Archive for the 'scripture' Category

Can Christians Support (This) War?

Published
by
Mike
on November 15, 2007
in scripture
. 245 Comments

I wish it were easier for churches to have a discussion about war. But it’s one of the most difficult issues to talk about.

For one thing, for many families this isn’t just a hypothetical discussion. They have sons and daughters who are in the military — some of whom are deployed overseas. And others are veterans who are proud of their military service.

There are two historic positions that are represented in almost all our churches.

A third “position” I won’t consider. It’s the one that seems dominant in places — the “I’m-proud-to-be-an-American-and-let’s-kick-some-Islamic-butt” position. It isn’t Christian, so I won’t discuss it.

One view is that Christians must never participate in or support war. This position has, among other arguments, these convictions:

(1) The teaching of Jesus encourages us, in light of the inbreaking shalom of God, to refrain from anything except love for our enemies. He insists that we not pay back “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” — the law of retaliation (Matthew 5:38-42). And he says: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-48).

(2) The death of Jesus points us to a way of nonviolence. He broke the cycle of violence through life-giving sacrifice.

(3) The Old Testament points to a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (e.g., Isaiah 2:4). I remember when Hugo McCord came to our church in Missouri for a gospel meeting and taught the pacifist position. This was his text.

Pacifism has historically been an emphasis in leaders of the Restoration Movement — leaders who were convinced that others trust in horses and chariots but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. You’d perhaps be surprised to know that many of the influential Christian leaders whose books you read or sermons you’ve listened to are pacifists.

The other position is the just war position. This conviction is that in this fallen world, evil must be contained. With reluctance and with tears, we must hold back those who seek to oppress, even if force is involved — all the while longing for the peace-filled kingdom to come in its fullness.

What’s my position? That’s not significant here. (Perhaps I’ll drop a note if a discussion develops. You might be surprised.) What IS significant is that churches are going to have to have this discussion. We’re going to need to listen to each other without condemning. We’re going to have to study afresh and agree to disagree, since study alone (contrary to what I thought growing up) won’t solve this!

Obadiah

Published
by
Mike
on November 8, 2007
in scripture
. 27 Comments

The story of Obadiah begins in Genesis 25 with the birth of the twins: hairy (Esau) and heel-grabber (Jacob). Rebekah was told that two nations were in her womb — more, I think, than most women are wanting to hear. The older would serve the younger.

Fast forward to Deuteronomy (2:1-8; 23:7) and you learn that this relationship still mattered centuries later when the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land after the exodus. The Edomites (descendents of Esau) were to be treated respectfully, because they were relatives.

This area of Edom was just south of the Dead Sea — about 70 miles north-to-south and just 15 or 20 miles east-to-west. It’s a hilly area that felt to the residents like secure protection.

One famous Edomite in the New Testament was (apparently) Herod the Great. His father, Antipater, was an Idumean, or an Edomite. Herod married into the Jewish royal family and kept the Jewish law. Ok, some of the Jewish law. He had minor lapses like the propensity for killing off family members.

Despite the warnings to treat the kinsmen Edomites well, when you move ahead many centuries later, the Edomites are roundly condemned. Check out Psalm 137, Lamentations 4, Ezekiel 25 and 35, and Jeremiah 49.

There’s something vile the Edomites did when Neduchadnezzar and the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. But what was that?

It’s in Obadiah that we find out.

For the most part, their sins were not sins of commission but of omission. While Jerusalem was attacked, they kept their distance from the south, up in their mountainous crags, and cheered on the defeat of Judah. They are the nanner-nanner-nanner people of the Bible.

Their central offense appears to be that they stood by when they should have stood with their relatives being attacked.

If that’s true, then could this, the shortest book in the Old Testament, be a piece of prophetic literature that has a fresh word for the church today?

It invites us to ask how we are standing by rather than standing with. Wasn’t that what offended so many religious types about Jesus? He kept stepping into the messes of the world. He refused to stand at a distance condemning.

