The sin Jesus addressed via the Cross was our sin against God, not our sin against one another. The latter still requires the hard work of reconciliation. If we understood this, our track record in handling abuse situations would be vastly improved. Jesus’ work on the Cross is not license to bludgeon victims toward cheap forgiveness of their abusers.

God does not need us to “make good” to him in order for him forgive us. However, humans may need us to do so. There is such a thing as manifesting (bringing forth) fruit of repentance. This makes hyper-Protestants nervous. It need not be so.

Here, Crosby makes the point I’ve been approaching by asserting that the sin God deals with on the Cross is our sin against Him, not our sign against others.

God has given (perfect middle participle– a present reality affecting us at the moment) us, everything necessary for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We just need to get on with well-executed consistency in basic things, rather than lusting for some ill-defined new level of spiritual catharsis or illumination (Stephen Crosby, “It’s 2019 and God is Not Taking You to New Levels”).

That articles like these still speak to me proves that I’m still a post-Charismatic.

I have started to prioritize sleep catch-up over prayer-walking. Is that okay?

“Not one of those men had ever suggested that a person could be ‘called to anything but ‘full-time Christian service,’ by which they meant either the ministry or the ‘the mission field’” (Jayber Crow, 43).

You can be called to anything in which you can love.

Provided we forgive others, God forgives us if He observes our:

• repentance,
• hopeless ignorance, or
• incapacity.

We should do the same.

Is it scripturally defensible to claim that the Cross handles our sin(s) against God but does not do anything about our sin(s) against other people? And that even God’s forgiveness of our sin against Him does not preclude the possibility of rehabilitative action on His part, even punishment? (Restitution would be impossible, of course.) Is this a good way to avoid the pressure to forgive and forget or forgive quickly or superficially and a good way to keep perpetrators from getting off easily and without restitution and without reconciliation and without humbling?

This thought occurred to me while praying the Lord’s prayer on my walking way up Enterprise Drive to pick up Éa’s bag from Organic Climbing. It is tangentially inspired, I’m sure, by Rutledge’s The Crucifixion and by Denhollander’s piece on how penal substitutionary atonement informs how abusers and victims should be handled.

“Well, I feel better now.”

–When the verse you don’t understand is skipped by your favorite commentary.

— “Failing Pastor”

Perhaps the joy is lost from listening to and making music largely because it feels desultory: There’s no goal. At least, that’s what it seems like the Spirit may be saying as I possibly discerned on my walk to and from Gary Abdullah’s house to drop off an apology note written by Sullivan for his having tripped over an electrical cord and unplugged Inflatable Christmas Countdown Santa. So, here’s a goal in the absence of a relish for musical theatre, anthem gigs at college basketball games, Puddintown Roots, and the Choral Society: Build your repertoire book.

Before opening my mouth I always ask “Is what I’m about to say edifying?”

To which my brain answers, “One way to find out.”

— “Failing Pastor”

“The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings” (Psalm 115:16). This jibes with my theodicy.

And yet part of the ambiguity surrounding the human experience of creatures’ diversity is bound up with the fact that the multiplication of creatures is coupled with (and from a purely biological perspective, needed to compensate for) their regular destruction; rather than persisting in the capacious environments that God provides, living creatures, whether considered as individuals or as classes, die, so that, for example, only a small fraction of the terrestrial species that have existed in the half-billion years since the emergence of multicellular life survive today. Yet this fact in itself need not be viewed as inconsistent with creation’s goodness. Although death has most often been viewed in Christian tradition as a punishment for Adam’s transgression, Genesis 3:19, 22 (cf. 6:3) may also be read as teaching that humans (and by extension, other earth creatures) naturally return to the dust from which they were taken unless some other factor intervenes (see Gen. 2:7, 17 Ps. 103:13-16; Eccl. 3:19-20). Certainly there is nothing inconsistent with the goodness of creation that the “place” occupied by every creature should have temporal as well as spatial boundaries, entailing a limited life span no less than limited bodily dimensions; indeed, such temporal limits actually enhance the capaciousness of creation, since two creatures can occupy the same space if they do so at different times. Death can certainly be experienced as a violation of life and so as a curse, but Scripture also can speak of a kind of death that is a life’s natural conclusion, in which an individual dies “old and full of days’ (Gen. 35;29; 1Chr. 29:28: Job 42;17; cf. gen. 25;8; Isa. 65:20). Insofar as extinction of a species is the analogue to the death of an individual creature, one might equally conceive of classes of creatures—trilobites or dinosaurs, say, both of which thrived for tens of millions of years before becoming extinct—as having experience this sort of death. In this way we can understand death as temporal finitude, as a means by which the fullness of creation is arranged along a temporal axis as well as within contemporary physical spaces….

— Ian MacFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation

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:

1. “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.
2. “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 never before noticed the “perplexed but not despairing” line in 2 Corinthians 4:8. That would’ve been a good thread to hang onto through doubt.

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).
• “I know now what they say in your world about justice. And perhaps they say well, for in that world things always fall below justice. But Maleldil always goes above it. All is gift. I am Oyarsa not by His gift alone but by our foster mother’s, not by hers alone but by yours, not by yours alone but my wife’s—nay, in some sort, by gift of the very beasts and birds. Through many hands, enriched with many different kinds of love and labour, the gift comes to me. It is the Law. The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own” (Tor).

— 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.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

I laughed out loud at the last line.

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.

The violent take it by force, indeed.

A pass at the raison d’être for the churches website:

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.

And here’s a better-than-usual back-and-forth that resulted from posting this assertion to Facebook. Among the highlights:

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.”

— C.S. Lewis • Perelandra

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.