One of the beliefs shared by the great religions of the world is the importance of sacred time and space. Throughout the Hebrew tradition, sacred days and seasons recalled and celebrated what God had done in Israel’s life. Of prime importance was the celebration of the Passover and the Day of Atonement. For the earliest Christians, the first day of the week was a reminder and celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.
Likewise, there are certain places that are considered sacred. Isaiah’s vision of God took place in the temple, the sacred space for the Jews. But geographical locations were also important. Mountains and deserts often served as places where God appeared to people in the biblical narratives. Thus, both sacred time and space are vital to authentic worship and can function to draw us into the experience of God.
One aspect of sacred time is the holy seasons that have always been significant to the worship of the church. While our daily calendars structure our time of work, play, etc., the Christian calendar structures the year of worship. The seasons of the church such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost create a sense of sacred order and serve to move us to the center of our faith; the work of God in the incarnation of Christ.
Furthermore, celebrating sacred seasons in worship connects us to the eternal church throughout the world. When we celebrate the sacred seasons we are participating in the eternal and universal language of the gospel that crosses the boundaries of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and culture. Yet, these sacred times are not merely celebratory reflections on the past; more importantly they shape our symbolic world in the present, revealing to us the reality of God for our own lives and the hope we and the creation have in God’s good future.
We can even speak of the specific day of worship as sacred. Christians have designated Sunday as the Lord’s Day, the day set aside for the church’s worship of God. While there is no prescription as to the specific time on Sunday that corporate worship should take place, it is important to understand that whatever hour is set for community worship there ought to be clear demarcations that separate sacred time from secular time. Periods of communal worship should open by calling the people to the sacred time of worship, thereby designating the reason the church gathers.
The value of sacred time also necessitates a sacred order to the worship service. Worship that incorporates singing songs of praise, praying prayers of confession, celebration, and intercession, reading Scripture, confessing our faith as a community, passing the peace of Christ to others, sharing the Lord’s Supper, and hearing the proclamation of the word creates a sacred rhythm to the communal worship experience. This kind of worship values the importance of the theological drama of the gospel and functions to move the people of God to leave the sacred time of communal worship and to go and live out their faith in the secular time of the world.
Sacred space is also essential for worship. While the experience of God can occur anyplace, the sacred space of a church sanctuary can create an atmosphere that invites us to worship God. Sacred space would include the design of the structure itself; however, the use of specific objects in worship is also important to authentic worship.
Symbols such as the cross, and fixtures such as the pulpit, the Lord’s Table, and the baptismal fount or pool function to remind us of the foundations of our faith: the word of God, the sacrifice of Christ, and the renewal of the Spirit. While these objects should never be the recipients of our worship, they can and do serve as focal images that point to what God has done for us in Christ.
In efforts to be relevant, however, some churches have lost a sense of sacred time and space. These movements argue that the use of sacred time and space is outdated and does not create an atmosphere of spontaneity in worship. In some of these churches, traditional sacred seasons have been pushed aside for more topical themes and the sacred rhythm of worship has been replaced by appeals to emotionalism. Moreover, church sanctuaries have taken on a more contemporary decor in which the front of the church looks more like a concert stage than a sacred place.
But in an attempt to be relevant to our culture, these approaches to worship have dismissed the historical and theological importance of sacred time and space for worship. Much more than relevant to worship, sacred space and time can create worship experiences that draw us out of our egocentrism and invite us into the authentic worship of God.
Among the 6th century Celtic Christians of Ireland and Scotland the importance of sacred space and time were given the designation “thin places”. Thin places are places or times in which the barrier between the material world and the world of God become so thin that we can experience the presence of the divine. While the thin places in our personal worship can appear anytime and anywhere, the reverent use of time and space in shared worship can create thin places that invite us into the worship of God.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Authentic Worship Relives and Reclaims the Jesus Story
Isaiah chapter 6 narrates a dramatic vision in which the prophet is taken into the throne room of God where he sees God clothed in majestic splendor. In this scene of worship, Isaiah’s experience of God brings him to see God as the ultimate reality, and through this worship experience, Isaiah is transformed.
As I reflect on this scene, I am confronted by questions about how we do worship today. The foremost question to address regarding worship is who do we worship? The obvious answer to this query is of course God. Christianity is a monotheistic faith in which we believe in and offer worship to the one transcendent God. In this belief we share common ground with those who practice Judaism and Islam. All three religions worship the God of Abraham.
Yet there is one crucial distinction that separates Christians from these kindred faiths. From its genesis, Christianity, which originally began as a small Jewish sect, was distinct in that followers of Jesus offered worship to the risen Christ together with their worship of God.
In their singing of hymns to Jesus, sharing sacred meals in honor of Jesus, and praying prayers to Jesus, they gave to Jesus worship that had been traditionally reserved for God alone. Thus, worship in the early church was not only Theocentric, it was also Christocentric; Christ centered worship that acknowledged and responded to what God had done in Jesus.
For these Christians, however, the event that was the definitive work of God to which they responded in worship was the death and resurrection of Jesus. An expression of this can be seen in scenes of heavenly worship in Revelation, where Jesus is worshipped as a slaughtered Lamb.
It is probable that the worship scenes of which John writes in Revelation reflect worship practices of the first century church. Early Christians would give praise and adoration to Jesus, the Lamb, not only because they believed him to be divine, but more importantly, because he had been crucified and resurrected. These worship gatherings were celebrations of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Thus, authentic Christian worship, then and now, rehearses and celebrates not only who God is, but specifically what God has done in Jesus Christ.
