Bishop N. T. Wright went on The Colbert Report last night, and the results weren’t what I would have expected. Stephen Colbert (as some have complained) wasn’t at his funniest, but it seems to me that that’s because he was actually interested in having a serious discussion with Bishop Wright about his book, Surprised by Hope. It’s probably just as well, since it seemed to me the good bishop got a bit testy as it was—I’m not at all sure he would have handled an all-out Stephen Colbert assault. Taken all in all, I think it’s a pretty good discussion, with some of the trademark Colbert humor and a pretty good exposition of Bishop Wright’s understanding of the concept of heaven (which I don’t agree with, though I still appreciated the clip); seeing a little of Colbert’s serious side as a man of faith, as I think we did, was a bonus.
Author Archives: Rob Harrison
Radicals & Pharisees
The quote heading the page today on The Thinklings is, “The radicals of one generation become the pharisees of the next.” I don’t know who said it (since they don’t, and I hadn’t heard it before), but whoever it was got the matter significantly wrong. The fact is, the Pharisees were the radicals of their own generation (or at least, they were one of the radical groups—there were certainly others); it was the Sadducees who were the Establishment. This isn’t an isolated phenomenon, either, as the pharisaical spirit is far more often found among the radicals and other fringe groups of the day than it is among those who are established and in positions of authority; the Establishment rarely has the energy to be pharisaical, and it has any number of other concerns to distract it from such efforts and attitudes. Radicals, on the other hand, have both energy and reason for it, just as the original Pharisees did: if you’re trying to build a movement to change society, that’s the most efficient way to do it.Our problem in understanding the Pharisees is that we only see them through the lens of the New Testament and their reaction to Jesus, who was, in essence, one of their own outflanking them from an even more radical position. Their faults are magnified, and their approach is interpreted in terms of centuries of subsequent Christian legalism; this is understandable, but does skew our picture somewhat. As a consequence, we miss the very real energy of their reform movement, and the hope it generated for some—and thus we interpret them as stick-in-the-mud never-change reactionary old-guard Establishment conservatives, when in reality they were anything but; when in reality, their problem was that they were leading change in the wrong direction, and not far enough.
There’s a parable in here somewhere . . .
. . . but at the moment, it’s beyond me to know what it is. This from Neil Gaiman (who is, as my wife notes, an unabashed pagan):
I wound up strangely out of sorts today, after my journey down to Dave [McKean]’s. The toilets on many trains in the UK have ridiculously unintuitive ways to open and close doors, with mystery buttons inside the toilet to close and lock the door that are hard to find, even for the sighted. I watched a blind man head into the train toilet. He couldn’t find the door to close it, said “excuse me, can some[one] help me?” until a fat man in a suit sitting next to the toilet stopped pretending he wasn’t there and pressed the close door button for him. Then I watched the fat man hurry down the aisle and past me and back into the next compartment for all the world as if he was embarrassed by what had just happened. Soon enough there came a frantic knocking on the toilet door as, obviously, the blind man couldn’t get out (secret, randomly placed buttons would do it, but you have to find them first). And there was a carriage full of people between me and the toilet, so I waited for someone to get up, press the outside button and let him out. And nobody did. now the knocking started again, louder, and more panicked, and I looked out at a carriage filled with people who were pretending very hard they hadn’t heard, and were all now gazing intently at their books or papers. So I got up and walked down to the toilet and let the man out, and showed him back to his seat, because it’s the least I’d want if I was blind, and it’s how you treat a fellow human being, and for heaven’s sake. And then I went back to my seat, and everyone looked up at me and stared and smiled with relieved “thank god someone did that” smiles, and I sat down grumpy and puzzled and remain grumpy and puzzled about it still. I’m still trying to work out what on earth was going on there—I don’t think I did anything good or clever or nice. I just did what I would have thought anyone would do. Except a train filled with people didn’t, and in one case actively appeared to be running away in order not to. And I puzzle over, was this a carriage filled with particularly self-centred or embarrassed people, has something fundamental changed in the years I’ve been away from the UK (unlikely, and I don’t believe in lost Golden Ages), did those other people really somehow blindly fail to notice that there was a blind man trapped in the toilet…? I have no idea and I write it down because, as I said, it puzzles and irritates me, and if it ever turns up in a short story you’ll know why.
“It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.”
—Romans 2:13-16 (ESV)
HT: Sara
In defense of the church, part IV: Jesus
I started doing these posts “in defense of the church” (as you can see from parts I, II and III)
in large part because I think the church takes a lot of flak that really isn’t fair; granted that there are a fair number of congregations out there which are truly poisonous (any pastor can tell you that), and a fair number more which are thoroughly dysfunctional (ditto), and another pile on top of that which are preaching something other than grace, to move beyond criticisms of specific congregations to dismissal of the church as a whole seems to me ungracious and unwarranted. Hence my three previous posts in this irregular series.
