The Internet Monk Archives

Matthew B. Redmond: Some Thoughts on What Is Happening at The Village Church

Note from CM: Sin rules this world through the unholy trinity of money, sex, and power. Most of the scandals with which the church has to deal have something to do with one or more of these three areas. And often, the original transgression ends up being but a small part of the problem. As we have learned well, the cover-up is usually more significant in the long run than the crime itself. It only compounds the original error, adds sin to sin exponentially, and creates a multitude of problems that go far beyond embezzlement, adultery, or abuse of power.

Last week was not a good week of publicity in this regard for Christians, especially evangelicals. There was the Duggar affair, for example. We’re not going to talk about that one, because frankly, I have no interest in that little corner of celebrity religiosity. I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to unravel all the strands of money, sex, and power that are in play there.

The situation that gets my attention, and that sparked interest in today’s author, has to do with The Village Church, whose lead pastor, Matt Chandler, has been a respected preacher, and one for whom this blog has at times expressed appreciation.

My friend Matthew B. Redmond, who blogs at Echoes and Stars, has been following their story and today we present some of his thoughts about it. If you don’t know the situation, follow the link in his first sentence and review it first.

• • •

Some Thoughts on What Is Happening at The Village Church
by Matthew B. Redmond

If you do not know what is going on, you need to go read the documentation.

1. At this point, there are very few facts to debate. The story comes from official documentation from The Village Church and the missions agency, SIM. To ask for another side of the story is to simply bury your head in the sand and not want to deal with the uncomfortable facts of the actual story.

2. A church (and its leaders) that places itself in the position of teaching and instructing men and women all over the world through conferences and resources will not be and should not be able to enjoy the luxury of avoiding criticism in its practice of discipline, especially when some of that instruction is on the subject of discipline itself.

3. One question The Village Church and its defenders will have to answer is, “Why is this not a biblical grounds for divorce if they do in fact have the biblical grounds to remove him from ministry indefinitely and feel the need to warn the parents of the church about this man and his exposure to children?”

4. If the use of child pornography is in fact pedophilia, then Karen, the wife has the biblical grounds to divorce/annul the marriage according to most evangelical position papers. The job of the elders is not to validate that decision but to support her.

5. The Lead Pastor of The Village Church is Matt Chandler, is also the President of Acts 29. To assume this kind of thinking has not and will not be exported to other Acts 29 churches is naive. If you support what The Village Church is doing to Karen, then you will think it is a good thing. If you do not, then this should worry you.

6. What I cannot understand is why they would be so clear in their communication about the pedophile husband not being under discipline and how the wife emphatically is under discipline.This would have to assume the best about his repentance and then assume the worst about her motives.

7. There will be many voices calling for “grace” for the husband caught in his sin. I agree with those voices. But I do not agree with all the addendum to that call for grace that would deprive the same for the wife/victim. Grace for him does not mean she, the church, and law enforcement have no recourse for action against him.

8. In the end, I cannot imagine anyone at The Village Church admitting they blew it. I hope I am wrong. I want to believe the best about them. But they have no real outside accountability since they are a SBC church and they are now the flagship of Acts 29. Matt Chandler is among the elite of the celebrity preachers in the Evangelical Industrial Complex. He and his fellow pastors will not have to worry about being marked by this. That is, until it happens again.

9. And it will happen again. And again and again. The dude-bro will get a pass and his wife will be expected to fall in line. This is exactly what happened with SGM. The wife was expected to stay with the pedophile husband and if they did not, the wife was disciplined. And it kept happening.

10. There is no place on the Scriptures saying the leaders of a church must give permission for a divorce if there are biblical grounds. A church cannot and must not discipline where no sin has occurred.

11. I think it is a good thing when husbands and wives can reconcile after adultery. But the most cynical part of me thinks the desire of churches to see husbands and wives reconcile in situations like this is marketing. I may need to repent of that but I fear also I may be right.

12. Many will ask, “Why do you care?” The short is answer is that I was once on staff at an Acts 29 church.

A Memorial Day Meditation: Pentecost and Memorial Day

It is an odd conjunction of special days: Pentecost Sunday and Memorial Day (U.S.A.).

Memorial Day looks back and commemorates the sacrifices of the past. Pentecost, an event which grew out of the greatest sacrifice and triumph, looks forward to a new day.

The one recalls war. The other anticipates peace.

One emphasizes what people have done to secure a nation’s freedom. The other stresses what God must do if people would be truly free within.

One emphasizes our battles against flesh and blood. The other reminds us our greatest conflicts are not with human enemies, but with spiritual forces of darkness.

Memorial Day is solemn. Pentecost is exuberant.

The one is a day for silent reflection. The other a day for speaking the good news with tongues on fire.

The sign of Memorial Day is a national flag, billowing in the breeze. On Pentecost, the wind of God blows from heaven, and God’s people are marked with cross and crown.

On Memorial Day, communities have parades to honor our country. At Pentecost, the people of God are sent marching into all nations of the world to share the good news.

Our leaders make speeches on Memorial Day, urging us to remember those who gave their lives to protect America. On Pentecost, great is the company of preachers who point us to him who died and rose again to make the whole world new.

Families decorate graves with flags and flowers on Memorial Day. On Pentecost, we receive gifts from him who broke the power of the grave and will one day raise the dead to life again.

One day is an occasion for family picnics. On the other, God’s family gathers at the Table.

Memorial Day was designed to bring our nation together. Pentecost makes people from every tongue, tribe and nation one in Christ.

On Memorial Day, our leaders remind us that we too may be called to take up arms in defense of our freedom. On Pentecost, we lay down our arms and our reliance upon them, confessing the ultimate power of love and service.

