July 29th, 2010
Question: If we are saved by God’s grace and yet we continue to turn our back on God, i.e., we don’t practice our faith, we don’t pray, we don’t read God’s word, we continue to repeat the same sins over and over, etc. if we die are we saved or did we fall short of God’s grace? Ref: Hebrews 10:26-31
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This is why theologians get paid the big money [insert ironic chuckle here].
We are supposed to know what is going to happen when we die and why.
Let me be straight up and, on behalf of a whole bunch of us, say: We don’t. For sure. We have hunches, we have hopes, we have hints, but we don’t really, really know.
It’s tricky, right? There are texts that can really scare the dickens out of a person. Take a look at the one you mention: Hebrews 10:26-31.
And why stop there?
Matthew 7:13, Luke 16:26, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 20:13-15 all can be cause for deep fear and even despair….and there are a lot more where these came from.
Of course, other texts aren’t so frightening, and actually suggest a wider door.
1 Tim. 2:6, 1 Cor. 15:22, Romans 5:17, Col. 1:20, 1 John 2:2.
Of course, each of these texts are bound to the verses before and after it, and bound by the author’s historical context, and many can be interpreted a number of ways.
My point here is that the Bible (in the cases listed above, the New Testament) isn’t as monolithic as one might believe.
Not that it is a huge surprise for those who read my blogs carefully, but I am of the mind that the question of what happens after we die is largely a theological question, and that in the end, we have to humbly say that we don’t know…and that we will not be paralyzed by that notion.
The way in which you phrase your thoughts, however, raises some interesting questions. You begin by saying that “If we are saved by God’s grace….” and close by wondering if we can “fall short of God’s grace.”
My immediate thought is, saved from what?
My second thought is, what is grace?
And my first answer to the first thought is, sin.
And my first answer to the second thought is, the gift of something undeserved.
And so two theological questions:
If we really believe that God offers grace (an undeserved gift) to we who sin (namely we who reject God in favor of something else) then:
1. isn’t the demand to repent, to stop the sin, to pray, etc…..aren’t these all acts to make us deserving of grace? And along side of that (this doesn’t cut into my two questions, btw!  ), then what is grace, really? Can we fall short of something we don’t deserve in the first place?
2. Who doesn’t sin, and (again, still part of the same question!) who is aware of all the ways in which one sins? Is it ever possible to confess and repent of all our sins?
These are just beginning questions. Then begins a whole run of ‘em.
Like,
Are all sins choices, or could there be sinful behaviors which are bound up in mental illness, in fatigue, in family systems?
Do we really want to say that only Christians are going to heaven…and does even Scripture make that case?
Is this a slippery slope to universalism?
And if “all people get into heaven,” then what’s the point of believing?
Ah, but then there are counter-questions:
Like, if a person believes to get into heaven, isn’t the integrity and authenticity of the belief self-serving, since it appears to be motivated by a protecting one’s own eternal hiney?
When does one believe “enough” to be in God’s good graces?
Is there anyone who is purely good? And even if not entirely good, are there parts of people which are fundamentally good, and then are those parts not in need of salvation….and what would that mean?
But don’t good deeds matter somehow?
And yet if we say that they do, then don’t we say that we in part can save ourselves?
And what happens if we’ve lived a pretty good life, and in the moment that we allow ourselves to wonder these sorts of things, get hit by a car? What is going to be God’s final answer?
Regardless of how one comes down on the question of heaven/hell, salvation/damnation, this much is safe to assert is true:
If one says that they believe in God, then there are implications for how they live their lives, for the choices that they make.
We all mess up, sometime quite gloriously, even those who say that they–and in fact really do–believe.
There’s a reason why we have the word “grace,” in other words. We need it.
But generally, if one says that something is core to who they are, then they live life consistent to that notion: not to get something, but because they can’t help but to live in such a fashion.
I tell my husband that I love him not to get him to love me, but because I love him. I play with my kidlets not to get them to respect me, but because I adore them.
Actions are an expression, in other words.
And let it not be missed that some of the most life-giving people are those who are not connected to any one particular religious tradition.
So the point is not to “diss” confessing and repenting and praying and discerning what is faithful and striving to live accordingly.
The point is to rather raise the question about whether these are pre-reqs for salvation…and if we answer that they are, well….who doesn’t fall short of that?
