Sense of Security: Based on Trust or Certainty?

Following up on the idea I presented last week about the human brain being designed for trust rather than for absolute certainty (http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2013/03/boxing-god-in-until-he-disappears.html), I want to share from one of last year's posts in which I quoted George MacDonald (the man C.S.Lewis gave credit for most influencing him):

"To know God is to be in the secret place of all knowledge; and to trust him changes the whole outlook surrounding mystery and seeming contradictions and unanswered questions from one of doubt or fear or bewilderment to one of hope. The unknown may be some lovely truth in store for us, which we are not yet ready to apprehend. Not to be intellectually certain of a truth does not prevent the heart that loves and obeys that truth from getting the goodness out of it, from drawing life from it because it is loved, not because it is understood."  (from MacDonald's book, "The Lady's Confession")

"Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to rouse the honest heart. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood...Doubts must precede every deeper assurance. For uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed."   (from the book, "Discovering the Character of God")

A loved child is curious, full of honest questions and has no fear of punishment from the parent; as a consequence he/she grows in understanding. As followers of Jesus, many of us (particularly in the evangelical/charismatic tradition) have been trained by our "christian culture" that we should be absolutely certain about many different doctrines, and in our adherence to doctrinal certainty, we lose childlike curiosity and cease to grow in dynamic understanding of God. We cling to certainty for our sense of security, rather than to trust in the Person of God in Christ Jesus.

There are many "regions hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed" that we can venture into without fear when hand in hand with our Father. May the Spirit of Jesus reveal the love of the Father to us in such a way that we dare to trust Him and never stop asking questions and never stop growing!

Boxing God In Until He Disappears...

One thing that is becoming clearer to me as I have been daring to venture out of the box of evangelical certainty is that God is trustworthy and He is all love. This is liberating because it means that it's safe in Him to ask questions and to doubt things that I've been taught - He is not threatened by my questions and even welcomes them; I don't need to fear His reaction if I doubt some of the many tight doctrines that I was raised with; I can trust that He will never abandon me and will lovingly lead me as I lean on Him.

Dr. Curt Thompson, a follower of Jesus who is a psychiatrist, has studied the human brain and writes fascinating material about the integration of the disciplines of psychiatry and Christian spirituality. He writes the following about how our brains are actually designed for trust, not for absolute certainty:

"Not certain about God?...You mean we can’t know that we know that we know…for certain? Well…no, you can’t. Your brain won’t let you.  Imagine what it is like to have a mind that not only can’t be certain, but was intentionally created not to be.  Rather, it was created to trust.  Confidence, yes.  Certainty? Certainly not. 

Our full-bodied minds were created for movement. At times so subtle that we barely notice it, at times rapid and furious.  But movement is the ground (though sometimes perceived as shifting, as it were) on which trust is constructed...And without trust—or perhaps in other words, with absolute certainty—we die.  Did you know that your eye is constantly moving, even within nanometers, in order to more clearly perceive an object?  Some researchers wonder that if the eye were literally perfectly still, the object would become blurred or perhaps even disappear.  Cool, huh?  But also a bit frightening.  It is when we attempt to get God to be perfectly motionless, to perfectly fit the mold we construct for him within which to fit, that he tends to eventually disappear.

In those moments when you fear that you have lost your certainty, and then, perhaps your sanity, or even your god, know that you are now ready to enter relationship with the God, not of certainty, but of Movement, the God of Trust, the God of Justice."

In light of this, I am very thankful for parents who modeled for their children the willingness to keep changing and growing in their understanding of God. They were ever moving with what He was showing them of His character and His ways. This empowered and continues to empower me to do the same, and I'm loving the discoveries of Him that continue to come as a result of this!

For those who may want to read the entire article by Curt Thompson, you can find it here:
http://www.beingknown.com/2010/12/certainty-is-an-illusion/

Telling God's Story - Why Does it Matter?

We just went through the book, Telling God's Story, by Peter Enns - a book written to help us teach the Bible to children. I want to follow up with a couple of thoughts about the implications of the author's proposed way of presenting scripture to children.

There are two major shifts that stand out to me in Enns' way of teaching the Bible to children:

• First, starting young children with stories of Jesus rather than with Old Testament stories. This helps to establish early on that the Bible is primarily about Jesus, therein sending a clear message that He is the lens through which we understand God's story. It also makes the Bible story cohesive, around one Person, rather than a book of disjointed stories.
• Second (related to the first point), teaching the child the nature and purpose of scripture through approaching it in an age-appropriate way so that they can process the Bible according to their level of understanding. In this way the legitimate and obvious questions that the Bible brings up to the more developed mind can be asked as the child matures in his ability to think things out. In the contemporary evangelical world, we have often mistakenly taught our children that the Bible is something that it's not and have subliminally sent the message that it should not be questioned at all. This is in part because we have read it with the modern scientific and enlightenment worldview rather than with the worldview of the ancient peoples.

