(N.B. What follows is a sort of questioning-pondering, not intended as anything conclusive or static, just an issue I've been working on...so there are probably several problems in it.)
Rev 21:6-8 “He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost form the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.’”
One mystery in particular has occupied my theological curiosity for many years. It’s one I doubt I’ll ever understand (it took me a long while to accept Deuteronomy 29:29, that “the secret things belong to the Lord,” but I finally grew content with the fact that there is much I will never know, at least this side of Heaven); it’s one that perhaps no theologian has ever fully understood, even though many have tackled the issue. But I tackle it nonetheless, not—I hope—in arrogance, but with the avid curiosity God placed within me. I have never seriously doubted God’s existence—in truth, I’ve never been allowed to: more easily indeed could I doubt my own existence—and for quite a few years now I haven’t doubted God’s love and perfect goodness. The confusion and questions comes in at the question of evil.
How could a good, loving, and sovereign Creator allow evil and suffering within His Creation? If God were not absolutely sovereign, or were not Love Itself, there would be little problem; but there is little recourse to talking about our (or Lucifer’s) “free will.” After all, God created our wills, and they have only as much freedom as He allows. None are absolutely free; all are constrained by what He permits. How could He have created a will that chose “Evil”? For how could Evil have existed in an Existence created exclusively by Him, and maintained solely by His sovereign pleasure? Granted, Evil may be simply (if, perhaps, incompletely) described as “a diversion from God’s will”…but how, with a God able to control everything, who is the ultimate origin of everything, is that even possible? Furthermore, ignoring the theoretical possibility of Evil, how could a good and loving God allow His own creatures to stumble into it?
I’ve never read Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” although I’ve read a shorter essay by him about the topic…perhaps if I read the full book, my own ponderings would find better direction. But I doubt even Lewis can solve this mystery. The existence of evil is a trickier theological-philosophical problem than I have been able to describe here; even a little thinking along these lines demonstrates this. However, I’ve been thinking about the question long enough that I believe I have come to glimpse God’s character more clearly through my questions. Nevertheless, I still have no answer, although what follows is what I’m coming to understand of the whole thing, however incomplete or downright wrong it may be.
The passage from Revelation above made a new insight click into place. But I am always wary to draw any theology from Revelation, even more so than other works of prophecy—the other prophetic books having already occurred in large part, to varying degrees. In this case, however, what clicked was something already rolling into place, chugging along by the twin engines of Biblical exegesis and my personal disgust with a particular strain of “Christian” thought.
Exegesis may be an over-reaching word for what has taken place over the past few years as I read Scripture with a none-too-discerning eye. Yet one strain in my reading has been an attempt to better perceive God’s character as revealed in His Word, and several years ago now a single verse jumped out at me: Exodus 15:3 “The LORD is a Warrior, the LORD is His Name.” It did not strike me as surprising, necessarily, for as a young boy I loved the stories of battle in the Old Testament—David and Goliath, David’s mighty men, Gideon, Sampson, all those scenes which appeal to something fundamental in the masculine soul. Reading Eldredge’s Wild at Heart in high school emphasized this strand (among other strands; looking back, it may have been in this book that Exodus 15:3 was first brought clearly to my attention) in man’s heart. In the intervening years, however, this verse has been something of a lens through which I’ve looked, from time to time, at other portions of Scripture. The Imprecatory Psalms, for example, make a bit more sense in this light, as does Jesus’ brief but decisive burst of anger in the Temple Court (and His claim to have come “to bring a sword,” and the nature of His Second Coming), as well as all those mentions of spiritual warfare. It was helpful for me to remember that “spiritual warfare” was not some backwards-euphemism for pacific prayer and turning the other cheek. Spiritual warfare stems from something absolutely fundamental to God’s nature. 1 Samuel 17:47 is a good example of this: “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give all of you into our hands.” This acceptance of the Lord’s warrior nature also, in an indirect way, helps explain all those commands to the Israelites to “utterly destroy” the corrupt and rebellious peoples of the Holy Land—down to their wives and children, their goods and their animals. That, though, needs a longer treatise to satisfactorily explain it (I touched upon it in a previous blog, Meditation on Psalm 83, although it was a rather oblique study. That post, by the way, deals with some similar ideas to this post), so I’ll abandon that tangent for now.
That was one of the strands that recently produced a “mental click” of sorts for me—there is something in Yahweh’s make-up that is victorious, righteously violent, a vehement thing of holy burning fire. In the words of a current Christian writer, He is the God Who Smokes. He has the heart of a Warrior. Perfect Love is not pacifism (as we know deep down, I might add—who can watch Wallace fight in Braveheart because of his wife’s murder, and then for his people, or see Hawkeye and Uncas war for their loved ones in the Last of the Mohicans, or a grown Peter Pan fight to rescue his children in Hook, and not at least glimpse this truth? It is ingrained in our greatest stories. Even children’s movies such as The Lion King display an awareness of this.)
The other strand is a reaction to something all too evident in our culture, both Christian and secular. It is unbridled pacifism or, to put it into other words, an unwillingness to fight evil. I don’t know when I first became aware of this philosophy, but a good place to start talking about it is the book Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. All in all a very good and timely book, and I don’t mean to discredit a Christian whom I respect. But, in a portion of the book where Shane waxes political, he makes clear his absolute pacifism. It does not seem to me to be an objection to this war or that, but a categorical opposition to war in general. Now, this sentiment certainly carries a strong appeal; after all, in the absence of evil it would be the only right way to live. This last sentence, incidentally, leads with only a short step to my “apologetic” of the existence of evil and suffering. But let me digress—or, more optimistically, let me flesh out this idea.
Evil does exist. Ignorance of this fact leads to more than one serious error, but awareness of it can lead someone like C. S. Lewis to write his essay entitled “Why I am not a Pacifist.” Pacifism is, in a way, an unwillingness to get involved in the fight against evil: there were pacifists even during WWII, when the lines were quite clearly drawn. Hitler would never have been stopped if only pacifists faced him, and the Jews would be with us no longer nor, perhaps, Poles or Gypsies or Slavs. The fact that some wars—most wars, in my opinion—are unjust does not preclude the existence of just wars. To refuse to fight all wars is, since evil exists, to let evil win.
But I am not merely speaking on the scale of international war, although it will always be with us...historians among you might think to those precious few years when WWI was naively labelled “The War to End all Wars.” Nor am I really speaking of more “local” wars, genocides and all related cruelties that cry out to deaf ears for justice. When I speak of letting evil win, I am not just or even primarily talking of guns and bombs and fighter jets. There are cultural wars that are serious enough to merit the name...one thinks of the abolition of slavery in England, for example, among multiple other cases (I chose this one because in it the good guys won, and because the lines were so clearly drawn between right and wrong—albeit the insight for many came only in hindsight). In more general and germane terms, all of existence is a struggle, is a fight, is a war. (A pertinent quote from author Tim Stoner: “If there is a real enemy who is the Master Deceiver and pads silently about
like a ravenous lion seeking those he can devour, then peace is not an option.”)
Before I came to Oxford, I attended a talk by an Oxford professor of theology. Somewhere else I wrote a rather in depth response to it (see “Taking the Lion out of the Faith”), so I will only touch upon it here. During a talk I as a whole rather enjoyed, it became clear that this fellow strongly disapproved of the warrior imagery in the Bible, dismissing the sanctioned violence of the Old and New Testaments as unenlightened views by the writers. Now, apart from the chronological snobbery and subtle danger of this sort of prideful Biblical interpretation (“Oh, certainly David meant that—but of course he doesn’t understand God like I do”), what really annoyed me was that he used Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia to support his point. I confess I really couldn’t follow his handling of the representation of Aslan as completely pacifistic, but afterwards in a discussion with him I mentioned—after pointing out some of the warrior imagery God uses through His Word—that it seems that his view of God emphasized the Lamb and obscured the Lion. His response was basically to the effect that this Oxford don’s picture of the Lion of Judah was in truth a Lamb in Lion’s clothing. This, by the way, completely ignores the Biblical phrase “the Wrath of the Lamb”...obscuring the Lion of God does not allow one to escape God’s warlike character. I still fail to understand how someone familiar with Narnia can make that mistake, but it was a reminder that wishful thinking can lead smarter and better educated men than me into grievous errors.
Having read Tim Stoner’s writing (both his book The God Who Smokes and many of his blog posts) I knew I was not alone in my objection to this strain of Christian interpretation. Of course, Lewis and Luther and Augustine and the Biblical authors alone would be sufficient, but it is helpful to read those living now who hold to and profess the Christian tradition...And Stoner is far from alone in that, of course: he is joined by Eldredge and many others. But this is more than I need write about this issue: suffice it to say that I have long objected to the current tendency to amputate all warlike characteristics from God, His Word, and the Christian life in general. It cripples us and—more importantly—it is patently untrue.
And so I come back to the verse at the head of this essay, especially the italicized portion. “He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” There are two elements to this yearning cry of the Lord that are familiar throughout His Word. One is seen there at the end: I will be his God and he will be My son. Often in the Bible “son” is replaced by “people,” but the meaning is basically the same. Throughout the Bible God is crying out for His people, His children, to come into proper relationship with Him...Hosea comes to mind most poignantly to me (Read Hosea 2 for a good expression of this). Also, in Romans 8 one can see this desire of God’s heart, particularly in verses 14-17. Elsewhere in both Testaments, though, it is found—it cannot be ignored, it is a major theme of Scripture: God is looking to bring His children, His people, into right relationship with Him. This is not, I repeat not, Him looking for people to obey and serve Him (“God is not served by human hands”) or even to merely offer Him praise. Romans 8:14 says it well “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” God is, to use C. S. Lewis’ imagery, looking to turn us into sons, gods, beings that—if we saw them today—we “would be strongly tempted to worship,” creatures of “everlasting splendours.” Oswald Chambers says it like this: “The one and only characteristic of the Holy Ghost in a man is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.” God is not seeking servants—He is molding us into creatures who reflect the glory and beauty and majesty of the Creator. This is a higher calling than any of us would dare aim for, but He is certain to achieve it nevertheless.
This leads to difficulties that our imaginary heaven of sweet winged cherubs and harps does not demand. He is not merely looking to save us (though He does so, gloriously and graciously). He is, of course, looking for members of His own family to bring in; He wants to share His own character and being—He’s not looking for milksops, as Oswald Chambers says. And this brings me to the second familiar strand in Revelation 21:7: The idea of “overcoming.” It is found in all those verses I mentioned before which speak to the warlike elements of God’s divine nature. But it’s not only found referring to God’s nature—it’s also seen in descriptions of God’s people.
There is Gideon; in Judges 6 and angel of the LORD appeared to him, telling him “the LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
It is seen in Samson, Joshua, and Caleb.
There is, of course, David. In 1 Samuel one man describes David—“I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him.” David himself says (in Psalm 144) “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.” David the warrior-poet, it should be remembered, God called “a man after My own heart.”
This is sentiment is found in the New Testament as well. In Matthew 11:12 (ESV), for example, the Bible says “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” There is—clearer, I think—Christ’s statement that He came not to bring peace, but a sword. God wars against evil throughout Creation, and He brings us into that struggle.
In Romans 8 I find a clear parallel to the imagery in Revelation 21:6-8. A selection from the end of this chapter reads (note: all these verses should, as always, be read in context. But I won’t lengthen this post by pasting whole chapters) “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers...What then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?...In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
A weighty passage, that touches upon many things—not least giving a certain perspective to God’s purposes in predestination that concern both His nation Israel and His people the Church, both corporately and individually: He is working through human history towards a definite goal that is broader and higher reaching than any one person. But I will not get much into that—there’s much in Romans 8 that is over my head.
What I want to focus on is that idea of being conformed into His familial likeness, and also this imagery of conquerors, of those who overcome; throughout Paul, too, the idea of straining, pressing on, running the race, overcoming, is a common theme. Laced through the whole Bible, God is calling men and women into becoming more like Him. This entails—among so many things—becoming one who overcomes. I must say here, the story of God’s warlike attributes is only part of the story—I’m stressing it because it is a part that is often brushed under the rug in Christian circles I’m familiar with. He is also a God of Peace and Comfort—but the point is, that peace and comfort must be understood in context of a War which God is involved in, and winning. Yet we should not ignore verses such as Hebrews 12:14-15 “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many,” and Romans 12:17-19 “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” There are other verses too, which point to this mystery: God Wars and Restores, burns and heals, judges and forgives. Another mystery—it is the Lord’s to avenge and “the battle belongs to the LORD,” but He will give our enemy (and His) into our hands...we are not to be mere bystanders, nor amateur providences (See, e.g., 1 Samuel 17:47).
