Hello imonks, and welcome to the weekend. Ready to Ramble?
Good thing he doesn’t have to run for re-election. Pope Francis’s approval rating in America has plummeted in the last year.The drop-off has been especially sharp among American conservatives: “This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of ‘the idolatry of money’ and attributing climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs,” Gallup analyst Art Swift wrote Wednesday when the survey was published. But he’s also down 14 percent among liberals.
After hearing the news, Pope Francis sought to shore up his support among Americans by showing off some sick new dance moves while his homie dropped some beat-boxing.
And that homie is the president of Italy, by the way. “His Holy Homie”?
The Rock of Ages in the Big Room (Carlsbad Caverns), Ansel Adams
You’ve Gotta Hear This. It’s Amazing. By Damaris Zehner
Jeff Dunn insists that American readers will refuse to read poetry. He’s always counseled me to leave the poetry out and in fact removed all the poems I had snuck into the manuscript of the book he’s publishing. I trust Jeff’s experience , but sometimes I can’t help myself. Sometimes the densely packed, singing lines of poetry are the only way to express what I experience of the immensity of nature and the mercy of God.
The poet who captures the immensity of nature and the mercy of God best is Gerard Manley Hopkins.
I’d like to introduce you to his most sublime poem – with perhaps the worst title in poetic history: “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection.” My goal is not to make you like poetry if you don’t, but to glory in a spiritual truth vividly expressed. Think of me as that person in your household (maybe it’s you) who follows people around with book in hand, saying, “You’ve gotta hear this. It’s amazing,” and cornering you until you listen. I’ve got you cornered and I’m going to read you the poem, but I’m going to break off to explain as we go. I hope that’s not too annoying. I will include the uninterrupted poem at the end.
First, the Heraclitean fire of the title. Heraclitus was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who said that “no one ever steps into the same river twice.” Change was foundational to his idea of the universe; there was no constant but change. All creation is simultaneously participating in transformations in which elements replace each other: “The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water.” The first part of Hopkins’ title, and the first part of the poem, traces those transformations. Don’t let Hopkins’ habit of jamming words together or playing with ing parts of speech bother you. In his efforts to make words into symphonic chords and not just notes, he couldn’t help himself – language had to be jammed with more meaning than its everyday usage allowed. You can figure out the progression of what he’s describing: clouds, the merry-makers (roysterers), dance through the first two lines; they transform to rain lancing down to earth. Next wind dries the ruts and puddles of yesterday’s tempests into crusts and dusts, leaving footprints in the caked earth. These transformations, “nature’s bonfire,” never cease.
Jeffrey Pine-Sentinel Dome, Ansel Adams
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches. Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair. Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rutpeel parches Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there Footfretted in it. Million-fuelѐd, nature’s bonfire burns on.
Hopkins then contemplates the place of humankind in this roiling universe of transformation. The changes that keep nature ever renewed seem just to erase man. As our elements are recycled and our essence is drowned, we view the approach of our nothingness with pity and indignation. (The “her” below refers to nature.)
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvѐd spark Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indignation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time beats level.
Then Hopkins answers his own bleak ponderings: Heraclitus’s transformations are not the only ones, and drowning people can be rescued. Flesh may be eaten by worms and return to ashes; but the refining fire of Christ will burn away the trash and leave behind the heart of what He is and what we are in him.
Enough! the Resurrection, A hearts’ clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.
Maybe Americans don’t read poetry, but maybe they should. These lines lift my soul, fill my eyes, and give me hope and purpose; my mind and my heart are both set on fire. By struggling to work through it, I opened myself up to a larger truth than I could previously comprehend. I don’t just acquire information about the Gospel but plunge into it the way I’d plunge into a wave in the ocean. I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. This is the Gospel.
Of course I could scrap the effort of reading poetry and just trot out the more “accessible” phrase, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” That cliché, however, is not going to make me follow you around the house with book in hand, overflowing with delight that has to be shared.
• • •
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby (Hubble image)
William P. Brown serves as a great example of someone who has integrated biblical studies with scientific and technological progress so as to promote a “theology of wonder.”
This portion from one of my favorite books on the Old Testament, The Seven Pillars of Creation, explains how Brown first caught that sense of wonder. I’ve included the video he describes — and it’s still fun to watch today. His last sentence is a keeper, capturing something I was trying hard to say yesterday. What we need today are people in the church who can capture the wonder both of ancient scripture and contemporary science and communicate them so that we can all share in that wonder.