Memorial Day commemorates the sacrifices of a few in uniform who died for the many, that all might live in peace. Pentecost calls every man, woman, and child to lay down their lives for others that all might live forever.

On Memorial Day, our leaders tell us that our future peace and prosperity depends upon maintaining our military might. At Pentecost God reminds us, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.”

Memorial Day celebrates the common grace of living in a free and prosperous nation. Pentecost marks the extraordinary grace of God who has come to live within us and make us his own temple.

One focuses on America. The other focuses on Christ.

Each, in different ways, is of value and importance.

But only one day has ultimate significance.

Give honor to whom honor is due.

But remember, there is a new day coming. At Pentecost, we begin to taste it.

Sundays with Michael Spencer: May 24, 2015

If you haven’t read them recently, the relevant passages on Spiritual gifts are 1 Corinthians 12-14, Romans 12, and 1 Peter 4.

Most of us who are old enough recall when we first heard teaching on the subject of “spiritual gifts,” or charismata. For me, it was in the Charismatic movement’s first wave, which involved me both with Catholic charismatics and with charismatics in the mainline churches. That teaching almost entirely dealt with the gift of tongues and other “supernatural” gifts of the Spirit.

Later on, many of us encountered evangelical teaching on spiritual gifts in teaching that seemed heavily influenced by various kinds of secular personality theory, especially the identification of various personality characteristics as they pertained to work, relationships and self-understanding.

The Biblical material on spiritual gifts took a back seat to questions of fulfillment and happiness. I’ve known many Christians who were on a permanent quest to be accurately defined in terms of spiritual gifts/personality type/vocational preference and style.

More recently, “spiritual gift” seminars and inventories have become a standard part of the megachurch’s appropriation of Biblical material for its own programmatic needs. Spiritual gift inventories were not so much about finding who had the gift of “helping” as getting adequate cameramen for the 11 a.m. service.

I’ve always thought that despite the exegetical mysteries we’ll probably always face with these passages and this topic, the practical application of spiritual gifts was not really in question. But because of the connection with controversial topics many don’t want to explore and because spiritual gift inventories are assumed to be the best application, little new is ever said about spiritual gifts.

A recent sermon by my pastor/friend Fr. Peter Mathews boiled the essentials of these passages down to these four points, all with application.

1) The Holy Spirit gives charismata.
2) The Holy Spirit gives diverse charismata.
3) The Holy Spirit gives diverse charismata to diverse people.
4) The Holy Spirit gives diverse charismata to diverse people for the common good.

After hearing that message, I found myself thinking about the one thing I find missing in most evangelical teaching on spiritual gifts. I’d insert it as point “3.5”

3.5) The Holy Spirit gives diverse charismata to diverse people in diverse situations.

Much of the teaching on spiritual gifts that has morphed into “inventories” and such seems to be about my own possession of a gift so tied to my own identity that no matter what situation I am in, that gift is my one offering to the community.

So if my gift is teaching, then I am gifted for teaching in every situation. And I’m justified to say “I would like to help, but that’s not my gift/calling/ministry.”

Instead, I’d like to suggest that the Holy Spirit manifests a diversity of gifts in diverse people in diverse situations, and what may be my spiritual gift in situation “A” may no be at all what I am gifted to do in situation “B.”

The applicable prayer here is not just “What can I do?” but “Father, how can I be a gift from you to this situation?”

We actively seek out the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s diverse empowerment, but we have a spiritual sensitivity that if toilets need to be cleaned more than Leviticus needs to be taught, then I am gifted, called and empowered to do that very thing.

I believe that the economic downturn and the situations we all may face as families, neighborhoods, churches and ministries may provide a much needed opportunity for us to rethink “charismata,” and be much more open to what God would have us do and be in a new situation.

The current economic downturn provides many opportunities for kinds of “giftedness” that aren’t that valuable or appreciated when times are good. How many of us think about offering rides to others, or sharing a meal, or creating a food pantry when times a good? How many of us see our gifts in terms of program rather than in terms of what the Spirit is doing and yearning to do in very unusual situations?

I’d welcome your thoughts on spiritual gifts, and particularly on having a more flexible and less deterministic view of how they function in the church, the Kingdom and the world.

Saturday Ramblings, May 23, 2015: Memorial Day Edition

1968_AMC_SCRambler_Rambler_Hurst_Replica_Clone_Restomod_For_Sale_Front_resize — 1968 AMC SCRambler

Saturday Ramblings, May 23, 2015: Memorial Day Edition

Greetings iMonks. Today, Dan is away at the Moody Pastor’s Conference, you know, the one where all the moody, grumpy pastors congregate and complain. That leaves me, one unworthy to tie Dan’s hiking boots, to lead us in rambling on this Memorial Day Saturday.

We’ll start with a Top Ten list of quotes from David Letterman’s final show:

10. “We’ve done over 6000 shows and I was here for most of them, and I can tell you, a pretty high percentage of those shows absolutely sucked.” (DL)

9. “I’m just glad your show is being given to another white guy.” (Chris Rock)

8. “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.” (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

7. “Earlier today we got a call from Stephen Hawking, and he, bless his heart, had done the math, because he’s a genius and stuff, and 6,028 shows and he ran the numbers, and he said it works out to about eight minutes of laughter.” (DL)

6. “Honestly, Dave, I’ve always found you to be a bit of an over-actor.” (Jim Carrey)

5. “You want to know what I’m going to do now that I’m retired? By God, I hope to become the new face of Scientology.” (DL)

4. “Your extensive plastic surgery was a necessity and a mistake.” (Steve Martin)

3. “When we started the show there were mixed responses. Half of the people said, ‘That show doesn’t have a chance.’ The other half said, ‘That show doesn’t have a prayer.’ ” (DL)

2. “My fellow Americans, our long, national nightmare is over” (President Ford). “Our long, national nightmare is over” (President Bush). “Our long, national nightmare is over” (President Clinton). “Our long, national nightmare is over” (President George W. Bush). “Our long, national nightmare is over. Letterman is retiring” (President Obama).

