Random Reflections - Greg Boyd

This Blog Has Moved

2008-07-21T20:54:00.003-05:00

Hi folks.

Well, believe it or not, the new Christus Victor Ministries website has (finally) been launched! Check it out at www.gregboyd.org. While there are still a few loose ends, we're very pleased with it. You'll find a wealth of material on the new site that wasn't on the old site. This site will also host my blog from now on.

Check out the site and browse around a bit.

Blessings

Greg

Pastor Boyd rocks the house!

2008-07-18T08:54:00.003-05:00

Below is Greg's drum solo from a few weeks ago at the NDY fundraiser on behalf of Providence Ministries. Tonight, NDY will be performing in Jackson, MN at Rhythm of the River, a two-day music festival.

Thanks Greg for using your talents to better the lives of kids in Haiti!!
posted by yours truly~marcia

A Little Whining and a Book Review (Overcoming Evil God's Way)

2008-07-14T08:10:00.001-05:00

Yo folks,

Hope you’re all enjoying a grand summer (or, for those in the Southern Hemisphere, a nice winter). I’m having a great time, but I’m also feeling a bit scattered. It's requiring more effort than usual to stay centered and aware of God's presence. Not sure how it happened, but I’ve just had way too many “pots on the burner.” Mind if I whine for a moment?

Here's a snippet of my life (beyond the ordinary chores, relationships, etc.). I have my weekly sermons and other church duties, of course. And, as part of my daily routine, I have about 50 e-mails (on average) that ask for a response (taking roughly an hour a day). Beyond this, I just finished and sent off a manuscript for publication entitled (tentatively) This Sacred Moment: Reflections on Practicing the Presence of God. I’m now editing the page proofs of Revolting Beauty and refining for publication The Cosmic Dance (our funky illustrated book on science and theology). I'm speaking eight times at a week-long conference in Hungary in a couple weeks that I need to prepare for. I have two academic dictionary entries, an academic journal article and three revised chapters for the new edition of Across the Spectrum due by September. Plus I'm supposed to complete two chapters in a forthcoming anthology by this spring.

But these aren't what's occupying most of my time. The project that presently occupies most of my time, thought and passion these days is The Myth of the Blueprint (my eight-year project showing the influence of pagan philosophy on the early church's view of God, free will, providence and evil). I just finished a section on the first two heirs of Plato in the "Old Academy," Seusippus and Xenocrates. This stuff seriously lights my fire!

See, I've got lots of pots on the fire. I don't want or expect anyone to feel sorry for me, because I love every bit of this! (Well, e-mails not so much, but everything else for sure). But that's my problem. I'm interested in and passionate about way too many things! (My ADHD tendencies are getting the better of me, I suppose).

But I’m not quite done whining yet. I also have to read -- a lot. I have to read! It’s a sort of addiction. Last week I finished J. R. Boys-Stones’ Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of its Development from the Stoics to Origen. (This is a great work detailing the shift from independent reasoning to authority that occurred in Stoicism and Middle Platonism and that strongly influenced early Christianity). Then two days ago I finished John Dillon's The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347-274). (Dillon is the best authority on ancient Platonism, in my opinion). I’m now reading a book that a publisher sent to me, written by Stephen Russell, entitled Overcoming Evil God’s Way (Faith Builders Resource Group, 2008).

And with this I (finally!) transition from my whining to the point of this post. (Oh yes, I forgot to mention in my whining that I try to post two or three times a week. Nuts, isn't it?).

Overcoming Evil is intended to be a comprehensive overview of the biblical and historical case for “nonresistance” (returning force with force). I’m only a hundred pages into this book (it's about 300 pages long), but so far it’s very good. Already I'd recommend it. Russell's material on the Old Testament is a nice, clear and comprehensive introduction to the issue of peace and violence in the Old Testament, though it doesn't add much to what we’ve already covered the last couple of months. My review will thus be brief.

His main point is that, when you read the Old Testament in the light of Jesus Christ (as we must) it becomes evident that, while all Scripture is inspired, not all Scripture reveals God’s character with equal clarity. It's true God reluctantly participates in the bloody barbarism of the cultures he’s trying to slowly win over, but God's true character is revealed when (for example) he mercifully protects Cain, the murderer, from being murdered and when he puts strong constraints around ancient, unbridled, retaliation practices. So too, in contrast to the barbaric Conquest narratives, we see God’s true heart in Old Testament characters who display Christ-like characteristics. For example, we find Elisha doing warfare God’s way when Elisha leads a supernaturally blinded Syrian army with whom Israel was at war (and that had been dispatched specifically to kill Elisha! See 2 Kg 6:12-14) into the court of the Samaritan King. When all expected Elisha to give the order to slaughter the captives, he instead told the king to throw them a banquet (2 Kg 6:22-23). That’s doing battle God’s way. And in contrast to the use of violence which always -- always! -- leads to more violence, this act of mercy brought an end to the fighting between Syria and Israel (2 Kg 6:23). God's ideal will is for his people to fight like Elisha, not Joshua.

Three other points of emphasis in Russell's material on Old Testament violence are worth mentioning. First, Russell rightly points out that, while Yahweh knew his people would have to be defended against hostile nations (recall Ellul's point that nationalism and violence are two sides of the same coin), God didn’t originally intend to have his people fight. He repeatedly promised his people that if they would trust him, he would do all their fighting for them. Moreover, as we've seen, many passages suggest that God originally intended to fight Israel's enemies with non-lethal means, e.g. driving them out with hornets. So, when God later commands his people to kill (unless Creach is right and this is to be interpreted allegorically), this too must be understood to be a matter of God sadly accommodating his will to meet his untrusting, violence prone people where they're at.

Second, Russell has an excellent section on God as the Lord of history. He notes how God was willing to use the violent tendencies and arrogance of one nation (e.g. Assyria) to punish the sinfulness of another nation (e.g. Israel), only to turn around and allow yet a different arrogant and violence-prone nation (e.g. Babylon) to punish that nation (Assyria). In doing this God was exposing the sinfulness of all nations as well as exposing the futility of using violence as a source of security. (This is similar to what Craigie argued in The Problem of War in the Old Testament). The only true security is trust in God. Yet, in the midst of all these judgments, Russel points out, there was always uttered a word of mercy and hope. Even Assyria and Egypt, Israel's arch-enemies, would eventually become part of God’s people (e.g. Isa. 19:25).

Third, in the course of fleshing out all this, Russell offers some wise and pointed words to America. He notes that empires rise and fall with remarkable speed, even those such as Assyria and Babylon who, at the height of their power, seemed utterly invincible. Babylon’s mighty reign lasted less than a century, as did the empire of modern day communist Russia. We Americans are now the reigning empire, and, as with all previous empires, we trust in our power and wealth to keep us secure. (In fact, as with all previous empires, we interpret our power and wealth as a blessing from God/the gods). We must remember that this has been the arrogant mindset of all empires just prior to their falls from power.

In this light, Russell concludes, “Who imagined the fall of the Soviet Union would come a short seven decades after its founding and rapid rise in power? And who among us knows what God has in store for our nation or any other? But His purpose is good, and if we choose to become part of His plan, even our deaths will be victorious” (72-73).

Wise words. I encourage you to put no trust in the power and wealth of America (or whatever country you happen to live in). The only real security is in Yaweh and living his way, as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Even if it means you die.

Stay centered in his love and peace.

Creach and the Command to "Utterly Destroy"

2008-07-05T15:43:00.003-05:00

Hello Bloggers,

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I was waiting until my new site was ready to launch before writing another post. Unfortunately, it seems something new pops up every day to delay the launch, so I finally decided to post regardless of when the new site will be ready. (Do you have any idea how much work it takes to get a new website ready? For cry'n out loud!)

We’ve been discussing (among other things) the problem of Old Testament violence on this blog the last couple months. Without question the most offensive aspect of Old Testament violence concerns God’s command to “destroy them [the Canaanites] totally” and “show them no mercy” (Deut. 7:2). This is the concept of herem (“ban”) which most scholars interpret to mean something like “devote to destruction.” It's close to the concept of offering something up as a sacrifice to Yahweh. But could anything be more contrary to the teachings of Jesus than the idea of sacrificing men, women and children (to say nothing of the animals) to God as a sacred offering?

But what if the concept of herem was not meant to be taken literally? This was the view of the second century theologian Origen (found in his Homilies on Joshua). He argued that anything in the Old Testament that wasn’t consistent with the moral and theological truth revealed in Christ must be interpreted in a non-literal way. He thus interpreted herem as an allegory for spiritual warfare. The Canaanites thus represent everything inside of us or in the world that keeps us from being fully devoted to God. These things, he argued, must be completely destroyed.

Now, the practice of allegorizing Scripture (on the part of Jews and Christians) or other ancient literature (like Homer on the part of pagans) in order to make it more consistent with the beliefs and practices of the exegete was a widespread practice in the ancient world, especially in Alexandria where Origen was located. But, as a general approach to Scripture, it is uniformly rejected by scholars today. Not surprising, until recently I knew of no scholar who took Origen’s attempt to allegorize herem seriously. Then I happened to stumble onto the work of Dr. Jerome Creach, Professor of Old Testament at Pittsburg Theological Seminary. Dr. Creach was kind enough to send me the rough draft of a chapter he’s working on in which he fleshes out his view that herem was not meant to be taken literally. (It will be part of a larger book he’s writing that addresses the issue of faith and violence).

I can summarize the heart of Creach’s argument by making seven points. Taken together, they suggest that herem in Deut. 7:2 was meant as a metaphor for complete devotion to Yahweh, not as a command to literally annihilate people.

1) There are a number of passages in Deuteronomy that reflect a much more humane treatment of foreigners than a literally reading of herem would suggest. For example, Deuteronomy 15 instructs the Israelites to be generous and merciful to foreigners, and 21:10-14 gives instruction to Israelite men requiring them to treat with decency Canaanite women they want to marry. Verses 24:17-18 instruct the Israelites to be kind to foreigners in need, and so on. How are these instructions consistent with the command to completely slaughter all Canaanites?

2) Joshua 11:19 presents the Israelites as trying to make peace with various Canaanite cities, though only the Gibeonites accept their offer. Only when cities rejected peace did war ensue. Other passages treat Israelite warfare as a defensive response to Canaanite aggression as well. Creach argues that this theme is interwoven throughout the Conquest narrative (reflecting concerns by those who redacted the final version of this book). This motif hardly seems consistent with the understanding that the Israelites were to slaughter them carte blanch.

3) The fact that Rahab (Joshua 2) and the Gibeonites are spared -- and even held up as models of faith -- is hard to reconcile with a literal interpretation of herem.

4) Engaging in redaction arguments that are too complex to go into here, Creach argues that Joshua 1-12 presents an idealized account of the Conquest. There is some evidence for this in the text itself. For example, Joshua 11:23 says Joshua “took the entire land” and that there was a rest from war. But 13:1 depicts "large areas of land" that had not yet been taken over when Joshua was an old man. Moreover, the beginning of Judges describes how various tribes worked to secure their territories (Judg. 1:1-3, 6). On top of this, Creach argues that archeology supports the gradual conquest model much more than the idealized model of chapters 1-12 of Joshua. This also suggest that the “conquest” was not as militant and annihilationist as a literal reading of herem (and a straight forward reading of Josh. 1-12) would suggest.

5) Creach argues that Numbers 21:1-3 suggests that herem was originally something Israelites offered to God; it wasn’t something God himself ordered. To acknowledge that their military victories were acts of God the Israelites vowed to not benefit from it, but to offer up everything as a sacrifice to God. Creach then notes how Deut. 7:1-5 differs from this, for here God himself orders herem and it has a moral dimension to it. The concern in Deuteronomy (but not Numbers) is that Israel will be seduced by Canaanite practices.

6) Creach argues that Deuteronomy 7:1-5 is patterned after Ex. 23:20-33. In this latter passage the Lord told the Israelites he himself would “wipe out” the Canaanites (vs. 23). But he clearly doesn’t mean by this that he would completely destroy them, for he says he’ll make them “turn their backs and run” (vs. 27). He also says he’ll use hornets to drive them out little by little (vs. 28) because if he did this all at once the land would become destitute and overrun with wild animals (vs. 29). For the Israelites’ part, they weren’t to make any covenants with the residents of the land or with their gods (vs. 32) and were not to let them live in their land because of the possibility that the Israelites would be seduced by their foreign gods (vs. 33). This clearly is not consistent with the idea that God’s intent from the start was to have the Israelites slaughter the Canaanites completely.

7) Finally, utilizing the work of R. W. L. Moberly (“Toward an Interpretation of the Shema”), Creach notes that Deut. 7:1-5 is part of an explanation and extension of the Shema (“Here O Israel…” Deut. 6:4-9). It stipulates what it looks like for the people of God to be faithful to Yahweh, and it involves not following “the gods of the peoples around you” (Deut 6:14) and remembering that Yahweh delivered Israel out of Egypt and drove out their enemies before them (vs. 19). Chapter 7 then adds the command to "utterly destroy" their enemies (vs. 2) with the stipulations that they are not to intermarry with them (vs. 3) and are to break down all their sacred places and idols (vs. 3). Yet, it's hard to reconcile the stipulation to not follow the gods of the people around you, to remember that the Lord “drove out” the enemies before you and to not intermarry with the indigenous residents with the understanding that the Israelites were to completely annihilate the Canaanites.

Put all this together, and you arrive at Creach’s conclusion that the command to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites had become a metaphor for complete devotion to Yahweh by the time Deuteronomy was written. The practice of herem perhaps began in Israel as a practice that was close to “ethnic cleansing,” which is perhaps what we find reflected in Number 21:1-3. But it evolved over time to become a metaphor for something that was not violent. To this extent, Creach argues, Origen was right. Herem is a metaphor for being completely devoted to Yahweh and that “points aways from violence and bloodshed.”

Think about it.

Greg

A Word to My Mennonite Friends: "Cherish Your Treasure!"

2008-06-26T06:31:00.006-05:00

Hello friends,

I plan on getting back to the problem of violence in the Old Testament soon, but today I want to share a marvelous experience I had last week.

About eight months ago I spoke at a conference at Hesston college (a Mennonite college) on faith and politics (I posted on it here). While at this conference I sensed very strongly God telling me there was some sort of relationship I (and possibly the church I pastor) was to have with the Mennonites. More specifically, at the end of the conference I received a very clear and burning message I knew I was to share with the Mennonites. Whatever else this "relationship" entailed, I knew it included sharing this message. Yet, I had no idea when or how this message was to be shared.

Then about two months ago I received an invitation to speak at a historic gathering of Mennonite leaders in Columbus, Ohio. When the Executive Director of the Mennonite denomination (Jim Schrag) explained to me what he hoped my talk would accomplish I got goose bumps because it was exactly what God had put on my heart at Hesston seven months earlier. I have rarely been part of something that was so obviously providential. I was humbled and delighted to be given this important assignment. My message was -- and is -- basically this.

There is a beautiful and powerful grassroots Kingdom movement arising all over the globe that Mennonites in particular need to notice. Millions of people are abandoning the Christendom paradigm of the traditional Christian faith in order to become more authentic followers of Jesus. From the Emergent Church movement to the Urban Monastic Movement to a thousand other independent groups and movements, people are waking up to the truth that the Kingdom of God looks like Jesus and that the heart of Christianity is simply imitating him. Millions are waking up to the truth that followers of Jesus are called to love the unlovable, serve the oppressed, live in solidarity with the poor, proclaim Good News to the lost and be willing to lay down our life for our enemies. Multitudes are waking up to the truth that the distinctive mark of the Kingdom is the complete rejection of all hatred and violence and the complete reliance on love and service of others, including our worst enemies. Masses of people are waking up to the truth that followers of Jesus aren't called to try to win the world by acquiring power over others but by exercising power under others -- the power of self-sacrificial love.

What many who are being caught up in this movement lack is a sense of tribal identity and historical rooting, and many are looking for his. A central feature of post-modernity is the longing to "live in a story" that's bigger than oneself. Many, therefore, are looking for a tradition they can align with.

The only tradition that embodies what this rising breed of Kingdom radicals is looking for is the Anabaptist tradition (which the Mennonites are heir to). This is the only tradition that consistently refused political power and violence. This is the only tradition that made humble, self-sacrificial love the centerpiece of what it means to follow Jesus. It's the only tradition that isn't soaked in blood and the only tradition that looks remotely like Jesus. Many (in fact, most) of the early leaders of this movement in the 16th century paid for their non-compliance with the Christendom paradigm by being martyred. This tradition is a treasure to be cherished. And it's a tradition whose time may have come, for this is precisely the vision of the Kingdom that millions today are waking up to.

The irony is that, just as millions like myself are running toward this treasure, many Mennonites are running away from it. In the name of becoming culturally relevant, the distinctive, radical aspects of the Anabaptist tradition are being downplayed by some as they become "mainstream" American Christians. For example, some Mennonite churches now allow national flags on their premises -- even in their sanctuaries! This was always taboo among Mennonites, for they have always (wisely) been keenly aware of the danger of mixing the Kingdom with nationalism. So too, some churches are now letting their Kingdom message get co-opted by politics -- some on "the right" and others on "the left," which in turn is beginning to create tensions in the church. And some churches have even begun to back off the centrality of their stance against violence.

So, my message to the Mennonites, in a nutshell, was (and is) this: Cherish Your Treasure! Not in a prideful way, of course, but simply as a precious gift God has given you and that God wants to give the world through you. Be daringly flexible on all matters that aren't central to the Kingdom (e.g. worship styles, dress, etc.), but be utterly uncompromising on all matters that are central to the Kingdom (viz. everything that pertains to living a Jesus-looking life). My Mennonite sisters and brothers, you have what multitudes in the rising Kingdom movement are longing for. You can provide a home to so many who right now are looking for one. If you hold fast to the faith you've been entrusted with (Jude 3), you may just find your fellowship exploding in the years to come. For, I believe, the Anabaptist vision of the Kingdom is a vision whose time has come.

I am deeply humbled and honored to have been invited to share this word with the leaders of the Mennonite Church last week. My prayer is that God uses it to prepare them to fulfill the vital role God has for them in the Kingdom movement he's inspiring in our day.

Blessings

Greg

p.s. People who are in the know tell me that the new CVM site will be ready to launch in a few days. Wooooohooooo!! It's got about 10 times the content as the present one and is a whole lot easier to navigate.

The Shack: A Review

2008-06-22T06:30:00.008-05:00

Over the last few months I've had at least a dozen people tell me I needed to read the novel The Shack by William P. Young. "It's your theology in narrative form," one person told me. Now, I rarely read novels, especially Christian novels. And in my experience, Christian novels that try to get theological are the worst. But, giving the pattern of enthusiastic recommendations and given that someone had given me a free copy begging me to read it, I decided to give it a two or three chapter trial on a plane ride the other day.

Warning: Do not read this novel on a plane or any other public place where you're trapped around people -- unless you're totally okay with becoming emotionally undone in front of perfect strangers. There are points where this book rips your heart out. At least it did me. The body building dude sitting next to me on the plane must have thought I was a first rate wimp, weeping over a novel.

Anyway, to my surprise, I loved this book! Without giving much more away than is on the back of the book, The Shack is about a guy (Mack) whose little daughter is abducted and murdered by a serial pedophile killer (Young goes for the jugular on the problem of evil, which I deeply appreciate). Several despairing years later, Mack encounters God in the very shack where his daughter's life was taken. The bulk of the novel covers three days of conversations between Mack, on the one hand, and God "the Father" (who appears as an African American woman), the "Son" (appearing as a 30-something carpenter) and the "Holy Spirit" (an etherial, hilarious, Asian lady).

I felt like the portrait of God in this novel was beautiful and reflective of what we find revealed in the New Testament. And the theological and psychological insights of this book were at times profound and consistently communicated in brilliantly simple ways. A good deal of the dialogue is about the problem of evil, but the novel touches on everything from the Trinity, Incarnation and the nature of free will to the nature of relationships, forgiveness and even the role of our imagination in staying anchored in "the Now." In fact, Young even addresses (at length) the nature of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This was the section that impressed me most. Young fleshes out how our tendency to judge God, others and ourselves lies at the root of our sin and misery. It was amazing. Those who have read my Repenting of Religion will have no trouble understanding why I was so excited about this material.

Now, you might think that a book with all this theology would be pretty boring, but it's not -- at all. It's actually a page turner. Young manages to pack all this heady stuff into a narrative that keeps you spell-bound (at least it did me). In one moment he has your head spinning with theological quandries and in the next he has you crying, sometimes out of sadness and other times because of the beauty and tenderness of what he's sharing.

I know many readers of this blog will be most interested in what I thought of Young's theodicy (his explanation for evil). I again don't want to give too much away because I want everyone to read this book. But I will say that those who told me Young expressed my understanding of God and evil in narrative form were largely right.

I was at one point worried, for Young has God say to Mack, "As difficult as it will be for you to understand, everything that has taken place [including his daughter's abduction] is occurring exactly according to this purpose [God sharing his love, joy and freedom with humans] without violating choice or will " (pp.124-25). Sounds like a meticulous view of sovereignty playing the 'mystery card" of free will and divine determinism all over again. But as the narrative unfolds, it became very clear that whatever God [Young] meant by the above sentence, he didn't intend to say that evil happens because God has a purpose for it. Over and over God stresses that he does not in any sense cause evil. But he does respond to it in ways that always end up furthering his purposes in the world. In fact, the novel contains some probing insights into the nature of love and freedom. Young even has a superb section that explores the irrevocability of free will and the mind-boggling interrelatedness of the "ripple effects" of our choices. Those who are familiar with my Is God to Blame? and/or Satan and the Problem of Evil will have no trouble seeing why I was delighted with this material.

The only substantial disagreement I have with the theology of this novel concerns Young's view of time and the nature of the future. While his book breaks from the classical tradition on many points, on these two issues Young is a traditionalist. At several points God brings up his foreknowledge of all that will (not might) take place and Young seems to (mistakenly) think that this helps God achieve his sovereign purposes without violating free will (as though God were not infinitely intelligent and thus able to anticipates "maybes" with the same effectiveness as "certainties"). But given that the open view of the future is a minority view in Christian circles, it's hardly surprising Young espouses this view. And given the over-all theological, psychological and spiritual insight of this masterful novel, this one piece of theological disagreement is hardly worth registering.

I encourage you all to read this powerful and poignant novel.

But not in a public place.

Blessings

Greg

Boyd and Heiser Dialogue On The Nephilim Question

2008-06-18T22:39:00.000-05:00

In the previous post my friend Michael Heiser offered clarifications to points where he felt I misunderstood and misrepresented his position. In this post I'd like to share a dialogue between Michael and I that arose from the questions I raised in my review of his forthcoming book, The Myth That Is True.

1) My original question: If these giants were as widespread as Heiser’s "seed of ha nachash" hypothesis supposes, why don’t we have archeological evidence of giant skeletons, buildings, tools, weapons, etc.?

Michael's response: Michael replied that “[s]keletons don’t last that long to be recovered” and “[t]he giants of the bible (these giant clans) were not unusually tall BY OUR STANDARDS. I personally don’t believe that the biblical giants were over seven feet tall. According to the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scroll readings for the Goliath story, Goliath was actually 6 feet 6 inches.”

My reply: This is surprising to me. What about the King of Og whose bed was over 13 ft. long and 6 ft wide? And why rely on the Septuagint version of Goliath’s height instead of the Hebrew text which, I’ve read, makes him over 9 feet tall?

Michael's rejoinder: Regarding Og, his sarcophagus is what is measured, not him. Regarding Goliath, everyone who does textual criticism knows that the Masoretic text of Samuel is in bad shape. The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Material are, in the overwhelming number of cases, superior.

2) My Original Question: Many of Heiser’s arguments are circumstantial and sometimes quite speculative….If the seed of ha nachash was as central to the biblical story-line…wouldn’t it be a bit more obvious?

Michael's Response. Michael replied that he doesn’t “say anything that isn’t rooted in the text, and I tell you when I speculate.” He pointed out that his theory is “able to reconcile Gen 3, Isa 14, and Ezek 28” and is “grounded in the text and in comparative data.” Finally, Michael noted that since I misunderstood his nachash thesis (see the previous post), he felt my “question is a bit misguided.”

My reply: Michael’s right that my overly-literally reading of his ha nachash theory lessens the force of the objection I raise here. And it’s true that Michael believes his interpretation of ha nachash as “the shiny one” reconciles Gen. 3, Isa 14 and Ezek. 28. But his interpretation still strikes me as circumstantial, and I don’t see any conflict between these three passages that needs to be reconciled.

Michael's rejoinder: The vast majority of critical OT scholars and likely a majority of evangelical OT scholars do NOT feel Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are referencing the “serpent” of Eden. I disagree, but I am in the minority.

3) My Original Question: Genesis 3:15 suggests an on-going animosity between the seed of the serpent (or shiny one) and the seed of Eve until a descendant of Eve crushes the serpent's (or shiny one's) head. But if the seed of ha nachash is the Nephilim, then the battle seems to have ended pretty much with the invasion of the promised land (with a few lingering giants among the Philistines to be slain later on).

Michael's Reply: Michael replied that he didn’t see the battle as ending in the OT, and the only reason I thought he was suggesting this was because I took his idea that the Nephilim were the seed of ha nachash too literally.

My response: Fair enough.

4) My Original Question: Because there’s so little in Scripture about the rebellious gods begetting Nephilim, Heiser has to rely quite a bit on certain non-canonical writings to flesh out his thesis, especially 1 Enoch.

Michael's Response: Michael responded that “This is just wrong. Genesis 6 is crystal clear, and 1-2 and Jude back it up in very explicit terms.”

My Reply: I grant that Genesis 6 is pretty clear and that 2 Peter 2 and Jude are most likely tapping into the "Watcher" tradition. But I don’t think this gets us much mileage in terms of arguing that the Canaanite Nephilim were begotten by rebellious gods.

Michael's Rejoinder: The Canaanite nephilim weren’t directly begotten by the rebellious sons of God of Genesis 6, so I’d agree with you. The “Canaanite nephilim” (which is a bad term since “nephilim” isn’t used of any of the giant clans) are descended from the nephilim. The question is, “how?” This takes us back to the flood question (Gen 6:4b). I outlined three views there, and opted for the last one—that the Genesis 6 cohabitation happened afterward. In that respect, you’re right—there are no other passages that say this sort of thing happened again. It’s just based on a point of Hebrew syntax in Genesis 6:4.

5) My Original Question: If the Canaanites were as infected with the seed of ha nachash as Heiser suggests, why were some spared and even taken as wives?

Michael's Response: Michael responded that the “infection” was related to “the initial Genesis 6 event – the sons of God and the human women” but that “there is no hint at all that the original (after the fact) threat of Genesis 6 was in view” in the conquest narratives. “The problem [rather] was that the (spiritual) seed of the nachash (evil enemies of Israel) would try to squash Israel.” He also pointed out that in the pre-scientific ancient world, the male “DEPOSITED the child in the woman, who served to incubate it.” In other words, there was no awareness of women contributing genetically to the person being born, so there would be no concern with daughters of Nephilim passing on an infected gene.

My Reply: It’s true there is no “hint” in the conquest narratives that the problem of the Nephilim infection of the human race was “in view.” But that’s precisely my point. If the problem of the Nephilim before the flood was that they were infecting the human race, how could this not be a problem with the Nephilim after the flood – if indeed the Canaanite giants were supernaturally begotten just as the pre-flood giants? And perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see how appealing to the pre-scientific views of conception and gestation answer the question I raise.

Michael's Rejoinder: The reason that the problem was “messing with the human race” in Genesis 6 is because that’s what Genesis 6 says. The OT never says thereafter with the other giant clans that there was any mingling of the populations (there were Mosaic laws forbidding it, though). I can’t say intermingling was the problem when the text doesn’t say that. The problem is clearly other: these were descendants of ancient enemies who were occupying the land. These particular enemies were viewed as demonic. As such, the story of the genocide of these particular populations are cast as holy war—it was Yahweh vs. the demon-gods and Yahweh’s people vs. the people of those demon-gods. I’m just saying what the text says without trying to insert any other reason.

6) My Original Question: If many (or all) of the Canaanites were not fully human, why do the narratives consistently refer to them simply as humans?

Michael Response: “Because they WERE human. They were just more than human. Remember Jesus? He was fully human but not only human.” He adds, “the nephilim and the giant clans were not deity like Jesus. But they did have unusual parentage.”

My Reply: I concede Michael’s point. But it still seems to me that if the Nephilim of Canaan had “unusual parentage” we might expect more than one verse (Num. 13:33) indicating it.

Michael's Rejoinder: There’s a lot more than one verse in play (and this is my dilemma in writing this book). That one explicit verse needs to be set against the backdrop of the wider Canaanite religions. It was not just an Israelite belief that certain populations in certain areas were “Sheol/Underworld ground zero.” Bashan = “place of the serpent” to the people of Ugarit as well – doesn’t take much imagination.

7) My Original Question: While some of Heiser's exegetical arguments were compelling and insightful (he certainly caused me to notice some things I'd never noticed in the text before!), others struck me as a bit stretched. Most importantly, his reading of Genesis 3 left me unconvinced.

Michael's Response: Michael responded by saying readers of my blog “need to read the chapter” [in his book]. He says, “If you understand the wordplay going on in Genesis 3 (the Hebrew word for “earth” is also used for “Sheol” or the Underworld in the Bible) it is easy to see how God is sentencing the Shining One, who wanted to be above the highest of God’s created order (the “stars of God—the heavenly host – see Isaiah 14:9ff.), to be below every created thing – literally sentenced to rule the Underworld (hell) instead.”

My Reply: I grant that readers need to read the chapter to ascertain its plausibility. But the main problem with his interpretation, I felt, was that Gen. 3:1 refers to the serpent as one of the “wild animals” God made, and 3:15 curses him “above all livestock and all wild animals.” In this light it's hard for me to think the author had anything other than a real snake/serpent in mind. But, as always, I could be wrong.

Mike Rejoinder: This is precisely why most OT scholars do NOT think Ezek 28 and Isa 14 reference the Eden story. Read the text CLOSELY. It never actually says that the nachash IS one of the beasts of the field. ESV has “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field.” Here’s where English translations betray the reader. The Word “other” isn’t in the Hebrew text! What the text actually says is that the nachash “was more crafty than the beast of the field.” No kidding—he was a divine being! I don’t want contradictions between Genesis 3, Ezekiel 28, and Isaiah 14 where none exist—and translations like the ESV (and your assumptions about Genesis 3:1) create contradictions (unintentionally).

8) My Original Point: Against the church tradition, Heiser argues that Satan first fell when humans fell – in Genesis 3. He is correct in noting that the Bible doesn’t explicitly teach that Satan fell prior to the human fall. But I think we have other sound reasons for thinking he did.

Michael's Response: Michael responded that he didn’t “say anywhere that Satan fell in Genesis 3.”

My reply: My apologies. I inferred this because Michael says in his book that “the fall of what is likely a large group of angels (demons) is never described anywhere in the Bible prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve” and because he emphasizes that Genesis 3 is where the Lord cursed “the shiny one” and cast him down.

Michaels Rejoiner: And it isn’t. We have to speculate that there was, and I (with you) believe that as well.

Thanks to Michael for this interaction. I wish him the best with his book and encourage those interested in this topic to be looking for it.

Okay, that's it for the Nephilim issue, but not for the broader Jesus Versus Jehovah issue. (I'm thinking about writing a book with that title. Catchy, heh?)

Peace

Greg

Heiser Clarifies Misunderstandings in My Review

2008-06-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

In my last post I reviewed chapters from my friend Michael Heiser's forthcoming book, The Myth That Is True. He wrote me a response pointing out several areas where I seem to have misunderstood him. He said my misunderstandings were helpful, for they pointed out areas where he might need to be clearer in the text. But I certainly don't want to in any way misrepresent his position, so I'd like to post his clarifications.

1. I said I thought the "lynch-pin in Heiser’s thesis is Genesis 3:15 in which the Lord says that, because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion, there would be on-going enmity between the offspring of the serpent (ha nachash) and the descendants of Eve.” Heiser responded:

My view of the nachash is not a lynchpin to the later idea connecting the holy wars of Joshua to the giant clans. You can hold the latter without the former.

2. I thought Michael was arguing that the Nephilim were the offspring of ha nachash that Yahweh had earlier prophesied would war against humans. Heiser wrote:

Actually, I don’t believe the nephilim are literally connected to the nachash in any sort of genealogical way. The nephilim are spiritually the seed of the nachash in that they are enemies of the people of God. The nephilim are “demon seed” in that they were fathered by divine beings, but they are never linked to the nachash (the “serpent”) in the Bible. They’re just “on the same team” as enemies of God and God’s human family. The nephilim are a “fulfillment” of the curse about the seed of the nachash hating the seed of the woman—but the nephilim are seed of the nachash only in that they are enemies of the people of God. It just happens they aren’t mere humans. No “familial link” can be established between the nachash and the nephilim, but a “common enemy” link can certainly be established.

