Last week, I got this query:

Hello Anna,

As I walked to work this morning I saw posters for a “Hell-oween” event…I called the number on the poster and learned that it is going to be a haunted house similar to “Hell House”  which highlights “real-life” terror such as abortion, suicide, homosexuality, etc.

I am concerned, and frustrated. You can’t argue, you can’t call them out publicly, but at the same time I can’t just sit here.

What would your response be? As a human I fear for the teenagers that enter on Friday night and walk out with such intense, misguided understandings.

First, I apologize that I am only now getting to it: sick kids have dominated my thoughts this past week, and their yuck has been frightful enough!

I know of these houses.

Whenever I disagree with somebody, I try to get into their mindset.  It’s a trained habit, forcing me to move out of a reptilian, amygdala-fired reactionary frenzy and toward a thoughtful, perhaps even mindful, consideration of what is being presented and why.

It’s practiced caritas.

So, in the spirit of charity (which stems etymologically from the word caritas), people who create these houses of horror think that they are saving souls.  They think that if people would only “have eyes to see” the eternal consequences of their “immoral” choices, they would abstain and therefore regain their place in heaven.

While many of us find this “evangelism technique” distressing (to say the least) many of us would not hesitate, say, sending our children to a talk against drunk driving given by someone terribly maimed by their decision to do just that.  It’s not Schadenfreude, but rather cause-and-effect made manifest with the goal of averting disaster.

How much more, they figure, ought we literally scare the hell out of people?

We are doing it for their own good!

And let’s face it: it gets people’s attention.

Young people’s impressionable attention in particular.

But here’s the thing about young people: they are in the process of maturing.

And they are ripe (that’s the meaning of the word ‘mature’) for owning their own opinions, their own beliefs.

They are beginning the process of emancipation from the obligatory acceptance of Authority’s opinion, a move which frees them to learn not only that there are other ways of thinking about matters, but that it is acceptable to think!

And so I see these houses as an opportunity to empower them with the gift of some questions at exactly this fortuitous moment in their development into adults.

These questions, for example, aren’t a bad place to begin:

1. Where in Scripture does one see this notion of God’s desire to eternally damn people?

2. What is going on in those texts, and in the time in which those text were written?

3. Where do you see in Scripture contrary notions of God?

In other words, what does a teenager love to do as much as anything, but question authority?

And these houses try to gain authority by scaring the hell out of them.

So the teen has an opportunity to own what they believe, and why they believe it.

They also have the opportunity to learn how arguments are made.

Those who use this approach to make someone come to their understanding of God use coercion via fear as a primary tool.

“Believe or die” can be effective…though the integrity of the effect is questionable.

And so here are more questions:

1. Why use fear as a way to convince people to act or believe in a certain way?

2. How does fear as a catalyst for belief shape the nature of the end-result belief?

3. How does this method reflect the group’s/person’s understanding of God’s essence, or at least God’s way of engaging?

And then I wouldn’t hesitate asking yet another set of questions:

1. Why these terrors?

2. What do they seem to have in common?

3. What sort of terror might those who consider having abortions, or those who have suicidal thoughts, or those who fear coming out, be experiencing here and now?

4.How might we be complicit in their terror?

5. What of other terrors like starving children, the ill, the destitute?  Or of terrors such as greed, monopoly of power, of apathy, of ignorance?

6. Are we as ready to offer help and compassion as we are to condemn?

In short, it seems to me like these “Houses of Horror” are horrible indeed.

But for different reasons than they like to think.

And one can redeem them by inviting those who might be influenced by them to steer clear of the anxiety they produce, to remain calm, and to ask the questions.

One more thing:

Today is Reformation Day.

The key piece of the Reformation is that we are saved by grace and not by works.

That also suggests that we are also not damned by them either.

And it seems to me that that notion, the notion of grace for all, is more frightful to some then hell.

Maybe across the street from your friendly neighborhood “Hell-oween,” you could hold a Counter-Event , a “House of Heaven,” on All Saints’ Day, tomorrow.  You could call it, “Hello, even’ you?”

I’ll stick with my day job.

Dang.

There’s always gotta be one in the crowd who listens and then in their free time chases something that bugs them.

So this fine woman sent me this question because she participated in Family Camp at Outlaw Ranch, near Custer, South Dakota. (Insert shameless Outlaw Ranch plug.  ELCA bishop Dave Zellmer and I are leading camp again over the week of July 4th, 2012, aided by the musical talents of Paul Tietjan. It’s way fun, and so you should sign up.  Info is here.)

And I went off on my radical grace schtick.

And she went off and found her Bible.

It has been said that systematic theologians read more about the Bible than the Bible.

Perhaps.

But the Bible is always read with an interpretive bent: the question is whether that bent is manifest or latent.

I just happen to have a manifest bent because I get to be a systematic theologian.

And my bent is Easter.

That’s key to mention at the outset.

That means that my way of thinking through scripture is not to believe that it is literally true, for example.  (Why that is so is another question, but the blogs I’ve written here and here and here might give a hint). Instead, I believe that the defining event for Christians is that Jesus is no longer dead.  So everything is seen and read and thought about through that lens.

Death, in all its forms, doesn’t win.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the text. The part you’re most curious about is italicized at the tail end, but is informed by the beginning and middle of the really really long section below.

13That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.²Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow.⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹Let anyone with ears listen!” ¹⁰Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” ¹¹He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. ¹²For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. ¹³The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ ¹⁴With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. ¹⁵For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’ ¹⁶But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. ¹⁷Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.¹⁸“Hear then the parable of the sower. ¹⁹When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²²As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

²⁴He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” ³¹He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” ³³He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” ³⁴Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. ³⁵This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” ³⁶Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

I’m going to turn to two sources here: Robert Farrar Capon and Brian Stoffregen.

The first time I came across Capon was when I was a student at St. Olaf.

My English professor came into my classroom with a cookbook in hand.  He sat down, and said, “I must read to you from this cookbook.” And he proceeded to relay Capon’s essay “The Heavenly Onion” taken from The Supper of the Lamb. (Wish I could find a link to the text, but I can’t. Tons of references to it, but no actual text.  Please send one if you know of one!).  My professor had tears in his eyes, either because Capon’s writing was so moving, or because Capon’s writing was so vivid that the virtual onion caused his eyes to water!

Capon, an Episcopalian priest as well as gourmet, has written a three-volume series about the parables.  It’s brilliant. The Parables of the Kingdom, The Parables of Grace, and The Parables of Judgment have all shaped me and my way of thinking through Scripture.

In his text The Parables of the Kingdom (note, not the Parables of Judgment), Capon tackles the text.

He gets pleasantly hung up on the Greek word aphete, which can be translated as “let,” “permit,” “suffer,” (!).  In this context, the sense is that the wheat and the weeds ought to grow together.

But then he brings us on an etymological journey, and instructs us that not only does the word lend itself to that meaning, but is also translated as “forgive!” Poking around in the King James Version, Capon says that 47 of the 156 versions of aphienai find their way into some form of the word “forgive.” (106).

As far as Capon is concerned, this implies that (note the snarkines in his writing below–has anyone else noticed that word surfacing more and more as of late?  I like it. Capon’s snarky):

On the basis of the parable as told, the farmer has announced, publicly and in advance (do you seriously think the servants told nobody about his crazy plan to leave the weeds alone?) that his enemy is quite free to come back any night he chooses and sow any weeds he likes.  Not just more zizania [weeds], but purslane, dock, bindweed, pigweed, or even–when he finally runs out of seriously mischievous ideas–New Zealand spinach.

There is more.  On the basis of Jesus’ ministry as lived and died, God has announced the very same thing.  No enemy–not the devil, not you, not me, and not anybody else–is going to get it in the neck, in this life, for any evil he has done…

And then there’s the clincher.  On the basis of jesus’ ministry as risen, there is no change in that policy.  He comes forth from the tomb and ascends into heaven with nail prints in his hands and feet and a spear wound in his risen side–with eternal, glorious scars to remind God, angels, and us that he is not about to go back on his word from the cross.” (108-109)

Capon is not oblivious to that final verse: you know, that bit about the weeds being collected and burned.

