Ethan told me yesterday morning that a group of African protesters known as NO WHITE SAVIORS has been making waves among Adventures in Missions folks and making many points about short-term mission trips with which Ethan agrees. He indicated he wished to talk about it the next time we chat.
I was at the top of Balmoral Way today, and I asked You about it, and my thoughts poured out naturally: There is no answer to whether “short-term missions” are a good idea generally. There is only the question of whether a a given person being on a short-term mission trip is good, i.e., does his or her presence there produce love, unexploitative joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, or wisdom? If it does, then keep doing it; if it doesn’t, then stop.
I appear to have inadvertently discarded most of my skimpy annotations from Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion under the false understanding that there was no limit to the size of the notes field on Goodreads. Ah, well.
All I’m left with at the moment is the following Barth quotation:
What took place on the Cross of Golgotha is the last word of an old history and the first word of a new (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV).
This dovetails nicely with the idea that has matured in me in recent months and about which I taught at church a few weeks ago: The primary thrust of Jesus’ earthly mission was to fulfill both sides of the Levitical & Deuteronomic covenant with Israel.
Beyond the above quotation, the thing I am most impressed with about Rutledge’s points is her insistence that impunity is a very unjust thing.
I have asked You, Lord, for answers to the following questions, which are really the same:
Why was it Your plan that Jesus be crucified?
What, objectively, happened at the Crucifixion other than the obvious? Where, other than in the minds of humans, does the Crucifixion accomplish anything?
Tonight, I believe I received two more pieces to the answer in the form of questions put to me:
“What, objectively, happens when you spank a child or put him or her in timeout?” The answer is nothing. What happens is all in minds: the mind of the child, the mind of the parents, and the minds of observers.
“If Carla ignored you for a year, would it be OK to simply forgive her and let bygones be bygones, and pretend nothing happened?” The answer is no—for her sake and for mine, no.
That latter point is related to Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo.
I enjoyed today how although I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to bring anything to church, at the last minute as we approached our taking of the wine and bread, I thought of “What A Friend I’ve Found” by Delirious?, which I had just run through with Carla, the Rookes, and Ben last weekend on a whim. I need to remember not to worry so much. Just follow my whim. Especially with music making. I ought not make music simply because I have a voice for it. I ought to make music when it is in the service of love only. Is love the post hoc pretext that covers a selfish ambition for praise or usefulness? Or is love the actual, prompting reason I’m doing the singing? Let it always be the latter.
Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham. The Human One came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
What prompted Jesus to announce that Zacchaeus was saved? Zacchaeus’ change of mind to no longer do wrong by people and to do right by them with his money. Not the empty sinner’s prayer or anything like it. Who are the lost? Not those who don’t believe in Him. It’s those who don’t follow Him in His ways. Salvation is right behavior. Or something.
“But now it seems that good is not the same in all worlds; that Maleldil has forbidden in one what He allows in another“ (Tinidril).
“…the vast astronomical distances which are God’s quarantine regulations…”
“Ransom felt himself more and more in the presence of a monomaniac.”
“The fatal touch of invited grandeur, of enjoyed pathos—the assumption, however slight, of a rôle—seemed a hateful vulgarity“ ( of Tinidril under the influence of the Un-man).
“Not for the first time he found himself questioning Divine Justice. He could not understand why Maleldil should remain absent when the Enemy was there in person.”
“He writhed and ground his teeth, but could not help seeing. Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. And if something, who could set bounds to it?
“Then came blessed relief. He suddenly realised that he did not know what he could do. He almost laughed with joy. All this horror had been premature. No definite task was before him. All that was being demanded of him was a general and preliminary resolution to oppose the Enemy in any mode which circumstances might show to be desirable: in fact—and he flew back to the comforting words as a child flies back to its mother’s arms—‘to do his best’—or rather, to go on doing his best, for he had really been doing it all along. ‘What bug-bears we make of things unnecessarily!’ he murmured, settling himself in a slightly more comfortable position. A mild floor of what appeared to him to be cheerful and rational piety rose and engulfed him” (of Ransom contemplating his mission against the Unman).
“‘Other things, other blessings, other glories,’” he murmured. “‘But never that. Never in all worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real.’”
“The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of coloured chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object“ (of Ransom against the Unman).
— C.S. Lewis, of Ransom against the Un-man • Perelandra
No comment on the above. I just like them.
“At least,” he added in a louder voice, “this forbidding is no hardship in such a world as yours“ (Ransom).
I am struck that the more one sees the goodness that surrounds us, the less the rules about the same world in which that goodness resides seems hard. The more we see life as a gift, the less likely to we are to complain about what we ought to avoid. Why would I engage in some pleasure that harms myself or others when there are ample pleasures I can engage in that do neither?
