My family is still fairly new to the Episcopal church, and having grown up in more evangelicalish churches, there are still a lot of differences that we are still learning to appreciate. The idea that throughout the service, all of the prayers are written down, predetermined, with only a few blanks to fill in specific to our congregation. This is a massive change from the church I'm used to, where a member of the congregation or a worship leader would lead a prayer coming from his own words that could last for several minutes, infused with many requests and oftentimes messages to the congregation. (Please note that I am not attempting to condemn or claim that this improvisational prayer is any less significant or correct, I am just comparing what I grew up with to what my church does now.) As such, we are having to relearn prayer.
I've also been dealing with a lot of conflicts about the nature of and purpose of prayer. Since Rachel Held Evans went into the hospital and everyone on Twitter started saying prayers, especially when we started to see things getting worse, my already skeptical views continued to solidify. If God answered prayers according to our requests, Rachel should have been healed. If God answered prayers according to the faith of those who prayed, Rachel should have been healed. If God answered prayers according to our persistence, Rachel should have been healed. Instead, Rachel died. If we view prayer as bringing our requests to God, but knowing that God is going to make his own decision anyway (or that he is impotent to do so), then it seems to be completely void of purpose. There has to be something different to it, and something different to why we pray.
We have a 2-year-old son who joins us during the latter part of service every week. While he spends most of his time on the pews playing with cars and drawing on paper, we really want him to have something to engage him in the service. Also, we want him to learn to pray, even if we don't know why or what it should look like, so we were already doing simple prayers at bedtime. Our church says the Lord's prayer every week, so we thought this would be a good entry point. We now do the Lord's prayer with him every night, having him repeat after us in bite-sized chunks. He surprised us a couple of weeks ago by suddenly saying the whole thing without any prompting. When we get to church and start saying the prayer, he enthusiastically joins in, albeit a bit delayed (which results in him saying "Amen" out loud after the rest of the congregation, which is unbelievably adorable).
The Lord's prayer was part of the lectionary this week, too, so it inspired me to write about it. I will concede that the passage in the lectionary also includes Jesus basically saying ask God and it will be given to you. I don't
know how to square this with the doubts that Rachel's death cemented in
me without doing a lot of mental gymnastics. Thus, I am going to ignore that point today, not because it is unimportant or wrong, but because I legitimately do not know how to handle it.
Taking all of the above into account, I decided to give my own take on it as an attempt to give the words a little more meaning to me. In writing this, I decided upon the "May we" format, mainly for the construct of expectation. If I say to
someone "may you find peace today," I tend to mean something along the
lines of "my desire is for you to find peace today." It comes across as
a more passive hope or desire rather than directly asking "Please do this." It's more of a conversation and a statement of mentality than it is a request. I also like the "we"
construct, as it indicates the desire is for all of humanity as well as
us individually to embrace these hopes.
So having said all of that, here is my attempt at doing the Lord's prayer in my own voice (which is a little more long-winded, as I'm already long-winded, and I'm doing my best to speak in plain terms).
Dear God,
You are divine and set apart from everything else in our life.
May we declare your presence and power on the earth the same as we do in the life to come.
May we enact your desires on this world to make it reflect the life to come.
May we be satisfied with enough to make it through this day, leaving worries about tomorrow to you.
May we have the wisdom and grace to forgive our oppressors and enemies in the same way we wish to have our own actions of oppression, hatred, and destructiveness forgiven.
May we be freed of the distractions and worries that attempt to take our focus off of your desires.
May we recognize that creation is yours, not ours, and may we treat it accordingly.
May we recognize that your power is great and trust in it when it seems defeat is inevitable.
May we recognize that victory over death is yours and live accordingly.
May all of these desires come to fruition.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
An Analysis of the Rich Man and Lazarus
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He
called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip
the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in
these flames.’ But
Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received
your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is
comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides
all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that
those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one
can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He
said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Luke 16:19-31 (NRSV)
This parable has always been interesting to me because unlike most parables, I have seen this one taught and referenced for multiple different reasons. It's an interesting passage because we can read so many things from it, but it's also a potentially dangerous passage because we can read so many things from it.
Heaven/Hell
In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’
Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.
This is the primary reason I seem to come across this passage. I am somewhere between an annihilationist and universalist when it comes to my afterlife theology. I do not believe in eternal conscious torment (ECT). Whenever I read discussions about the afterlife, those that believe in ECT often come to this passage to support their position. Indeed, we have all of the elements needed here to see ECT. We have conscious torment, and we have an indication that no one can go from Heaven to Hell and vice-versa, which seems to eliminate any post-death reconciliation (which is a common approach to universalism). I will concede that this is a very effective passage for defending the ECT belief on the afterlife.
