Joy to the World (Unedited)

Unless you are pulling out a traditional hymn book in church you are unlikely to sing the richest part of the Christmas song: Joy to the World.  Most of the versions on the radio, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, even Veggie Tales omit this incredible verse of this song.  It reads: "No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns invest the ground, He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found..."

And strangely this verse stands at the very center of the biblical reason why this baby is actually bringing joy to the world.  It gets me every time I sing it.

Owen on Godly Affections

The 17th century Puritan John Owen had a few things to say that weren't very Puritan-ish, or at least the stereotypes often placed on them.  Tim Keller gives a very interesting summary of his Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ.  Of course like every puritan Owen believed in the centrality of biblical doctrine and the light (as he often called it) of the word of God.  But beyond this, he never hesitated to emphasize the indispensability of the affections, the feelings of the heart, religious passions.

“Where light [right doctrine] leaves the affections behind, it ends in formality and or atheism; where affections outrun light they sink into the bog of superstition, doting images and pictures or the like.”

This gives a picture of an interesting balance that Owen says is required for healthy spiritual life.  But if you had to error on one side of the spectrum or the other, which would it be?  Feelings or doctrine?  Love or Truth?  Genuine affections or true beliefs?  What do you think Owen would say?

“In your thoughts of Christ, be very careful that they are conceived and directed according to the rule of the word, lest you deceive your own souls, and give up the conduct of your affections unto vain imaginations... Yet I must say that I had rather be among them who, in the actings of their love and affection unto Christ, do fall into some irregularities and excesses in the manner of expressing it... than among those who disavow their having any thoughts of or affection unto the person of Christ... It is better that our affections exceed our light [right doctrine] from the defect of our understanding, than that our light exceed our affections from the corruption of our wills.”

For someone who cared more about doctrine than probably any of our modern churches, this a remarkable thing to say.

An Alternative Nativity Scene

Ken Bailey in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes asks some interesting questions regarding the traditional nativity story which we're accustomed to seeing every year in displays, figurines, and Christmas pageants...

1. Why was there no one in Bethlehem (their own hometown) that could provide Joseph and Mary lodging for the birth of Jesus?  Hospitality isn't a nice gesture in the middle east.  A family's honor, not to mention the honor of an entire village, is often at stake.  Surely being Joseph's hometown it seems to hard to believe he and his wife would have been left out in a barn/stable/cave to stay, says Bailey.

2. Bailey continues, “simple rural communities the world over always assist one of their own women in childbirth regardless of the circumstances.  Are we to imagine that Bethlehem was an exception?  Was there no sense of honor in Bethlehem?... [It would have been] an unspeakable shame on the entire village.”

3. According to the traditional story, why would the shepherds, after visiting the baby Jesus in a animal stable or cave, have not invited them into one of their homes?  Are we to believe that they rejoiced and praised God that they had seen the birth of the new king and then left this family in an animal pin?

4. Bailey also points out interestingly, “Joseph had time to make adequate arrangements.  Luke 2:4 says that Joseph and Mary ‘went up from Galilee to Judea,’ and verse 6 states, ‘while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.’  The average Christian thinks that Jesus was born the same night the holy family arrived –hence Joseph's haste and willingness to accept any shelter, even the shelter of a stable.”

These problems get resolved, says Bailey, by getting a better answer to two questions:  Where was the manger?  And what was the “inn”?  He uses a background study to make the case that mangers were traditionally held in the homes of the average villager and uses a word study to make the case that “inn” is better translated “guestroom.” –not a commercial inn.  It is the same word translated  “upper room” in Luke 22:10-12.  In sum, he argues it is far more likely Jesus was born in an average villager's home, not outdoors in a stable or cave.  Very interesting.  Worth reading even just the first chapter.

It reminds me of how much I still read the scriptures through my own interpretive lens.

What Made Pharaoh Change His Mind?

“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon...” – Exodus 12:29

In one plague after another God devastated Egyptian homes, crops, livestock, and water supply...  even a pandemic of physical disease spread across the land by the finger of God.  But regardless of the devastation none of them were compelling enough for Pharaoh to truly change his mind.  That is, until plague number ten arrived.

But why did this turn out to be the deal-breaker for Pharaoh?  The general interpretation, which includes the numerous films made of the exodus, seem to have an implicit understanding along the lines that this was the one plague that actually  ‘hit home,’ so to speak.  The tragic death of Pharaoh's very own son.  Some of the films in particular attempt to show a deep love for his child, and a supposed emotional brokenness over this situation.  And in this emotional brokenness everything has shifted his mind to now release the people of Israel.  Pharaoh is strangely even presented as somewhat of a victim of this family tragedy and presented in a markedly sympathetic light...

