Tag: c.s. lewis

Jun
19
2013

When they had fin­ished eat­ing, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love (agape) me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love (agape) me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love (phileo) me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love (phileo) me?” He said,

“Lord, you know all things; you know that I love (phileo)  you.” (John 21:15–19)

 But again and again, Jesus writes a dif­fer­ent story and makes a dif­fer­ent way out for us—a way of for­give­ness, mercy and grace. One day, Jesus decides to go hunt Peter down and res­cue him from him­self. Where would he find him—fishing early in the morn­ing and back at his old job. As he calls him to come out of the boat and join him for some break­fast, per­haps one of the more riv­et­ing sto­ries in all of Scrip­ture unfolds.

In this story, it’s a very sim­ple one. In your Bible, the sec­tion is often enti­tled Jesus Rein­states Peter or some­thing sim­i­lar. I think a bet­ter title would be Peter Finally Learns Grace with a strong empha­sis on the word “finally.” Remem­ber, Jesus clearly said ear­lier that if any­one were to deny him before any­one, he would for­sake them also. This is exactly why Peter was not very eager to catch up with Jesus after the res­ur­rec­tion. Peter believes he has just ruined his entire life. He knows what Jesus said and now he has to live by those words. But this shows you just how much Jesus is will­ing to for­give and just how great his mercy can be.

greekWhen read­ing an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the Bible with the scene above, it does not do a good job of cap­tur­ing the words and the actual con­ver­sa­tion that is tak­ing place between Jesus and Peter. Almost every Bible writ­ten in Eng­lish has a dif­fi­cult time in trans­lat­ing these verses because unlike the Greek lan­guage, we only have one word for love. So with this, before one reads this pas­sage, you need to have an under­stand­ing of the Greek words for love. In the pas­sage above, it is using two unique and dif­fer­ent words for love. Let’s look at a cou­ple of these Greek words.

First, one word that is used for love in this pas­sage is the word agape, which in layman’s terms sim­ply means godly love. Agape is a rich word and is com­prised of many facets to its mean­ing. In one exam­ple, it is derived from the word love-feast, which we might think of the word for us as being communion—a very inti­mate fel­low­ship. Like­wise, this type of love is highly sac­ri­fi­cial; it’s a love that is long-suffering; it’s a love that is best exem­pli­fied by the cross. One descrip­tion I read stated that it means to “to be well pleased, to be con­tented at or with some­thing.” I like that descrip­tion because that is Jesus’ love toward us and a love that he wants for us to have toward our­selves and toward oth­ers. He wants us to know that he is well-pleased and con­tented with us. It’s the type of love which Jesus is attempt­ing to develop in each of us, because in no way shape or form do we have the abil­ity to expe­ri­ence this love nat­u­rally toward our­selves or to oth­ers. This love is super­nat­ural. And this is the final and most unique thing about this love—it can only occur by being in a rela­tion­ship with Jesus.

Only those who have a rela­tion­ship with God can acquire agape love no mat­ter how hard they try. It’s inevitably con­nected up with hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with Jesus. Twice in the Bible, it puts it as sim­ple as it can be said: God is agape (I John 4:8, 16). How­ever, the other two loves found in the Scrip­tures are more nat­ural and for a bet­ter word, lesser to a degree in com­par­i­son to this type of love. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his book The Four Loves, agape is the high­est level of love—it is the one which is the stan­dard. It is the coup de gris. At the end of the day, it’s the one you want to be holding.

Any­body can expe­ri­ence these other types of loves that we will now dis­cuss. They are fairly com­mon and the ones we most think of when we think of the word love. They are open to any­one and any­one can tap into them. In most rela­tion­ships, these are the ones that are at work. These are the lesser loves. First, another Greek word for love is phileo; it sim­ply means friend­ship. On one level, this is a love in which you care for the per­son and have sim­i­lar inter­ests. The word Philadel­phia is derived from this word, which we know as the city of broth­erly love. That’s a good way to put it. How­ever, with this have you ever seen two broth­ers together? It can some­times be a love-hate rela­tion­ship. It’s either on or it’s not. Phileo can be a deep love, but it can also be shal­low. Aris­to­tle in his book Nico­machean Ethics spends a great deal of time talk­ing about this word phileo. One sec­tion cap­tures the essence of this type of love; in describ­ing it, he gave an exam­ple of the type of friend­ship, such as between “a cob­bler and the per­son who buys from him.”  Now that isn’t a very deep love, is it? Phileo can be as deep as the love you have for the per­son who checks out your milk and eggs at the gro­cery store? Aris­to­tle also went on to say that phileo was based on friend­ships of util­ity, mean­ing a love in which you expect to get some­thing out of the rela­tion­ship. In that sense, phileo is a self­ish love—what are you going to do for me. As you can see, it can be a love that doesn’t go ter­ri­bly deep and is amuck with some trou­bling aspects. Remem­ber this type of love, we will be com­ing back to it and dis­cuss it further.

The other word for love in the Greek is eros—it’s pas­sion­ate or phys­i­cal love. Sex is the most com­mon way we think about the word eros; but this type of love is not only erotic in nature. It can be hold­ing hands at a movie or when you look at some­one with wow in your eyes. It can be pas­sion, zeal, excite­ment, lust and infat­u­a­tion all rolled up in one.  Like the love phileo, it also can be fleet­ing and not ter­ri­bly sta­ble. Again, it’s a love that is nec­es­sary and impor­tant to our lives, but in the long run, it’s not a love that over the long haul is some­thing solid or secure.

Next time, we will dig into this dis­cus­sion fur­ther. We will look at the con­ver­sa­tion between Jesus and Peter and why words really do matter.

In: Friend to Jesus
Tags: , , , ,
Mar
14
2012

Le Génie du Mal, Guilaume Geefs

 This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

Our duty, as men and women, is to pro­ceed as if lim­its to our abil­ity did not exist. We are col­lab­o­ra­tors in cre­ation. Teil­hard de Chardin

There are two equal and oppo­site errors into which our race can fall about dev­ils. One is to dis­be­lieve in their exis­tence. The other is to believe, and to feel an exces­sive and unhealthy inter­est in them. C.S. Lewis

But this is not the full story. Let’s lis­ten to another part of the story that God wants to share. We need to go way back; back to the begin­ning, even before we were cre­ated. An impor­tant char­ac­ter of the Bible shows up who also is very cru­cial to its story. In fact, he is the antag­o­nist, our oppo­nent, enemy and foe. He is the neme­sis, and he is a for­mi­da­ble one (not to God, but to his chil­dren and to his cre­ation). His name is Lucifer (or Satan) and he is an essen­tial char­ac­ter in the story of God’s pur­poses of cre­ation and redemp­tion and it can be a great dan­ger to for­get that.

To begin, Lucifer was and is a very unique being.  In terms of under­stand­ing who this per­son is, in the book of Ezekiel, we are painted a por­trait of who this remark­able angelic being was before his rebel­lion and fall.