He has a couple of things to say here:

1) Proportionately, the parable is about the aphesis of evil, “not about the avenging of it.”

2) God gave us what we want.  A little fear-inducing, behavior-shaping, yikes-y stuff.  But with it, he writes: “The human race is hooked on eschatology [notions about the endtimes]: give us one drag on it, and we proceed to party away our whole forgiven life in fantasies about a final score-settling session that none of us, except for forgiveness, could possibly survive” (109-110). And then:

When we dwell too simplistically on the Final Judgment, we almost always picture it as the day when God finally takes off the gloves of mystery with which he has so far handled with world and gives his enemies a decisive taste of eschatological bare knuckles.  That image, however, leaves one important truth out of account: the judgment occurs only after the general resurrection of the dead.  And since the resurrection of the dead (of the just and the unjust alike) is something that happens to them solely by virtue of  Jesus’ resurrection–about which we have very little unparadoxial information–we should be very slow to imagine scenarios for it that are based on simplistic extrapolations of our present experience.  Everything that happens after the second coming of Jesus–judgment, heaven, and even hell–happens within the triumphantly reconciling power of his death and resurrection.  We simply don’t know how or to what degree that power affects the eschatological situation.

Take, for example, the question of whether we are in a position to discuss the meaning or even the possibility of ultimate human rejection of the reconciliation.  To be sure, Scripture says clearly enough that the sovereign, healing power of Jesus can and will be refused by some.  I have no problem with that.  What I do object to, however, are the hell-enthusiasts who act as if God’s whole New Testament method of dealing with evil will, in the last day, simply go back to some Old Testament “square one”–as if Jesus hadn’t done a blessed or merciful thing in between, and as if we could, therefore skip all the paradoxes of mercy when we talk about hte Last Day and simply concentrate on plain old gun-barrel justice.” (113-114).

Let me be clear: I could quote Capon all day, but you would stop reading.  His lawyers might not, however, and I’d get in a mess of trouble for breaches of copyright.

But I’m sorely tempted to quote him ad nauseum because Capon understands mystery and he understands grace and he sees that Easter makes all the difference in the world.

So does Brian Stoffregen.  He’s a Lutheran pastor who writes illuminating textual notes on the weekly Gospel verses.  You can find his insight and honest, well-written prose here.  Here he writes on the parable-at-hand (I know it’s a long excerpt, but if you’re into grace and humility, here’s some good fodder for you):

I notice that the angels collect “out of his kingdom”. Earlier the field was defined as “the world” (kosmos, v. 38). Does Jesus/Matthew intend us to think that “his kingdom” is the same as “the world,” or, as I’ve discovered in other passages, there is a greater judgment for those on the inside, who don’t measure up in some way.

Those that are gathered for punishment are defined as “all causes of sin” and “all evildoers” (NRSV). These need further comments.

“causes of sin” is skandala. This word originally referred to a trap — most likely the type held up by a stick; then, metaphorically, to something that causes a person to be trapped, caught, be stuck where they don’t want to be — that is something that was offensive to them. Finally, came to refer to things that tempted others to stray or sin. The word is used three times in Matthew (once in Luke and no occurrences in Mark or John).

On one hand, especially with the verb, skandalizo, there is the sense that such things have to be removed, e.g., if a part of your body causes you to sin, remove it (5:29, 30; 18:6, 8, 9). The noun is used three times in 18:7 to refer to the dangers of being a cause of sin to others.

Besides seeing “causes of sin” as people within the community who are leading others astray, they could also be within each individual — parts of us that remain under the power of sin and continually tempt us to stray away from the faithful life. The parable suggests that the day will come will all of that will be destroyed. Then, we, as truly and fully righteous will shine like the sun. To use Luther’s terms, presently we are simultaneous sinner and saint; but the day will come with the “sinner” part will be removed and destroy. All that will be left is the saintly part.

The other use of the noun presents an interesting problem. In 16:23 Jesus turns and says to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Similarly, the verb is used of the disciples in 26:31: “Then Jesus said to them, “You will all become deserters because of me this night; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’

Peter and the disciples are “causes of sin,” but will they be gathered and thrown into the blazing furnace?

Perhaps we can say that they deserve that kind of punishment, but by God’s grace they don’t receive it.

“all evildoers” is more literally “the ones doing lawlessness”. They are those living as though there were no law. Matthew has made it clear that Jesus came to fulfill the law (5:17-18) not to do away with it. (I might phrase it, “He came to restore the law to its proper uses.”) My hunch is that there may have been some within Matthew’s community who proclaimed that the law no longer applied to them, and lived without it. For Matthew, “lawlessness” is not just outward acts, but one can be “lawless” inwardly (23:28), perhaps not inwardly wanting to obey the law, but putting on an outward show of obedience.

The images of “furnace of fire” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” seem to be Matthian. Only Matthew uses “furnace” (kaminos) as a picture of punishment (13:42, 50). (Its other uses are Rev 1:15; 9:2).

It is used often in the OT as a picture of refinement (Is 48:10; Sir 2:5; 27:5; 31:26) — so this text could be interpreted as refining those who are in the kingdom. They are purged of all the sins and lawlessness that is within them through the fires of God’s judgment.

The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” occurs six times in Matthew (8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30) and once in Luke (13:28), and no where else in the NT. Thus, it seems to be a strong emphasis in Matthew.

What I find interesting about Matthew’s six uses is that those who will weep and gnash their teeth, all seem to have been “insiders”!

• 8:12 it is the “heirs of the kingdom” (probably Jews vs. many from east and west)
• 13:42 some from “out of his kingdom”
• 13:50 evil from righteous, but both are “caught in the same net”
• 22:13 someone at the wedding banquet, but not wearing the wedding robe
• 24:51 wicked slave (as a slave, he was part of the household)
• 25:30 worthless slave (as a slave, he was part of the household)

It seems to me that this harsh judgment is uttered against those within the community of faith, but who fail to bear the proper fruit of living in Christ. As was true in the OT, God’s harshest judgments were pronounced against his own people. So, too, Matthew does in his gospel.

So Capon and Stoffregen do not deny that there is judgment in this story.

They do deny that it need be ultimate.

And that’s where I’m at too.

I have never said that one can’t find texts that suggest the possibility/probability/assured existence of eternal damnation.

I have said that a) there are other texts that would dispute that assertion; and b) I think Easter trumps any text that trumpets eternal damnation.

I think God’s ultimate agenda is reconciliation.

It is aphete.

And aphete does not preclude judgement.

Instead, it comes before, during, and after it.

It’s precisely what makes judgement–with the aim of restoring, or refining–possible.

Even to those within the Christian community.

And that’s mysterious grace for sure.

I hope that that aided in your thinking about the text!

And I hope you sign up for our week next year again.

Pax.

So in the spirit of candor, this question really was intended to be a comment on this blog, “Reader Question: God of the OT Really Be God of the New?  Spin it for me.”

But it raises such good questions, that it demands a spin-off blog of its own.

I like that you are wanting a more “practical explanation” of what Christians believe was Jesus’ voluntary death for the sake of others.

Because whatever else you can say about Jesus, his message is not overtly practical.

The thought you have posed above also crossed the mind of the Apostle Paul.  Take a look below at the excerpt from Romans 5.  I know that it’s a large chunk of text.  Best to read through the whole thing, but if you don’t want to, just note the bolded part.

5Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.⁹Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. ¹²Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— ¹³sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. ¹⁴Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. ¹⁵But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. ¹⁶And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. ¹⁷If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. ¹⁸Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. ¹⁹For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

That’s the text I’m going to use as a reference point for your question.

So let’s have at it.

These feminist theologian’s shoulders get a bit tight when you write that you can’t understand “the meaning of giving up your only son to save a bunch of sinners.”

You come by the idea honestly!  It’s everywhere in Christian theology.

I’m just not so sure that it’s accurate, at least insofar as it goes.

Feminist theologians worry–and let me be clear, male theologians are also feminist theologians!–that such language fosters the idea that God is an abusive father, a being who willingly had his son killed, and just passively and apathetically sat aside as Jesus suffered.