Why does this matter? Two reasons come to me (though I'm sure there are more):

1. Since our desire as parents and teachers is to lead the child to Jesus, helping him/her to understand Jesus and what it means to be a follower of His, it's critical that we underscore as much as possible that scripture is given to us to help us see what God is like in His Son Jesus. The living Word is greater than the written Word, so it's critical that our children learn that scripture points us to Jesus (not the other way around). Though this may seem a subtle difference, it's a big and important difference.
2. If the child doesn't learn what God's primary intentions are in giving us scripture, he won't be prepared for the many controversies about the Bible that there are in both the Christian world and the world of those who aren't followers of Jesus. The child's unrealistic expectations of what the Bible is and does can set him up for either blind/naive defensiveness of the Bible (which can result in an entrenched position that will hinder him from growing in understanding of God in Christ) or for a complete rejection of the faith because he wasn't prepared for confronting reasonable arguments against what he was told the Bible is.  

Because of technology today, parents and teachers can no longer protect children from the many alternative views about scripture that are easily accessible. We can help prepare them for that encounter.

For those interested in what Peter Enns has developed of curriculum for teaching children the Bible, go to:   http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Gods-Story-Instructor-Teaching/dp/1933339489/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1361894089&sr=8-10&keywords=peter+enns  There you will find some teacher and children's materials available.

For any who may want to go into more depth on the topic of the nature and purpose of scripture, Peter Enns has written other books that can be found on amazon.com:  "Inspiration and Incarnation" and "Genesis for Normal People".  You can also find some material on the general topic of the Bible in the blog posts that I did a year ago on the book, "The Bible Made Impossible":  http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-made-impossible-authors.html

I pray for today's little ones who are dear and precious to God that they will grow in wisdom and grace and surpass us in their understanding of how utterly good and wonderful our God is. May we cheer them on even though it will certainly require the un-doing of some of our inherited ways of thinking.

Telling God's Story - Chapter 10: Jesus (Scene One and Scene Two)

We've reached the final chapter of Telling God's Story by Peter Enns, in which he presents Act 5 of the Biblical redemption story: Jesus.

The five acts of the Biblical story as the author proposes are the following:

• Act 1:  Creation and Fall
• Act 2:  Redemption - Abraham and Moses
• Act 3:  Redemption - David and Kingship
• Act 4:  Redemption - Return from Babylon
• Act 5:  Redemption - Jesus

Act 5 has two stages: Jesus' first coming and His second coming. Much of the Gospels and Epistles focus on His first coming. Jesus, like the kings that came before Him, was God's earthly representative and came to reveal God in His fullness. The difference in His connection with the heavenly Father was that He had a more direct connection, a "genetic connection." He is divine and yet fully human. "Jesus lived his life in a state of double humiliation: he was God become man, and as a man he was nothing much to look at." (Phil. 2:6-8)

Jesus' messiahship, though carried out in lowliness, was far more sweeping than previous "messiahs"/kings. In Him all people, Jews and Gentiles, would "together be made whole, forgiven of their sins" through His own death and resurrection. Jesus did what no person nor the nation of Israel could do - He was a blessing to all nations, restoring humanity to God by His death and raising all God's people to new life by His resurrection.

"Jesus actually fulfills Israel's story thus far. Through Jesus, all the nations are truly and finally blessed, as promised through Abraham. Jesus is the new and improved Moses, who leads his people out of a different kind of slavery...Like David, Jesus is anointed by God to lead his people. And when God delivers his people from Babylon, this is a foreshadowing in the Old Testament storyline of the time when God will bring his people home...Jesus died and was raised to life to allow all of us to be part of Israel's grand story."

The author begins Scene Two of Act 5 saying, "By being raised from the dead, Jesus became the 'firstfruit' of the future resurrection of all believers...When Jesus rose from the dead, the future invaded the present." Right now we who follow Jesus are living in the "last days" which began when He was resurrected, but the final installment of the last days is yet to come. "In the meantime, what defines us as God's people is being united to God by faith."

Because we are united with God in Christ, the future is built into us. Our children should grasp the New Testament message: "You are 'in Christ' people, and that means you already have one foot in the future. You have a high calling. The power of the Spirit of Christ is at work in you, teaching you, loving you, rebuking you, carrying you...so that in every area of life you can be more like Jesus...Therefore, by God's mercy, stop living in such a way that is opposite to that high calling."