It’s all clear…as mud.
Peace,
Anna
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Heaven & Hell, Mercy & Grace, Reader Questions, Scripture, Suffering, Truth | 6 Comments »
July 28th, 2010
Question:
In the Exodus rendition of God’s self-description, the syntax takes on expansive meanings: “I am who I am” could be “I will be what I will be” or “I am what I will be”.
God continues in the passage to describe Himself in relationship to mankind as the “God of your fathers”, etc. It would be nice to better understand what God meant (or Moses’s interpretation) of that event.
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Wowza. There’s something to keep a mind moving in the morning.
In short, in Exodus 3:13 and following, God lets God’s name slip. YHWH.
But the name YHWH has been keeping people awake ever since, and apparently you too have maybe lost a few minutes wrangling with it.
Why YHWH? What does that mean?
Bernhard Anderson, Old Testament theologian, calls this text “one of the most cryptic passages in the Old Testament.”
I’d add that to your fantastic adjective “expansive!”
To Moses’ “simple” question, God offers three responses.
1. “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be;”
2. “I am;”
3. “The God of your ancestors…”
We have been terribly interested in this “be-ing” piece, this name that in Hebrew is rendered YHWH.
The first person form of the Hebrew word for the verb “to be” is ‘ehyeh. In Hebrew, it would be spelled (transliterated into English now of course!) HYH, namely “I am.” The third person form of this verb (namely “he is”) is YHWH.
Anderson lays out three different ways of thinking through this odd choice of a name, and I’ll lay them out in turn. (All of the following is found in Understanding the Old Testament, 4th Edition, p. 60 and following).
1. One line of thinking puts out there that originally in the text, the word was based on the Hebrew verb for “cause to be,” as in “He makes things happen.” In other words, in the context of the text, it reads, “I bring things into being.” This works nicely grammatically and theologically, if the agenda were to make the case that God was the creator of all things. Martin Noth notes that the “to be” verb used here does not imply merely “existing,” but rather active being, movement. (Exodus: A Commentary, 1962, p. 45).
2. Another theory is that YWHW should be understood simply as “I am.” Some, says Anderson, don’t particularly like this approach, because the idea of thinking about God in some eternal sort of way wasn’t really an issue for the ancient Israelites; it’s actually more of a Greek concern.
That said, the Israelites were concerned about developing an idea about God who was, is, and will continue to be involved in history. Another twist on this approach maintains that the point is that YHWH is, rather than other gods. Anderson quotes R. de Vaux who wrote that the implication here is that YHWH “is the only one who exists for Israel.”
3. Last is the idea that the name means “I will be,” in a future-bound sort of way. Here is a sense of comfort and promise. Moses will not be going forth alone, but rather with God, and the Israelites will not be left alone, but will be with God. As Anderson writes, “…the divine name signifies God, whose being is turned toward the people, who is present in their midst as deliverer, guide, and judge, and who is accessible in worship.”
That said, the text suggests that God is not 100% sure that it’s a good idea to reveal the divine name, for fear that people will try and use it for their own purposes. Think, for a moment, of how wars, church battles, justifications for personal deeds, are engaged with the assumption that “God is on my side.” So the interpretation above implies that God retains control of God’s identity, as in, “I will be whom I will be, not whom you want me to be.”
Still, once you know the name of someone, you can be in relationship. A name can be said in gentleness, love, anger, rejection, consolation, jest. With this in mind, that God offered YHWH suggests God’s willingness to be vulnerable and accessible. In other words, not only the name is of interest here, but the very offering of the name is too. See Terrance Frethiem here, in Interpretation: Exodus, pp. 64 and following.
Much more could be said regarding the name YHWH. Anderson concedes that the “honest truth is that we do not know for sure the source from which Moses received the name Yahweh.” That said, he goes on, the most important matter is what the name meant to early Israel. Here, it seems as if the name YHWH was bound up with the Exodus event, a God who, to quote Exodus 20:2, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
To that degree, the name YHWH could continue to have relevance for those who call still upon that name. God continues to be, to be creative, to be involved, and to bring new things into being.
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Judaism, Reader Questions, Scripture | 2 Comments »
July 26th, 2010
Like ink made visible in the moonlight.
That’s what it was like to be in Germany.
