What Is Faith? What Is It For? A Conversation

Video Summary:

James Alison says faith is relaxing in the presence of someone you're certain is fond of you. Lutheran idea: faith is trusting God's promises, not intellectually assenting to a set of theological propositions.

Faith is not given to individuals in sufficient quantities, but communities. Similar to how an individual might not believe every line of a creed, but the church as a whole does. In organizing her faith community, the statement of faith required of members will be participating in the liturgy and sharing the eucharist.


David Shay: My initial reaction to this was that it was awesome to hear something that made sense to me about faith, but that I haven't articulated myself before in this way. I've seen a lot of these concepts in books on orthodoxy that I've read, especially the idea of things being based more in the community, the body, not just the individual. What were your thoughts, Dave?


Dave Mantel: I did a quick word study on that 1 Corinthians passage she mentioned, where Paul is addressing a "y'all,"--the community responsibility for faith, rather than the individual--and it doesn't normally get translated that way, but it could be, which is cool. I think a lot of times with this kind of stuff most people will translate something a certain way because it's always been done like that. So that stuck out as something I really liked.

But there was something I'm not sure I know how I feel about, where she talks about the creed, and how not everybody has to believe everything, as long as it all gets believed in the end--that's okay. I can see how that would be encouraging. But I don't know where I stand with that kind of thinking yet.


David Shay: I get that, but don't think we can take what she's saying in this video as "the rules" of faith. It's kind of a catch-22; the way she's presenting it, you almost can't say you disagree, because what she's saying is "Exactly!" and you'd be like "But I don't agree with that" and she'd say "I know, exactly, but we both love Christ and believe he's God." And that's kind of why a lot of what she said makes sense to me. Which brings us back to the first part of what she says, which is that faith is relaxing in the presence of someone you're certain is fond of you. Most of the time we only talk about the rules and the function of us being in love with the Creator, and we don't focus on the relationship with the Creator; what are the emotions that you feel, what are the unwritable things that happen to you; that sense is something that would be nice to bask in.


Dave Mantel: I understand what's being communicated, but I have a problem with the way that it's being put. I think it's really cool--there's two ways to think about this: one is that you don't have to have 100% faith in every doctrine all the time, and that's okay, because faith isn't about having all the right ideas all the time; and the other way is this, that there are a lot of extra rules... Rob Bell has a similar problem in his book, Velvet Elvis, where he talks about "flexible doctrine," and he uses the example of the virgin birth, and I'm like "That's not a good example!" because the virgin birth important to all of Christianity, but if you were talking about something else- things that are really side issues that not the whole Church agrees on (I view the content of the creeds as main issues, not side issues)- it's okay to wrestle with those things during different seasons. James?


James Davisson: I have to admit that my initial gut reaction to this video was almost entirely negative. For whatever reason, my brain reacted to the sentence "James Alison says faith is relaxing in the presence of someone you're certain is fond of you" with the same kneejerk dislike I usually reserve for people proclaim inghow much they love eating organic produce while they do yoga. Liberal white people sitting around in a room agreeing with each other; I just reject the surface quality of this whole thing. Once I was able to get past that emotional response, I was able to get on board with a lot of what she was saying.

In fact, what I did with it was try to find someone more "orthodox" who might agree with or support her position, and what I came up with was something I remembered C.S. Lewis, that I think goes along with her second idea that faith might not require belief in every line of the creed:

The Resurrection and its consequences were the “gospel” or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the “gospels,” the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already converted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it.

To me, that sounds like Lewis saying something similar, that the essence of Christian faith is belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the impact that it has on humanity; everything else is commentary on that.


Dave Mantel: This goes back to our last conversation: what is the point of all this? What is it for? The end result of this conversation should not be "Do we all think the right things?" but "How does this help our relationship with God and each other?" So whatever we conclude should be in relation to those two things; not about doctrine, but relationship.


David Shay: Let me jump on that, relationship: I think that might be the cheesy part that James hated so much. My struggle with faith is that, when I look for someone who "has it going on" with their faith, it can be tought, I'm not actually sure I believe there's someone who actually knows who God is. I get emotional at church, but I'm just like a secular person in line at the Chiptole, or getting gift cards at Target; we live a very mundane life outside of church, outside of our practices. What is it actually like, though, when we analyze our lives and know we're dwelling beside the Creator; how does it make things different, what is the answer? It's not entirely to be found in what you believe, in doctrines, nor only in how you treat people, because we all know really nice people who don't believe in God. It's found in something else, I can't put it into words, but it's found in something that has no need to be proven to others; it's simply dwelling with God and letting God change you. I think we've lost touch as Christians because we're trying to prove too much to others, that what we believe makes sense, and we've forgotten to relate to God and each other. That's the obsession of the individual; all of us just trying to better our own lives instead of contribute to a community.


Dave Mantel: That's where I get sometimes; I get wrapped up in "head knowledge," in having the right ideas and telling other people about them. It's not something that changes my life; I'm not letting it. It's not expressed in loving other people, and that's the trap I get stuck in sometimes.


David Shay: Right. She says that maybe faith isn't for the individual, but I think it can be--there are people who have just, crazy amounts of faith, overflowing faith.

I know people who I admire as Christians, with very different theological views from me. I know a guy, he's very Reformed, and I am not, and I admire him, and I look up to him because of these weird moments we've had, like this time we were out with a group of people at camp in the woods, and it's midnight and crickets and animals are going off, and he says "Let's just stop for a second--y'all hear that song?" And we just stand there, silent, but the woods aren't silent--I think that sort of thing is more the point even than what this person even gave a sermon on earlier that evening, that is how the Kingdom of God can work. And that sounds pretty tree-huggish, wishy-washy, I get it, because I can't tell someone that story and it really hits them, necessarily, but I think that experience of community, faith, and God, that happen within that story, is an important thing. This person's theology that's different from mine, that's not as important.


James Davisson: Couple things. I question too what's important about Christianity and what sets us apart from good, secular people. And what does that is that we live in the age where Christ has come and changed things, and we can spread the word about that, and we can further his Kingdom even change the world for the better because of that story and the knowledge we have about it. And we too often look to the distant, end-of-time future, rather than this immediate future that we have the power to shape, as Christians. 

This other thing I was reminded of in listening to your comments was this item we've been meaning to talk about, this blog post called Twelve Myths Too Many Christians Believe, and the first myth is "Christianity is a relationship, not a religion." The idea is that we say things like this because we're uncomfortable with admitting that Christianity is a religion, because then maybe it's just one religion among many that are all equally right/wrong, the slippery slope of pluralism, etc. I'll quote from the post:

[I]it is entirely possible to believe that there are more religions than one while still holding to the perspective that yours is the right one. I feel that it is important to keep in mind that Christianity is indeed one religion among many because it will help us to see the Other as real – someone with beliefs that they hold as dear to them as we do ours. Naturally we think Christianity is the best religion available; if we did not, we would hold to a different one. Further, we believe that our particular church or denomination is the best expression of that faith; if we felt otherwise, we would go elsewhere. We must, however, allow ourselves to remember that there are others who do feel otherwise and are not idiots.