I do see ways to view this that don't necessitate adopting ECT, though. First, the purpose of this parable was not to teach about Heaven and Hell. Verse 13 in this chapter is where we get the famous You cannot serve God and wealth line. In verse 14, the Pharisees are called lovers of money. At the beginning of the chapter, we had a parable about a rich man with a dishonest manager. Money and wealth seem to be a theme that has been leading up to this.
Further, this view of the afterlife is not one found in the Old Testament. It, however, was developed during the Second Temple period of Judaism, so it was a common view held by the audience at that time. (See the wikipedia entry on Sheol). Jesus is likely just using a known construct to tell his story rather than try to describe the actual mechanics of the afterlife.
The last thing I'll mention on this is that my views of the afterlife are found throughout the Bible. I actually believed ECT until I read through the entire Bible, which converted me to annhilationism (and I've since drifted towards universalism). The truth of the matter is that there are passages in the Bible that seem to defend any number of afterlife views, and if we want to hold fast to a particular view, we have to perform some pretty hefty distortion of other passages. This is one of those verses that non-ECT believers have to wrestle with, but that doesn't mean that because this one passage seems to point towards ECT, that the whole Bible does. This passage does not necessitate adopting ECT.
Money/Wealth
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.
Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.
These lines strike me as interesting because it doesn't explicitly charge the rich man with anything other than receiving good things in life. There are ways to read this that would indicate that the rich man should have cared for Lazarus, and that is why he is being punished, but that is never explicitly stated. It's just that their fortunes were reversed in the afterlife. I don't have a lot of analysis here, I just find the lack of explicit condemnation interesting. Were I telling the story, I would make a direct connection between his lack of mercy and his agony.
Of course, we do have to ask what he wants his brothers to be warned about and what he claims they will repent of. It's not any significant stretch to assume that this is indeed about living lavishly in their wealth while not taking care of the suffering in front of them.
My social justice side does love this part of the passage (if not the Hell part). My read on it is that this rich man and his family all live lives of riches and ignore the poor in front of them. Rather than give any mercy to the poor, they make the poor beg and scavenge for anything. As a result, the rich are now suffering, and those that they didn't have mercy on are now living lives in happiness. Their fortunes are reversed. Especially in light of our current political reality, that sounds nice to me (though if I think about it too thoroughly, I start liking it less, as my life is probably a lot closer to the rich man than to Lazarus).
However, the part that really resonates with me is this line:
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
I'll touch more on this in the next section, because I believe this part has been severely misused, but my take on it is that Moses and the prophets were abundantly clear on how important it was to care for the needy:
Isaiah 1:17:
learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
Amos 5:11:
Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
Ezekiel 16:49:
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
These are just a tiny sampling of passages all over the prophets. I could post whole chapters of Amos and Isaiah. The Levitical laws have many rules about caring for the immigrant and alien. The year of Jubilee was instituted to relieve families of permanent oppression (something that would be nice to see in present day). There were rules about caring for the immigrant and the alien. This concept of caring for the poor and needy was not new with Jesus.
So if we had enormous swaths of the Hebrew Scriptures that dictate caring for the needy, then all of the rich man's family should have been well aware of how important that mandate was. If they were able and willing to ignore all of it, then they weren't going to listen to anything. Their mind was made up, and nothing would change that. We see that a lot with the modern evangelical support of politicians and policies that demonize the poor, demean the needy, dehumanize the oppressed, and exalt the rich. Fox News and power has supplanted the Bible as the source of truth, and no amount of evidence seems to change that.
Belief/Doubt
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
When I have thought of this parable throughout my life, this part frequently comes to mind. The reason for that is that this portion has been weaponized against doubt. It wasn't until very recently that I even considered that this line could be referring to not listening to the prophets about caring for the needy. This passage has always been about doubt to me.
I'm honestly not sure how much of this is self-inflicted and how much of it has shown up in teachings over the years, but I've always read that as "if they didn't believe in God even with the words of Moses and the prophets, nothing will convince them." This has been used to support why non-Christians deserve to go to Hell (this is often coupled with Romans 1:19-20 ). This line has been used as a reason we don't see miracles today. It's been used as a way to question the salvation of someone with doubts. As a result of that, it has the effect of causing doubters to question their own salvation. It's a dangerous verse when used improperly, yet that's the only way I've ever heard (or read) it.
I feel like my approach in the previous section makes much more sense from a storytelling perspective, and it seems more consistent with how I perceive Jesus to teach. It has a lot more to do with acting according to what the scriptures teach than pure belief.
I would love to hear other thoughts on this parable. If you come across this, feel free to give your feedback in the comments!