The worship we find in the early church told a narrative and rehearsed the story of Jesus with theological depth that led to existential transformation. Worship both looked backwards to what God had done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and forward to the eschatological hope of Christ’s return. In doing so, this worship gave meaning and grounding to the believers’ existence in the present world gone awry.
From reading about Isaiah’s experience, and by reflecting on the worship of the early church, we can deduce themes that illustrate the existential results of authentic worship of God. Worship humbles us before the transcendent God. Worship also de-centers our profane existence by drawing us out of ourselves and into the reality of God. And worship transforms and renew us to live the gospel story.
I fear, however, that in our self-centered and entertainment driven world we can lose sight of the theological meaning and power of worship. With the accessibility of various styles of worship, and with a great number of churches shifting to more casual and entertaining styles, I cannot help but perceive a dumbing down of the theology of worship as a potential problem.
This is not true in every instance where contemporary styles of worship are practiced, but these approaches to worship, if not performed with careful reflection, can lead us to ignore the theological drama that relives the Christ event and that grounds the church in the “already, but not yet” of God.
The narrative movement of worship, through historic worship practices that invite participants to relive and reclaim the story of Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, draws us not only into a remembrance of God’s past work in Jesus, and an awareness of God’s present work in us and in the world, but also into the dawning of God’s future triumph over evil.
Worship is the central act of the church through which we offer adoration to God and to Jesus, and through which we encounter God’s presence and goodness through rehearsing the story of Jesus. While worship cannot be defined by style, and worship itself must not become an idol, reflecting on the biblical and historic roots of worship indicate that through the theological drama of worship, we, like Isaiah, can come face to face with God and we too can be transformed.
.
As I reflect on this scene, I am confronted by questions about how we do worship today. The foremost question to address regarding worship is who do we worship? The obvious answer to this query is of course God. Christianity is a monotheistic faith in which we believe in and offer worship to the one transcendent God. In this belief we share common ground with those who practice Judaism and Islam. All three religions worship the God of Abraham.
Yet there is one crucial distinction that separates Christians from these kindred faiths. From its genesis, Christianity, which originally began as a small Jewish sect, was distinct in that followers of Jesus offered worship to the risen Christ together with their worship of God.
In their singing of hymns to Jesus, sharing sacred meals in honor of Jesus, and praying prayers to Jesus, they gave to Jesus worship that had been traditionally reserved for God alone. Thus, worship in the early church was not only Theocentric, it was also Christocentric; Christ centered worship that acknowledged and responded to what God had done in Jesus.
For these Christians, however, the event that was the definitive work of God to which they responded in worship was the death and resurrection of Jesus. An expression of this can be seen in scenes of heavenly worship in Revelation, where Jesus is worshipped as a slaughtered Lamb.
It is probable that the worship scenes of which John writes in Revelation reflect worship practices of the first century church. Early Christians would give praise and adoration to Jesus, the Lamb, not only because they believed him to be divine, but more importantly, because he had been crucified and resurrected. These worship gatherings were celebrations of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Thus, authentic Christian worship, then and now, rehearses and celebrates not only who God is, but specifically what God has done in Jesus Christ.
The worship we find in the early church told a narrative and rehearsed the story of Jesus with theological depth that led to existential transformation. Worship both looked backwards to what God had done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and forward to the eschatological hope of Christ’s return. In doing so, this worship gave meaning and grounding to the believers’ existence in the present world gone awry.
From reading about Isaiah’s experience, and by reflecting on the worship of the early church, we can deduce themes that illustrate the existential results of authentic worship of God. Worship humbles us before the transcendent God. Worship also de-centers our profane existence by drawing us out of ourselves and into the reality of God. And worship transforms and renew us to live the gospel story.
I fear, however, that in our self-centered and entertainment driven world we can lose sight of the theological meaning and power of worship. With the accessibility of various styles of worship, and with a great number of churches shifting to more casual and entertaining styles, I cannot help but perceive a dumbing down of the theology of worship as a potential problem.
This is not true in every instance where contemporary styles of worship are practiced, but these approaches to worship, if not performed with careful reflection, can lead us to ignore the theological drama that relives the Christ event and that grounds the church in the “already, but not yet” of God.
The narrative movement of worship, through historic worship practices that invite participants to relive and reclaim the story of Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, draws us not only into a remembrance of God’s past work in Jesus, and an awareness of God’s present work in us and in the world, but also into the dawning of God’s future triumph over evil.
Worship is the central act of the church through which we offer adoration to God and to Jesus, and through which we encounter God’s presence and goodness through rehearsing the story of Jesus. While worship cannot be defined by style, and worship itself must not become an idol, reflecting on the biblical and historic roots of worship indicate that through the theological drama of worship, we, like Isaiah, can come face to face with God and we too can be transformed.
.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Jesus Gave Strong Warnings Against "Affluenza"
We are in the middle of a very serious epidemic in this country. No, the Center for Disease Control has not issued any warnings, and doctors and health care professionals have not reported any outbreak of disease or plague. But the epidemic we face is real, powerful, and very dangerous. It is an Affluenza epidemic.
Affluenza is the desire to possess more and more stuff, and the affluenza epidemic is the spreading of this wanting throughout our culture. And unfortunately, though Christians follow a man of poverty, we too have fallen victim to affluenza.
