Finally God Unveils His Face!

To finish out the year, I'm sharing seven quotes from George MacDonald, thought-provoking words that may provide the reader with material to meditate on as we transition from the end of this year into the start of a new year. I've chosen different themes from his writings; perhaps one of these may catch your attention. If so, a helpful practice is to take a moment and contemplate it together with Him:

"God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation - a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on, from fact to fact divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus, He unveils His very face. Then begins a fresh unveiling, for the very work of the Father is the work the Son Himself has to do - to reveal..."

"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking."

“You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself." (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity)

“...there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.”  

“...though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.” 

“But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope,
That one day we shall thank thee perfectly
For pain and hope and all that led or drove
Us back into the bosom of thy love.”  

“It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul than He has created. From every burden, from every anxiety, from all dread of shame or loss, even loss of love itself, that yoke will set us free.”

May the coming year be one of looking into the face of Jesus and experiencing His work of "casting aside veil after veil...until at length in His Son Jesus, He unveils His very face." God is Christlike!  II Cor. 4:6  For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made us understand that it is the brightness of his glory that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

Astonishing News for Everyone about an Astonishing Person

In the previous post about "astonishing news", we looked at Luke 2 and the announcement made by the angel to the shepherds:

Luke 2 ^{- "}And in the same area there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And then an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were very afraid. But the angel said to them, “Listen! Do not fear. For I bring you good news of great joy, which will be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: You will find the Baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.” Suddenly there was with the angel a company of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will toward men.”

I want to follow up on how Jesus wonderfully fulfilled each part of the announcement that is highlighted above.

First, "Do not fear." In taking on human flesh and dying, Jesus faced fear and broke the power of the fear of death that haunts and torments every human. His pure love for humans drove out fear, opening the way to trust God rather than to fear.

Second, "good news of great joy." Jesus was the joyful good news. His presence among people always inspired joy and expectation. Here was a person who was fully alive, filled with the love of God for everyone. His presence caused great hope and rejoicing to all who were hungry and thirsty.

Third, "to all people." In spite of the fact that the first century world was "small" and that Jesus moved about in a very limited geographical space primarily among the Jews, He was always relating with and ministering to those who were not Jewish and left no doubt about God's love and redemption being for all peoples. In Jesus we began to see clearly that God has no favorites; all are His own.

Fourth, "the Baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a manger." Jesus' life began as any human life begins - as a baby, helpless and vulnerable. The way He lived His life as a grown man reflected His identification with the average person. God came in a way that was unexpected and non-threatening.

Fifth, "on earth peace." This announcement of peace concerning this birth indicates that His nature is that of peace. In Jesus peace came to earth. Because He understood that violence only begets more violence, He did not try to resolve force with force. He lived this way of peace and His death manifested His refusal to respond to violence by use of force. He promised peace before His crucifixion and pronounced peace immediately upon appearing to His followers after His resurrection. Jesus was and is the Prince of peace.

Finally, "good will toward men." In Jesus God was showing that He has good intentions for humans, all humans. When we see how Jesus treated humans, we see the good will that God has towards us. God was in Christ saying through Jesus' words and deeds and the outpouring of His life that He loves and wants everyone to experience the goodness that there is in relating with Him.

...astonishing news for everyone about an astonishing Person! GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST!

Astonishing News for Everyone

The dramatic announcement made to the shepherds about God's coming in human flesh shows us a lot about God.

Luke 2 ^{- "}And in the same area there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And then an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were very afraid. But the angel said to them, “Listen! Do not fear. For I bring you good news of great joy, which will be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: You will find the Baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.” Suddenly there was with the angel a company of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

                                                                 Glory to God in the highest,
                                      and on earth peace, and good will toward men.”

As I reflect on this beautiful portion afresh, I see the following truths about God in the highlighted phrases:

First, "Do not fear." This suggests to me that God knows we are fearful people and wants us to understand that, unlike the intimidating gods of the nations, He is coming to us in a non-threatening way. Rather than fearing Him, He desires that we trust Him.

Second, "good news of great joy." Our God is a joyful God with good news for us. This announcement isn't that of a vengeful, vindictive God but One, who like loving parents, is eager to surprise their children with a gift that the child knows he/she doesn't deserve.

Third, "to all people." This God is not tribal. He isn't coming for only one particular group of people but for all people, all nations. This is staggering news for humans whose bent is toward thinking that God favors people like ourselves over others.

Fourth, "the Baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a manger." Wow! This God comes in the most vulnerable form possible and is born into the poor of society, underscoring His desire to identify with the lowliest and to come in the most non-threatening way possible.

Fifth, "peace on earth." This tells us that His nature is peace-loving and non-violent. He comes, unlike all other gods and kings, with no rivalrous nor competitive agenda, no need to prove Himself. The rule of His kingdom is a rule of peace.

Sixth, "good will toward men." This God comes with good will, good intentions towards all people. All other gods and rulers view people as a means to accomplish their agenda and glory. Our God is all about good for everyone.

This is an astonishing announcement! Everything about it shouts that this God has no animosity towards humanity but rather is madly in love with humans and will do anything to come to our aid. The world has never known such a God; but because He is how He is, He won't assert and force Himself and His ways on anyone; it requires a lowly attitude in us to see and receive the good news that the angel announced that splendid night.

Deadly Side Effects

Recently I asked myself this question: "Is my interest in continuing to learn and to grow in knowledge so that I can understand God better and thereby love Him and others more, or is it so that I can prove that I'm 'right' and win arguments? Is it so that I can give life to others or so that I can feel superior to others?"

I believe this question was prompted by the Spirit of God and was His way of continually re-calibrating my journey in Him to keep me focused on loving Him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength and loving my neighbor as myself.

In the story of the garden of Eden, we see the two ways of knowing that humans are offered: knowing independently of God (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) and knowing in God (the tree of life). We humans have a wonderful capacity for knowing and learning, making great and wonderful discoveries because of being made in the image of our Creator; but when we exercise this capability apart from relationship with Him, even the discoveries we make that are beneficial to others have a dark underbelly to them and side effects that are worse than the knowledge/discovery.