These theologians want to quickly point out that God didn’t stick Jesus up on the cross.

People did.

That is, Jesus’ dedication to God’s agenda of commitment to the poor, and hungry, and powerless, and outcasts, and (per your question) sinners, ticked people off, and got him in a mess of trouble.

So the way we tend to handle those who threaten our level of comfort and privilege and power is to get rid of them.

Which is precisely what happened to Jesus.  (Even if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, you can agree that that’s why he got killed.)

He had friends in low places.

Why did he do it? Why did he live in a way that was sure to get him killed?

Well, lots of ways to consider that.

The Old and New Testaments are pretty darn consistent in telling of a God who strives for reconciliation over judgment, and forgiveness over condemnation.

On paper, this makes no sense, as you point out.

But have you ever loved anybody, in spite of yourself?

Have you ever been loved, in spite of yourself?

Love is not reasonable.

The thing about God is this: God covets wholeness; individual and collective wholeness.

God knows that we are not right unless we are all alright.

Part of our difficulty (because you are in good company: we US Americans have an especially hard time wrapping our minds around this) in imagining God “saving a bunch of sinners” is because we are used to people deserving what they get.

(As an aside, again, I think it fascinating that we here in the good old USA seem yet to believe that health insurance is a right tied to being employed rather than a right tied to being human.  That is, our policies implicitly make clear that those who have jobs–and especially well-paying ones at that–deserve to receive cancer treatments, surgeries, ER care more than those who do not have jobs and are not self-sufficient.)

By definition, grace, as I’ve said before, means that which is given precisely to those who don’t deserve it.  If someone deserved it, they’d be getting something, but it wouldn’t be grace.

A reward, perhaps.

Brownie points.

But not grace.

But this commitment to grace, or to wholeness and reconciliation, does not mean that one’s tragic choices, choices that cause pain to others and to one’s self, don’t matter.

They do matter.

Profoundly, they matter.

A loud and clear “NO,” and manifest (sometimes painful) consequences can also be manifest grace.  Saying, “This is not o.k.  And choices on your part lead to choices on the part of others, on the part of me” is difficult, risky, and can place one in positions of grave vulnerability, isolation, and may well lead to the severance of relationships.

The hope is that the NO is not the final word.

The NO is spoken within the bracket of YES, I love you.  YES, we are striving for wholeness.  YES, we know that you are more than these choices.

Sometimes it even works.

You see, grace does not mean that there is no comeuppance.

Forgiveness does not mean that what occurred was acceptable or forgettable.

And while there are several examples in Scripture where forgiveness is given when no repentance is extended, repentance, confession, humble offering of heart in hand, can be very cleansing.

It might not change the breach, but it can acknowledge it.

And that acknowledgement might even be more beneficial to the perpetrator than to the one harmed.

To boot, it is possible that the one harmed might even discover that what had once seemed so black and white, might not be.  Perhaps she or he even contributed to the grey.

(Makes me think of that Jewish observation that even God needs to be forgiven.  That is, what a set-up!  An imperfect world is created in which there is often no correct answer and we are held liable?  What’s up with that?)

I digress, but only a bit.

The point isn’t that the choice doesn’t matter, is inconsequential, is overlookable.

The point is that the choice is not ultimate.

It is not final.

It is not definitive.

So Christians identify themselves primarily by Easter, an event which makes it clear that God’s agenda is life.  Death is powerful, but is not more powerful than God’s promise of bringing life out of it.

It would be interesting to consider whether Easter is God’s confession and repentance.

Hmmm.  Typing out loud, which is generally a bad idea.

Anyway, let’s get back to Paul, who said in verse 18, “Just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”

As my mentor Walt Bouman said in his last sermon, “I take it that when Paul said ‘all‘ he meant all!”

So where there is death, God rolls up the divine sleeves and gets to work to bring about life, and new beginnings.

So just as a physician does not treat the well, so God does not offer life to the alive.

In other words, it might be practical after all.

That is, who needs the grace but the sinner, the one who doesn’t deserve it?

Perhaps that’s why Paul writes that God proves God’s love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died, with the end gain being that although we will still die, we will not be ultimately killed.

And again, as Walt wrote, now that you know that death doesn’t win, there is more to do with your life than preserve it.  This in turn frees us to become something new: not out of fear, not out of a disingenuous desire to keep our kiesters out of hell, but because we are loved into a new way of being.

And that’s got some practical traction.

If everything is God’s will, what is the point of praying for anything? Why is it when something good happens, everything gives all the credit to God, when in fact, the credit should go to the people/person responsible for the good fortune?

Oh, I’d love to visit with you over coffee on this one!

So many directions to go with it.  My mantra for this blog, then, will be focus….focus….focus…..

I am very glad that you began your question with the word, “If.”

Makes me think of that School House Rock tune, “Conjunction junction, what’s your function?”

The function of that all-important IF is to raise the possibility that not everything is God’s will.

In other words, I’d like to entertain the possibility that everything is not God’s will.

Although it surely crossed the minds of theologians before WWII, that awful event in history caused them to tackle head-on the idea that God is omnipotent–that is, powerful in all things.

Really? They wondered.

Hitler was part of God’s plan?

And so an unofficial rule of thumb started to surface, namely that if you can’t say whatever you want to say about God while standing in Auschwitz, with ashes of Holocaust victims falling on your shoulders, then don’t say it anywhere.

My daughter sang a song some time ago in which the words go, “My God is so great! My God is almighty! There’s nothing that my God can’t do!”  It ended with quite the heartfelt “HUH!” at the end of this line.  So I commended her on her singing (which, let’s be clear, was amazing), but then had to mess with the theology of it.  And so I said something like, “Sweet baby girl, if it is true that there’s nothing that our God can’t do, then why is your brother still struggling with the effects of a traumatic brain injury?”

It is very clear that a person can come up with a theology that gets one there, a theology that says that everything is God’s will.  We see hints of that even in the phase “God’s plan.”  People are always looking to see what God’s plan is, which leaves me wanting to ask the question, where does God’s plan begin and end?  Is it part of God’s plan that I cross the street at this intersection instead of the next?  That I wash lights before darks?  Or, more provocatively, that 6 million Jews are killed?

I like to think instead about God’s vision.  If we talk about vision, then we are moved to consider not only about God’s vision but about God. On what basis does a person decide what is God’s vision, or if we must, God’s plan?

And it seems to me that we are sent to see what sort of God is consistently revealed in Scripture.

And there we find a God who is about healing, about justice, and about mercy.

For Christians, we see that ultimately in the Easter story, this event we say affirms that God’s agenda is about life, not about death.

If death and decay and grief and pain were God’s agenda, Jesus would still be in that tomb.

But the Christian story maintains that God works to bring life out of death, not death out of life.

Soooooooooo…….

I would quibble with the “if,” is what I’m saying.

That doesn’t negate your point about praying.  What is the point about praying?

Why, just today I was conversing with a friend about prayer, and sent him this link to OMG blogs about prayer.  So I won’t bore you with repeating myself here.  Have at those written ditties to see if there’s anything there that might be helpful to you in a more general way…keeping in mind that I’m not not not the poster child for prayer.  I have finally decided to assure people that I will think of them, which is more surely to be the case than that I will pray for them, and my two close friends in Sioux Falls know that I promise them with full integrity that I will gasp for them.

But this much I can say about the point of prayer.  As I have written about before, the Hebrew word that we translate in Scripture as righteous is tzedek.  While it is true that it can and should be translated as righteous, it also can be translated as properly aligned.

Prayer is a moment to become tzadek, to become properly aligned, rightly oriented, to the thing that defines who we are.

This is why it is so key to identify who our God is, or what we understand God to be.

Hitler and I did not define God similarly.

To make an extreme point.

When one prays, it gives one a moment to pause and consider the one to whom one is praying.

And so Hitler would have had a real hard time pursuing his hateful agenda while praying to a God who gathers people in, calls us to turn the other cheek, reaches out to the outcasts, and, for criminy’s sake, was a God of the Jews and whose son was a Jewish rabbi!

Good Lord.

So.

Prayer orients us, is the point.

