Category Archives: Scripture

“Doubting Thomas”?

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Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.—John 20:24-31 (ESV)

Doubt’s a funny thing, sort of a grey area between belief and unbelief—between, you might say, two different kinds of certainty. It can be paralyzing, leaving people unable to act because they don’t know what to do. Sometimes, it can be liberating, freeing people to let go of a false certainty to seek a true one. It can be unhealthy, especially if it becomes obsessive; but it can also be a healthy thing, reminding us that we might not know quite as much as we think we do. Of course, doubt can be dishonest, really a mask for a determination not to believe something—or, in some cases, for a refusal to commit to any belief at all; but honest doubt, doubt which is truly open to belief and truly seeking understanding, can be an important prelude to true faith. The problem is, it’s all too easy to lose sight of that, and so you find churches that treat doubt as a sin—as if believing in Jesus and following him are supposed to be easy, which they often aren’t—that fail to see the difference between doubt that doesn’t want to believe, and doubt that does.

The story of Thomas is a corrective for us in that respect, if we actually read it. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories we already think we know; even people who’ve never knowingly been within fifty feet of a Bible know what a doubting Thomas is. Just for grins, I Googled the phrase “doubting Thomas” and found 903,000 hits, including a page on Dictionary.com which informed me that a doubting Thomas is “one who is habitually doubtful.” That’s our picture of Thomas, based entirely on this passage, as if he were the sort of guy who wouldn’t believe you if you told him the sky was blue.

Is that really fair, though? Does he really deserve to be universally known as “Doubting Thomas”—to be a cliché? He’d been off on his own, away from the other disciples, and while we don’t know for sure why that was, it seems likely that he reacted to grief and loss the same way many of us do: he pulled away from other people, shut them out, and tried to work through it by himself. The Scottish New Testament scholar William Barclay notes that England’s King George V used to say, “If I have to suffer, let me be like a well-bred animal, and let me go and suffer alone”; this seems to have been Thomas’ approach. When he got to the point that he felt he could bear to be around the other disciples, he joined them, expecting to commiserate and reminisce with them—and instead they fed him the most implausible story he had ever heard. Put yourself in his shoes—would you have believed it?

Of course, part of the reason Thomas picked up his label is his response to the other disciples, with his statement that unless he could see the wounds and put his hands in them, he would never believe that Jesus was alive again; if you read the commentaries, you’ll see that they treat his statements as if he made them calmly and rationally, as if he were matter-of-factly stating the terms which would have to be met before he would believe. Stop and think a minute, though—do you really imagine that Thomas, confronted with this ridiculous fairy tale, tugged on his beard, carefully considered the situation, and then set forth the conditions on which he would believe the story, as if he were a philosophy professor grading a blue-book exam? No! He responded the way many people would have, with anger, sarcasm, and hyperbole: “You expect me to believe that? Why, unless I see the wounds in his hands—no, unless I can touch them myself—there’s no way!” OK, so maybe it’s not an admirable response; but really, which of us would have done any better?

The fact of the matter is, Thomas was no more a doubter than any of the other disciples who didn’t believe until they saw Jesus with their own eyes, and the Bible never portrays him as such. We do know that he was something of a pessimist, and that he loved Jesus greatly; in John 11, when Jesus announced his intention to go to Jerusalem, setting his feet on the road to the cross, Thomas told his fellow disciples, “Let’s go with him, that we may die with him.” He was sure the worst was coming, but he made no excuses; better to die with Jesus than to abandon him. In the event, the worst happened and Jesus was crucified, but Thomas survived; he had seen it coming, but was still broken-hearted at Jesus’ death. If he hadn’t cared, he no doubt would have had an easier time believing in the resurrection; as it was, his grief was too great for belief to come easily.

To be sure, Thomas does come across as something of a skeptic—but there are skeptics and there are skeptics. There are certainly those who are “habitually doubtful,” who refuse to believe anything anyone tells them, whether because they’re suspicious and distrustful, because they’re contemptuous of others, or for whatever reason; but Thomas doesn’t fall into that category. Thomas doubts, yes, but he doubts because faith comes hard. How much of that is grief and how much is his natural character and temperament, we don’t know, but he just needed more, some sort of tangible proof. He was willing to believe, but he needed more than just a crazy story; he needed to see Jesus himself.

Given that, it does need to be said for Thomas that at least he was honest about it. When the others told him they’d seen Jesus, he didn’t try to play along or try to humor them; he was completely honest, telling them straight out that he didn’t believe their story. What’s more, he didn’t leave, either; it must have been a little uncomfortable—they were celebrating the resurrection, he was still grieving the crucifixion—but he stuck around. Thomas doesn’t get credit for either of those things, as a rule, but both say a great deal for him.