Put another way, our children should not get the message "Do these things so that God will be pleased with you", but rather "God has made you brothers and sisters with Christ; he is pleased with you, now go and live it."

The book concludes with this final word: "Our greatest task in teaching the Bible to our children is to bring them to a point where they join us 'in Christ.' And this is what the Bible is here to do: to tell, ultimately, the one big story of who God is and what he does to restore his world."

Telling God's Story - Chapter 9: The Return from Babylon

Chapter 9 of "Telling God's Story" presents Act 4 of the Bible narrative which is also stage 4 of God's redemption: Israel's Return from Babylon.

In this stage of redemption history, God brings His people back, reestablishing them in their land after their captivity by the superpower of that day, Babylon. The time in captivity served as a purifying and refining process, resulting in a faithful remnant returning to Israel. With this remnant God, once again, starts over. He is "re-creating" Israel.

"Israel's exile, rejection, and suffering in Babylon foreshadow Jesus' own rejection and suffering on behalf of his people. The famous prophecy in Isaiah 53 about the 'suffering servant' is primarily referring to the suffering of Israel, God's servant. It is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus and his suffering for his people. But God is not finished with Israel yet."

When the Persians took over world domination they allowed the captives to return home, and now God's people could worship Him properly, meaning the rebuilding of the temple. The temple was completed in 516 BC. The people were allowed relative freedom but were still subject to foreign power.

During the long Persian dynasty, Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the common language for the Jews. In order that all could read the Hebrew Bible, it was translated into Aramaic, the international language of the day. "This is an extremely important point: Israel was going international. Now, other people could have access to the Bible in their own language."

Later when Alexander the Great took control of the known world, Greek became the language of choice. Eventually a mixture of languages was spoken in Israel: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. (The sign hung over the cross of Jesus was in 3 of these languages: Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.)

The return of Israel from Babylon got them back to their land, but it also introduced a great mixture of peoples, languages and customs, making Israel a volatile land at the time Jesus came on the scene.

"Into this situation, Jesus came...If you knew nothing of Jesus or Christianity, but you understood the tense political, cultural, and religious mood of the first century, and then you started reading the Gospels, it wouldn't be long before you asked yourself 'Who is this Jesus and when is he going to be killed?'" 

Chapter 10 ("Jesus: Scene One and Scene Two") is the closing chapter and climax of this book.

Telling God's Story - Chapter 8: David and the Problem of Kingship

By way of review, the second half of "Telling God's Story" presents the Bible story in the form of a five-act play; so far we have looked at Act 1: Creation and Fall, and Act 2: Redemption: Abraham and Moses. We are now in chapter 8 which presents Act 3: David and the Problem of Kingship.

In the chapter on Abraham and Moses, we looked at the first 2 stages of redemption, which were:

• Stage One (Abraham): God makes and blesses a new nation for the purpose of blessing all nations.
• Stage Two (Moses): God forms this nation into a people for Himself and trains them to look like those who bear His image.

In this chapter on David and kingship in Israel, we get stage 3 of redemption in which "Israel is transformed from a desert-wandering tribe of former slaves to a people with land, kings, and eventually a temple."

Although this transformation should have resulted in stability and in God's glory among the nations, what actually happened was a steady decline over the next 400 years.

Peter Enns goes through some of the story of those 400 years. For the purpose of this review, I'll summarize by saying that after the Exodus came the lengthy conquest of Canaan after which various dynamic warrior-type judges led and protected the people. (Although Canaan was a tiny piece of land, it was coveted by the nations around it because of its strategic location, thus causing Israel to be constantly under attack by their neighbors who wanted control of that area.)

Eventually the people of Israel demanded a king like the nations around them had; although this was contrary to God's desire for them, He agreed to their demands and gave them a king with the warning that there would be problems as a result of their wanting to be like other nations.

A king was anointed with oil; he was an "anointed one" which in Hebrew means Messiah. So it is appropriate to think of Israel's kings as messiahs, anointed by God to do His work. "To appreciate Jesus' messianic role, how impressive and amazing it is, we need to be familiar with what the concept meant in the Old Testament. There, the 'messianic hope' was not in a heavenly being coming down, but in Yahweh raising up a might warrior-king who would keep the Law and would rule and guide his people..." 

Saul was the first king and he turned out to be a failure as king. Then Samuel found David, an unassuming and weak young man, and anointed him to be Israel's king. We know the story of David; to get the complete picture of the "messianic ideal", David and his son Solomon need to be looked at side by side. Though neither was perfect, they were both good kings who loved God. However, the "messiahs" that follow them (with a couple of exceptions) were very bad kings, and as a result the kingdom of Israel split into two parts: the northern kingdom (sometimes called Ephraim or Israel) and the southern kingdom (called Judah).

