Best of Michael Spencer: Real Apologetics

Maine morning

Note from CM: This was Michael’s final post on Internet Monk: Feb. 10, 2010.

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A brief word from Michael

The ultimate apologetic is to a dying man.

That is what all those “Where is God?” statements in the Psalms are all about. They are, at least partially, invitations to Christians to speak up for the dying.

All the affirmations to God as creator and designer are fine, but it is as the God of the dying that the Christian has a testimony to give that absolutely no one else can give.

We need to remember that each day dying people are waiting for the word of death and RESURRECTION.

The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.

If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

What is your apologetic? Make it the full and complete announcement of the Life Giving news about Jesus.

Saturday Ramblings: April 9, 2016

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1952 Nash Rambler Greenbrier

The world where I live is greening up, though as usual, spring can’t make up its mind about whether to revert to winter or sprint toward summer. But the grass is green and diaphanous sage-colored leaves are forming on the trees. So I thought I’d post this pretty little Rambler wagon today in two-tone green as a matching accessory to spring’s emerging display. Hop in, and let’s take a ramble…

Today’s funny bits come courtesy of The Church Curmudgeon.

CC3

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings: April 9, 2016”

Best of Michael Spencer: The Coming Evangelical Collapse

Desert 3

Note from CM: This is the article that brought Michael what he called his “15 minutes.” There would be two more posts on the subject (linked at the bottom). Though he claimed to not be a prophet, he had a great deal of insight about the culture of evangelicalism in the U.S. and where it was (and is) headed.

• • •

My Prediction

I believe that we are on the verge — within 10 years — of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”

The party is almost over for evangelicals; a party that’s been going strong since the beginning of the “Protestant” 20th century. We are soon going to be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century in a culture that will be between 25-30% non-religious.

This collapse, will, I believe, herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian west and will change the way tens of millions of people see the entire realm of religion. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become particularly hostile towards evangelical Christianity, increasingly seeing it as the opponent of the good of individuals and society.

The response of evangelicals to this new environment will be a revisiting of the same rhetoric and reactions we’ve seen since the beginnings of the current culture war in the 1980s. The difference will be that millions of evangelicals will quit: quit their churches, quit their adherence to evangelical distinctives and quit resisting the rising tide of the culture.

Many who will leave evangelicalism will leave for no religious affiliation at all. Others will leave for an atheistic or agnostic secularism, with a strong personal rejection of Christian belief and Christian influence. Many of our children and grandchildren are going to abandon ship, and many will do so saying “good riddance.”

This collapse will cause the end of thousands of ministries. The high profile of Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Hundreds of thousands of students, pastors, religious workers, missionaries and persons employed by ministries and churches will be unemployed or employed elsewhere. [ ]. Visible, active evangelical ministries will be reduced to a small percentage of their current size and effort.

Nothing will reanimate evangelicalism to its previous levels of size and influence. The end of evangelicalism as we know it is close; far closer than most of us will admit.

My prediction has nothing to do with a loss of eschatological optimism. Far from it. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But I am not optimistic about evangelicalism, and I do not believe any of the apparently lively forms of evangelicalism today are going to be the answer. In fact, one dimension of this collapse, as I will deal with in the next post, is the bizarre scenario of what will remain when evangelicals have gone into decline.

I fully expect that my children, before they are 40, will see evangelicalism at far less than half its current size and rapidly declining. They will see a very, very different culture as far as evangelicalism is concerned.

I hope someone is going to start preparing for what is going to be an evangelical dark age.

Desert 2

Why Is This Going To Happen?

1) Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This was a mistake that will have brutal consequences. They are not only going to suffer in losing causes, they will be blamed as the primary movers of those causes. Evangelicals will become synonymous with those who oppose the direction of the culture in the next several decades. That opposition will be increasingly viewed as a threat, and there will be increasing pressure to consider evangelicals bad for America, bad for education, bad for children and bad for society.

The investment of evangelicals in the culture war will prove out to be one of the most costly mistakes in our history. The coming evangelical collapse will come about, largely, because our investment in moral, social and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. We’re going to find out that being against gay marriage and rhetorically pro-life (yes, that’s what I said) will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence and are believing in a cause more than a faith.

2) Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions of youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure.

Do not be deceived by conferences or movements that are theological in nature. These are a tiny minority of evangelicalism. A strong core of evangelical beliefs is not present in most of our young people, and will be less present in the future. This loss of “the core” has been at work for some time, and the fruit of this vacancy is about to become obvious.

3) Evangelical churches have now passed into a three part chapter: 1) mega-churches that are consumer driven, 2) churches that are dying and 3) new churches that whose future is dependent on a large number of factors. I believe most of these new churches will fail, and the ones that do survive will not be able to continue evangelicalism at anything resembling its current influence. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

Our numbers, our churches and our influence are going to dramatically decrease in the next 10-15 years. And they will be replaced by an evangelical landscape that will be chaotic and largely irrelevant.

4) Despite some very successful developments in the last 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism. The ingrown, self-evaluated ghetto of evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself. I believe Christian schools always have a mission in our culture, but I am skeptical that they can produce any sort of effect that will make any difference. Millions of Christian school graduates are going to walk away from the faith and the church.

There are many outstanding schools and outstanding graduates, but as I have said before, these are going to be the exceptions that won’t alter the coming reality. Christian schools are going to suffer greatly in this collapse.

5) The deterioration and collapse of the evangelical core will eventually weaken the missional-compassionate work of the evangelical movement. The inevitable confrontation between cultural secularism and the religious faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, that much of that work will not be done. Look for evangelical ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6) Much of this collapse will come in areas of the country where evangelicals imagine themselves strong. In actual fact, the historic loyalties of the Bible belt will soon be replaced by a de-church culture where religion has meaning as history, not as a vital reality. At the core of this collapse will be the inability to pass on, to our children, a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7) A major aspect of this collapse will happen because money will not be flowing towards evangelicalism in the same way as before. The passing of the denominationally loyal, very generous “greatest generation” and the arrival of the Boomers as the backbone of evangelicalism will signal a major shift in evangelical finances, and that shift will continue into a steep drop and the inevitable results for schools, churches, missions, ministries and salaries.

• • •

Here are the links for all three of Michael Spencer’s original “Coming Evangelical Collapse” posts:

  1. The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 1
  2. The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 2
  3. The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 3

Best of Michael Spencer: Wretched Urgency

Pittsburgh 3

Note from CM: Today, we present Michael’s classic critique of revivalistic fundamentalism that introduced a key term into the post-evangelical lexicon.

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Wretched Urgency: The Grace of God, or Hamsters on a Wheel?

My friend and prayer partner just looked across the lunch table and said I didn’t look good. In fact, he said I hadn’t looked happy all week.

He’s right. I am troubled. I want to preach and I can’t for almost two more weeks. The war is occupying my time and my mind. I’ve had some discipline problems with my students, who are tired of being in school and caught up in the spring that has finally chased winter from their minds. I’m thinking about where to find college money for my daughter and how to buy her a car and why I can’t stop gaining weight. Don’t ask me how I am. I might tell you.

OK. Don’t bail out. I’m not usually a whiner about life. Since you, my reading public, really want to know, I’ll tell you what is bumming me out: I harbor unspeakable thoughts about my Christianity. Things you can’t say in most churches. Things that are disturbing to many evangelicals, especially my particular kind of Fundamentalistic Southern Baptist Arminian revivalists. Dare I say these things? It’s too late!

Well, if I do, someone is going to say I am just a narrow, anti-evangelism, anti-missionary, five point “aggressive” Calvinist. And you already know how I feel about that. Someone else will say, like Job’s friends, that I’m living in sin and making excuses for myself. Others will mail me a book or tape that will make it all better. I will run the gauntlet if I start typing.

None of this intimidation will work on me. I’ve been thinking these things for years, and they aren’t shadows. What I am going to to say is real, and I am going to bet that once I let the cat out of the bag, a lot of readers will write me and say they thought it too, but were afraid to say anything because they didn’t want to get in trouble or get preached at. So here we go.

I don’t think Christianity is about converting people.

The Background Paper

It might help to get a feel for where I came from. The Southern Baptist Church that evangelized and discipled me was very typical of America’s largest non-Catholic denomination in the sixties and seventies. We were the very definition of all things Southern (with some midwesterness thrown in) and all things conservative, independent, rural and Baptist. It was a big church in a modest city, but it was full of essentially country people. The prevailing wind was Revivalistic Arminianism of the kind represented by Billy Graham and any number of evangelists below him on the sophistication scale. When big-haired Texas evangelists came to down, they were right at home.

Now, essential to this church was the belief that everyone was lost except the Christians in Southern Baptist Churches who were saved on a date they could remember and sure of their salvation if repeatedly asked “Are you sure? Are you certain? Are you sure you’re certain?”. Roman Catholics and most other Protestants were lost automatically, just for showing up.. A few sincere strays might get in- like maybe the occasional Church of Christ guy- but infant baptizers and non-Baptists in general were “religious organizations” and not Christians. I kid you not. This was a major emphasis at our church. There were even serious discussions about whether independent Baptists were saved, since they didn’t participate in the Southern Baptist Cooperative missions program. (Not a joke. Entirely true.)

Now this environment created a definition of the Christian life that was oriented to one thing: converting people. Oddly though, the word “evangelism” was never actually spoken. The word was “witness.” Christians were “witnesses.” We were supposed to “witness” to everybody and at every opportunity. This kind of “witness” was entirely verbal and best done in hostile territory. We had Thursday night “visitation” and Saturday morning “visitation” all for the purpose of “witnessing.” We took classes in how to “witness,” classes that bore an amazing similarity to seminars on how to sell vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias. (“Mrs. Jones, after seeing the amazing usefulness of Jesus, can you think of any reason you shouldn’t buy him right now?”)  Stories of successful “witnessing” episodes were the stock in trade of every preacher I heard growing up. Every sermon set out to bring a person to faith in Christ at the altar, and then, to a militant commitment to be a “witness,” or as it was often put, a “soul winner.”

You can’t feel bad enough.

“Witnessing” was the single and sharp focus of the Christian life in my church, and we were suspicious of those liberals who didn’t see the constant urgency of aggressive witnessing to the lost. We weren’t quite out on street corners preaching at the by-standers, but we would have admired that sort of fellow, and we would have probably been told we should aspire to such boldness. The maniac preacher-guy who railed at college girls and boys, calling them whores and hell-bound for make-up, movies and smoking, would have gotten a big love offering at my church. In all of this, it was a short walk to feeling badly about my own sorry and pitiful Christianity. I didn’t fit the mold.

Feeling badly about things was a key part of the Christian life in my church. We called it being “burdened for the lost.” The ideal Christian lived in hours of weeping daily prayer, interceding and travailing for the lost. (Weeping was very important.) If we prayed adequately, the lost would be saved and revival would come. Every week. Our lack of prayer was always to blame for everything, as was our lack of support for door knocking and confrontational witnessing of every kind. If you weren’t willing to learn the “techniques” of soul winning, you were an example of Christians who didn’t love God or are if people went to hell. In other words, you were like me.

