I Chronicles 13

For my weekly quiet time this week, I studied  I Chronicles 13.

In I Chronicles 13:2-3, David states: “If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the LORD our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren every where, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us: And let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we enquired not at it in the days of Saul” (KJV).

I have two items:

1.  I Chronicles 13:3 states that the Israelites failed to inquire of God at the Ark of the Covenant in the days of King David’s predecessor, King Saul.  In I Samuel 4-7, we read the story of what happened to the Ark of the Covenant.  In the time of Samuel, before Saul was even king, the Israelites brought the Ark of the Covenant out as they were battling the Philistines, thinking that the Ark could deliver them.  What happened instead was that the Philistines captured the Ark and set it in their sanctuary beside their god Dagon.  But God had the last laugh, for the statue of Dagon kept falling down and eventually broke, the Philistines were smitten with tumors, and the Philistines finally decided to return the Ark to Israel.  The Ark ended up at Kiriath-Jearim, in somebody’s house.
Before the Ark was captured by the Philistines and ended up at Kiriath-jearim, the Ark was inside of the Tabernacle, where the priests performed their duties, except when the Ark went out to battle.  Now that the Ark was at Kiriath-Jearim, however, the Ark was at a different location from the Tabernacle.  The Ark was at Kiriath-Jearim, whereas the priests ministered at Nob.

Why did the Israelites fail to inquire of God at the Ark during the days of King Saul?  One reason may have been that it was in somebody’s home at Kiriath-Jearim rather than at the central sanctuary.  It was not at the place where the Israelites were accustomed to finding it, so the Israelites neglected it.  Another explanation, which appears in the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary, is that King Saul undermined the Ark when he slaughtered the priests at Nob during his pursuit of David (I Samuel 22).  Granted, the priests were at Nob, whereas the Ark was at Kiriath-Jearim, but the priests of Nob were still involved with the Ark, the commentary argues.  Consequently, when Saul killed the priests of Nob, he eliminated important people who were promoting and supporting the Ark.

The Ark only appears once between I Samuel 7 and II Samuel 6, the chapter in which David is bringing the Ark from Kiriath-Jearim to Jerusalem.  That is in I Samuel 14:18, in which Saul brings the Ark out to Israel’s battle with the Philistines, and God delivers Israel.  The Ark was not completely neglected in the days of Saul.  Moreover, people found ways to inquire of God before David brought the Ark to Jerusalem.  They could hear from God through prophets or the ephod (I Samuel 23).  What was so special about the Ark, if Israelites could inquire of God without the Ark?  The Ark was supported by God, who had commanded its construction, and it represented God’s presence to Israel in a special way.  Israel had a history of experiencing God through the Ark.  David felt that he had to support it.  David, too, had neglected the Ark, but he decided to do something about that.  There are all sorts of ways to hear from God, but do we value what God values?

2.  In I Chronicles 13:2, we find the Hebrew word niphretzah, which is from the root p-r-ts.  This word is significant in our story because it often relates to breaking out or bursting forth, and that is what God does in I Chronicles 13:11 when Uzzah places his hand on the Ark to keep it from falling: God bursts forth against Uzzah and kills him, since the Ark is not being transported in the holy, reverential manner that God wants.  What does this word mean in I Chronicles 13:2, however, in which David wants to gather all of Israel to witness the transportation of the Ark to Jerusalem?  We don’t see anything about breaking out or bursting forth there, right?

Different explanations of p-r-ts in I Chronicles 13:2 have been proposed, especially by medieval Jewish interpreters.  One is to understand it to mean far and wide: David is commanding the message of the Ark’s transportation to be carried far and wide throughout Israel, so that many Israelites can come and witness the event and show their respect for the Ark.  The root, after all, can relate to spreading out or overflowing.  Another explanation is that the root in I Chronicles 13:2 relates to showing strength or enthusiasm about the transfer of the Ark, maybe even to strongly encouraging the Israelites to come and see the event.  There are occasions when the root pertains to urging or compelling.  A third explanation is that the root in I Chronicles 13:2 is about God opening a way, since the root can mean to break forth or to open: the way to inquiring of God has been opened, since the Ark is once more being recognized and valued.  Israel will have an intimacy with God, the way that God desires it.  The door has been opened!  (See here for a list of the uses of p-r-ts in the Hebrew Bible.)

