The Internet Monk Archives

Reconsider Jesus – What was Jesus Like?

On Fridays we are taking a journey with Michael Spencer through the Gospel of Mark. We have found many of his writings and sermons on Mark and are editing and compiling them into a book: Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. The following is a blog post written by Michael Spencer in May of 2008. It is one of nearly 200 source documents that will shape the commentary. The book is still quite a ways from completion, but if you would like to be contacted when it is available for purchase, drop us a note at michaelspencersnewbook@gmail.com. As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”….Mark 3:31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers* are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said,”Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Most Christians aren’t like Jesus.

Should we even try to be? Isn’t that impossible?

None of us can be like Jesus perfectly, but the Gospel of the Kingdom calls Jesus’ disciples to hear his call and set the goal and direction of their lives to be like him. For a follower of Jesus, Paul’s words of “follow me as I follow Christ,” are translated simply, “follow Christ in every way possible.”

Ghandi said “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” He’s far from the only one to have made that observation, and those critics aren’t holding anyone to a standard of perfection. They are simply looking for enough congruence that the claim to be a follower of Jesus makes sense.

Christians have gotten very good at explaining why they really shouldn’t be expected to be like Christ. At various points, these explanations are true. At other points, they start sounding like winners in a competition for absurdist doublespeak.

Perhaps many Christians don’t resemble Jesus because they don’t really know what Jesus was like. Or- more likely- they assume Jesus was very much like themselves, only a bit more religious.

Getting our bearings on being like Jesus will start with something very important: discarding our assumption that our personal and collective picture of Jesus is accurate.

One of the constants in the Gospels is the misunderstanding of Jesus. The list of mistaken parties is long.
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Summer Sounds from CM: The List

The List
by Roseanne Cash, 2009

When Roseanne Cash was a teenager, she was on tour with her father, Johnny Cash. One day as they were talking about songs, he realized that she did not know some of the songs that he considered essential for any singer-songwriter to know. So, he gave her a list of what he thought were 100 essential country songs.

She tucked it away in a box and found it later, when she was mature enough to realize its value. When she had come to the point in her career when she was ready to claim her family legacy and make an album representing her place in it, it was a natural step to choose some songs from “the list” and perform them.

The result is one of my favorite covers albums of all time.

The video below is from an appearance on Austin City Limits. That’s Roseanne’s husband, John Leventhal, on acoustic guitar and background vocals. On the album, Bruce Springsteen sings the back-up parts.

I could listen to this album every day and never get tired of it.

On Peter Rollins: Deconstruction Is Not Enough

The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction
By Peter Rollins
Howard Books, 2013

– Part two of a two-part review and meditation

* * *

It is dangerous to put a chainsaw in the hands of a preacher.

We live in a house that is 112 years old and this has been renovation summer. We are engaged in a months-long project of painting the exterior and fixing various trouble spots. We also have a lot of overdue landscaping work to do, including trimming and cutting down trees, pruning back and replacing large bushes and refurbishing gardens.

So I got out the chainsaw last week and went crazy. Our backyard, once dense with foliage, is now filled with light. There is a large dead tree that I can’t get, which is awaiting the chainsaw of a tree professional, but the rest is gone, helpless to stand against my lumberjack wrath. I joked with my neighbor that this is what I do best — wreak destruction. I’m not so good at construction.

At some point Gail and I will have to come to agreement on the plan going forward. What kinds of trees, bushes, and flowers will we plant, and where exactly will they go? We’ll need to envision what we want for these spaces, measure, plan, shop, consult with experts, make purchases and then build a new backyard. We’ve been talking about it, and will soon start making decisions. Then the positive work of making something new will start in earnest.

This is our second day of considering what Peter Rollins has to say in his book, The Idolatry of God. Rollins is an intelligent voice that speaks effectively to a certain constituency in the post-modern, even post-Christian wilderness. He does so by being a provocateur, countering the traditions and claims of the Church with a direct and startling clarity.

The message of his book is that, although God has traditionally been approached as a product that will render us complete, remove our suffering, and reveal answers about which we can have certainty, in reality we can’t be whole, life is difficult, and we remain in the dark, even (especially!) as people of faith. We should therefore embrace our brokenness and stop putting our trust in over-stated mythologies that are set forth as ways of liberating us from the common lot we share with our fellow human beings.

