The Salvation Miracle

Whatever ‘I’ am is somehow the portion of life that makes experience of the world unique to one person and not another. Life is the connection between the ‘whatever makes me me and not you’ and the power to change something in the world. If life is ‘will’ (the power to affect some form of change in the world), then death is the cessation of power. And if that is accurate of death, than to die to oneself or sacrifice one’s life for that of another is no less a material, concrete, actual death than anything else; it is perhaps a matter of degree or fullness of that death, but it cannot be relegated to some ‘spiritual’ realm or trivialized as not an actual death.

Miracles (literally, deeds of power) are then also not specialized outside of the realm of possible/material but are the particular acts of will that effect a change only through an assertion of power. To die to oneself and be alive in Christ is for the power you ‘have’ over the world to be controlled by the power of God to effect the salvation of the whole world; again not a ‘spiritual’ death and rebirth but a fundamental shift in whatever it is that makes ‘you’ you. Salvation comes through death because it is the final and complete surrender of all that made ‘me’ me in distinction or conflict with that power which is God’s in the world. Salvation is, then, the quintessential example of a miracle.

 

On Atoms and Demons

When I’m feeling particularly cantankerous and willing to question just about everything we think we know, I wonder if an atom is just a mathematically sophisticated demon. I wonder if the most fundamental ways we think about the world around us are just as wrong now as ever. Perhaps we should wonder if knowledge of atoms will be considered on par with knowledge of demons a thousand years from now. It is true that thinking ‘atomically’ has a greater propensity for achieving precise results, but, to say that there is something more basic than the atom is not all that substantively different from saying that the things which cause illness or delusion are more concrete than demons. Both demons and atoms carry great explanatory power in the minds in which they make sense and I don’t think it’s too crazy to wonder if the distinction between atoms and demons is more in a particular form of precision than in kind. The effort to explain the things people see is present in both, and I wonder if history will look upon us more kindly than we look upon the ‘absurdity’ we find in superstition and myth.

Membership Classes as Radical Hospitality #2 -Hospitality Required

What images pop into your head when you read the words ‘required membership class?’

I think the prevailing sentiment is probably a negative one. Restrictive, uninviting, narrow, etc. But I want to propose that when the church is doing what it is called to do, a required membership class would speak not to a burden placed on the one seeking to join but to the nature of the church as a radically hospitable people. I won’t pretend like having something called a new member’s class is going to do anything for anyone just because it exists, but I would argue that one of the biggest things missing in most churches is an intentionality about offering all people a way to move from acquaintance to sibling in Christ.

I don’t think it matters as much that a church should require something from people considering joining, but I do think it speaks to the heart of what it means to be the church that we should require ourselves to develop a way to know and be known; to make love and community more than a catchphrase or an ideal.   

There are obviously 100 things every church thinks it does to make people feel invited and welcome. There are 100 other reasons why it would be nearly impossible for everyone who seeks it to find a perfect fit and everyday best friend group in one particular church. But if we are blessed to be a blessing to the whole world, then we, as congregations, have to require of ourselves that we offer the chance to know and be known.

If a required new member class is the space to know and be known, what would it look like?

[Also see #1 – Excommunication]

Fundamentalism is like hanger

Fundamentalism is like hanger

To say “you just need to pray more,” or “you just need Jesus,” or “you should just read the bible” is like saying “you’re just mad because you’re hungry.” True? Perhaps. But a horrible thing to say within a relationship.

That kind of rationalization is perhaps my greatest source of discomfort with modern ‘evangelical’ or ‘fundamentalist’ Christianity. So much of the language I hear is so overtly spiritual and so perfectly crafted that I feel like I’m being told something so true and obvious that I must be an idiot if I don’t agree. And yet, the most spot on nugget of truth doesn’t really help if I’m not in a place where I can experience the implications of the truth. And stating the most simplistic view of the truth is rarely a helpful way to experience or overcome the reality behind mere words.

Relationships are first about experience and only then about words to give shape and understanding to that relationship. “Christian culture” tends to speak with words as though the words have meaning apart from the experience of relationship – and if you don’t see the meaning behind the words, there is no logical or reasonable pathway between those words and the power of relationship toward which they are attempting to point. Just like telling me I’m mad because I’m hungry doesn’t make me less angry no matter how true – explaining Christian truth when I don’t experience relationship with God doesn’t make me feel loved. Feed me when I’m hungry; care when I feel unloved – and then we can talk.

Intellect and Idol

The intellectualization of the Christian faith cannot help but lead to the idolization of scripture. The assumption that there is a definable philosophical/logical/rational/scientific background on which to stake our understanding of God and history is the golden calf of our intellectual culture. To claim instead that God alone is the arbiter of truth and definitively reveals Himself in scripture is to require that present experience of God play a key role in standing under authority – not a mind game, a mind changed to see clearly.

It does not make any more sense for us to now adopt the ‘background’ philosophical understanding of the bible than it would make for us to adopt the scientific background of Genesis – it’s not that a ‘biblical’ worldview or a ‘modern scientific’ worldview is right or wrong – the problem is that we can’t define the ground on which we stand in either case apart from the ground upon which we stand. Culture will never stay still enough to feel like we have any semblance of a solid place to stand.

Placing God at the center of our faith (and not scripture, or philosophy, or whatever else) necessarily feels like a shifting sand beneath our feet because we will never understand God to the extent that we can lock God down and know God perfectly by a set of beliefs and words. Refusing to assume there is solid intellectual ground without the power and presence of God is an essential part of the church’s continued faithfulness – just like refusing to assume a golden calf could contain the essence of God was an essential part of Israel’s faithfulness in the Exodus.