From a Christian perspective, I am tempted to draw a parallel between the third explanation and Jesus Christ.  Granted, God can minister to all people, believers in Christ and non-believers, as the ancient Israelites managed to inquire of God and to receive answers from God apart from the Ark of the Covenant.  But God prefers that we approach him through Christ, as God preferred for the ancient Israelites to consult God at the Ark.  In Christ, we see the revelation of what God is like and what God wants to teach us: our weakness as human beings, and God’s love in sending his son to die for us.

"Obedience in Prayer"

My church had its Bible study last night.  We’re going through Jim Cymbala’s When God’s People Pray.  In last night’s lesson, “Obedience in Prayer,” the message I was hearing was that God will not bless us if we are holding on to our sins.  Such sins can include living together without being married, dishonesty in one’s finances, or such heart-sins as bitterness, unforgiveness of others, and “secret sexual sins.”  We went through Bible passages about God not hearing the prayers of those who hold on to their sins.

It was a discouraging lesson, at least to me.  One person in the group was trying to comfort me by saying that Isaiah 1:9 states that we should be willing and obedient—-not perfect, but willing to forsake sin and follow God.  That made me feel slightly better, but it did not entirely remove my discouragement.  What exactly counts as being willing?  And am I even willing, for that matter?  Am I willing to get rid of my sexual desire, as if that is even possible, considering it is a key part of human nature?  Am I willing to become “reconciled” with people I’d rather have nothing to do with?  Am I willing to stop being an introvert and to start being an extrovert (which some evangelicals define as love)?

I’ve had negative experiences with the sort of mindset that was being promoted last night.  One year, due to my social discomfort, I was not “reaching out” to my roommates in love, and so someone told me I was not following Jesus.  That entire year, I felt as if God did not like me, did not approve of me, did not really accept my worship.  The whole idea that I have to “obey” God for God to hear my prayers puts me into depression, for I can never “obey” God enough, at least not in the manner that many evangelicals would like.

These sorts of ideas put me into depression.  The thing is, many people in the non-Christian world do not understand it.  They think they should be able to feel good about themselves, even though they have sexual desire, or are not reconciled with every human being who has been in their lives.  They do not understand why anyone would think differently, and they would see the religious notions I have gotten over the years as psychologically unhealthy.  Well, they are, at least for me.  Other Christians don’t seem to have a problem with them.

And there’s not only me to consider.  Suppose people around me have grudges, for legitimate reasons?  Are their grudges hindering God’s blessing?  I’m not responsible for them, you might say?  Well, suppose God not blessing them impacts me?  And, since I care for them, I want for God’s blessing to be on them.  But I cannot tell them to forgive.  If I had been through what they had, I’d have difficulty forgiving, too.

There were some things in last night’s lesson with which I identified.  Jim Cymbala was saying that, when he has a fight with his wife before church, he feels a need to apologize to her before he prays there, otherwise his prayers might not be powerful.  He wants to preach the Gospel and minister to people powerfully.  He wants God’s presence in church.  For that to happen, he needs to pray.  But can he really pray when he is unreconciled with his wife?  Not really, according to him, so he needs to reconcile with her—-he needs to say he’s sorry.  I can identify with this, on some level, for, whenever I am mean to someone I love, I feel distant from God.

All of this said, I can understand why some people leave the Christian God and seek guidance, wisdom, and peace elsewhere.  It just seems that the Christian God demands too much of us.  We’re only human.