The follower of Jesus is not immune to this reality. We never reach a place where trust and dependence on God is not necessary in our growth in understanding (whether that be theological understanding or any other discoveries). As we pursue knowledge that leads to creativity, we must do so in Him and dependent on Him; in other words, we must seek knowledge while in vital relationship with Him and with the awareness that the purpose of learning is to better understand God and His creation and be conformed to His likeness so that the way we live our life is like Jesus lived His: in loving communion with God and loving actions towards all humans. A common deadly side effect to gaining better understanding of God and His ways is pride and a sense of being superior to others.

When we grow in knowledge while depending on God, the benefits of that knowledge will have no deadly side effects.

If increased understanding is not producing increasing tenderness towards God and others, then it may be time to step back and allow His Spirit to examine us. For each person this will look different, but a periodic time of healthy self-reflection (not a morbid unhealthy religious self-hatred type of exercise) is helpful in re-calibrating the direction in which we are headed. Our natural propensity towards taking what we are learning and using it in unloving, self-serving ways requires that we allow God's Spirit to call us apart (for a moment, a day, a week...) for renewal and a fresh reminder of what life is really about: receiving His freely-given love in order to freely love Him and others with the same love and therein bring life and peace into our small corner of the world.

There is no Fear/Control in Love (In other Words, Is God 'in Control'?)

This is the third and concluding post on the topic of God's uncontrolling love. Having shared thoughts on the general idea that true love by nature is uncontrolling (here) and then some thoughts on where we see this clearly in operation (here), I will share some random thoughts about the implications of this kind of love. This is not comprehensive at all but perhaps can help generate more thoughts on the topic. The following are a few implications that come to mind:

One implication is that God is more interested in His creation's well-being than in His own well-being, because to love someone without trying to control them will, in one way or another, ultimately cost the lover his/her life. It is a dying to oneself and a giving up of one's power for the sake of the other.

Another implication is that God is willing to take risks in order to win voluntary love from His creatures. By taking hands off and not manipulating a person to behave in a desired way, the lover is risking that the person will walk away from life and goodness.

A third implication is that God wants love that is freely given to Him. God must exercise the kind of love He wants back from us. Voluntary love is not produced through using controlling love.

Another implication of God's love being free from control would be that, contrary to what we Christians say about God all the time, He is not controlling all that happens in our lives and in the world. God so loves the world that He gave up control over us in order to have a family that loves Him voluntarily. If God is not controlling everything, this would explain why the world is in the mess it's in; humans must be allowed free choice in order for true love to be operative in the world.

All of this could make God look impotent and weak to the point of His being unable to accomplish anything. But my final thought about uncontrolling love may apply here, and that is that uncontrolling love is actually the most powerful force there is. GOD IS LOVE. The presence of God among men is transformative. His power is in the ability of uncontrolling love to ultimately win over the heart of the loved one because the human heart is created to be loved. The apostle Paul says that LOVE NEVER FAILS; if this is so, then the God who is love will ultimately win the loved one through His loving presence rather than through His control.

^"God is love, and the man whose life is lived in love does, in fact, live in God, and God does, in fact, live in him. So our love for him grows more and more, filling us with complete confidence for the day when he shall judge all men—for we realise that our life in this world is actually his life lived in us. Love contains no fear (control)—indeed fully-developed love expels every particle of fear (control), for fear (control) always contains some of the torture of feeling guilty. This means that the man who lives in fear has not yet had his love perfected." (I John 4:16-18  JB Phillips paraphrase - I inserted the word 'control')

There is No Control in Love (In other words, "Sovereignty is More Like the Pathos of a Slaughtered Lamb than the Omnipotence of a Totalitarian Emperor")

Following up on the topic of true love being uncontrolling (see There is No Fear/Control in Love), I will touch this week on where we can see this kind of love most clearly in operation.

As a starter, I'd like to suggest three places we can see this at work. The three places that come to mind are in the stories that Jesus told, in the life that Jesus lived, and in the death that Jesus died.

First, the stories Jesus told. Perhaps the most famous of His stories, the story of the lost son (Luke 15), displays uncontrolling love most clearly. The father in the story had points of control over the situation through which he could have controlled both sons, thereby gaining a contrived desired result. After all, as long as the father was alive, everything technically belonged to him and he could have used that as a means of controlling the behavior of his sons, strong-arming them into being how he wanted them to be. This story has no hint of attempts at control on the part of the father; he loved them with pure unadulterated love.

Second, the life Jesus lived. Time after time we see Him relating with people in a non-controlling way. Statements made by Jesus in the gospel of John sum up the way He lived His life: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing...I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me." (John 5:19,30) Obviously, Jesus lived His life of love without trying to make things go the way He thought they should. He lived trusting His Father; in other words, His life was one of loving trust without fear and control. 

And third, the death Jesus died. His death by crucifixion meant that He was literally immobilized, rendered incapable of doing or controlling anything; it climaxed a life lived free from controlling people and situations. The cross is the ultimate expression of the words of the apostle John, "There is no fear/control in love..." The non-controlling love of God is seen in living color in the death of Jesus. In Jesus we see in clearest terms what God's love is like - no fear, no control, no coercion nor manipulating, fully self-giving for the sake of the other. The cross shows the voluntary helplessness of the Creator to do anything to control creation; it was a voluntary helplessness because He understood that His creation can only respond freely to freely given love.

Morgan Guyton says: "...many Christians like me are wondering if God’s sovereignty looks more like the pathos of a slaughtered lamb than the omnipotence of a totalitarian emperor." 

Next week I'll write about some implications of this kind of love.

There is No Fear in Love (in other words, There is No Control in Love)

-->As I continue to seek to know God, I'm discovering that His love is of a nature that is beyond human understanding of love. Recently as I was teaching, I had a new understanding of how uncontrolling His love is. And it dawned on me that true self-giving love must be uncontrolling or else it is not pure.
With this in mind, I plan to share some random thoughts on this topic that are helping me know and love God more. This isn't comprehensive but simply a starting place for prayer and discussion about God and His love.

In this post I will share thoughts on the nature of true love and the issue of control in love.

According to I Cor 13, the nature of true love is the following:

* Love is patient, which implies long waiting for the sake of the loved one; this is a form of suffering because waiting for another person means putting my plans and desires on hold.

* Love does not claim "ownership" of the loved one even though I may have a role in the person's life that would give me permission to "own" that person.