The text doesn’t tell us, but I can only think that he stayed because his fellow disciples were his connection to Jesus; he stayed because he wasn’t giving up on them, because he wasn’t giving up on God. As for his honesty, how many of us are honest enough to admit we don’t understand, or believe, something when we don’t? Better someone like Thomas, who insisted on being sure and was open and forthright about his doubt, than someone who just plays along, mouthing the words and pretending to believe. As Barclay noted, “It is doubt like that which in the end arrives at certainty,” while those who just pretend never get anywhere at all. It also needs to be said for Thomas that he didn’t do anything by half measures; when he doubted, he doubted, and when he believed, he believed. Once he saw Jesus—and you’ll notice, for all his talk, Thomas didn’t need to touch him, just to see him—his doubts were gone, his belief total. Faith didn’t come easy for him, but once he was sure, once he had counted the cost, there were no halfway measures, and no holding back.

Perhaps that was part of the reason for his skepticism; it’s easy to make commitments, after all, if you only make them half-heartedly, but that doesn’t seem to have been an option for Thomas. We can see that in the statement he makes when he sees Jesus, which is really pretty remarkable. It’s been said that this is the key moment in the entire gospel, the key statement about Jesus, and I think that’s true, because Thomas here moves from several steps behind the other disciples—disbelieving the resurrection—to a step ahead of them; in an instant, he sees what the resurrection truly means, and from his heart he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

The disciples had been calling Jesus “Lord” for quite some time, but that’s a word that can cover a lot of ground; on the one hand, it was the standard Jewish substitution for the name of God, but on the other, it was a standard form of polite address, meaning roughly “Sir.” Somewhere along the line, the disciples started to mean more than that by it—they clearly realized that he deserved more than the ordinary level of respect—but how much more is impossible to say. For Thomas at this moment, however, it’s very clear exactly what he means by “Lord”: he’s giving it all the meaning it can bear. In putting “Lord” and “God” together, he’s joining the two great Old Testament names for the Creator—Elohim, which we translate as “God,” and the personal name of God, often rendered in English as “Yahweh” or “Jehovah,” but which the Jews substituted with Adonai, “Lord,” because no observant Jew would speak it. In calling Jesus “Lord” and “God,” then, Thomas is affirming Jesus as YHWH Elohim, the God of Israel, the very God of all creation, deserving of all worship and obedience. His realization is the cornerstone of our faith now, but then it was a new and radical statement; for a Jew who had been taught in no uncertain terms the vast difference and separation between God and his creation, even human beings, to come to understand that God had stooped to cross that divide by becoming human was a truly remarkable and world-expanding realization indeed.

Jesus responds by approving Thomas’ recognition, and then goes on to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Some people think that Jesus is rebuking Thomas here for his unbelief—that fits in with the whole “Doubting Thomas” thing, after all—but if so, it’s a very gentle rebuke, and one addressed to the others, not just to Thomas; after all, there were very few at that point who had believed without seeing Jesus with their own eyes. Jesus isn’t singling out Thomas for rebuke, and I’m not at all sure he’s rebuking anyone, since he doesn’t say “More blessed.” He simply blesses all those, both then and throughout time, who had and would come to believe without visual confirmation. He pronounces a blessing on, among others, us.

Now, if Thomas’ confession is a critical moment in this gospel, I think Jesus’ response is almost as critical. Remember that John chose to include these words for a reason—none of the other gospel writers did so—and notice that they are followed immediately by verses 30 and 31, which set out the purpose for this book: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who believe without seeing, and the purpose of this gospel, the reason John chose to write it, is to bring people into that blessing, to bring people who have never seen Jesus in the flesh to believe in him anyway. In that light, I think it’s worthwhile to ask why John tells this story; and I think one reason is to show us vividly that faith didn’t come any easier for those disciples than it did, or does, for anyone else.

Modern skeptics know how hard it is for them to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead, and they tend to assume that it must have been easier for the first disciples, or else they never would have believed such a crazy tale; but Thomas shows us otherwise. As we’ve seen, he’d expected the worst, and the worst had happened, and that was just too powerful, too real a thing for him to set aside just because the other disciples told him he should. These were his friends, the people with whom he had walked the length and breadth of Israel who knew how many times—these were the people he trusted if he trusted anyone—but his pain and loss were too real and too great for him to hear. Their testimony wasn’t enough; Thomas had to see Jesus for himself before he could believe.

And here’s the key: that doesn’t disqualify him. His doubt doesn’t rule him out. Instead, he cries out for a reason to believe—and God gives it to him; and after all this, it’s Thomas, not any of the others, who makes the great confession which is the climax of this gospel. It’s Thomas, who spells out his inability to believe in great detail, whose doubt persists longer than any of the others, who then makes a statement of faith which goes beyond that of any of the others. It is the one who went through this period of doubt, who heard the story of the resurrection from those who had seen Jesus alive again and declared, “I don’t believe you, and I’m not going to believe until I can touch him for myself,” who then called Jesus both Lord and God. It was out of the dark soil of his doubt and grief that the bright flower of his great confession grew.

This is no accident; it’s no mere coincidence that Thomas made this statement; rather, it’s a lesson for us. We often tend to treat doubt and faith as opposed, as if doubt were the opposite of faith—but that isn’t true at all of honest doubt, like that of Thomas. Rather, doubt can be essential in working our way through to deeper faith. If we never doubt because we never ask questions about our faith, if we never doubt because we never really face the hard times in our lives, if we never doubt because we never admit to ourselves that we might have reason, then we don’t have more faith—we have less; we aren’t exercising our faith, we’re protecting it, and that means we aren’t really trusting God. Part of having real faith in God is trusting him enough to doubt him—I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Faith doesn’t mean never doubting, it means trusting him enough to believe that if we express our doubts, as Thomas did, that God will respond and give us reason to have faith in him.