The conflict at his home town synagogue (Luke 4:16ff) was over his examples of how God wants his people to move beyond their own safe, gated communities. His story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16) highlights the evil of standing by while another is in need. (Note that there’s no evidence the rich man was actively doing harm. He just stood by.) When he talked of judgment (Matthew 25), the key questions weren’t about obtuse questions of doctrine but about standing by or standing with. When you see him naked, thirsty, hungry, and in prison, what is your response?

Obadiah says that the moutains of Seir would not protect the Edomites: “‘Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,’ declares the Lord.”

Apparently God takes this seriously. His final evaluation isn’t based on the edict: “Do no harm.” It goes beyond that: when we see Lazarus . . . when we see the person beaten along the road to Jericho . . . when we see someone hungry, hurting, or lost — what is our response?

Do we stand by? or stand with?

Abraham and Isaac

Published
by
Mike
on November 3, 2007
in scripture
. 72 Comments

Tomorrow I’m preaching on the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. I’m still, after all these years, baffled by it. God tested Abraham by asking for a child sacrifice.

Here are the insightful questions of Eugene Peterson:

There is so much here that we cannot comprehend, so much that violates our pious sensibilities, so much that refuses to conform to our expectations. How can God command a murder? And not just murder in general but the murder of a beloved son? How can God go back on the miracle-promise fulfilled in the birth of Isaac? How can God, who our parents and pastors have taught us loves us from eternity, command this cold-blooded cruelty? How can God, who Jesus tells us has such a tender heart that he is moved even by the death of sparrows, command a father to kill his son, without so much as a hint of explanation? We Can’t handle this.

W TX Football . . . and Matthew’s Gospel

Published
by
Mike
on October 27, 2007
in scripture and sports
. 13 Comments

We joined 15,000 of our closest friends last night to watch two undefeated teams, Odessa Permian (as in “Friday Night Lights”) and Abilene High, play at Shotwell Stadium. The game had been promoted in this week’s Sports Illustrated. It’s hard to describe what that experience is like. We came up on the short end of a 28-21 game, however, breaking AHS’s eight-year dominance over Mojo.

- - - -

Have you ever noticed how Matthew’s gospel blocks together the words of Jesus? If you’re reading Mark with a red-letter Bible, it’s constantly red-black-red-black-red-black. But in Matthew there are large chunks of the red. Scholars have noted that it probably isn’t accidental that there are five of those teaching sections (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25) — likely corresponding to the five books of the Law.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the fulfiller of and authoritative interpreter of the Law. All things point to him, as you can tell immediately from the genealogy and from the many statements that say “and so was fulfilled.” Often, these “fulfillments” are surprising — until you understand how Matthew understands the Old Testament and Jesus.

E.g., Isaiah 7 had said that a young woman (a Hebrew word that doesn’t necessarily mean a virgin) would conceive and give birth to a son. It was a sign that applied to the people in the looming days of the 8th century. But now, Matthew says, those words find their deepest sense in the one who was born of a virgin. (He uses a Greek word that specifies that THIS young woman is a virgin.)

Similarly, when Joseph and Mary take their newborn to Egypt because of the madman Herod the Great and then return after Herod’s death, this fulfilled the words of Hosea 11:1: “out of Egypt I called my son.” But when you’re reading Hosea, it’s clear that’s a reference initially to the exodus. However, now in a deeper sense they point to Jesus, the one who fulfills all those dreams.

He came as the faithful Israelite. He was the new Moses. (Maybe it’s not an accident that Matthew moves from Egypt to water to desert to teaching — the same as you find in the story of Moses.)

Here now is the one who speaks authoritatively. Here is the one who fulfills God’s dreams for Israel. All of scripture points to him.

Youth Ministers and Gospeled Change

Published
by
Mike
on October 11, 2007
in Church, Church of Christ, justice and scripture
. 67 Comments

A couple recent pictures of Reese Kathryn Cope:

null

null

- - - -

I’ve written before about my appreciation for youth ministers. That appreciation continues to grow as I hear stories of youth leaders who are instilling a deep sense of justice and compassion in their teens. Someday we may look back and realize that there was a dramatic shift in our churches — a shift that focuses more on God’s work to restore the world (in all ways). And we may realize how much of that took place from the teaching and modeling of youth workers.