Jesus had a great deal to say about wealth and possessions and our proper response to them. Indeed, Jesus constantly provoked his hearers with radical ideas about wealth and possessions; ideas so radical that we still attempt to explain them away or ignore them altogether. At the heart of his message was a strong warning against affluenza, or to use a more offensive term, greed.
Defining a term like greed can be somewhat difficult. After all, greed can be understood in fairly relative terms. At some level all of us are greedy. So, a clear definition of the term greed, apart from a dictionary meaning, is quite difficult to pin down.
But I think we can at least come to some level of an understanding of the concept of greed from a discipleship viewpoint. To do so, we need to see greed along two intersecting planes: The vertical and the horizontal.
The vertical plane of greed is our greed in terms of our relationship to God. When we are greedy, that is when we desire more and more wealth and possessions, we put these things in the place of God. We make wealth an idol and we serve mammon as our god. This is what Jesus warns us against when he states that we cannot serve both God and mammon, for one will always come before the other in receiving our devotion.
It is this vertical plane of greed we find convicting, but manageable. The remedy we have for greed against God is just to say to ourselves, and to God, that we do not put wealth and possessions in place of God; mammon is not our idol. After all, many of us do not consider ourselves wealthy in the first place, so how could we put our wealth before God when we do not see ourselves as wealthy?
Moreover, we quickly defend our innocence of vertical greed by saying that we always put God first. We pray, we attend worship, we do good things, and here is the big one, we tithe, perhaps even more than 10%. Yes, many, if not all of us, would quickly say that we are not guilty of greed against God, for wealth is not our idol.
The other intersecting plane, however, is what catches us. The horizontal plane is our greed in relation to our fellow human beings. Just as Jesus stated that the two greatest commandments, to love both God and our neighbors, are of equal value, so Scripture is also clear that greed is not only sin because we put wealth and possessions in place of God, but also because it prevents us from sharing with others who are in need. As John rightly asks, “How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” John’s rhetorical question implies that one cannot logically say they love God and also withhold aid from those in need.
So, although we can rationalize that we are not greedy because we do not put possessions in the place reserved for God, our hoarding and not sharing with others reveals our true spirit of greed toward others and toward God.
Greed is caused by placing inappropriate value on possessions that lead us to rationalize why we need this new thing or that new thing. Once we begin to make such rationalizations, we become trapped in an uncontrollable sequence of desiring more, obtaining more, and then desiring more. We fall victim to the affluenza epidemic.
But if we repent of our vertical greed toward God and our horizontal greed toward others, our perspective and the use of our possessions can change. We can begin to see the essential worth of possessions primarily as God’s gracious gifts given to meet our basic needs, and not as things we cling to. Such a perspective sets us free from the need to want more, and we can reject wealth as an idol in order to serve God fully.
Moreover this view of possessions and the proper use of them can also save us from the horizontal direction of greed. When we see the central value of possessions as meeting our basic needs, we can find the strength to repent of our lives of hoarding and self-indulgence and we can be free to practice lives of generosity through which we seek God’s justice for the poor.
Affluenza is the desire to possess more and more stuff, and the affluenza epidemic is the spreading of this wanting throughout our culture. And unfortunately, though Christians follow a man of poverty, we too have fallen victim to affluenza.
Jesus had a great deal to say about wealth and possessions and our proper response to them. Indeed, Jesus constantly provoked his hearers with radical ideas about wealth and possessions; ideas so radical that we still attempt to explain them away or ignore them altogether. At the heart of his message was a strong warning against affluenza, or to use a more offensive term, greed.
Defining a term like greed can be somewhat difficult. After all, greed can be understood in fairly relative terms. At some level all of us are greedy. So, a clear definition of the term greed, apart from a dictionary meaning, is quite difficult to pin down.
But I think we can at least come to some level of an understanding of the concept of greed from a discipleship viewpoint. To do so, we need to see greed along two intersecting planes: The vertical and the horizontal.
The vertical plane of greed is our greed in terms of our relationship to God. When we are greedy, that is when we desire more and more wealth and possessions, we put these things in the place of God. We make wealth an idol and we serve mammon as our god. This is what Jesus warns us against when he states that we cannot serve both God and mammon, for one will always come before the other in receiving our devotion.
It is this vertical plane of greed we find convicting, but manageable. The remedy we have for greed against God is just to say to ourselves, and to God, that we do not put wealth and possessions in place of God; mammon is not our idol. After all, many of us do not consider ourselves wealthy in the first place, so how could we put our wealth before God when we do not see ourselves as wealthy?
Moreover, we quickly defend our innocence of vertical greed by saying that we always put God first. We pray, we attend worship, we do good things, and here is the big one, we tithe, perhaps even more than 10%. Yes, many, if not all of us, would quickly say that we are not guilty of greed against God, for wealth is not our idol.
The other intersecting plane, however, is what catches us. The horizontal plane is our greed in relation to our fellow human beings. Just as Jesus stated that the two greatest commandments, to love both God and our neighbors, are of equal value, so Scripture is also clear that greed is not only sin because we put wealth and possessions in place of God, but also because it prevents us from sharing with others who are in need. As John rightly asks, “How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” John’s rhetorical question implies that one cannot logically say they love God and also withhold aid from those in need.
So, although we can rationalize that we are not greedy because we do not put possessions in the place reserved for God, our hoarding and not sharing with others reveals our true spirit of greed toward others and toward God.