Luke 16:19-31 (NRSV)
This parable has always been interesting to me because unlike most parables, I have seen this one taught and referenced for multiple different reasons. It's an interesting passage because we can read so many things from it, but it's also a potentially dangerous passage because we can read so many things from it.
Heaven/Hell
In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’
Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.
This is the primary reason I seem to come across this passage. I am somewhere between an annihilationist and universalist when it comes to my afterlife theology. I do not believe in eternal conscious torment (ECT). Whenever I read discussions about the afterlife, those that believe in ECT often come to this passage to support their position. Indeed, we have all of the elements needed here to see ECT. We have conscious torment, and we have an indication that no one can go from Heaven to Hell and vice-versa, which seems to eliminate any post-death reconciliation (which is a common approach to universalism). I will concede that this is a very effective passage for defending the ECT belief on the afterlife.
I do see ways to view this that don't necessitate adopting ECT, though. First, the purpose of this parable was not to teach about Heaven and Hell. Verse 13 in this chapter is where we get the famous You cannot serve God and wealth line. In verse 14, the Pharisees are called lovers of money. At the beginning of the chapter, we had a parable about a rich man with a dishonest manager. Money and wealth seem to be a theme that has been leading up to this.
Further, this view of the afterlife is not one found in the Old Testament. It, however, was developed during the Second Temple period of Judaism, so it was a common view held by the audience at that time. (See the wikipedia entry on Sheol). Jesus is likely just using a known construct to tell his story rather than try to describe the actual mechanics of the afterlife.
The last thing I'll mention on this is that my views of the afterlife are found throughout the Bible. I actually believed ECT until I read through the entire Bible, which converted me to annhilationism (and I've since drifted towards universalism). The truth of the matter is that there are passages in the Bible that seem to defend any number of afterlife views, and if we want to hold fast to a particular view, we have to perform some pretty hefty distortion of other passages. This is one of those verses that non-ECT believers have to wrestle with, but that doesn't mean that because this one passage seems to point towards ECT, that the whole Bible does. This passage does not necessitate adopting ECT.
Money/Wealth
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.
Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.
These lines strike me as interesting because it doesn't explicitly charge the rich man with anything other than receiving good things in life. There are ways to read this that would indicate that the rich man should have cared for Lazarus, and that is why he is being punished, but that is never explicitly stated. It's just that their fortunes were reversed in the afterlife. I don't have a lot of analysis here, I just find the lack of explicit condemnation interesting. Were I telling the story, I would make a direct connection between his lack of mercy and his agony.
Of course, we do have to ask what he wants his brothers to be warned about and what he claims they will repent of. It's not any significant stretch to assume that this is indeed about living lavishly in their wealth while not taking care of the suffering in front of them.
My social justice side does love this part of the passage (if not the Hell part). My read on it is that this rich man and his family all live lives of riches and ignore the poor in front of them. Rather than give any mercy to the poor, they make the poor beg and scavenge for anything. As a result, the rich are now suffering, and those that they didn't have mercy on are now living lives in happiness. Their fortunes are reversed. Especially in light of our current political reality, that sounds nice to me (though if I think about it too thoroughly, I start liking it less, as my life is probably a lot closer to the rich man than to Lazarus).
However, the part that really resonates with me is this line:
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
I'll touch more on this in the next section, because I believe this part has been severely misused, but my take on it is that Moses and the prophets were abundantly clear on how important it was to care for the needy:
Isaiah 1:17:
learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
Amos 5:11:
Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
Ezekiel 16:49:
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
These are just a tiny sampling of passages all over the prophets. I could post whole chapters of Amos and Isaiah. The Levitical laws have many rules about caring for the immigrant and alien. The year of Jubilee was instituted to relieve families of permanent oppression (something that would be nice to see in present day). There were rules about caring for the immigrant and the alien. This concept of caring for the poor and needy was not new with Jesus.
So if we had enormous swaths of the Hebrew Scriptures that dictate caring for the needy, then all of the rich man's family should have been well aware of how important that mandate was. If they were able and willing to ignore all of it, then they weren't going to listen to anything. Their mind was made up, and nothing would change that. We see that a lot with the modern evangelical support of politicians and policies that demonize the poor, demean the needy, dehumanize the oppressed, and exalt the rich. Fox News and power has supplanted the Bible as the source of truth, and no amount of evidence seems to change that.
Belief/Doubt
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
When I have thought of this parable throughout my life, this part frequently comes to mind. The reason for that is that this portion has been weaponized against doubt. It wasn't until very recently that I even considered that this line could be referring to not listening to the prophets about caring for the needy. This passage has always been about doubt to me.
