The Catholic Church teaches that death does not separate the church of God from itself. We are members of one another and this solidarity continues even after we have been taken from this world. This is why they pray to the deceased. It’s not that they’re worshipping the dead, they just believe death is not strong enough to rend them from one another.

 

Though Protestants are often scared by such a thought, I wonder if there’s biblical precedent for it. Paul’s discussion of the “Heavenly Realms” throughout Ephesians provides us with one foundation. In this realized eschatological terminology, Paul sees the “living” ecclesia participating in worship with the “dead” ecclesia in the presence of Christ who is at the right hand of God. In other words, though we are “living” and they are “dead,” we are together!

 

Furthermore, the author of Hebrews tells us that we run our race with a crowd of deceased saints around us. They are not removed from us, they are encouraging us to run our race in perseverance. We participate in the narrative of redemptive history together with the saints.

 

So, if the church of God is not separated by death, then it is a far stretch for us to consider the possibility that the deceased saints intercede for the living saints? Why would they not pray for the perseverance of their loved ones still living? If they can cry out for justice below the throne of God (See Revelation), why can they not cry out for perseverance?

 

But if this is possible – if they are in our midst and still interacting enough to pray for us, is it possible that we can communicate with them? I don’t mean this in some “Ghost Whisperer” sort of way. I simply mean, if a brother or sister in the Lord dies, but, say, we had unforgiveness in our hearts toward them, is it possible for us to apologize to them? Must we just be restricted to asking for God's forgiveness? Certainly, unforgiveness is a sin against God. But do you think its possible to reconcile with a believer who has in fact passed on?

 

I don’t know. Just brainstorming here. Thinking about dead people. Maybe being morbid. I’m not coming down on this….I’m just thinking out loud.

 

My wife and I are joining/starting an intentional community of mutual sharing and responsibility. We will be moving in on April 26.

Here are some thoughts I've had during this process...

One of the great doctrines of ancient Church lies in their teaching that death cannot separate the ekkelesia of God from itself. Indeed, this is one of the great doctrines of Pauline theology if we read Ephesians carefully enough. Death cannot alienate us either from the love of God or from fellowship of one another. The church, the community of Christ, is so solidified, so fused together, and so intertwined that the feeble attempts of our “final enemy” to rupture our bonds of faith are fated to failure.

Oh, but what death could not accomplish American individualism has achieved. The same church Paul commands to be “united in Spirit” and “contending as one soul for the faith of the gospel” has been torn asunder like the pitied girl whose corpse was cut in 12 chunks and mailed to each of Israel’s most powerful mob families. Individualism’s insipid doctrine of self-autonomy and self-betterment have all but made the church a privatized social club calling for no accountability and possessing no prophetic voice. And when you have a group of self-oriented people attempting to do life together, factions and schism are inevitable – it’s like sticking a bunch of 2 year olds in a sandbox together; it’s not going to be long before it becomes a human litter box despite the protests of those who know better.

From where does this individualism emerge? Surely not form within the biblical text with its persistent call for communal unity. And surely not from church tradition which stresses that there is no salvation apart from the church community – that is, one cannot claim to be a Christian and not participate in the redeemed community.

But it would be too premature a jump for me to say that it arises out of some secular-liberal agenda clandestinely subverting the church and its "Christian" culture. In fact, this would be the easy answer wouldn’t it? After all, aren’t those “leftists” to blame for all our problems? It certainly couldn’t be that we’ve swallowed our own red pill, could it?

Sociologist Max Weber actually traces American individualism back to….wait for it….Protestantism (specifically it’s early American Puritan version). In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ,Weber argues that the Calvinistic theology of early American Protestantism focused largely on individual election and the signs thereof. That "God has predestined me, personally, to eternal salvation is manifested in the fact that he has prospered me with material gain” was the thought of the hour, and has stayed around long after Puritanism died under the weight of its own self-righteousness.

