Category Archives: eschatology

"Gospel of rational hope"?

25 Wednesday Apr 2007

Posted by in christianity, Emergent Conversation, eschatology, Theodicy, Virginia Tech

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Pastor Glenn Parkinson of Severna Park Evangelical Presbyterian Church writes in his blog that he is starting to wonder whether the media is doing more than reporting on a culture in crisis. He suggests they are promoting a “culture OF crisis”. It’s a clever turn of phrase, and reflects, I think, a view that is quite popular among my Christian brothers.

He says,

“day after day, one horror after another works to emotionally tear us down and condition our response. An increasing number of these crises are forced upon us by the larger media and shepherded by a new priesthood of secular institutions…”

I emphatically disagree with Glenn. First, because he severely trivializes the importance and value of the lives of those who are not Christians, and who are not destined for heaven, according to Glenn’s concept of salvation.

In my view Glenn demeaned those lives, by saying that to them grief is merely the process of “getting over” tragedies, “coping” with them so that folks can get back to their personal dreams, which Glenn seems to think is the only real meaning in their lives. It would appear that in Glenn’s view, only those who are predestined toward heaven have a rational basis of hope in their lives. The rest are living on borrowed time, and pursuing a meaningless existence that the media attempts to bestow significance upon.

Glenn suggests that the media should be blamed for “taking on a ‘priestly role'” and “determin[ing] what emotionally stresses us”. He states that

“modern media…assures that selected crises can and will draw the attention of the entire nation. In other words, our own personal trials are no longer enough. Now, we must enter into the personal torment of others — others we do not know, and whose agonies are chosen for us by the whims of the larger media.“

(italics mine)

It’s true that the troubles of people everywhere, people we once could ignore, keep invading our personal space. But is that the media’s fault, or a change in the world around us?

I’m sure that Glenn profoundly feels the pain of the victims and their families. I’m sure he disagrees with Cain, and acknowledges that we are indeed our brothers’ keepers. I’m sure his tears after Virginia Tech were no less heart-felt than mine were. But I think there’s a much better explanation than simply that the media is selecting crises, or choosing these agonies for us to pay attention to. It seems to me that the reason why the world has been drawn together to share each others pain is that God now wants it that way. I think the Biblical phraseology which refers to this is that God has “gathered the nations.”

Appropriate, is it not? Since, like Pastor Parkinson, I believe the Bible is relevant and reliable, and God is sovereign — ruling in the kingdom of men as Nebuchadnezzar came to see it — then could it be that the same God who chose to scatter the nations in Genesis 11 might now be choosing, as he promised he would in Zephaniah 3:8-9, to “gather” them? The scattering involved the introduction of multiple languages. The gathering that seems in evidence now involves mitigating the language differences, is accompanied by a lot of trouble, and finally results in a single-minded recognition of God by all people. Travel, communication, and knowledge are doing that. Computers are doing that, music is doing that, and visual images are doing that. Gathering the nations. From Caesar to George Washington there was one mode of travel, one means of communication. Then, in the blink of an eye, the skills and powers that created the modern age leaped into the human experience.

If God is behind the “global village”, the “time of trouble“, the “distress of nations with perplexity“, the “increase of knowledge“, the “trouble like a woman in labor“, then “the Media” is not what Glenn should be blaming for the gattling-gun of events that grab world attention. These things, in my view, “demonstrated the planet’s relentless march toward equilibrium”, as Greg Mortenson and David Relin write about the interplay of cultures in Three Cups of Tea. We’re seeing something global here, something organic, something bigger than Christianity, bigger than America, bigger than the world Media or all the negative forces on the earth. And though there are paroxysms of pain, the relentless march is making life better for the poor, rougher for the rich, and more egalitarian all around. In spite of the efforts of Christianity to retard it.

As Thomas Friedman and Isaiah put it, the world is flat. As Zephaniah put it, the nations are gathered. At Virginia Tech, a Korean raised in America buys a German gun to randomly-yet-willfully kill an Israeli Holocaust survivor, a French instructor, an Indonesian graduate student, etc. etc. Did the media decide we needed this tragedy, and thus play it up? To suggest this idea is to miss the point of the trouble.

Instead of nostalgically looking backward to a time when Churchianity supposedly had more power, and more people listening to its claims, I suggest that Christians like Glenn, or David Wayne, or other good and devout men and women who trust God, re-examine the hopes and explanations they draw from the Bible.

To Glenn, people need and deserve to hear what he calls the Gospel of rational hope. He doesn’t want folks just weeping over the waste of human potential that occurred a few days ago. He wants hope to emerge in the minds of those who somehow conclude that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God really is powerful, and really does love the human race. Glenn seemingly doesn’t want anyone consoling themselves with what he considers to be the false hope that every life has value aside from religious conversion, and that somehow things will work out for everyone. To Pastor Parkinson, things won’t work out for anyone except the authentic true believer… everyone else is in for sadness, separation, torment… for eternity.

[but wait? Don’t the U and L in TULIP say that God is the one who chooses folks for salvation anyway? If so, then why mourn for Cho’s unsaved victims? Oh well, that’s another discussion for another day. After tragedies like this one, most Calvinists find themselves sounding like Arminians in spite of themselves.]

The irrational hope, the liberal or secular-humanist assumption Glenn speaks of is the notion of personal autonomy: self-motivated dreams, earth-bound involvements as the be-all and end-all of life. The concept of self-will is, after all, repugnant to every well-schooled Calvinist. In his view (and I only partially agree) tragedies like this one give the lie to self-will, forcing folks to at least consider the words of Solomon: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, says the Preacher”. I would argue that this view of life is only valid for those who, like the Christians Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15, are called by God to choose a life that walks away from many of this life’s opportunities in order to participate in a higher resurrection.