I think we sometimes tend to be afraid of our own honesty, afraid of admitting what we really think and feel, and we need to understand that God isn’t. True faith in him means trusting him enough even in our doubts to believe that God can handle our doubts just as well as he can our professions of faith—and that if we bring our doubts to him, they will be answered, and we will find that we really can trust him.

Politics in a state of grace

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(Warning: I hadn’t realized until I put this up just how long a post this is, and while it doesn’t exactly ramble, it’s something of an exploratory post. Call it variations on a theme . . . or maybe “Rhapsody in Red and Blue.”)

Anyone who’s spent any significant amount of time around this blog is no doubt aware that I have a definite political point of view; I come by it honestly. I’m the son of a decorated Navy pilot and a Navy nurse, and the nephew of a Navy doctor. I grew up around the military, in a church that was half Navy (the other half was Dutch; it was an interesting mix), in a family and community from which I absorbed the firm belief that patriotism is a virtue. I’ve been raised to be proud of this country and of all she has done for the world, her inevitable failures notwithstanding. I took my shape from an environment that was and is profoundly conservative, politically, theologically, culturally, and personally, though fortunately evangelical in form rather than fundamentalist. I was for a while a card-carrying member of the Republican National Committee, and I thought that was a good thing. I’m not the same person I was then, certainly, but I’m still conservative, politically and theologically, and a lot of people would reflexively brand my forehead with the scarlet “R” (for “religious right”) and figure they had me labeled.

Those folks would be wrong, though. Not because I’m not conservative, or because I don’t usually vote Republican; it’s not a matter of policy differences, or differing views on moral issues. I do, however, have a major problem with the whole approach to politics taken by many conservative Christians. I’ve argued before that American politics is idolatrous, in that it leads people to find their identity in a political party rather than in Christ; in that same post, I noted that patriotism can be an idol, and for many people, I think it is. Yes, our country is a wonderful gift to us, and yes, we’re richly blessed to live here—but it’s God’s blessing to us, and when we start to value the gift as much as we value the giver, that’s idolatry.

We need to understand that as Christians, our political loyalties can never properly be primary loyalties—not even our loyalty to our country is properly a primary loyalty—because our primary loyalty needs to be to God. Arguably the primary theme in Scripture, and certainly the primary political theme, is that God is the one true king over all creation; all human authorities are secondary. We as the church acknowledge him not merely as Lord over our nation, but as Lord over the church; we are directly under his rule.

When Paul says in Colossians 1:13 that we have been “transferred . . . into the kingdom of his beloved Son,” we tend to understand that in purely spiritual terms, that we have been saved and set free from death and sin, and that is certainly his main point; but it isn’t the only point. Paul has in mind here a complete transfer of allegiance, as verses 15 and following make clear, for we are now under the rule of the one who created every power and every authority, whether in heaven or on earth; thus we are no longer to understand ourselves primarily in relation to human governments, nor are we to define ourselves in human political terms. Instead, we are to understand ourselves as citizens of heaven, serving here as ambassadors to the people and nations of this world—and note the message we’ve been given to proclaim: not a message of war or hatred, but the message of reconciliation, that Jesus came to make peace between us and God through his sacrifice on the cross.

The founding principle of any truly Christian politics must be the absolute sovereignty of God. God is king over all the earth and the source of all true political au­thority; we owe our allegiance to him first and our country second. Yes, this is our country, but only for a little while. That’s why Scripture describes us repeatedly as strangers and foreigners, wanderers and exiles on this earth. The paradigmatic verse for us in this respect is Jeremiah 29:7: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” We’re here because this is where God has planted us, which means we need to take this as our home for as long as we’re here, and to do what we can to promote the welfare of the community and country to which we belong—as God defines that, not as any earthly political group does. We must never forget that when we say “my country,” we do so not with a sense of ownership, nor indeed with a sense of true belonging, but simply because this is the country in which God has placed us to serve him. Our primary place to belong is the kingdom of God, and our primary allegiance is to him; all other allegiances must be understood in that context. We’re called to serve Christ as our one and only Lord, in every aspect of our lives, including those which our culture labels “public,” “political,” and “secular.”

This is not to say, however, that we’re free to ignore our government at will; God has established governments for a purpose, and we have to bear that in mind. Paul makes this clear in Romans 13:1-7. Note, however, that he phrases his argument very carefully. “Every person,” he declares, is to “be subject to the governing authorities.” On the one hand, this is a very strong statement—there are no ifs, ands, buts, or exceptions. This means everybody, period. On the other hand, he doesn’t say, “Every person is to obey the governing authorities.” This means everybody, but it doesn’t mean that everybody has to do everything the government orders, period. Rather, the point here is that we all must acknowledge as a general rule that the government and its officials have authority over us, for God is the source of all authority and is the one who has instituted all human authorities. This will usually require that we obey whatever our governments tell us to do, but there are exceptions; Paul’s choice of the verb “be subject” reminds us that we are called, ultimately, to be completely subject to God in every aspect of life, and that human authorities are contingent, not absolute.