David Shay: My response is that God is not a religion, nor is Christ a religion; I think that our desire to know God is what created a religion. I think my biggest issue is that people don't acknowledge God as real, they acknowledge God as a figure, someone they know about that they read about in a book. But you have to experience God in the world.


James Davisson: I've heard some Christians speak on the idea that some people are given the ability to have faith, and some are not. Which is something that seems to be borne out in reality; cognitively speaking, there seem to be people who are and others who are not able to experience God, in terms of brain function. What do you guys think about that?


David Shay: I wonder about that; I wonder if it's something that appears outside of western societies. But it's an interesting question; what can you do? You love them, you share with them in experiences that you maybe see as spiritual and they maybe see as a good time. Go to a concert that you think is a spiritual experience and that they see as fun. And just believe what you believe; believe that the concert was spiritual and you shared it with someone who didn't feel that way.

Example, Erica and I went to a Sufjan Stevens concert and we all sang together, a capella, Come Thou Fount, I'm sure the theater was not filled with just Christians, but we all sang that song; people sang and closed their eyes, and I believe it glorified God. I don't know what the non-Christians would say about it, but I can say that I think it was good.



Dave Mantel: I've had similar experience; I was a Thrice farewell show, and there was a song where the bridge was "We are the image of the invisible," and I looked around and thought of the people singing along "Do you believe in that, or know what you're singing? Because it's true." That was one of those moments where I thought, this is interesting, it's a moment that glorifies God, this primal acknowledgement of God.

I think this ties into our other conversation about salvation and evangelism; if it's not about believing the right things- if someone is not predisposed to believe in or desire a deity, how do we interact with them? We have to live differently, not to make them conform to a doctrine, but to bring them into contact with the invisible.


David Shay: I think we've come full circle! Because that sounds a lot like "relaxing in the presence of someone you're certain is fond of you." James, I want you to agree.


James Davisson: I mean, just after that sentence, I was like "I'm mostly on board," but before that I was like "Shut up!" That sentence just sounds so...homeopathic and new age-y to me.  My gut reaction, not my actual analysis.

Does Jesus' Skin Color Really Matter? (Yes. Yes It Does.)

by Dave Mantel

First, this happened:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Then, this happened:



Then something like this:

And I saw people say things like (all sic):

"Jesus decendant from David, tribe of Juda, an Israelite, the Europian white people today are the Israelite migrants over the cacus mtns, hence cocasians, we can conclude he was white."

"Jesus may have been middle eastern but I'm pretty sure his father wasn't lol. So his skin color could have been anything."

"A divine entity. He no longer has a cultural heritage. Let's allow Jesus to save people instead of using Him to advance our own agendas"

"Jesus is NOT middle eastern. Jesus WAS middle eastern. For 30 some odd years 2000 years ago. Jesus IS the eternal God and heaven is his address. He is so hard to describe that those who have seen his true glory use only symbols: "white as snow", "pure light", "flaming fire". They all shuddered at his sight and felt as they were as good as dead. It's hilarious that we should all debate to describe someone who by his very essence is beyond any description." 

All of those just lived on ONE Facebook post. I haven't even started on the blog posts yet... anyway, as you can see, there's a pretty wide range of ideas here in opposition of the idea that the race of the historical Jesus matters. As it happens, James already posted a very helpful introduction to this "historical Jesus" a few weeks ago here on the blog. Read that HERE. But in case you don't want to do that, let me just share this tiny bit with you:

A minority of Christians think and read about the historical Jesus, but most of us avoid this question [of who the historical Jesus really was]. Some of us just don't care, basically saying "Christianity is what we have now. It doesn't matter exactly happened back in Jesus' day. What matters is my faith today." But many of us are genuinely afraid of what we might discover about the historical Jesus. What if we find evidence that Christianity just doesn't make sense? That Jesus wasn't who we thought he was, and our religion is just...silly?

These are things that can keep Christians away, but refusing to look at the historical Jesus is a little intellectually dishonest. We're essentially saying saying that the truth doesn't matter. What's more, though, if we avoid these big questions about the historical Jesus, we risk missing out on answers that can enrich and help our faith. 

So that's what we're dealing with right off—there is a large group of religious people who just do not care to know anything about the historical roots of Christianity—i.e., Jesus—and because of that, have mutated this religion into something other than what it started out as; in this case, transforming Jesus from a man who actually existed in space and time and history to some strange caricature in the name of timeless divinity. But why is it important that Jesus be a man tied down by such things as ethnicity and skin color? Isn't he beyond all of that now? I hear you asking those questions. And my answer to them is this: it's important because if we pluck out the bits of Jesus that we want to use today, leaving behind all the perceived uninteresting or irrelevant bits, we're creating a new, hollow religion based on something wholly unreal. White American Jesus is not the Jesus in the Bible, and thus (if you claim to believe the Bible) not God. He is a construct of our minds and our times, and an idol.

Secondly, by creating a god in our own image, placing him in our culture and time, we're missing out on so much of the actual richness and meaning to be found in the Bible. Reading scripture through 21st century, western eyes is difficult to begin with, but it is even harder when we are indoctrinated with the idea that the actual context of scripture is irrelevant because Jesus has transcended all of that.

"So Dave," you may ask, "what skin color did Jesus have? Just so I can be straight on the issue." And the answer to that question is: nobody actually knows! I know. Crazy.

I personally hold the idea that he probably looked like Sayid from LOST, but the Bible never mentions Jesus' skin color. We know he was Jewish, grew up in Egypt and Nazareth (the hood), but that's pretty much it. Is that important? It's super important.

Remember LOST?...Never mind. I don't want to talk about it.

It's important because, on the one hand, we have this historical context to place Jesus in—he had a family, friends, a home he grew up in, a place in history...he was a person. But he also transcends that. Theologians love these kinds of both/and situations. So Jesus was a person tied to an ethnicity, gender, skin color...but, being God, he also transcended those things for us—most clearly in scripture, through his words. The kinds of people Jesus taught us to be when he said, "Follow me," are the kinds of people who are beyond ethnicity, beyond culture, and beyond every other thing that divides. Yet, those things still make up who we are, just as they made up who Jesus is. It's amazing!

There's a cool paragraph at the end of a good article that appeared in the Atlantic this week on this very subject, which reads like this:

Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice. It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers. And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those "from every nation, tribe, people, and language" can worship God together.

Is "The Sinner's Prayer" Harmful?

This week, we sat down for a discussion, prompted by the video below, in which pastor David Platt talks about the Sinner's Prayer, a prayer that many evangelicals and people in other Christian groups ask people to pray when they convert to Christianity. The prayer consists of an admission of sin and a request for Jesus to "enter your heart" or become the central figure in the pray-er's life. Platt questions its validity and warns about its use, and that's the jumping off point for our conversation. Note that this is a transcript of a verbal conversation; we're speaking off the cuff. So feel free to take issue with things we've said, and talk to us in the comments section; we may very well agree with you, and at all events you'll give us a chance to clarify our thoughts.