1. “It’s beginning to look like I’m not gonna get The Tonight Show.” (DL)

The month of May in Indianapolis may not be what it used to be, but it’s still all about “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” — the Indianapolis 500. This year is the 99th running of the race (next year should be amazing), and Scott Dixon will be on the pole after winning qualifications with an average speed of 226.760 mph. Dixon won the race in 2008.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Andy Stanley and the North Point family of churches must have decided it’s time to “engage the culture” again. Shutting down Sunday services is no longer just for Christmas — North Point will be closed this year for Memorial Day as well.

I’m not sure they even do that in Indianapolis.

On his Facebook page this past week, Franklin Graham posted prayers for each of the Supreme Court Justices, urging Christians to petition heaven that the court will make the right decision regarding same-sex marriage. Here is his appeal for Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born to a family of immigrants and grew up in public housing in the Bronx. She is a great example of someone who reached the American Dream through hard work and determination. Unfortunately, she is also an example of someone who seems to be very misguided on the issue of same-sex marriage. She voted to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2014, and homosexual advocates consider her an ally in their fight to make same-sex marriage the law of the land. Let’s pray for Justice Sotomayor to have the wisdom to know that as a society we cannot survive if we turn our back on God’s standards and His definition of marriage.

07/05/2015 Marriage Equality Referendum. Pictured are Yes and No Posters on street in Dublin. Photography: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland — Photography: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

Meanwhile, the New York Times anticipated yesterday’s national vote about this issue in, of all places, Ireland.

If there was any doubt about the pace at which acceptance of gay rights is taking root in societies around the world, consider Ireland.

On Friday, voters in this once deeply Roman Catholic country will decide whether the Constitution should be amended to add a tersely worded declaration: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

If the amendment passes, Ireland will become the first country to legalize same-sex civil marriage by popular vote.

Here are some samples from what will surely become everyone’s favorite new website: Pinterest, You Are Drunk.

If nobody can tell if you are really good at it, or really bad at it,
it’s probably time to pick a new craft.

And then you invariably have to spend the second half of the BBQ
watching Aunt Bernice walk around with a bottle cap stuck
to the back of her pale meaty thigh.

Hairy leg hosiery, because my husband tried to keep me
from coming to meet his coworkers at the work picnic.

Last week, we lost two great extreme athletes, Dean Potter and Graham Hunt, in a BASE-jumping accident. The pair had attempted to jump in wingsuits from Taft Point, a 7,500 foot cliff overlooking Yosemite Valley in California.

Potter once wrote of his childhood dreams: “I dreamed of feathers sprouting on my arms, fields rolling far below in waves of cloud-streaked green, distorting into burnt wastelands of faint sand dunes and dust storms. Other winged humans flocked toward me. They were gesturing, making high-pitched squeaks. They arched their backs and brought their arms down to their sides, shifted slightly to control their flight and looked at me, encouraging” (“Embracing Insanity”).

Here is a remarkable 2009 National Geographic video featuring Potter making the world’s longest BASE jump:

Christianity Today reports that:

A feud over theology has led an unusual ecumenical project in a small Arizona town.

Eight churches—including Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and non-denominational congregations—in Fountain Hills have teamed up for a campaign of public banners and sermons aimed at the theology of a nearby Methodist church.

These churches in Fountain Hills, Arizona have come together in the light of a fierce public debate in the local media surrounding the teachings and positions of Pastor David Felten of The Fountains, a United Methodist Church. Felton advocates what he calls “progressive Christianity.” The other churches will be preaching a coordinated sermon series on “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction?”

Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday in the Western Church, so here’s a Pentecost Special (from Lark News)…

When he prophesies, it’s in pirate

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Sam Brobst took a “Learning Your Spiritual Gift” course at Full Life Center, a charismatic church, and felt the Lord leading him to prophesy during meetings. But when Brobst opened his mouth the first time, he and others were surprised by what came out: pirate speak.

“We were in the middle of worship, when this voice rings out, ‘Yar! Hear the word of the Lord — the Lord of the mighty seas!’” says one witness. “It was straight out of a Disneyland ride.”

Brobst says he can’t help it: when the Spirit moves upon him, he clamps one eye shut and his voice becomes gravelly and menacing. On a recent Sunday, he prophesied, “Avast ye, mateys! Hear the word from our Cap’n: No fear have ye of storms and scallywags, says ye? Argh! But I be seein’ your true hearts. For I see below quarterdecks, says I. Ye be tremblin’ in the face of scurvy dogs. But pay them no heed. For I be preparin’ to pour down plenty o’ booty upon ye. So be of cheer, me hearties! Ye be loved of the Cap’n.”

The people of the church by now are accustomed to it, though first-time visitors often giggle.

“It doesn’t even sound like pirate to me anymore,” says one regular attendee. “My mind translates it.”

Others say it’s preferable to past prophetic styles they have witnessed.

“One woman would wail her prophecies,” says longtime member Darlene Bright. “Another man would thunder in a deep voice like he was trying to impress us. All in all, I prefer pirate.”

Finally, a brief tribute for Memorial Day. This video, from Arlington National Cemetery, describes an honor trip made there that was sponsored by Vets Roll, an organization that thanks America’s veterans by making it possible for them to travel to Washington, D.C. at no cost. These trips are designed to help bring healing and closure to these veterans as they remember the extraordinary and difficult times when they were called upon to serve their country in battle.