This unfortunately seems to be a common but unlikely interpretation that doesn't follow well the historical or biblical picture.  Historically, unlike our modern age with modern medicine, the death of a child in the ancient world was quite pervasive and regular.  In ancient Rome for example the child mortality rate was around 50% who would not make it to ten years old.  Of course this is not to say that Pharaoh would not have had an emotional reaction to his death, but looking closer there is more going on than just the loss of a son.  Notice first, it is the death of his firstborn son.  This son was of course the heir to the throne.  And thus God was effectively cutting off Pharoah's ruling dynasty and the designated line of succession in one night.  This is implicit not only in the fact of the son being his firstborn, but the text mentions this reality explicitly: “the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne.”  The fact that his son was “on the throne” in some sense, might also imply that he was already an adult who had some measure of rulership already.  Regardless, at the very least it means that this final plague would have been primarily a statement to Pharaoh about the impotence of his supremacy and his rulership, not primarily about family tragedy.

There is also some indication that all the plagues were not just intended to devastate Pharaoh's country, people, and land, but were in fact a theological statement.ˡ  They were a demonstration of the supremacy of Israel's God over and above the gods of Egypt, starting with the god of the Nile.  There are hints of this divine dual as the Egyptian magicians under the authority of their gods attempt to replicate Moses' signs and wonders from the hand of Israel's God (Exodus 7:11,22, 8:7,18).  Second, we also know that the Pharaohs of Egypt often thought of themselves as divine or the son of the gods –particularly the sun god Ra (who was shown to be embarrassingly weak with plague number nine, Exodus 10:21-23).  So working with this background, it would seem that God was marching through the pantheon and the last ‘god’ lined up for subjugation was Pharaoh himself and his ruling dynasty.

So what motivated Pharaoh to finally release Israel?  I agree that it was something that ‘hit home.’  But it is less about Pharaoh being a heart-broken father with a deep love for his son, and more about Pharaoh's rulership being dramatically subdued in a most humiliating way.  He is no god, his successor is struck down, and now he finds himself coming before the God of slaves to ask for a blessing (Exodus 12:32).  There is a bit more to that one night that finally changed Pharaoh's mind.

ˡ There is a brief summary of this idea in Kenneth Laing Harris, ESV Bible Commentary, 156.

Robinson Cano vs. NY'ers

Robinson Cano returns to New York with a lot people ready to ridicule him publicly.  That is, until they have to look at him face to face.  Hilarious.

Is There Free Will in Heaven?

The answer to this question is not as obvious as one might think.  On one side, free will is the basic requirement for any action to be worthy of moral praise or moral blame.  And if heaven is where all good things come together and are lived out, than yes, you might think of course there must be genuine free will in heaven.  But if that's true, do we have the real possibility to choose to sin in heaven?  That is equally strange, because sin is the one reality that heaven must never allow in!  And so the deeper you dig into what anyone actually means by free will (or heaven for that matter), the more difficult this question becomes.

However a little background work will help us find where we should probably land on this.  Traditionally, there are two ways to understand free will.  In their definitions both views try to give the most intuitive answer to the following question:  What are the conditions necessary that will make someone morally accountable and responsible for their actions?  The first group will say something like this:  Free will is the ability to act unencumbered according to your own desires.  It is the ability to act according to what you really want to do.  Pretty basic.  This they say is the necessary condition that makes someone truly responsible for their actions.  For example, if a journalist cannot publish a story he wrote because of threats from the local mafia, he is not able to act according to his true desires.  He choices are being forced on him from the outside against what he really wants to do.  And thus, on this understanding, he is not able to act freely.  They would say his will is being encumbered.  This is the view of free will taken by Compatibilists.  More on Compatibilism later.

The second group want to say something stronger: Free will is the ability to genuinely choose among various alternatives.  Free will is not just being free from outside forces that might manipulate you to act contrary to your desires (like the mafia), but also being free from inside forces and necessitating compulsions from within you.  Conditions like your own physical brain chemistry or  your own internal nature that might determine your action.  They would grant there are certainly forces inside you that might influence you, but if the will is truly free it must be able to genuinely choose among multiple alternatives despite those influences without anything inside them or outside them that would determine their decision.  The key word here is determine.  So a journalist's decision to denounce government corruption is free not only because its what he really wanted to do, but also because within his own psychology (or even from God) he was not necessarily compelled one way or the other.  He could have genuinely chosen among the various options to write what he wrote.  This is called libertarian free will.