I'm honestly not sure how much of this is self-inflicted and how much of it has shown up in teachings over the years, but I've always read that as "if they didn't believe in God even with the words of Moses and the prophets, nothing will convince them." This has been used to support why non-Christians deserve to go to Hell (this is often coupled with Romans 1:19-20 ). This line has been used as a reason we don't see miracles today. It's been used as a way to question the salvation of someone with doubts. As a result of that, it has the effect of causing doubters to question their own salvation. It's a dangerous verse when used improperly, yet that's the only way I've ever heard (or read) it.
I feel like my approach in the previous section makes much more sense from a storytelling perspective, and it seems more consistent with how I perceive Jesus to teach. It has a lot more to do with acting according to what the scriptures teach than pure belief.
I would love to hear other thoughts on this parable. If you come across this, feel free to give your feedback in the comments!
Monday, June 17, 2019
Worthy of God's Love
Rant time.
Today, I ran into a comment on an old Rachel Held Evans post where someone talking about their unique band of church misfits said "But the one thread that holds us together is the fact that we all recognize and accept the fact that we are unworthy of the love of God and His Magnificent Son but HE LOVES US ALL THE SAME." The comment may be 7 years old, but the sentiment is one I hear all the time, and it angers me so much, I felt compelled to write about it immediately.
As someone who struggles with depression, who grew up in a conservative tradition and attended an evangelical church as a young adult, I am incredibly familiar with the emphasis on how unworthy I am. I'm a wretch. I'm a worm. I'm a no-good sinner. I'm fundamentally broken. These types of phrases are prevalent throughout worship music, and they are frequent staples of sermons. I have a voice in me telling me what an awful failure I am already. I don't need an entire church emphasizing and reinforcing that perspective. It's fundamentally abusive, and I'm glad I no longer attend those churches because of it. This whole concept that we are unworthy of God's love is an insidious way of demeaning our very nature.
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
- Genesis 1:27,31
We are created in the image of God. God called his creation good. Beyond that, God is clearly worthy of love. Since we bear His image, we are worthy of God's love.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
- John 3:16
Again, we have God loving us so much that he gave us Christ. He wants us to know and understand how much he loves us. And Jesus doesn't seem to think that sinners don't deserve his love. Indeed, just as those that are sick are worthy of care, those in need of grace are worthy of Christ's love. We are worthy of God's love.
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God;
- 1 John 3:1a
I have a young son. I love him with all of my heart. Does he do things that drive me up the wall? Yes. Do I need to discipline him frequently? Yes. Do I put a lot more into our relationship than he does? I would say so. Is he unworthy of my love? By no means! The idea that parents only love their children out of some benevolence that children don't deserve is an awfully bleak way to view the world. Children are worthy of love, and cannot thrive without it. We are God's children. We are worthy of God's love.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church
- Ephesians 5:25
The church as the bride of Christ is a metaphor that permeates the entire New Testament. If I ever hear a husband say that his wife was unworthy of his love, but he loves her anyway, or hear a wife say that she is unworthy of her husband's love, that's a clear sign to me of an emotionally abusive relationship, and the wife needs to get far away from her husband. Rather, husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Christ loves us in the fullness of who we are, and he declares us his bride. We are worthy of God's love.
There is so much more exposition that could be done here. However, I think I'll end the rant with this: the idea that we should be groveling before God about how unworthy we are or that we need to continually reiterate that God's just doing us a favor by loving us is a message that carries intense harm and suffering, and I think it's flat wrong. We are worthy of God's love because we are His bride. We are His children. To argue against our worthiness is to deny our very nature as image bearers of Christ. We are worthy of God's love.
In case I haven't been abundantly clear on this: You are worthy of God's love. I am worthy of God's love. We are worthy of God's love.
Today, I ran into a comment on an old Rachel Held Evans post where someone talking about their unique band of church misfits said "But the one thread that holds us together is the fact that we all recognize and accept the fact that we are unworthy of the love of God and His Magnificent Son but HE LOVES US ALL THE SAME." The comment may be 7 years old, but the sentiment is one I hear all the time, and it angers me so much, I felt compelled to write about it immediately.
As someone who struggles with depression, who grew up in a conservative tradition and attended an evangelical church as a young adult, I am incredibly familiar with the emphasis on how unworthy I am. I'm a wretch. I'm a worm. I'm a no-good sinner. I'm fundamentally broken. These types of phrases are prevalent throughout worship music, and they are frequent staples of sermons. I have a voice in me telling me what an awful failure I am already. I don't need an entire church emphasizing and reinforcing that perspective. It's fundamentally abusive, and I'm glad I no longer attend those churches because of it. This whole concept that we are unworthy of God's love is an insidious way of demeaning our very nature.
