Christianity

Everything Matters

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Rich, in his concluding message in the series on “The Christian and…” this past Sunday began the sermon with the assertion that everything we do as Christians matters and ended with the question, “does my life matter or not?” My immediate response to this is “of course!” And it makes me wonder why we have spent a whole summer considering as a church how all of life matters and how becoming more like Christ relates to every aspect of our lives. It seems to me that this should be as plain as the nose on my face.

Except that it isn’t.

Why is that? I think there are two reasons. The first is one basic to our nature as fallen creatures whose ingrained habit of living is to close God out of our lives except when we are really desperate. There is a part of me that resists God’s gracious overtures to make sense out of my life and to fashion me into a “little Christ” who is at the same time the unique person God intends me to be. Sometimes, the visceral response to these overtures is one of “sez who?” or maybe slightly more politely, “I can do it myself”. Sometimes I even pursue the really mixed up strategy of trying to meet the radical demands of following Jesus without his radical help. Call it being the male macho cowboy or whatever you will, I keep wanting to limit the places I let Jesus  into when he in fact is saying, “it all matters to me”. Too often, I only realize this only when I royally screw up!

The other reason is an external one. The “water we swim in” is a society that has made sharp divisions between public and private, secular and sacred that confines the expression of our faith to the private parts of life. Have you noticed how some recent public discourse no longer talks about freedom of religion but “freedom of worship?” There is a subtle message in this that says, “you may practice your faith in the privacy of your home, your car, and your church, but don’t let it intrude into any part of public life.”

In the university setting where I work, I sometimes ask graduate students if they ever stop to pray when confronted with a tough research problem or give thanks when they have a breakthrough. Do they pray about a seminar in which they will present, or for students as they grade their papers or prepare for office hours? Sometimes, I’m confronted by a blank stare that says, “I never thought of this before.” I suspect at least part of this is that we are all tempted to “go into secular mode” when we arrive at work.

Rich’s “principles and practices” seemed to me to offer helpful ways to lives as someone for whom everything matters that deal both with my resistance to following Jesus and with the false dichotomy between sacred and secular in our society. He challenged us to the principles of an integrity where the private and public part of our lives are consistent with each other, to be wise in recognizing that Christ does not call us to a life that defies the capacities and competencies he has given us, to allow Christ rather than the cultures of family, workplace, community or even church to shape us, and to rely on the resources of God in scripture, Spirit, and Christian community to live Christ-shaped lives. And he challenged us to the practices of examining our use of our time and claiming it for what matters, to creating routines that sustain us, to being defined in relationship to Christ rather than giving our identities to persons or forces like our jobs to shape us, and to live attentively.

This last one has seemed particularly important to me. Dallas Willard often advised those who sought his advice on living well to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry” from their lives. Hurry seems to me to be what keeps me from living attentively to both my insides and my external circumstances and the life Jesus is inviting me into in all of life. When I am hurrying through my life, I stop asking questions like “is this something that really matters to Jesus, something he wants me to do?”, “how does this matter to Jesus?”, “how might I act as someone whose life and character matters to Jesus?”

Reality for followers of Jesus is that our lives and everything we do in our bodies in this life matter deeply to him. It seems that it all comes down to whether we will live in the shadow worlds of secularity and human rebellion or the bright and good reality of Jesus where everything in our lives matters.

This blog is also posted at Going Deeper, a blog reflecting on messages at our church each week.

Review: Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews

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Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews
Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews by Mary Poplin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mary Poplin poses a challenging question for our public discourse. Is reality secular? That seems to be the prevailing assumption that governs public discourse in politics and public policy, public media, much of the world of business and the world of higher education. It is often argued that secularism provides the only neutral ground where a pluralistic world can meet. Poplin would argue that this is not the case. Secularism is not neutral but rather a worldview that is arguing that its “take” on reality is true.

