David Bentley Hart, from The Doors of the Sea

A lovely passage from the conclusion of The Doors of the Sea, wherein David Bentley Hart addresses the how can a good God allow suffering? question:

[W]e Christians are not obliged (and perhaps not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day - to look, that is, upon the entire littoral rim of the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children - and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces - whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance - that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. And we are not only permitted but required to believe that cosmic time as we know it, through all the immensity of its geological ages and historical epochs, is only a shadow of true time, and this world only a shadow of the fuller, richer, more substantial, more glorious creation that God intends; and to believe also that all of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness… When, however, we learn in Christ the nature of our first estate, and the divine destiny to which we are called, we begin to see - more clearly the more we are able to look upon the world with the eye of charity - that there is in all the things of earth a hidden glory waiting to be revealed, more radiant than a million suns, more beautiful than the most generous imagination or most ardent desire can now conceive. Or, rather, it is a glory not entirely hidden: veiled, rather, but shining in and through and upon all things… At [disastrous] times, to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only a faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.

Happiness as Human Flourishing: Matthieu Ricard on On Being

I’ve read Christian authors from time to time who seem to be flirting with Buddhism - I guess I’m thinking primarily of Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr - and I’ve never really understood the appeal.

Then yesterday while mowing the lawn I listened to Krista Tippett’s interview with Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and was captivated. In an hour discussion (I listen to On Being’s unedited versions, always) Ricard shared thought after thought about human flourishing and connectedness and joy and contentment that, with just the tweaking of a few phrases, could’ve been directly from Christian teaching.

Now, nobody freak out, I’m not off to shave my head buy a robe and become a monk. But if you have a spare hour, this interview was well worth listening to.

Finished Reading: People to Be Loved by Preston Sprinkle

I’ve honestly been avoiding books on the topic of Christian views on homosexuality because I’ve become so familiar and fatigued with the arguments over the past decade. But this one by Preston Sprinkle caught my attention and was on sale cheap at the time on Amazon, so I downloaded it to my Kindle app and gave it a go.

Sprinkle sets out to take an evenhanded look through the Bible at the various key texts that have been used to argue for both the Affirming and Non-Affirming positions regarding homosexual practice. I’ll give him credit - for the majority of the book he was even enough that I had no real inkling of which side he was going to come down on. Well done!

The beginning of the chapter seven wherein he finally reaches a conclusion (spoiler alert: he’s in the Non-Affirming camp) is where the shine started to come off. Not because of the conclusion he reached, but because of how he addresses 1 Corinthians 6. What do malakoi and arsenokoites really mean? How should they be translated? “Affirming scholars”, he tells us, “generally argue that these words are too ambiguous.” OK. A “brilliant New Testament scholar at Yale University” concludes that nobody can really know exactly what they mean. Later on about arsenokoites, he tells us that “[s]cholars differ widely on what this word means”. But after setting this scene of ambiguity, he essentially says what do these words mean? Let me explain it all to you in 20 pages in a popular-level book. He lost me at that point.

There is good stuff to take away from Sprinkle’s book regardless of which camp you find yourself in. I appreciate his focus on loving individuals rather than flattening them to “an issue”. And if you’re not familiar with the various approaches Christians have taken toward Scriptures related to homosexuality, there are worse places to start than this book to get an overview. I can’t find myself jumping-up-and-down-excited about People to Be Loved, but I can affirm (sorry, couldn’t resist) it as a solid, useful volume.

People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue

Sabbath is a way of life...

More from Marilynne Robinson’s The Givenness of Things, from a chapter titled “Decline”:

The Sabbath has a way of doing just what it was meant to do, sheltering one day in seven from the demands of economics. Its benefits cannot be commercialized. Leisure, by way of contrast, is highly commercialized. But leisure is seldom more than a bit of time ransomed from habitual stress. Sabbath is a way of life, one long since gone from this country, of course, due to secularizing trends, which are really economic pressures that have excluded rest as an option, first of all from those most in need of it.

