Brian McLaren has recently come out with three little fiction e-books:  The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals, The Word of the Lord to Republicans, and The Word of the Lord to Democrats.

I heartily and without reservation recommend The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals to everyone who reads this blog.  It’s a wonderful little parable in which we follow Wheaton College student Wendy Gullivan.  Wendy has a surprise encounter with God in the form of a homeless man while she’s on an “Urban Immersion” ministry weekend with fellow Wheaton students.  God, it seems, is depressed–suicidally depressed–by Evangelicals…”Especially American Evangelicals.  And most especially in groups.  The more, the scarier.”

Over the next four or five years, Wendy and God meet up several more times, and with each encounter, Wendy learns a little more about how to shift her perspective from an obsession with personal salvation and certainty of doctrine, to loving and ministering to those God loves.  Along the way, McLaren is good for several hearty laughs from those of us who recognize ourselves, our friends, or our churches in his characters.  I don’t want to ruin the story by spilling too much…for three bucks you really ought to just read it!  But I will say his alternate rendition of some Scriptures the way Evangelicals teach them is worth the price alone.  Take this example:

For God so loved the church that he gave to himself his only Son, as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, so that those elect few who believe in this atoning doctrine would not suffer eternal, conscious torment in hell as a result of original sin, but would live forever in heaven after death.  For God did not send his Son into the world to save the world, but to condemn it, and save only the church.  (Not John 3:16-17)

The other two books, The Word of the Lord to Democrats and The Word of the Lord to Republicans are both good, but I can’t give them the same unqualified “You Must Read This” endorsement.  Both are actually funnier, in places, than Evangelicals.  But while McLaren’s skewering of Republicans is both witty and pointed (and quite appropriate, I think), in Democrats Brian pulls his punches too much.  I say this as a Democrat–it seemed to me that McLaren’s “Word of the Lord” to the Dems was largely that they are behaving too much like Republicans.  While this is to some extent accurate, it seems to me that if God were to send a message to Democrats it would have a lot more content than just “make up your mind what you’re going to stand for and then take a stand”  (for one thing, I think God’s message to Democrats would also remind them (us) that morality and holiness aren’t antiquated concepts to be left on the scrap heap of history).  So I finished Democrats rather disappointed that he hadn’t slapped them around with the same gusto he did in Republicans.  I will say, however, that his parody of Rush Limbaugh in Democrats is inspired…

All three books are well worth the $2.99 each.  Unfortunately they are only available as e-books…the good news being that this means they’re cheap, but it also means you can only read them on an e-reader or your computer (either Amazon or Barnes & Noble carry them).

The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman earlier this year has brought out the usual political punditry.  Everyone “knows” the “real” reason Martin took a bullet, even though they can’t seem to agree on what that real reason actually was.  As with theology, so with politics: the conclusion to which one comes seems more easily predicted by one’s prior beliefs, than by the facts in the case.  Conventional wisdom says Trayvon was killed because he was a black kid in a hoodie.  There’s probably some truth in that, though I suspect it’s more accurate to say he was confronted because he was a black kid in a hoodie, and his death was the result of an unfortunate escalation of the confrontation.  Bill Cosby and CNN commentators counter that the proliferation of guns and gun rights are also to blame, perhaps more so.  They too have an element of the truth…certainly if George Zimmerman wasn’t packing heat he couldn’t have used it.

But lurking in the background is a deeper question that I don’t hear being discussed, and that is the value of already-born human life.  I say this because, as we all know, the stage upon which the current drama is playing out includes Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.  As represented in the media (and I have heard this characterization on both Fox and NPR), if a person “feels threatened” he or she has the right to use deadly force against a would-be attacker, and has no “duty to retreat.”

Importantly, Florida’s actual Stand Your Ground law is a bit more tightly worded than either conservative or liberal media suggest.  Most of it involves defense of a residence or vehicle, the so-called “Castle Doctrine,” which in essence allows a homeowner to shoot on sight anyone who breaks into his/her home, vehicle, tent, etc.  The part of Florida’s law that might apply to Zimmerman’s defense is XLVI 776.013(3), which reads:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

It is this “no duty to retreat” clause that causes me the greatest concern. The concept of a duty to retreat, historically, has meant that a claim of self-defense to justify homicide would only be sustained if the defendant not only feared for his life, by also had no reasonable means of escape.  In other words, if retreating could have de-escalated the situation without resulting in death or serious injury to either the defendant or a third party, then the defendant had a duty to extract himself from the scene rather than resorting to lethal force.