3. I said that "Satan’s strategy, presumably, was to pollute the human gene pool in order to prevent the arrival of the fully human descendant of Eve (Jesus) who would overthrow Satan’s reign on earth.” Michael responded:

I don’t believe that the POINT of the cohabitation of divine beings and human women was to infect the messianic line. That was a residual effect, but not the motivation. There is no biblical or Second Temple literature that has the sons of God expressing the motive of disrupting the messianic line.

4. I thought Michael was arguing that the reason God ordered the Canaanites exterminated was because he wanted "to ensure that his people, from whom the Messiah would come, would not be polluted with the ‘demon seed.’” Heiser responded:

This overstates my position. The need to eradicate the nephilim was not to save the messianic line (I don’t say that in the book to my knowledge). Rather, the reason is to reclaim the land promised to them from ancient enemies who were descended from the nephilim.

5. I said that "while it seems only the Anakites were direct descendants of the Nephilim, this passage [Num. 13:33] suggests that the demonically-caused genetic propensity toward great height was very widespread. In other words, it suggests that many if not all Canaanites were at least indirectly related to the Nephilim.” Michael responded:

I don’t like the phrase “demonically caused” because the sons of God were not demons. They are different beings. This makes it sound (again) like I see a “genetic” link between the nachash and the nephilim, when I don’t. The height was due to the fathership of the sons of God, not demons. (Yes, the sons of God were corrupt and sinned, but “angelology” is not so simple as to use the word “demon” of them. Demons have their own separate origin. The text also doesn’t say (and I don’t say) that the Anakim were first generation descendants of the nephilim (but it does link them securely in some generational relationship).

My hearty thanks to Michael for these clarifications. If this is a topic that interests you, I encourage you to read his book when its published. And for related interesting reflections on "the divine council" (Michael's specialty), check out his website.

Greg

Yahweh's War Against the Nephilim

2008-06-12T19:11:00.000-05:00

Hello Bloggers and Bloggerettes,

Sorry it's been awhile. Been very busy la la la la.

In this post I’d like to review a forthcoming book by my friend Michael Heiser. It's entitled The Myth That is True and Michael was kind enough to send me several chapters that deal with the topic of the Nephilim. (My thanks to Michael!) Heiser’s arguments are often complex and nuanced and I obviously can’t begin to do justice to them in a short (or even long) post. So I encourage readers to get his book when it comes out. Though Heiser often relies on his technical expertise in Ancient Near Eastern studies (he’s an Old Testament scholar), he communicates his material in a very readable and even entertaining way. His book reads something like a detective novel. I think a lot of you would enjoy it. In the meantime you can visit Michael's website here.

As with my previous post on the Nephilim, buckle your seat belt. We're going to get into some pretty bizarre stuff.

The seed of "the shiny one"

The lynch-pin of Heiser’s thesis is Genesis 3:15 in which the Lord says that, because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion, there would be on-going enmity between the offspring of the serpent (ha nachash) and the descendants of Eve. Yet, the Lord says, in the end a descendant of Eve will crush the head of ha nachash. Heiser (who has a impressive command of Ancient Near Eastern languages) argues that ha nachash shouldn’t be translated as a noun (“serpent”) but as an adjective, in which case it means “the shiny one” (cf. Isa. 14:12 and Ezek. 28:14 where Satan is spoken of in similar terms). According to Heiser, therefore, the prophesy of Genesis 3:15 isn’t about the enmity that sometimes exists between snakes and people but between the seed of the shining one -- Satan -- and humans.

This concept of the “seed of ha nachash” has a spiritual application, such as when people are described in the Bible as children of the devil (e.g. Jn 8:44). But, Heiser argues, it also has a more literal application. We first find this literal application in the Genesis 6 account of the “sons of God” taking wives from the “daughters of human beings” and begetting Nephilim (giants).

Heiser marshals a number of convincing arguments against those who try to argue that the “sons of God” in this passage refer to the righteous lineage of Seth and that the “daughters of men” refer to the unrighteous lineage of Cain. Making use of his expertise in Ancient Near Eastern languages, he also refutes those who attempt to argue that the word Nephilim means “fallen ones” (as in fallen people) rather than supernaturally conceived giants. He thus defends the uniform ancient Jewish and early Christian understanding of this passage as a report of angelic beings (called "Watchers") who took on flesh, had intercourse with women and beget hybrid, quasi-divine creatures who were extraordinarily tall, strong and violent. According to Heisner, these Nephilim are the offspring of ha nachash that Yahweh had earlier prophesied would war against humans. Satan’s strategy, presumably, was to pollute the human gene pool in order to prevent the arrival of the fully human descendant of Eve (Jesus) who would overthrow Satan’s reign on earth.

Humans were apparently willing participants in this rebellion, for the Genesis account says the “sons of God” took “wives.” In other words, they didn’t rape women. According to I Enoch (which Heiser thinks is passing on reliable traditions), this unnatural intermingling began in the “days of Jared,” who is referenced in Genesis 5:18. This means this rebellious angelic activity had been going on for centuries before God decided it was time to judge humanity, the fallen angels and their hybrid children in Noah’s day. Moreover, Heiser argues that by telling us that only Noah and his immediate family were unsullied at this time, the Genesis author was showing that the seed of the woman “had nearly been eclipsed.” The purpose for the author inserting this strange episode at this point in the narrative was to justify God’s drastic action in flooding the land.

But the flood didn’t permanently solve the problem, Heiser argues. The Genesis author himself notes that the Nephilim existed not only before the flood but also afterwards (vs. 4) and we find descendants of the Nephilim all over the place in the land of Canaan. How is this possible? Heiser suggests that perhaps the flood was local, not global. (It’s important to remember that the word “earth” (eretz) in the Bible doesn’t refer to a planet [they had no such concept] but to whatever land a given writer had in mind when he or she wrote). On the other hand, if the flood was in fact global, perhaps the rebel gods resumed their project of creating hybrid-creatures once again after the flood. In support of this, Heiser notes that Genesis 6:4 could be translated: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – whenever (not simply when) the sons of God went to the daughters of humans beings and had children by them.”

The Nephilim and the Population of Canaan

Like a detective following a hot trail, Heiser then sets about piecing together evidence and marshaling arguments that the various tribes mentioned in the conquest accounts were directly or indirectly related to the Nephilim. In his view, the seed of ha nachash had infected the entire land. The reason God ordered these groups exterminated, Heiser argues, was because he needed to ensure that his people, from whom the Messiah would come, would not be polluted with what Heiser refers to as “demon seed.” The warfare for the promised land was a continuation of the prophecied war between the seed of Eve and the seed of ha nachash.

Here are just a few of the arguments I found most intriguing.

1) In Numbers 13:32-33 the spies report that “all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them" (emphasis added). Heiser argues that, while it seems only the Anakites were direct descendants of the Nephilim, this passage suggests that the demonically-caused genetic propensity toward great height was very widespread. In other words, it suggests that many if not all Canaanites were at least indirectly related to the Nephilim.

2) In Joshua 11:21-22 the military campaign of Joshua is summarized and, significantly enough, the focus is squarely on the Anakites. “At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns. No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.” According to Heiser, this passage explicitly states that the main objective of the military campaign was to clear the land of the seed of ha nachash so the Israelites could dwell there.

Yet the campaign wasn’t altogether successful since Joshua grew old and died before the Anakites in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod could be killed (Josh. 13:1-7). These were Philistine cities, and this explains why giants show up when the Israelites later engaged them in battle. For example, I Chronicles 20 mentions Sippai who was a descendant of the giants (Heb. raphaim) (vs.4) as well as Lahmi the brother of the giant Goliath the Gittite (that is, from Gath), “who had a spear with a shaft like [the size of?] a weaver’s rod”(vs.5). It also mentions another “huge man” who was a descendant of giants (Heb. rapha) who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. He was killed by David’s nephew in a battle that took place at Gath (vs. 6).

3) A tribe that is singled out for mention when Yahweh first announces his plan to bring Abraham’s descendants into the promised land are the Amorites. The Lord tells Abraham that after four generations in Egypt the sin of the Amorites will have reached “its full measure” and thus warrants God’s judgment as he brings Abraham’s descendants (the Israelites) back to this land (Gen. 15:16). Centuries later the Lord reminded the Israelites that he had destroyed the Amorites, “whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks" (Amos 2:9-10). The Amorites were apparently giants. Related to this, when the Israelites first encountered the Amorites, they were chased out of the land “like a swarm of bees…all the way to Hormah” (Deut 1:44). The metaphor seems to signify how small the Israelites were compared to the Amorites.

4) According to Heiser, Mount Hermon in the Transjordan is particularly significant to understanding Yahweh’s war against the Nephilim. According to I Enoch the rebel gods (the “Watchers”) descended “in the days of Jared” on Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is associated with giants in a number of ways. It was within the territory of the Amorites, who we’ve seen were giants (Deut. 3:8-9). King Og of Bashan who was one of the Raphaim (giants) and whose bed was at least thirteen and a half feet long ruled this area (Deut. 3:11). Other passages also associate Mount Hermon with the giant clan of the Raphaim (Josh 12:1-5). On top of this, Heiser points out that Mount Hermon was associated with a number of demonic practices in Scripture and the ancient Jewish tradition.

Heiser notes that the word “Hermon” (kh-r-m) in Hebrew means “cursed.” According to I Enoch it got its name because here is where Yahweh cursed the Watchers for their rebellion. But this is also the word used for the Hebrew practice of Holy War (usually transliterated herem). It's usually translated "ban" and signifies consecrating something to Yahweh as a sacrifice (that is, for destruction). Heiser seems to suggest this connection may not be coincidental. If I understand Heiser right, he's suggesting that in ordering the destruction of the Canaanites, God was trying to complete his curse on the Watchers and their hybrid descendants. If correct, this association of Mt. Hermon with "the ban" would strongly support a connection between the Canaanites and the Nephilim.

5) In Joshua 12:1-5 the Raphiam are associated not only with the infamous Mount Hermon but also with the cities of Ashtaroth and Edrie. Heiser notes that Ancient Ugarit literature also associates these two places with rapiuma, the Ugaritic word for Raphaim, and it describes them as “divine” and as the descendants of great warrior kings who now inhabit the underworld.

6) Heiser offers other circumstantial pieces of evidence suggesting various tribes among the Canaanites were giants. For example, one tribe is called the “Jebusites,” and their name means “those who trample.” Another tribe is the Perizzites and they are mentioned in close connection with the Raphaim (e.g. Josh 17:15).

If Heiser is correct, then in waging war against the Canaanites Yahweh was not really fighting against other humans. He was actually fighting for the human race against the seed of "the shiny one," Satan. God was protecting the bloodline that would eventually give rise to the savior who would crush the head of Satan, end his reign on earth and liberate humans to be his viceroys on the earth, as he always intended them to be.

Questions

I’m in total agreement with Heiser’s reading of Genesis 6 (I offered my own defense of this view in God at War). But I’m somewhat hesitant to accept that many if not all the Canaanites were infected with the seed of ha nachash. It’s not that Heiser’s arguments aren’t compelling. Many of them are (though I would need to do quite a bit of research to solidly confirm or deny some of his particular arguments that are rooted in his command of Ancient Near Eastern language and literature). My hesitancy is rather due to a number of questions that remain floating around in my mind. Here’s a few off the top of my head (given in no particular order).

1) If these giants were as widespread as Heiser’s "seed of ha nachash" hypothesis supposes, why don’t we have archeological evidence of giant skeletons, buildings, tools, weapons, etc.? (In my research on the Nephilim I found some who claim they have evidence of this -- even supplying photos! But I found no scholarly confirmation of any of this. In fact, I couldn't find any reputable scholar who even bothers to refute it).

2) Many of Heiser’s arguments are circumstantial and sometimes quite speculative. To be sure, they're often very clever and compelling, but circumstantial and speculative nonetheless. If the seed of ha nachash was as central to the biblical story-line as Heiser supposes, wouldn’t it be a bit more obvious?

3) Genesis 3:15 suggests an on-going animosity between the seed of the serpent (or shiny one) and the seed of Eve until a descendant of Eve crushes the serpent's (or shiny one's) head. But if the seed of ha nachash is the Nephilim, then the battle seems to have ended pretty much with the invasion of the promised land (with a few lingering giants among the Philistines to be slain later on).

4) Because there’s so little in Scripture about the rebellious gods begetting Nephilim, Heiser has to rely quite a bit on certain non-canonical writings to flesh out his thesis, especially 1 Enoch. But what warrants this level of confidence in this and other non-canonical books? It certainly goes against the scholarly consensus to accept that I Enoch and other apocalyptic books pass on a substantial amount of reliable historical information. The claim would therefore need a good deal of supporting evidence and argumentation.

5) If the Canaanites were as infected with the seed of ha nachash as Heiser suggests, why were some spared and even taken as wives? And if the fully human Canaanites could be clearly distinguished from the hybrids, why did Yahweh often command slaughtering everybody? Why not simply command the slaughter of only the Nephilim or the Anakites or “people over eight feet tall,” or something of the sort? Even if we accept something like the Nephilim thesis, in other words, it doesn’t remove the problem of why God had the Israelites slaughter humans.

6) If many (or all) of the Canaanites were not fully human, why do the narratives consistently refer to them simply as humans? Yahweh commands his people to slaughter “men, women and children.” This seems odd if some (or all) of these people were not really people.

7) While some of Heiser's exegetical arguments were compelling and insightful (he certainly caused me to notice some things I'd never noticed in the text before!), others struck me as a bit stretched. Most importantly, his reading of Genesis 3 left me unconvinced. For example, he argues that Yahweh’s curse on ha nachash that forced him to crawl on his belly and eat dust (Gen.3:15) was a metaphor for his being cast out of the divine council down to earth. I personally don’t know of any scholars who agree with this perspective, and it struck me as forced. It seems to me (along with the majority of scholars) that the passage is referring to a snake. This beast was "more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made" (3:1) and when he was judged the Lord said: "Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!" (3:15). In the context of this narrative, it seems clear we're talking about a literal snake.

Now, many regard this narrative to be a folktale depicting the primordial rebellion of humans. Others take this to be a historical event that nevertheless employs allegorical elements (the snake, the two trees) to make its point. And still others interpret the whole thing literally. But Heiser's attempt to argue that ha nachash is not a snake or serpent but a reference to "the shiny one" just doesn't seem supported by the narrative itself. This would be a relatively minor point hardly worth mentioning except for the fact that a good deal of Heiser’s “seed of ha nachash” theory seems to hang on his particular interpretation.

8) Against the church tradition, Heiser argues that Satan first fell when humans fell – in Genesis 3. He is correct in noting that the Bible doesn’t explicitly teach that Satan fell prior to the human fall. But I think we have other sound reasons for thinking he did. For example, as I’ve argued elsewhere, it strikes me that we have a much harder time accounting for why nature is so violent millions of years prior to the arrival of humans unless we accept that a corrupting influence was operating in the world prior to the creation of humans.

In light of these and other questions, I’m presently not convinced of Heiser’s thesis. It could be that for some genetically odd reason certain tribes of the Canaanites simply were unusually tall. It could be that they’re referred to as Nephilim simply because this had become a standard word for giants. I grant that this conflicts with Numbers 13:33 where it explicitly states the Anakites were descendants of the Nephilim. If these “Nephilim” aren’t the Nephilim referred to in Genesis 6, who are they? A different well-known tribe of giants? I think this is Heiser’s strongest argument. But I'm hesitant to put too much weight on this one verse, which I feel I'd be doing if I accepted that the Anakites and other groups in the land of Canaan were hybrid creatures on this basis.

Yet, I can't deny it is possible. For all who are intrigued by this possibility, I heartily recommend getting a hold of Heiser’s fascinating book when it comes out as well as checking out his website.

One final point: even if we were to accept that the slaughtered Canaanites were not fully human, this hardly solves our bigger problem of reconciling the violent-tending God of the Old Testament with the self-sacrificial God of the New Testament, for there are plenty of other violent episodes Yahweh engages in against people, often using his people as warriors. This is the very sort of behavior Jesus forbids. So…let's keep reading and thinking.

Blessings

What's Up With The Nephilim?

2008-05-30T14:43:00.002-05:00

After a little break to plug the upcoming NDY fund raiser for Providence ministries and then show off my new granddaughter, it's time to get back to trying to explain why God ordered the slaughter of the Canaanites.

I'll warn you ahead of time: this reflection is a bit "out there." But I believe in leaving no stone unturned. Over the last few weeks a dozen or so people have sent e-mails expressing their conviction that many of the Canaanites were not really human. Some, at least, were Nephilim -- giants who were the hybrid progeny of fallen angels having sex with women.

I told you this was going to be "out there."

In light of these suggestions I looked into this possibility. I found a good deal of truly bizarre stuff (e.g. linking the Nephilim to the building of the Pyramids, the Easter Island Statues, UFOs and so on). But I also learned some things I didn't know before. Here's the theory (or at least my novice take on this theory) in a nutshell

In Genesis 6:4 we are told that the "sons of God" (ben elohim) had sex with the "daughters of the human beings" and had offspring. These were "the Nephilim" (meaning giants) whom the author says are "the heroes of old, men of renown." All ancient interpreters of the Bible agree that the "sons of God" in this passage refers to angelic beings who were supposed to watch over humans but who instead rebelled against God and used their position of authority to corrupt the race. (This is referred to as the "watcher tradition." It was widespread in the ancient Jewish world and early Christian tradition. It's possibly alluded to in Jude 6. It's fully expressed in 1 Enoch, which is quoted in Jude 14-15). As I argued in my book God at War, viewing the "sons of God" as angels squares with biblical terminology and explains why the offspring of their unnatural union with women were supernaturally large. It also accounts for why the Genesis author shares this bizarre episode as a prelude to the story of the flood. He's demonstrating how hopelessly screwed up the human race was getting to justify God sending a flood and starting over with Noah's family.

As an interestingly aside, many ancient cultures have stories of semi-divine warriors who fought in the past (e.g. the Titans). Many people argue these fables are rooted in actual history -- which, they argue, is what the Genesis author is giving us in 6:4.

Anyway, I always assumed the hybrid Nephilim were killed in the flood. But several people drew my attention to the fact that the Genesis author says, "the Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward... "(Gen. 6:4, emphasis added). This means that either some Nephilim survived the flood (which is possible if you hold to a local flood, as most Bible scholars today do) or that the rebel angels went back to work creating hybrid offspring at some point after the flood.

What's this got to do with the Canaanites? Well, there are a number of references to exceptionally large people among the Canaanites, linking them to the Nephilim. Here's a summary.

* When the spies returned from scouting out the land, they told the people, " We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them" (Nu. 13:33, emphasis added). They also brought back "a single cluster of grapes" from the land that were so large it took two men to carry it (Nu. 13:23). Don't ask me.

* There are several other references to the descendants of Anak (Anakites) that make mention of their incredible size, as well as other Canaanite tribes that are said to be "as tall as the Anakites"( Duet 1:28; 2:10, 21; 9:2). Some argue these also are descendants of the Nephilim.

* We find a reference to Og, King of Bashan -- a Raphite (who are also said to be as tall as the Anakites -- Rapha means "giant") -- whose bed was nine cubits long and 4 cubits wide . That's a bed that is somewhere between 13 to 18 feet long and six to eight feet wide! (Note, some argue that all the references to the "Raphaim" are actually references to "giants," not the proper name of a tribe. (This is how the KJV translates the term. See Deut 2:11, 20; 3:11, 13; Josh. 12:4; 13:12; 15:8; 17:5; 18:16 [KJV])

* Later in the biblical narrative we read about descendants of the Raphites (= "giants?") as well as others who were incredibly large -- including, of course, Goliath, whom David slew (e.g. 2 Sam. 21:15-22; I Chron. 20:4-8).

On the basis of this evidence, some argue that the "Watcher" angels were once again trying to undermine God's objective for human history by creating hybrids. When God commissioned the Israelites to slaughter these "folks," he was protecting the human project from further corruption, just as he had done with the flood.

Now, I'm frankly not sure what to think of all this. Its weird -- to the point that I'm tempted to dismiss it. But I've learned that reality is usually more weird than my western mind likes to admit. If we take the narratives seriously, we can't deny there were some incredibly large people (and grapes!) in the land of Canaan. And we can't deny this largeness is related to their being descendants of the Nephilim. But I'm not yet sure this entails that some of the Canaanites were actually hybrids, just like the pre-flood Nephilim. But even if they were, I'm not sure how far this gets us in giving a plausible account for why Yahweh had whole towns slaughtered. Clearly, many (if not all) of these victims were full humans -- as evidenced, for example, by the fact that sometimes the Israelites were allowed to keep some women as wives.

I'm trying to keep an open mind. I don't know how much more time I'll invest in this topic. But I just today received in my e-mail a book-in-process (called The Myth That is True) from a friend of mine named Michael Heiser that defends something like this thesis. I plan on giving it a read as soon as I can and may get back to you on whatever light it sheds on this weird and fascinating subject.

Peace

Greg

It's a Girl!!!

2008-05-30T10:51:00.001-05:00

Shelley and I are proud to announce that our wonderful daughter Alisha (aka: "snorky") and our spectacular son-in-law Tim have given birth to an adorable, 8 pound, 21 inch baby girl! They've given her the name "Sage" (isn't that an cool name?).

Congratulations Tim and Alisha!!!

We thank God for his precious new creation, given as a gift to this beautiful Kingdom couple.

And so...

Ladies and Gentlemen,
We proudly present to you,

Sage Nicole Gilbert

P.S. Tim and Alisha feel called to move into the city so they've put their town home on the market. If you know anyone interested in a very spacious, delightful town home in the Burnsville area...check their place out here.

Reverend Greg Boyd "The Drummer"

2008-05-29T19:42:00.003-05:00

NDY (Not Dead Yet) will be performing Friday, June 6th, 8pm at O'Gara's Garage in St. Paul. Cover charge is $10 at the door, with all proceeds going towards Providence House in Haiti.

We hope you can make it to hear the band live but if not below is Reverend Boyd playing a drum solo leading into Takin' Care Of Business at NDY's gig from January. Greg, I (Marcia) dare you to quit your day job!

The Teleological Exegetical Principle and O.T. Violence

2008-05-24T16:59:00.000-05:00

These days we're (mostly) discussing why the God of the Hebrew Bible sometimes commands people to slaughter enemies, including women and children, while Jesus reveals that God dies for enemies and longs for their forgiveness. Based on our recent exploration of Peter Craigie’s The Problem of War in the Old Testament, I’m in the process of formulating what I might call The Teleological Exegetical Principle. (Remember folks, I'm thinking out loud here. I'm exploring possibilities, not giving absolute conclusions). Basically, this principle stipulates that, all other things being equal, we should always interpret the beginning of any divine program from its end (telos).

Let's first apply this principle to the law of the Old Testament. The Old Testament law initially looked like it was given to make us righteous before God, but it failed (as Paul frequently notes). Given that it ended in failure, the Teleological Exegetical Principle would lead us (along with Paul) to presume that this was the point (or at least one of the points) of God giving the law all along. He was proving to us that we can never be made righteous before God by striving to obey the law alone. In the light of this failure, we (along with Paul) can view the law as a "shadow” pointing us -- as a negative object lesson -- to the reality of “Christ.” Its failure prepared us to humbly accept God’s righteousness as a gift given through Christ.

If Craigie is right, this principle also applies to nationalism and violence (they are inseparable) in the Old Testament. Divinely sanctioned nationalistic violence initially looked like it could establish the Kingdom of God, but it failed. The nation of Israel tried to live by the sword but it ended up dying by the sword (as Jesus said would always happen). Given that nationalistic violence ended in failure, the Teleological Exegetical Principle would lead us to presume that this was the point (or at least one of the points) of God using nationalistic violence all along. He was proving to us that his Kingdom can never be brought about by nationalism and violence.

This negative object lesson laid the groundwork for the coming of the anti-nationalistic, anti-violent Kingdom, inaugurated through Jesus. And this leads to yet another application of the the Teleological Exegetical Principle.

Jesus’ death -- which was brought about because Jesus refused to be co-opted by nationalism or to resort to any violence -- initially looked like a failure but ended up in victory. Jesus' sacrificial death defeated the Powers, set captives free, reconciled us to God and established the Kingdom of God on earth. Given that Jesus’ death ended in victory, the Teleological Exegetical Principle would lead us to presume that this was the point of Jesus refusing nationalism and violence. He was proving to us that God's Kingdom can only be brought about by refusing nationalism and violence as we rather choose to love and sacrifice for our enemies, even to the point of death.

So, if the God who sanctioned genocide in the Old Testament looks antithetical to the God who died for his enemies on Calvary, this is because it's supposed to! If you're offended and angered when you read about Yahweh commanding the slaughter of women and children or David celebrating infants being smashed against rocks, it's because being offended and angered by this sort of barbarism is the point. Only if you see how grotesque and futile this nationalistic violence is will you be able to fully devote yourself to a non-nationalistic and anti-violent Kingdom.

If Craigie is right, God was reluctantly condescending to the violent mindset of the world and playing the part of a tribal warrior god in order to ultimately show us (among other things) that he's not at all like this. Or, if you will, God entered our violence filled Matrix (recall the movie) and played along with its violent rules, but he did this in order to wake us up to our bondage to this ugly, illusory Matrix. Once freed, we are empowered to see who God really is and who we really are. Christ is the "reality" to which all Matrix "shadows" point. In Christ we see that God is a God who would rather give his life for enemies than kill them. And in Christ we see that all people, including enemies, are worth God giving his life for.

Now, I'm not pretending this explanation for God's treatment of enemies is without problems or is adequate in and of itself. But I AM convinced that something like this was going on in Yahweh's sanctioning of violence in the Old Testament and that this must be part of a comprehensive explanation of this violence.

More to come. In the meantime, imitate God as he is revealed in Jesus (Eph. 5:1-2), not the God revealed in the Old Testament's warfare tradition.

Greg

Review of Ehrman's "God's Problem"

2008-05-21T10:13:00.001-05:00

The other night I read Bart Ehrman's new book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer. Since it touches on the issue of violence in the Old Testament and since I've received so many e-mails asking me about it, I thought I'd post a review.

This book was better than I expected. I really disliked Ehrman's earlier best-selling book Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman's conclusions were very biased and went far beyond what the evidence warranted. Yet he presented his arguments in such a way that laypeople unfamiliar with the science of textual criticism could (and many did) find convincing. Consequently, I initially resisted reading God's Problem. I figured if Ehrman's work was poor in his area of expertise (Ehrman is a New Testament textual critic), it would probably be atrocious in an area where he isn't a specialist (viz. dealing with the problem of evil). Nevertheless, a friend (Paul Eddy) compelled me to read it and, much to my surprise, I actually thought it was pretty good. It was certainly better argued and fairer than his Misquoting Jesus.

I'll make six comments that roughly follow the outline of Erhman's book.

1) Ehrman does a masterful job presenting the problem of evil in its full horror. His book is permeated with horrific examples of evil, and he gives these because he rightly surmises that most westerners (certainly most western Christians) wrestle with this issue in a detached, theoretical manner. They are thus inclined to accept easy answers that are woefully inadequate. I couldn't agree more.

2) Ehrman notes how Old Testament authors viewed suffering as divine punishment (chapters 2-3). He presents this material -- much of which we've covered the last couple weeks on this blog -- in all its barbaric horror. I would quibble with some of his interpretations (e.g. his view that animal sacrifices were meant to appease God's wrath), but overall his work here is solid. Ehrman concludes this section (as he does each section) with a critique. He forcefully argues that, as a comprehensive explanation for why humans suffer, this just doesn't work. What's odd, however, is that Ehrman correctly notes that Old Testament authors never presented God's judgments as "a universal principle, as a way of explaining every instance of suffering" (49). Yet, he still critiques the punishment motif as if it was meant to be an exhaustive explanation of evil. His criticisms are valid against the divine punishment theodicy, but not at all against the Bible.

3) Ehrman nicely expounds on a biblical motif that views suffering as a consequence of human sin -- revealing that biblical authors had some sense of free will (chapter 4). In this context he discusses the "free will defense." Ehrman notes that there's a tension not addressed in the Bible between affirming human free will, on the one hand, and affirming an "all-powerful Sovereign...who foreknows all things" (113). Elsewhere in the book Ehrman adds that the free will defense doesn't explain "natural evil" (12-13). Those who are familiar with my work (e.g. Is God to Blame?, God of the Possible and Satan and the Problem of Evil) won't be surprised to hear me claim that neither objection is very strong. Given that the free will defense is the most common one appealed to by Christians, I was surprised at how brief and unpersuasive Ehrman was in trying to refute it.

4) Ehrman proceeds to discuss a wide variety of biblical passages that suggest, in various ways, that God uses suffering to contribute to the greater good (ch. 5). I felt that both Ehrman's presentation of the biblical material and critique of the greater good defense in this chapter were strong. Erhman rightly exposes the injustice involved in the idea that God allows or ordains suffering in some in order to benefit others. He also rightly rejects the mistaken notion that God allows suffering because we couldn't appreciate good without it (147-48). Moreover, while Ehrman agrees that good can sometimes come out of evil, he objects to the idea that "something good always comes out of suffering"(147). To the contrary, he insists, "most suffering is not positive..." (ibid).

The trouble, however, is that Ehrman seems to think he's exposing a weakness in the Bible's view of suffering when he offers these criticisms. He's not. Yes the Bible presents a God who is always working to bring good out of evil, and yes it depicts God as always using evil for his own good purposes. But nowhere does the Bible intimate that all suffering is "positive" for those who suffer, and nowhere does it suggest that all evil is allowed "for the greater good."

5) One of the weakest points of Erhman's book, in my opinion, concerns his treatment of Job (chapter 6). He insists that the book of Job is a compilation of two contradictory books: a folktale (Job 1-2 & 42) in which Job is tested, passes the test and has everything restored, and a book of poetic dialogues between Job and his "friends" in which Job rails at God while being accused by his friends. The point of the folktale, Erhman insists, is that "God deals with his people according to their merit, whereas the entire point of the poetry [viz. the dialogues] is that he does not do that..." So, in the folktale, suffering is seen as "a test of faith" while in the poetry "suffering remains a mystery that cannot be fathomed or explained" (154).

There's a number of problems with Ehrman's perspective and interpretation of Job, but time allows me to only mention two.

First, Ehrman's view (shared by many other Old Testament critics) assumes that whoever allegedly compiled the folktale and poetic dialogues into a single book was simply too stupid to notice the obvious contradiction that Ehrman and other critics now find. But why should we assume the redactor (compiler) was less bright than modern critics? It strikes me as more humble and more reasonable to assume that if an ancient redactor didn't see a contradiction, perhaps we're mistaken in thinking there is one. And once you acknowledge this, we have less reason to think there were two different works put together in the first place.

This leads to my second point: Because Ehrman treats the book of Job as a compilation of two contradictory works, he massively misses the point of the entire book! Ehrman thinks that when God shows up "in the whirlwind" to give his monologue (chs. 38-41) he does so simply to assert "that he is the Almighty and, as such, cannot be questioned" (174). This is why there is no answer to the question of suffering (according to the poetic dialogues). But this isn't all God does in the monologues. God points to the unfathomable beauty and complexity of creation (ch.38-39) and then points to Behemoth and Leviathan, cosmic monsters that all ancient near eastern people believed in (chs. 40-41). If God simply wanted to assert that he cannot be questioned, why point these things out to Job?

The answer, I submit, is that God wasn't saying he couldn't be questioned simply because he was "the Almighty." He was revealing why humans cannot know why evil occurs the way it does and thus why they shouldn't question "the Almighty" who does know. It's because a) we humans know next to nothing about the complexity of creation, and b) we shouldn't think we can do a better job than God fighting the cosmic forces of evil that threaten the world. In short, we humans will never know why evil strikes the way it does because we are ignorant.

In this light, the folktale (if we grant it is that) of the prologue (chs. 1-2) makes perfect sense. It's letting the audience of the book in on an event that the characters in the book don't know about -- and never (in the context of this narrative) learn about. And that is the point! Job and his friends assume they know what they're talking about when the former accuses God of injustice and the latter accuse Job of sin, but they don't. Both parties assume God is directly behind Job's afflictions, but the fact is that random events take place in the unseen heavenly realm that adversely affect us but about which we know nothing. At the same time, we can be assured that God is at work in the world to compensate for injustice -- which is the point of the epilogue (ch.42). (I discuss this interpretation of the book of Job in much greater depth in Is God to Blame?).