You see if what the journalist publishes is what he actually desired to write, then Compatibilists have enough information to say he certainly has free will.  But the Libertarian needs to know more.  Are the molecules and chemicals in his brain part of a deterministic system such that he could not have chosen anything other than what he in fact did choose?  If such a deterministic system exists, Libertarians will say no he cannot be genuinely free.  Compatibilists say these additional facts have no bearing on whether someone has free will or is morally responsible.  The journalist is accountable only in so far as he is able to act in accordance with his desires, regardless of whether their desires are physically or metaphysically determined or not.  Do you see how this works?

I'll let the cat out of the bag.  In my view a Compatibilist account of free will seems to make better sense of the assumptions the biblical writers, and in my view better sense of moral accountability altogether.  I only came to this view a few years ago.  Of course, more than a blog post would be necessary to outline the various reasons I find myself in this camp.  But one argument has proven to be very compelling for me, which is related to the question at the beginning.

Can we genuinely sin in heaven?  Notice a Compatibilist understanding of free will allows him to say “no” to this question, but also allows him to believe on his understanding that genuine free will can still truly exist in heaven.  Since free will is the ability to act according to your true desires, and being that we will only genuinely desire good things in heaven, then there is room within this view for heaven to be both always sin-free and also contain wills that are free.  It is simple, straightforward, and intuitive –at least on this question.  But notice also that a Libertarian understanding of free will requires them to say “yes” to this question in order for heaven to be a place where genuine free will can exist.  That seems a hard bullet to bite.  Because we should probably say about heaven –at the very least– that there will not be sin there.  And more than that, we seem to be compelled to say we should never be capable of sin in heaven.  But perhaps they can bite a different bullet and just say well in heaven we just won't have free will like we do now.  That's a hard sell as well, because free will is always the necessary precondition for any act to be morally good.  And the one thing we should probably say about heaven is that it is the one place where all good things live, exist and thrive.

I know some of you are thinking: what does it matter?  These hypothetical questions are just philosophical games.  You are right that many can treat it that way.  Nevertheless, I have never had such a revolution in my thinking about sanctification and how I might grow in my spiritual walk than the moment I solidified my thoughts on the free-will question.  How do I choose good and not sin today?  These two views have very different answers to this very practical question.  And unfortunately a person's unreflective default understanding of these sorts of ideas will almost always be the reigning cultural understanding of them.  And we know that pattern usually doesn't bode well for those seeking “not to be conformed to the world.”

Blasphemy Laws for the Modern World

Blasphemy is verbal defamation against that which is held with the highest regard.  I know it sounds really strange but a long time ago it used to be God that was held with the highest regard in society.  And in such societies it was unbearable to hear God spoken of with such disdain.  Many of them made laws against it because they believed it could quickly incite people to hatred and violence.

Of course in our society verbally defaming God is way down on the list of the worst things that can come out of people's mouths.  And besides that we as western societies are too enlightened to limit people's free speech in the modern era...  or are we?

The answer is we are not.  We still believe in blasphemy laws.  We still believe in laws that limit free speech against what people take to be of supreme value.  But we just believe something else has replaced God as that which is supremely valuable.  Instead of blasphemy, we call it hate speech.ˡ   Speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.  You see, in a democracy the “demos” rules.  It is the people themselves who are given the right to rule.  And our values have been shaped around this in such a way that those held with the highest esteem are unequivocally “the people.”  And in such a world, verbal defamation against the people themselves cannot be tolerated -especially minorities whose voices must not be suppressed when you strive for a healthy democracy.  Thus, the active limitation of free speech and free expression as in every society continues on, just under a new name.  But make no mistake.  It is blasphemy; it is outlawing speech that defames that which is supreme.  We're not more enlightened or tolerant than those wacky medieval folk.  We just have a different supreme value.

This is interesting in its own right.  But here's another little wrinkle that might be prophetic for the direction of western culture.  What happens when God commits blasphemy?  That is, what happens when God's purported speech offends “the demos?”  The answer for now is the only space appropriate for such speech is the non-public arena.  The answer for the future might be just the space between your ears.

( ˡ This connection was drawn from a lecture by Doug Wilson)

Jesus and Headbangers

Working for Costco I had quite a few friends and co-workers that loved heavy metal music, and in fact two were in metal bands themselves.  And now I have another friend on this side of the world that also loves American heavy metal music, particularly Metallica.  He even got a chance to see them live when they came to Istanbul last year.  Christianity and traditional religion has historically had a turbulent relationship with this genre of music.  They both understand just enough of a veneer of the other to spit fire back and forth.  One sees the other as promoting hate-filled, violence-begetting, devil music.  And from the other side, Christianity is seen as part of the pompous, self-righteous, power-hungry, establishment.  There seems to be a very strong ideological impasse... or is there?