Greed is caused by placing inappropriate value on possessions that lead us to rationalize why we need this new thing or that new thing. Once we begin to make such rationalizations, we become trapped in an uncontrollable sequence of desiring more, obtaining more, and then desiring more. We fall victim to the affluenza epidemic.
But if we repent of our vertical greed toward God and our horizontal greed toward others, our perspective and the use of our possessions can change. We can begin to see the essential worth of possessions primarily as God’s gracious gifts given to meet our basic needs, and not as things we cling to. Such a perspective sets us free from the need to want more, and we can reject wealth as an idol in order to serve God fully.
Moreover this view of possessions and the proper use of them can also save us from the horizontal direction of greed. When we see the central value of possessions as meeting our basic needs, we can find the strength to repent of our lives of hoarding and self-indulgence and we can be free to practice lives of generosity through which we seek God’s justice for the poor.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sermons Should Call Us to Radical Discipleship
Perhaps it’s who I am, but when I sit in church trying to follow the sermon, I am often stunned by the blandness of many Sunday morning homilies. By using the term blandness, I don’t mean the lack of excitement and passion, although this is important. By blandness, I aim to say that many sermons I hear are so simplistic and unimaginative because they only scratch the surface of a biblical text, a theological idea, or an ethical question. And in doing so, these sermons miss the chance to challenge us to plunge the depths our faith.
I am an ordained minister who preaches on occasions when I am invited to fill in for pastors who are away on Sundays. In being a supply preacher, I do not face the grind each week of preparing a sermon on top of all the other duties a minister faces. But I have been in such a position before, so I can certainly sympathize with the pressures pastors deal with in preparing a word from the Lord for the congregation each week.
But there is nothing more important a pastor is called to do than to prepare a message that challenges the mind, pricks the heart, comforts the soul, and calls us to seek first the kingdom of God. And most pastors take this call very seriously and work hard to prepare sermons they feel meet the needs of the people of God. Yet, despite a serious commitment to preaching and the hard work many pastors put into preparing sermons, many sermons fall short of confronting our way of thinking about God, human existence, and the world.
There are several reasons why this may be true. For one thing, pastors often do not struggle with the theological questions inherent in the biblical texts, preferring to link together simplistic statements that only scratch the surface of a passage. They approach the text with theological assumptions and read those assumptions into the text instead of allowing the text to challenge their prescribed theological beliefs. All of us are guilty of this at some point, but many sermons use biblical texts only to reinforce assumed theological propositions instead of allowing the text to challenge our theological status quo.
Second, many preachers feel that they are called to provide authoritative answers on theological and ethical issues to their congregation. For sure, ministers must bring a prophetic word each week, but to be stringently dogmatic without considering other valid ideas and interpretations falls short of thought provoking sermons that challenge our assumptions on issues. Even the biblical texts are often not so clear on issues we face in the contemporary world. Indeed, the biblical writers demonstrate their own struggle to find answers to ultimate questions about God and life. Sermons that leave us with more questions are much more powerful because they not only remind us that the will and purpose of God cannot be limited to authoritative interpretations, but they also lead us to struggle to find our own faith.
Third, some sermons take on a quasi-psychological tenor, serving as nothing more than self-help sessions that do not provoke us to think of Jesus’ call to discipleship. These kinds of messages serve only to address our emotional conditions and solve our narcissistic needs. But the Scriptures witness to a God who loves the world, and Jesus framed his holistic healing of the hurting around his understanding of God and how God’s rule had come. Sermons are not primarily for the purpose of meeting our self-serving needs; they are to confront us with Jesus’ call to seek God’s kingdom through service and sacrifice.
Finally, sermons should construct a symbolic world through which believers see and experience the rule of God. If we believe that God’s rule has come in the incarnation of Jesus, then we must take seriously the symbolic existence Jesus created through his teachings and healings. Indeed, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a good model of what it means to construct a symbolic world. A symbolic world is an alternative way of existing in the real world as we follow Jesus’ call to radical discipleship. Such a symbolic world does not remove us from life in the real world; however it does impinge on our real world by creating an alternative way of existing that will challenge our ways of living in the world and cause us to rethink the compartmentalization of our lives.
Paul declared that we should not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Ministers have the responsibility and the opportunity to bring a word from God that can renew the minds of those who have ears to hear. Sermons that cause us to think, struggle, and ask questions about what it means to follow Jesus in radical discipleship may not be entertaining, but they can be transformative.
I am an ordained minister who preaches on occasions when I am invited to fill in for pastors who are away on Sundays. In being a supply preacher, I do not face the grind each week of preparing a sermon on top of all the other duties a minister faces. But I have been in such a position before, so I can certainly sympathize with the pressures pastors deal with in preparing a word from the Lord for the congregation each week.
But there is nothing more important a pastor is called to do than to prepare a message that challenges the mind, pricks the heart, comforts the soul, and calls us to seek first the kingdom of God. And most pastors take this call very seriously and work hard to prepare sermons they feel meet the needs of the people of God. Yet, despite a serious commitment to preaching and the hard work many pastors put into preparing sermons, many sermons fall short of confronting our way of thinking about God, human existence, and the world.