Glenn has a different idea. He covets the opportunity to tell people his concept of the Gospel, what he calls a rational hope. Though he admits it would sound “foolish” to the masses if, suddenly, some Christian spokesman were allowed to explain the Gospel (the traditional Gospel that is), to the public…

What would that “good news” be? Let’s suppose that, miraculously, Glenn got his way and the masses didn’t change the channel, Again and again I hear Christians admit that most people turn away in disgust from “The gospel” — the one most of my friends, and Glenn hold to be taught in the Bible. Generally my Christian friends blame these skeptical folks for rejecting what to them is “amazing grace.” While it is indeed amazing that a Creator God would accept, adopt, and pursue a relationship with the likes of Glenn, or David Wayne, or me … but is that all the Good News the Bible has? Is there an additional gospel of grace that covers those who were not chosen from among men by a Sovereign God during the Christian age that is now clearly waning?

Or put another way, might there not be another explanation for the paltry size of this saved family than simply the Arminian “the others have hardened their own hearts?” or the Calvinist, “God in his sovereignty has made atonement limited”?

Here’s the mainstream Good News, put in plain speech as most Christians perceive the Bible to teach: A dark and tortured man just killed 32 people against their will. Of these, a few appear to be authentic Christians, confident that because they placed their faith in Christ as savior, they will next live with God in heaven. But for most of the dead — the Jews, Moslems, and non-believers among the victims — Glenn’s gospel says these folks all lack the thing that they would have needed to gain eternal life in heaven — “saving faith in Christ”.

In this view, they not only lost the rest of a life that Glenn feels is vanity (but which these poor unsaved souls were enjoying up to that moment); they now get to experience a hell created by God himself for those whose names were not written in a book of life before they died.

For Glenn, it would appear that these tragedies were meant as examples, goads, to be a lesson to the rest of the unsaved…. a warning to accept salvation through Christ. I’ll come back to that in a minute… because I think Glenn and the millions of authentic Christians who agree with his perspective are sincere, and are correct in believing that God is indeed loving and gracious toward all people.

If God is using troubles to remind the masses of their own impending loss, then the unsaved among the victims are a sad case indeed. They will be in some God-forsaken place, kept separate from those who “did the good deeds”… forever. Hmmm. I wonder what sorts of torments will they have to endure? Will they have to get shot again and again by multiple Chos? Maybe they’ll have to listen to that hideous Cho laugh.

Now, all of this awful pain — not only the Cho-inflicted pain but the God-inflicted pain that dwarfs it — a Christian commentator apparently would be able to tell us … would have been unnecessary if every one of the victims had first entrusted their life to Christ. If somehow the Jewish Holocaust survivor could have disregarded the religion of his upbringing, disregarded the religion of those who wiped out his family and almost killed him… and embraced Protestantism… well, if he could have done that he wouldn’t have had to go to hell for his unbelief. Yes, he was a hero, and saved the lives of his students by taking bullets for them while they escaped… but as one Christian radio commentator I heard recently said, “There are lots of nice guys in Hell.”

For my Christian friends who believe in a burning Hell because the Bible seems to teach it, please stay with me a little longer. I’ll stop insulting you now.

Let me suggest that you have missed something. That there is great value even in the un-Christian life of this age, strange as it may seem to you. Let me suggest that the Bible itself offers a better outcome than this, a truly good Good News, a truly rational Gospel of hope.

Here it is: the Judgment day is not for sentencing, but for teaching and correction. It is a time of learning righteousness. It is a second age of hope, with much broader results and a complete absence of the confusion and deception that has marked the Christian age. It is a time when all people learn who the true God is. It is a time when all people discover that God really is kind and loving and just. It is a time when the hereditary curses will melt away, and folks’ll be able to sort through what they did wrong to themselves and others, and learn from those mistakes. The Chos of the world will not be question-marks any more, and will discover what it’s like to feel love and to give love. Love from God, which most people NEVER knowingly experience now. And love from other people, which most people crave more of.

Think of all the victims of the Chos and the Hitlers and the Saddams. Yes, and the victims of the Christian nations and the Christian crusaders and the Christian popes and emperors. Think of the recent past and near future — the victims who suffer from man-made environmental disasters caused by the misuse of world resources… they’ll come back and join in a process of restoring the earth into a global paradise.

Think of the victims of “acts of God” — those who died in tornadoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and blizzards and lightning strikes. All of the dead, the Bible says again and again, will come back. If they were in the earth, or the sea, it doesn’t matter. They are coming back from their graves. And in every case, they will find a new government, made up of merciful, fairminded peers who know what they feel, understand their struggles, and can enforce the high standards of love and justice with mercy, patience, and kindness.

In this view, Christians and Jews alike have been learning precise principles of right and wrong throughout the past two ages. Many of these have actually been prepared for servant-leadership and teacher-priesthood among their fellowmen. The folks God has been working with — the relatively small handfull who experienced and responded to God’s grace up till now … will have the heart of a mediator, and the skills of a wonderful counselor.

And the rest of the world, whom God has barely touched at all in a personal way, nevertheless have many, many lessons of life engraved in their characters. Think Ghandi, Einstein, Gorbachev, Sagan; God will not throw away these souls, or the billions of anonymous people who have lived and died in the shadow of God’s hereditary “wrath” on the human race. (Notice, Christian believer, that “wrath” is something revealed to all people already — not something for the future. We’re children of wrath — born into it. But the wrath will one day be past, and then God’s mercy will endure forever.)