I've read a few articles recently that outline some compelling reasons that if Christianity widens its gaze a little more to the underlying core of what metal is really about, there would be less of an impasse.  In fact, one writer says that perhaps the Metalhead with a Iron Maiden t-shirt you might have passed on the sidewalk last week might be “closer to the kingdom of God” than most people.  What does he mean?

“People in the metal culture understand that the world is not a warm fuzzy happy place full of sweetness and light... [they] know there is something deeply wrong with the world.  And metal often expresses our outrage. Instead of pretending everything is okay or anesthetizing ourselves with consumerism, self-pity, or poison, Metalheads tend to confront things head on.  This is unbelievably important because it is the hardest part of the Christian message for most people to grasp and Metalheads understand it from the get-go.  Metalheads know something is really, really wrong...”

And since Christianity teaches there is an innate poison that has infected our world and everyone in it [called sin] there is a strange philosophical harmony between the two that ties them together at a very fundamental level.  On other levels some have argued less-persuasively that Christians can learn from heavy metal culture to make their faith more passionate and less highly-structured and serious.  All in all however, while there are some compelling ways it seems that the heavy metal world needs to be better understood, particularly by the Christian community.  I also wonder if, on the other side, Christianity needs to be more properly understood just as well, particularly by the Metal culture.  Below is an attempt to start that conversation:

So the obvious, but actually sometimes not so obvious, things first.  Christianity is about following Jesus.  Some people follow Jesus well.  Some not so well.  So a more proper understanding of Christianity is really a more proper understanding of Jesus, not necessarily the people who claim to follow him.  While that seems pretty basic, it is interesting to me that the strongest indictments of Christianity have nothing to do with Jesus or his teachings, and almost always are directed at the easiest caricatures of those who claim some sort of connection to him.  That said, everyone including the heavy metal culture needs this basic reorientation first, if they want to actually understand Christianity.

The metal culture might find it ironic that Jesus actually had the most verbal venom for the religious hypocrites of his day.  In front of the crowds, he would tell stories about how some members of the most pious religious sect actually had a lower standing before God than lifelong traitors and thieves whom God forgave.  He called the religious hypocrites blind fools, greedy vipers, self-indulgent, children of hell, lawless and murderous.  You get the point.  If you don't like some of the religious folks around you, you need to get in line behind Jesus.

The people in the metal world might also find it ironic that Jesus was stirring a movement that defied the world system and many of the powers that governed it.  He intentionally made himself an enemy of that system, and would defeat it in the most unlikely of ways.  If you're only thinking politics here, you're getting only a small part of the picture.  Nevertheless, even politically Jesus was killed as a political rebel.  A fake king.  A usurper who didn't get the memo that Caesar doesn't like other so-called kings.  While historians might see the irony of how Jesus' defiance had political implications for the Romans centuries later, it is much more astonishing that all this was just a minor sub-plot in a much bigger confrontation.  I'll say more on this in a second.

Underneath the politics, the religious system around Jesus probably got the sharpest end of his contempt.  He intentionally broke many of the religious traditions of the Jews, publicly humiliated the religious leaders, and in his spare time physically razed their headquarters in the temple courtyard.  It was a religious system that could not endure such brazen opposition for long, and the establishment knew they had to shut him down.  But underneath even that, Jesus was not ultimately interested in simple religious reform.  He had made an even bigger enemy.  Neither the Jews nor the Romans were actually what he was ultimately fighting against.  They were only a means.  They were a means to confront and intentionally defy instead the most potent enemies of the human race... enemies who go all the way back to the beginning... death and sin, and the spiritual power that stood behind them.  This is the story of the bible.  It is why C.S. Lewis says “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, and he's calling us all to take part in his great campaign of sabotage.”  Jesus was a rebel, but his real enemy no one even thought to confront.  He was a rebel, but his method of rebellion no one even thought to imagine.

Depersonalizing the Supernatural

I just finished watching the old Star Wars series this week with Heidi.  One of the most important elements of the movie is the pervasive "Force" ...which is something like a supernatural energy that permeates the universe.  The force doesn't have its own thoughts or emotions, its just... well... a force.  It's an impersonal power and energy that can be mastered or controlled by those with either good or bad intentions.

It got me thinking.  Every religion and most worldviews maintain some belief in the reality of the supernatural.  There is something beyond chemicals and matter.  There is something beyond atoms and electrons.  There is something beyond our world or something that perhaps permeates into our world.  But what sort of supernatural things are there?  The answer to this question is where the similarities usually end.  Is the supernatural a karmic energy that balances out the injustices of the world?  Is true reality just a hidden supernatural force underneath everything that we have forgotten about?  Is the supernatural a bunch of human-like gods with their own righteous (or sometimes cruel) agendas?

