Self-Sacrifice, or Just Plain Giving

My pastor’s sermon this morning got into a variety of issues.  He started off by talking about how many of us wear masks, and we should not be afraid to take off our masks before God and ourselves.  But then he was getting into us being willing to lay down our lives for others, as Jesus did for us.  I do not understand that, to tell you the truth.  I don’t think that many of us will be in a situation in which we have to lay down our lives for somebody else.  Okay, well, suppose I was in such a situation: Would I be willing to lay down my life for someone else?  It depends, I guess.  Do I know the person?  Do I have affection for the person?  If not, then I would have to be particularly overwhelmed by the Spirit of God to have enough love in me to lay down my life for another person!

On my way to church, I was thinking about a project that I’m participating in.  I am a bit less-than-enthusiastic about it because it requires some time-commitment on my part.  But I realize that it is important to the person leading the project, and so I am participating.  I would not label my act self-sacrifice, per se.  But I think that it is important for me to do something for someone else, rather than just seeking to serve myself.

Book Write-Up: Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers

Leslie Leyland Fields and Dr. Jill Hubbard.  Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers: Finding Freedom From Hurt and Hate.  Nashville: W. Publishing Group (an imprint of Thomas Nelson), 2014.

I decided to read this book because I am interested in the topic of forgiveness in general.  As the title suggests, Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers focuses on the forgiveness of one’s parents for such acts as abuse or neglect.  The book tells people’s stories and refers to biblical examples and movies, and Dr. Jill Hubbard also contributes her own experiences and insights.  But the pivot and framework of the book is Leslie Leyland Fields’ story about her own journey to forgive her father.  Fields is a beautiful, a profound, and a compelling writer.

The book suggests that those wounded by their parents recognize that their parents themselves may have had their own wounds.  It encourages them to learn more about their parents and to treat their parents with kindness, even if their parents do not repent of their sins or reciprocate any love.  The book recognizes the importance of boundaries, personal healing, and personal safety, however, and also of repentance on the part of the guilty for true reconciliation to occur.  It is definitely not defining forgiveness as being a doormat.  The book also says that forgiveness is about much more than helping the wounded person to feel better, for forgiveness transforms the wounded and other people.

There is some theological tension in the book, though.  On the one hand, God is presented as one who is loving and as one whose forgiveness is far superior than our own.  On the other hand, the book quotes and acknowledges biblical passages that suggest that God treats people as they treat others—-that God will not forgive us if we fail to forgive others, that God judges us according to our judgment of others, etc.  In my opinion, the first view depicts God as more unconditional in love than the second view.  This theological tension was not adequately resolved in the book, in my opinion, but it does refer to the example of Peter, who had a mission after Christ had forgiven him.  That could be the closest that the book gets to some resolution: that Peter was forgiven, and now must carry forth healing and forgiveness into the world, as should we.

Excellent book!

Note: I received a complimentary review copy of this book through the BookLook Bloggers (http://booklookbloggers.com/) book review bloggers program.  The program does not require for my review to be positive, and my review reflects my honest reaction to the book.

I Chronicles 4

I Chronicles 4 has the story of Jabez.  Jabez prayed to God: “Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me!” (v 10, KJV).  The text goes on to narrate that “God granted his request.“

I liked what the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary had to say about the prayer of Jabez, as it drew from Jewish traditions: that Jabez in I Chronicles 4:10 was asking God for the opportunity to learn and to teach Torah.  That was the path to true blessing, and that would be how God would keep Jabez from evil, particularly Jabez’s own evil inclination.  And, according to the Artscroll, God granted Jabez’s request by leading Jabez to a group of Kenites.  In I Chronicles 2:55, we encounter Kenite scribes who dwelt in a place called Jabez.  According to the Artscroll, the Kenites needed a teacher, and God provided them with one, leading to a place of Torah study and scribal activity called “Jabez.”