The inspiration behind this study stems from a childhood epiphany that took place in a science museum in Seattle. Set off in a far corner was a small video screen whose button was waiting to be pushed by a curious child. I happily obliged. A serene scene unfolded of a young couple lounging on a picnic blanket in a Chicago park. But before my eyes could linger, the screen took me out above the park, the city, Lake Michigan, the continent, and the globe. Vast stretches of outer space quickly came into view. The solar system resembled something of an atom. Next came other stars, the swirling Milky Way, and finally empty space dotted with tiny galaxies. Then in a matter of seconds I found myself once again suspended over the lounging couple, pausing only briefly before closing in on a patch of skin and proceeding all the way to the cellular, molecular, atomic, and quark-scale levels. I was mesmerized by this dizzying ride through the cosmos and the microcosmos. I saw things I thought were privy only to God.
That presentation, I discovered years later, was Powers of Ten, the ingenious creation of Charles and Ray Eames. Both a visual thought experiment and a virtual rollercoaster ride, this now “ancient” video dramatically covered the extremities of scale, from the unimaginably vast (1025) to the inscrutably tiny (10-16), from the cosmic to the subatomic. The sum effect on me was nothing short of transcendent.
Gloriously “weird” is how physicist Brian Greene describes the quantum world. “Too wonderful” is how the biblical sage responds to creation’s marvels (Prov 30:18-19). The psalmist trembles before the vastness of the universe (Ps 8:3-4). Biologist Ursula Goodenough celebrates the “sacred depths of nature.” What do they all have in common? I wonder. Though separated by over two and a half millennia, the authors of ancient Scripture and numerous scientists of today find themselves caught up in a world of abiding astonishment. Like the ancients, many scientists admit to being struck by an overwhelming sense of wonder—even “sacredness”—about nature and the cosmos. What a far cry from Francis Bacon’s objectification of the natural realm as humanity’s slave!
The wonder of it all prompts one—anyone—to wonder about it all. Bioanthropologist Melvin Konner regards the capacity to wonder as “the hallmark of our species and the central feature of the human spirit.” Although Homo sapiens (“wise human”) may be too self-congratulatory, there is no doubt that we are Homo admirans, the “wondering human.” Wonder is what unites the empiricist and the “contemplator,” the scientist and the believer. “Everyone is naturally born a scientist,” admits astrobiologist Chris Impey. We can no more deny that of our distant ancestors than we can deny that of ourselves. Together, the ancient cosmogonist and the modern cosmologist, the biblical sage and the urbane biologist form a “cohort of wonder.” [emphasis mine]
We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn or scoff at the totality of being. Sublime grandeur evokes unhesitating, unflinching awe. Away from the immense, cloistered in our own concepts, we may scorn and revile everything.
But standing between earth and sky, we are silenced by the sight. . . .
• Abraham Joshua Heschel
• • •
This week I’ve been trying to wrap my head around something I have felt inside for some time, a perspective I’ve had few words for, a secret fear about my own journey as well as for the world in which I live.
On Monday, I tried to talk about it by means of a metaphor, using The Wizard of Oz. It seems to me that the world we live in today is Oz-like, a land of colorful things that interest and stimulate the mind and imagination. The wonders among which we dwell, wrought by our progress, make the Christian faith look colorless, bland, and uninteresting by contrast (i.e. like “Kansas” in the film). Now, the attractiveness of the “world” has always been an issue for Christians, but the “world” has advanced so far in the past two centuries so as to become an overwhelmingly pervasive sea that has swept the Church off her feet and is pummeling her beneath waves of technology, freedom, and affluence. “These are the days of miracle and wonder,” sang Paul Simon, and the people who suckle at the breasts of such marvels are becoming increasingly immune to the ideas Christians throw at them.
Yesterday, we invoked Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who famously wrote about a coming world without religion as we’ve known it. “Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the ‘religious a priori’ of mankind,” he said but then asked, What if “this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless . . . what does that mean for ‘Christianity?'” In his musings, Bonhoeffer made use of a different metaphor, saying that perhaps the world has “come of age.” Father is big and strong and can do anything in our eyes, when we are children. We rely wholly on him (whether we recognize it or not) for our life and well being. But when we mature and become independent, able to stand on our own, capable of providing for ourselves, what then is our relationship to Father? Who is Christ to a world come of age? asked Bonhoeffer.
