Christianity

Paradoxes: Dying to Live

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I’ve been thinking of late of some paradoxes of life. Paradoxes are ideas that seem apparently contradictory and yet are true. One of these is at the heart of my faith. It is the idea that to live, you must die. To try to hold onto your life is to lose it. Only if you lose it will you gain it. Jesus put it this way, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (Luke 9:23-25).

The problem with this paradox is that to test its truth, one has to believe in resurrections. In our modern world, when you die, you just die. Period. And so it seems to make sense to hold onto life as long as you can. The only question is, what kind of life are you holding onto? Yesterday, I reviewed Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, the story of Binx Bolling and a life of quiet, middle-class desperation. And I wonder, is this the kind of life we are holding onto–one of acquiring more things and experiences and wealth in our early years, so that we can buy retirement condos and play golf into senescence? Maybe we sprinkle in some service to humanity and philanthropy. Yet the story is just about us, about living life “my way” (in the words of the old Sinatra song), until we die and are forgotten.

I wonder if at least for some of those who come to faith as adults, it is an awakening from this desperately comfortable zombie-like existence. It is recognizing that we really need resurrection, and for that to take place, first we must really die to running our own lives, to making our selves supreme. This seems hard. But isn’t this what we do when we go under the knife for a major surgery for a life-threatening condition? We could die, but if we do not undergo the surgery, we will. This is what following Jesus means–to die to directing my own life to follow the direction of another.

I’ve been on this journey most of my life and it is still hard. Jesus speaks of taking up the cross daily. At present, one of the things this means is shifting attention in my work from some of the things I’ve really loved to some necessary but less glamorous “behind the scenes” work that I know how to do and may multiply our work in the long term. It involves a kind of dying but what I’ve also thought about as I begin to lean into this change is the promise of new life that could not be had any other way. It means living afresh into the paradox that is at the heart of the gospel.

I end with a quote I first heard years ago by Jim Eliot, a missionary martyred in South America by a tribe who eventually found faith, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Review: Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt

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Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt
Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt by Albert Haase
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Voices from the past can be like a bucket of cold water awakening us to realities to which our own age renders us oblivious. Reading Athanasius, particularly in this vivid paraphrase is like that. Part of this is the subject matter for most of this work, the life of Antony. Antony was a desert monastic–holy but hardly tame. Most striking in Athanasius narrative on Antony is his spiritual combat with demonic beings. Were it not for the wisdom and discernment Antony shows elsewhere, one might think him a bit deranged. Yet perhaps this reflects our own obliviousness to the spiritual powers and that they may lull us with subtleties and not need to attack directly. Here is one quote from Antony that gives a sense of this (and of Haase’s paraphrasing):

“If you really had guts and power, only one of you would have come. But since the Lord has conquered you, you had to gang up on me like schoolyard bullies. In reality, your bark is worse than your bite….If you really have guts and power, then come on and have at me! But if you are a wuss, why disturb me? For faith in our Lord is the strongest of defenses and the best of weapons.”(p.33)

We also see in Antony the combination of the interior spirituality of the desert with the ability to minister with insight with both individuals and groups where necessary. Antony’s life is an account of the physicality of spiritual formation as he deals with lust, fasting, physical suffering and more and how facing these dependent upon Christ can immeasurably deepen our love for God.

The book also includes several shorter pieces by Athanasius. The letter to Ammoun gives pastorally wise counsel to a young man about the normal physical excretions of the body (including nocturnal emissions) and that since God made the body, these are not evil or unclean but normal and good. The letter to Dracontius challenges one fleeing a call to the bishopric to courage and obedience. And the fragment of Festal Letter 19 is an important piece of evidence from the early fourth century to the already forming consensus of the church on the canon of scripture.

The book includes a study guide for reflection or discussion, and an annotated bibliography on the works of Athanasius–all in 128 pages!

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Unfinished Work

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I hate not finishing things! I rarely leave a book unfinished. I don’t like to leave food on the plate. And I like to finish a job that I start. Yet one of the things I’ve become increasingly conscious of as I get older is that some of the things I’ve dreamed of–whether my dreams for campus work, for our organization, or for the impact of Christian thought in the part of the world where I live–I will likely live to see only glimmers of the things I’ve dreamed of. Until the end of history and the return of Jesus, the day comes for each of us where we lay down our work, and ultimately our life in this world–always with things undone, always with more that we know could be done.

every_good_endeavor_sm2_thumb

I think of great “unfinished” works of music. There are Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, and Edward Elgar’s Third. What must it have been like for those composers to have music in mind that was never realized on a score?