Literalism is practical atheism

Literalism as a moral guide is always a form of practical atheism. Literalism inherently fails precisely to the extent that it obfuscates the simple fact that we are not God and we will never fully understand or control our actions, intents, or the results of either. I’ve written more generally about complementarianism and it’s problems, but it is the most illustrative of this point.

For the sake of this particular argument I’ll assume that the Bible does in fact say what the most plain reading seems to say and that the Bible means to imply what complementarians take it to imply – namely, men are the head of household and women are not to have authority over men. The Bible says “the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.” (Eph. 5:23) Therefore, men are to be the spiritual leader, make final decisions, etc. A couple of other verses may also be brought in as relevant – “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” (1st Tim. 2:12), for instance – and a whole way of life, marriage, and church leadership is developed to most literally reflect the words of scripture.

This is the point at which a literalist reading presumes that it has made a definitive moral argument – the Bible says it, we must live accordingly. But to segment off this question of morality from 1) a further reading of God’s Word and 2) the rest of a faithful life, is to compartmentalize God out of the equation as an unnecessary distraction rather than the source of life and meaning.

1) Here are a few other things the Bible says – “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed,” Psalm 82:3. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world,” James 1:27. “God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless,” Isaiah 40:29. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted,” Luke 14:11. I could go on naming verses about the reversal of power God brings about and naming those passages that emphasize humility and self sacrifice as the Christological form of power. The weight of scripture has a very clear theme – God lifts up the least, the last, and the lost time and time again. To do anything to harm these, is to do the very same to God (Matthew 25:31-46)

2) Here is something else complementarianism justifies in the real world – spousal and child abuse. I don’t know that specific research has been done to express just how often complementarian thought is used to justify abuse, but it happens infinitely more than is acceptable. My wife’s experience with survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse combined with a cursory internet search lead me to a heartbreaking number of anecdotes in which it is the case that 1) a woman is made to feel by her abuser that abuse is justified by his God given authority, and/or 2) a church implies (and at times outright says) that a woman cannot escape abuse because she is to submit to her husband. The numbers do not matter to this argument nearly as much as it matters that such justification does in fact arise through complementarian arguments.

The literalist reading would suggest that the existence of people failing to live into complementarian marriage in the way God intended it to exist is no excuse for abandoning the clear sense of marriage as described in the set of verses above. Put differently, just because we’re bad at God’s ideal for marriage doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong. We should still strive for that ideal because the Bible says so. This is the point at which literalism fails so spectacularly and devolves into practical atheism.

Christians do not have any possible way to separate our decision to follow this pronouncement about men and women from our decision of whether or not to lift up the powerless, defend the widow, value humility, challenge the world’s assumptions of power, or any other desire to embody the love and life that Jesus makes possible. Again, I’m happy for the sake of this argument to accept the validity of the assumption that the above verses say and mean what a plain reading implies. But we cannot say that we support ‘biblical gender roles’ and at the same time pretend that this particular take on ‘biblical gender roles’ does not in actual, lived experience lead to spousal abuse.

To pretend like we have no choice but to be complementarian is to choose the value of male authority over the reality of female suffering. Jesus, faced with the choice to heal on the Sabbath or keep it holy, chooses healing over strict interpretation. The same logic is at play in every aspect of the way we live our lives – it’s not a question of if we are faithful, but of which attempt at being faithful is the most important for the here and now. We will fall short of some aspect of the life God intends, but I cannot see how we should ever prefer to try for a way of life that leads to spousal abuse instead of a way of life that puts the well being and humanity of women and children above any perceived benefit of complementary gender roles.

Said differently, even assuming men are scripturally supposed to have greater authority, we necessarily have to choose whether to value the safety of women and children more than the value of living into that authority structure. You may say that by choosing the former value we are choosing to violate God’s will and design, but when male authority creates the space in which women and children are abused, we have already made a choice about which kind of failure we authorize and which we ignore. Given that we are always choosing one value over another, I cannot see any scenario in which God would call us to choose spousal abuse over egalitarian relationships.

Literalism is a form of practical atheism because it empowers us to pretend like we don’t have a choice. It enables us to hide our deepest imperfections and failure to live as God calls us to live. Literalism gives us the space to pretend that we’re “just following God’s word,” when in reality we are living in a fallen and broken world in which our words and actions go far beyond our knowledge and control. Literalism suggests that we can take one snippet of scripture, divorce it from all other scripture and life itself, and have a clear understanding of how we are to live that compartmentalizes away the necessary harm that results. By pretending like we can segment our lives in this way and, even worse, that we should presume only one kind of moral question matters at a time, we do violence to the powerless in our world whose voices are not heard over the assertions of power made by those of us viewed as having authority.

Literalism never allows God to call into question the rationality and tradition that are shaped by the strong and authoritative men in the world, even though scripture itself calls those with power and authority into question time and again. The cross is God’s radical declaration that we are embraced and transformed no matter how far we fall short – literalism is practical atheism because there is no space to admit the multiple competing values and choices that we make everyday; choices that cannot be perfect to exactly the same extent that we are not God.

To live in submission to God requires us to at least 1) admit how deeply flawed we are and how impossible it is to fully embody the new life in Christ without the constant grace of God, 2) embrace and never hide the fact that we are always making competing value judgments in every decision we make, 3) refuse to hide behind tradition or bureaucracy as a reason for our failure to embody the love of God more fully, and 4) prioritize the same people and values that Jesus did – the sick over the healed, healing over Sabbath, the powerless over the powerful, the outcast over the popular, etc.