* Love doesn't flaunt itself (whether in obvious or in subtle ways) to get the attention and praise of the other person(s).

* Love is polite (recognizes the dignity of the other), not simply for the sake of politeness, but for the sake of honoring every human as a being of great value to God.

* Love isn't overly sensitive to every little word and action by others but overlooks many offenses whether they are intended or not.

* Love is inclusive, genuinely happy when good things happen to anyone, and has no desire to gloat when bad things happen to another person or group that is not part of its clan or way of thinking.

* Love endures forever; it believes the best about others and keeps hoping in the face of everything; it doesn't quit when it's not accepted and will prevail when all else has collapsed.

As I take the time to ponder each of these qualities of love, I can see how uncontrolling true love is. For example, exercising patience and waiting for a loved one to find and experience God is a form of taking hands off; it's refraining from manipulating to hasten the person towards God. Being willing to wait is a form of non-controlling love, and it is risky...and so on.

I'll let the reader go through each of the qualities of love and think through how letting go of control is at the back of each one. This makes sense, because fear is what pushes us to want to control life, and fear is the opposite of love (according to I John).

Next week we'll look at where we best find this kind of love in operation.

Repentance Means to Accept Being Found

An assignment I gave the students in a 2-week intensive course that I just completed was that they work in groups to rewrite Jesus' parable about the lost son (what we call the prodigal son). I was deeply moved by their work and freshly reminded of what an amazing story this is of the nature of our heavenly Father.

Even by those who don't claim to be "Christian", this story is considered to be the greatest story that's been told. It is our story, the story of each of us; it is the gospel story. In his book The Cross and the Prodigal, Kenneth Bailey says this of the father in the story:

"Traditional Western interpretation has said that the father interrupted the son and didn't give him a chance to finish his speech. Rather, faced with the incredible event (of his father's stunning display of love by shamelessly running bare-legged towards him), he is flooded with the awareness that his real sin is not the lost money but rather the wounded heart. 

The reality and the enormity of his sin and the resulting intensity of his father's suffering overwhelm him. In a flash of awareness he now knows that there is nothing he can do to make up for what he has done. His proposed offer to work as a servant now seems blasphemous. He is not interrupted. He changes his mind and accepts being found. In this manner he fulfills the definition of repentance that Jesus sets forth in the parable of the lost sheep. Like the lost sheep, the prodigal now accepts to be found."

What if God were really this good (with none of the qualifiers that we add)?? Think about it and be in wonder...

We Have Been the Real Reductionists...

More words from other Jesus followers to challenge us to understand God more:

N.T. Wright (Simply Jesus):
"Jesus - the Jesus we might discover if we really looked is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we had ever imagined. We have successfully managed to hide behind other questions and to avoid the huge, world-shaking challenge of Jesus's central claim and achievement. It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself."

Albert Nolan (Jesus Today):
"Jesus' respect for the dignity of everyone he encountered was boundless. He treated each individual as unique and lovable - whether that person was a blind beggar, an epileptic, or a Roman centurion. He was particularly attentive to the needs of women and children: the widow of Nain who had lost her only son, the poor widow who put her last coin into the collection box, the woman suffering from hemorrhages, the women of Jerusalem who, he says, should weep for themselves and their children rather than for him, and, anticipating the day when the Roman armies will attack, the focus of his attention is on children, pregnant mothers, and those with babies at the breast..."

George MacDonald:
"How terribly have the theologians misrepresented God's character. They represented him as a king on a huge throne, thinking how grand he is and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain...

But how contrary this is to what the Gospel accounts plainly tell us. Brothers, sisters, have you found our King? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at the table with the head of the fisherman lying on his chest and (with) somewhat heavy heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well."

God is Different than We Think

More quotes to lead us to fuller understanding of our God:

Greg Boyd:
"God is different than we think.  The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God to be. For example, few people in Jesus’ day would have expected God to “justify” a tax collector who was too ashamed to “even look up to heaven” (Lk 18) instead of the righteous Pharisee who fasted twice a week, gave a tenth of all he earned... Similarly, few if any expected God to welcome into his kingdom “tax collectors and prostitutes” before religious leaders whom everyone held in high esteem (Mt 21:31; cf., Lk 7:38-50). Indeed, because the God he revealed was so contrary to what people expected, Jesus repeatedly taught that those whom most assumed were “outsiders” would find themselves “inside,” while those whom most assumed were “insiders” would find themselves “out” (e.g., Mt 7:21-3; 22:1-9; 25:31-46)..."


Brian Zahnd (Beauty Will Save the World):
"Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ. We do this best, not by protest or political action, but by enacting a beautiful presence within the world. The Western church has had four centuries of viewing salvation in a mechanistic manner, presenting it as a plan, system or formula. It would be much better if we would return to viewing salvation as a song we sing. The book of Revelation...doesn’t have any plans or formulas, but it has lots of songs. The task of the church is to creatively and faithfully sing the songs of the Lamb in the midst of a world founded upon the beastly principles of greed, decadence, and violence. What is needed is not an ugly protest, but a beautiful song; not a pragmatic system, but a transcendent symphony. Why? Because God is more like a musician than a manager, more like an composer than a clerk keeping ledgers."

The Power of Powerlessness

Continuing the series of quotes this month with the prayer that they will help awaken desire to grow and change in our understanding of God in Christ Jesus:

Doug Frank (A Gentler God): 
"In the most brutal episodes of human history, God has been present - not in power, the kind that we understand or reach for, but as the humble whisper of love into the hearts both of the butchers and the butchered...If God cannot straightforwardly micromanage human events so as to rescue the abused child, the tortured prisoner, the cancer victim, neither can God rescue God's very own self incarnated in Jesus...There is a kind of power in God's whispers. But it is the power of powerlessness. It changes things, but invisibly, unpredictably, unaccountably and, from our point of view, unreliably. It is not the kind of power we imagine, or wish, God to have."

Kenneth Bailey (The Cross and the Prodigal):
Luke 15:1-3 "The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' In this verse we have (the word) prosdechomai which means 'to welcome into fellowship.' ...The crowning blow was that Jesus ate with them. In the eyes of his opponents Jesus was defiled by such contact. But there was more! To eat with another person in the Mideast is a sacramental act signifying acceptance on a very deep level."