Last, I think I’d want to consider a bit more this idea that credit should go to the people who had the “good fortune.”

Now, I agree that it is disturbing when people who escaped a tragic accident, for example, say “God saved me!” or “It was just by the grace of God!”

Makes me wonder why God had it in for the other people.

So I think you are right that if we are going to give God credit when good things happen, we also better be prepared for a word about and to God when bad things happen.

That said, rarely–if ever–does anybody do anything (good or bad, by the way) that can be traced exclusively to them.  Alone.

It’s one of the reasons we can speak about the devastating effects of poverty.  It is a cycle.

Or dare I say the devastating effects of wealth.  It is a cycle.

We live in response to, as a result of, despite, with, without other people, other events, other circumstances.

Nothing is in isolation.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t have pride in our accomplishments?

No.  Of course we ought to.

It does mean that neither our joys nor our sadnesses belong exclusively to us, and sometimes, as you point out, it is due to “good fortune” rather than effort…and sometimes our good fortune comes on the backs of others’ bad fortune.

To get back to your overall point, which I think has more to do with what is up with prayer than anything, here’s the sum gist of it all:

Prayer gives us pause to remind ourselves how we can steward God’s will in this world, and for that matter, it gives us pause to consider what we mean when we speak of God’s will, and on what basis.

Precisely because not everything is going according to God’s vision.

I remember an Easter sermon once, one in which the congregation was expected to sing, “Oh what a beautiful morning! Oh what a beautiful day!  I’ve got a beautiful feeling!  Everything’s going God’s way!”

AAAAACCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

It’s not!

And so what is God’s way?

Prayer provides us the opportunity to become tzadek again, to remind ourselves that we are not alone, that we live in community, and can steward a vision of justice and mercy and wholeness where there is none to be found.

I think I need something stronger than coffee now.

Anna

The NT makes sense (mostly)! So why does the OT make it so hard to be a Christian? A lot of it is so contradictory. What makes it worse is when preachers read too much into an OT passage to support something in the NT, and then you find that in the next chapter or book God does something horrific such as wiping out people or judging people because of what someone else did. Seems the Judge of the OT is not the loving Father of the NT no matter how much spin you put on it. Rant over

A pillar Lutheran theologian by the name of Joseph Sittler once said that he was too good a theologian to think that he was a great one.

I’m of the same mind, which is why, instead of taking this one on alone, this question that has so many key layers, I contacted a truly great theologian to help respond to it with clarity and savvy.

Dr. Murray Haar was a colleague of mine when I taught religion at Augustana College in Sioux Falls.  Although we are no longer colleagues at the same institution, I am grateful that we are yet friends.

He is Jewish, but for a time served as a Lutheran pastor before he returned to the faith of his family and that had once been his.

So he was a perfect fit to send this fine question–and one that has crossed many a Christian mind.

Murray wrote this in candid and pithy and pointed and provocative response:

What some Christians sometimes forget is that for Christians, Jesus is the God of the Old Testament become flesh.  So the Old Testament God is really no different than the New.  Both care about justice and love.  Both are gracious and yet condemn sin.  In point of fact, in the whole New Testament Jesus does not smile once.  He does not sing camp songs.  In fact, he rarely acts with grace or talks about how much he loves people.  His first words in the Gospel of Mark are ones that make him sound like an O.T. prophet, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  So what we have are charicatures of Jesus as being loving and kindly and sweet and the O.T. God as lacking grace and being violent.  The fact is in the Bible God is God is God, mysterious, ineffable, perplexing, ambiguous, with both a passion for justice and grace.

Thank you Murray.

I recall making a similar point as the questioner to my New Testament professor in seminary.  His steely response is still seared into my little brain:  ”They are the same God.”

One of my favorite quotes from Despicable Me (love that movie) is “It’s so fluffy I’m going to DIE!”

I think that’s how many Christians view Jesus: meek and mild, and, well, ultimately fluffy.

But he wasn’t.

He got ticked.  Turned tables over.  Called people vipers.

That is, I think that this question–which conveys some common beliefs about Judaism, Christianity, and their respective Holy Scriptures–conveys some misunderstandings about them all as well.

The Old Testament, of course, was not written for people to become Christians.  It was written for Jews.  So the questioner is correct that it is disrespectful to read into the OT for NT “prophecies.”  The writers were writing for their time to their context.

That said, the Germans have a great word, one Heilsgeschichte. It means “God’s salvation history,” or God’s saving acts in history.  The idea has a longstanding place in Christian theology, and is meant to show that God has acted on behalf of God’s people in the past, and continues to do so in the present.

And so it is appropriate to look to the Old Testament to see the continuity.

While it is absolutely true that there are troubling stories in the Old Testament, it is key to recall that there are also troubling tales in the New of apparently merciless and capricious judgment (Parable of the Bridesmaids) or perplexing rewards (Parable of the Unjust Steward).

And it is also true that even now, the question of how God can be loving and yet seem to abide, allow, or even create suffering is real to Jew and Christian.

And one more key piece we Christians ought not forget: Jesus was not a Christian, but was a Jew.  And the Scriptures to which he referred were those we commonly call the Old Testament.  So as Dr. Haar notes above, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, the assurance that the One would come, Emmanuel (a Hebrew word), God-With-Us.

So.

It isn’t as simple as dividing God up, splitting God up the middle between the Old and New Testament, as if God were just going through an Old Testament, adolescent-like God phase.

In fact, the more that one pays attention to the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, and that the God of the Old Testament is the same God in the New, the more we’ve got a shot at tamping down anti-Semitism, misrepresentation of Jewish beliefs, Christian triumphalism, and “Bibles” that don’t include the very Scriptures to which Jesus referred.

Upshot of the thumbnail sketch: the notion that there are two Gods just like there are two Testaments is widespread.  But the more you peek at it and poke around in it, the more one notices that there are more consistencies than inconsistencies, more relation than disconnect, and therefore less to rant about and more to reflect upon!

So did I spin out or weave together?

Peace, and thanks to the questioner.

Anna

Advent, as you note in your defining of the term, comes from the Latin “to arrive”. We as Christians anticipate the second arrival, or as we commonly say, second “coming”, of Christ while celebrating Christ’s first arrival. In Christ’s first arrival, God offered Her only Son to die for the sake of all who believe (Jn. 3). Jesus rose from the dead in three days, and after remaining on earth for some time, ascended into heaven and is now placed in God’s seat of highest honor before Her throne (or as the creeds put it, God’s “right hand”). Jesus, who is most truly Lord and Son of God, left the earth to come to the point that it is now, in which people die of various diseases and various sufferings, and knew when He left this world that such things would happen (God is omnipotent, and so also Her Son must be). Why would God’s Son leave this world to return again later knowing that such terrible things would take place? What did God have to gain by having Her Son come twice rather than once?

Right.

Short version: I have no idea.

Well, I have ideas, but nothing I’m willing to put out there as the incontestable, incontrovertible truth.

So I’ll humbly put out there a few of those ideas, consoled by the fact that it is great fun wondering about the question, and by the fact that nobody really knows why anything is as it is, so I’m in good company.

The Christian claim that Jesus came, and then left, is characterized by some as tantamount to him saying, “Now, hold that thought!” while, as you point out, suffering goes on unabated.

What’s up with that?

It’s actually a great Advent season question, because it has to do with waiting.

I am increasingly interested in the difference between ‘waiting’ and ‘anticipating.’

If we wait, we are passive.  As I write this, I am waiting for my car to be repaired (sunroof is stuck in the up position, which is an unfortunate matter when my thermometer is registering 8 degrees!).

But there is nothing that I can do to help that car be fixed.  I can only bide my time, doing activities that are unrelated to the reason I’m waiting.

Anticipating, however, involves action.  When we anticipate something, we involve ourself in the act of waiting.

My daughter was on the phone with my sister last night.  Both are named Else, by the way. So Auntie Else asked Elsegirl, “Are you getting ready for Christmas?”  ”Nope,” said my daughter, “but we sure are getting ready for Advent!”

During Advent, and during this period of waiting for God to come again (for what purpose? you have asked), we wait.