Most people have not given up on the supernatural.  Many seem determined to say there is something out there.  But most seem equally determined to depersonalize the supernatural.  What do I mean by that?  Most explicitly is of course how so many in the last 50 years have been particularly drawn to eastern worldviews and religions whose beliefs center on declaring that the true supernatural reality of the universe is something impersonal.  The supernatural is a force, an energy.  It is not something that has feelings or beliefs.  It is not something that has a will or emotions or self-awareness.  It is an "it," not a "he" or "she."  Even though monistic Hinduism, atheistic Buddhism, even New Age metaphysics all have personal gods way back in their historical roots, the greater emphasis today is the mystical and esoteric truths which focus in on the core belief of an impersonal ultimate supernatural reality.  It's not just that people have been specifically drawn into these beliefs (although many have), but how as a whole our tolerant western culture seems to find eastern visions of impersonal supernatural forces as much more agreeable/open-minded, than say a personal Christian God.  The culture is slowly and methodically leaning toward a more depersonalized vision of the supernatural.

But there are also less obvious ways the supernatural is being steadily depersonalized across the world and even within theistic religions.  We can think about this better if we think about marriage for example.  My marriage is a very personal relationship.  I know my wife.  She knows me.  Taking care of my wife is not like taking care of my car.  If I plan perfectly all my various marital duties and do them exactly on schedule, that does not mean I have a healthy marriage.  That's because my wife is not a machine, she is a person.  I have to deeply understand her, and come along side her, and truly feel things toward her and our marriage that she can sense.  Marriage is something significantly more than duty.  My car doesn't care about what I feel or my motivations; it just cares (in a manner of speaking) about whether I'm doing my due diligence in a timely way.  And so the question is: Is interacting with the supernatural more like how I should interact with my car... or more like how I should interact with my wife?  Even for those religions who believe in a personal God, the unfortunate answer to this question is that people often believe the interaction is more like my car.  

From pagans to Pharisees to everything in between, religious people seem to actually prefer a depersonalized interaction with supernatural reality.  It is about religious duties and practices that really form the center of people's interaction with the supernatural, even if the supernatural is personal.  There are lots of reasons perhaps, but the one that immediately presents itself is that a personal interaction is significantly more difficult to manage, predict and control than interacting with a depersonalized set of duties and requirements.  (Need we mention marriage again!)  If I can reduce my interaction with the supernatural to simply a set of manageable rituals and behaviors that will bend the world (or the afterlife) in my favor, it will be substantially easier for me to control the outcome.  Or so it seems for many.  As you might sense, this propensity to depersonalize our interaction with the Supernatural brings under the umbrella a lot of theistic religion and practice.

There are other reasons we depersonalize the supernatural as well.  It provides a pretty simple account for the existence of suffering and evil in the world.  Forces are not moral agents, only a person can be a moral agent.  So safely putting the supernatural into the impersonal category disallows it from being morally accountable for the existence of moral or existential evil.  Additionally, people prefer depersonalizing the supernatural so that the notion one's own ultimate moral accountability loses its edge.  After all, you can't really offend a force.  You can only offend a person.  Forces are quite a bit safer to manage along those lines as well. 

There are of course objective reasons that would say this trend is not leading us toward an accurate picture of the Supernatural.  But as I hinted at, it's not really a set of objective reasons that are drawing us as a culture away from it anyway.  A husband who treats his wife like a impersonal robot needs more than a lesson or two on the value of healthy love and intimacy.  His heart needs to taste and be captivated by the beauty of true leadership and intimacy.  He needs to see it lived out in front of him in an attractive, healthy, winsome, and joyful way.  So it is with us who love our personal interaction with the ultimate supernatural Reality of the universe!  Our lives need to be a unique display for a world that is growing more favorable toward a robotic or even 'a force' vision of the supernatural.  We all love Star Wars; but I can't imagine anything better than living as a second-tier servant and son under the personal God (as I know him), than even living as a first-tier Jedi that has made the supernatural serve me!

What about you?

The Power of an Idea

"Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny."

– William James

Endurance: A Fading Reality

Two worthy excerpts from The Roots of Endurance by John Piper:

"There is a mind-set in the prosperous West that we deserve pain-free, trouble-free existence.  When life deals us the opposite, we have a right to not only to blame somebody or some system and to feel sorry for ourselves, but also to devote most of our time to coping, so that we have no time or energy left over for serving others.  

This mind-set gives a trajectory to life that is almost universal -namely, away from stress and toward comfort and safety and relief.  Then within that very natural trajectory some people begin to think of ministry and find ways of serving God inside the boundaries set by the aims of self-protection.  Then churches grow up in this mind-set and it never occurs to anyone in such a community of believers that choosing discomfort, stress, and danger might be the right thing -even, the normal, biblical thing- to do.