Religious Switching 2.0

Well, last week I promised you, the full Religious Switching in America Graph along with commentary. The graph is complete. Click on the image for a better view. The commentary and related data tables… well I guess I will have to discuss with Chaplain Mike when that will be coming. The graph took a little longer to finish than expected.

To understand that graph, 54,000 Americans were surveyed in 2014. The top of the graph represents what they said their faith group was in childhood. The bottom of the graph represents their faith group today. The lines between the top and the bottom represent the changes between childhood faith group and current faith group. The legend for the smaller faith groups is to the left. The blank space at the right of the graph represents those faith groups where not enough data was provided to determine changes. All data was derived from the Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Study.

My apologies for not having the commentary ready. I will have it soon. Please contribute to the discussion my leaving your own thoughts and comments and I will answer them as best I can in my next post. For comparison purposes the 2007 graph is provided below.

More on “Playing the Music”

Picking up on yesterday’s post, here few more thoughts on “playing the music”…

• • •

Last night we went to a spring intermediate school band and choral concert (5th and 6th grade). My grandson was playing and we knew several other children and families who were involved. I have four children and have been to many of these events before. I’m not being unkind when I say that concerts at this age are usually events to be endured rather than enjoyed. At least with regard to the music, that is.

There is, of course, much to be enjoyed and celebrated. Just looking down at that gymnasium floor and seeing all those energetic, eager, dressed-up, awkward pre-teens navigating their first tentative steps toward adulthood is entertainment enough. Then, take a glance back at the bleachers. Some of their parents are barely thirty years old, many are holding drooling newborns or squirming toddlers, and there they are watching their little man or woman play an instrument, sing in the choir, maybe even do a solo in front of a huge crowd. That can be a wake-up call! There are plenty of grandparents like me, too, the old veterans, who chuckle with recognition when the jazz band strikes up “Ben’s Blues,” the same piece we’ve heard played by every first time combo we’ve witnessed. A blest community of ordinary people in all shapes and sizes and seasons of life, gathered to hear the music come alive through our kids.

The young choral director in her twenties always throws in a surprise or two to delight the crowd and show off the kids’ energy and emerging talent: a solo or two in a contemporary pop song, a swinging rendition of “Rockin’ Robin” with movements and gestures, an African folk tune that impresses everyone with the children’s ability to sing in a foreign tongue. The band’s not left out either — they rock the joint (oh so slowly) as they don sunglasses and play the theme from “Mission Impossible.”

Of course, the tempos are tedious, entrances and cut-offs are anything but precise, the tuning is questionable and instruments squeak here and there, often at the most inopportune times. A vocal soloist misses her cue and the choir has to start the song over. The audience begins to clap at a pause in the music rather than at the end. Mics feed back on the teachers who introduce the numbers and there are awkward silences between performances as the groups rearrange themselves and their equipment and music. The teachers always tell bad jokes. Parents and grandparents like me crawl around the floor and bleachers trying to find the best spots from which to capture the memories through pictures and video. It’s a scene right out of Mayberry, I tell you; small town charm at its best.

But somehow it all comes together, and the audience and participants end up thoroughly enjoying the show. Afterwards the community mills around, we visit with our neighbors, snap pictures, admire each others’ children, and touch base with the teachers, some of whom are getting to know yet another generation in our families.

Yesterday, we talked about “virtuoso spirituality.”

Maybe that word threw some of you a bit. I for one don’t think I’ve felt like a “virtuoso” for a single second in my life of faith. More like the kid who hit the cymbal on the wrong beat or the one whose clarinet squeaked or whose voice cracked when trying to hit that note that was just out of reach. When it comes to following Jesus, I’m not sure I’ll ever leave the awkward middle-school stage.

But I’ll give it to those kids and this community. They may represent exactly what “playing the music” is all about. Putting yourself out there. In all your awkwardness and naïveté and self-doubt. Trusting the music and the practice you’ve had. Keeping your eye on the director or conductor. Listening to the others and trying to blend in. All the while knowing that there is a big community around you that takes delight in you and your growth, that is there to applaud every step of progress and to encourage you after every mistake.

I tell you, I saw a lot of grace, forbearance, kindness, joy, and encouragement at a 5th and 6th grade concert last night.

I also saw a lot of awkward, half-grown kids who made a bunch of mistakes and produced a lot of mediocre music — it surely wasn’t “virtuoso.”

Or maybe it was, in its own way.

However you want to look at it, music came alive here last night, we were all a part of it, and the joy was tangible.

Eugene Peterson: Virtuoso Spirituality

What comes next is very important: I am sending what my Father promised to you, so stay here in the city until he arrives, until you’re equipped with power from on high.

• Luke 24:49, MSG

• • •

Pentecost is the next great Sunday on the Christian calendar: it falls this Sunday for the Western Church and on May 31 for the East. The Holy Spirit has always been one of the great mysteries of our faith and throughout church history entire movements have been devoted to trying to capture the essence of the Spirit-filled life.

Today, I want to share a passage from Eugene Peterson, whom I have found to be a reliable guide for my life in Christ. This passage is from his book, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. Though it doesn’t speak of the Spirit directly, I find it to be one of the most enlightening texts I have read describing what, it seems to me, the Holy Spirit has come to do in our lives as Christ-followers.

See what you think. Let’s talk about this as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost.