While Ehrman thinks Job has nothing to say about the problem of evil, if my interpretation is right, it has much to say. For it reveals that the mystery of evil isn't a mystery of God's character or purposes; it's rather a mystery about an unfathomably complex world that is afflicted with hostile cosmic forces. And this leads to my sixth and most important comment on Erhman's book.

6) Ehrman ends his work with an excellent discussion of the apocalyptic worldview and its perspective on evil. He rightly notes that this is the worldview of Jesus and all New Testament authors. In this view, "cosmic forces of evil were loose in the world, and these evil forces were aligned against the righteous people of God, bringing down pain and misery upon their heads, making them suffer..." (191). Not only this, but the reason there are "so many disasters in this world, earthquakes, famines, epidemics, wars, deaths" is because "the powers of evil are in control" (202). Ehrman praises this perspective because it "takes evil seriously" (244) while insisting "quite vociferously that God does not bring disasters; it is his cosmic enemies" (218). It also is the only explanation that accounts for natural evil. In my view, he's absolutely right!

Yet, Erhman argues that this understanding of evil also fails because it's "based on mythological ideas that [he] simply cannot accept" (245). Moreover, the end of the world that apocalypticists thought was going to happen in their lifetime proved wrong (245-46). And, finally, the apocalyptic belief that God will supernaturally intervene in the near future and bring an end to evil "can lead to a kind of social complacency..." (246).

I don't find any of these objections compelling. First, I have never found a remotely persuasive argument as to why we should regard belief in hostile cosmic powers to be "mythological." This is simply a modern, western, naturalistic assumption (and, I should note, one that is being increasingly abandoned).

Second, even if we were to grant that Jesus, Paul and others mistakenly thought the end of the age was going to occur in their lifetime, this hardly negates the entire apocalyptic worldview. Where's the justification for jettisoning an entire worldview just because one aspect of the worldview is mistaken? That's bad logic! At the same time, there are ways of interpreting the various references to the immanent end of the world in the New Testament that avoid attributing a mistake to Jesus, Paul and others. For example, some scholars (such as N.T. Wright) argue that the "end" these people were referring to was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Alternatively, some argue that the central point of passages expressing a belief in the approaching end to the world are meant to instruct us about how we should live (e.g. with hope and passion, as though each day were our last) rather than to register an opinion about when this end will occur.

Finally, while some who embrace an apocalyptic worldview may become complacent about battling evil in the world, there is no necessary reason why they would do so. Consider, for example, that Jesus held an apocalyptic worldview and yet spent his entire ministry confronting evil. Consider also that a central aspect of the New Testament's message is that his followers are supposed to imitate him in everything. This objection, therefore, amounts to nothing.

In conclusion, I applaud much of Erhman's expositions of various biblical motifs that explain why we suffer. But none of these motifs claim to be a comprehensive theodicy, so Erhman's critique of them as theodicies misses the mark (even though many of his critiques of theodicies based on these motifs are to the point). Most importantly, Ehrman's critique of the apocalyptic explanation of evil is completely without merit. Given that this was the worldview Jesus and his disciples embraced, and given that this worldview provides the best single explanation for evil -- as Erhman himself grants -- I feel justified in relying on this view of evil as the most comprehensive and authoritative in Scripture. And this makes the utter weakness of Ehrman's refutation of this perspective all the more significant.

It means the Bible does provide an answer to our most important question -- why we suffer. Ultimately, it's because the world is held hostage to cosmic forces of evil. But this affliction will not last forever.

Maranatha!

Greg

thanks Greg!

2008-05-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

just wanted to say thanks to Greg for the very sweet post on my b-day!!
and Greg, I am very impressed that you managed to post something on your own without any spelling or grammar mistakes. see, you don't really need me as much as you think you do.
;)
oh yeah, here is the Feb. 24th link (you really should learn how to make links, btw...it's easy, even for the techno-challenged).
~Jen

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEN!!!

2008-05-13T09:39:00.005-05:00

This is my friend Jen. She's one of the kindest, humblest and smartest people you could ever meet.

She's also a blast to party with!

I first met Jen 11 years ago when she was a student at Bethel University. She was my Teaching Assistant for two years and has remained a close friend of mine and my small group ever since. Regular visitors of this blog may recall that Jen is a University of Minnesota and Harvard trained medical doctor who has been serving folks in Haiti the last nine months. She's also the wonder-woman who stitched up my ripped-apart toe when our small group was vacationing in Mexico. (For gross photos, check out the post on February 24 -- I'd provide a LINK, but I'm techno-challenged and thus don't know how. In fact, I had to get Julie Ross to get Jen's picture on this post because I don't know how. Thank you Julie!)

What readers probably don't know is that, among her many gifts, Jen is a master word-smith. She graciously edits all my posts (except this one, which is meant to be a surprise -- which is why there's no LINK to the post with the gross toe). On top of this, Jen has just finished editing my forthcoming book Revolting Beauty and is now in the process of editing all the material on the new CVM website that will be launched in a month or so. (The new site has hundreds of pages of writings on various theological issues). She's done all this while serving people down in Haiti!

And now you know why I refer to her as a "wonder-woman."

Today is Jen's 30th birthday. So I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly say:

Happy Birthday Jen!!!

Jen,
you are a gift to me
and to everyone who knows you.
Thank you
for all you do
but even more
for who you are.

You're a truly beautiful human being!

“Shadow” and “Reality”

2008-05-12T16:39:00.002-05:00

Hello Bloggerites,

In the last post we discussed Craigie’s view that one of the central purposes why God involved himself in using violence to establish and preserve Israel was to provide humanity with a negative object lesson: namely, nationalism and violence can never bring about the Kingdom of God. I agree with this perspective, but it seems to me Craigie’s thesis could be strengthened by showing how it's rooted in the New Testament itself.

In the book of Colossians Paul says that, in the light of Christ, all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament must be seen as “a shadow of things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Col. 2:17). The author of Hebrews teaches the same thing when he says that “[t]he law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves” (Heb 10:1, cf. 8:5). Now that "the reality" (Christ) has come, we can and must abandon the shadow. This is closely related to Paul's teaching in Galatians that the law was intended as a tutor to lead us to Christ (Gal 3:23-24). The law exposes our sin and thus reveals the truth that we cannot reconcile ourselves to God on this basis (cf. Rom. 7: 6-20). In other words, the law is a shadow that points beyond itself by providing us with a negative object lesson.

If Craigie is right, God's involvement in nationalistic violence can be understood along similar lines. As the law was intended to lead us to Christ by showing us how not to try to be reconciled to God, so nationalistic violence was intended to lead us to the true Kingdom of God by showing us how not to try to establish God's Kingdom. As the failure of the law points us to Christ, so the failure of nationalistic violence points us to the Kingdom of God. As the law is a shadow of the reality of Christ, so nationalistic violence is a shadow of the reality of the Kingdom of God.

In fact, one could argue that these two negative-object lessons are implied in each other, for the law structured the way Israel existed as a distinct nation and it was premised on divinely sanctioned violence. The failure of the law to bring us into alignment with God's will is thus related to the failure of the nation and its intrinsic violence to bring us into alignment with God's will. Both reveal that we are too sinful to reconcile ourselves to God and bring about his Kingdom. And God used both to prepare us to embrace a Savior who saves us by grace and whose Kingdom transcends all national boundaries and refuses all violence.

These reflections take us a long way in reconciling the Old Testament's God of war with Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and abstain from all violence. If the God and the ethics revealed by Jesus seem to at points contrast sharply with the God and ethics of the Old Testament's war tradition (and they certainly do), this is because they're supposed to! This is the point!

At the same time, we can't pretend for a moment that this explanation alone is adequate. For example, Craigie's thesis doesn't even address the issue of God's direct use of violence in the Old Testament. I'll address this and a multitude of other questions in future blogs.

Stay centered in his love

Greg

A Negative Object Lesson: Review of Craigie III

2008-05-07T11:50:00.002-05:00

Hats off to Todd Dietz for his excellent, hard-hitting video! Brilliant!! Thanks for sharing that Todd.

We’re discussing Peter Craigie’s work, The Problem of War in the Old Testament, as part of a broader discussion on the problem of violence in the Old Testament. So far we’ve seen that Craigie argues that God’s involvement in war in the Old Testament was a concession to human sinfulness. One of God's purposes, we saw, was to reveal how horrifying war is. We’ll now consider an even more fundamental purpose Craigie finds in God’s involvement in war. In my opinion, this is the single most insightful aspect of his book.

Craigie notes how God’s decision to work with a nation (Israel) to move towards his Kingdom objectives in creation required, as a matter of necessity, that God be willing to get involved in war. Given that God’s usual mode of operation is to work through “normal human activity” and "normal human institutions" as he finds them (70-71 [all numbers refer to Craigie's work]), there was no way for a state to be established and preserved in the ancient world (or the modern world, for that matter) except by relying on military force. All national relations in the ancient (and modern) world hang on a balance of power (69). Hence, Craigie argues, "[a]s a nation state in the real world of that time, Israel could not exist without war" (71). With Jacques Ellul, Craigie argues that statehood and violence are inextricably linked together (71-72), a fact that simply reveals how deep violence is lodged in the human heart (73).

But why did God choose to work with a nation, and therefore to use violence, in the first place? To understand this, Craigie argues, we have to look at how the whole enterprise ended up. We have to interpret the beginning of God's establishment of Israel through violence from the perspective of the end. And the end was utter defeat for this chosen nation.

As Israel was established by war, Craigie notes, so “the end too was to come in war” (76). Craigie details how the Israelites fell violently to their enemies after the reign of David (76-77). This defeat was “a reversal of their own conquest” (77). Just as God had earlier used the Israelites to judge the Canaanites, so God now used other violent nations to judge the Israelites (77). As Craigie says, “It was becoming evident that God was no respecter of persons, and though the providence of God might not always be fully understood, a certain justice was becoming clear in his dealings with men” (77).

Yet, out of the darkness of this stunning defeat, a radically new vision of the Kingdom began to emerge, according to Craigie. For example, Jeremiah, who lived through the critical years of the end of the state of Judah, announced the coming of a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34). “Whereas the old covenant had an external form in the nation state,” Craigie notes, “the new covenant would be marked by an inner work of God in man’s heart” (79). (As an aside, Craigie wrote in the seventies and thus fails to use inclusive terminology). For Jeremiah, “the failure of the chosen people to fulfill their high calling pointed to a deeper need in man which could only be met by a work of God in man’s heart” (79).

Along similar lines, in response to their dismal military defeat, Zechariah offers hope by proclaiming that Israel’s king would eventually come. But instead of announcing that he would come in might and power and triumph over Israel’s enemies, as previous prophets had frequently proclaimed, Zechariah announced that their king would come “marked by humility,” bringing “peace,” “riding on an ass” (Zech 9:9) (79). Someday Israel and the world would be ruled by a servant king, not a warrior. This relates to the growing vision of a future epoch of global peace that also arose in response to Israel's defeat (e.g. Isa. 2:4; Mic.4:3). The horror of war -- especially when it resulted in Israel's own defeat -- gradually birthed a beautiful vision of a world that would be completely free of violence (83-91).

All of this prepared the way for the arrival of Jesus Christ and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in the New Testament, argues Craigie. “According to Jesus," he says, "the Kingdom was not to be a nation state, but a realm within men’s hearts” (80). It was Israel’s defeat in war that “terminated the outward form of the old covenant, the nation state…” and that forced people to “ponder the covenant and to seek a solution to the problem of man’s nature and the manner of God’s dealings with man” (80).

The truth that was being revealed through Israel's defeat was that“[t]he Kingdom of God in the form of a political state was not viable” because of the violence that is rooted so deeply in the heart of humanity (81). If God’s own "chosen people" couldn’t establish the Kingdom with God ordained nationalism and divinely sanctioned violence, then we must conclude that nationalism and violence simply are not viable means for establishing God’s kingdom (81). And that, Craigie argues, was the central point all along.

Old Testament nationalism and violence were thus intended to function as a sort of negative object lesson for us. They didn’t work. If you live by the sword, Jesus said, you’ll die by the sword (Mt 26:52). By exposing the futility of nationalism and violence, God was revealing that his Kingdom can never be brought about by these means. The Kingdom can only come when God himself transforms humans to the core of their being (81). This begins to happen when we humble ourselves before God and place our total trust in Jesus Christ. When we swear off all nationalism and violence and surrender to Christ, God makes us citizens of a Kingdom that transcends all national boundaries and allegiances and is characterized by love, peace and humility (81).

The “tragedy of the history of Christianity," Craigie notes, "is that so frequently the Old Testament lessons drawn from defeat in war have been forgotten” (82). Too often “the kingdom of God has become fused once again with nation state (sic); or the church, as the human organization of the citizens of the Kingdom of God, has taken upon itself the functions of a nation state” (82). Too often Christians have looked back at the Old Testament not as a negative object lesson but as a positive precedent to justify their own religious barbarism. And, as I argued in my book The Myth of a Christian Nation, whenever Christians have done this it has been disastrous for the advance of God's Kingdom as well as the broader culture.

As I mentioned at the outset, I found this aspect of Craigie’s book to be profoundly insightful. He expresses and defends a growing conviction I've had about this material for several years. While I couldn't clearly articulate it or defend it, I've become convinced that the sharp contrast between the way of the cross, on the one hand, and the barbarism of Israel's slaughtering campaigns, on the other, must have been part of God's purpose in using violence all along. I don't think Craigie's little book (it's only 123 pages) takes us all the way there. More work needs to be done. But, in my opinion, it certainly takes us a long way in the right direction.

In my next blog I'll offer a few reflections that I believe can strengthen Craigie's thesis even further.

Live in the way of peace,

Greg

Dollars = Change

2008-05-03T13:09:00.007-05:00

A podrishioner guest post - Todd Dietz

I first heard Pastor Boyd speak online when he was at Mars Hill Church. I liked what I heard so I found the Woodland Hills Church podcasts and started listening every week. I'm a restaurant manager and work a few late nights every week. After close and everyone is gone I catch up on paperwork and listen to Greg's sermons. I do appreciate the shout-outs given to podrishioners every week.

Ten years ago I started playing around with video editing, which led me to participate in a local film festival. This past year I drew inspiration from Pastor Boyd’s sermon “Taking Back The House”, my third festival entry, which can be watched below. Also, you can learn more here about the making of this video.

Although I am located hundreds of miles away Greg's teachings are a blessing to me.

Podrishioner,
Todd Dietz
Cedar Falls, Iowa

Dollars = Change by: Todd Dietz

Revealing the Horror of War: Review of Craigie, Part II.

2008-04-30T22:21:00.001-05:00

Hello Blogging Friends,

I’m in the process of critically reviewing various perspectives on the problem of violence in the Old Testament. My goal is to extract principles along the way to hopefully arrive at a comprehensive explanation for why the warrior portrait of God in the Old Testament seems so radically different from the God revealed in the crucified messiah. I've appreciated all the feedback I've gotten on the posts thus far.

In my previous post I began reviewing Craigie’s book The Problem of War in the Old Testament. We saw that Craigie holds that the metaphor of God as a warrior reveals that God is not above getting involved in sinful human activity -- even activity as sinful as war. As much as God hates war, he is willing to use it for his own purposes. God’s involvement in war reveals his remarkable willingness to accommodate and utilize human sin, but it reveals nothing about God’s true moral character, according to Craigie. To discover this, we must look above all to Jesus Christ.

So, what are the purposes for which God involves himself in war, according to Craigie? This is the question that this and the next post will address.

War is Hell
According to Craigie, one of purposes Yahweh had in getting involved in war was to expose its true, horrifying character. Craigie discusses the views of the famous Prussian soldier and philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). In his book On War, Clausewitz argues that the main objective for any nation going to war is to utterly demolish the will and ability of their opponent to ever rise up against the nation again (Craigie, 47). He held that “to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity” (Clausewitz, On War, Penguin edition, 1968 [1832], 102). The only type of war that makes any sense, according to Clausewitz, is one that is willing to do whatever is necessary to permanently vanquish the enemy.

In this light, Craigie criticizes Just War theory which attempts to spell out the conditions under which war can be justly entered into and fought. Following Clausewitz, Craigie holds that the idea that war can be moderated in a just manner is “unrealistic,” for the truth is that war is “essentially lawlessness” (53). As General Sherman so eloquently put it, “war is hell.” It’s not a “game played by rules," Craigie says. Only after a war has ended do we pretend that there were rules people were supposed to abide by. In this way the victors (and only the victors!) can “indict the loser for ‘war crimes’” (53).

Craigie interprets the several divine commands given to Joshua and others to slaughter all the Canannites (e.g. Deut 2, 7; Josh. 6) to be a “massive and solemn warning” about the true, hellish nature of war. They reveal that, as much as we might try to sanitize war with our unrealistic theories, there are, in truth, “no half-measures in war” (53). The macabre warfare narratives of the Old Testament “destroy any illusions we may have about war being 'not all that bad,' a kind of sport played by gentlemen.” (As I mentioned in the previous post, this is why Craigie refuses to follow the tradition of calling these “holy wars”). These narratives, Craigie argues, are “a safer guide to the reality of war than are the various formulations of the “Just War” theory that have emerged in the history of Christianity” (53).

Any person who is committed to taking all their cues about what God is like and about how humans are to live from Jesus Christ must be completely revolted by the Old Testament narratives in which Yahweh commands the extermination of the Canaanite people. If Craigie is right, this is precisely the point of these passages!

Assessment
I’ll say two things in response to this aspect of Craigie’s book.

First, I believe Craigie is largely correct in his critique of Just War theory. There is something profoundly “unrealistic” (and, arguably, “evil”) in the common assumption that declaring a war “just” lessens its horror in any way. Among a multitude of other problems, there is no objective, universally agreed upon criteria for what constitutes a “just war” or of what constitutes “just behavior” of soldiers while battling in war. The concept of “justice” that a nation or tribe uses in their Just War theorizing is largely, if not entirely, culturally conditioned. Not only this, but the concept of justice as applied to war is always employed to protect and further the interests of the nation or tribe that is doing the theorizing. Not surprisingly, every nation or tribe that has ever gone to war has felt justified doing so. After all, who would kill and be willing to be killed unless they felt their cause was justified?

While believing one is justified in going to war may ease the conscience of leaders and warriors in killing other humans and may help motivate warriors to kill more valiantly, we have to free ourselves from the illusion that this belief lessons the horror of our killing. This illusion that our killing is "not all that bad" because it's "justified" keeps us from being as revolted by war, and thus as passionately opposed to war, as we’d otherwise be. In this way, just war theorizing -- which is intended to minimize war -- actually contributes to the perpetuation of war! (I offer further criticisms of Just War theory from a Christian perspective in my book, The Myth of the Christian Nation, chapter 9).

Not only this, but as Craigie argues, we have to free ourselves from the illusion that the realities of war actually conform to the rules of decency our Just War theorizing stipulates soldiers should abide by. Now, I seriously doubt Craigie is suggesting that wartime rules of conduct are useless or that prosecuting people for war crimes when these rules are violated is always hypocritical (though I may be wrong about this). For my part, I think it's good that soldiers are trained – and forced, if need be – to act as decently as possible while engaging in battle. But Craigie’s main point remains a good one. We mustn’t allow the existence of our Just War rules to conceal the "essential lawlessness" of war. War is hell, and we need to see it as such.

Craigie’s point is that, if the "Yahweh wars" (not "holy wars") in the Old Testament don’t conform to our Just War theorizing – and they certainly don’t -- maybe we’re starting to get the point of these Old Testament wars. Pull back the veneer of civilized decency of our Just War theorizing and one discovers that the heart of war is hell.

Second, in contending that the point of the passages in which Yahweh commands wholesale slaughter is to reveal the hellishness of war, Craigie is, I believe, onto something profoundly important. Unfortunately, he falls far short of making his case in his book. Indeed, Craigie spends remarkably little time developing and defending his thesis. The point needs much more developing and defending, however, since it's certainly not obvious from the passages themselves that this was one of the reasons Yahweh was willing to engage in Israel's warfare.

Craigie’s thesis only becomes plausible when we adequately understand and appreciate two other important biblical truths.

1) There is an ever-intensifying theme in the Old Testament itself that Yahweh is not a God of war but is rather a God of peace whose vision for the world is one that is completely free of violence (e.g. Isa 2:4; Mic 4:3). Only when we appreciate the full force of the Old Testament revelation that God loves peace do we begin to appreciate the truth that God absolutely and unequivocally hates war – which in turn leads us to suspect that God is using something like reverse psychology in the war narratives of the Old Testament. Craige deals with the strong peace tradition in the Old Testament (ch. 8), but unfortunately doesn’t use this material to substantiate his claim that God is exposing the true horrors of war in the process of participating in it.

2) Jesus Christ is the definitive revelation of God, superseding all previous revelations (Heb. 1:1-3). With his radical teachings about unconditional love for enemies and unconditional refusal to engage in violence, Jesus brings to a pinnacle the unfolding peace tradition of the Old Testament while further confirming that this tradition (not the war tradition) expresses the true heart of God. This beautiful revelation of God’s heart in Christ contrasts with the grotesque divine commands to slaughter people in the strongest possible way. And it’s from this perspective (but only from this perspective) that we begin to suspect that perhaps Craigie is right: given the revelation of God in Christ, Yahweh's willingness to participate in the sinful debacle of war couldn't have been to in any sense condone war. To the contrary, it must have been to expose how horrifying war really is and to thereby reveal why it is so contrary to his will.
Unfortunately, and surprisingly, Craigie never fleshes out the way in which the revelation of God in Christ contrasts with the war material of the Old Testament. In my opinion, the plausibility of his insightful thesis suffers accordingly.

Yet, there is a second purpose that Yahweh had for involving himself in the sinfulness of war, according to Craigie. This is the most important, and I believe most insightful, point of his book. We'll discuss this point in the next post.

Until then,
stay centered in his peace.

Speaking of Faith

2008-04-29T11:55:00.005-05:00

The discussion with Greg, Shane Claiborne and Chuck Colson can be found here.

We encourage you to listen to the unedited version.

Posted by your friendly Admins. ;-)

Craigie: The Problem of War in the Old Testament, Part I

2008-04-24T21:15:00.002-05:00

Hi folks.

Today I’m returning back to my “thinking out loud” about the problem of violence in the Old Testament. My posts on Vernon Eller's War and Peace From Genesis to Revelation produced some interesting reactions in readers. On the one hand, I received a number of e-mails from people who were quite relieved to find that I ended up rejecting Eller's view that the divinely commanded violence of the Old Testament should be understood to be merely part of its cultural packaging. I apparently had them worried. Others, however, were disappointed (and several even angered) that I ended up rejecting Eller's thesis. I want to reassure these latter folks that I fully understand where they were coming from. I would love to embrace Eller's perspective. But, at least at this point in my life, I honesty just can’t reconcile it with my submission to Jesus as Lord.

In the next few posts I want to assess Peter Craigie’s views expressed in a small but insightful book entitled The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Wipf and Stock, 2002 [orig. 1978]). (All numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in The Problem of War).

To begin, Peter Craigie doesn't pull any punches in laying out the problem of war in the Old Testament. When we read of God commanding the literal slaughter of men and women, young and old, it is (and should be) disturbing (10). This material poses three distinct sets of problems, according to Craigie.

First, it creates a theological problem, for the portrait of “God as Warrior” seems incompatible with “the New Testament description of God as loving and self-giving” (11.) Second, it creates a problem of revelation, for we have to wonder how a book so filled with ruthless violence can be considered God’s word (11). Third, the war material in the Old Testament creates an ethical problem, for, in contradiction to the New Testament, this material has often been used to justify killing – and in God’s name. (11-12).

This last problem is particularly challenging, since throughout Church history “the opposition to war has been proclaimed by lonely voices” (15). Indeed, Craigie briefly traces the influence of the war tradition of the Old Testament throughout history and shows how it influenced the violent tendencies in Islam as well as in Church history (chapter II). Starting with Augustine’s appeal to political authorities to punish heretics and extending through the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Reformation, the Conquistadors, and even going up through the American civil war, Christians have relied on the Old Testament war traditions to justify Christians butchering enemies rather than serving them, as Jesus taught (27-29). Indeed, many still skip right past Jesus and appeal to the Old Testament violence to justify Christians participating in war or using violence for other reasons.

Craigie acknowledges that one might be tempted to simply dismiss all the war material in the Old Testament as a residue of the barbaric cultural packaging revelation had to come in (34-35). (This is basically the avenue Eller and many others take). But Craigie argues we have to be very hesitant to do this. For one thing, the warfare material is central to the Old Testament (36-37). Rejecting this would require dismissing a good deal of the Bible! Even more importantly, Jesus and the first Christians regarded the whole Old Testament as God’s Word (12, 35, 37-38). For Craigie, therefore, dismissing this material is simply not a viable option for Jesus' followers (38). At the same time, given the significant problems this material poses for theology, revelation and ethics, we have to study it very carefully to make sure we are not misunderstanding and misapplying it. (32).

Craigie’s small book contains a number of insights that I believe can help us begin to reconcile the "God as warrior" motif of the Old Testment with the self-sacrificial God revealed in Jesus Christ. In this post I’ll discuss the first of these insights, to be followed by several others in subsequent posts.

God is Not Above Participating in Sinful Human Activity

Craigie notes that the Hebrews always believed that God is present in, and revealed through, the events of human history. Though they knew God was transcendent, they also were convinced that “the living experience of the immanent God is to be found within the fabric of human history”(39). “[T]he self-revelation of God was not to be seen primarily in miraculous events,” Craigie argues, “but simply in his working through the human activities of his chosen people”(40). The people God works in and through, however, are always fallen, sinful people (41). This insight “provides a clue to understanding the conception of God as Warrior” (39).

War is the quintessential expression of this sinfulness (41). When Old Testament authors describe God as a warrior, therefore, they are simply acknowledging that God is willing to stoop even this low. “Words such as ‘warrior’…point to the [violent] realities of human existence.” When the words are metaphorically applied to God, Craigie argues, “they point to his involvement in that [violent] existence and history” (95). To call God a warrior, therefore, is to say that God is willing to fight “through the fighting of his people” (40). God is not above using sinful people and even a quintessential sinful human activity to achieve his own purposes (41, 96). To call God a "warrior" is to say that “God participates actively in the human institution of warfare…” (95).

It’s important to note that God’s willingness to participate in the sinfulness of war “does not primarily afford us a glimpse of his moral being,” according to Craigie. It rather “demonstrates his will and activity” (42, cf. 96). In other words, it tells us nothing about who God really is, except that he is willing to compromise his ideals and get his hands messy by entering into and working through the violence in the human heart and human society (43).

Craigie argues that, given how intrinsic violence is to human society, it would be impossible for God to reign as king over the world unless he had “some kind of relationship to war” (43). If “the prerequisite for divine action were sinless men and sinless societies,” then, Craigie argues, "God could not act through human beings and human institutions at all” (96). More specifically, Craigie agrees with Jacques Ellul (referring to Ellul's masterful work Political Illusion and Violence: Reflections From a Christian Perspective) that violence is intrinsic to the establishing and preservation of states and nations (69- 74). If God was going to try to establish his kingdom through the nation of Israel, therefore, it had to involve violence. (This is a point that we’ll see becomes extremely important later on).

The bottom line is that that Old Testament war tradition teaches us that God is willing to compromise his ideals to work in and through the violent, fallen world. So, even in something as diabolically horrendous as war, God is present. He is at work to use this violence both to judge human fallenness and move the world forward toward his redemptive purposes (95). God’s presence in such a diabolic situation does not justify it or make it holy (unlike most Old Testament scholars, Craige refuses to speak of a “Holy War” tradition, for he argues war is always sinful, even when commanded by God.). But God's presence in war should provide us “hope in a situation of hopelessness" (43).

Assessment

One of the most fascinating aspects of God as revealed throughout the Bible is his willingness to compromise. Though he is an all-holy God, throughout the Biblical narrative we find God making concessions to accommodate humans in their sinful situations.

For example, when God’s ideal for monogamy was no longer feasible for the Israelites because women and children were being left without a provider and protection (due to men being killed in war), God compromised his ideal and allowed for polygamy and even concubines. So too, because of the hardness of the human heart, as Jesus said, God compromised his ideal and allowed for divorce. And, most incredibly, when humanity was desperately enslaved to sin and the devil, the all-holy God accommodated humans by becoming one of them, taking on all the sin of the world and letting himself be ravaged by the devil. "God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21). This is not a God who's afraid of getting dirty!

According to Craigie, something like this must be said about God’s involvement in war in the Old Testament. It reveals that the all-holy God of perfect love is not above getting his hands (and reputation) dirty by working in and through the quintessential expression of human sinfulness – the institution of war. God of course could have instead decided that he is too holy to be involved in such disgusting activity. But the God revealed in Jesus Christ and anticipated in the Old Testament is not that kind of God. His holiness doesn't exclude being related to sinful humans. Rather, his holiness is his unique love for sinful humans and willingness to be involved in -- and even tainted by -- sinful humans. This is why the holiness of Jesus attracted sinners (while the false holiness of the Pharisees repelled them). As the incarnation reveals, God dives into humanity at its worst and he wisely uses humans at their worst to achieve his sovereign purposes. And humans are never worse than when we are at war, killing other humans. This is the first aspect of what the revelation of "God as Warrior" teaches us.

I think it's interesting to observe how close Craigie is to Eller in his views on God's willingness to compromise. We earlier saw that Eller argued that Joshua and others were right in believing that God wanted them to conquer, but wrong when they thought God was telling them to conquer with violence, for Jesus reveals that God hates violence. Yet, Eller argued that God was not above using the violence of the Hebrews (and other nations) to further his sovereign purposes in the world. As the Bible uniformly testifies, God is willing to use even things that he detests.

This is essentially Craigie’s position, except that Craigie argues that God didn’t wait until Joshua and others started engaging in violence to decide to use it. Rather, God decided to use it ahead of time, and this is why he was willing to stoop so low to the point that he directed them how to use it.

I could make my point this way. Both Eller and Craigie agree that God was willing to use the violence of the cultures of the day to further his purposes because there was no alternative -- given how barbaric the people of this day were. (As we'll see in a later post, things haven't changed in the world [Romans 13:1-7] -- though they definitely have for God's people [Rom. 12:17-21]). Unless God is going to simply override human free will and reduce humans to automatons, then he has to work with us and through us as he finds us. And he finds us to be almost incurably violent. The only difference between Craigie and Eller, then, is that the latter tries to get God a little more “off the hook” by having his sovereign involvement in sinful activity kick in after the killing begins. Craigie, by contrast, simply grants that God knew he’d have to be involved in sinful violent activity from the start, so he went ahead and steered the violence to his sovereign advantage from the start. The difference between the two, we see, is not all that great.

Of course, this leaves unanswered the question of what sovereign purpose God might have had in getting involved in war in the first place. And this brings me to what I regard to be the greatest contribution of Craigie’s book. I’ll discuss it in my next post.

Till then,
Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

Greg

Eckhart Tolle’s "A New Earth" Book Review

2008-04-20T09:04:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to suspend our discussion of violence in the O.T. for one more post in order to review Eckhart Tolle’s new book, A New Earth. The book has become an overnight sensation thanks largely to Oprah's enthusiastic endorsement. In fact, Oprah is in the process of hosting a 10-week on-line course conducted by Tolle. Over two million students are participating in this! In response to this, there’s been a frenzy of e-mails and video clips being sent out by conservative Christians warning people that Oprah is a false prophet, the heretical pastor of the world's largest mega-church, a leader of a new cult, etc…

Hearing the buzz I decided to pick the book up at the airport and read it on the plane ride out to the conference in California I attended last week. Here’s my review.

Insights in A New Earth

I have to start by saying I found nothing in this book that hasn’t been said many times before by others who espouse various forms of eastern spirituality. More specifically, it struck me that many (if not most) of Tolle’s ideas are simply restatements of ideas espoused by J. Krishnamurti -- though, curiously enough, Tolle never refers to him. At the same time, Tolle is a much better mass communicator than Krishnamurti (or any other promoter of eastern spirituality I've ever read). He has an ability to package esoteric ideas in ways that westerners can easily understand and absorb, and this undoubtedly goes a long way in explaining Tolle's success.

As was true whenever I've read Krishnamurti, I found some aspects of Tolle’s book very helpful. For example, his analysis of the false and futile ways the ego tries to give itself worth is superb. His insights on judgment, the origins of violence and the causes of relational dysfunction were wonderful. His strong emphasis on “living in the present moment” is full of wisdom. And he is brilliant at helping readers identify ways in which they get stuck. I can easily understand why many readers experience “aha” moments as they read this material. Tolle masterfully names issues all of us wrestle with, usually without knowing it. One can't help but feel like Tolle is telling their own story.

