Afraid of What?

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul asks his friends to pray for him:

Also pray that God will give me the right words to say. Then I will speak fearlessly when I reveal the mystery of the Good News. Because I have already been doing this as Christ’s representative, I am in prison. So pray that I speak about this Good News as fearlessly as I have to.

Note that Paul uses the word ‘fearlessly’ - other translators render it as ‘boldly’ - and the reader might ask: what causes Paul’s fears?

The quickest answer is that Paul is afraid of those who would resist or mock the Gospel which he proclaims. Anyone who talks about the Good News of Jesus, whether in a private conversation or before a large audience, risks encountering mockery or rejection. That risk is often realized into actuality. Such a fear would be reasonable on Paul’s part: he is realistically anticipating (‘counting the cost’ Luke 14:28).

Yet there are other possible objects of fear. The quickest answer is not the only answer.

Perhaps Paul is concerned about fearing God. A proper relationship to God is described as the ‘fear of the Lord’ which is a respect and reverence. A correct understand of the ‘fear’ of the Lord reveals that it is not a form of anxiety. This distinction is sometimes expressed in the difference between Furcht and Ehrfurcht. Paul may be worried that his healthy respect and reverence could give way to unhealthy anxiety.

It could also be that case that Paul is afraid of himself. He knows all too well the frailty of human nature. Maybe he’s afraid that he won’t declare the Gospel well, that his own sinfulness will undermine the reputation of the Gospel, that his anticipation of mockery and rejection will dampen his enthusiasm about the Gospel - Paul is afraid of being afraid.

Note, too, that Paul uses the word ‘mystery’ to refer to the Gospel that he proclaims. The Gospel includes truths which human reason cannot quite grasp. Paul wants to be bold in presenting this mystery.

The reader can see in this text an encouragement to embrace the notion of mystery: humans cannot ‘understand’ the Gospel thoroughly as we understand, e.g., a chemistry textbook. There are questions which, in this lifetime on this earth, will never be answered. There are paradoxes: seeming contradictions, the final harmonizations of which will be revealed only in the next life.

Paul’s request reveals that he, like all humans, wrestled with fear and mystery. Jesus strengthens individuals to face their fears. Jesus helps people to accept that there are some mysteries which human reason can never clarify.

What the Text Shows, but Does Not Tell: The Condemnation of Polygamy

Many Christians are conflicted about instances of polygamy in the Bible. When asked about the seeming contradiction between the generally accepted standard of monogamy and the cases of, e.g., the patriarch Jacob or King Solomon having more than one wife, faithful Christians often look down, shuffle their feet, and mumble something about it having been OK back then.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Old Testament, in fact, contains a sustained polemic against polygamy and in favor of monogamy.

That line of reasoning, however, is often implicit rather than explicit, because the Hebrew Scriptures use narrative didactic instead of propositional didactic.

Even an erudite reference work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery make the simple mistake of assuming that the text allows for Solomon’s or Jacob’s marriages:

Both the Old and New Testaments agree that adultery is sin. In the OT any married woman who has intercourse with a man other than her husband is guilty of adultery, as is any man who has sex with another man’s wife. But it is sometimes acceptable for a man to have multiple wives or concubines. Jesus holds up a more consistent standard in the NT, with both men and women called to be faithful to their one spouse.

The Hebraic style of the Old Testament prefers narrative didactic: showing concrete examples. The OT is less inclined to use propositional didactic: stating general principles. So we do not find a clear statement in the text that polygamy is wrong.

Nevertheless, the text contains expansive argumentation against polygamy. Consider the description given of Lamech, the first recorded polygamist in human history. He is clearly painted as someone whose example should not be followed.

The polygamy of Jacob results in negative consequences: jealousy and envy between Rachel and Leah. The text is preaching against polygamy.

Solomon’s multiple wives are explicitly linked to his spiritual downfall.

Abraham was not strictly guilty of polygamy, because he was not married to more than one woman at the same time. The text, however, still questions his behavior, inasmuch as he had children with his two successive wives, Sarah and Keturah, with his domestic servant Hagar, and with an unspecified number of concubines. The result was a lack of domestic tranquility as the children of at least five different mothers competed with each other. The text is highlighting the suboptimal consequences of Abraham’s indiscriminate procreation.

Simultaneously, the text points to the virtues of monogamy. In the various prophetic passages which employ the metaphor of God as husband and the nation of Israel as His bride, the paradigm is distinctly monogamous.

The reader should understand that the Old Testament offers a narrative, or a string of related narratives, which together constitute a condemnation of polygamy and an endorsement of monogamy. According to the text, polygamy is never OK.

Aggressive Grace: Assertive Salvation

In a famous passage, Paul Tillich develops the familiar concept of God’s active grace encountering the human soul: the soul which is passive in the process of justification, even though it may be active in the process of sanctification. Tillich pushes this concept and shows that grace is not only active, but it is even aggressive.