When brought back from the grave, everyone — everyone — will be able to pick up right where they left off, learning more about God and unlearning the negative things that habit and custom have led them into. No more deceptions will be allowed. Each will become productive, and spontaneous expressions of joy will sweep across the planet.

Glenn, I think that Christianity… following in Jesus’ footsteps — is indeed a rational hope for those of us whom God has called — revealed His grace to. It starts in our hearts and guides us toward heaven. It bends upward what inclines to grow downward.

But there is a rational hope for all the rest of the human race, too. It is a hope that is broad enough to allow for the random vicissitudes we see the groaning creation struggling under. If they were aborted before they were born, they have a hope of resurrection and life upon this earth. If they died in a Blacksburg classroom without Christ, they have a hope of resurrection and life upon this earth. If they will die next week from a car wreck in Boston, or a car bomb in Baghdad, they have a hope of resurrection that is as sure as the grace of God toward believers now.

Glenn, I urge you to consider the many texts of scripture which are so much broader, so much deeper, so much more hopeful, than the traditional Gospel which leaves the masses of mankind outside the family of God for all time.

The Power of a Grid

23 Friday Mar 2007

Posted by in eschatology

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How refreshing for David Wayne to speak of the humility of Bruce Waltke and others who are learning to read the Bible with fresh eyes.

I commented on his question, “What grids do I have and do we have that need to be changed…?” here.

Now here’s a list of scriptures that indicate that the expectations of no future opportunity for the salvation of the unsaved world are a serious defect in the popular Christian “grid”.

God’s goals:
“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain (kingdom). The earth shall be full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea.””

The eyes of the blind shall be opened, etc. Here, the whole world comes to “Zion” – the government God has been establishing, which in my view will consist of both victorious Christians and regathered Jews. working together in heaven and earth to teach and redeem the unsaved world. The process for these “ransomed of the Lord” (see 1 Timothy 2:6 for a statement about how many are included in that term) is described in the Isaiah 35 text as a highway — that is, an easily traveled road — which will be for the unclean, yet the unclean won’t pass over it. In other words, people are cleansed as they walk this way. Even fools, (today’s atheists?) it says, won’t err in this journey to Zion, where God dwells.

And where will God ultimately dwell? With men, according to Revelation 21..

There will be a family of God both in earth and in heaven, as Paul describes it in Ephesians 3:15.

The judgment day will be a process of teaching, in which the whole world will learn righteousness by seeing God’s judgments: Isaiah 26:9

Indeed, the millennium during which Christ is “shephering the world with a staff of iron” along with today’s faithful Christians, will be the first time in human history when deception and lies from Satan are unable to mislead people away from God. Why would God bottle up Satan in a bottomless pit, where he is unable to deceive the nations, if it was not God’s intention to spend that thousand years in teaching and instructing the nations so that they can be tested for good character and love at the end, as foretold? Revelation 20:3, 7-10.

Jesus words:

“If I am lifted up (on the cross) I will draw all men unto me.” John 12:32
“My flesh I give for the life of the world.” John 6:51

God’s overarching promise:
I created the earth not in vain. I formed it to be inhabited. … By myself have I sworn… that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. “ Isaiah 45

That’s why there will be a resurrection of ALL the dead, both the just and the unjust. Acts 24:15

That’s why it will be said, that death and hades were swallowed up in victory, and that the Lord God shall wipe away tears from off ALL faces. Isaiah 25:8

When the grid of exclusivism is overlooked, suddenly God is better than almost anyone has dared to dream. Suddenly instead of “hiding himself” as Isaiah 45 states it, God will ultimately reveal himself to be the righteous judge, restorer of the poor. Now, we can find hope for the victims of the slave trade today and in past ages. The crack babies who were born without the physiogical ability to have a conscience; the Islamists who are born and bred with hatred; the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

In this grid, this paradigm, Christians were personally called by God, invited and redeemed ahead of the rest of the world, so that they could be part of his future government of the world (see Ephesians 1:10, Weymouth translation)

And in this grid, everyone else gains as well. They don’t have the golden privilege of being part of the Bride of Christ, the inner family of God in heaven. But they still get an amazing “feast of fat things”. They get to live in a redeemed earth if they profit from the lessons of evil and learn from the age of God’s judgments being in the earth.

What will the end be, after the end of the era of judgment and the little season of punishment which follows it? Isaiah described it thus: “The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet. They break forth into singing.”

This is why I believe God is happy. (1 Tim 1:11) Because he knows how his creation will turn out in the end!

I believe that today, more and more Christians are starting to have their minds open to this amazing kindness and grace of God.

An Unfinished Life

28 Thursday Dec 2006

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies

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Einar Gilkyson: You think the dead really care about our lives??
Mitch Bradley: Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.
Einar Gilkyson: Griff said you had a dream about flying.
Mitch Bradley: Yeah. I got so high, Einar. I could see where the blue turns to black. From up there, you can see all there is. And it looked like there was a reason for everything. 

Just saw a great movie — An Unfinished Life. Ranks right up there with Places in the Heart and My Life As a House as stories of redemption and forgiveness, told in realistic terms by a real thinkers who understand the complexity of human experience.

The quote above is from the end of the movie (not giving away the plot). Two crusty old cowboys played by Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are reflecting on the dead because at the beginning of the movie we learn that Redford’s character Einar had a son who died in his 20s, and the old man never got over it. Every day he would sit at the grave and tell his son what had happened, what he was thinking, and ask for his opinion. It was not eerie or spiritualistic, just a man coping with life by metaphorically speaking to his son’s memory. So at the end Einar asks Mitch if the dead can forgive. The movie has just explored the more practical question, “can the living forgive?” The title comes from the inscription the father has cut into the son’s gravestone — “an unfinished life.”