- - - -

Insightful words about the gospels from N. T. Wright:

“No historian, no reporter, nobody ever tells things ‘just like they happened.’ All stories about all events involve the story-teller in selection, collection, arrangement and hence ‘interpretation.’ That doesn’t mean the whole thing is a pack of lies. It just means there is no such thing as a point of view which is nobody’s point of view. Nobody is ever a fly on the wall. All storytelling is story-telling with a purpose. The Gospels are no exception. To read the Gospels, then, we must continually be alert both for the question ‘what is this telling us about Jesus?’ and for the question ‘what is the evangelist trying to say, through this tory about Jesus, to his own contemporaries?’”

- - - -

My name has finally been removed from the www.foracappella.org site. It took quite a while for someone to figure out that I didn’t endorse the statement there. Hmmmm. Hadn’t read my blog, I guess. Keep hoping they’ll take down the scandalous articles that indicate instrumental music is a matter of salvation and fellowship. I’ve read some comments indicating that no one should bother to say anything about it. But those comments are wrong. That teaching is heretical. It reduces the gospel and throws up barriers that shouldn’t exist. Neither singing a cappella nor with instruments is heretical. Teaching that one or the other is necessary for salvation and fellowship is heretical.

- - - -

I’m expecting a short World Series, aren’t you? It’s hard to imagine either the Rockies or the D’backs matching up well with the Indians or Red Sox.

- - - -

I’ve been concerned about the need for the recruiters of Christian colleges to give the same perspective to potential students that the leaders on campus are providing once the students get there.

E.g., if a Christian college has banned people from speaking on its campus, that’s fine. The administration certainly has a right to do that. But wouldn’t it be ironic if the admissions people wound up recruiting from the congregations where those ministers work? Are they making it clear that they would like the students to attend even though the ministers they’ve grown up with are aren’t welcome?

Or let’s suppose that the administration generally believes that something like instrumental music will condemn you. Wouldn’t it be dishonest if the recruiters went to students from instrumental churches and encouraged them to attend, leaving the impression with the students and their parents that they are brothers and sisters in Christ who are in full fellowship?

The point is that there needs to be a consistent message between the policy and practices of the administration and the impressions given by the admissions counselors.

The Law of Christ

Published
by
Mike
on September 27, 2007
in scripture
. 87 Comments

Despite Paul’s insistence in Galatians that we are not set right with God or spiritually formed by the law, he makes these statements:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

A couple helpful insights: the first from Ben Witherington and the second from N. T. Wright.

“The phrase ‘the law of Christ’ first and foremost refers to the cruciform and resurrection pattern of the life of Jesus, which is to be replicated in the lives of Christ’s followers by the work of the Spirit and by imitation.”

“It is not a bare faith, simply giving credence to a set of beliefs. It is a faith that works — but not with ‘the works of the law’. . . . It is faith that works through love. Love is open to all, no matter of what ethnic origin; but, even more, love is precisely the motivating force through which God himself welcomes all believers into his family. That same motivating force is what ought to make all family members welcome one another as well.”

- - - -

Want to know what people under 30 think about Christianity? Check this update from Barna.

- - - -

Still time to join us for the “Overflow” Zoe Conference next week.

A Community Called Atonement

Published
by
Mike
on September 11, 2007
in scripture
. 12 Comments

This morning I took a long walk in the cold mist. I love it. Could have been Vermont! (Minus the trees and mountains.) More hot days will come, but there is again the promise of autumn.

- - - -

I haven’t been able to catch my breath to do much blogging. This weekend I read Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement (Living Theology).

What a good, thoughtful read. McKnight has a way of bringing the best in New Testament studies to a deep concern for the church and its mission. He places atonement in the larger biblical framework: “Atonement finally concerns union with God and, simultaneously, communion with one another as its mirror among God’s created beings.”

Perhaps the greatest strength is the way he anchors the understanding of atonement in — shocking!! — Jesus himself and the announcement of God’s kingdom.

“You might be surprised to find the number of books on atonement that simply do no interact with (or even mention) Jesus’ vision of the kingdom. . . . Why? Because atonement theories have been shaped by the history of atonement theories, and that history has been dominated by Paul’s letter to the Romans so one-sidedly that opening the door to the kingdom upsets the entire conversation. . . .