Amazing Love, Starring Sean Astin

I watched a Christian movie last night.  It’s called Amazing Love, and it dates to 2012.  Sean Astin stars in it.  You probably know him from such movies as The Goonies, Rudy, Lord of the Rings, and Fifty First Dates.  Patty Duke also had a role at the beginning of the movie, and I was interested to learn that she is Sean Astin’s mother.  Moreover, I learned that Astin’s step-father, John Astin, played the father in the Addams Family series.  But John Astin was not in the movie that I watched last night.

In Amazing Love, Sean Astin plays a youth minister named Stuart.  He and his wife Beth (played by Erin Bethea, whom I know from the Christian movie Fireproof) go on a camping trip with some kids.  One of the girls on the trip, Ashley, is stuck-up, but she is also suffering because of her parent’s divorce.  She does not get along with another girl, Carrie, who believes that Ashley thinks she’s too good for the group.  Even though Carrie is told that she as a Christian needs to love Ashley, Carrie simply does not want to do so.

On the last day of the camping trip, Stuart tells the kids the biblical story of Hosea, with some poetic license added in.  Hosea was a prophet to Northern Israel, and he criticized Israel’s worship of pagan gods instead of the God of Israel.  He was commanded by God to marry a prostitute, Gomer, for that would symbolize how God felt: God was married to Northern Israel and loved her, yet she committed adultery with other gods.  In the course of the story, Gomer leaves her husband to be with a rich man, who gives her beautiful jewelry.  One night, the rich man wants to sleep with her, but she is not in the mood, so the rich man throws her out.  She is then auctioned off, and Hosea lovingly buys her back.

Stuart likens Hosea’s buying Gomer back to Christ paying the price for our sins and buying us back.  When some of the kids are baffled that Hosea had such love for Gomer, notwithstanding her unfaithfulness, Stuart replies that all of us fall short of that kind of love, and yet Jesus inside of us can help us to love people unconditionally.  At the end of the movie, Ashley and Carrie are getting along, and the other kids are reading their Bibles!

I liked this movie for a variety of reasons.  Sean Astin did a good job portraying an accepting youth pastor, one who valued what all of the kids had to say and included them in the group’s discussions.  The movie also addressed the issue of unconditional love: how can we love those whom we don’t want to love?  According to the movie, Jesus inside of us is what enables us to do so.  I’ll try to keep that in mind.  There are some people, though, whom I don’t want in my life, so the closest I can come to love in that case is to wish them well and to live my own life, as they live theirs!

I did some reading about Sean Astin’s religion.  See here, where he talks about his own faith journey, as well as his mother’s struggle with Catholicism.  In this article, he discusses Christian films.  I should also note that, although he has been in evangelical movies, he leans toward the Democratic Party politically.  He supported John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2008, and he was campaign manager for Democrat Dan Adler, who ran for Congress in 2011.

Debates on Jesus' Resurrection: Crossan, Borg, White, Renihan, Craig, Buckley

I watched two debates recently.  One was a 1995 debate between Christian apologist William Lane Craig and liberal Christian and New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan.  William F. Buckley, Jr. was the moderator.  The second was between Crossan and New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, on the one hand, and Christian apologist James White and James Renihan, on the other hand.  The debates concerned the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Craig, White, Renihan, and Buckley (who was the moderator, yet he interjected quite a bit, and it was easy to tell where he stood) defended the idea that Jesus historically rose from the dead, that the tomb in which Jesus was buried turned up empty, and that the risen Jesus appeared to the apostles.  Crossan had more of a metaphorical understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, and Borg said that the question of whether there was an empty tomb should not matter for the Christian faith.