Europe illuminates a part of me that is otherwise not seen, sometimes even by myself.
Kathleen Norris writes about the notion of “Spiritual Geography,” this idea that a person is shaped not only by people and events, but also by place.
I imagine that implicitly, we know this to be true, but that we’re not often called to think on it, because we don’t often leave places of familiarity.
When I first arrived in Germany in 1999, every night, for many, many nights, I was exhausted, physically tuckered out by thinking in, reading in, writing in, speaking in, dreaming in, German.
Clearly that part of my brain, that part that concerns itself with new language, was weak, out-of-shape, ignored.
And it needed rest to meet the new day.
That experience, by the way, consoles me as I look at my sweet boy Karl, who tires so easily (and is sleeping beside me this very moment) because his brain is engaging in mental Pilates every moment of every day.
Returning to that place, however, I found myself in a home that I never would have known that I had, had I not made the strange choice to sell all that I owned (or store it with my parents, God bless them) and move to a foreign land with a foreign language and foreign ways.
Suddenly, this last trip, I realized that the foreign had become the familiar.
Now, this is not to say that I am enamored with all that is German, with all due respect to that fine land.
Customer service?
Often enough, I found myself missing the idea of a Wal-Mart Greeter–and I never even shop there!
Heightened formality?
I ought to, but don’t, do hierarchy so very well.
Lots of people in little space?
This introvert yearned for open prairie.
But that said, savoring extended meals outside with the background music of contented conversation–and even accordions, which generally make me want to curl up in the fetal position and weep?
Insert longing sigh of satisfaction.
Progressive medical care available to all?
Humaneness in action.
Raising children with the collective agenda to appreciate and respect nature’s wonders?
Isn’t that how it should be?
And the tangible history of thousands of years can’t help but remind a soul that they are not alone in time or space.
With that, the soul becomes acquainted with the past, and the present, and the future–and itself–in profound ways.
My point isn’t that you need to see the the familiar land only in the rearview mirror.
My point, vis-a-vis this evening’s blog, is that if one only lives “safely” by never venturing forth, never challenging the known, never availing oneself to the possibilities that newness extends, never considering that one might be wrong, one might never realize that home still has the light on a bit further on down the road…or at the very least, there are some souvenirs to be had to adorn your homey mantel.
Engaging new thoughts about God, truly “pondering anew, what the Almighty can do,” tends to exercise a part of the brain somewhat content with not moving particularly much.
And the process is exhausting, and somewhat scary, just like our first many days in Germany. Just like it is for Karlchen.
However, one has the distinct possibility of discovering a home one never knew one had. Who knew that there is an active–and fruitful–Buddhist/Lutheran dialogue? Who knew that women medieval mystics were in part behind the regularizing of Holy Communion? And for some, who knew that Jesus was not a Christian, but a Jew?
Worst case scenario, one learns to appreciate–and understand–even more one’s home-of-origin. For instance, my English grammar benefitted tremendously by learning the difference between the nominative and the accusative case alone, not to mention my discovery of etymologies heretofore unknown, and a new distinct ability to remember German surnames thanks to knowing what the name originally meant…sometimes in awfully amusing ways.
Learning about religious history, ecumenical dialogue, feminist and liberation and African and Black theology makes me tired, exhilarates me, and brings me home to new places.
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As an aside, Karlchen is making wondrous newness too. Watering eyes, relaxed muscles, emerging complex speech, and new bodily functions.
Was it scary, and is it still?
I cannot express how deeply that is true.
But living, loving, mothering, is.
So we wait, and weep, and hope, and rejoice when the foreign becomes familiar again.
Peace,
Anna
Posted in God's Relevancy, Truth | 1 Comment »
July 13th, 2010
So. I recognize that I have been lax in writing.
I have not been lax in thinking, however.
This summer has been as crazy-busy as it is hot.
OMG open house in April.
Wedding in May.
New husband in China and Thailand for two weeks.
Family from Alaska in June, their visit culminating in a first-ever, 100% attended family reunion on my mother’s side here in Sioux Falls.
And now we sit in Düsseldorf, Germany.
We find ourselves here, in the land where I did my doctoral work, and in the land where the accident occurred, that event which killed my first husband and caused my son to suffer a traumatic brain injury.
