Embarking

6 or 7 years ago, Dan Reeves introduced me to something called the LifeJournal produced by Wayne Cordeiro at New Hope Church in Oahu.  Back then, I was part of a network of pastors in the Detroit, Columbus, Toledo, and Cleveland areas and Dan was doing some consulting with our network of RCA Churches.  It’s a simple little book that helps a person be more disciplined in their daily Bible reading.  Apparently, Wayne has used this with his whole church to much success.  We started using it for our daily devotional time, but also as a way to do some prayer and Scripture work together as a group whenever we would meet, seeking what God might be saying to us at that time.  We were literally, on the same page of scripture every day, and then when we came together, we had a chance to share what we heard as well as hear some interesting parallels with one another.

Here’s how it works.  If you’re familiar with a reading through the Bible in a year plan or a lectionary readings, you already know most of it.  Basically, Wayne has put together a Bible Reading plan for the year.  He then provides a little explanation of how, simply, to approach the text using the acronym S.O.A.P. – Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer (simplified Inductive Bible Study).  Wayne talks about looking that day for what the Holy Spirit has highlighted in the chapters for you that day, trying to see it, understand it, and apply it.  There is space to write down a scripture, and journal out your observation, application, and prayer.  There’s also a section to keep a prayer list.  That’s it.  Simple.

Sometimes I realize that all I really need is some simple organizational help to get me going on something I’m undisciplined about.  This is a great way to get into the Bible daily, create some accountability (if you do it with friends), and keep a record of what you see.

Since that time, I’ve moved on from my leather bound paper journal to an online version.  If you haven’t seen YouVersion produced by Craig Groeschel’s team at LifeChurch.tv, you have to check it out.  It’s an online (and mobile phone) app that gives you a ton of different translations, the ability to make notes – public or private – and to tag scriptures, etc.  It also has a bunch of Bible Reading plans that will help you track your progress.  They even have some built in accountability tools if you want to use them. They’ll email you, or a friend, to remind you of your reading.  You can also do online journaling as well as see how the passages have affected other people.  Be careful… this is an open application, so you have to listen to people’s interpretations and check them out.  Taking them at face-value could get you in trouble.  This kind of media is great for a lot of reasons, but it’s also great for spreading misinformation or misinterpretation.  (Of course, that happens in real life, face to face encounters just as well!)

One of the interesting things that Dr. Tim Keller said at the North American Network gathering for City to City was something like the following:

“The reason secularists are afraid of Christians is their belief that if we get in power, we will take everyone else’s freedoms away.”

I found this to be an interesting and enlightening comment.  I’m not sure the word “afraid” hits it quite right, but what Keller is getting at is that Christians are often not great “citizens” in the secular society because of our propensity towards creating a government which takes things away from people – rights, civil liberties, freedom of belief, etc.  I’m not sure this has happened in recent history in any way of significance, but the threat is certainly there from the Christian Right.  The sense that, if Christians would be placed into major political positions of power, we would use our power to estrange others of different beliefs is palpable in at least the rhetoric.  The interesting thing about this is that certainly, any political group lobbying for power hopes in someway to use that power to leverage their beliefs for their version of the good of the country.  I’m not so sure that Christians are all that different in this political sense than any other idealogical group.  However, my deeper question (and possibly Keller’s) is whether there is another way to approach cities, politics, and the social sphere in general from a Christian perspective or from Christian values and beliefs.

There are lots of questions wrapped in whether and how Christians should be involved in politics.  And historically, there are any number of ways in which Christians have approached the public realm, from ruling and reigning to fomenting revolution to isolation.  Today, Christians can be found on the left, on the right, in the middle, and on the outskirts.   What I appreciated, though, about Keller’s comments was that it is disturbing that our neighbors and fellow citizens would be worried about persecution and oppression under a Christian lead government.  That’s enlightening when we think about it deeply.  I realized that I’m afraid of many of the Christians I know getting into the political realm for the same reasons.  So, Keller asks, why don’t our neighbors think we love them?  Why don’t people in the city think we love their city?  If we are truly loving our neighbors as ourselves and seeking the welfare of the city (and country), why would that be threatening?  Is it the confusion in their hearts and minds, or is it in something we have done? (my bias is that it’s something we are responsible for more than anything… cf. the wonderful book UnChristian by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman).