Today, I want to lay it on the line and state my fear in plain terms, and tell you why this subject is eating me up personally and as an ambassador of Christ to others.
I am afraid that I live in a world in which we, myself included, have lost our imagination for God.
Let me put it like this, to bring it right down to today’s news —
In a world where people can build a small, durable machine, outfit it with intricate, precise instruments, and send it off into space for a ten-year journey of three billion (!) miles, keeping it on course so that it meets up with a small dwarf planet on the edge of our solar system where it captures a treasure trove of meaningful data and sends it back to us — in a world like that, what does it mean to have an imagination for God?
I mean, this New Horizons project is mind-blowing!
Learning about this expedition elicits a sense of wonder I’ve not felt in a long time. Three billion miles! To the exact spot where they aimed it ten years ago! Without any serious glitches! How far is three billion miles? How can I even begin to fathom this? This kind of stuff is invigorating. It expands the mind. It sparks the imagination. It calls forth genuine awe. This is big.
God used to be big.
And in the past there was always plenty to remind mere mortals of this. Nature itself was terrifying. If that weren’t enough, religious rituals and ceremonies emphasized mystery and an invasion of otherworldliness into human experience. Majestic cathedrals were built to inspire thoughts of transcendence. Composers wrote intricate, soaring, ethereal music. Artists were commissioned to paint altarpieces, icons, and frescoes with sublime themes that portrayed grand stories and evoked mystic contemplation. People spoke, trembling, of God intervening directly in the world: sending plagues, giving great victories, judging nations, casting mountains into the sea. Life itself was uncertain enough that one might feel ever dependent on the mercy and goodwill of one’s Creator.
One commendable motivation of literalists and fundamentalists such as Young Earth Creationists is to try and keep this “big God” alive among us by insisting that all biblical accounts are journalistic depictions of what actually happened. “Isn’t God great!” But what they end up giving us is a cartoon God. This God delights children and satisfies those who are averse to literature, complexity and nuance. Those whose imagination can’t stretch beyond six to ten thousand years. Those whose God is not big enough to speak in poetry, metaphor, myth, or fiction.
The Church and Christians like me have not done a good job translating, updating, and expanding the imaginative worlds of the faithful so that they can begin to conceive of a God who is even bigger than three billion mile space missions, a universe approximately fourteen billion years old, and quantum physics that describe microscopic realms where the “laws” we know do not apply. A God of infinite variety and complexity, who can only be fully appreciated by a spirit of humble awe and wonder as we gaze on “things too wonderful for [us], which [we] did not know” (Job 42:3).
And then to think that in Jesus, God walked here among us. To see the wonder in human flesh, flowing water, broken bread and poured out wine; my neighbor’s eyes.
Where are those who will help us develop and expand our imagination for God in these days of miracle and wonder?
To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words. . . . The tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away.
Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur.
Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
Note from CM: I am reading Letters & Papers from Prison because I want to explore more of what Bonhoeffer said about the “completely religionless time” he said was coming. Yesterday’s metaphor, which I realize came across with mixed results, was one small attempt on my part to begin working through my own sense that we, at least in the West, may be actually living in such an age.
• • •
What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience–and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as “religious” do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by “religious.”
The famous passage above, from Bonhoeffer’s prison letters, has led to more than a half century of discussion on the question of “religionless Christianity.” Richard Beck has argued that this striking phrase and concept, which has caught the imagination of so many, was actually Bonhoeffer’s penultimate concern. The chief matter for Dietrich Bonhoeffer was: Who is Christ for us today? His central theological question was about Christology. The context was the “religionless” age in which we live.
Beck summarizes it like this:
Bonhoeffer was trying to understand how Christ could be “Lord of the world” in a world that didn’t recognize Christ’s existence or seem to need him. In that kind of world, who is Christ for us?
This was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question in 1944. The world was at war, with madness at every hand, and Christianity seemed impotent to do anything about it. It caused him to question whether history might be witnessing the end of the Christian era itself.
Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the “religious a priori” of mankind. “Christianity” has always been a form — perhaps the true form — of “religion.” But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless — and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any “religious” reaction?) — what does that mean for “Christianity?”