But perhaps it is better said that we anticipate, which means (etymologically speaking) “to take before”.  We are, as Else says, getting ready.  Anticipating is like participated waiting.

Christians can learn a lot about waiting from the Jews.

Taped up on my wall at OMG I have a page from the German newspaper Die Zeit, a piece written by the Jewish theologian Elie Wiesel.  (For those who can read German, the link to this same article is here)  In it, he mulls this business of waiting, of anticipating the arrival of the Messiah.  And he writes this:

“Zurzeit träume ich nicht mehr vom Messias. Er besucht meine Träume nicht mehr. Er kam nicht, als er erwartet wurde. Also hat er Verspätung. Macht nichts, der Jude in mir wartet weiter auf ihn.”

“These days, I don’t dream any more about the Messiah.  He doesn’t visit my dreams any more.  He didn’t come when he was expected.  So he’s late.  Doesn’t matter.  The Jew in me will just continue to wait.”

Now, Wiesel is not speaking here about waiting in keeping with the sort of waiting implied in the joke, “Quick!  Jesus is coming!  Look busy!”  Wiesel is speaking about waiting that anticipates the one for whom we are waiting.  It is the very Jewish notion that we hear in John the Baptist’s cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

So some theories are that Jesus did not disappear to some place far away, but rather appears to us now as the breath that moves in us to make the reign of God present.  Some theologians, notably those who teach something called Process Theology, believe that God works in every moment to inject love and compassion into a situation, and that there you see resurrection, there you see God in the fullness of the moment, seeking always to lure us toward the right and the good.

Others, who agree that Jesus did not ascend to some place, think that he ascended to the future.  The resurrection was a “downpayment,” so to speak, a promise-in-action that death does not have the last word.  It is a both/and notion.  God is already here but not yet fully.

I felt this take on matters when I was two months pregnant with my son Karl during December of 2000.  My life had already changed (I was taking new vitamins, not drinking great German beer any more, planning for his new and safe arrival), even though he wasn’t fully here yet.

It is not to be missed that the notion of God as mother resonates throughout Scripture.  Note Isaiah 49:15:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Feminist scholar Elizabeth Johnson notes that Jesus also compares himself to a mother gathering her chicks (Mt. 23:37).  Note what else she says down below in my “quotes” section.  It is goosebumpy good.

And one effect of this notion is, to quote my mentor Walt Bouman, “Now we know that there is more to do with our lives than preserve them.”

That is, we are now called to be “little Christs,” as C.S. Lewis would say in Mere Christianity.  (“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”)

At this point I am reminded of Lisa Ling, whom I once heard present here in Sioux Falls.  She said that she was not a religious person, but married one.  All of the horrors that she covers as a journalist led her to finally ask her husband, “Why doesn’t your God do anything about this suffering?”  To which he replied, “God did.  God made you.”

In other words, we who call ourselves Christians are called to be ambassadors of the reign of God, being in our selves and in the Church demonstrations, enactments, of life trumping death.  Allow me to also point out yet again that it is critical that Christians figure out what we understand Jesus to be, for that informs (dictates, one could say) who we are as “followers of Jesus.”

The tradition of the theology of the cross suggests that God does not passively sit by, but suffers with us, calling new life out of dark death.  It has often attended to the forgiveness of sins, but since WWII, it has asked the question of what the cross says and does not only for those who are the sinners, but for those sinned upon.

Another approach suggests that this period of time is the “gathering time,” the time when Christians are called to proclaim God’s word to all the world.  Even within this idea, there are (at least) two divergent notions: one says that we need to evangelize so that as many people can be “saved” as possible before Jesus comes again; others say that the point is to proclaim the risen Jesus because in him we see God’s agenda to heal and gather all the world.

Regardless of the ideas of what we’re to be doing in the meantime, your last question still hangs over the entire blog entry so far:

Why would God’s Son leave this world to return again later knowing that such terrible things would take place? What did God have to gain by having Her Son come twice rather than once?

How can there be such suffering in a world created by one whom we proclaim to be good?

There is an idea that although one can make the case that God is good, it might be more accurate to say (merely?) that God is God.

God is wild.

God is a mystery.

Even if you take God out of the equation, existence is a mystery.  It doesn’t make sense.

But for those of us who put some faith in something we call God, it behooves us to figure out what we mean by it, more or less, and what difference it makes.

I’ve begun dancing with a thought, a thought born out of an awareness that it is very easy to judge someone’s actions, or inactions, from a distance–and not particularly creative, either.

However, once stories are told from the inside, once differing and personal perspectives are heard, sometimes what appeared to be a cut-and-dry matter suddenly becomes, well, not that.

And one is compelled toward compassion, toward humility, and toward an appreciation of messiness and complexity, a recognition that life is anything but simple.

I look at the suffering you name, and am fully aware of suffering in my life and of the lives in my sphere, and I wonder too with indignation and with perplexity and with curiosity, “What is up?”

And then I wonder whether I need to apply the same sort of humility and compassion toward God that I strive to apply toward others whose actions cause me indignation and perplexity and curiosity.  Maybe something is up.

I do not know why the Messiah has not come/come again.

Some might see this concession as a cop-out.

I don’t feel particularly cop-outy when I point out my son’s brain injury and remind God loudly of God’s promises.

Nor do I find myself particularly relieved of my pain and indignation when I imagine that there is no God and this is all happenstance.

At the very least, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we’ve got a story of a God who gives God’s creation freedom–for if we did not have that, then this entire enterprise of life would be a game, a puppet show, an illusory matrix.

And, it seems to me, that is what love relationships are: wild, a mystery.

(Lest we forget, the Latin origin of the word passion means ‘to suffer.’)

The minute that there is the exertion of coercion, we have no longer a love relationship but a controlling relationship.

So there is freedom, and there is consequent suffering.

And the general trajectory of this same story is that God does not desire pain and suffering, but rather wholeness, healing, justice, mercy, and redemption….and God is passionate about that agenda.

So we’re talking about faith in this agenda, and therefore also in this persistent belief that God desires something different than what you so poignantly describe as this apparently persistent reality.

After all, in the very text you cite, namely John 3, verse 17 (which I have never yet seen held up on a placard at a ballgame) says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Below, then, a smattering of thoughts (more to come: I left a few on the floor at my study) on the matter to round out this entry, and to demonstrate some varying voices weighing in on the matter that I stumbled on as I read up on things.

Thanks ever so much for your question.

Jürgen Moltmann in The Coming of God:

…with the raising of the crucified Christ from the dead, the future of the new creation of al things has already begun in the midst of this dying and transitory world… (136)

The eschatological message of the New Testament–’The End of all things is at hand’ (1 Peter 4.7)–is geared towards resistance, and against resignation. (137)

Elizabeth Johnson in Quest for the Living God:

…seeking the female face of God has profound significance.  By relativizing masculine imagery it lassoes the idol off its pedestal, breaking the stranglehold of patriarchal discourse and its deleterious effects.  God is not literally a father or a king or a lord but something ever so much greater.  Thus is the truth more greatly honored.  This is not to say that male metaphors cannot be used to signify the divine.  Men, too, are created, redeemed, and sanctified by the gracious love of God, and images taken from their lives can function in as adequate or inadequate a way as do images taken from the lives of women.  But naming toward God with female metaphors releases diving mystery from its age-old patriarchal cage so that God can be truly God–incomprehensible source, sustaining power, and goal of the world, holy Wisdom, indwelling Spirit, the ground of being, the beyond in our midst, the absolute future, being itself, mother, matrix, lover, friend, infinite love, the holy mystery that surrounds and supports the world. (99)

[Referring to the multitude of maternal images for God in Scripture] Strongly associated with all these maternal images is divine compassion.  Biblical scholars point out that the Hebrew noun for compassion or merciful love comes from the root word for women’s uterus, rehem, which is also the root for the verb “to show mercy” and the adjective “merciful.”  Here the life-giving physical organ of the female body serves as a concrete metaphor for a distinctly divine way of being, feeling, and acting.  When scripture calls on God for mercy, a frequent theme, it is actually asking the Holy One to treat us with the kind of love a mother has for the child of her womb. “To the responsive imagination,” writes Phyllis Trible, this semantic connection “suggests the meaning of love as selfless participation in life.  The womb protects and nourishes but does not possess and control.  It yields its treasure in order that wholeness and well-being may happen  Truly, it is the way of compassion.”

