A Covenant & Christmas

Since the first day of Christmas I have wanted to write a Christmas reflection, and here it is day four and nothing. I finally decided that my heart and mind are pulling in a different direction, and that I should write out of that which I am currently preoccupied. Fortunately, the pull of my heart and mind is related to the story of Christmas.

I have been reading through N.T. Wright’s book, Justification, which was written in part as a response to John Piper’s book, The Future of Justification: a Response to N.T. Wright. And so, Wright’s book is a response to a response, which expresses the controversial nature of Wright’s concept of justification. Perhaps the depth of this controversy can be seen in the metaphor that Wright uses to begin his book, a metaphor that equates his understanding of justification with a kind of intellectual Copernican revolution.

Essentially, Wright is saying that the doctrine of justification does not arise out of the question “How can a sinner stand before a righteous and holy God?” but rather out of the question “How will God be faithful to his covenant with Abraham, by which all the nations of the world will be blessed.” The point for Wright is that justification is not about the existential crises of the individual, but rather about God’s actions to restore the entire cosmos and all of humanity to their original integrity and beauty.

In constructing his understanding of justification one of the key issues Wright addresses is what he identifies as a mischaracterization of Judaism as a religion based upon works righteousness. Against this, Wright asserts that much of the historical documents of Paul’s era make it clear that the Jews understood themselves to be God’s people on the basis of grace, a grace most particularly seen in the covenant established with their forefather Abraham. Within this covenant, the Law was commonly understood to be a means of maintaining faithful membership, as well as a means by which Israel was distinguished and separated from the rest of the gentile nations. Thus the Law was not held to be the means by which a faithful Jew sought to make his or herself righteous before God.

Another critical issue Wright addresses in constructing his doctrine of justification is the idea of exile as it was understood during Paul’s time. According to Wright many Jews believed they were in a state of partial exile, insofar as they had returned to their homeland, but they continued to be under foreign domination. Along with this, it was commonly believed that a complete end to their exile would not happen until the Messiah came to usher in God’s Kingdom by which God’s people would be delivered from and vindicated before all the nations. It is from this idea of vindication, particularly with its eschatological connotations, that Wright develops his understanding of justification.

Paul, according to Wright, had come to see that what Israel had expected for herself at the end of the age: vindication, had happened in the person of Jesus the Messiah, and that this vindication was particularly seen in Jesus’ resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus signified the coming of the end, the coming of the Kingdom in which the restoration of creation and the justification of God’s people is now available in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. The implication of Jesus’ resurrection also necessitated for Paul the need to redraw the lines of covenant membership. Instead of this line being drawn along the ethnic markers of Judaism, it was now to be drawn along the lines of all those who confess that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. And so, justification, according to Paul, according to Wright, is about inclusion in God’s covenant with Abraham, a covenant that was established prior to the giving of the Law, and a covenant that Abraham entered into by faith, and who thereby became the father of all who believe.

Please take note that my presentation of the essentials of Wright’s book does not due justice to the cogency with which he develops and supports his understanding of the doctrine of justification. Moreover, I have not touched upon the ways his book has been a blessing to me, and the ways I find myself resisting him on some points. In short, this book merits much more than I have given it in this post, and for this reason I plan on returning to it in future posts. For now, however, in light of the Christmas season, I will just say the following.

One result of reading this book is that I have never, in my life, ever felt so connected to the history of Israel. I now see myself as one how has, to use Paul’s term, been grafted into the story of God’s passionate love for his people Israel. I feel much more connected to the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, and the significance of proclaiming that Israel’s God is God indeed. Most importantly it has become very meaningful for me to proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah, the living embodiment of God’s righteousness, the living embodiment of God’s faithfulness to his covenant with our father Abraham, through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed.

In thinking about God’s covenant with Abraham as the context for understanding the significance of the birth of Mary’s baby, I am reminded of the words of an old man named Simeon. When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple, in accordance with the custom of the Law, Simeon, prompted by the Holy Spirit, took the baby into his arms and praised God by saying:

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.