James Davisson: Platt starts the video by claiming that people in churches are "missing the life of Christ" because of the sinner's prayer. What do you guys think of that?


David Shay: The main thing I disagree with David Platt about is a little outside the context of the video—I don't agree with him because I think that, there's a level of "the life of Christ" that reaches all life on this planet, regardless of a sinner's prayer. But in this context, he's saying there are people who aren't true followers of Christ because they are saying a prayer that doesn't really mean anything, that they're told to say, and it doesn't reveal the full essence of Christ to them. And I agree with that.

JD: Can you talk more about why you agree, David? Do you feel like you know a lot of people who fit his description, people who go to church but are missing the life of Christ?


DS: I can think of people, but of course I wouldn't want to say who I think is a "false Christian!" But I think this stems from a culture where, say, a person would be like "I said the sinner's prayer when I was four years old!" and then that person goes to church every Sunday, and they say they love Jesus, but you want to say to them "Remember when Jesus was yelling at the Pharisees for these reasons? You're kinda doing what the Pharisees were doing, every day. I think Jesus would yell at you." But you can't have that discussion with them.

So it's maybe not even the sinner's prayer that's the problem, but the culture of a church that thinks that all you gotta do is say the sinner's prayer and then you're in. There just isn't discipleship; the church becomes a hangout of people who have said this prayer at some point, and there's no difference between them and non-Christians. I've always wondered with people like this that I've met, like "Why don't you just not come to church on Sunday, and be productive on Sunday morning instead? It seems like almost nothing Jesus said matters to you."


Dave Mantel: And what is "salvation" anyway, right? Are there people in the church who really believe, in their heart of hearts, that doing a "repeat after me" thing is sufficient for an immediate, complete life change? Or is it something more? Something we don't actually understand, but over the years have consistently whittled down to these three or four sentences that somehow transform a person eternally? I know there's the whole "confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord" in Romans 10 but... I don't think what we're talking about is exactly what Paul had in mind.

JD: When English the word "salvation" comes up in the Old Testament, especially when it's used in the Psalms, it doesn't have the meaning that the New Testament does when it talks about "salvation," and it certainly doesn't mean what evangelicals mean when they use the word. In the OT, it just means, "[I am in physical danger right now and require] rescue [from said danger.]" It's a mistranslation or an imposition to call that eternal salvation. But we've stated elsewhere on the blog that reinterpretations and fresh meanings for older scriptures can be positive, so that's not to say that we can't use the Psalms to talk about a different kind of salvation from what the Psalmist meant.


DM: Right, and there are so many different kind of examples in the New Testament, too, of how salvation happens in people's life. Jesus told Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his house when he just said he was going to be a better person—he hadn't actually done anything yet. Just said he was going to. The criminal on the cross just asked to be remembered, the lame man was brought to Jesus by his friends and lowered through a roof—he technically didn't do anything except have cool friends...there are loads of other examples...it just seems to me that salvation comes in a lot of different ways and means a lot of different things in scripture, so to make up this thing about some kind of prayer happening and then a moment in time when you receive "salvation" seems a little silly (to put it mildly) to me.

Unfortunately, instead of simply accepting that salvation is something mysterious and possibly different for everyone, evangelicalism has created this kind of easy, one-size-fits-all answer, because Modernity had this need to create answers to every question, even if they're wrong. The focus in evangelicalism has been, for decades: get-saved-so-you-don't-go-to-Hell. But if that's not the point, since that doesn't seem to appear anywhere in scripture...if salvation isn't something to be achieved, per se, and doesn't take place in a single moment in time, and its primary purpose is not to save us from an eternity in Hell, then what is it, and how does it happen?


JD: It's a big question. Let's focus for now on shallowness of Christians that Platt is pointing toward, and how that's related to the sinner's prayer. Are there other sources of shallowness in Christianity, besides this notion that Christianity is about trying not to go to hell?


DS: I feel like that's the biggest one. That's almost why some people might say that Catholicism and "Christianity," western, Protestant Christianity, are two different religions. Western Protestantism today seems to be based around that notion of avoiding hell. I think there's all kinds of shallowness, though, there are shallow things Christians say all the time, and I think that's why many people raised in the church are becoming atheists. Do you know that there are people in the church who use Job to comfort people? "Hey guess what, God's just ruining your life to test you, are you going to follow God?" And people are like, "I would rather believe that there is no God and the world is chaotic than believe in a God who would torment me on earth just so I would still love God."

I'm bringing up that example because it's in the nature of what Dave Mantel was saying: there's something that we don't know, so we just insert an answer so we can sleep at night. Well you can't sleep at night, though, when your family members have died and say you then have a terminal illness, you know—when your life starts to look like Job. Before that point, you might say God tests people who say they love God by making their lives suck, but once that happens to you, you might think "I don't believe in a God that does this."

Another example: no one can say what happens after death. We can say what we think, but we can't know. And I was talking to a Christian friend, and he said, "People need direction!" And I said "Are you saying they need answers? Because what's worse, not telling people something that no one knows, or making up an answer to something that no one knows?" As far as life after death, we only have what we believe; we can't direct people to certain answers. I think you can be a Christian and still say that.

JD: For me, the big source of shallowness in Christianity is the failure to articulate really well the other reasons there are to be Christians outside of not going to hell. I got the message growing up that it was also about being free from sin and ceasing sin was part of it, and I think being free from sin is good and is a part of why being Christian is worthwhile. But the thing is, you can stop doing wrong without being a Christian, you can be an atheist who doesn't habitually do wrong things—there's lots of them, I know them.


DM: And there's another point where I feel like, at least for evangelicals, we've really missed the mark... because, what is the Gospel? What is the point of being a Christian? Is it to be able to stop doing bad things? To avoid hell when we die? I don't mean to sound like a broken record here, but if we don't know what the point of all of this stuff is—why we do what we do—then we're just following a morality paradigm and maybe being involved with a social group once or twice a week, you know?


DS: I feel like the only convincing argument for creating a religion out of Jesus' life is the Great Commission, "go and make disciples," and I don't even see that as being a convincing reason to make a religion. But I do think that making disciples is an essential part of the gospel; the book of Acts is full of this, it's a great follow-up to the gospels, because it's just the disciples going and being empowered to make connections with other people in other lands. I think we are meant to connect with each other, and I think that's part of the message of the gospel; you see Jesus breaking down walls and getting judged for it, eating with sinners, going to Zaccheus's house, talking to a woman at the well. That seems to me to be more in the nature of what God wants from us. I don't know if that would be on David Platt's agenda, but to me, that's the thing about the sinner's prayer, it distracts us from the importance of making connections.


JD: I think the gospel is something along the lines of: Jesus came to change human history, in part by teaching us not to exclude people and to love each other and be in community, and also in some mysterious way, by defeating death. I don't know how to define the gospel, and that's embarrassing. The big problem for me is that my definition of the gospel doesn't feel uniquely Christian enough—anyone can come along and say "love each other, and also we'll never really die."