But back to my starting point: the problem of the existence of evil. We know that God created in order to display His Glory. It stands to reason, too, that He created in such a way to display a broad swath of His character, not just His power and divine nature, but other elements of His Person. He can do this without us, certainly—the heavens declare the glory of God, the rocks shout out with praise—but He chooses in His essentially relational Nature to bring us into the story. He displays His sovereignty, love, grace, beauty and more through both the animate and inanimate things in Creation. One of His favorite ways to display His character (it seems) is through His people. So we, in chorus with the stars and stones and waters of the deep, exhibit certain hints of His love and forgiveness, His justice and His mercy. But also—and here is the point—God’s victorious Nature, able and eager to overcome, is also made evident through Creation. This is done through both His deeds and ours.
It is, I think, safe to say this is a central purpose of Creation: To bring little gods into Heaven’s Family, thereby demonstrating God’s glory, His relational nature, His overflowing, joyful generosity and Fatherhood. To me (many probably realized this long ago) this hints at the answer to “why Sin?” Sin exists, possibly, because God wishes to display this portion of His Character: Yahweh is a Warrior, Yahweh is His Name. This perspective carries a slightly trouble flavor with it—it sounds as though God uses Sin for His own purposes. Indeed, that may be the case. But it should be remembered that we see now only darkly, as if in a smudged mirror, and that there do exist mysteries that are simply not ours to know. What we do know is that God is good, is love, is sovereign, is just, and that Creation exists for His Glory…somehow, the existence of Sin must—I think—glorify Who God is, or else I don’t think it would have been allowed…and we know it was allowed by a sovereign God. This emphasis on God’s conquering nature does not really change anything, it only offers a suggestion as to how Sin might glorify Him—by giving Him opportunity to Rescue, to Save, to Fight, to be Victorious and Sacrificial (it’s worth emphasizing that God’s Sacrifice on the Cross—which brings many sons into glory—seems to be only possible in the context of a war with Evil: and we know the Cross was for God’s glory).
But Sin does not only allow God to display His passion for victory directly, but also indirectly. God is creating creatures—us—who overcome, as He Himself has done and continues to do. He intends His creatures to display His own Person more than we realize. Not only by being loving and forgiving and generous (though that too, most assuredly), but also by overcoming and (in the words of Ephesians) “to stand our ground, and after we have done everything, to stand.” We are to eventually bear a strong family likeness, differing only in degree, to Jesus Christ. God does not turn a blind eye to evil, and nor should we…we were made, to some extent, for the very purpose of facing and defeating that evil through the grace of God. We need not shy away from the war imagery found through the Bible…it is meant first to warn us, then to rouse us. It is in this light that I read such passages as these:
“But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior;
so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced;
their dishonor will never be forgotten.
O LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous
and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.”
--Jeremiah 20: 11-12
“A destroyer will come against Babylon;
her warriors will be captured,
and their bows will be broken.
For the LORD is a God of retribution;
He will repay in full.”
--Jeremiah 51:56
There are many such passages as these. We need not worry about the existence of evil, though we should be aware and serious about it. For we know Who wins, we know Who will ultimately be glorified: the Warrior Creator who is Love Absolute.
This may have merely muddied the waters, and perhaps there’s nothing truly original here; but the waters are muddy enough already, and I think it’s a perspective that should be heard in our quasi-Christian culture that takes the ostrich, rather than the Lion, as its mascot. Moreover, this seems to be a worthwhile path to explore...I do believe a part of the answer to “Why Sin?” is found in the propensity of God to conquer, to overcome.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Taking the Lion out of the Faith
(Note: this was actually written long ago; the November dating is something of a compromise between when it was actually written and when it was actually posted. Not that this detail matters at all.)
Last night I attended a talk at a local church given by a professor of systematic theology at Oxford. I enjoyed it very much, in part because I’ll be heading off to Oxford myself in a couple weeks, and such ideas as he presented in his talk helped motivate my desire to study at Oxford…the rational and narrative presentation of heady ideas is a great appeal to me in my intellectual journey. I agreed with much of what he said, especially his emphasis on narrative as a means to understand and present theology, as well as his reasoned response to postmodernism. However, in keeping with my often contrary mind, I’ve been pondering those ideas we disagree about far more than those we share.
Admittedly, he is a far more educated man than I am, wiser, more familiar with the Scriptures, etc., so by differing with his opinion I stand in great danger of being wrong. However, being wrong does not worry me, since I’ve had plenty of wrong beliefs before and found that articulating wrong ideas is often the first step towards reaching right ideas. Also, my disagreement with this fellow is in part drawn from a Christian writer who, I think, would likewise disagree with the speaker…and so I take some small comfort in not standing alone in my uneasiness with the view the professor expressed. In fact, I find it very likely that, if I had not recently read this other Christian writer, my ears would not have perked up at the troublesome claims I heard.
I spoke with the lecturer after his talk, and found much in his way of thinking that appeals, much in his career that I admire. However, what sparked my disagreement was not a misunderstanding; after speaking with him at length, I confirmed that we do have quite different views on God and the Gospel. Nothing drastic, perhaps, nor something truly troubling…merely an ideological contrast. I respect this man greatly, and I know he has done much more for the kingdom than I have at this point. And so, if through disagreeing with him I come across as disparaging him in any way, it’s merely a flaw in my argumentative style.
Two main points struck me as faulty. The first and main issue was his emphasis on God as a God of Peace, to the exclusion of God’s warlike qualities; wrapped up in this is the fellow’s belief that the idea of redemptive violence is a faulty myth, and un-Christian at that. Connected in some way to this view is his opinion that we need not worry too hard about persuading people to the right way of thinking, or really struggle against conflicting worldviews…all we need concern ourselves with is telling our Story accurately, and it in turn will take care of “out-telling” all other stories. In addition to these two well-communicated ideas of his, I found fault with something that didn’t surface until I spoke with him at length afterwards: a shrugging away of the violence of God in the Old Testament, a dismissal of the Jewish understanding of God’s involvement in their victories…in short, he seemed to believe that when the writers of the Old Testament expressed views of God that were in conflict with his own view of a God only of peace, these writers were hindered by primitive views and inaccurate beliefs.
I’m going to address the second point—the idea of the Christian Story out-telling others—first, because it is, in my opinion, less dangerous as well as closer to the truth. For our Story is the most compelling one, not only because it is the True Story, but also because of the Grace and goodness and love contained in it. And yet, this speaker ignored one crucial element, one truth that explains why—even when we tell the Christian Story well—it often does not seem to “out-tell” other stories. And that is the reality of sin: though the Story is true, there is also present “the wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” If the best Story always convinced, always “out-told” the others, then evangelism would be wonderfully easy: the whole world would have long since been won over.
Yet it is true that we do not “persuade with wise words” or manipulate people into belief in Christ. No matter our eloquence or stuttering, it is only the Holy Spirit Who can convict and save. Yet if we proceed forth in this childish belief that all we need to do is tell our story compellingly, then we will leave in our wake a host of confused, resistant souls. We are called to tell the Story well—both the Great Epic of the Gospel and our own experience of that Story—yet if we do not see that in doing so we take part in a great and real struggle, a war of ideologies and powers, a contest for not only the understanding of our listeners but also their very, shadowed wills, we will not reflect the Light where it can heal.
After listening to this thought of his, a classic parable came to mind. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” the soul rescued from the world of darkness, captivity, and shadowed sight is freed into the world of Light and Truth. When he returns to his fellows, still chained in the Cave and debating the shadowy projections that are their whole world, these men disbelieve the true experience of their once-comrade. Moreover, they notice that he can no longer argue about the shadows as well as they can—for he, knowing the realities projected onto the wall of the Cave, and having eyes now better attuned to light than darkness, lives in a different world than they.
And so it is with us: we cannot convince the world against their will simply by telling them about the Outside and about the Light. They think us mad. In truth, we cannot convince them at all—it is not a matter of a Story out-telling others; it is a matter of being freed. For even that fortunate soul who was brought out of the Cave was brought out…he didn’t perceive the truth and break his chains because he glimpsed the truth. In fact—and this is important—even after freed, after he was brought into the light, he still didn’t see the Outside (the Story, in our terms) for what it was. Inside the Cave (as a slave to Sin), one cannot hear the Story for what it is—it is only after one is called Outside that one begins to understand. The metaphor of “a Story out-telling all others” is nice, but it ignores the present reality of Sin…for sin, twisted and twisting as it is, does not know what is best—that is, in a way, what sin at its core is.
That, in a way, brings me to my main objection to the lecture. The denial of God’s involvement in the war…for the “Story,” the “Great Epic,” is a tale of war. This speaker would agree with me as far as this goes, but he would then present the Adversary as the only one who uses force in this war. This instead of seeing that the struggle is between the One who has a monopoly on the use of righteous force and his Adversary who fights against Someone bigger, stronger, more powerful, with a force to which he has no right. God achieves all He achieves through Peace, not through conflict—the sword Christ came to bring, the Sword of the Word, and Christ’s double-edged sword at the Second Coming are not weapons at all (this I heard from him after the lecture); apparently “sharp double-edged sword” is ambiguous.
Let me back up for a moment and provide some context. The speaker used a review of the movie “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” in his lecture; the review was by an atheist who recognized the strong Christian imagery of Aslan…and hated it. The reviewer (if I’m remembering closely enough) lamented the presentation of a powerful force of absolute Good, a Force to which the other characters could appeal, Someone who would win on their behalf when they were outmatched. In the end, the speaker stated that the reviewer’s understanding of Aslan was flawed, for He wasn’t primarily an irresistible force of reckoning and righting, but rather a Being of peace Who laid down in unresisting sacrifice for the other characters.
It’s a persuasive interpretation. After all, Aslan (and Jesus) did lay down his life for one who betrayed him, one who was wholly unworthy, and did choose not to resist. That is certainly a part of the story…but it is not the whole story. In fact, it misrepresents the Story. Aslan, before and after the Stone Table, was a warlike Lion. This is a constant throughout the Chronicles, a Lion who is loving, comforting, and playful with those in relationship with Him, and yet unmistakably, irrefutably, painstakingly-obviously, fearsome and violent to His enemies. It’s the same for Jesus (who really thinks Lewis would mess up such a vital part of the Story?); we well know the imagery of Jesus’ Second Coming, and we shouldn’t forget that even in His First Coming, He came not to bring peace but the sword. Also, of course, we can look to His clearing of the temple, as well as His irresistible confrontation with however many demons He cast out; they fled not because He was peaceful and good, but because of the power He could bring to bear. When Jesus died on the Cross He certainly did lay down His life…but it was, in Grand Strategy terms, a decisive victory. To only focus on Christ’s refusal to resist is to ignore the greater reality of what was going on…disciplined obedience to a heroically aggressive plan.
The speaker presented redemptive violence as a myth…instead, he said, what occurred was redemptive sacrifice. I would offer that both are real, both took place on the Cross. The speaker maintained that redemptive violence (or violence of any sort) was a doctrine of other religions, but not true Christianity. That the sacrificial Lamb is a better image of God than the roaring Lion; that, when the Lion imagery holds, it implies a God who is proactive and clever (but oh, not violent) in His peacefulness…in short, instead of a Lion we have a Lamb in Lion’s clothing.
Jesus’ peaceful attitude was not the absence of violence, it was the perfect restraint of a perfect violence…that violence of God that is an indivisible part of His great Glory and Holiness—for Holiness burns irresistibly, forcing even the Seraphim to cover their eyes in His Presence. That was the speaker’s great mistake—shying away from righteous aggression and the proper use of force. I honestly cannot understand (even after speaking with him at length) how he explains away the very real use of righteous force that God displays throughout His Word…although I suspect that it has much to do with a wish for it to be otherwise.
For we are well familiar with the abuse of force and evil violence. Indeed, violence carries the connotation of evil in our everyday language. Looking at God’s commands to put whole cities to the sword and flame, and David’s call for swift, decisive judgment upon his (and God’s) enemies, we find a violence we are uncomfortable with. We seek some way out of it—we refuse to see that God can be both absolutely Good and capable of destruction. But with the existence of evil, He can be no other way—a good, just, holy God must destroy what is evil. God creates, and He destroys what mars that Creation; He gives, and He takes away. Thankfully, our God displays unparalleled patience in His judgment.
Of course, if there were no sin, God would (I believe) have no cause to display violence. This may—and I’m saying this tentatively, for I feel I’m touching upon mysteries unknowable to me—be why God allows sin. It is one of the more troubling theological questions. How can a good God permit evil? All He does is for His Glory…how does allowing sin glorify God? Again, these are not ideas I’d care to defend, for I simply do not know. But, the explanation that makes most sense to me is that sin allows for God to display His characteristics as a Warrior (think Exodus 15:3, “The LORD is a Warrior, the LORD is His Name”) and as an Ever-Victorious Conqueror. The speaker’s image of God—a God of quiet peace, not in truth a warrior at all, does not stand up well to the presence of sin; for a God who did not ever want a struggle yet is faced with one nonetheless is a bit problematic. Although, perhaps (most assuredly, rather) much more is going on in all this than we can see.