In his June 8 letter to Bethge, Bonhoeffer further discussed how the historical movement toward “the autonomy of man” had in his time “reached an undoubted completion.” To him, it had become evident that “everything gets along without ‘God’–and, in fact, just as well as before.”
Richard Beck observes that this “world come of age,” this world that had arrived at “adulthood,”was not viewed as a bad thing by Bonhoeffer. He seems to have recognized it as a natural development from childhood to adolescence to maturity. It was something God’s people should accept and not fear. With that in mind, he critiqued as pointless, ignoble, and unchristian any Christian apologetic approach that attacked the world’s adulthood.
Pointless, because it seems to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him dependent on things on which he is, in fact, on longer dependent, and thrusting him into problems that are, in fact, no longer problems for him. Ignoble, because it amounts to an attempt to exploit man’s weakness for purposes that are alien to him and to which he has not freely assented. Unchristian, because it confuses Christ with one particular stage in man’s religiousness, i.e. with a human law.
Furthermore, in using these apologetics the Church is advancing a heretical view of God. By complaining that in coming to adulthood the world has evicted God, the church denies the exaltation of Christ as Lord over all things. As if humans could rise up and cast out the Creator and Redeemer of all from his universe! The Church, according to Bonhoeffer, too often presents God as a frustrated parent who doesn’t want human beings to grow up and achieve independence. As if God’s aim is to turn us all back into children.
But if this is not a good approach, how then should Christians live? How should they witness to the Lordship of Christ in a world that has achieved independence from God? We come back to Bonhoeffer’s controlling question: “Who is Christ for us today?”
In the end Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his letters and via his martyrdom, pointed to the Cross as the answer to that question. He writes, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.”
In other words, God acts in the world through the very act of letting himself be evicted from the world. Christ’s resurrection power and Lordship in the world is exercised not by his powerful, commanding presence and domination over the world, but by letting himself be crucified and cast out again and again. Through his weakness, impotence, and even his absence, Christ reigns.
If the Church is to truly witness to Christ then, it will not be through apologetics or any type of “ministry” that attempts to put the world back under the guardianship of a celestial nanny. Rather, it will be through taking our place alongside our fellow humans as people without God in a world without God in order that we might truly know God. As Richard Beck puts it, “By pushing the false ‘Powerful God’ out of the world the way becomes clear for the God revealed in the cross of Jesus.”
In this light, Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed his desire to live:
…unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian.
The world’s “adulthood” is not something to be feared and fought, rather it becomes a “midwife” to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ: that in his absence Christ is Lord of all.
And perhaps, when we embrace life in a world without God, we shall become Christians.
• • •
Recommended Reading: Richard Beck’s series: “Letters from Cell 92″ at Experimental Theology.
We Christians don’t often make the connection between progress and ideas. We live in a world of our own, where we think it’s all about ideas, about “what you believe,” and we fail to see that advanced technology and the freedom and autonomy it has brought to much of the world has dramatically changed the way people today view life.
For example, that which is “moral” or “ethical” is defined by most people today as “that which gives people the most access to personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” while not causing undue harm to others. Christians have tried, with extremely limited success, to argue against this idea and to argue instead for the idea of limiting our personal freedom under the authority of God’s revealed will (Christian morality). However, in these days especially, arguing on the basis of ideas doesn’t seem to hold sway with people. The Christian perspective is more than just a set of arguments with which people agree or disagree. This goes beyond a “worldview” problem.
It is as though Christians are citizens of Kansas who live in Oz.
Kansas is all sepia, beautiful in its own way. However, Oz is technicolor, and it is hard to explain the attractiveness of sepia to someone who has only and ever seen brilliant colors all around.
Kansas is mundane. It’s about being at home with kind and good, but frankly boring people. Kansas is about tending to chores. It’s about childhood fears and small ambitions. Oz, on the other hand, is about having access to strange and wondrous places, interacting with interesting and surprising characters, experiencing the wonders of technologies we can scarcely imagine, getting caught up in vibrant mythologies and battles of good vs. evil. Oz is music and parades and perpetual stimulation. Oz is the colorful “over the rainbow” life of freedom.
What would be attractive about Kansas to a citizen of Oz? What would be his response when I come to him with the argument that it’s wrong to live his life in color; he must turn to the sepia lifestyle in order to be pleasing to God? No matter how many intellectual arguments I could marshal, I’m not sure I could win my point with this citizen of Oz. Not because my reasoning is necessarily bad, but because my friend has no imagination for Kansas.
