What was Jesus’ divine purpose on Earth? The most fully textured account in the gospels is that Jesus came to proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand, an event which also demanded repentance from his people. In its starkest form, this is contained in a single four point sermon by Jesus in Mark:
The time is fulfilled.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent.
Believe in the Good News.
Notice that this doesn’t say anything about our souls or any eternal heaven or hell. I believe that there is some kind of eternal existence, whose ultimate fulfillment is foreshadowed by Jesus own resurrection. But I find that I agree with a long list of contemporary writers (N.T. Wright, Dallas Willard, Rob Bell) who argue that it is a mistake to characterize Jesus mission primarily as a ticket-punching exercise as to which “souls” do or do not go to heaven with Jesus or to a South-Park hell populated by Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
Doug and I will be writing a lot here about the Kingdom of Heaven. But I think that there is also an opposite danger in identifying the Kingdom of Heaven as purely a code for social interaction. In ways that we will discuss, Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of Heaven must return to the personal. That is to say, it is also possible to go too far in the direction that Jesus’ message is simply a roadmap for nice behavior. Through somewhat different paths Doug and I over the past weeks have both come to a similar point: even if the Kingdom of Heaven represents a world in which justice for widows and orphan is realized, if we simply have a world in which a lot of people help widows and orphans, we do not necessarily have the Kingdom. (See Doug’s post on Summer Lovin’ below). To put it another way, kingdom behavior is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the Kingdom itself. We must return to what happens to people to complete the story. The Kingdom of Heaven requires a transformation of individuals. But what does this mean? More to come.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
Jealous = God = Not Jealous?
Doug really snagged my attention with his “Violation of the Transitive Property?” post. This looks like a great seminary or ordination exam question, not to mention something out of one of my graduate school social choice courses. I’ll stick my neck out ready to be chopped off by you seminary folks with the following observations:
1 ) It is axiomatic that the Lord is a jealous God. Perform a “jealous God” search on Bible Gateway to see what I mean. But this jealously is essentially unidimensional. God is not jealous when we also love our family or flowers or puppies or Mustang convertibles, as long as we do not worship them. What He does demand is that we have no other gods before him. Yes, it is true that the prophets tell of a failure of justice in the kingdoms; but first and foremost the prophets’ story is of a people who began worshipping other gods.
2 ) But what does it mean for the Lord to be “jealous?” The words for jealously seem to have to different meanings in different contexts: the Lord’s jealousy versus earthly envy. Many bibles (especially more traditional texts) use “envy” for the Paul quotes, indicating a covetous desire to possess someone or something belonging to someone else. Love is not “envious”. To reinforce this point, my Bible (ESV) actually quotes Paul as saying, in II Corinthians 11:2, “I am jealous for you with a Godly jealousy.” Wanting to flesh this out, I went to my dictionary. It distinguishes between jealousy as envy and jealousy as a sovereign carefully guarding his rights. In this sense, the Lord being a jealous God does not mean that “the Lord is resentfully envious”, it means “you belong to God and God is zealous and careful and watchful in making sure that you honor no one else.” I am envious if my neighbor buys a Jaguar and I eat my insides up wishing I had one. The Jaguar belongs to my neighbor and I covet it. On the other hand, we belong to the Lord, and He jealously guards that relationship. Envy doesn’t enter into it.
3 ) One could also look at the “God is Love” verses, but to do so would require a discussion of what the meaning of the word “is” is, and I just don’t think I want to go there.
1 ) It is axiomatic that the Lord is a jealous God. Perform a “jealous God” search on Bible Gateway to see what I mean. But this jealously is essentially unidimensional. God is not jealous when we also love our family or flowers or puppies or Mustang convertibles, as long as we do not worship them. What He does demand is that we have no other gods before him. Yes, it is true that the prophets tell of a failure of justice in the kingdoms; but first and foremost the prophets’ story is of a people who began worshipping other gods.