My wife and I loved every character in the movie, and appreciated that the story saw hope and joy in even the bitter, disappointing aspects of human experience. In the end, the reason for everything comes out.

It makes me happy to see Hollywood types who are cynical toward churchianity, yearning to pierce the veil of time and ask what the purpose of human life might be. And it makes me happy to see them often arriving at the view that our lives are not in vain — that there is hope for everyone.

My McLaren Colloquy: 4. The Faithful Remnant

23 Saturday Dec 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Emergent Conversation, eschatology, orthodoxy, remnant

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Conversing with his friend Samir Vesna on pp 129-130 of A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren writes,

Restorationists… often refer to themselves, Samir says, as a remnant…. “We’re not small because we’re ineffective, or lazy, or ingrown, or otherwise unattractive; we’re small because we’re a faithful remnant! Everone else has compromised…. We’re the few, the committed, the faithful, the proud. (Oops.)…Samir has seen a lot of this remnant thinking in restorationist territory; he sees how destructive it is.”

McLaren goes on to mention how Samir preached about Moses, who was essentially offered the status of remnant by God when the nation of Israel lapsed into idolatry. Moses didn’t take the bait, but pleaded with God to preserve and continue investing in Israel, rather than starting over with Moses as a new patriarch. Moses, who really was a faithful remnant kind of guy, set an example for all who wish to be similarly faithful by showing a willingness to be sacrificial in his love, and eager to bless even the errant members of God’s heritage. McLaren concludes:

Samir asked his friends with a remnant mentality: what is a truly faithful remnant like? Its members do not turn inward in elite self-congratulation…. No, the faithful remnant “after God’s own heart” turns its heart others-wise, outward, toward the unfaithful, in loyalty and love. True faithfulness bonds the hearts of the faithful to their unfaithful neighbors.

If Christ’s faithful church is a “remnant”, it has been learning not to subscribe to the destructive, oppressive orthodoxy of earlier times. It has been “a generous orthodoxy” which is patient under injustice, hopeful that in due time God would bring justice; like Jesus, encouraging the bruised reeds and smoking flaxes of the world; — and pre-occupied with trying to get its own actions brought into harmony with God’s word and spirit.

Brian McLaren – Domesticated the true revolutionary power of Christ

04 Saturday Nov 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Emergent Conversation, eschatology, revolutionconference

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Brian McLaren spoke after lunch today….
My unedited notes:

Throughout human history , the paradigm has been: people without power are hurt by people with power. So they use the selfish assumptions and violent methods of the powerful to claw themselves into power… so that by the time they have arrived, they themselves are just as violent and oppressive as the ones they have replaced.

It would be easy for this revolution to be the same — for it to be another outbreak of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless — but ultimately if it still uses violent methods it will fail.

Mark 1: The good news of kingdom — has come near — repent and hear good newss.
John Baptist came and began to immerse…

Brian asks (ironically) Why is there so much filler — why is John the Baptist relevant?…
Then again, maybe it’s not filler after all.

On a plane recently, Brian sat next to a guy — asked him what he did, he said, “I’m one of the top 3 experts on the genetics of the fruit fly in the world.” 🙂

So Brian asked him to talk about his field and he was delighted to tell him what about it that was exciting.

Among other things he said: “they say there’s junk DNA — but that’s wrong. There IS no junk DNA. First, there is a lot of DNA that we simply don’t know what it does.
Then, there are parts that seem to fill an important role in the timing and alignment of strands. They peel and break and when you analyze it, you find that the DNA needs these strands to unpeel and connect. Their function is to help the DNA strand stay together and keep in time.

The details that seem like filler are like that. For example: — John the baptistt.
John didn’t invent baptism — it was common to Israel — ritual washing.
If your child came to you with a cut and you got blood on your skin — you were unclean. If you were a woman and had your monthly cycle; if you encountered a dead body — you were in need of ritual purification.
Who did this? the Priests. Where? at the temple
What was unusual about John the Baptist was not that he did immersing, but where — not in temple precincts but in Jordan river..
He was saying, this brown water is pure compared to the religious establishment — I look like a wierdo — it’s the priests who are the ones who are defective.
And then Jesus came and was baptized by John. He was validating John, and more than that, he was adding that John, who had condemned Herod for his immorality, was right in his condemnation of not only the religious establishment but thee civil as well.

When Jesus was baptized at Jordan is was thus an affirmation of the Kingdom of God — both a political and religious establishment…. not a new religion but a new kingdom.

Jesus was establishing an entirely new way of life — something radical. We’ve domesticated it but it’s truly a revolutionary message.

Luke 1:46-53 — the words of Mary. Mary praises God for being “mindful of the humble state of his serveant…his mercy shas
he has scattered those who are proud …
he has brought down rulers from their thrones
buth he has lifted up the humble”
but has sent the rich away empty”

What is Mary saying?

That the economic system is turned upside down by God.
and that He has toppled the rulers from their seats, while exalting the poor..

Luke chapter 4 – Jesus reads in the temple:
“spirit of Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; freedom from prison, recovery of sight to the blind”

Jesus warms the hearts of his Jewish audience at first by – proclaiming favor to the poor… the Jews could identify with that since the Romans were oppressing them.