“The kingdom of God, in short compass, is the society in which the will of God is established to transform all of life. The kingdom of God is more than what God is doing ‘within you’ and more than God’s personal ‘dynamic presence’; it is what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God — including what God is doing in you and me. It transforms relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world.”

In light of criticism of the notion of penal substitution, McKnight has some helpful insights. While admitting the pitfalls of many attempts to explain it, he provides a way forward. As he says, “I believe the hue and cry by emerging Christians about penal substitution is a gut-level reaction to caricatures of the doctrine. I don’t know how to read elements of (especially) Paul without explaining his soteriology as penal . . . .”

Perhaps more later. This is a worthwhile read!

The Scandal of Galatians

Published
by
Mike
on August 28, 2007
in scripture
. 69 Comments

I remember one year when the Pepperdine lectureship was on Galatians. It was one of the many excellent programs that Jerry Rushford has put together.

On the last day of lectureship (Friday), one of Pepperdine’s prominent professors — who’s no longer there — launched out in an impassioned attack on his university and the lectureship because of the things being said.

What that told us was this: people had gotten the message of Galatians right. For if you really understand what Paul’s saying, it will be scandalous. It was then; it is now. If no one is complaining, you may not have explained it properly!

Just remembering that story as I continue preaching through the book!

“Know that a person is not justified by observing the law, but by the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah. So we, too, have put our trust in Christ Jesus that we may be justified on the basis of the faithfulness of the Messiah and not by observing the law . . . .” (2:16)

“So in Jesus the Messiah you are all children of God through trust, for all of you who were baptized into the Messiah have been clothed with the Messiah. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus the Messiah.” (3:26-28)

“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (5:14)

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.” (6:14-15)

God’s Accommodation

Published
by
Mike
on June 27, 2007
in scripture
. 135 Comments

ADDED at 10:00 a.m.: Thanks to someone for mentioning in the comments that the Oprah show with my sister-in-law, Pam Cope, and her work in Ghana is going to be repeated today. It’s a powerful story.

- - - -

Stackhouse argues that gender distrinctions “are a result of sin in fallen human society, not divinely ordered human relations.” Nothing about the creation or redemption threads of scripture would lead you to believe that men have a privileged place with leadership.

“How did I come to that sort of conclusion?” he asks. “Why do I think the Holy Spirit counts patriarchy as a sinful, oppressive structure to which he nonetheless accommodated himself and the church until such time as both church and society could do away with it? Because that is what I think the Holy Spirit has already done in one extremely important case: slavery.”

Christians have a consensus opinion today that the social conservatism in the NT regarding slavery was just such a case.

“Preachers on both sides of the slavery controversy marshaled powerful, Bible-based arguments that convinced millions of believers. Some fair-minded observers have concluded that the proslavery forces had the better of this debate, since a straightforward interpretation of the passages regarding slavery conveys no obvious condemnation of the institution and seems instead to encourage Christians in both roles, master and slave, to stay right where they are and simply to behave properly. Yet there is no important Christian leader anywhere in the modern world today who defends slavery. Not one.”

Again and again, Stackhouse shows that many passages in scripture — about polygamy, slavery, patriarchalism — are “God’s accomodation to something he does not like.” But imbedded in the gospel story is an eschatological vision of justice and equality that is already breaking in all around us.

He notes that not all that very long ago in the West patriarchy resonated with people because women were assumed to be fundamentally inferior in areas of leadership — more emotional, less rational, etc. “Thus, it made sense for men to dominate and women to submit, just as it made the same sort of sense for white people to dominate everyone else if everyone else was understood to be inferior and even subhuman.”

But — thankfully! — such reasoning is, for the most part, behind us.

“The complementarian position has become incoherent. Thanks be to God that many complementarians are not sexists who believe that women are inferior to men. (In regard to those who maintain that women really are inferior in these important respects, I will not pause to say much, except that the Bible, reason, and experience are against you. All you have on your side, from a Christian point of view, are misogynist texts scattered here and there in the tradition from the patristic period to our own.) To the complementarians who do believe that women are equal and yet see the Bible as restricting leadership to men, let me respectfully and fraternally ask, Why would God mandate that pattern forever? May I invite you to consider the Bible in the way I am suggesting, which does, I think, make better sense of the elements of both patriarchy and equality that many egalitarians and complementarians agree are present.