But this is also why this book deeply concerns me. For, while Tolle is a master at identifying the universal human problem, the solution he offers to address this problem is, from a Christian perspective, as misguided as any proposed solution could be. I’ll say three things.

Individuality, Relations and Love as Maya

First, Tolle espouses a rather typical eastern metaphysics in which the true "you" is not the "you" that is distinct from other people, but the (alleged) "you" that is one with the universe. To grasp this, imagine waves on an ocean. Your individual ego is one such wave, but the true “you" in the eastern religious worldview is the ocean itself – as it is for me and every other “wave.” The wave -"you" is limited and temporary, but the ocean-"you" is unlimited and eternal. According to Tolle and the eastern worldview in general, every problem we have, individually and as a collective whole, is the result our tendency to identify with, cling to and fight for the limited, transitory wave instead of with the unlimited, eternal ocean.

In fact, for Tolle, as for most who espouse eastern spirituality, our individuality is something of an illusion – Maya, as the Hindus call it (9 -- all page numbers refer to A New Earth). What is ultimately real is our essence, which is the infinite ocean, the“Source” and (yes) “God” (see e.g. 26). If we can remain consciously aware of our essential oneness with all things on a moment-by-moment basis, we will find that the perpetual striving and anxiety that attaches to our individual ego disappears. We will thus be free, fulfilled, peaceful, etc... The three words that are “the secret of all success and happiness” are “One With Life” (115). Instead of living with an ego-centered awareness of how we (as individuals) are distinct from all other things, we must cultivate an ego-free awareness of how we are one with all things on a moment-by-moment basis. And when this happens, there is no longer an awareness of a "we" that is distinct from others at all.

This eastern worldview that Tolle espouses fundamentally contradicts the biblical worldview. It's important we understand why this is so. For Tolle, the world of distinct things and distinct people is only quasi-real. Ultimate reality is one, “formless,” “pure potentiality,” "pure awareness," etc. This means that relationships are only quasi-real, since relationships must take place between distinct persons. And this means that love is only quasi-real, since love is obviously a relationship.

This is why Tolle says that the biblical teaching that “God is love” is “not absolutely correct.” The truth, according to Tolle, is that...

God is the One Life and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object. So love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality (106).

In other words, since duality is not an ultimate reality, love is not an ultimate reality – which is why God can’t be said to be love. Love is rather a means to an end –the end being the recognition that you and all other people are not really distinct. Love thus helps us transcend the world of duality and enter “the light of consciousness itself.” "To love," Tolle says, "is to recognize yourself in another" (105, emphasis added). For, ultimately, there is no "other" to love. There is only the self.

By contrast – sharp contrast – the biblical worldview affirms that the teaching that "God is love" is not only “absolutely correct” but is the most important and correct truth there is (1 Jn 4:8). In the biblical worldview, God is an eternal, perfect, loving relationship. As Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is eternal, perfect love shared between a plurality of "persons." Love and plurality are not pen-ultimate realities: they are ultimate reality!

Not only this, but out of perfect love, God created a world filled with ultimately real individuals with the hope that they'd share in and reflect the joy and ecstasy of his eternal, perfect, and ultimately real love. The goal of life, therefore, is not to dissolve all individuality into oneness but to eternally affirm individuality in loving relationship with all other individuals and with God. The goal is not to realize you are God, but to be eternally related to God with a love that participates in the perfect love that God eternally is.

This fundamental difference is clearly manifested in the way Tolle teaches people to "stay awake" and "live in the now," in contrast to the way Christians such as Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God) and Frank Laubach have helped people "stay awake." Tolle encourages people to cultivate an on-going awareness of their essential oneness with life. The goal is to transcend the ego and lose any distinct awareness of yourself. By contrast, Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach encourage people to cultivate an on-going awareness of the presence of God and to surrender to this presence on a moment-by-moment basis. Tolle aims at experiencing one's own divine "I AM" on a moment-by-moment basis. Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach aim at experiencing a loving relationship with the I AM on a moment-by-moment basis.

Clearly, Tolle's eastern worldview fundamentally contradicts the most important aspect of the biblical worldview.

Freedom From A Religious Belief System?

Second, there’s a profound inconsistency that pervades Tolle’s book (which, not coincidentally, I've also found in all of Krishnamurti's writings). Both in his book and on the Oprah show, Tolle claims he is not promoting a “belief system” (17). This is why he and Oprah claim his book -- and his course -- is compatible with whatever belief system a person might already have. Whatever you believe, Oprah says, Tolle's technique to become self-aware and live in the moment will make it better -- "like seasoning on a meal," she says. In fact, Tolle claims we are entering a new age in which we will witness the end “not only of all mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems” (21). For, in keeping with Krishnamurti's life-long teaching, Tolle believes that belief systems are ego-centered interpretations that we impose on reality and that therefore hinder our pure awareness of reality. To the extent that one attains pure awareness in the present moment, one transcends beliefs.

Ironically, every page of Tolle's book contains beliefs -- that is, interpretations of reality. For example, the belief that belief systems are ego-centered interpretations that we impose on reality is a belief. So too, when Tolle announces that the belief that “God is love" is incorrect, he is obviously announcing a particular (mistaken) belief.

Along the same lines, a couple of sentences after prophesying the eventual demise of all belief systems, Tolle announces:

If evil has any reality – and it is relative, not an absolute reality – this is its definition: complete identification with the forms – physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms (22).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be a (mistaken) belief about the nature of evil.

In the very next sentence Tolle goes on to explain that the reason identifying with forms is “evil” is because it causes us to forget our “intrinsic oneness with every 'other' as well as with the Source” (22). This is yet another (mistaken) belief.

Several sentences following this, Tolle announces that when Jesus talks about “heaven” he is referring to “the inner realm of consciousness” (23). This is yet another belief -- and one that anyone who understands Jesus' words in their original first century Jewish milieu will easily identify as profoundly mistaken.

So too, when Tolle proclaims that "[a]ll religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them" (he is apparently an expert on all of them) and that anyone who believes "only your religion is the truth" is "using it in the service of the ego" (70-71), he's clearly espousing a religious belief -- and note, one that he clearly believes is the only true one!

Finally, when Tolle repeatedly teaches that one should accept every experience as something that is good for them -- for "life," he claims, is helping their consciousness to evolve (e.g. 41, 57, etc.) -- he's espousing a particular religious dogma...one that I would suspect parents of kidnapped children as well as the kidnapped children themselves might find disagreeable.

I could go on, but enough has been said to demonstrate that Tolle's claim that he is not promoting a "belief system" is far from true. As a matter of fact, he is promoting a particular religious worldview buttressed by a plethora of religious beliefs. What's particular aggravating is that Tolle never supports these religious beliefs with evidence or argumentation. (How could he? He apparently isn't even aware he's propounding beliefs in the first place!) Tolle just announces these dogmas as though they were self-evident truths. While there are some aspects of this religious belief system that are consistent with Scripture and are even helpful, as I said above, its core is as antithetical to the Christian worldview as any religious belief system could be.

Tolle's Teaching on Jesus and Christianity

Third, the belief system Tolle espouses is at its very worst when he starts talking about Jesus and Christianity. According to Tolle, Jesus, like the Buddha, was an “early flower” in the evolution of human consciousness whose message was misunderstood and distorted (6). For example, Tolle suggests (without proof) that Jesus' message was distorted when people began to worship him as a god (15). If this is a distortion, it happened very early since its clear from the letters of the apostle Paul that Jesus' followers started worshiping him several years after he lived! Where Tolle got his "inside information" about a non-distorted version of Jesus' message that predates this he unfortunately does not tell.

Along the same lines, Tolle claims (incredibly!) that gnosticism and mysticism in the Christian tradition were movements that recovered the original insights of Jesus (16). The fact that all of the New Testament documents are thoroughly Jewish -- not gnostic -- and that we have no evidence of gnostic influenced Christianity until the second century (well after the New Testament documents were written) doesn't seem to concern Tolle.

So too, Tolle claims that when Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” he meant to say "[t]he very Being that you are is Truth" (71, emphasis added). He was speaking of the “I AM” that forms “the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form in fact." This is the same as our “Buddha nature” our “Atman” or “the indwelling God” (71). Good to know.

Not only this, but when Jesus told us to deny ourselves, he meant to say that we were to “[n]egate … the illusion of the self” (79). Similarly, when Jesus referred to “eternal life” he was actually referring to “the dimension of the formless within” you (81). And, most fantastically, when Jesus died on the cross he was giving us “an archetypal image” of how our evolving consciousness is “burning up” our “ego” (102).

A hundred more illustrations of Tolle's remarkable pronouncements about Jesus and Christianity could be given, but I think you get the point. Two things are clear from all of this.

First, Tolle is promoting (without any supporting evidence or argumentation) an assortment of very particular religious beliefs about Jesus and Christianity that he clearly believes are the only true ones-- in sharp contrast to all the wrong beliefs that Christians have embraced throughout history. Now, I honestly would have no problem with any of this if Tolle was simply upfront with what he was doing. If Tolle came clean and admitted, "Folks, I'm trying to sell you a religious belief system that contradicts Christianity in the most profound ways imaginable," I'd applaud his effort and honesty! I'd think his alternative doctrines silly, of course. But I'd respect the candor. Unfortunately, whether by intention or just lack of self-awareness, Tolle is not forthright about the religious beliefs he promotes.

Second, as is clear to anybody with even a cursory understanding of the original context in which Jesus’ lived and even a modicum of information about Church History, Tolle's claims about Jesus and Christianity are demonstrably wrong. Indeed, a little sound exegesis (on the meaning of what Jesus taught) and historical research (on the early church) reveals his claims to be, frankly, comical. The only thing that is perhaps more comical is his apparent lack of awareness that he’s espousing an alternative set of religious dogmas in the first place -- and this from a man whose whole agenda is about becoming self-aware!

I am left, then, with deep concerns about this book and with the fact that Oprah (who explicitly identifies herself as Christian) is so enthusiastically supporting it. Again, I'm not denying there are some very good insights in this book. Nor am I joining the rank of those who are castigating Oprah as the new pastor of a new, heretical, internet "mega-church" or "cult." I believe both Oprah and Tolle mean well and are sincerely trying to help people improve their lives. But I am nonetheless very concerned that the masterful way Tolle identifies and diagnoses the struggles we all wrestle with will make readers more gullible in accepting the strongly anti-Christian religious belief system he's intentionally or unintentionally slipping in the back door.

I would thus encourage anyone who wants to read this book to do so with a very critical eye (c.f. 2 Tim. 4:3-4; 2 Pet. 2:1).

Better yet, if you're interesting in a Christ-centered way of learning how to live "in the present moment" -- and we all should be -- forget about Tolle and read Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach's Practicing His Presence and/or J. De Caussade's The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Yes, live in the now! But do it in loving relationship with God rather than by believing you are God.

Blessings

Greg

More on Evolution as Cosmic Warfare

2008-04-15T07:26:00.009-05:00

I spend the weekend hanging out with some of my openness friends attending a Science and Openness Theology Conference in southern California. We all presented essays we've been working on since last summer for a book on Science and Openness Theology. After each presentation other Conference participants offered critical feedback.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my essay was entitled Evolution As Cosmic Warfare. Given the incredible stature of Satan in the N.T., I argued, we have grounds for interpreting the massive carnage and waste found in evolution as largely, if not completely, the work of Satan, not God. (I refer to Satan as a shorthand way of referring to Satan, principalities and powers and demons, since I think all play a role in corrupting nature).

A lot of people loved my argument. Others not so much. A few seemed to loath it (especially those most heavily involved in the natural sciences). One line of criticism went something like this. If the evolution-as-cosmic-warfare thesis is right, then the animal kingdom today is the result of the activity of both God and Satan. So a tiger, for example, reflects both the glory of God as well as the malevolent character of Satan. But it's not clear that this "co-designer" model is coherent. Even if it is coherent, how are we to decide which characteristics should be attributed to God and which to Satan? On top of this, one person argued that for my thesis to be regarded as plausible, it was incumbent upon me to offer a compelling scientific account of how Satan corrupted natural processes to produce things like malevolent parasites and carnivorous predators.

I responded by saying I could see no difficulty in admitting dual spiritual influences in the evolutionary process. Consider the glowing bunny that scientists have created by splicing together the DNA of jellyfish and rabbits: It reflects the creative influence of both God and humans. Since we lack specific information about how God and Satan were involved in the evolutionary process , it may be impossible to trace specific characteristics back to their spiritual source -- assuming there is a spiritual source behind a specific characteristic or set of characteristics (often these may be merely the result of natural processes). If we didn't know that rabbits didn't originally glow, for example, we'd have no way of knowing that the glowing rabbit had been tampered with.

Still, I argued, all other things being equal, to the extent that something in nature reflects the character of "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet 5:8) rather than that of the benevolent Creator, we ought to at least entertain the possibility that this is due to the corrupting influence of Satan.

Turning to the final criticism, it's true that I can't give a scientific account of how cosmic warfare produced malevolent parasites, predators and the like. But this is hardly a strike against my thesis since it applies equally to those theists who deny Satan's involvement in nature. For example, defenders of Intelligent Design who accept evolution hold that God's intelligence was involved in the unfolding of evolution, but they cannot give a scientific account of how he was so involved. This is the same boat I'm in, except that I simply add that we have no reason to assume God is the only spirit-agent affecting this process.

The bottom line is that no one can provide a scientific account of how supernatural agents affect the world for the simple reason that the methodology of natural sciences doesn't concern itself with supernatural agents. I rest my case!

Anyway, the entire conference was fun and informative. At the end of the conference I spent a fun afternoon with Ralph Winter and a team of mission-minded folks who work with him. We discussed and debated an assortment of topics, including the openness of the future, the nature of Genesis 1, the problem of evil and the theological foundation of missions. It was invigorating.

On my plane ride out to California I read Eckhart Tolle's new book A New Earth that has been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey and is causing an uproar among many Christians. I'm going to suspend our Old Testament and Violence discussion one more post to report on this book in a day or two.

til then,
B-BLESSED!

Evolution As Cosmic Warfare

2008-04-10T07:32:00.013-05:00

Well, believe it or not, I'm going to take a break today from obsessing on the problem of violence in the Old Testament and instead obsess on the problem of violence in nature. (I promise to return to the O.T. soon -- we'll deal with Peter Craigie's The Problem of War in the Old Testament).

Some of you who have been visiting this blog for ten months or more may recall that I was part of a three week science and theology conference last summer. It focused on integrating science with the open view of the future. (I blogged on the conference and topics surrounding it from June 18 to July 30, 2007). Among the many topics we discussed was the issue of explaining how an all-good Creator could have designed -- or at least allowed for -- a system of evolution that contained, if not necessitated, horrific violence, suffering and waste. This is the problem of "natural" evil, and it's eloquently expressed by Tennyson in his famous poem In Memoriam.

Man…trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law –
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrek’d against his creed.
Tennyson
In Memoriam

Neither nature today, nor the evolutionary process that led up to it, look like they they were designed and governed by a non-violent God of love!

Why am I obsessing on this now? Well, in about an hour I'm catching a plane to California to attend a follow-up conference to the one I attended last summer. All who attended last year's conference will be delivering papers on aspects of science and the open view of the future that were in whole or in part inspired by that conference. These papers will then be edited and (hopefully) published in a book. My essay addresses the problem of violence in nature and is entitled "Evolution As Cosmic Warfare: A Biblical Approach to So-Call 'Natural' Evil." (I know this will aggravate some readers who hold to a young earth creationist view, but my paper assumes that the earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old and that some form of evolution was involved in bringing about humans and the animal kingdom as we find them today).

As my title suggests, the rather controversial thesis I will defend in my essay is that, given what the Bible has to say about Satan and other fallen angels, Christian theists have no reason to assume that the carnage and waste that characterizes the evolutionary process and nature today is all the result of how God designed nature. Indeed, I suggest we view evolution as a sort of epoch-long warfare between the life-affirming creativity of an all-good God, on the one hand, and the on-going corrupting influence of malevolent cosmic forces, on the other. The fact that God is nevertheless able to achieve his creational objectives (for example, the creation of humans in his image) through this corrupted process reflects God's sovereign wisdom in bringing good out of evil and overcoming evil with good.

I end my paper by defending and tweaking a proposal put forth by Ralph Winter and a team of colleagues at the Roberta Winter Institute that reconciles this evolution-as-cosmic-warfare perspective with Genesis 1 and 2. Some of you may recall that last summer I announced I felt I had to modify my "gap" interpretation of Genesis 1 because it conflicted with the geological evidence. At the same time, I began to consider an alternative reading of Genesis 1 that I'd recently come across, proposed by Ralph Winter (I posted on this topic 7/30/07). Well, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Ralph Winter's interpretation offers the most plausible way of resolving the problems my old "gap" theory faced. (You can read Winter's proposal -- entitled "Unfinished Epic" -- here).

I don't necessarily agree with everything Winter proposes, but in my essay I use the basic framework of his work to depict Eden as the first expression of "the mustard seed kingdom." It was a supernaturally created "Kingdom oasis" that God carved out in the midst of a demonically oppressed and corrupted world. Eden was to function as a sort of beachhead from which humans were to partner with God, expand his Kingdom against the kingdom of darkness and ultimately transform the whole earth to become the domain over which God reigns -- the Kingdom of God. The beachhead was unfortunately lost to hostile forces, thanks to the failure of the original humans. But defeating malevolent forces, winning back the earth, and having humans reign with Christ over the earth (2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 5:10; 20:6; 22:5) remains God's primary objective and the primary calling of humans.

One of the things I'll be doing out in California is meeting with Ralph Winter and his team to brainstorm about the evolution-as-cosmic-warfare thesis and this new way of reading Genesis. It should be a very interesting time. I'll let you know how it goes.

Right now I've got to go catch a plane!

Blessings on all you co-rulers with Christ!!

Greg

A Critique of Eller's Thesis

2008-04-05T16:40:00.004-05:00

Hello Bloggers,

These days I'm "thinking out loud" about the problem of divinely sanctioned violence in the Old Testament. (If you're new to this blog, I encourage you to go to the 3/14 post and start at the beginning of this series). I've recently given an overview of Vern Eller’s view that the Old Testament warriors and authors simply got it wrong when they thought they “heard” Yahweh commanding them to slaughter people (see 3/29 post). In the previous post I noted that there are at least five rather strong arguments that can be made in support of Eller’s thesis (see 4/1 post). In this post I want to offer six arguments that can raised against Eller’s thesis.

1. Cultural Relative Packaging Verses Culturally Relative Teaching?

First, as I noted in my previous post, I think Eller’s point that we don’t have God’s “unmediated voice” in Scripture is undeniable. God’s revelation is always packaged in, and conditioned by, the cultural and personal limitations of the biblical authors. At the same time, Eller’s claim that the cultural and personal limitations of the biblical authors led them to claim Yahweh told them to do something (e.g. slaughter the Canaanites) that Yahweh didn’t in fact tell them to do takes this principle to a whole new level. It’s one thing to claim that a true biblical teaching is expressed in a culturally relative way and quite another thing to claim that a biblical teaching itself is culturally relative.

For example, the psalmist is obviously expressing the limitations and barbarism of his culture when he celebrates the prospect of Babylonian babies having their heads smashed against rocks (Ps. 137:9). But his barbarism (fortunately) wasn’t the point of the passage. By contrast, when Joshua claims that Yahweh told him and his warriors to utterly destroy the Canaanites, this seems to be the central point of the passage. Dismissing Joshua’s claim as culturally relative thus seems to be a much more significant move than dismissing David’s incidental expression.

On the other hand, Eller could perhaps respond that the destruction of the Canaanites wasn’t in fact the central point of the Holy War passages: the central point was God’s victory. So, Eller could argue, the destruction of the Canaanites was how Joshua (mistakenly) expressed God’s victory, in the same way that David's delight in smashing babies was how David (mistakenly) expressed God’s victory. In both cases we have to say that there’s something right, and something wrong – something timeless, and something culturally relative – expressed in these passages.

I have to grant that this is a strong response -- to the point that I’m not sure how to refute it. Yet, I can’t help but feel like there’s something amiss here. The Psalmist doesn’t claim God told him to smash the heads of Babylonian babies, but Joshua (and others) explicitly claim God told them to slaughter the Canaanites. Indeed, in passages like Deuteronomy 7, God (reportedly) goes to great lengths to make sure they spare no one -- and then gets very irate when they disobediently let some live.

2. Why Couldn’t Yahweh Be Clearer?

Second, as we've seen, Eller believes that Joshua and other Old Testament warriors got it right when they heard Yahweh tell them they were to only fight the battles he wanted them to fight and that they were to place their complete trust in him when they fought. They were not to fight with the “Nimrodian” mindset of other nations (viz. fighting out of insecurity, self-interest, etc.). Unfortunately, according to Eller, these warriors mistakenly thought this entailed that they had to slaughter anyone who stood in the way of Yahweh’s will being done.

It seems to me there’s something rather peculiar about this view. How is it that Yahweh succeeded into getting Joshua and others to refrain from placing any trust in their sword and to not fight out of insecurity and self-interest and yet failed to clearly communicate that they weren’t supposed to kill anyone? Why would it have been so hard for Yahweh to clearly say to Joshua, “Don’t kill people?” If anything, one might have thought it would have been harder for God to get Joshua and other ancients to see that they weren't to fight out of insecurity and self-interest and harder for God to get them to place all their trust in him alone for victory than it would have been to simply get them to obey his command not to kill people. In fact, at various points throughout his book (War and Peace from Genesis to Revelation), Eller himself contends that most today still don't get the first two points, even when they understand the point that humans aren't supposed to kill others. (This is why he praises Joshua and other Old Testament warriors over modern day anti-war protesters, as I noted in my post on 3/29). So, even by Eller's own analysis, it seems Yahweh succeeded at the harder task (viz. getting his warriors out of their "Nimrodian" mindset) but failed at the easier task (viz. getting them to refrain from killing).

3. The Slippery Slope Argument

Less strong is a third argument that several readers of this blog expressed to me. They argued that once one grants that any biblical passage might be mistaken, we have no means of deciding what is and is not the "true voice of God" in Scripture. We have embarked on a slippery slope toward total relativism, they fear. More specifically, if Joshua was wrong in thinking Yahweh told him to slaughter the Canaanites, then Paul might have been wrong in thinking God told him we’re saved by grace or in thinking God told him fornication was a sin. If humans have to decide what is and is not the true voice of God in the Bible, they argue, then it seems it's “every man for himself.” We can choose what we like and discard what we don’t like. Eller’s thesis, in other words, throws us into an epistemological, theological and moral abyss. (I find this worry lies behind the passion of many evangelicals to uphold "biblical inerrancy").

I empathize with this concern, but I'm not convinced it's a sound objection. Two things are worth mentioning.

First, everyone already has to decide what is and is not “the true voice of God in the Bible" -- at least to the extent that we all have to try to discern the timeless teaching of the Bible from its cultural packaging. For example, no one today (including those who espouse "inerrancy") feels compelled to believe that the earth is surrounded by water and held up by pillars, despite the fact that biblical authors clearly believed this. And few people today feel compelled to insist women shouldn't wear braided hair or jewelry and call their husbands "lord." Yet these beliefs and instructions are in the New Testament. The central point being taught in these passages is timeless, but the way they're expressed is culturally relative.

Now, we may disagree with Eller’s claim that the reports of Yahweh telling the Israelites to slaughter people are culturally relative. But I don’t think we can argue that Eller’s claim straps us with a new "slippery slope" problem. It’s the same old “timeless teaching verses culturally relative packaging” problem all over again.

Second, while there is obvious disagreement about what is and is not culturally relative in the Bible, the issue is not as subjective as people simply “accepting what they like and discarding what they don’t like.” There are reasonable criteria to assess this. (On this I recommend the marvelous book by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth). For example, one way to assess whether something is timeless or culturally relative in the Bible is to ask, “Is the matter uniformly presented in Scripture or are their variations throughout the biblical narrative?” So, granting that there are culturally relative aspects of Scripture doesn’t land us in an epistemological, theological and moral abyss -- even if we end up agreeing with Eller that the reports of Yahweh commanding the Israelites to slaughter people are among these culturally relative aspects of Scripture.

4. Jesus’ View of the Old Testament

A fourth objection that can be raised against Eller's thesis is, in my mind, much more forceful. By far and away, the most compelling reason I have for believing the Old Testament is inspired in the first place is that Jesus (like almost every other first century Jew) viewed it as such. He uses the expression “Scripture says” and “God says” interchangeably, for example.

Now, I have very good reasons for thinking Jesus was the Son of God (for an exploration of these reasons, see Eddy & Boyd, The Jesus Legend). I thus have very good reasons for thinking Jesus couldn’t have been mistaken in his view of the Old Testament. As a follower of Jesus, therefore, I feel compelled to accept his perspective. This doesn’t rule out viewing aspects of the Old Testament as culturally relative, but it does seem to rule out concluding that any scriptural author ever “got it wrong.”

Yet, so far as I can see, accepting Eller’s thesis forces us to just this conclusion. When Joshua and others reported that Yahweh told them to slaughter people, they were wrong. As compelling as Eller’s argument is, therefore, I feel I have to choose Jesus’ view over his.

5. God’s Use of Violence

Fifth, throughout his book (War and Peace From Genesis to Revelation), Eller has no problem conceding that Yahweh uses the violent tendencies of nations -- including the Israelites -- to achieve his sovereign purposes. To be sure, Eller stresses (rightly) that God always does this reluctantly, and that whenever God brings judgment on Israel or any other nation, it's never an end in and of itself. God’s heart is always to heal and redeem people. Violence is a tragic but necessary means to a loving, healing and redemptive end (e.g. 72-77). Moreover, Eller brilliantly highlights the fact that throughout the Old Testament God inspires prophets to paint a picture of the future in which violence will no longer be necessary. Still, Eller grants that God is willing to use violence for good ends when necessary.

Given that Eller grants this much (and how could he not, since this motif runs throughout the Old Testament?), it’s not clear to me how he can balk so strongly at the Holy War tradition of the Israelites. True, there’s a difference between God commanding his people to violently slaughter others, on the one hand, and God using the violent tendencies of nations as he finds them to slaughter others. But I’m not sure how significant this difference really is. In Isaiah 10, for example, God used Assyria to harshly judge the Israelites, but he nevertheless spoke in terms of Assyria being his “rod” and “servant.” Other times in the Old Testament narrative God “calls” nations (e.g. Assyria, Babylon) to rise up against Israel – even though he sometimes punishes these nations for being the kind of barbaric nation that would be useful for this purpose.

So, it seems there is a rather fine line between God commanding violence and using violence. If we grant that God is willing to engage in the latter, it seems a bit odd to balk too strongly at his willingness to engage in the former. Even more to the point, the claim that God uses violent-tending nations to engage in violence against people is arguably as inconsistent with the picture of God revealed on Calvary as the claim that God commands a violent-tending nation to engage in violence.

6. What of God’s Own Violence?

A sixth and final objection to Eller’s view is that it's not clear how much it actually accomplishes in terms of reconciling the view of God in the Holy War traditions with the picture of God presented on Calvary. Yes, if accepted, Eller’s thesis allows us to dismiss the claims that Yahweh commanded his people to slaughter others. To this extent, Eller's view removes the inconsistency of how God expects his people to treat enemies in the Old and New Testaments. This is no small accomplishment. Yet, Eller's view doesn’t do anything to help us reconcile the picture of God himself slaughtering people with the view of God presented on Calvary.

Think about it. Even if Eller's thesis is accepted, we still have to accept that God wiped out almost the entire human race – including little children – with a violent flood. (Even if one holds that the Genesis flood was local, not global, we’re still talking about massive carnage). Even if Eller's thesis is accepted, we still have to accept that God incinerated entire cities -- populated with infants and little children (Sodom and Gomorrah). We still have to accept that God killed the first born sons of all Egyptians, drowned the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea and carried out a host of other episodes of massive slaughtering. Even in the New Testament we find Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, being struck dead by God (Acts 5)! (One might also want to appeal to the carnage in the book of Revelation, but I shall later argue that Revelation actually presents no such picture).

These episodes of God causing carnage seem no more consistent with the God revealed on Calvary – the God who chooses to be killed rather than to kill – than the episodes of slaughtering that involve human agents. Hence, while Eller's thesis nicely removes the inconsistency between the Old and New Testaments regarding how God wants his people to treat enemies, it doesn't at all help remove the inconsistency regarding their portraits of God.

So folks, from where I sit, we're pretty much back to the drawing board. Eller's view (shared by many others) seems promising on the surface. But once you critically examine it, I'm afraid it comes up short.

How could the loving, non-violent God revealed in Jesus Christ -- the God who prayed "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" -- be one and the same with the God who said "slaughter them all" and "show them no mercy"? In the next post we'll consider another proposal.

Until then, remember that our picture of God is to be rooted in Jesus Christ alone, and our attitude toward enemies is to be derived from Jesus Christ alone.

Greg

A Defense of Eller's Thesis

2008-04-01T22:33:00.001-05:00

Hello internet friends,

In my last post I reviewed Eller’s proposal for reconciling the warrior image of Yahweh found in the Holy War tradition, on the one hand, with the self-sacrificial image of God revealed in Christ, on the other. We saw that Eller basically argues that the Old Testament warriors (and authors) were right in understanding that Yahweh had called them to fight his battles, but wrong in thinking this entailed killing other people. In this post I'll offer five arguments that support this view. In my next post I'll raise several arguments against it.

First, I have to applaud Eller’s Christ-centered approach to reading the Bible. Eller rightly sees that we must read the Old Testament in light of Christ, not qualify the revelation of God in Christ on the basis of the Old Testament. He rightly sees that the Old Testament is authoritative to disciples of Jesus only insofar as it points toward, and concurs with, what we learn about God and the Kingdom through Christ.

Second, it has to be conceded that Eller’s proposal in principle solves the problem we’re addressing. In fact, I have to frankly confess that, so far as I can see, it solves the problem more simply, and possibly more effectively, than any other proposal we’ll consider. (Yet, as we'll see in the next post, it also faces some formidable objections). The gap between the way God sometimes appears in the Old Testament and the way God appears in Jesus Christ is explained by the culturally conditioned perception of God in the Old Testament, which means we no longer need to wrestle with any apparent duplicity in God himself.

Third, the fact that the New Testament clearly reveals that the warfare God wants us to fight is "not against flesh and blood" but against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12) lends support to Eller's view. Since we're supposed to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, it makes sense to suppose that God wanted the Israelites to engage in spiritual warfare rather than "flesh and blood" warfare. And this supports the conclusion that the Old Testament folks simply erred in allowing their "Nimrodian" mindset to adversely affect the way they heard Yahweh speak to them.

Fourth, we've seen that Eller argues that the biblical warriors and authors were products of their cultural conditioning when they (mistakenly) thought they heard Yahweh telling them to slaughter others. Some evangelicals may find this to be a shocking proposal and possibly in conflict with a belief in the infallibility of Scripture. At the same time, it must be conceded that, regardless of one's view of Scripture, everyone has to in principle accept Eller’s crucial insight that in reading the Bible we’re not hearing “the unmediated voice of God himself” (78).

For one thing, everyone grants that some aspects of the Old and New Testaments are culturally conditioned. For example, no one today believes the earth and sky are held up by pillars, that the earth is surrounded by waters populated with threatening sea monsters (Rahab, Leviathan), that the sky is as hard “as a molten mirror” (Job 37:18) and holds water above it, and that this sky has windows in it that God opens up so it can rain on the earth (e.g. Gen. 7:11). This is clearly the view of the cosmos reflected in many Old Testament passages, but we of course realize this is just part of the Bible’s cultural conditioning.

So too, when the apostle Paul says -- in God's inspired word -- that he can’t remember whether he baptized anyone outside of Stephanas' house (I Cor. 1:16-17), and when he offers opinions -- in God's inspired word -- that he acknowledges he didn’t get directly from the Lord (1 Cor. 7:25ff), or when he instructs women not to wear jewelry or have braided hair (1 Tim 2:9), it's clear we’re hearing God’s voice mediated through the personal limitations and cultural conditioning of a first century Jewish male. It's not like the Bible was dictated directly by God.

Let's take this reflection a step further. I honestly don't see how a disciple of Jesus could avoid concluding that at least some of the warfare material in the Old Testament is culturally conditioned by the barbarically violent culture in which the authors were living. For example, the Psalmist sings, “Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks” (Ps. 137:9) and “The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked” (Ps. 58:10). The central God-inspired point of the passages is to assert that God will be victorious and wickedness will be punished. But, in light of God’s self-revelation in Christ, it seems rather obvious that the particular way the Psalmist expresses these points is culturally conditioned. The Psalmist would apparently be happy to wade in the blood of his enemies and smash their babies against rocks, but we can’t imagine Jesus being happy about this attitude. He commands us to love, bless, do good to and pray for our worst enemies!