But then, Jesus made his public relations team shake their head because he offended his audience with his next statement: Elijah and Elisha didn’t do their miracles for their Jewish citizens but for two Gentiles in their midst . At this they were ready to stone Jesus.

It was revolution Jesus was talking about.

We domesticate the revolution and turn it into something tame and harmless to the status quo.

We should not gather in little rooms to do things harmless to the world;
our real ongoing work is to proclaim liberty to the captives, good news to the poor

Yes, it is a message both to the powrful & powerless– each enslaved to their ownwn selves. But through most of our history, the Christian church has been the religion of the powerful.

Jesus doesn’t proclaim a revolution in the political sense.,
His is a revolution in the type of revolution we join.
A change, not through domination of others, but through personal transformation, outflowing into social transformation.

Lies are always told by religious, social, and economic leaders — Jesus’ truth shows all those things to be a lie..

Luke 18:18-23 — Think about the subtext. How could someone become a ruler – by collaboration with the Romans.
So this rich young ruler asks Jesus, “Good teacher — what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus replies by asking if he knows the commands. He replies that he keeps the commands. So Jesus says, you still lack something — sell what you have and give to the poor. –

To this ruler, in that historic context, Jesus is saying: “You’re working for the powerful people. Stop working for the powerful and join me in my mission to the poor — in other words, “switch sides.”

The Kingdom of God message is for both the powerful and the powerless. Don’t follow in the paths of the world system, where the goal is power. In this model, powerless people claw their way to the top with the goal of benefiting the powerless — but in the process of seeking power, they become like the powerful. So that by the time you arrive in a position of power, you are just like the person you displaced.

Jesus proclaimed the message of a different kind of Kingdom — in which a small band believes and follows the example of the King. [KINDIG note: I think the gist of his idea was that “The transformation happens inside us. It is not a transformation we accomplish toward others, but that God accomplishes in us.”

If we don’t get the message of the revolution as Jesus taught us, we are exchanging old wineskins for new wineskins while we keep and cherish old wine. — [KINDIG: Here is my recollection and rewording of what Brian was saying: in other words, the old wine is the failed paradigm of trying to change other people through organizations we establish — trying to gain power “for the accomplishing of good”. Adopting a new structure for doing that will not help us. We need to abandon that paradigm, that old wine, and allow God to change not only the wineskin, the structure of our community, but also the wine, the goal and method of our transformation — from using power to change others to allowing God’s power to change us while we accept the other brothers and sisters in our community.]

It’s not all bad

26 Friday May 2006

Posted by in eschatology, Theodicy

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The last line of one of my favorite movies, Grand Canyon, says, “It’s not all bad.”

That’s how I felt when I got to see the Da Vinci Code last week. Not all bad, and certainly not all good. Not nearly as bad as the reviewers said, not nearly as good as I would have expected (from a cinematic perspective) from one of my favorite director/writer teams.

As a Christian, I found the threadbare arguments attempting to present Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife almost humorous. The plot twists were likewise very thin and I had to suspend disbelief at every turn.

What I see as valuable in the movie, though, is the way it points a finger at the oppressive, paternalistic activities of the Church. These are things that should never be forgotten. They should be explored, revealed, and the institutiion which hides them should be held to account. Indeed, that accountablility and ultimate recompense are exactly what the Scriptures foretell in some of the most lurid language of holy writ.

I write about this in a new website I’m developing, called www.davinciicnivad.com

Let’s look at one of the historical INaccuracies of the moviee: the claim that Constantine, a pagan, decided what would be in the Bible. That would have been in 325 C.E., during the Council of Nicea. What most folks don’t know, and what apparently most higher critical school scholars are too dishonest to admit, is that for the last 70 years we have had in our possession nearly complete Papyrus’s of most of the New Testament, dating back to between 200 and 250 AD, well before Constantine. These are called the Beatty Papyri, after the collector who assembled them and made them available for scholars to study. They include parts of the 4 Gospels and Acts, with John’s Gospel 2nd in order. THey contain almost the entire book of Revelation, and the Epistles of Paul, including Hebrews after Romans, proving that at that time it was attributed to Paul. 86% of those letters are preserved in these remarkable Papyrus scrolls.

What’s also noteworthy is what these Papyri do NOT contain. None of the “Gnostic Gospels”, such as Thomas, Judas, etc. Only the same 4 Gospels we read and study today, with textual accuracy and agreement with the other 24,0000 New Testament manuscripts.

The Bible is a firm foundation, and the more we learn about how it was preserved, the more it becomes apparent that God wrought a miracle in helping human beings speak his word faithfully, and preserve it adequately for confidence, without a requirement that every scribe or every preacher be accurate or even well-intentioned. The variety of textual fragments that survive reveal the evolution of many attempts to add to or delete portions of the Word.

For example, the Revelation manuscript of the Beatty Papyri contains the versess that refer to the Diadem and Dragon symbols pointing to Roman Imperial authority…. even though those terms were not in use at the time the manuscript was copied, let alone when John first penned it. Just as with the remarkable prophecies of the book of Daniel, the book of Revelation was clearly a prophetic work, with amazing insights into the historic development of “Christian” apostasy.

Back with a vengeance – Ya gotta like Dan Brown

15 Monday May 2006

Posted by in christianity, eschatology, gnosticism

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In the best Garrison Keillor tradition, an English teacher strikes it rich.
I haven’t read the book yet, and the movie isn’t out yet, but I already know what interests me about this latest pop sensation. It is the contortions my Christian brethren whose roots are deeply mired in Gnosticism go through as they attack Dan Brown and his fictional DaVinci Code for his resurrection of other Gnostic concepts.