Later in the book, Piper offers additional observations about our churches, his own tendencies, and the value of imitating people of endurance:

"I need this inspiration [for endurance] from another century, because I know that I am, in great measure, a child of my times.  And one of the pervasive marks of our times is emotional fragility.  It hangs in the air we breathe.  We are easily hurt.  We pout and mope easily.  We blame easily.  We break easily.  Our marriages break easily.  And our commitment to the church breaks easily.  We are easily disheartened, and it seems we have little capacity for surviving and thriving in the face of criticism and opposition.

A typical emotional response to trouble in the church is to think, 'If that's the way they feel about me, then I'll just find another church.'  We see very few healthy, happy examples today whose lives spell out in flesh and blood the rugged words, 'Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds' (James 1:2).  When historians list the character traits of America in the last third of the twentieth century, commitment, constancy, tenacity, endurance, patience, resolve, and perseverance will not be on the list.  The list will begin with an all-consuming interest in self-esteem.  It will be followed by the subheadings of self-assertiveness, self-enhancement, and self-realization.  And if we think that we are not children of our times, let us simply test ourselves to see how we respond when people reject our ideas or spurn our good efforts or misconstrue our best intentions.  

We all need help here.  We are surrounded by, and are part of, a society of emotionally fragile quitters.  The spirit of the age is too much in us.  We need to spend time with the kind of people -whether dead or alive- whose lives prove there is another way to live.

What's with the singing?

There are many flavors of Christianity.  But despite such a wide variety, one of the many common threads you will find among them all is a strange propensity to sing.  Whether there is the full worship band with modern instruments or the organ-led hymns of traditional churches or even the good-ol hand clapping and dancing in African and Asian churches, across the spectrum Christians are always singing in some measure or other.  An interesting question is why?

Other religions have singing to be sure.  But singing is not as central, nor as universally prolific across cultures and traditions as it is for Christianity.  Some religions center on recitations and rituals, some on fasting and offerings, some on meditation and chanting.  Christianity has these customs as well.  But Christianity is a religion whose worship is more characterized by singing than any other.  And more than that, it is so prolific that you will actually observe people that you would think the least-likely to take part in public singing and popular music (like the older and conservative no-dancing churches for example) still finding reason to joyfully lift their voices together.

The answer to why is more than sociology –it is more than just tradition.  Christianity has proven to allow very unique expressions of its beliefs across the spectrum.  The meaning of worship has proven to be more significant to Christians than the various forms of worship.  This is not true of many other religions.  And so if this is true, saying singing is just a traditional Christian form is too simplistic of an answer.

I submit that the most important reason is a specific (and unique) aspect to its beliefs that produces this propensity to sing.  There is something at the heart of what Christians believe that demands community-wide celebration.  Every religion, including Christianity, has a path and a destination for its followers that at least has the potential for a hopeful ending -a nirvana, a heaven, a new world.  But Christianity, as far as I know, is the only one where the eschatological new age has already been set in motion.  An enduring hope, that has already (in some measure) been realized.  What do I mean?

First, lets talk theology.  Contrary to all the endtimes sensationalism and speculation, the theological center of what the new age is really about in the bible is three things:  new resurrection, eschatological judgment, the return of God's presence and Spirit to be amongst His people.  This was and still is the Jewish hope for God's new creation.  Then Jesus marches on the scene and says the kingdom of God is here (Lk 17:20-21, Matt 12:28).  Here now.  Right now.  God is starting to fulfill the long-awaited promises. The new age is dawning.  And so it did.  End times judgment for sin actually began then on a wooden cross.  The first-fruits of humanity's new resurrection also happened three days later.  And 40 days after that, God's long awaited presence returns in a whirlwind.  It has already happened.  But of course not in its fullness.  The New Testament teaches the new creation has already been set in motion, but its full consummation is still yet to come.

For this reason, there is not just promises and hope in Christianity.  There is also fulfillment.  Jubilee.  There is new creation.  There is forgiveness.  There is God returning and literally dwelling in and amongst His people again.  Right now.  Christians say not just that Jesus will save us one day.  They actually say he has saved us (notice the past tense).  And if these aspects of fulfillment are at the center of Christian belief across the centuries and across the continents, there is only one thing to do.  Celebrate.  Sing to the Lord.  Make a joyful noise!  Rejoice.  The new life, the new creation, the new age is not just to come.  Look around... it is already sprouting around us!

It is remarkably unique.  And for this reason, it becomes a beautiful invitation for others to touch and taste something that for most people is only a distant hope.

A "Retired" Christian... ?

In a television interview actor Peter O'Toole was once asked, "Are you a believer?"

His unique response was "I am a Retired Christian."