I’ve just begun reading Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor. In one of the early chapters he recounts the little story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, Leaf by Niggle that tells the story of an artist, Niggle, who has a vision of a scene with a beautiful tree in the center. Try as he might, Niggle can never capture the whole tree, only one very perfect leaf. Then Niggle goes on the long journey of death until he comes to a place where he sees the tree of his vision and realizes that his creation was part of a much larger Creation of a greater Creator. Keller notes that this story was written at a time when Tolkien doubted that he would ever complete Lord of the Rings, and that Tolkien was in fact Niggle!

J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien

Keller draws from this the idea that for the Christian, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (NIV) Paul’s hope was not that our work would be complete in this life, but that there would be a resurrection to a new creation, where somehow our creations would carry over into the final Creation.

What that says to me is that the prospect of unfinished work need not be a cause for despair. Our work will matter and somehow we will see the realization in some purified form of our deepest hopes and dreams. And so I can keep giving myself to pressing toward those goals, to pursuing the good, the beautiful, and the true. I don’t need to finish because my trust is in the one who said, “It is finished.”

When the Lord’s Supper was a Real Meal

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Our church has begun a blog of responses from several of our congregation members to our pastor’s sermons each week. I will usually posting every other Wednesday and will re-post to my own blog. Enjoy!

Review: You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church… and Rethinking Faith

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You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church... and Rethinking Faith
You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church… and Rethinking Faith by David Kinnaman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

David Kinnaman’s book You Lost Me is based on extensive Barna Research exploring the reasons a number of Millenials (or Mosaics as Kinnaman likes to call them) have left the church. The book is useful for four areas of exploration.

The first is that of generational distinctions. Kinnaman sees three qualities that mark this generation: access to information, alienation from societal structures and skepticism toward authority. Of these I thought the first the most unique–certainly Boomers experienced alienation and skepticism of authority during the Vietnam and Watergate eras–they may just have forgotten. Information access is different–youth can fact check a sermon on their smart phone during the service!

The second is his discussion of three ways of being lost–as nomads, prodigals, and exiles. Nomads have left church but not faith. Prodigals have turned from the faith. Exiles are more complicated. They believe, sometimes passionately, but struggle when they don’t find that passionate belief embraced by the church or hamstrung by cultural barriers.

The third is reasons he sees for disconnection. These include six factors: overprotectiveness, shallowness, anti-science attitudes, repressiveness, exclusiveness, and intolerance of doubt. One thing I wonder is whether those who lead such churches have just forgotten what it was like to be young and to struggle with questions, impulses, and an intolerance of hypocrisy. Most of us would have been put off by the same kinds of churches, I think, in our youth.

Finally, he explores how the church can reconnect and I was grateful that the answers he proposed were not slick techniques but a return to basics (maybe a form or repentance?): reconsidering how we make disciples, rediscovering the idea of calling and vocation, and prioritizing wisdom over information. The book concludes with ideas from fifty church leaders. This last seemed uneven and superfluous to me. I think the book would have been stronger with just Kinnaman’s concluding chapter.

My son and I, with guest posts from one of his friends who would say he has left the church, have posted a series of blogs as part of a conversation between generations around the ideas of this book. If you have missed them, here is a complete set of the links to our posts in the order they appeared:

http://bobonbooks.com/2013/11/17/confession/ This is the post that gave us the idea for the conversation.

http://bentrubewriter.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/generation-gap/

You Lost Me, The Conversation: Generational Distinctives

http://bentrubewriter.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/how-would-you-describe-yourself/

You Lost Me, the Conversation: Nomads, Prodigals, and Exiles

http://bentrubewriter.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/faith-outside-the-church/

http://briandbuckley.com/2013/12/04/christianity-and-me-part-1/?relatedposts_exclude=3198

http://briandbuckley.com/2013/12/05/christianity-and-me-part-2/

You Lost Me, The Conversation: Disconnections

http://bentrubewriter.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/you-almost-lost-me-creation-care/

You Lost Me, The Conversation about Creation Care

You Lost Me, The Conversation: Reconnections

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Christianity and Me, part 2

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A friend of Ben’s who describes himself as a “prodigal” has joined our conversation and written thoughtfully on both what he appreciates about Christianity and why he’s not a Christian. Thought you’d enjoy seeing some of the conversation between the three of us.