My first quarter was filled with tentmaking activity; hopefully now I can slice out enough time to share what I’ve learned about Gnosticism in the New Testament.

My first installment will start, (DV) tomorrow.

In the meantime, a brief reflection on what good can come of all this fury, in the religious world, that is.

Isaiah records the prophecy of Messiah, coming to mystical Edom with garments spattered with bloodstains. In the picture of Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 34, the great controversy which God sends the messiah to avenge is “the controversy of Zion”.He has been trampling a winepress of lambs and goats. Hmmm… Lambs and goats. What are lambs in the parlance of Bible usage? Baby Christians, innocent little young believers. And what are goats? Self-willed, head-strong, pseudo-believers.

Naturally, the mainstream commentators such as Matthew Henry and John Wesley think this is about the enemies of “the church”. I am certain they are wrong.

In my judgment, these prophecies, like the ones in Revelation which speak of the “winepress” of God’s judgment, are about God’s judicial anger WITH THE CHURCH.

In the Isaiah texts, the prophet speaks of a time for those who have been associated with “Israel” but who really are out of harmony with God’s plans and ways in spirit and truth, to be exposed and debunked.

Just as the lambs are symbols and the goats are symbols, the “killing” that is going on is not literal either; I think it means to cease to have any claims of faith — to die as to faith in Christianity.

Across the world, that sort of killing, loss of faith, has been going on since the beginning of the 20th century. We are well into what is now acknowledged as “the post-Christian era”. Baby Christians, and those who associate with “Christianity” because of the selfish benefits that accrue to those who attend church, have been leaving the church in droves. If they remain seekers, they may end up in a smaller church, a house church, or a mega-church — but the mainstream denominations have experienced major drops in both attendance and contributions.

Works like Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, with its speculations and fantasiies, aren’t speaking the truth, mind you… but these are strange times, and oddly enough these sorts of smokescreens and shows of “knowledge” do a work that accomplishes God’s will as described in those prophecies. It’s God’s will for the Christian church to be tested to the max, shaken to the foundations. Even if that means the lambs and goats are going to get shed from the fold.

So for me, reflecting on my lifetitme spent bristling at the “systematic theology” that smart but I believe misguided brothers have pulled out of their imaginations and their seminary coffee shops instead of from the pure words of God, it’s almost fun to read the anti-DavinciCode articles, as they awkwardly try to defend orthodox tradition. I get amused when I read erstwhile Protestants, defending Roman Catholic belief system, filled as it is with Gnostic concepts, from Gnosticism! (Example, Christianity Today). What am I talking about, Gnosticism in the “orthodox” church? Well, Catholicism harbors concepts such as mariolatry, the Immaculate Conception, hindering of marriage, (see 1 Timothy 4:1-4) restrictions on food, asceticism (monkism and nunneries), and a very negative Augustinian view of both the flesh and marriage. Their apocrypha are hardly any different than the “Gnostic Gospels” in credibility.

Orthodox Protestants have preserved intact the other Gnostic-borrowed or Gnostic-adapted concepts from Catholicism such as a concept of God who has been more informed by Babylon and Greece than Israel; not to mention straight Platonic (smart but nevertheless Pagan) ideas like the immortal soul, eternal hell, etc. It’s funny to read, say, Christianity Today’s article that attempts to poke holes in Brown’s research, while attempting to uphold aspects of Christ’s history and personality that are equally unbiblical! It’s funny to read Collin Hansen’s revisionist view of Arius and Athanasias. At least, it would be funny if I didn’t know something about the thousands of believers in the One God and His Son, Jesus Christ, who were killed for not accepting the official dogma. It’s evan funnier to see CT attempting to defend Roman Catholicism while at the same time distancing themselves from an institution that any sober student of history realizes was a suppressor, not an upholder of truth throughout its corrupt and sordid past.

God’s the One who views the mainstream Churches with a vengeance. I just hope to be useful in showing how the Bible reveals what God is now doing in human affairs to even the great balances of justice. I’m confident the good folks will come through the ringer… but the institutions are getting squeezed by all this pressure.

I’ll start presenting my proofs for this little rant tomorrow.

Unity with diversity

14 Saturday Jan 2006

Posted by in Christian liberty, Christian trends, eschatology, evangelicalism, prophecy

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The lack of unity in Christian circles is legendary. Most attempts at forging unity focus on either doctrinal agreement (and define unity as agreement with specific points) or on organization cooperation (agreement to submit to one ecclesiastial authority). By the way, I think these two kinds of bogus unity are what the false church grapple with in the Revelation prophecy about forcing their adherents to have the mark of the beast “in the forehead” (doctrinal agreement) or “in their hand” — cooperation or organizational agreement.

I think the Biblical position is that God created the unity when he chose those who are in reality the body of Christ, and we are asked to diligently preserve that unity. We can’t make it, and in the final analysis we can’t break it either. God is building his temple and each stone in it will fit together and be assembled on the other side of the veil without the sound of a hammer. All the shaping is done in the quarry, a la Solomon’s temple. In the meantime, the Lord knows those that are his.

How can we find, share, learn from, love and serve our brothers in Christ then? I really like this explanation, written by a missionary some years back and edited and compiled by Keith A. Price, and reproduced on Ken Allen’s eclectic website:
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/fellowship.html

The basis for Christian Fellowship

These principles are based on many years of inter-denominational fellowship and are conclusions I have reached after making many mistakes and after having had considerable discussion with scores of Christian leaders. I am particularly indebted to the correspondence of Anthony Norris Groves – a dentist-missionary to Baghdad in the 1830s – who practised many of these principles. Although they have never before appeared in the form I now give, I have retained a number of the excellent expressions he used in his correspondence.