“That also is a strange thing to say,” replied the Lady. “Who thought of its being hard? The beasts would not think it hard if I told them to walk on their heads. It would become their delight to walk on their heads. I am His beast, and all His biddings are joys.”
There is, of course, danger in the Divine Command Theory of ethics, for sure. But given the touchstone of the crucified Jesus, this is an excellent perspective.
“You ask me to believe that you have been living here with that woman under these conditions in a state of sexless innocence?“ (Weston)
I think of our society’s obsession with sex.
“That would be a strange thing—to think about what will never happen” (Tinidril).
Why bother even thinking about that which will not happen? It is how I wish to approach everything I have decided against doing.
She had no notion of how to glance rapidly from one face to another or two disentangle two remarks at once. Sometimes she listened wholly to Ransom, sometimes wholly to the other, but never to both.
Me!
[D]eep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?
This is how I view temptation.
“I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is by doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His well, but not only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which his bidding is the only reason? When we spoke last you said that if you told the beasts to walk on their heads, they would delight to do so. So I know that you understand well what I am saying“ (Ransom).
A fine stab at making sense of the command not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
He picked one and broke it in two. The flesh was dryish and bread-like, something of the same kind as a banana. It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give the orgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather the specific pleasure of plain food—the delight of munching and being nourished, a “Sober certainty of waking bliss.” A man, or at least a man like Ransom, felt he ought to say grace over it; and so he present did. The gourds would have required rather an oratorio or a mystical meditation.”
The blind man on the roadside to Jericho (Luke 18:35-43) was so desperate for help from Jesus that he was willing to stand up to people who were trying to shout him down.
This website exists to help those who wish to follow Jesus find like-minded people to eat with in remembrance of Him to provoke one another to love and good deeds, thus enacting the good news that Jesus is lord.
Loving someone as yourself means relinquishing all claim to private property. It also means exercising as much effort for the good of those around you as you do for your own good.
The rub is to apply this theological definition of ownership to the things I “own” in the material world (and to the immaterial things, such as my time and energy). The way I propose to do this is to realize and act on the fact that loving someone as myself entails using what is “mine” as much for the benefit of others as I do myself. The more I contemplate the “as myself” part of Jesus' quotation of Leviticus, the more radical it seems.
and this one: “Wisdom, as your example of the woman with the alabaster jar illustrates, is emphatically not to be taken as synonymous with restraint.”
“Do you feel quite happy out it?” said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.
“If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra?—the answer is Yes,” said Ransom. “If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view?—I’m afraid the answer is No. One can believe in anesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it’s good practice.”
What is Christianity? “A Jesus-looking God raising up a Jesus-looking people to change the world in a Jesus kind of way.” At least, that’s the fetchingly simple way Greg Boyd put it in a podcast episode released back in late November.
Did you ever think the reason your life has become somewhat more pedestrian is that your prayers have become so, too? The thought occurred to me while on my prayer walk this evening, and it excited me.
Let it be true that my prayers are always answers to God’s speaking. But when I first read the quotation, which I found in a Krista Tippett interview, I read it as: “The answers we seek from God are the prayers we pray,” as if He is the one providing the food for prayer.
Instead of God taking responsibility for creating, what would happen if we view God as taking responsibility for being created? That is, in Christ, God the human being fulfills humanity’s responsibility before God to present itself humbly, obedient and trusting in the face of all the vicissitudes inherent in that nature, and fulfills human nature’s calling and purpose. In this case Jesus’ death fulfills created nature, loving and trusting God within the constraints of created finitude. Christ, the God-Man, represents creation to God, takes responsibility for being creatED (not for creatING), unites creation to God, and in so doing reconciles the world to God, not God to the world.
I feel a certain reorientation in my reading life these past two days, and it has to do with love. If I am to do everything in love, then I am to:
choose what to read in love, that is, in thanksgiving that there are so many good books from which to choose,
choose what to read for love, that is, thinking of the books’ relative capacity to facilitate or express my love for God and love for others—by which I mean specific others around me, not just books that will answer questions raised by what other people on the Internet are thinking about,
read savoringly, because to do so any other way is a waste of time that benefits no one, including myself, unless I’m reading purely for information, and is therefore unloving. Reading for understanding, entertainment, or aesthetics doesn’t even happen if I don’t read savoringly.
read only at times when I can read savoringly, a constraint which will have the added benefit of making my responsiveness to the actual world around me much better and thus my actual total quantity and quality of love in any given day.
Also, when I switch to reading articles, I should be selective enough with my Instapaper queue that I find it easy to pay close attention to each article I do read and I get through it all in a timely manner. Basically a miniature version of the above rules.
With movies, it is easier:
I love God while watching movies because I watch them in thanksgiving.
I love Carla while watching movies because she wanted time to watch movies together to be a part of our life. We wouldn’t be watching movies together if I didn’t like her.
Movies are shared activities, if passive ones. They are much easier therefore to meet the “to the enjoyment of relationship with” portion of my definition of love.