When it happens that a government is bent on rewarding evil rather than good, then we must follow God rather than government. That’s part of seeking the welfare of the country to which he has sent us: any authority which is in direct conflict with the expressed will of God must be resisted in whatever manner is appropriate. Any such action must be taken with humility, not giving ourselves too much credit; and again, it must bear in mind the fact that the ends don’t justify the means, and that unjust actions corrupt just goals; but if, like Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhöffer, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Niemöller, and others, we find ourselves in the path of injustice, we are obligated to resist it to the best of our ability. “I was just following orders” wasn’t an acceptable defense at Nuremberg, and it isn’t anywhere else, either.

In general, however, we are to submit ourselves to the governing authorities, because God has established them to carry out his work in the world, whether that be the town council or President Bush—or, for that matter, whether the next president be Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama. (After all, neither one could possibly be as bad as Nebuchadnezzar was, and Jeremiah made it clear to the exiles that they were to submit themselves to his rule.) Certainly, while our government is imperfect, it generally strives to reward those who do good and punish those who do wrong, and thus is generally in line with God’s purpose for it; for in that way, we are encouraged to turn away from evil and do what is right. As such, we’re called, for instance, to obey the speed limit to avoid punishment—a ticket, in that case—but also, Paul says, “because of conscience”—in other words, because our laws and police are part of the structure by which God brings order to the world for our good. And of course, this means that we’re called to pay the taxes the law requires, for that is the most basic way in which we submit ourselves to the authorities over us; the power to tax is the fundamental power for any government.

Is it enough, however, to obey the laws and pay taxes? Perhaps it was in Paul’s time, or in Jeremiah’s time; but not in our time, and especially not for those of us who live in democratically-based societies. The underlying point in this passage from Romans is, I think, that we are called to be good citizens, and good citizens who remember that our government’s authority rests on the God who created it to serve his purposes, whether our government remembers that or not; and in democratic nations, being a good citizen carries a few more responsibilities than it did in the days of the Roman Empire. Similarly, if we truly believe that the command to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you” applies to us, that means we need to take those responsibilities seriously.

You’ll notice that nowhere in this is any command to seek the welfare of one’s own political party, nor is there any defense of a spirit of polarization. Polarization as a fact appears to have its advantages, but the spirit of polarization, which brands those who disagree with us as enemies and exalts winning for one’s side ahead of the good of the whole, is another matter altogether. Our differences are real—I’m not making light of them, nor am I saying we should play them down or pretend they’re unimportant—but I am saying that we need to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. Or at least, if we’re going to see them as enemies, we need to remember that Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Either way, we need to love those with whom we disagree, not treat them with automatic hostility; we need to respect them enough to believe that in most cases, they’re trying to do the right thing as best they see it, rather than assuming that if they disagree with us, it can only be from ignoble motives. We also need to recognize that we aren’t perfect either, and that our own motives are never as pure as we’d like to think.

That means that we need to learn a hard lesson: winning isn’t the most important thing (let alone everything). You’ll notice in his prayer for the Colossians, Paul’s requests aren’t for anything we’d identify as worldly success; rather, he prays that they would know God deeply, that they would live holy lives, that they would be patient, that they would be joyful. Yes, if we’re concerned about a cause, we’re going to be concerned whether it succeeds or fails—but we need to remember that ultimately, that isn’t our responsibility, it’s God’s, because he’s the one in charge. We also need to remember that it might not be in his plan for our cause to succeed, for one reason or another; making that determination isn’t our responsibility either. Our responsibility is to “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him,” in every aspect of life; it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important than political success, and that the ends don’t justify the means; and, dare I say, it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important in our leaders than whether or not they advance our political agendas. (If you don’t believe in the importance of character in leadership, by the way, just talk to any church that’s ever called a pastor who was high on gifts and low on integrity, and you’ll see what I mean.)

Finally, it needs to be said that if our founding political principle is the sovereignty of God, then his word must have final authority for us—which means we must seek as faithful and unfiltered an interpretation of his word as we can. Too often we seek to conform the word of God to our pre-existing biases, causes and agendas, rather than simply letting the Spirit speak; if we want it, God must want it for us, and if somebody objects, well, “God is doing a new thing.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, or in defense of how many different agendas. That’s not the biblical model. The biblical model is that God is the judge of all the earth, he is the one who determines what is just and right, and our job is to conform, whether it suits our preferences or not. Our political efforts should be guided by what he desires and commands, whether we like it or not, whether it’s comfortable or not, whether it’s convenient or not, whether it’s easy or not. We need to resist the temptation to hear what we want to hear, and seek as best we can to hear honestly what he’s saying.

