The Necessity of a Critical and Relevant Faith

Here's another excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is part of the introductory chapter. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. A Kindle version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

The book is written for group discussion.

If a relevant and progressive Christianity is to survive and bear witness of God’s love to the world, the adherents to such a faith, those who seek to follow Jesus, must embrace a critical approach to the Christian faith.  Critically thinking about the faith is not equivalent to criticizing the faith, as some may think, although that may be part of critical thinking.  Rather, thinking critically about the faith is to continue to ask questions, to inquire about the history of the faith, its present relevancy, and its future hopes.  It is also to admit its flaws and weaknesses with honesty and transparency.

For this to happen with any degree of success, any question about the Bible, theology, and the practice of faith must be taken as a valid question.   In dealing with the mysteries of God, we should never be completely satisfied with the idea that if the Bible says it, then that settles it. Nor should any of us be entrenched in our own interpretations of scripture.  We should always be open to new ways of thinking about the Bible and theology, for to do so leads us toward the truth and the realization that, in the words of Jesus, the truth will set us free. 

         

I have no doubt that many readers of this book will quickly identify with what I have to say. At the same time, I have no doubt that just as many others will find what I have written to be difficult to accept, and they may even reject these ideas outright. I am not so bold as to think I have figured it all out. However, I would like to offer my own story that has led me to many of the ideas I am arguing in this book.

         

Readers of this book will find out rather quickly that I am a person who seeks always to ask serious questions about faith.  I don’t ask these questions to be provocative, and I am not simply playing the “Devil’s Advocate”.  I am also not seeking to create a straw man that I can easily attack.  I am asking such questions with a great deal of honesty about my own interpretation of the Christian faith that has evolved over many years.  There are specific reasons why I asked such critical questions, and why I encourage others to ask challenging questions.

         

One reason for my determination to raise critical questions about faith, and why I encourage others to do so, is that I grew up in a fundamentalist tradition in which queries about the Bible and faith were not appreciated.  This was particularly true when one tried to ask questions about the inconsistencies found in the Bible, or when one tried desperately to harmonize a belief in a good God with the reality of suffering.  As a teenager, I was told that such questions are not important, and even heretical to ask; only knowing Jesus and believing in him were necessary.  I was satisfied with this answer until a later time when I began to discover the intellectual obstacles one encounters when approaching the Bible for definitive answers.  It was then that I returned to ask those serious questions, which opened more questions, and which eventually led to evolutionary, and indeed revolutionary changes in the way I view the Bible and the Christian faith. I can say with all honesty that this shift in my thinking did not come easy and it took time. In fact, I fought this for some time until I realized that venturing into unchartered waters, at least uncharted for me, led me to a deeper and more satisfying faith.

         

A second motive for my critical look at the Bible and Christian faith is that I have perceived an insufficient education in our faith and in the Bible on which our faith is based, particularly in churches.  By this I don’t mean that churches are doing a poor job at doing Christian education.  Many churches are doing a fantastic job at providing training in the faith to their members.  But there may be a bit of shallowness to the education we provide, in the sense that we are not always struggling with tough questions. There is no doubt that asking tough questions may lead us down paths that we dare not want to travel, but such questioning may be necessary if we are to make our faith our own.

         

This deficiency in the kind of Christian education that promotes critical thinking has led not only to biblical illiteracy, but more tragically, to ignorance when it comes to biblical interpretation and theological thinking.  Many Bible study groups do not seriously consider the complexities inherent in reading ancient texts.  Rather they focus only on what these texts say to us as individuals, as if the books of the Bible were written with our needs in mind.  Furthermore, churches are not providing tools to help folks think theologically.  Instead, theology becomes a separate box of propositions we always believe, without critically assessing their value for our context.    

         

Of course, much of the fault lies with those who print such materials for church groups.  Some materials produced for the purpose of Christian education are often so insipid and limitedly focused that they only serve to heighten our emotional experiences without moving us into a deeper and more thoughtful understanding of God and humanity. While finding personal meaning from the Bible and from our faith is vitally important for Christians, it is secondary to and flows from delving deeply into the text of the Bible to discover something outside ourselves and our own narcissistic needs.  The popular idea that God wrote the Bible for me needs to be stamped out.