Matthew 6, a modern paraphrase

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So when you do your good deeds, do not announce them with hashtags, as the hypocrites do on Instagram and on Facebook, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you do your good deeds, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your doing may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And when you have your Bible study and quiet time, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to do this with Twitter pictures of coffee and their Bible, and on Facebook statuses to “encourage” others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Inspired by nothing in particular and many things in general.

Stop Trying to be a Man - Start Trying to be a Good Man

Brad Williams with a fantastic piece on Christ and Pop Culture today, saying things that desperately need to be said:

Culture tells us that certain things are “manly” and certain things are “unmanly.” But we must take that with a grain of salt. Most of the time, those around us in the culture have no idea who or what they are — so taking our cues from them doesn’t make any sense. Down deep, many people are quite insecure about themselves, and so they stick to silly things like “pink is for girls” because they have no better way to define what it is to be masculine. As a good man, you must take note of these things. Such markers might be alright for immature boys, but a good man will feel some grief for adults who continue to define themselves so narrowly.

Back in 2001, John Eldredge wrote a book titled Wild at Heart. In it, he argued that every man’s desire is for “a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.” This does sound very romantic perhaps, but that’s all it is. After all, many women have these same desires — and some men may hardly desire such things at all. A good man does not have, in his heart, a grand desire for conquest. A good man’s heart desires only peace. A good man doesn’t desire war with his neighbor in order to take what isn’t his. The prophet Micah, when teaching of the day when God’s Kingdom would finally come to Earth, wrote, “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4). A good man loves the peace of his own vineyard. He desires a time when there’s nothing out there to make anyone afraid. This doesn’t mean he’ll always live in peace because seeking peace can still lead to conflict, but peace should always be the end goal. Your dream of peace may lead you to a different place of contentment than a vineyard or a fig tree, but Micah’s verse reveals that a man’s proper goal is desiring the opposite of fighting battles.

Maybe the Christian manliness bro culture has dissipated a little bit since Mark Driscoll left the helm of Acts29 and Mars Hill, but it’s still far too prevalent. Williams provides a great corrective here that those bought into the “real manhood” circus.

-- Christ and Pop Culture: Stop Trying to Be a Man and Start Trying to Be a Good Man

Jethani: Blessed Are The Disillusioned

Skye Jethani articulates in a piece today a lot of the frustrations I have felt and heard in recent months. Just a sample:

The tribe of the disillusioned is growing and the institutional containers we have inherited are struggling to hold us. The cracks are spreading. The containers are leaking. But we stay, for now, because we don’t know where to go. We don’t know who to follow. We don’t know where we belong. The disillusioned wonder—where are the voices that affirm traditional Christian marriage without condemning our neighbors who do not? The disillusioned wonder—where are the churches that focus more on loving people in the name of God than using people in the name of mission? The disillusioned wonder—where are the humble Christians that can discern the difference between a loss of privilege and real persecution?

I appreciate that he doesn’t just leave us in the wondering but gives us some encouragement for where to go from here. Worth reading.

-- SkyeJethani.com: Blessed Are The Disillusioned

We are from the future, embodying that in the here and now

One of my favorites, Brian Zahnd, talked recently on the Makers and Mystics podcast. I love this little bit of what he had to say about the church being “from the future”:

When I say I’m from the future, what I mean is that in baptism I have come to live under the reign and rule of Christ here and now. And I use an illustration: this is what the Church should be like. If you go to a movie, and you’re there to see, well, whatever you’re there to see, everybody knows that before the actual movie starts you have the previews. And what a preview is, is 2, 3, 4 minutes of a coming attraction. This movie is not here yet, but they’re going to show you enough of it that you get an idea of what it will be like. The church is to be a preview of the age to come. We’re not perfect, we don’t claim that. But we should be able - I don’t think we really can, for the most part - but we should be able to say to the wider culture, “look at our communities. This is where this thing is headed. This is what the reign of Christ actually looks like, because we are from the future, we are embodying that here and now.”

So good.

NTW on 'a central part of the Christian vocation'

[F]ollowers of Jesus have no choice. A central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.