Poplin should know. She chronicles her own journey through materialistic naturalism, secular humanism and pantheism before her spiritual search led her back to a vibrant Christian faith. She writes as one who is persuaded that these other accounts of reality are inadequate and that, while others have valid insights, only Christianity provides a comprehensive view of reality that is intellectually, existentially, and spiritually true and satisfying. She outlines her purpose for this book as follows:

My position from study, observation and life experience is that the Judeo-Christian worldview encourages more freedom, supports more diversity, and is safer and healthier than secular or other religious worldviews. Indeed I will propose that the Judeo-Christian worldview includes all the true and productive principles found in the other worldviews, fills the gaps between them and offers much more. I believe it can be demonstrated that it is a more accurate description of reality (p.42).

The major part of this book then is a survey of four worldviews that she believes offer contesting views of reality: materialistic naturalism, secular humanism, pantheism, and Judeo-Christianity (really Christianity). Given her basic position, it follows that her assessments of the three rivals to Christianity are critical: Regarding naturalistic materialism, she criticizes its reductionism, its scientism, its lack of inherent purpose, its exclusion of miracle and its ungrounded ethic. Secular humanism is critiqued for its exaltation of human reason, its radical freedom, and its view that somehow morality can arise out of human dialogue with neither divine commands nor a sense of sin. Pantheism is problematic for its inadequate response to suffering, its denial of good and evil, and the pantheon of gods and spirits to which one opens oneself with potentially deleterious effects.

By contrast, she argues for the embrace of Christianity as providing a wider rationality that opens up our minds to reality, a Triune Creator God who offers a narrative of the world that all peoples can embrance, a redeemer Christ who addresses the deepest needs of the human condition. She argues that all aspects of reality from the physical world, to human culture, to the arts are signposts of this greater reality.

What is surprising in all this is that Mary Poplin is an accomplished academic who neither nuances her argument nor hides it behind academic jargon. She makes no attempt at “neutrality”, believing this impossible, and speaks with candor about her own life before Christianity and bluntness in her assessment of its inadequacies. As a result, some may be put off by her honesty. But this is someone who believes both thoughtfully and passionately in truth and the law of non-contradiction. There are only two possibilities for her: only one, or none, of these mutually contradictory worldviews can be true. Life, purpose, human flourishing and eternity hang in the balance. If that is indeed the case, then nuance and ambiguity are out of place, and her candor warranted. I think her assumption is that the genuine truth-seeker, no matter where they are beginning from, will welcome that candor.

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Review: Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past

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Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past
Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past by Robert F. Rea
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why learn about church history? This is particularly an important question for Christians committed to a biblical faith. Isn’t the Bible enough? Isn’t tradition a bad thing, a kind of institutional legalism that takes us away from the heart of the gospel and the vitality of the early church in the book of Acts?

Robert F. Rea meets these questions “head on” in a book that I hope will see wide usage. His basic argument is that when we ignore the thought and actions of Christians throughout history and from other cultures, what we more likely do is create a culturally captive Christianity that is a “Christianized” reflection of the culture in which we are embedded. Only as we “commune with the saints” across history and culture and understand how they read and applied the Bible can our expression of Christianity “sync” with theirs and have a hope of being the startlingly fresh word the world needs.

Rea begins with discussing “tradition”, which he uses in “the general sense as a synonym for Christian history, church history, or historical theology…”(p. 29). He recognizes that tradition is necessary and inevitable while recognizing that particular traditions may be good or bad. He then explores how “tradition” has been understood in relationship to scripture throughout the history of the church. He begins by showing that in the early church scripture and tradition were compatible–the clarification of the meaning of scripture by the early fathers and councils gave shape to orthodoxy. He traces this through the Great Schism of 1054 and the issue of papal primacy, the Reformation period and the heightened emphasis on scripture and subordination of tradition, down through to the present and the renewed interest in some sectors of the church in patristics and the role of tradition in Christian understanding. He then summarizes the role of tradition among the major current streams of the church. What is significant for him is that tradition plays a role in all of these, even though the relation of biblical authority, ecclesial authority, and tradition will be defined differently.