He seems to mean that he doesn't practice anymore, but he's still "cool" with God (whatever that means).  He does admit to reading the bible because of "the beauty of the language" and also comments on his admiration for the faith and belief of those people within the bible.

A perfect dodge.  A delicate sidestep away from any denial or acknowledgement of whether the faith of those people in the bible is actually built on something true.  If I was in the interview chair I would have asked two follow up questions...  Since I don't like dodges no matter how playfully colorful, I would have asked again: So then are you a believer Peter?  Do you believe the teachings of the bible to be true?...  Another interesting follow up question would have been:  What do you think it takes –as you say Peter– to be "cool" with God?  His answer to that probably wouldn't be that unique, but still worth asking.

I remember in High School a teacher was "cool" the more he or she for the most part let us do whatever we wanted.   If the teachers joked around a lot or used a few profanities for effect, they were really cool.  Basically a teacher being "cool" was a teacher being quite like the students themselves.  I wonder if Peter O'Toole might be going along the same track about God.  I'm cool with God.  God's cool with me.  God doesn't get uptight or really take anything too seriously.  For the most part, God just lets us go about our lives and maybe He just throws us a few tips along the way...

It is a perspective that provides plenty of room for the idea that someone could actually "retire" from God.  A notion so dramatically disconnected from anything resembling the beautiful, life-giving teachings that O'Toole says he reads every night, that the only logical thing to say is this understanding of Christianity is pure projection.

Saying I can "retire" from Christianity is like saying a Cocker Spaniel can retire from being a dog.  It would show more that I don't actually know what a Cocker Spaniel really is. In the same way, saying Christianity is the sort of thing you can retire from (like a hobby or a summer home or a vocation) shows Mr. O'Toole missed the basic category of the sort of thing Christianity really is.

Your World, A Poem for Nathaniel

Nathaniel likes to wake up while it is still dark.  While I held him yesterday morning his eyes were wide open, but they were moist, swollen and red.  He had been crying.  He had his first fever yesterday along with a few other symptoms of illness.  Like most of us, he was uncomfortable and frustrated.  But there was a curious look on his face as well.  A surprised and bewildered look.  Almost as if he was looking up and asking, what is this pain?  Why do I feel this?

And so I thought to write something for him…

___________________________

Your World

Looking into your worn eyes,

It's as if today is the first day,

The first day you feel that something is not right.  

As you look back at me,

You seem to sense

The world is not as it should be.

This is our world little one.

This is your world.

So many smiles and laughs.

So many new tastes and new adventures.

The joys you feel with every new discovery are so incredibly pure.

But not everything you find will be joyful.

Not everything you taste will be delightful.

Something has happened.

This is our world Nathaniel.

This is your world.

Trees and ferns, 

Flowers and fruits,

A forest of delight surrounds you.

But something else has grown up alongside.

A parasite never intended.

A disturbing overgrowth overshadows everything.

This is our world my son.

This is your world.

We often ignore the shadows,

Or minimize them.

But it waits for us all the same.

We isolate ourselves,

We insulate ourselves,

But the corruption you feel today needs another remedy.

This is our world Nathaniel.

This is your world.

Thrills and astonishing beauty,

Heroism and renewing hope.

Every day they live together with

Injustice and ceaseless warfare,

Betrayal and bitter words.

It is two worlds, but it is one world.

This is our world little one.

This is your world.

The darkness hangs above us, deeper still

The darkness lives inside us.

Precious little one, don’t let your eyes adjust.

When the thorns surround you, don’t prune them.

See it around you yes,

But see it inside of you first.

And tho’ the remnants of beauty have not vanished, look closer,

Something more magnificent has begun.

Precious little one, the corruption itself is being remade!

When thorns surround you, see more than silver linings.

See hope that stirs within you, yes,

But see the hope that is stirring outside of you first.

This, my son, this is our world.

This is your world.

Greater than Angels

First-century Judaism had a thorough-going hierarchy of spirits, angels, and demons.  Some Jews would wear amulets around their necks in order to invoke the protection of angels from evil spirits.  One amulet for example was published as saying: “Michael, Gabriel, Ouriel, Raphael, protect the one who wears this... Flee, O hated one, Solomon pursues you.”

Even the Qumran community, which was outside mainstream Judaism at the time, also had quite a vast understanding of the rank and function of angelic hosts.  In a text called the War Scroll, the “sons of light” fight valiantly at the end of the age against the “sons of darkness” with angelic forces leading both armies.  Another text called 11QMelchizedek interprets the Melchizedek figure in the book of Genesis as an angel.  They weave him into an intricate eschatological plot where this angel comes to have certain functions that would later be interpreted as distinctly messianic.  He is to return at the end of the age to bring liberty to the captives and to defeat, once and for all, the forces of darkness.  He is the “Prince of light” and they often seem to equate him with Michael the Archangel.