However, what we can see is what is written throughout the Word of God; conflict between good and evil. When only evil is using violence, we get the sense of a God postponing His judgment, not a God incapable of responding in like kind. Indeed, when God uses violence, it completely overwhelms the violence of the Adversary. This is seen most clearly in the Old Testament (and Revelation, although I won’t make an argument from symbolic prophecy at the moment), although it is not hidden in the New Testament either. However, the speaker quickly dismissed the Israelite view of God wherein God “hands over their enemies into their hands” and grants them victories. I think this is a very irresponsible thing to do—it is explaining away a very common role of God in the Scriptures.
Explaining away the forceful conflict in the Old Testament is to be guilty of what Lewis calls “chronological snobbery;” surely, more of God has been revealed through the New Testament, but what was revealed of Him in the Old still holds true. Deuteronomy 20:4 is clear: “For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory”—to muddle it beyond recognition is to invite a free-form interpretation of the Scriptures whereby a man’s preference becomes truth. Psalm 44:2-3 is equally unambiguous: “With Your hand You drove out the nations…It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.”
Why did God cull Gideon’s force down to so small an army? The motivation was to show that it was the LORD, not the swords of Israel, that assured them of victory…the LORD fought their battles. David was a man after God’s own heart—and a warrior as well as a worshipper; indeed, it can be said David worshiped through his warlike attributes, at least at times. This, incidentally, may reveal a small part of why the imprecatory Psalms are part of God’s Word: righteous conflict glorifies Him, as the man after His own heart well knew. Again, muddling these parts of the Story, these emphases of the LORD as a warrior on His people’s behalf, into something merely revealing the particular explanation of the people of Israel for their own violent acts, is setting one’s self above the authors of Scripture themselves.
Moreover, God’s fighting spirit is not found in the Old Testament alone. In addition to Jesus clearing out the Temple with a whip, there are a few spots that indicate we, too, are called to take active part in the war. Matthew 11:12 says “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” A similar sentiment is found in Luke 16:16 “"The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.” We are called to the appropriate use of force—the watered down, liberal, modern view of the Christian as a milksop has little relevance to our roles as sons and daughters of the King. We look back through history and see Christians misusing force—the Crusades come to mind, as does the Inquisition, although other moments stand out as well—and we shy away from appropriate aggression, righteous strength, our role as warriors. And we wonder why Islam is advancing around the world, and why Christian values are being so overwhelmed at home. We refuse to stand in the gap—and not always out of cowardice, but often simply because we have been taught that all resistance is bad. We do not put on our Armor; or, if we do, we do not take up our Sword; or, if we do, we cower nonetheless, ashamed of our power or unaware that we are to charge into battle alongside the other saints.
God is the Lion AND the Lamb; not a Lamb alone, nor a Lamb in Lion’s clothing. Such a seeming dichotomy may be difficult for our human minds to grasp…But the Divine (and Spiritual reality as a whole) is full of apparent paradox to human eyes; God is Just and Merciful, He possesses self-sufficiency that is yet eager for relationship, He is Three Persons yet One Being, Christ became fully man while remaining fully God. Christ is Prince of Peace yet the Ever-Victorious Conqueror. It’s not an either-or choice for God—God can be both Lion and Lamb, can be utterly Peaceful yet the Champion of Heaven. God WARS against sin. This is a central theme of the Story, and even if we have trouble understanding this aspect of God, we refuse it at our own peril.
Orthodox Christianity knows better. What would Augustine say to the suggestion of a milksop God, only and ever about Peace? What did Lewis (an author the speaker himself used more than once) say? Among other things, Lewis said “The Christian idea of the knight—a Christian in arms in defense of a good cause—is one of the great Christian ideas.” Violence is not always evil, as the fashioner of Narnia well knew. I believe Lewis would have been likewise aghast at the presentation of God as solely a peaceful God, to the exclusion of all else. For Aslan was a Lion—equally a Lamb, we cannot forget this—and to focus on one aspect of a multi-faceted God is to ignore an equal, yet not-quite-opposite, aspect.
The speaker also described the Final Judgment as the result of a natural law; men go to Hell not because God “sends” them there, but because they were going there all along. I agree, more or less…but some of us God has rescued from the path to Hell (and this He does, mind you, not through passivity and peace but through conflict). Also, though, the way the speaker presented the story was again incomplete to the point of misleading. Yes, men chose to walk down the path to Hell, and in that way they cannot blame God for their end; but, in the end, they are tossed into the fiery pit, as Satan and his demons are likewise tossed. Hell is where those who have rebelled against God rightly belong—but it is also a punishment. God is not uninvolved in the Final Judgment. Judgment comes from God; Death is the natural consequence of Sin, but that Law (the causality of Sin, whereby to sin is to die) is not above God: He chooses to punish according to His justice, for Who determines natural laws? He is the Judge, not a helpless bystander watching as sinful men stride into Hell, wringing His hands in impotent sorrow. Christ’s parables, for example, show otherwise: God takes active part in the harvest, burning the weeds afterwards.
One more point from the Old Testament: Exodus 19:12-13 “Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, “Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death…whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live,” combined with Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” These are not nice, cozy sentiments from God. Holiness is a high and weighty thing; there is an irreconcilable battle being waged between the Holy and the unholy…no compromise, but only total victory, is possible. This is a part of who God is; what is further revealed of Him in the New Testament is hugely (and rightly) comforting. But, the grace and mercy and love of God cannot be rightly understood unless this other aspect of God—the jealous lover, the fierce and total conqueror, the unflinchingly just—are also acknowledged. Furthermore, if we remember Ananias and Sapphira, we know that God Himself is unchanged, no matter the extent of His grace that has been made known.
God as only the Peaceful King, the sacrificial Lamb, is a comforting notion, especially in a world of conflict, pain, and evil. It’s easy to think of a loving God as a kind old grandfather, lacking violence or aggression…but a Just God—and, in truth, a Good God—cannot be passive when it comes to Sin, just as we should not be passive in the face of sin. In our modern culture, faced by terrorism, domestic violence, and other ills, we like to imagine a God who is without violence, without aggressive force. But the problem there is that God is not without force…the very opposite. Instead, He claims a monopoly on force. Lucifer challenges that proposition; Satan claims the right to use force for his own purposes, and there the lines are drawn. Righteous force, though, sends Satan to the earth like a bolt of lightning; Satan’s spurious force cowers and corrupts.
I think at the core of the speaker’s refusal of the warlike aspect of God is a very real difficulty in seeing the drastic difference between right and wrong force, as well as the mistake of seeing peace and threat as mutually exclusive. Without the existence of threatening force, peace has no substance; peace is the restraint of—or immunity to—threat. Christ is the Prince of Peace because He wins that peace, not because He’s incapable of war…if He were, the End would look very different. Why else would the demons shudder? Redemptive violence is a theme of Christianity, whether it’s the wrath of God poured out on His Son on the Cross, or the stripes Christ suffered for our healing, or the cleansing violence of His Second Coming, or, in fact, the violence of the Flood…and still other examples of the War raging around us. War may look very different for the Christian; our only visible battle wounds may be the worn-out holes in the knees of our jeans, our double-edge weapon is the Sword of Truth, but the battle rages anyway. We fight differently than the world, but fight we must—God arms and armors us for no other reason. He commands us to stand firm in our struggles against the powers and authorities of evil, and to “fight the good fight.”
That is the point. There is a Good Fight, and when we ignore righteous aggression (out of fear or distaste of the misused violence we see all around) we are in peril of becoming ineffectual—or even overrun by the fight that is, without exception, coming our way. One cannot fight without violence: emphasizing the Peace of God, to the exclusion of the rest of His nature, and supposing all violence to be evil is to miss out on our central Mission—in which, as the biblical and later Christian authors affirm, there are two Lions. One who is out to kill, steal, and destroy; the Other, as a kindly Beaver stated, is of course not safe…“but He's good. He's the King I tell you."
Last night I attended a talk at a local church given by a professor of systematic theology at Oxford. I enjoyed it very much, in part because I’ll be heading off to Oxford myself in a couple weeks, and such ideas as he presented in his talk helped motivate my desire to study at Oxford…the rational and narrative presentation of heady ideas is a great appeal to me in my intellectual journey. I agreed with much of what he said, especially his emphasis on narrative as a means to understand and present theology, as well as his reasoned response to postmodernism. However, in keeping with my often contrary mind, I’ve been pondering those ideas we disagree about far more than those we share.
Admittedly, he is a far more educated man than I am, wiser, more familiar with the Scriptures, etc., so by differing with his opinion I stand in great danger of being wrong. However, being wrong does not worry me, since I’ve had plenty of wrong beliefs before and found that articulating wrong ideas is often the first step towards reaching right ideas. Also, my disagreement with this fellow is in part drawn from a Christian writer who, I think, would likewise disagree with the speaker…and so I take some small comfort in not standing alone in my uneasiness with the view the professor expressed. In fact, I find it very likely that, if I had not recently read this other Christian writer, my ears would not have perked up at the troublesome claims I heard.
I spoke with the lecturer after his talk, and found much in his way of thinking that appeals, much in his career that I admire. However, what sparked my disagreement was not a misunderstanding; after speaking with him at length, I confirmed that we do have quite different views on God and the Gospel. Nothing drastic, perhaps, nor something truly troubling…merely an ideological contrast. I respect this man greatly, and I know he has done much more for the kingdom than I have at this point. And so, if through disagreeing with him I come across as disparaging him in any way, it’s merely a flaw in my argumentative style.
Two main points struck me as faulty. The first and main issue was his emphasis on God as a God of Peace, to the exclusion of God’s warlike qualities; wrapped up in this is the fellow’s belief that the idea of redemptive violence is a faulty myth, and un-Christian at that. Connected in some way to this view is his opinion that we need not worry too hard about persuading people to the right way of thinking, or really struggle against conflicting worldviews…all we need concern ourselves with is telling our Story accurately, and it in turn will take care of “out-telling” all other stories. In addition to these two well-communicated ideas of his, I found fault with something that didn’t surface until I spoke with him at length afterwards: a shrugging away of the violence of God in the Old Testament, a dismissal of the Jewish understanding of God’s involvement in their victories…in short, he seemed to believe that when the writers of the Old Testament expressed views of God that were in conflict with his own view of a God only of peace, these writers were hindered by primitive views and inaccurate beliefs.
I’m going to address the second point—the idea of the Christian Story out-telling others—first, because it is, in my opinion, less dangerous as well as closer to the truth. For our Story is the most compelling one, not only because it is the True Story, but also because of the Grace and goodness and love contained in it. And yet, this speaker ignored one crucial element, one truth that explains why—even when we tell the Christian Story well—it often does not seem to “out-tell” other stories. And that is the reality of sin: though the Story is true, there is also present “the wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” If the best Story always convinced, always “out-told” the others, then evangelism would be wonderfully easy: the whole world would have long since been won over.
Yet it is true that we do not “persuade with wise words” or manipulate people into belief in Christ. No matter our eloquence or stuttering, it is only the Holy Spirit Who can convict and save. Yet if we proceed forth in this childish belief that all we need to do is tell our story compellingly, then we will leave in our wake a host of confused, resistant souls. We are called to tell the Story well—both the Great Epic of the Gospel and our own experience of that Story—yet if we do not see that in doing so we take part in a great and real struggle, a war of ideologies and powers, a contest for not only the understanding of our listeners but also their very, shadowed wills, we will not reflect the Light where it can heal.
After listening to this thought of his, a classic parable came to mind. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” the soul rescued from the world of darkness, captivity, and shadowed sight is freed into the world of Light and Truth. When he returns to his fellows, still chained in the Cave and debating the shadowy projections that are their whole world, these men disbelieve the true experience of their once-comrade. Moreover, they notice that he can no longer argue about the shadows as well as they can—for he, knowing the realities projected onto the wall of the Cave, and having eyes now better attuned to light than darkness, lives in a different world than they.
And so it is with us: we cannot convince the world against their will simply by telling them about the Outside and about the Light. They think us mad. In truth, we cannot convince them at all—it is not a matter of a Story out-telling others; it is a matter of being freed. For even that fortunate soul who was brought out of the Cave was brought out…he didn’t perceive the truth and break his chains because he glimpsed the truth. In fact—and this is important—even after freed, after he was brought into the light, he still didn’t see the Outside (the Story, in our terms) for what it was. Inside the Cave (as a slave to Sin), one cannot hear the Story for what it is—it is only after one is called Outside that one begins to understand. The metaphor of “a Story out-telling all others” is nice, but it ignores the present reality of Sin…for sin, twisted and twisting as it is, does not know what is best—that is, in a way, what sin at its core is.
That, in a way, brings me to my main objection to the lecture. The denial of God’s involvement in the war…for the “Story,” the “Great Epic,” is a tale of war. This speaker would agree with me as far as this goes, but he would then present the Adversary as the only one who uses force in this war. This instead of seeing that the struggle is between the One who has a monopoly on the use of righteous force and his Adversary who fights against Someone bigger, stronger, more powerful, with a force to which he has no right. God achieves all He achieves through Peace, not through conflict—the sword Christ came to bring, the Sword of the Word, and Christ’s double-edged sword at the Second Coming are not weapons at all (this I heard from him after the lecture); apparently “sharp double-edged sword” is ambiguous.