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
- Genesis 1:27,31
We are created in the image of God. God called his creation good. Beyond that, God is clearly worthy of love. Since we bear His image, we are worthy of God's love.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
- John 3:16
When Jesus heard this, he said to them,
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick;
I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
- Mark 2:17
Again, we have God loving us so much that he gave us Christ. He wants us to know and understand how much he loves us. And Jesus doesn't seem to think that sinners don't deserve his love. Indeed, just as those that are sick are worthy of care, those in need of grace are worthy of Christ's love. We are worthy of God's love.
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God;
- 1 John 3:1a
I have a young son. I love him with all of my heart. Does he do things that drive me up the wall? Yes. Do I need to discipline him frequently? Yes. Do I put a lot more into our relationship than he does? I would say so. Is he unworthy of my love? By no means! The idea that parents only love their children out of some benevolence that children don't deserve is an awfully bleak way to view the world. Children are worthy of love, and cannot thrive without it. We are God's children. We are worthy of God's love.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church
- Ephesians 5:25
The church as the bride of Christ is a metaphor that permeates the entire New Testament. If I ever hear a husband say that his wife was unworthy of his love, but he loves her anyway, or hear a wife say that she is unworthy of her husband's love, that's a clear sign to me of an emotionally abusive relationship, and the wife needs to get far away from her husband. Rather, husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Christ loves us in the fullness of who we are, and he declares us his bride. We are worthy of God's love.
There is so much more exposition that could be done here. However, I think I'll end the rant with this: the idea that we should be groveling before God about how unworthy we are or that we need to continually reiterate that God's just doing us a favor by loving us is a message that carries intense harm and suffering, and I think it's flat wrong. We are worthy of God's love because we are His bride. We are His children. To argue against our worthiness is to deny our very nature as image bearers of Christ. We are worthy of God's love.
In case I haven't been abundantly clear on this: You are worthy of God's love. I am worthy of God's love. We are worthy of God's love.
Friday, June 14, 2019
The Law on our Hearts
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NRSV)
For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NRSV)
For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,”
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,”
he also adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Hebrews 10:14-17 (NRSV)
The Church of Christ, which was my tradition for most of my first 25 years, has a significant portion of its conservative constituency that believe that the Holy Spirit is not active today, but was instead the guiding force behind the Bible, meaning that the Bible is essentially the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. I will admit that there is something endearing about the concept that we are completely free of the necessity of listening to the Spirit today, and instead have all we need in the Bible.
As such, I am very
well aware of how to use the Bible to determine right and wrong, looking
at it as a rule book of sorts. Further, I am very well aware of the
tension when I feel one thing is right while the Bible appears to say
something different. Historically, I've had to side with the Bible
because my conscience was part of my sinful flesh. I just had to submit
to the Bible. My conscience had no standing to protest. This is still a common refrain from conservative traditions.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this passage from Jeremiah above. I am reluctant to put a New Testament meaning to the verses of the Hebrew Bible, as I'm sure Jewish scholars can give me another interpretation of this passage that may indicate more of its original intent. However, I make a rare exception for this passage, because it is quoted twice in the book of Hebrews (8:10-12, 10:16-17), and in the Hebrews 10 passage, the author specifically attributes its words to the Holy Spirit (or at least that's my interpretation). So given that the book treats these as the words of the Holy Spirit, I will approach that in the same manner.
What does the Spirit mean by putting the laws in their hearts and writing them on their minds? Frankly that sounds like reason and conscience to me. But what if our conscience seems to conflict with the Bible?
N. T. Wright has an old lecture where he discusses how a story can be authoritative. Though I'm sure I'm mangling is ideas somewhat, I really love when he starts discussing existence as a 5 act play, and we are living in the second half of act 5. In a 5 act play, by Act 5, you know the characters. You know what they're like, and you would know if they suddenly did something out of character. The history of the Bible and the stories therein serve as those opening acts. We get an idea of the character of God through the story we are told.
In light of this, we can look at the epistles as examples of those filled with God's spirit exhorting others. We can learn a lot about what it means to be a follower of Christ by reading the stories of those who started the movement. However, it is relevant to recognize the epistles as part of a story rather than looking at them as a rulebook written for us today. Where did these authors get their words and understanding of God's will? Through the Holy Spirit, who put God's law on their hearts. How did they know how to live out God's will without a New Testament to guide them? Through the Holy Spirit, who wrote God's law in their minds. The Epistles in the Bible show a demonstration of the Spirit through what he put on the hearts of the authors, as an example of this.
Indeed, all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, because it is useful to understand what it looks like to be a disciple of the living God. It is useful to know the stories of God working in the world. It is instructive to see how the early church used the wisdom of the Spirit to deal with unique circumstances. It's a valuable template for how it looks to live as a follower of Christ. And it allows us to be discerning when we want to know whether an action or posture is consistent with the will of God. It gives the setting for our part of Act 5.