Christians try to overcome our Kansas/Oz problem in various ways.
Fundamentalists practice separation from Oz, or so they say. Theoretically, they advocate that Christians live a “Kansas” mindset and lifestyle in the midst of Oz, while at the same time severely criticizing the Oz way of life. Fewer and fewer seem able to maintain this. Today’s technology and the culture it creates is so pervasive and powerful that it has become virtually impossible to remain untouched by it. I would wager that even the strictest fundamentalists watch quite a bit of “Oz TV.” Their children and grandchildren certainly do. It no longer takes a tornado to bring Kansans to Oz.
On the other end, progressive Christians willingly embrace Oz and claim that the reality in which Christians find ourselves today requires that we redefine Kansas. We no longer need to live in sepia, we can access and make use of all the benefits of Oz with little concern or guilt. God is involved in every aspect of Oz and no longer requires the “old ways.” What is important is taking the side of those who haven’t yet had access to the personal freedom and opportunities for happiness that the rest of us have. Work for that, be yourself, and if you must keep some of Kansas in your heart to give you meaning or significance, that’s fine — just don’t slow the rest of us down.
Evangelicals and those who practice church growth methodologies have sought to walk a middle way. These Christians identify with Kansas, but try to make their lives and communities look and sound and feel as much like Oz as possible so they can enjoy an Oz-like lifestyle without guilt and so that their neighbors will feel comfortable joining the faith. We talk Kansas, but walk in substitute Ozes of our making. In essence, evangelicals have failed to see the water in which they themselves swim with their neighbors. For, underlying all the words about the glories of Kansas, they have actively pursued their own autonomy and satisfaction here in Oz right along with everyone else. Another problem with this approach is that it subtly involves a “bait and switch” tactic. They attract people with Oz-like entertainment, then somewhere along the line try to turn them into people who think like Kansans.
In my view, what is lacking in all of these approaches is the failure to realize that “Kansas” and “Oz” are about more than ideas. What is needed are ways of helping folks “see” the beauty of sepia landscapes, down home living, familiar people, and devotion to chores. Somehow, we have to prompt people so that they’ll sing “Over the Rainbow” in Oz! To have people come to feel that: “if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard [in Kansas]. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!”
There’s no place like home. But you won’t convince the citizens of Oz about that with ideas alone.
Note from CM: I know we just posted a portion of what Michael Spencer had to say about Young Earth Creationism last Sunday, but another disturbing situation was reported this past week, which shows me that we need to keep beating this drum at Internet Monk.
Deborah Haarsma at Biologos writes about Jim Stump’s resignation from Bethel College because the school, which is affiliated with the Missionary Church, decided to change its position and require those who teach at the college to affirm their statement, “We believe that the first man, Adam, was created by an immediate act of God and not by a process of evolution.” Haarsma’s article is, in my view, very generous to the school even though she expresses disappointment in the decision itself. I would not have been so gracious, I’m afraid. Evangelicals never fail to amaze me with their ability to take silly stands and fight unnecessary battles. As a resident of Indiana, I’m also embarrassed that a Christian denomination based in our state has chosen to represent an obscurantist perspective that, in my view, has no reasonable basis either in the Bible nor in science.
So, we’ll hear more from Michael on the subject today, and probably more from me in days to come.
• • •
My own experience with creationists indicates that maintaining a view of scripture that includes scientifically valid propositions about the age of the earth, the origin of species and the nature of geology/astronomy and physics is just as important as any Biblical statement about Jesus or the Gospel. Use of the Genesis account of creation and the fall anywhere in the Biblical narrative means that all the propositions, theories, explanations and extrapolations of the young earth creationists are assumed to be true, Biblical and the standard test for orthodoxy.
I could cite any number of blog comments that indicate a complete “domino” theory: Inerrancy = young earth creationism = orthodoxy = the Gospel. It’s not much trouble to find advocates of this view who will say departure from the “truth” of Hamm’s version of creationism equals abandonment of the Bible, the Gospel, the truth and righteousness.
We must develop a way to talk about scripture that does not create this situation. The rise of Ken Hamm’s approach to Genesis has been largely blessed by the culture warriors whose influence in evangelicalism ties every available issue together, making those who would doubt YEC to be honorary pro-abortion activist Democrats in favor of gay marriage.