I’ve been reading the book To Change the World by James Davison Hunter, which is a fascinating book on culture, history, power, Christianity, and change.  In that book, I think it’s chapter 5, Hunter shares some history of the relationship between Christians and political movements.  One of his arguments (to be really simplistic) is that when the cultural elites are truly converted and lead with humanity in mind through true care for the poor, estranged, and powerless that Christianity has been the most effective in cultural change.  Though I haven’t heard enough on Keller, I think this is where he’s pointing.  How do you impact the cultures of power and ideas while maintaining a heart for true justice and care for all humanity?

Jesus said this in his inauguration into ministry in Luke 4, quoting from the Isaiah 61 vision:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

One of the questions here is how this message and mission of Jesus – the good news – is being missed by our culture when Christians try to enter into the public realm?

I think Keller’s right.  We don’t know how to enter the public discourse, and often aren’t allowed into the public discourse as Christians because of our reputation.  We do need a new apologetic that arises out of the message and mission of Jesus for a new humanity, rooted in love and redeemed by love, for all people.

Again, we return to love, the gospel of love, the message of love, the heart of love, the approach of love, the words of love, the power of love, the conviction of love, the character of love, the way forward through love.  Love.  Jesus.  Simple.

What would a politics or public discourse of love look like, feel like, and sound like?  What if the world looked to Christians and said instead, “We would love to have you at the table because we know if you were in power, more people would experience the true freedom that love brings.”

Buy		Read

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a Max Lucado book.  Lucado’s new book, Fearless, is a book about the fears that are so prevalent in our lives and how they affect us.  Lucado takes these fears on head on and matches fear with courage, and fright with faith, with heavy doses of mercy, grace, and generous love.  It’s an uplifting book that en-courages by giving you a dose of an alternative, biblical reality of a God in control.

What I like about Lucado is his ability to use Scripture, prayer, stories, examples, and easy to read, engaging and creative writing.  In this book, Lucado looks past fear and into the heart of the pain behind and inflicted by so many of our fears.  He is engaging in stories and metaphors, and then is a straight shooter with the clarity of biblical truth.

The promise of Christ and the contention of this book are simple: we can fear less tomorrow than we do today. [p. 13]

Destructive anxiety subtracts God from the future, faces uncertainties with no faith, tallies up the challenges of the day without entering God into the equation. [p. 46]

The Expanded Bible

I recently got a copy of The Expanded Bible, New Testament, published by Thomas Nelson. It’s text is a modified New Century Version, and the “contributing scholars” are Tremper Longman III, Mark L. Strauss, and Daniel Taylor. I’m new to Strauss, but I’ve appreciated Longman’s writings and thoughts as a biblical scholar for a long time. I first learned about him through Dan Allender (who happens to be a promoter on the dust jacket). Taylor, as far as I’ve known, is more of a writer than a biblical scholar, but has always worked with biblical material, is contibuting editor to Books & Culture, etc. I had my introduction to Taylor at the Calvin Faith & Writing Conference years ago.

In any case, this is a very interesting resource, and I’ve already found it quite useful. What these writers/ scholars have done is take the New Century Version and then expanded it within the text to include alternative translations for words or phrases, literal translations of the words, the traditional translation (read KJV), comments, references and textual variants. Rather than have some of these within the footnotes, or expanded explanations (as in a Study Bible), these are included within the text. Doing this allows the reader to see the translation decisions that need to be made, or the possible other meanings, textures of the text, etc. It also allows the reader to see both the formal equivalence possibilities (favoring a more literal translation) and functional equivalence models (favoring words that convey meaning rather than being literal) – choices which most translations make and you never see.

What I appreciate about the Expanded Bible is the ability to really see what’s going on a little better without a) having to go to multiple translations or b) having to go back to the original language. Particularly for those who do not have training in Greek or haven’t studied the textual variants or semantic range of words or idiomatic renderings, this can be a great help for Bible Study or teacher preparation.

One thing that may be lacking here is a more helpful explanation of textual variants as well as translation in general. There is a good, short explanation of the difference between a formal and functional model, but more information in the introduction could help those who pick this up and haven’t been introduced to the issues. What I find in most churches is a relative lack of knowledge about how the bible has been contructed, about additional manuscripts, scribal errors, the decision-making process of most translators (older, harder reading, etc.)