Let me back up for a moment and provide some context. The speaker used a review of the movie “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” in his lecture; the review was by an atheist who recognized the strong Christian imagery of Aslan…and hated it. The reviewer (if I’m remembering closely enough) lamented the presentation of a powerful force of absolute Good, a Force to which the other characters could appeal, Someone who would win on their behalf when they were outmatched. In the end, the speaker stated that the reviewer’s understanding of Aslan was flawed, for He wasn’t primarily an irresistible force of reckoning and righting, but rather a Being of peace Who laid down in unresisting sacrifice for the other characters.
It’s a persuasive interpretation. After all, Aslan (and Jesus) did lay down his life for one who betrayed him, one who was wholly unworthy, and did choose not to resist. That is certainly a part of the story…but it is not the whole story. In fact, it misrepresents the Story. Aslan, before and after the Stone Table, was a warlike Lion. This is a constant throughout the Chronicles, a Lion who is loving, comforting, and playful with those in relationship with Him, and yet unmistakably, irrefutably, painstakingly-obviously, fearsome and violent to His enemies. It’s the same for Jesus (who really thinks Lewis would mess up such a vital part of the Story?); we well know the imagery of Jesus’ Second Coming, and we shouldn’t forget that even in His First Coming, He came not to bring peace but the sword. Also, of course, we can look to His clearing of the temple, as well as His irresistible confrontation with however many demons He cast out; they fled not because He was peaceful and good, but because of the power He could bring to bear. When Jesus died on the Cross He certainly did lay down His life…but it was, in Grand Strategy terms, a decisive victory. To only focus on Christ’s refusal to resist is to ignore the greater reality of what was going on…disciplined obedience to a heroically aggressive plan.
The speaker presented redemptive violence as a myth…instead, he said, what occurred was redemptive sacrifice. I would offer that both are real, both took place on the Cross. The speaker maintained that redemptive violence (or violence of any sort) was a doctrine of other religions, but not true Christianity. That the sacrificial Lamb is a better image of God than the roaring Lion; that, when the Lion imagery holds, it implies a God who is proactive and clever (but oh, not violent) in His peacefulness…in short, instead of a Lion we have a Lamb in Lion’s clothing.
Jesus’ peaceful attitude was not the absence of violence, it was the perfect restraint of a perfect violence…that violence of God that is an indivisible part of His great Glory and Holiness—for Holiness burns irresistibly, forcing even the Seraphim to cover their eyes in His Presence. That was the speaker’s great mistake—shying away from righteous aggression and the proper use of force. I honestly cannot understand (even after speaking with him at length) how he explains away the very real use of righteous force that God displays throughout His Word…although I suspect that it has much to do with a wish for it to be otherwise.
For we are well familiar with the abuse of force and evil violence. Indeed, violence carries the connotation of evil in our everyday language. Looking at God’s commands to put whole cities to the sword and flame, and David’s call for swift, decisive judgment upon his (and God’s) enemies, we find a violence we are uncomfortable with. We seek some way out of it—we refuse to see that God can be both absolutely Good and capable of destruction. But with the existence of evil, He can be no other way—a good, just, holy God must destroy what is evil. God creates, and He destroys what mars that Creation; He gives, and He takes away. Thankfully, our God displays unparalleled patience in His judgment.
Of course, if there were no sin, God would (I believe) have no cause to display violence. This may—and I’m saying this tentatively, for I feel I’m touching upon mysteries unknowable to me—be why God allows sin. It is one of the more troubling theological questions. How can a good God permit evil? All He does is for His Glory…how does allowing sin glorify God? Again, these are not ideas I’d care to defend, for I simply do not know. But, the explanation that makes most sense to me is that sin allows for God to display His characteristics as a Warrior (think Exodus 15:3, “The LORD is a Warrior, the LORD is His Name”) and as an Ever-Victorious Conqueror. The speaker’s image of God—a God of quiet peace, not in truth a warrior at all, does not stand up well to the presence of sin; for a God who did not ever want a struggle yet is faced with one nonetheless is a bit problematic. Although, perhaps (most assuredly, rather) much more is going on in all this than we can see.
However, what we can see is what is written throughout the Word of God; conflict between good and evil. When only evil is using violence, we get the sense of a God postponing His judgment, not a God incapable of responding in like kind. Indeed, when God uses violence, it completely overwhelms the violence of the Adversary. This is seen most clearly in the Old Testament (and Revelation, although I won’t make an argument from symbolic prophecy at the moment), although it is not hidden in the New Testament either. However, the speaker quickly dismissed the Israelite view of God wherein God “hands over their enemies into their hands” and grants them victories. I think this is a very irresponsible thing to do—it is explaining away a very common role of God in the Scriptures.
Explaining away the forceful conflict in the Old Testament is to be guilty of what Lewis calls “chronological snobbery;” surely, more of God has been revealed through the New Testament, but what was revealed of Him in the Old still holds true. Deuteronomy 20:4 is clear: “For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory”—to muddle it beyond recognition is to invite a free-form interpretation of the Scriptures whereby a man’s preference becomes truth. Psalm 44:2-3 is equally unambiguous: “With Your hand You drove out the nations…It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.”
Why did God cull Gideon’s force down to so small an army? The motivation was to show that it was the LORD, not the swords of Israel, that assured them of victory…the LORD fought their battles. David was a man after God’s own heart—and a warrior as well as a worshipper; indeed, it can be said David worshiped through his warlike attributes, at least at times. This, incidentally, may reveal a small part of why the imprecatory Psalms are part of God’s Word: righteous conflict glorifies Him, as the man after His own heart well knew. Again, muddling these parts of the Story, these emphases of the LORD as a warrior on His people’s behalf, into something merely revealing the particular explanation of the people of Israel for their own violent acts, is setting one’s self above the authors of Scripture themselves.
Moreover, God’s fighting spirit is not found in the Old Testament alone. In addition to Jesus clearing out the Temple with a whip, there are a few spots that indicate we, too, are called to take active part in the war. Matthew 11:12 says “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” A similar sentiment is found in Luke 16:16 “"The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.” We are called to the appropriate use of force—the watered down, liberal, modern view of the Christian as a milksop has little relevance to our roles as sons and daughters of the King. We look back through history and see Christians misusing force—the Crusades come to mind, as does the Inquisition, although other moments stand out as well—and we shy away from appropriate aggression, righteous strength, our role as warriors. And we wonder why Islam is advancing around the world, and why Christian values are being so overwhelmed at home. We refuse to stand in the gap—and not always out of cowardice, but often simply because we have been taught that all resistance is bad. We do not put on our Armor; or, if we do, we do not take up our Sword; or, if we do, we cower nonetheless, ashamed of our power or unaware that we are to charge into battle alongside the other saints.
God is the Lion AND the Lamb; not a Lamb alone, nor a Lamb in Lion’s clothing. Such a seeming dichotomy may be difficult for our human minds to grasp…But the Divine (and Spiritual reality as a whole) is full of apparent paradox to human eyes; God is Just and Merciful, He possesses self-sufficiency that is yet eager for relationship, He is Three Persons yet One Being, Christ became fully man while remaining fully God. Christ is Prince of Peace yet the Ever-Victorious Conqueror. It’s not an either-or choice for God—God can be both Lion and Lamb, can be utterly Peaceful yet the Champion of Heaven. God WARS against sin. This is a central theme of the Story, and even if we have trouble understanding this aspect of God, we refuse it at our own peril.
Orthodox Christianity knows better. What would Augustine say to the suggestion of a milksop God, only and ever about Peace? What did Lewis (an author the speaker himself used more than once) say? Among other things, Lewis said “The Christian idea of the knight—a Christian in arms in defense of a good cause—is one of the great Christian ideas.” Violence is not always evil, as the fashioner of Narnia well knew. I believe Lewis would have been likewise aghast at the presentation of God as solely a peaceful God, to the exclusion of all else. For Aslan was a Lion—equally a Lamb, we cannot forget this—and to focus on one aspect of a multi-faceted God is to ignore an equal, yet not-quite-opposite, aspect.
The speaker also described the Final Judgment as the result of a natural law; men go to Hell not because God “sends” them there, but because they were going there all along. I agree, more or less…but some of us God has rescued from the path to Hell (and this He does, mind you, not through passivity and peace but through conflict). Also, though, the way the speaker presented the story was again incomplete to the point of misleading. Yes, men chose to walk down the path to Hell, and in that way they cannot blame God for their end; but, in the end, they are tossed into the fiery pit, as Satan and his demons are likewise tossed. Hell is where those who have rebelled against God rightly belong—but it is also a punishment. God is not uninvolved in the Final Judgment. Judgment comes from God; Death is the natural consequence of Sin, but that Law (the causality of Sin, whereby to sin is to die) is not above God: He chooses to punish according to His justice, for Who determines natural laws? He is the Judge, not a helpless bystander watching as sinful men stride into Hell, wringing His hands in impotent sorrow. Christ’s parables, for example, show otherwise: God takes active part in the harvest, burning the weeds afterwards.
One more point from the Old Testament: Exodus 19:12-13 “Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, “Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death…whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live,” combined with Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” These are not nice, cozy sentiments from God. Holiness is a high and weighty thing; there is an irreconcilable battle being waged between the Holy and the unholy…no compromise, but only total victory, is possible. This is a part of who God is; what is further revealed of Him in the New Testament is hugely (and rightly) comforting. But, the grace and mercy and love of God cannot be rightly understood unless this other aspect of God—the jealous lover, the fierce and total conqueror, the unflinchingly just—are also acknowledged. Furthermore, if we remember Ananias and Sapphira, we know that God Himself is unchanged, no matter the extent of His grace that has been made known.
God as only the Peaceful King, the sacrificial Lamb, is a comforting notion, especially in a world of conflict, pain, and evil. It’s easy to think of a loving God as a kind old grandfather, lacking violence or aggression…but a Just God—and, in truth, a Good God—cannot be passive when it comes to Sin, just as we should not be passive in the face of sin. In our modern culture, faced by terrorism, domestic violence, and other ills, we like to imagine a God who is without violence, without aggressive force. But the problem there is that God is not without force…the very opposite. Instead, He claims a monopoly on force. Lucifer challenges that proposition; Satan claims the right to use force for his own purposes, and there the lines are drawn. Righteous force, though, sends Satan to the earth like a bolt of lightning; Satan’s spurious force cowers and corrupts.
I think at the core of the speaker’s refusal of the warlike aspect of God is a very real difficulty in seeing the drastic difference between right and wrong force, as well as the mistake of seeing peace and threat as mutually exclusive. Without the existence of threatening force, peace has no substance; peace is the restraint of—or immunity to—threat. Christ is the Prince of Peace because He wins that peace, not because He’s incapable of war…if He were, the End would look very different. Why else would the demons shudder? Redemptive violence is a theme of Christianity, whether it’s the wrath of God poured out on His Son on the Cross, or the stripes Christ suffered for our healing, or the cleansing violence of His Second Coming, or, in fact, the violence of the Flood…and still other examples of the War raging around us. War may look very different for the Christian; our only visible battle wounds may be the worn-out holes in the knees of our jeans, our double-edge weapon is the Sword of Truth, but the battle rages anyway. We fight differently than the world, but fight we must—God arms and armors us for no other reason. He commands us to stand firm in our struggles against the powers and authorities of evil, and to “fight the good fight.”
That is the point. There is a Good Fight, and when we ignore righteous aggression (out of fear or distaste of the misused violence we see all around) we are in peril of becoming ineffectual—or even overrun by the fight that is, without exception, coming our way. One cannot fight without violence: emphasizing the Peace of God, to the exclusion of the rest of His nature, and supposing all violence to be evil is to miss out on our central Mission—in which, as the biblical and later Christian authors affirm, there are two Lions. One who is out to kill, steal, and destroy; the Other, as a kindly Beaver stated, is of course not safe…“but He's good. He's the King I tell you."