           

Failure to do so will only lead us to assume what the Bible says, or will cause us to make the Bible say what we want it to say without giving careful thought and attention to the text itself.  Moreover, such Bible readings will limit our understanding of our faith to simply a personal spiritual experience.

Reclaiming Jesus

Here's another excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is part of the chapter Reclaiming Jesus. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. A Kindle version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

The book is written for group discussion.

As the subtitle of a book puts it, many Christians view themselves as God-blessed, but never consider the fact that we are Christ-haunted.[1] We gather in worship of God, offering praise for God’s love for us and God’s blessings on us, but we often fail to heed Jesus’ command to discipleship and radical living.  From our places of blessing, we like to point our pious fingers at those outside, and even some inside the church and condemn them for their sins, while at the same time holding onto an understanding of God that is so far away from Jesus’ life and teachings.  In this way we create a God in our own image, in our own likeness, one that we can manage and one that is worshiped at churches where, as one of my kids puts it, “you can get an easy “A”.

         

But this is not what it means to be a follower of the Jesus of the Gospels.  Yes, following Jesus is liberating, but it is demanding, it is costly.  Yet, the demands are too much for most of us, and we prefer a different Jesus who marches to the beat of our drum.  But this is not the real Jesus, the biblical Jesus.  For the real Jesus offends us.

         

When I was working on my Ph.D. in Edinburgh, Scotland, I would often take breaks from my writing and roam Auld Reekie, as Edinburgh is affectionately known.  One of my favorite places of respite from the grind of writing a dissertation was the National Gallery of Scotland.  There I could view in peace the creative works from the great artists of history.  It was there that I discovered one of my favorite paintings; one which I had only known from books.  That painting is El Greco’s Savior of the World.

         

For me El Greco’s painting captures the essence of Jesus.  Although El Greco painted a Jesus who looks more like one of El Greco’s contemporary Europeans than a Jew living in first century Palestine, once you get past this historical flaw, you begin to appreciate what the artist has done.  As I would sit there viewing this work, the face of the subject always drew me to himself.  El Greco’s Jesus is inviting, compassionate, and loving. 

         

Yet, as I would sit for periods of time staring into the warm and compassionate face of the painted Savior, I would begin to see something else.  Those same inviting and loving eyes became piercing and condemning.  That once warm face now became offensive to me as if he was looking deep into my soul and witnessing the worst of human sin.

         

In Mark 6, Jesus, Nazareth’s own hometown boy, returns home to preach to those who knew him as a child.  You can imagine the anticipation they felt for what he might say as he preached his first sermon in his home synagogue.  Yet, although Mark does not tell us the words that Jesus spoke, he does tell us that those who heard him “took offense at him” (Mark 6:3).  Taken literally, they were scandalized by what he said.  Why?

         

Perhaps they assumed that their hometown boy would make them proud by affirming their righteousness, their place as God’s elect people, and their pious religious observances.  Perhaps they assumed that Jesus would side with them against their enemies, preach stirring sermons convicting others of their sins and pointing to his own people as examples of what it means to live holy lives.  Perhaps Jesus would tell them how God-blessed they really were.  Whatever Jesus said in the synagogue on that day convinced the Nazarenes that the returning hometown boy was not the Jesus they wanted.  Instead he was the Jesus they got; and they were offended.

We can look at this story and scornfully judge these people and others who reject Jesus, shaming them for not embracing the person and words of Jesus.  But are we not just looking into the mirror at our own faces?  Was not their problem with Jesus the same as our problem with Jesus?  We embrace the Jesus we want, but we quickly reject the Jesus we get; the real Jesus who offends us.

         

The Jesus we want is our friend.  He is our ally in the face of our enemies.  This Jesus is always on our side, answering our prayers and blessing us.  This Jesus tells us what we want to hear, makes us comfortable, and looks pleasingly at our self-righteousness.   This Jesus is the one who applauds our hate speech and intolerance of others, who approves of our use of violence and war against our enemies, and who promises us that our capitalistic pursuits will bring us prosperity.