Here are some thoughts:

1.  The first debate was somewhat of a disappointment.  My hope was that Craig would make his historical arguments for Jesus’ resurrection, and then Crossan would respond to them point-by-point, disputing Craig’s arguments or offering alternative ways to account for the evidence.  Craig offered historical-critical arguments that Joseph of Arimathea donated a tomb for Jesus’ burial, and Craig used similar criteria to that used by the liberal Jesus Seminar in determining which parts of the Gospels are historically authentic.  Crossan, as far as I could tell, did not respond to Craig’s arguments.  Instead, Crossan talked about the story of Jesus’ resurrection being in some sense metaphorical, but metaphorical for what?  And Buckley was needling Crossan about Crossan’s faith.  There was not a whole lot of scholarly meat in this debate, and this surprised me, for Crossan’s books have impressed me as having scholarly meat.  There was one point in the debate that I found interesting: William Lane Craig said that Jesus rebuked doubting Thomas because Thomas doubted the testimony of the other apostles that Jesus was risen from the dead.  According to Dr. Craig, Thomas should have accepted the apostolic testimony, as should we.  And this is understandable, on some level: I would tend to trust the testimony of people I knew, at least if they did not strike me as liars or as mentally-ill.

2.  The debate among Crossan, Borg, White, and Renihan had more scholarly meat, in my opinion.  Someone from the audience asked about the five-hundred witnesses to the risen Jesus whom the creed in I Corinthians 15 mentions, and Crossan raised a variety of considerations.  He noted an ancient story about witnesses to Julius Caesar’s ascent to heaven, and he also referred to the vision that tens of thousands at Fatima see.  Crossan also mentioned the view of some scholars that Jesus’ appearance to the five-hundred referred to what happened on Pentecost (Acts 2).  Regarding the empty tomb, Borg noted that, within the Gospels, we see alternative explanations for Jesus’ tomb being empty (i.e., that Jesus’ body was stolen, or that it was moved).  Borg made another interesting point in arguing that the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection was not important to the Christian faith: he noted that Paul believed that the dead would rise, even before he believed in Jesus’ resurrection.  That may be true, but I find it hard to deny that Paul in I Corinthians 15 argues that the resurrection of believers depends on the resurrection of Christ.

3.  Dr. White talked about his experiences in hospital chaplaincy.  I used to think that I could do that sort of work, but now I wonder.  How would I tell someone that his or her loved one has died?  Such a delicate situation would require high-level social skills.

In any case, Dr. White was asking Dr. Crossan and Dr. Borg what comfort they could offer to the dying, or the loved ones of the dying.  The thing is, I wonder what comfort Dr. White’s theology could offer them!  The notion that people have to accept Christ before they die lest they go to hell, and that God has already decreed who would be saved, is not particularly comforting, in my opinion.  What if my loved one failed to make a Christian commitment before death?

4.  I think that the reason that there is usually more scholarly meat in White’s debates than in Craig’s debates is that, in White’s debates, the debaters actually get to ask each other pointed questions.  White’s debates have long periods in which the debaters cross-examine each other.  White can thus ask his opponent how he accounts for such-and-such a piece of evidence, and the opponent offers some explanation.  In Craig’s debates, by contrast, I have not seen that as much.  Rather, the debaters give speeches one after the other, then they answer questions from the audience.  A debater can easily avoid interacting directly with the opponent’s arguments that way.

Then again, there was more free-flowing exchange in the Craig-Crossan debate.  But the questions that I wanted addressed were not being addressed, at least not too deeply.

Ann Davis

I was watching the Entertainment Tonight segment about actress Ann Davis last night.  Ann Davis played the housekeeper Alice on the Brady Bunch.  She passed on a few days ago.

The segment featured an old interview that ET did with Ann.  She said that she initially wanted to be a doctor, but then she concluded that she was not smart enough for that.  She then turned to speech and drama, which she loved.  She would go on to win an Emmy two times for her role on the Bob Cummings Show.  Later, she would play the role for which she was best known, Alice in The Brady Bunch.

Ann would go on to become involved in the church and ministry.  She lived in a religious community and served at a homeless shelter.  In the ET interview, she said it was if the Lord let her have all the world had to offer, then made her a better offer!