I’m not going to argue the history of the laws. My question is not a legal one, but rather moral: what is a human life worth? The Florida law explicitly states that anyone who has forcibly entered your home (i.e., broken in) can be presumed to have violent intent…therefore, in essence, the inviolability of your threshold is worth a life. Stand Your Ground says you need not leave the scene if threatened, even if the only wound you might sustain by retreating is to your ego. Bluntly, your pride is worth a life.

This is not unusual in our culture. Listen to conservative American commentary on our wars and foreign policy–heck, listen to our presidents–and it is clear in numerous circumstances that we as a people are perfectly willing to take human lives, at times in great numbers, for no greater cause than our pride in our greatness as a nation.  As goes the people as a whole, so go many as individuals.

Christians disagree about the appropriate boundaries for the legitimate use of deadly force. I myself am not an absolutist in this regard, though my criteria are stricter than most. But I see no rationale whereby the follower of Jesus can justify or defend the doctrine of Stand Your Ground, rooted as it is in the presumption that one man’s ego could ever justify taking another man’s life.

How does this apply to Zimmerman?  Well, he’s likely to be tried either against the state Stand Your Ground law, which even former governor Jeb Bush said is not applicable, or on federal civil rights charges.  Neither is likely to address what I think is the root cause of ego-vs-life, but nor will they address the other relevant question, which is training for those who are armed.  This is the practical side of the Martin/Zimmerman story, and it’s likewise getting no play.  We can argue all day about whether guns, or concealed carry, should be legal in this country.  Bottom line, those arguments will garner lots of donations to the NRA and to gun control groups, but they’ll accomplish little else.

I think we ought to try for a little common ground by requiring that those who have the permission to carry a weapon–particularly a concealed handgun–must undergo regular training.  I don’t mean how to shoot, though they certainly should be proficient with their weapon.  I mean when to shoot.  I rather suspect that in most situations where a weapon is involved, the escalation to the pulling of a trigger happens incredibly quickly.  I know many police departments require their officers to undergo shoot/no shoot simulation training on a regular basis.  So ought civilians.  Evaluating the danger of a confrontation is tricky business, and there are no simple answers.  But those who hold in their hands the power to take life, owe to the rest of us the discipline to have thought, and practiced, and thought some more about just when that power ought to be used.  I’m neither judge nor jury, but I’m guessing that neither George Zimmerman nor the vast majority of his supporters have exercised that discipline.

The following is a guest post by my father, Aaron Martin, who just returned from a project installing a windmill to bring water to a village of displaced people in Papua New Guinea.  For more information about the “Model Village” project in PNG, please see the website of my brother Dave’s company M-CAM.

Dad’s account covers a lot of ground.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Introduction
The following is my summary of my experience in Papua New Guinea (PNG) during Feb. 11 – 23, 2012.  It is not an attempt to detail all of our experiences or to give a complete chronology of the time.  Instead I have attempted to give you a taste of some of the experience.  The trip included such amazing experiences that it almost seemed as if we lived a lifetime in that short time span, hence my title.

To the reader, my training is in mathematics and the physical sciences, and I am very grateful for that training.  I have found it to be very helpful and useful.  My bachelor’s degree was in mathematics and my master’s degree was in astronomy.  Some of what follows will not sound very “scientific” but I remind you that the sciences are limited to the repeatable, the predictable, and the measurable.  Not all of our lives fall into these areas.  So enjoy the following for what it is, an amazing story.
March 9, 2012

A Lifetime in Two Weeks

The Background
For my wife Ruth and for me, this all began in the end of May, 2011.  Our son Dave wrote a posting on his weekly blog about a group of five tribes in Papua New Guinea (PNG)who had been driven from their ancient, ancestral home lands by Exxon and dumped in Port Moresby, the PNG capital, with no place to reestablish themselves.  Dave working with Clemence Kanau and others acquired a tract of about two square miles of unused land about three miles east of the Port Moresby airport.  The tract with very fertile soil could support several thousand of the displaced families, except for one problem, there was no potable water on the site.  The closest accessible water for most of the site was around three miles or more of walking distance from locations on the site, and that single tap water source was only available in mornings and evenings, if it was available at all.