         

The Jesus we want is created in our own minds and answers to our demands.  He permits us to wage unjust violence against our enemies in the name of national security.  He allows us to hoard money and possessions in the name of financial security.  He consents to our prejudices against people of other races, genders, religions and sexual orientations in the name of cultural security.  Yes, this is the Jesus we prefer.  He is the Jesus we can accept and worship.

         

But this is not the real Jesus.  The real Jesus is the one who calls us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies, to sell all we have and give to the poor, and to take up the cross and follow him.  This is the Jesus who calls us to reach out to others and cross the boundaries of race, religion, culture, gender, and sexual orientation.  This is the Jesus that dined with tax collectors, beggars, diseased, and various persons of questionable social standing.  This is the Jesus who compels us to repent of our insular lives and to commit ourselves to work for justice, peace, and hope in our world.  This is the Jesus who calls us to rethink our theological assertions and to open ourselves to being moved by his Spirit.  And this is the Jesus, who being so offensive and so scandalous to his contemporaries, that he was crucified on the most offensive and scandalous instruments of Roman power-the cross.  Yes, this is the radical Jesus, the scandalous Jesus, and the offensive Jesus; but he is the real Jesus, the biblical Jesus, and the Jesus who calls us out of sin into the salvation of radical discipleship. This is the Jesus we must reclaim.

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[1]
          David Dark, The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea, Westminster / John Knox / 2005

Jesus’ Miracles in Mark and God’s Compassion and Comfort

In a previous post, I discussed how Jesus’ miracles in the Gospel of Mark function to demonstrate God’s numinous presence, as people who witnessed his miracles act in awe, wonder, and fear. These reactions demonstrate Mark’s presentation of Jesus as the one sent by God to act for God. If we look further at Jesus’ miracles in Mark, we also see that they function to bring God’s compassion and comfort to those Jesus heals. In this way, Mark presents Jesus as taking on the role of God.

At various points in the narrative the Markan Jesus is said to have compassion on the plight of people in need, or is asked by those in need to have compassion (1:41; 6:34; 8:2; 9:22). This compassion compels him to act to alleviate their situations. Yet we need not limit our recognition of this fact only to the use of the Greek word splagchnizomai translated as compassion. This is particularly true if we understand Mark’s narrative in light of Isaiah. 

Mark 1:2-3 comprises a mixture of quotations from the Old Testament, which are attributed by the author to Isaiah, but come from Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1, and Isaiah 40:3. Why does Mark attribute all of these to Isaiah? Some Markan scholars have argued that Mark’s attribution of the conflation of Old Testament texts in 1:2-3 to Isaiah the prophet might show the author’s intention of narrating his story in light of the New Exodus motif of Isaiah. 

By doing this, Mark sets his story within the framework of the New Exodus theme of Yahweh’s hope and victory found in Isaiah 40-55. Part of this hope and victory comes in the comforting of God’s people. 

Indeed the first verse of Isaiah 40 reads, “Comfort (parakaleite), O comfort my people, says your God.” This is a command that God’s people be comforted. Moreover, Isaiah 40:1-11 seems to serve as somewhat of an opening for Isaiah 40-66, in which the theme of God’s consolation and comfort are found throughout. Isaiah 40:1-11 is an expression of the hope of God’s comfort and salvation.

Given this understanding of Isaiah 40, and its use in Mark to set the tone of his Gospel as narrating the eschatological victory of God in bringing salvation, I would propose that the miracles performed by Jesus in Mark’s narrative may be viewed within the framework of God’s promised comfort for God’s people. Jesus acts for God in answering God’s call to bring comfort. This point is strengthened when we consider two other significant factors. 

First, since Jesus is presented in 1:14-15 as the one who proclaims the gospel of God, we might interpret his miracles as actions which visibly proclaim that gospel; the miracles function as acted parables. Again, we can hear the echo of Isaiah 40:9. There the herald of good tidings, the one who brings good news, is commanded to proclaim, “See your God.” 

In the prologue to the Gospel, Mark portrays the in-breaking of God into the narrative through the tearing of the heavens and the coming of the Spirit (1:10), and through the way Jesus is presented as the one who proclaims that the dynamic rule of God is at hand, and he calls on all to believe in the gospel of God (1:14-15). Against the background of Isaiah 40, then, Jesus is the one who not only proclaims the coming of God, but also acts for God in the bringing of comfort to God’s people.