I will not take you down memory lane to appreciate what I did to myself and to others to try and become that kind of big game hunting Christian. I took classes that equipped me with outlines and questions. I wore buttons to start conversations. I left tracts. I visited friends and tried to steer the conversation towards “spiritual things.” I walked aisles and promised, again and again, to become a good Christian witness. All the while I felt horribly guilty, and knew that my preacher was right when he said that on the day of judgment, the blood of my unsaved friends would be on my hands. That verse haunted me for years, and I am not yet out from under its shadow.

Let me give you an example of this atmosphere. My youth and music minister, Bill, was a huge influence on my life. As a growing young Christian, we spent hours together. I owe him a great deal of gratitude as a mentor during some tough times in my family. He took an interest in seeing me discover and use my gifts and talents in the service of the Kingdom. One day I brought a book to Bill; a book I was excited about reading because it was taking me into a subject I’d never heard about at our church. The book was J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. This remarkable book of theology was way over my head as a teenager, but the premise was revolutionary to me: the basic fact of my life was living to know my creator. It was my relationship with God that was my basic identity. God was the center of the Christian experience, and salvation was an unfolding of the greatness of the Lord. All this stood in contrast to the version of the Christian life that was all around me.

Bill wasn’t excited about Knowing God. In fact, he seemed threatened and angry that I was reading such a book and excited about it. “Your purpose isn’t to know God. Your purpose is to win souls. That’s what you are here on earth to do- be a witness and win others to Christ.” That was his response. I can hear it like it was yesterday, and I still feel the feelings of contradiction that oozed over me.

This was the air we breathed. The Christian life was a life of urgent rescue, and not a life of wasting time on whatever “Knowing God” was all about. We were all on constant 911 calls. The rapture could come any time, and every Christian was given this day for no other reason than to win souls. If you were not on witnessing patrol or on your knees preparing or following up a witnessing call, you were a useless and bad Christian.

(Let me say that probably more than a few of you will read this, and have read other things I have written, and are now saying, “Michael, you are really screwed up. Get some professional help.” I agree with you, and given the choice of therapy, Fundamentalists Anonymous, or writing these essays, I’ve picked the cheaper and less traumatic of the three options. But you are right. It messed me up and I am not over it yet, not by a long shot. I’m not alone either, am I?)

Pittsburgh 1

The Need For Speed

And thus was born my lifelong struggle with what I will call the impulse of wretched urgency in Christianity. It is my goal to help you to see it, and if possible, to convince you in joining me in renouncing it. For starters, let’s describe it.

We begin with the premise that the purpose of the Christian life is to persuade others to become Christians. Evangelism. Witnessing. Persuasion. These are the highest callings of the Christian. Why are you here? That others might know Christ. Heaven will be great, but the rewards are for the witnesses who spent their lives- and every bit of their energy- in getting other people to heaven. Nothing will be worse than to know that your friends are in hell because you didn’t tell them about Jesus.

The time is short. The rapture approaches. Or if you aren’t a rapturist, the need is to reach all the nations- or unreached people groups- as soon as possible. My hero- John Piper- says that no one can be saved without hearing the name of Jesus, so it is urgent we convince people to become missionaries. Everyone should go overseas and witness. Young adults should reconsider “worldly” careers and take the path of “extreme” missions involvement. Martyrdom is a great way to end your life and we ought to admire those who risk it or choose it.

Idleness is a sin. We need to be constantly and increasingly busy about the Lord’s work. More and more prayer. Become a prayer warrior and an intercessor. Claim people and pray them into the Kingdom. Ministry must always be the priority of every relationship. Wherever you are, you are accountable for the salvation of those around you..

Confrontation is no big thing. You do it if you love people. Constant communication of the Gospel is your true work.These are the hallmarks of a real Christian. He/she is busy witnessing. The church is busy growing and reproducing. Every Christian is involved in ministry- and all the training and preparation necessary for ministry- that takes a substantial amount of their time. (I’m pretty good at this!!)

The house is burning. We must be urgent and never lag in our mission. We are truly yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and dragging people out the one door of escape. We may appear foolish or even cultish, but it doesn’t matter. Growth. Numbers. Progress. Stories. Growing influence. Increasing territory. More boldness. More conversions. Larger churches. More events and groups and ministries and so on and so on.

Imagine a fellow starts a breakfast meeting with a few Christian friends. They drink coffee, joke and enjoy doing little or nothing. One thing is for certain. At some point, someone is going to say that the group is wasting their time. Right? Why aren’t they praying? Why aren’t they witnessing? Why aren’t they motivating themselves for evangelism or missions? All this talking and joking and discussing issues is just a waste of time. Christian are here to make a difference, and this group isn’t solving any problems or making a difference at all.

Recognize that voice? It’s in my head and it won’t go away.

Is That Really An Alarm in My Head?

Now, of course, all of this come with buckets of scripture. Go into all the world. The love of Christ compels us. You will be my witnesses. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He who wins souls is wise. Don’t let the master return and find you sleeping. You must be ready, for no one knows the hour the master will return.
Paul was urgent. Jesus was busy about his Father’s business. The early Christians preached the word wherever they were. The shepherds and the wise men were urgent in spreading the news. People Jesus healed ran up and down the roads telling about Jesus. Look at the man in Mark 5. Jesus casts demons out of him and he spends his whole life evangelizing and witnessing.

Read Christian history. Look at people like St. Patrick. Spurgeon. St. Francis. William Booth. Jim Elliott. Billy Graham. These people were urgent. Intense. Spending their lives in the service of the Lord.

Had enough? I have. My head is starting to hurt.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Anything worthwhile in life has an element of intensity and urgency in it at some point. Certainly, Christianity is a religion of realism and truth. The truth of the Gospel is an urgent message of pardon to be obeyed now, not later. It is a revolutionary message that is meant to be applied now, not in the by and by. Its truths ought to cause us to evaluate everything in our lives in the light of the “urgency” of the message. I yield this point without objection, and move on.

Further, there are some intense and urgent characters in the Christian story. Jesus is urgent. Paul certainly is in that category many times. Church history contains people who believed it was better to burn out than to rust. Some of those people have characteristics anyone can admire and often the lessons of their lives and teaching are valuable. I won’t argue this either, though I will say something about it all later.

What I will say is this: The “wretched urgency” that pervades much of evangelical Christianity isn’t Biblical. It’s a hoax, and a sick one. In fact, I will go so far as to say it is an outright distortion and perverting of the New Testament into saying something it never says, and ignoring plain truths it lays out for anyone to see.

A Christian may appear to be a fool at times. We are fools for Christ’s sake. But Christianity shouldn’t make us crazy. It shouldn’t break our mental and physical health. It shouldn’t fry our relationships and make us salespersons and hucksters. We aren’t hamsters on a wheel.

Turn off the alarm. It’s a hoax.

Things That Just Aren’t There

This all started for me when I noticed that there was no concern for church growth in any of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. Read it. Stop right now and go read it.

OK. Am I telling the truth? It says to hold fast. It encourages purity, fidelity, bravery and love. There are commendations and criticisms. But nothing about church growth. Nothing that says the agenda of Jesus for these churches was militant evangelism. I’m not saying there isn’t anything in these letters about evangelism. I am NOT trying to substantiate some kind of hyper-Calvinistic anti-missions philosophy. Far from it. I’m simply saying that in these two very important chapters summarizing the message of Jesus to these seven key churches in Asia Minor, there is no wretched urgency about evangelism and witnessing.

There is urgency about holiness, truth, and responsiveness to Christ. There is urgency about the Gospel IN the church, and among those who say they believe it. There is commendation for faithfulness in living it out. There just isn’t anything about church growth or aggressive personal evangelism. If you find it, you’re making it up.

How about the epistles in the New Testament? In those places where Christians are addressed as Christians, where is the urgency about church growth or personal evangelism?

Yes, I know that Paul is urgent about his ministry, but I don’t find his instructions for other Christians to be entirely in the same vein. I hear Christians being told to live quiet, peaceful, honest, generous lives adorned with integrity and love. Christians are told to be devoted to their families, to love fellow believers, and to live in such a way that outsiders cannot accuse or criticize. If they suffer for being a Christian, it should not be because they provoked a response through simply living the life Jesus taught.

Again and again, I look in the epistles for the kind of Christian experience that I was taught was normal, and I do not find it. The statements of urgency are not statements telling me to turn my house and life upside down in frenetic efforts to persuade people to join my religion. The urgency in Paul comes from his personal mission and his own vocation as a church planter. I can’t automatically apply it all to everyone else.

Shouldn’t we all be like Paul? No. Not if we aren’t apostles and church planters. Paul ran all over the world telling people to believe the Gospel, love Christ and live like it. We are to go back to our homes, jobs and communities and do exactly that. Preachers and missionaries have the urgency appropriate to their calling, as anyone should have the urgency appropriate in theirs. A parent has some urgency in parenting, but it has to be measured. A businessman or a teacher has some urgency, but again, in an ordered way. Christians look at their callings, their lives, their faith and apply the appropriate amount of urgency. We are not all told to sell all we have, give it to the poor and hit the road. In fact, that could be nuts.

What about urgent door to door evangelism? Ever run the phrase “house to house” in a computer concordance? Here’s what you get. The apostles went “door to door” i.e. home to home teaching and encouraging Christians when Christians were meeting in houses. (Acts 5:42; 20:20) Before sending them on a mission, Jesus told his disciples NOT to go house to house, but to find one home and stay there living a life of integrity. (Luke 10:7) And finally, busybodies go house to house stirring up trouble. You should stay home and be quiet. (I Timothy 5:13)

The fact that the New Testament does not command door to door confrontational evangelism completely overturned vast tracts of my own spiritual upbringing. It’s like a dark and terrible secret that was kept from me. Door to door Jesus salesmen were presented as the ideal Christians. Initiating attempts at conversion with people who didn’t know you was the very best definition of being a “witness.”

Listen to Peter’s description of evangelistic urgency to his first century audience: “1 Peter 3:15-16 15 but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; 16 yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” Live so people will ask. Don’t force feed them the question. Live the life. Live it plainly, but there is no guilt trip put on anyone for not accosting their co-workers once a week.

I cannot find the kind of Christian life I am talking about in the epistle to the Romans. Not anywhere. I have scoured the Corinthian letters and find Paul getting pretty intense about himself, but he’s usually telling the Corinthians they are a bunch of immature fanatics who need to take care out their own in-house garbage. As to their neighbors: 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” There is similar “urgency” about the lives of believers in 1 Peter 4:17 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

The Corinthian letters particularly are important as an example of an extensive pastoral correspondence between a church planter and a group of Christians. If there were an urgency about “winning souls” and “growing churches” it would appear in more than just Paul’s defenses of his own motives and ministry. There is an urgency for holiness and obedience, but not about “witnessing.” Paul is passionately concerned with what kind of persons the Corinthians are, and seems remarkably unconcerned with their “Christian activities.” He has lived around them long enough to say “imitate me as I imitate Christ (I Cor 11:1),” and by that I do not believe he meant “witnessing.” He had imbedded himself in their lives long enough to say “Look at who I am and imitate that.” This was not a guy barnstorming and whipping up Christians for evangelism. He was saying live the life.