T.A.Sparks:
"A true knowledge of the Lord Jesus will reverse a good many of our ideas, and a good many of our procedures."  



 

"Sometimes It Seems God Loves Us Too Much..."

For some weeks I will be sharing quotes from various followers of Jesus that I pray will inspire us to desire God more. Today I will share two quotes:

Michael Spencer from his book Mere Churchianity:

"We don't see that the powerful change that happens in the life of a disciple never comes from the disciples working hard at doing anything. They come from arriving at a place where Jesus is everything, and we are simply overwhelmed with the gift. Sometimes it seems as if God loves us too much. His love goes far beyond our ability to stop being moral, religious , obedient, and victorious and we just collapse in his arms."



A.W.Tozer:

"How good it would be if we could learn that God is easy to live with. He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is. Some of us are religiously jumpy and self-conscious because we know that God sees our every thought and is acquainted with all our ways. We need not be. God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still."

To Love Truth Requires Courage and Humility

It's not a stretch to say that the apostle John loved the truth (as opposed to simply knowing truth). He wrote this in his third letter, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."

There's a vast difference between being a "lover of Truth" and being one who simply knows true information or true doctrines. I believe that one thing that shows that John was a lover of truth is that he loved and closely followed Jesus who is Truth personified. More than simply giving data and facts about the Man, John shares from a deep personal knowing of Him.

The following are some characteristics that I see of one who loves the Truth (as opposed to merely having correct information or beliefs):

• The active seeking of the person of Jesus who is Truth personified; i.e., not settling for gaining correct facts or beliefs about Him but seeking His Spirit for a knowing/understanding of the person of Jesus...who He is, what He's like, what He desires, and how He feels and thinks about His creation in general, and about me in particular.
• A holy dissatisfaction with what I presently know of Him and His ways; i.e., never content with what I have learned in the past. Although thankful for what I have learned, I should be ever pressing into His Spirit for further understanding and experiencing of this God-Man Who is unlike any other in the universe in His love and kindness and embracing of all.
• A willingness to "unlearn" what I have known as truth; i.e., there are things that I have learned along the way that must be unlearned as I mature in God; this is a natural part of maturing in any walk of life, but it is painful for fearful humans because we find identity and security in believing that everything that we believe is correct. It disorients us to discover that something we used to be so sure of isn't quite aligned with the full truth as it is in Jesus.
• A sincere walking in the Truth; i.e., loving Truth enough to follow Him in loving obedience.

Gaining correct information is fairly easy; loving Truth is risky and requires courage and humility.

Framing God's Story: Disinterested Love, the Way of Escape

In the previous three posts (here, here, here) I have shared an alternative way of viewing God's story of His creation and love of humanity. Today I will conclude this series with thoughts concerning how we escape from this awful slavery to the fear of death (self-preservation).

Born mortal, we are all slaves to fear...particularly fear of death in its many forms. The satan uses this deep fear against us; it pushes and pulls us into sinful living because of our panic at losing our life (be that our actual physical life or losing that which gives us a sense of significance and permanence in this age).

In becoming fully human like us, Jesus faced this fear of death. At every turn He succeeded in living free from its dominion by never yielding to the temptation to save His own life at the expense of another; in other words, through self-giving love. His death on the cross was the culmination of a life lived in love, choosing the life of "the other" over His own life when faced with that choice. By so doing, He broke the stronghold that the fear of death held over humanity.

We who are in Christ are empowered by His presence in us to overcome bondage to fear of death in the same way. Theologian John Romanides says: "The salvation of man is dependent upon how much, under the guidance of God, he is capable of exercising himself in the cultivation of a genuine, unselfish, and unconstrained love for God and his fellow man...Just as God, above all, is free of every need and self-interest, the spiritual man who has the Spirit struggles and becomes perfected in the love according to Christ, love that is delivered of all need and self-interest."

And so it is in our struggle to love purely and without self-interest as Jesus loved that we are little by little perfected in love and therein delivered from fear. Fear is cast out by love, and as fear and death loses its hold over us, sinful practices drop off. This is the process of salvation that we struggle to walk out together daily with the Spirit and with one another. (Scripture at times calls this 'dying to the false self' with its self interest and self preservation.)

May the Spirit of Jesus help us understand our dilemma and enter actively into the struggle to learn to love disinterestedly and thereby experience increasing freedom from the tyranny of fear and of its fruit, sinful living.

Framing God's Story: Fear of Death Enslaves Humanity

Continuing on the theme of reframing the story of God and His creation with the frame of the fear of death as humanity's fundamental predicament rather than of sin, I'll share some ways in which we humans are "held in slavery by their fear of death" (Heb. 2:14,15), according to Richard Beck. (For previous posts, go here and here.)

One way we manifest our bondage to the fear of death is in our denial of death which we do by attempting to remove signs of it in our everyday life. Arthur McGill says of the American lifestyle: "All traces of weakness, debility, ugliness and helplessness must be kept away from every part of a person's life..." Beck adds that "we are happy to help others but are loathe in this culture of death to ask for help...Beyond maintaining personal appearances, the culture of death avoidance demands that reminders of death, disability, age, failure, and weakness be removed from public view...In contemporary American culture our slavery to the fear of death produces superficial consumerism, a fetish for managing appearances, inauthentic relationships, triumphalistic religion, and the eclipse of personal and societal empathy."

Another manifestation of our enslavement to fear is our participation in cultural hero systems. All cultures have their hero system which defines success for those living in it. We all want to "make our mark" by creating or being part of something that is 'lasting.' "For example, my life is deemed meaningful because my children outlive me, or I wrote a book, or I helped the company have its best quarter of the year. Child, book, and company are all forms of 'immortality', ways to continue living into the future in an effort to 'defeat' death."

For the hero system to give a sense of permanence and security in the face of death, it must be experienced as absolute, eternal, transcendent and ultimate. When someone comes along who has different values, everything that has contributed towards my sense of significance and security in the face of death is threatened. This gives rise to demonizing (marginalizing and dehumanizing) the "other", the outsider.

