Christianity

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.