I do not find guilt-inducing, blood on your hands urgency in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians or Thessalonians, letters that are indicative of diverse pastoral situations and relationships. Each letter is consumed almost entirely with concerns and problems within the church. The “witness” Paul is working to shape is lives submitted to Christ in matters of doctrine and discipleship. He is not organizing confrontive door-knocking expeditions. The interactions between Christians and non-Christians are of this flavor: Philippians 2:15-16 15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. And like the Corinthian letters, the urgency is the Christian mission as lived out by each person where God has placed them: Colossians 4:2-6 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison- 4 that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. 5 Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

The Thessalonians, who had caught a bad case of “Left Behind Fever,” received this admonition: “1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. In fact, it is remarkable how often the advice to the Thessalonians could be paraphrases as “Calm down. Live sensibly and morally. Stand firm. Be the sort of people who have an anchor for the soul in times when anything goes.”

Notice how Paul connects a thorough conversion of life with the influence the Thessalonians will have over others. Evangelism as an “activity,” seems to never be in mind here. A witness is what sounds forth from a changed and discipled like.

1 Thessalonians 1:4-9 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,

Here. Quote me. There is no urgent concern for converting people in the New Testament. Did you get that down? There is also no urgent concern for the numerical growth of churches by the efforts of members to convert others. There are no burgeoning church programs. There are no plans to train everyone to door knock and sell Jesus. There is an urgent concern for doctrinal and personal Christ-likeness. There is a concern for leadership, integrity, honesty and obedience to Christ in our personal lives. The idea that we are here to “win souls” and not to know and show God is bogus.

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The Gospel Road

What about the Gospels? Isn’t the ministry of Jesus full of soul winning urgency?

I think it has to be said that there are two kinds of urgency in the Gospels that have to be accepted. One is the urgency of Jesus in his own mission. Not a mission to convert, but a mission to fulfill all the Father had for him to do, up to and including the cross and resurrection. This urgency needs to be seen against how Jesus lived for thirty years before his ministry. He stayed home and was an obedient son, a carpenter and a productive, honest member of his community.

The urgency comes with his call to public ministry.

Scholars debate to what extent Jesus’ message was dominated by an eschatological “grip.” Some believe Jesus was convinced he was bringing on the end of the world as predicted by John the Baptist. Others, like George Ladd, are convincing that Jesus had an “already, but not yet” idea of the Kingdom, that allowed “urgency,” but did not bring the fanaticism of political revolution. This is an important aspect of this discussion, but should be pursued elsewhere. My point would be that Jesus passed on to his disciples a sense of “urgency” that the Kingdom had arrived and was coming “in force,” but he did not pass on the “wretched urgency” I am arguing against in this essay.

The second kind of urgency has to do with Jesus’ words to his disciples. He called them to leave their nets and come follow him. He called on others to make similar immediate and total changes of life in order to follow him. Some of Jesus’ interactions with perspective disciples majored on drastic response, and  he sometimes stressed not taking time to be overly concerned with ordinary matters. I also admit this kind of urgency is in the Gospels, but I disagree that it dominates the teaching of Jesus or defines the character of the Christian life in the way I was brought up. It is, precisely, the interaction between Jesus and his actual disciples in that situation and context. In that sense, it harmonizes with the first kind of urgency in the mission of Jesus.

If the Gospels are read with an interest to what they are saying to the “regular” Christian who heard them later, it is clear that the announcement of the Good News was “urgent,” but Jesus never instructed the ordinary Christian to convert people out of an urgent, “soul winning” mentality. The ordinary Christian was to believe the message, and consistently live a life increasingly shaped by the message and the Spirit. For instance, how should any Christian apply the lesson of the Gaderene Demoniac?

Mark 5:18-20 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Now this makes a fine sermon illustration for buttonholing and door-knocking, but that is a misuse and certainly is reading into the text. The power of the Gospel has done for all of us what Jesus did for this man. We are set free from the power of evil. We are in our right minds. Our response should be to want to follow Jesus. But Jesus commands that we go home to our friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for us. Even though the text seems to indicate the man became a preacher of sorts, it is because of his notoriety and gratitude, not out of guilt induced urgency. The command from the Lord was to go home and tell his friends, and that is what I believe the Gospel sends us to do, in whatever calling we have in life.

Am I Really, Really Wrong?

Am I wrong when I see Jesus healing, helping preaching and teaching, but sending most people back to their lives and families to live out their discipleship? Am I wrong that “urgency” in the teaching of Jesus isn’t of a kind that turns people into street corner preachers as much as it turns us into people who are salt of the earth and lights in the world wherever we happen to be? Am I wrong to sense that the focus on conversions, church growth and confrontation is not present in the New Testament, and a renewed focus on ordinary Christians living extraordinarily Christ-formed lives is needed everywhere? Am I wrong that “gowing” churches and their leaders are getting way too much attention, and the regular guy and gal trying to live it out at home and at work are not getting near enough attention?

I keep trying to see how this works out in two areas. One, what kind of person is a Christian? What should I be like? How should I feel? I cannot read the New Testament and conclude I should be full of the mindset and emotions of a person set on the street to make his living going door to door selling an unwanted product. I do not see a person overrun with guilt, but overjoyed in grace. I do not see the heaviness of a burden for the lost, but the joy of the saved visible and alive in the heart of the Christian. Hell, for all its reality, is not the reality that fills and motivates the Christian.

I think about this when I think of the many, many preachers who have passed through churches I’ve attended, and have hammered a guilt-dominated, wretchedly urgent, downright mean message of “you have to save the world” into the minds of passive Christians. It’s ugly, and I have come to despise it. It’s not the Christian life, and it doesn’t have the fruit of the Spirit anywhere.

The other area is what should my life be like for those around me? My family, co-workers and friends. What should they see and experience? This is a big area for me because I am a campus minister and I am charged with a certain kind of urgency in my own ministry setting. I accept that, and I always have. I don’t always like it, but even then, it is a joy to preach the Gospel. I glory and exalt in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and I revel in His Good News for my students. But I do not believe I am to be “wretchedly urgent” in a way that produces an obnoxious ministry, or a guilt-filled, terrorizing approach to students. Isn’t wearing this kind of urgency on my sleeve simply another kind of manipulation?

I am about to send my daughter off to college. What kind of a Christian do I want her to be, especially if her friends or roommate is not a Christian? Well, prepare to be shocked. I do not want her to be obsessed or distressed for their conversions. I do not want her plotting to confront them with the Gospel. I want her to BE a Christian, and live like one in the depths of her conscience and the details of her life. I want her to be a public Christian, associated with a church. I want her to be loving, honest, dependable, sober, humble and loyal. I want her to be mentally and spiritually equipped to live the life and speak the truths. I want her to be devoted to the Bible as the authority of her faith.

But I do not want her leaving tracts for her roommate. I do not want her miserable that her roommate’s salvation depends on her. I do not want her “burdened” and guilty. I do not want her friends talking about her in tones of dread when she is walking toward them, knowing she has to work out this guilt in efforts to convert them. I want her to be a person in whom they see a reality beyond religion, and a passion beyond the need to convert.

Frankly, I don’t care if she ever tells them they need to be Christians. If God brings about the opportunity, then that is wonderful and I want her to have the word of faith ready to share. But mostly, I hope she shows them everyday they need Christ, and that her life prompts  many discussions, questions and inquiries without necessitating plots and plans to force feed the Gospel to the disinterested.

It seems ridiculous sometimes to think that all our efforts at desperate and urgent conversions have not done the good that holy and beautiful lives, lived out in ordinary ways, could have done. God will always call people to cross barriers and go to the unreached and to start new churches. We need those whose lights burn brighter for a while in a particular cause. But I think about Martin Luther King, Jr. Changing the world, and committing adultery at the same time. I think of how many preachers and missionaries and people involved in evangelistic ministry burn out and burn up. I have always listened to the testimony of men like James Robison with great interest. While he was burning up the world with evangelistic zeal, he was dying inside. Now I see in him a holy urgency born of great grace. Tears and a burden, but not a miserable burden that defines his life more than the great laughter of the pardoning God. In Billy Graham I see the urgency, but I can also see that this does not define him. A humble and quiet rest in who God is and what God does.

If I’m wrong, write and tell me. If I’m right, and speaking to your own experience, tell me that, too. I want to know if I am alone in my error, or if I am right and speaking the truth, as strange as it may sound.

In the meantime, I will be accused of being a Calvinist, and that is fine, because only a vision of God saves any of us from despair. I will be accused of being anti-missions and anti-evangelism, but my life and priorities should refute that. What I want to be accused of is being a person without wretched, driving, guilt-producing urgency. I want all my urgency to be born of grace and mercy, and lived out in everything I do before the eyes of the Lord. Jesus should make me better than I am, and for that, I am urgent. I close with a passage that puts it perfectly:

1 Corinthians 15:10-11 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Best of Michael Spencer: When I Am Weak

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Note from CM: Yesterday, we marked the sixth anniversary of Michael Spencer’s death. Today I want to share my favorite Michael Spencer essay. An eloquent expression of the Christian life as viewed through the theology of the cross, this post represents Michael at his most honest and transparent. This perspective helped me move toward practicing my own faith in the Lutheran tradition.

“I fall down. I get up….and believe. Over and over again. That’s as good as it gets in this world….We need our brokenness. We need to admit it and know it is the real, true stuff of our earthly journey in a fallen world. It’s the cross on which Jesus meets us.”

• • •

When I am Weak
Why we must embrace our brokenness and never be good Christians
by Michael Spencer

The voice on the other end of the phone told a story that has become so familiar to me, I could have almost finished it from the third sentence. A respected and admired Christian leader, carrying the secret burden of depression, had finally broken under the crushing load of holding it all together. As prayer networks in our area begin to make calls and send e-mails, the same questions are asked again and again. “How could this happen? How could someone who spoke so confidently of God, someone whose life gave such evidence of Jesus’ presence, come to the point of a complete breakdown? How can someone who has the answers for everyone one moment, have no answers for themselves the next?”

Indeed. Why are we, after all that confident talk of “new life,” “new creation,” “the power of God,” “healing,” “wisdom,” “miracles,” “the power of prayer,” …why are we so weak? Why do so many “good Christian people,” turn out to be just like everyone else? Divorced. Depressed. Broken. Messed up. Full of pain and secrets. Addicted, needy and phony. I thought we were different.

It’s remarkable, considering the tone of so many Christian sermons and messages, that any church has honest people show up at all. I can’t imagine that any religion in the history of humanity has made as many clearly false claims and promises as evangelical Christians in their quest to say that Jesus makes us better people right now. With their constant promises of joy, power, contentment, healing, prosperity, purpose, better relationships, successful parenting and freedom from every kind of oppression and affliction, I wonder why more Christians aren’t either being sued by the rest of humanity for lying or hauled off to a psych ward to be examined for serious delusions.