DS: I think that's a pretty good answer though. I've had this conversation with others, atheists and agnostics, who are like "Anyone can be nice!" and I'm like "I know anyone can be nice, because Jesus is for everyone, God is for everyone; everyone can be nice because these things are from God and God wants them for everyone." Which is kind of a cheap answer, an infuriating answer, and it's one way that my theology is kind of cheap and shallow. It's kind of a cop out. But you can't believe in a God who is love, but the only way to experience that love is to say some words properly. What is more ridiculous, that a God has come and given us love, and everyone on the planet experience it and have it whether they know God by name or not, or the other thing, where some white guy from the U.S. comes to you and says "Say this! 'I'm a sinner and I accept Jesus.' You feel it? You feel the love?!"


JD: Any final thoughts?


DS: I agree with David Platt in that this prayer specifically is causing people to not really be Christians but believe that they are Christians. What an actual Christian is, he and I might disagree on, but we agree on that, and I think it's nice that he said it.

---

Photo Sources: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnragai/6999511358/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/powazny/2999422498/

The Historical Jesus & The Divine Messiah

by James Davisson

A few months ago, a big controversy blew up over an interview in which a Fox News reporter repeatedly asked a Muslim scholar why he had written a book about Jesus, as if this were the most utterly baffling thing! His response was basically "because I'm a scholar of religion and because Jesus is an interesting religious figure," which most people seemed to think should have been good enough.

All this talk got me interested in the book this guy wrote, which I read some reviews of and which sounded like a pretty middle-of-the-road book about "the historical Jesus." And it got me thinking about the value of the historical Jesus for Christians; what can thinking about and reading about the historical Jesus do for us? 

What does "the historical Jesus" even mean?

It's basically the answer to a BIG problem Christians don't think about too often, either because it's too scary or because it seems irrelevant to us. The problem is this: Christianity is a religion. It focuses on worshiping Jesus as God and celebrating his death and resurrection.

But, if you think about it, there's a HUGE question to be asked about this religion: did the historical person, Jesus—who lived and breathed and taught and healed in first-century Palestine—intend to start a religion? If so, how do we know? If not, what were his intentions? It all boils down to this: who exactly was Jesus, what did he want, and what was it like in the world he lived in?

Was Jesus white? Did he have a beard?
Was he constantly glowing? We may never know.

Why should anyone care?

A minority of Christians think and read about the historical Jesus, but most of us avoid this question. Some of us just don't care, basically saying "Christianity is what we have now. It doesn't matter exactly happened back in Jesus' day. What matters is my faith today." But many of us are genuinely afraid of what we might discover about the historical Jesus. What if we find evidence that Christianity just doesn't make sense? That Jesus wasn't who we thought he was, and our religion is just...silly?

These are things that can keep Christians away, but refusing to look at the historical Jesus is a little intellectually dishonest. We're essentially saying saying that the truth doesn't matter.

What's more, though, if we avoid these big questions about the historical Jesus, we risk missing out on answers that can enrich and help our faith. 

But James, I'm not a Christian.

So, what, the person whose life started the world's most practiced religion is totally irrelevant to you? There are literally billions of people currently affiliated with this guy, and tons more who were formally associated with this guy (RIP dead people). If thinking about who he really was a little bit seems completely boring and worthless to you, you need to grow a little curiosity, man. Is all I'm saying. 

Okay, prove it. Prove that this is interesting and important.

Word. I'll try.

Real talk: Jesus' heart got up to some wacky stuff in its day.

Topic: How could Jesus be the Messiah?

A big problem that comes up a lot for Christians is that Jesus was not the Messiah the Jews expected. I've actually heard this occasionally from  Jewish friends: "James, Jesus just doesn't fit the profile for the Jewish Messiah."

Putting aside for now the question of what modern Jews expect from a Messiah, let's talk about the Jews of the Jesus' time, the first century CE. The Jews of Jesus' day were expecting a descendant of king David to come to Jerusalem, defeat the Romans, and set up a kingdom of God on earth. This is what we learn in church, and this is what has long been believed in scholarly circles.

So Jesus failed to come through on most of that. He didn't defeat the Romans, he didn't set up a new kingdom: nothing. Let's set those issues aside for the moment; I may come back to them in another post, because they're interesting. The biggest problem with Jesus being the Messiah is actually that Christians believe he was God. Not only that, but we even believe that Jesus himself thought he was God and that he even claimed to be God. Everyone knows the Jews were, are, and always will be absolute monotheists. The Jews of Jesus' day only believed in one God, and he wasn't some person who walked around and talked to people, but an all-powerful cosmological figure! So it's a big problem for Christians to think that Jesus told people he was God. Wouldn't his fellow Jews just have called him crazy? Why would anyone follow this guy? It all sounds made up and weird.

There are two traditional approaches to this specific problem with the historical Jesus, which I'll call "the problem of the divine Messiah."

Would God really flash the sign of the horns in a portrait?
There's no way God is into metal. Therefore Jesus isn't God. QED.

THE PROBLEM OF THE DIVINE MESSIAH

The Skeptical Approach:

Skeptics and scholars often resolve this problem by saying that Jesus never claimed to be God. They say that Jesus' divinity and claims to be divine were invented by later Christians.

What's missing in this approach is a compelling historical reason for Christians to have come up with the idea that Jesus was God on their own. Without a supernatural event like the Resurrection (which a skeptic would naturally exclude), Christians don't seem to have had any reason to come up with the notion that Jesus was God. It would have been sheer madness for them to have imagined it on their own. And an argument that ends up implying that early Christians were all simply crazy is not particularly satisfying.

The Christian Approach:

Christians have generally said something like "God doesn't play by human rules! Just because the Jews of Jesus' day weren't expecting it, doesn't mean that Jesus couldn't have been God."

What's missing in the Christian approach is a compelling non-religious reason to buy this answer. If you're not starting from a place where you know God exists and can do amazing things, there isn't any reason to buy the idea that God just thought up a crazy, unexpected scheme to come to earth and die. And while it's okay to only have religious reasons to believe religious ideas, it is undeniably helpful and powerful to have logical, historical information that backs up your religious beliefs.

So both approaches leave something to be desired.

+  +  +

The Historical Jesus Approach:

I want to talk about two scholars, one Jewish, one Christian, who, in looking at the historical Jesus and his context, have come up with some much more compelling responses to the problem of the divine Messiah.

(1) Daniel Boyarin: The Idea of the Messiah in the 1st Century

One sneaky and excellent way to tackle this problem is to question the basic premise. Daniel Boyarin, in his book The Jewish Gospels, argues that it's just not true that the Jews of Jesus' day weren't expecting a divine Messiah.

Boyarin shows that there were actually many competing ideas about the Messiah in the first century CE. In order to prove, then, that the historical Jesus could have thought of himself and spoken of himself as God, we only need to know that some Jews of Jesus' day believed that the Messiah would be God.

In other words: if at least some Jews expected the Messiah to also be God, they might not have reacted to Jesus as completely crazy when he claimed to be both the Messiah and God. And early Christians, in turn, would not have had to come up with the idea out of thin air after Jesus' death, because it would already have been both a part of Jesus' ministry and the culture around them.