Now we get to figure out what that looks to live out today, and it can look different than it did in Biblical times. We have our model to understand what concepts can be of God and what cannot be of God. We have the law on our hearts. So what do we do when our Spirit-filled conscience conflicts with something we read from the Bible? If we go against our conscience, we violate the very passage I quoted above. If we act with our conscience in seeming contradiction of what we see in a Biblical passage, then we've violated the passage in question. One way or another, we're going against scripture. So we have to make a decision as to which portion to violate. How do we make that decision? With the law on our hearts.
N. T. Wright has an old lecture where he discusses how a story can be authoritative. Though I'm sure I'm mangling is ideas somewhat, I really love when he starts discussing existence as a 5 act play, and we are living in the second half of act 5. In a 5 act play, by Act 5, you know the characters. You know what they're like, and you would know if they suddenly did something out of character. The history of the Bible and the stories therein serve as those opening acts. We get an idea of the character of God through the story we are told.
In light of this, we can look at the epistles as examples of those filled with God's spirit exhorting others. We can learn a lot about what it means to be a follower of Christ by reading the stories of those who started the movement. However, it is relevant to recognize the epistles as part of a story rather than looking at them as a rulebook written for us today. Where did these authors get their words and understanding of God's will? Through the Holy Spirit, who put God's law on their hearts. How did they know how to live out God's will without a New Testament to guide them? Through the Holy Spirit, who wrote God's law in their minds. The Epistles in the Bible show a demonstration of the Spirit through what he put on the hearts of the authors, as an example of this.
Indeed, all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, because it is useful to understand what it looks like to be a disciple of the living God. It is useful to know the stories of God working in the world. It is instructive to see how the early church used the wisdom of the Spirit to deal with unique circumstances. It's a valuable template for how it looks to live as a follower of Christ. And it allows us to be discerning when we want to know whether an action or posture is consistent with the will of God. It gives the setting for our part of Act 5.
Now we get to figure out what that looks to live out today, and it can look different than it did in Biblical times. We have our model to understand what concepts can be of God and what cannot be of God. We have the law on our hearts. So what do we do when our Spirit-filled conscience conflicts with something we read from the Bible? If we go against our conscience, we violate the very passage I quoted above. If we act with our conscience in seeming contradiction of what we see in a Biblical passage, then we've violated the passage in question. One way or another, we're going against scripture. So we have to make a decision as to which portion to violate. How do we make that decision? With the law on our hearts.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
On Blogging
I have been blogging about various things over my first few posts. I don't really know what I want this to become. I started it when Rachel Held Evans passed away, and I felt like I needed to find a voice for myself, since I no longer had her voice to just say "ditto" to. However, I also feel like my blog to this point has been fairly guarded, throwing out random theological ideas without really giving a basis for where I'm coming from.
Depression is a major part of this. I struggle with chronic depression. I have for most of my life. The negativity and sadness that results from this tends to push people away. Who wants to hang out with someone who is always a downer? Because of that, in an effort to prevent rejection, I put on a happy face, or at least one that makes it seem like I have it together. That's part of how I became "Generic Guy #2".
I enjoy posting online or talking via email because I can curate what I say so carefully. I can analyze it over and over to make sure that what I'm trying to say is communicated the way I want it to, and to try to minimize offense or revealing too much of myself. I can present myself in a positive, measured, and thoughtful manner. I can filter out my emotions. That tendency is what makes this blog seem so sterile, which is not really what I'm going for.
In an ideal world, I'd have people on the blog commenting and reading and I'd get an idea of the kind of content that people wanted to read. In an ideal world, my theological posts generate discussion and debate, which is something I desperately crave. In an ideal world, I could actually approach the blog in a full "this is me" manner rather than "this is the way I wish to present myself". I'm going to try to make this a thing, as much as it depends on me.
Part of these first posts, though, are me just trying to find my voice and throw my thoughts out into cyberspace. I don't know what to focus on, and so I just pick whatever topics come to mind. Hopefully, I'll be willing to be more open in future posts. But for now, I'm just trying to figure out what I want to write about and why. Hopefully someday, people will visit and we can converse.
So that's the answer to what I'm blogging about and why. I don't know, and I don't know. I'm just going to keep trucking on until I figure it out, or I fizzle out. We'll just have to wait and see where this goes.
Depression is a major part of this. I struggle with chronic depression. I have for most of my life. The negativity and sadness that results from this tends to push people away. Who wants to hang out with someone who is always a downer? Because of that, in an effort to prevent rejection, I put on a happy face, or at least one that makes it seem like I have it together. That's part of how I became "Generic Guy #2".