For a Jewish context that had a very high regard for angels, this is fascinating background for the opening chapters of the book of Hebrews.  The author of Hebrews wants his Jewish readers to know who they are leaving behind if they trade Jesus for Judaism.  And he starts by arguing Jesus is greater than “angels.”  And since angels meant something more to Jews in this period than the harp-playing, cloud-hopping, halo-donning anecdotes we see today, than this argument has an edge we are prone to miss.  It is about rulership.  The delegated authority of God is not given to an angel.  It is given to “a son” (1:5).  Slap one.  The one sitting at the authoritative right hand of God is not an angel; it is the living messiah (1:13).  Back slap again.  The one who will fight God's enemies (the forces of darkness), the one who will rule God's kingdom with a scepter is not an angel; it is the living Jesus (1:8,13).  Double slap!

Although there are aspects to Jesus' superiority in Hebrews 1 that go all the way back to Jesus' fundamentally superior nature and being (1:2-3, 1:8,10), the primary argument is that Jesus has become superior to angels because the name that he has inherited is superior to them (1:4).  Jesus has inherited a rulership over something that angels are merely servants within.  He is forcing his readers to understand that leaving Jesus means you are leaving the commander of God's new kingdom –the very kingdom which is at the center of their enduring hope.  If you long for God's ultimate victory over evil, you probably shouldn't leave the one who holds God's scepter.

Newsweek's Tirade against the Bible

Daniel Wallace gives a patient, thorough, and tactful review of a not so tactful rant by Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald.  Well worth the long read...

“The Talk”

In a New York Times opinion article Professor David P. Barash, an evolutionary biologist, sketches “the talk” he has to give to his college students at the beginning of every semester.  The foundational creed of modern biological science, evolution by natural selection, cannot be harmonized with contemporary religion –at least those religions that believe in a creator God, he says.  “It (Biological Science) has demolished two previously potent pillars of religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God.”  For such a weighty claim being rehearsed every year to a very uncomfortable classroom, I was expecting some new and exciting robust scientific insights that I have not come across.  But instead of robust science from a well-respected biologist, the case being made for these weighty claims is strangely the reflections of amateur philosophy.

Oddly, I agree with Professor Barash that the tenants of religion and science cannot be harmonized by safely compartmentalizing them into their own spheres of influence –or magisteria as Gould calls them. (Gould argues that religion is about values and science is about facts, and so as long as they don't attempt to go pass their allotted boundaries, they can live in harmony.)  It is obvious to both of us that religion wants to talk about facts, and that values are inescapable, even for the irreligious biologist.  But what seems to escape Professor Barash is that this –along with most of his other reasons– are not actually scientific arguments.  They are philosophical ones.

The most obvious is his last reason.  Biological science shows there is loads of painful suffering in the world (do you need to take a biology course to know that?), and therefore the most important theological explanations for this are grossly inadequate.  Again, that would take a theological argument not a scientific one.  And that is actually what he stumbles to attempt:  “Theological answers range from claiming that suffering provides the option of free will to announcing (as in the Book of Job) that God is so great and we so insignificant that we have no right to ask.”  Again, besides the fact he grossly distorts or just plainly misunderstands the theological arguments here, Barash is still under the assumption that his rebuttal to this is actually a scientific argument, not his own philosophical spin-off.  He certainly has a right to his own philosophical spin-offs, but to do them under the banner of “science” is grossly misleading.  His entire reasoning is based on assumptions about moral evils, what a good God would allow, his own truncated definition of “benevolence,” etc…  However substantive these assumptions might be, the one thing that should be quite apparent is that these arguments are philosophical, not scientific.

The same is more subtly true for his other “scientific” reason as to how the uniqueness of man as a pillar of religion has been “demolished.”  I’m not sure what Prof. Barash thinks theologians mean by “image of God” in mankind… but it would seem obvious that it probably has nothing to do with science searching for some supernatural divine trait within human genetics.  While apparently this is not as obvious to Barash, the more important point here is that the entire discussion itself of what it truly means “to be like God” –again– is a theological discussion that Barash is proving to have only a Sunday school level of awareness.

As he mentions in the beginning, the reason for his “talk” is because some of his religious students have communicated a certain level of discomfort as they work through some of the findings of modern biology.  I'm all for interdisciplinary interaction, even if its up front.  But one wonders by the treatment he rehearses in his article if the level of philosophical and theological interaction that he brings to the table goes beyond the troubled reflections of the deep, well-resourced, religiously-inclined 19-year old's who walk into his classroom.