There are several reasons why this may be true. For one thing, pastors often do not struggle with the theological questions inherent in the biblical texts, preferring to link together simplistic statements that only scratch the surface of a passage. They approach the text with theological assumptions and read those assumptions into the text instead of allowing the text to challenge their prescribed theological beliefs. All of us are guilty of this at some point, but many sermons use biblical texts only to reinforce assumed theological propositions instead of allowing the text to challenge our theological status quo.
Second, many preachers feel that they are called to provide authoritative answers on theological and ethical issues to their congregation. For sure, ministers must bring a prophetic word each week, but to be stringently dogmatic without considering other valid ideas and interpretations falls short of thought provoking sermons that challenge our assumptions on issues. Even the biblical texts are often not so clear on issues we face in the contemporary world. Indeed, the biblical writers demonstrate their own struggle to find answers to ultimate questions about God and life. Sermons that leave us with more questions are much more powerful because they not only remind us that the will and purpose of God cannot be limited to authoritative interpretations, but they also lead us to struggle to find our own faith.
Third, some sermons take on a quasi-psychological tenor, serving as nothing more than self-help sessions that do not provoke us to think of Jesus’ call to discipleship. These kinds of messages serve only to address our emotional conditions and solve our narcissistic needs. But the Scriptures witness to a God who loves the world, and Jesus framed his holistic healing of the hurting around his understanding of God and how God’s rule had come. Sermons are not primarily for the purpose of meeting our self-serving needs; they are to confront us with Jesus’ call to seek God’s kingdom through service and sacrifice.
Finally, sermons should construct a symbolic world through which believers see and experience the rule of God. If we believe that God’s rule has come in the incarnation of Jesus, then we must take seriously the symbolic existence Jesus created through his teachings and healings. Indeed, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a good model of what it means to construct a symbolic world. A symbolic world is an alternative way of existing in the real world as we follow Jesus’ call to radical discipleship. Such a symbolic world does not remove us from life in the real world; however it does impinge on our real world by creating an alternative way of existing that will challenge our ways of living in the world and cause us to rethink the compartmentalization of our lives.
Paul declared that we should not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Ministers have the responsibility and the opportunity to bring a word from God that can renew the minds of those who have ears to hear. Sermons that cause us to think, struggle, and ask questions about what it means to follow Jesus in radical discipleship may not be entertaining, but they can be transformative.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Suffering Raises Questions about God’s Justice
I was sitting on my porch this past week reading the Monday edition of our local newspaper, enjoying very much an article about a married couple who spent their lives traveling the U.S. driving trucks. It truly is a great story of love and partnership between husband and wife.
In the middle of the article there is this wonderful quote by the gentle lady, “I emphatically believe that God was riding with us.” In her own words, she was giving credit to God for her wonderful life and the blessings God had showered upon her and her husband. Her perspective about the blessings of God should serve as an example to all of us to thank God for the grace we experience each day.
As I sat on the porch finishing that particular article, I flipped the paper over only to see this headline: “Cyclone death near 4,000 in Myanmar.” As most of us are aware by now, a devastating cyclone hit the Southeast Asian country on Saturday. As I write these words, media outlets are reporting that as many as 100,000 might be dead. The human suffering is surely overwhelming.
Seeing these two stories on the same front page of this newspaper raised for me once again the question concerning evil and suffering and the belief in a God who is just. Indeed, tragic events like the devastation in Myanmar, if we are honest with ourselves, ought to cause us to ask serious questions about God and the problem of evil, or what theologians call theodicy.
Theodicy seeks to reconcile how God can exist as a loving, knowing, and powerful being while evil and suffering persist. While this is a philosophical question, it is also a very existential question, one that has an impact on each of our lives. How can a God who is so loving and powerful bless my life while I watch thousands suffer in a country far away?
Obviously I cannot answer the problem of theodicy in this column; I cannot answer it period. But I do think Scripture gives us a guide to working our way through the messiness of these questions, although the Bible does not give us the answers we want. Indeed, the writers of Scripture often struggled with this very question, never reaching a definitive answer.
One canonical book in particular addresses this question through poetry. The book of Psalms is a collection of poems from Israel’s history that speaks in honest language about God and human life in relationship to God. Walter Bruggeman, a biblical scholar and theologian, has written on the Psalms and offers a way of seeing them as expressing the “flow of human life”.
Bruggeman categorizes the Psalms under three general themes: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of reorientation. These themes also express human existence as we find that our lives move from one theme to another. It is the psalms of disorientation that seek to address the problem of pain and suffering.
By disorientation, Bruggeman means that we enter a season of life when we experience pain and when we question God. We move from a world of order and goodness, into a world of chaos and evil, whether we experience it personally or see it in the lives of others. It is these times of disorientation when the psalms of complaint and lament speak to us about how honest we can be with God and ourselves.
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” “How long will you hide your face from me?” These are the opening words of Psalm 13 and they express the honest pain the psalmist feels as he questions the love and providence of God. He takes his anger to God in a bold and honest prayer of accusation, blaming God for forgetting him, for hiding from him, for not loving him. Is this right? Is this acceptable? Is this faith?
The answer to all of these is yes. And the reason we can call out to God with such raw and honest language is that God is the only one to whom we can bring our prayers of protest that call out to God for help, particularly when the pain, the suffering, the loss is so overwhelming. Even Jesus called out to God in protest, “My God, my God. Why have your forsaken me?”
Theodicy will continue to remain a conundrum. Some have sought simplistic answers like “it’s because of sin” or “it’s God’s will” or “Just have more faith.” Others have been so confounded by the problem that they have abandoned a belief in God. While I have not reached the point of losing my faith, I am often confused by God’s justice and I can only cry out, “How long, O Lord?”
