Consider Jesus…

I had opportunity recently to reflect on a depiction of Jesus crucified. It was a Byzantine-like crucifix featuring a rather ornate cross in which the disciples and numerous women were also painted. Jesus lay atop of it, his arms open wide. It was not the usual depiction of the Crucifixion; one had the sense that Jesus was standing. It looked almost as if Jesus was on the Cross yet not hung from it. The painting of Jesus’ wounds were particularly striking. The artist captured rivulets of blood dripping from each of the five wounds—from his hands, each of his feet, and his chest.

I meditated before this crucifix for a long time until suddenly my heart broke and I wept. Then I confessed in prayer, “Jesus, I am so ashamed; I don’t know you like this!” It was a wrenching experience, leading me in a much different direction than I had anticipated. It was as if I encountered Christ for the first time, and what I ‘heard’ imparted an entirely new perspective on His Church and my role in it.

We Protestants like our crosses empty and clean, made from smooth wood; a little ‘rugged,’ perhaps, but generally free of dust or stains of blood and sweat. We like our Jesus powerful and Risen, clothed in a shining garment with piercing eyes. But here was a Jesus dripping blood; thin, frail, nearly naked. This was the way that God came into this world—not as a powerful and successful manager, marketer, or coach in a business suit, but as a despised, rejected, poor itinerant. God came and bled for us, and calls on us to do the same. This is the Jesus we serve and follow, whose life we claim to want to imitate: a Jesus bleeding, naked, exposed, alone. This is the Lord we are to give witness to in this world, whose path we are called to walk.

“Consider Jesus….” The writer of Hebrews uses this phrase, and I wonder if we have ever really done it. We would do well to obey its inherent admonition. To consider involves thinking carefully about a thing, to painstakingly look at it with concentration. Significantly for Christians, to consider involves weighing the pros and cons of a something before making a decision on a course of action. ¹ Or, as Jesus himself said, to count the cost. Selah!

I cannot tell you all that happened in my heart that day; it was a visceral experience, flooded with deep, painful, unarticulated emotion. I sensed the Lord speak to me about my future in ministry, but much of the experience is just too private, too inchoate to be shared. Yet one thing I know—and sense a compulsion to shout from the housetops—is that we need to recapture a true picture of Jesus, for the Jesus we think we serve in these days may very well not be the Jesus who came to this earth.

Consider Jesus… crucified, bloody, weak, beaten, despised and rejected. Completely submitted to the will of the Father God. For love of His Father and for love of us, he endured the cross and despised its shame. And us?

¹ Encarta World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

A political reflection…

I try to keep current with politics and confess that it can become a distraction. But these days it holds less and less of an interest, largely because what passes for political discourse today provides further evidence of the ruin of our culture. There seems little penalty for being uninformed or historically illiterate, and reasoned discourse has been supplanted by destructive invective. Lofty notions of sacrifice, patriotism, common good and shared future appear to be consigned to the ash-heap of history, while cynicism, immorality, selfishness and a lack of any moral compass are enshrined in their place. Surely it is a dark time for our Republic, and it renders politics particularly problematic for Christians.

Nonetheless, a surprising number of American Christians seem consumed with politics. Maybe it is due to my fifteen year absence as a missionary, where one lived the reality of possessing a citizenship other than that available locally, but it is genuinely shocking to encounter the dominance of politics in American church conversation. It has even been woven into the teaching ministry of some local churches. Needless to say, we did not experience this in churches overseas.

Of course everyone has an opinion on what political party a Christian must support. And in truth there are particular ideologies, practices and policies that Christians will (should?) find either abhorrent or desirable. Yet a Christian—by definition—should be a person who knows that the answer for human ills will never be found in the political arena, but in God. Thus it would seem that for Christians, politics should always be a subsidiary interest rather than the most important.