A Long Way Off

During this past Lenten season I read Henry Nouwen’s Show Me The Way, and I came across the following verse from the Gospel of Luke about the prodigal son:

I will leave this place and go to my father and say: “Father I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men.” So he left the place and went back to his father.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him.

Nouwen’s reflection was an exposition on returning. His main idea was twofold, that returning to the Father was a lifelong struggle, and that God’s profound love provides the foundation of our returning. Of the two aspects of this reflection I certainly understand the former, and I struggle with the latter. It is this struggle that prompts me to write this post.

Within the above passage I was caught by the verse that says, “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity.” On a literal level the verse is talking about physical distance. Perhaps, in this story, the father’s house was on top of a hill, and thus he could see a good distance a way. So, one day he steps out to survey his land and far off, as little more than a speck on the horizon, he identifies his wayward son and runs out to embrace him. The son’s distance, however, is not just a physical reality. The boy is still a long way off because, though he is physically returning, in his heart he is not with his father. He is not returning because of a desire to be reunited with his dad, he is not longing to restore the lost relationship. Instead, he is coming home merely because his funds ran out, and life was hard. And yet, the father, who knows this very well, runs out to embrace the boy, to hold his beloved son regardless of why he has returned.

I am astounded by this verse, and particularly the words, “still along way off” because I am so thoroughly like this prodigal. I am a user in the distance, and my returning is more about me than God, is more about the gifts of God than God himself. I have known, struggled with, and in some measure been shamed by this mean truth for my whole adult life. I have long searched for genuine repentance, and ironically been very self involved in trying to find or produce it. Often, I have imagined God, for whom nothing is hid, looking down upon my soul and seeing my impure motives and at best coldly letting me enter by some back door. But this passage, this blessed passage says that while the boy was still a long way off, his father astoundingly and unexpectedly runs out to embrace him. This is unspeakable grace.

*******

God, I am not worthy to be called your son.

Are Americans Suspicious of Intellectuals?

Are Americans suspicious of intellectuals? I watched a good part of the Biden/Palin debate, and thought I had a good sense of who came out on top, but the next day my sense was undermined when I was listening to various political commentators who presented the debate as a toss up, or worse, that Palin actually fared better. Really!?! Maybe I live in an alternate universe that exposes me to different realities, but I could have sworn that Biden had a greater mastery of political and economic concepts and details, expressed more experience regarding the economy and foreign relations, and correctly named various political figures and geographic places. And yet, according to one poll Palin was favored by 49% and Biden by only 35%. Huh!?!

I remember having the same reaction during the bebates between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Al Gore, much like Biden, expressed a greater mind for facts, concepts, and political nuances, and Bush, much like Palin, expressed a kind of homespun, down-to-earth sensibility that the bulk of Americans apparently appreciate. Being a teacher of written communication, I certainly acknowledge the importance of emotional appeal in communication, but it cannot be a substitute for sound reasoning, nor a substitute for mastery of subject matter.

In looking at the response of Americans to recent debate performances I come to one basic conclusion: many Americans must have a simplistic view of the world, and therefore view people who demonstrate sophistication and an awareness of complexity regarding culture and politics as a bunch of elite circumlocuters. I don’t know about y’all, but when it comes to picking people to make tough political decisions, though I do want someone who will be sympathetic to the plight of the common person, I don’t want someone who is a common person. Very simply, I want someone smarter than me.

A Recurring Vision

I have a vision that has been creeping up and recurring in my imagination. It happened again the other day when I was at the store, either looking at some of the headlines about the economy, or processing soundbites from recent political conventions. Either way, I was thinking about potential hard times ahead, and it struck me that the Church does not need to be victim to whatever circumstances lay before us. Jesus took two fish and five loaves and fed five thousand, and he said that we, his body, would do greater things than him. Out of this, I imagined the Church being a place where common boundaries are broken, and people are reaching across family lines, and they are genuinely providing for one another’s needs, each giving as he is able, and everyone is covered.