Evangelicals love a testimony of how screwed up I USED to be. They aren’t interested in how screwed up I am NOW. But the fact is, that we are screwed up. Then. Now. All the time in between and, it’s a safe bet to assume, the rest of the time we’re alive. But we will pay $400 to go hear a “Bible teacher” tell us how we are only a few verses, prayers and cds away from being a lot better. And we will set quietly, or applaud loudly, when the story is retold. I’m really better now. I’m a good Christian. I’m not a mess anymore. I’m different from other people.

What a crock. Please. Call this off. It’s making me sick. I mean that. It’s affecting me. I’m seeing, in my life and the lives of others, a commitment to lying about our condition that is absolutely pathological. Evangelicals call Bill Clinton a big-time liar about sex? Come on. How many nodding “good Christians” have so much garbage sitting in the middle of their lives that the odor makes it impossible to breathe without gagging. How many of us are addicted to food, porn and shopping? How many of us are depressed, angry, unforgiving and just plain mean? How many of us are a walking, talking course on basic hypocrisy, because we just can’t look at ourselves in the mirror and admit what we a collection of brokenness we’ve become WHILE we called ourselves “good Christians” who want to “witness” to others. Gack. I’m choking just writing this.

You people with your Bibles. Look something up for me? Isn’t almost everyone in that book screwed up? I mean, don’t the screwed up people- like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Hosea- outnumber the “good Christians” by about ten to one? And isn’t it true that the more we get to look at a Biblical character close up, the more likely it will be that we’ll see a whole nasty collection of things that Christians say they no longer have to deal with because, praise God! I’m fixed? Not just a few temper tantrums or ordinary lies, but stuff like violence. Sex addictions. Abuse. Racism. Depression. It’s all there, yet we still flop our Bibles open on the pulpit and talk about “Ten Ways To Have Joy That Never Goes Away!” Where is the laugh track?

What was that I heard? “Well….we’re getting better. That’s sanctification. I’ve been delivered!” I suppose some of us are getting better. For instance, my psycho scary temper is better than it used to be. Of course, the reason my temper is better, is that in the process of cleaning up the mess I’ve made of my family with my temper, I’ve discovered about twenty other major character flaws that were growing, unchecked, in my personality. I’ve inventoried the havoc I’ve caused in this short life of mine, and it turns out “temper problem” is way too simple to describe the mess that is me. Sanctification? Yes, I no longer have the arrogant ignorance to believe that I’m always right about everything, and I’m too embarrassed by the general sucktitude of my life to mount an angry fit every time something doesn’t go my way. Getting better? Quite true. I’m getting better at knowing what a wretched wreck I really amount to, and it’s shut me up and sat me down.

17662224834_2d88160140_kI love this passage of scripture. I don’t know why no one believes it, but I love it.

2 Corinthians 4:7-11 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Let me attempt a slight retelling of the text, more in line with the Christianity of our time.

But we have this treasure in saved, healed, delivered and supernaturally changed vessels, to show that God has given to us, right now, His surpassing power over ever situation. We are no longer afflicted, perplexed, in conflict or defeated. No, we are alive with the power of Jesus, and the resurrection power of Jesus has changed us now…TODAY! In every way!. God wants you to see just what a Jesus-controlled person is all about, so the power of Jesus is on display in the life I am living, and those who don’t have this life, are miserable and dying.

Contextual concerns aside, let’s read Paul’s words as a basic “reality board” to the Christian life.

We’re dying. Life is full of pain and perplexity. We have Christ, and so, in the future, his life will manifest in us in resurrection and glory. In the present, that life manifests in us in this very odd, contradictory experience. We are dying, afflicted, broken, hurting, confused…yet we hold on to Jesus in all these things, and continue to love him and believe in him. The power of God is in us, not in making us above the human, but allowing us to be merely human, yet part of a new creation in Jesus.

What does this mean?

It means your depression isn’t fixed. It means you are still overwieght. It means you still want to look at porn. It means you are still frightened of dying, reluctant to tell the truth and purposely evasive when it comes to responsibility. It means you can lie, cheat, steal, even do terrible things, when you are ‘in the flesh,” which, in one sense, you always are. If you are a Christian, it means you are frequently, maybe constantly miserable, and it means you are involved in a fight for Christ to have more influence in your life than your broken, screwed up, messed up humanity. In fact, the greatest miracle is that with all the miserable messes in your life, you still want to have Jesus as King, because it’s a lot of trouble, folks. It isn’t a picnic.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Here is even more undeniable, unarguable language. Weaknesses are with me for the whole journey. Paul was particularly thinking of persecutions, but how much more does this passage apply to human frailty, brokenness and hurt? How essential is it for us to be broken, if Christ is going to be our strength? When I am weak I am strong. Not, “When I am cured,” or “When I am successful,” or “When I am a good Christian,” but when I am weak. Weakness- the human experience of weakness- is God’s blueprint for exalting and magnifying his Son. When broken people, miserably failing people, continue to belong to, believe in and worship Jesus, God is happy.

Now, the upper gallery is full of people who are getting upset, certain that this essay is one of those pieces where I am in the mood to tell everyone to go sin themselves up, read Capon and forget about sanctification. You should know me better by now.

The problem is a simple one of semantics. Or perhaps a better way to say it is imagination. How do we imagine the life of faith? What does living faith look like? Does it look like the “good Christian,” “whole person,” “victorious life” version of the Christian life?

Faith, alive in our weakness, looks like a war. An impossible war, against a far superior adversary: our own sinful, fallen nature. Faith fights this battle. Piper loves this verse from Romans, and I do, too. But I need to explain why, because it can sound like the “victorious” life is not Jesus’ life in the Gospel, but me “winning at life” or some other nonsense.

Romans 8:13 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put (are putting) to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

The complexity resides right here: Faith is discontentment with what I am, and satisfaction with all God is for me in Jesus. The reason that description works so well for me is that it tells us the mark of saving faith is not just resting passively in the promises of the Gospel (though that is exactly what justification does), but this ongoing war with the reality of my condition. Unless I am reading Romans 8 wrongly, my fight is never finished, because my sinful, messed-up human experience isn’t finished until death and resurrection. That fight- acceptance and battle- is the normal life of the believer. I fight. Jesus will finish the work. I will groan, and do battle, climb the mountain of Holiness with wounds and brokenness and holy battle scars, but I will climb it, since Christ is in me. The Gospel assures victory, but to say I stand in a present victory as I “kill” sin is a serious wrong turn.

What does this fight look like? It is a bloody mess, I’m telling you. There is a lot of failure in it. It is not an easy way to the heavenly city. It is a battle where we are brought down again, and again and again. Brought down by what we are, and what we continually discover ourselves to be. And we only are “victorious” in the victory of Jesus, a victory that is ours by faith, not by sight. In fact, that fight is probably described just as accurately by the closing words of Romans 7 as by the “victorious” words of Romans 8.

Romans 7:23-25 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

I fall down. I get up….and believe. Over and over again. That’s as good as it gets in this world. This life of faith, is a battle full of weakness and brokenness. The only soldiers in this battle are wounded ones. There are moments of total candor- I am a “wretched man” living in a “body” of death. Denying this, spinning this, ignoring this or distorting this reality is nothing but trouble in the true Christian experience. The sin we are killing in Romans 8 is, in a sense, ourselves. Not some demon or serpent external to us. Our battle is with ourselves, and embracing this fact is the compass and foundation of the Gospel’s power in our lives.

(In my opinion, the Wesleyan-Pentecostal-Charismatic-Holiness misreading of this passage is a very serious miscue in healthy Christianity. What lands us in churches where we are turned into the cheering section for personal victory over everything is denying that faith is an ongoing battle that does not end until Jesus ends it. Those who stand up and claim victory may be inviting us to celebrate a true place in their experience at the time, but it isn’t the whole person, the whole story, or all that accurate. They are still a mess. Count on it. This battle- and the victories in it- are fought by very un-victorious Christians.

I will be accused of a serious lack of good news, I’m sure, so listen. At the moment I am winning, Jesus is with me. At the moment I am losing, Jesus is with me and guarantees that I will get up and fight on. At the moment I am confused, wounded and despairing, Jesus is with me. I never, ever lose the brokenness. I fight, and sometimes I prevail, but more and more of my screwed up, messed up life erupts. Each battle has the potential to be the last, but because I belong to one whose resurrection guarantees that I will arrive safely home in a new body and a new creation, I miraculously, amazingly, find myself continuing to believe, continuing to move forward, till Jesus picks us up and takes us home.

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Now, let’s come to something very important here. This constant emphasis on the “victorious life” or “good Christian life” is absolutely the anti-Christ when it comes to the Gospel. If I am _________________ (fill in the blank with victorious life terminology) then I am oriented to be grateful for what Jesus did THEN, but I’m needing him less and less in the NOW. I want to make sure he meets me at the gate on the way into heaven, but right now, I’m signing autographs. I’m a good Christian. This imagining of the Christian journey will kill us.

We need our brokenness. We need to admit it and know it is the real, true stuff of our earthly journey in a fallen world. It’s the cross on which Jesus meets us. It is the incarnation he takes up for us. It’s what his hands touch when he holds us. Do you remember this story? It’s often been told, but oh how true it is as a GOSPEL story (not a law story.) It is a Gospel story about Jesus and how I experience him in this “twisted” life.

In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face: I stand by the bed where the young woman lies . . . her face, postoperative . . . her mouth twisted in palsy . . . clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight . . . isolated from me . . .private.

Who are they? I ask myself . . . he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers. . . to show her that their kiss still works.

This is who Jesus has always been. And if you think you are getting to be a great kisser or are looking desirable, I feel sorry for you. He wraps himself around our hurts, our brokenness and our ugly, ever-present sin. Those of you who want to draw big, dark lines between my humanity and my sin, go right ahead, but I’m not joining you. It’s all ME. And I need Jesus so much to love me like I really am: brokenness, memories, wounds, sins, addictions, lies, death, fear….all of it. Take all it, Lord Jesus. If I don’t present this broken, messed up person to Jesus, my faith is dishonest, and my understanding of it will become a way of continuing the ruse and pretense of being “good.”

Now I want to talk about why this is important. We must begin to accept who we are, and bring a halt to the sad and repeated phenomenon of lives that are crumbling into pieces because the only Christian experience they know about is one that is a lie. We are infected with something that isn’t the Gospel, but a version of a religious life; an entirely untruthful version that drives genuine believers into the pit of despair and depression because, contrary to the truth, God is “against” them, rather than for them.

The verse says, “When I am weak, then I am strong- in Jesus.” It does not say “When I am strong, then I am strong, and you’ll know because Jesus will get all the credit.” Let me use two examples, and I hope neither will be offensive to those who might read and feel they recognize the persons described.

Many years ago, I knew a man who was a vibrant and very public Christian witness. He was involved in the “lay renewal” movement in the SBC, which involved a lot of giving testimonies of “what God was doing in your life.” (A phrase I could do without.) He was well-known for being a better speaker than most preachers, and he was an impressive and persuasive lay speaker. His enthusiasm for Christ was convincing.

