Category: Spirituality

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Spirituality Theology

Hauerwas on Matthew on Kingdom

“Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'”  — Matthew 3:1-2.

John [the Baptist] was not offering a better way to live, though a beter way to live was entailed by the kingdom that he proclaimed was near. But it is the proclamation of the “kingdom of heaven” that creates the urgency of John’s ministry.  Such a kingdom does not come through our tryin gto be better people.  Rather, the knigdom comes, making imperative our repentance.  John’s call for Israel to repent is not a prophetic call for those who repent to change the world, but rather he calls for repentance because the world is being and will be changed by the one whom John knows is to come.  To live differently, moreover, means that the status quo can be challenged because now a people are the difference.

Stanley Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew, Ch. 3.

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Epistemology Spirituality Theology

Bloesch on Epistemic Humility

“The Christian does not pretend to know all the answers to life’s questions, but he does claim to know some of the answers to the final questions, those that determine the direction of one’s eternal destiny.  Yet he makes this claim not on the basis of his own ingenuity or intelligence but on the basis of God’s revelation in the Scriptures.  Moreoever, he does not boast that he ‘possesses’ these answers, for they reside in the mind of Christ which is made available to him time and again by the Spirit.” 

Donald Bloesch, The Ground of Certainty, at p. 76.

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Spirituality Theology Uncategorized

Hauerwas on Herod and Babies

“Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the Magi.”  Matthew 3:16.

Herods must be resisted, but we must also not forget that the fear that possessed Herod’s life is not absent from our own lives.  “All Jerusalem” was also frightened by the news of this child’s birth.  And the same fear continues to possess cultures — our culture — that believe they have no time or energy for children.  Abortion is one of the names for the fear of time that children make real.  Children rightly frighten us, pulling us as they do into the unknown future.  But that pull is the lure of love that moves the sun and the stars, the same love that overwhelmed the wise men with joy.  It is the love that makes the church an alternative to the world that fears the child.

Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew, Chapter 2.

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Spirituality Theology

Hauerwas on Matthew 2: Patience and Nonviolence

“The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatient violence by cross and resurrection.” — Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew Chapter 2.

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Spirituality Theology

McKnight on the Third Way

Scot McKnight starts a series on a “third way” between “liberal” and “conservative” versions of the Christian faith.  Good and important stuff.

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Spirituality Theology

Quote of the Day: Wagering on Mission

“Christian mission is participation in the liberating mission of Jesus, wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems to belie. It is the good news of God’s love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.”

-David Bosch

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Spirituality

Quote of the Day — Psalm 86

“Lovingkindness and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

— Psalm 85:10 

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Spirituality Theology

God Showed Up?

This is a preview for Rob Bell’s latest Nooma, “Open.”  I watched this on Monday and really enjoyed it.  In this clip, Rob voices something that has been bugging me for a while:  why do we so often use the phrase “God showed up”?  It seems like one of those hip Christianese things we like to say:  “man, we’ve been praying about this mission trip, and God really showed up in a big way.” 

I feel like a grouchy old man when I hear this.  My gut churns a bit, and I think, “what do you mean God showed up?  Isn’t God everywhere?  Doesn’t He know everything?  Is He like Baal or Zeus, off doing his own thing, until our supplications make him finally pay attention and sort of reluctantly do some magic?  Are we surprised — like whoa, God, I didn’t think you got the invitation, but you showed up, dude!?”

Ok, I am a grouchy old man.  But I do think there’s something subtle here that is good to correct.  I feel like we lose something of God’s majesty, wisdom, and mystery when we say something like “God showed up.”  I like to think that God is fully there even when it seems to me that He hasn’t shown up.  When I pray for my son’s disability to be healed, and it isn’t; when I pray for justice in the world, and there doesn’t seem to be much of it; when I hear a story on the BBC world news about the global sex slave trade and how little can actually be done about it; when I study the Bible in depth and find it to be unruly and untameable, often more of a challenge than a clear guide; when I look at the list of things I hope to accomplish in life and realize that, at age 42, I’ll never succeed in all of it; when I consider the precautions I have to take to avoid giving in to the disease of depression — in all this and more, God doesn’t have to show up, he’s there, just as much as when He opens doors I thought were sealed shut or blesses me with health and success, as He often does.

 

Categories
Biblical Studies Spirituality

A Conspiracy of Silence

RJS writes an excellent post on Jesus Creed about the difficulty, in evangelical circles, of dealing openly with the problems presented by Biblical criticism, archeology and the natural sciences.

I could write about this all day.  I think the answer to the question — “is there a conspiracy of silence about ‘problems’ with the Bible” — is yes, no, and sometimes.

Yes — I believe a great many pastors and educators know the problems and keep silent for fear of how their constituencies will react.  Look at what happened to Pete Enns and at how his book — a relatively modest proposal in the bigger picture of Biblical scholarship — stirred up a hornet’s nest.  There are  broods of vipers in the Church who will strike at the first sign of flinching.

No — I believe a significant, significant, significant number of pastors and educators are living in denial about the problems.  In the old “battle for the Bible” paradigm, critical methods were seen as prima facie invalid because they approached the Bible from a paradigm of unbelief.  The result is that many have steeled themselves against even hearing and testing the claims of Biblical / historic / scientific criticism.  They’re pretty sure Answers in Genesis has solved all this, and that’s the end of it.

Sometimes — it seems to me that there are more an more people in evangelical circles willing to take Biblical / historic / scientific criticism seriously.  There are at least here and there local church leaders who remain engaged with trends in the academy (I’m blessed to know some personally).  And at the same time, there are some GOOD reasons to subject the conclusions of critics to criticism.  So-called “scientific exegesis,” all the rage in secular Biblical Studies, excludes a priori any “real” miracles behind any Biblical text, including the bodily resurrection of Jesus (note that this has noting directly to do with the relation of the Bible to the natural sciences — by “scientific” they mean an exegetical method that precludes the supernatural.)  To the “scientific” exegetes, N.T. Wright is a fundamentalist — go figure.

The bottom line is that IMHO churches engaging the educated and informed young people of today, especially in a North American context, cannot, cannot continue to keep silent or live in denial and claim to be exercising their missional responsibilities.

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Spirituality

C.S. Lewis on Losing Yourself

The last paragraph in Mere Christianity.  Do I ever need to keep learning this, every day:

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not
given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.