving our fellow human. It is comforting to know that we are getting better than what we’ve earned!