Virtuoso Spirituality

Frances Young uses the extended analogy of music and its performance to provide a way of understanding the interrelated complexities of reading and living the Holy Scriptures, what John experienced as eating the book. Her book Virtuoso Theology searches out what she names as “the complex challenges involved in seeking authenticity in performance.” It is of the very nature of music that it is to be performed. Can music that is not performed be called “music”? Performance, though, does not consist in accurately reproducing the notes in the score as written by the composer, although it includes this. Everyone recognizes the difference between an accurate but wooden performance of, say, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and a virtuoso performance by Yitzak Perlman. Perlman’s performance is not distinguished merely by his technical skill in reproducing what Mozart composed; he wondrously enters into and conveys the spirit and energy — the “life” — of the score. Significantly, he adds nothing to the score, neither “jot nor tittle.” Even though he might reasonably claim that, with access to the interrelated psychologies of music and sexuality, he understands Mozart much better than Mozart understood himself, he restrains himself; he does not interpolate.

One of the continuous surprises of musical and dramatic performance is the sense of fresh spontaneity that comes in the performance: faithful attention to the text does not result in slavish effacement of personality; rather, it releases what is inherent in the text itself as the artist performs; “music has to be ‘realized’ through performance and interpretation.”

Likewise Holy Scripture. The two analogies, performing the music and eating the book, work admirably together. The complexity of the performance analogy supplements the earthiness of the eating analogy (and vice versa) in directing the holy community to enter the world of Holy Scripture formationally.

But if we are “unscripted,” Alasdair McIntyre’s word in this context, we spend our lives as anxious stutterers in both our words and actions. But when we do this rightly — performing the score, eating the book, embracing the holy community that internalizes the text — we are released into freedom: “I will run in the way of thy commandments when thou enlargest my understanding” (Ps. 119:32).

• Eugene Peterson
Eat This Book, p. 76f

There are many things I love about this and how it speaks to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The Spirit is closely linked with the Word, reminding me that my relationship with God is a conversational one. As in all relationships we deepen our friendship by listening and speaking to one another. It is my special place to listen in this relationship.

God’s Word, however, is not just a “rule book” to be slavishly followed. It is a text to be performed in life by individuals and communities with personalities, contexts, gifts, and unique perspectives.

The Word has no actual value except in performance. The Story calls us to live within it, to carry it on, to live it out.

In reality, we add nothing to the Word. However, the “sound” of the Word that emanates from each individual’s and community’s performance brings out fresh nuances and perspectives that can make it “new” and invigorating, no matter how many times we hear it.

When we “perform” the Word with virtuosity, having not only “learned” it but having also “internalized” it, we then “interpret” it through our performance in such a way that it does not, in the end, draw attention to ourselves, but to the spirit and energy — the “life” — of the score itself.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit in us that enables us to “perform” the Word in our daily lives. I’m not one who thinks of this process as merely monergistic. We actively participate in it, we “work,” we cooperate, we practice, we learn, we internalize, we grow. It is a messy process filled with failures and setbacks. Any sense of “progress” may be invisible to us. It’s a lot like life and nothing at all like a mechanical process of production. Disciples are not made, but grown.

Seems to me that I spend a lot of time learning the notes. I probably should be doing more performances. Putting it out there, in front of the audience. Playing the music. Letting it live.

A Fight about the Finish

Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to today’s feature bout. We are excited to feature two young fighters at the top of their game. They come to the ring today to trade punches, each hoping to give hell to his opponent and to settle once and for all the significance of that biblical doctrine.

In this corner, representing the Gospel Coalition, in the fiery red trunks, it’s J.D. Greear. Greear is the lead pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and author of several books that reflect the “new reformed” movement. Greear says he’s going the throw the Book at his opponent tonight, with “7 Truths about Hell.”

And in this corner, a journeyman scholar from overseas, who has combined theological studies and writing with pastoral and missional work in a wide range of contexts. His books and his blog, P.OST, represent a further development of the so-called “new perspective” in N.T. studies, with its emphasis on narrative theology: here is Andrew Perriman. Perriman hopes to exploit the biblical and theological weaknesses in his opponent’s position by throwing “7 Fallacies about Hell” at him.

Ding! Both fighters emerge from their respective corners, ready to fight about the finish.

Greear begins by throwing a hard right, straight from the reformed playbook, which says we should always start with God. “Hell is what hell is because God is who God is!” Greear asserts.

Hell is what hell is because the holiness of God is what it is. Hell is not one degree hotter than our sin demands that it be. Hell should make our mouths stand agape at the righteous and just holiness of God. It should make us tremble before his majesty and grandeur.

But Perriman blocks.

The obvious response to that claim is “Does it?” Does it really make us marvel at the righteousness and holiness of God? Honestly? Wouldn’t most people gape in horror? Wouldn’t most people draw quite the opposite conclusion—that a God who subjects people to endless torment must be a callous and contemptible cosmopath? How can we possibly expect people to be impressed by a doctrine of cruel and disproportionate metaphysical punishment?

Furthermore, he counters by saying Greear hasn’t proved his point at all with biblical texts and has actually made a stronger case for annihilation.

J.D. Greear is undeterred. With a swift combination he moves from the majesty of God’s holiness in the O.T. to the words of Jesus in the New.

…when you start reading the Gospels, you find that Jesus speaks about hell more than anyone else. In fact, if you count up the verses, Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven. …If we want to avoid the idea of hell, we can’t ignore the problem by just focusing on “meek and mild Jesus.”

Perriman ducks, however, and escapes by following an entirely different line of interpretation.

Jesus certainly had much to say about the judgment of Gehenna, the judgment that would come at the end of the age, but he was not speaking about “hell” in the sense of a place of eternal conscious torment after death. The judgment of Gehenna is the judgment on Jerusalem and Israel that would come within a generation. It would entail immense suffering for the people—the suffering of siege, disease, famine, crucifixion, ferocious in-fighting and war—and not many would escape it. But this was a suffering that would end with death, not begin with death.

Chasing his opponent down, Greear moves in closer. It’s clear that he would also like to fight this bout on an intimate level, by appealing to the love of God and his purpose in creating people to know him forever. He puts Perriman in a clinch with two emotionally persuasive points: Hell shows us the extent of God’s love in saving us, and people are eternal.