Further substantiating this idea is the recognition that in Isaiah 40:11 God speaks of coming to God’s people as a shepherd to feed them. This may shed light on Jesus’ feeding miracles in 6:34-44 and 8:1-10. In both scenes Jesus is said to have compassion (6:34; 8:2) on the crowd, and in 6:34 his compassion is because they are as sheep without a shepherd to feed them. Thus in the miracle of feeding the people, Jesus takes on the role of God as shepherd of the people, bringing comfort to God’s people. 

Jesus’ miracles serve to demonstrate that God was fulfilling God’s promise of comfort for hurting people. Thus, Jesus’ acts of compassion are within the context of God’s promises to bring compassion. 

How are we following Jesus by bringing God’s comfort and compassion to the hurting in our world?

Reclaiming the Churh's Mission (2)

Here's another excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is part of the chapter on the church. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. A Kindle version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

Following the Crucified Jesus

One of the dominant themes in the Gospel of Mark is the journey that Jesus and his disciples travel. Often, this wandering band is pictured on the road moving toward, as we discover through reading the story, Jerusalem, the holy city of David. As the narrative of Mark moves forward, however, Jerusalem begins to come into clear view, and Jesus begins to point this out to them.

Most likely those who followed Jesus knew they were headed to Jerusalem; what faithful Jew would not know the direction to Jerusalem? So Jesus’ acknowledgement that they are headed to Jerusalem seems out of place, unless the mention of the direction in which they are headed is intended to mean something. Why does Jesus state specifically that they are headed for Jerusalem? For what purpose did the disciples think they were headed for Jerusalem? Did their understanding of trip to Jerusalem match that of Jesus?

Perhaps they thought that when they reached Jerusalem, Jesus would take his rightful place as King of Israel and overthrow the Romans. Perhaps they followed Jesus, hoping that they would be participants in this rule of Jesus in David’s city. Most likely they believed that Jesus’ purpose in continuing on the road to Jerusalem was so that he would be made king and, consequently, they would share in that kingly power.

This expectation is seen most clearly in the request two of Jesus’ disciples make as their band moves even closer to Jerusalem. The brothers, James and John, come to Jesus with the bold request, “Grant us to sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). These disciples seem to understand that following Jesus leads to glory, but they fail to understand that there is no glory apart from the cross that looms in Jerusalem. In Mark’s story, Jesus had spoken to them two other times before this exchange about what would happen in Jerusalem; he would be arrested, beaten and killed. But somehow they failed to hear, or perhaps, refused to hear his words. Instead they continued to see the movement toward Jerusalem as a move toward power and glory and not one that would lead to suffering and death.

The specifics of the request made by the brothers should not be missed. James and John were seeking seats of authority by requesting places on the right and left of Jesus. Jesus affirms that there are such seats, but that they are reserved for whom they have been prepared by God. But the only other place in Mark where people are said to be on the right and left of Jesus is in the crucifixion scene of 15:32-52, where someone is crucified on his right and someone else is crucified on his left. Moreover, just before we read of these two other crucified victims on either side of Jesus, we are told of the inscription that read, “King of the Jews.”

What all of this says to us is that the kingly glory of Jesus in Mark’s narrative is found in his death on the cross, and those who are at the right and left of Jesus in glory are those who take their places on the right and left of Jesus in crucifixion. For Jesus, glory comes not in the heavens, but in the cross.

This overturns our own ideas of greatness and power. Greatness does not come in worldly thrones, but in the throne of a cross. Power does not come by ruling over people, but by serving others. In opposition to the disciples, Jesus was living out true greatness and power by going down the road to Jerusalem that led to the cross.

When I was getting ready to preach one Sunday morning, I sat on one of the front pews in the church. At the end of the pew there was a stack of music books. As we stood to sing, I happened to glance at the title of the books, which read, “Easy Gospel Arrangements.” We often are like James and John in that we want easy gospel arrangements. Certainly the gospel is freely offered to all, but it is not cheap in its demands. The real gospel of the real Jesus calls us to give up ourselves in self-sacrificial service to God and others by taking up the cross and following Jesus. Only in doing this can we reclaim the church’s place and mission.