The basic point is that the Bible does not give us the unmediated voice of God. It gives us God’s voice mediated through culturally conditioned human witnesses. In this light, it doesn't seem too outlandish to suppose that certain Old Testament warriors and authors were right when they heard God telling them to fight his battles, but reflected their cultural conditioning when they interpreted this to mean they were to slaughter men, women and children. They expressed a God-inspired truth when they affirmed that God wanted to fight for them and give them the victory. But the way they expressed and applied this truth was culturally conditioned.

Finally, there may be some precedent in the Old Testament for Eller’s contention that the Israelite warriors were partly right and partly wrong when they engaged in their holy wars. In a superb article entitled “I was only a little angry” [Interpretation 58 (2008) 365-75], Terrence Fretheim notes that a “remarkable number of prophetic texts speak of divine judgment on those nations that have been agents of God (Jer. 25:12-14; 27:6-7; Isa 10:12-19; 47:1-15; Zech 1:15)” (p.372). He notes that in these texts the agents God used “exceeded their mandate, going beyond their proper judgmental activities in vaunting their own strength…” (ibid). This is perhaps most explicit in Zechariah when the Lord says, “I was only a little angry; they made the disaster worse” (ibid). In other words, while God wanted to use these violent-tending nations to achieve certain ends, “They overdid it!” (373). In a sense they obeyed God, but they allowed their own violent tendencies to take them beyond what God intended, and thus make themselves the objects of God’s judgment.

Fretheim notes that these texts reveal that God doesn’t meticulously control the behavior of the nations he uses – not even Israel. And the reason this interests us at present is because it reveals that a nation can be said to carry out God’s will, in one sense, but to also, at the same time, rebel against God’s will in another sense. In this light, one could argue there’s precedent for Eller’s contention that the Holy War tradition of the Old Testament represents Israel obeying God’s will while at the same time going against his will because they fused their admirable obedience with their own culturally conditioned assumption that people were the enemies. God told them to fight his battles and to inherit the promised land, but the Israelites themselves interpreted this to mean, “slaughter everyone.”

It seems to me, therefore, that a surprisingly strong case can be made in defense of Eller's thesis. I confess I am tempted to embrace it. But, as I'll show in my next post, I also think it faces some serious, and possibly unsurmountable, problems.

Till then, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus,

Greg

Could Old Testament Warriors Have Been Mistaken?

2008-03-29T22:44:00.003-05:00

Hi bloggers and bloggerettes,

Sorry it's been a few days since I've posted. Been crazy busy.

I've been discussing the problem of divinely sanctioned violence in the Old Testament. So far I've argued that whether or not we're able to reconcile the holy war tradition with the non-violent example and teachings of Jesus shouldn't affect our faith in Christ, our picture of God or how we live (see postings on 3/17, 3/21 and 3/24). Still, this issue has significant theological repercussions, so we need to take it very seriously.

It's now time to start examining proposals. I’ll put all my cards on the table. I have a tentative "solution" (really, a set of "solutions") that I plan on building toward as I review various proposals over the next couple weeks. But I'll also be honest with you and confess that I'm not entirely satisfied with my present "solution," so I'm very open to modifying, or even completely abandoning, my present views. In a very real sense I'm just processing out loud on this blog. My hope is that this exercise will help refine, modify and improve my own view and perhaps help others along the way.

Let's start by considering the most radical proposal to resolve the apparent contradiction between the Old Testament's Holy War tradition and the non-violent character of God that is portrayed in the New Testament. There are a number of scholars and pastors who consider themselves Bible-believing evangelicals who argue that when Joshua and other Old Testament warriors thought Yahweh was telling them to slaughter men, women and children, they were simply mistaken. The Bible accurately (even infallibly?) reports what these people "heard," but their "hearing" was culturally conditioned by the violence of the culture they were entrenched in.

Some who are reading probably just gasped and are shocked I would even bother to consider such a proposal. But please hear the proposal out!

One author who espouses this view is Vernard Eller. I’ve read all of Eller’s books and find him to be a profoundly insightful thinker with a beautiful vision and deep understanding of the Kingdom. (His book Christian Anarchy is a classic!). In his book War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation (Wipf and Stock, 2003) Eller makes as good a case as I’ve ever seen defending the view that Yahweh did not command the violence of the Holy War tradition. I can’t begin to do justice to the complexity of Eller’s argument and the insights offered in this (often neglected) book. But I can briefly outline his basic argument in five steps.

1. Born Fighters

First, Eller argues that humans are made with a warrior instinct, for we are made in the image of a warrior God. He finds this in the paradigmatic Genesis narrative itself, for humans are commanded to “subdue” and “rule” the earth (19 [all numbers are page references to War and Peace]). We’re to partner with God in building his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, and this involves fighting for the Kingdom (21). In the Genesis narrative it's not yet clear who or what we’re supposed to fight, but there are suggestions we're not to fight other humans. In the narrative of Eve’s creation from Adam, for example, Eller notes that all fighting language is gone. “[T]here is nothing here about ruling or exerting control over others…Everything points to a mutual giving of oneself to the other – the very contrary of domination over the other. (23)

2. Turning on Each Other

Second, Eller observes that when humans "fall" (rebel against God), our fighter instinct gets turned on each other (Adam on Eve, Cain on Abel, etc.). Eller brilliantly traces the escalation of violence throughout Genesis and the Old Testament. Human on human violence, then, is the result of our estrangement from God. More specifically, violence is rooted in our unwillingness to trust God for security and thus in our need to make ourselves secure (33). At the same time, the Genesis narrative reveals that even after the fall, God continued to be a warrior, but he was a warrior for humans, not against them. This is reflected in the fact that Yahweh made clothes for Adam and Eve to cover their shame and in the fact that he took measures to protect Cain from other humans who wanted to kill him (as well as in a number of other ways) (29-30). Eller argues that God is always trying to protect humans from themselves and trying to get humans to partner with him in building the Kingdom (which Eller metaphorically depicts as dancing with God).

3. What Joshua and Other Old Testament Warriors Got Right

Eller argues – convincingly, I believe – that the wars that Joshua and others fought were not at all like the wars nations usually fight, for these wars are always motivated by the need to make oneself secure (he calls these sorts of wars “Nimrodian wars,” for they’re patterned after the “great” warrior in Genesis, Nimrod). The Israelite wars were “holy wars,” for the Israelite warriors were motivated only by a desire to partner with God in fighting God’s foes. Indeed, the Holy War tradition is premised on the conviction that “it is Yahweh who is fighting the war; about as much as is expected of the human participants is that they come along and watch him do it” (47).

This is why we repeatedly read in the Old Testament's Holy War material the refrain that “Yahweh has already given the enemy into your hand.” (52-53). This is also one of the reasons the Israelites often enforced “the ban” (herem) in which everything had to be “utterly destroyed.” They were trying to protect themselves against the fallen urge to fight for selfish purposes (57-58). Unlike Nimrodian wars, therefore, the Israelites couldn't be motivated by their own insecurities. They had to place all their trust in Yahweh and couldn't benefit from their battles (unless Yahweh explicitly allowed them to).

Not only this, but before engaging in these battles, the Israelites always had to spend time consecrate themselves to God – which means, according to Eller, they had to “[l]et Yahweh work you over, remodeling your Nimrodian image into that of himself until your total life and being become consistent with the war in which you have been enlightened to fight” (51). In this light, Eller says, these warriors “were doing the very best they knew how in getting their lives hallowed in accordance with Yahweh’s will" (52) They were trying to play out their warrior instinct the right way, by fighting God's battles rather than their own. "Their effort,” Eller adds, “puts ours to shame” (52).

One of the most interesting things about Eller’s book is that he is sharply critical of "enlightened" contemporaries who cavalierly judge Joshua and other similar Old Testament warriors for their barbarism. Joshua and other warriors at least had the understanding that they were to fight God’s wars, not their own, and that this involved totally surrendering to God’s will. In a moment, we’ll see that Eller believes these Old Testament warriors misapplied this true perception, but “we [today] don’t even have the true perception. Joshua’s is not the last word,” he says, “but his is the only first word that has any chance of ever getting us to the last word” (40).

Eller is particularly critical of anti-war activists who are, in his view, as “Nimrodian” in character as pro-war activists. Both the militarist and the pacifist are trying to acquire security for themselves apart from God (41). The way to stop wars, Eller argues, is not to get people to stop fighting each other. So long as people and nations are insecure, violence is inevitable. Rather, the only way to stop wars “is to get people to switch from fighting their wars to join Yahweh in fighting his war” (41). “Sad to say,” Eller argues, “the understanding of these people [Joshua and company] was flawed on some points, and their grand attempt failed." "But," he adds, “let it be said in deepest seriousness that, until we are ready once again to try the experiment of Joshua, there is no hope that the peace that God intends ever can become a reality” (43).

4. What Joshua and Other Old Testament Warriors Got Wrong

This brings me to the fourth, and, for our purposes, most important aspect of Eller's argument. While Eller stresses admiration toward the sincerely of Old Testament Holy Warriors, he also argues that “it simply is impossible to reconcile the savage, city-leveling Yahweh of Joshua with the God and Father of Jesus” (58) “[W]hen one…contemplates the hideous carnage that the ban required and encouraged, when he considers the completely indiscriminate and merciless slaughter of innocent men, women, and children, he cannot help but feel that the event reflects more of human presumption than it does of divine obedience” (72). Eller notes that “[e]ven the best of people with the best of intentions are not sufficiently godlike that they can fight God’s war without corrupting and perverting it with their own Nimrodian tendencies” (72).

In various passages that report Yahweh commanding slaughter, we are finding an accurate report “of what human beings heard him [Yahweh] say.” But we are not here finding “ the unmediated voice of God himself.” (78). When “the words run entirely contrary to all that knowledge would lead us to expect, we should perhaps question the hearing of the reporters rather than the consistency of God’s speaking” (78).

The Israelites were right in thinking they were called to advance God’s plan in the world (59) and right to believe this involved fighting. But they failed to grasp that “MAN IS NOT THE ENEMY” (59). In keeping with the “Nimrodian” mindset of their age, they wrongly assumed that any people who threatened the fulfillment of God’s plan were enemies who had to be removed. “[W]hen the squeeze came,” Eller claims, “Israelite faith wasn’t quite adequate, and the people fell back on the conclusion that man must be the enemy." In their limited perspectives, "there is no way for God’s plan to go forward without fighting against men, so this," they believed, "must be what God wants" (60).

This lapse constitutes “a failure of faith in the capabilities of God. As far as man can see, the only alternatives are either to let the plan of God be frustrated or to take out the obstructionists” (59). But this is, in fact, a “Nimrodian decision based on the premise that God’s alternatives are limited to what man can understand” (60). It’s the same thinking that Christians use today to justify violence (viz. "if we don't fight, evil will win!"). To really have faith in God, and to truly fight the battles God wants us to fight, we need to have faith that God can achieve his loving ends without using violent means (60).

Only in the New Testament do God’s people fully understand that our struggle is never against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12). Only with the coming of Christ does it become unambiguously clear that Yahweh’s battle is never against people, but always for people and against spiritual powers that oppress and destroy us. (Eller has a marvelous chapter on the spiritual warfare understanding of the atonement [ch.5, 113-144]).

5. God’s Use of the Holy War Tradition

One final point needs to be made. Eller argues that, while God didn’t approve of the slaughtering his warriors engaged in, he nevertheless used it to advance his purposes in the world. Throughout the Bible God uses what he does not approve of, as when he allows other nations to defeat Israel to teach them lessons. So too, “once Israel had determined that she was going to fight, God determined that, whether he approved of such fighting or not, he was going to use it to preserve Israel, give her a homeland, and lead her in the way toward the peaceable kingdom” (78). It's a matter of God bringing good out of evil.

This is how God handles all violence, according to Eller. All war is the result of human estrangement from God, and so in this sense all war is a punishment for rebellion against God. “God doesn’t approve of war,” he says, “but this isn’t to say war is completely outside his plan.” Rather, “war is the punishment brought upon themselves by those who foster and create the kind of situations that lead to war. " Moreover, Eller argues, "it is not that the losing nation is the punished one and the winner merely the punisher. War is always punishment both ways”(79). So, as a regrettable concession, God worked with Israel’s Nimrodian mindset, as he worked with the Nimrodian mindset of others, to accomplish his purposes, as much as possible, in the world. And part of this purpose was to punish the sinful violent-mindedness of both the Israelites and their pagan enemies.

And all the while Yahweh was laying the groundwork for a future revelation of who he really is, what his character is really like and what kind of warfare he has really called us to.

In my next post I'll offer a critique of this view. Until then, chew on this perspective. What pros and cons can you think of in response to Eller's view?

Keeping thinking, growing and loving!

Greg

OT Violence and Christian Behavior

2008-03-24T20:58:00.000-05:00

Hi folks,

Well, now that my toe drama is over we can get back to the topic we’ve been wrestling with the last several posts: How can the motif of divine violence in the Old Testament be reconciled with the Calvary-centered depiction of God in the New Testament? Before considering various possible ways of resolving this difficult issue, I’ve been addressing a very important preliminary question: What is, and is not, at stake in resolving this issue?

In previous posts I argued that even if one concluded that passages depicting Yahweh as condoning genocide are not divinely inspired, this wouldn’t in any way undermine our grounds for believing Jesus is the Son of God. And even if one concluded that these passages are divinely inspired, this wouldn’t in any way undermine our grounds for believing Jesus is the definitive picture of God. So, whatever other things might be at stake in this issue, our faith in Jesus and our picture of God are not among them.

In this post I want to address a third and final thing that is not at stake in this debate. Even if we conclude that the passages depicting Yahweh as commanding violence are divinely inspired, this shouldn’t in any way affect how followers of Jesus live. More specifically, it shouldn’t affect how we view war and other forms of violence. This is a very important consideration, for since the time of Augustine Christians have consistently appealed to the violent strand of the Old Testament to justify waging wars when they believed their cause was “just.” (This is Augustine’s famous “just war” theory).

Two things may be said about this.

First, the appeal to the Old Testament to justify Christians fighting in “just” wars (if there are such things) is illegitimate for the simple reason that the Old Testament knows nothing of a “just war” policy. The wars that Yahweh had the Israelites engage in were not fought on the basis of justice. They were fought simply because Yahweh told the Israelites to fight them. They were holy wars, not just wars.

Moreover, a major motif of the Old Testament’s holy war tradition is that the Israelites were to completely trust Yahweh to fight their battles. They were forbidden to take any practical and pragmatic issues into consideration when they went into battle. They were commanded to place no trust in their own military might or wisdom. (This is why David got into so much trouble for counting his soldiers before going into battle). Indeed, the Israelites often didn’t have to raise a sword to win their battles. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down, for example, simply because the Israelites obeyed Yahweh and marched around the city seven times.

On top of this, because the Israelites' battles were holy wars – not wars fought out of a national interest or for a “just” cause -- the Israelites were forbidden to benefit from them (except in cases where Yahweh specifically gave them permission to do so). From all the towns of Canaan, for example, the Israelites were forbidden to keep any spoils. To the contrary, everything and everyone had to be “utterly destroyed” (herem).

If any Christian leader is going to appeal to the Old Testament to legitimize their nation’s warfare, they must commit to fighting the way the Israelites were commanded to fight. They must be certain that Yahweh himself has told them to enter into this war and must do so without any consideration of whether or not it meets someone’s criteria of a “just war.” They must refuse to take any practical or pragmatic issues into consideration and must place no trust in their military might or wisdom. And they must refuse to benefit in any way from their victory.

I submit that, since the time of Joshua, no nation has ever entered into war on this basis. (One could perhaps argue that contemporary Islamic extremists fight on this basis, but they aren't a "nation"). This fact clearly reveals the disingenuousness of appealing to the Old Testament to justify national or personal violence.

Second, appealing to the Old Testament’s motif of divine violence to justify Christians engaging in violence for any reason is illegitimate because disciples of Jesus are commanded to base their lifestyle on the example and teachings of Jesus, not the Old Testament. If we confess Jesus as Lord, we must follow his example and obey his teachings above all others (e.g. Phil. 2:5-8; Eph 5:1-2; Jn 15:10, 14). “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching,” Jesus taught (Jn 14:24). And in the first epistle of John we read: “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (I Jn 2:6).

Jesus chose to love, serve and die for his enemies rather than engage in “justified” violence against them. He chose to be killed rather than to kill. Followers of Jesus are called to mimic this attitude and behavior towards their enemies (1 Pet 2:18-23; 3:15-16; Heb. 12:2-3). Moreover, Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament) consistently taught that we are to love, bless, pray for and do good to our enemies (Mt.5:44-45; Lk 6:27-36). We’re to never retaliate or use violence in self-defense (e.g. Matt 5:38-39; Rom. 12:17-21; I Thess.5:15; I Pet 3:9 ). No where in the New Testament is this example or these teachings about non-violence ever qualified. No where do we find any exceptions to the commands to love and do good to our enemies.

Jesus himself seems quite aware that the attitude towards enemies he commands his followers to embrace is very different from some aspects of the Old Testament. For example, in the Old Testament God twice reigned down fire from heaven in judgment on various individuals and groups. Yet, when John and James wanted to do this same thing in the New Testament, Jesus rebuked them (Lk 9:52-55). It violated the spirit of the Kingdom Jesus came to establish to want God to act the way he did in the Old Testament! In some ancient manuscripts of Luke, Jesus rebuked John and James by saying, “you don’t know what sort of spirit you are of” (vs. 55). If this reflects the original text, it means Jesus was implying that an act that was considered to be “of God” in the Old Testament may be considered to be of a different spirit – demonic – in the New Testament!

Along similar lines, Jesus sometimes contrasted his teachings with various teachings of the Old Testament and various traditions that arose out of those teachings. For example, the Old Testament permitted one to retaliate against an offender, taking “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Mt. 5:38). But Jesus expressly forbids his disciples to act on this principle. His disciples were rather to express self-sacrificial love towards their enemies (Mt. 5:39-44). Clearly, the way of the Kingdom Jesus was establishing was very different from the way of Yahweh in the violent strands of the Old Testament.

My point is that, regardless of whether or not we can adequately explain the apparent contradiction between the violent strand of the Old Testament with Jesus’ radical example and teachings about loving our enemies, this shouldn’t qualify our commitment to follow Jesus' example and obey his teachings in the least. Our call is to mimic the crucified savior, not the “warrior” portrait of Yahweh we sometimes find in the Old Testament (Ex. 15:3).

To sum up, we've seen that our faith in Jesus, our commitment to trust that God looks like Jesus, and our commitment to follow the non-violent example of Jesus are not at stake in resolving the apparent contradiction between the God who commands genocide in the Old Testament and the crucified God found in the New Testament. Still, since Jesus himself trusted the Old Testament as God’s Word, and since we are part of a community and tradition that have received the Old Testament as God’s Word, it is incumbent on us to do our best to explain away this apparent contradiction.

This is what I shall be attempting to do in forthcoming posts.

Till then, “Be imitators of God” and “[l]ive in love, as Christ loved you [while you were yet enemies] and gave himself for you” (Eph 5:1-2).

Greg

I'm NOT DEAD YET!

2008-03-22T21:48:00.007-05:00

Just like the famous rock group I play in, I'm NOT DEAD YET! I'm out of the hospital, alive and well.

But, there WAS a little drama.

I had to preach at the WHC 5:00 service tonight. Should have been no problem, since I'd already gotten clearance to get a "pass" out of the hospital, assuming they wanted to keep me over another night. But, because I wiggled my toe during the MRI (a couple of times it turns out), and because the doctor had reason to be concerned that I'd gotten a "bone infection" (which is really not good), he wanted me to do the MRI over again. (Do you have any idea how hard it is NOT to wiggle your toe when someone tells you NOT to, especially when so much is riding on it? It's tormenting!). So this time he wanted me to be sedated with Valium. Trouble is, because of scheduling problems, the MRI couldn't happen until about 2:00 on Saturday.

Well, I barely made it out of the hospital in time for the service. And when I got there, I was a wee bit buzzed from the Valium, combined with some Vicodin they'd given me earlier for pain. I drank a quadruple espresso on the way to church to "sober up." At the same time, I was putting the finishing touches on my sermon (which I had hardly gotten to since I'd been hospitalized for a couple of days).

Bottom line: The service went great! I certainly enjoyed it -- though I don't know how much of this was due to the Valium and Vicodin and how much it was the result of the Holy Spirit. Who cares? And somehow I managed to give a semi-coherent message that seemed to impact people.

When we are weak, HE is strong. Praise God!

Thanks for your prayers.
We'll get back to the Old Testament violence issue soon.

Happy Easter!!!

Greg
p.s. It turns out I have a nasty staph skin infection, not a bone infection, which is very good news. A couple weeks on antibiotics and I'm home free!
p.p.s. Aren't my friends terribly mean to me?
p.p.p.s. Don't I have great friends -- and an adorable grandson?

Greg Boyd and the Horrible Toe

2008-03-21T23:07:00.019-05:00

You might remember a post last month detailing Greg's unfortunate injury to his little toe. Insignificant injury, right? Well, Greg is currently in the hospital recovering from a runaway infection.

Greg's toe started feeling pretty messed up a few days ago, so he went to see his doctor on Wednesday evening. The doctor was shocked at how bad the infection was and started him on an antibiotic. Greg went home that night and spent a very horrible night sweating and shaking.

Thursday Greg developed a rash, continued to shake uncontrollably, and the skin on his face and one of his arms was somewhat discolored. Not good. Shelley took him back to the doctor who sent him to the E.R. where they promptly admitted him to the hospital.

Today he feels and looks better and seems to be responding to the I.V. antibiotics he's been receiving. There are some really funny parts of this story though. For instance, Greg wiggled his toes during the 5 minute MRI, which meant a do-over. On the next attempt Greg asked if the music could be turned off so he could concentrate...his heart was racing at the thought of failure by wiggling again, which he didn't do again but he was so nervous that he couldn't lay there. Also, while visiting him we messed around a little with his chart. Under "activity level" we wrote "hyper," under "diet" we wrote "vegetarian cows." Under "fall risk" they had "no" circled, so we corrected that too...after all, a fall is what got him into this mess in the first place. We noticed under "Today's plan" his nurse had written "Zeroed"...we left that because zero is what Greg amounts to on any given day. (We're kind of mean friends).

Greg is spending his time trying to catch up on some reading. He's been plowing through Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President. He's giving it a big thumbs up, and he'll tell you more about it himself at some point. And what kind of visit would it be without his adorable grandson, Soel. They played drums together. Greg is hoping to be out in the morning just in time for Easter services Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

Anyway, if you could keep Greg in your prayers it would be great. We do love him!

Blessings,
your faithful Admins along with the whole small group

The Violent Strand of the Old Testament and Our Picture of God

2008-03-21T22:30:00.003-05:00

Hello fellow brave inquirers who aren't afraid of dealing with difficult issues head-on:

We’re trying to make sense of the violent strand of the Old Testament in which God is depicted as a warrior -- commanding the genocide of the Canaanites for example -- and in which barbaric violence is sometimes celebrated, as when David rejoices over Babylonian babies having their heads smashed against rocks (see the previous two postings). I’ll soon start discussing a number of proposals to address this issue, but first I want to get clear on what is and is not at stake in resolving this issue.

In my last post I argued that our faith in Christ should not be at stake in resolving this issue. Even if we feel forced to conclude that the violent strand in the Old Testament isn't divinely inspired, this shouldn’t affect our faith in Christ. It would certainly create a host of theological problems, but it shouldn't lessen in the least our confidence that Jesus is the Son of God. In this post I want to go further and argue that nothing about our fundamental picture of God should be at stake in resolving this issue. Even if we conclude that the violent strand of the Old Testament is as much a part of God’s inspired Word as every other part, this should not affect in the least how we view God.

The reason is that the New Testament presents Jesus as the final, definitive, perfect revelation of God. This is what is meant when John calls Jesus the “Word” (logos) of God. When God speaks or thinks, John is saying, it looks like Jesus (Jn 1:1). So too, Paul calls Jesus the “form” of God and the “image” of God, which means that the infinite God has made himself finite and visible in Jesus (Phil. 2:6; Col.1:15). While no one has seen God as he is in himself, the Gospel of John says, the “one and only Son, who is himself God…has made him known” (Jn 1:18). This is why Jesus responded to Philip's request to see the Father by saying, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9, emphasis added). We behold the glory of God himself in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 3:18-4:6; I Jn 1:1-3) which is why we are always to fix our spiritual eyes on him, and on him alone (Heb 12:2; Col.3:5).

The author of Hebrews sums up the matter nicely when he writes:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven (Heb 1:1-3).

The author is saying that while God revealed himself in a variety of ways in the past, in these “last days” (meaning simply, in this last epoch of history), God has superseded all these by revealing himself through his own Son. Unlike all previous written and spoken revelations, the Son radiates God’s glory and is “the exact representation of his being.” He is, in fact, the one through whom and for whom everything exists (Col 1:15-17).

In other words, Jesus is the point of everything – including the point of all the previous revelations (see Jn 5:39-40, 46). While others spoke and wrote about God, Jesus is God (I Jn 1:1; Rom. 9:5; Tit. 2:13). Indeed, "in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Col. 2:9). Think about this! All (not some) the fullness (not an aspect) of the Deity (God himself-- not a lesser being) lives in bodily form (in the incarnate Son of God).

The unmistakable message these various authors are hammering home is that, if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus Christ. Jesus isn't merely part of God’s revelation, as though it’s ever appropriate to line him up alongside of the Old Testament and/or our life experiences as a supplemental or competing source of revelation. No, Jesus is himself the definitive, unsurpassable revelation of God. All we need to know and can know about God is found in him. Jesus is not a way to God or a truth about God: he is the way and the truth – which is why he’s the only way to go to the Father (Jn 14:6). Jesus is not a Word, an image or a form of God. He is the Word, the image and the form of God. Now that God is revealed in Christ, there are no competing or supplemental revelations.

Now, if Jesus is in fact "the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being," and if in fact we see the Father when we see Jesus, we have to wonder why God doesn’t look like Jesus in the violent strand of the Old Testament. We’ll deal with this soon. But my point right now is that, even if we fail miserably at resolving this issue, it would constitute a denial of the New Testament's understanding of faith in Christ to allow this violent strand to in any way qualify the picture of God given to us in Christ. We would be placing the violent strand of the Old Testament alongside Jesus -- as though it stood on equal footing with Jesus -- which is the very thing Jesus and the New Testament explicitly forbid. There's only one "exact representation of [God's] being" -- and it's Jesus.

Of course, one might legitimately argue that this stance forces those of us who affirm that the violent strand of the Old Testament is divinely inspired into a contradiction. We say that the violent strand of the Old Testament is divinely inspired but we deny that it reveals what God is truly like. Perhaps this is a contradiction, perhaps not. But even if we completely fail at explaining away this apparent contradiction, it's far better to live with an apparent contradiction than it is to compromise our faith that God looks like Jesus -- period.

So, whatever else is at stake in the issue of explaining the violent strand of the Old Testament, our picture of God should not be. Fix your spiritual eyes on Jesus (2 Cor. 3:17-4:6; Col 3:5; Heb 12:2), not on the warrior God of the Old Testament.

Blessings

Greg

Ms. Paparazzi the Night Stalker

2008-03-20T09:21:00.006-05:00

Thanks for posting that Marcia. Paul and I are very pleased to receive the CT Book Award. We make a good team -- despite the fact that we sometimes drive each other nuts. Our prayer is that this book will help build confidence in the reliability of the Synoptic Gospels, both at an academic and lay level.

And now about Ms. Paparazzi the night stalker. It's just a little creepy knowing that, as I read and write away in my little room at 5:00AM, Marcia might be out there taking pictures! Random. I wonder what my neighbors might have thought if any saw her in action. Casing out the joint or what?

Anyway, time to get back to our violence in the Old Testament debate. I'll have a new post up soon.

Blessings

Greg

GB...TIME TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE

2008-03-19T13:28:00.016-05:00

Sorry to interrupt all this Old Testament/violence talk Greg has been writing on, but I (Marcia) have some exciting news to share.

Christus Victor Ministries received word today that The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, co-written by Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd, received Christianity Today's 2008 Best Book Award in the category of Biblical studies. You can read more about it here.

CONGRATULATIONS Paul and Greg!

AND...in the spirit of keeping up on my pictorial posts...here is the Boyd house in the middle of the night as it snows...the light is on in that horrible messy room of his. GB is notorious for getting 3-4 hours of sleep per night, and using the rest of the night to write. He should use the rest of the night to rest...but he doesn't. Greg, turn the light off and GO TO BED!!! BUG!

What’s at Stake in Trying to Explain the Violent God of the Old Testament?

2008-03-17T10:20:00.004-05:00

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drive out before you many nations... and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy…You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you.
Deut. 7:1-2, 16

I’m wrestling with the issue of the depictions of God as violent -- to the point of commanding genocide -- in the Old Testament (see my blog on Friday, March 14th). The main issue here is not just that passages in which Yahweh commands the Israelites to slaughter women and children (and even animals!) offend our modern sensibilities. The main issue, rather, is that these Old Testament depictions of God seem to run directly counter to what we learn about God in Jesus, who alone is the perfect revelation of God (Heb. 1:1-3).

In Christ we learn that God is the kind of God who chooses to suffer at the hands of enemies and on their behalf rather than use his supernatural power, or earthly powers, to defeat them. In Christ we learn that God loves his enemies, and commands us to do the same. In Christ we learn that it's God’s will that his people refuse to engage in violence against enemies, and instead imitate Jesus by sacrificially serving them.

The problem we're addressing, then, is far more serious than the fact that our modern sensibilities are offended by the Old Testament's violent passages. The problem is that God reveals himself in Christ to be antithetical to the genocidal God of various passages in the Old Testament.

Before we attempt to explain this, I think it’s important to ask: What is at stake in resolving this issue? In fact, in my opinion, answering this question is even more important than resolving the issue itself.

One might suppose everything is at stake in resolving this issue, for one might wonder how we can affirm the Bible to be God’s infallible Word if it contains contradictory images of God. And if we can’t trust the Bible to be God’s infallible Word, how can we trust that Jesus is the Son of God and died for our sins, since we learn about this in the Bible too? One might also argue that, in light of the revelation of God in Christ, it's not only logically impossible but also morally impossible to affirm any depiction of a God who commands the slaughtering of women and infants and who inspires the psalmist to celebrating the smashing of infants' heads against rocks (Psl. 137: 8-9).

Now, I believe the Bible is God's infallible Word (depending on how you define “infallible” – but that’s a separate issue), but I believe this way of approaching this or any other biblical issue is unhelpful and even dangerous. I'd like to offer a different way of approaching this issue. For I don’t believe my faith in Christ hangs on whether or not I’m able to adequately explain the apparently contradictory images of God in the Bible. Here's why.

My belief that Jesus is the Son of God isn’t rooted in my belief that the Bible is God’s infallible Word. Rather, my belief that the Bible is God’s infallible Word is rooted (mostly) in my belief that Jesus is the Son of God. I don’t believe in Jesus because the Bible says so. I believe in the Bible (mostly) because Jesus says so.

Now, you might be wondering, if I don’t believe in Jesus because the Bible says so, why do I believe in Jesus? There are a number of reasons, but here are the main two.

First, I find the historical evidence supporting the portrait of Jesus in the Gospels and Epistles to be very compelling [on this, see Eddy, Boyd, The Jesus Legend (Baker, 2007) or its less academic equivalent Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007)].

Second, I find that the over-all message of the New Testament, as well as the broader narrative of the Old Testament that forms its backdrop, harmonizes with my deepest intuitions about life. For example, at the core of my being I (and most healthy people) am convinced that, if there is any purpose to life, it’s centered on love. In the New Testament I find a story that makes sense of this core intuition, for the story of God becoming a human and dying a cursed death on the cross to save a rebel race of sinners is (if it's understood rightly) the greatest love story ever told. If God is like this, I can understand why I have the core intuitions I have. The Gospel story thus “rings true” on an existential as well as a historical level.

Now, since I have historical and existential reasons for concluding that Jesus is the Son of God, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that God had something to do with providing the oral and written meta-narrative – the biblical narrative -- that anticipates (in the Old Testament), looks back to (in the New Testament) and interprets Jesus’ coming. I thus have reasons for accepting that the Bible is inspired. What is more, reading the Gospels as generally reliable historical documents (see the above mentioned works for arguments supporting this assessment), it appears that Jesus himself viewed the Old Testament as God’s Word and that he saw himself and the community of his followers as carrying on this same Spirit-inspired authority. Since I believe Jesus is the Son of God and have made him Lord of my life, I’m inclined to think he was correct in his basic theological views, and thus correct in his assessment of the biblical tradition. (I have other reasons for believing the Bible is God’s infallible Word, but these are my main two).