Many Christians have criticized Bruce Wilkinson’s 2000 book, The Prayer of Jabez, saying that it promotes a prosperity Gospel.  Back when the book was popular, there was concern that Christians would use the prayer of Jabez as a mantra in an attempt to obligate God to cater to their own self-centered desires.  I was listening to one preacher who said that the Bible does not promise that God will hear everyone who prays: the prayer of one who does not listen to God’s law is an abomination (Proverbs 28:9); God will not hear the prayer of one who ignores the cry of the poor (Proverbs 21:13); and husbands who are inconsiderate towards their wives hinder their own prayers (I Peter 3:7).  See here for other examples.  I recall Christian radio personality Hank Hanegraaff saying that we can pray the prayer of Jabez until we are blue in the face, but God will not honor that prayer if we refuse to forgive a person.

I think that the Artscroll’s insights can potentially counter these reservations, or at least balance them out.  Jabez was not asking for material prosperity, per se, but for the opportunity to grow closer to God and to serve others, through study of the Torah.  And Jabez recognized that he had an evil inclination and thus needed the Torah to deal with his own evil.  That, in my opinion, is preferable to assuming that people need to become perfect before God answers their prayers, yet it also unites prayer with the pursuit of righteousness, the path of becoming godly, compassionate people.

Incidentally, my impression is that a number of Bruce Wilkinson’s critics read his book one-sidedly.  Wilkinson was relating the prayer of Jabez to receiving opportunities to serve God and others, which is similar to what the Artscroll is saying.

I will not make the leap of saying that the Artscroll’s interpretation of the prayer of Jabez is what the biblical passage meant in its original context.  Still, I appreciated the Artscroll’s insights, and the insights of the Jewish interpreters from which it was drawing.

The Thief on the Cross, the Romans Road, and Deserving to Die

For its Bible study, my church is going through The Easter Experience: What If What Happened Then Changes Everything Now?  Last night, we did Session 5, “I have the promise of eternal life.”  The lesson focused on the thief on the cross, the one whom Jesus assured would be with him in paradise.  The pastor on the DVD offered two speculative back-stories about the thief.  One presented the thief as a good-hearted person who came from a broken home and committed his crimes to help others.  The other depicted him in a far less flattering light.  The pastor said that the thief reviled Jesus at first, yet something changed the thief’s mind and led him to defend Jesus when Jesus was forsaken even by his Heavenly Father, and to ask Jesus to remember him when Jesus entered into his kingdom.  The pastor speculated about what could have changed the thief’s mind: Jesus’ kindness to his mother while on the cross, or Jesus asking God to forgive his persecutors.  In the course of the lesson, we got into the evangelical message that all of us deserved to die for our own sins, like the thief, but Jesus died in our place.

I thought that the drama on the DVD was particularly powerful.  Maybe it was because I was wondering what exactly influenced the thief to change his mind about Jesus.  And I was also curious as to what exactly the thief believed about Jesus.  How could the thief look at Jesus on the cross and conclude that Jesus was a king of any kingdom?  It looks like it’s the end for Jesus at that point, so how could the thief think differently?  Was he aware that Jesus would rise from the dead, something that even Jesus’ own disciples had not yet grasped?  My guess is that the thief concluded that Jesus was who he said he was because he was aware of Jesus’ miracles, but he also was impressed by Jesus’ composure, love, and relationship with God even in his final hours.  The thief saw a quality in Jesus that he did not believe was present in himself.  I doubt that he had any advanced knowledge of the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection, but perhaps he believed that Jesus’ soul would be with the Father after the crucifixion, and Jesus would later return to set up the Kingdom.  Or maybe he envisioned Jesus being resurrected in the last days, with the rest of the righteous, and Jesus would then rule the earth as the Messiah.

I was impressed by the story on the DVD.  Where I got tripped up was when the booklet was trying to convince us that we are all sinners who deserve to die.  I have a hard time with that emotionally.  I don’t think it’s pride on my part, for, conversely, I don’t feel that I deserve to go to get rewards in any good afterlife, either!  I just have difficulty believing that somehow I deserve to die.  Evangelicals may tell me that I should just suck it up and accept that concept, that the substitutionary atonement is true regardless of how I feel, just like the law of gravity is true regardless of my personal feelings!  Maybe or maybe not.  The thing is, I doubt that a doctrine can bear fruit in my life if I have emotional or intellectual problems with it.