Why did Jesus speak about hell more than anyone else in the Bible? Because he wanted us to see what he was going to endure on the cross on our behalf. On the cross, Jesus’s punishment was scarcely describable: this bloodied, disfigured remnant of a man was given a cross that was perhaps recycled, likely covered in the blood, feces, and urine of other men who had used it previously. Hanging there in immense pain, he slowly suffocated to death.

And then, Greear surprises the crowd with a blow from the left.

C. S. Lewis once noted that hell is a necessary conclusion from the Christian belief that human beings were created to live forever.

Wow! That was unexpected! The neo-Puritan summons a punch from the training manual of Anglican C.S. Lewis! That is usually quite effective. What will Perriman do in response to this?

He gives Greear a look, and it’s clear he’s impressed, but in the clinch he just keeps on raining body blows on the pastor.

As to the cross showing the extent of God’s love, Perriman delivers a blow to the gut.

The point is vividly made, but it simply doesn’t make the point.

Andrew Perriman is utilizing his narrative training to its fullest. He notes that Jesus took Israel’s punishment as a representative punishment, not a unique punishment. He was one among many Jews who suffered Rome’s punishment and would suffer during the upcoming war with Rome. The whole point of his death lay in identifying with God’s suffering people.

And then he fends off Greear’s left by asserting that C.S. Lewis was simply wrong! What courage that took! “The gift of God is eternal life,” he quotes, hoping to destroy Lewis’s argument for human immortality.

It’s at this point in fights like these that some fighters begin to wear down. But not J.D. Greear. First, he lands a strong left jab: “In one sense, God doesn’t send anyone to hell; we send ourselves.” Then he comes back with a right hook, hoping to put Perriman on the canvas: “In another sense, God does send people to hell, and all his ways are true and righteous altogether.”

Hell is the culmination of telling God to “get out.” You keep telling God to leave you alone, and finally God says, “Okay.” That’s why the Bible describes it as darkness: God is light; his absence is darkness. On earth we experience light and things like love, friendship, and the beauty of creation. These are all remnants of the light of God’s presence. But when you tell God you don’t want him as the Lord and center of your life, eventually you get your wish, and with God go all of his gifts.

…We may be tempted to rage at God and to correct him. But how can we find fault with God? As Paul says in Romans 9, who are we—as mere lumps of clay—to answer back to the divine potter?

We are not more merciful than God. Isaiah reminds us that all who are currently “incensed against God” will come before him in the last day and be ashamed, not vindicated (Is. 45:24), because they will then realize just how perfect God’s ways are. Every time God is compared with a human in Scripture, God is the more merciful of the pair.

When we look back on our lives from eternity, we’ll stand amazed not by the severity of his justice, but by the magnanimity of his mercy.

Ah, but Andrew Perriman doesn’t even flinch at this flurry of rhetorical violence.

We’re getting to the thin end of a very thin argument here, and again, frustratingly, we are offered the gospel of C.S. Lewis and his eccentric views about a self-inflicted hell rather than anything of biblical or theological substance.

And again, he blocks the “lumps of clay” blow by reminding Greear that Paul was talking to Israel in Romans 9, and that the judgment to which he refers has nothing to do with hell.

Oh, and we’ll have to go back to the replay to verify it, but it appears that Perriman also landed a sneaky blow in this exchange: “What is it with conservative American Christians and their obsession with Lewis?”

The clock is winding down on this fight and each fighter has one more chance to put his opponent down. J.D. Greear decides to go with the “depravity” punch. But he disguises it by using a contemporary move that contains a strong appeal to the emotions.

If you accept Jesus just to “get out of hell,” then you’d hate being in heaven, because only those who love and trust God will enjoy heaven. If you don’t love the Father, then living in the Father’s house feels like slavery. It would be like forcing you to marry someone you didn’t want to marry. The only way you’ll enjoy heaven is when you learn to love and trust God.

Only an experience of the love of God can rearrange the fundamental structure of your heart to create a love and trust of God. It’s not enough for God to take us out of hell; he must take hell out of us.

But Andrew Perriman sees it coming. And he is able to sidestep it once more, dodging this persuasive appeal by going back to his fundamental position.

Again, the argument tells us nothing about hell, but it highlights what is perhaps the core theological problem with this whole way of thinking—it is grounded in and perpetuates the view that Christianity is a religion of personal salvation, that it is all about getting people out of hell and into heaven.

Here we have one of the fundamental corrections that modern evangelicalism needs to make if it is to maintain any legitimacy as a biblical movement.

The object of the exercise is not to get people to heaven. It is to preserve the integrity and effectiveness of a new creation people in the world. In the biblical story, judgment and salvation are operative for the most part historically. A people is judged, a people is saved, nations are judged. The church subsequently—for complex reasons, not all of them bad—rewrote the corporate narrative around the individual and his or her personal spiritual interests. It has worked up to a point, but for the sake of both theological integrity and missional credibility, I think we now have to reinstate the historical grounding of the biblical narrative. Among other things, that means ditching the unbiblical doctrine of hell.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Both fighters end up on their feet. This epic battle over hell ends with no knockout. That means the judges will have to decide the winner on points.

So we’ll turn over to you, the judges. What is your verdict? How do you call this fight?

Randy Thompson: The Bloody God and the Bleeding God

The Bloody God and the Bleeding God
by Randy Thompson, Forest Haven, Bradford, NH

I’ve been reading the Old Testament. It’s a great story, despite Leviticus’ by-laws and Numbers’ numbers. However, reading it is an unsettling experience. As I started to note the body count, it seemed to me that God was a lot like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, with her constant cry “Off with their heads!”