How does this work? I have two guesses. First, I imagine that God has established a principle of synergy into the very fabric of the Church’s being, so that when people share things in common, when they move beyond the boundary of their immediate family toward caring about the whole family of God, they find that the total provision is more than the sum of its parts, that in the Kingdom of God 1+1 does not equal 2, but instead it equals 3 or 4 or 5. As good as this idea is, however, I prefer my second guess, which is the miracle of God’s presence. This kind of miracle is not the product of a distant God intervening in natural human affairs, but rather the work of God’s Spirit who both inspires people to move beyond their norms and who blesses the fruit of their labor with a hundredfold return. This is where the provision that normally covers one family multiplies beyond all natural boundaries and explanations toward the covering of thousands. This is a supernatural witness that boldly proclaims that Jesus is resurrected and living among his people in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, this is the vision. I don’t know it experientially and I am not sure if it is orthodox. What I do know is that it is frightening. What if God doesn’t show up to multiply our provisions, what if my brother or sister in Christ doesn’t throw into the pot as I have. What will God require of me to make this vision a reality. Does this imply some kind of communal existence? I am not sure. I am just thinking that it’s not cool when middle class Xians, for all their moralizing, look and live like every other middle class family. I am just wondering how my present manner of living is keeping me from the fullness of life that God intends to give all who claim Jesus’ name.

Do Not Go Gentle

My body is determined to let me know that forty is just around the corner, and to process this, I thought I would make like an elderly person and share my physical ailments.

Lately I have been experiencing considerable discomfort and some pain at the part of my foot where my arch borders on my heels. In response to this, I jumped on the web and googled “heel pain” and after wading through a couple of pages I came across a malady known as a “bone spur” that is related to another malady called “plantar fasciitis”. A bone spur is a little growth on the heel bone and plantar fasciitis is when the soft tissue that surrounds this spur becomes inflamed. It is this inflammation that causes the pain. Although I cannot say for sure that I am afflicted by these two maladies, when the various sites I consulted said that middle aged people are most susceptible, and that often there is pain after a night’s sleep due to the soft tissue becoming contracted, which is when I typically experience this pain, I think I have good reason to believe that I am indeed the victim of bone spurs.

I always thought that when I got older I would likely be dealing with my fair share of physical issues as my parents had their fair share, but I thought older wasn’t till my mid-fifties. Along with this, I still view myself in many ways as one who is just out of college. Over the past couple of years, however, in the face of receding gums, mildly thinning hair, periodic back pain, unintentional grunts when getting up from low chairs, occasional random popping sounds, and some digestive issues, the fact of my getting older is undeniable. My body is schooling my mind telling it to recalibrate my sense of self to match my demographic category: middle age.

And yet, there is a part of me, a strong part of me, that refuses to give in. Along with Dylan Thomas, I will “not go gentle into that good night”. Consequently I am working on a plan to make changes in my life so that I will be kickin some ass into my eighties, and perhaps beyond. Of course, the mere fact that I have to make these changes just to maintain my previous level of functionality is an indication of getting older. My younger body had the resilience to withstand all the abuse that I put it through. By contrast, nowadays even the slightest abuse results in significant consequences: too much coffee equals too much toilet time, too much food equals to much gut, too little sleep equals grossly bloodshot eyes framed by dark circles, and too little exercise results in slow but persistently advancing aches and pains upon my body.

Having said all of this, I want to be careful to balance the fight with the kind of wise acceptance that generally comes with age. Indeed aging is a natural part of life and on some level it needs to be graciously affirmed. As I see it, however, I have at least another twenty years to work on establishing this kind of balance. In the mean time, I am going to pop a few vitamins, some probiotics, and an occasional antacid to help buttress my resolve to follow through on my plan to keep the symptoms of aging at bay.