The second part of his book looks at the expanding circles of inquiry that are necessary to explore as we talk about church history beginning with our immediate circle, our congregation, our faith tradition, our shared theological outlook, contrasting theologies, other cultures, and across the centuries. He considers how our identity is shaped and modified as we expand our circles of interaction. He emphasizes how the cloud of witnesses across the centuries give us models for living, help us recognize false belief, and help us confront persecution and difficult ethical choices. We also practice accountability across the centuries, both allowing prior formulations of biblical understanding and practice to critique ours, as well as sometimes engaging the beliefs and practices we think inadequately reflected biblical faithfulness. We both avoid past errors and learn from past responses to error. Theologians from the past can mentor us–filling in gaps, helping us think in different categories, and as we listen to the conversation across the centuries, come to understand the “consensus of the faithful” where this exists.

In his third section he explores the usefulness of tradition to biblical exegesis and proposes a model that incorporates not only the historical-critical approaches we most commonly use but listens to how our contemporaries in our own and other cultures read scripture and how Christians through history have read scripture. Hopefully, these understandings agree but when they do not, he raises the possibility of multiple levels of understanding, which was certainly accepted by biblical writers as well as many of the early fathers. Some may be critical of Rea here, but what challenges me is that writers of the New Testament themselves sometimes interpreted scripture in other than historical-critical ways.

He concludes with exploring the uses of church history for systematic theology, which must interact with both biblical and historical theology; spirituality, drawing on the spiritual writers and formative traditions the church has learned from down the centuries. He also considers other topics such as worship, mission, ethics, compassion, and Christian unity and how an understanding of church history can enrich and inform our efforts in each of these areas.

Rea makes a good case here that biblical faithfulness may be enhanced rather than diminished as we study the scriptures with the saints across history and culture. He provides examples throughout and resources at the end to help underscore his case. Rea’s book not only makes the study of church history appealing to those who would identify as “Bible” Christians; he also lays the groundwork for a vibrant Christianity that evades the shackles of cultural captivity and heals the schisms of the past.

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Good Grief!

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Good grief sounds like an oxymoron. Only a disturbed person relishes loss. Grieving, whether we face the loss of a person, a job we love, a situation in life or a diminishment of our own capacities, comes with a number of emotions, none of which are pleasant–sadness, depression, anger, confusion and more. Yet Rudy’s message on Sunday proposed that we can grieve well. Is this really possible?

Before we get to that question, I want to acknowledge that Rudy helped me see something more clearly than I had before. It was that because we were created originally to live eternally and not die, we often plan and live for permanence and not loss. We think of being best friends forever, of putting down lasting roots somewhere, of things always being the way they are. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

A good friend observed to me that the first half of life is about acquisition and achievement whereas the second half is about loss. Somewhere along the way, we confront the impermanence of life and that “the center doesn’t hold, things fall apart.” And the challenging question we face is whether the grief of loss is just the gateway to a despairing view of life. Perhaps this is why we try to assuage grief and rush the process because to face it honestly means facing the hardest questions about life.

As Rudy talked about, it all comes back to Jesus and our resurrection hope in him. If Jesus truly came back to life, there is indeed a basis for hoping against hope that there is something beyond the ultimate of all losses–the death of others and our own death. Trusting in his promise, we can face the hardest realities of loss and name them and then realize that Jesus and not loss or death has had the last word. There is a life and a restoration of creation in which we encounter the realization of all our hopes–not only of life everlasting, but of real relationship with those in the Lord we have lost and real work that bears lasting fruit in a creation that is renewed.

How does this help us grieve well? It enables us to have the courage to name our grief honestly with all the emotion that comes with it.  It enables us to allow the journey of grief to take its time with us rather than feeling we must manufacture “all better” feelings when that’s not true. And it enables us to lean into the comfort of God’s promise even when we don’t feel God’s presence.

Loss really doesn’t seem the way life is supposed to be which makes it so hard. The promise of the gospel doesn’t mean an escape from grief but rather that grief needn’t be suppressed nor end in despair–there is hope and light on the other side of the dark night that gives us courage to walk in the valley of the shadow of death and loss.

This post also appears at Smoky Row Brethren Church’s Going Deeper blog.

Be Not Afraid — Seriously?

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Our pastor explored something in his sermon on Sunday that I think many of us struggle with and that is the clash between statements like “be anxious for nothing” or “be not afraid” and the worries, anxieties, and fear that dog our steps and often feel hard to shake off. Sometimes the words “be not afraid” sound a bit to us like “don’t think of pink elephants”. Once there, it is just not easy either to shake those visions of pink elephants dancing in our heads or those worries nipping at our heels.