I was wondering if there is another way to see the atonement than the typical evangelical “Romans Road” path.  To be honest, I think that the Romans Road method of evangelism takes biblical passages out of context.  The end of Romans 6 says that the wages of sin is death, for example, and many evangelicals say that we should point to this text to convince a prospect for evangelism that she is a sinner and deserves to die, but that Jesus died in her place.  But I am doubtful that this was Paul’s focus in Romans 6.  In that chapter, his focus is on ceasing to do the works of the flesh, which lead to death, and embracing a new life of the Spirit and of righteousness.  My carnal mindset and acts lead to death, on so many levels.  That makes a bit more sense to me than saying that a person who steals a candybar deserves the exact same penalty as a mass murderer, in God’s eyes.  I am hesitant to dismiss the idea that Paul believed that we all deserved to die, however, for Paul does make the point that all have sinned and treasure up wrath, and that the commandment brings death.  How does the commandment bring death?  The only way I can see is that it condemns us for our sin.

I have also been disappointed with how evangelicals, and this includes our booklet, use James 2:8-11.  That passage says that anyone who breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all, and evangelicals like to point to that to argue that we are all sinners and deserve God’s judgment.  Maybe so, but I do not think that’s the focus of James in James 2.  James is encouraging his readers not to practice favoritism, not showing them a way to escape punishment for their sins.

Plus, I don’t care for how Romans Road methods of evangelism treat Christians like parrots who need to be trained in what to say.  There’s not much room for authenticity or individuality in that, in my opinion.  Rather, people are being trained to be mass-produced salespersons with a script.

There was something that resonated with me last night, though.  The pastor was reading to us from the teacher’s manual, and it said that the law is summed up by loving God and others, and all of us, regardless of what sin we committed, violate or fall short of this standard when we sin.  In that sense, the sins that I commit are bad in God’s eyes, just like the sins that can land somebody into the electric chair.  I would still say that actually murdering somebody is far worse than bearing a grudge, for the former actually has a direct and horrible effect on somebody else.  But both flow from the same stream: not loving God, and not loving others.  On the standard of love, we all fall short.

I also think that believing that I deserve the divinely-imposed death penalty for my sin can lead to humility—-I am less likely to think that I am better than somebody else.  As someone in the group said, we are all equal before the cross, for we are all condemned until we receive forgiveness.

I’ll stop here.  I’ll keep on the comments, but I will not publish any comments that are even remotely snarky.

Book Write-Up: Jesus and the Kingdom

George Eldon Ladd.  Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism.  New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

Some of my readers may know that I grew up in an offshoot of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God.  One thing that Herbert Armstrong liked to harp on was that Jesus’ Gospel was about the Kingdom of God.  The Gospel, according to Mr. Armstrong, was not a message about Jesus, but rather it was Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God, which Mr. Armstrong understood to be the world government that Jesus Christ would establish on earth after his second coming.

Over time, I came to be aware of Christians who interpreted Jesus’ message about the Kingdom in terms of present or spiritual realities, not just as a future event.  Some understood the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed to be a spiritual kingdom, in which God rules over the hearts of human beings.  Others contended that the Kingdom of God was actually in the world in the person of Jesus Christ during the first century, since Jesus was the king of the Kingdom and was bringing Kingdom blessings to people, such as healing, exorcism, and forgiveness of sins.