Finally, Beck shows how our fear of death pressures us to attach ourselves in idolatrous relationships with institutions (including  Christian institutions). Beck quotes William Stringfellow who says that the contemporary equivalent to the biblical language of "powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirit..." are realities such as "all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols..." These entities exert a moral force in our lives in the form of demanding our service and allegiance and loyalty, and we willingly yield to this, finding ourselves in rivalry with those inside our organization and in competition with other institutions who may be a threat to our success.

Stringfellow explains why the temptation to yield to this moral force is so great: "Make work your monument, make it the reason for your life, and you will survive your death in some way...Work is the common means by which (people) seek and hope to justify their existence while they are alive and to sustain their existence, in a fashion, after they die."

The irony of giving our allegiance to these powers (be they institutions, nations, movements, etc) is that they too are mortal, and self-preservation is at the heart of their existence, meaning that to surrender ourselves to them is a form of worship of something mortal rather than worship of the eternal God. All of this can happen in the name of God as can clearly be seen in the religious and political systems of Jesus' day (and ours).

Next week I will conclude this series about framing God's story differently by sharing how the slavery to fear of death is broken in our everyday walk in God.

Framing God's Story: More About Human Weakness, Less About Human Wickedness

Continuing the theme of last week's post (The Picture Frame Makes a Difference), I want to share more about how some others in Christianity frame the human predicament differently than we western Christians generally frame it.

In his book, The Slavery of Death, Richard Beck says: "Where Western Christianity has tended to interpret 'sarx' as a depraved and congenital 'sin nature,' the Orthodox see 'sarx' as 'mortality' - our corruptibility and perishability in the face of death. And it's this vulnerability, Paul explains, that makes us susceptible to sin. The idea here is that we are less 'wicked' than we are 'weak.' As 'sarx' - mortal animals - we are playthings of the devil, who uses the fear of death to push and pull our survival instincts (our fleshly, sarx-driven passions) to keep us as 'slaves to sin.'...Sin here is seen as a symptom of death, the underlying disease.

"...our vulnerability to death makes us fearful, paranoid, and suspicious creatures and...these fears promote a host of moral and social ills...Because we are mortal and driven by self-preservation, our survival instincts make us tragically vulnerable to death anxiety - the desire to preserve our own existence above all else and at all costs."

According to Hebrews 2, Satan uses this fear of death to hold us captive to resorting to our own devices for survival rather than trusting God, and this sin of independence in turn brings separation from God, and so the tragic cycle goes on. In this particular framing of the story, salvation is from death and corruptibility and its cycle, whereas in the western framing of the story, salvation is from divine wrath.

Framing humans in God's story as weak rather than as wicked presents a different view of God and of humans; as I suggested in last week's post (here), it can significantly change our attitude towards others (and towards ourselves) and empower us to see all humans with compassion rather than with judgment.

The Picture Frame Makes a Difference

Many years ago, I discovered that the frame around a picture makes a big difference. Framing, as well as painting, is an art. The color and design emphasize certain aspects of the painting and causes the person viewing the painting to focus on particular parts of the artwork.

As I'm rethinking different parts of the picture of God's story and His love for His creation, I'm learning to re-frame that picture, and it is helping me a lot. The Lord is using many means to help me re-frame the story. One means is through the writings of authors I have discovered, one of which is Richard Beck. In his very interesting and wonderful book, The Slavery of Death, he presents why he believes that humanity's predicament has more to do with our mortality than with our morality. In other words, our fear of death is the better framework for the picture of humanity's basic problem than is sin.

Beck says: "Death, not sin, is the primary predicament of the human condition. Death is the cause of sin. More properly, the fear of death produces most of the sin in our lives."

As I have read Beck's work and looked into some of the theology of the early church fathers, I've come to appreciate this framing of humanity's problem over the framing that many of us in the western stream of Christianity have been given. Many of God's people in church history and today as well understand humanity's need to be more a need for a Deliverer than for a Judge. In other words, we are born mortal and fearful of death rather than sinful. Sin is the result of fear of death which has us hopelessly trapped and in need of a Deliverer.

This in no way denies that we all sin, but it sees sin as the symptom of something more profound.

In a society in which lack of food is not a threat to physical life for most people, the fear of death takes on the form of neurotic anxieties, such as fears related to self esteem or having significance and acceptance from others. In our desire to be immortal, we attach ourselves to causes or organizations or religious groups that will last beyond our lifetime; or we place our hopes in our children's success as a way to ensure our success; we compete for positions and for recognition...etc.

I can see advantages to framing humanity's primary problem in mortality and fear of death rather than framing it in moral behavior. I'll share 3 reasons I like this framing:  first, it highlights God's graciousness and compassion towards humans.  The legal framework emphasizes God as angry Judge who demands that law-breaking humans be punished; but God is loving Creator and Father who in great compassion for His creation comes in His Son to rescue humanity from the grip of this fear of death by defeating it in His flesh (Heb. 2), forgiving and healing and reconciling us back to Himself to live in fellowship with Him; in that living fellowship we are empowered to walk free from anxieties that drive us to sinful practices.

The second reason I think framing the story of man's predicament in mortality is better is that it doesn't pit Jesus against God. In other words, it doesn't present Jesus as taking our side against God's anger towards humans; but rather it shows that God and Jesus have always been of one mind in unconditional, unchanging love for weak humans and that they are in agreement about our need for deliverance from the one who holds the power of death over us: (Heb. 2:14,15) "By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death."  (2 Cor. 5:19) "In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them."

The third reason I believe framing humanity's predicament in this way is good is that it sees humans through a more compassionate lens and moves us away from our tendency as western evangelicals to see people primarily as sinners who ought to know better and so should be judged and condemned. Rather than seeing ourselves and others as primarily law-breakers of God's holy law, we see humans as born fearful and driven to sin because of the desperate need to escape death in its many forms. In my own experience, since changing how I frame the picture of humanity's fall, I find myself slower to judge and condemn others because I now see them (and myself) as captive to a fear that only Jesus can deliver us from. This awakens compassion and desire to help people know that there is freedom from the fear of death.

(Much of the way we frame God and His story is rooted in our beliefs about the atonement. If you're interested in viewing an interesting presentation of the eastern and western views of the atonement, you can go to this link:  The Gospel in Chairs.) 

What Matters Supremely...

Deep down we all want to be fully known and still loved. J.I. Packer says the following:

“What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me, and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when His care falters.