The basis of our fellowship is life in the Christ of the Scriptures rather than Light on the teaching of the Scriptures. Those who have part with Christ have part with us. Because our communion is one of life and love more than one of doctrine and opinion, we seek to show that the oneness in the life of God through Jesus Christ is a stronger bond than that of being one of us – whether organizationally or denominationally.

Because our fellowship is based on our common life in Christ, we do not reject anyone because of the organization or denomination with which he may be affiliated; nor would we hold him responsible for the conduct within that system, any more than we would a child for the conduct in the home of which he is merely a part.

We do not feel it desirable to withdraw from fellowship with any Christians except at the point where they may require us to do what our consciences will not permit, or restrain us from doing what our consciences require. Even then, we maintain our fellowship with them in any matter where we are not called upon to so compromise. This ensures that (inasfar as we understand the Scripture) we do not separate ourselves from them any further than they separate themselves from Christ.

We do not consider an act of fellowship to be indicative of total agreement; indeed, we sometimes find it a needed expression of love to submit to others in matters where we do not fully agree, rather than to prevent some greater good from being brought about. Our choice would be to bear with their wrong rather than separate ourselves from their good.

We believe it more scriptural to reflect a heart of love ready to find a covering for faults, than to constantly look for that with which we may disagree. We will then be known more by what we witness for than by what we witness against.

We feel it biblical never to pressure people to act in uniformity further than they feel in uniformity; we use our fellowship in the Spirit as an opportunity to discuss our differences and find this to be the most effective way of leading others – or being led by them – into the light of the Word.

While enjoying such a wide range of Christian fellowship, we would not force this liberty upon those who would feel otherwise minded. In such circumstances, we enjoy fellowship as far as they will permit, then pray that the Lord would lead them further into this true liberty of the common life in Christ.

I’m a Christian, but…

19 Saturday Nov 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Christian trends, christianity, eschatology, Theodicy

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The Christian community in the first century was outside, and in many ways opposed to, the power-struggles and values of the society of their day — both Jewish and Roman. Yet the Christians were culturally relevant — they understood the weighty issues of the day, and respected and honored their hearers.

What they offered was intensely interesting to virtually every segment of society. Jesus was intensely interesting to Pilate, to Herod, to Caiaphas the High Priest, and to the Scribes and Pharisees, the leading religious thinkers of Israel. Paul was intensely interesting to Agrippa and Festus. In Ephesus, Paul was spared from almost certain death by the intervention of the leading (pagan) committee of Asia (“The Asiarchs” – Acts 19:31)

Kings and governors chose to hear from them because so many people were violently opposed to their teachings, and the recent events in Jerusalem had gotten the notice of leaders throughout the civilized world. Christians were a pain to leaders, partly because they did not fear the only real powers the State could muster: economic sanctions or lethal force. Still, Christians weren’t competing to grab the controls of temporal power. They were taught by their leaders to be submissive to the “higher powers” — the State. They were relevant but not worldly; involved but not confrontational. They were a bit prickly at times, because they also acknowledged a higher order, and the freedom of thought and action in religious matters that they believed had come from God to be the ultimate guide of their conscience — not the decrees of an unbelieving State. But they went to prison and the cross with songs on their lips.

Not so today. Now, the Christian community to a large extent has intertwined itself with the world system, and attempt to use money and political processes to gain access to the wheels of power. Everywhere I turn, I see Christians whining about the supposed restriction of Christian freedom by a State that, well, the Christian right feels has betrayed them. This brand of my fellow-Christians seems to have imbibed the notion that the State should be a partner of religion in the institution of morals, in the guiding of children, in the upholding of religious “norms” such as Christmas, prayer at public events, pledging allegiance “under God”, presiding over a religious marriage rite, etc.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe that all western governments, including the United States, has indeed become an ally of a number of elements in society that, in Biblical terms, are by definition immoral. I believe the Bible condemns murder, and specifically gives rights to the unborn fetus in Exodus 21:22 and following. (Though I acknowledge that most Jewish interpreters disagree with my reading of that passage). I agree that Biblical marriage is indeed between a man and a woman. I agree that the foundation of all human society in this fallen world is indeed the family unit, and that the integrity of marriage lies at the heart of that social foundation. I agree that children need to respect and honor their parents if it is to be well with them in life, and in their relationship with God. I think decent people in a democracy have a right and indeed a duty to try and keep their government moral.

But what I am taking issue with here is the notion that true Christian faith has somehow secured a place in the governance of the free world, at least in America. From a historical point of view, I believe that this idea is very dangerous to true Christianity, and very dangerous to the spread of true Christianity. Whenever Christians have gotten their hands on the controls of power, bad things have happened. Well, not always — a few leaders have from time to time been a little less vicious, a little less immoral than your run of the mill tyrants. But mostly, the worst leaders in history have been popes and quasi-religious emperors. These have been venal, corrupt, rapacious, and viciously evil. Among the most notable in this pantheon of “Christian” leaders has been Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain (who expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492), Pope Innocent III, who persecuted the Albigensians and Waldensians, and launched the Inquisition and the Crusades; institutional “Christian” escalation and support of African slavery from the 16th to the 19th centuries; and the 20th century’s own King Leopold II, who decimated the Congo in the name of Christianity and set the stage for Rwanda just a few years ago. Taken together, the number of souls killed by “Christian” leaders certainly must number in the hundreds of millions. And I believe God has been keeping this list, and is now in the process of bringing retributive judgment upon Christian institutions that have been involved with these evils. (Revelation 18)

I am an American, and thankful for the comparatively humane record of the United States over the last two centuries; (I believe the U.S. was in part the “Open Door” of opportunity to oppressed Protestants mentioned in Revelation 3:8) but I am not blind to the many ways we have failed to help the poor, and have at times been conspirators in oppressive actions by religious and political leaders around the globe. The point is, that the United States is not, and never has been a theocracy — a government truly ruled by God. It is a republic or a democracy — ruled by the people who are partly good, partly bad, partly religious, and partly secular; and its strength for good has come as much from its Thomas Paines and Thomas Jeffersons and its Abraham Lincolns (agnostics or deists) as from its George Washingtons, Jimmy Carters, or George Bushes (openly religious men).