You were in Eden, the gar­den of God; every pre­cious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, emer­ald, chryso­lite, onx, jasper, sap­phire, turquoise, and beryl. Gold work of tam­bourines and of pipes was in you. In the day that you were cre­ated they were pre­pared. You were the anointed cherub who cov­ers: and I set you, so that you were on the holy moun­tain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were per­fect in your ways from the day that you were cre­ated, until unright­eous­ness was found in you. (Ezekiel 28: 13–15)

The Mes­sage trans­lates one sec­tion of these verses, this way: “A robe was pre­pared for you the same day you were cre­ated.” In this telling, we can think of the story of Joseph and the favoritism from his father Isaac when he was given his spe­cial coat of many col­ors (Gen­e­sis 37: 3–4). With a pas­sage like that, it is obvi­ous that Lucifer is favored by God as well. But this is where sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems begin to emerge in the story—God had other plans.

God ear­lier was par­tial to Lucifer, but now he has decided to cre­ate some­one even more favored, even more beau­ti­ful, and I dare say, with even more author­ity than this beau­ti­ful prince. Lucifer (see Isa­iah 14:12–15) was one awe­some crea­ture, but now he was about to be sub­ject to another cre­ation and peo­ple. Sim­ply put—we, as human beings sup­planted Lucifer as God’s beloved. In terms of the over­all plan, we were the right­ful heirs right from the begin­ning. In read­ing the Scrip­tures, it can be sur­mised that Satan’s jeal­ousy of man began a whirl­wind of destruc­tion that we are still sub­ject to today. Again, under­stand­ing who we are in the story is of utmost impor­tance. To help spell this out bet­ter, below is the hier­ar­chy of the cre­ation in terms of the posi­tion of God, the angelic beings, and mankind as his creation.

Before Cre­ation

  • God
  • Lucifer and the angels

After Cre­ation

  • God
  • Human cre­ation
  • Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels

After the Fall of Man

  • God
  • Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels
  • Human cre­ation

After the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ

  • God
  • Human cre­ation
  • Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels

Specif­i­cally, if we reframe this under­stand­ing of the “hier­ar­chy” of God’s cre­ation, it begins to paint with broad strokes where Lucifer fits into the cen­ter of this story. If we, being made in God’s image, can now begin to under­stand why this fallen and evil crea­ture wanted our destruc­tion, we can begin to under­stand why we are so impor­tant and why our lives are so cru­cial to the makeup of this world.

The delin­eation above tells us some impor­tant the­o­log­i­cal insights. First, after God cre­ated the earth and Adam and Eve, human beings not only had domin­ion over the earth, but over Lucifer and the angels as well. How­ever, here’s the bad news and a very impor­tant, but tragic point: after man dis­obeyed God, Lucifer now has now taken domin­ion and author­ity over God’s trea­sured cre­ation, his chil­dren. In essence, when we Adam and Eve “obeyed” Lucifer, when they fol­lowed him into his lie, when they dis­re­garded God’s com­mand for their lives—on paper, it was all over and lost.  The New Tes­ta­ment spells out what Gen­e­sis tries to tell us:

As for you, you were dead in your trans­gres­sions and sins, in which you used to live when you fol­lowed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the king­dom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are dis­obe­di­ent (Eph­esians 2:2). 

In the early part of the book of Gen­e­sis, we see this exam­ple when it tells the story of the Fall. As we go on and flip a page or two into the book of Gen­e­sis, the pas­sage describes this awful sit­u­a­tion with greater clar­ity. In this jeal­ousy Lucifer had toward God’s chil­dren, in his great hatred toward us, he attempts to lead us away from the One who truly loves us—and with noth­ing more than a piece of fruit,with just a sim­ple red apple that you could pick on a cold Octo­ber day.

         The Ser­pent: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”

The Woman: “…God did say ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the mid­dle of the gar­den, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

The Ser­pent: “You will not surely die…”

Before night fell, Lucifer suc­ceeded in his manip­u­la­tion and lie, and God’s chil­dren found them­selves sub­ject to a dif­fer­ent ruler—to this evil and fallen being. In the Fall, in our dis­obe­di­ence to God, we obeyed the Enemy and became his slave. This can be missed when read­ing Gen­e­sis. This is the aspect of read­ing the Bible as a nar­ra­tive and not only look­ing for the obvi­ous. At this point in time, the entire world is under the domin­ion of this rebel­lious angel. As we have said, the Bible calls him Lucifer or Satan and in dif­fer­ent pas­sages he is called “the god of this age” (2 Corinthi­ans 4:4), “the prince of this world” (John 12:31), and “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph­esians 2:2). As Mil­ton writes in Par­adise Lost, “Satan exalted sat, by merit raised to that bad emi­nence.” That day the world turned sour or as Sally Mann has said, “The earth [became] sculpted out of death.”  Because Lucifer knew his demise, what a bet­ter way to end it—to destroy the cre­ation God loved and trea­sured the most.

YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY

Let’s talk a lit­tle bit more about the­ol­ogy. A new thing hap­pens and God does not for­get about his cher­ished ones. As Jesus, he comes onto the scene and restores what had become so messed up—not only is he our sub­sti­tute, but he also ran­soms us from Lucifer’s hand. What does that mean? For some of us, when we think about the cross, we imme­di­ately think of the phrase—Jesus died for our sins—the­o­log­i­cally, this premise is what we call sub­sti­tu­tion­ary atone­ment. How­ever, in the early church, they viewed the cross in another way; they saw Jesus’ death as a ran­som for our lives, as a deliv­er­ance and pro­tec­tion from Lucifer’s author­ity over mankind.  After the Fall, the human race lit­er­ally became his prop­erty and pos­ses­sion. The­olo­gians from the early church up until the present call this ran­som atone­ment. After the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus, all that is nullified—Lucifer’s reign and con­trol can be over if you want it to be.

So often when Jesus spoke to peo­ple he asked them to fol­low him and this was the reason—to fol­low him meant that we would lit­er­ally be turn­ing our back on the one who hates us and we could begin to learn how to live with the One who always had our best at heart. If we were to fol­low Jesus, every­thing could be as it should be—we now have restored to us the priv­i­lege of being an heir and child of God, and we no longer have to be sub­ject to some­one who does not care for us in the least. We now lit­er­ally give our lives back to God and release our­selves from Satan’s con­trol and con­tempt (to learn more about this premise, you can google Chris­tus Vic­tor). As a cen­tral teach­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment about Jesus’ death on the cross, it con­tends that God not only saves us from sin and death, but also Lucifer’s hatred and control.