One of the most striking things about most of the “be not afraids” of scripture is that they are spoken by God, or those speaking for God. And this gives me a clue to this thing of dealing with fear that has been of great help to me. “Be not afraid” is not an order to “think positively” or to “make a positive confession” but rather they are God’s invitation to a relationship of trust. God’s invitation is not to try to suppress our worries by our own efforts but to trust them to his care.

I think I first understood this deeply when I was worrying about money a number of years ago. Things were often tight when I was growing up and there was at least once instance where dad was between jobs. I actually think my parents handled this pretty well, but the fear of not having enough carried into my adulthood. Strange then that my chosen profession involved depending on donations of others to pay the salary for the work I do. We were going through a patch where those donations were down and I was facing possible salary reductions, and perhaps worse, not being able to meet our obligations. At least that was what I was afraid of

My strategy for dealing with fear was a combination of worrisome talk that had to be tiring for my wife (who was far more hopeful about things) and “doubling down”, particular in efforts to raise the requisite funds. I even asked God to help me as I met donors and to supply my needs. I did everything except to go to my heavenly Father and say, “Daddy, I’m really scared of not being able to provide for my family and to meet my debts.” I continued coping with these pressures like this until I was doing a Bible study written by Dave Ivaska, a colleague, titled Be Not Afraid. There was a question at one point that asked very simply, “what are you afraid of?” For the first time, I named this fear to God instead of trying to deal with it or even asking God to deal with the stuff that caused me to be afraid.

I can’t say that my fear magically disappeared. But in naming my fear to God and allowing God into that fearful space, the fear began shrinking and lost its hold in my life as I became aware that God didn’t just love me in an abstract sense–God loved me at the place of my fear. Rich talked about this idea that there is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

I’m still on this journey. Other fears about loss are becoming real for the first time. There are the fears of significant loss of physical or mental abilities that come as I notice bodily changes or take longer to remember a name or grope for the right word. There is the kind of loss of recognizing you are far from indispensable and wondering as you hand off to rising leaders whether there is anything left that you can contribute, or what all you did meant when much of it is changed!

Rich talked about how we often experience the love of God that drives out these fears through people in community. I need that! It is still tempting for me to just put on my game face and double down. That strategy never worked very well and I have less energy or time for it now. Perhaps it is in becoming a safe place to name and shed our fears that we become “the beloved community.” That’s the safe place we have with the God who says, “be not afraid.”

This post also appears at my church’s Going Deeper blog.

Review: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

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To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an important book! James Davison Hunter challenges the rhetoric (and hubris) that often comes with the idea of “changing the world” that is embraced by many Christian ministries and movements. He argues first that we often work from inadequate assumptions about the nature of culture change. Secondly, he argues that either in our embrace or rejection of political power, we wrongly attribute too much to this kind of power. Third, he would argue that the proper stance for the church is one of “faithful presence.” These three points are more or less the theses of the three “essays” that comprise this book.

In his first essay, he begins by challenging what he sees as the shared assumption of many movements that “world-change” happens as you change the hearts and minds of individuals through evangelism, political, and social efforts. Related to this is often a version of a “great person” theory of culture change. Hunter argues that this view, based on getting individuals to think better and do better, is mistaken because of an inadequate understanding of culture and culture change, which he articulates in the form of eleven propositions. He would argue that culture is embedded in overlapping institutions of cultural power as much as in ideas and that culture changes as elites within overlapping networks work toward shared ends. Hunter observes that part of the failure of Christians despite some political heft and media presence to effect the changes they hope for in American culture is their absence from these elites. He also looks at the history of Christianity and notes how their influence extended into the culture when they represented the elites of education, the arts, social institutions, as well as politics. William Wilberforce, for example, was not simply an individual reformer but part of a network of politicians, educators, landowners, and industrialists who, together, helped form a social consensus against slavery. He concludes the essay with warnings about hubris as well–change often has unintended consequences.