But I digress. My main point in this essay is this: what is so strange about recent trends is that the first century relevance and yet alienation from the halls of power by true Christians has been replace by irrelevance, insensitivity to the poor, and a pawing after the privileges of power on the part of “Christians”.

And equally amazing: concern for the poor, concern for the environment, interest in checking governmental abuses and advancing the rights of human beings on all fronts has been taken up by agnostics, atheists, unbelievers of every stripe.

Today “Christianity” is less likely to be identified with the poor and oppressed, and more likely to be today the preferred religion of many powerful, educated people. Partly because Christianity identifies with morality and “family values” — which in my opinion is noble and good. But also partly, because “Christianity” confers power and privilege and social advantage in the United States, if not in many places on the globe.

Today the preservation of the environment is more likely to be advocated by atheists and agnostics than by Christians. The reality of human-induced global warming is being ridiculed by “Christians” — why? Is it because of the weight of scientific evidence, or the advantages to our privileged ways of life and the disdain they hold for environmentalists?

The rights of oppressed people are more likely to be championed by secular or irreligious voices than by Christians. And even the cause of “truth” — logic, investigation, true science — instead of being advanced by true Christians as it was during the Reformation — is now becoming, embarrassingly to some of us Christians, the domain of the skeptical, the atheist, the unbeliever.

Gotta run. Truth and justice demand that I finish my Work in time to watch the Ohio State/Michigan game.

Problem of Pain

18 Friday Nov 2005

Posted by in eschatology, Theodicy

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MM writes in her “Theology of the Body” blog yesterday that as many philosophers have noted, there are two primary issues relative to evil that we must lay at God’s feet: the “acts of God” that involve human suffering in an incomplete or unfriendly planet, and the “moral failures” that flow form human free moral agency.

She writes an interesting conclusion:

I would submit also that people tend to become uncomfortable with these explanations of pain as resulting from a broken world and moral failure; such an answer seems incomplete. In fact, such an answer is incomplete, until both you and your audience have acknowledged your own “breaking” role in the broken world. May I suggest that such a conversation about the problem of pain is a good opportunity to recognize (gently) the sin and brokenness of the one who brings these troubling questions about the reality of pain, and the consequent need for the Savior?

The approach advocated by MM, it seems to me, may come across as insensitive — sort of like blaming the victim. (as Anonymous seemed to be saying). Yes, we all need to repent. But even after we have repented we will still hurt. And hurt even more on behalf of those who are darkened and discouraged by the prevalence of invincible evil, while the only invincible force in the universe does not interfere. So to force people to wait for an answer about the goodness of God, until they have personally taken full responsibility for their troubles, is both incomplete and unnecessary.

Unnecessary because the Bible is full of answers on this topic of God’s goals and ultimate designs. Incomplete, because the process of repentance and growth toward Godlikeness is a long journey, not a single step. In fact, when we envision the world as it will be toward the end of Messiah’s rule — a world that by today’s standards will be a paradise, with scarcely a problem visible anywhere, victory over evil will still be quite incomplete. In that world, all the people who have ever lived will be back, outwardly obedient and living happily. They will have acknowledged the Savior, and learned substantially much more about how to live and love, freely … and yet the probability of a major explosion of evil will still exist. And it is predicted that evil will indeed come roaring back at the end of the Millennium, in the “little season”. Jesus puts his finger on why in his parable of the Sheep and the Goats. There, when queried as to their sins of omission, exposed at the end of Messiah’s rule, both categories of people are unconscious of what they omitted. Or at least they say they are.

I therefore submit that what God is working toward, the goal he has laid down of complete victory over evil, will only come when all human beings and angels will have fully learned how to be unconsciously, constantly good. So good that they will not only avoid transgression, their love for others will not miss opportunities to do good. This level of character growth will require God’s mighty help, and it will begin to be extended while people are weak.

At the moment, the weak are still saying they are strong. The proud are still “happy”. But God will intervene, he will cry, yea, roar. He will defeat every human rival institution, including and especially the “Christian” ones.

Yet God will also be winsome in victory, and even with the toughest cases of wickedness, God will rise to the occasion by revealing his judgments in an educational way, and by attacking the wickedness of the wicked, until he finds no more wickedness. (Psalm 10:15)

This will take some amazing teaching on God’s part, and some long experience with the subtleties of human and angelic pride. But it will happen, and it is promised. And so I would disagree that God did the ultimate good by creating free beings who can and do sin. If that is all he did, he would be the author of confusion, bitterness and death. But God will make the anger of man, the sin of man, the wilfulness of man, praise him by turning it into a learning opportunity, and nurture every willing heart toward complete victory. All godlike creatures carry destructive possibilities within their hearts and minds — so pain and suffering at the present time is only a problem when viewed shortsightedly. In the long view, it is a necessary part, and everyone will be able to graduate with honors from this long and arduous class.