"This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based...on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see, and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself.

“There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

For this truth to transform us, it's important to actually embrace it, accept it and practice it; one way to practice accepting this love is to pause a few moments during your day (doing this regularly) to listen for the Father's affirmation of you. For example, you could take these words of J.I. Packer and turn them into a personal statement by God to you, saying something like this:  

"(Your name), what matters supremely is not the fact that you know Me but that I know you. You are engraved on the palms of My hands, and I never stop thinking about you; I'm thinking about you right now. You know Me because I knew you first and continue to know you. I know everything about you, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I still want you as My friend; I want this so much that I went to death to win you for Myself..., etc."

I Am His House

I wanted to quote a poem this week by George MacDonald and came across this beautiful and powerful poem from his book, Diary of an Old Soul. To get the impact of his words, I encourage you to take a little time to quietly ponder them. The form of English is a bit difficult but worth struggling to grasp:

"Too eager I must not be to understand.
How should the work the Master goes about
Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned?
I am his house - for him to go in and out.
He builds me now - and if I cannot see
At any time what he is doing with me,
Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.

The house is not for me - it is for him.
His royal thoughts require many a stair,
Many a tower, many an outlook fair,
Of which I have no thought, and need no care.
Where I am most perplexed, it may be there
Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim,
Where thou will come to help my deepest prayer."

Amen, dear Lord...may it be so.

To Make Converts to a Doctrine is to Make Proselytes

As I have often made reference to, I believe that part of what God is doing in the world now is breaking up the religious systems and practices that have become hindrances to people seeing Jesus and what God is like in Him. Our preoccupation with ensuring doctrinal correctness has become a stumbling block to our making disciples/followers of Jesus.

In his outstanding book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes that Hinder It, Roland Allen addresses the desperate need for preaching Jesus rather than preaching Christianity. In the following quote, he critiques western Christianity for worrying more about getting our "doctrine" correct than about preaching Jesus. Jesus ends up being relegated to a secondary place. He is the First Cause but we tend to stress the secondary causes (doctrinal beliefs):

"...We speak as if the Gospel and the doctrine, preaching Christ and preaching Christianity, were identical terms.

"There is a difference between the revelation of a Person and the teaching of a system of doctrine and practice.

"...our doctrine so dominates our mind that we can scarcely believe that men can love Christ and be saved by Him unless they know and use our doctrinal expressions. Because we find this difficult we inevitably tend to give the teaching of our doctrine the first place in our work...But the Person is greater and far excels it.

"When we fall into this error, we inevitably tend to make the acceptance of the shadow (the doctrine, the system) the aim and object of our work. In doing that we are doing something of which Christ spoke in very severe terms. To make converts to a doctrine is to make proselytes."

Jesus recognized this in the religious leaders of His day, condemning them for making converts instead of disciples (Matt. 23:15). Only as we make Christ crucified our theme and passion will others become true followers of Jesus rather than mere adherents to certain prescribed beliefs.

Washing Feet...

The quote below from Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps paint a picture of what it looks like for Jesus' followers to wash the feet of others in His name:

"In the midst of discipline, the entire fullness of the Holy Spirit wants to unfold and to ripen, and we should give it full space within us for the sake of God, for the sake of others, and for our own sake. The entire world of God, the dear Father, wants to be born in us, to grow and ripen. Love—where only suspicion and hostility reign; joy—instead of bitterness and pain; peace—amid internal and external strife; patience—where impatience threatens to overwhelm us; kindness—where only raw and hard words seem to make any difference; goodness—where understanding and empathy seem like weakness; faithfulness—where long separations and enormous changes in all relationships seek to rock the foundations of even what is most stable; gentleness—where recklessness and selfishness seem to be the only ways to reach one’s goals; self-control—where short term pleasures seem to be the only reasonable option and all bonds are about to dissolve."

In a world where hostility, sadness, strife, impatience, harshness, meanness, infidelity, brashness and self-indulgence wear and tear people down, the fruit of the Spirit of Jesus at work through us brings refreshing as did the washing of tired and dirty feet in Jesus' day.

Galatians 5:22,23 "The Spirit however, produces in human life fruits such as these: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control—and no law exists against any of them."

Wisdom Gives Us Ground Rules for Growing and Relating in a Time of Transition

This week a friend of mine pointed James 3:17 out to me. I hadn't read this portion for awhile and I was struck afresh with the contrast that James makes between earthly wisdom and wisdom from God. He speaks of this in the context of the power of the tongue to bless and to curse. After stressing that earthly wisdom is contentious and jealous, James goes on to give a beautiful description of what the 'wisdom from on high' is like. Below are several versions/paraphrases of this verse, and I have highlighted the various descriptive words used for wisdom:

NET: But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable,  gentle,  accommodating,  full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and not hypocritical.  

ESV: ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 

HCSB: ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without favoritism and hypocrisy.
 
TLB: ¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure and full of quiet gentleness. Then it is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others; it is full of mercy and good deeds. It is wholehearted and straightforward and sincere.  

MSG: ¹⁷ Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced.  

NRSV: ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  

YLT: ¹⁷ and the wisdom from above, first, indeed, is pure, then peaceable, gentle, easily entreated, full of kindness and good fruits, uncontentious, and unhypocritical.

In today's climate of change and paradigm shifts, this passage provides us with a great set of 'ground rules' for growing and relating with one another as we work through differences of views. May we desire and seek for God's wisdom as we would for hidden treasure (Prov 2) and therein grow in our understanding of God and of one another together.

 

  

Jesus' Good News of Peace - God is Not Against You!

As a young woman I loved praying the well-known prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. It is a wonderful and profoundly fitting prayer for the days we are living in:

The first words from the risen Christ to His fearful and failing followers were, "Peace be with you..." He should have scolded them and pointed out their failure and weakness. Imagine how startled and relieved they must have felt to hear His words of comfort after their utter failure to be loyal to Him in His darkest hour.

But Jesus is always different than what we expect.

When He spoke words of peace to His followers after His resurrection, He was sowing seeds of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light, joy in hearts that were full of fear, offense, unbelief, hopelessness, darkness and sadness. He was loving and forgiving them without demanding to be loved and understood. In so doing He won their full allegiance and willingness to follow in His steps.