How do we get from the complete destruction of enemies in the Old Testament to loving our enemies in the New? How on earth do we get from the bloody God of the Old Testament to the bleeding God of the cross?

In case your memory needs refreshing, here is a sampling of passages that can keep you up at night:

“And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord and said, ‘If you will indeed give this people into my hand, then I will devote their cities to destruction. And the Lord heeded the voice of Israel and gave over the Canaanites, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction. So the name of the place was called Hormah” [which means destruction] (Numbers 21:2-3).

“. . . And the Lord our God gave him over to us, and we defeated him and his sons and all his people. And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women and children. We left no survivors. . .” (Deuteronomy 2:33-34)

“Shout, for the Lord has given you the city [Jericho]. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live” (Joshua 6:16b-17).

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Samuel 15:2-3).

This is not a complete list, but it well serves as a reminder of the violent, troubling Old Testament passages we try to blip over when we come to them. The problem is, here, we’re dealing with real life and real death, not Alice’s dream of a bloody-minded but comic Queen of Hearts.

I realize, of course, that I am not alone in noticing God’s bloody hands in the Old Testament. It’s there for all to see: Slaughtering opponents is part and parcel of entering God’s Old Testament real estate—rather like the buyer killing the seller at the closing. And, I know full well that I am not the first one to comment on this.

My difficulties with the slaughter passages were compounded by a series of articles published in Christianity Today within the past year. There, people brighter and more capable than I, attempted to make sense of God’s troubling tendency in the Old Testament to wipe out whole groups of people. From my perspective at least, they failed to do so. This troubled me, and I sensed that there had to be a way of making sense of the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ and who saves sinners, and the God of the Torah, who kills them. So, I decided to take a whack at it.

William Blake, the visionary romantic poet, captured this divine dilemma in two poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” For Blake, the lamb is an image of Christ and is created by a God who is Jesus-like:

He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

Yet, there is also in creation the tiger, dark, violent and dangerous:

Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Both the lamb and the tiger are God’s creations, and both point to the character of the God who made them both. Both tiger and lamb find their source in the mystery that is God. Seemingly, God’s tiger qualities and lamb qualities coexist in a Divine Shalom. But, from the outside looking in, we find God’s tiger qualities uncomfortable and frightening and even violent. Blake’s question in “The Tyger” is our question as well:

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Blake, I think, suggests the answer to that question is “yes.”

So, how do we reconcile God’s murderous, tiger-like impulses with His lamb-like love revealed in Christ the Lamb of God?

Let’s begin with violence in general. From what I can make out, violence seems to be an integral part of life in ancient times, and wars between states and violence in general were religiously sanctioned. One appealed to one’s gods for victory, and if your side won the war, your gods were the reason for the victory. You win because your gods were more powerful than the gods of your enemies.

Since God works within the context of human cultures, God worked within the violence integral to cultures of the Ancient Near East. For God to be God in that context, God would also need to be a God who fights—and conquers. A God who gets beat up by the other gods isn’t a god to be taken seriously. Such a God would not be worth worshiping or taking seriously in that age because there would be better god options available, namely the gods of the powerful and successful kingdoms who regularly beat up everyone else’s gods. Battles were not just bloody human affairs; they were battles between the gods as well. In this sense, all ancient wars were, in a sense, holy wars. Not only would human opponents of God need to be conquered, so would their gods. These gods can be destroyed only as their worshipers and servants are destroyed. From what I can make out, there is no god anywhere in any pantheon who is the god of losing gracefully and surrendering.

The people of God would have had no reason to believe in, much less trust, a God who did not fight and conquer. That they existed at all, especially after the Exile, is a witness to their shared memory of a God who fights. Their existence depended on not being assimilated into the polytheistic fertility religions around them. They survived as the people of God because they depended on a zero tolerance policy in regard to this type of religion. Holy war was about the people of God’s survival as a religious, political, and cultural entity.

Further, when it came to violence, God had an equal opportunity attitude. The Old Testament shows that God’s violence is both a means of conquest and a means of judgment of His own people. If Israel was God’s bloody means of judging the idolatry of the nations, then the Nations were God’s bloody means of judging His own people, as the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian invaders illustrate. One can say that God wages holy war against His own people, using the Assyrians and Babylonians as His unwitting proxies. God’s violence is for God’s purposes, not for the purposes of His people. God is not on the side of His people to accomplish their purposes. Rather, God’s people are on God’s side to accomplish His purposes.

However, once the people of God were established and purified—painfully—over the centuries, then violence no longer needed to be accommodated to God’s purposes. Those who return to the Promised Land after the Exile are a sadder, wiser and humbled people. The only major war after the Exile was the Maccabean War, which was a war of self-defense and survival. They were faced with obliteration as a nation, and they fought back. This was a different kind of war than what we find in the Conquest of the Promised Land. Though certain Messianic hopes kept the violence option alive, religious violence met its bloody end in the Zealot uprising of 68-70 A.D.

The uniqueness of God and the power of God were established in history. Once established as the God of Israel who keeps His promises and who is with His people in power, God no longer needs violence in order to reveal Himself. Now, he reveals Himself in weakness in His Son, and supremely so in His Son’s death.

The God who fights becomes the God who suffers. A God who suffers and who has never fought and conquered is a weak and insignificant God, worthy of our pity but not our worship. But, coming on the heels of Israel’s bloody history—a history of war, slaughter, conquest, judgment and God’s faithfulness to His promises—the fierce, bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament who reveals Himself in and through Isaiah’s Suffering Servant and who becomes enfleshed in Christ, who humbles himself and dies, is a God who is truly remarkable and beyond our comprehension, who is worthy both of our reverent fear and humble love.