This afternoon as I was driving my son to McDonald’s I turned on one of the local classic rock stations, that was doing a “Retro Weekend.”  Of course I’m just old enough to find it weird that the songs they’re classifying as “retro” came out after I was married, but I guess I’m just not young any more…anyway, I got caught short by a song I missed the first time around, “What if God Was One of Us?” by Joan Osborne (I understand I missed it the second time around too, as it was covered in “Glee” a couple years ago).  Anyway, give a listen:

I’m not going all theological on this song.  I could disagree with various nuances of the lyrics, and it’d be beside the point.  It’s somehow sweet and thought-provoking and worth chewing on.

Of course, season your thoughts with the fact that, if you believe what the Scriptures teach us about Jesus, than in some interesting, transcendental, and wholly-incomprehensible way God did, in fact, become one of us.  Not “just a slob like one of us” exactly, but certainly alone at times and trying to make his way home…with us in tow.  That’s worth contemplating as Easter approaches.

The geniuses of the legislature in my newly-adopted home state are proving their brilliance once again with regard to the Ten Commandments as a source of American law.  A bill has just passed our Assembly (unanimously, no less) and is now headed for the Senate, to make sure the “Foundations of American Law and Government” display can be posted, not only in judicial buildings and courthouses, but in any public facility in the state.  The “Foundations” display is itself prescribed in Georgia Code 45-13-51, enacted in 2006.  Here’s the description taken from the actual text of the law:

The Foundations of American Law and Government display contains documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government. The display contains (1) the Mayflower Compact; (2) the Ten Commandments; (3) the Declaration of Independence: (4) Magna Carta; (5) “The Star-Spangled Banner”; (6) the national motto of the United States of America; (7) the Preamble to the Georgia Constitution; (8) the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution; and (9) a picture of Lady Justice.

The code has several provisions to make sure that no single one of these nine elements be given prominence over the others.  Though I’m not a lawyer nor a constitutional scholar, I find it interesting that this law appears almost identical to one overturned in the 2005 Supreme Court decision enjoining the display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse.  Though I’m a staunch advocate of the separation of church and state, that is not the issue I intend to address today.  Rather, I’m looking at the ridiculous claim that the Ten Commandments actually serve as a substantial foundation for American law.

Here’s what the Georgia law states in its prescription for the “Foundations” display:

The Ten Commandments have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and the formation of our country. That influence is clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Ten Commandments provide the moral background of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.

The law further elaborates on the Commandments’ influence in its description of the Declaration of Independence:

Perhaps the single most important document in American history, the Declaration of Independence was, as Abraham Lincoln stated, the “frame” into which the Framers placed the Constitution. The Declaration’s fundamental premise is that one’s right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is not a gift of government. Government is not a giver of rights, but a protector of God-given rights. Moreover, government is a creation of “the governed” and derives all its power from the consent of its people. As the Preamble to the United States Constitution states, “We the People” are the government. (emphasis mine)

The Georgia (and previously, Kentucky) authorities claim that they are setting out an educational display to educate the public about the “Foundations of American Law and Government.”  45-13-51(a)(4) of the Code actually states “A basic knowledge of American constitutional history is important to the formation of civic virtue in our society.”  It is rather astonishing, in this context (and the Supreme Court decision referenced above observed the same thing), that a display purporting to teach “a basic knowledge of American constitutional history” does not even include the U.S. Constitution among its documents.  On the other hand, it does include several components that cannot plausibly be said to have any bearing on United States law at all, including most significantly, our National Anthem, the national motto “In God We Trust,” and a picture of Lady Justice.  These things are American cultural traditions, but they are not law.