Clearly, we need to hear voices like Conrad Hyers who rescue our use of the Bible from the claims of the creationists. The false dichotomies, death-or-surrender tactics and propagandizing techniques of one segment of evangelicalism is making it more and more difficult to bring the intelligent, bright young people of our churches with us into serious discipleship. This is not an issue that will be solved by preachers throwing Bibles around in protest of the insidious errands of anti-Christian educators. If the YEC approach wins the day in evangelicalism, the movement will lose. It will lose thousands and thousands of young minds, who will go where the relationship of science and scripture is less hazardous.
Hello, imonks, and welcome to the weekend. Shall we Ramble a bit?
69 sedan
Of course the big news in foreign policy was the agreement with Iran, which puts their nuclear program under international oversight. “This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction”, the President said on Tuesday. The GOP candidates fell all over each other denouncing the deal. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee vowed that, if elected, he would “keep all options on the table, including military force, to topple the terrorist Iranian regime and defeat the evil forces of radical Islam.” What are your thoughts on this, imonks?
Personally, I think Obama better be careful. What with Cuba and now Iran, pretty soon we are going to squander our precious supply of enemies. But then, we’ll always have North Korea.
While writing a sermon on Psalm 103, I was concerned that sometimes we Christians have a deficient view of the role of grace in the Christian life. I showed the following clips from Saving Private Ryan to illustrate one deficient view: that grace is something God saves us by, but we must then pay this back by how we live our lives. Most of you know the story: Private Ryan must be saved and sent home (his family has lost all his brothers in the war) and so a squad of Rangers scours the combat zone, some dying in the process, to find him. In the first clip Captain Miller, played by Tom Hanks, is about to die, and whispers his final words to Private Ryan:
The film ends with the clip below, as we see James Ryan return to honor those who gave their lives for him.
I couldn’t help feeling sorrowful as the burden of “earning this” was placed on that young man. But the sorrow was personal: I too have struggled for much of my life with earning the grace of God, or being good enough.
For the sermon, I also wrote down the following chart on three ways that Christians can understand (or misunderstand) the place of grace within the Christian life. I advocated for the third understanding (grace as liberation).
Some may find this chart helpful. Others will suggest corrections, and I am eager to hear them. I called this a heuristic post, because my goal is to generate discussion and learn.
Note from CM: Thought I’d revive this post from 2013 for today, since last night we went to see James Taylor in concert once again.
• • •
This is a book about the second turning.
In the first turning, a Christian experiences the transformation from a natural person to a spiritual person. Instead of “self” being the center of life — exploring, cultivating, adoring it — God becomes the center. This miracle is brought forth by the Holy Spirit giving us new life in Christ. It is a necessary, indispensable, basic step.
But it is only a first step. The work of the Holy Spirit should not stop here but lead to a second turning in which the spiritual person again becomes natural.
I first read Walter Trobisch’s words over thirty years ago. They struck me then as extraordinarily wise and needful for my life. I have spent the last three decades making the second turning.
When I had a spiritual awakening in my late teens, I found myself in a new world of fundamentalist Christian faith and practice. Let me talk about one aspect of that world today. One major theme that drove me was the concept of “giving up things for Jesus.” I honestly couldn’t tell you how much of that came from the preaching and teaching I was receiving and how much was my own imperfect understanding of what this new life was all about. All I know is that I had the idea that following Jesus meant leaving the world behind — and that meant giving things up.
The inspiration behind this study stems from a childhood epiphany that took place in a science museum in Seattle. Set off in a far corner was a small video screen whose button was waiting to be pushed by a curious child. I happily obliged. A serene scene unfolded of a young couple lounging on a picnic blanket in a Chicago park. But before my eyes could linger, the screen took me out above the park, the city, Lake Michigan, the continent, and the globe. Vast stretches of outer space quickly came into view. The solar system resembled something of an atom. Next came other stars, the swirling Milky Way, and finally empty space dotted with tiny galaxies. Then in a matter of seconds I found myself once again suspended over the lounging couple, pausing only briefly before closing in on a patch of skin and proceeding all the way to the cellular, molecular, atomic, and quark-scale levels. I was mesmerized by this dizzying ride through the cosmos and the microcosmos. I saw things I thought were privy only to God.
The famous passage above, from 
, has led to more than a half century of discussion on the question of “religionless Christianity.” 
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