2 ) But what does it mean for the Lord to be “jealous?” The words for jealously seem to have to different meanings in different contexts: the Lord’s jealousy versus earthly envy. Many bibles (especially more traditional texts) use “envy” for the Paul quotes, indicating a covetous desire to possess someone or something belonging to someone else. Love is not “envious”. To reinforce this point, my Bible (ESV) actually quotes Paul as saying, in II Corinthians 11:2, “I am jealous for you with a Godly jealousy.” Wanting to flesh this out, I went to my dictionary. It distinguishes between jealousy as envy and jealousy as a sovereign carefully guarding his rights. In this sense, the Lord being a jealous God does not mean that “the Lord is resentfully envious”, it means “you belong to God and God is zealous and careful and watchful in making sure that you honor no one else.” I am envious if my neighbor buys a Jaguar and I eat my insides up wishing I had one. The Jaguar belongs to my neighbor and I covet it. On the other hand, we belong to the Lord, and He jealously guards that relationship. Envy doesn’t enter into it.
3 ) One could also look at the “God is Love” verses, but to do so would require a discussion of what the meaning of the word “is” is, and I just don’t think I want to go there.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
God 101
I have on my laptop a couple of posts in process that I hope to complete over the next couple of days. However, last night I was reading through Psalms, one of my favorite and most familiar books of the Bible. I read Psalm 103 and it just sucked all the breath right out of me---as though I was reading it for the first time. I can't excerpt one or two phrases from it because it is a magnificent latticework of the attributes of God: justice, love, forgiveness, healing. Psalm 103 is almost like God 101. Run, don't walk, to your Bible and see if you agree.
Darfur III
Michael Ledeen has a post on Darfur worth reading on yesterday's NRO. I am going to quote it here not because I necessarily think it is correct, and not because I necessarily think it is a Christian response. I do believe that every Christian who prays about a solution to Darfur should have to consider and confront both the wisdom (as in serpents) and the innocence (as in doves) of Ledeen's opinion. It's a short post, here it is in full:
"On a hot sabbath, i am prompted to say that Darfur is a catastrophe that could and should be solved in an hour or so. The killers largely operate from helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft. We could destroy them all in an hour or so. But that would be "wrong," because it would violate the current hymnal.
"On a hot sabbath, i am prompted to say that Darfur is a catastrophe that could and should be solved in an hour or so. The killers largely operate from helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft. We could destroy them all in an hour or so. But that would be "wrong," because it would violate the current hymnal.
Go tell the victims. Explain why sanctions are better, because it makes the Western politicians feel pious. Even though black Africans are being slaughtered.
And while you're at it, tell the starving people of Zimbabwe why their killer and oppressor, Robert Mugabe, is left untouched by the entire outside world. Explain why St Nelson Mandela doesn't give a damn, while you're at it.
The Middle East is tough. These African horrors are relatively easy to fix. But nobody does a damn thing except talk about sanctions...and then largely fail to enact and/or enforce them.
When did Western leaders become vulgar Marxists? These evils do not have economic causes and are unlikely to be defeated by economic means (remember the Iraqi sanctions?). They have political causes and can be defeated by superior fire power."
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Violation of the Transitive Property?
God is love. - 1 John 4:8 or 4:16
In his description ennumerated in the last post Paul writes that we can do all of these great things but if we have not love we profit nothing. If love = God then if we don't have God we profit nothing? (I can see that, it sounds right, kind of like the author of Ecclesiastes) Maybe this is all moving in the wrong direction . . . but I'll keep going until someone tells me I need to stop. In Paul's description of love later in chapter 13 of 1st Corinthians he says
Love is patient (I dig a patient God)
Love is kind (Sweet!)
Love is not jealous (wait!)
Okay, that's where it gets me because all the rest of what he says seems to line up with my concept of God. God doesn't keep record of wrongs, He casts our sins into the sea of forgetfulness (Micah 7:18-19, Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:12), He isn't self seeking, he has no narcissistic streak, he asks to be worshipped because he knows that in our worshipping of him that we are transformed (Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we worship is what we are becoming.") . . . but Jealousy!
I've always been told that God is a jealous God, unless the jealousy that God has is because of his own righteousness involved, but tell me what you think.
God=love=not jealous, therefore God=not jealous?
In his description ennumerated in the last post Paul writes that we can do all of these great things but if we have not love we profit nothing. If love = God then if we don't have God we profit nothing? (I can see that, it sounds right, kind of like the author of Ecclesiastes) Maybe this is all moving in the wrong direction . . . but I'll keep going until someone tells me I need to stop. In Paul's description of love later in chapter 13 of 1st Corinthians he says
Love is patient (I dig a patient God)
Love is kind (Sweet!)
Love is not jealous (wait!)