Sadly, then, the church today does not offer an alternative to the Idolatry and Unbelief that weigh us down, but instead blesses them and gives them divine justification. The question that faces us, then, is how Christianity in its most radical and subversive form, critiques the church and offers real freedom.

Fair enough. Houston, we have a problem. But so does Peter Rollins. For although the paragraph above concludes the first part of his book, promising a positive vision of “the new creation” that the Church can promote, he cannot and does not deliver. Deft with the chainsaw, he wreaks what may be a necessary deconstruction of the Church’s inadequate message. However, no true new landscape ever emerges.
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Losing The War Part Two—Hell On The Installment Plan

This post is about the sin of acedia. It is known by a lot of other names, none of which entirely capture or circumscribe this sin; ennui, anomie, alienation, despondency, carelessness, boredom, but the Fathers who describe it called it by its Greek name, acedia. It is an old word. meaning literally “carelessness”. When it came West, it got subsumed into that most comfortable of all the Seven Deadly Sins; stultia or Sloth. But acedia is far more than just laziness or inaction. Indeed, laziness is a symptom of acedia much more than the res in se. A person suffering from acedia can also exhibit furious activity, but all of it without any discernable purpose. It is also much more than simple depression, which often has a physical component and can be treated by medication, exercise, and diet. The best definition of acedia I have yet found comes from the manual of a video game:

Accidie: rejecting life… is a Middle English word, retrieved because the usual word, “sloth,” now only expresses a trivial laziness. Accidie is a form of spiritual despair, a refusal of grace, a bargain with nothingness that shuts out God’s gift of the new possibility. Usually called sloth, laziness, dejection, passive-aggressiveness, despair or spiritual depression nowadays, accidie is a spiritual listlessness or depression, a reluctance, and finally a refusal, to respond to God.

Accidie begins at the center, at our relationship with God, and it stems ultimately from a refusal to live toward God as dependent creatures made in His image. It is a passive shrinking from creative existence. The style of accidie would be to dampen down one’s inner life, living at a minimum level of mind and heart, letting thoughts and feelings die down.

It is the ultimate in spiritual minimalism.

Accidie is a partial consent to non-being, striking a bargain with insignificance. Another way to sin by accidie is to empty out one’s self in idle worship rather than growing toward God, seeking significance in some other human being or cause or circumstance, scrabbling after a sense of self-worth. Self-abdication offers a temporary refuge both from God and from the nothingness that stalks creative life. The fruit of accidie is despair. In its terminal form it finally rejects God’s new possibility. It rules out grace, shutting any opening to the divine life.

Accidie has its full effect when one puts oneself intentionally beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Spiritual withdrawal and depression often start with dishonest prayer, refusing to raise some issue with God, rejecting a summons, getting tired of God’s silence and walking away. It chooses to live and die on the margins of nothingness rather than launch out further into the abyss of God. It leaves the self independent from God and in control, even at the price of self-minimization. Those who strike bargain with nothingness can avoid surrender to God.

Scary words, aren’t they? No wonder the Fathers put pride and acedia together on the same level of toxicity with lust, gluttony, greed, envy, and anger lower and less dangerous. If pride is the unGodding of God by usurping His place, acedia is the unGodding of God by abolishing His place. Alas, there is no psychiatrist out there with a pill for acedia.

Continue reading “Losing The War Part Two—Hell On The Installment Plan”

Living In The Land Of The Real

We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him. (Judith 8:25-27)

In my homily on Sunday, I dared to suggest that when Jesus cried on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” that God had actually forsaken the Son. And that when we go through dark periods of our lives and feel abandoned, we are drinking from the cup that Jesus drank from in his passion. I was met with cries that I was ignoring Scripture. “God says he will never leave us or forsake us!” was your plea.

Yes, that is true. He did say that. But he does forsake us, all the while not ever forsaking us. Trying to nail God down and say “he always does this” or “he never does that” will only lead to frustration and headaches. You have heard that God will not be put in a box. Ask Job. God allowed all kinds of evil to devastate Job’s life—in essence, abandoning Job—all the while proclaiming that he is God and it is futile for us to question his ways. Job experienced his misery while cupped in the palm of God’s hand. Forsaken, never forsaken. Don’t box God in by saying he can’t ever forsake us. And don’t spend fruitless time trying to explain how this works.