Tillich’s hypothesis may be related to a puzzling passage in the New Testament (Matthew 11:12), where Jesus says:

The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful people have been seizing it.

It is no innovation on Tillich’s part to say that grace is active. But if we consider the breathtaking scale and scope of what grace accomplishes, ‘active’ might be an understatement. To completely cover all the sins of a human being, to gain admission into eternal life for that person, and empower that person to begin to live a new life even here and now in this world: that is an amazing power.

To accomplish all of this, not for one human being, but for billions of people, and to do so completely, effectively, finally, and in a way that can’t be cancelled or nullified - this is power and strength on a scale so grand and cosmic that ‘active’ does indeed seem like an understatement.

Tillich uses a verb of violence: he says that grace ‘strikes’ us:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

The assertive nature of grace shatters our negativity, our vanity, and our self-indulgence. It sometimes manifests itself in our losses and in our griefs. God says, after all, that “My power is strongest when you are weak” (II Corinthians 12:9).

When grace strikes us, we might not at first be able to totally conceptualize the experience - to turn the sensation into a perception. Moses, after all, had to ask God what His name was. Moses was experiencing God before he could articulate the nature of God.

Tillich uses another violent verb: grace ‘breaks into’ our lives:

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

Grace’s invasion into our life does not instantly transform us into perfect beings: We are still sinful, imperfect, broken, and flawed. It is God who is perfect, not we.

Although we are still corrupted by means of sin, what is established by grace is our relationship to God. Our ontological status is not changed, but our relational status is.

Tillich uses yet one more violent verb. Grace ‘conquers sin,’ and thereby creates the foundation for a relationship:

If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

God’s liberating grace is often forceful. The exodus out of Egypt was a violent event. The escape from the Babylonian captivity required the destruction of the Babylonian empire.

Given that God’s grace is capable of changing the foundational dynamics of the universe, one could hardly expect it to be cuddly and domesticated influence.

God Uses Whom He Will

The example of Cyrus the Persian is paradigmatic for God’s action on a world-historical scale. As a Persian of the pre-Zoroastrian era, Cyrus would have been a polytheist, and his worldview would have differed fundamentally from that of Hebrews who knew and worshipped the Lord.

Yet a premier Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, tells us that Cyrus is God’s “anointed one” and that “the Lord loves Cyrus.” Isaiah also quotes God as saying that Cyrus is “My shepherd.” Not only does God seem to embrace Cyrus, but the language used is shockingly messianic.

Around 500 B.C., Isaiah’s statements about Cyrus would have been shocking for the Hebrew readers.

From a Hebrew perspective, Cyrus would have been “unclean.” Cyrus came from a culture which had perspectives in direct contradiction to Hebrew society: Persia’s society at that time condoned slavery and failed to see value and dignity in every human life.

Yet God chose to use Cyrus to unfold a segment of his world-historical plan.

This paradigm is found elsewhere in the text. The reader finds that “the Lord had given victory to Aram” (II Kings 5), Aram being a pagan nation.

Likewise, God “led King Pul of Assyria” to take several tribes captive (I Chronicles 5). Subsequently, “the Lord used Nebuchadnezzar to take Judah and Jerusalem away into captivity” (I Chronicles 6).

God uses many different people to carry out His plan. God uses all sorts of people. He does not confine Himself to those who know and honor Him. The entire earth is, after all, God’s personal property. The paradigm is that God can, will, and does use anyone He chooses. God is not limited in His choices. Any type of person can be used by God.

Which might lead one to entertain the hypothesis that God uses not only anybody, but everybody. Such a hypothesis will require further investigation.

Food and Incarnation

The concept of incarnation is central because it demands attention both to the “here and now” and to the “there and then” - and to the connection between the two of them.

If incarnation is central to the Good News of Jesus, then the act of eating is central to incarnation. Scan the text for mentions of eating, drinking, and even feasting, and the numerous occurrences of these vocabulary leave no doubt that these actions are important.

Eating is, in the text, more than merely obtaining the calories and nutrients necessary to sustain life. People eating together reflects the notion of building unity and fellowship, as Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians:

He also gave apostles, prophets, missionaries, as well as pastors and teachers as gifts to his church. Their purpose is to prepare God’s people to serve and to build up the body of Christ. This is to continue until all of us are united in our faith and in our knowledge about God’s Son, until we become mature, until we measure up to Christ, who is the standard.

Notice that the process of unification is exactly that: a process. Perfect unity is a future goal, not a present reality. People who follow Jesus are in a process of continuous engagement. Over time, that engagement moves, perhaps asymptotically, toward agreement.

Incarnation is the glorious promise that we are in motion toward agreement and unity. Incarnation is also the realistic understanding that we, as fallen human beings, will not achieve total or perfect unity or agreement in this life.