That aside, the portion I highlighted above makes the true intent of the display pretty clear…among the “Foundations” of American law, in the mind of this bill’s advocates, is the premise that our rights come from God, not from man, or law, or government.  This is a premise worthy of debate on its own merits, but it is not one I intend to engage in this post.  Nevertheless the premise must be acknowledged, because it makes clear that when the legislators claim a secular, educational purpose for laws related to the display of the Ten Commandments, they are in fact being disingenuous.

The claim that the Ten Commandments provide a foundation for American law would be laughable if so many people didn’t take it so seriously. Here’s a link to the full text of the U.S. Constitution.  Go read it.  There is no mention of God or religion in the entire thing.  Nor does the Constitution touch on any topic addressed in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  The two documents simply do not overlap at all. Now here’s a link to the first ten amendments to the Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights, and here are all the remaining amendments to the Constitution.  Go read those.  Note this important point:  The word “God” or any other name for (or reference to) the divine does not occur once in the entire Constitution of the United States nor its amendments.  Nor do the amendments allude to any subject also mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

Finally, let’s look at the Commandments one by one.  I’ve done a visual commentary on the Commandments in America before, but this time, we’re going to look at the actual text (taken from the ESV in this instance):

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

There is nothing in American law that specifies any God in particular, or any hierarchy of gods.  Even the Declaration of Independence only references a “Creator.”  Other than the Creator’s having given to humans the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we are told nothing about that being.  Furthermore, as mentioned before, the Declaration of Independence, while an important historical document, is not actually a law.  Commandment One does not influence any law of the United States.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…

The laws of this nation do not forbid idolatry, and they certainly do not forbid sculpture or photography, both of which create images or likenesses of many things.  For that matter, only very few Christians throughout history have had any objection to the creation of images and likenesses.  We have taken this commandment (correctly, I think) to enjoin idolatry, not art.  But neither is prohibited by American law.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Whether or not this command contributes to American law depends on what one thinks it means.  Though I’m not aware of any law currently in force, there have certainly been legal prohibitions against public profanity, particularly profanity using God’s name, in various American states in the past.  Clearly any such laws that still exist have lost any force, given the ubiquity of profane speech, music, writing, and general discourse in our country today.

Most credible sources I’ve read suggest this command has more to do with taking an oath in God’s name and then breaking it…and possibly even making an oath with full premeditation that one intends to break it (hence taking God’s name in vain).  We certainly have laws against perjury in this country, though I’d suggest there’s nothing uniquely Judeo-Christian about them.  The material sense of such laws is the dishonesty of the oath, not the violation of God’s name.  To claim we get our laws against perjury from Moses is a stretch at best.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Many places in America used to have Sabbath laws.  We don’t any more.  Very few Americans, Christian or otherwise, come anywhere close to keeping any sort of sabbath law on any day of the week.  American business, pleasure, goodness and sin all proceed apace on a 24-7 schedule.  Nothing to see here…move along now…

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

We could debate exactly what this command means too.  One common interpretation is that we should provide for the care of our elders, which could easily devolve into an argument as to whether each family should care for their own, or whether Social Security and Medicare are our way of keeping the Fifth Commandment.  I’m not taking that bait, at least not today.  But whether it’s the question of long-term care, or the more immediate question of kids obeying their parents, our society has mores and expectations in that regard, but not laws.  A child can disown, disrespect, and even abandon his parents, and as long as he does not physically abuse them (and there are other legal bases against abuse), there are no legal grounds upon which to charge him.

6. You shall not murder.

Yup.  We have laws against that.  So does every society, whatever god it does or does not worship.  Even atheist, Communist societies have laws against murder.  There is a much broader Biblical case, particularly in the New Testament, for a standard on the protection of human life that goes far beyond the prohibition of murder.  The standard of Jesus, which our nation most certainly does not presume to follow, elevates the sanctity of all human life including that of fetuses, enemies, and criminals to a level that those who claim to be “pro life” completely fail to grasp.  Nevertheless, for the point at hand, to suggest that our prohibition against murder descends uniquely from the Sixth Commandment beggars belief.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

Obviously, we have no law against adultery in this country.  In many states, even adultery as grounds for divorce has lost much of its punch.  Whatever public moralizing we may do (say, an adulterous congressman trying to impeach an adulterous president, to pick a random example), nobody goes to jail or pays fines for adultery in the United States.