I was told that I wasn’t paying attention to the Word of God. Well, let’s be clear about this. The Word (capital W) of God is Jesus. The Word made flesh. The word (lower case w) of God is what many people call Scripture, the 66 (or 73, depending on your view of the deuterocanonical books) books collected in our Bible. These books were written by men (and, possibly, women) in a variety of lands over a period of thousands of years, but they have one purpose: To reveal God in Jesus to us. We see Jesus in Genesis through John’s Revelation. He is revealed to us in ways that surprise and even shock us. But he, the Word of God, is the central figure in the word of God. The Bible is not given to us for any reason other than so that we can see Jesus. It is not a handbook on how to live a successful life. It is not the Great Answer Book. It is not a book filled with magic verses that promise we will never suffer. It is a collection of books to show us Jesus. If we are not seeing Jesus as we open the Scriptures, it is because we are not living in reality.

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Good News from Peter Rollins: God does not exist, is not sublime, and has no meaning

The Adoration of the Golden Calf, Poussin

The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction
By Peter Rollins
Howard Books, 2013

– Part one of a two-part review and meditation

* * *

Peter Rollins thinks that much modern Christianity has become, in essence, idolatry.

Today the “Good News” of Christianity operates with much the same logic. It is sold to us as that which can fulfill our desire rather than as that which evokes transformation in the very way that we desire. Like every other product that promises us fulfillment, Christ becomes yet another object in the world that is offered to us as away of gaining insight and ultimate satisfaction.

In his book The Idolatry of God, Rollins observes that humans, from the beginning of self-consciousness, experience a sense of loss and separation. At the same time we realize that there is an “I,” we also observe that there is a “not I” from which we are separated. Thus we sense a gap, and we begin to feel that we have lost something we once had, we have been disconnected from something (or someone) primordial. Thus, from the start of self-awareness we long to be reconciled, reunited with that from which we have been disunited. In ourselves, we are incomplete.

From early childhood, we pursue various objects and experiences, believing they will somehow fill the void and make us whole. As we mature, these may take the form of pleasure, success, wealth, fame or reputation, power and influence, or true love.

Or faith in “God.”

These days, religion has become another product on the shelf designed to address our sense of incompleteness. This way of presenting God, Jesus, and Christian faith is so common in our time that many think this is the Bible’s Gospel — Jesus has come to fill the gap in our lives and bring us satisfaction.

I remember a simple, winsome little tract from the Jesus movement when I had my teenage spiritual awakening that had that very title: “What Fills the Gap?” The subsequent era of church growth mentality, seeker oriented movements, and the nearly total loss of historical awareness and tradition that this entailed has only accelerated the sense that this “gospel” is God’s good news for people today.

Peter Rollins suggests that Jesus actually came, not to fill the gap, but to set us free from this idolatrous instinct.

But instead of offering a freedom from this type of thinking, the church has simply joined the party and placed its own product in the machine. Their god-product takes its place alongside all the other things vying for our attention with their promises to fill the gap in our lives and render our existence meaningful. Take one or mix and match: luxury car, financial success, fame, or Jesus; they all pretty much promise the same satisfaction.

This idea of God as the fulfillment of our desires is so all-pervasive today that most of us take it for granted. Whether people accept the idea of God or reject it, they seem to be talking about the same thing: a being who satisfies our soul by filling the gap in our existence. The only conflict is that some people reject this god-product as fiction while others accept it.

However, it is the very framework of thinking that is inadequate, not merely what one puts in the “gap-filler” role. Whether it is a BMW, a soulmate, or Jesus, that thing that we have designated as our “answer” becomes an idol.

That’s right, we can even make Jesus into an idol.

Continue reading “Good News from Peter Rollins: God does not exist, is not sublime, and has no meaning”

The Homily

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? (Psalm 22:1, NIV)

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli,Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) (Matthew 27:46, NIV).

Breakfast at the Savoy this week consisted of scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, blueberry pancakes, Doubleshot coffee, and a piercing comment by Adam Palmer.

I had said that, as I continue to struggle with the black dog of depression, I feel like God has abandoned me.