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Meditation on Psalm 83
What follows came out of what I intended to be a short note to myself on something that struck me in Psalm 83, and so it starts out rather informally and continues in long, rambling, disorganized fashion. Yet it is what I wrote as my mind roamed, so here it is:
In the Old Testament one finds such passages as this: “so pursue them with Your tempest and terrify them with Your storm. Cover their faces with shame so that men will seek your Name, O LORD” and elsewhere, in many places as well…Man, faced with the wrath of God, is expected to turn back to Him; this is found in Revelation as well. God’s destruction was, in some part, in order to turn men back to Him. This holds true for both Israel and the Gentile peoples—God’s swift justice called down in order to turn people back to Him. We find this hard to imagine now…it is God’s mercy, His unfailing love, His great forbearance, His Sacrifice for our sakes (albeit ultimately, and importantly, for His sake most of all), it is these pleasant expressions of God’s divinity that we expect will draw men to Him. Not His wrath and sharp justice. We modern men think that such harsher realities of the Divine will drive men away from God, will form barriers between them and an experience with the Holy God. I think we have watered down, or pacified, our representation of God accordingly—and harmfully. The Old Testament writers, as well as, in truth, the New Testament writers, understood aspects of God that we choose to ignore. God is a God that the warrior king David could implore to visit bloody judgment upon his enemies…for God is the original Warrior King. And, at the same time, David could entreat God to show His glory to men who did not know Him, that they might come to believe in His Name. These two desires of David’s heart (remember, he was a man after God’s own heart, after all) are not mutually exclusive, however much we moderns fail to see the complexities of reality, or choose to see opposites where complements might exist (one thinks of man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty as a key example of that). For man, when faced with the irresistible power of God, the inarguable justice of God, the immutable laws of God, and the overwhelming, transcendent Presence of God, he no longer holds any delusions that it is God who is in the Dock. Man knows—or, more broadly, is more likely to realize—when faced with God’s wrath that he needs God’s forgiveness. It is much harder to entertain delusions of grandeur or immunity when in the midst of God’s judgment.
Of course, more is going on than simply a reminder of God’s Holiness for those being confronted with God’s harsher qualities. It is—this is probably more true to David’s intent—that the lesson is for those who witness God’s judgment on others. Psalm 37 comes to mind: “I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil, but he soon passed away and was no more…Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for the man of peace. But all sinners will be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off.” It is often a helpful reminder to see wickedness punished here on earth, although often such punishment is—unfortunately for the wicked—postponed until much later.
Yet I think such passages of the Old Testament, where is described or hoped for an encounter between wickedness and God’s just wrath, do offer an interesting commentary on the difference—superficial, as all such temporal differences are—between modern and ancient man. The Bible, I think, describes a more natural state, prey to less affections and accretions of layered culture, than does the world with which we are familiar. It seems strange to us that a loving God might display His wrath in order to draw unbelievers to Him, or that, having chosen to do so, such a ploy might work. I think this is an example of one of many ways that the Bible describes the human condition more accurately than we tend to see it, unless we consider things with more critical reason than is usual. We understand how God’s likability might draw men to Him…but we understand little about Holiness. We look askance at the many examples of God’s “tough love” of His creatures, and perhaps think “Why, wouldn’t it be better to just offer a few more blessings?” But, of course, when God acts in judgment, blessings and patience have already been thrown back in God’s face. Man, unless anchored in God, will drift under the impetus of happiness and unappreciated blessing according to the law of sin and death. Sometimes it takes God shaking things up a bit—whether in imprecatory psalm fashion, or like He did to the Children of Israel in the wilderness, or like He will do during the Tribulation. Man does not accept a new law—especially one which requires him to give up his rights—easily. Sometimes, encounters with justice or more general misfortune serve man well, like a pothole or blown tire stopping a car racing down the wrong road.
Another thing we often ignore is that all the peoples of the earth belong to God; they are for His pleasure, and He acts in a way that brings things more closely under the covering of His will. I think ancient man understood, at varying levels of consciousness, that he existed for the satisfaction of God. The difference between modern and ancient man in this regard ties into Lewis’s “God in the Dock” distinction, and also likely results from the synthetic/artificial world we live in, insulated by illusions of control which ancient man largely lacked. But, it was a rarity in the ancient world for a man to believe in no god at all, or to disdain the gods of his people; God’s display of power, therefore, reminded unbelievers the HE alone was the True God…such a reminder is always and ever for man’s benefit. It may, of course, be an extremely uncomfortable benefit, but encountering the existence of our Creator is perhaps a necessary step in the journey to understand His Holy love and person and entering into relationship with Him. And perhaps this is why a psalmist might implore God to “Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are Your inheritance;” he understood that God was the judge of the nations, that they existed for Him, and that God displaying His Nature was, in the long run, the best possible thing.
And yet I’ve still approached the issue from the angle of how God’s display of just power benefits man; I know, however, that the core issue is how such an action glorifies God. Yet I can’t move away from the reality, strange to my modern mind, that God’s harsh displays do draw people to Him. It does make sense, though, especially if one studies the experience of Israel in the Old Testament (or even, maybe, Israel’s experience since the Diaspora). Yet I find myself thinking of God’s harsh justice as punishment first…which it possibly is, especially in certain cases. It’s hard to wrap my mind around asking for God’s swift judgment so that men might be saved…but in that I think I am an oddity over the long tradition of the people of God; I’ve been programmed by political correctness—both within and without the Church—and an emphasis on tolerance over love, on platitudes over absolutes, on niceties over justice. We frown at the imprecatory psalms, shake our heads at Augustine’s “just war,” categorically oppose the idea of the Christian Knight, argue vehemently against those who describe natural disasters as “the judgment of God” (who, after all, really knows? There are quite a few precedents, one must remember). God knows best, and He was not always warm and friendly with a rebellious Israel—or with Israel’s pagan neighbors—and we should never apologize for this. God is a tempest and a storm, and sometimes His righteous violence forces men to face the Truth, and sometimes they respond by seeking His Name.
In the Old Testament one finds such passages as this: “so pursue them with Your tempest and terrify them with Your storm. Cover their faces with shame so that men will seek your Name, O LORD” and elsewhere, in many places as well…Man, faced with the wrath of God, is expected to turn back to Him; this is found in Revelation as well. God’s destruction was, in some part, in order to turn men back to Him. This holds true for both Israel and the Gentile peoples—God’s swift justice called down in order to turn people back to Him. We find this hard to imagine now…it is God’s mercy, His unfailing love, His great forbearance, His Sacrifice for our sakes (albeit ultimately, and importantly, for His sake most of all), it is these pleasant expressions of God’s divinity that we expect will draw men to Him. Not His wrath and sharp justice. We modern men think that such harsher realities of the Divine will drive men away from God, will form barriers between them and an experience with the Holy God. I think we have watered down, or pacified, our representation of God accordingly—and harmfully. The Old Testament writers, as well as, in truth, the New Testament writers, understood aspects of God that we choose to ignore. God is a God that the warrior king David could implore to visit bloody judgment upon his enemies…for God is the original Warrior King. And, at the same time, David could entreat God to show His glory to men who did not know Him, that they might come to believe in His Name. These two desires of David’s heart (remember, he was a man after God’s own heart, after all) are not mutually exclusive, however much we moderns fail to see the complexities of reality, or choose to see opposites where complements might exist (one thinks of man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty as a key example of that). For man, when faced with the irresistible power of God, the inarguable justice of God, the immutable laws of God, and the overwhelming, transcendent Presence of God, he no longer holds any delusions that it is God who is in the Dock. Man knows—or, more broadly, is more likely to realize—when faced with God’s wrath that he needs God’s forgiveness. It is much harder to entertain delusions of grandeur or immunity when in the midst of God’s judgment.
Of course, more is going on than simply a reminder of God’s Holiness for those being confronted with God’s harsher qualities. It is—this is probably more true to David’s intent—that the lesson is for those who witness God’s judgment on others. Psalm 37 comes to mind: “I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil, but he soon passed away and was no more…Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for the man of peace. But all sinners will be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off.” It is often a helpful reminder to see wickedness punished here on earth, although often such punishment is—unfortunately for the wicked—postponed until much later.
Yet I think such passages of the Old Testament, where is described or hoped for an encounter between wickedness and God’s just wrath, do offer an interesting commentary on the difference—superficial, as all such temporal differences are—between modern and ancient man. The Bible, I think, describes a more natural state, prey to less affections and accretions of layered culture, than does the world with which we are familiar. It seems strange to us that a loving God might display His wrath in order to draw unbelievers to Him, or that, having chosen to do so, such a ploy might work. I think this is an example of one of many ways that the Bible describes the human condition more accurately than we tend to see it, unless we consider things with more critical reason than is usual. We understand how God’s likability might draw men to Him…but we understand little about Holiness. We look askance at the many examples of God’s “tough love” of His creatures, and perhaps think “Why, wouldn’t it be better to just offer a few more blessings?” But, of course, when God acts in judgment, blessings and patience have already been thrown back in God’s face. Man, unless anchored in God, will drift under the impetus of happiness and unappreciated blessing according to the law of sin and death. Sometimes it takes God shaking things up a bit—whether in imprecatory psalm fashion, or like He did to the Children of Israel in the wilderness, or like He will do during the Tribulation. Man does not accept a new law—especially one which requires him to give up his rights—easily. Sometimes, encounters with justice or more general misfortune serve man well, like a pothole or blown tire stopping a car racing down the wrong road.
Another thing we often ignore is that all the peoples of the earth belong to God; they are for His pleasure, and He acts in a way that brings things more closely under the covering of His will. I think ancient man understood, at varying levels of consciousness, that he existed for the satisfaction of God. The difference between modern and ancient man in this regard ties into Lewis’s “God in the Dock” distinction, and also likely results from the synthetic/artificial world we live in, insulated by illusions of control which ancient man largely lacked. But, it was a rarity in the ancient world for a man to believe in no god at all, or to disdain the gods of his people; God’s display of power, therefore, reminded unbelievers the HE alone was the True God…such a reminder is always and ever for man’s benefit. It may, of course, be an extremely uncomfortable benefit, but encountering the existence of our Creator is perhaps a necessary step in the journey to understand His Holy love and person and entering into relationship with Him. And perhaps this is why a psalmist might implore God to “Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are Your inheritance;” he understood that God was the judge of the nations, that they existed for Him, and that God displaying His Nature was, in the long run, the best possible thing.
And yet I’ve still approached the issue from the angle of how God’s display of just power benefits man; I know, however, that the core issue is how such an action glorifies God. Yet I can’t move away from the reality, strange to my modern mind, that God’s harsh displays do draw people to Him. It does make sense, though, especially if one studies the experience of Israel in the Old Testament (or even, maybe, Israel’s experience since the Diaspora). Yet I find myself thinking of God’s harsh justice as punishment first…which it possibly is, especially in certain cases. It’s hard to wrap my mind around asking for God’s swift judgment so that men might be saved…but in that I think I am an oddity over the long tradition of the people of God; I’ve been programmed by political correctness—both within and without the Church—and an emphasis on tolerance over love, on platitudes over absolutes, on niceties over justice. We frown at the imprecatory psalms, shake our heads at Augustine’s “just war,” categorically oppose the idea of the Christian Knight, argue vehemently against those who describe natural disasters as “the judgment of God” (who, after all, really knows? There are quite a few precedents, one must remember). God knows best, and He was not always warm and friendly with a rebellious Israel—or with Israel’s pagan neighbors—and we should never apologize for this. God is a tempest and a storm, and sometimes His righteous violence forces men to face the Truth, and sometimes they respond by seeking His Name.
Friday, October 2, 2009
October 1st
Today was my second full day in Oxford, and already I feel fairly well settled in; that’s not to say I’m not a tad daunted by the prospect of all that is left to do before class—not to mention the amount of work that will accompany those classes. Part of the problem is that it’s relatively unclear what precisely I am supposed to do—this has been a common theme in my experience thus far, beginning with my student visa ordeal and continuing through accommodation and finances and various pre-term details. Getting ready for a year at Oxford is made somewhat more complicated in part because of the tri-partite nature of the school; the University (Oxford itself), College (St Hilda’s), and Faculty (History) entities each have their own way of doing things, their own tasks, own advisors, own locations, own cultures, own libraries…I even have separate email addresses for my separate college and faculty roles. However, the exceedingly (and, at times, seemingly needlessly) complicated process has been made more manageable in part because of all the fellow graduate students I’ve met. That’s not to say we are able to offer each other much in the way of information about what exactly it is we are supposed to do, but there’s something to be said for commiseration and the herd mentality. Knowing that we are together all adjusting to the Oxford way of doing things, an incredibly well-established but often counter-intuitive way, is a comfort. Also, the staff people at Oxford are quite friendly, and being at Oxford itself makes all manner of hoops worth jumping through. I’m going to for the most part skip the various tasks that threaten to bother me at times, and aim for an account of my broader Oxford experience.
So, back to the beginning. I arrived in London late Tuesday morning, and slowly made my way to Oxford. I didn’t really know how to get there, or to my college or house, but managed anyway—with a well-ordered public transport system, most things are possible. Upon arrival at St Hilda’s (my college), I ran into a fellow American whom I had met at the UK consulate in Chicago, where we both had to go to procure our visas. I quickly met several other Hilda’s students…but that is jumping a bit ahead. The first fellow Oxford student I met was on the bus ride from Heathrow Airport, a Harvard graduate and a nice guy, though undoubtedly jealous of my superior undergraduate education. There were a few other Americans Oxford-bound on the bus, although we more or less split ways upon arrival.