The southern kingdom lasted longer but eventually in 586 BC its people were taken captive into exile by the Babylonians; in 538 BC when the Persians conquered the Babylonians, a small remnant of Israelites returned to their land and the temple was rebuilt under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.

After the exile, the messianic hope sprung up again, the desire for a righteous king, and the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are among the most "messianic" of all the Old Testament books. "Chronicles is very concerned to see a new king arise, one like David, who will lead the people well. This king, this messiah, will be faithful in leading the people in obedience to God, and he will also protect and expand Israel's borders. This is the Old Testament messianic hope."

When Jesus comes, He defied the expectations of the Old Testament hopes in the Messiah, while at the same time fulfilling them in highly unexpected ways - which explains why his own close followers couldn't understand His mission. "Jesus redefined the messianic role...As God's divine representative to all peoples, Jew and Gentile, Jesus does what no forerunner had been able to do - reverse the damage caused by the first human, the first representative of God on earth, the first image-bearer: Adam. The Davidic stage of redemption helps set the stage for Jesus and his fulfillment of this kingly/messianic role, centuries later..."

Next we'll cover chapter 9: "The Return from Babylon."

Telling God's Story - Chapter 7: Redemption: Abraham and Moses

In the previous chapter we looked at Act 1 (Creation and Fall) of the five acts of the Bible story. Chapter 7 is about Act 2 - Redemption: Abraham and Moses.

Abraham and Moses are the two primary figures in the Old Testament who God uses to set in place His redemptive purposes. Because the Bible is not a legal document intended to answer every detail, there are a lot of unanswered questions about it. This is ok since the larger purposes of the Bible don't require that we know all the details.

Redemption, Stage One: Abraham
There are two main issues to underscore about Abraham's role in God's story:

• God will make a great and blessed nation through Abraham (who came from pagan origin).
• God's intention for creating this nation was that through them, all the peoples of the earth will be blessed.

"...Abraham's tale is not an isolated story, (not) the description of a great man we should emulate. Rather, Abraham stands at an initial stage in a grand story that reaches its climax, as does all of Scripture, in the death and resurrection of Christ - and...with all of us here today who are 'in Christ' who share in both is resurrection power and in his suffering (Philippians 3:10)...In a nutshell, this is the 'moral' lesson to be learned from Scripture. This is the vision of the Christian life Scripture teaches. We are part of God's plan to restore creation."

An important point to note is that although Abraham is chosen to be father of a mighty blessed nation, there is one obstacle after another that arises to get in the way (read about all of the family problems) - nothing is going smoothly! "Why God insists on working through these bottom-feeders is not easy to explain, but it is a constant in the Bible. God's people are marked by moral failures, lack of faith, and rank rebellion...This reinforces my earlier point: the central point of these stories is not to give us moral guidance."

Redemption, Stage Two: Moses
In the story of Moses and the Exodus we see Israel begin her journey as an actual nation. This is an act of grace on God's part because His deliverance of Israel from captivity is not because they were good people but because He has an important role for them to play in His great story. The purpose of the Exodus was much greater than the freeing of slaves; there was a two-fold purpose:

• God delivered Israel as part of His promise to Abraham (Ex. 2:24,25). With His remembrance of His covenant with Abraham, God is moving forward with His project and taking it to a new level with Moses and the Exodus.
• This deliverance shows that Israel belongs exclusively to God. When God told Pharaoh through Moses to let His people go, He said, "Let my people go so that they may worship me." The central issue of the Exodus was about who Israel would serve/worship. "Pharaoh and Yahweh are rival competitors for Israel's allegiance."

After leaving Egypt, Israel first worships Yahweh at Mt. Sinai, meeting their God and Creator in the thunder and lightning and smoke. The law that God gave His people there was not for the purpose of earning His favor - they already had His favor as His own people; the Law was given as a pattern for holy behavior that would reflect the image of God to a fallen world. The tabernacle was given as a pattern for holy worship of Yahweh.

(Enns develops the idea and purpose of the tabernacle and why the golden calf incident threatened to undo everything; for the sake of brevity, I won't go into that...)

The author ends this chapter by saying, "The Exodus is a very important theological moment in the Old Testament...(it) proves that there is no god like him...The Exodus story has a trajectory. It is not a flat story to derive a 'lesson' from it. Rather, it is a crucial chapter in the grand story. This second stage of redemption is all about God forming a people for himself and training them to look like people who are his image-bearers..."

Chapter 8 moves on the the 3rd Act of the Bible story: "David and the Problem of Kingship".