It’s a wonderful thing

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being married to somebody smarter than me. I’ve said this many times, and will no doubt say it many more. At the moment, I’m saying it again because my wonderful wife has just put words to something very important, something we both feel very strongly, and done so better than I’ve yet managed to do. I’ve been talking through some of this with our elders, and preaching about it some, about what it means to be that kind of church, and how we get there; I’ve talked about how we become a church of square holes (and triangular, and star-shaped, and rhomboid, and . . .) so that people feel it’s OK to be a square peg, and I’ve been encouraged to find people listening, and open. But there’s no question, we can’t get there on our own; to do that, we need a response from others outside ourselves. We need to find ways to earn people’s trust (which means, of course, continuing to grow ourselves to be worthy of that trust), so that we can all be the Church of the Exploded Comfort Zone together.Anyway, go read Sara’s post; she really has said it better than I can.“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain . . .”—Psalm 127:1a

The parable of laminin

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“From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace
by the blood of his cross.“And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast,
not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.”—Colossians 1:9-23 (ESV)Laminin is a cell adhesion protein, one of a family of proteins which, according to Wikipedia, are “an integral part of the structural scaffolding in almost every animal tissue”; the article also says that “Laminin is vital to making sure overall body structures hold together.” Or, as a molecular biologist in Texas once put it to Louie Giglio, a story he tells in the clip embedded below, laminin is “like the rebar of the human body . . . the glue of the human body.”Now, a great many folks out there already know this story, due to the wide audience the Passion conferences have had, so while this was new to me, it isn’t to many; but it’s still quite remarkable. Take a look—here’s the molecular structure of laminin:

So in other words, this molecule that’s vital to holding us together . . . is cross-shaped. The structure of our bodies, at a deep and fundamental level, is cruciform. What’s more, as my delightfully perceptive wife points out, it echoes the Trinity, as it’s a cross made up of three parts.God has left testimonies to himself buried all through creation, little embedded parables for those who have eyes to see his hand and ears open to hear his voice; this, I believe, is one of them, just a little witness to and reminder of the truth Paul articulates in Colossians: Jesus Christ is the one who holds all things together. This is a spiritual truth, but it’s also a far greater truth about our whole world: Jesus is the one who holds everything together, who holds it all in his hand and sustains it all by his will. He’s the one who keeps the planets orbiting their suns and the suns moving in the vast dance of the cosmos, and the one who keeps protons bound to neutrons and electrons spinning joyfully in their orbitals; all that exists, including us, exists because he continues to will it to exist, because he holds it in his mind and heart and remembers it to itself. And in our own bodies, we have a little echo of that fact, a little parable to point us to that truth, in the tripartite cross-shaped molecule that is “the rebar of the human body.”Thanks, Hap, for teaching me that.