Boyarin spends several chapters giving the reader insight into 1st-century Jewish readings of Daniel 7, a text in which Daniel sees a vision of someone described as "an Ancient of Days" transfer his power and glory to someone who looked like a "Son of Man." Almost all first-century Jews took this chapter to be a picture of the relationship between God and the Messiah. And Boyarin argues persuasively that many of them would have interpreted it to mean that the Messiah would share not only God's power and glory, but also God's divinity.

Boyarin backs this idea up with analysis of a 1st-century Jewish text, 1 Enoch, in which someone called a Son of Man (= the Messiah) sits on God's throne and exercises God's authority:

"And he sat on the throne of his glory, and the sum of judgement was given unto the Son of Man, and he caused the sinners to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth, and those who have led the world astray." (Enoch 69:27)

In The Jewish Gospels, Daniel Boyarin shows that the problem of the divine Messiah is not actually a problem at all. He argues that it would have been totally possible for a Jew, like Jesus, in first-century Palestine to claim to be both the Messiah and God without all of his fellow Jews assuming he was simply insane. They might think he was a liar, a blasphemer, and someone intending to lead them astray, but only because they did not believe his claim, rather than that the claim itself was impossible.

+  +  +

 (2) NT Wright: Jesus as Divine Redeemer, New Temple

In his book, The Challenge of Jesus, NT Wright goes a step further than Boyarin: not only was it possible for someone to make a claim to be both God and Messiah, but it is extremely likely that Jesus thought of himself this way.

Wright starts by discussing an image that's all over the Hebrew Bible: after the exile of the Jewish people, God would return in person to Jerusalem and restore justice to his people. This idea can be found in a range of books, from Isaiah and Ezekiel to Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, all the way to Psalms.

The problem was, Wright says, that until this actually happened, the exile wasn't really done for the Jews; they had returned physically to Israel, yes, but they were still an oppressed, occupied people until God returned to Jerusalem. The spiritual exile, in which God had not yet restored them to their rightful place as God's beloved people, wasn't over yet. This was a terrible situation, and Jews prayed and hoped fervently for the end of this spiritual exile.

Wright then goes on to show how, on every step of his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus saw himself and portrayed himself in the role of God returning to Jerusalem to wipe the slate clean and end Israel's exile, once and for all. One amazing example to me was the story of the prodigal son; I'll quote Wright here:

"Among the dozens of things people regularly and often rightly say about this parable, one thing is missed by virtually everybody, though I submit that it would have been blindingly obvious to most first-century Jewish listeners. A story about a scoundrel young son who goes off into a far pagan country and is then astonishingly welcomed back home is—of course!—the story of exile and restoration [that is, the son is a metaphor for the Jewish people]. And Jesus told the story to make the point that the return from exile was happening in and through his own work. The parable was not a general illustration of the timeless truth of God's forgiveness for the sinner, though of course it can be tranlsated into that. It was a sharp-edged context-specific message about what was happening in Jesus' ministry." (The Challenge of Jesus, 41-42)

Jesus saw his own coming to Jerusalem as acting out God's ending the spiritual exile of his people. It makes sense to say that he saw himself and portrayed himself as God.

Wright also makes a powerful case for Jesus claiming God's authority and power for himself, through a discussion of the main symbols of God's power on earth (Temple, Torah) and the things God's character was thought to be composed of (Spirit, Glory, Wisdom). Jesus ends up claiming the power of each of these elements of God's power for himself.

To me, the most interesting of these was this: Jesus thought of himself as replacing the Temple, the primary symbol of God on earth in first-century Judaism. Wright shows that Jesus actually thought of himself as the new Temple. The most obvious one is this: the major function of the Temple in Judaism was that it was where you went to get your sins forgiven. Jesus, controversially, claimed the power to forgive sins for himself!

NT Wright shows us that Jesus had a well-thought-out theology of who he was and what he was sent to do. He shows that Jesus felt called to enact God's promise to return to Jerusalem and restore Israel to her rightful place, though in a way that Jews at his time did not expect. We can see ample evidence of this throughout the gospels if we look for it. I would encourage readers to check out The Challenge of Jesus for more persuasive arguments.

Conclusion:

The historical Jesus was someone who claimed to be God. This is true, and it doesn't mean that he, or his followers, were crazy. This is something to really think about, friends.

Jesus might or might not have set out with the intention of starting a new religion, but examining in detail who he was and what he did and thought need not be a scary proposition for those of us who practice the religion that came after him. In doing so, we can certainly learn something that will impact the way we live and think about our faith. I know examining this question and others about the historical Jesus through books like the The Jewish Gospels and The Challenge of Jesus has renewed and invigorated my faith, rather than weakening or killing it. What might it do to yours?

---

Sources:
Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels
NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus

Photo Sources:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jezus_-_actor.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Sacre_Coeur_de_Jesus_%28HS85-10-32787%29.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1135_Mosaikikone_mit_Christus_dem_Barmherzigen_Bodemuseum_anagoria.JPG

http://andyrossagency.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/jewishgospels.jpg
http://vialogue.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/challenge-of-jesus.jpg?w=594

What Is The Bible and What Does It Do?

by Dave Mantel

If you read the title of this post in the voice of Arnold in Kindergarten Cop...then we're starting on the right page.

An ongoing, and seemingly endless, conversation in evangelical circles is: how do we interpret the Bible in light of more and more historical and scientific discovery in this modern age? As a Christian, whether you claim belief in the Bible as 100% without error, or a book of stories outlining a moral code for humanity to live by, or something in the large gap between, there is an ongoing question of why we believe what we believe about the Bible.

Recently, Rob Bell has been writing a series on his blog entitled "What Is The Bible?" It's a great read, whatever your own preconceived answer to that question is, and I really recommend it. It compelled me to examine just what I believe about the Bible, its authorship, divine inspiration, and purpose.

Something I have been curious about for a long time is how devout Jews look at the Old Testament—the Torah, specifically—compared to the evangelical world. The morning I started writing this post, Rachel Held Evans had a Q&A in her "Ask A..." series with Rabbi Rachel Rose. In this post, she answered, in part, some of the questions I was having. When asked ,"How do you interpret the passages where God seems to command things that are immoral?" Rabbi Rose answered,

The classical Jewish answer is that these rules were never intended to be taken literally, and were in fact never followed at all. For instance, in the case of the commandment to stone an unruly child, our sages placed so many conditions and qualifications on that commandment that it could never have been carried out...

In Jewish tradition, we frequently speak in terms of "Written Torah" (the text of the Hebrew Scriptures as they have come down to us) and "Oral Torah" (the ensuing centuries of conversations and interpretations of our sages and rabbis, which are also considered to be holy.) We always read Torah in the context of generations of commentators and interpreters, Rashi, Talmud, Midrash, all the way to new interpretations in the modern age...