Dining together with those who follow Jesus is a “foretaste of the feast to come.” Sharing meals with unbelievers and heretics is an imitatio dei, inasmuch as Jesus often ate with those who were skeptical of His claims to divinity and of His claims to be the Savior of all people.

In the book of Luke, Jesus gives instructions to His followers: to eat with those who “welcome” or “accept” them. They are not to wait to find those who agree perfectly with them, or are in perfect unity with them. A mere willingness to hear the Gospel suffices.

Stay with the family that accepts you. Eat and drink whatever they offer you. After all, the worker deserves his pay. Do not move around from one house to another. When ever you go into a city and the people welcome you, eat whatever they serve you.

Interestingly, Paul also writes (I Corinthians 5:10-11) that circumstances might arise when it would be necessary to reduce the amount of fellowship one might have with certain people. This passage requires careful analysis. Paul tells us that we should not “associate” with certain people, but adds that we should continue to “have contact with” them.

Who are these people with whom we should not “associate”? Because all people sin, it cannot be that we should break fellowship with anyone who sins. Paul notes that it would be impossible to break off fellowship with sinners, and even if it were possible, it wouldn't be desirable. Rather, fellowship should be reduced, but not entirely cut off, with those who fail to acknowledge themselves to be sinners.

Jesus is interested, after all, in sinners. Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).

If there is anyone with whom we should not eat, then, it is those who consider themselves to be without sin, who consider themselves to be perfect. To be sure, there are many who would never proclaim themselves to be perfect, but whose actions and words imply some attitude of self-righteousness.

But rather than worrying about our supper companions, it is much more relevant that we direct this warning to ourselves: do we “examine ourselves” (II Corinthians 13:5)? Are we willing to admit that we are sinners? To admit that we sin? To admit that we are sinful?

Let us be unambiguous with ourselves about who and what we are. When we confess that we are sinners, that we are sinful, and that we sin, - then we can be certain of God’s compassion and love toward us.

More Than Salvation: God’s Plan for Constant Communion

Why do we want to be in relationship with God? Some common answers might be: to receive blessings from Him; to obey Him; to learn principles for proper living from Him; to help build His kingdom.

While each of those answers contains an element of truth, each of them is complete, and even the totality of them is incomplete. Skye Jethani writes:

The primary purpose of our worship gatherings, preachings, and programs should be to present a ravishing vision of Jesus Christ. When people come to see who he is and what God is like, treasuring him becomes the natural outcome.

We can too easily lose our focus. As the New Testament says, “We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith.”

Jethani uses specific verbs to speak of the relationship between God and human beings: “unite” and “experience” and “treasure.” Each of these has rich semantic field to unpack.

The word ‘unite’ is used in the New Testament, and also in some mystical traditions. Those who follow Jesus are united with God, and God is working to unite all things. Yet this union is communion; the individual does not lose her or his identity in a mystical merging with God.

The Psalmist encourages experience, urging the reader to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Our experience is neither the foundation of our doctrine nor the confirmation of our theology, but rather the manifestation of our dogma. If we believe what we say we believe, then our experiences will be shaped by that belief.

The word ‘treasure’ is used by Jesus in some of His parables. We know that God loves us and saves us, but beyond that, He treasures us: He values us, He likes us. And we Him. In some liturgical traditions, the verb ‘adore’ is used.

Jethani offers a quote from John Piper:

The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is way to get people to God. It’s a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God.

It is possible for us to underestimate God’s intent: Yes, He wants to save people and give them eternal life, but He wants much more.

God could have redeemed the human race and given salvation in a much simpler fashion than He did. If His goal was merely to get everyone into heaven, a five-page set of instructions could have sufficed. Instead, He gave us hundreds of pages of Scripture.

The New Testament uses the verb ‘reconcile’ to describe one of God’s goals. God saves us, and then He goes on to reconcile us to Himself. Jethani writes:

God’s focus and desire has been to be with his people. He walked in the garden with the man and the woman and sought to rule over creation with them.

One need only to think of the extensive development of the marriage metaphor among the prophets: God relates to the human race as a marriage man and woman relate to each other.

Such a marriage involves connection and harmony in all aspects of life: finances, eating, sleeping, travelling, working, purchasing, socializing, etc.

God wants to be interwoven with every aspect and every minute of ordinary human life. Jethani points to a text found toward the end of John’s Revelation:

God lives with humans! God will make his home with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There won’t be any more death. There won’t be any grief, crying, or pain, because the first things have disappeared.

Given the thorough communion and engagement which God wants with us, we must be careful not to limit the scope of His plan to too small a field of action.

Fulfilling God’s desire to be with us is why Jesus went to the cross. He did not die merely to inaugurate a mission.