He was also a well known serial adulterer. Over and over, he strayed from his marriage vows, and scandalized his church and its witness in the community. When confronted, his response was predictable. He would visit the Pentecostals, and return claiming to have been delivered of the “demons of lust” that had caused him to sin. And life would go on. As far as I know, the cycle continued, unabated, for all the time I knew about him.

I understand that the church today needs- desperately- to hear experiential testimonies of the power of the Gospel. I understand that it is not good news to say we are broken and are going to stay that way. I know there will be little enthusiasm for saying sanctification consists, in large measure, in seeing our sin, and acknowledging what it is and how deep and extensive it has marred us. I doubt that the triumphalists will agree with me that the fight of faith is not a victory party, but a bloody war on a battlefield that resembles Omaha Beach more than a Beach party.

But that’s the way it is. I’m right on this one.

I write this piece particularly concerned for pastors. I am moved and distressed that so many of them, most of all, are unable to admit their humanity, and their brokenness. In silence, they carry the secret, then stand in the pulpit and present a Gospel that is true, but a Christian experience that is far from true.

Then, from time to time, they fall. Into adultery, like the pastor of one of our state’s largest churches. A wonderful man, who kept a mistress for years rather than admit a problem millions of us share: faulty, imperfect marriages. Where is he now, I wonder? And where are so many others I’ve known and heard of who fell under the same weight? Their lives are lost to the cause of the Kingdom because they are just like the rest of us?

(I’m not rejecting Biblical standards for leadership. I am suggesting we need a Biblical view of humanity when we read those passages. Otherwise we are going to turn statements like “rules his household well” into a disqualification to every human being on the planet.)

I hear of those who are depressed. Where do they turn for help? How do they admit their hurt? It seems so “unChristian” to admit depression, yet it is a reality for millions and millions of human beings. Porn addiction. Food addiction. Rage addiction. Obsessive needs for control. Chronic lying and dishonesty. How many pastors and Christian leaders live with these human frailties and flaws, and never seek help because they can’t admit what we all know is true about all of us? They speak of salvation, love and Jesus, but inside they feel like the damned.

Multiply this by the hundreds of millions of broken Christians. They are merely human, but their church says they must be more than human to be good Christians. They cannot speak of or even acknowledge their troubled lives. Their marriages are wounded. Their children are hurting. They are filled with fear and the sins of the flesh. They are depressed and addicted, yet they can only approach the church with the lie that all is well, and if it becomes apparent that all is not well, they avoid the church.

I do not blame the church for this situation. It is always human nature to avoid the mirror and prefer the self-portrait. I blame all of us who know better. We know this is not the message of the Gospels, the Bible or of Jesus. But we- every one of us- is afraid to live otherwise. What if someone knew we were not a good Christian? Ah…what if…what if….

I close with a something I have said many times before. The Prodigal son, there on his knees, his father’s touch upon him, was not a “good” or “victorious” Christian. He was broken. A failure. He wasn’t even good at being honest. He wanted religion more than grace. His father baptized him in mercy, and resurrected him in grace. His brokenness was wrapped up in the robe and the embrace of God.

Why do we want to be better than that boy? Why do we make the older brother the goal of Christian experience? Why do we want to add our own addition to the parable, where the prodigal straightens out and becomes a successful youth speaker, writing books and doing youth revivals?

Lutheran writer Herman Sasse, in a meditation on Luther’s last words, “We are beggars. This is true,” puts it perfectly:

Luther asserted the very opposite: “Christ dwells only with sinners.” For the sinner and for the sinner alone is His table set. There we receive His true body and His true blood “for the forgiveness of sins” and this holds true even if forgiveness has already been received in Absolution. That here Scripture is completely on the side of Luther needs no further demonstration. Every page of the New Testament is indeed testimony of the Christ whose proper office it is “to save sinners”, “to seek and to save the lost”. And the entire saving work of Jesus, from the days when He was in Galilee and, to the amazement and alarm of the Pharisees, ate with tax collectors and sinners; to the moment when he, in contradiction with the principles of every rational morality, promised paradise to the thief on the cross, yes, His entire life on earth, from the cradle to the Cross, is one, unique grand demonstration of a wonder beyond all reason: The miracle of divine forgiveness, of the justification of the sinner. “Christ dwells only in sinners.”

Best of Michael Spencer: Death – The Road that Must Be Traveled

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Note from CM: Michael died on this day six years ago.

O Lord, the God of mercies, 
grant unto the souls of Thy servants,
the anniversary day of whose death we are keeping, 
a place of solace, 
of peaceful rest, 
of glorious light.

Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.

• • •

Death: The Road that Must Be Traveled 
For this boy, coming to terms with death ain’t no easy thing.

Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing through the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking, without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing of a meadow.

• Mark Helprin, “A Soldier In The Great War”

I’ll make it simple: I don’t want to die. I, a Christian, a minister and a person of faith, do not want to die. The thought fills me with fear, and I am ashamed at how little faith I have in the face of what is a universal and uncontrollable human experience.

I’ll die, no matter how I feel about dying, but I’m not at peace with the reality of death right now, and my fear of death is becoming a more frequent visitor to the dark side of my soul. I’ve never been a brave person, but bravery isn’t the issue anymore. It’s acceptance and faith that rests in God, rather than denial, avoidance and the terror of my fears.

Near number one on my list of things I don’t like about Christians is the suggestion I should have a happy and excited attitude about dying. “Uncle Joe got cancer and died in a month. Glory hallelujah. He’s in a better place and if you love the Lord that’s where you want to be right now. When the doctor says your time has come, you ought to shout praises to the Lord.” Or this one. “I’d rather be in heaven. Wouldn’t you? This earth is not my home. I’d rather be with Jesus and Mama and Peter and Abraham than spend one more day in this world of woe.”

Not me. Not by a long shot. I like this world of woe, and I really don’t want to leave it.

My bad attitude hasn’t held me back as a minister. I can do a good funeral. Probably some of my best moments in the pulpit have been talking about heaven and what the Bible says about death. But there always was this one thing: it was the other guy who was dead. Not me. So I automatically had a more positive attitude.

With the arrival of middle age, my fear of death has perched itself on my shoulder like a talking parrot. It waits until every other thought and concern has quieted down, and then it squawks as loudly as possible: “You’re going to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” It particularly likes to show up when I am going to sleep at night. I’ll say my prayers, begin to doze off, and SQUAWK- “Just a reminder big guy, you’re going to die.” For a few moments, I live in panic, fear and despair.

Call me whatever unspiritual names you like, but I don’t want to die. Everything about me wants to be alive in this world. I don’t want to say good-bye to my wife, children and friends. I don’t want there to be a last sermon, a last day at home, or a last drive in the country. When someone says we were made for heaven, I say “OK, but that’s not the way it seems to me. I appear to be made for living in this body, in this world and enjoying it.” I haven’t heard a prospect for heaven yet that sounds better than eating at my favorite barbecue place, making love, or going to the ball park. (But then I always have a bad attitude at Christian events held in stadiums. The food lines are too long. “Well, in heaven, we won’t eat.” See, here we go again.)

Death is so unwelcome, so final, so alien and so frightening to me that I am afraid to think about it for any extended period of time, and possibly find some remedy for the situation. I’ve never talked to anyone about this fear, more than just mentioning it to my wife. Such a conversation paralyzes me even as I type the possibility. I’ve avoided excellent books by helpful people, because the whole thing just creeps me out and sends me to the pits. I will admit the reason I am writing this essay is so I will have to think about it. I truly want to come to terms with the fact that I am going to die, and I want to find the peace of Christ about dying. But I’m honest–it’s going to be hard. No matter how many other Christians die, and no matter what I say or others say about death when it happens, I am clinging to life on planet earth with both hands and all my strength. I’m a tough case. And I don’t think that I’m alone.

I’ve imagined what a Christian counselor might have to say to me about this problem. He or she might ask when I was first introduced to death. I think my first awareness that people really died was the loss of my grandma’s husband, whom we called Humphrey. We never called him grandpa, because she married him late in life and my mom’s father had died many years before. As long as I knew him, he was a very angry man who had suffered a stroke and couldn’t talk. I was eight when he finally died, and I didn’t want to go to the funeral home. I was taken to the funeral home over many objections and tears, and I vividly remember not wanting to look at the dead body. Finally, my Uncle Bill took me by the hand and walked me up to the casket. It was a frightening moment, and no one said anything to help me understand what had happened.

I was scared for weeks, but I never told anyone. For most of my childhood years, fears of hauntings kept the covers over my head at night. No one knew, and no one noticed. So no one talked with me about it. I remember watching Don Knotts in “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” and I understood perfectly well why he was so terrified of staying in that old mansion. I was often scared in my own room. Death and dead people were scary.

From that time, death was a rare and unscheduled intruder in my otherwise somewhat normal childhood. I came to understand that it occasionally happened to other people, but if I thought about it happening to me, I don’t remember. Aunts, uncles, a man across the street, old people at church, accident victims, celebrities, all those folks in the newspaper every week: that was who died. But it had nothing to do with me. Death wasn’t part of my world.

Many parents will take the death of a pet as the opportunity to talk about death with a child. I had plenty of pets to die, including a favorite dog who was killed right in front of my house, but my parents never talked with me about death, and I must have never asked about such things. I kept my fears to myself, lest I be seen as a sissy or weak and afraid.

Three events brought death much closer to me, but still failed to penetrate my pretended sense of invulnerability. The first was almost drowning in my half-brother’s swimming pool at age 12. I was not a good swimmer, and I found myself in a pool with a sudden drop off instead of a slope. I stepped onto what I thought was solid footing, and instead dropped under the water without a breath. I managed to get my hand above water, and my brother saw the hand and pulled me out of the water before I drowned. I am sure I thought much about death in the aftermath, and this probably contributed to my own profession of faith at age fifteen. It is an event that has haunted me ever since. My brother was busy, and I had no idea he was in the area of the pool. God was certainly watching out for me.

The second event was my dad’s first heart attack, which occurred when I was thirteen. The days in ICU and weeks of recovery brought a constant reminder that my dad might pass away at any time. Dad certainly never let us forget it. I cannot remember what I thought about death during those days, but I am sure I had to consider that it might be about to touch my own family, and even though my dad had been disabled most of my life, it would still be a frightening thought to lose your father.

The third event was the tragic deaths of two close friends from church. One occurred my senior year in high school in a tractor accident, and the other happened during my first year of college when the young man dropped dead during gym class from an aneurysm. Ironically, these were the two boys who taught me to play guitar. Their deaths shook our church and community. I think of them often, and wonder where they are now. I heard a lot of sermons about those boys, but no one ever talked with me about my own feelings about death. I was a Christian by now, and everything was supposed to be all right.

Of course, since those days, I have buried my father (in 1992) and many relatives, friends, church members and strangers. As a minister, I have been with families in the last moments of life. I’ve watched a seventeen-year-old die of cancer. I’ve been with friends as they buried their nine-year-old son. I’ve had two beautiful, wonderful Christian friends take their own lives, and I did the funeral for one of them. I’ve talked with hundreds of students about deaths in their families. If you asked me to preach a series of sermons or teach a Bible study on the topic, I would do well.

None of this has helped. The thought of my own death still paralyzes me.