The second essay explores what Hunter sees as a Christian embrace of the postmodern politicization of power and its reduction of all of public life to politics. One of the things he also notes in this analysis is the phenomenon of ressentiment, the narrative of injury that often drives the postmodern striving for power–whether it is the anger of the decline of values, the inequalities of society, or the disdain of politics. What he then does is apply these insights to a description of efforts of Christians on the political right, left, and the neo-Anabaptists and their apparent disdain for political engagement. Hunter would see all three as participating in the conflation of all public life into political life either by their embrace or disdain of that life. All miss the “something more” that he believes is part of the calling of Christians in the world.

That “something more” which he calls “faithful presence” is what he elaborates in the third essay. He argues on the basis of the incarnation and servant ministry of Jesus that our faithful presence is not one of grasping for power but rather of seeking the shalom of our human society through a full participation in all the dimensions of human life. He contends that Christians often lack an adequate sense of calling to living out their faith in every day life in the world, and that this is what constitutes Christian faithfulness. He also notes the struggle of this, that we participate, and share in imperfect institutions that we might make a bit better through our presence in the way that heralds the coming kingdom.

I call this an important book because it challenges thoughtfully our inadequate assumptions about culture change, it diagnoses our absence in many of the powerful centers of culture, it names what has been wrong with so many of our political engagements, and it proposes an alternative deeply rooted in the person and work and mission of Christ. Some will no doubt contend with his characterization of the Christian Right, Left, or neo-Anabaptism. What I am concerned with is the question of whether “faithful presence” and a de-constructing of the rhetoric of world-change might lead to a vision of making the world just a little better, but discourage the more drastic but sometimes needed efforts like those of a Wilberforce, or a modern day Gary Haugen in fighting human trafficking. Would those committed to “faithful presence” see an outrageous wrong and move beyond what I would call mere presence to active belligerency that engages the overlapping networks to address something that prevents human flourishing? I think that Hunter’s idea of “faithful presence” is probably robust enough to include this, but I wonder how the language would translate into everyday church circles. I suspect it could easily turn into a response that says, “we should not resist evils like this but simply be faithful to the Lord.” Will “faithful presence” be understood in the terms Andre’ Trocme and Le Chambon understood it in hiding Jews escaping Nazi Germany? Or could this simply support the thin, privatized faith that goes along with tyranny?

That said, I think this one of the most important works written about Christian engagement in public life and one that deserves more attention and discussion by all who care about public life and how Christians engage the wider culture.

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I would also call your attention to an earlier post on this book and two review essays I learned of through comments on the post:

To Change the World

Revisiting “To Change the World” by James Davison Hunter, Andy Catsimanes

How (Not) to Change the World, James K.A. Smith

 

Review: The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions

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The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions
The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions by George R. Sumner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the challenges of being a convinced Christian in a pluralistic society is how we engage with people from other religious traditions. Most thoughtful Christians neither want to just say, “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and you are wrong” nor do they want to say “you have your truth and I have mine and can’t we all get along?” The first statement fails to take the beliefs and truth claims of other religious adherents seriously. The second takes no one’s truth claims seriously. Both in fact are patronizing to the other party.

George R. Sumner’s book proposes a third way that considers the different strategies the church has used throughout history to address other religions and arrives at the standard of the “final primacy” of the person and work of Christ and then explores how other religions in some sense similar to the Old Testament anticipate or have points of connection with the Christian message. This effort seeks to take both the internal system of a particular faith seriously and acknowledge that there may be much of worth in that system while adhering to the person and work and claims of Christ as the final standard against which the claims of other traditions are measured.

Sumner tests this proposal in the theologies of Barth, Rahner, and Pannenberg, three of the twentieth century’s foremost theologians. He then follows this with a consideration of the economy of salvation, that is the working of Father, Son and Spirit in salvation and explores whether there is in fact a detectible Trinitarian logic to reality and to the human condition. He then explores how “final primacy” drives a theology of mission and explores the working out of final primacy in Indian theology and in theories of inculturation.

What I appreciated about Sumner was his nuanced approach to “redemptive analogies” and connections often made between Christianity and other faiths. He is not dismissive of these but he is also careful to distinguish genuine from merely perceived connections. He recognizes how critical appraising these things from within the logic of the other belief system is so that spurious connections are avoided and other faiths are truly understood on their own terms.