I enjoy posting online or talking via email because I can curate what I say so carefully. I can analyze it over and over to make sure that what I'm trying to say is communicated the way I want it to, and to try to minimize offense or revealing too much of myself. I can present myself in a positive, measured, and thoughtful manner. I can filter out my emotions. That tendency is what makes this blog seem so sterile, which is not really what I'm going for.
In an ideal world, I'd have people on the blog commenting and reading and I'd get an idea of the kind of content that people wanted to read. In an ideal world, my theological posts generate discussion and debate, which is something I desperately crave. In an ideal world, I could actually approach the blog in a full "this is me" manner rather than "this is the way I wish to present myself". I'm going to try to make this a thing, as much as it depends on me.
Part of these first posts, though, are me just trying to find my voice and throw my thoughts out into cyberspace. I don't know what to focus on, and so I just pick whatever topics come to mind. Hopefully, I'll be willing to be more open in future posts. But for now, I'm just trying to figure out what I want to write about and why. Hopefully someday, people will visit and we can converse.
So that's the answer to what I'm blogging about and why. I don't know, and I don't know. I'm just going to keep trucking on until I figure it out, or I fizzle out. We'll just have to wait and see where this goes.
Thank You for Saying Nothing.
I hate driving. My wife is fine with it, so she is usually the driver of our family. When were off on our anniversary last year, she was having trouble parking our minivan nicely. I kept making jokes about it, thinking we were having fun, but it really started to weigh on her. The last day of the anniversary she let me know how much it was upsetting her and making her not want to drive. I didn't realize it was affecting her like that. I apologized and said I'd try to avoid making comments in the future.
Several months later, we went out for dinner, and she parked the car at a fairly crooked angle. When we were getting back into the car, she commented at how crooked it was, and I made some comment to the effect of "You didn't hear it from me" or something to indicate that I wasn't saying it. She thought about it for a moment and recognized that I hadn't said anything to her about her parking since that conversation. I've noticed it a few times, but decided it wasn't worth saying. It was nice to get affirmation that my silence was appreciated.
One thing I know from raising children and dogs is the importance of positive reinforcement. Children will often act out because it's the only way they get attention. Dogs can be unpredictable when they are punished when doing something wrong, but don't know what the right thing to do is. For both, they are often given praise when they obey a command, or exhibit an appropriate immediate action. However, rarely do they get praise for just behaving in general. One thing I've learned over the years is to praise them when they are just minding their own business or simply not misbehaving. It's important for them to understand when their lack of action is the appropriate behavior rather than just assuming it's good because they aren't getting reprimanded. They need to know their silence is appreciated.
I deal with this often as it relates to ally dynamics. As someone who fits almost every privileged demographic, I am typically relegated to the role of ally. However, as an ally, one thing that is important to learn is when to speak up and when to shut up and let the oppressed speak for themselves. I don't have a great concept of when to do which thing. I tend to err towards silence. If I do that when I should speak up, I can get called out for it, and it serves as a learning experience. However, I often feel that my silence shows that I don't care, which is not true. If I stay silent appropriately, though, I get no reinforcement. It would be useful to know when my silence is appreciated.
I have a pinned tweet on my Twitter profile: I find that the character limit on Twitter can make me a more thoughtful person. I start to write, try to edit it to get my point across as clearly as possible within those limits, and by the time I get everything polished, I come to my senses and delete the whole thing.
I have written a lot of tweets that I never published. I have a lot of questions that I've never asked. I have a lot of thoughts that I've never shared. For the most part, that's a good thing. However, I never get feedback on the things I don't say.
If I post something that gets a negative reaction, I learn from it, likely never to post something like that again, but also to listen to why it got a negative reaction. If I post something that gets a positive reaction, I learn from it, and I try to post more like it or learn what people liked about it. On the other hand, I don't know what reaction the post I didn't publish would have received. I get no feedback on if I should have posted it, and I get no feedback on if I was wise to delete it.
Sometimes it would be nice to just be told "thank you for saying nothing."
Several months later, we went out for dinner, and she parked the car at a fairly crooked angle. When we were getting back into the car, she commented at how crooked it was, and I made some comment to the effect of "You didn't hear it from me" or something to indicate that I wasn't saying it. She thought about it for a moment and recognized that I hadn't said anything to her about her parking since that conversation. I've noticed it a few times, but decided it wasn't worth saying. It was nice to get affirmation that my silence was appreciated.
