Lee Harmon. The River of Life: Where Liberal and Conservative Christianity Meet. Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2014. See here to purchase the book from Amazon.
In The River of Life, Lee Harmon talks about what he
believes as a liberal Christian. He actually says what his religion is
on the last page of the book: “Participatory Eschatology. This
is my religion. This is Jesus’ dream, and it is happening. The world
will become what we, through the help of God and the inspiration and
example of Jesus our Savior, transform it into.”
Essentially, Lee Harmon maintains that Jesus was preaching a
this-worldly religion, rather than one that focused on having a good
afterlife. Harmon argues that, when Jesus preached about Gehenna, he
was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., not hell.
When Jesus spoke of the forgiveness of debts, Harmon says, he may have
been talking about people forgiving literal debts—-debts that pushed
people into poverty—-as part of the Jubilee that Jesus was
inaugurating. Jesus also went about doing good, freeing people of
disease, and he emphasized giving to the poor. As Harmon notes, there
are different eschatological views within the New Testament. The
synoptic Gospels have an eschatology that holds that Jesus will soon
return in power to establish a literal rule on earth. The Gospel of
John, however, has a realized eschatology, which regards Jesus’ giving
of the Holy Spirit to his disciples shortly after his resurrection as
his second coming. There are also different understandings within the
New Testament about who exactly Jesus was (e.g., when Jesus became divine). In any case, Harmon holds,
there is a common notion throughout the Gospels that Jesus in some sense
brought the Kingdom of God in his ministry on earth, a Kingdom that
does good and alleviates suffering.
Harmon does not reduce religion to social justice or community
service, however, for he does talk about personal piety and experience
of the divine. He says in one beautiful passage, “I have sat in the
churches of various denominations and seen strong people reduced to
emotional puddles and then lifted into radiance” (page 2). He talks
about his personal prayer life and how he prefers to pray to the Spirit
that positively influences the earth: “With this focus, I feel silly
praying selfish petitions—-a universal Spirit somehow transcends my
selfish ambitions—-so my prayer naturally steers toward renewing my
purpose to contribute to the Kingdom of God” (page 33). He has
quotations of prominent liberal Christians and spiritual thinkers about
the definition of faith and how it may differ from (or mean more than)
having prescribed beliefs or accepting something without proof.
Harmon is also honest about his own religious questions, about such
issues as what we can know about God, whether God is personal, and
whether there is an afterlife. He says that he is not trying to
encourage people who believe in an afterlife to abandon that belief, for
he recognizes that believing in an afterlife gives comfort to people;
he just wants to stress that Jesus’ mission was focused on this world. I
appreciated Harmon’s approach here because he was presenting himself as
a fellow pilgrim giving us something to think about, and he was
expressing acceptance of people with different perspectives. He was
communicating that one does not have to agree entirely with him to get
something out of his book.
I found Harmon’s thesis about Jesus’ mission to be convincing,
overall. I agree with him that Jesus wanted to improve the conditions
of people in this world. On whether the churches of New Testament times
were like that, however, I would say that it was rather mixed. On the
one hand, the early Christians in the Book of Acts and Paul appear to
focus on encouraging people to repent and believe in Jesus in light of a
coming judgment, and, while they were concerned for the poor, their
concern appears to be rather insular—-for poor Christians. On the other
hand, Jesus’ apostles in the Book of Acts do continue Jesus’ practice
of delivering people from disease and demon possession, and one could
argue that Christians in New Testament times sought to have a positive
influence on the world by demonstrating an alternative society—-one in
which the needs of the poor are met and people from different social
backgrounds embrace each other as family.
Harmon’s book encouraged me to think about the issue of Gehenna. I
acknowledge the possibility that Jesus may have been referring to the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. when talking about Gehenna, and yet
there do seem to be some voices in the New Testament that posit a
dreadful place for the wicked in the afterlife. I think of Matthew
8:11-12 and Luke 13:28, which say that many will sit with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom, while others will be cast into outer
darkness, amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth. In terms of Harmon’s
discussion of Gehenna, I wish that he had fleshed out more the
significance of Gehenna to Jesus’ mission: Why was Jesus predicting the
destruction of Jerusalem, what did that have to do with his Kingdom
mission of beneficence, and what does the destruction of Jerusalem say
about the character of God. Harmon in one place seems to suggest that
salvation is not really about deliverance from God’s wrath, and yet does
not the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. imply that God has wrath,
according to the Gospels? In some places, Harmon appears to touch on
the significance of 70 C.E.—-that it was about the end of the old
covenant (and I wonder if this would conflict with Harmon’s view that
the earliest Christians were Jewish Christians who valued the Torah) or
was part of the pangs that accompany the Kingdom—-but I was hoping to
see more about the significance of Gehenna, especially as it relates to
Jesus’ Kingdom mission.
Overall, though, I found Harmon’s book to be thoughtful and thought-provoking.
My thanks to the author, Lee Harmon, for sending me a review copy of this book.