For me, this assumption is largely what our little community will challenge. I want my materialistic, self-focused Christianity to be defenestrated like a bad grade card on the bus ride home from school. I want to proceed from avarice to abnegation and learn to think of others more highly than I do myself. I want to learn to blame myself first for community conflict instead of assuming others are always asinine. I want to purge the materialistic, privatized, self-absorbed religiosity from my soul, that somehow I might know Christ and the power of his resurrection in a more meaningful way. I want to confront and be confronted with sin. I want to lay my soul bare before others so that there remains no crevice left for falsehood to fester.

Dear God, I must be insane…

I don't usually like just adding a quote without some kind of commentary, but I think this one can stand on its own.

"God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war . . . . We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. The God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don’t play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

-Hell does not occur within the Pauline Corpus. In other words, Paul’s gospel is not proclaimed with the threatening backdrop of Hell looming over his hearers. It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. The closest Paul gets is ‘eternal condemnation’ in Galatians. And even this is threatened to those who actively oppose the gospel. It is not related to those who do so in ignorance.

 

-Peter doesn’t use our normal Gk. word for Hell. He employs the Gk. mythological term. I’m not sure what significance to draw from this quite yet. I’ll get back with you on this one.

 

-The Gospels are the prime employers of Hell terminology, along with Revelation of course. In the Gospels, Hell language is primarily metaphorical (though, this obviously doesn’t suggest there isn’t a ‘real’ place.). This is even more so the case with Revelation – in apocalyptic literature, symbolism rules the day. It is probable, then, that Hell is not a place burning with fire. Burning and gnashing of teeth are metaphorical ways of referring to punishment.

 

-In the Gospels, Hell is not reserved for the unbeliever who has never heard. Hell is reserved for those who have heard and should have known better.

 

- Assuming the traditional reading of I Peter’s reference to Hell, Jesus descends into Hell to preach to people who are there. But why? Is it possible that, as CS Lewis hints at, Christ’s offers of salvation are made even to people in Hell? There seem to be no clear texts indicating either direction – though we certainly have traditional understandings that are offended by this suggestion.

 

-In Revelation Hell is a place where Fallen Babylon will end up – the world system of opposition to God. This is not a system ignorant of God – this is the Roman Empire who actively stood against Christians and persecuted them.

 

-Hell is never threatened to ignorant unbelievers. It is always to those who actively oppose the gospel (the Rome Empire, the antagonists in the Gospels).

 

-Hell is not an OT concept. Sorry KJV readers of the Psalms, Sheol is not Hell. Sheol is the place of the dead. All people went there in OT theology. Hell does not develop in Jewish theology until the Intertestamental period. Most scholars agree that it developed because Israel was in Exile while believing also in a God of justice. That is, in this life in Exile they could not see how justice was going to prevail, but because they believed in a God of justice, they took hold of this idea of Hell which essentially said, “Though we do not see justice in this life, we will see it in the next.” The concept actually appeared first in the pagan religions Israel interacted with during their Exile.

 

Maybe we should rethink our evangelical doctrines of Hell to include these observations. Maybe our zeal for evangelism and dramatic conversion has blinded us to what the Bible actually says about Hell. Did I miss anything? And I swear if anyone accuses me of being Emergent or Universalist just because of this post I will gouge their eye out with a spoon!

 

In one of the more misunderstood passages dealing with the life of Jesus, the Son of God encounters a gentile woman who seeks his assistance in casting a demon out of her daughter. The gospel of Mark provides her pedigree for us: “a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia.”[1] Before we get to hear Jesus’ response to her request, Mark supplies us with the three strikes against her from the average Jewish standpoint.  She was A. a woman, B. a gentile woman, and C. gentile woman who hailed from the insufferable Syrophoenician region, a region filled with people who should have been destroyed in the Canaanite genocides – their very presence a continual reminder to the Jews of their failure to fully obey Yahweh. Even the most hated woman in the Hebrew Bible, Queen Jezebel, hailed from this region. But as we shall see, our narrative redeems the Canaanite people and our woman serves as a reminder that Yahweh’s mind has changed about the decedents of Queen Jezebel.