Alfred North Whitehead in Process and Reality:

What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world.  By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love int he world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world.  In this sense, God is the great companion–the fellow-sufferer who understands. (532)

Kathryn Tanner in Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity:

Since there may come a time when the world no longer exists, this placement in God cannot e equated with God’s repsence or placement within the world.  A kind of indwelling of God in us is, however, a consequence of life in God, just as incarnation has as its consequence a human life lived by the power ofGod.  In imitation of Christ, we live in God and therfore the life we lead has a kind of composite character to match our new composite personhood: God’s attributes become in some sense our own; they are to shine through our lives in acts that exceed human powers and in that way become established as part of a reborn sense of self. (111)

Douglas John Hall in Professing the Faith:

The theology of the cross is about the courage to enter the darkness so that the light may be seen. (128)

Douglas John Hall in Confessing the Faith:

The “good news” (gospel) is formed over against and in response to the “bad news” of the historical moment. (11)

To wait for God is hard.  It is comparable to the posture of the beggar, who possesses nothing, is dependent, and is constantly made conscious of his inadequacy.  The Christian preacher who waits for God feels bereft in the presence of those who look to him for religious answers to all their questions; his expertise appears bogus; he does not command the respect accorded to those who possess authority in their fields.  Yet, who other than superficial persons can give credence to those who speak and act as if they already possessed….God? (271)

The Bible is well acquainted with Shakespeare’s thought that history may be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Think only of Sarah’s laughter when she heard “those men” under the tree talking about her forthcoming pregnancy (Gen. 18).  When Israel affirms that hope is a legitimate historical category, applicable to time, applicable to individual life as well as the life of the creation as a whole, it does not do so naively but in the full knowledge that this can never be done easily.  It is a matter of trust in God, not in processes naturally favorable to human welfare. (485)

Emil Fackenheim, Canada’s foremost Jewish theologian and philosopher, now living in Israel, has written that after Auschwitz, hope is for the Jew not an option but a “commandment.”  But hope is authentic only when the Jew remembers–that is to say, remembers not only the ancient “root experience” of the exodus but also the modern one, the Holocaust.  If the data of despair is neglected, then hop–or what will be called hope–will revert to shallow hopefulness, a conditioned reflex of the well off. (488)

Luke Timothy Johnson in The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters:

The…New Testament’s witness insists that jesus did not return from the dead to continue his former life.  That would be good news only for him and his friends and family.  It would not be a new creation.  It would not be good news for all humanity for all ages.

The resurrection is, the whole of the New Testament witness insists, Jesus’ entry into the life and power of God.  To express that truth, the New Testament uses the language not only of resurrection, but they symbol also of Jesus’ ascension and enthronement at God’s right hand. (185-86)

Jesus’ ascent is the premise for the sharing of the gifts (of the Spirit) with others (Eph. 4:11-16).  The ascension of Christ is not a distancing from us but the condition for a new form of intimacy with us. (189)

James Wm. McClendon, Jr. in Systematic Theology: Doctrine:

According to Revelation 5:9f, the sacrificial work of the earthly Jesus has already formed this “royal” people; we exist; the new politics has begun.  As [John Howard] Yoder puts it, “On the average and in the long run, truthtelling and the love of enemy are the effective ways to create and defend culture,” that is, to give viable shape to the world, even in the present age.  Relief work goes farther than war to enable a people to survive; the Red Cross outlasts the Nazi swastika cross. (99)

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki in God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology:

The great reversal themes in the teaching and life of Jesus call for a radical openness to God’s rule.  Our structures, no matter how inclusive their original intent, tend to harden toward their own preservation and perpetuation, rather than to be continuously open to the needs of inclusive well-being.  The structures are to be in the service of love and justice.  Openness to God’s future calls upon us indeed to create structures, but always to submit those structures to the critique of the demands of God’s radical love.  Faithfulness to the past, when that past is the revelation of God in jesus Christ, calls upon us for a radical openness to new and unexpected forms of inclusive well-being, God’s reign.

Apostolicity, therefore, is a continuity with the past that nevertheless has an essential openness to it.  In every generation and in every Christian there must be a faithfulness to the content of the gospel: our words must point to the Word who is a person, living, crucified, risen.  Therefore, our words must also take the form of ever new interpretations of ways in which we can enact love and justice.  Word and deed together constitute the church’s faithfulness to its apostolic tradition. Constancy and openness form the dynamism whereby the apostolic church witnesses to the world. (141)

How can I ask God for forgiveness? It seems like it is making light of all the things I’ve done wrong in the past.

Thank you for this question.  It’s pertinent, powerful, and pesky.

Here’s one way of thinking through what forgiveness is about: or, rather, what it is not about.  It’s the distinction between overcoming vs. overlooking.

When I read your question, my impression is that you associate forgiveness with the latter, namely with overlooking.

It’s an understandable and common notion, right?  We hear it a lot in the phrase “forgive and forget.”  Whatever occurred doesn’t matter.

That’s different than what happens when a person thinks about forgiveness as overcoming.

When you work with the idea of forgiveness as overcoming, you don’t ignore whatever happened.  It’s precisely because something happened that forgiveness is on the table in the first place.

Forgiveness, though, is the applied notion that something is more powerful than what occurred.  Not that something didn’t occur, but that it isn’t final, it isn’t ultimate.

The way I do Christian theology, I look at forgiveness through the lens of Easter.  The tomb was what, as you write above, was done wrong in the past. And if that were worth hanging onto, If God were fixated on that, then Jesus would have just stayed dead.

But the Christian story says that he didn’t.  Instead, he rose from the dead.

My thinking tells me that we can talk about judgment, but that Easter redefines it: Easter announces that God’s final judgment, so to speak, is that life is more powerful than death, that mercy wins out over condemnation, or, as I have said I’m sure ad nauseum, that death is real, but life is real-er.

Not that judgment is precluded, but in the end, it does not prevail.

That is, Easter redefines us not on the basis of the past but on the future: life wins.

A couple of other ways of thinking through this:

1.  You are doing more wrong than you even know (Who says that never was a discouraging word said on the prairie?).  No matter what you do, you are engaging in sin.

I talk about my countertop to illustrate that.

When I remodeled my house to accommodate for my son’s wheelchair, I wanted it to be as eco-friendly as possible.  Among other decisions, I needed to choose a countertop.

I could have gotten a relatively affordable laminate.

But I had also learned of a new product made with recycled cardboard (for two shades of brown), recycled newsprint (for two shades of grey and black), and (with the help of a contract with the federal reserve), shredded money for green!

It was expensive.  However, it was made with recycled material and was itself recycled.  To top it off, a portion of the proceeds was funneled into developing sustainable housing in Africa.

So what do I do?  Do I go for the expensive but ecologically responsible product?  Or do I buy the laminate and give the difference away to Bread for the World?

I maintain that no matter what I did, somebody was harmed or died, and I am not exaggerating.

My point is that we are caught in a web of interrelationships, and just by existing we will inadvertently (let alone intentionally) harm somebody.

This is why Luther had reservations about confession: not that he didn’t appreciate the power of confessing one’s sins, but because there was never any way that we could confess, let alone know, all of our sins.

2.  Forgiveness can be a power play.  The forgiver can extend or withhold forgiveness, and in doing so, wield fantastic power.  But when forgiveness is done from a position of self-righteousness, or a refusal to look at the context of the infraction, or the context of the infractor (so to speak), then humility and compassion are withheld.

That is, who is not him/herself in need of forgiveness?  And who then are we to withhold it?

Life is messy.  None of us hit home runs every moment of every day.

At our house, right beside the front door, we have a little brass bowl which we fill with water.  These are often hung beside the doors in Roman Catholic homes in Germany.  We dip our fingers in them when we leave and when we return home, as a reminder that we are not defined by our sins but by the fact that our sins are washed away.