“Then you are close to Jesus on the cross,” said AP.

My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.”Repeat what you just said.” He did. I thought that through, then said, “So feeling abandoned by God is a part of the ‘dying to self’ we are called to?”

Yes, said Adam.

For some reason, that brought a small amount of comfort.

I have always heard that God the Father did not actually abandon Jesus. Jesus only felt abandoned. And, the thinking continues, feelings are not real. So don’t give in to the feelings, but trust the promises. You have, no doubt, heard the same chorus yourself. But is that true? Will God ever abandon us?

When Jesus cried out from the cross, he was quoting one of the most gut-wrenching psalms of all. Jesus does not ask, “Why do I feel like you have abandoned me?” but “Why have you abandoned me?” There is an abandonment in the mysteries of the passion that is very real. It was so very real that darkness overtook the land in the middle of the day. It was so real that an earthquake ripped at the earth that received Jesus’ blood. God had abandoned Jesus.

And yet … and yet God could never abandon Jesus, “for from him and through him and for him are all things.” Jesus holds all things in himself, including death, including the abandonment of his Father. So Jesus was abandoned while holding abandonment itself in his being. Again, this is a great mystery, one that is at once revealed and resolved in the Cross.

Jesus says the only way I can be his follower is for me to pick up my cross and follow him. And that cross includes participating in the sufferings of Christ, and that means I will also know being abandoned by God. Not just a feeling that I am to ignore, but a very real abandonment that is held within Jesus himself. There is no confessing, no speaking promises, no claiming blessings that will eliminate the need to experience abandonment for one who truly desires to press into the heart of the Father.

Yes, there is the reality of God forsaking Jesus on the cross and, as we carry our cross, forsaking us in Jesus. But there is a greater reality: There is the resurrection. And in the resurrection there is no more forsaking, no more abandonment—only an intimate union with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The only way to this union, however, is through the cross. Very, very few will ever choose to go through the cross and suffer abandonment. Most will turn back because it is too much. It brings about death.

Yet only that which has died can be resurrected.

What will you choose to do?

Let us pray.

Saturday Ramblings 8.17.13

Good morning, iMonks. How is your coffee? Want another sweet roll? Here, let turn the page of the newspaper for you. Comfy? Good. Now, wake up from your dream and grab a broom. It’s time for the weekly clean-up around here we call Saturday Ramblings. (And we have a great bonus video for you this week, but don’t peek ahead, ok?)

It has not been a very good week for our brothers and sisters in Egypt. Christians have been targeted in the violence that is tearing apart the African nation. My question for you: Why don’t we care?

Long ago and far away, Egypt was the home of one Moses. But I never pictured Batman as Moses. Or is it Moses as Batman? Whatever it is, Christian Bale has signed on to play Moses on the big screen. Good choice?

You haven’t peeked at the music video, have you?

Last week we mentioned a mysterious priest who stopped to pray at the scene of an auto accident in Missouri. There was speculation by some that this could have been an angel. Now, said priest has come forward, saying it was no mystery. He is, by all accounts, human, not angel.

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Reconsider Jesus – Once Saved Always Saved?

The following is an excerpt from Michael Spencer’s upcoming book: Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. This week we are continuing with some of his thoughts on The Seed and the Soil from Mark 4:1-8; 13-20 that we introduced two weeks ago. Michael Spencer’s thoughts on Mark Chapter 4 are edited by Scott Lencke. Check out his excellent blog! If you would like to be contacted when Michael Spencer’s book is available for purchase, drop us a note at michaelspencersnewbook@gmail.com.

Once Saved Always Saved?

Mark Shea is a sharp, Catholic thinker. His podcast with the “Catholic Exchange,” which finished in early 2011, was always provocative. In one of his episodes contrasting evangelical and Roman Catholic views on spiritual security and assurance, Shea made a unique comment about a common area of disagreement. There isn’t a transcript, but here’s the quote:

“I became more secure in my relationship with God once I was no longer certain I was going to heaven.”

Shea is skewering the common conception that evangelicals believe in easy salvation with instant assurance, but produce millions of believers who get “saved and resaved” with regularity or care so little about the possibility of hell that they never actually consider following Christ. It’s a bit of a caricature, but it’s also based in truth at some level. Some conservative evangelicals can make it difficult to reasonably discuss the topic at hand, especially those who run to extremes like that of making stupendous numerical claims in regards to evangelism.