 

While others would have considered her unclean, Jesus has just completed teaching that uncleanness is a matter of the heart, not the body, “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean?’…What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”[2]

 

In context, Jesus puts into practice what he preaches. Even trekking through the region of Tyre and Sidon betrayed an act of rebellion. 1^st century Jewish stereotypes considered this an area of “seduction to false gods and hostility to the Jewish people.”[3] Instead of judging this woman based on her gender, ancestry, and the side of the tracks she came from, Jesus addresses her as a person, not a mere stereotype.[4]  Interestingly Yahweh, who originally commanded the Canaanite genocide, is, in this text, informing us that power, dehumanization and domination are inadequate means by which to spread God’s kingdom.  The superiority of the gospel to violence is a probable ethical principle one could draw from this passage.The Canaanites who were once supposed be destroyed now find a place within God's redemptive plan. This text, then, is intended to counter the Canaanite genocides - this text, above that one, displays the character of God!

 

While Jesus response to this gentile woman may seem harsh, he does not respond to her with sexism or racism, for that would be a violation of the sermon he has just preached. Initially the text informs us that Jesus refuses the woman’s request.  Jesus notifies the woman that, as a dog (gentile), she will have to wait for the children (Israel) to be finished feasting before she can eat. While this may sound offensive to us, the woman has no such reaction.  She does not react as if Jesus has insulted her.  More likely, she understands that Jesus is merely stating that the time for ministry among the gentiles has not yet arrived. Demonstrating great intelligence and wit[5], she tells Jesus that sometimes dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table as the children are eating.  “Now is a good time for my daughter to be healed, even if the time of the gentiles has not arrived,” she says. 

 

Without regard for her gender or race, Jesus grants the woman’s request. With no consideration for whether or not this woman or her daughter are deemed unclean because of their gender, Jesus heals them both.  He casts the unclean spirit out of the daughter, symbolizing that the gentiles by virtue of their race, and women by virtue of their gender, should no longer be categorized as unclean. He shows this woman she is not subhuman simply because of her gender or race. Neither Jesus nor the gospel writers concerned themselves with her gender; they simply marveled at her “great faith.”[6]

 

Forgive and forget. The phrase always resounds of bumper sticker Christianity to me. Like when my guitar gets played too much the sound of this phrase just never seems to hit my ears at the right pitch – one of the strings must be out of tune, or more likely broken.

 

Sure, forgiveness is a perpetual necessity, but forgetting? Really? Is forgetting violence and sin perpetrated against me even feasible? Is it even morally justifiable to forget in a world where people take advantage of that forgetfulness?

 

We acknowledge forgiveness as a chief Christian virtue. Despite this, few actually practice it. Indeed, it is not as though it is an easy virtue to practice – one must be harmed first. Nevertheless, Christ is clear that those who do not practice forgiveness will not be forgiven  (sorry, my fellow evangelicals, sola fide just doesn’t cut it here). This much is clear. But is forgetting clear? What does that even mean or look like?

 

As long as I remember the violence one commits against me I will never be able to fully embrace and enjoy the other person as a creature created in God’s image. I will never be able to trust the other person fully to the extent that their violence against me resides in my mind. So long as this violence is ready and willing to spring to mind. That is, I leave them locked into the role, the violent role, they once played in my life.

 

My paradigm for forgive and forget is, of course, God. No Sunday School answer here – God will surely wipe away all tears and remember our sins no more. We will be separated from our sins, our acts of violence, our self-focused perpetrations against God and others, as far as the east is from the west. Forgive and forget. Apparently God does.

 

Or does He?

 

If recalling a previous violence performed against me at the hands of a perpetrator is a sin of violence against them because it casts them into a mold they have been forgiven of and redeemed from, then this surely explains, on a divine level, why God also forgets our sins against Him. That is, God will not continue to remind us of our sin. He will not keep us in the role of once-disobedient children who, though they have been forgiven, need constant reminders of their former wickedness, thereby keeping them shackled to their old selves. Supposedly remnants of sin will be lost to divine forgetfulness. Supposedly.