In the middle of the article there is this wonderful quote by the gentle lady, “I emphatically believe that God was riding with us.” In her own words, she was giving credit to God for her wonderful life and the blessings God had showered upon her and her husband. Her perspective about the blessings of God should serve as an example to all of us to thank God for the grace we experience each day.
As I sat on the porch finishing that particular article, I flipped the paper over only to see this headline: “Cyclone death near 4,000 in Myanmar.” As most of us are aware by now, a devastating cyclone hit the Southeast Asian country on Saturday. As I write these words, media outlets are reporting that as many as 100,000 might be dead. The human suffering is surely overwhelming.
Seeing these two stories on the same front page of this newspaper raised for me once again the question concerning evil and suffering and the belief in a God who is just. Indeed, tragic events like the devastation in Myanmar, if we are honest with ourselves, ought to cause us to ask serious questions about God and the problem of evil, or what theologians call theodicy.
Theodicy seeks to reconcile how God can exist as a loving, knowing, and powerful being while evil and suffering persist. While this is a philosophical question, it is also a very existential question, one that has an impact on each of our lives. How can a God who is so loving and powerful bless my life while I watch thousands suffer in a country far away?
Obviously I cannot answer the problem of theodicy in this column; I cannot answer it period. But I do think Scripture gives us a guide to working our way through the messiness of these questions, although the Bible does not give us the answers we want. Indeed, the writers of Scripture often struggled with this very question, never reaching a definitive answer.
One canonical book in particular addresses this question through poetry. The book of Psalms is a collection of poems from Israel’s history that speaks in honest language about God and human life in relationship to God. Walter Bruggeman, a biblical scholar and theologian, has written on the Psalms and offers a way of seeing them as expressing the “flow of human life”.
Bruggeman categorizes the Psalms under three general themes: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of reorientation. These themes also express human existence as we find that our lives move from one theme to another. It is the psalms of disorientation that seek to address the problem of pain and suffering.
By disorientation, Bruggeman means that we enter a season of life when we experience pain and when we question God. We move from a world of order and goodness, into a world of chaos and evil, whether we experience it personally or see it in the lives of others. It is these times of disorientation when the psalms of complaint and lament speak to us about how honest we can be with God and ourselves.
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” “How long will you hide your face from me?” These are the opening words of Psalm 13 and they express the honest pain the psalmist feels as he questions the love and providence of God. He takes his anger to God in a bold and honest prayer of accusation, blaming God for forgetting him, for hiding from him, for not loving him. Is this right? Is this acceptable? Is this faith?
The answer to all of these is yes. And the reason we can call out to God with such raw and honest language is that God is the only one to whom we can bring our prayers of protest that call out to God for help, particularly when the pain, the suffering, the loss is so overwhelming. Even Jesus called out to God in protest, “My God, my God. Why have your forsaken me?”
Theodicy will continue to remain a conundrum. Some have sought simplistic answers like “it’s because of sin” or “it’s God’s will” or “Just have more faith.” Others have been so confounded by the problem that they have abandoned a belief in God. While I have not reached the point of losing my faith, I am often confused by God’s justice and I can only cry out, “How long, O Lord?”
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Jesus Defined Life as Living in the Presence of the Living God
Jesus consistently engaged in debate with Israel’s two main religious-political parties: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups, both important to first century Judaism, were similar in many aspects, but they did differ on several issues. One crucial theological point on which they certainly disagreed was the idea of resurrection. While the Pharisees did hold to a belief in the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees did not believe that such a resurrection would occur.
In Luke 11:27-38 we are specifically told that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in being told this, we know exactly why this group of religious leaders come to debate theology with Jesus. They come to argue with Jesus not in an attempt to discover theological truth. They come to Jesus for the sole purpose of entrapping Jesus by forcing him to answer a conundrum about brothers, marriage, death, and resurrection.
When I read about these encounters Jesus has with religious leaders, encounters he surely knows are motivated by aims of trickery, I often wonder why he would even give them the time of day. After all, was his mission as the one sent from God to waste time debating with theologians who remained embedded in their traditions and who refused to believe that God could speak and work outside of those traditions? Was not his mission toward the poor, the outcast, the sick, and the oppressed, and if so, why does he spend any time debating and arguing with either the Sadducees or Pharisees?
There is a fundamental question that underlies every debate Jesus had with any group of religious leaders. Every discussion, every debate, every argument, whether instigated by Jesus or the religious leaders, centers on this one question: Who speaks with the authority of Israel’s God? And over and over every one of the debates raises the next logical question concerning the nature of God. Whether the debate is over the Sabbath, purity laws, or paying taxes to Caesar, the underlying argument is over who speaks for God and who defines the nature of God.
I think this helps us see why Jesus engages in debates and arguments with these religious leaders when he certainly had better and more important things to do with his time. He argues with them about the nature of God, because for him, God is the ultimate reality that gives meaning to human existence.
Let’s suppose Jesus did not believe God to be the ultimate reality that defines human existence. Suppose he was just another good person with certain powers to heal people, which he chose to do frequently. Yet, in healing these people, what life would he be offering to them if he was not also offering them the essence of what it means to be human? In other words, while his healings would have been physically beneficial to those who were sick, if such physical healings did not also encompass the reality of God as the one who gives, sustains, and blesses life, such healings would fall short of the restoration to full humanity.