I remember reading about Ann Davis on wikipedia years ago.  Maybe it was because I had just watched one of the Brady Bunch movies, and I was curious about the actors.  It interested me that Ann Davis never married or had kids, and that she lived in a religious community (which I think was Episcopalian).  I have to respect actors who take their faith or beliefs seriously.

I used to watch the Brady Bunch when I was a kid.  I liked it.  I liked Alice!  I bet that Ann Davis was a nice person.  She always came across that way on TV: as someone who’s real and down-to-earth.
See here to watch the ET segment.

Book Write-Up: Union with Christ, by J. Todd Billings

J. Todd Billings.  Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church.  Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

J. Todd Billings teaches Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary.  I went to Harvard Divinity School with Todd—-I was in the M.Div. program, whereas he was in the Th.D. program.  We knew each other from a Christian group we were in.  I decided to read his Union with Christ for a variety of reasons.  First of all, I like to read books by people I know.  I read and enjoy plenty of books by people I don’t know, but there is something special about reading books by those I have actually met and interacted with.  Maybe it’s because I feel that I am getting more of a glimpse into who they are and what matters to them.  Second, I’ve been interested in John Calvin, and the nuances of Calvin’s thought feature prominently in Todd’s work.  Third, I’ve appreciated things by Todd that I have read, such as an article that he wrote for Christianity Today about biblical interpretation, and an article that he wrote about the Reformed/Calvinist acronym TULIP.  I found these writings to be thoughtful, nuanced, and informative.

Union with Christ is 174 pages, yet it covers a lot of territory, even though the territory revolves around the central theme of believers’ union with Christ.  I could do the customary book-reviewer task of summarizing each chapter, but that is not really my style, at least not in my blog book reviews.  (When I write book reviews for publication, my approach will probably be different.)  I have decided to organize this review according to Scriptures: I will quote a Scripture (in the KJV), then I will apply this to what Todd writes about in his book.  I will also call Todd “Billings,” since I think that it a more respectful way to interact with his work.

Romans 8:15: “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

The part that I want to highlight here is the adoption.  According to Paul, believers in Christ are adopted sons of God.  Billings mentions what adoption meant within the ancient Roman context: “In this ancient Roman context, adoption was generally not about babies and childless couples finding a way to have children.  Instead, the adoptees were usually adults, and adoption was first of all a legal arrangement to provide an heir who would receive an inheritance and enter into a new household with all its privileges and responsibilities” (page 18).

How does this relate to believers being adopted sons of God?  Believers in Christ are forgiven of sin (justification), and they enter into new lives of the Spirit, in which they perform works of righteousness (sanctification).  According to Billings, one cannot accept the forgiveness part of the equation while dismissing the practical righteousness and new life of the Spirit part, for that would be like being adopted, yet refusing to move into the adopting father’s house or to undertake the responsibilities that come with the adoption.  Moreover, John Calvin stated that justification without sanctification would divide Christ.

John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

According to Billings, believers are joined with Christ, and that is what motivates and enables them to do good works.  But, as a Reformed Christian, Billings also maintains that God has to be the one who causes believers to believe.  God’s plan from creation was for human beings to depend upon God and to have union with the divine.  This was to be the case even before sin entered the world: Billings quotes John Calvin’s statement that Adam and Eve were to eat from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden in order to live because that would teach them dependence on God.  (As Billings notes, however, Calvin believed that what believers have in Christ goes beyond what Adam and Eve had in the Garden, for believers become partakers of the divine nature, which entails personal immortality.)  Union with God/Christ is the opposite of autonomy.  If people could simply decide to believe on their own initiative, Billings argues, that would reflect autonomy rather than union with God.  According to Billings, God must be the one who brings about the conversion, for humans are totally depraved, which does not mean that they are bad through and through, but rather that all of their faculties are corrupted, that they are unable of themselves to seek the chief good (God), and that they cannot of themselves do works that earn them salvation.  People need union with Christ to bear any spiritual fruit.

I Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

According to Calvin, God is so above and beyond human beings that it is impossible for them to truly understand God.  Consequently, God brings himself down to our level.  In Scripture, God is depicted anthropomorphically, not because that is how God truly is, but rather because that allows us to relate to God.  Moreover, God brought himself down to our level in the incarnation, when God the Son became a human being.  Billings quotes Calvin as saying that “all thinking about God, apart from Christ, is a bottomless abyss which utterly swallows up all our senses” (Calvin’s words, quoted on page 72).

Billings wrestles with a question, though.  Right now, believers see through a glass darkly.  They need God’s revelation in Christ in order to have any understanding of God, and yet even their understanding then is vastly limited.  Eventually, however, they will have a full vision of God, a beatific vision.  Does that mean that they will no longer need Christ to understand and to see God?  What does that do to Calvin’s notion that believers need Christ to be between themselves and God, otherwise their attempts to understand God will get them swallowed up in a bottomless abyss that consumes their senses, since God is so great?  Does that go out the window in the eschaton, during the time of the beatific vision?

Billings argues that believers will need Christ to understand God even during the time of the beatific vision.  Their union with Christ will be important even when sin is no more.  I did not entirely comprehend how Billings believes that Christ will be relevant to believers’ beatific vision of God in the eschaton.  My impression is that his argument was that Christ sees God clearly, and, because believers will be united with Christ, they will be able to see God clearly, as well.  I am open to correction on this, though.

I Corinthians 11:28-29: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.  For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”

This is about the Lord’s supper, in which believers partake of bread and wine that represent (Catholics say embody) the body and blood of Christ.  Paul is criticizing those who eat and drink these elements without discerning the Lord’s body.  What does this mean?  It could mean that certain believers in Corinth were eating and drinking without recognizing or fully appreciating that those elements represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Another option is that it means that believers were partaking the elements of the Lord’s supper without respecting the church, the body of Christ.  Paul in I Corinthians, after all, lambastes the division, elitism, and lack of love that accompanied the Corinthian Christians’ celebration of the Lord’s supper, for the Lord’s supper was supposed to be a time when believers gathered together in unity and love for Jesus Christ and one another.

Billings talks about social justice, the importance of forming relationships with the poor, and showing love to everyone, believer and non-believer.  What is interesting to me, however, is the prominence of the Lord’s supper in his discussion of these issues.  For Billings, the Lord’s supper is supposed to exemplify the bringing together of all sorts of people in love and unity.  Billings talks at length about Apartheid South Africa.  The Reformed Church in South Africa initially opposed segregating the races at the Lord’s supper, emphasizing that the Lord’s supper should bring people together at the Lord’s table rather than separating them.  Apartheid was actually being touted as a progressive idea—-an idea that would allow the different races to maintain their own cultures and to advance independently—-but the Reformed Church was resisting applying Apartheid to the Lord’s supper.  Eventually, however, it caved.  As it focused on evangelism, it came to cater to people’s preferences rather than be truly reformational.   Later, however, it would reverse its stance in an anti-Apartheid direction.

One aspect of Billings’ discussion of social justice that especially stood out to me was his critique of saying that God champions the oppressed while marginalizing the oppressors.  Billings agrees that God loves the poor, but he questions whether dividing people into oppressed and oppressors is really that fruitful, for the categories are not that iron-clad (since the oppressors may be oppressed themselves, in areas), such a division goes against unity in Christ, and marginalizing people does not necessarily redress the problem of oppression and social injustice, whereas bringing people together can.  I sympathize with Billings on this.  I flinch whenever I read that God is the God of the poor, as if God is not the God of others, too.  I still believe, however, in challenging injustice and oppression.

Philippians 2:5-11: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.  Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Billings critiques a popular Christian incarnational model of ministry.  Essentially, this model says that Christians should imitate the incarnation of Christ whenever they do ministry.  In the same way that God the Son became a human being, Christians in ministry should become a part of the culture to which they are ministering, understanding it and imitating it.