In 1991, I was in the hospital for some tests on my heart. I’d had an episode of continual skipping heartbeats in the pulpit, and I had to sit down, and eventually take an ambulance ride to Louisville. During the six days I was being tested, a technician viewing the results of a heart scan said I had evidence of scarring on my heart, and surgery seemed inevitable. (It actually turned out to be nothing, and I have been fine ever since, minus caffeine and the pastorate.) When I heard the news of possible surgery, the fear of death quickly reduced me to a mass of sobbing fear and begging prayers. My inability to face death overwhelmed me. With all I believed about God–even at that moment–my own weakness took over my mind and my feelings. I have never been so frightened.

I was 34 at the time, and hardly in the place to become obsessed with my mortality. Now at 46, I am more afraid of death than ever. I’m not sobbing and begging because I don’t let myself think about it, but it’s getting harder to not notice some things.

My body is slipping away from me. It is becoming increasing clear that no matter what I eat or do, my body is falling apart. This won’t just go to a level of dysfunction and stop. It’s going to continue to decline until major parts stop working, and it becomes obvious that death is going to pick one of those faltering parts and finish me off. (Assuming an accident or crime doesn’t get me.)

An intelligent guess, based on family and personal history, is that I stand a better than average chance of dying quickly with a heart attack, or becoming seriously debilitated as a result of a heart attack or stroke. I’ve seen plenty of both, and I’ll take the debilitation as long as I can still get to the ball park and the remote.

I don’t like the feeling that my genetic code, too many pizzas and general attitude have conspired to place a time bomb in me that will kill me whenever it wants to. God’s attitude towards death is way too hands-off, in my opinion. He should get involved to slow things down. My uncle was once told by a doctor that his body was full of aneurysms that could burst at any moment and kill him. He said he’d probably been walking around like that for years. There are some people who get body scans so they can see every possible spot or beginning tumor, and then they will know where the cancer will start. Uhh…No thanks. It seems that all of us should at least be fixable until we just get tired of hanging around. I’ve probably watched too many “Highlander” episodes.

Sometimes it seems that everything conspires to make me face my mortality. Not long ago, I was bombarded with men telling me about their prostate cancer scares. Other times, news about young men dying of colon cancer or leukemia are all I get in my mailbox. The information age is tough on an expert on denial who doesn’t want to think about death at all. I’m too much of a coward to visit Web MD or even get a blood test. I don’t want to walk through the valley of the shadow of death or anywhere near it. I want someone to show me a road around it.

When I read about other people’s lives, my mind and heart tell me that there will almost certainly be the same chapters in my life that are always there in every life: Illness. Suffering. Decline. Hospitalization. Nursing Homes. Death. As I sense that everyone before me, and some around and even behind me, are disappearing off the horizon of life, I have to accept that I am on the same conveyer, taking everyone to a common destination. As undeniable, as simply obvious as this is, I somehow entertain the childish notion that everyone is moving and I am standing still.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think I am going to resolve this quickly, but I have some thoughts about how I got here and how I might make some progress out of the pit.

Graves 3

I’m very typically human in my fear of death. Of that I am sure. I may not be as good as most people in covering it up, and I may be well behind the curve in accepting reality, but I don’t think there is much unusual in wanting to live, enjoy this world and not die. I don’t feel the least bit bad that I don’t see myself as a “spiritual” creature made to frolic around heaven. I am a creature of my body and senses, and everything in me is naturally calibrated to this world.

Jesus struggled with these same fears of dying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I am sure he was in a better position than I am to know what death and the life beyond are all about. So I’m not ashamed to be a struggler on the road to death and life.

It’s interesting to me that many atheists and members of other religions have a better attitude toward death than I do. I can’t totally speak for what they are going through inside their own heads, though I suspect many are like me but taking refuge in their own hiding places. What impresses me is how many can laugh, or go peacefully into that good night, apparently without the struggles I see in myself. What is it about me that wants to hold on so much to what no one, ever, anywhere, has been able to hold on to?

I’m a product of a culture that has effectively eliminated death from the menu of reality most of us are confronted with on a daily basis. Death has been moved to the periphery of society or to special facilities where specialists can take care of it for us. Where previous generations and cultures were constantly confronted with deaths in the family and community, and the sudden deaths of the young and the healthy were common, our culture has pushed death out to where we can maintain an illusion of control or invulnerability. Perhaps if I had been brought up in Ireland in the nineteenth century or in Haiti today, I would have come to terms with my own mortality more easily.

One of my memories of my father comes from one of the last times I visited him before he died. It illustrates how removing death to the periphery left me empty and afraid when I needed to be caring and involved. Dad was declining as a result of congestive heart failure. He asked me as I was walking to the car, if I really believed in heaven. He’d always been a deeply committed Christian, and I’d never seen in him any doubts about such things, even when he was most depressed. But with an intuition that death wasn’t far away, he wanted to hear his preacher son say something comforting and reassuring. Somehow my answer felt hollow, because it wasn’t a conversation we’d had before. Always, everything would be okay. Death would never really show up. Now, when I should have turned around and talked with dad, I gave a quick answer and got into the car. I’ve relived that moment so many times. Why couldn’t I have spent more time with dad? Why didn’t I want to spend that time? I was doing what our culture tells us to do–put dying people out of sight, and not think about what it all means. That felt right at the time, but not any more.

I’m part of an evangelical church that hasn’t been very helpful. I’ve never heard a sermon on how to die well. Oh I’ve heard about martyrs who desired death and those who accepted death with relish, but these people are so different from me that it annoys me to hear about them. A saint like Jim Elliott, waxing eloquent about his own death, never has worked for me. Such an embracing of death is a grace from God. It’s not something you are going to talk me into easily. Aside from idealizing death, I heard very little that was helpful, and a lot that was harmful.

Years ago, I was forced into attending a prayer meeting led by a religious fanatic who repeatedly said that the key to winning the lost was telling the Lord that he could kill you if that was what it took for a person to come to Christ. The speaker used an illustration of a vision of his own grave opening up (and later the grave of his son) and God asking if he were willing to die (or for his son to die) for others to come to Christ? I clearly recall wishing I could do anything to leave the room, because nothing in me was anywhere near the same page as this guy. I have a similar problem with some of my favorite preachers, including Dr. John Piper. Their constant insistence that I love the idea of dying has not found a good place to take root in my mind or emotions.

On the other hand, I also have to say that I’ve never been part of a church where the elders would stand up and say it was OK to die, and OK to pray that someone would die. We were always praying that people would be healed or that a miracle would occur, even when such a healing was unlikely and evidently not on God’s agenda. We still assumed that the will of the Lord was a special healing for everyone, and that death should be avoided at all costs. It sounded good to me, and as a result, I can say I have never, in the preaching or praying of the churches that formed me, heard anything that realistically helped me come to terms with the fact that I will one day die. That’s affected how I deal with dying people. It’s made me pray a lot of unhelpful prayers and say a lot of useless things.

Is this an “idolatry of life?” Is it part of the reason my natural tendency to fight any acceptance of death with everything in me has, at least to this point, won out over my acceptance of the truth of my own death and the promises of eternal life that should comfort me?

Some of my problem comes from the way heaven has been presented to me. I have no gripe with heaven, and I certainly prefer it to any of the other options, but heaven is often presented as one of the cheesiest doctrines in evangelical Christianity. My atheist brother once asked me why anyone would want to live forever. He was, no doubt, not thinking about exploring the majesty of God like an explorer explores an endless sea, but was thinking about the endless church services and church picnics that seem to populate evangelicalism’s version of the great beyond.

I can’t imagine anything about the next world that isn’t an echo of this world. Hear that? I can’t imagine anything about “heaven” that doesn’t somehow depend on a comparison to this wonderful world of ours. The Bible is no help at this point, because almost everything it has to say about heaven is an amplification or a comparison of earth. Otherwise, you get this: 1 Corinthians 2:9 — But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen and no ear has heard nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” I believe it, and it sounds great. I just don’t know what it means.

I live in an area of America–Appalachia–where people sing and talk about heaven as if it has an Internet site with virtual cams everywhere. We constantly hear about mansions, and there are letters in the local newspaper from people in heaven. That’s right. Dead people write letters from heaven on the anniversary of their passing and they are published in our local paper. So far, we haven’t gotten in letters from the other place, which I guess is a good thing. But maybe the mail just isn’t running from there. All in all, I haven’t read anything that’s helping me.

I have to admit that this kind of talk about heaven makes me not want to go. I mean, a short visit to golden streets would be nice, but like having to live in Disney World, it would eventually get boring. The light of the city, as I understand it, is the Lamb. They will see His face, and that is the treasure of heaven. Everything else is just window dressing.

Graves 1

I’ve never heard clear and helpful teaching on the resurrection and the resurrected life. With all the emphasis on what’s happening after the Left Behind series is over, it seems odd that the vast majority of Christians know nothing about the resurrection and the resurrected life. Heaven is a cloudy wonderland of people in white singing lots of worship choruses over and over. I have a feeling that if I would have heard more of the very “earthy” visions of the Old Covenant prophets rather than so much of the book of Revelation, I might have a better hope and an easier time facing my death….and resurrection.

The Old Testament is full of incredible pictures of a restored earth and the life of those who live upon it. I would like to hear less about the rapture and more about the resurrection to a new heaven and a new earth. There is no doubt that God made me to dwell upon the earth. The more I hear about a “spiritual” heaven, the less able I am to face death as I should. I want to come to my death knowing that the best is yet to come. A big Promise Keeper’s meeting won’t work. (Even if Jesus is the speaker.)

How am I going to fight the fight to accept my own death? I haven’t finished the plan, but I’ve made a start.

I want to get closer to people who are dying well. My mom is 82, a brave soul and at peace. I want to learn from her. I want to learn from fellow saints and those who recorded their thoughts and conversations as they took the final journey or watched those they love die well. (Book recommendations are welcome.) Ecclesiastes 7:4 “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

I want to read helpful, faith-building books about heaven. I gained more from C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle than every Gospel song about heaven I’ve ever heard. I know that Peter Kreeft has written helpfully on this subject, and I need to begin reading these and other books that will drive out some of my fears and create an anticipation of a world of love beyond death.

I need a hero who has walked this path and shown no fear. My friend Jim is an example. He has buried a wife. He has survived open heart surgery. He is a faithful, joyful and ever learning Christian. I can cut up with him like he was in his twenties rather than in his seventies. He has faced death and retained not only humor, but a treasury of compassion for others. It is Jim and his wife who will be found visiting the hurting and the grieving in our community. Their “retirement” is not travel and shopping, but visiting and praying, ministering in the name of Jesus. All things being normal, Jim will get home before I do, and I plan to watch him closely all the way. What I don’t yet have in my life, he has in abundance, and I home some of that joy in the face of death is contagious.

I need to let death be my teacher. Many years ago, I preached a funeral sermon by that title, and I knew then and now that I was not much of a student. I don’t even want to go to class. I will preach a last sermon. Have a last year with my wife. I will have a last embrace from my children. I will not hang around long enough to get it all right. I’ll not make up for my sins, or likely learn how to succeed, become successful and rich. I have used up a lot of what I’ve been given. God will give me as many days as he has for me, but there are a determined number of them and then it’s over. Once I can accept this, my life will be better. Every sermon, kiss, ball game and pizza will be better, and I will be happier.