Church as a missional community

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One of the things that holds the church back in this culture, I believe, is that we think of it as a place. We have the idea that we go to church, we have church, and then we leave church and go back into the “real world”; which, however common it is, is completely unbiblical. We may talk about the important truth that we are the body of Christ, the covenant people of God, but we haven’t really grasped that fact until we realize it’s just as true on Monday afternoon as on Sunday morning. The church is not a place; the building’s just something the church has to enable it to do certain things, most notably to gather to worship God. The church is all of us together, and we are every bit as much the church when we’re out buying, selling, working, playing, and the like as when we’re standing together on Sunday morning singing. Together, we carry out the central part of our mission, worshiping God, but we also prepare for the rest of it—which happens out in the world at large. That’s part of really being the church, that we are as much the church when we’re apart as when we’re gathered together.The problem is, we lose that when we let our walls define us. “Oh, those walls? That’s the Presbyterian church. And those walls over there, that’s the Free Methodists. And those walls down the road, that’s the First Church of the Brethren.” And those walls define out—everyone not within them doesn’t belong there. But Jesus didn’t define the church by walls, he defined us by our mission in this world—by, as you might say, the form which our daily lives are to take as the expression and outworking of our worship of him. It’s a mission which (like so many things) has three parts, which we can see in his farewell to his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20 and Acts 1:6-8.First, go into the world. The church is not defined as a group of people who all like to worship in the same way, though you wouldn’t always know it from the way we do things; nor is it defined as a group of people with the same cultural expectations, though if you look at the way so many churches tend to segregate by age, you might come to think otherwise; nor is it defined as a group of people who all believe the same things, though our longstanding denominational boundaries could give you that view. The church is defined as a group of people who have obeyed Jesus’ call to go. For some people, that means packing up and moving across the world; for more of us, it means sending and supporting those people, while at the same time remembering that we too are missionaries when we go down the street to buy milk. Wherever God leads us, whether Outer Mongolia or here in northern Indiana, that’s our mission field; wherever we are, we’re his missionaries. That’s what defines us as the church—not the details of our beliefs, not the details of how we do church, but the fact that we are a people on the way, following Christ in mission on the road to his kingdom. That’s why my other denomination, the RCA, defines its mission this way: “Our task is to equip congregations for ministry—a thousand churches in a million ways doing one thing—following Christ in mission, in a lost and broken world so loved by God.” That’s the church: a community of people, a community of communities, “following Christ in mission in a lost and broken world so loved by God.” That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Go.”Next, he says, “Be.” Specifically, he says, “You will be my witnesses.” Note that. He doesn’t say, “You will do witnessing”; he says, “You will be my witnesses.” We’re not just called to “save souls,” we’re called to share the life Jesus has given us with the people around us—and not just with our words, but by the way we live our lives. As St. Francis of Assisi put it, “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” That’s not an easy standard; our lives are to be sermons on the word of God, backed up by the things we say. Our call as disciples of Christ is to go out into the world and live in it as he did—talking with others about our Father in heaven, and just as importantly, showing his love to those around us in every way we can think of. We are called to do the work he did: to feed the hungry; to care for the sick; to welcome the outsider; to defend the oppressed; to lift up the downtrodden; to love the unlovable; to break down the barriers between race and class and gender; and to speak the truth so clearly and unflinchingly, when the opportunity arises, that people want to kill us for it.After all, what’s a witness? Look at the justice system, which depends on witnesses—on people who have seen something important and are willing to tell others what they saw. That’s what we’re called to be. We too have seen something important—we have seen the work of Jesus Christ in our lives and the lives of others, through the power of the Holy Spirit—and we too are called to testify to what we’ve seen. In our case, though, our testimony is to be not only the things we say, but everything we do, the way we live our lives, because our lives must provide credibility for our words; a witness who isn’t credible convinces no one. To be witnesses, to bear witness to Jesus with our lives, means that at every point, our lives are to reflect the love and testify to the truth of Jesus Christ.Which is impossible, for us; but what is impossible for us is possible with God. That’s why Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” and then says, “and you will be my witnesses.” Unfortunately, though, when the Holy Spirit fills us with the love and the grace and the power of God, we don’t stay filled; as the great evangelist D. L. Moody put it, we leak, and so we need to be constantly filled and refilled by the Spirit. That’s one reason we’re called to gather together each week to worship: when we spend time focusing on God, both by ourselves and together as a church, we open ourselves up for his Spirit to change our hearts and our lives, so that more and more we will be the people, and the church, he calls us to be.So, Jesus says, “Go”; he says, “Be”; and he says, “Do.” Specifically, he calls us to do his work: as his disciples, to make more disciples. Our mission as the church is to go out into the world, not to hide behind our four walls—to live, in full view of the world, lives powered and guided and changed and being changed by the Spirit of God—so that people will be attracted by our example and thus be drawn to follow Christ as we follow him. We are God’s light in the window, calling home those who have wandered far from him, giving direction to people lost in the darkness; but when people come, it isn’t enough just to get them in the door. It’s our call at that point to nur­ture them as we nurture ourselves, to give them a place by the fire and feed them, body and soul, to share our life with them, and to disciple them so that they, too, can take up the call in their turn.Now, this isn’t just a matter of teaching people to believe true things; by itself, that’s not discipleship. Discipling people is a matter of teaching them true things so that they will go out and live true lives. Our call and our purpose as disciples of Christ is to become like him: to think with his mind, to love the world around us as he loves it, and thus to act as he would act, to follow him in his mission in this lost and broken world so loved by God; and to do that, we need to place ourselves under the authority of his word, to obey his commandments and learn from his example. That’s why preaching and teaching are central to our life as the church, not just because we learn things, but because God builds what we learn into our lives, using it to form and shape us as his disciples.Finally, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” This is, of course, a promise, but it’s also a framework and goal for our mission. We remember that Jesus is always with us by his Spirit, that we are never alone, without comfort, guidance, protection, or care; but we also remember that there is an end to this age, and that we don’t know when it will be. We remember that Jesus is with us to comfort us, yes, but also to challenge us; he’s with us not only for our sake, but for others’ sake and his own, to enable and empower us to be Jesus to the people around us. We remember that his purpose is in part to prepare us for the end of the age, when he will come again, and to use us to prepare others. We remember that he is with us, not to make us comfortable inside our four walls, but to take us beyond them to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted and comfort those who mourn, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to declare the year of the Lord’s favor—and to warn of the day when his judgment will come—so that when we come home to his kingdom at last, we will hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the rest I prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.”

Doctrine in a nutshell (or two)

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HT: Ray OrtlundAnd I never get tired of this song.Creed

I believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate
He was crucified and dead and buried.And I believe what I believe
Is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it, no, it is making me—
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.I believe that He who suffered was crucified, buried and dead;
He descended into Hell and on the third day, He rose again.
He ascended into Heaven where he sits at God’s mighty right hand.
I believe that He’s returning to judge the quick and the dead of the sons of men.ChorusI believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
One Holy Church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
I believe in the resurrection,
I believe in a life that never ends.ChorusWords and music: Rich Mullins/Beaker
© 1993 Edward Grant, Inc./Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing
From the album a liturgy, a legacy, & a ragamuffin band, by Rich Mullins

In defense of the church, part III: Doctrine

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There’s a strong anti-doctrinal spirit in parts of the church these days, as the impulse in this direction of oldline Protestant liberalism is being reinforced by Emergent types who are assiduously reinventing Walter Rauschenbusch; it’s a spirit that’s captured quite well in this video from Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.

[10/23/15: The video is no longer available, as far as I can tell.]