That does not mean that, as Paul asked rhetorically, “Should we sin more because grace abounds?”

Instead, it means that still and even so, we are forgiven.  As Psalm 130 tells us (Luther’s favorite), because there is forgiveness in God, God is loved.  The forgiveness comes first, which allows us to trust and love God, and then act out of that trust and love.

All of that said, I can’t help but believe that often it is our difficulty in forgiving ourselves, rather than believing that God forgives us.

And when we do that, we give the sin, or our complicity in it, more power than we do God’s word of forgiveness.

One more thing: Often people say that repentance is necessary in order for forgiveness to occur.

I’m all in favor of repentance. It is cleansing, it is healing, it is honest.

But I look at tales about lost coins and lost sheep, and realize that they didn’t repent and still were found and joyously reunited with their owners.  It’s even questionable whether the prodigal son repented; some readings suggest he was just hungry and tired with sleeping with sheep.

Sometimes we can’t repent (for any number of reasons: can a murderer repent?  someone whose actions were born out of mental illness, despair?), sometimes we don’t know we need to repent.

Call me a Lutheran-on-steroids, I’m just blame uncomfortable with making repentance a work that must be done in order to receive forgiveness.

An oft-repeated quote is that “Withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat-poison and waiting for the rat to die.”

You can withhold it, but doing so won’t benefit the sinner, and it surely won’t benefit the sinnee.

So were we to be having a face-to-face conversation, I think I’d press you to talk to me about what you understand forgiveness to mean, and to bring about.

Maybe we can get a few additional voices to weigh in here: What do you think?

P.S.  See a couple of my other blogs on forgiveness here and here.

——————————–

These are fantastic, articulate questions.

I brewed myself a strong cup of coffee, and sat down to settle into it.

1. Your distinction between “reacting” and “responding” intrigues me.

Reacting reminds me of what reptiles do well. They tend not to thoughtfully consider situations, options, motivations, and complexities.

Responding suggests more of an evaluated reply.

As I read the reports of Anne Rice’s departure with your question in mind, I found that on the surface she appeared to “respond.” She spoke of having deliberated for some time about this move, and that there was indeed wrestling involved.

However, her reasons for leaving were stunningly simplistic. To be sure, one can find examples of precisely what she is naming: sexism, prejudice against homosexuals, close-minded and dogmatic thinking.

But two thoughts came to mind:

a) that sort of thinking is surely also to be found in the secular world;

b) that sort of thinking is surely not to be found across the board within the Church.

I was struck with the irony that her decision came not long after my tradition, the ELCA, voted to welcome gays and lesbians in relationship. An interviewer brought this point up to her. She replied that although she was pleased with the vote, she needed to “walk away from the whole controversy, the whole conversation.”

I appreciate fatigue, truly I do. And I appreciate disgust even at the Church, truly I do.

But I don’t appreciate blanket statements so very much.

There is much that the Church has done and continues to do that deserves righteous indignation. But one appears awfully simplistic and judgmental if one suggests that these acts define the Church through and through, and that one somehow is above reproach enough to find something better….alone….without the interference of relating to others….because that always muddies the waters.

Really, I wondered if she knows of Jim Wallis and Sojourners, or of the recent UCC ad that suggests anything but stodgy thinking.

2. There are some parallels, I suppose, to Anne and Martin. Martin left because he thought that the pope usurped his appropriate powers, and he felt that the Church’s teachings were skewed.

But there are some key differences:

a) He did not want to leave. What he wanted to do, despite all of the muck and frustration and danger and anger, was to stick around and reform the Church.

b) Once he left, he did not retreat to a private corner, or shake the dust off of his shoes and blast the entire Church. He set out to build up a new way of being Church.

I really really understand why a person would want to leave the Church. The Church can be clumsy, capricious, and downright wrong.

But it is indeed hard to remain a Christian and not be part of a Christian community, for a couple of reasons.

a) Jesus did not just come for me. Jesus came for the entire world.

I respect a private faith as much as I respect indignation at the Church! There are good reasons to be so frustrated that one walks away! And there are good reasons to craft a deeply personal, private faith. That is not the point.

The danger is that one establishes an “exclusivity” with Jesus, and assumes that whatever one has going on privately with Jesus is way better than what those church-goers are up to, do the degree that one doesn’t need others for one’s own faith.

I’m not so convinced that that is true.

b) Connected with that is the reality that we are all fallible. Community (granted, a healthy community) helps us think through matters collectively and conversationally, so that one doesn’t become navel-gazingly arrogant.

See, I know of specific congregations who would largely agree with Anne Rice’s perspective, and I think that both she and these other gatherings of people suffer the loss of that possible relationship.

I must add, however, that there is a reason that denominations are suffering such attrition these days. We have too often made ourselves and our message irrelevant and/or archaic. Ann speaks a prophetic voice to us, and that ought not be missed in this dust-up.

3. There are reasons to leave certain doctrines and denominations which uphold them.

Although, as I’ve made clear in other blogs, I actively supported (and still do) the recent ELCA decision on the ordination of gays and lesbians in relationship, I understand better the grief and anger of those who are leaving if I imagine how I would respond were the ELCA to withdraw the validity of women’s ordination.

To be in relationship with anyone–person or institution–necessitates a fine balance of humility and principle.

If one concedes that no one–including oneself–is perfect, then one greets frustrating exchanges with more compassion and less haughtiness.

Still, there is a reason why I am ELCA Lutheran, and not Missouri Synod, for example, or Roman Catholic, or Jewish. There are some things I hold to be central, and the ELCA folks seem to resonate with my convictions more than do other traditions. So I suppose I have, to use your language, left those doctrines.

But were I to blast these other traditions with a wide swath of disgust, I would not only ensure that present conversations would cease, I would also guarantee that further conversations would be that much more difficult.

And I would do a fine job of making clear that I am certain that I cannot be wrong, and am always right…or at least on balance right-er than these other misguided or ignorant people in the other pews.

So. A first run at your question(s).

In short, I have felt most every one of Anne Rice’s frustrations. But I’m not sure that leaving the Church with a generalized Pox on the House is helpful, accurate, or fair.

I’m eager to hear if you have some follow-up!

Anna

—————–

Great question!

I imagine that at one level, just about every passage of Scripture has some element of interpretation going on.

Some read the Bible literally, meaning that everything occurred just as one reads at face value.

Others see various layers, and wonder about how archaeological finds, linguistic insights, historical context and so forth inform the intended meaning of the texts–assuming that there is any agreement on the interpretation of the archaeological finds, linguistic insights, historical contexts themselves to begin with!

Even the notion of themes is tricky. Most would agree that God has a habit for caring for the poor and the oppressed. However, what the _implications_ of that habit for _us_ is, is another story. Jim Wallis, for example, sees matters vastly differently than does, say, Glenn Beck. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/what-glenn-beck-doesnt-un_b_511362.html and http://blog.beliefnet.com/gospelsoundcheck/2010/07/jim-wallis-glenn-beck-and-lifest.html is a place to start. Here’s a funny take on their bickering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy8v1Q1VWuI

And while one wants to think of God as all-loving, there is a healthy share of texts which might call that into question.

This is why I love being a systematic theologian. My “gig,” so to speak, is to figure out why we say we believe what we do, and whether it can actually carry the water home. Is it consistent? Does it make sense according to the world in which we live? Where are the weaknesses, and can we work through them (not always, by the way)?

If you have specific texts in mind, that might be a way to do a “case study.”

Thank you for raising this one up!

————————

Do you remember this Federal Express commercial with the speedy talker? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeK5ZjtpO-M

Have that in mind as you read through this blog entry, because this is OMG’s version of the history of scripture in approximately 2000 words, borrowed heavily from a lecture I have often given on the topic! It’s an awfully thrilling history.

The word ‘Bible’ comes from the Greek words, ‘ta biblia,’ meaning ‘little scrolls,’ or ‘little books.’ In fact, many little books make up the Big Book, so to speak.

The Bible is also called “the canon,” which means “measuring rod,’ or ‘ruler.’ In fact, in Regensburg Germany, there are two steel posts attached to the corner of the ancient city hall. They were used as a uniformly accepted yard stick, in case the fabric merchant was going to sell two feet of material for the price of three. These two rods were, in essence, a canon.