Dead Words

Nietzsche once said, “That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.” So, here are a few words: God, justice, love, truth, salvation, holiness, faith, and goodness, which according to Nietzsche are all signs that point to empty and dead realities. Being a Christian, I, of course, resist his assertion and yet I also affirm the truth of what he is saying. How is this so?…

When I first heard this aphorism, what initially came to mind is that throughout Church history people—mystics particularly—have had experiences of the divine that were beyond words to convey. Then I thought about the apophatic tradition within the larger Christian tradition, which basically asserts that God is beyond words and that we finite creatures would do best by acknowledging the limits of our understanding and language. Drawing upon my own experience I remember instances of becoming frustrated by the baggage of language when trying to express a shift in my understanding of God that came as a result of some kind of experience. It seems that this frustration arose because of the tension between the new and the old. I had a new experience, and yet I only had the same old words to express it, words that were bound by a tradition of usage that I feared would inevitably distort what I was trying to communicate. In light of all this, I find sufficient reason to affirm Nietzsche’ assertion. Words like “God”, “love”, “salvation”, etc, are all too often the empty husks of cultural decay that inevitably lull the soul into numbness. Likewise, I have too often read through books that gave descriptions of God, or the work he has done, only to get a sense that the reading gave me some kind of mastery regarding these things. This should never happen when talking about God. And yet, in spite of all this, even as this post demonstrates, I have an impulse (as do many others) to speak about God.

I find some resolution to this tension in the words of the apostle Paul, who when writing to the Christians at Corinth stated, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’ power, so that your faith may not rest on men’ wisdom, but on God’ power.” For Paul, when it comes to speaking theological truth, the Spirit must make present the divine realities the words point to, and thereby give new life to words that are in bondage to decay and death. This new life, however, is not just given to words; it is also given to those who respond in faith to the words that are spoken about what God has done in Jesus Christ. In fact, it is probably most proper to say that words come to life for those who are coming alive. In this manner, Paul would very likely respond to Nietzsche by saying, “You only find words for something already dead in your heart because you are dying.” This leaves me with a final question for myself and for any others who might care. If words like “God” and “love” and “faith” are dead is it because they are no longer vital, or is it because we, in some very real sense, are dead?

Gallery Of Truth

I realize that this sounds naïve in our postmodern world, but I believe in the pursuit of truth with a capital “T”. I think I have a pretty decent grasp of the epistemological and linguistic problems that humanity faces in this pursuit, but nevertheless I think we must not abandon this enterprise. As I see it, the end result of this pursuit is not to construct a blueprint for reality, as I do not think that is how God has constituted us in relation to the Truth. Articulations about truth are analogical in nature and thus there is some similarity between the concepts of our mind and the reality they refer to. Through our articulations we are not holding up a mirror to reality, rather we are rendering paintings, which reveal as much about our perception, and our mastery of the tools we use, as it does the subject we seek to represent. The fact that this approach affirms a plurality of possibilities for representing the Truth, however, should not be seen as epistemologically nihilistic. The nature of analogy is one of resemblance, which implies a boundary within which all possibilities of representation must operate. To go beyond the boundary is to go into a place where resemblance ceases.

What all this implies is that we must be constantly open to how others are representing the Truth, not in a pluralistic free-for-all where all representations are considered equally valid, but rather in the awareness that there exists a variety of acceptable possibilities. To use an analogy, the medium of the mind is not light and reflected glass, but rather paint and an incredibly diverse palette. When you bring together multiple paintings on one subject, you have multiple interpretations, not fragments of a mirror. Thus the paintings give multiple options in approaching the same subject, but they can never work together to construct a mirror. In saying this I realize that some might object that my epistemology is to relativistic, but I want to point out that the interpretive element of representation does not undermine a genuine connection between the mind and Truth or Reality. In being open to others we must be critical to see if their representation, as differently interpreted as it may be, is within the proper boundary of the subject we seek to represent. Just as there are a variety of possibilities for interpreting the same reality, so it is possible that a person is interpreting a different reality. Discerning the difference is not easy as the boundaries are not always clear, but this does not mean they don’t exist. In the end, the pursuit of Truth requires humility, patience and a lot of hard work, but if we pursue it just think about the incredible gallery we would have.