Billings is all for trying to understand the cultures of others when one is ministering to those cultures.  He raises a question at one point as to whether missionaries can fully become a part of those cultures, however, for he tells the story of Western missionaries in Africa whose child contracted a life-threatening illness, and they were able to get the child to the United States to be treated, an option that was not available to many of the Africans to whom they were ministering.  But Billings is for trying to reach people where they are, to understand them, and to be with them.  He questions, however, whether likening that to Jesus’ incarnation is appropriate.  He believes that there are differences between the incarnation and Christian ministry, and that Christians who see their ministry as incarnational may tend to exalt themselves and their service rather than Jesus Christ.  For Billings, a better model is union with Christ, which entails bearing the good fruit of service to others, but not at the expense of worship of Christ and being empowered and motivated by Jesus Christ.  Billings at one point refers to a translation of Philippians 2:5 that he believes coincides with such a model (“Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus,” an alternate NRSV reading).  Whether or not one finds that translation convincing, one cannot dispute the other passages Billings cites indicating that Paul saw his union with Christ as an essential part of his Christian service.

Thoughts: I enjoyed many aspects of Billings’ book.  I found that it was appropriate for me to read it after reading Karen Armstrong’s History of God, for Armstrong talks about God being great and transcendent, and that overlapped with Billings’ discussion of God’s transcendence and accommodation to our limitations. Also, in my opinion, Billings’ discussion of Calvin and the beatific vision marked the point where the book went from being just a good book to being a great book.

I thought that Billings’ discussions of justification and sanctification assumed that the Christian life is automatic: that believers automatically want to serve and love God and neighbor.  What should one do when one says the sinner’s prayer and finds that he or she struggles to do the right thing, or to avoid doing the wrong thing—-when the motivation to do good may not be there?  I suppose that the solution here would be to become more united with Christ, for that is the source of good spiritual fruit.  Still, I believe that this co-exists with Christian free will.  We can be united with Christ, yet we make choices, and even our good choices are far from perfect and may be tainted with sin.  We are not robots programmed by God, but we are agents, influenced by God.  And I wonder something: If we have free will in the sanctification process, why can’t our free will and autonomy be a part of our seeking and believing in God at the outset?  Why would free will, in that case, be a sign of autonomy that contradicts the principle of union with God/Christ?  Cannot union with Christ co-exist with our ability to make choices?

Billings’ discussion of the Lord’s supper was interesting to me.  I must admit that I largely see the Lord’s supper as a part of the church service where we eat bread and drink grape juice.  I respect what it symbolizes, but I tend to emphasize other parts of the church service (the sermon, songs, fellowship) over the Lord’s supper.  I was surprised, therefore, to read the Lord’s supper being presented as such a grand, socially-transforming ritual.

Billings discussion of South Africa was also interesting to me.  I had no idea that Apartheid was actually touted as a progressive idea.

On the incarnation and ministry, this was not a topic that interested me that much.  I can understand why Billings discussed it, since he believed that he was correcting a common Christian misconception that detracted from the centrality of Jesus Christ.  Personally, I thought much of what Billings was saying on that issue was obvious, and I did not really understand the views of those he was critiquing.  Of course, Philippians 2 is not about believers becoming incarnate, I thought, but it is about believers imitating Christ’s attitude of service.

Billings' critique of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (there is a God we can call on when we are in need, but our main goal should be to be happy and nice, and good people go to heaven after death) was definitely worth the read.  I was wondering to what extent that is my religion!

Great book!

Jesus Praying for Us

Today is Ascension Sunday.  At my church this morning, the pastor talked about the majesty, the mastery, and the ministry that relates to Christ’s ascension to heaven.  He said that Christ in heaven prays for us.  Do I believe that?  I’m not in the mood to nit-pick or over-think it right now.  I’m sleepy.  I have work to do today.  Frankly, I can use all the prayer I can get.  So, yes, today, I’m going to trust that Jesus is in heaven praying for me!

Luke 22:21-21: “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”