That is a point made in a sermon written by a doctor of the Church, John Chrysostom. When read against the backdrop of some contemporary discussions of American social policy, it is surprising to realize that it was first preached in the late 300’s:

“Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold from the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first—and then they will joyfully share their wealth.” ¹

Chrysostom, a noted advocate of social justice, reveals an important ordering of priorities which must be recaptured today. All of the political discourse conducted in the contemporary church will profit nothing unless hearts are changed. And hearts are only changed by the gospel of God, received by faith in Jesus Christ and enacted by the Holy Spirit. And (sadly!), one of the first places the gospel needs to be preached is in the Church, because there are many therein that have yet to hear it! Rather than offering “world-view” education or values doctrine, people need to hear the gospel, learn about God and become literate in the Bible. That is the way God changes human hearts. And it is through changed humanity that society will be dramatically and lastingly changed.

Forgive me for my skepticism about all these Christian politicians. Politics is not in itself an evil; it is a natural outcome of human community. It is unavoidable even in the church. But the politics that is conducted on a local or national stage is almost exclusively about power, and I question whether a genuine Christian can accommodate him or herself to that kind of life. The pursuit of power, for whatever purpose, seems antithetical to the calling of the disciple of Christ. Now admittedly it would indeed be nice if our senators, representatives and presidents were all authentic, bible believing Christians, but then again it would be nice if Santa and the Easter Bunny were also real. Unfortunately, I imagine neither has a remote chance of coming to pass in this earth. The best we can hope for in this life is for God through Christ to have the rule over our land. But that is accomplished, not by having the state house fall to its knees, but by having individual citizens submit themselves to His rule. We in the Church need to produce more evangelists than politicians. We must pray, and pray very hard. But let us live like Christians, for therein is our greatest influence on the community and affairs of men.

¹ Chrysostom, St. John. On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom (ed. Robert van de Weyer; Liguori, Missouri: Liguori/Triumph, 1996), 43.

Room for reason…

Long ago, years before I had children, I attended a meeting in Tulsa. In the lobby of the auditorium there were textbooks on offer for a Christian home-school association, who were also meeting at that time. Loving books, I couldn’t help but get lost in examining them. One text etched itself into my memory. It purported to be a science textbook. In a section concerning the age of the earth the author claimed that ‘God created the earth with fossils in it.’ I remember making a claim of my own to my wife that day, that we would never send our kids to Christian schools if that was the level of intellect they embraced.

Well, fast forward nearly ten years later, and I have children in the public school system. My oldest was being bullied and harassed, and entertained fantasies of dying rather than attending school—in the second grade! And my precious little daughter was openly mocked by her first-grade teacher because she had the innocent audacity to suggest that we believed the Bible teaching that the earth was created by God. And there isn’t any need to delve into the “gender re-education” curricula to which my pre-k son was being exposed. So as concerned parents, who are Christians, we knew we had to do something. So we found our way to a Christian school. Thankfully it provided elementary education in a safe environment which affirmed our Christian practices.

When we returned to the States, we sought for another Christian school, and for a while, all was well. Recently, however, my children have been coming home with some disconcerting reports of various teachers’ comments in different classes. In a discussion of a passage in his sixth grade science text, my youngest son’s teacher made sure to suggest that the idea of plate tectonics—in which the continents move on top of the earth’s mantle—is a suspect theory not widely embraced. Instead, he suggested that the world is exactly as God made it. My daughter’s seventh grade geography teacher interrupted a video tape in which the idea of continental drift was mentioned to suggest that the flood of Noah is responsible for the oceans separating continents. And my oldest boy is being taught to suspect scientific pronouncements about the age of the earth and to accept Bishop Ussher’s chronology.

My children are polite and respectful; they listen and take the time to evaluate these claims. They think about confronting their teachers with their questions, but not surprisingly defer to the adults. Thankfully, we do talk about these things at home. And in no uncertain terms I make it clear that the Bible was not written to be a record of cosmological or geological development. Instead, the Bible is a record of God’s relationship with humanity, explaining humanity’s created status, its fall, its need for redemption and its answer from God through Christ. We’ve taught our children that the primary message of the Bible is how God worked through humanity to bring the Christ into the world to save humanity. Additionally, it teaches us about who we are and how we should live as a result of Christ’s work. Because they hear this at home, they cast a wary eye on these comments by their teachers. But what, I wonder, of other students who accept this teaching as truth? How does this equip them to be witnesses to their generation?