So, perhaps, we need to take some time to properly assess the evangelical doctrine of assurance for a moment. It’s actually one of my favorite topics – having spent many hours wrestling with the Bible and Methodist friends over the question. And it can be one of the most misunderstood, distorted and pastorally damaging of evangelical teachings.

First of all, what are we talking about? Most usually, the discussion relates to the question: “Can I know for certain that I am going to heaven?” Some call the subject “assurance of salvation,” but that gets into the area of what a person feels at a given point and not into God’s work of salvation itself. Most Protestants call this subject “perseverance,” and, by that, they mean that quality of faith that continues through life into heaven.

On the question, “Can you know that you know that you know?”, I’ve heard at least a thousand Baptist preachers shout, “Yes!”, based on what we grew up calling “once saved always saved” (from now on OSAS). “Real” Baptists tend to like OSAS, while more reformation-influenced Baptists prefer perseverance. But all of them agree that the elect – the individual people of God, those who belong to Jesus – will persevere to the end, will not finally fall away and cannot lose their salvation.Continue reading “Reconsider Jesus – Once Saved Always Saved?”

I Can’t Get No…

Ravine VG — Les Peiroulets Ravine (detail), Van Gogh

I was perusing the IM Archives the other day and came across a post I wrote two years ago. It was simple and short, based on a sentence by Dallas Willard I had read in a book on spiritual formation. I didn’t know what to make of it then, but it arrested me.

Well, the sentence got my attention again today, and I would like for us to discuss it.

Here are Willard’s words:

“It is spiritually formative to be dissatisfied and unable to resolve it.”

Hmm. Read that again. Slowly. Again.

Now let’s talk.

My first thought is, I am not sure I have ever been anything other than “dissatisfied.” How about you? For people my age, dissatisfaction, restlessness, and ennui came as natural as breathing. Were these ingredients in the bottles our mothers fed us, we members of the Baby Boom generation?

The Stones sang our generation’s chorus back in the early 1960’s — “I can’t get no… I can’t get no…” No satisfaction. The thought still reverberates within me some fifty years later.

Realistically, could anyone with half a brain look back on the tumultuous twentieth century and not be dissatisfied? Those of us born in the post-war era wondered how in the hell the shallow peace and prosperity of suburbia (which we nevertheless enjoyed, by the way — we are hypocrites just like everyone else) could blind us to the record of interminable blood lust, injustice, and corruption that was presented as a “century of progress.” Idealists all, we could see through those who called us to settle for the kind of satisfaction you could buy in a store or receive from an “authority.” We wore our dissatisfaction as a badge of honor, a mark of authenticity. We knew how to get real, man.

On a personal level, as a sinner-saint, a Christian who views the cross and Jesus’ call to carry it seriously, I’ve never been “satisfied.” Instead, I feel a sense of wanderlust, a hunger, what I hope is a “holy” dissatisfaction, a sign of burgeoning life within. I’m not content to be where I am; I want to go forward, to “follow” in response to grace’s invitation and provision.

At some times, moreover, as an introvert and a pessimist prone to depression, my dissatisfaction is pervasive, touching the prosaic details of my utterly human life. I am not happy when I’m alone. I am not happy with my family. Food doesn’t satisfy. There’s nothing to watch on TV. I don’t feel like reading anything. Nothing sounds fun or inviting. I just don’t like life in those moments and I may or may not be able to tell you why. Those are the times when I’m glad Jesus loves unhappy grouches, but even that is not a thought that brings much relief or satisfaction. I’m stuck in a querulous rut.

Most of my dissatisfaction is about me. I can’t stop “shoulding” on myself. I should lose weight. I should take more walks. I should use my time better. I should order my daily life and schedule more wisely. I should pay more attention to my wife. I should have a more disciplined prayer life. I should remember birthdays and anniversaries. I should eat healthier. I should clean up my clutter. The list is endless.

I should…

I envy those souls that seem to be content, their hearts and minds at rest, peacefully enjoying ordered lives. I have moments like that. Then my alarm goes off.

Continue reading “I Can’t Get No…”