I have others of that sort I could add to them, and I may well, at some future point; but lately I’ve felt God poking me that there’s something else I need to say first, something that comes out of a place where he’s convicted me in the past. The most basic thing to say in defense of the church, the first thing that needs to be said, is that Jesus loves the church; in Ephesians 5, Paul describes the church as the bride of Christ (and says that we husbands are supposed to love our wives as much as Christ loves the church—remembering always that Christ wascrucified for the church). We’d best be careful, I think, what we say about the church, because I’ve never met a groom yet who took kindly to people ripping on his bride; I don’t imagine Jesus does, either.
Which is not to say that criticism of particular congregations (or denominations, for that matter) is out of line; as noted, there’s a fair number of them that have gone fair wrong. I come out of the Reformed tradition, which makes a point of the three marks of the true church; from our perspective, just because something calls itself a church doesn’t mean it is in any meaningful sense. (If anything, my theological forebears were probably a mite too willing to declare churches to be false churches.) And for that matter, fair, reasoned, gracious critique is important for all of us, as individuals and as the people of God, to grow, and so that’s never out of place or inappropriate. But when we go so far as to denounce “the church” and suggest that God doesn’t like “the church” any more than we do—no, that’s too far. Jesus loves the church, and that isn’t going to change.
Yes, this even means that he loves the people in it who hurt us and make us miserable—he died for them just as he died for the soldiers who crucified him, praying as he died, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” As brutal hard and painful as it is, he wants to bring us to the point where we can love them, too, even as he commands us to love all the rest of our enemies. The love and grace of God are hard things, because they go as much to the people we want cut off as they do to us; if we’re going to accept them for ourselves, we have to be committed to showing them to others. (Which is not to say that we have to be able to do so right away; forgiveness takes time. There are people in my past that I can’t forgive yet, so I know that full well. But we have to be committed to getting to that point, as we heal.) Jesus loves the church—and yes, that includes that pastor, that elder, that deacon, that member; which means we’d best be careful what we say about it, and about them, and in what spirit we say it.
I was going to link to this song, which I posted as song of the week over a year ago; but I think I’ll just post it again here. I like this one a lot, in large part because it continues to convict me, and to call me back to a proper heart for ministry; and because it gives me hope that someday, we as the church will live up to the love Jesus has for us.
Jesus Loves the Church
You say that you believe in us—at times, I wonder why;
You say you see the Father in our eyes.
But I think if I were you, Lord, I’d wash my hands today,
And turn my back on all our alibis.Chorus:
For we crucify each other, leaving a battered, wounded bride—
But Jesus loves the church;
So we’ll walk the aisle of history, toward the marriage feast,
For Jesus loves the church.We fight like selfish children vying for that special prize;
We struggle with our gifts before your face.
And I know you look with sorrow at the blindness in our eyes
As we trip each other halfway through the race.Chorus
I want to learn to love like you; I don’t know where to start.
I want to see them all but through your eyes.
For you believed enough to live amidst the madding crowd,
Enough to die before our very eyes.Chorus
Words and music: Sheila Walsh
© 1988 Word Music
From the album Say So, by Sheila Walsh
Praying on the front line
Something else I’ve been meaning to post is this passage from Tim Keller:
Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal is corporate, prevailing, intensive and kingdom-centered prayer. What is that?
- It is focused on God’s presence and kingdom. Jack Miller talks about the difference between “maintenance prayer” and “frontline” prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:
a. a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves
b. a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church
c. a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory. . . .
- It is bold and specific. The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:
a. Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. . . .
b. They then begin to make the big request—a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory/presence of God (“that I may know you”—Exod. 33:13); 2) for the people’s experience of the glory of God (v. 15); and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people (v. 16). Moses asks that God’s presence would be obvious to all: “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is a prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God’s power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.
- It is prevailing, corporate. By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. . . . Sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for—to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through.
This is the kind of prayer the church needs to practice, and the kind of prayer meeting it really needs to hold (not that there isn’t value to maintenance prayer meetings as well, as part of the pastoral care of the church); it’s the kind of prayer which I’m working to encourage in the congregation I serve, which means first of all in myself. It’s hard; it takes faithfulness and commitment and attention; but I do believe the fruit is more than worth it.HT: Joyce
This week’s sign that the Apocalypse is upon us
(to borrow from Sports Illustrated, since it’s an old SI writer)
I’d call this unbelievable, but that’s not strong enough; it’s been a long time, even in this culture, since I’ve seen anything this despicably dishonorable. In this year’s Georgia Class AAA high school baseball championship game, the pitcher and catcher of the losing team (Cody Martin and Matt Hill, respectively) colluded to bean the plate ump with a four-seam fastball (this just a few minutes after said ump called strike three on the pitcher’s brother, Dodgers first-round pick Ethan Martin).
I agree with Rick Reilly: What are we turning into in this country, anyway?