This is the way of the cross, the way of Jesus. Every human longs for inner peace. To be His follower is to be an "instrument of peace" to those among whom we live, giving them the good news of the risen Lord that God is not against them but is for them no matter how they have failed.

Lord, make us instruments of Your peace in the days we are living in...Amen.

Devoted to Jesus or to Our Beliefs about Jesus?

I used to be certain about my beliefs about God, but as I have continued to grow in Him, I have become increasingly uncertain about many beliefs I used to hold tightly. I have discovered that God won't be held captive to a set of beliefs; this can be seen clearly in Jesus who was continually confounding the religious leaders of His day by acting and speaking in ways that did not fit their belief system.

When I first began loosening my grip on what I had been so sure of concerning God, it scared me because my sense of security was based on being certain, not on God Himself. Now after a few years of exploring outside the confines of my inherited belief system and discovering that God is unbelievably wonderful, I am experiencing a level of peace and joy unlike what I had in the past. He is my certainty, not my beliefs about Him. This allows me to continue to keep changing in my beliefs and to be at peace with uncertainty.

Oswald Chambers had strong words concerning our tendency as evangelicals to be more devoted to our beliefs than to Jesus Himself. "...a Christian must be consistent in his relationship to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to strict unyielding doctrines. People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ."

"...When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God– it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said, “…unless you…become as little children…”. The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next. If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, '…believe also in Me', not, 'Believe certain things about Me.'"

Our devotion to unyielding doctrines and beliefs about God cause us to look more like the Pharisees of Jesus' time than like Jesus. In these days of significant social change in our culture we have a great opportunity to demonstrate what it means to be devoted to Jesus and His ways (serving those in need, giving to the poor, befriending those we consider unlovely and unworthy, embracing the "other" without judgment) rather than to defend our beliefs about Him and shut people out of the kingdom.

"To Forgive is Manly"

In his wonderful book, Beauty Will Save the World, Brian Zahnd says that beauty always has a form to it; it's something that is expressed and can be seen. Through his non-violent, non-retaliatory death Jesus re-centered the world around an axis of love rather than the axis of violence and power; this forgiving love of enemies in the shape of the cross is the most beautiful form.

At the end of the chapter the author challenges followers of Jesus with these words and a story:

"Jesus was not trying to give the world the best version of Caesar's kingdom; he was giving the world the kingdom of God!...Jesus refused to be drawn into any of the many heated political controversies of his day. Political controversies were simply irrelevant to what Jesus was doing in giving the world a radical new alternative...

"The only institution that can claim the title of 'Christian' is one that is actually Christlike...it must take up the cross and follow Jesus in the most demanding of Christ's ethical imperatives - loving and forgiving enemies. The principalities and powers of this world simply cannot do that. They belong to a structure organized around an axis of power; their entire orientation is one of retaliation, and their only paradigm is vengeance. Only the  church empowered by the Spirit and organized around an axis of love can forgive enemies...Quite simply, we are disciples of the one who would rather die than kill his enemies."

The chapter ends with a story about a young pastor, Dritan Prroj, in Albania who was murdered on his way to get his two children from school in 2010. This happened because of a blood feud that had begun five years earlier. According to the 'law' of the blood feud, if someone is killed, the family of the victim can avenge the death by killing another male from the other family. These feuds can wear on until all the males of one family are dead. Whole villages are paralyzed in this region because the men of entire extended families don't dare leave their homes.

However, Pastor Prroj, who was living in hiding, decided he could not live this way and would live openly; and he and his brother agreed that if one of them was killed, the other would not 'take blood' in revenge. "They would simply allow the cycle of violence to die with them in a deliberate imitation of Christ." Because he had helped lead large aid programs for flood victims in his region, Prroj was well known and respected as a man of peace. There was wide media coverage when he was killed; his death helped "expose the false 'honor' behind the demonic philosophy of blood feuds."

Two weeks after the murder of Dritan Prroj thousands turned out for a rally in the capital city of Tirana for the purpose of naming and shaming the evil practice of blood feuds. Many carried signs that read: "TO FORGIVE IS MANLY"

This story illustrates the power of forgiving love to break the cycle of violence and is how beauty took form in this particular time and place through Christlike followers of His.

"This is the church showing the wisdom of God to the principalities and powers....This is the cruciform in its most radical form. It is in the axis of love expressed in forgiveness that the axis of power enforced by violence is exposed as ugly..."

Messy Transition: Changing Priorities

Transition times are always messy and confusing and require changing priorities. What worked formerly or was practiced in the past has to make room for other more effective life-giving ways in the new age. This doesn't always mean a total abandoning of former things but it does imply re-prioritizing; using Phyllis Tickle's metaphor of a 'rummage sale' (see previous post here), it means that a lot of stuff we've collected over time needs to be looked at and sorted through to determine what should be kept (and the degree of importance given to that) and what should be tossed.

Last week (see here) I wrote about the overarching need in the church for reprioritizing Jesus over Christendom. In this post I want to mention three more areas of changing priorities that I see happening in the Christian community particularly in America. This is not exhaustive nor is it in any particular order of importance, but this may help spark conversations about how God is moving in our times and how we can move with Him.

First, I see a prioritizing of compassion over belief systems. In the Age of Belief (which we are transitioning out of) we have placed a high premium on having a correct belief system and adhering to that at the expense of people. There is a shifting of priorities to compassionate action. This doesn't eliminate a need for Jesus' followers to adhere to a few simple basic beliefs about God and Jesus, but it means we never allow our belief systems to become more important than people, particularly those who are disenfranchised, for whatever reason, to whom we extend mercy and understanding and help without condition.

Second, there is a move towards prioritizing the kingdom of God over the American empire. Ever since the Roman church agreed to partner with the political system in order to win more adherents to the faith (this was the beginnings of Christendom in the 4th century), we have confused God's kingdom with worldly kingdoms; and in the US Christianity has become increasingly enmeshed in political parties with the hope of remaining a dominant power in our country. The kingdom of God is political, but its politics is not built on the politics of this world nor does it operate with the same value system. I'm seeing a move away from blind patriotism that equates America with God's kingdom.