 

I wonder if God really can forget.  When someone has physically harmed me the scars and wounds will always be present. But once I have died, those scars will no longer be there – thereby giving me an even greater ability to forget the former violent action. This is also the case with psychological violence perpetrated against me. Though there may be a sense in which Auschwitz survivors will never fully mentally recover from their wounds, when they have passed on to the presence of God, they will be enabled to forget.

 

Yet this is not so with Christ. Someone once told me that the only man-made things in heaven will be the scared hands and feet of Jesus. Indeed, when we look at the Gospel accounts this is true. Jesus tells Thomas to place his hands inside His scars. The fact that Thomas is able to, even with Jesus’ new resurrected, glorified body, says that these scars, unlike mine, will be permanent.

 

The scars of Jesus will be a constant reminder of what redemption cost. The scars of Jesus will never let me forget what the casting away of my sin really took. And wouldn’t it be somewhat of a dishonoring of Christ’s sacrifice to forget such a thing? Wouldn’t it be a shame if we went through eternity having forgotten of our redemption – the most glorious act of love in history?

 

Though we are told our sins will be remembered no more, I don’t know if divine omniscience or the scars of Jesus allows for such a thing. But if I do not accept that these things will be forgotten, then won’t I also be saying that part of God’s promises won’t come true? Will I not be saying the Bible contradicts itself in an important way?

 

Just a thought for the day….a normal thought for a normal day.

 

 

 

 

Blogging is hobby I fully enjoy. There’s just something fun about leaving your opinions out there for others to read and extract from them encouragement or insight. My blog is a world I’ve created where my musings and opinions reign supreme – and like King Jeremy the Wicked, I stand on top of my created mountain “with arms raised in a V!”

Unfortunately, along with my victorious creation “the dead lay in pools of maroon below.” This is because blogging also brings out my brokenness. Much of blogging is about disclosing a false-self. I want you to think I’m smart or funny. I want you to think I’m godly or confident. Lord forbid that you should see my insecurities, sins, or fears – or worst of all, think I might actually be wrong about something.

I’m a pacifist, but the more I blog (an innocent activity in itself) the more I see violence still residing within my heart and in the heart of others. Is this the case because over the internet we can be total a-hole’s without having to pay the consequences of hurting someone close to us? Does this brokenness manifest itself so easily in blogging because in the false world we’ve created we are able to be whoever we want to be instead of who God has created us to be? Is arrogance so prevalent in our blog discussions because in the end those people on the other side of the computer screen are not actually people created in the image of God? Rather, they’re faceless sub-humans whose only value in my false-world comes from whether or not they agree with my latest theological agenda?

About 6 months ago I became a bit convicted about the condescending face I put forth in my blog page.[1] So I started a new page and vowed not to let conceit rule in my new cosmos. Thus far I think I have succeeded. But it’s taken some work – when people reply to my posts in rude or obnoxious ways, I really have a hard time not telling them off. I’ve found myself actually being able to fight off the false-self that wants to emerge in those situations and have decided not to respond at all or to respond in gentleness.[2]

It’s simply not my job to put all the Calvinists and Modernists in their places. Neither is it my job to think more highly of myself than I ought to. I must remember that the Fundamentalist, though I do not agree with her/him, is still my sister/brother in Christ. I must keep in mind that John Calvin, John Wesley, and John Nelson Darby are brothers in the Lord who stand in need of a gracious savior. To create a false-reality where one or more of them is not honored as a fellow citizen of the kingdom is to deny the ultimate graciousness of our wonderful Lord.

Here are some thoughts/observations on the White Horse in Revelation 6. As you can tell from my previous posts and this one - I sure do love inner-book word studies. They just seem to clear up so much misunderstanding.