-- N. T. Wright, The Day The Revolution Began, p. 401

Talking Complementarianism and Egalitarianism with Brent Thomas

Brent Thomas is kicking the dust off his blog in the hopes of fostering some charitable discussions on contentious topics. He starts out with a doozy: complementarianism vs. egalitarianism.

Let’s start with “complimentarianism” and “egalitarianism”. For those not familiar with these terms, they have to do with the idea of gender roles, particularly in ministry (at least that’s what we’ll focus on for the sake of this conversation though the issue certainly applies to marriage and gender-relations as a whole so feel free to take the conversation there if you’d like). Most Christians would argue that men and women are created equal, that’s not the issue here. Instead, the question becomes gender role, particularly within a ministry context. Complementarians argue that, because of unique gender roles found in Scripture, women are prohibited from leadership roles within the local church such as “elder” or “pastor” while Egalitarians argue that not only do no such Scriptural barriers exist, women are just as called and qualified to serve in such roles.

He admits this is a simplification of the issue, but then kicks off the discussion with a series of questions that I’ll give my answers to here. If you’re interested in the discussion, I’d encourage you to answer them yourself either on your own web space or in Brent’s comments. The following questions are his, the answers mine.

Do you view this as an issue of “orthodoxy”? In other words, if someone holds a different position than you on gender-roles, do you believe them to still be a Christian?

I do not believe this is an issue of orthodoxy.

If you do not view this as an issue of orthodoxy, how important is this issue to you? Where would you rank it on a scale of theological/cultural importance (top, bottom, middle, etc.)?

I’d rate it as a matter of middling importance to me. It’s not significant enough to, by itself, drive a change in the church that I attend. I don’t have a big enough progressive soapbox to rate it as too highly culturally important. I lean that way sometimes, but I don’t have a soapbox - just a few soap flakes or something.

Do you hold to either position? Why? What Scriptures or outside books/authors helped you arrive at your position? How do you succinctly explain your position to others, especially those who might disagree? What pushed you in one direction or the other?

I personally hold rather gently to the egalitarian position. (I am a member of a church that is firmly complementarian.) I grew up being taught a complementarian position and held to it up until the past 7 - 8 years. I recall reviewing Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet (in which he advocates for the egalitarian position) shortly before it was released and blogging my disagreement with Dr. McKnight’s conclusions. He then chided me in the comments for not answering the actual questions he was asking. In retrospect, he had a point.

I’ve considered the Scriptures, read plenty of the online debate on the topic, and have been significantly influenced by female friends who serve in leadership positions at their egalitarian churches. My thoughts have undoubtedly also been influenced, though in ways I can’t as easily put my finger on, by having three daughters of my own.

The other experience that sticks out to me was taking communion last year at an egalitarian church where the elements were served by a husband-and-wife couple. I’m not sure whether serving the Lord’s Supper is gender-restricted in typical complementarian churches. (The elements are served by the elders in my current church, but not sure if that’s doctrine or just tradition.) But having the elements served and words spoken by both the man and woman serving was a very powerful experience.

Why do you believe that this issue seems to cause such division? Why has it been so controversial to so many? How can people on all sides of this issue come together without sacrificing their own convictions? Or can they?

I think this issue causes division because it gets easily lumped in together with other gender-related issues like homosexuality and same-sex marriage. The hermeneutics that are typically used to support the egalitarian position - specifically, that Paul’s teaching was for a specific situation and time and not necessarily applicable for all Christians at all times - are similar to those used to support acceptance of homosexuality within the church. Thus the slippery-slope argument kicks in pretty quick.

I believe people can come together on this issue if they are willing to view it as a secondary matter. Clearly the stretching is mostly done by the complementarians, though I really appreciate Richard Beck’s testimony of being an egalitarian in a complementarian church and gracefully maintaining that he will not serve in any role that a women would not also be allowed to serve in. That could be as easy as joining together with other churches from time to time and being respectful when they have women serving in leadership, or finding ways to have women serve and teach in more visible ways.

Thanks, Brent, for inviting the discussion. I look forward to reading others’ opinions as well.