I am admittedly angered by how these teachers misuse scripture. Yet what I find most disconcerting, especially as a minister of God’s Word, is the apparent weak and impoverished nature of these teachers’ faith. Why are Christians so afraid of truth being uncovered by the world? Do fossils overthrow biblical revelation? Does an old earth render the reality of Christ dubious? Do the bones of a triceratops supplant the Bible’s authority? God forbid! If faith in God cannot withstand the questions of science or human reasoning, then what kind of faith do we actually possess?

The Genesis account of creation does not pretend to supply a ‘scientific’ record of the origin of the cosmos. That Genesis 1 is not Enlightenment-defined scientific history is revealed in its account of light and dark being created on day one, while the sun, moon and stars were not created until day four! God is not devoid of reason! Obviously He is revealing something other than the process of cosmological origin. The message of Genesis instead establishes the reality that God is the Creator. He is the Creator and the One who orders all elements of Creation. This establishes His Transcendence and power over all creation. This separates Him from all the so-called gods of men, and powerfully distinguishes the Biblical account of creation from all other creation stories penned in the minds of men.

Christians have nothing to fear from genuine scientific inquiry. Science is in its purity the work of humanity using its God-given rational faculties to pursue and explain material truth. Faith in God transcends the material even as God transcends the material realm. God demands revelation; science tests sensual evidence. God’s fingerprints are all over the created order, yet they do not manifest in evidence perceptible to the five physical senses. Nonetheless, science will lead a genuine intellect to the consideration of God. Only the fool, who rejects God as a precondition, can pursue science and reject God.

I desire for my children to be educated in an environment that protects and esteems their humanity and morality and faith. Obviously, then, they cannot be educated in most public schools as they are currently constituted. The American public school system has abandoned almost all pretense of genuine education in favor of partisan and ideological social engineering. This is particularly problematic for those of us who hold a biblical world-view. Yet the alternative cannot be the creation of empty-headed curriculum that twists sacred scripture into a treatise of science or geography. This is the great error of protestant fundamentalism, and understand—I say that as an unapologetic fundamentalist. I see nothing wrong with embracing the fundamentals—the existence of God, of the authority of the Word, of Christ and His return. But we do greatly err when we attempt to defend the Bible using the tools and vocabulary of modernity.

Besides, nothing in the great drama of redemption depends on the science of creation. What humanity needs today is a relationship with God by faith in Jesus Christ. This relationship will equip the next generation to accurately know truth—in both the natural and supernatural realm. In the beginning was the Word, which implies reason and rationality. The God of Abraham and Christ is not afraid of science or the mind. And our faith must not deny reason. Let us leave room for reason in our hearts and minds as well.

The age between promise and fulfillment…

In church we have been considering the story of Abraham and Sarah and their walk and life of faith. These two, the father and mother of all who are of faith (Rom 4:16–17), are quintessential examples of human beings who trust God to perform His promises. It takes but a little time to read the story of the birth of Isaac; it plays out in a mere ten chapters of Genesis. Yet in the lives of Sarah and Abraham it took twenty-five years between God’s promise of a son and the fulfillment of the birth of Isaac. Twenty-five years. 25!

All of us live in an age between a promise and the fulfillment. We stand between the declaration, “This same Jesus will come again” (Acts 1:11) and His actual, manifested, physical return. Some of us are also waiting for the fulfillment of a more specific individual promise. What can Abraham and Sarah teach us about how to live during this age?

The first and most important lesson is this: God will fulfill His Word. This is because God—unlike man—cannot and will not lie (Num. 23:19). This is the bedrock of faith—a strong, immovable confidence in the character of God. If He promised, He will do it. Believing that is faith in God.

We have added many things to the concept of faith which may have obscured its essence. Biblical faith is not primarily a means of producing prosperity, healing, victory, employment, or anything else concerning life in this world. Instead, it is a relationship with God, an expression of our belief, trust and confidence in His person, presence, character and integrity. The stories of Abraham and Sarah, along with all the other biblical narratives, teach us about the character of God. He is faithful, and He will perform His Word.