Frankly, I never considered coming back here. The memories, both good and painful, are so vibrant that even imagining the place causes a visceral reaction in me, a palpable sense of presence even from the distance of time and place.
Yet here we are.
Germany offers stem cell therapy, you see, an approach to healing not yet available to us in the United States. We learned about this opportunity through our acupuncturist, also a “novel” approach to healing in the States. But the novel stopped my son’s seizures after only three weeks, and has kept them thus at bay for over a year and a half.
So I told our acupuncturist that she had convinced me that there was a lot to be said for “fringe” approaches, and if she knew of any other any other fringy possibilities out there, I was all ears.
She told me of stem cell therapy, and put me in touch with a colleague of hers, who then put me in touch with the XCell Center in Düsseldorf.
And several months later, Karl is now resting tonight after having 11 million of his own stem cells injected into his traumatized brain.
Whew.
Needless to say, I have a nice glass of red beside me.
Hope and I? We have a dicey relationship.
On the one hand, whether we realize it or not, just swinging our legs out of bed is a hope-filled move. Hope, even subconsciously, allows us to function. We hope that we will have a good day, that we’ll get to work on time, that our loved ones will get home safely, we marry, we have children. All are trajectories of hope.
But sometimes hopes are dashed.
Quite literally, actually. Mine were dashed across a street 6 years ago, almost to the day.
And ever since then, hope and I haven’t made nice with each other, precisely.
So I hope for Karl’s complete healing from his brain injury, and everything I do is geared toward making that hope tangibly true.
The reality of that occurring is slim. And so then, what good is hope?
So I have come to wonder about the toxicity of hope; that is, can hope itself be detrimental? thwart one’s acceptance of reality? allow one to live a quixotic life built on vanities and illusions?
Yep.
But the danger of succumbing to hope’s opposite, despair, is equally numbing.
And I don’t particularly like the blandness of mere optimism either. I am optimistic that Karl’s present fever will go down.
But I’m not here to get a fever and reduce it.
I’m here to get Karl walking and talking.
So I have made peace with hope in the same manner as I engaged my first pregnancy, a pregnancy which ended in miscarriage. I had been told that many first pregnancies end in miscarriages, almost as if my body needed to learn what to do. And when I did miscarry, I grieved, but I did not despair….and we did not give up, and were blessed with Karl, and later Else.
I refuse to give up on the possibility that Karl can heal. And I insist upon going to great lengths to make the impossible possible. My vocation as mother calls me to that pursuit. Karl himself teaches me about the art of joyful defiance.
And, vis-à-vis God, it gives me an opportunity to remind God of God’s promises, and as I explained to a dear friend lately, I do so in a hold-God-accountable-to-God’s-promises sort of way. It is manifestly evident in Scripture that God has as God’s agenda healing. Perhaps it’s the Jew in me who feels quite comfortable pointing that out to God.
So the doctors and nurses and drivers and care-givers here, consciously or not, are ambassadors of healing. Their professionalism and clear recognition of the stakes demonstrate empathy and determination to patients and families who tend toward the isolated and exhausted. That the staff here engage in this sort of novel procedure is itself a tangible act of hope. Many of those who travel here, myself included, were told to suppress even optimism.
One last note. Germans have “doch,” a fantastic word which can be translated as an innocent, “I think you are mistaken,” to a sharp and sometimes rude rebuttal, the likes of which ought not be written down in this blog. Karl and I have a “gig.” I ask him, “Karlchen, when the doctors said that you would never talk again, or walk again, or laugh again, or make mischief again, what did I say to them?” And he says with a smile, “Doch!”
I said it in the latter sort of way.
Doch=spoken hope, and suddenly I understand hope against hope.
Peace,
Anna
Posted in God's Relevancy, Suffering | 2 Comments »
June 18th, 2010
That’s a provocative observation from theologian Sallie McFague.
I stumbled on it while preparing for last night’s forum sponsored by 1Sky and Repower America about Christianity and the care of Creation.
Below, as my next post, I’ve pasted the text of my presentation. As always, I look forward to your responses!
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Christians aren’t so much called to be successful, but rather faithful.
Depending on your perspective, this is either freeing or a real bummer.
Generally, it is safe to say that “success” tends to be associated with a decent and stable job, family, comfortable house, good reputation, etc.
But the trouble comes when we Christians reflect upon the one who is the foundation for our beliefs: Jesus.