If one roots their faith in Christ in historical evidence and the existential fit of the Gospel story, what is at stake in resolving the issue of violence in the Old Testament? Well, let's imagine the worst case scenario. Suppose that, despite our best attempts to argue otherwise, we finally feel forced to conclude there is no way to reconcile the depictions of God commanding genocide and inspiring David to celebrate the killing of infants with the revelation of God in Christ. Suppose we thus feel forced to conclude that we have a logical as well as a moral obligation to reject this depiction of God. Does this undermine our faith?

If your faith in Christ is rooted in your faith in every passage of the Bible being infallible, this worst case scenario would obviously completely destroy your faith. But if your faith in the Bible is rather rooted in your faith in Christ, the worst case scenario would hardly be catastrophic. It would present us with theological problems, obviously. We’d have to modify our understanding of God’s involvement in providing the oral and written meta-narrative that interprets the coming of Christ. We’d perhaps need to rethink what we mean by claiming the Bible is "infallible," and this might raise certain hermeneutical issues as well. And we’d certainly have to rethink our Christology. How could Jesus, the Son of God, have trusted that the whole Old Testament was God’s infallible Word if (as we are imagining in this worst case scenario) a major motif that it contains is simply wrong?

These are challenging problems, but it’s so important we notice that none of them need affect our most fundamental reasons for believing Jesus is the Son of God or that the over-all message of the Bible that interprets Jesus’ coming is inspired by God. If our faith in Christ is rooted in historical evidence and the existential fit of the Gospel story, we really lose nothing even if we end up concluding that the passages in the Old Testament that depict God as commanding genocide were not inspired by God.

So, let's do our best to explain the depictions of God as violent in the Old Testament and to thereby reconcile them with the revelation of God in Christ. But for God’s sake (literally), don’t leverage your faith in Christ on the outcome of this investigation!

More to come. Til then,

be outrageously blessed!

Greg

Divinely Inspired Infanticide and Genocide?

2008-03-14T06:44:00.010-05:00

A number of years ago I read a Christian apologist who argued that one proof of the Bible's inspiration is the fact that it is "the most beautiful book ever written." Now, I believe the Bible is divinely inspired. But this statement made me wonder how many books this guy had actually read. In fact, it made me wonder if he'd read the Bible!

Here's an inspired verse I don't find particularly beautiful.

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction...
Happy are those who seize your infants
and dash them against the rocks (Psalms 137:8-9)

When an army conquered a city in the ancient world the victors would sometimes celebrate by smashing the heads of the infants against rocks. (Possibly inspired by this verse, this practice was resurrected by Christian Crusaders conquering Muslim cities). In this dark passage, the Psalmist is eagerly looking forward to this being done to Babylonian infants. He thinks the warriors who get to do this are lucky!

Most beautiful book in the world? Sorry. I'm not feel'n it.

Let's be honest. This passage is barbarically ugly, and we've got to wonder what on earth it's doing in the "inspired Word of God"! How are we to see this passage as "inspired" in light of the fact that Jesus taught us to love and bless our enemies, not hate and curse them? How could the same Lord who taught us to turn the other cheek, never retaliate and never use the sword inspire the Psalmist to gloat over the splattering of infants' heads? If harboring anger and speaking nasty words ("Raca") to another person puts us in danger of hell, as Jesus taught (Matt 5), what kind of danger must the Psalmist be in for harboring this utterly vindictive attitude toward the Babylonians?

What intensifies this problem even more is that it's not like Psalms 137 is an isolated case of celebrated violence in the Old Testament. It's found all over the place! The worst episodes happened when the Israelites enter the promised land. As they approached certain cities, the Israelites were commanded -- by God -- to slaughter men, women, children and even the animals! Yahweh is aiming at complete genocide of the Canaanite people. Could anything be more antithetical to what we learn about God in Jesus Christ? Honestly (we've got to be honest here, even if it hurts) doesn't this depiction of God look more like the God of Osama Bin Laden than the Father of Jesus Christ?

In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith. It's a problem I want to wrestle with in my next few posts. But I want you to be forewarned: If you think I'm going to have nice and tidy answers to this question, you're going to be disappointed. I don't. I'm still in process, entertaining a number of possibilities.

But I invite you to join me in the process.

In the meantime, I encourage you to walk in the self-sacrificial, loving way of Jesus, not the baby-head-smashing way of the Psalmist.

Later

Greg

Stating It Clearly

2008-03-13T07:21:00.005-05:00

Hello fellow bloggerites,

Thanks for all the feedback on my review of Colson’s God & Government. In light of some of this feedback, I feel I need to clarify my view. I am not suggesting Christians can’t or shouldn’t be involved in politics (though I can easily understand how the New Testament leads some Christians to this conclusion). And I am not at all negating the good that Christians like William Wilberforce accomplished by political means (though non-Christians have of course accomplished similar things). Rather, in my review of Colson’s book and my other writings, I am simply arguing four things:

1) Even if it's permissible for Christians to participate in politics, we certainly don’t have a duty to do so, as Colson and most Evangelicals assume. Our only duty and allegiance is to God and his Kingdom. We cannot serve two masters. Out of our duty to God we are to obey laws, pay taxes and pray for political leaders as well as peace. (These are the only four things Scripture mentions in regards to what a Christian's relationship with political power should be.) Also out of our duty to God, however, we are to break all laws and go against all social norms and cultural taboos that are inconsistent with the reign of God. The life of a Kingdom person is to be counter-cultural and subversive of power.

2) There is no distinctly “Christian” way of being involved in politics. The criteria for political discernment is decency and wisdom, not the Christian faith or Christian lifestyle. Given the ambiguity of most political issues, good and decent people can and do fundamentally disagree about proposed political solutions to various problems. Kingdom people need to always respect this ambiguity, even (especially) on issues about which they are passionate, and thus never label their particular views "Christian."

3) While some good things can at times come of political involvement, the trust and confidence of Kingdom people is never to be placed here. Our trust is to be placed exclusively in the Kingdom of God, which always looks like Jesus. Our focus, time and energy must be centered on individually and collectively replicating the self-sacrificial love of Jesus to all people at all times.

4) Finally, politics is dangerous! We must always remember that Satan -- the “god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4) who “controls the entire world” (1 Jn. 5:19) -- is the C.E.O. of all governments (Lk 4:5-7). We must always remember that political power was the thing Satan tempted Jesus with and must never forget that Jesus refused this temptation. We must always remember Church history, which abundantly testifies to how saying “yes” to Satan’s temptation turns the Church into an ugly, destructive puppet of Caesar.

That's it in a nutshell. Hope that clarifies things a bit.

In an upcoming post I'm going to tackle the problem of violence in the Old Testament. Stay tuned!

Greg

Review of Colson's God & Government

2008-03-06T13:18:00.009-06:00

As I promised, here's my book review of Chuck Colson's book God & Government. This is a long post, but I hope you'll find it worth the effort.

Chuck Colson is one of the most respected, influential voices in the modern Evangelical movement. His book God & Government is an important one, for in this work we find Colson’s seasoned reflections on the relationship between Church and State.

Having heard Colson speak on many political matters on his daily radio broadcast (“Breakpoint”), I was frankly surprised by how much I agreed with this book. Whatever else one might think of Colson’s perspective, one can’t deny that he is extremely informed, sophisticated and nuanced in his understanding of culture and politics. At the same time, there is much in this book I found troubling. In fact, as will become clear, the part that troubled me also puzzled me, for it seemed to me to be inconsistent with all the material I agreed with.

I’ll first outline two areas of Colson’s book that I agreed with and then discuss the aspect of his thinking I disagreed with and found puzzling.

The Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of the World

First, Colson is keenly aware that the Kingdom of God, which the Church is called to manifest, cannot be brought about by politics. Among other things, Colson argues that the two kingdoms operate with two very different understandings of how the world can be transformed. For example, “[w]hile politics is based on the premise that society must be changed in order to change people,” Colson notes, “in the politics of the Kingdom it is people who must be changed in order to change society” (105). The Church’s role is to transform society primarily by putting on display God’s love, revealed in Jesus Christ (103). While political power can restrict people’s behavior, only Christ-like love can genuinely transform people. God “commands [his people] to influence the world through their obedience to Him, not by taking over the world” (268, cf. 289, 300). The Church is to influence and lead society primarily by providing it with a counter-cultural model (272-74). Amen to all of this!

Along the same lines, Colson argues that as Christians, we're citizens of heaven before we’re citizens of any country, and we’re to “serve as ambassadors, citizens of the heavenly Kingdom at work in this world” (ibid). As we carry out God’s work in the world, Colson says, Christians should “not rely on government, but on their own penetration of society as ‘salt and light’” (270). In fact, Colson says Christians must therefore resist “the ever-present temptation to usher in the Kingdom of God by political means” (104, cf. 131). This temptation, he sees, is one “to which the church has most commonly succumbed, and certainly this is its greatest temptation today” (ibid). Indeed, the lure of power “has been one of Satan’s most effective tools from the beginning, perhaps because he lusts for it so himself” (308).

Colson argues that the temptation to think we can change the world by acquiring political power is the very temptation Jesus resisted when tempted by the devil. He notes how easy it would have been for Jesus to accept Satan’s offer to reign over all the governments of the world (Lk 4:5-7). If Jesus accepted Satan’s offer, Colson notes, he “could enforce the Sermon on the Mount: love and justice could reign” (131). Jesus could have easily rationalized his accepting this offer by thinking that “if He didn’t accept, someone else would” (ibid). Colson argues that this is, in essence, the temptation many politicians accept when they “compromise to stay in power” because they believe that “there you can do more for the common good” (ibid).

Throughout its history, Colson observes, the Church has succumbed to the very temptation “Christ explicitly denied,” and this has greatly harmed its mission (132). Power always corrupts, and never more so than when it is wielded by religious people (300-12, 344). This became painfully clear when the Church acquired political power after Constantine (4th century). Colson notes that Augustine was one of the first examples of how Christians can be corrupted by political power when he tragically called on the state to use its power to suppress heresy, using whatever force was necessary to accomplish this. This set in motion a long and tragic history of the Church torturing and murdering people in Jesus' name (124-25). Colson expresses his agreement with Jacques Ellul who argued that “[c]ollaboration with power, whether Communist or not, is always ruinous for the church. If the church exists, if it is to have legitimacy in the eyes of the people,” Ellul says, “ it must always stand erect as a counter-power to political power” (225-26).

Rather than collaborating with political power or seeking to acquire power over others in any other way, Christians are to follow Jesus’ example of exercising power in weakness, as demonstrated by his washing the disciples' feet (308-09). Colson insightfully notes that “[n]othing distinguishes the kingdoms of man from the Kingdom of God more than their diametrically opposed views of the exercise of power” (312). This is fantastic!

Colson ends his book by brilliantly exposing the “utopian illusion” that peace and harmony will be brought about in the world through political means. The only hope is in the coming Kingdom of God that is manifested in

…ordinary , individual lives, in the breaking of cycles of violence and evil, in the paradoxical power of forgiveness, in the actions of those little platoons who live by the transcendent values of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this world, loving their God and loving their neighbor” (420).

Anyone who is familiar with my work Myth of a Christian Nation will know that I was ecstatic to hear Colson proclaiming such truth!

The Massive Failure of the Contemporary Church

Second, Colson seems acutely aware that the Church in America is absolutely pathetic at living out the radical call of Kingdom citizenship. American Christianity, he decries, is “a pale shadow of the radical Kingdom its Founder announced” (55). American Christians are outwardly religious, but, as numerous studies have shown, “our religious beliefs make no difference in how we live” (245). The remarkable wave of secularism that has swept America over the last forty years is mainly the fault of the Church failing to be the Church (243). (I’d argue that the failure of the Church to be the Church is the reason for almost every other social ill western culture has ever faced, but that’s a different story). Colson writes:

Christian values are in retreat in the West today, primarily, I believe, because of the church itself. If Christianity has failed to stem the rising tides of relativism it is because the church in many instances has lost the convicting force of the gospel message…Christianity…has become a religion of private comfort and blessing that fills up whatever small holes in life that pleasure, money, and success have left open, what Bonhoeffer called a “god of the gaps” (252, cf. 243).

I couldn’t agree more! But here’s where I become puzzled.

Our Alleged “Divided Allegiances"

Given that Colson believes the main job of the Church is to transform the world by using the power of weakness rather than political power; given that Colson believes political power always corrupts the Church and is a temptation of the devil we must resist; given that Colson believes that the hope of the world lies not in politics but in the Church being the radical, counter-cultural Church it's called to be; and given that Colson agrees that the Church in America is failing miserably at this all-important task, wouldn’t you think Colson would focus all of his attention on helping the Church become the Church rather than how it should influence politics? Oddly, this is not what Colson does. Yes, he has many admonitions for Christians to live out their Kingdom calling, but he also focuses a great deal of his attention – in this book and in his broader ministry – on how Christians should engage in politics! Among other things, Colson hangs his hat on Christians fighting to outlaw abortion, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and confirming “strict constructionst judges” in our courts (120).

According to Colson, Christians have “divided allegiances between God and the state” (313, cf. 126). ) “[A]s citizens of the nation-state,” Colson says, “Christians have the same civic duties all citizens have…” (314). We thus “have a duty…to work through civil authority for the advancement of justice and human good.” (133-34). Indeed, Christians are called to be patriotic (he has a whole chapter on “Christian patriotism”), though Colson grants that “Christian patriots spend more time washing feet than waving flags” (283). (I’m wondering why we should be waving flags at all!)

Despite the fact that Colson grants that “Jesus was remarkably indifferent to those who held political power” (126), and despite the fact that he agrees the Church should not “seek authority over political matters” (127-28), Colson argues Christians are commanded to try to influence the “kingdom of man” by bringing the values of “the Kingdom of God” to the political arena (262-63). Moreover, “Christians have a duty to “hold the state to account for its obligations to its citizens” (275). In fact, if a state is completely failing to carry out its God given duty, Colson says, “[t]he Christian may be justified…in organizing to overthrow the state.” He adds that, “Where peaceful means are available, force should be avoided” (283), which obviously implies that where peaceful means are not available, force is permitted.

Not only this, but “while the Christian is not to return evil for evil…he may participate in the God-ordained structure that restrains the evil and chaos of the fallen world by the use of force” (100). Christians can, therefore, participate in the armed forces and engage in violence if their cause is just. (How is that not returning evil with evil?). And while Colson grants that being involved in political offices may very well require one to lie and deceive people if it's in the nation’s interest, and despite the fact that Jesus and the New Testament forbid duplicity (Mt 5:37; Eph 4:15; I Tim.1:10), Colson argues that Christians should not hesitate to aspire to these political positions and participate in deception if they feel so called (313-14). Since our loyalties are “divided” between God and the state, sometimes Kingdom people must do things for the state that would otherwise be forbidden for Kingdom people if it’s for the greater good of the country.

Where Does Colson Get This?

Now you may be wondering, where does Colson get all this? It’s interesting to observe that, while Colson’s expositions on how the Kingdom of God is different from the kingdoms of the world are filled with Scriptural citations, such citations are almost non-existent in his expositions on how Christians should engage in politics. He of course frequently cites I Tim 2:1-3 and 1 Pet 2:13-17. But these passages only inform us that we’re to respect and pray for political leaders while obeying them insofar as this is possible (though it sometimes is not, cf. Acts 5:29). These passages hardly justify Colson’s view that Christians have a duty to participate in politics.

The only passage Colson relies on in a substantial way is Romans 13:1-7. Because Paul in this passage says that God “ordains” or “establishes” (tetagmenai) government and that Christians are to therefore obey ruling authorities (again, insofar as this is possible), Colson concludes that Christians have a “divided allegiance” between God and state, and that our duties to the state are the same as every other citizen (99-100).

In reality, this passage doesn’t support Colson’s position: it argues against it. Among other considerations, we have to read Romans 13 as a continuation of Romans 12 (in the original there were no chapter divisions). In Romans 12 Paul commands Kingdom people to love and bless their enemies while never retaliating. We are rather to leave all vengeance to God (Rom. 12:14-21). Then in chapter 13 Paul proceeds to tell us one of the ways God exacts vengeance – the very vengeance he just forbade us to ever carry out: namely, God uses the sword of government (13:4). The purpose of Romans 12 and 13, therefore, is not to inform us that we have a “divided allegiance.” It’s to rather distinguish the behavior that characterizes the Kingdom of God from the behavior that characterizes the sword-wielding kingdoms of the world.
The truth is, Kingdom people do not have – or at least should not have -- two allegiances. We cannot serve two masters (Lk 16:13). We are to obey government not because we have a duty to it but because we have a duty to God, and he tells us to submit to government insofar as it’s possible. Government is simply not worth bucking against if we don’t have to because this will distract us from doing our Christian duty of manifesting the Kingdom and spreading the Gospel.

A lot of Questions!

So, its not clear where Colson gets his passionate call for Christians to be involved in politics. It’s also not clear how this passionate call to politics is consistent with his excellent exposition on the unique, Jesus-looking way Christians are to transform the world and how different this is from politics. Here are eight (of a hundred) questions (or sets of questions) that arose in my mind as I read Colson’s book.

1. As we saw above, Colson grants that Jesus was “remarkably indifferent” to political powers (126). Since our central call is to imitate him (e.g. I Cor 4:6; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; Eph :1-2; I Thess 1:6; 2 Thess 3:7; Col 2:6; I Pet 2:21; I Jn 2:6), shouldn’t we too remain relatively indifferent to the political powers? Colson never addresses why our attitude should be so different from the Lord we’re called to imitate.

2. We saw above that Colson believes Christians have a duty to hold the state accountable (326) and even to violently overthrow it if necessary (283). When did Jesus ever hold Caesar accountable or tell his followers to do so? Even more to the point, if any government deserved to be overthrown it was the Roman government of Jesus’ day. And there was, in fact, a popular Jewish movement that was calling for just this (the zealots). Yet, Jesus explicitly disavowed this movement and forbade any use of the sword. He rather chose to subvert government by manifesting God’s love while allowing the government to put him to death. We are explicitly taught that this is the example we are to follow (I Pet 2:21). Colson never supports his endorsement of potentially violent revolutions with Scripture.

3.Related to this, on what basis can Colson justify Christians resorting to violence simply because one deems it justified? When Jesus, Paul and others in the New Testament command us to love, do good, bless and pray for our enemies and never retaliate, they never once provide us with an exception clause. Why does Colson not even attempt to offer a justification for his position? He seems to not notice the contradiction.

4. If political power is a temptation of the devil that always corrupts, as Colson argues, why should Christians trust it to bring about positive change and be invested in bringing about this change? Since Colson grants that the Christians main job (I’d say only job) is to influence the world by imitating Jesus’ self-sacrificial love, and since Colson concedes that this is where the only hope of the world lies, and since Colson further grants that the American Church is pathetic at doing this, shouldn’t we regard Colson’s own call to political activism as a massive distraction from our primary (if not singular) mission? At the very least, shouldn’t we put politics on the back burner until we get good at doing the one thing God explicitly calls us to do: namely, to look like Jesus?

5. Colson grants that ministers and priests must take great care to distinguish their political opinions from their “spiritual roles.” Otherwise they can’t help “presenting two faces to the world” that “ inevitably damages the work that should be a primary concern: the witness of the church” (326). This is certainly wise. But if this is true of clergy, why isn’t it also true of lay people? We are all called to be ministers and priests (Eph 4:11-13; I Pet 2:5; Rev. 5:10; 20:6). We’re all called to be “the witness of the church.” How many people have been ostracized from the Kingdom in America simply because they can’t stand the public political positions many Christians have taken?

6. Colson repeatedly notes, with great wisdom, that Kingdom people are called to be faithful rather than pragmatic. But then how can he justify encouraging Kingdom people in politics to compromise their Kingdom walk by killing or lying if they have to on the grounds that doing so would serve “the common good?” This strikes me as putting pragmatism over faithfulness.

7. Here’s a big one. Colson grants that whenever pastors become partisan, they “may soon discover they have compromised both their own witness and that of their church” (329). This is wise advice, and, as I’ve said, it applies to lay people as much as clergy. Yet right after saying this Colson reports that he helped draft a statement with Richard Neuhaus in 2006 that said, “Those who take pro-choice positions are denying themselves the company of believers” (331). How is this not being partisan? A particular political position is being made into a litmus test for church membership!

Isn’t it conceivable that a pro-life Christian could in good faith decide that attempting to overturn Roe versus Wade is simply not feasible in our pluralistic culture and that embracing this all-or-nothing stance is actually contributing to the killing of unborn children? Couldn’t a pro-life Christian conceivably conclude that, since almost all Americans agree that the fewer the abortions the better, the main reason abortion rates remain constant is that the two sides have become polarized at the extremes? Couldn’t one suspect that the one side won’t give in on the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion because they fear the other side will gain momentum in criminalizing the morning-after pill? Couldn’t a pro-life Christian conceivably conclude that trying to find a common ground requiring compromise on both sides would actually allow us to work together to achieve what we all want – fewer abortions? Or isn’t it conceivable that a pro-life Christian might in good faith come to the conclusion that the issue of abortion is so difficult that women themselves should be the ones to decide the matter rather than government?

At the very least, aren’t these (and many related) issues at least ambiguous enough that leaders like Chuck Colson should refrain from disfellowshipping someone because they hold a different political position? Colson’s view here is particularly puzzling because he elsewhere warns about how political involvement has often divided the church (252-53)!

Finally, given that the central call of the Kingdom is not about politics but rather about sacrificial service to the world, shouldn’t we be more focused on how we Christians can sacrificially serve women with unborn children, making it feasible for them to go full term, rather than kicking each other out of church over our opinions about what government should or should not do about abortion?

8. Colson worries that if gay marriage becomes permissible by law, Christian ministers and priests will be ordered to marry same-sex couples or see the state yank their licenses to perform marriage (129). This, of course, is very debatable, but partly on this basis Colson encourages Christians to fight for the marriage amendment act. Regardless of whether or not one thinks it’s in the interest of the common good for gays to be able to call their unions “marriages,” isn’t Colson encouraging Christians to acquire political power, which he elsewhere says the Church should never try to do (127-28). This is especially puzzling because Colson grants that whenever the church wasn’t persecuted it was being corrupted (126). In this light, why would Christians fight for the right not to be persecuted? Did Jesus or his disciples ever do such a thing?

Isn’t the temptation to defend ourselves and advance the good by political means the very temptation Jesus rejected, and the very temptation Colson warns us about?

Conclusion

Colson is fantastic in his analysis of the distinctness of the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world, and brilliant at exposing the dangers of fusing the two. But, as we’ve seen, he then goes on to advocate many political positions and encourage many political activities that, at the very least, stand in tension with these insights. What explains this? There are, I believe, two things.

The first and most fundamental problem is Colson's mistaken view that Christians have “divided loyalties.” He of course stresses that our loyalty to God supercedes our loyalty to the state (despite advocating that Christians in politics can lie or that Christians can participate in killing if it's in the interest of the nation). It’s because of this understanding of dual allegiances that Colson is able to – indeed, forced to -- espouse two very different (arguably contradictory) views of politics and how Christians should, or should not, engage in it.

Second, Colson repeatedly falls into a false antithesis. Either a Christian is politically active, or they hold to a “privatized faith.” For example, at one point Colson criticizes the “passing-through mindset” of

…those who believe they are simply sojourners with loyalties only in the kingdom beyond. They believe that faith is an entirely private matter, and that they are under no obligation to the community or country in which God has placed them ( 280).

Well folks, there is another alternative. One can believe they’re “passing-through” this world (which the New Testament in fact teaches) and that their only loyalty is to the Kingdom of God (which the New Testament also advocates) while embracing a profound “obligation to the community or country in which God has placed them” (which the New Testament also advocates). The question is not whether or not Kingdom people are called to radically affect society, but how. Everything in the New Testament drives home the point that we are to transform society not by thinking we have any special wisdom on how to fix government and run the world, but by simply imitating our Lord and Master. Everything about Jesus’ radical lifestyle, and certainly his death on Calvary, was a radical act of social activism. This is the social activism Christians are to be engaged in.

I don’t think this means Christians can’t be involved in politics (though some of my Anabaptist friends would disagree). But it certainly means we all (not just clergy!) have to take great care to keep our political involvement distinct from our call to manifest God’s Kingdom. Don’t label your political opinions “Christian”! And it certainly means we should not divide our loyalties and trust between God and our political involvement Our only loyalty, and our total trust, must be in God who sovereignly uses our Jesus-looking acts of sacrificial love to transform the world into a domain over which he reigns: the Kingdom of God.

Let me tell you about my "Beso"

2008-03-01T22:05:00.013-06:00

Hi folks,

I'd like to share with you a little bit about my adorable wife Shelley. It's her birthday today! I affectionately refer to her as "Beso" (pronounced bee-so) because.... actually, I have no idea, but that's been my name for her these last 25 years.

This is Shelley on vacation last summer, basking in the tranquility of the midsummer breeze...she is so BEAUTIFUL!

Shelley and I have been married 28 years. She's the love of my life, my best friend and my partner in ministry. I could not do what I do if it were not for her -- and this isn't just flowery husband talk! Honestly, Shelley is to me what a seeing-eye dog is to a blind person. She's my bridge to the normal world. She's the glue that holds my life together. Among a trillion other things, Shelley schedules all my appointments, reminds me on a moment-by-moment basis where I need to be and constantly provides me with insight on social situations that I, being quasi-autistic, completely lack (I couldn't pick up a social cue if it slapped me in the face!). Even more importantly, Shelley's love for me is a constant source of strength and encouragement. Beso...you are "the wind beneath my wings."

Shelley doesn't like a lot of fanfare. While she threw me the party of the century for my 50th birthday, Beso simply wanted to go out to a movie for hers. She loves pop-corn and I love Cherry Icees. Isn't she absolutely adorable? How did I get so lucky?

I can't believe how in love I am with my Beso. The way she delights in simple things, the way she perpetually fiddles around the house, the affectionate way she plays with our dogs and the way she so easily gets excited about our lives. She loves and accepts me, just as I am, with all my little idiosyncrasies. I love the history we have together, the family we've raised together, the friends we enjoy together, the ministry we do together and the process of aging we're now experiencing together.

Beso, I simply can't even imagine doing life without you.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

A Discussion With Chuck Colson and Shane Claiborne

2008-02-28T07:09:00.015-06:00

Hi folks.

Hats off to Marcia (Paparazzi) Erickson and Jen (Doc) Halverson for the outstanding summary they wrote about our vacation and my poor little toe. Do I not hang with the coolest tribe on the planet? I'd never had a chance to see Doctor Jen "in action," and while I wish the circumstances had been a bit different, it was quite an experience to see this young master at work. This doc rocks! When Jen was a student and T.A. of mine at Bethel, I recognized her exceptional giftedness and tried to steer her into theology. (The world needs more brilliant female theologians!). But on this night more than ever I thanked God she ignored my advice! Thank you Jen. The toe is healing nicely. (P.S. Jen, who is usually very calm, has a wild streak that comes out on the dance floor!)

Now onto current events.

I'm in San Diego attending the National Pastors Convention. (Mexico last week. San Diego this week. Tough life, heh?). My older brother Chris and his family live out here and last night I was able to get away from the convention and visit them. I hadn't seen them for years, so this was a real treat. Lisa (Chris' wife) is a lovely, environmentally-conscious vegetarian (yeh!). She served this incredible veggie dish with artichokes that led me into the sin of gluttony (I've since repented). I played drums with their 17 year old son Josh (who has great double pedal footwork!) and had a sweet conversation with their intellectually-inclined 15 year old daughter Lauren. And Chris and I had a chance to share a brew while reminiscing about the good-old-days (and the not so good-old-days) of growing up. It was a memorable evening.

Before that, I participated in a public debate with Chuck Colson and Shane Claiborne, moderated by Krista Tippett (who hosts the program Speaking of Faith on National Public Radio). The topic was Evangelicals and Politics and the ballroom was packed (they had to open an overflow room). I've read the works of both of these gentlemen but had never met them personally, so this was a real treat. The discussion may be aired on Speaking of Faith and/or shown on TV, depending on the decision of NPR's program directors. I'll let you know if and when this happens.

I'm planning on posting a review of Colson's book God & Government later on, so I won't go into the details of our discussion now. But here are a few quick reflections on the debate.

Shane Claiborne is awesome. I love this guy! I love his life (read his book The Irresistible Revolution) and adore his radical vision for the Kingdom. We fed off each other throughout the discussion. I'd often make a theological point and he'd illustrate it with a story -- and this kid (he's only about 30 years old) is a great story-teller! One person in the audience told me after the debate that he thought Shane and I were going to interrupt the debate by giving each other a bear hug. (We did, but only after the debate was over).

I also have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed dialoguing with Chuck Colson. I love his heart, profoundly respect his character and praise God for the way he has used Chuck to minister to prisoners around the world. But we have some profound disagreements on the issue of faith and politics. The exchanges between him and I were at times intense, though always respectful. (Shane is too winsome to debate intensely. He'd sometimes diffuse tension with a great story). Here are a few of the disagreements:

* Chuck believes Christians have a “dual allegiance” to God and country. I and Shane argued that the only allegiance followers of Jesus should have is to Jesus. We cannot “serve two masters.” (By the way, Shane is coming out with a book entitled Jesus for President. I think this is a brilliant title and said so in the debate. I pointed out that one of the reasons the confession "Jesus is Lord" is rather meaningless today is because we don't refer to those over us as "lords" any more. So it doesn't seem that the confession of Jesus as Lord rules out having other people or things rule us. But if we instead confessed "Jesus as President," it would immediately become clear that this confession rules out pledging allegiance to any other president, nation, the military, etc....Way to go Shane!)

* Chuck believes Christians have a duty to participate in government. I and Shane agreed that we are to obey laws and respect leaders, but nowhere in the New Testament are we told we have a duty to participate in government. In fact, the New Testament depicts governments as under the control of Satan. Shane and I argued that our only duty is to obey our one President, Jesus. This isn’t to say Christians are forbidden to participate in government. But it’s certainly not our duty to do so.

* Chuck believes there’s a rather unambiguous way Kingdom values translate into politics, at least on a number of matters (the ones he deems most important). He argued that our faith tells us that abortion is wrong, that homosexuality is sinful, that poverty is unjust and that all people, including criminals, deserve humane treatment. I responded by pointing out that Jim Wallis agrees with every value Chuck just mentioned, yet he espouses political positions that are on almost every point antithetical to Chuck’s (see Wallis' recent book The Great Awakening). This alone demonstrates that people who share the same faith and values can fundamentally disagree on politics -- which is fine, so long as they acknowledge that the Kingdom isn't about impacting politics in a certain way. Chuck’s response back to me was to say he respects Jim and doesn’t question the sincerity of his faith, but that his books are basically carte blanche endorsements of Democratic politics.

I rest my case.

* The most intense exchange of the debate occurred between Chuck and I on the issue of voting pro-life. Chuck believes that Christians have a duty to vote for pro-life candidates. In fact, in his book God & Government he says that Christians who support candidates who aren’t pro-life “have taken themselves out of fellowship with us” (p.329). (Yet he said he regards Jim Wallis as a brother in Christ. Maybe I'm missing something). I tried to get Chuck to see that a person can be against abortion (which I am) and yet not vote for a pro-life candidate. There are other factors to consider, I argued.

For example, many believe the best way to fight abortion is not by criminalizing it, but by eradicating poverty. So, precisely because they're pro-life, they might support the candidate they think will do the most for the poor even if this candidate isn't a staunch anti-abortion candidate. Others believe that the main reason unborn children are being aborted in America is because the two camps are so polarized and unwilling to compromise. The vast majority of Americans agree that the fewer the abortions, the better. But we aren’t working together to make this happen because both camps feel that if they give in an inch, the other side will take a mile. The only reason many pro-choice people defend the barbaric practice of “partial birth abortions” is because they’re afraid that if they surrender this the other side will gain momentum in criminalizing the use of the morning after pill! If this assessment is correct, then the very refusal to compromise on one’s pro-life stance when voting is actually contributing to killing unborn babies!

I’m not saying Christians should necessarily agree with this assessment. Some may, some may not. But it once again demonstrates how sincere Christians can have differing views on how their pro-life values translate into politics. Vote your faith and conscience (as everyone of course does), but don't label it "the Christian way" to vote.