“My fundamental practical question therefore is this: What are Christians supposed to do when society itself shifts to egalitarianism? There is no longer a rationale for the woman to remain in the culturally expected role of dependence and submission, just as there is no rationale for the grown-up child to act as if he requires his parents’ direction as he did when he was young. When, under the providence of God and the ongoing, spreading influence of kingdom values, society opens up to the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of women, then Christians can rejoice and be in the vanguard of such change — as we have been in both causes. The irony remains precisely in Christians lagging behind society and still requiring a submissive role for women, a posture that now is a mirror image of the scandal that egalitarianism would have caused in the patriarchal first century.”

I agree, for the most part, with Stackhouse’s paradigm. It’s not a position I came to easily years ago. I entered kicking and screaming. It was frightening. It seemed to fly in the face of a couple “obvious” passages.

But I could finally no longer hold to patriarchal/complementarian thinking. It didn’t fit the gospel. I finally had to own up to my baptismal vows: that in Christ there is no Hutu or Tutsi, no Easterner or Westerner, no black or white, no male or female, no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free.

(And NOW . . . I’ll move onto other topics . . . for a while.)

Stackhouse’s Paradigm

Published
by
Mike
on June 26, 2007
in scripture
. 54 Comments

So here’s the problem: sometimes the Bible sounds egalitarian and sometimes (perhaps even more often) it sounds complementarian/patriarchal. How can a person be honest to both perspectives? That’s what Stackhouse is asking.

He presents a paradigm that makes the best sense to him of the varied evidence.

His first principle in the paradigm is equality. As he looks at the creation story and then especially the ministry of Jesus and the events of Pentecost, he concludes: “God originally intended women and men to be coequal partners in stewarding the earth, without role differentiation, and he has never rescinded that mandate. Indeed in God’s renewal of all things, in his great salvation plan to restore shalom, men and women will treat each other as they were intended to treat each other. We already see this renewed order in the inbreaking of the kingdom evident in the New Testament.”

But what about passages that seem to sit in contrast to that vision — passages that seem to be patriarchal? That leads to a second principle in the paradigm: some things matter more than others, or what Stackhouse calls “holy pragmatism.”

God works within human limitations. In the Old Testament, you just have to think of polygamy. “God is willing to forgo the achievement of secondary objectives in the interest of furthering his primary purposes, and he expects us to do the same.” (More on this later.)

The third principle concerns eschatology. “What . . . would our understanding of gender look like if we took the ‘already but not yet’ principle seriously? What if we were to expect, instead of one extreme or the other, an appropriately paradoxical situation: a slow and partial realization of gospel values here and there, as God patiently and carefully works his mysterious ways along the multiple fronts of kingdom advance?”

He asks us to observe what missionaries have always known: “Missionaries of every era and locale often have practiced this policy. There was no point in undertaking a quixotic crusade against a deeply entrenched social evil when the church was tiny and young. Better to grow the church and then permeate society with gospel values, with the long-term hope of ameliorating or even revolutionizing what was wrong.”

Why does Paul sometimes sound like he believes in male leadership and sometimes like he’s an egalitarian? According to Stackhouse (and I agree), it’s because of “prudent instruction as to how to survive and thrive” in the patriarchal culture of that day. But he also promotes “the egalitarian dynamic already at work in the career of Jesus that in due course will leave gender lines behind.”

Here’s the conclusion of this paradigm:

“When society was patriarchal, as it was in the New Testament context and as it has been everywhere in the world except in modern society in our day, the church avoided scandal by going along with it — fundamentally evil as patriarchy was and is. Now, however, that modern society is at least officially egalitarian, the scandal is that the church is not going along with society, not rejoicing in the unprecedented freedom to let women and men serve according to gift and call without arbitrary gender line. This scandal impedes both the evangelism of others and the edification — the retention and development of faith — of those already converted.”

More manana.