If God caused suffering in the Old Testament, He redeems it in the New. God caused suffering, and then undergoes it, transforming it with his presence so that now there is hope in suffering, slaughter and death for those with the Gospel faith to see it.

On the cross, the God of Holy War identifies with the victims of Holy War. God identifies there with those who perished because of His bloody, holy war justice. The Old Testament God of bloody justice is also the New Testament God who bleeds in Christ on the cross of judgment and rejection. At the cross, God meets those who were judged and slaughtered in God’s holy wars by a God who experienced the same judgment and the same slaughter. The God who dies is the God who kills; the God who raised His slaughtered Son from the dead is the God who loves.

This does not explain away the bloody=mindedness of the Old Testament, but it does make some sense of it. God’s OT violence sets the stage for this same God to make Himself known all over again in the baby in a peasant’s manger and in the suffering Messiah nailed to a cross. If God uses violence to execute His justice in the Old Testament, He judges violence on the cross of His Son and bears Himself the violence of His own judgment. The One who gives life also gives violent death in judgment. The same One then takes violent death and uses it to create life anew.

It is because we meet God most intimately in the bleeding Lamb of God of the cross that I am content to trust that God, and choose to hope that the violent tiger God of the Old Testament will make sense when I meet that God. I am bold to hope this, because Paul the Apostles tells me that though I now see as in a glass dimly, someday I will see clearly, as Isaiah the prophet suggests:

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. . .
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

• Isaiah 11:6-9

Somehow, though, it wouldn’t surprise me at all that, when the time comes and we come before God seeking answers to our questions, we might find ourselves like Job in the presence of God:

Surely, I spoke of things I do not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust an ashes.

• Job 42:3, 5

When we meet the One who is both lamb and tiger, we will see the Wholeness of the One who is both.

Sundays with Michael Spencer: May 17, 2015

God is like a Rorschach test. You know, the ink blot test, where you look at an image that really presents nothing coherent, and you describe what you see. Kind of like looking at clouds and talking about what you see.

The Rorschach test is outdated and was always controversial, but it does yield one agreed upon result: There are a limited number of common responses to each image, and they do demonstrate that we don’t just purely see the world, but we bring a complex grip of presuppositions and assumptions to what we see, and this influences how we interpret an image.

I’m wondering why certain kinds of people seem to identify with particular expressions of Christianity. I don’t have to do this exercise for you, do I? Charismatics. Calvinists. Warren-style Boomers. Traditional Southern Baptists. Emerging church twenty-somethings. Social justice liberals and Jerry Falwell fundamentalists….they really aren’t the same kinds of people. They are different. Though they read the same Bible, hear the same stories about Jesus and talk about the same God, they are different from one another, and similar to those with the same label.

Is this really because some are smarter than others? Some are better at hearing God’s voice? Is it all a matter of social and family context? Or is it- at least partially- a matter of psychological factors that we don’t really want to look at, because they take away the veneer of “being right” and confront us with the fact we’re not quite the free-choosers and serious disciples we think we are?

Was Arthur W. Pink unable to find a church where he could minister because of his study of the scriptures? Did his eventual withdrawal to write a magazine at home with his wife, living almost as a hermit, come from the God he came to know in Jesus? Perhaps Pink was a hermit and a loner for reasons that we don’t know, and he interpreted Christianity in a way that made his withdrawal from other people a necessary protest against the weak Christianity of the age.

Are Rick Warren’s members and disciples really taken by Warren’s preaching and writing? Or do his followers come from those who have a psychological need to be part of the “winning” team as a way of validating themselves?

Do liberal Christians like Bishops Spong and Robinison represent a more humane, rational approach to reading the Bible, or are they identifying with an approach to God that allows them to deconstruct the strictures and prejudices they have suffered under throughout life?

Is Michael Spencer writing what he learns in his study of the Bible and his reflection on his faith, or does he need to be a writer to make up for failures to succeed in his career? Does self-publishing allow him to pretend he has something worth saying and people who want to read it?

This could go on for days. Do we see Jesus as he is? God as he is? The Bible as it is? Are we at all what we seem in our discussions and ministries, or are we moving to music that is deep within our make-up; music we can’t admit hearing and responding to?

I know it is possible to upend a lot of our Christianity under a ruthless psychological examination. The need for God to exist, the need to be right about morality and the afterlife, and the need for our answers to work are presuppositions with many of us. When we look at religion, and at Christianity in particular, we see what we need to see and what we deeply desire to see in order for life to work. The vehemence of much of what we say to one another in the name of “right theology” and “right doctrine” is bogus. Much of it is nothing more significant than the need to assure ourselves we are right.

Faith in God is a living reality that risks all on a God who is not a psychological puppet show. Jesus really calls us to follow him. The Spirit invites us to live in a trusting adventure. These realities come to us through, above and beyond the many ways we presuppose the “truth” about God.

It would be good for me to step back and remember that my voice isn’t reporting the unbiased, pure teaching of scripture. Whatever I say comes along with all my psychological needs and baggage. Whatever is said to me by those who are sure they have the truth comes to me with their presuppositions and unacknowledged motivations as well.

What we see in the faith, in the scriptures and in the Gospel is highly personal. The kind of Christian we are is not automatically a reflection of Jesus. Frequently it is far from Jesus, and very close to our own dark sides. Pastors know this when they preach, if they will be honest. But it is hard to be honest. It’s hard to live this truthful life Jesus expects. We need to pray and be open to the ways God can shape us to be simple Christians, obedient servants and loving children in his family. Those who speak the loudest often live the least like Christ. That is certainly true in my case. It would be good if we could all acknowledge that much of what we offer others isn’t genuine at all, and we have fooled ourselves (and others) rather than admitting the truth about who we are and why we do and say what we do.