I’m struck, in that video, by the blithe confidence with which people look into the camera and assert that their church has no doctrinal statement that anyone has to believe because everyone has their different opinions and they’re all valid, and that upholding anything as unchanging truth is a waste of time because Scripture is evolving, as if a) they’re obviously true, and b) doctrine is obviously a bad thing. The problem is, these statements don’t hold.

They don’t hold for three reasons. The first is that if you want Scripture to mean anything at all, it can’t mean that. You will not find “everyone has ideas and they’re all valid” in the Word of God. What you will find instead is Jesus declaring, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); what you’ll find is Paul telling Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:14-17). What you’ll find, in other words, is a strong concern through all Scripture that the church know and believe and uphold the truth, which in fact does not change, because truth is of God and God doesn’t change. If we actually want to follow Christ, that necessarily means that we need to be concerned to know and believe and proclaim the truth—and that in turn means that we do need doctrine, and an understanding of at least the most basic beliefs that we need to hold if we’re to follow where he’s actually going (as opposed to where we want to believe he’s going).

The second reason is that, as John Hatton has noted in a brilliant post on Confessing Evangelical, doctrine is necessary as the “constitution for a community.” He pulls this phrase from Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation who helped draft (and enforce) the GNU General Public License; according to Moglen, that’s the primary purpose of free software licenses, not that they provide a platform for enforcement, but that they constitute (which is to say, create and give form to) a community with a given identity and purpose. Without that constitution,

groups arise within the community who, being ignorant of the principles on which the community is constituted, start to reject and work against those principles. They do not mean to undermine the community—quite the opposite; they consider they are strengthening it—but by undermining that community’s constitution it is inevitable that they will end up damaging the community itself.

This is a phenomenon with which the church is all too familiar, and it shows why there is a need to teach people the faith. Not because people need to know doctrine inside-out in order to be good Christians; not because it is a useful technique that is effective in building up individuals and the church; but because poorly-taught Christians may find themselves inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place. . . .

In addition, the free software movement and the church are both faced by numerous external opponents (variously, the world, the flesh, the devil, and Microsoft 😉 ), and ignorance of the constitution on which each community is founded makes it easier for those external opponents to damage that community and the individuals within it.

The key here is that those who reject doctrine (or conceive themselves to be doing so, anyway) do so because they misconstrue it as primarily regulatory in purpose, as if the main reason we have doctrines is so we can punish those who disagree. As Hatton, applying Moglen, shows, that’s wrong: the primary purpose of doctrine is formative, creating us as the people of God, as the kind of community God wants us to be. Set it aside, and you may be fine for a while, but ultimately you’ll find “poorly-taught Christians . . . inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place.” Who we are and how we live begins with and flows out of what we believe; we cannot be a unified community in Christ, we cannot serve God together as his people, in any faithful way for any length of time without holding at least our most important beliefs in common (such as who this God is we’re worshiping, and who this Jesus is we’re following, and why we’re doing this at all). As Rich Mullins summed up the matter in his song “Creed,”

I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it—no, it is making me;
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

The third reason the statements I referenced above don’t hold is that they fail the Francis Schaeffer test: “Can you live them out?” You can’t; Solomon’s Porch can’t, and their video shows it. In the snippets from Doug Pagitt’s sermon (at least, I assume it’s Doug Pagitt preaching), he makes such statements as, “Ultimately, community that’s Christian means to be a community of love.” That’s a doctrinal statement. It makes no sense whatsoever without a complete doctrinal context that provides definitions (so that we know what words like “community,” “Christian,” and “love” mean; they aren’t self-evident) and goals (so that we know, for instance, why we value community, and why we want a community that’s Christian as opposed to some other kind), and it asserts something that we must believe: a Christian community is a community of love. On the basis of what they say, the folks at Solomon’s Porch ought to be completely happy if someone stood up at that point and said, “You’re wrong; that might have been true once, but it isn’t now”—but they wouldn’t. They might say, “all those ideas are important and valued,” but if someone tried to interrupt the message to insist that a Christian community is not a community of love, they would find out exactly how important and valued that idea isn’t.

And that is necessarily so. It has to be; because if they really believed their own sweeping statements and tried to live accordingly, they would find that the rejection of doctrine is a universal acid that dissolves community. And so, even as the folks in that video insist that all beliefs are welcome, they also say, “If Jesus were alive today, what would he be concerned about? Well, he’d be concerned about what I’m concerned about” (and therefore, by clear implication, you ought to be concerned about that, too). They’re not rejecting doctrine as such; they can’t, because they wouldn’t have a coherent community if they did. What they’re rejecting is any doctrinal authority except themselves—which ultimately ends in rejecting the authority and primacy of Jesus, and building a church that’s all about us and how wonderful we are.

This is, I believe, where the attack on doctrine comes from. People may say they’re attacking the church because it insists on believing specific things, but their overt complaint is in fact incoherent, and merely a mask for the real complaint: that the church is telling them things they don’t want to hear. That’s not all bad, nor is it necessarily unreasonable, since no church has all its doctrines right, and too many churches teach things which are harmful, or proclaim things in harmful ways; but the problem comes when we start to think that the church should only tell us what we want to hear, and only ask us to believe what we want to believe. That’s not the model we have from Jesus. Jesus spent a lot of time telling people things they didn’t want to hear, because it was what they needed to hear; if we as the church are to be faithful to his call, we must go and do likewise.