Let’s look at this con­cept from one more angle. I love lit­er­a­ture. I stud­ied it in col­lege and it is still one of my favorite things to do—to read sto­ries. I have learned so much through them. Drama, tragedy, comedy—they illus­trate for us in excep­tional ways impor­tant truths about life. Sto­ries teach us the most. This is why Jesus spent so much time telling them—it is how we learn best. They stick with us and this is why Jesus spoke truths through para­bles and sto­ries. The prob­lem is that sto­ries don’t always spell it out. You have to read them (and some­times reread) and lis­ten for what they are try­ing to say. Some­times, it’s not so obvi­ous to under­stand what the author is try­ing to say. And when you think about it, the Bible is writ­ten almost exclu­sively as a story when one reads it cover to cover. Some­times when we read the Scrip­tures, we need to remem­ber to read it that way—simply as we would read an exhil­a­rat­ing novel that a friend has rec­om­mended. Wal­ter Wan­gerin did us a great ser­vice when he wrote The Book of God, because it brought us back to the fun­da­men­tals of the story of redemp­tion; the pages we turn do not become just a bunch of rules that need to be fol­lowed out, but the full­ness of a story where we become the cen­tral char­ac­ters along­side our Creator.

This takes us to a final point. Let’s look at the word king­dom. Through­out the gospels, Jesus uses this word over and over when he is teach­ing the peo­ple and his dis­ci­ples. What he is attempt­ing to explain is that in this world there are two king­doms co-existing with one another: the king­dom of God, and for a bet­ter word, the king­dom of the World (to which Satan is the “prince” of this “king­dom”). He makes it clear and states that each per­son is in one camp or the other. Jesus says it about as bla­tantly as it can be said: “If you are not with me, you are against me.” (Matthew 12:30) There is no mid­dle ground. Each per­son is either in alle­giance to him or blindly being swayed by his enemy.  Even Bob Dylan gets it; in one part of a song he wrote, he belts out this truth:

You may be an ambas­sador to Eng­land or France

You may like to gam­ble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavy­weight cham­pion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

 

Might be a rock’n’ roll addict pranc­ing on the stage

Might have money and drugs at your com­mands, women in a cage

You may be a busi­ness man or some high degree thief

They may call you Doc­tor or they may call you Chief.

 

Might like to wear cot­ton, might like to wear silk,

Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,

You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,

You may be sleep­ing on the floor, sleep­ing in a king-sized bed

 

You’re gonna have to serve some­body, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

The ques­tion we each have to ask our­selves is where do we stand, who are we going to serve and fol­low? Again, there is no mid­dle ground. With this issue, there is never a happy medium. Your mail­ing address is either in his King­dom or in the world. You are either for or against Jesus. You are either serv­ing him or some­one else. At least, this is how Jesus explained it.

 

 

 

 

In: Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , ,
Feb
29
2012

This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

Every­thing you want in life is right out­side your com­fort zone. Robert Allen

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to expe­ri­ence pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of non-feeling, or stop ques­tion­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new under­stand­ing, and new love. Sylvia Plath

God draws, but He draws the will­ing one. John Chrysostom

As I thought about this woman that I men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous post, it dawned on me just how imper­a­tive it is to con­tin­u­ally pur­sue God. As an exam­ple of this, I know of some­one who recently has walked away from their faith. This was a per­son who some years back was serv­ing and liv­ing a life that was exem­plary when it came to being a Chris­t­ian. How­ever, over the last cou­ple of years, I began to see that this life began to wane and he did not take his rela­tion­ship with God very seri­ously over these last years. Slowly over time, it began to show, and not only with the obvi­ous out­ward signs. Sadly, since that time, he has made many poor deci­sions, which has not only impacted him neg­a­tively, but his fam­ily as well. It’s been a lit­tle bit like watch­ing a train wreck.

Of late, I have been think­ing about how unhealthy it can be to not have Jesus at the cen­ter of your life on a daily basis. Yet this hap­pens all the time. In gen­eral, the church today places such empha­sis on evan­ge­lism, “get­ting peo­ple saved and into heaven,” but focuses too lit­tle on discipleship—learning how to live a life with Jesus. The Barna Group has some stag­ger­ing sta­tis­tics, con­firm­ing the fact that the church is good at “mak­ing con­verts, but not disciples:”

  • In a recent study, when Chris­t­ian adults were asked to iden­tify their most impor­tant goal for their life, not a sin­gle per­son said it was to be a com­mit­ted fol­lower of Jesus Christ.
  • Less than one out of every five born again adults had any spe­cific and mea­sur­able goals related to their per­sonal spir­i­tual development.
  • Less than 1% of all Chris­tians per­ceived a con­nec­tion between their efforts to wor­ship God and their devel­op­ment as a dis­ci­ple of Jesus.
  • The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen Chris­tians is “God helps those who help themselves”—which is not actu­ally in the Bible, and con­flicts with the basic mes­sage of Scripture.

Liv­ing with Jesus every day—this is really where life begins, not when you say the sinner’s prayer. Life is always con­tin­u­ing and we need to move with it. How­ever, too often in Chris­t­ian cir­cles, being reflec­tive and delib­er­ate about our rela­tion­ship with God is put to the side. For what­ever rea­son, peo­ple tend to stag­nate rather than thrive after mak­ing a com­mit­ment of faith. Ques­tions don’t get asked. Masks begin to be worn. We play the part, but in real­ity, we don’t know how to gen­uinely be in friend­ship with God. Liv­ing the Chris­t­ian life and going through the motions is easy, being in rela­tion­ship with Jesus is a whole dif­fer­ent mat­ter. This is what he was talk­ing about when he told the para­ble about build­ing your life on the sand—that it was unsafe to build on some­thing that is temporary.

After becom­ing a Chris­t­ian, I learned an impor­tant lesson—if you have any amount of bib­li­cal knowl­edge, watch out. You even­tu­ally will become the expert, the guru. Peo­ple will per­ceive that you have it all together, look up to you, and believe that you and God must be best buds. But all of this can be dan­ger­ous, because it can per­pet­u­ate a seri­ous problem—you will begin to learn how to live an inau­then­tic life; you will learn how to fake it. In the end, you will paint your­self  into a cor­ner to which there is no escape. Because you have played the role of the well-behaved church­goer, you won’t know how to play any other part. Sadly, I know this from first-hand expe­ri­ence from years past.

But reli­gious knowl­edge is never the stan­dard for hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God and too often in the church, this is what we empha­size. It’s easy to know a lot about some­one; it’s a whole new thing to know some­one. This makes sense—it’s much more easy and com­fort­able to just know about some­one, sim­ply know­ing the facts (e.g., “she works at a hos­pi­tal, likes to eat sal­ads at lunch, has three kids, and dri­ves a white Toy­ota Sienna.”). There’s dis­tance and safety and very lit­tle mess. But know­ing just the facts about some­one does not mean you know them. Lots of us know a lot of stuff about a whole bunch of peo­ple, but it goes about as far as that. Our knowl­edge is a mile wide, but an inch deep. For some, it can be rare that they have gen­uinely deep and strong friendships. They keep peo­ple at bay, at a safe dis­tance and they don’t go too deep. We can also do the same with God.