Part of the lesson is to treasure the opportunities that I have as gifts God is graciously giving to me . I could be the one dead in an accident or from cancer. But I’m not. I am alive and given today to live, enjoy my life and delight in the God who loves me. I must learn that the day of death will also be a gift…a way into the house of the Lord for even more delights. That this is hard to believe is not really my fault, and I believe God will give me the grace I need for the exit ramp when the exit ramp arrives, and not before.

I need to talk about death with others. I’ve been afraid to plan my funeral or even mention my death to my children. I must change. A few months ago, I met a fellow on the Internet named Chris. He was a pastor who just took a new church and he was excited about his ministry. Six months later he was dead of leukemia. I’ve seen this before. I have seen it enough to know I should be talking about what death means in my life. What do I want my wife and children to remember? What do I want my legacy to be? What am I unwilling to leave uncompleted? Can I say, with confidence, that I haven’t wasted my life? Am I still dreaming enough to know what I want to be doing when the time comes and God says, “Okay. That’s enough for you?” Silence won’t help me achieve these things. Part of my cowardly, begging tears in the hospital was the knowledge that I hadn’t lived well, but poorly in so many ways.

There are two passages of scripture that I am holding on to these days. The first is John 11:24-27. Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

I am thoroughly banking on what Jesus meant when he spoke these words to people who had buried their brother four days previous. The Gospel makes it clear that Jesus’ raising of this man was a miracle of incomprehensible, undeniable and world-shaking implications. But it wasn’t this miracle that was so stunning; it wasn’t only these audacious words of Jesus; it was Jesus himself. These are words that confidently speak of his victory over death and his sovereignty over all its many details. I am going to fight to believe that Jesus is speaking to me as surely as he spoke to Lazarus, and I have nothing to fear from death as long as he is the master of it.

The other scripture is a simple citation from Genesis 5 that will need some explanation. Genesis 5:24 “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”

Every year when I teach Genesis, I stress that the Bible is giving us important messages in these first few chapters, and we should stay aware of the themes that progress through the book. One of those themes is the entrance and universality of death. God creates a world without death, then warns Adam that the day he eats, he will die. They eat, and death enters the picture. Its progress is relentless and unstoppable. Even the long lifelines of the patriarchs cannot outrun the judgment of God. Over and over, we hear the names, and those hundreds and hundreds of years, followed by the same end….”and he died.”

The point is that death is the enemy no one can outlast or outrun. Death is eating away at the fabric of the world God has made, both inside and outside these human beings made in God’s image. There are no exceptions, right? Well, there was Enoch.

We know two important things about Enoch. One is that he “walked with God.” Given what we know in the first few chapters of Genesis (and certainly what we know from the rest of the Bible) this is a way of saying Enoch was a man of faith. I don’t know who else in these early chapters of Genesis had faith that God recognized and honored, but Abel and Enoch certainly are singled out as persons of faith, the quality God is looking for in each one of us.

The other fact is that Enoch is not in the list of those who died. Instead, the scripture cryptically says “and he was not, for God took him.” What does this mean? I do not know. What I believe is that it is the writer’s way of saying Enoch’s faith caused him to experience death, not like other men, but as “God took him.”

Just reading that sentence–among the plainest in all the Bible–is enough for me. It is enough for me to believe that God takes those who have faith. Someone once said that the Christian does not see death as the triumph of death, but as the giving way of death to life. In the final moments, this world must release its deadly hold, and eternal life takes control entirely. For the faithful, death is not an ending, but a birth.

It is as if we were observers in the womb, and as the child vanishes from our sight, we say, “he was not, for someone took him.” In the same way, scripture seems to be saying the Enoch’s passing was different. The details don’t matter at all. What matters is that death didn’t take him. Death only brought him to a point, and from there, God took him.

In my own struggle to accept where my life is going, this is the best promise so far. If I can hold on to the promise that God will take me, then I believe I will want to be nowhere else.

Best of Michael Spencer: Our Problem with Grace

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NOTE FROM CM: As we begin our week of classic Michael Spencer posts, this is the ideal place to start. In his eulogy at Michael’s memorial service, David Head said, “The grace of Jesus is, to use Jesse Stuart’s wonderful phrase, “the thread that runs so true” through Michael’s life.” In this post the Internet Monk never wrote better, and he never pointed us to a more important subject. This was Jeff Dunn’s favorite.

• • •

Q. 1. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

A. That I belong–body and soul, in life and in death–not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Q. 2. How many things must you know that you may live and die in the blessedness of this comfort?

A. Three. First, the greatness of my sin and wretchedness. Second, how I am freed from all my sins and their wretched consequences. Third, what gratitude I owe to God for such redemption.

• The Heidelberg Catechism

• • •

Grace. It’s dangerous stuff.

“Amazing Grace” may be the church’s favorite hymn, but I’m not the first person to notice that the subject of God’s actual grace seems to give many Christians a case of hives. Singing about it is way cool. After that we need a team of lawyers to interpret all the codicils and footnotes we’ve written for the new covenant.

I don’t really care whether we all agree on how to reconcile Paul’s justification by faith and James’s justification by works. I don’t care whether we agree on the application of the threat of Bonhoeffer’s sermons on “cheap grace.” I don’t care all that much about Catholic grace vs. Protestant grace or conservative grace vs. liberal grace, though I have my convictions. Grace as merely a point or a subpoint in theology seems rather bizarre to me. Grace is an all or nothing gig, not some percentage of the take. Get with it, or get out of the kitchen.

For me, the Gospel itself is “the Gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24) The Bible is incomprehensible apart from grace. It is the tidal wave predicted in the first scenes, and it eventually arrives to soak everything and everyone in Jesus. Titus summarizes the incarnation and work of Jesus as, “the Grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.” The New Covenant is grace and truth from Jesus, as contrasted with the law that came through Moses. (Consult Hebrews for the difference.) Every single New Covenant blessing comes through grace. Listing the scriptures that substantiate this would be woefully redundant to most of my readers. The air of heaven is grace. The heart of the Father is grace. The Good in the Good News is grace.

Paul knows that grace is a potent brew, and so in Romans 6 he anticipates the objection that is running around in the minds of thousands of evangelical preachers. “Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound?” In other words, how can we be sure people will live the way they are supposed to if this grace thing is as good a deal as it appears to be? What a great opening for a chapter on all the things we HAVE to do to really, really, really be serious Christians. Get ready to take notes.

Instead, we get a list of the miraculous accomplishments of grace, all done by Christ, for us, outside of us and in the past, accompanied by an expanded admonition to “consider yourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Yes, I know he says to “yield yourselves” to God, which sounds like works, but keep reading. “…As men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:13b-14).

Ahem. In other words, the entire sixth chapter of Romans says act like God has graciously done everything necessary for your salvation and you can’t do anything to save yourself. Grace, not legalism, not works, is the great motivator of the Christian life. Every appeal in Romans 6 is based on what God has done that we cannot do, and the greatest obedience flows from the grace of God.
The reason for this is clear. Grace magnifies the giver. It’s not that obedience has no capacity to magnify God. It does–IF it comes from hearts ravished by grace, and not the accounting department.

Continue reading “Best of Michael Spencer: Our Problem with Grace”

Easter II: Lee Camp on “The Politics of Easter”

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I saw this referenced and quoted over at Jesus Creed, and it is too good to not repeat.

The following is from an article at the Huffington Post called, “The Politics of Easter,” by Lee C. Camp, professor of theology at Lipscomb University.

Christianity is often misunderstood, and often misunderstood by the “believers.”

Easter is a political fact: that the merciful governance of a power beyond our understanding has been inaugurated in human history. Easter is not a mere “religious doctrine” to which Christianity calls potential adherents to give their intellectual assent, so that they might receive some reward in the after-life.

But if Easter is to be rightly recognized as a political fact, it must always be kept in tandem with Good Friday: what Easter vindicates is not the self-righteous claims of any particular group of people who see themselves as the good guys. Instead, Easter vindicates suffering love.

Note that Easter is not the triumph of suffering love. The triumph of suffering love is demonstrated on Good Friday.

When the powers-that-be would trump the truth with their big sticks and walls and torture, and yet the threatened one chooses, still, to bear witness to the truth: this itself is a victory. When the powers-that-be mock the one who protests the conceit of the powers, or when the powers-that-be spur the crowds to violence: in the midst of such fear-mongering, where is one who will stand undeterred, who will exhibit courage, who will not return hatred for hatred? Where is the one who will embody the meaning of being a true human?

Good Friday exhibits the true human, victorious in suffering, undeterred by the arrogance of the powers.

But he was a loser; he was tortured, killed; and if he had had a wife and kids, they might have been tortured and killed too.

Yes, but, the true human’s apparent defeat is in fact a triumph. How else could the fundamental truth of this claim — that suffering love is the grain of the universe — how else could this public, political claim be tested, except in such a public, political ordeal?

And the true human’s apparent defeat is, in fact, a triumph in this way too: in showing the arrogance and the ultimate emptiness of the powerful for what it is. It was a representative of the super-power who stood by on that Good Friday who realized, watching the torture and killing of the true human, what the empire had just done. “These are not good people, kill ‘em, shut them up” — this is the glib way the super-power killed the true human. But at least some, through the ordeal of that Good Friday, saw the conceited, bombastic display of power for what it was.

To be willing to suffer well is itself, then, the triumph of suffering love.

What then, of Easter, the politics of Easter? Easter is the vindication of suffering love. Easter: a non-repeatable, public, political claim that the true human shall not be kept in the grave. To cultured despisers of religion and any notion of “revealed truth,” it seems laughable.

But if it is true — that the way of suffering love has been vindicated, has been shown to be the way in which the universe ultimately works — then it is a question with which we must all deal, religious or not. To argue with Easter is like arguing with gravity: it does not matter whether one “believes” it or not; it is simply a matter of whether we will continue to wound and harm and destroy ourselves by refusing to respect its reality.

That the way of love, even when tortured and killed, shall not be kept dead: if this be true, then such a claim would re-order not merely one’s private life, but the whole of life, and the whole of history, and the whole of politics.

Saturday Ramblings: April 2, 2016 – Opening Day Edition

Rambler baseball ad

Today’s vintage Rambler advertisement came from 1960, a year or two before your intrepid Chaplain started his Little League career. So the boys piling into the pink station wagon would have been the “big boys” that I looked up to back then, especially if they were wearing baseball uniforms. And this is the weekend! Tomorrow, we celebrate my favorite U.S. national holiday — Opening Day! It will have been, as the Bleacher Report story reminds us, 153 days we’ve endured without meaningful baseball games.

What are the big questions as we face the 2016 season? Oh, sports fans, we know there is only one question. Can the Chicago Cubs finally break “The Curse of the Billy Goat” and win their first World Series championship since 1908? Can they even get back to the World Series, where they haven’t played since 1945?