In Revelation 6:2, when the Lamb who was slain unfastens the first of 7 seals, a white horse comes forth carrying a rider who holds a bow, but no arrows. This rider is given a crown and rides out as a conqueror to conquer. Dispensationalists often interpret this rider to be the anti-Christ – the eschatological one who will come and dupe the world into following him. He fools them by bringing peace (hence no arrows), and for 3.5 years is a peaceful chap until something snaps in him and he goes berserk in a cosmic sort of way.

Contrary to this popular interpretation, though, this figure in chapter 6 is hardly some eschatological anti-messiah. This figure really is the actual Messiah, Jesus Christ. He comes forth to conquer, but does not do so with violence – again, the lack of arrows in his bow. His white horse would conjure great insecurities in the mind of  a 1st cent. Roman. The Parthians were a horse-riding, bow wielding threat to the Pax Romana. John utilizes this imagery to subvert Rome's power and false sense of peace. Jesus, the crucified messiah, rides this horse and he alone conqueors with peace.

This fact of the crucified, peacemaking Jesus being the figure represented as riding a white horse is supported by simple word studies in the passage. And here’s where I will spend the rest of my time.

First, the Gk. word for white (leuko,j) only, only, only occurs in reference to Jesus, God, or the faithful followers of Jesus in John’s apocalypse. White is the color of righteous triumph, the color of those who have overcome, the color of the One who delivers the revelation of God. In fact, in 19:11, another (probably the same) white horse comes out with a rider on it who is explicitly shown to be Jesus – the One called Faithful and True. Now, John’s imagery is often difficult to interpret, but I seriously doubt he would put both Jesus and the anti-Christ on the same white horse (or even two horses that came from the same mother). This color is strictly reserved for the righteous and the Righteous One, not the world or Babylon.

Second, the crown this rider receives is the Gk. word (ste,fanoj) employed only, only, only in reference to the believers and Christ in Revelation. The Beast and other antagonists in Revelation sport a different crown altogether – a completely different Gk. word. The one time an antagonist does wear this righteous crown, Revelation says it is “like a ste,fanoj of gold” (w`j ste,fanoi crusoi/), not an actual ste,fanoj. That is, this is a fake ste,fanoj.

Third, the Gk. word for conquer (nikw/n) – from which we get the word “Nike” – is employed only, only, only in relation to Jesus and the saints who faithfully followed him. There are 2 exceptions to this in Revelation, but the overwhelming evidence points to the use I have mentioned here. Furthermore, in the previous chapter – the immediate context, that is - (5:5) the imagery directly pointed to Jesus being the conqueror. John expects his readers to still have that imagery in their mind when they come to this horse.

Fourth, I would look at the bow. Dispensationalists often say that the anti-Christ will conquer with peace, but unfortunately miss that Jesus has already conquered with peace. Jesus brings peace, not through a sword, not through military might, but through being the Lamb that was slain. They got the peace right – they just gave it to the wrong person.

Finally, offering an argument from silence, I would also note that the word “anti-Christ” not only never occurs in this passage, but never occurs outside the books of 1& 2 John. And there the anti-Christ’s were among the people – they were not some eschatological figure waiting to deceive the world – the deception is occurring now!

Ok, more later, but for now, let me know what you think – especially you Dispensationalists out there. Why must this figure be the anti-Christ? In the end, I think the evidence I have provided here is overwhelming, but I’m up for someone making an attempt….(I say with a challenging wink and sly smile).

Try this on and let me know what you think...

Premise 1: If God is a Spirit then 'He' is beyond sexual distinctions.

Premise 2: If God is beyond sexual distinctions, then sexually distinctive language concerning God comes from the creatures, not the Creator.

Premise 3: If sexually distinctive language about God comes from the creature, not God,  then it tells us more about the creatures than it does about God.

Premise 4: If the the language tells us more about the creature than about God, then gender specific language about God is not helpful for learning about God.

Conclusion: If gender specific language about God is not helpful, then we should abandon it altogether or use both male and female pronouns at the same time...something like s/he.

Okay....give me all you got.