But we need to move beyond just know­ing about God—we need to push to know him per­son­ally. John Wes­ley once wrote, “Once in seven years I burn all my ser­mons; for it is a shame, if I can­not write bet­ter ser­mons now than I did seven years ago.” In that state­ment, Wes­ley was say­ing that it was not a good thing if he hadn’t grown beyond where he once stood in terms of know­ing God. We need to keep mov­ing on as well, being rest­less and ask­ing for more. This should be our end goal. I think C.S. Lewis said it in the most direct way possible:

Every time you make a choice, you are turn­ing the cen­tral part of you, the part of you that chooses, into some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what it was before. And, tak­ing your life as a whole, with all your innu­mer­able choices, all your life long you are slowly turn­ing this cen­tral thing either into a Heaven crea­ture or into a hell­ish creature—either into a crea­ture that is in har­mony with God, and with other crea­tures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fel­low crea­tures and with itself.

Those are strong and dif­fi­cult words, but they are true. Yogi Berra said it in a sim­i­lar way, but in a way only he could: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up some­where else.” As Chris­tians, we need to con­tin­u­ally change and grow and move beyond just know­ing about God and gen­uinely encounter him. At the end of the day, we need to know where we are headed.

In: Friend to Jesus
Tags: , , , , , ,
Jan
17
2012


A Chal­leng­ing Faith

The Bible is cer­tainly an eccen­tric book. You can find some very strange sto­ries and pas­sages within its pages. It is also a very dif­fi­cult book. The story of a father who sac­ri­fices his daugh­ter because of a vow; talk of dash­ing children’s heads against the rocks (Psalm 137:8–9); the para­ble of the Shrewd Man­ager; these sto­ries and many more are chal­leng­ing and answers are not so clearly evi­dent on a first, sec­ond or third read­ing. There is a grap­pling that is nec­es­sary for cor­rectly under­stand­ing what is being said. In one instance a pas­sage is obvi­ous; at oth­ers, it can be deeply con­fus­ing, con­fin­ing or chal­leng­ing. As one who has stud­ied lit­er­a­ture, I appre­ci­ate this. The Bible is not a Danielle Steele novel. The book that God gave us is chal­leng­ing and thought-provoking. It makes us use our minds and hearts in a way that we don’t nor­mally do. [pullquote]The Bible is not a Danielle Steele novel. The book that God gave us is chal­leng­ing and thought-provoking. It makes us use our minds and hearts in a way that we don’t nor­mally do.[/pullquote] Most impor­tantly, it forces us to rely on the Holy Spirit with all our being to under­stand these extra­or­di­nary words we read.

In the past, those who main­tain an open view of God have taken a beat­ing at the hands of many other the­olo­gians and Chris­t­ian lay writ­ers. This is trou­bling because in real­ity the Open View the­olo­gians are wrestling with the Scrip­tures and look­ing at verses or sto­ries that just don’t fit with what has been taught in the past. Are they cor­rect in every assess­ment? Per­haps not. How­ever, they are delv­ing deeper into the words God gave us than maybe we have done in many years since. Like Jacob, they are wrestling with God.

One the­olo­gian who truly wres­tled with the Scrip­tures was the late Clark Pin­nock. A remark­able the­olo­gian who was instru­men­tal in clar­i­fy­ing the infal­li­bil­ity of Scrip­ture later in life took on the view of Open The­ol­ogy. Let’s explore what that exactly is.

So What Did Clark Pin­nock Believe?

There are essen­tially three areas where Open The­ism stands in con­flict with the clas­sic view of the­ol­ogy, the Calvinist-Augustinian view. The issues below are ones that make clas­sic the­ists roll their eyes and offer strong disagreement—these three view­points: the power or sov­er­eignty of God, the immutabil­ity of God and finally, God’s foreknowledge.

a. The Power or Sov­er­eignty of God

The Clas­sic View of God’s power is that God is sov­er­eign and in con­trol of all human and super­nat­ural events. As the Reformed the­olo­gian R.C. Sproul has said, “If there is any part of cre­ation out­side of God’s sov­er­eignty, then God is sim­ply not sov­er­eign. If God is not sov­er­eign, then God is not God.” (R.C. Sproul, Cho­sen by God, p. 26) The Clas­sic or Calvin­ist view holds that God must be in con­trol of all events, in all places and in all times. This is where we get the strong insis­tence in pre­des­ti­na­tion; that we as each per­son were either cho­sen by God to be in rela­tion­ship with him or not. Our sal­va­tion depends noth­ing on us; it is all up to God. There is no choice and no free­dom. We are either des­tined for heaven or hell; the choice is God’s alone.

The Open View sees things dif­fer­ently. They do not see the use of the word sov­er­eignty as syn­ony­mous with con­trol. Beyond that, if we have the choice of free­dom in our lives as they believe, it is inevitable that God had to give up some “con­trol.” This is an impor­tant sum­ma­tion of this theology—there are always con­se­quences or ram­i­fi­ca­tions to what you believe and these beliefs must be thought out and weighed. When it comes to the doc­trine of prov­i­dence each path leads to places that have trou­bling reper­cus­sions. But right away you may be think­ing What?! God is not in con­trol? How could this be? Isn’t this a basic of Chris­tian­ity? Pin­nock insists, sov­er­eignty has to do with rule and author­ity, not con­trol. He argues in response that God still has con­trol, but not in a way that is deter­min­is­tic, dom­i­nat­ing, and monopolistic. [pullquote]Pinnock insists, sov­er­eignty has to do with rule and author­ity, not con­trol. He argues in response that God still has con­trol, but not in a way that is deter­min­is­tic, dom­i­nat­ing, and monop­o­lis­tic. [/pullquote]A word that open the­ists will use is that God is “omnire­source­ful.” God at times maybe has to adjust to cer­tain cir­cum­stances, because of human free will, but He is ready and has the where­withal to never be caught off-guard. This, Pin­nock argues, is a truly omnipo­tent Creator.

Yet this does not make God weak, for it requires more power to rule over an unde­ter­mined world than it would over a deter­mined one. Cre­at­ing free crea­tures and work­ing with them does not con­tra­dict God’s omnipo­tence but requires it…God’s power presently is more sub­tle, much greater in fact than the coer­cive power of a pup­peteer. Monop­oly power is easy to manage—more dif­fi­cult is power that makes free agents and gov­erns a uni­verse where crea­tures can dis­obey. (Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God,  113–114)

b. The Immutabil­ity of God

This is not the only place where Open The­ists have caused con­tro­versy. They also con­clude that God can change. The Reformed the­olo­gian insists, “How can this be? Scrip­ture upon scrip­ture voices that God does not change.”

Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.  (1 Samuel 15:29)

Remem­ber the for­mer things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me; declar­ing the end from the begin­ning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; say­ing, My coun­sel shall stand, and I will do all my plea­sure; call­ing a rav­en­ous bird from the east, the man of my coun­sel from a far coun­try; yes, I have spo­ken, I will also bring it to pass; I have pur­posed, I will also do it. (Isa­iah 46:9–11)

“If God were to change where would this leave us? What if he decided to change his mind about us, about sal­va­tion? No, God never changes,” says the clas­sic theist.