He had none of these.
And yet he was faithful.
Christians believe that Jesus came to deliver soteria, a word often translated as “salvation,” but which in the Greek implies health, healing, and wholeness…the sort you don’t have to wait to die for.
And so he was in the business, so to speak, of restoring, forgiving, feeding, serving. Now.
It can’t be overlooked, of course, that he did also end up on a cross.
Sometimes being faithful is risky business.
Now, typically, Christians have looked to the cross as being primarily about the forgiveness of sins: “Jesus died for you.”
And while I’m all for that, the last 70 some years of theology has begun to wonder if perhaps there might more to his death than the forgiveness of sins.
Nobody is objecting to the forgiveness of sins, to being justified by Jesus’ blood, mind you. But after Auschwitz, it is difficult not to wonder whether justification has to have something to do with justice.
In other words, did Jesus die for more than just sin? Did Jesus die not only for the sinners, but also for those, or for that, which are sinned upon?
And it’s out of that idea that Christians recognize that God is in solidarity with those who suffer, that Jesus isn’t the only one to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”, that God feels our pain more deeply than do we, and, again, that Jesus came to bring soteria–health, healing, and wholeness–to those who suffer, because from a Christian standpoint, if God’s primary agenda were death and decay, then Jesus would still be dead in the tomb.
Instead, Christians believe in Easter, an empty grave, an announcement that life, not death, has the last word.
Now, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?
Perhaps surprisingly, lots.
Many Christians look at Jesus’ life ministering to the oppressed and outcasts, and his death on the cross, and see that God is interested in attending to the crushed.
And so a movement has begun that asserts that while God is concerned with the well-being of all people, God has preferential concern for the poor, for the voiceless, for the subjugated.
Feminist theologian Sallie McFague states that “nature is the new poor,” and that we would do well to “integrate needy nature and needy people.” (Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature, 170.) I think she’s absolutely right. And in fact, they already are related; areas of environmental degradation directly correspond with areas of communal poverty–one need only look to the effects of BP on the local economies of the coast to see this to be so.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has put out a fine Social Statement about ecological concern entitled “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice.” (http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/Environment.aspx) It states, “When we act interdependently and in solidarity with creation, we do justice. We serve and keep the earth, trusting its bounty can be sufficient for all, and sustainable.”
That’s fantastic.
It goes on to say that through participation, sufficiency (that is, having what we need, and not what we want), and a sustainable lifestyle, we can honor God’s creation by acting out just living for all creatures.
Now, to some, this seems like an extraordinary leap. A theologian named Gordon Kaufman points out that the main vocabulary of Christianity–like sin, salvation, forgiveness, repentance, hope, faith, love, righteousness–all concern human relationships. (“The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 65 [1972]: 350, as discovered in Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology [Fortress Press: Philadelphia, 1985], 6.)
In fact, the New Testament is hard pressed to demonstrate a real pattern of concern or interest in an ethic toward the land. One can argue that’s because they were anticipating Jesus to return at any moment, and their attention was focussed instead on evangelism.
And while Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament scholar, points out that the Old Testament has no “environmental agenda” that we would recognize as such, “land is a central, if not the central theme of biblical faith.”
He writes these stunning words to make the point.
“Place is space that has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is space in which important words have been spoken that have established identity, defined vocation, and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issued. Place is indeed a protest against the compromising pursuit of space.”
He goes on to worry about how having land, i.e., power and wealth, “can…be…the enemy of memory,” namely forgetting what it is like to have no place, and therefore no identity, no power, no promise. (The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2nd edition [Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2002], 4)
But Wendell Berry, author, philosopher, and advocate of the earth, speaks about the Jewish-Christian tradition of scripture reading and worship as showing a “pattern of reminding.” (Wendell Berry, “The Responsibility of the Poet,” What Are People For? [San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990], 91.)
So, although the New Testament leaves a bit to be desired in terms of specific references about respecting and stewarding creation, it does have a fine pattern of reminding for those in pain, threatened by death, devoid of hope–like speechless nature.
And it has this key event, this resurrection story, which tells us that now that we who can speak know that death isn’t final, there is more to do with our lives than preserve them.
We can instead be faithful, even, and perhaps these days most precisely, on behalf of all creation.
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Suffering | 2 Comments »
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