8. You shall not steal.

We have that one too.  So does everybody else.  Our laws against stealing come from our standards of private property, not from divine fiat.  As I said for murder above, there’s nothing unique about our prohibition of theft that shows any divine sourcing.  Theft did not suddenly become a crime at the revelations from Sinai.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

I already touched on the subject of perjury up in the Third Commandment.  This command is more particularly about false accusation and testimony that wrongly convicts the innocent.  The Code of Hammurabi has several provisions with a great deal more detail than Exodus, regarding the consequences for perjured testimony against another.  Hammurabi predates Moses by anywhere from 300-500 years, depending on what date estimates one accepts.  Moses didn’t inspire this law.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Of all the Ten Commandments, I find the Tenth to be the most blindingly obvious evidence that American law and Mosaic law are two radically different things.  Without covetousness, the American market economy would not exist.  Advertising as a profession is the deliberate creation of covetous desire in the contented.  Far from reproving covetousness, our society stokes the fire under every human lust and turns it into a market opportunity.

In summary, there is very little material overlap between the Ten Commandments and any laws of the United States.  The most generous reading would see links only in the sixth (murder), eighth (theft) and ninth (perjury/false witness) commandments, none of which contain anything particularly unique, none of which were novel at the time of Moses, and none of which require divine revelation to substantiate them.  To display the Ten Commandments as prescribed in the “Foundations of American Law and Government” regulation is a statement of religious endorsement.  Advocates’ claims  of  secular, historic motivation are at best specious, and at worst  baldfaced lies.

In Scot McKnight book The King Jesus Gospel, which I reviewed a little while ago, Scot issued an interesting challenge: “I have always encountered people who boldly announce to me that they are ‘noncredal’ and even say ‘I don’t believe in the creeds’ because of their next words: ‘I believe in the Bible.’ I respond with one question, and I think I ask this question because I too was at one time one of their number: ‘What line or lines in the Nicene Creed do you not believe?’”  He states later in the same paragraph that “there’s nothing there not to believe.”

With the deepest respect to Scot, this post is my response to his question.  In point of fact, I have what I think are several reasonable objections to the Nicene Creed, which I’m going to lay out below.  First of all, here’s the text I’m using.  There are several variants, and I had to pick one, so I went with the version I found at www.reformed.org/documents/nicene.html:

The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

I’m not going to do a complete line-by-line commentary of the Nicene Creed because it’d get real boring real fast.  I will stipulate, in answer to the objections that I’m sure some will raise, that there is a historical context in which the various clauses of the Nicene Creed (and others) may be more fully understood.  But part of the error in insisting upon the creeds, in my view, is precisely that the creeds are taught in most churches as a thing to be believed and assented to, entirely devoid of their historical context.  In fact, if we looked more frequently at the controversies that were being considered, which influenced various clauses in the creed, I rather suspect more of us might come to the conclusion I have, that some of those old arguments don’t compel us as they compelled the Fathers who fought over them in the third, fourth and fifth centuries.

At any rate, the following paragraphs address my major thoughts or objections.

I believe …

Strange as it may seem, my first objection comes with the very first two words, “I believe.”  I’ve mentioned before that I see the Shema of the Old Testament, quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:29-31 among other places, as one of the best examples of a creed actually in the Bible.  The Shema starts off with a simple declarative statement “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”  The focus is not the fact that we believe something, it is the reality that there is a God and He is one.  God is God, and God is there, and God is one, regardless of what you, I, or anybody else thinks or believes.  The shift from “there is a God” to “I believe in a God” may seem subtle to some, but to me it implies that the individual’s assent is the important thing.

Furthermore, the Shema goes from declaring that there is one God, to commanding that this God is to be loved as Lord.  The creeds, on the other hand, focus merely on “right thoughts,” that is, giving intellectual assent to the existence and character of God.  This is part of the shift from discipleship to religion against which I’ve argued repeatedly on this blog.