And this is why this particular debate between Jesus and the Sadducees is so important. They have not come to discover theological truth from Jesus. Nor have they come with open hearts and open minds. Indeed, they have come only to trap Jesus into admitting there is no resurrection. Yet, in a turn of events even they could not foresee, Jesus offers a rebuttal to which they have no answer and which defines the true meaning of life.
The problem in this debate is a disagreement over definition. While the Sadducees defined life as living as flesh and blood humans in this world until death ends this life, Jesus defined life in terms of relationship to God. For the Sadducees, life ends at death. But in their preoccupation with the dead, they have missed the theological truth that God is not the God of the dead; God is the God of the living.
When Jesus says that God is not the God of the dead, he is not saying that God has stopped being God to those who have experienced physical or spiritual death. He is saying that God cannot be God of that which is dead, for God is not dead; God is living. Likewise, God is not the God of the living because the living are alive. God is the God of the living, because God is the living God.
Jesus once stated that he had come to give life more abundantly. In other words, he defined his mission not only as imparting life to all who believed, but also as imparting a life of fullness and wholeness. And for Jesus, who believed and followed the God of the living, this meant not only the absence of death, but the presence of the living God in the life of the believer.
In Luke 11:27-38 we are specifically told that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in being told this, we know exactly why this group of religious leaders come to debate theology with Jesus. They come to argue with Jesus not in an attempt to discover theological truth. They come to Jesus for the sole purpose of entrapping Jesus by forcing him to answer a conundrum about brothers, marriage, death, and resurrection.
When I read about these encounters Jesus has with religious leaders, encounters he surely knows are motivated by aims of trickery, I often wonder why he would even give them the time of day. After all, was his mission as the one sent from God to waste time debating with theologians who remained embedded in their traditions and who refused to believe that God could speak and work outside of those traditions? Was not his mission toward the poor, the outcast, the sick, and the oppressed, and if so, why does he spend any time debating and arguing with either the Sadducees or Pharisees?
There is a fundamental question that underlies every debate Jesus had with any group of religious leaders. Every discussion, every debate, every argument, whether instigated by Jesus or the religious leaders, centers on this one question: Who speaks with the authority of Israel’s God? And over and over every one of the debates raises the next logical question concerning the nature of God. Whether the debate is over the Sabbath, purity laws, or paying taxes to Caesar, the underlying argument is over who speaks for God and who defines the nature of God.
I think this helps us see why Jesus engages in debates and arguments with these religious leaders when he certainly had better and more important things to do with his time. He argues with them about the nature of God, because for him, God is the ultimate reality that gives meaning to human existence.
Let’s suppose Jesus did not believe God to be the ultimate reality that defines human existence. Suppose he was just another good person with certain powers to heal people, which he chose to do frequently. Yet, in healing these people, what life would he be offering to them if he was not also offering them the essence of what it means to be human? In other words, while his healings would have been physically beneficial to those who were sick, if such physical healings did not also encompass the reality of God as the one who gives, sustains, and blesses life, such healings would fall short of the restoration to full humanity.
And this is why this particular debate between Jesus and the Sadducees is so important. They have not come to discover theological truth from Jesus. Nor have they come with open hearts and open minds. Indeed, they have come only to trap Jesus into admitting there is no resurrection. Yet, in a turn of events even they could not foresee, Jesus offers a rebuttal to which they have no answer and which defines the true meaning of life.
The problem in this debate is a disagreement over definition. While the Sadducees defined life as living as flesh and blood humans in this world until death ends this life, Jesus defined life in terms of relationship to God. For the Sadducees, life ends at death. But in their preoccupation with the dead, they have missed the theological truth that God is not the God of the dead; God is the God of the living.
When Jesus says that God is not the God of the dead, he is not saying that God has stopped being God to those who have experienced physical or spiritual death. He is saying that God cannot be God of that which is dead, for God is not dead; God is living. Likewise, God is not the God of the living because the living are alive. God is the God of the living, because God is the living God.
Jesus once stated that he had come to give life more abundantly. In other words, he defined his mission not only as imparting life to all who believed, but also as imparting a life of fullness and wholeness. And for Jesus, who believed and followed the God of the living, this meant not only the absence of death, but the presence of the living God in the life of the believer.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Religious People Must Become More Literate About Religion
In his book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn’t (2007), Stephen Prothero argues that while Americans are the most religious people in the Western World, we are perhaps the most religiously illiterate. He states, that the “private and public lives of Americans are “awash in a sea of faith.” “Unfortunately, however, Americans’ knowledge of religion runs as shallow as Americans’ commitment to religion runs deep.” While some religious and non-religious folks would respond that this really does not matter, it does matter a great deal.
On the one hand, the non-religious would argue that we ought to do away with religion altogether because religion is only an ideology that causes problems and conflicts. They would argue that more wars have been fought over faith, and to some extent their argument is valid. On the other hand, the religious might argue that there is no pressing need for religious literacy for faith is not about formal religion, it is about a relationship with God. Formal religious doctrine and practices only get in the way of a unique and personal relationship to God. But both of these positions ignore the powerful role religious traditions and practices have played and continue to play in the lives of people of faith from all religions and in our world.