However, overall, I think this is a great addition to or prequel to a Study Bible. It allows you to get into the text with more texture without getting into someone else’s decisions about what the correct reading is, or someone else’s interpretation. With any translation, many decisions have been made. With a study bible, there is lots of commentary on interpretation.

I would not probably use this Bible as a normal “reading” bible. I would find all the symbols and extra information distracting, but in the right uses, it can be really helpful. I think an Old Testament Version would be great.

What was the role and place of the temple in ancient society?  In many ways it served as the center point for Israel’s life and worship.  It was the place in which God took up residence, and the place out of which God’s glory spilled into the lives of his people so that the surrounding cultures would see and recognize him as the one true God.  It was also the “holy place,” undefiled and the place of true purity.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

So, given that, some questions to ponder as we apply the metaphor of the original temple to our own lives/ bodies that probably are helpful  if we think at all about how to enter more deeply into our relationship with God:

1. The temple had something called the “most holy place”.  This was the holy of holies and was considered the dwelling place of God.  Where is the most holy place in your temple?  Where do you go to meet with God face to face?
2. Outside the holy of holies was the holy place, and before that the vestibule, porch or entrance, and before that the court of the priests with the brazen sea and the altar of the burnt offering.  Priests went through purification rights before entering and had different types of worship (sacrifices, offerings, washing, etc.) at different stages.  What are the steps you need to go through to enter through to meet God face to face in the holy of holies?  Is there preparatory work you do before meeting with God?  
3. Outside the temple proper and the inner court of the priests was the great court surrounding the whole temple from where the people worshipped.  This was the place of public worship and gathering with God’s people in unison and in community worship.  Do you have a place where you gather with the community to worship the God who resides within the most holy place?  How does what happens in the holy of holies impact what happens in the public place?  How does what happens in the public space of worship impact what happens in the holy of holies?
4. Outside the public worship place was the place where the surrounding cultures existed.  These surrounding cultures and people would come into the worship of the people of God as observers as well as participants.  The temple worship affected surrounding cultures and peoples, and surrounding peoples and cultures affected temple worship.  What does “being the temple” imply our role in the surrounding culture is?  How is God’s glory shown from the holy of holies out to the public places and into the surrounding cultures of your life?  What impact is your temple worship having on the surrounding culture, and what impact is the surrounding culture having your worship?

After you’ve reflected a bit on this, don’t miss that in the past, God resided in temple and the surrounding peopels would come to him.  People don’t “go to the temple” now to meet God.  Instead, God came to us to bring the temple to the people, to the world.  If your body/ life is the temple of the Holy Spirit, what does that really mean?

Bending down
He touched and gathered dust
Molded in between careful fingers
And shaped slowly, carefully.

An artist’s sight
Captures what cannot be seen
And only imagines
What could be.

Dust dirt water.
Mud clay lump.
Press smear pinch.
Stop smile breath.

Dust filled with divine exhale
Filled by breath full of life
Now breaths and bursts alive
Eyes open and everything is new.

The One bending down
Releases His living poetry
Now straightening his new body
To walk, stand, run, and skip.

Exalted from dust to life
Raised just below heaven
Kings of the earth
Crowned with glory.

From dust to angels.

I went to see Brian McLaren tonight with a friend at Baker Book House in Grand Rapids.  He was on a book tour for his new book in Phyllis Tickle’s series on Ancient Spiritual Practices called Finding our Way Again.  He didn’t talk a whole lot about the book, but instead talked for a bit about his last three books (The Secret Message of Jesus, Everything Must Change, and this new one) and the kernels of thought and heart that have produced them.  You can tell that McLaren is passionate about change in the world in which we live more in line with the Kingdom of God.  It’s always great to hear McLaren, not because he’s super-inspiration or charasmatic, but because he opens up the Scriptures often in a new way and his questions are challenging.  I also am particularly fond of his almost fearless (now) prophetic words towards the secular culture and towards the church, particularly the evangelical church.  He answered the typical questions I figured he’d get like “What do I say to my conservative friends who don’t like you or think your dangerous” and “what do you really think of hell and the afterlife.”  The second one, he really danced around and I wasn’t fully satisfied with, but he consistently went back to his reading of Scripture through the lens of the inbreaking Kingdom of God in peace, love, generosity, and goodness.  Here are a couple highlights for me (paraphrases):

“The evangelical church is not meant to be a chaplaincy to secular capitalistic consumerism.”