She references an excerpt from the Jewish Virtual Library, Rebellious Son, in which the author asserts, in reference to Deuteronomy 21:18–21,

"There is no record of a rebellious son ever having been executed, except for a dictum of R. Jonathan stating that he had once seen such a one and sat on his grave (Sanh. 71a). However, it is an old and probably valid tradition that there never had been, nor ever will be, a rebellious son, and that the law had been pronounced for educational and deterrent purposes only, so that parents be rewarded for bringing their children up properly (ibid.; Tosef. Sanh. 11:6)."

One of the more easy examples, no doubt—stoning the rebellious son. But what about some of the more problematic texts that were enacted? Slavery? Polygamy? What about texts like Jonah or the Exodus that seem to live far from the current reality we know today?

Jonah: known for, among other things, getting vomited out of a fish.

In the series mentioned above, "What Is The Bible?" Bell says with regard to the story of Jonah,

"If you don’t believe it literally happened, that’s fine. Lots of people of faith over the years have read this story as a parable about national forgiveness. They point to many aspects of the surreal nature of the story as simply great storytelling because the author has a larger point, one about the Israelites and the Assyrians and God’s call to be a light to everyone, especially your enemies.

Right on. Well said.

Just one problem. Some deny the swallowed-by-a-fish part not from a literary perspective, but on the basis of those things just don’t happen. Which raises a number of questions: What’s the criteria for the denial? Do we only affirm things that can be proven in a lab? Do we only believe things we have empirical evidence for? Do we believe or not believe something happened based on…whether we believe that things like that happen or not? (That was an awkward sentence. Intentionally.) Can we only affirm things that make sense to us? Are we closed to everything that we can’t explain?

If we reject all miraculous elements of all stories because we have made up our mind ahead of time that such things simply aren’t possible, we run the risk of shrinking the world down to what we can comprehend. And what fun is that?

That said, there are others who say Of course he was swallowed a fish, that’s what the story says happened!

Fine.

Just one problem. It’s possible to affirm the literal fact of a man being swallowed by a fish, making that the crux of the story in such a way that you defend that, believe that, argue about that, and in spending your energies on the defend-the-fish-part miss the point of the story, the point about allowing God’s redeeming love to flow through us with such power and grace that we are able to love and bless even our worst enemies."

The reality is, the Bible was written by human beings. They had agendas, they had stories to tell. They were from ancient times, writing to ancient peoples. Their world was completely different than our own. So what does that mean? It means that the most important questions we can ask when studying the Bible are, "Why is this here?" and "What was the author's intention in writing this this way?" Without beginning with those kinds of questions, it would be easy for us to start stoning our disobedient sons to death in the middle of town. And I, as an occasionally disobedient son, am not a fan of that outcome.

---

Photo sources:
Photo 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ramsey.Psalter.1310.jpg
Photo 2: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Lastman_-_Jonah_and_the_Whale_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Idolatry: It's Complicated

by James Davisson

Like Faith or Salvation or Brisket, Idolatry is a religious concept that sounds much simpler than it is.¹ "The Bible says 'don't worship idols,'" you may say, "how complicated is that?"

Complicated. As with pretty much anything in the Bible, the instruction to not worship idols has been interpreted in lots of different ways over the years. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians have said "Yo, it's cool to make images of Jesus and the saints and whatever as long as you're not actually worshiping the images" whereas Protestants have tended to be like "Nuh-uh, sounds like idolatry to me bro" and the Puritans were like "NO RELIGIOUS IMAGES EVAR NOT EVEN THE CROSS." Guys, I love the Puritans so much. Not even ironically.

Judaism has tended to side with the Protestants on this one, basically saying "Look, even if you worship God while you look at an image to help you out, that's still idolatry, mang." Slightly further afield, Islam has said "Definitely no pictures of God or Muhammad. But prolly stay away from pictures of people too. And animals. You know what? Just to be safe, best stick to calligraphy."

So the spectrum on idolatry runs from "Religious images are totally fine as long as you don't worship them" to "Just, don't even draw things, dude." So it's pretty dang complicated, just within the Abrahamic religions.

+  +  +

The root of these conflicting ideas is how idolatry gets talked about in the Bible. As far as much of the Hebrew Bible is concerned, Israel's worship of idols is Reason #1 for the exile: Israel wasn't faithful to God, so God sent them away. And the exile is pretty much the Big Problem in the Hebrew Bible that its authors have to deal with, so idolatry is super important and gets a lot of press throughout the ol' HB.²

Mostly, though, the HB is content to be like "HEY YOU: stop worshiping Baal, God doesn't like it" (but, you know, more poetically than that). It's taken for granted that the Israelites knew why they shouldn't worship idols and that the authors didn't really need to go into detail about what people were actually doing when they worshiped one.

This is Baal. Not to be confused with YHWH.

But sometimes they did, actually, go into detail about that. And that's when things get a little weird:

As a thief is shamed when caught,
     so the house of Israel shall be shamed—
they, their kings, their officials,
     their priests, and their prophets,
who say to a tree, “You are my father,”
    and to a stone, “You gave me birth.”
For they have turned their backs to me,
     and not their faces.
But in the time of their trouble they say,
     “Come and save us!” (Jeremiah 2:26-27, NRSV)

I'm sorry, what? No, Jeremiah, no, I don't think anybody was actually doing that. When you worship another deity besides God, that's, uh, quite different from going up to a tree and being like "What's up, Dad?" To say the least.

In fact, what the HB is doing here and elsewhere is confusing worship of a god, who is represented with a physical object, with worship of a physical object itself. Check out Isaiah, for example, who has a whole riff on this:

The carpenter...cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!” The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:13-17, NRSV)

In other words, "Some people are so dumb, they think they can just make gods out of stuff, you know? Isn't it stupid to cut some wood, burn half of it, and think the other half is going to save you?!"

Which, again, is not what you're doing when you worship an idol. When you worship an idol, you think there is a certain god out there, and you make an image that you then use to help you direct your worship towards him. That's what Isaiah's contemporaries were actually doing when they made and worshiped idols.

In my Biblical Hebrew class in college, we read and translated Isaiah 44 together,³ and while we were doing so, the professor mentioned the fact that Isaiah hadn't properly described what idolaters were actually doing. He said that scholars actually still disagree about whether Isaiah merely didn't understand or, what I think is more probable, that he was simply parodying or satirizing them in this passage.⁴ Satire or not, though, it's kind of an odd thing to find in one's Bible.

+  +  +

If this view of idolatry is incorrect, why is idolatry wrong? There are a couple ways that people have answered this question, having to do with different interpretations of what idolatry is, which has led to the complications I talked about at the beginning.

For Christians and Jews (and, I suppose, Musilms), the basic reason that idolatry is wrong is simple: it's worshiping gods that are not God. Israel (and, by extension, Christians) made a covenant with God to worship only God and no one else: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:2-5, NRSV). In other words, idolatry is wrong because it's the same thing as worshiping other gods.

In this orthodox icon, St. George is totally owning that dragon.