Sarah Palin for VP
So far during this craziest of presidential-election seasons, I haven’t been right about much of anything yet (though I take solace in the fact that neither have many other people). Still, I keep hoping that will change; and in that spirit, I’m officially hopping on the Sarah Palin bandwagon. Gov. Palin isn’t all that well known as yet, since she’s the governor of Alaska, which isn’t exactly a media hub, and an Alaska native to boot; that’s the one argument against John McCain choosing her as his running mate. The rest of the arguments all line up in her favor. Ann Althouse points out a few, Jack Kelly of RealClearPolitics adds some of his own, while Fred Barnes’ piece in The Weekly Standard, though written last year, lays out a few more, and they’re compelling; aside from the fact that she’s not from a populous, media-heavy state, she’s about as perfect a fit for Sen. McCain as one could imagine. (Update: Beldar thinks so too, as does Jonah Goldberg.)One, she’s young, just 44; she would balance out Sen. McCain’s age.Two, she has proven herself as an able executive and administrator, serving as mayor, head of the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and now as governor; she would balance out Sen. McCain’s legislative experience (though he does have command experience in the Navy).Three, she has strong conservative credentials, both socially (she’s strongly pro-life, politically and personally) and fiscally (as her use of the line-item veto has shown); she would assuage concerns about Sen. McCain’s conservatism.Four, she’s independent, having risen to power against the Alaska GOP machine, not through it; she’s worked hard against the corruption in both her party and her state’s government. She would reinforce Sen. McCain’s maverick image, which is one of his greatest strengths in this election, but in a more conservative direction.Five, for the reasons listed above, she’s incredibly popular in Alaska. That might seem a minor factor to some, but it’s indicative of her abilities as a politician.Six, she has a remarkable personal story, of the sort the media would love. She’s a former beauty-pageant winner, the mother of five children (the oldest serving in the Army, preparing to deploy to Iraq, the youngest a Down Syndrome baby), an outdoorsy figure who rides snowmobiles and eats mooseburgers—and a tough, take-no-prisoners competitor who was known as “Sarah Barracuda” when she led her underdog high-school basketball team to the state championship, and who now has accomplished a similar feat in cutting her way to the governor’s office. No one now in American politics can match Sen. McCain’s life story (no, not even Barack Obama), but she comes as close as anyone can (including Sen. Obama); she fits his image.Seven, she would give the McCain campaign the “Wow!” factor it can really use in a vice-presidential nominee. As a young, attractive, tough, successful, independent-minded, appealing female politician, though not well known yet, she would make American voters sit up and take notice; and given her past history, there could be no doubt that she would be a strong, independent voice in a McCain administration, should there be one.Eight, choosing Gov. Palin as his running mate, especially if coupled with actions like giving Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal the keynote slot at the GOP convention, would help the party going forward. The GOP needs to rebuild its bench of plausible strong future presidential candidates, and perhaps the best thing Sen. McCain can do for the party is to help with this. The party needs Gov. Jindal to stay where he is for another term or two (as, I believe, does the state of Louisiana), but in giving him the convention slot that launched Sen. Obama to prominence four years ago and putting Gov. Palin on the ticket, Sen. McCain would put two of the GOP’s best people and brightest hopes for the future in a perfect position to claim the White House themselves; in so doing, he would make them the face of the GOP for the future.
“Preach grace, brothers”
Some time ago, I listened to a colleague in ministry give his testimony, and came away amazed that he had ended up a pastor—and in fact, amazed that he was even a Christian. He had come to Christ when he was six, but the church he attended was extremely legalistic, so much so that by the age of ten, they had him firmly convinced (and completely terrified) that he was going to Hell. He described his adolescence and early adulthood as a process of holding God as far away as he possibly could while still holding on enough to keep from going to Hell, which was his overriding concern; at one point as he was talking, he wondered if he might not have been better off “just going prodigal for a while,” though he knew he’d been too afraid to do so.In the midst of all this, though, God was at work on him, reaching out with his grace by his Spirit, slowly peeling away the layers of fear around his soul “like an onion” which that church had left there, calling him first back into the church, and then into the ministry; gradually, gradually, God has been setting him free from that fear, teaching him to trust—and teaching him to share that healing with others, to preach the good news of Jesus Christ so that people may live.I’ll never forget him looking at us and saying, almost pleading, “Preach grace, brothers. Preach grace.” I do, or at least that’s my intent and desire, and I think I can say that’s true for all the others there; but I don’t think I’ve ever been reminded so powerfully, or had it sink in quite so deeply, just how crucial that is. I’ll never forget it.
China as an island
Check this out from Strange Maps:
If you’re at all interested in geopolitics and the future of our nation’s relationship with China (and if you aren’t, you should read a few of James Fallows’ articles in The Atlantic), it’s worth diving into the analysis that accompanies the map; it’s a summary of a longer article, “The Geopolitics of China,” which I haven’t yet read but definitely intend to read. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, too many Americans have grown accustomed to thinking of this as a unipolar world with America the only superpower; leaving aside whether that’s ever really been true (Vladimir Putin might well disagree), the rise of China will be changing that before too long, if it hasn’t already. China’s large, powerful, and—to most Westerners—mysterious; the more we come to understand them, the better.HT: my wife
Morning prayer
For the first showings of the morning light
and the emerging outline of the day
thanks be to you, O God.
For earth’s colours drawn forth by the sun
its brilliance piercing clouds of darkness
and shimmering through leaves and flowing waters
thanks be to you.
Show to me this day
amidst life’s dark streaks of wrong and suffering
the light that endures in every person.
Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul
that I may see with eyes washed by your grace
that I may see myself and all people
with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day’s light.
—J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 40