The Open the­olo­gian goes even fur­ther, he demands that God even changes his mind, he rethinks his think­ing! Pin­nock reports that by look­ing at the texts of the Bible, it is obvi­ous from many dif­fer­ent ref­er­ences that God did change his mind and con­tin­ues to do so. In par­tic­u­lar, the book of Jonah depicts this forth­rightly by say­ing God actu­ally “repented” of the evil he said he would do. Not only this, this is a God who asks ques­tions (Num­bers 14:11), One who regrets deci­sions (I Samuel 15:11), and One who finds out things (Gen­e­sis 2:19).  In fact, Pin­nock also sug­gests that God even learns through the process of redeem­ing the world.

This implies that God learns things and (I would add) enjoys learn­ing them. It does not mean that God is anybody’s pupil or that he has to over­come igno­rance and learn things of which he should have been aware. It means that God cre­ated a dynamic and chang­ing world and enjoys get­ting to know it.(Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God, pp. 123–124)

[pullquote]Pinnock is very clear in what he is say­ing about this. “God is unchang­ing in nature and essence, but not in expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and action.” [/pullquote](Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God, pp.  113–114) He is not espous­ing that God’s nature or who he is to the core changes or is altered. But with the inter­ac­tion with his chil­dren, God can change his mind as well as what he does. 

c. The Knowl­edge of God

For many, prob­a­bly the most trou­bling stance of the open the­olo­gian is the view that God is not omni­scient in the sense that we have thought about that term in the past. Again, sim­i­lar to the issue of God’s power or con­trol, clas­sic the­ists see God’s knowl­edge as exhaus­tive and defin­i­tive. He knows every­thing even before it hap­pens. Clas­sic the­ists argue that this brings com­fort and secu­rity. If God knows every­thing, he can con­trol every­thing. “Again,” the clas­sic the­ist would ask, “how could you take such a view that God doesn’t know every­thing? Have you read the Scrip­tures? Just start with the prophets and you will see that God knows every­thing that will hap­pen and what will be.” How­ever, open the­olo­gians insist that we must think out our the­ol­ogy and under­stand the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of these beliefs. If God knows every­thing then that lends itself to every­thing being fixed. And if every­thing is fixed then we can not be made as cre­ations of love, but we are sim­ply robots con­trolled by the hands of God.

The Open the­olo­gian would argue an impor­tant point, when it applies to God’s lim­ited knowl­edge, one begins to see this truth when read­ing the sto­ries found in Scrip­ture. As a past sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor once said, those who have an open view of God (or Armini­ans) lean toward nar­ra­tive the­ol­ogy; they see the Bible as a tremen­dous story to be engaged in, not just a list of doc­tri­nal state­ments for us to abide to and check off.

What does the Bible say about God’s knowl­edge? It says, for exam­ple, that God tested Abra­ham to see what he would do and after the test says through the angel: “Now I know that you fear God.” (Gen­e­sis 22:12) This was a piece of infor­ma­tion that God was eager to secure. (Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God,  pp. 121–122)

And this leads us to the final point. Open the­olo­gians are often accused of over-limiting God’s knowl­edge. Those with an open view of God insist that he knows what he needs to know, which is most every­thing.  A mis­con­cep­tion that some may hold about this empha­sis is that God knows very lit­tle, if nearly noth­ing. How­ever, this is not their stance on the issue. Open View the­olo­gians main­tain that God does not need to know every­thing exhaus­tively or in a deter­min­is­tic fashion-—again, he knows what he needs to know.

How Did We Get Here? What Have We Become?

A ques­tion some may ask is: how did this Open View of God come about? Was it just some the­olo­gians play­ing where they shouldn’t? Or did it come about as a real response to some­thing wrong with our present under­stand­ing of God?

a. The Influ­ence of C.S. Lewis and Free Will Theism

Other than the Wes­leyans, Armini­an­ism has been pretty much a non-issue within the world of evan­gel­i­cal­ism. Calvin­ism or Reformed the­ol­ogy has ruled the day in most denom­i­na­tions. How­ever, it can be argued that one of the most influ­en­tial “the­olo­gians” of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury has been C.S. Lewis. Many of us have grown up on his books such as Mere Chris­tian­ity, Screw­tape Let­ters, The Prob­lem of Pain, The Great Divorce and many oth­ers. [pullquote]For the evan­gel­i­cal church, espe­cially the Amer­i­can one, C.S. Lewis is our patron saint. Open The­ol­ogy in some ways came out of his writ­ings and the gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed him have been highly influ­enced by his thoughts and writings.[/pullquote] Lewis often spoke of the free choice we had in our rela­tion­ship to God. In the clas­sic, Mere Chris­tian­ity, he devotes a sub­stan­tial part of the chap­ter, “The Shock­ing Alter­na­tive” to the issue of free will. Lis­ten to some of his words from this book:

Free will is what has made evil pos­si­ble. Why then, did God give [crea­tures] free will? Because free will though it makes evil pos­si­ble, is also the only thing that makes pos­si­ble any love or good­ness or joy worth having.

The hap­pi­ness God desires for His crea­tures is…ecstasy of love…And for that they must be free.

The bet­ter stuff a crea­ture is made of—the clev­erer and stronger and freer it is—then the bet­ter it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.

Because of Lewis the Amer­i­can church has had a sub­tle, but strong influ­ence with regards to the issue of free will. Though he was not a staunch Armin­ian, this view per­vades most of his works which so many evan­gel­i­cals have read. An exam­ple of this would be in one of the open the­ists such as Gre­gory Boyd. In his books, Boyd often quotes Lewis and you see the influ­ence this Eng­lish­man had on him. And this makes sense as well. With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves. With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves. [pullquote]With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves.[/pullquote]

b. One Prob­lem with the Doc­trine of Predestination

Open View the­olo­gians have made us think out our the­ol­ogy and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of those beliefs. Each doc­trine that we have about God has impli­ca­tions. Yet often we either deny these ram­i­fi­ca­tions or do our best to cover it up with Scrip­ture verses out of con­text. Some­times worse yet, we attempt to place the truth of God into an acronym like TULIP (i.e., total deprav­ity, uncon­di­tional elec­tion, lim­ited atone­ment, irre­sistible grace, and per­se­ver­ance of the saints) which inevitably can­not hold the intri­cate truths of the Scrip­tures. We attempt to com­part­men­tal­ize God. The Open­ness of God move­ment is a response to this. It looks at pas­sages and sto­ries in the Bible that show dif­fer­ent sides of God and cre­ation from what we may have been pre­vi­ously taught. When viewed in this way, the doc­trine of pre­des­ti­na­tion has some ram­i­fi­ca­tions that sim­ply are not bib­li­cal. There are many areas in which the Calvinist/Augustine view of God breaks down. One of the main ones is the prob­lem of evil.

The rea­son Calvin­ism does not work in the 21st cen­tury is because it is not real­is­tic with regard to the world we live. In par­tic­u­lar, it leaves major ques­tions untouched when it comes to the prob­lem of evil. If we live in a deter­mined uni­verse to some extent God is respon­si­ble for the evil that hap­pens to us. This is a major prob­lem that Open The­olo­gians have with Calvin­ism. As one exam­ple, when we look at the Holo­caust, we can con­clude, “Where was God? Why did He allow this? What is the greater good that seven mil­lion peo­ple were bru­tally mur­dered and mas­sa­cred?” There is none, because God did not ordain the heinous acts the Nazis. Again, this was sim­ply human free­dom at its worse.