A second lesson is to guard against the temptation of doing anything to help God fulfill His promise. The whole Hagar incident didn’t work out too well for Abraham and Sarah. And remember Moses’ attempt to govern the Israelites on his own? The historical narratives repeatedly describe difficulties caused by human interference in God’s promises. Rather than to try and bring things to pass by our own strength, we need to wait on God. That is, in itself, the work of faith: waiting. For it appears that for the most part, it takes time for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

Why should this be? I suspect that it has something to do with our need for preparation. A major hindrance to the fulfillment of God’s promises is people and their (our) lack of faith. The age between the promise and fulfillment then might just be a gift—an opportunity received in order to develop our faith. It takes faith to receive and steward the promises of God. That faith is the product of a relationship with God. Therefore I would suggest that the time between the promise and its fulfillment is time given to get our relationships right. The first and most important of these relationships is the one which we have with God. But all our other relationships must be ordered aright as well.

Receiving the promises of God requires that our will be conformed to God’s will. For that we must surrender ourselves to God. This surrender is not something we can do in our own strength. The truth is that the very idea of surrender is not even produced by our own, independent thought. Both the desire and expression of surrender comes through faith, which is the gift from God. It is produced by the Holy Spirit and the Word. As we submit ourselves to the Word and the Holy Spirit, we arrive at a position to receive God’s promise. Always remember, these are God’s promises; they are given for His purpose and intent, not our own. Right relationship with Him is manifested through our position of surrendered submission, as we live in complete dependence upon Him rather than in living on our own or for ourselves.

We must first be in right relationship with God. But this, at one and the same time, affects all our other relationships—those we have with other people. Not surprisingly, our ability to possess God’s promises demands that these other relationships are rightly ordered as well. What is the right ordering of a Christian’s relationships with others? It is expressed by our imitation of Christ, in which we count others as more important than ourselves and devote ourselves to the interests of others rather than to our own (Phil. 2:3–8). But know this: it is only by entering into a submitted, surrendered life with God that we are empowered to lose our self-centered focus. A disciplined, submitted and surrendered life starves the self’s constant hunger for its own blessing, and blinds it to its narcissistic attraction to itself. Christians must live this way. It is the source of both our body life (Church) and our witness in the world.

Again, while it is true that we have to decide to live like this, none of it—not the submission, surrender, humility, self-denial, nor the focus on others—can be done without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The desire for such a life proves the Spirit’s call on us. We need only stop resisting. That sets us in a place of submission to the Word and the Spirit. And so the age between promise and fulfillment is a gift, a time of preparation in which we are called to get ready to receive God’s promise.

Wherever we find ourselves, let us reflect on Abraham and Sarah and all the other men and women of faith whose stories are preserved in Holy Scripture. Let us learn to trust God and get our relationships right. Abraham and Sarah had to get their own relationship right before a child could be born to them. And so it will be for us. Now let me be honest—the time between the promise and its fulfillment can be frustrating, agonizing, and a whole host of other adjectives that may be less than edifying were I to employ them. The temptation to do something will always be strong, and many there will be who will counsel for it! And yet we must resist and stand in faith. I’m encouraged by the account of Abraham and Sarah’s journey, even as I pray that my own does not extend for twenty-five years! Yet no matter how it looks, I know that God will perform His Word. So let us develop our faith by getting our relationship right with God. And let us get right with each other. Let us encourage each other, help each other and esteem each other as valuable and precious. Let us pray for each other, even as we stand, wait, and develop our faith in God.

A ray of light…

Forgive me, friends, for my recent lack of posting. I have been busy about many other things of late—not the least of which has been learning to read theological German! And I have just now returned from a time of prayer and fasting over in the Blue Ridge mountains. There is much to share, but the dawn is only starting to break. You know how the darkest night is just before the dawn? As first light pierces the black horizon, one begins to discern shapes and forms but full details remain obscured. One must wait for more light before setting out in earnest. So it is true for us right now. We have seen something of the landscape before us, inciting our hopes of the next phase of our journey. And yet before taking that first step, we must wait for the sun to rise some more. Still we are greatly encouraged. For first light tells us that the night is passing and that the day is drawing nigh. Please pray for us—pray very hard. May God be revealed more and more in and through us in the days ahead.

In the meantime, I do have some random thoughts to share. Be blessed!