Christianity

A God, A Rulebook, or Trustworthy Testimony

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Bible open to John 5. (c)2015, Robert C Trube

Bible open to John 5. (c)2015, Robert C Trube

What am I talking about? The Bible, the Christian scriptures.

Some people treat the Bible as if it was the fourth member of the Godhead. Sometimes, it seems we are more zealous to defend a notion of what the Bible is than we are for God’s glory, God’s reputation in the world.

I think many view the Bible as a book of rules. Do these things and you will go to heaven. Don’t do these things and God will get you. Let the people into our community who keep the rules. Exclude the ones who don’t. Study hard so you know the rules. If you are creative, figure out ways to extend the rules to every situation, even ones never envisioned by the rules. Exclude those who don’t agree with your creative interpretations. Congratulate yourself on your diligence in study and rule-keeping. You are one of God’s star pupils.

Of course, that is only good if you are good at study and rule-keeping and many of us are honest enough to admit that we are not. So, should we just pack it in since we are in a mess with God anyway? I think that is how a number of people feel.

This Sunday, our church looked at John 5:19-46 together. Verses 39 and 40 suggest a very different reason for the scriptures:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life.These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,  yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Jesus is proposing that the Bible is neither God nor a rule book but rather testimony about himself that can be trusted. The central idea of the Bible is to help people find life through trusting and following Jesus. The Pharisees, who were great at battling for the Bible and devising ingenious rule-keeping strategies were missing the point. In fact they were so caught up in these things that they were refusing something better, real life, being connected to the God who made them through his Son who had come to them.

But, you say, there really are a lot of rules in the Bible. It sure looks like a rule book in places. What’s that all about? There are two ways to answer this. One is that the rules really reflect what God is like and what we need to be like to live with Him. They tell us we need God to do something both to wipe the slate clean from all the ways we break the rules, and to deal with our propensity to do the opposite of what God wants for us. That something is Jesus and the life he gives means both forgiveness for what we’ve done and the power to increasingly live differently.

The second answer is that the instructions and commands we find, especially those given by Jesus and in the New Testament are not rules but tell us how we might most faithfully and joyfully enter into the life Jesus has for us. They teach us how to love God and each other and to experience wholeness in our own selves.

There’s a good deal more that can be said about all this so if you have questions, leave them in the comments and let’s talk!

The real deal that I want to come back to is that the most important thing to look for when reading the Bible is how it points us toward Jesus. Earlier in the passage we see this is the Jesus who claims equality with the Father and to have been entrusted with the Father’s authority both to give life and to judge (verses 19-27). If that’s true, then there is no one more important to know!

So, if you are spiritually seeking, then it seems one of the most important questions you can ask as you read the Bible is, how does this testify to Jesus and what is this telling me about him? In some sense, all of the Bible does this, but I would suggest for newbie Bible readers that the gospels do this most clearly.

And for those who are Christ-followers, how are we viewing the Bible? Have we gotten caught up in some form of Bible wars? Are we congratulating ourselves on how well we keep the rules, or how much we know about the Bible? Or are we not paying much attention at all to what it says, depending on sermons to do that for us? What John says is that this book tells us who Jesus is and how we can find abundant life as we get to know and follow him better and better.

Going Deeper Question: How do you think about the Bible, and how are you interacting with it?

Review: The Living Paul: An Introduction to the Apostle’s Life and Thought

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The Living Paul: An Introduction to the Apostle's Life and Thought
The Living Paul: An Introduction to the Apostle’s Life and Thought by Anthony C. Thiselton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The apostle Paul is alternately portrayed as the true founder of Christianity and the control-freak who destroyed the beautiful thing Jesus began and hated women. Anthony Thiselton, in this succinct portrait, gives us a much more nuanced picture of Paul.

One of the first things Thiselton does is deal with two of the “deal-breakers” that would keep many from paying any further attention to Paul. The first is that he shows the continuity between Paul and Jesus in the grace he proclaimed that is also evident in both the parables and the gracious works of Jesus. This is also the key place where he deals with Paul’s treatment of women, pointing to his close associations with women throughout his ministry and the active ministry roles they shared with him. Secondly he deals with the stark divide many perceive between old and new creation in Paul, setting alongside this Paul’s theology of progress and growth toward maturity in Christ.

His next two chapters give us a narrative of Paul’s life covering his conversion, the “hidden years” and his missionary journeys. He suggests probable dates for different events and the provenance of different letters, while acknowledging scholarly difference on these issues.

In subsequent chapters, Thiselton gives concise overviews of Paul’s contribution to our theology of the Trinity, of the nature of fallen and redeemed humanity, the work of Christ and the crucial Pauline insight of our union with Christ, his development of a theology of the church, the sacraments, Christian ethics, and the last things. He considers the present question of justification and the views of Luther, Dunn, and Wright, coming down with a synthesis of Luther and Wright.

The final chapter was probably of greatest interest as Thiselton considers the major figures of post-modernism in relation to Paul. A key insight not often discussed are the parallels between our time and Paul’s in confronting pluralism, power, and meta-narratives.

Throughout, Thiselton is a model of concision, which may be frustrating for those looking for a more exhaustive treatment but just right for those struggling with their view of Paul and willing to consider a more nuanced view.

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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.