Many Christians refrain from inter-religious dialogue precisely because they believe to do so means that they must forfeit what is finally primary in their lives, their allegiance to Christ. Others are concerned to not offend believers of other faiths with Christian truth claims. The recognition of what is finally primary in Christian faith actually allows for the forthright discussion of “final primacy” for other religions that moves our conversations beyond niceties and vague commonalities. It takes the truth claims of each faith seriously rather than relativizing them and respects all the parties in a dialogue without asking any to compromise deeply held beliefs. At the same time, real, non-coercive dialogue has within it the possibility that one may grow in the understanding of another, or even become convinced of the truth claims of another. Sumner’s “essay” (his term) points us toward the substantive dialogue where these kinds of outcomes might be realized.

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Review: Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission

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Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission
Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission by J.D. Payne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Have you noticed how many people from other countries are living in your city? J.D. Payne thinks this is part of God’s providential work that creates great opportunities for mission if his people will have eyes to see it. My city, Columbus, Ohio, has the second largest Somali population in the U.S. with over 40,000 residing in our city. A whole network of shops, restaurants, places of worship (mostly Islamic) and businesses have developed in consequence.

People are moving for all sorts of reasons from country to country and Payne chronicles this movement with both stories and charts of data. There are refugees, migrants seeking better economic opportunities, students enrolling in our universities. And this is not just the case in the U.S. It is the case on every continent.

Payne has one simple contention and that is that those who come from a particular country, especially those not easily open to western missions, may make the best people to take the gospel back to these countries and plant churches. The basic issue is whether believing people in host countries will recognize the opportunity and respond.

Payne suggests a simple four part strategy consisting of Reach, Equip, Partner, and Send. One of the things he warns against is that without an intentional focus on sending, many will simply assimilate into a host culture and host believing communities. Contrary to some, he believes in real partnerships and that what Western churches have to offer is not all bad, even though paternalism in various guises is to be watched for. What he does observe is that Western partners with returning immigrants have much more access to the immigrant’s culture than they would on their own.

What I like about this book is that it refocuses the discussion on immigration from national policy debates to the kingdom implications of the immigration that is taking place. While the policy debates do matter and Christians should be involved in pursuing justice and mercy that welcomes the stranger we should also be wondering what is God up to in these global dispersions and how we might co-operate with God in what He is doing.

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Review: Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem

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Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem
Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem by Heath A. Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Your God, if he exists, is a genocidal monster, and even if I believed there were such a God, I could never put my faith in him.” This is what atheist students have said to me in discussions. More than this, it is one of the leading critiques of Christianity from the New Atheist movement. What this critique focuses on are the mostly Old Testament texts, especially in Deuteronomy and Joshua in which the total destruction of Canaanites is commanded. This is often cited as part of a larger critique of Christianity and monotheistic religion as inherently violent because they have no room in the world for those who differ from them, with the Crusades serving as case in point.

This is an important critique to answer not only in public dialogue but personal conversation. Indeed, for many Christians of conscious, this raises doubts. This volume, then, is a valuable resource both for personal exploration and theological and apologetic resources for answering this challenge. The book consists of a series of chapters by different authors that were presentations at a conference on this issue. Given this format, the reader will find that not all authors make the same arguments or interpret biblical texts in the same way.

The book is organized into six parts. The first speaks of the challenge of “Holy War” for Christian morality and consists of an introductory essay, and an illuminating exploration of documentary evidence in the Crusades and the lack of biblical citations of the “divine war” texts (most authors in this volume prefer this term, or “Yahweh war” to the term “holy war”). There is nothing holy about war, and also, the wars in question are in fact initiated by and fought by Yahweh, with Israel accompanying.

The second part explores the Old Testament texts including an illuminating essay about “divine war” in the writings, an area not often referenced in discussing this issue. Part three turns to the New Testament, with an interesting essay on divine warfare in Ephesians, which clearly situates warfare for the church in the spiritual realm, and divine warfare as representing divine justice in John’s Apocalypse.