Chuck couldn’t see my point – which was a little surprising to me given that in his book God & Government he admits that participating in government usually requires compromise (e.g. he encourages Christians to aspire to governmental offices even though it may require them to tell lies when it's in a nation's best interest to do so).

* Finally, I have to say that the best lines of the debate went to Shane. Three times the crowd applauded after he spoke (Chuck and I got zero). The most insightful, I thought, was when he responded to Colson's citation of Bonhoeffer's attempt to assassinate Hitler as an example of how Christians need to participate in politics and sometimes resort to violence. Shane told a story (of course) of a film he watched that interviewed Hitler's chief secretary. She said that it was "miraculous" how Hitler escaped unharmed when the bomb Bonhoeffer's group planted exploded. This reinforced Hitler's sense of divine mission at a time when it was wavering and encouraged him to carry out his genocidal programs more enthusiastically. Shane said that as much as he respects Bonhoeffer, "the cross lost when that bomb went off." Wow.

Well, I've got to run and conduct a seminar. I'll discuss Chuck's book in a later post.

Blessings
Greg

work hard, play hard, sleep hard

2008-02-24T19:18:00.044-06:00

I (Marcia), your paparazzi "lens truth master" found Greg last week in Mexico. He tried going incognito with a fierce bandanna look but it flopped as he was a dead giveaway with book and pen in hand.

Our small group and extended clan (26 people) spent a week taking in the WARM sun and soft ocean breeze far AWAY from Minnesota and its harsh winter COLD. We have been taking vacations together for 10 years and each trip lets us escape from our everyday lives...except for Greg--his everyday life is ENHANCED on vacation. We have all come to know that Greg works hard and plays hard and sometimes we can't tell which is which.

See how Greg works while others play...or is he playing and it just looks different for him?

Greg at the beach...playing hard or working hard?But, when evening comes and we go dancing Greg puts down the book and pen and he plays harder than ANYONE...or is he working at it because he's not reading and he has to have some interaction fun?

Greg and Shelley...singing and dancing hard

Greg loves 70s music and dancing. Didn't he have that Tower of Power t-shirt on when he played in the NDY gig last month?

Then came the sleeping hard part...Shelley was busy packing the last night as Greg snored in the same room. He woke up and tried to get out of bed while still half-asleep, and the next second all he knew was that he was on the floor and in excruciating pain, his right baby toe was sticking out at a completely unnatural angle, and there was blood everywhere. His cries of pain woke up Alisha & Tim (their daughter and son-in-law), and Tim became the paparazzi for the night.

Jen is our go-to person for everything from upset stomachs to things like this, so it was Jen who got woken up to fix Greg's toe in the middle of our last night in Mexico. How do you like the makeshift ER they put together? Nice lamps and towels! At least she's wearing gloves!! I'll let Jen take over to tell the rest of the story.

(consider this your fair warning that some pretty gross pictures are coming up!)

Hey this is Jen. I was super tired our last night in Mexico so I went to bed early and was looking forward to a nice long sleep. Yeah...that didn't happen. Shelley and Alisha came to wake me up around 1:30.

I found Greg lying in bed, moaning in pain, with a seriously deformed bloody toe (it kinda looked like it was ready to fall off). It's definitely one of the grosser things I've ever seen.

I'm a pediatrician but I see this kind of stuff in kids all the time, so it was no big deal to fix it up. And whenever I'm traveling with a big group of people I bring supplies with me so I can take care of things like this, so I had almost everything I needed, and Alisha and Shelley tracked down everything else I didn't have.

I have to say--I'm super impressed with how badly Greg messed up his toe without even knowing how he managed to do it--that takes skill. I'm guessing he stepped on glass (we found that piece in the above picture on the floor) which cut the toe, then caused him
to freak out and step wrongly on the toe...and the end result is that he had a big, deep laceration between his toes and a dislocated toe. I also thought he might have broken his toe too.

Talk about a not-fun place to have to place stitches. It's actually kind of good that the toe was dislocated, because it made it a little easier to stitch up the cut.

Seven stitches later the cut actually looked pretty good and Greg's toe no longer looked like it was going to fall off, but it still looked completely deformed.

I carefully started to push the toe back where it was supposed to be...and it popped right back into place. Shelley and Tim even heard it pop back in. Lovely.

By now it was almost 4 AM...so much for getting that nice long sleep! Greg you owe me!!! ;)

(For all you medical people out there, I understand that you might think that using a hotel room as an ER in the middle of the night in Mexico is a little stupid, so here's my disclaimers--I put Greg on prophylactic antibiotics in case he had an open fracture, and I made Greg go to the ER once he got back to Minnesota to make sure there wasn't any glass in the cut and to see if the toe was fractured. He went yesterday and there's no glass in the cut. I guess there's a little bone chip that might be a small fracture, which is no big deal).

2 pictures up: stitches done but still dislocated
Above picture: everything back in place!

Mexico 2008!!! A hard place to be! ;-)

Compassionate Dominion and Factory Farms

2008-02-16T07:09:00.008-06:00

“The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but, ‘Can they suffer?’”
Jeremy Bentham

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite."
Leo Tolstoy

"The righteous care for the needs of their animals.."
Prov. 12:10

In the previous two blogs I've offered four reasons I became and remain a vegetarian. (By the way, there are many other arguments that others give to support vegetarianism --- such as its health benefits. I think some of these arguments are plausible, but I'm omitting them since they don't honestly affect my own decision one way or the other). I now want to share my fifth and final reason why I'm a vegetarian. It concerns the fact that we're called to reflect God's love and mercy by how we exercise dominion over the animal kingdom (Gen. 1:26-28).

5. Compassionate Dominion and the Factory Farm Industry

Because we've been conditioned to see them as products for consumption, few western Christians seem to appreciate just how much dignity and value God ascribes to animals. It was to animals, not humans, that God gave the first command recorded in the Bible (Gen. 1:22). Every animal was created by him, belongs to him, and is sustained and cared for by him (e.g. Ps. 50:10-11; Job 12:10). The Lord is often depicted as a compassionate care-giver affectionately tending to the needs of his pets. “All creatures look to you,” the Psalmist says, “to give them their food at the proper time” (Ps. 104:27 cf. vs. 11; 147:9). Jesus depicts his Father as personally attending to the needs of sparrows (Mt 6:26; 10:29; Lk 12:6).

The Lord’s heart is to preserve “both people and animals” (Ps 36:6), and he shows compassion on every living thing that he has made (Ps 145:9). For example, one of the reasons he gave to Jonah for wanting to have mercy on Nineveh was that it was home to so many animals (Jon 4:11). Clearly, God has a tender heart toward animals.

One of the clearest signs of the dignity and value God ascribes to animals is that he sometimes makes covenants with them. When God forged a new covenant with Noah after the flood, for example, he included animals. The Lord said the rainbow was “the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you [Noah] and every living creature with you…” (Gen. 9:12, cf. 16-17, emphasis added). So too, as we saw in the last blog, the covenant of non-violence God says he’ll make in the coming Kingdom epoch includes the animal kingdom (Hos. 2:18).

Now, the final act of creation, according to the Genesis narrative, was the creation of humans who were created to be God’s co-workers (I Cor 3:9; 2 Cor. 6:1) and co-rulers (2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 5:10) carrying out his will “on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10). Our original mandate in the Bible centered on carrying out God’s loving dominion over the earth and the animal kingdom (Gen. 1:26-28; Psl. 8:4-8). We are entrusted and commissioned to reflect God's care for animals by how we ourselves care for them.

This original commission was never retracted by God. Carrying for animals is still one of our most fundamental benchmarks for how we’re doing as a species. And by that benchmark, I think it's obvious we're failing pretty miserably.

Over the last century we have reduced farm animals to commercialized commodities whose only value is found in how efficiently we can produce and slaughter them for profit. Consequently, we now have a situation where more than 26 billion animals each year are forced to live in miserable, over-crowded warehouses where there is absolute nothing natural about their existence and where they are subjected to barbaric, painful, industrial procedures. (I encourage readers to view the film Farm to Fridge [click here to watch] and read Matthew Scully's marvelous book Dominion to be informed on these matters).

Here are just a few examples of the typical treatment animals receive in our factory farms to satisfy our appetite for meat.

* Up to a dozen chickens are squeezed into sixteen inch cages, stacked four or five high, in which they cannot so much as spread a wing. This is how they spend their entire miserable lives.

* These over-crowded, over-stressed conditions produce hostile behavior. To prevent chickens from plucking each other to death and thus lose profits for the factory farm industry, these poor creatures are “debeaked” (as are turkeys and sometimes ducks). This involves using a searing hot blade to cut through the bone, cartilage, soft tissue and nerves of the beaks of these abused birds.

* Cattle are routinely castrated, have their horns cut off and are branded with a searing hot iron, all without the use of pain killers. During auction and shipping their movement is controlled by electric prods (called “hotshots”) that send painful, high-voltage shocks through the cow’s body.

* Because of the speed with which it must be carried out, the slaughtering of cattle is not always efficient. Some are consequently still conscious when they’re dismembered.

* Dairy cows spend the bulk of their existence in crammed quarters, hooked up to a milk machine. They are impregnated each year to keep milk production going and have their young taken from them almost immediately after birth, an act that is unnatural and traumatizing to both the calf and its mother.

* Once taken from their mothers, calves are frequently kept in tiny crates in which they cannot turn around or even lay down comfortably. To produce veal, male calves are fed an unnatural diet to keep them borderline anemic. This keeps their meat white and tender. When they’re just several months old, they’re slaughtered.

* The worst victims of the factory farm industry, in my estimation, are pigs. Gene research has recently revealed that pigs are one of our closest cousins in the animal kingdom. These poor beasts are routinely castrated, have their ears and tails cut and have their teeth yanked out all without the use of any anesthesia. The shrieks of pain heard throughout these ordeals are gut wrenching (see the film Farm to Fridge).

* Pigs are customarily kept in narrow stalls that allow them to do nothing more than stare ahead their entire lives. Because pigs are extremely intelligent creatures – more so than most breeds of dog – they often go insane in this confinement, sometimes gnawing at their own limbs (which is why many factory farms yank out their teeth). They are pumped full of hormones to stimulate unnatural growth, and many get to the point where their legs won’t support their body weight any longer. These must then be dragged to slaughter.

* Pigs are commonly packed so tightly into transportation trucks that many are crushed to death in the process. As with cattle, the slaughtering process is far from perfect, and some are yet conscious when they are scalded in boiling water to have their hair removed.

If you saw your neighbor torturing their dog the way factory farms torture pigs and other animals, you'd immediately call the police and the man would be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. If your neighbor did this to numerous animals over time, he'd eventually be locked up (despite how pathetic our laws against animal cruelty are). Yet when billions of animals are treated in this barbaric way on factory farms, we not only look the other way, we actually support it and fund it -- if, in fact, we consume the beasts these farms torture! And the only reason we do this is because we like the way they taste.

There’s no question that this calloused treatment of animals on factory farms is an efficient way of processing meat that helps keep its price down. But there's also no question that this represents the antithesis of the loving and compassionate dominion God intended humans to exercise over animals. We're called to reflect God's loving and compassionate character in the way we treat animals. There's nothing -- nothing -- loving and compassionate about the way animals are treated on factory farms. Their lives on these farms are a living hell.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am called to manifest the reign of God in every area of my life. Since torturing animals is not consistent with the reign of God, I feel I cannot help fund an institution that does this.

Undoubtedly, someone will respond; “What practical difference will it make for one individual to refuse to benefit from the butchery of the slaughter houses? They're going to continue to operate regardless of what you or any other individual does.” The same argument was used to justify Northern Americans reaping benefits from slavery before the civil war. For all their protesting, few Northerners boycotted the South's slave-driven cotton industry. This argument is simply a poor, morally vacuous argument.

But even if we grant that refusing to benefit from animal torture on factory farms doesn't make any practical difference, this shouldn't affect the behavior of followers of Jesus in the least. We are called to do what we do not because its practically expedient, but simply because we are called to do it. Faithfulness, not pragmatism, is our motivation. Our call is not to pragmatically fix the world, but to simply be the Kingdom.

At the same time, we have to remember that every Kingdom act we engage in, including our refusal to participate in unnecessary violence toward animals, is an act of resistance against the Principalities and Powers and helps weaken their stronghold on the earth. While we may not be able to empirically measure the impact our revolt against violence has on the world, we can trust that our loving revolt is, in fact, making a significant difference. (My forthcoming book Revolting Beauty will explore this idea in depth).

If you're a person committed to seeking first the Kingdom of God (Mt 6:33), please take God's mandate to care for animals seriously. Prayerfully reflect on your own treatment of animals and the treatment you support by your lifestyle choices. If you choose to eat meat (which, as I've repeatedly said, is not prohibited in Scripture), I encourage you to purchase it from free range farms that at least allow farm animals to enjoy a natural life in the open air. (By the way, this also applies to the consumption of all dairy products).

Yes, food from free range farms is more expensive. But consider the enormous price you force animals to pay when you insist on buying it a little cheaper.

Eat well.
Eat responsibly.
Eat under the reign of God.

The First Fruit of the Coming Non-Violent Creation

2008-02-13T20:50:00.006-06:00

“A society’s moral progress is best judged by its treatment of animals.”
- Gandhi

More and more people are asking me the question, "Why are you a vegetarian?" So I've decided to write a couple blogs explaining my position. I want to remind bloggers that I am not trying to convince anyone that eating meat is sinful, for the Bible clearly allows for it. Nor am I trying to suggest that a person is in any sense more "righteous" for abstaining from eating meat. For reasons that I'll give in this and a subsequent blog, I do believe that refraining from eating meat whenever possible is most consistent with our call to manifest the Kingdom and to extend God's loving dominion over animals (Gen. 1:26-28). But Scripture explicitly forbids making this a litmus test for how righteous a person is. This is a matter that each person must wrestle with on their own, and no one is allowed to judge another.

In the last blog I shared that I'm a vegetarian because (1) God led me to make a pledge to refrain from all unnecessary violence to any living creature. This in turn has increased my capacity to (2) love and (3) experience the intrinsic worth of all living things. I now want to share a theological reason that I feel supports my pledge to refrain from all unnecessary violence.

4. The First Fruits of the Coming Non-Violent (and thus, non-carnivorous) Creation

Scripture teaches that God originally gave vegetation and fruit to “everything that has the breath of life in it” – including humans, “the beasts of the earth,” the “birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground” (Gen 1:29-30). People often fail to notice that the only food God originally intended humans and all other creatures to eat was vegetation. The fact that humans now eat animals and many animals eat each other was not part of God's original plan for creation. It's rather the result of the fall.

This is confirmed when we compare God’s post-flood covenant with Noah with the Genesis 1 creation account. To Noah and his sons the Lord says:

Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it (Gen. 9: 1-4).

The command to Noah is very close to the command given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1. But now the animal kingdom has “fear and dread” towards humans and humans are for the first time allowed to eat animals instead of “green plants” alone. This implies that the fear, dread and violence that presently permeates creation was not part of the original creation that God pronounced “good” (Gen 1:31).

What also confirms this perspective is that when the Kingdom comes in fullness at the end of the age, God's original vision for a non-violent creation will be restored. In that day, Isaiah says,

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. Infants will play near the hole of the cobra; young children will put their hands into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:6-9).

Along the same lines, Hosea paints a picture of a future era when God will make a covenant of non-violence that includes the animal Kingdom:

In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety (Hosea 2:18)

There was no violence in the beginning and there will be no violence in the end. There is violence now only because humans, the landlords of the earth, rebelled against God and allowed the Powers of evil to corrupt the creation.

Now, the most fundamental job of followers of Jesus is to manifest the reign of God. I take this to mean that we're called to put on display now what the world will look like when God fully reigns over it in the future. In theological terms we're to be "the eschatological community."

One way the New Testament expresses this truth is by referring to Kingdom people as the “first fruits” of a coming harvest (2 Thess 2:13; Ja 1:18; Rev. 14:4). The “first fruits” referred to fruit that ripened and was picked before others. In the Old Testament, first fruits were consecrated (set apart) to God and were a sign that God will faithfully bring the remainder of the harvest to fruition (e.g. Ex. 23:19). In the same way, Kingdom people are consecrated to God as a sign that God will faithfully bring his Kingdom to complete fruition.

As the “first fruits” of the Kingdom, our call is to be in the present what the entire world will be in the future, when the Kingdom is fully manifested. In a world that is yet under bondage to the rebel Powers, we're to display what it looks like to live in the reign of God. Our lives are to reflect God's will being done "on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10). We're to be, as much as possible, heaven on earth and thus a window through which people can see the future into which God is leading the world.

If God's original ideal of a creation free of violence will be achieved in the future, it seems to me that the job of Kingdom people is to manifest this ideal now, as much as possible. Which to me suggests that since humans won't be killing animals and eating them in heaven, we shouldn't be killing them and eating them now.

Think about it as you enjoy a nice tasty head of lettuce. :-)

Greg

Why I’m a Vegetarian

2008-02-10T07:42:00.000-06:00

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
Pythagoras (6th century BC)

I used to be a carnivore. I especially used to love rare steak. When I’d order meat in a restaurant I’d tell them to cook it “as little as possible.” Well, I’ve now gone four and half years without consuming any meat or fish (my policy is, if it has parents and could bear offspring, I won’t eat it). This wasn’t easy for me, especially at first. But I’ve never regretted my decision.

I often get asked why I became and remain a vegetarian, so in the next couple of blogs I’m going to explain myself. My goal is not to convert anyone to vegetarianism. In the New Testament this is considered a personal decision that cannot be made into a doctrine (Rom 14:6). At the same time, I hope my reflections are a catalyst for thought on our call as Kingdom people and our responsibility to animals.

In this blog I'll give the primary reason I became a vegetarian and two reasons why I remain a vegetarian (which are really just two benefits I've discovered since becoming a vegetarian). In the next blog I'll give a couple of theological and philosophical arguments that I think support abstaining from meat.

1. God Told Me To

The most fundamental reason I became a vegetarian is simply that I felt God told me to. It’s that simple. God has the right to forbid for one what he allows for others, and he just told me, very clearly, I wasn’t supposed to eat meat. It's not that the Bible forbids it. It doesn't. It's just that God forbids it for me. In fact, I felt very strongly the Lord wanted me to enter into a covenant of complete non-violence with him.

I am never to harm anything if I don’t have to -- not even a bug. And I'm never to harm humans even if it seems (by normal standards) that I "have to".

2. Increasing the Capacity to Love

Almost immediately after making this pledge I began to understand why the Lord had wanted me to make it. Scripture says a little yeast leavens all the dough (1 Cor 5:6). Well, I discovered that the little yeast of my willingness to engage in violence towards animals and other creatures for self-serving reasons (e.g. appetite, convenience) was polluting my heart and to some degree compromising my capacity to love. It felt like – and still feels like – my commitment to total non-violence has had, and is yet having, a purifying effect on my heart.

Along the same lines, my commitment to purge violence completely from my life has increased my sensitivity to the ugliness of violence, both in my own heart and in the world. Jesus taught that harboring hostile thoughts towards others and speaking hostile words towards others is a form of violence. In fact, he says it’s equivalent to murder (Mt. 5:1-26)! Numerous other passages in the New Testament instruct Kingdom people to purge all hatred, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, judgment and malice from our minds as well as our speech. All these things are forms of violence and are antithetical to love. I have found that my commitment to non-violence has helped me wake up to all of the violence I have in my thoughts and speech, which in turn has helped me get free from this ugly violence. And this, in turn, has deepened my capacity for love.

Five years ago I never dreamed there was a connection between eating meat, anger in the heart and my ability to love. But for me at least, there definitely was. A little yeast leavens all the dough.

3. Seeing the Sacred Beauty in All Living Things

Along the same lines, I discovered that the little yeast of my willingness to participate in violence towards animals and other creatures for self-serving reasons had been leavening my capacity to see their intrinsic worth. My pledge not to harm creatures raised their value in my mind and this in turn allowed me to see their intrinsic value.

Animals are not just food, and insects are not just inconveniences. They are works of art by the eternal Creator and they have their own intrinsic, sacred worth. But I couldn’t see this worth very clearly when I thought of them primarily as food and inconveniences. Becoming a vegetarian and committing to complete non-violence has significantly deepened my capacity to experience the sacred beauty of God’s creation. This experience brings with it a new dimension of delight and joy over creation.

Genius that he was, Pythagoras saw all this. There's a connection between violence towards animals and violence towards people, and a connection between violence in general and our capacity for love and joy.

I’ll share other reasons why I became and remain a vegetarian in the next blog. Until then,

go enjoy a nice carrot! :-)

Greg

A Bono Looking Church?

2008-02-08T14:53:00.000-06:00

Hello blogg'n buds,

Well, I got a little flack from a few of you for claiming that the Product (RED) Campaign is a powerful Kingdom movement. Several wondered how something intertwined with consumerism could be called "Kingdom." One worried that I was subtly endorsing consumerism by endorsing Product (RED). And someone suggested that the Product (RED) Campaign would be more authentically Kingdom if people were encouraged to simply sacrifice for those in need, without getting clothing or other merchandise out of the deal.

Okay, let me explain.

Of course it would be much more Christ-like if people sacrificially gave money to help people in need without getting anything in return. But most western people aren't going to do that. And besides, there's already plenty of venues available for people who are willing to do this.

What most western people are going to do is continue to buy lots of stuff. At the same time, most western people on some level would like to help out people in misery. Bono ingeniously thought of a way to combine these motives, cash in on his celebrity status, and relieve a lot of suffering in the world. He didn't rely on government to address these issues. He just did it.

What would happen if the Church, as a whole, approached issues with Bono's mindset? What if we just did what Jesus called us and empowered us to do? What would happen if Jesus followers around the world were willing to live outrageously generous self-sacrificial lives? What would happen if a majority of Christians asked the question of how they could use whatever advantages they have to benefit disadvantaged people? And what would happen if the global Church were united enough to pool its ingenuity and resources to help impoverished and afflicted people, for the glory of God, without having to rely on government?

I submit we would do a thousand times more than all the governments of the world combined could do. This is how we are to advance God's will "on earth as it is in heaven" and advance the Kingdom of God.

Sadly, it seems insanely naive to entertain this vision of the Church even for a moment. While there are beautiful examples of Jesus-looking individuals and movements throughout history and yet today, the Church on the whole has for centuries been fragmented, impotent, uncreative and self-indulgent. The Church has not often transformed its surrounding culture by doing what Jesus commanded and empowered it to do, namely, manifesting his servant love to hurting people.

Consequently, the only kind of power most Christians see making an actual difference in the world is political power, which is why so many Christians think it's their job to grab as much of this kind of power as possible. And so we find ourselves in the tragically ironic position of being a profoundly broken Church, doing little of what Jesus did and little of what he told us to do, while being obsessed with fixing government, which is something Jesus never did or told us to do.

Maybe shooting to be like Jesus is too much of a stretch for us right now. But perhaps we could set our sites on Bono?

"Lord, fix us, for we are profoundly broken."

Greg

Be Bono-fide

2008-02-05T20:11:00.000-06:00

Thank you Ms. Paparazzi on that delightful expose of my Bono-fide Icee-drinking fun night out with friends.

We really did have fun seeing U2 3D. I'm frankly not crazy about their music (I'm more of a funk R & B man), but their message makes a U2 concert (and now a movie) one of a kind. While most rock bands sing about -- well, you know, crap -- this is a band with a subtle Kingdom message. It seems to me that the unprecedented crowd investment is mostly due to the lyrics and the spiritual meaning behind them. The crowd was caught up in a message.

Which leads me to this reflection. It seems to me that the One Campaign, which includes Product (RED), is one of the most beautiful and powerful Kingdom movements being carried out right now. In response to the massive AIDS epidemic in Africa, Bono asked the question: "What can I do?" Bono used his celebrity status (a status he admits is silly) with the help of others to launch this campaign with the hope that profits would generate money to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and Malaria.

And it's just like God to use a believer (Bono confesses Christ as Lord) who is very much on the "fringe" of the Church to illustrate what the Church should be doing. Our job is to manifest God's love by using our God-given time, talent and resources to serve the world. See a need and meet it with your gifts.

I'm also tempted to say that Bono's music, with its sometimes-profound message, is "anointed." Of course, we weren't in worship of Bono in those pictures Ms. Fancy Pants Paparazzi took...we were simply a part of the 3D experience and being silly with it.

But, I do know God is using U2 and their gifts. Let their example challenge us to do the same.

Blessings

Greg

cvm paparazzi (marcia) at work

2008-02-03T11:08:00.000-06:00

Greg posted that the launch date for the new CVM site has been delayed a couple months. I thought (as Greg's "lens truth master") I'd give you insight into the delay and what Greg's been busy doing.

He's been BONO-fide!

Here he is with his lovely wife, Shelley, getting ready to see U2 3D with his small group.

Honestly, who drinks an ICEE at 50-years-old?

Is that Julie (the mastermind behind the new site) sitting behind Greg and Shelley in worship?

Dave, take a breath!!

Greg...you have a lot of explaining to do!

Where's the new Christus Victor website?

2008-02-01T14:08:00.000-06:00

Some time ago I mentioned that we were going to launch our new, improved, super easy and super informative website "very soon." "Soon" has come and gone, so where's the new site?

May I remind you that while sequence is absolute, "time" (the measurement of sequence) is relative? The New Testament tells us to expect Jesus' return "soon," for example.

I hope our new website is up a little "sooner" than that. But I'm beginning to wonder.

As many of you who have launched websites can testify, there's a gazillion and three things that can stall a launch date. Let's just say we've hit a good percentage of these. We're still working out the bugs. We know how irritating it is to try and navigate a site that only partly works!

To be perfectly realistic, it now looks like it'll be late April before we're ready to go.

I apologize to the several dozen e-mailers who wrote me questions and received the answer: "I address this question in depth on my new website which should be up and running in the near future." At the time, I thought that "near future" meant a couple days. It now looks like it's going to be a couple months.

Like I said, time is relative.

But I think you'll find the new site very helpful and worth waiting for. For example, on this site you'll be able to easily locate every verse (that I know of) that supports the Open View of the Future, along with my commentary on it, as well as every verse (that I know of) that is used to refute the Open View, along with my commentary on it. There's a huge (and ever growing) Q and A Section in which I respond to hundreds of questions people have raised over the years on a wide range of topics (from politics to eschatology to demons to sex to ... whatever). There's also a huge Essay Section where I address a wide (and ever growing) variety of topics. Philosophical types will find my reflections on Hexagonic Logic, Neo-Molinism and other esoteric matters on the site. Marcia, the Paparazzi of the small group I'm a part of, is putting together a photo gallery.

But the thing I like most about this new site is that it is profoundly simple. For techno-challenged people like myself, this is huge. The site is amazing without being a maze!

So, I beg your patience for a few more months. In the meantime, keep tuning in to the blog and get what you can from our current (but somewhat obsolete) site.

Blessings

Greg

Where do you find your security?

2008-01-31T10:01:00.000-06:00

In Matthew 6:24-34 Jesus taught us it's impossible to serve two masters. He illustrates this by saying we "cannot serve both God and money." But he could just as easily have said we "cannot serve both God and government," for his teaching is all about where we find our security. “Therefore I tell you," Jesus says, "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" And a few verses later he concludes:

...the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

People with a non-Kingdom mindset ("'pagans") instinctively try to find their security in whatever they think will ensure that their self-interests are met (minimally, food, clothing and shelter). They "run after" these things. This is why they serve money and why they worry incessantly. But Kingdom people are to "run after "only one thing: the reign of God. Part of what this means is that we should trust that God will provide for our basic needs and not worry about ensuring our own self-interests.

We've seen in previous blogs that the reason we have governments is because the fallen human race finds it hard (impossible?) to trust God. Like the ancient Israelites, we want rulers to protect our self-interests (I Sam. 8). This is why people with a non-Kingdom mindset "run after" and worry about politics. So much of their self-interest is at stake! But Kingdom people are empowered to trust God to provide for them and thus to be be freed from these preoccupations.

I don't believe this entails that we can't participate in the political process. In a democracy we are invited to give our opinion about how things should be run, so if you're so inclined, go ahead and give it (whether by voting or participating in some other way). But this passage definitely entails that we should not serve, chase after, or worry about these matters. Our total trust is in God, for whom all the governments of the world are "less than nothing" (Isa 40:15-17).

You cannot serve two masters. If your allegiance is to the reign of God, it cannot be to anything else -- including money and government.

Stay centered on the King,

Greg

Satan, Government and Christian Anarchy

2008-01-29T08:02:00.000-06:00

Inspired by my reading of Jacque Ellul, I've been talking about Christian Anarchy the last couple posts. I want to remind folks that "anarchy" used in this way does not denote chaos. It rather means "without (an) rule (archy)." It refers to the belief that people who are under the rule of God are not under any human rule. We are to obey the laws of the land insofar as they are consistent with Gods' will, but we do this because it is God's will for us to do so. (One person who wrote me, Jason Barr, has suggested the label Christ-archist rather than Anarchist. While it's true Kingdom people are not under the rule of governing authorities in this view, we are under Christ's rule. It's an interesting suggestion).

According to the Christian Anarchist (or Christ-archist) therefore, human governments have no significance for Kingdom people. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God and are “foreigners,” “exiles” and “strangers” in this world (Phil 1:27; 3:20; Heb 11:13; 1 Pet 1:17; 2:21).

I also want to be clear that I'm exploring this train of thought in these blogs. I'm reviewing what Scripture says about God and government and finding, thus far, that it supports the view of Christian Anarchy. But I want to be clear that I'm still in process on this topic.

So far I've tried to establish that, according to the Bible, earthly governments are premised on mistrust of the rule of God (I Sam. 8). It was not part of God's original plan for humans, but rather exists as a way of God accommodating himself to human sin. I've also tried to establish that, from God's perspective, all governments are "less than nothing" (Isa 40:15-17). Since our trust is exclusively in this God, the "ruler of the nations," we should adopt this same perspective. To live under the reign of God is to live solely under the reign of God and to therefore regard earthly government as insignificant.

What I now want to argue is that all human governments are not only premised on mistrust: they are actually ruled by Satan. In Luke 4:5-7 Satan offered Jesus all the authority of the governments of the world, for he claimed to own all this authority and claimed that he could give it to whoever he wanted. What's amazing is that Jesus does not dispute his claim. He granted that Satan owned this authority and thus could give it to whoever he wanted. But he refused to put himself under Satan's rule to acquire governmental authority.

Everything else the New Testament says about Satan and governments confirms that Satan was, in fact, not exaggerating his power. Jesus three times refers to Satan as the “ruler (arche) of this world” (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16;11). An arche referred to the highest ruling authority (the "boss") in any particular region. Satan is also referred as the “the god of this age” and “the principality and power of the air” (2 Cor 4:4; Eph 2:2). And John goes so far as to claim that, “The whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (I Jn 5:19). If the whole world is under the power of the evil one, it hardly seems Satan was exaggerating in claiming all government was under his power.

Not only this, but Satan is referred to as “the destroyer” who “deceives the nations” (Rev. 9:11; 20:3, 8 cf. 13:14) . All earthly governments are depicted as belonging to a single Kingdom that is under Satan's rule but which is now being delivered over to Jesus (Rev. 11:15). Consistent with this, scholars agree that “Babylon” in Revelation symbolizes earthly government under Satan's authority. Babylon rules “all nations," all of which are “deceived” by her “sorcery," which appears to be the deceptive lure of power. (Rev. 18:23).

Just to be clear, this obviously doesn't mean that all leaders in earthly governments are under Satan's rule. Many leaders are God-loving people who are sincerely trying to serve their society and the world. But these passages suggest that the whole power-over system that constitutes human government is under Satan's oppressive influence. I see no way around this conclusion.

Given this clear and consistent witness in the New Testament, followers of Jesus have to seriously question how much confidence we should ever have in any government and how preoccupied we should be with their innumerable fights and problems. We must remember that we are not only "foreigners" and "exiles" in this land; we are soldiers stationed in enemy occupied territory. We are not to become preoccupied with "civilian affairs" and are to "always seek to please our commanding officer" (2 Tim. 2:4).

What our commanding officer tells us to be is fully invested in living under the reign of God, yielding to the Spirit who continually works to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. We are to live Spirit-led, radically counter-cultural lives. And we're to collectively form a contrast society that puts the beauty of God's self-sacrificial character on display in the midst of a world that has grown profoundly ugly.

To live this way is to revolt against everything in our lives, society, government and the world that is inconsistent with the reign of God. To live this way is to revolt against Satan and the Powers that empower all that is inconsistent with the reign of God. To live this way, in other words, is to be a revolutionary.

Viva la revolution!