Back in 1908, the Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers in what was then a 5-game series, 4 games to 1, becoming the first team to ever repeat a championship run. But ever since those back-to-back victories, the Cubs have become the ultimate symbol of futility. Many say the problem since their last appearance in 1945 has to do with a certain animal who was denied admission back then. Here’s the story, from the website of the world famous Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago:

ef1aec59bd212205d74f9d7327fe8f71October 6th, a sad day in Cubs history. The Cubs entered game four of the World Series leading the Detroit Tigers 2 games to 1, and needing to win only two of the next four games played at Wrigley Field. A local Greek, William “Billy Goat” Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern and a Cubs fan, bought two tickets to Game four. Hoping to bring his team good luck he took his pet goat, Murphy, with him to the game. At the entrance to the park, the Andy Fran ushers stopped Billy Goat from entering saying that no animals are allowed in the park. Billy Goat, frustrated, appealed to the owner of the Cubs, P.K. Wrigley. Wrigley replied, “Let Billy in, but not the goat.” Billy Goat asked, “Why not the goat?” Wrigley answered, “Because the goat stinks.” According to legend, the goat and Billy were upset, so then Billy threw up his arms and exclaimed, “The Cubs ain’t gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field.” The Cubs were officially cursed. Subsequently, the Cubs lost game four, and the remaining series getting swept at home and from the World Series. Billy Goat promptly sent a telegram to P.K. Wrigley, stating, “Who stinks now?” For the next twenty years, throughout the remainder of Billy Goat’s life the Cubs would finish each season at 5th place or lower, establishing a pattern that would reverse the Cubs luck and term the team “The Lovable Losers.” The World Series would become a dream, and “wait ’til next year” would become the team’s motto. From 1946 to 2003, the Cubs would post a 4250-4874 (.466) record, have only 15 winning seasons, finish in first place a mere 3 times, have no pennants, no World Series appearances let alone wins, with only four post season experiences (1984, 1989, 1998, 2003) resulting in a complete reversal of their fortunes. The Cubs were and are a cursed franchise.

Of course, theologically astute fellow that I am, I know the real reason for the Cubs’ losing streak.

You see, Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play, was erected in 1914 on the site of Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary. If you know anything at all about Lutheran teachings, you know that the “theology of the cross” is a primary emphasis. The theology of the cross teaches us that God is most reliably present not in our successes or strengths, but in our weakness and suffering.

And that’s why God loves the Cubs so much. I’m praying for a little less love this year.

Go rambler

ROBERTStrumppage0frontCoverpageIn one of the funniest fake polls I’ve ever read:

• 53 percent of evangelicals are “mostly sure” that Donald Trump is not the Antichrist

• 23 percent of evangelicals surveyed were “somewhat sure”

• 16 percent were “not really sure”

• The remainder were either “totally unsure,” “totally sure,” or told the pollster to get off their lawn.

The reporter also notes that a small group of respondents were okay with Trump being the Antichrist. In the comments, one respondent asserted: “Sure, he could be the Antichrist, but he’ll shake up Washington, which is just what this country needs.” Another respondent wrote: “C’mon. All Trump is saying is that he’ll give us the kingdoms of this world if we simply bow to him. Does that sound like Satan to you?”

If you ask me, I’m 100% sure that this is something evangelicals and fundamentalists are actually debating.

ROBERTSThere are a lot of funny baseball stories. We’ll salt the Ramblings with one of them today.

This is a personal favorite. When I was a young adult living in New England, Jon Miller became the play-by-play voice of the Red Sox. I still remember him telling this story on the radio and in our family we repeat it and laugh about it to this day:

Sunday, August 10, 2008 -- Chicago, Ill -- ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball with Jon Miller

In 1974, the A’s promoted a nineteen-year-old outfielder to the big leagues from Birmingham, the A’s class-AA farm team. His name was Claudell Washington.

Claudell wasn’t a talkative person. Upon his arrival from the minors, I interviewed him and found most of his answers were “Yes” and “No.”

Trying to sound impressive, I said, “Claudell, you’re not only making the jump all the way from double-A to the major leagues,  but the jump to the world champions of baseball. Any trepidation about the move?”

“I had the flu in spring training,” Claudell shrugged. “But I’m fine now.”

• Jon Miller, Confessions of a Baseball Purist

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ROBERTSI know what this generation of politicians needs: another great statesman like Winston Churchill!

But how do you think he and his reputation would fare in today’s 24-hour news cycle/social media world? In a new book by David Lough, No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, the author details the Prime Minister’s almost unbelievable excesses with money and drink.

476449411-british-prime-minister-winston-churchill-cigar-troop-visitDuring the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, the man who would turn out to be his most implacable foe was drowning — in debt and champagne.

In 1936, Winston Churchill owed his wine merchant the equivalent of $75,000 in today’s money. He was also in hock to his shirt-maker, watchmaker and printer — but his sybaritic lifestyle, of a cigar-smoking, horse-owning country aristocrat, continued apace.

…We learn of Churchill’s ruinous stock market speculation circa 1929 and the inheritances he squandered; his gambling rousts at the casinos in Biarritz and Monte Carlo; the thousands of pounds he sank into the upkeep of Chartwell, his beloved country mansion in Kent; and the unceasing torrent of cash he poured into maintaining a first-rate cellar.

To get an idea of Churchill’s annual alcohol consumption, here’s what he ordered in 1908, the year he married Clementine:

  • nine-dozen bottles and seven-dozen half-bottles of Pol Roger 1895 vintage champagne, plus four-dozen half-bottles of the 1900 Pol Roger vintage
  • six-dozen bottles of St Estèphe (red) wine
  • five-dozen bottles of port
  • seven-dozen bottles of sparkling Moselle (white) wine
  • six-dozen bottles of whisky
  • three-dozen bottles of 20-year-old brandy
  • three-dozen bottles of vermouth
  • four bottles of gin

Christopher Hitchens once compared Churchill to Shakespeare’s Falstaff in his over-indulgence. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his host at the White House during World War II, was astonished “that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well.”

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ROBERTSMarch 22 was a historic day at Havana’s Latinoamericano Stadium, as the Tampa Bay Rays played the Cuban national team in an exhibition game with presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro among the 50,000 in attendance. Tampa Bay won 4-1.

How much do they love baseball, and how seriously do they take it in Cuba? Here’s a video from Anthony Bourdain about his interaction with some “professional” baseball fans on the island.

You know, I could live in place that talks baseball like that.

ROBERTSAs of this writing, 198,000 people had put down a $1000 deposit to reserve their new Tesla Model 3 electric car this week.

tesla-model-3-speed-price-rumors-elon-musk

The car starts at a much lower price point than previous models — $35,000 — and has a range of 215 miles per charge. Orders came fast and furious from around the globe, even though the car won’t be available until 2017. The base model car seats five comfortably, and should be good for 0-60 in less than six seconds. As CEO Elon Musk said: “At Tesla, we don’t make slow cars.”

Yeah, but it ain’t a Rambler.

ROBERTSToday in music…

I’ve been listening to early Ray Charles lately and have been blown away by his incredible mix of blues, jazz, and gospel sounds. I especially love the early stuff — it’s raw and energetic, and it grabs your heart and won’t let go.

Here’s a great example of why they called him “genius” and “the father of soul.” This is “Sinner’s Prayer” from Ray Charles’s eponymous debut album in 1957.

Another Look: A Long Pause from Impermanence

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I hope no reader will suppose that “mere” Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions — as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals.

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Part of the “post-evangelical wilderness” experience is a deep sense of longing to be at home.

Psalm 63 carries the heading, “A psalm of David, regarding a time when David was in the wilderness of Judah.” Wandering in the desert places left him hungry, thirsty, eager for a renewal of the vital experience of worship and fellowship he had known with his brethren in the Temple.

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.

I have seen you in your sanctuary
and gazed upon your power and glory. 

• Psalm 63:1-2 (NLT)

David longed for home. There’s no place like home.

As wonderful as “a personal relationship with Jesus” sounds to our individualistically-oriented ears, Scripture, tradition, history, and experience teach us that this relationship is most fully realized in the communion of saints.

When the family sits down at table together, the abundance of our Father’s provision becomes most apparent to us. At the table, our identity as family members is confirmed and reinforced. We take our part in the family story. We recall and celebrate unique experiences we’ve shared together. We laugh about our idiosyncracies and foibles. We discuss the broader world from a perspective that looks out from our front door. Here we praise and tease one another, and address family concerns. Here the memories of family members no longer with us are recalled. Here we welcome the newborns, the children, and baptize them into the family’s ways — we teach them the silly kids’ songs, tell them the old jokes and stories, and at some point show them the secret family handshake and codes and let them in on a few of the skeletons in the family closet. Here we welcome guests, translating our strange dialect into words they can understand and, hopefully, appreciate.

You simply can’t know these things in the same way when you’re on the move, sleeping in tents, having to pack up and travel to the next location all the time. There’s a certain charm to sitting around the campfire, but it’s the ephemeral thrill of the open road, the wanderer, the hobo. You feel the exhilaration of freedom for a time, but hauling water and firewood, sleeping on the ground, dealing with the weather, bugs, and strange sounds in the night, and setting up and breaking camp gets old after awhile.

The word the Bible uses to talk about Israel settling down in the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness is instructive — rest. God gave them rest. It just felt downright good to sit a spell and put their feet up for awhile. However, as wonderful as that homecoming was, Hebrews 3-4 tells us they never really found complete rest, even in the good land. A settled home in this present world could never fully satisfy the hunger in their hearts for the city in the age to come. They looked for a city built by God himself, a permanent home of righteousness and peace, the home God creates through Christ for his forever family in a new creation.

Nevertheless, having a “home” here and now is also vital, as essential as it is for desert travelers to find an oasis, or better yet, a destination that provides some kind of long pause from impermanence.

Never was C.S. Lewis’s wisdom more evident than in the opening pages of Mere Christianity, when he spoke to this subject. You can talk about personal belief, a Christianity of essential truths that one embraces, a faith with which one, as an individual, agrees. You can set forth a “mere Christianity” that satisfies a seeker’s heart, mind, soul and spirit, and introduces him into a vital relationship with the true and living God.

“Mere Christianity” brings these believers into a great hallway in God’s magnificent mansion. You mingle there. You converse with others who have entered through the front door. You talk about how great it is that you have been invited and welcomed in. You praise the gracious hospitality of your Host. You are humbled at the generosity of the One who made it possible for you to have a home.

And then you notice that some are making their way into various rooms along the corridor. Peeking into one of these rooms, you see comfortable chairs, a crackling fire in the hearth, and a table spread with a feast. Not sure if you are invited in, you observe, and then go back into the hall.

After awhile, you begin to feel a bit uncomfortable. You’re running out of things to say to the others mingling there. You look around for a place to sit down, but there are no chairs. Your stomach growls, but your eyes spot no food being served. You wonder where you will sleep that night.

You’ve been welcomed in, and you’re thankful to be out of the cold and rain. You sigh; that’s better. A place of respite from the storm. A hallway where you can rest for a little while.

But it’s a hallway. And soon you are restless once more.