Part four explores biblical-theological perspectives. David Lamb observes how both compassion and wrath are evident in the wars of Yahweh, and Israel, as well as her enemies may be subject to both, depending on whether they repent and trust, or rebel and pursue wickedness. Douglas Earl’s second essay in this volume pursues the question of herem, the devotion to destruction of people, livestock and city structures.

Part five consists of four chapters focused on ethical and philosophical perspectives. Most helpful to me was Glen Stassen’s chapter which focused on the neglected theme of “peacemaking” in the prophets. While we often notice war-making, we do not often notice the language of the land enjoying rest from wars. In Judges there are 40 to 80 year stretches where this is true (something our own country has not known). Robert Stewart also focuses helpfully on the polemical strategies of the new atheists and the problematic elements in these.

The book closes with theological perspectives. One of the things evident here and throughout the volume is that none of the authors sees any warrants in the “divine wars” of the Old Testament for any form of holy war today. The authors warn against alliances of Christians with political powers of state supporting war efforts in language that make these seem like holy or religious wars.

The authors also point out the biblical work still to be done–indeed the differing, though not conflicting perspectives evidence this additionally needed work. Some writers in this selection lean more toward considering the OT texts in question stylized hyperbole. Others emphasize that most of the Canaanite wars (as supported by archaeological evidence) suggest that Israel displaced the Canaanites rather than obliterated them, apart from a few instances. Still others justify these acts as the just, and delayed (by 400 years) judgment of God against idolatrous cultures engaged in child sacrifice and other morally repugnant atrocities. My own hunch is that a nuanced apologetic will probably include all of these elements.

All told, this is a valuable resource that also includes an extensive bibliography for those who would pursue this at greater length. Anyone engaging with those who have been exposed to the polemics of the New Atheists will find much of help here.

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God at Play?

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“Work that’s unrelated to want.” That’s how our pastor defined “play” in a message on “the Christian at play.” This sparked some thinking about what it was that God was doing in the “work” of creation. If this definition is accurate, God was in fact at play, because there was no want or necessity in God’s creation. God didn’t create because God “had to.” All this was done simply for God’s pleasure. In the old King James Version, Revelation 4:11 says, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

One gets a sense of God at play in making the creation. He says, “let’s do so and so” and it springs into existence, and then at the end of each day, he looks at this and says, “that was goo-ood!” (Bob’s paraphrase!). When he creates fish, he creates a bazillion different kinds. He doesn’t just make green, but an infinite variety of greens. And he gives human beings eyes that can distinguish those shades.

Was God at work or play in creation? Genesis 2:2 says, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” It sounds like God is in fact working, But then I notice the rest part. Was God wiped out from doing all this stuff? I don’t think so. Genesis says he “had finished”. One senses that God is admiring and delighting in what God had done–savoring the delight of making and the things made. Was God at work or play in creation? I think the answer is “yes”.

Rich’s definition explores the paradox that often play involves this intense investment of energy that we might be tempted to call work. Likewise, aren’t there times when the work we do that is related to want ceases to be labor and seems to be play? I often describe the joy I have in setting foot on the campus where I work as “feeling like a kid in a candy shop who just received his allowance”!

Sometimes, people think that work was “the curse” or part of the curse of the fall of Adam and Eve. I’ve often taught that work existed prior to the fall (see Genesis 2:15) and that work simply became toilsome and a necessity in consequence of the fall (see Genesis 3:17-19). What the message makes me think about is that there was a connection between work and play that was damaged along with the connections between God, people, and the creation. Work becomes this survival necessity that is often laborious but sometimes still has glimmers of play. Play gets relegated to a “carve out” in our days, or something we live for on the weekends. Sometimes it becomes an obsession and we literally work at our play.

Perhaps then, “playing together”, which is something Rich suggests should be part of the life of our community, is a way of celebrating “the new creation”, the ways Jesus is restoring all the connections severed in the garden. Playing together isn’t just a bonding, fellowship activity (nice churchy words!). It looks forward to the fulfillment of new creation–the new heaven and earth that exceeds our wildest dreams of all that is good and true and beautiful. Maybe Euchre Tournaments really are a taste of heaven!

This blog also appears at our church’s blog page: Going Deeper.