Ephesians 5:1-2

Greg

F.Y.I. For two interesting websites that espouse something like Christian Anarchy or Christ-Archy, see http://www.jesusradicals.com and http://www.jesusmanifesto.com

The Insignificance of Governments and Armies

2008-01-26T13:32:00.000-06:00

Isaiah 40:15,17

Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket,
And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales;
Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust...
All the nations are as nothing before Him,
They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless.

Though all governments are premised on mistrust of God (as we saw in the previous blog), and though they are all ruled by Satan, the "lord of this world" and the "god of this age" (Lk 4:5-7; Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4), God nevertheless uses their sword wielding violent tendencies to achieve certain objectives, including keeping as much law and order as possible (Rom. 13:1-6). Still, the passage we're looking at today reveals that God invests these governments with no significance. They are to him like a drop of water that disappears once dropped in the bucket and like a speck of dust that doesn't register on the scales. They are "nothing," "less than nothing" and "meaningless."

To belong to the Kingdom is to place all of our trust in this God. Part of living in the Kingdom, therefore, is to accept this perspective of all the nations, governments, politics and armies of the world. They are "less than nothing."

The fallen natural mind of course sees our trust as insane, impractical and probably irresponsible. The fallen natural mind instinctively believes that everything hangs on what politicians, governments, nations and armies do. This is why people with this fallen mindset grow anxious about who is getting elected, what policies are being put in place, what nation is gaining the upper hand and which army is growing the strongest. The fate of the nation and of the world hangs in the balance on such issues! We must do whatever it takes, using violence if necessary, to ensure that the "right" people get elected, the "right" policies are put in place, the "right" nation gets the upper hand and the "right" army grows the strongest.

The "right" ones, of course, always happen to be our own. And the bloody merri-go-round of history keeps spinning round and round.

This outlook is natural for fallen humans. But people with a Kingdom mindset know better. Our trust isn't in nations, governments, politics and armies, but in the God for whom all these things are an insignificant speck of dust. This is why a Kingdom person can enjoy "perfect peace" as their eyes are fixed on him (Isa 26:3).

This doesn't mean that Kingdom people are to simply resign themselves to whatever comes to pass in our nation and around the globe. To the contrary, we are called to be revolutionaries. Following the example of Jesus, we are to revolt against everything in our life, in society and around the world that is inconsistent with the will of God in the world.

But we aren't called to be revolutionaries by acting like pagans who pin their hope on resolving the endless problems of worldly politics the "right" way. We're to be revolutionaries by acting like Jesus who placed all of his trust in his Father -- for whom all the politics of the world are "less than nothing." This is why Jesus could refrain from using power available to him to crush his enemies in self defense and rather offer his life up in love for his enemies.

Of course this sacrifice -- like all Kingdom sacrifice -- looked insane, impractical and irresponsible from the perspective of the natural mind. But Jesus confidence in his Father paid off three days later. This launched the Kingdom revolution we are part of today, and we're called to advance it by living with this same sort of confidence in God and same sort of sacrificial love toward others, including all enemies.

Viva la revolution!

Greg

God, Government and Christian Anarchy

2008-01-23T11:10:00.000-06:00

Hello blogging buds.

The last two days I've been reading Ellul's The Presence of the Kingdom. Fantastic book -- though many readers will find his somewhat elusive "dialectical" style challenging (Ellul writes, and thinks, in terms of antitheses.) Anyway, the book inspired me to re-study everything the Bible says about governments. I'm recording my reflections in an essay I'm writing for our new website that will be entitled God, Government and Christian Anarchy. (We've hit some snags, but hopefully the new site will be up pretty soon).

Here's a sampling. It's my reflection on I Sam. 8:1-22. I've come to suspect this text is absolutely foundational for a proper understanding for God's view of all human government. (You might want to stop and carefully read the text before proceeding).

It wasn't part of God’s original plan for humans to ever rule other humans. This came about because of the fall. I Samuel 8 indicates that one of the things God originally intended to do with Israel was to begin inching humanity back to this ideal, for up to this point in Israel's history they hadn't had a human ruler. True, God had occasionally appointed judges to settle disputes, but there had been no established government or positional ruler.

In the age in which Samuel lived, however, the faith of the Israelites wavered and they wanted a king “to be like other nations,” and to “go out before us and fight our battles.” In other words, the people felt having a king would give them greater security. They no longer trusted God to do this.

God responded to this request for a king by decrying,

…they have rejected me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day–in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods…”

God pleaded with his people not to go down this path. He warned them that giving a person power over them would wreak havoc in their lives (vss. 11-18). What God knew – but what the people seemed incapable of accepting – was that when sinful humans are given power, they tend to use it in sinful ways. Exceptions to this are very rare, as history readily testifies. But the people would not listen. They demanded a king. So God reluctantly gave them what they wanted.

This passage reveals that governments are a concession on God’s part to humans who cannot trust God to rule them. Since humans are rebellious and insist on having them, God uses governments, as much as possible, to preserve as much law and order as possible (Rom. 13:1-5). But this doesn’t mean that God approves of them. Often in the Old Testament God used a wicked nation (e.g. Assyria) to punish Israel, only to turn around and punish the nation he used for being wicked (e.g. Isa 10). God uses what he does not approve. That’s God’s attitude toward governments. They are under the influence of Satan (Lk 4:5-7) and are inherently corrupt, but God nevertheless uses them to achieve his objectives, so far as this is possible.

By contrast, the Kingdom of God is premised on people trusting God as their sole ruler. This is simply what it means to live under the reign of God. It follows that Kingdom people should place no more trust in governments than Jesus did – which was none. If a government's laws happen to be consistent with the rule of God, we obey them. If they’re not, we follow the example of Jesus and disobey them. But either way, it’s clear that our behavior isn’t dictated by what government says, but by what God says.

This is why it's appropriate to refer to the Kingdom's view of government as "Christian Anarchy" (an [without] archy [authority]). Because we trust God and have pledged our sole allegiance to God, we are to have no trust in any of the the "archys" that are premised on not trusting God.

Think about it.

Greg

Doing Martin Luther King Jr. Justice

2008-01-21T07:32:00.000-06:00

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day, so I'd like to share a reflection on this great man and the movement he birthed.

For the first time in history, we have an African American who is a viable candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Barack Obama wouldn't be doing what he's doing today if it wasn't for what Martin Luther King Jr. did 40 years ago -- at great cost to himself. This man did more to free America from its historical racism than any other single individual (though, of course, we still have a long way to go).

From a Kingdom perspective, the thing that stands out most about King is not that he rallied blacks to push back on unjust laws. This was of course a good and necessary thing to do. What makes King a truly great man from a distinctly Kingdom perspective, however, is the way he did this.

Before marching, King would always tell his audiences he didn't want anyone marching who could not genuinely say she loved her white oppressors and was marching not only for her own freedom, but for the freedom of her oppressors (for King saw that oppressing another is as much a form of bondage as being oppressed). Not only this, but King would tell audiences he didn't want anyone marching who couldn't commit to refraining from all violence, even in self-defense. King explicitly based all this on the teaching and example of Jesus.

This makes what King did not simply a good and necessary social movement. It makes what King did a Kingdom movement. Indeed, I'd argue that the early civil rights movement, led by King, was one of the clearest expressions of the Kingdom in history.

It's unfortunate, though hardly surprising, that the beautiful Kingdom dimension of King's vision has largely been forgotten today. For the most part, King is remembered simply as a leader who fought for the rights of oppressed people, and the civil rights movement is remembered only as a political and social protest movement. In my opinion, this doesn't do King justice. It misses the most important thing about the man. While the civil rights movement spun off in a number of directions -- including some that contained violence -- the man who birthed it had a vision of a movement that would look like a giant Jesus, fighting for the freedom of all though loving service to enemies rather than relying on anger and force.

To honor King rightly, we must never forget this.

Indeed, to honor King rightly, we must never cease to practice this.

Live in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you (Eph 5:1-2).

Greg

Atonement

2008-01-18T13:44:00.000-06:00

Atonement: ** (of four)

Enjoyed a nice date with my wife last night. We saw the movie Atonement. I loved being with my wife, but this movie frankly left me a little flat.

Atonement is supposed to be a poignant love story. I was expecting a sort of Doctor Zhivago story of lovers who are tragically separated for long periods of time, but whose love endures against all obstacles, yada yada. Didn't happen.

Two lovers are indeed tragically separated, but the movie didn't make me care about them all that much. The movie never convinced me these two young folks were really all that in love in the first place. Their whole relationship consisted of a single passionate encounter in an office (I kid you not)! It was physically passionate, but not particularly romantic. It lasted maybe 90 seconds and then was interrupted by a snoopy bratty girl. The lovers are then immediately separated for the rest of the movie (except for one brief encounter in a hospital cafeteria that wasn't very emotionally compelling).

Sorry, but you just can't leverage very much on one 90 second sexual encounter. True, you had the sense that these two people had loved each other for some time prior to this encounter, without acknowledging it to one another (leaving the viewer to guess why). And I'm sure this hidden love is fully developed in the book. But in the movie it was just too vague to make you more emotionally invested in their relationship.

So, as a love story, I felt it flopped.

But all was not lost. For this movie isn't only, or even primarily, a love story. It's even more fundamentally a story about living with guilt. You see, the reason the lovers were separated for years was because the little girl who caught them "doing it" ended up telling a vicious lie about the man that got him sent away to prison and then off to war. Basically, she destroyed the life of both the guy and the gal. She gradually comes to realize the seriousness of her sin and then must struggle with the question of how she can atone for it.

For me, the redeeming point of this movie was the brilliant way it addressed this issue. Basically, there's nothing this girl can do to atone for her what she's done. The message is, you can't undo destroyed lives, and so you can't remit guilt. The girl thus lives a condemned life.

I may be reading too much into this movie (Shelley says I always do), but I felt the movie (probably unwittingly) testified to the need for a Savior and the need for an afterlife, in which all wrongs are made right, if anyone is ever going to experience true atonement. If death ends everything, there is no hope.

In my view, the depth and poignancy of this profoundly important theological point atoned for the movie's flat love story.

Blessings

Greg

Huckabee on Amending the Constitution

2008-01-15T15:55:00.000-06:00

Well, you may have already heard about it. Huckabee publicly proclaimed that we need to amend the constitution to bring it into conformity with "God's standards."

You can check out the minute and a half clip HERE.

Man, is he going after the evangelical vote, or what?!

Now, I can't help but wonder what this sincere man means when he says he wants to "amend the constitution to fit God's standards." Of course, he probably means he wants to outlaw gay marriage, since the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman. But if we're going to make our constitution fit "God's standards," as reflected in the Bible, why stop there?

Marriage throughout most of the book of "God's standards" allowed for polygamy and even concubines. If the Bible is to be our standard for marriage in America, perhaps our constitution should be amended to reflect its comprehensive view of marriage.

So too, the Bible allows for (and even occasionally commands) slavery, as the good old pre-abolition Christian South was eager to point out to the liberal secularists in the North. Would Huckabee have us amend our constitution to fit this aspect of the book of "God's standards"? Why not? If our goal is to conform to "God's standards," why be selective?

How about the way women are treated as property throughout much of the Bible? And let's not forget the pervasive "holy wars" we find in the Old Testament. If we want a constitution that truly reflects "God's standards," why not incorporate these as well?

And of course, the Bible knows absolutely nothing of any "inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." This comes out of John Locke, not the Bible. So maybe these pagan concepts should be jettisoned if we're going to seek to have a constitution that conforms to "God's standards."

Then again, for Christians "God's standards" are centered on Jesus Christ and the New Testament. Since Huckabee is appealing to Christian voters, and apparently wants to promote a "Christian America," why shouldn't he center his constitution amending policy on this central aspect of the book of "God's standards"?

Now that would be interesting.

Can you imagine if it was in the U.S. constitution that whenever we as individuals or as a nation were attacked, we by law would have to turn the other cheek, love our enemies, bless our assailants, do good to our persecutors, refuse to retaliate, offer them whatever they ask (expecting nothing in return), offer to feed them, clothe them and provide housing for them, and of course offer our lives up on their behalf, however evil they may be (e.g. Lk 6:27-35; Mt 5:39; Rom. 12:17-21)?

Goodbye to "the right to bear arms"!

If this is the direction Huckabee would like to amend our beloved constitution, I would greatly admire his courage and wish him the best -- because there's no way in perdition Christians would get him elected if that is what he meant! They may want a constitution that "conforms to God's standards," but only certain passages carefully selected out of his book of holy "standards," and certainly not the standards set by Jesus Christ!

Isn't it ironic?

Now please hear me. My point is not to weigh in on the political issue of gay marriage. Vote your faith and values (like anyone doesn't do this). My point is that there's something profoundly naive, if not disingenuous, about trying to pretend like we can resolve this or any other political issue in our pluralistic society by trying to make the Bible law.

Even worse -- much worse -- when Huckabee and other well-intentioned Christians talk this way, they earn the right to be despised by non-Christians, and thus to have the Gospel they claim to represent despised as well. The beauty of God's self-sacrificial love is once again smothered in the ugliness of politics.

Jesus never let politics get in the way of the message he was sent to bring. And the central job of his followers is to simply imitate him (Eph. 5:1-2).

How I'd love it if Huckabee would call on all Christians to consider their own sins to be much worse than the sins of gay people (Mt 7:1-3; I Tim. 1:15-16) and to commit to demonstrating God's love for gay people by sacrificially serving them.

Of course, he'd never get elected.

He might get crucified.

But I'd certainly vote for him!

Blessings

Greg

The Subversion of Christianity

2008-01-14T06:59:00.000-06:00

Welcome open minded internet thinkers.

Thanks again for all your prayers. I'm feeling much better.

I'm still a bit sick, but I managed to travel to Columbia, Missouri, this weekend to preach/teach at a friend's church (Woodcrest Chapel). Had a very nice time sharing my testimony. Coughed up a couple phlegm balls, but no big deal.

A bigger deal was the fact that I lost my driver's license on the way down to Columbia (how shocking, right?). I had no other I.D. I thought I was totally up-a-creek, but it turns out you can fly without an I.D. -- it's just a real hassle. You have to be thoroughly searched at every checkpoint and have all this paperwork filled out. But you can do it.

While traveling there and back I read Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity (I'm obviously on an Ellul-kick these days). This is a man after my own heart (and head)!!! Everybody needs to read this book!

Ellul's basic thesis is that the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated with his life, death and resurrection has been subverted -- converted into its opposite, in fact -- in the religion of Christendom. This happened primarily because leaders in the 4th and 5th century decided to give into the temptation that Jesus resisted (Lk 4:5-7) -- namely, acquiring political power (thus, submitting to the devil's authority). Christianity thus was co-opted by "the powers." A movement that was in its very essence non-conformist became a religion of conformity. Indeed, Christianity has historically usually been a defender of the status quo ("conservative").

More specifically, Ellul shows that Christianity has been subverted by:

* SUCCESS. The Kingdom only works when it's lived out in small numbers. Once it becomes a mass movement, it becomes an ideology and loses its soul.
* MONEY. A movement that was founded on people renouncing all possessions got seduced into sanctifying the "right" to possessions.
* MORALITY. This is a huge point. Ellul totally gets that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is judgment and is at the root of all sin (see chapter IV). The Kingdom revolution is a revolution of the Spirit -- which is the antithesis of living on the basis of ethics. He continually stresses that the New Testament and the early Jesus-movement "has no morality." Once Christianity became a ruling power and a successful mass movement, however, it had to control people with rules.
* RELIGION. The Jesus movement is anti-religious. But people crave religion. They have "religious needs" that the Jesus movement undermines. When the movement became a mass movement, it became a Christianized version of pagan religion.
* PRAGMATISM. The Kingdom was founded on the singular concern to be faithful to God, not a concern to fix the world. Once Christianity became successful, however, it wrongly assumed responsibility to rule the world and got practical. Since most of Jesus' teachings are impractical, they had to be set aside.
* VIOLENCE. Non-violence never seems practical, so it was among the things that needed to go. (Here Ellul curiously argues that the example of Islam was the main influence in making Christianity a violent religion, see Chapter V).
* POLITICS. Here Ellul is at his best, showing how Jesus' apolitical/anti-political movement was transformed into the handmaiden of politics. He shows that Christianity has almost always pathetically given divine sanction to whatever political regime it found itself in. Using ingenious theological arguments right out of the Bible, the Church defended the monarchy when it found itself under a monarchy and the Republic form of government when under this type of government. So too, it defended Socialism under Socialism, Communism under Communism and of course Democracy under a Democracy. The movement whose heart is to revolt against all government to manifest the reign of God is reduced to a silly defender of whatever government happens to be in charge.
* POWER. The heart of the problem, Ellul argues, is that we fear the freedom the Kingdom offers us. It's the radical freedom of possessing nothing -- including power. We rather crave the security of things, of power, of rules, and of pretending we are free (e.g. by having a vote) when in fact we are in bondage. The Spirit was to set us free, but this requires relinquishing all these things.

Anyone who knows my work can see why I would be very excited reading this book.

A few other things are worth noting.
* Ellul is unequivocally an open theist, though he (writing in the 80s) doesn't use this term. He never gives a sustained argument for this view, but takes stabs here and there at the idea that the future is pre-settled in God's foreknowledge or will (predestination).
* Ellul's writing style is a bit erratic. Some readers will find his thought process hard to follow at times. Also, he presupposes a lot on the part of his reader. He constantly makes references to people, movements and ideas without explaining them. You can follow the gist of his argument without a knowledge of these things, but it does make his book more challenging.
* Ellul has an assortment of idiosyncratic ideas I find entirely implausible. Sometimes his interpretations of particular passages border on being bizarre -- as when he argues that the "abomination" referred to in Matthew 24 refers to the corruption of Christianity. He also denies that Satan and demons are personal agents or have any reality apart from humans. His view of the Trinity is rather modalistic. And he doesn't seem to endorse the worship of Jesus. There's other quirky things as well.

Still, all this aside, this is a book I'd encourage everyone to wrestle with.

Now I'm onto the next Ellul book: The Politics of God and the Politics of Man. I'll let you know how it goes.

Blessings

Greg

A Call to Christian Anarchy

2008-01-11T06:37:00.000-06:00

I'm ALIVE!!!

Not 100% for sure, but compared to Wednesday, I'm the epitome of health. Thanks for your prayers.

Well, obviously the last five days haven't been the most productive in my life. But when I wasn't a total zombie staring at the TV I managed to get a little work done for the new website. I transposed many of the Q & A e-mails I've saved over the last year onto the site, where we have Q & A and essay sections. (Don't worry, I took out all the names and any possible personal references and I edited most of them). The site will be up and running very soon.

I also managed to read a couple of good books on "Christian Anarchy."

For some background I first read Daniel Guerin's Anarchism (gives a history of secular anarchism). I then read Jacques Ellul's Anarchy and Christianity, followed by a re-reading of Vernard Eller's Christian Anarchy. All are highly recommended.

So, you're wondering, what is Anarchism?

Basically (this will be very general) it's a political philosophy that goes back to two radical thinkers in the 19th century: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his disciple Mikhail Bakunin. They held that there are no political solutions to human problems, because politics lies at the foundation of most human problems. All top-down forms of government -- which means, pretty much all governments -- are evil. If the collective whole of humanity would commit to not allowing anyone to rule anyone else, a new bottom-up kind of order would naturally arise as humans formed egalitarian, reciprocally beneficial associations with others.

Unfortunately, the elite and powerful benefit from the present hierarchical political and economic systems and the masses have been brainwashed to believe that they need to be ruled. The masses fear freedom, which is why they surrender autonomy over to alleged superiors. (In totalitarian regimes, people surrender autonomy by allowing the regime to go on. In democracies, they surrender it with a vote -- which Anarchists view as little more than a means by which a government gives citizens the illusion that they're empowered). As I understand it (mainly from Guerin), the Anarchist movement was born to help people escape their brainwashing, see the truth of what is going on and be empowered to live truly free lives.

Jacques Ellul was a brilliant French thinker who saw profound similarities between Anarchism and the view of government espoused by Jesus (and, he argues, the rest of the Bible as well). Of course, the secular anarchists were too optimistic in thinking humans could ever govern themselves. But they were right about the evils of government. Government is ruled by Satan and the rebellious principalities and powers (which, unfortunately, Ellul thinks are mythic symbols of human evil).

The Kingdom Jesus established is anarchistic in that it recognizes God alone as the arche (supreme power). It thus lives free from all other powers (an-arche [anarchy] means without authority). Governments are part of the fallen, oppressed world system that has been done away with in Christ.

In Ellul's estimation, it's not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom. If we do this, then we, like Jesus, will find ourselves revolting against the government (and culture). We are, most fundamentally, called to be non-conformists. Our service to the world is the way our counter-cultural lives expose the invalidity of all forms of government by manifesting the reign of God.

Anyone who has read The Myth of a Christian Nation would immediately know what I think of this perspective.

It's brilliant!

Vernard Eller's Christian Anarchy espouses basically the same perspective and covers much the same ground and Ellul - but he's actually a better writer than Ellul (though this may partly be due to the fact that Ellul's work is translated from French) and is more thorough. He also has a playful style I enjoyed (especially when feeling close to death as I read it). Here's how he re-states Paul's call to submit to ruling authorities in Romans 13:1-7:

"Be clear, any of those human arkys [governmental authorities] are where they are only because God is allowing them to be there. They exist only at his sufferance. And if God is willing to put up with a stinker like the Roman Empire, you ought to be willing to put up with it, too. There is no indication God has called you to clear it out of the way or get it converted for him. You can't fight the Roman Empire without becoming like the Roman Empire; so you had better leave such matters in Gods' hands where they belong" (Christian Anarchy, p.11).

Anyway, I encourage you to join the Christian Anarchistic movement. Get along with the ruling powers as much as you can, but put no trust in them. Let's let our lives reflect the truth that governments are part of a fallen world order that has been rendered obsolete in Christ. May our lives reflect the truth that the hope of the world lies in the power of the cross, not the sword -- or the vote.

Viva la revolution!

Greg

Misery

2008-01-09T09:12:00.000-06:00

Well, I'd hoped to post something insightful by today, but sorry folks, I'm brain dead.

Saturday night I got hit with something nasty. The last four days have been spent sneezing, coughing and groaning. My lungs burn. Every joint aches. My throat is raw. I haven't showered, shaved or slept much for four days.

I looked in the mirror last night and scared myself.

A few blogs ago Marcia celebrated the band I play in, "Not Dead Yet." I feel like I' m close to falsifying our bands name.

Have you ever been so sick you get irritated just waking up -- because now you realize you have to be conscious? I wish someone would invent a pill you could take to go into a temporary coma to ride out this sort of thing.

At the same time, I realize that, while I may feel like I'm close to death, I'm going to be just fine in a few days. And I realize there are millions of people around the globe who are, at this very moment, experiencing much more misery than I am and who have no hope of getting out of it.

When I use my little slice of misery to empathize with their huge dose of misery, it makes my misery much more bearable.

Another example of the Kingdom principle that it's in our self-interest to put others' interests above our own interests (Phil. 2:3-4).

So, I should quite whining and go back to my semi-comatose T.V. staring.

But I certainly wouldn't mind any "quick recovery" prayers you'd shoot up on my behalf.

Thanks

Greg the half dead

2008-01-07T18:44:00.001-06:00

My hats off to the "God-loving" and "God-fearing" Marcia. Most excellent.

See, quality takes time.

And does anybody know anyone else who says "Bug!" when they're peeved? One of the things I love about Marcia is that she's just... shall we say... a little different. Sometimes I like irritating her just to listen to her unique way of expressing herself. It's so cute!

Well, for the next NDY gig we'll try to get a bigger venue so we can actually let people know about it (The Dugout could only hold 175 people).

Speaking of quality taking time, the new site is coming along... any day now... I personally can't wait, partly for selfish reasons. I get 40-60 e-mails a day. About a third of them are questions, and around 90% of these are questions I've answered, in one form or another, a dozen to a hundred times. I've been saving my responses and plan on transferring them to this new site. (This will take awhile, so don't expect them all up when we debut in a couple days). Then I can just respond to these questioners by saying, "check out the site."

Try to remember the most important aspect of your environment each moment is that God is present there. If you're not aware of God, right now, you're filtering out the most important thing.

"Practice the presence of God" (bro. Lawrence)

Peace
Greg

NOT DEAD YET!!!!!!!!

2008-01-06T23:31:00.000-06:00

this is Marcia...
ok, first I just have to say, RUDE!
insensitive
impatient
BUG!

GB needs to chill.
he simply can't get over the messy room issue. DUDE!

but, since I'm a mature, gracious, God-loving & fearing woman, I will look past Greg's latest blog dedicated completely to disparaging my character...I won't go there. Before I get to the pictures...as a representative of Providence Ministries I'd like to say a huge thanks to NDY and everyone who came out to hear them...over $1000 was raised towards our work in Haiti! THANKS!!!

I give you NDY...already!!

pastor doctor reverend professor drummer Boyd

the other rock stars: Norm, Greg E., Dave, Alex and Steve

Greg's daughter Alisha and her husband Tim...their first baby is due in May and that didn't stop Alisha from dancing away

the groupies
long live NDY

About the NDY blog thing

2008-01-06T22:05:00.000-06:00

Heh folks,

Yes, Marcia WILL BE giving a pictorial blog on the NDY debut later... like I PROMISED in my previous blog. A slight delay it seems. Marcia has read parts of my forthcoming book Cosmic Dancing, and so, apparently, has learned that time is relative -- to humans, but not to God. So, since Marica is human, and not God, very soon could mean... well....

dum dee dum dum....

any day now, for sure....

It'll be something alright.

Quality takes time you know.

For sure.

Soon as it pops up, it'll be really special. Yes sir.

Heh, just checked out my friend Terri's blog. She got the "A Roar for Powerful Word's" award for blogging! Way to go Terri! She's only been doing this for a couple weeks. Wow. But if anyone roars with words, its her. Check out her blog here.

What do ya think about Huckabee and Obama? Was I right about that, or what? Wow.

Marcia?

I didn't preach today cause I was sick. Fortunately they could show the video from the Saturday night service.

In case you wanted to know.

Friday night rocked. You'll see.... soon.

Some of you may recall that this is the same Marcia that embarrassed me a while back showing how messy my office is. I love her tons, but kind of owe her some grief, don't you think?

She's really got a gift for photography. Punctuality? -- not so much.

But you'll see, it'll be worth the wait...

Earth calling Marcia. Come in Marcia???

Peace on you all.

GB

The Iowa Caucus

2008-01-05T09:36:00.001-06:00

A hum .... hello? Obama and Huckabee victors?

Now, I'm of course not one to say "I told you so," so I won't...

but just FYI, I did. (See previous blog)

Let's see if I'm right about the presidential run off.

Greg (the humble and wise)

ps. Had a GREAT time last night playing with NDY at the Dugout as a fund raiser for Providence Ministries. Marcia will post a pictorial blog of it later.

Very Random Reflections to Start The New Year

2008-01-03T05:24:00.000-06:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR all you internet lovers of truth!!

Yes yes yes, a little belated. So what. Time is relative.

Well, this blog is called RANDOM reflections, and the blog today will show why. I'm going to push randomness to a whole new level. I'm just feeling in a random mood. (We should coin a new adjective: "I'm feeling randomy.")

1) I'll start by telling you about my New Year's celebration. As we always do, Shelley and I ushered in the New Year with our small group, our kids and a bunch of their friends. It was a packed house. We played lots of games (including our favorite, Mafia). We also played a new game where you have to shout out random word associations, and I was reduced to tears (of laughter) when Marcia Erickson (our small group paparazzi) tried to convince us that "Ostriches fold." You kinda had to be there.

2) Our daughter Denay and grandson Soel came and stayed with us for the week between Christmas and New Years. Heighlos, our son-in-law, joined us for a day as well. He manages (very successfully I might add) the Buckle clothing store in Fargo, so he had to get back for the day after Christmas opening.

Soel wakes up every morning and wants to watch videos of drummers on the internet. Then he wants to play drums. Then he wants to watch more drumming videos. Then he'll drum when he eats, takes a bath, watches TV, gets changed... basically always. He drums with drum sticks, spoons, pens, markers, straws, tooth brushes... anything. And the little dude is getting good! How many 19-month-old kids do you know that can do a "long roll" (where you bounce each stick twice eat time you hit)?

3) Well, ladies and gentlemen, the rock-n-roll band I play in -- NDY (Not Dead Yet) -- debuts tomorrow night (Friday, January 4th) at "The Dugout" in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. NDY is composed of the guys in my small group (Dave Churchill, Greg Erickson, Alex Ross and myself) and we'll be joined by the very talented Steve Lutz on keyboard and the musical genius worship pastor of Woodland Hills Church, Norm Blagman. We've been practicing a lot, and NDY is getting NTB (not too bad). If you're in the area, stop by (music starts at 9:00). We're going to have a blast! It's a fund raiser for Providence Ministries and the suggested donation ("cover charge") is $5. Marcia plans a pictorial blog of the event...so watch for that.

4) Speaking of Providence Ministries, we raised almost $20,000 in December for the Haitian Education Project that supports three different schools through Woodland Hills Church and other supporters! Praise God, and a hearty "thank you" to all who are sacrificing for this great ministry. There are of course always far more needs in Haiti than there are resources, so we can always use more support. Visit their blog for more information.

5) Speaking of Haiti, it's been a delight having the lovely Dr. Jen Halverson back with us the last two weeks. As many of you know, Jen is in the middle of a 9 month stint doing medical work in Haiti. She too can always use more support. You can find out about her ministry by visiting her blog.

6) Saw The Great Debaters last night with Shelley. Very uncreative title, but excellent movie. Yes, it's a bit formulaic, but it's a sweet, feel-good formula! This is the true story of an African American debate team from a tiny Texas town who in 1935 ended up beating the Harvard team which was, at the time, the reigning national champion. It's a nice "against all odds" sort of flick. But it's also a story also about racism, courage, hope, love and -- believe it or not -- non-violent civil disobedience. And it has a good dose of suspenseful drama. What more could you ask for from a movie!

7) Also saw Enchanted the other day. Very cute, funny and touching. A nice escape from reality movie. The lady who plays the cartoon-turned-real Princess (forget her name but she's from Minnesota) deserves an Oscar. Well, maybe not. But she is perfect for the role.

8) In a couple of days, Christus Victor Ministries will have a new web site! Yes, I know we just got a new one last year, but for a number of reasons it wasn't working for us. This new one rocks! Even before we launch the site, I want to say thank you to my good friend Julie Ross who has graciously poured her formidable website designing skills into making this a first rate site. Check out the above link in a couple days (if all goes smoothly).

9) Another person in my small group, Terri Churchill (married to Dave the lead singer of our famous rock band, NDY) started her own blog the other day. You can check it out here. This is good news to the world, because as everybody who knows Terri can testify, this woman is an insightful thinker and incredible writer. We've been encouraging her to publish some of her stuff for years. This is a nice move in this direction and I bet those who check out her blog will be blessed.

10) Finally, as you all know, today the rat race officially begins. By the time you read this the Iowa Caucus will probably be about over. Only 10 more months of insanity left!!

I think it's fun to try to guess who'll win. So, just for fun, here's my two cents.

I've been saying to Shelley for the last five months that Huckabee is going to win the Republican nomination. Five months ago hardly anybody knew who Huckabee was. He's the only candidate who conservative Christians could possibly rally behind, and he's the only one who knows how to push all the evangelical buttons. But he didn't appear "winnable" until recently. Now he does. I'm guessing that Evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson who threw their weight behind Rudy Giuliani (despite his rather liberal stances on certain issues and less than stellar personal life) and Mitt Romney (despite his Mormonism and notorious flip-flopping) are kicking themselves right now. I suspect he'll win Iowa, but however it goes in Iowa, I'm predicting you're going to see the conservative Christian crowd rally together (which concerns me, of course), and Huckabee will take the nomination.

But it's just a guess.

On the democratic side of things, it's obviously wide open. But if I had to, I'd put my money on Obama. I've thought from the get-go that Hilary just has too much baggage. Her last name is Clinton. Her political involvement in the past has been very polarizing -- at a time when people are exhausted from the intense polarization of the present administration. Consider also that almost half of all people polled say they would vote against Hilary regardless of who her opponent is. That's a very hard deficit to overcome. Not impossible, but formidable.

So, I'm guessing it will in the end be Huckabee against Obama. And, despite the conservative rally I don't think Huckabee stands much of a chance. Obama will be our next president.

Or not.

And none of this matters much -- which is the main point for Kingdom people to remember. Whatever happens in this rat race, please don't let yourself get sucked in. Have you're opinions, make your guesses, vote if you want to. But always remember that the power that will ultimately conquer evil and save the world is not the power that flows from Caesar's throne. It's rather the power that flows from Calvary.

This year, lets commit to exercising that power 24/7.

Peace
Greg