I would never notice certain things unless someone points them out first. Then, once brought to my attention, that thing dominates my faculties of observation, making me almost long for the naiveté I previously possessed. When I first began reading feminist theology, Schusseler-Fiorenza and Welch drew my attention to how language, particularly patriarchal language, shapes not only abstract theological concepts, but also the everyday, practical matters of the Christian life. Among other things, we assume male dominance in the masculine pronouns we use for God, even though we classically maintain God is neither He nor She, but Spirit.

 

Though I could continue to criticize the church’s use of vocabulary in the oppression of certain peoples, the ecclesiastical rhetoric I want to appraise presently is the church’s employment of the rhetoric of the Empire – particularly its economic rhetoric.

 

I often hear Christians refer to “investing” in either non-believers or people whom they are mentoring in the faith. The language of investment is procured, obviously, from the economic world referring to putting money to use in order to gain a potentially profitable return. That is, one invests in order to gain a return.

 

But is the return what Christian friendship is really about? It is supposed to be what I can gain from my time and effort spilled into another person? When we “invest” in a non-Christian, what we often mean is that we spend time with them in order to make them Christian! When we “invest” in a disciple, we mean we spend time with them in order to elicit the return of sanctification!

 

But is the return at the heart of Christianity? Is my primary agenda in befriending a non-Christian that they might buy into my product? Does this language not dehumanize and objectify our “investment”? Does this language not communicate that this whole Christianity thing is about what I can profit, or God can yield? Being friends with people outside the Christian faith is not about investment, it is about being genuine friends! Genuine friendship, for sure, involves demonstrating God’s love to the other. But this demonstration of love is not artificial and contrived; it is not about reciprocation or return. Consider my friendship with JR.

 

I would never say of JR that I am “investing” in him. That would entail certain things which are not inherent in sincere friendship. It would imply that I deem him spiritually below me or that he needs me in his life to be spiritually fruitful. It also implies that my agenda is to correct his spiritual imperfections, and because of my investment, I expect that he will provide a certain return. In the end, the language of investment doesn’t appear to be a natural part of genuine friendship.

 

But, in the end, this is not even the most dangerous aspect of investment rhetoric.

 

For me, the most dangerous part of the church’s employment of economic language is that we have taken the language of America’s dominant deity (economics, consumerism, materialism), and leaving it unchanged and unchallenged, we have taken it into our communities like a long lost brother. But as long as the economic rhetoric involved in America’s one true religion is warmly accepted by the church, we will never be able to counter the influence of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, or just plain-ole Mammon in our lives.

 

Now from where I sit, it appears we have two options. First, the church can completely rid itself of economic language.  We can completely drop the language like a deflated stock. No more language of investment or any other kind of rhetoric that smacks of capitalism.

 

The second option, and one that requires a bit more creativity, is to continue to use economic language, but subvert it by investing it with distinctly Christian meaning. This option falls in line a bit more with what we see in the New Testament. The Gk. word we translate “fellowship” often referred to partnership in business agendas in the first century. Also, and more obvious, the word we translate “redeem” means to “buy back.” It too is an overtly economic word.

 

I like this second option the best, but there are two difficulties with it.

 

First, are we creative enough, or even powerful enough, to change the way Christian people generally employ economic rhetoric? Like Wal-Mart in a small town, economic language dominates our American landscape. Completely subverting it and changing it is a nearly impossible task. We may try, but in the end, our use of language is merely a text which is interpreted and misinterpreted by our hearers. Just because I invest economic rhetoric with new meaning doesn’t mean my hearers will observe that investment.

 

Second, when the New Testament writers reinvested economic language with Christian meaning, they were not using the language of the dominant deity of the Roman Empire. So, even assuming our hearers will understand our new meaning, might we be safer in simply abandoning the language altogether?

 

So, that’s as far as my thoughts have taken me on this topic thus far. I’m looking for some help getting past this roadblock. What do you think? The bottom line is that Jesus did not heal people for his own glory, and he even healed some who never even thanked him or his Father. It doesn’t seem like his investment in people was only about what he or his religion can get out of it. What about just showing people the love of God for its own sake?