That’s what Scripture is, a canon, a gathering of writings to which we hold various assertions up to see whether they jibe.

In fact, it is still a disagreement about which little books actually belong in this Big Book, the Bible. Martin Luther, for example, wanted to chuck the books of James and Revelation. Some argue that the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King Jr. ought to be included in Scripture. Theoretically, changes could be made: the Bible as we have it never was approved by any council whatsoever, and even now different traditions include different books. But the chances of that happening are really, really, really slim.

So let’s look at each section of the Bible to see what one can find.

The Old Testament

The first portion of the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, is called the Tanakh. It’s an acronym, like NASA, standing for these three words: Torah, Nebi’im, and Kethubim.

The Torah (also called the Pentateuch, meaning five [penta-] teachings) is comprised of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Several authors are responsible for these books (the idea that Moses wrote them is highly disputed by most scholars, beginning with the observation that Moses died in these texts, and aided by clearly different styles of writing and agendas), and overall, it took approximately six centuries to write them all (11th-5th centuries B.C.E.). These documents were discovered before the ancient Hebrews were returned from their Babylonian exile (beginning in 538), and preserved what previously had only been maintained orally.

The name ”Torah’ was given to these books because it preserved teachings: ‘Torah’ means ‘teaching’ or ‘law.’ It became a normative text by the middle of the third century BCE, when it was first translated into Greek.

The Nebi’im are the prophetic writings, like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and so forth. They were compiled by 200 BCE, but were written in two stages: some before 609 BCE, and some during the Exile. One can notice certain editorial changes that occurred over time, like the addition of Isaiah 40-66, or Zechariah 9-14, in order for the prophetic address to continue to be relevant.

The Kethubim, meaning the Writings, were uniquely bandied around, independent of one another. They were compiled late into the first century BCE. Different editors put the books in different orders, and depending upon whether you are a Jew or not, some books are considered one, some two. They include the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.

Then we have the Apocrypha. The name comes from a Greek word meaning ‘hidden.’ It’s where we get our words ‘cryptic’ and ‘crypt.’ It is possible that it is called the Apocrypha because some thought that the words and ideas were so mysterious that the meanings were hidden from the average person, or that the texts in the Apocrypha should be hidden because the words were heretical to some!

We have these manuscripts because a man named Jerome was commissioned to translate the Scripture into Latin. His final work is called the Latin Vulgate. He distinguished these books from the Old Testament and from the New Testament. Roman Catholics consider the Apocrypha part of the Bible, but Protestants tend to see them as “extra-canonical.”

However, the Apocrypha is used and known in history!

Shakespeare named two of his daughters after the books Susanna and Judith, and about eighty passages from eleven of his plays contain references to it. Hymn writers use it, like the composer of Now Thank We All Our God, who based its text on Luther’s translation of Sirach 50:22-24. All sorts of common names come from it, like Edna, Susanna (Susan, Suzanne), Judith, and Tobias (Toby). The word macabre could well come from the gruesome details of the Maccabee tales. And perhaps for some, most importantly, New Testament writers make use of it. Romans 1:20-29 correlates with Wisdom 13: 5, 8; and 2 Corinthians echoes Wisdom 9:15, and James 1:19 parallels Sirach 5:11.

The Septuagint (LXX) is the translation of the Old Testament into Greek, and was completed sometime between 200-300 BCE. It was translated from the Hebrew into Greek (and a few verses in Aramaic) because after the exile, the Jews had spread out, dispersed, all over the Mediterranean world. This occurrence is called, in fact, the Diaspora. Because Greek had become the main language (much like English today), many Jews had forgotten their Hebrew, and could only understand Scripture in the Greek.

Many of the New Testament writers, when referring to the Old Testament writings, quote from the LXX, not from the Hebrew text, because they didn’t know Hebrew well either!

Legend has it that seventy scholars did the work; hence the name. It was here that the order of the Old Testament was set, because the translators put the books in, what seemed to them, to be chronological order.

It is key to remember that the Old Testament was the only Testament for the early Christians–not least of all Jesus. It is included in the Christian Bible because without it, without Judaism, one is not Christian.

The New Testament came into being because of a heretic.

I really like heretics.

Marcion lived around 150 AD, and completely changed the history of the church.

He believed that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament.

So he pitched most of the Old Testament.

And he got rid of all the writings that he felt favored Jewish readers, like Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. The pastoral epistles conflicted with the way he saw theology, so he chucked them too. And he didn’t like Luke’s nativity story.

Which left Paul.

And something Luke-esque.

Needless to say, the orthodox (ortho=straight, doxa=thinking, namely those with “straight thinking,” those who “have it right”) excommunicated him.

Not that that helped much.

So they decided to establish the Canon, and the beginnings of the Bible as we have it now came into being, to counter Marcion and other like-minded heretics..

The Old Testament was retained, and writings after Jesus were preserved as long as it seemed as if the writer were either a disciple or a disciple of a disciple. And the writings could not be considered to be heretical in and of themselves, e.g., if an author suggested that Jesus only ‘appeared’ to be human, it was not allowed into Scripture.

Dating of the original texts for New Testament books is interesting, and is tricky.

Most scholars think that Mark was written about 60 CE (approximately 30 years after Jesus’ death), Luke and Matthew around 70-80 CE, and Paul between 50-65. Not all scholars agree, by the way, that all the books attributed to Paul (like Ephesians, for example) were indeed written by Paul.

But that’s another blog.

And if you really want to chase something interesting, check out the idea of the four-source hypothesis, which notes the similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and proposes that the authors knew of each others’ writings, as well as at least three others: Q (Quelle), and proto-Luke, and proto-Matthew. Here’s a quick survey: http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Synoptic_Problem.htm

In short (ha ha), the Bible as we have it, only came into existence around 369. That’s more than three centuries after Jesus lived! Before that, the Gospels and letters of Paul were the primary sources of Church writings, up until 150. Around 190, a list circulated with approved scripture, and it included all the books in our present New Testament, except Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John.

Then in the first part of the fourth century, a gentleman named Eusebius wrote that Hebrew, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were still considered by some to be iffy. No one quite knows how people reconciled to having them included in Scripture, but by 369 we have our first listing of all the books in the Bible as we now have it.

It’s important to note that we have not one single “original” manuscript of scripture. We have ancient copies, but they are not uniform–although the consistency is remarkable from one manuscript to the next.

Most scholars dispute the notion of God “whispering” in an author’s ear to “dictate” what should be written.

Literalism is dangerous–and easily disproven.

As I’ve said in another blog entry, even the authors were comfortable with metaphor. Did any author really mean that God is an eagle, or that we are sheep?

And literalism misses the point. There are many forms of writing in scripture: history, poetry, letters, lament, hymnody for starters! If two people are standing on a hill, which one tells a truer word: the one who says, “I can see 6.6 miles?” or the one who says, “I can see forever?”

Add to that the terribly different historical, cultural, and linguistic circumstances, and the notion of literalism begins to lose its luster.

And what of context? I’ve often said, echoing my OT professor, that the one commandment that humanity has ever gotten right is “Be fruitful and multiply!” But in a day and age of overpopulation, when all creation is groaning with resources stretched beyond reserve, is it a word God would speak yet today?

Different translations of the Bible emphasize different interpretive priorities. Some do translate with an emphasis upon literalism, and others allow, even if in footnotes, some measure of translational freedom. The translation I prefer is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). It is a fine collaborative work which depended upon biblical scholars from many and various traditions–a choice that consciously avoided an interpretive bias.

So.

Clearly, much to think about, wonder about, and pursue.

For those of who wanting to chase this further, take a look at these following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript It’s a wikipedia article which offers some cool links to studying ancient manuscripts. Note the images!

The Da Vinci Code received much attention. Take a look at Speaking of Faith’s view of it here: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/davinci/index.shtml

Here’s theologian William Placher’s historical perspective on the notion of biblical literalism: http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=5

I’m eager for feedback and further questions!

Peace,

Anna