I cannot pretend to know what’s best from a legal standpoint regarding the issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Nine of our brightest legal minds are working on it right now, and they’ll probably be split 5–4. I tend to favor allowing such anti-discrimination laws like what Colorado has because the I don’t see the cakebaker as endorsing any harm. But regardless, the way of Jesus is clear: Bake the cake. To understand why, read Matthew 5:38-48, especially vv. 39–41.
I seek a metaphor to illustrate a possible metaphysics of my claims that “only our good works will be saved” and that the “line between sheep and goat runs right through me.” How do I survive but my unrighteous deeds do not? How is it so unpleasant as to be called Gehenna?
If we affirm Homosexuals because they are “born that way” when clearly it is at the least not the natural ideal, then what would keep us from affirming someone who is born with a propensity to steal, or lie, or fornicate, or any other thing? A huge component to following the narrow way of Christ is denying our “natural” selves.
Along those lines, what would you do if a leader in your ministry said they don’t think the passages about sex outside of marriage apply to today, and they will be sleeping with whoever they want. They point out that it’s really just a few passages that mention this. If I’m open to accepting a different opinion on this issue, why not any and every issue?
What is the pandora’s box of sin we would be opening if we allowed this?
me:
Glad to help. I do see a risk of opening Pandora’s box if we allow same-sex marriage in the Church without a clear articulation of why we no longer call it sin. Thankfully, you yourself have already furnished your world such an articulation: It’s the rule of love.
No one can engage a propensity to steal without being unloving. The same goes for a predisposition to lie.
We all have a leaning toward premarital sex, it seems, which may account for why it’s a little more complex to explain how it’s necessarily unloving. Nevertheless, such explications can be made. The rule of love keeps us from affirming such behavior.
The same cannot be said against same-sex marriage. You and I discovered this in conversation thirteen years ago, as I recall, in the car while traveling for a bachelor party. I’ll go so far as to turn things around and say that it’s unloving for us to deny the great good of marriage of those same-sex Christian couples who need it and have clear consciences about it.
In answer to your second set of questions, no two issues are the same, and interpretive tradition doesn’t lose its weight simply because “times have changed.” If a leader in my ministry organization wished to cast off the scriptural restraints regarding premarital sex, reciting the chestnut that the pertinent Bible passages don’t apply to today, perhaps because of the advent of contraception or today’s admittedly unfortunate concurrence of an increase in the average age of marriage and a decrease in the average age of puberty, I might simply make as strong a case as I could that premarital sex remains an unloving thing to do. I might also challenge him to produce a positive scriptural argument for it motivated by Christian love, which I believe hasbeendone for same-sex marriage, rather a purely negatory one motivated by libido.
But I might also take the opportunity to revitalize the Christian sexual ethic more generally: At its core, the world’s sexual ethic boils down to a single maxim: Get consent. Christians could agree that that’s a good maxim. And obviously, it is possible for premarital sex to tick that checkbox. A slightly more sophisticated worldly sexual ethic might add a second maxim: Do no harm. For the sake of argument, let’s temporarily and reluctantly grant that premarital sex might possibly fulfill this criterion as well. Now, let’s ask: Leaving aside individual scriptural proscriptions about specific behaviors, if we were able to abstract from the Bible a general, Christian sexual ethic, would it be coterminous with the sexual ethic of the world? In other words, are the above two maxims that comprise the world’s sexual ethic also all there is to a Christian sexual ethic?
The answer is no. If we Christians take Jesus and Paul seriously, we ought to recognize a third sexual maxim: Don’t be distracted from the Lord’s work. In the New Testament, the importance of being undistracted is what prompts both the holding up of celibacy as the ideal and and the concession of marriage as an alternative.
This principle of undistraction is a stalwart defense of the Kingdom against all manner of sexual innovation, and a strong, argument for loving, exclusive monogamy as the only acceptable erotic outlet for a Christian. I have run polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, and premarital sex against it in simulations in my head. I have yet to encounter in my imagination a realistic scenario in which they create less, or even equal, distraction from God’s main plan than the ideal (celibacy) or its attendant concession (marriage).
Thanks for the opportunity to write this stuff out.
Much love,
Scott
P.S. I will caution in my trumpeting the cause of Christian celibacy that such a station must be accompanied by robust social support. By this I’m not suggesting that celibacy leads to sexual deviance. (In the case Catholic priests, I have read in non-Catholic sources that rates of pedophilia among priests are no higher than they are in the population at large.) I am merely saying that celibates need deep friendships just like, and perhaps more acutely, than the rest of us. I’ll add that I think they’ll need a knowledgeable, wise plan for managing their sexuality.
P.P.S. Please remember that it is possible, albeit difficult, and beautiful to build an organization that affirms both Side A and Side B gay Christians in the dictates of their consciences.