(NB: the last paragraph has been edited to more clearly and accurately express my point.)

 

Thinking with the fishes

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Just a quick post tonight, because I’m dead tired—most of my neurons are sitting in corners sulking, refusing to talk to each other. I have several posts I’ve been hoping to get done, but . . . well, maybe tomorrow . . . maybe Monday.Anyway, if you’re not familiar with The Porpoise-Diving Life, check out the May issue on the website. I’m more than a little biased here, since my wife contributed a piece, and the editor is Erin Word, whom I like quite well, but I do think there’s some good material up. (Sara’s, btw, is the last one in the list, “The Mythical Good Christian Is Just a Piece of Topiary.”) Reading through a few of the pieces set me in mind, for some reason, of a certain theme that pops up a few times in Paul’s letters:“For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision,
but keeping the commandments of God.”—1 Corinthians 7:19 (ESV)“For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only faith working through love.”—Galatians 5:5-6 (ESV)“But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts
for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”—Galatians 6:14-15 (ESV)Of course, the issue these days isn’t circumcision; the new legalism has its own equivalents. Let’s just be careful that in throwing off legalism, we don’t make a fetish of its opposite. As Paul is at pains to tell us, circumcision is nothing, but neither is uncircumcision . . .

The God who speaks

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“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”—John 14:1-7 (ESV)These words are much loved and much quoted, and I’m sure have been for as long as there has been a church. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this passage, though, is the basis for Jesus’ promise: it isn’t based on what he’s taught them so far, or even on his crucifixion and resurrection, but on the fact that he’s going to leave them. It’s his going away that makes the fulfillment of his promise possible. There are various aspects to this, but perhaps the most reassuring is that when Jesus ascended, when he returned to heaven, he wasn’t leaving us, he was leading us; he was going ahead of us to prepare our way, to show us the way, to be our way. That’s why he says, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be”; and that’s one reason why he sent us his Spirit, as the agent through whom he leads and guides us in this life, on the way toward the kingdom of his Father. Remember, “the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it,” and he’s actively at work in and through all of it. Thus for us, the world is not silent, nor is God silent; rather, God is always speaking to us, and all of life is the medium through which he speaks.Most basically, of course, and most importantly, God speaks to us through the words he inspired, which include the record of the life he lived for us on this earth; it’s through the Bible first and foremost that Jesus leads us by his Spirit, as he continues to speak to us by his Spirit through these words, and he will not say anything that contradicts what he has already said. But that’s not the only way he speaks to us; it’s not the only way he guides us. He speaks through us sometimes as we talk with each other, making us agents of his wisdom; sometimes he may speak truth to us through people outside the church; he touches our minds and hearts through his creation, the natural world; and sometimes he speaks to us directly, in the back of our minds and the quiet of our hearts. I’ll never forget one time I was absolutely furious at someone—a couple someones, actually—and in my mind I heard Jesus say, “Show them grace.” I knew it was God, since it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I protested angrily, “They don’t deserve it.” To which he responded, “I know. That’s why it’s called grace.”Granted, most of the time God doesn’t speak to us quite that clearly; I suspect I was being unusually dense that day. But he does speak to us, and he does lead us, and we can trust that fact no matter what; what’s more, we can trust that he’s good enough at leading us to overcome how bad we often are at following him. We don’t need to worry or be anxious about that, for we can trust God for his grace; we simply need to do our part. We need to spend time with him, in reading his word (the main way we come to know him and recognize his voice) and in prayer—not just talking to him, though that’s important, but also being silent, listening for his voice—so that we learn to know him when he speaks; and we need to learn to expect him to speak, because he is at work leading us by his Spirit every day, in every moment. Christ came down to seek us out in our sin and rescue us from the power of death, and he’s busy right now bringing us home; and what he starts, he finishes. Period. End of sentence.(Note: those with a philosophical bent might find Edward Tingley’s article “Gadamer and the Light of the Word” a valuable reflection on this matter; though Gadamer was not a believer, he gives a better account of the Spirit’s work than many Christians, and Tingley has some excellent things to say on this.)

The Ascension and the Second Coming

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Over at The Gospel-Driven Church, Jared raised the question from N. T. Wright, “Is the Second Coming a Pauline Innovation?” Bishop Wright contends it is; I think, however, he’s mistaken, primarily because there’s an element missing in his reading of the Olivet Discourse: the Ascension. In John 14, Jesus bases his promise to his disciples on the fact that he’s going to leave them—in order to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, it’s necessary for him to go, and when the time comes, he’ll return to lead them (and us) home to be with him; in the meantime, he will send the Holy Spirit to be the one who walks alongside us. In the context of Hebrews’ teaching on Christ as our great high priest, it seems clear to me that this has to be a reference to the Ascension and the work Jesus is doing on our behalf now, and thus that his coming again must refer to his final return in glory, not to his resurrection from the dead.