Open the­olo­gians con­tend that clas­si­cal the­olo­gians have neglected the impor­tant fact that we live in a war zone and with that, Open the­ists con­tend that with regards to their the­ol­ogy, they leave out a cru­cial char­ac­ter in the bib­li­cal story. This per­son, of course, is the one we find through­out the pages of Scripture—the angelic being, Lucifer or Satan.

David Grif­fin makes this point that the “real­ism of the New Tes­ta­ment image of the demonic is lost in the the­ol­ogy of Augus­tine and other clas­si­cal the­olo­gians because of their monis­tic monothe­ism accord­ing to which there is only one cen­tral power.” He fur­ther notes that “the bat­tle between the divine and the demonic is, accord­ingly, a mock, not a real bat­tle.” (Gre­gory A. Boyd, Satan and the Prob­lem of Evil, pg. 61)

God is so in con­trol in the Reformed view that there is no room for the evil one and his plans and activ­ity. Fur­ther­more, just like us, he is sim­ply a pup­pet in God’s hands. How­ever, this is not the bib­li­cal view of his inter­ac­tion with our world. He is a viable enemy to God and his cre­ation, both to believ­ers and to the lost. He is the “god of this age,” (2 Corinthi­ans 4:4) and who even has the power to offer Jesus the king­doms of this earth (Matthew 4:8–10). He truly is a for­mi­da­ble foe. Even though he is an ulti­mately defeated adver­sary, because of the sac­ri­fice of Jesus on the cross, he still does wreak havoc in the lives and hap­pen­ings of our world.

Leviathan and Rahab encom­pass the earth and war against God… “Rag­ing waters” of chaos defy the Almighty and threat­en­ing his cre­ation must be kept at bay…A sin­is­ter spirit of great power is the “god of this world” and “the ruler of the power of the air.” An evil “prince” owns all the king­doms of this world and indeed con­trols the entire fallen world…Everything and every­one under his author­ity has to some extent been affected accord­ingly. (Gre­gory A. Boyd, Satan and the Prob­lem of Evil, pp. 301–302)

There are many the­o­ries with regards to the Atone­ment (i.e., why did Jesus die on the cross?). The most preva­lent one is sub­sti­tu­tion, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. How­ever, another impor­tant one is what is called the ran­som the­ory—that is, Jesus’ death on the cross ran­somed us from the hand of Satan. [pullquote]There are many the­o­ries with regards to the Atone­ment (i.e., why did Jesus die on the cross?). The most preva­lent one is sub­sti­tu­tion, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. How­ever, another impor­tant one is what is called the ran­som the­ory—that is, Jesus’ death on the cross ran­somed us from the hand of Satan. [/pullquote]Redemption in this case lit­er­ally means “buy­ing back,” and this the­ory of atone­ment was the main view up until the Medieval Period. There are a hand­ful of verses declar­ing this, but the main one is found in the gospel of Mark: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ran­som for many.” (10:45)

Scrip­ture tells us that we are slaves as indi­vid­u­als and those of us who have given our lives to Jesus Christ are a “bought” and freed peo­ple. If this is the case, who were we bought from? This is an impor­tant “doc­trine” that is rarely dis­cussed, but is cru­cial if we are to under­stand the story of God and redemp­tion. Essen­tially, Jesus bought us from the domin­ion of Satan. When Adam and Eve said “no” to God, they inevitably said “yes” to the one who beguiled them. To some mys­te­ri­ous extent, God is under oblig­a­tion to keep this con­tract, because he is just. This being the case, Open the­ists main­tain that he is lim­ited in con­trol to some extent when it comes to the activ­i­ties of the evil one.

Can’t We Just Get Along

We know that we all pos­sess knowl­edge. Knowl­edge puffs up, but love builds up. If any­one thinks he knows some­thing, he has not yet learned it as he ought to know it. But if any­one loves God, he is known by him. (1 Corinthi­ans 8:1–3 ISV)

Alfred North White­head remarks, “the clash of doc­trines is not a dis­as­ter, it is an oppor­tu­nity.” This is clearly the case when one approaches Open Theology. [pullquote]Alfred North White­head remarks, “the clash of doc­trines is not a dis­as­ter, it is an oppor­tu­nity.” This is clearly the case when one approaches Open Theology.[/pullquote] We have for­got­ten some­thing very impor­tant. Doc­trine is not the hinge pin to our sal­va­tion. There will be no true or false quizzes or exam­i­na­tions con­cern­ing our beliefs in Calvin­ism or Armini­an­ism. Is doc­trine impor­tant? Of course, it is. How­ever, too often Chris­tians believe it is the all in all when it comes to hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God, and it is not. This is the lit­mus test that you are either in or out by what you think and believe. Yes, there are some cru­cial aspects of doc­trine that need to heeded, but in large part many the­o­log­i­cal dis­agree­ments are just that, argu­ments. That is why it is so dis­ap­point­ing and sad that some the­olo­gians have said some very hard words when it con­cerns the late Clark Pin­nock. A quote from John Sanders reflects this:

[Clark is] often seen as a threat by the evan­gel­i­cal door­keep­ers. In large part this may be because evan­gel­i­cal the­ol­ogy, rather than being inno­v­a­tive and the­o­ret­i­cally reflec­tive self-critical, oper­ates more like the prac­tice of account­ing in the busi­ness field—it  insists in pro­ceed­ing only by pre-approved rules and fixed for­mu­lae and for­mats. (Callen, Barry. Clark Pin­nock: Jour­ney Toward Renewal, pg. 4)

Cor­rect doc­trine does not give us a right rela­tion­ship with God. The­o­log­i­cal strug­gles like this when they go awry entirely dis­arm our mes­sage before the world. How does Jesus says that the world will know him—because of our unity and love for one another. (John 17:20–23) They will never know him because of our doc­tri­nal stances and the the­ol­ogy that we hold. If we lose our unity and love for one another and con­tinue to live so dog­mat­i­cally in our beliefs (I would argue like the Phar­isees), the world will be lost on our splin­tered and unlovely message.

We must become more mod­est in our claims. I do not have the final answers. The­ol­ogy is an unfin­ished task, and all of our efforts at inter­pre­ta­tion are lim­ited in insight. As Paul says, “We see through a glass darkly.” There is more to be known about God than any of us presently knows. (Pin­nock, Clark, “The Pil­grim on the Way, Chris­tian­ity Today, 1998)

If you would like to delve deeper in under­stand­ing Open The­ol­ogy, I would rec­om­mend the books below.

[amazon_enhanced asin=“080106290X” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0830818529” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0830815503” /]

In: Spiritual Formation, Theology
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jul
27
2011

So how does one get the fruit of the Spirit that Jesus and Paul thought were so vital to our lives?

Jesus made the most impor­tant point and that was that the only way a per­son could exhibit this fruit in their lives was if they stayed in a rela­tion­ship with him.