… the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds… (referring to Jesus)

This is not a section I actually take issue with, though I do take issue with the proposition that it matters.  What I mean by this is that this clause, along with the “begotten, not made” clause later, address the issue of Jesus’ pre-creation existence.  While I do see texts in scripture that suggest Jesus did in fact pre-exist creation (not least the first chapter of John, and John 8:58), I don’t know that a dogma of Jesus’ origin, and the timetable of his existence, is something we actually need to care about.  Sure, the biblical evidence suggests these clauses are true (I think).  But I fail to see what difference it makes.  I certainly don’t countenance the Constantinople Council’s anathematization of anyone who disagreed.

… God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God … (referring to Jesus)

I rather suspect that only a tiny fraction of everyone who recites this phrase has any clue what it even means.  I’m not sure I do.  I presume it’s referring in some way to Jesus’ divinity, and the commentaries on it that I find through a quick Google suggest the same, though interestingly I find an alternative translation “God from God, Light from Light” etc., which may even be compatible with the divine-yet-subordinate position that I have previously suggested is a more accurate characterization of what Jesus said about himself–that is, that he comes from, and is therefore distinct from, the Father.  So my objection to this phrase depends on how the speaker interprets it:  if as a classic Trinitarian construction that places Jesus as fully divine and equal to the Father, I object to the content; if rather it’s just something the speaker doesn’t comprehend, I then object to reciting as credal, words that have no meaning to the speaker.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life …

It’s in Pneumatology that I really start to take serious issue with the Nicene Creed.  This is one place where this creed goes far beyond its antecedent Apostles’ Creed, which merely stated “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” full-stop, with no qualification or theorizing.  Whatever the Holy Spirit is or is not (and on this I have previously written), I can think of no place in the Scriptures where the Holy Spirit is referred to as Lord, and “Giver of Life” is mis-attributed altogether.  The two texts to which I would point for this latter would be Genesis 2:7 and its beautiful New Testament mirror in John 20:22.  In Genesis it is God the Father who breathes the breath of life into man (“breath” and “spirit” are synonyms in Greek and, I’m told, in Hebrew too), and in John it is Jesus who breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples, initiating or symbolizing their new life in the new Kingdom.  The Spirit is, if anything, the life that is given, not its giver.

… who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified … (referring to the Holy Spirit)

I can find no place in the Scripture that admonishes or commands anyone to worship the Holy Spirit, nor states that the Spirit is glorified.  Nor can I think of any reference to people doing so.  The Breath of God is, as I wrote before, the tangible and very active presence of God working and speaking in the world, but it is never an object of worship.

There is more, I am sure, to be said, and this post is more of an opening for dialog than anything definitive.  Nevertheless each of the above objections is, I believe, a reasonable point to challenge the Nicea crowd for going beyond what is written in some rather substantial ways.

There remain areas where, while I say it differently, I do believe things that are substantially similar to the statements of the great creeds.  I illustrated as much in my post What IS a Christian, Anyway? I’m not saying the creeds are all wrong, but I do hold that emphasizing them is most assuredly wrong.  As Tom Wright stated in a recent lecture at Calvin College, “It is possible to check the credal boxes, and miss the larger reality to which they are the signposts.”  More than that, I would say without reservation that the Nicene Creed includes several boxes that ought not to be checked at all.

The concept and ideas around heaven is one of things that has been hijacked and subverted from its original understanding. I once heard N.T Wright eloquently say it like this: “heaven is great but its not the end of the world.”

Unfortunately most Christians believe that heaven is simply a destination and that death then heaven is what eternal life means. Of course there is something eternal to this thing we call life but the more profound understanding comes when we realize that an eternal kind of life is meant to be started right now in the here and now while we live on this earth.

When we begin to strive to live today as if all was right in the world as God originally intended, it is as if our veil is lifted and we see this world differently. This theme fits nicely into the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven reality. If only Christians would be taught more often what it looks like to be used a vessel to usher in heaven into the here and now. This I believe will be the challenge to the church over the next decade and longer.

The church has focused so much on the inner transformation that it has forgotten how to pair that vision with the transformation of the world vision as well. For some strange reason God has chosen to use his people to re-build his Kingdom on earth as it is heaven. Jesus was the first fruits of this vision and now it has been extended to his people through the profound presence of God’s Holy Breath (AKA Spirit).