Oxford is quite a busy place, with students, locals, and tourists flowing ceaselessly through the well-worn streets, but always above the crowded thoroughfares are the spires and old stone walls of the University offer a timeless commentary on the daily progression below. My college is on the banks of the Cherwell, more or less opposite Magdalen College, a pleasant little place with lots of old trees and green lawns. I’ve walked (it feels like) all over my side of Oxford; my house is about a mile from the Cherwell, so I put quite a lot of distance in each day…though not enough to be a bother, at least not yet. Things may be different on dark, rainy winter days. However, if the miles of walking aren’t enough to keep me in shape, I pass by the gym on my way home; incidentally, the track here is where Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile record. Also incidental, the first coffee shop I visited (not, in fact, for coffee) was founded in 1646. Relatively old, I would say.
My first full day in Oxford (yesterday) started off with an introduction talk(s) for international postgraduate students. It was a lot of information; a mixture of things I already knew, things I needed to know but have basically already forgotten, things that will surface on their own, and things I probably don’t need to know. It was a bit disorganized, but there was a free lunch so I can’t really complain. I did find out about a free dinner that night, which happened to be hosted by the Graduate Christian Union—so I of course went, along with Scott (the St Hilda’s guy I met in Chicago) and some other Hilda’s people. It was good to get connected to a Christian society right away, and the table I sat at during dinner was full of great people—four of which I already knew, with four more who spent the rest of the evening with.
A quick description of these people: Scott, from Wisconsin, is working on his master’s degree in the social science of the internet; he’s a computer science student, among other things, who spent the last year teaching English in Japan. Kate is from North Carolina, and I think she’s working on her master’s in Women’s Studies…her friend from college was also present, visiting her in Oxford after several months spent working in Nepal. She’s not a student currently, but blended in quite well. Then there is Lia, a Romanian who has lived in Boston for the past 12 years, including her undergraduate career at Harvard. She is studying Art History, and hopefully she’ll give me a tour of Romania some day. Next came Alex, a German who is studying Computer Programming; then Nike, a Canadian studying for a D.Phil (basically a Ph.D) in Quantum mechanics; then Cecile, from Paris, working on a D.Phil in Physics—with an astro-physics/astronomy bent; Deborah, from Bombay, who is working on a D.Phil in English Literature and was our more experienced host of the evening. After the dinner Deborah took us out to a pub (one advantage to the British culture—even at a Christian gathering it is recommended we go out to the pubs after); we went to the Turl Bar, which we reached by going through another pub and down a quasi-underground alleyway area.
My house, as I mentioned, is a little far out (although I’ve met several people with a longer distance to walk). It’s a nice little place though, 3 or 4 stories (depending on whether or not you count the loft, where the landlord/owner/fellow resident resides). It’s rather like a duplex, pretty narrow but with everything necessary for a good time in England, including an apple tree with ripe apples in the back garden. I have 4 flatmates, including the owner; all of whom are British and none of whom are Oxford students, though one does go to Oxford Brookes University, another school here though not affiliated with Oxford University. I like the fact that I’m living with Brits, because my days have been mostly filled with hanging out with other international postgraduates, most of whom are American. Although the British postgraduates should be coming in this weekend, it’s good to have a default British household.
Today kind of flew by, although I had my first meeting with my advisor (my faculty advisor, who happens to be my college advisor as well—such an overlap is, I think, a rarity). And so I have a bit more of an idea what is expected of me, academically speaking. Hopefully I will fashion a much greater understanding in the weeks to come. Also, I went to the grocery store for the first time here, which is of course a noteworthy milestone—I will be able to eat. I also met my first Rhodes Scholar here. And, I had a late lunch/early dinner with three other postgrads, including a home-made apple pie from apples we picked. I cannot say I did much in preparing the meal, other than watching…but I did cut up the apples, which was about the limit of my cooking skills. Tonight I will have a late-night snack, Kebab-shop style—something I have missed from my year in Scotland. This one goes out to Chris Ballantine.
There is so much I could say, especially if I went deeper into my appreciation for Oxford and this opportunity I have…or if I started talking about what this term will look like, what sort of things I will be studying, where I want to travel, or if I began writing about Oxford history/trivia and describing the scenery, or what all I have to do over the next couple weeks. But, I think this is about it for one posting; pax vobiscum (I’m supposed to know Latin now…do I? That remains to be seen).
So, back to the beginning. I arrived in London late Tuesday morning, and slowly made my way to Oxford. I didn’t really know how to get there, or to my college or house, but managed anyway—with a well-ordered public transport system, most things are possible. Upon arrival at St Hilda’s (my college), I ran into a fellow American whom I had met at the UK consulate in Chicago, where we both had to go to procure our visas. I quickly met several other Hilda’s students…but that is jumping a bit ahead. The first fellow Oxford student I met was on the bus ride from Heathrow Airport, a Harvard graduate and a nice guy, though undoubtedly jealous of my superior undergraduate education. There were a few other Americans Oxford-bound on the bus, although we more or less split ways upon arrival.
Oxford is quite a busy place, with students, locals, and tourists flowing ceaselessly through the well-worn streets, but always above the crowded thoroughfares are the spires and old stone walls of the University offer a timeless commentary on the daily progression below. My college is on the banks of the Cherwell, more or less opposite Magdalen College, a pleasant little place with lots of old trees and green lawns. I’ve walked (it feels like) all over my side of Oxford; my house is about a mile from the Cherwell, so I put quite a lot of distance in each day…though not enough to be a bother, at least not yet. Things may be different on dark, rainy winter days. However, if the miles of walking aren’t enough to keep me in shape, I pass by the gym on my way home; incidentally, the track here is where Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile record. Also incidental, the first coffee shop I visited (not, in fact, for coffee) was founded in 1646. Relatively old, I would say.
My first full day in Oxford (yesterday) started off with an introduction talk(s) for international postgraduate students. It was a lot of information; a mixture of things I already knew, things I needed to know but have basically already forgotten, things that will surface on their own, and things I probably don’t need to know. It was a bit disorganized, but there was a free lunch so I can’t really complain. I did find out about a free dinner that night, which happened to be hosted by the Graduate Christian Union—so I of course went, along with Scott (the St Hilda’s guy I met in Chicago) and some other Hilda’s people. It was good to get connected to a Christian society right away, and the table I sat at during dinner was full of great people—four of which I already knew, with four more who spent the rest of the evening with.
A quick description of these people: Scott, from Wisconsin, is working on his master’s degree in the social science of the internet; he’s a computer science student, among other things, who spent the last year teaching English in Japan. Kate is from North Carolina, and I think she’s working on her master’s in Women’s Studies…her friend from college was also present, visiting her in Oxford after several months spent working in Nepal. She’s not a student currently, but blended in quite well. Then there is Lia, a Romanian who has lived in Boston for the past 12 years, including her undergraduate career at Harvard. She is studying Art History, and hopefully she’ll give me a tour of Romania some day. Next came Alex, a German who is studying Computer Programming; then Nike, a Canadian studying for a D.Phil (basically a Ph.D) in Quantum mechanics; then Cecile, from Paris, working on a D.Phil in Physics—with an astro-physics/astronomy bent; Deborah, from Bombay, who is working on a D.Phil in English Literature and was our more experienced host of the evening. After the dinner Deborah took us out to a pub (one advantage to the British culture—even at a Christian gathering it is recommended we go out to the pubs after); we went to the Turl Bar, which we reached by going through another pub and down a quasi-underground alleyway area.
My house, as I mentioned, is a little far out (although I’ve met several people with a longer distance to walk). It’s a nice little place though, 3 or 4 stories (depending on whether or not you count the loft, where the landlord/owner/fellow resident resides). It’s rather like a duplex, pretty narrow but with everything necessary for a good time in England, including an apple tree with ripe apples in the back garden. I have 4 flatmates, including the owner; all of whom are British and none of whom are Oxford students, though one does go to Oxford Brookes University, another school here though not affiliated with Oxford University. I like the fact that I’m living with Brits, because my days have been mostly filled with hanging out with other international postgraduates, most of whom are American. Although the British postgraduates should be coming in this weekend, it’s good to have a default British household.
Today kind of flew by, although I had my first meeting with my advisor (my faculty advisor, who happens to be my college advisor as well—such an overlap is, I think, a rarity). And so I have a bit more of an idea what is expected of me, academically speaking. Hopefully I will fashion a much greater understanding in the weeks to come. Also, I went to the grocery store for the first time here, which is of course a noteworthy milestone—I will be able to eat. I also met my first Rhodes Scholar here. And, I had a late lunch/early dinner with three other postgrads, including a home-made apple pie from apples we picked. I cannot say I did much in preparing the meal, other than watching…but I did cut up the apples, which was about the limit of my cooking skills. Tonight I will have a late-night snack, Kebab-shop style—something I have missed from my year in Scotland. This one goes out to Chris Ballantine.
There is so much I could say, especially if I went deeper into my appreciation for Oxford and this opportunity I have…or if I started talking about what this term will look like, what sort of things I will be studying, where I want to travel, or if I began writing about Oxford history/trivia and describing the scenery, or what all I have to do over the next couple weeks. But, I think this is about it for one posting; pax vobiscum (I’m supposed to know Latin now…do I? That remains to be seen).
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Devolution of Western Society, Pt 1.
Our common worldview in the West has regressed most dreadfully over the past several generations. We think we are living in a progressive society—if only we could see how far we have backslid; if only we could understand that the popularity of the moment weighs little compared to the wisdom of the ages; if only we woke up to the fact that “chronological snobbery” has blinded us to the truth that we are not inherently wiser than those who went before. In truth, they had the advantage over us, for we have burned our bridges and willfully forgotten the foundations of wisdom passed down to us—previous generations at least had roots to help them grow, whereas we, in our epiphytic short-sightedness, detach ourselves from our host-tree as if we will do anything but fall.
Paganism, polytheism, and monotheism (of most sorts, at least) are better than post-modern, secular, “God-in-the-Dock” agnosticism—an agnosticism that falls short of atheism only because the question isn’t really of much interest anymore. Myth is better than scientific theory—for “myth” appeals to what is true, while theory invokes only what is deemed probable. The Way of Christ is no aberrant deviation from the tradition of the ancients—Jews to whom it was shamefully mundane, Greeks to whom it was foolishness, and all the rest who at the very least understood the Creator held more sway than mere creatures. No, as Lewis and others have rightly pointed out, Christianity is not 100% different from the varied spiritual endeavors of non-Christians; others got it “broadly right,” in many cases, and one can find the vast majority of Truth in other paths…but (and this is the critical point) Jesus fulfilled it all, presented perfect Truth, shone a pure light amongst the fitful campfires of the primitive seekers. We modern Christians often forget that the many of the ancients were “very religious in all respects,” worshipping in ignorance what Paul offered through Christ, and—though they groped around for the Light as if blind—God was not far from them (Acts 17:22-27).
Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and none come to the Father except through Him. But that does not mean all other ways are equally distant from the truth; all errors are not equally dangerous, for although all, if uncorrected, condemn, some are corrected much more easily. Those men at Athens who already worshipped the Unknown God had a shorter distance to go to Christ than the worshippers of Aphrodite in Corinth; Nicodemus apparently had a shorter distance than Pilate, the Jews generally had a shorter distance than the Greeks, someone born into a Christian culture today has a shorter distance than someone born in an Islamic nation. But, as noted above, Pagans and others who believe in a God or many gods have a shorter distance to travel to Christ than someone who discounts entirely the supernatural and spiritual realms.
Modern Western society stands at a dreadful distance from the Way of Christ. Mainstream elements have, I believe, veered drastically away from a healthy worldview since at least the poorly-named Enlightenment. It was around then that the shift Lewis notes in “God in the Dock” became so popular. Man lost sight of the fact that the Creator was his judge and instead tried to place Him in the Dock—the seat of the defendant. That is something that we fail to address enough today.
Western Christians live in a postmodern world—a world that has “lost its story”—and we are woefully unprepared to understand His Story…in truth, the story of us all, in one form or another. Relativism is not just a foolish, flawed worldview—it is a tragic mistake, a dangerous path, an anti-rational disease that sickens a whole society. When there are no absolutes, tolerance usurps the place of Love, resignation reigns over resolution, deception overshadows truth, shallowness dries up meaning, and political correctness takes over the common good. We do not know the true stories that lay upon us all, we fail to see the meaning in the madness…instead, we embrace the madness and call its chaos freedom. As Christians, though, we’ve been given a lens that allows us to see, although often we still choose not to look in the right direction. Too many Christians see their identity as existing alongside the multifarious identities of the fallen world and ignore the critical divide between truth and error. Part of this is, I think, that we are not burdened with God’s heart for the lost: we fall woefully short of the standard “leave the 99 to find the 1 who is lost.” I know that’s part of the problem because it is something I see in myself.
But also there is, I believe, not enough confidence in the Truth. Not enough understanding of the Story. We don’t shine our certainty confidently into an uncertain world—a world that deeply craves meaning and attachment to the story for which they were crafted. We treat other religions or other worldviews as if they are equal to our own—as if “our Story” was merely something told by human mouths. Some small part of this is perhaps a fear of coming across as arrogant…but I think that a poorer excuse than most would have it. Surely, we don’t want our attitudes to ever turn somebody away from the truth, but how eager and insistent should someone be who possesses a cure of absolute importance? Confidence in the Way of Christ is not arrogance. Granted, it is not through our confidence, our knowledge, our humility, or our attitude that people will come to Christ, but only through the Spirit of God; but still our competence, our confidence, comes from God and should not be watered down by the confusion of our neighbors. For we do not speak the truth to them for our sakes, but for their sake and God’s glory. They need this Story, and they need the meaning we have been shown.