One thing I know from raising children and dogs is the importance of positive reinforcement. Children will often act out because it's the only way they get attention. Dogs can be unpredictable when they are punished when doing something wrong, but don't know what the right thing to do is. For both, they are often given praise when they obey a command, or exhibit an appropriate immediate action. However, rarely do they get praise for just behaving in general. One thing I've learned over the years is to praise them when they are just minding their own business or simply not misbehaving. It's important for them to understand when their lack of action is the appropriate behavior rather than just assuming it's good because they aren't getting reprimanded. They need to know their silence is appreciated.
I deal with this often as it relates to ally dynamics. As someone who fits almost every privileged demographic, I am typically relegated to the role of ally. However, as an ally, one thing that is important to learn is when to speak up and when to shut up and let the oppressed speak for themselves. I don't have a great concept of when to do which thing. I tend to err towards silence. If I do that when I should speak up, I can get called out for it, and it serves as a learning experience. However, I often feel that my silence shows that I don't care, which is not true. If I stay silent appropriately, though, I get no reinforcement. It would be useful to know when my silence is appreciated.
I have a pinned tweet on my Twitter profile: I find that the character limit on Twitter can make me a more thoughtful person. I start to write, try to edit it to get my point across as clearly as possible within those limits, and by the time I get everything polished, I come to my senses and delete the whole thing.
I have written a lot of tweets that I never published. I have a lot of questions that I've never asked. I have a lot of thoughts that I've never shared. For the most part, that's a good thing. However, I never get feedback on the things I don't say.
If I post something that gets a negative reaction, I learn from it, likely never to post something like that again, but also to listen to why it got a negative reaction. If I post something that gets a positive reaction, I learn from it, and I try to post more like it or learn what people liked about it. On the other hand, I don't know what reaction the post I didn't publish would have received. I get no feedback on if I should have posted it, and I get no feedback on if I was wise to delete it.
Sometimes it would be nice to just be told "thank you for saying nothing."
Thursday, June 6, 2019
The Moment after Death
The night after the Rachel Held Evans funeral, my wife, who was only familiar with Rachel through my interests broke down in tears. She had just finished putting our 2-year-old to bed, and it broke her. I came over to comfort her, as I knew she was heartbroken over Rachel's children having to grow up without their mother, but she surprised me.
She told me instead her heart was breaking for Rachel. She couldn't understand how anyone could be happy with not getting to raise their kids. How could she be in heaven rejoicing knowing that she doesn't get to raise her two little children?
That perspective took me off guard, and after spending some time crying with her, I started to grasp for things I remember having heard in the past in some context. I remember somewhere once hearing the concept of Soul Sleep, which is essentially as I understand it the idea that after someone dies, they remain asleep and unconscious until the second coming. If that concept is true, Rachel isn't trying to somehow rejoice while knowing she can't be there for her children. Instead, she is just peacefully sleeping until she wakes up and immediately gets to see Dan and her kids again. That seems like a comforting thought in some respects and one that takes that paradox away.
I had never before considered the relevance in this life of Soul Sleep vs instant appearance in Paradise (both of which have some Biblical support - I'll not make a case for either here). It seemed like a random theological talking point. But after this conversation, I can see how each one offers a different type of hope. It's true that we talk about rejoicing forever in Heaven, but if we are aware of the people we left on the earth, it does seem difficult to imagine having no negative emotions relating to that. I don't know which one is true (or if either are), but it did get me considering the benefits of each perspective and why it might matter to us today.
I'd love to hear others thoughts or perspectives about this. What do you think about what happens the moment after death?
She told me instead her heart was breaking for Rachel. She couldn't understand how anyone could be happy with not getting to raise their kids. How could she be in heaven rejoicing knowing that she doesn't get to raise her two little children?
That perspective took me off guard, and after spending some time crying with her, I started to grasp for things I remember having heard in the past in some context. I remember somewhere once hearing the concept of Soul Sleep, which is essentially as I understand it the idea that after someone dies, they remain asleep and unconscious until the second coming. If that concept is true, Rachel isn't trying to somehow rejoice while knowing she can't be there for her children. Instead, she is just peacefully sleeping until she wakes up and immediately gets to see Dan and her kids again. That seems like a comforting thought in some respects and one that takes that paradox away.
I had never before considered the relevance in this life of Soul Sleep vs instant appearance in Paradise (both of which have some Biblical support - I'll not make a case for either here). It seemed like a random theological talking point. But after this conversation, I can see how each one offers a different type of hope. It's true that we talk about rejoicing forever in Heaven, but if we are aware of the people we left on the earth, it does seem difficult to imagine having no negative emotions relating to that. I don't know which one is true (or if either are), but it did get me considering the benefits of each perspective and why it might matter to us today.
I'd love to hear others thoughts or perspectives about this. What do you think about what happens the moment after death?
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