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

This also, if you think about it, is an amaz­ing state­ment. To be gen­uinely lov­ing or patient or kind means you have to lit­er­ally be in a rela­tion­ship with Jesus. If we are to believe his words with this, we need to live this out on a day-to-day basis learn­ing how to be in rela­tion­ship with him. Through this verse, Jesus is dri­ving home the point that even hav­ing the very abil­ity to have these qual­i­ties in a person’s life is entirely rooted in a rela­tion­ship with Him. In state­ments like these that Jesus made, he was either think­ing way too much of him­self or he was say­ing some­thing that we really need lis­ten to and live out. When he says stuff like this, I think of some­thing C.S. Lewis wrote:

I am try­ing here to pre­vent any­one say­ing the really fool­ish thing that peo­ple often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a mad­man or some­thing worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

With words like these, Jesus basi­cally was say­ing that to be a per­son of character—loving, joy­ful, patient, gen­tle, etc.—you have to be in rela­tion­ship with him. Again, we need to take him at his word with these strong words he says.

So there­fore, just as grapes or oranges need to be cul­ti­vated and nur­tured so that they can grow, so does this spir­i­tual fruit that Jesus and Paul talk about. When one tends to an orchard, there is water­ing, prun­ing, weed­ing, many dif­fer­ent things need to be done to have a plen­ti­ful crop to enjoy. It is no dif­fer­ent when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit. This fruit that Paul details for us are a blend of our own choos­ing and the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. They go hand in hand and you can­not have one with­out the other. The Holy Spirit works with us so that we can be fruit­ful. As one exam­ple, the Spirit gives you patience; but you also must actively be patient in that dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion you will face tomor­row. God always works with us in our endeav­ors, but he never does it alone. We work with him to become the peo­ple we were sup­posed to be.

To end, these char­ac­ter­is­tics, these fruit are not gained because we are just being moral or good. As I once heard some­one say, they are nine graces. I love the use of that word, because in some ways it exem­pli­fies what the fruit are all about. The dic­tio­nary defines “graces” as:

• Seem­ingly effort­less beauty or charm of move­ment, form, or proportion.

• A favor ren­dered by one who need not do so.

• A tem­po­rary immu­nity or exemp­tion; a reprieve.

This def­i­n­i­tion pic­tures for us what the fruit of the Spirit are: 1) They are given by God who bestows them upon us as a reprieve from our bro­ken lives. 2) The fruit of the Spirit allow us to be who we were meant to be from the begin­ning of time (e.g., lov­ing, patient, self-controlled, etc.). 3) And they inevitabil­ity restore our character.

So now might be a good idea to dis­cuss just what specif­i­cally the fruit of the Spirit are and why they are so impor­tant to our lives. In the up-coming weeks, we will look at these in some detail and see how we can apply them to our lives.

[amazon_enhanced asin=“0060506083” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“B002BD2UR0” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0060652969” /]

In: Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , , ,
Mar
30
2011

Every time you make a choice, you are turn­ing the cen­tral part of you, the part of you that chooses, into some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what it was before. And, tak­ing your life as a whole, with all your innu­mer­able choices, all your life long you are slowly turn­ing this cen­tral thing either into a Heaven crea­ture or into a hell­ish crea­ture — either into a crea­ture that is in har­mony with God, and with other crea­tures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fel­low crea­tures and with itself. To be the one kind of crea­ture is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowl­edge, and power. To be the other means mad­ness, hor­ror, idiocy, rage, impo­tence, and eter­nal lone­li­ness. Each of us at each moment is pro­gress­ing to the one state or the other.

[amazon_enhanced asin=“0060652888” /]

In: Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , ,
Jan
09
2011










For those new to this web­site, here are a hand­ful of facts about yours truly.

  1. While a col­lege stu­dent in Chicago, one day I went to go play ten­nis down­town with a friend. Once we got back, my car, which was a 1977 Chevy Caprice Clas­sic, had been stolen. The police found it 2 weeks later with most every­thing gone: the tires, rims, seats, all of my belong­ings, even most of the engine. I loved that car.
  2. In high school, I was an exchange stu­dent to Ger­many. I was the worst stu­dent when I left and came back the one who spoke Ger­man the best. How? My Ger­man teacher had me live with a fam­ily that spoke no English.
  3. I’ve seen many con­certs in my life­time: my favorites being U2 (Joshua Tree and No Line on the Hori­zon tours), Echo and the Bun­ny­men, Sufan Stevens (three times), Bobby McFer­rin, The Smiths, Gen­eral Public, Bro­ken Social Scene and some unknown  jazz quar­tet at the Green Mill in Chicago when I was in my early twenties.
  4. Eas­ily my worst job was sell­ing vac­u­ums door-to-door. I was 19 years old. The name of the vac­uum was The Pig and my boss was decep­tive, manip­u­la­tive and greedy. Fun times.
  5. I met my wife Julie through a week­end retreat through our church. We were camp­ing in Wis­con­sin and the name of the park where we camped was called Devil’s Lake State Park. Except for meet­ing Julie, it was a mis­er­able week­end, because I had to sleep in a wet sleep­ing bag, because it rained all week­end. I mar­ried her 11 months later. Sec­ond best deci­sion of my life (see below).
  6. Eerie: When I was in col­lege, a friend and I the night before spring break started were talk­ing late into the night. We were dis­cussing the peo­ple, if we lost them, would dev­as­tate our lives. She gave one name: her older brother who was her hero and best friend. He was killed in a bicy­cling acci­dent that week. This taught me for the first time an impor­tant les­son: life is fragile.
  7. Also while I was in col­lege, I worked with kids and adults with severe autism and other dis­abil­i­ties. Peter, a young man who had autism, also had a major metab­o­lism prob­lem and would eat any­thing in his sight and there­fore, all food had to be locked up at home. One day, we went for a walk and two high school girls were com­ing in our direc­tion. One of them was eat­ing a dough­nut. In a flash, Peter snatched it out of her hand and gob­bled it down. Not quite know­ing what to do, we just kept walking.
  8. Some things I love: Smart­wool socks, golf­ing with my sons on a sum­mer evening, sushi and raw oys­ters, World War II movies, my job, Arts & Craft fur­ni­ture, many dif­fer­ent HBO series, art muse­ums, hole-in-the-wall restau­rants, and Illi­nois Fight­ing Illini bas­ket­ball. I do not like roller coast­ers, lima beans, being cold, climb­ing up on a roof (i.e., heights), wear­ing con­tacts, and though this may sound sac­ri­le­gious, putting up Christ­mas stuff (e.g., the tree, orna­ment, lights, etc.).
  9. I love the ocean. I love stand­ing next to it. I love swim­ming in it. I love the sounds it makes. I love the smell. The oceans always reminds me that God exists and that he is good.
  10. I began to fol­low Jesus and became a Chris­t­ian in my sopho­more year of col­lege. I was really into U2 and a friend told me that Bono was a Chris­t­ian and said that my favorite song, “I Will Fol­low” was about fol­low­ing Jesus. At this time, I began to inves­ti­gate my faith from years past (I grew up Catholic) and through the books of C.S. Lewis books (Mere Chris­tian­ity, The Great Divorce, and Screw­tape Let­ters) I decided to begin “fol­low­ing” again. At that point, I had made a pretty big mess of my life, e.g., drink­ing a lot and the other stuff asso­ci­ated with that and was begin­ning to real­ize that there was more to life than how I was liv­ing it. It was the best deci­sion of my life.
In: Christian Faith
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Nov
10
2010