“If you read the passages of the bible literally about some things, you have to read it literally about others.”  His example here was the story of the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, in which he says, “If you read this passage literally, it seems like the way to get to hell is by being prosperous, and the way to get to heaven is to be a poor beggar with nothing.”

McLaren also talked about what the Gospel is and how it relates to things like penal substitutionary atonement and he also responded to Driscoll’s comments (although Driscoll was unnamed) attacking McLaren – the jist being that McLaren’s Jesus is too soft and sissy, and Driscoll’s Jesus who appears again in on a war-path of violence against his enemies.  McLaren was excellent on this point and gracious to his detractors as always.  I’m not going to sum it up except to say that McLaren is thinking about writing a book that responds to the misunderstandings of his critics.  On this note he talked about exclusivism, inclusivism, and universalism in terms of salvation – and I think I’ll try to post on that next.

Overall it was an uneventful but stimulating discussion as always.  McLaren speaks today at Mars Hill, in case you’re interested. 

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the third installment.

Embarking:  As I was reading through chapter 16, What if I Sin in Heaven, I was struck by a fairly new thought.  You talk a lot about how pain and struggle builds patience and helps us to be formed into the people God desires.  For instance, you say, “… if God took away all the bad things in this world, then he would also be taking away some really good things, like forgiveness and courage.”  The trigger for me was when you answer Bailey’s question about why God doesn’t just stop all this pain right now, you say, “Well, I think it’s because he wants to make us better.”  Ok, this is going to sound really strange, but is it possible – and I know this sounds heretical – that God intended, or even desired (ooh that sounds bad) sin because it allowed for things – like forgiveness and courage and redemption – that would simply not exist without something to overcome?  I once watched RC Sproul and his son argue about the locus of the origin of evil, and they put it in different places… but both of them ultimately put the responsibility for evil on God – even if it was in calculating (or foreknowing as you’ve stated) that evil would be a response to his creation.  In an American court, that would at least make God liable.  Was sin and evil a part of God’s plan – for certainly he wasn’t surprised by it, given his foreknowledge?  If so, then how does that affect our understanding of God, if at all?  This was heightened for me when you said, “Even the God-man was perfected through suffering.”  In some ways, God’s glory seems dependent (ooh, that doesn’t sound good, either) upon overcoming sin and evil, and by doing so becomes more glorious than if sin and evil didn’t exist.

SPIEGEL:  These are big and difficult questions, and for my full and nuanced treatment of the problem of evil I recommend readers to chapter six of my book The Benefits of Providence.  There I develop and defend the “soul-making” theodicy which says that God’s purpose in evil and suffering is to make us more mature disciples of Christ.  (For biblical grounds for this, see James 1:2-4 and 1 Peter 1:5-7, among many other passages.)  As for God’s sovereignty over evil, I don’t think it can put any more bluntly than it is articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which asserts that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass.  And why does he ordain what he ordains?  To bring glory to himself.  That says it all, I think.  And while it is a difficult teaching to accept, I think it is biblical.

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the fouth installment.

Embarking:  You seem to walk on some potentially dangerous territory with some evangelicals when you say, “…if fetuses and infants can be saved, then belief in Jesus Christ must not be necessary for salvation.  So whatever must be necessary for saving faith, it can’t be belief in Jesus.” [p. 198]  “One lesson here is that we must reject the narrow concept of explicit faith as necessary for salvation.”  [p. 199] And then again when you open up salvation to those who have an implicit faith limited by the amount or type of information or understanding they receive this side of heaven.  If I were CS Lewis, I would tend to agree with you, since he opens up salvation to a post-death experience in his Great Divorce (although admittedly, almost no one survives the trip to heaven from hell and goes further up and further in).  Most people would at least say that faith in the God of Abraham is the same as faith in Jesus, but in those cases, Moses, Abraham, David, and Elijah all knew Yahweh – who even then was the same Trinitarian God.  Can you make any type of biblical case for salvation outside of faith in the Trinitarian God – whether people encounter Christ or not?  A couple things come to mind: 

1. We are post Jesus, so we’re in a different situation than the OT people.  
2.  Would Paul open salvation to those he talks about in Romans 1, but who never encounter Christ?  
3. On what grounds can we possibly open up salvation for those who have not heard the gospel?