This interpretation is what gives us the Orthodox/Catholic view: it's okay to make religious images because we're not using them to worship other gods.⁵ I'm cool with that, but others have pointed out that God seems to not only be saying "Don't worship other gods" but also "Don't worship God by making images either." This has led to the other, more extreme views of idolatry, all the way up to the awesome Puritan version.

The big question I have about that is: then just why is it wrong? I don't think we need to have a debate about why, say, murder or theft is wrong. I'm down with God leaving the reasons for those commandments pretty vague, but if what God intended to say in Exodus 20:2-5 was "Don't even make images of me, bro" then it's a little frustrating that God left out the "why." I guess, for me, it's a little like declaring that you're not allowed to eat shrimp: while murder and theft have clear negative consequences, shrimp is just shrimp. Without a clear "why," it's just puzzling on the face of it.

+  +  +

I recently read the deuterocanonical book The Letter of Jeremiah, whose entire premise is mixing up idols and the deities they represent.⁶ The commentary in my Bible suggests the following:

What was the danger of idolatry to which this text and others point? The danger is that the worshiper may come to believe that the deity is manageable, subject to the control of the worshiper, able to be won over, placated. Israel's God is sovereign and utterly free, and Israel is called to hear, obey, and adore. (The New Interpreter's Study Bible, pg. 1531)

I think that comes the closest to articulating why using an idol, even an idol that's supposed to represent God, might be dangerous. 

Idolatry is a weird subject. The Hebrew Bible is a little hazy about what it actually is, and it doesn't seem to fully grasp why people might participate in it. But, like just about any religious subject, I think talking about it and examining people's different perspectives on it is inherently good.

---

1. Off hand, I actually can't think of any truly un-complicated religious concepts. "God loves you" is tempting, but I'm betting I could find plenty of people willing to complicate even that if I tried.
2. I don't know about you, but typing out "the Hebrew Bible" every time just seems silly to me. I'm going to call it "the HB" when I feel like it for the rest of this essay. Christians: just mentally replace the letters "H" and "B" with "O" and "T" and you'll be fine. Stop hyperventilating.
3. We actually worked directly from pictures of the Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was awesome. I still have my copy of this book, and inside, between the pages and the cover, is a photocopied page from another book I found to help me decipher the script in the Isaiah scroll, which is pretty different from the square script I was trained on in Hebrew class.
4. This is a fairly common way of talking about this subject in ancient Jewish thought. For another example, Check out this passage from the Wisdom of Solomon, a book written several centuries after Isaiah and Jeremiah (it's included in some Christian groups' Bibles, but not in others. I just read it as part of my ongoing attempt to read through the whole Bible, Apocrypha included.).
5. Note that this interpretation runs into the problem of the relevance of this commandment in modern times, when Christians have long since ceased to believe that other gods exist. This, I think, has led to the common explanation that things like money, status, power, and even cars can be "idols" that we "worship" if we care about them more than God. I like this interpretation, though it probably has relatively little to do with the author of Exodus's original intent.
6. Sample verses: They deck their gods out with garments like human beings—these gods of silver and gold and wood that cannot save themselves from rust and corrosion. When they have been dressed in purple robes, their faces are wiped because of the dust from the temple, which is thick upon them. One of them holds a scepter, like a district judge, but is unable to destroy anyone who offends it. Another has a dagger in its right hand, and an ax, but cannot defend itself from war and robbers. From this it is evident that they are not gods; so do not fear them. (Letter of Jeremiah 1:12-16)

Photo sources:
Photo 1 (modified):  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Worshiping_the_golden_calf.jpg
Photo 2:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baal_Ugarit_Louvre_AO17330.jpg
Photo 3:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orthodox_Bulgarian_icon_of_St._George_fighting_the_dragon.jpg

My Theological Progress

by Dave Mantel

I remember my first crisis of faith. I was about 11 years old, sitting on my bedroom floor, when I asked my mother, “How do we know this stuff is real?”

I was raised in a pretty conservative household and had a pretty sheltered upbringing. Luckily, when I asked this question, my parents didn’t call for an exorcism or send me to some kind of camp for lost sheep. As I look back, I see how lucky I was. There are really two ways modernist Christians deal with doubt and questions of the faith, one: by reprimanding the doubter and reminding them that all the answers are found in inerrant scripture, or two: encouraging questions because all the answers are found in inerrant scripture. My mother’s response was the latter. She gave me some books that I don’t remember reading—probably something by Lee Strobel—and we called it a day.

I think probably the first time I heard that there was another view of scripture other than the two extremes of “inerrant” and “completely false” was in one of my first college courses at Olivet Nazarene University. We were going over the Nazarene statement of faith, and they read their view of scripture: that it was “inerrant in all things pertaining to salvation.” That caught my attention right away. This was in pretty stark contrast to the belief of my upbringing, even though most of the wording was the same. There was that “inerrant” word again. But the clause was that it was only applicable to things pertaining to salvation. I would come back to that idea many times over the next few years.

As I began to fully embrace college life and adulthood, I began reading some of the more “controversial” literature popular with some of my friends—books like The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, Velvet Elvis, Love Is An Orientation, The Way of a Pilgrim…you get the idea. Not exactly controversial (though I guess they are in some conservative circles). As I started to read these books written by Christians who had worldviews that were so different than the one of my upbringing, I began to have more and more questions about the beliefs that I held.

I won’t bore you with the details, but as I started to ask more questions, I found that many of them didn’t seem to have black and white answers—even in this inerrant scripture I had been pointed to for so many years. It’s not that people couldn’t find answers. There were plenty of answers to the questions I was asking, often accompanied by a slew of references and verses as support. The pattern I began to see, though, was that sometimes there were two, or three, or more, completely different answers for the same questions, using the same inerrant scripture as reference. What was I supposed to do about that? Start verse counting? “OK, well, you have 37 verses to back up your point of view while the other side only has 23, so you win the Bible!”

Even more confusing was the fact that on many of the issues I was having my key conflicts with, I began to discover different whole sects of Christianity that had their own traditions and interpretations of the  issues, some for thousands of years, that differed greatly from my conservative, evangelical upbringing. Yet, they all still claimed Christianity as their religion, and they all claimed that their particular view on these issues is the correct and "orthodox" one.

Why do I bring all of this up; tell you this anecdote of my spiritual adolescence? Because I believe it’s not just my story, but the state of an entire generation of post-evangelical Millennials who have a lot of questions that they’ve been carrying around for a long time, but maybe have no idea what to do with them. Or maybe you’ve just grown weary or bitter from carrying these burdens for so long with nowhere to put them.

At this intersection of the modern/post-modern generations within Christianity, it is important for us to remember that many of the “answers” that have been spoon fed to many of us since birth are relatively new constructs, the idea of the complete inerrancy of scripture, for example.

That’s not to say that we should start throwing our babies out with all of our bath waters (side note: you realize that must have been a thing in order to become a colloquialism like this, right? Think about that.) There are many things that can and should be held to as orthodox within the Christian faith. However, those things might not necessarily be what you think they are—especially if you’re a protestant evangelical in the West. Believe it or not, 100-year-old traditions may seem long to you and your church plant, but compare them with Catholic or Orthodox traditions which are based on literally thousands of years, you hopefully begin to gain a little perspective.