Those who believe any story tend to find it easier to learn the real Story; those who believe in truth at all can better be shown the Truth than the post-modern relativists who squeeze their eyes shut lest they face an uncomfortable reality. Relativism would suggest that whatever truth we know is little more than an opinion. We must not fall for that lie, for truth does not have its origin in man and is not malleable to his will. There is no such thing as too much confidence in the truth of the Gospel, no such thing as being too certain about that which remains, for now, unseen. Rather than disparaging the “primitive” mythologies of the savage and the ancient, we should acknowledge that they, at least, grasp half-blind for truths our contemporaries feign to forget. There is a danger in being too “modern;” there is an even greater danger in falling under the label “post-modern,” for in doing so one trades the hope of firm footing for the shifting ground of a mire.
Paganism, polytheism, and monotheism (of most sorts, at least) are better than post-modern, secular, “God-in-the-Dock” agnosticism—an agnosticism that falls short of atheism only because the question isn’t really of much interest anymore. Myth is better than scientific theory—for “myth” appeals to what is true, while theory invokes only what is deemed probable. The Way of Christ is no aberrant deviation from the tradition of the ancients—Jews to whom it was shamefully mundane, Greeks to whom it was foolishness, and all the rest who at the very least understood the Creator held more sway than mere creatures. No, as Lewis and others have rightly pointed out, Christianity is not 100% different from the varied spiritual endeavors of non-Christians; others got it “broadly right,” in many cases, and one can find the vast majority of Truth in other paths…but (and this is the critical point) Jesus fulfilled it all, presented perfect Truth, shone a pure light amongst the fitful campfires of the primitive seekers. We modern Christians often forget that the many of the ancients were “very religious in all respects,” worshipping in ignorance what Paul offered through Christ, and—though they groped around for the Light as if blind—God was not far from them (Acts 17:22-27).
Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and none come to the Father except through Him. But that does not mean all other ways are equally distant from the truth; all errors are not equally dangerous, for although all, if uncorrected, condemn, some are corrected much more easily. Those men at Athens who already worshipped the Unknown God had a shorter distance to go to Christ than the worshippers of Aphrodite in Corinth; Nicodemus apparently had a shorter distance than Pilate, the Jews generally had a shorter distance than the Greeks, someone born into a Christian culture today has a shorter distance than someone born in an Islamic nation. But, as noted above, Pagans and others who believe in a God or many gods have a shorter distance to travel to Christ than someone who discounts entirely the supernatural and spiritual realms.
Modern Western society stands at a dreadful distance from the Way of Christ. Mainstream elements have, I believe, veered drastically away from a healthy worldview since at least the poorly-named Enlightenment. It was around then that the shift Lewis notes in “God in the Dock” became so popular. Man lost sight of the fact that the Creator was his judge and instead tried to place Him in the Dock—the seat of the defendant. That is something that we fail to address enough today.
Western Christians live in a postmodern world—a world that has “lost its story”—and we are woefully unprepared to understand His Story…in truth, the story of us all, in one form or another. Relativism is not just a foolish, flawed worldview—it is a tragic mistake, a dangerous path, an anti-rational disease that sickens a whole society. When there are no absolutes, tolerance usurps the place of Love, resignation reigns over resolution, deception overshadows truth, shallowness dries up meaning, and political correctness takes over the common good. We do not know the true stories that lay upon us all, we fail to see the meaning in the madness…instead, we embrace the madness and call its chaos freedom. As Christians, though, we’ve been given a lens that allows us to see, although often we still choose not to look in the right direction. Too many Christians see their identity as existing alongside the multifarious identities of the fallen world and ignore the critical divide between truth and error. Part of this is, I think, that we are not burdened with God’s heart for the lost: we fall woefully short of the standard “leave the 99 to find the 1 who is lost.” I know that’s part of the problem because it is something I see in myself.
But also there is, I believe, not enough confidence in the Truth. Not enough understanding of the Story. We don’t shine our certainty confidently into an uncertain world—a world that deeply craves meaning and attachment to the story for which they were crafted. We treat other religions or other worldviews as if they are equal to our own—as if “our Story” was merely something told by human mouths. Some small part of this is perhaps a fear of coming across as arrogant…but I think that a poorer excuse than most would have it. Surely, we don’t want our attitudes to ever turn somebody away from the truth, but how eager and insistent should someone be who possesses a cure of absolute importance? Confidence in the Way of Christ is not arrogance. Granted, it is not through our confidence, our knowledge, our humility, or our attitude that people will come to Christ, but only through the Spirit of God; but still our competence, our confidence, comes from God and should not be watered down by the confusion of our neighbors. For we do not speak the truth to them for our sakes, but for their sake and God’s glory. They need this Story, and they need the meaning we have been shown.
Those who believe any story tend to find it easier to learn the real Story; those who believe in truth at all can better be shown the Truth than the post-modern relativists who squeeze their eyes shut lest they face an uncomfortable reality. Relativism would suggest that whatever truth we know is little more than an opinion. We must not fall for that lie, for truth does not have its origin in man and is not malleable to his will. There is no such thing as too much confidence in the truth of the Gospel, no such thing as being too certain about that which remains, for now, unseen. Rather than disparaging the “primitive” mythologies of the savage and the ancient, we should acknowledge that they, at least, grasp half-blind for truths our contemporaries feign to forget. There is a danger in being too “modern;” there is an even greater danger in falling under the label “post-modern,” for in doing so one trades the hope of firm footing for the shifting ground of a mire.
Monday, August 3, 2009
A Lesson Both New and Old
Having grown up in a more Christian than average environment—socially, religiously, and intellectually—I find that often I know things before I really learn them. Perhaps this is not really a result of the Christian context of my life, but what I mean is that I’ll often encounter an idea, whether in book, Bible, conversation, or sermon, and know it to be true. And yet the truth of it, though met with assent, is not paired with understanding—not even of the necessarily-limited sort that my mind allows.
Maybe this is simply because spiritual truths take a while to settle into the mental language I’m more familiar with, or else due to the difference between learning by observation and learning by experience; I don’t know. There are countless examples of this, however, of lessons known and then seen later at a deeper, more personal level. One in particular has settled deeper into my understanding as of late.
C. S. Lewis makes the point (as have many others) that God demonstrates a certain humility in accepting our obedience to Him. Most, if not all, human egos would be too offended to actually crave the sort of offering we give to God: Lewis notes that we tend to accept God only when we have learned that absolutely nothing else is capable of pleasing or saving. We come to God, more often than not, as a last resort. We turn to Him after we’ve turned to all manner of other things…what human lover (one, it must be remembered, who is completely secure, satisfied, and self-sufficient) would accept a woman after she had turned to every other lover she could find, only to finally surrender, somewhat despondently perhaps, back to the One Who deserves her attention? God views the creatures He alone formed, who not only betrayed Him so momentously once, but who again and again look for other gods, other loves, and who usually turn back to Him only when they realize themselves at the end of their ropes…and He views them with love, as if they chose Him in a respectable way.
Of course, this…oversight…of the insufficiency of our love and faith is only made possible by the all-Sufficiency of the Son of God’s Crucifixion. Still, though, Christ’s mission was initiated by God and for God, so I don’t think it changes at all (or rather, it merely increases) the marvelous quality of God accepting our feeble and frantic surrender to His love with what, in a human lover, would be seemingly imprudent and over-extreme humility. We would tell such a man “you deserve better; don’t lower your standards so far.” Thank God He found a way to keep both His standards and us.
I’ve skipped ahead. I encountered this truth many years ago and knew it as true. But my well-developed ideas about it (inchoate, certainly, compared to Lewis’ own thoughts) come mainly from a recent encounter with two familiar passages of Scripture…for the first time, I think, I saw these two passages as connecting to this idea of the unassuming nature of God’s acceptance of us. (Note that such words as “humility” and “unassuming,” when talking about this side of salvation, are used only because I can find no better. I think they are not correct, in a strict manner; God’s nature demonstrates Glory first and foremost, and using “humble” to describe God’s victorious and heroic claiming of us is a woefully incomplete adjective. But I’m focusing on the idea that He accepts a sort of love we mortals have a hard time understanding or accepting—although, through Christ, we are expected to extend it.)
The two passages I’m talking about are the Parable of the Prodigal Son and Hosea 2. The first is more familiar to most people, almost certainly, and there is nothing new I could say about such a frequently encountered passage—of course, nihil novum sub sole; “saying something new” is, if even possible, not a virtue when talking about the Bible. But it’s really the comparison between the two passages that struck me.
The “prodigal” son deeply insulted his father, left, squandered his wealth and his life on empty, depraved living; when he reached rock-bottom, he came to his senses and said: “How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.” He wanted to be taken back, if only as the lowest of his father’s servants. So he returned…and “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” His father was not willing that his son be his servant; he would unconditionally take him back as his son once more. There are, of course, several lessons there.
But the similarity to Hosea 2 is what struck me recently. Hosea, after marrying a prostitute as directed by God and giving her all she could want, experienced the continual betrayal and shame of an unfaithful spouse; this, of course, illustrates God’s relationship with His People. In the second chapter (after a few verses that may serve as a reminder of God’s justice), God shows, I think, the Heart behind the punishments/trails/difficulties His creatures face. God demonstrates that His end-goal is always the redemption of those lost, the forgiveness and reconciliation with those who willfully abuse His Love and Holiness. Right after saying He will punish His unfaithful spouse, in short because she forgot Him and turned to other lovers, He states unequivocally that He won’t leave it at that. He also, as I stated above, at least hints that those punishments are sent in order to turn her away from dependence on other lovers…He wants her to reach rock-bottom (as did the prodigal son) so that she will turn to Him, the “one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold,” her One True Hope (v.8). This is what He says in v.14ff:
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards…There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call Me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call Me ‘my master.’”
The prodigal son’s father refused to consider his son a servant; the Lord refuses to let His bride see Him as master. God as Lover and God as Father, these identities never supersede God as King, but they go hand in hand…and we far too often ignore these expressions of God’s holy love. But really what strikes me is that difficult-to-describe quality of God’s love for us…what seems like humility at first glance, a crazily unassuming ability to accept a response from us that is one iota short of being forced, but what is, I think, ultimately an expression of the supreme self-confidence and independence of God. He does not love us out of any inherent need; unlike us, His love (though ever for His Glory) is something extended purely, not from a grasping need for wholeness—for He is always Whole—but out of the overflow of His Love for Himself. We unavoidably needy, dependent (we were made that way) and, of course, fallen creatures find it difficult to love when there is no benefit to us, no semblance of worthiness in the object of our love, no real indication from our beloved that they would choose us on their own. God, both as Father and as Husband/Lover/LORD, forgets our sins when we are no longer lost, and His joy overflows into blessings for us, in spite of the fact that He must rescue us from the depraved state of our own rebellion against Him, in spite of the fact we tend to frantically seek an escape when He closes in with His Love, in spite of the fact of what it cost Him.
Incidentally, I think this is where one of the problematic issues of Catholicism comes in; God is not a God of purgatory, Who saves from Hell yet nevertheless punishes after death for sins. He allures us back, He rushes down the road and celebrates our return. Maybe the idea of purgatory was fashioned out of a desire to show that sin is indeed grave, and to dissuade Christians from the idea of cheap grace—that, once saved, our sins are of no real account, for they are already paid for. But the idea of purgatory is in reality an affront to the true costliness of Grace: it is in fact because of the ultimate price our Salvation cost God that our sins are no longer counted against us, tossed as far away as the East is from the West, and we know that it is for freedom we have been set free. Purgatory seeks to make us pay part of the price of sin; nevertheless, Jesus’ Sacrifice was sufficient to pay the entirety of the price.
But that’s a tangent. And I have wandered far afield. It simply astounds me, the perfection of God’s Love. We love because He first loved us, and yet still we can’t quite follow His example; for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were sinners…prodigal sons, faithless prostitutes, persecutors of God’s people…God showed that, contrary to our expectations and upbringing, He still craved relationship with us. And not the relationship of master and servant, but a relationship founded on Love; and a craving not born out of need, but out of overflowing sufficiency. Our human expectations are that, if God takes us back, it is with conditions…but I think these two passages, one from the OT and one from the NT, show that God’s love overwhelms, that instead of hoops we need to jump through we need just turn to Him, no matter how much we have avoided Him in the past—and He’s actively involved in restoring that relationship all the while. And it should always be remembered—it is only through Christ that this is possible.
Maybe this is simply because spiritual truths take a while to settle into the mental language I’m more familiar with, or else due to the difference between learning by observation and learning by experience; I don’t know. There are countless examples of this, however, of lessons known and then seen later at a deeper, more personal level. One in particular has settled deeper into my understanding as of late.