Review: God, Freedom and Human Dignity: Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture

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God, Freedom and Human Dignity: Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture
God, Freedom and Human Dignity: Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture by Ron Highfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book makes an important contention regarding the questions of human freedom and dignity: our efforts to source our dignity and freedom within ourselves, far from enhancing our dignity and freedom, will invariably undercut our identity. Likewise, far from diminishing our dignity, to love and trust the Triune, self-giving God leads to the fullest expression of our humanness, imaging God in the very ways this occurred in the incarnation of the son, whose deity is in no ways diminished by his humanity, nor his humanity in any sense diminished by his deity.

As you can tell from this summary, there is much careful thought and argument to be found in this book. The first part of the book explores the “me-centered” self and how this arose in western thought. In relation to God, this self alternates between Promethean defiance, sullen subservience, or indifference. God is a rival in a zero-sum game whose omnipotence is to be feared and competed with, and whose omnipresence creates in one a source of dread. Yet the challenge of such a self is emptiness and aloneness–any being is in fact a threat to its supremacy.

Much of the second half of the book dispels misconceptions about God that lays the groundwork for a God-centered self. For example, Highfield notes that God doesn’t have power but IS power and thus to grant us power doesn’t diminish God but only enhances us. Perhaps the high point for me was the discussion of the self-giving love of the triune God for each other and the fact that we are loved as greatly in Christ as Christ is himself by the Father.

This is a rich book worthy of being read slowly and reflected upon. I’ve chosen to simply outline some of the main contours of the writer’s argument because to fully do it justice would require a much longer or review. Instead, I would simply commend reading the book itself!

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Review: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success

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The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The reigning perception of Christianity in the academy is of a faith that is the enemy of reason from which enlightenment humanism liberated us. Rodney Stark would contend that this is a characterization without basis in fact. In The Victory of Reason he argues that the distinctive progress of the west in science, technology, commerce, human rights, and democratic institutions can be traced back to the distinctive character of Christian belief.

What is more intriguing is that he argues that this emerged during what is often called “The Dark Ages” following the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Stark argues that it was the fall of the empire that in fact liberated Christian thought in ways that led to the progress noted above. During this period, free market commerce emerged in enclaves free from state interference in both Italy and parts of northern Europe. Technological innovation drove improved productivity. And the universities arose out of church cathedral schools to promote higher learning. All before the Renaissance or the Reformation, which he would argue were merely the fruit of the ground prepared by the church in the preceding millennium.

But what is it about Christian belief that fosters such openness to reason and its applications and to progress? Stark’s primary argument is that Christianity is not a static revelation fixed for all time, but an evolving understanding of truth that is open to discursive reason and to progress over time. His case study for this is the church’s response to usury and the creation of lending vehicles to fuel the growth of commerce without violating sacred teaching.

He goes on to argue that what hinders the victory of reason translated into material and technological progress is the presence of tyranny–either governments or guilds which restrict economic incentives or rob people of the rights of the fruit of their work. He contrasts Spain and England and their respective colonies in this regard, finally concluding with the connection between religious faith and the profound economic growth witnessed in pre-and post-revolutionary war periods in this country.

There is much in what Stark argues with which I agree. I wholly agree with his contention that Christianity provides the seedbed for the rise of reason and the scientific enterprise as well as concern for human rights and democratic institutions. I suspect, however, that his thesis is open to criticism on several fronts. One is the rise of authoritarian church institutions–is Christian belief too weak to prevent these. The second is the rise of tyrannous rule in “Christian” countries and the use of Christianity to justify tyranny. Finally, there is the question of Christian responses when revelation and reason appear to conflict–particularly efforts seeking to suppress free inquiry. I do not see Stark addressing these “counterfactuals”, and perhaps he could not in a work of this size for an educated general audience. I think all of these objections can be met in a way that do not detract from his thesis, and because of this believe this a valuable addition countering popular misconceptions of Christian faith.

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