So how do we, the post-modern, post-evangelical, Millennial generation get our stuff together and figure out what’s what? You may have seen this coming:

We need to ask more questions.

Shocker, I know. But this is so important. The modern evangelical old guard, if you will, the Pat Robertsons, the Mark Driscolls, and the John Pipers of the world, they will tell you that questions and doubting are not beneficial to your faith, that doubt will destroy your walk with the Lord and lead you straight to hell. They will tell you to fact check them, until you actually do, and then they will either reprimand you or blow you off. And this is all from a place—an indoctrination—of “We already have all the answers. If you’re asking questions, you are not a good enough Christian.” Shaming the very thing that I believe can transform the Church to be looked at as something more than the current homophobic, bigoted, child molesting, hateful, hypocritical thing we are now.

So start to ask questions. Do your homework. Start to refine your questions into scalpels that can help cut out some of this rotting offal that’s been sitting here for decades. Don’t be afraid of criticism, or Church history, and don’t be afraid of the questions. God is not scared by our little questions. There is nothing we can ask or look in to or seriously contend that God can’t answer. Don’t be afraid of the mystery, the unknowing. Some things are not meant to be answered. Some things don’t even have an answer. We must learn to be OK with that. And we must begin with ourselves.

And finally, don’t be afraid of doubt. Rob Bell says in his new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God,

“For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren’t opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it’s alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren’t opposites; they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.”

---

Photo sources:
Photo 1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/starfire2k/3631902258/ 
Photo 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Descent_of_the_Modernists,_E._J._Pace,_Christian_Cartoons,_1922.png

Some Oddball Books of the Hebrew Bible (Part 2)

by James Davisson

Part 1 of this post is here.

I'm discussing a few of the weirder books in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is about the relationship between God and God's people, Israel, but a few of its books are missing one or the other.

From William Russell Flint's "Song of Solomon"

SONG OF SONGS:

What it is: Song of Songs (AKA Song of Solomon) is a book of love poems (or, uh, lust poems—a sizable portion of them is devoted to the speakers' descriptions of their significant others' rockin' bods).

What it's missing: God. Song of Songs makes no mention of God, and though it is clearly set in Israel, it never mentions the Law or the covenant between God and Israel.

How it got in there: It's included in the Bible because the whole thing has been interpreted as a metaphor for God's love for Israel (and then, later, as Christ's love for the Church). While this was undoubtedly not the original intent of the book, there is certainly value in reading Biblical books in new lights and finding meanings in them beyond what their original authors intended.

Why it's interesting: The authors of the Hebrew Bible felt free to reinterpret and rethink older works, and the New Testament reinterprets and rereads the Hebrew Bible in a new light constantly. Without new interpretations for new contexts, the Bible would only be an interesting artifact of a specific time and place several thousand years ago, rather than a book that informs and shapes the lives of millions of people every day. Finding a book of sexy love poems like the Song of Songs in the Bible is certainly odd, but I think reinterpreting it as a divine message of love is beautiful and interesting.

+  +  +

"Obadiah the Prophet," James Tissot

OBADIAH:

What it is: Obadiah is a book of prophecy written after Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians and some of its people were taken into exile.

What it's missing: Israel. Obadiah is (nostly) missing "Israel," but in a different way from Job. Obadiah is Jewish and is writing from Judah, but he directs the content of his book almost entirely at a foreign nation, Edom. He is really, really angry at Edom and calls down God's judgment on them because they moved into Jerusalem and took advantage of its people and possessions after the city was sacked. And that's about it, really; Obadiah's so short, it is the only book in the Hebrew Bible that hasn't been divided into chapters. (The New Testament is rife with such books, though, which include Philemon, 2 and 3 John, and Jude.)

With one other exception (it's the next item on this list), all the prophetic books of the Bible are focused squarely on Israel, calling out her people for their wrongdoings and injustice, and warning them of the coming judgment if they don't change their ways.

How it got in there: I'm not aware of any controversy in including Obadiah in the Hebrew Bible. A good bet for the reason why is Obadiah's hopeful ending, which predicts the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. (So Israel is technically in Obadiah, though again, not at all in focus like a typical Hebrew Bible book.)

Why it's interesting: The fact that Obadiah is sure God will bring justice on the wicked Edomites conveys the idea that God is the God of everywhere, not just Israel, just as the book of Job does. But it communicates that idea in a disconcertingly violent and unsettling way, and it's not the main point of the book.

+  +  +

"Nahum," Russian Orthodox icon

NAHUM:

What it is: Nahum is a book of prophecy about the fall of the capital of Assyria.

What it's missing: Israel. Nahum is just like Obadiah: it's a prophetic book, written by a man from Judah, that is directed entirely at an outside nation. In this case, it's Assyria, but Nahum is even more strange to my ears than Obadiah, because he's not attacking someone over a specific injustice, but simply gloating over the doom of a long-hated enemy.

How it got in there: Like with Obadiah, I'm not aware of any controversy over including Nahum. My commentary suggests its value lies in "a belief in God's just government of world affairs," a belief that has never been easy to sustain, least of all in our own day and age. 

Why it's interesting: Assyria was a regional superpower in Nahum's day, and it had obliterated the northern nation of Israel about a century before he wrote. In Nahum's time, though, Assyria's capital city Nineveh was sacked by the Babylonians and Medes. Assyria generally had a reputation for cruelty and the people of Judah had a lot of reason to hate them, so it's unsurprising that people would be happy about another country's army crushing Nineveh. But it's pretty strange to see a Biblical book dedicated almost entirely to rejoicing over another nation getting a vicious beatdown.

+  +  +

SUMMING UP:

The Hebrew Bible is a weird place, and never more so than when it's defying expectations and including books that break the mold. While none of these books is my favorite, I'm glad they're all included. Looked at together, they show us even more strongly that this idea I leaned on pretty heavily in the first post is true: the Bible is a discussion among many ideas and a dialog among many stories; it's not a single, clear narrative or unified text.

For Christians, a huge part of what makes the Hebrew Bible important is that it was Jesus' Bible, and every part of it has the potential to inform us about who he was and what he had to say. Even the parts that seem especially odd to modern readers like me. Regardless of its messiness, the Hebrew Bible is deeply valuable.

It would be great in some ways to have a Bible that was written by a single person from start to finish. It would probably have fewer internal contradictions and be clearer about what it expected from us. There are religions that have this kind of scripture, or something close to it: Mormonism and Islam both come to mind. But as Christians, the Bible is what we have. In its way, it's incredibly beautiful, and the diversity of voices, stories, and ideas can lead to more fruitful conversations about the nature of God and faith.

But only if we let it. The notion that the Bible is a frequently fictional and often contradictory book is not new, but it is still controversial in most Christian denominations, and even where it is not, we rarely discuss what it means or think about it honestly and openly. And I really think that should change.

---

Photo Sources:
1. mydelineatedlife.blogspot.com
2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tissot_Obadiah.jpg
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nahum-prophet.jpg