Okay, that's where it gets me because all the rest of what he says seems to line up with my concept of God. God doesn't keep record of wrongs, He casts our sins into the sea of forgetfulness (Micah 7:18-19, Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:12), He isn't self seeking, he has no narcissistic streak, he asks to be worshipped because he knows that in our worshipping of him that we are transformed (Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we worship is what we are becoming.") . . . but Jealousy!
I've always been told that God is a jealous God, unless the jealousy that God has is because of his own righteousness involved, but tell me what you think.
God=love=not jealous, therefore God=not jealous?
Summer Lovin'
Every once in a while it's good to remind ourselves why we do the things we do, or why certain things are important to us. It's why we renew our vows, get baptized again, or sometimes why we sing worship songs. A few months back family groups at Wesley were given the topic of confession, repentence, and forgiveness to inquire with our groups about. Prior to the beginning of discussion I headed off to the prayer chapel. When I prayed about it I received a picture of an orange suspended from a branch.
To me the orange meant that we are to start our days with confession, repentence, and forgiveness. It helps us understand who we are, what God is like, and the joy of salvation. I believe it's true that we are in continual conversion to Christianity. I want to wake up each day and like starting it with a glass of orange juice start it with reorientation. The reorientation is around love, this is where I head into my question of the article.
The season for marriages has already kicked in as we (as a culture) seem to prefer spring and summer weddings. Many will read Paul's description of love from his first letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous . . .", I read over this whole passage slowly but it was the verses before it that really grabbed me,
This brings me to something that one of our readers commented on about wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We need both, if we were not wise we wouldn't get much accomplished but if we weren't innocent we would lose sight of why we were doing it in the first place.
To me the orange meant that we are to start our days with confession, repentence, and forgiveness. It helps us understand who we are, what God is like, and the joy of salvation. I believe it's true that we are in continual conversion to Christianity. I want to wake up each day and like starting it with a glass of orange juice start it with reorientation. The reorientation is around love, this is where I head into my question of the article.
The season for marriages has already kicked in as we (as a culture) seem to prefer spring and summer weddings. Many will read Paul's description of love from his first letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous . . .", I read over this whole passage slowly but it was the verses before it that really grabbed me,
And if I give all of my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. - 1 Corinthians 13:3You can give your body over to martyrdom but it doesn't mean anything if it wasn't generated by love it means nothing, it's not for our salvation. You can give all of your possessions to feed the poor but you can still not have love. To do good works seems to be independent of love. I suppose I always knew this but it really hit me reading that verse. You can do some amazing things but if you have not love it doesn't [profit you].
This brings me to something that one of our readers commented on about wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We need both, if we were not wise we wouldn't get much accomplished but if we weren't innocent we would lose sight of why we were doing it in the first place.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Darfur II
I mentioned earlier how impressed I was by the questions from the students at the FSU Wesley Foundation following the screening of the documentary Invisible Children. They were very probing questions about what the specifics were about what our government could do.
A similar train of thought is in an article by Nina Shea on today's National Review Online. She takes to task one of the most visible "save Darfur" organizations for, as I would put it, de-emphasizing the hard task of deriving practical solutions to make this stop. Just to be sure that Shea wasn't being unfair, I went to the main site of the Save Darfur Coalition. Indeed, it seems to be heavy on the "wear a wristband and tell our government to just do something" type approach, although President Bush's recent initiatives appear to be getting a fair amount of play.
Shea's point is that "genocides don't just happen." In this case, she claims that it is a fiction that the government of Sudan wants this to stop. So, the real policy issue is what incentives do we have to change the behavior of these very specific people? We faced this in Kosovo, and ended up with a military operation.
A similar train of thought is in an article by Nina Shea on today's National Review Online. She takes to task one of the most visible "save Darfur" organizations for, as I would put it, de-emphasizing the hard task of deriving practical solutions to make this stop. Just to be sure that Shea wasn't being unfair, I went to the main site of the Save Darfur Coalition. Indeed, it seems to be heavy on the "wear a wristband and tell our government to just do something" type approach, although President Bush's recent initiatives appear to be getting a fair amount of play.
Shea's point is that "genocides don't just happen." In this case, she claims that it is a fiction that the government of Sudan wants this to stop. So, the real policy issue is what incentives do we have to change the behavior of these very specific people? We faced this in Kosovo, and ended up with a military operation.
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