Yes, Jesus began a great mission. But that was not His only action. He didn’t die simply to start organized evangelization efforts “or to give us a second chance at life.” There was more happening on Good Friday.

He did not endure the horrors of the cross just to demonstrate a principle of love for others to emulate.

Jesus modeled selfless and self-sacrificing love, but that was only one aspect of His work. He didn’t suffer only to set an example “or to appease divine wrath.” Those goals were part of the story, but not the whole story.

While each of these may be rooted in truth and affirmed by Scripture, it is only when we grasp God’s unyielding desire to be with us that we begin to see the ultimate purpose of the cross. It is more than a vehicle to rescue us from death; it transports us into the arms of Life. The cross is how we acquire our treasure. It is how we find unity with God.

God’s desire for community is seen in His very nature: The three-in-one Trinity is a model of extensive engagement. God is never alone, and He wants us to join Him in that state.

Four Misunderstandings: God is an End, Not a Means

Why are we interested in God? Is a relationship with God a means to an end, or it an end in itself? We human beings can misjudge why we’re drawn to Him. And if we don’t know why we’re interested in relating to God, we certainly won’t know how to relate to Him.

As Skye Jethani writes, there are four common misperceptions. The first “sees the world as governed by the capricious will of God.” The second “places immutable natural laws at the center.” The third “assumes the world orbits around self and its desires.” The fourth “sees a divine mission at the core of all things.”

There are probably other misunderstandings, but Jethani sees these four as the most common. Each of the four can take many different forms.

What the four errors have in common is a mechanization of God. Each fails to attribute full personhood and agency to Him.

Whether a person sees God as an arbitrary despot, a collection of abstract equations in physics and chemistry, the one who provides for individual whims, or the taskmaster who sets quotas and goals for moral strivers, in any case, these visions of God ignore His personal relational attributes.

These misunderstandings objectify God and ignore that a relationship occurs between two subjects, not between two objects. As Skye Jethani writes,

If we peeled back the physical and metaphysical layers of time and space and peered into the very core of the universe, we would not discover divine will, natural law, personal desire, or global mission.

God is the core of the universe, and God is a person. Personhood entails having emotions, memories, plans, preferences, desires, and other aspects of truly sentient agency.

In relationship with human beings, God gives guidance and blessings. Anything good has its ultimate source in Him. God offers His wisdom as we seek meaning or purpose in our lives.

But God’s guidance is not “a list of rules and rituals to follow,” and His wisdom is not “the implementation of useful principles.” God’s way of helping us is not “a genie to grant us our desires,” and not “a task to accomplish.”

Skye Jethani points his readers in a different direction: God isn’t trying to help us reach some goal; He is the goal. God doesn’t help us as we seek something: He is what we seek.

Each of these four errors “seeks to use God to achieve some other goal.”

We should therefore let go of the idea that if we act in a certain way, then God will bless us; we should let go of the idea that God is giving us principles for successful living. God is present neither to grant us our desires, nor to have us grant Him His desires.

God is present so that He may relate to us, and we to Him. That is the ultimate goal.

Words, ideas, and even images only make sense when we have a frame of reference for them. While our problem of relating to God is far more than semantics, it has been my experience that when most people hear or think about God, they have a less than complete, and sometimes entirely flawed, vision of who he is. As a result, they do not tend to desire him. At best they see him as a useful instrument for achieving something more desirous.

Our primary goal is not to understand the universe and apply that understanding in order to manipulate nature to meet our desires. Neither is our primary goal serve a demanding God as mere slaves, hoping that He might notice and grant us a few crumbs of blessing. Likewise, our goal is not to enjoy God’s products and see how many of them we can obtain. Finally, our goal is not to expand God’s kingdom by our own efforts and missionary zeal.

Our goal is to be with God. Jethani titled his book With for this reason. Our goal is to spend time with God, to speak with Him simply for the purpose of sharing our thoughts with Him, not for the purpose of achieving some objective. Our goal is to listen to God, and to hear what He’s expressing to us.

Calm Deliberate Presentations Or Heated Retorts?

In history, dogmatic theology often emerges from polemics. The two great liturgical creeds, Apostolic and Nicene, appear to the moderns as statements of belief, but were created as replies during debates.

Jaroslav Pelikan notes that “it would be a mistake to concentrate on” doctrine as propositions presented as finished articulations.

It distorts our reading of dogmatic documents to concentrate on texts like Biblical commentaries and definitive statements of doctrine

so completely as to ignore the relation of the theology of the church to the Jewish thought out of which it came and to the pagan thought which is sought to convert.

The contents and formulations of doctrine did not develop in a vacuum. They are the products of disputes and Streitschriften. Texts which in their origins were retorts are sometimes mistakenly treated as if they were presentations for students.

To understand confessional documents, we must consider them in their context as volleys in an intellectual conflict.