I recall a career day session that I attended back when I was in high school.  I went to the session on ministry, which was led by a local evangelical pastor.  Another student who was there was a Jehovah’s Witness.  This student was ordinarily very quiet, so it was surprising to hear him suddenly opening up and voicing his religious beliefs!  In the course of the session, the Jehovah’s Witness asked the evangelical pastor to define the Kingdom of God.  The pastor defined the Kingdom as God’s moral standards and spiritual rule, though he acknowledged that it also included Christ’s future rule over the earth after his second coming.  The Jehovah’s Witness responded that Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the Kingdom is “real,” and he defined the Kingdom as the paradise that God will one day set up on earth.  In my experience, that is often what Jehovah’s Witnesses focus on when they go door to door.  But, as I talked with Jehovah’s Witnesses and read old JW works, my impression was that they do acknowledge some present or spiritual dimension to the Kingdom.  One JW evangelist told me that he will not fight in a war because he follows the standards of Jehovah’s Kingdom, in which war will not exist and all people will be at peace.  And I was reading a book by Judge Rutherford, an influential figure in the early days of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I vaguely recall him interpreting Luke 17:21 to mean that the Kingdom of God was among the first century Jews in the person and ministry of Jesus.

At college, as I was taking religious studies courses, I came across the view that Jesus in the first century believed that the end was imminent, but he turned out to be wrong.  That view troubled me as a Christian, but I could not easily dismiss it, for there were passages in the Gospels that appeared to support it.  Moreover, as I read the Old Testament prophets, I wondered if they themselves had an imminent eschatology, for they seemed to me to envision God bringing paradise amidst the historical situations of their own day, in which nations such as Assyria, Babylon, or Edom were prominent.  “Is that what the Bible is?”, I wondered, “A book of people’s frustrated expectations?”

In Jesus and the Kingdom, evangelical scholar and pastor George Eldon Ladd interacts with these issues.  No, he does not mention Herbert Armstrong or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but he does talk about biblical scholars and theologians who have sought to define the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached: some treat it as a future kingdom over the earth, whereas others see it as a present reality—-as ethics, or as the church, for example.  Essentially, Ladd argues that the Kingdom of God existed in the ministry of Jesus—-which included healing, exorcism, forgiveness, and conversions—-but that Jesus’ ministry foreshadowed the future Kingdom of God that would one day be over the entire earth.

Ladd also interacts with the works of biblical scholars and theologians who have wrestled with the idea that Jesus inaccurately predicted an imminent end of the world.    Ladd disputes that Jesus was wrong.  Ladd disagrees, for example, with the view that Jesus in Mark 13:30 was predicting that the parousia would occur within “this generation,” meaning the generation of the disciples; rather, Ladd maintains that Jesus was saying that Jerusalem would experience peril within “this generation,” which is what happened.  Ladd notes that Jesus in Mark 13 denied that the Son knew the time of the parousia, which means that Jesus was not setting dates for his return, and Ladd also observes that Jesus in Mark 13 affirms that the end is not yet during some of the cataclysmic events that Jesus narrates.  In discussing the Old Testament prophets, Ladd acknowledges that they mixed history with eschatology, but he does not believe that they were expecting an imminent paradise in their own day.  Rather, Ladd argues, the Old Testament prophets acknowledged in places that paradise would come in an unknown future (the latter days), and they mentioned what would occur in the distant future because they deemed that to be relevant to their audience.  They chose to inform people of God’s larger plans for humanity, not just God’s plans for Israel and the nations within their own historical contexts.  The same God who would soon bring them a “Day of the LORD” (i.e., conquest by a foreign power) would one day bring about a larger “Day of the LORD”—-one that would precede paradise on earth—-and they should repent before such a God!

Although Ladd disputes that Jesus predicted an imminent end of the world, Ladd does believe that Jesus wanted for Christians to be continually anticipating the Kingdom while avoiding spiritual compromise and slumber.  Consequently, Ladd acknowledges some tone of imminence in the preaching of the Kingdom by Jesus and the early church.  Such a tone is also intended to encourage repentance, Ladd claims.