SPIEGEL:  I addressed this in my response to one of Roger Overton’s questions on the A-Team blog last Friday.  To answer your specific questions, in reverse order: 3) my main basis for believeing God can save some who haven’t heard the gospel is consistency with the fact that infants (who die) and O.T. saints never heard the gospel but they (or many of them) are saved, which shows in principle that hearing the gospel (or having explicit beliefs about Jesus Christ) is not a necessary condition for salvation; 2) yes, I think Paul would allow for this-see my comments on the A-Team blog for my reply to the counter-argument from Romans 10:14-17; and 1) to say that our temporal location, relative to the life of Jesus, changes the criterion for salvation is arbitrary and groundless.  This is one reason why one may not hear the gospel.  Note that it is temporal in nature (applying to those who lived prior to Christ coming to earth).  Another is spatial (applying to those who don’t hear the gospel because of their geographical location-that is, they happen to live in places where the gospel has not been preached).  Now if God can show mercy to some who are temporally removed from the gospel (as we must believe from Scripture), then why can’t he also show mercy to some who are spatially removed?  To say that one is decisive while the other is not seems utterly arbitrary, particularly since Scripture makes clear that God transcends both time and space.

On his blog, Peter Enns has been sharing portions of a paper he delivered to the faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary in response to his book, Incarnation and Inspiration that got him into trouble and now into suspension.  In a recent post on the authority and cultural expressions of Scripture, first speaks of the mixing of Jesus divinity and humanity in his person.  Enns says that these are “essential” to who Jesus is, and that the combination is important.  I would be wrong to try to pit the humanity against the divinity or to raise one above the other.  Interesting, I was just relistening to a podcast recently by Seattle’s Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Seattle  entitled “The Supremacy of Christ and the Church in a Postmodern World.”  Driscoll was making a similar argument, accusing the Emergents of raising the immanence and incarnation of Jesus too high and accusing the New Reformers of raising the transcendence and exalted Jesus too much.  In any case, Enns argues that the authority of Scripture comes from its divine origin, in other words – in God’s words, but that it is encased unescapably in humanity, or cultural expression.  Here is a short passage from his post:

What I argue in I&I is that Scripture works in an analogous (not identical) way. Scripture is God’s word because it is of divine origin. That is the locus of authority, and no discussion of its humanity in any way compromises that authority. What a study of Scripture’s humanity does do is help us see the manner in which the divine author speaks authoritatively into particular ancient cultures. How this authoritative Scripture translates to different times and places, in both its timeless affirmations and contextualized particularity is (I trust this is not too reductionistic) the task of theological study. It is my firm experience, however, that evangelical lay readers, those to whom the book is addressed, are not accustomed to understanding the nature of Scripture this way.

This is one of the issues that I find so fascinating about how we understand Scripture, and one that I’ve mentioned in various ways here on my blog.  One of the ways it has been raised among some like myself is how much we can “purge” the human side, the cultural side, and get to pure propositional truths.  Again, don’t read what I’m not saying, and from what I’m reading of Enns, he’s not saying either but being accused of.  I’m not saying there isn’t truth, or objective truth for that matter or that God’s truth isn’t propositional in any way.  What I am saying is that our access too it is always enculturated, always incarnated, always spoken through word and cultural and interpretation from God into human cultures and persons.  God communicates, he doesn’t philosophize.  God relates, speaks, and loves rather than providing pure platonic visions of himself.  God is God, “I am who I am” and not philosophical categories and platonic idealism or Kantian pure reason.  God is interactional and in his divine goodness has chosen to speak, act, and even come incarnationally.

God is still who he is.  He is still the King and the authority.  What he says goes.  What he wants, will be.  There is no other name under haven by which we can be saved.  But let us be careful not to turn scripture – or God for that matter – into pure philosophical Kantian metaphysics.  We need to find a way to accept the way God has communicated with us – not through theological treatise, but through narrative of his relationship with his people – and then figure out how it speaks to us today, and what God really intends and who he is.  That’s much harder work than black and white propositions, I know, but that’s the work.  Driscoll is right (although I don’t like saying that) that we need to balance the transcendent and immanent God as he is.