Third, I believe that slowly but surely there is a prioritizing of unity over division among God's people. On the surface it appears to be the opposite as we hear and read all the attacks against one another on the internet and in other venues. However, I'm sensing some fatigue setting in over this and am seeing the attempt by some to do some healthy debating that doesn't label the other person but accepts that they have valid reason for thinking differently. While this will take a long time yet to become the norm, I believe that it is coming and that we will learn how to do the hard and self-giving work of "achieving disagreement" rather than assuming erroneous things about one another.

All of this seems healthy to me, but it is very confusing and disorienting to our systems and our collective psyche. As I expressed previously, my prayer is for grace for God's people to walk through this mess in humility and love shown in genuine listening and learning without discounting another because they think differently. The Lord is with us to help us!

Transition from Prioritizing the 'Sail' to Prioritizing the 'Wind'

One of the shifts happening now in the church (see my post here about the historic transition we're going through presently) is the movement away from Christendom to simpler, more creative ways of encountering Jesus in community. In other words, through the centuries of organized religion, we have collected a lot of practices and beliefs that aren't all necessarily bad but that are often barriers to encountering the living Lord. This shift is taking the form of disillusionment with institutional Christianity and the exploration of simpler means of encountering Him and sharing Him.

In his book, Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps contends that Jesus (the River) is accessible to all people and that unfortunately our religious systems and structures have become barriers to this access to Him. In the chapter about "wind and sails" Hipps shows how Jesus went out of His way to disregard the boundaries that religion had established. In His first miracle of turning water into wine Jesus "sets the stage for his way of operating in the world. It frames his entire ministry."

In this miracle, what's astonishing is not only that Jesus changed the chemical composition from one liquid to another but that He flagrantly broke the ceremonial rules which insisted that wine not be put into vessels that were dedicated for ceremonial washing. This is exactly what Jesus did - he had the servants use the  jars that were for ceremonial cleansing rather than use the empty wine jars. By doing this, He was mixing wine and water thereby defiling both and causing the people to be unclean.

Why would Jesus do such an offensive thing (and continue doing this sort of thing throughout His ministry)? Hipps says that it was because He was always trying to get people beyond the banks of the river and into the great expanse of the river of God's love.

"Religions have a tendency to get stuck. Institutions aren't made to stay limber...Thus the trajectory of any religion is always to become brittle. A basic law is at work in most things we humans create: whatever the intended purpose of our creation, when overextended, it can reverse on itself...when it (Christian religion) becomes overextended, the impulse is to preserve the institution rather than the message...Jesus consistently undermined the natural inertia of institutions. He was the embodiment of pure, unbridled creative force. Creativity is often disruptive. It has little interest in preservation; it is about making new things and making things new."

Jesus is not against religions. The author says that Jesus is the wind while religions are the sails. His own conviction is that the Christian religion is the sail that best catches the wind but adds the following, "We must never make an idol of the sail and thereby miss the wind. But it is also a mistake to say the sail doesn't matter. Without a sail, the wind is difficult to catch..."

"It is not the sail, but the wind we are after." Jesus continually broke the rules and boundaries established by religion so that people could get to Him; this is happening in our day as more and more of God's people work to make Jesus (the Wind and the River) more accessible to all people.

Grace for a Time of Messy Transition

In his book The Future of Faith Harvey Cox looks at the patterns in church history to suggest where we are headed as a people now. The following is a very simple summary of the three great eras of church history as outlined by Cox:

1. The Age of Faith: first 3 centuries of Christianity. "The faith of the earliest Christians was oriented around this hope for the new world of shalom that Jesus personified. Their emphasis was on community rather than creeds or clergy. The first three centuries of Christianity demonstrated theological variety, spiritual fellowship, and an anti-imperial stance." 

2. The Age of Belief: from the fourth to the twentieth century.  “…faith became identified with creeds, orthodoxy and ‘correct doctrine.’ The imperialization of the church under Constantine also resulted in the glorification of bishops and widespread ecclesiastical corruption."

3. The Age of the Spirit: began about 50 years ago and is continuing now to shake the foundations of the previous era of hierarchical, patriarchal, and institutionalized religion. We are presently in the midst of the dismantling of fundamentalism (close-mindedness and clinging to non-negotiable beliefs) within Christianity. This age is characterized by the “growing interfaith movement, the de-westernization of Christianity, liberation theology, and the tsunami of Pentecostalism.” In general, religious people are becoming "less dogmatic and more practical . . . more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrine."

Along the same line Phyllis Tickle describes the times we are in now to be like a great "rummage sale", something that the Church goes through roughly every 500 years, during which we struggle and argue (as would any family preparing for a garage sale) about all the stuff that has collected over the past 500 years related to God and Jesus. Some want to dispose of certain elements within Christianity and others want to keep them...and so the fight goes. Tickle says these transition times in history are very, very messy and that it takes several decades to sort through the mess until there is general consensus among God's people.

One major issue that always arises with these paradigmatic changes every 500 years is the question of where the church's authority lies. In the latest "re-formation" of the church (Luther being a key figure), the authority shifted from the Roman Catholic pope to the scriptures ("sola scriptura"). In the present transition, the authority is changing to something else which isn't clear yet; but there are reasons (another topic for another day) why scripture on its own can no longer act as our sole source of authority now but rather will be one of the key pieces of what will turn out to be the grounds of authority for God's people.

If this is so, then we as followers of Jesus must grapple seriously with the issue of the role of scripture for us collectively. This is happening now with many serious scholars debating and researching and praying and studying in an attempt to discover improved ways of handling the scripture so that it can play its role along with the Holy Spirit in leading us in this critical age. Some recommended material in this regard are books such as:
* Disarming Scripture 
* The Bible Tells Me So
* The Bible Made Impossible
For those of us who have been raised and trained to view the Bible as more or less a 'flat' book and without any flaws, these books may be hard to read with serious consideration. But I suggest them because they are written by followers of Jesus who value the scriptures and desire to help God's people sort through many questionable issues that are in scripture so that, on the one hand we don't ignore these questionable parts and, on the other hand we don't toss the whole Bible out because of the questionable parts. 

If Phyllis Tickle and others are correct that this transition will take many decades of struggle, I pray for grace for God's people to walk through this mess and to do so in humility and love for one another expressed in genuine listening and learning without discounting someone because they think differently. This isn't easy and takes the work of the Spirit in and among us.