Was I convinced by Ladd’s arguments?  I do not thoroughly dismiss them.  I agree that Jesus in the synoptic Gospels believed that the Kingdom was present in his own ministry.  I also think that redactors and canonizers of the Old Testament prophets interpreted the prophets’ eschatological promises as what would occur in the future, beyond the historical contexts of the Old Testament prophets themselves, and that is why the redactors and canonizers deemed the promises to be still relevant.  I am very hesitant to say that the Old Testament prophets themselves, Jesus, and the early church lacked an imminent eschatology, however.  Moreover, I think that Ladd should have explained more fully why Jesus came to earth in the first century and gave people a preview of what the distantly future Kingdom of God would be like.  What exactly was the point?  Ladd does affirm that the future kingdom in some sense rests on what Jesus accomplished at his first coming (i.e., his crucifixion and resurrection), but he should have fleshed that out more.

Ladd also thoughtfully discusses other issues, such as the distinction between prophecy and apocalyptic (the first is historical, whereas the second expects God to intervene from outside of history, and yet the two can overlap), the meaning of discipleship (the same thing was not expected of all disciples), and the role of grace in fulfilling the Sermon on the Mount.

The book is unsatisfying, yet thought-provoking.

On Isolation

Today’s Our Daily Bread had some interesting things to say about the topic of isolation.  The author of today’s devotional was Bill Crowder.  He states:

“Whether isolated by our own choices, by the cultural trends that surround us, or by painful losses of life, all who know Christ can rest in the presence of the Shepherd of our hearts.  What a friend we have in Jesus!…Those who know Jesus as their Friend are never alone.”

I found this to be a refreshing alternative to judgmental things that I have read by evangelicals about loners: that they are selfish, that they are not truly following Christ, that their failure to reach out to others will result in nobody helping them when they need help or coming to their funeral, etc.

One could object that today’s devotion neglects the importance of human companionship, that God did not expect for Adam to find fulfillment in God alone but created Eve to keep him company.  Fair enough, but there are plenty of people who find themselves alone.  There may be a variety of reasons: death of loved ones, living away from family, temperament, Asperger’s, a cold world, etc.  In the same way that we should not judge those who crave human companionship because they find that just praying to God does not make them feel better, we should also not judge those whose only company is God.

Still, we should try to make the world less cold than it is.  And being alone can have its disadvantages: there are things that I do not know, for example, and so I have appreciated the times when I could draw from the knowledge, experiences, and savvy of others.  There is a group where I live, and its aim is to do services for people who lack a social or family support network.  This group is vital, and there should be more groups like it.

Book Write-Up: Religion and the Enlightenment

James M. Byrne.  Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

I decided to get this book so that I could read a clear explanation of Immanuel Kant’s epistemology, plus I figured that I could solidify and build on whatever I knew about the Enlightenment.  I found this book, overall, to be rich and lucid.  It has chapters about the history of the Enlightenment, deism, and atheism, and it also profiles the life and thought of Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.  While it has chapters specifically on these figures, it also discusses others in the course of its narration, such as David Hume, Joseph Butler, Isaac Newton, and the list goes on.  This book is about the relationship among science, reason, and the Christian religion during the time of the Enlightenment, as old authorities were being challenged and questioned.  The issues that were discussed included arguments for the existence of God, whether the Bible was an adequate revelation or should instead be replaced by looking at nature for God’s revelation, whether nature was actually good, the question of what moved the elements of nature (i.e., God, consciousness within matter?), epistemology, and the basis for morality.  Byrne went into what people during the Enlightenment thought, as well as critiques of their positions.

While I found my reading of this book to be very informative, there are still areas in which I am confused.  I am puzzled as to how Rousseau could lambaste society in favor of the individual, while at the same time promoting a society that many would consider to be totalitarian.  Moreover, while I learned that Kant was actually attempting to refute David Hume’s epistemological skepticism, I believe that Byrne should have gone into more detail about this: What I got was from the book was that Kant believed that we could interact with phenomena, yet could not know those phenomena in terms of their essence.

The book had humorous moments.  For example, there was one figure who tried to prove the existence of God in so tortuous a manner that someone glibly remarked that nobody doubted God’s existence, until this figure attempted to prove it!

Good book!