Only in the recent past, however, have we come to grips with the reality that religion is a major factor in world affairs. For the most part, until perhaps the tragic events of September 11, 2001, we have ignored or downplayed religion as a powerful force. For sure, the cause of international conflicts cannot be boiled down only to religious ideologies, for there are economic, political, and social issues that contribute to these conflicts as well. But now that we are acknowledging that religion is important to world affairs, and that religion will not simply go away, how are we to respond?
First, we should respond by increasing our literacy about our own faith tradition as well as the religion of others. Churches need to take seriously the old-school idea of Christian Education. We have reduced such times of education to teaching about spirituality and personal relationships with God, which surely have their place. But we are failing to teach Christian theology and practice with any depth except when it relates to personal spirituality. Basic biblical and theological knowledge is a must, and specific church traditions ought to be educating the faithful about their beliefs, traditions, and practices.
Moreover, gaining a basic knowledge of other world religions can help us make some sense of world events and history. Such education about other religions will also avoid stereotypes and untruths about other religions that can only lead to a dehumanizing of adherents of that religion. While some churches offer classes about world religions, these often only serve as a pretext for evangelism, and time is usually spent finding problems within a particular religion in order to win an apologetic argument with an adherent of that religion. We need to see the intrinsic value of learning about other religions for the purpose of being better informed world citizens, and not solely for evangelistic reasons.
Second, we need to gain an appreciation of the truth value of all religions. All the great world religions search for God as the ultimate reality and for how we are to live as humans. While the various religions may have their specific way to seek God in order to formulate ideas about who God is, no one religion can logically gain the upper hand of truth over the others. There does not exist a completely logical religion that stands up to every philosophical or scientific critique. This does not mean that to be true faith must answer all the questions that the social and natural sciences throw at it, for faith cannot be proven or disproven by science. But it does mean that while religion can and does acknowledge that God is an all perfect being, religions are human interpretations of the experience of God, and therefore, they are flawed. This does not outright invalidate the truth of one’s religion; but neither does it mean that one religion is more truthful than another.
Finally, through education about our own faith tradition and the religious beliefs of others, we can reach a place where we can acknowledge the similarities as well as the differences between various religions. At their cores, all religions seek for the common good of humanity. While small groups of adherents from every religion make outsiders think ill of those religions, every faith has a center from which it seeks the common good. Keeping interfaith dialogue focused on the common good, while at the same time having open and honest discussions about religious differences, can help us balance the truth and value of our own religious faith while at the same time acknowledging the truth and value of the faith of another.
On the one hand, the non-religious would argue that we ought to do away with religion altogether because religion is only an ideology that causes problems and conflicts. They would argue that more wars have been fought over faith, and to some extent their argument is valid. On the other hand, the religious might argue that there is no pressing need for religious literacy for faith is not about formal religion, it is about a relationship with God. Formal religious doctrine and practices only get in the way of a unique and personal relationship to God. But both of these positions ignore the powerful role religious traditions and practices have played and continue to play in the lives of people of faith from all religions and in our world.
Only in the recent past, however, have we come to grips with the reality that religion is a major factor in world affairs. For the most part, until perhaps the tragic events of September 11, 2001, we have ignored or downplayed religion as a powerful force. For sure, the cause of international conflicts cannot be boiled down only to religious ideologies, for there are economic, political, and social issues that contribute to these conflicts as well. But now that we are acknowledging that religion is important to world affairs, and that religion will not simply go away, how are we to respond?
First, we should respond by increasing our literacy about our own faith tradition as well as the religion of others. Churches need to take seriously the old-school idea of Christian Education. We have reduced such times of education to teaching about spirituality and personal relationships with God, which surely have their place. But we are failing to teach Christian theology and practice with any depth except when it relates to personal spirituality. Basic biblical and theological knowledge is a must, and specific church traditions ought to be educating the faithful about their beliefs, traditions, and practices.
Moreover, gaining a basic knowledge of other world religions can help us make some sense of world events and history. Such education about other religions will also avoid stereotypes and untruths about other religions that can only lead to a dehumanizing of adherents of that religion. While some churches offer classes about world religions, these often only serve as a pretext for evangelism, and time is usually spent finding problems within a particular religion in order to win an apologetic argument with an adherent of that religion. We need to see the intrinsic value of learning about other religions for the purpose of being better informed world citizens, and not solely for evangelistic reasons.
Second, we need to gain an appreciation of the truth value of all religions. All the great world religions search for God as the ultimate reality and for how we are to live as humans. While the various religions may have their specific way to seek God in order to formulate ideas about who God is, no one religion can logically gain the upper hand of truth over the others. There does not exist a completely logical religion that stands up to every philosophical or scientific critique. This does not mean that to be true faith must answer all the questions that the social and natural sciences throw at it, for faith cannot be proven or disproven by science. But it does mean that while religion can and does acknowledge that God is an all perfect being, religions are human interpretations of the experience of God, and therefore, they are flawed. This does not outright invalidate the truth of one’s religion; but neither does it mean that one religion is more truthful than another.
Finally, through education about our own faith tradition and the religious beliefs of others, we can reach a place where we can acknowledge the similarities as well as the differences between various religions. At their cores, all religions seek for the common good of humanity. While small groups of adherents from every religion make outsiders think ill of those religions, every faith has a center from which it seeks the common good. Keeping interfaith dialogue focused on the common good, while at the same time having open and honest discussions about religious differences, can help us balance the truth and value of our own religious faith while at the same time acknowledging the truth and value of the faith of another.
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