The Shield of the Trinity



When I was about eleven years old we made our first trip as a fam­ily out to Delaware. It would be my first time going to the ocean and has now become a fam­ily tra­di­tion of ours which we con­tinue to do even today. When it came to vaca­tions, we had a tra­di­tion in our fam­ily, in which my mom would let my sis­ter and I get a few mag­a­zines or books at the Kroger gro­cery store to keep us busy on long trips. I remem­ber vividly what I chose that year. I got a bunch of books on sharks and shark attacks. The trip was twelve hours long and I read each book, cover to cover.

When we did arrive, I fell in love with the ocean; each day of the vaca­tion you would find me body board­ing or swim­ming. On one of our last days, I became more coura­geous and swam out fur­ther into the ocean than I ever had. I was just wad­ing in the water, float­ing around, and enjoy­ing one of my last days of vaca­tion. I was way out; in fact, I was prob­a­bly a good thirty yards away from the near­est swim­mer. But then I noticed some­thing odd. As I looked down the entire beach front, every­one was com­ing out of the water. I won­dered what was going on? That had never hap­pened before?! Just then, I saw and heard the life­guard shout through his speaker phone, “Every­one out of the water! Every­one out of the water! Sharks! Sharks!” I had never heard more fright­en­ing words. I turned around and sure enough, swim­ming out near a tanker were about a dozen fins stick­ing up out of the water.

Imme­di­ately, I swam toward the shore as fast as I could. There was only one prob­lem though, all I could think about was all of those shark attack sto­ries I had read. In par­tic­u­lar, I remem­bered that sharks most often attack in shal­low waters when their prey believe that they’re safe. I swam like never before; I kept pump­ing my arms, kick­ing my legs, and finally, with­out a scratch on me, I crawled up onto shore. Just then, stand­ing above me was the life guard and into his speak­er­phone he yelled, “False alarm. Just dol­phins.” After that, I don’t think I swam in the ocean any­more before we left to go home!

Some­times, things aren’t what they seem. This is the case when it comes to how we think about God. We can have the knack for mak­ing Him in our image. In the early church they had to wres­tle with this as well, and it came out when early church lead­ers had to wres­tle with the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the Trin­ity. You think you know God in one way and he turns around and changes things a bit. This was espe­cially the case with first cen­tury Jews who had become Chris­tians. They grew up on the words, “The Lord is One.” And that was and is true; but it’s not the whole truth. In the first cen­tury, the doc­trine of the Trin­ity threw every­body for a loop, and to this day, it can do the same.

So why is the doc­trine of the Trin­ity so impor­tant? Why do we even wres­tle with this ulti­mately mys­te­ri­ous issue? Why not just leave it to the the­olo­gians to argue over? The Trin­ity is so very impor­tant because it is the start­ing point with our view of God.  When one doesn’t come to have at least a rudi­men­tary grasp of the Trin­ity, one’s view of God is, at best, shal­low or worse, pro­fane. But it is also a truth that the doc­trine of the Trin­ity is very dif­fi­cult to get your mind around. It’s nearly impos­si­ble to put in words.

In the early church, the church had to come to grips with what they believed and so, they wrote out dif­fer­ent creeds to tell them­selves and oth­ers what they believed, and what they did not believe. Believe it or not, there is one such creed that specif­i­cally dis­cusses the impor­tance of the Trin­ity; it is called the Athanasian Creed. One part of it states:

As also there are not three uncre­ated nor three incom­pre­hen­si­bles, but one uncre­ated and one incom­pre­hen­si­ble. So like­wise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty; And yet they are not three almight­ies, but one almighty.

As you can see, words can fail us. Clar­ity is dif­fi­cult to find when dis­cussing a mys­tery. We must remem­ber that this doc­trine is some­thing our lit­tle minds can never fully under­stand. We must come to the point that we know that God is lim­it­less and we are finite. Yet we have a prob­lem with this; as crea­tures of the 21st cen­tury we want to know every­thing and often feel that we have the right to such knowl­edge. In our data-driven world, there is some much knowl­edge and we have a sense of enti­tle­ment that we should know all that there is to know. I like what Dorothy Say­ers had to say on the topic of the Trin­ity. Lis­ten care­fully to what she said:

Why do you com­plain that the propo­si­tion God is three in one is obscure and mys­ti­cal and yet acqui­esce meekly in the physicist’s fun­da­men­tal for­mula, ‘two P minus PQ equals IH over two Pi where I equals the square root of minus one’ when you know quite well that the square root of minus one is para­dox­i­cal in Pi is incalculable?

Did that make your head spin? There are many things within the Chris­t­ian faith that fall under the realm of mys­tery; two, would be, the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ and God’s prov­i­dence. The doc­trine of the Trin­ity is no dif­fer­ent. And this is the great prob­lem that many believ­ers face; if we don’t under­stand it, we have a dif­fi­cult time believ­ing it.

So how can we explain this dif­fi­cult belief of ours? How do we explain to some­one that we believe in one God but three “per­sons?” We have all heard dif­fer­ent analo­gies of explain­ing the Trin­ity. When my boys were young we bought them a children’s book that attempted to explain the Trin­ity as an apple. The book said it some­thing like this:

The Father is the skin of the apple. He is our protector.

The Son is the flesh of the apple. He is the one who makes us strong.

The Holy Spirit is the seed or core. He helps us to grow.

We must, how­ever, remem­ber that all analo­gies fail when it comes to the Trin­ity. In fact, all analo­gies lean toward some form of heresy. Why? Because God can not be anal­o­gous. If you could com­pare God to an apple, what would that say about him? It is impos­si­ble to com­pare God to any­thing. Actu­ally, the only thing we can kind of com­pare him to is us. We are the only thing he made in his image. And yet even we are a faint com­par­i­son to Him. Even that anal­ogy breaks down at some point. Analo­gies can be help­ful, but we must always keep in the back of our mind that they are flawed.

Per­haps just plain words are bet­ter descrip­tors. I like how C.S. Lewis pic­tured the Trin­ity. He saw that God, who is tri­une in nature, as some­one who is “super-personal.” We can’t even imag­ine such a per­son. I like that phrase Lewis uses, super-personal; God is per­sonal to an extreme. Actu­ally, he is more than a per­son. Med­i­tate on that for awhile. I believe there can be a com­fort and an excite­ment that one can find in such an under­stand­ing. One day we will all stand face-to-face to this ulti­mately per­sonal Per­son. Bet­ter yet, we can know this super-personal Per­son even today.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
In: Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , ,
UA-3459392