C. S. Lewis makes the point (as have many others) that God demonstrates a certain humility in accepting our obedience to Him. Most, if not all, human egos would be too offended to actually crave the sort of offering we give to God: Lewis notes that we tend to accept God only when we have learned that absolutely nothing else is capable of pleasing or saving. We come to God, more often than not, as a last resort. We turn to Him after we’ve turned to all manner of other things…what human lover (one, it must be remembered, who is completely secure, satisfied, and self-sufficient) would accept a woman after she had turned to every other lover she could find, only to finally surrender, somewhat despondently perhaps, back to the One Who deserves her attention? God views the creatures He alone formed, who not only betrayed Him so momentously once, but who again and again look for other gods, other loves, and who usually turn back to Him only when they realize themselves at the end of their ropes…and He views them with love, as if they chose Him in a respectable way.
Of course, this…oversight…of the insufficiency of our love and faith is only made possible by the all-Sufficiency of the Son of God’s Crucifixion. Still, though, Christ’s mission was initiated by God and for God, so I don’t think it changes at all (or rather, it merely increases) the marvelous quality of God accepting our feeble and frantic surrender to His love with what, in a human lover, would be seemingly imprudent and over-extreme humility. We would tell such a man “you deserve better; don’t lower your standards so far.” Thank God He found a way to keep both His standards and us.
I’ve skipped ahead. I encountered this truth many years ago and knew it as true. But my well-developed ideas about it (inchoate, certainly, compared to Lewis’ own thoughts) come mainly from a recent encounter with two familiar passages of Scripture…for the first time, I think, I saw these two passages as connecting to this idea of the unassuming nature of God’s acceptance of us. (Note that such words as “humility” and “unassuming,” when talking about this side of salvation, are used only because I can find no better. I think they are not correct, in a strict manner; God’s nature demonstrates Glory first and foremost, and using “humble” to describe God’s victorious and heroic claiming of us is a woefully incomplete adjective. But I’m focusing on the idea that He accepts a sort of love we mortals have a hard time understanding or accepting—although, through Christ, we are expected to extend it.)
The two passages I’m talking about are the Parable of the Prodigal Son and Hosea 2. The first is more familiar to most people, almost certainly, and there is nothing new I could say about such a frequently encountered passage—of course, nihil novum sub sole; “saying something new” is, if even possible, not a virtue when talking about the Bible. But it’s really the comparison between the two passages that struck me.
The “prodigal” son deeply insulted his father, left, squandered his wealth and his life on empty, depraved living; when he reached rock-bottom, he came to his senses and said: “How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.” He wanted to be taken back, if only as the lowest of his father’s servants. So he returned…and “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” His father was not willing that his son be his servant; he would unconditionally take him back as his son once more. There are, of course, several lessons there.
But the similarity to Hosea 2 is what struck me recently. Hosea, after marrying a prostitute as directed by God and giving her all she could want, experienced the continual betrayal and shame of an unfaithful spouse; this, of course, illustrates God’s relationship with His People. In the second chapter (after a few verses that may serve as a reminder of God’s justice), God shows, I think, the Heart behind the punishments/trails/difficulties His creatures face. God demonstrates that His end-goal is always the redemption of those lost, the forgiveness and reconciliation with those who willfully abuse His Love and Holiness. Right after saying He will punish His unfaithful spouse, in short because she forgot Him and turned to other lovers, He states unequivocally that He won’t leave it at that. He also, as I stated above, at least hints that those punishments are sent in order to turn her away from dependence on other lovers…He wants her to reach rock-bottom (as did the prodigal son) so that she will turn to Him, the “one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold,” her One True Hope (v.8). This is what He says in v.14ff:
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards…There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call Me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call Me ‘my master.’”
The prodigal son’s father refused to consider his son a servant; the Lord refuses to let His bride see Him as master. God as Lover and God as Father, these identities never supersede God as King, but they go hand in hand…and we far too often ignore these expressions of God’s holy love. But really what strikes me is that difficult-to-describe quality of God’s love for us…what seems like humility at first glance, a crazily unassuming ability to accept a response from us that is one iota short of being forced, but what is, I think, ultimately an expression of the supreme self-confidence and independence of God. He does not love us out of any inherent need; unlike us, His love (though ever for His Glory) is something extended purely, not from a grasping need for wholeness—for He is always Whole—but out of the overflow of His Love for Himself. We unavoidably needy, dependent (we were made that way) and, of course, fallen creatures find it difficult to love when there is no benefit to us, no semblance of worthiness in the object of our love, no real indication from our beloved that they would choose us on their own. God, both as Father and as Husband/Lover/LORD, forgets our sins when we are no longer lost, and His joy overflows into blessings for us, in spite of the fact that He must rescue us from the depraved state of our own rebellion against Him, in spite of the fact we tend to frantically seek an escape when He closes in with His Love, in spite of the fact of what it cost Him.
Incidentally, I think this is where one of the problematic issues of Catholicism comes in; God is not a God of purgatory, Who saves from Hell yet nevertheless punishes after death for sins. He allures us back, He rushes down the road and celebrates our return. Maybe the idea of purgatory was fashioned out of a desire to show that sin is indeed grave, and to dissuade Christians from the idea of cheap grace—that, once saved, our sins are of no real account, for they are already paid for. But the idea of purgatory is in reality an affront to the true costliness of Grace: it is in fact because of the ultimate price our Salvation cost God that our sins are no longer counted against us, tossed as far away as the East is from the West, and we know that it is for freedom we have been set free. Purgatory seeks to make us pay part of the price of sin; nevertheless, Jesus’ Sacrifice was sufficient to pay the entirety of the price.
But that’s a tangent. And I have wandered far afield. It simply astounds me, the perfection of God’s Love. We love because He first loved us, and yet still we can’t quite follow His example; for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were sinners…prodigal sons, faithless prostitutes, persecutors of God’s people…God showed that, contrary to our expectations and upbringing, He still craved relationship with us. And not the relationship of master and servant, but a relationship founded on Love; and a craving not born out of need, but out of overflowing sufficiency. Our human expectations are that, if God takes us back, it is with conditions…but I think these two passages, one from the OT and one from the NT, show that God’s love overwhelms, that instead of hoops we need to jump through we need just turn to Him, no matter how much we have avoided Him in the past—and He’s actively involved in restoring that relationship all the while. And it should always be remembered—it is only through Christ that this is possible.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Seeking and Finding
What do I truly seek? That is the question foremost in my mind. For we generally find the things we seek, though all things but One we find other than we anticipated. And yet in that One Thing which we ought to seek (if we knew our duty and our desire best) we find room to experience all the other good things we might otherwise have sought. “Further up and further in” leads us not only to new heights, but to new breadths, as well; in a turned-upside-down kind of way, as we climb closer to the Summit we find not a peak but a vast and limitless tableland, where infinity awaits. Though the way is narrow and the gate small, the Destination is expansive…and though there is only One Way to the Father, in Jesus Christ (and in this way the gate is small), the Gate Himself is impossibly broad, too. For there are a host of choices that lead to destruction, and One that leads to Life: yet within that one choice, that one surrender, we find true freedom. It is in the bottleneck of yielding to Christ that we find life abundant, freedom that is really free, and ineffable potential. And, I believe, just as we are set free by coming to Christ, just as on the other side of Him it finally becomes true that “all roads lead to God” as we come to experience in small part His multifaceted and gloriously abundant Person…on the front side of coming to Christ, we can walk in many various ways, follow many various desires until He shreds away the dragonskin to reveal Himself within us. Christ is the Way; but the way to Christ, well, that may be somewhat more ambiguous.
Some come to Christ through their family, some through the Word, some by Reason or Wisdom (think C.S. Lewis, or perhaps Socrates), some through a particular experience. Some are seeking purpose, some are seeking healing, some are seeking Beauty, some a Father; others are seeking goodness, peace, answers, love, and the list goes on. Some even come through other religions; most, perhaps, come largely against their wills.
And after answering Christ’s call to Life? What then? What do we seek? Still a multitude of things, perhaps, both good and evil, as we learn to live according to His Spirit. Everything is permissible for us, though not everything beneficial—we never do all we ought, but how much is strictly determined by our sense of “ought to,” and how much by desire? Desire, I think, leads us to Christ…does it lead us onward ever-after? I imagine yes, even more so, it does. Yet the Christian still must shed some desires from his old life—and here’s the confusion, for in truth the Christian must shed every desire from his old life: and yet some of those desires, I think, are redeemed along with the individual and are a blueprint of how we should come to seek Christ. The same journeys of desire, once sanctified, continue onward to Heaven. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I believe it so. It is the misunderstanding of desires prior to conversion that is the problem, not the desires themselves; we are all, always, trying to fill that “God-shaped vacuum,” and so even pagan desires are at heart a hunger and thirst for the Creator. Once that vacuum is filled, it begins overflowing…and so are the deep desires that helped position one for the “filling” still relevant during the “overflowing”? I think so. Paul’s zeal for God, horribly misunderstood and misapplied before Christ, became a singular zeal to realize Christ in everything post-conversion. Lewis’s desire for knowledge and understanding and answers before Christ became a desire to share his passion and understanding of the wonderful truth of Christ with others. Sheldon Vanauken’s lifelong affair with beauty and the transcendent became, after Christ, a desire to better realize the true Beauty and Sublimity of God.
I began writing this just to get some thoughts in black and white, and I didn't intend to post them. Especially as they don't seem to be leading anywhere surprising or insightful. But, I suppose my curiosity concerns the familiar idea "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find." Also, I'm reading Lewis's "The Pilgrim's Regress," all about one's journey to knowing Christ. It seems to me that we either have trouble accepting the diverse, sometimes-tragic, often-beautiful, inexplicable complexity of how Christ calls and leads people to His feet (and how He leads them afterwards!), or we fail to stand firm on the absolute, without-exception necessity of surrender to Jesus in order to find a life of goodness, true purpose, love, and freedom. The most frustrating thing about living in a society prone to polarizations is that people honestly begin believing that you must choose "Either-or" when faced with two truths. Or maybe that comes with the territory of being finite creatures with finite understanding...in any event, I hope I learn to devotedly seek all that Christ calls me to, and not merely the essentials; it's always the case that He has more for us, not less.
Some come to Christ through their family, some through the Word, some by Reason or Wisdom (think C.S. Lewis, or perhaps Socrates), some through a particular experience. Some are seeking purpose, some are seeking healing, some are seeking Beauty, some a Father; others are seeking goodness, peace, answers, love, and the list goes on. Some even come through other religions; most, perhaps, come largely against their wills.
And after answering Christ’s call to Life? What then? What do we seek? Still a multitude of things, perhaps, both good and evil, as we learn to live according to His Spirit. Everything is permissible for us, though not everything beneficial—we never do all we ought, but how much is strictly determined by our sense of “ought to,” and how much by desire? Desire, I think, leads us to Christ…does it lead us onward ever-after? I imagine yes, even more so, it does. Yet the Christian still must shed some desires from his old life—and here’s the confusion, for in truth the Christian must shed every desire from his old life: and yet some of those desires, I think, are redeemed along with the individual and are a blueprint of how we should come to seek Christ. The same journeys of desire, once sanctified, continue onward to Heaven. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I believe it so. It is the misunderstanding of desires prior to conversion that is the problem, not the desires themselves; we are all, always, trying to fill that “God-shaped vacuum,” and so even pagan desires are at heart a hunger and thirst for the Creator. Once that vacuum is filled, it begins overflowing…and so are the deep desires that helped position one for the “filling” still relevant during the “overflowing”? I think so. Paul’s zeal for God, horribly misunderstood and misapplied before Christ, became a singular zeal to realize Christ in everything post-conversion. Lewis’s desire for knowledge and understanding and answers before Christ became a desire to share his passion and understanding of the wonderful truth of Christ with others. Sheldon Vanauken’s lifelong affair with beauty and the transcendent became, after Christ, a desire to better realize the true Beauty and Sublimity of God.
I began writing this just to get some thoughts in black and white, and I didn't intend to post them. Especially as they don't seem to be leading anywhere surprising or insightful. But, I suppose my curiosity concerns the familiar idea "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find." Also, I'm reading Lewis's "The Pilgrim's Regress," all about one's journey to knowing Christ. It seems to me that we either have trouble accepting the diverse, sometimes-tragic, often-beautiful, inexplicable complexity of how Christ calls and leads people to His feet (and how He leads them afterwards!), or we fail to stand firm on the absolute, without-exception necessity of surrender to Jesus in order to find a life of goodness, true purpose, love, and freedom. The most frustrating thing about living in a society prone to polarizations is that people honestly begin believing that you must choose "Either-or" when faced with two truths. Or maybe that comes with the territory of being finite creatures with finite understanding...in any event, I hope I learn to devotedly seek all that Christ calls me to, and not merely the essentials; it's always the case that He has more for us, not less.
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