I love how N.T Wright articulates this in that through Jesus God became King. When you pair that profound way at looking at how the heavenly realm and earthly realm are working toward becoming one with the Christus Victor view of the cross, you end up with a Kingdom citizens vision and mission. Loosely, to not just be recipients of new creation but to be agents of it as well. We are of course to shape ourselves into living an eternal kind of life now but we are too also look for places where the powers have strongholds and through prayer, sacrificial love, non-violence, etc tear down those strongholds and re-claim for the Kingdom what the powers have taken on this earth.

Shockingly in all of those battles Jesus has already won. All we have to do is remind the powers that they lost and send them packing. Because we are image bearers it will be our physical work and words / prayers that will accomplish this feat.

I want to end this post with an image and some reflections on it.

I have to say this image makes an interesting point. Of course it is entirely a generalization and deeply flawed, however, if the Church and God’s people were being loyal to their calling as also being agents of new creation, I believe the words describing Christians would be as follows.

Christian:
Takes care of the sick
Cares for widows and orphans
Advocates for the poor and those on the underside of power
Brings food to the hungry
Brings water to the thirsty
Provides shelter for homeless
……

And many more things rooted in sacrificial love. Believe it or not that list above, and more, is actually what I consider “evangelism.”

Grace and Peace.

Tom (N.T.) Wright recently gave a lecture at Calvin College that I appreciated very much.  In it, he drew attention to an important issue I’ve written about here before: the over-simplification of faithfulness to Christ that takes place when creeds and statements of faith occupy a central position.  I know my own position is more extreme than Wright’s…he suggests putting the creeds in their rightful place while I suggest that the creeds themselves are part of the problem.  In context he still “loves” the creeds, while I accept the Apostle’s Creed as true though incomplete, and consider the Nicene Creed to be partially in error (a topic I intend to address in detail soon).  Nevertheless, I found Tom’s lecture to be refreshing in the extreme and I heartily commend it to you all.  You can read a bit of the background here.  The full audio of the one-hour lecture is also downloadable and though I usually don’t post podcasts, this is well worth a listen.

To whet your appetite, I transcribed one of the most salient (to me) passages which occurs between 8:20 and 10:34 in the audio:

The creeds were drafted in order to highlight points on which the church resolved major difficulties. But when the creeds began to be used as a teaching syllabus (as they often are to this day), then the problem begins, because of course the creeds jump straight from Jesus’ birth to his death … and I have a mental image at that point, of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John standing there saying ‘Excuse me, we spent a lot of time and effort telling you about all that stuff in between, and you just skip over it?  What’s that about?’

Now, I have nothing against the great creeds.  I love them, and I say them or sing them ex animo.  But they have accidentally encouraged—or the way they have been used has accidentally encouraged—a reading of the New Testament in which the main body of the four Gospels is not theologically load-bearing.  For many Christians, it would have been quite sufficient if Jesus of Nazareth had been born of a virgin, died on a cross, and never done anything in between except, perhaps, lived a sinless life.

The four Gospels then, function for many as the dispensible back story for the Gospel as preached by Paul … this is the de facto position of many Protestants and many Evangelicals—many conservative Evangelicals—the irony being, of course, that it’s the exact same position as that of Rudolph Bultman, with the only difference being that Bultman thought most of the stories were pious fictions.  But the reason why most Evangelicals would differ is not that the stories are doing anything theologically, in themselves, but simply to shore up a view of the inspiration of Scripture.  Not for the only time, swaths of Evangelicals are more anxious to protect a theory of Scripture, than to hear what Scripture actually says.

And toward the end, one more excellent quote (55:40 in the audio):

We have substituted the static belief in Jesus’ divinity for the active belief in what the Incarnate Son was actually doing.  It is possible to check the credal boxes, and miss the larger reality to which they are the signposts.

There’s much more to hear.  Take your time and give it a listen!

On Facebook recently I shared an article by Rachel Held Evans on Facebook. It was a great article with a simple desire to point out that asking tough questions about the text is not a slippery slope to faith abandonment.

The sharing of this article sparked a dialogue both online and offline with a number of people which got me thinking and led to the title of this post. I may not be in the same camp on a number of theological issues as much as mainstream evangelicalism. That is one of the reasons I have no problem labeling myself as a non-evangelical and stating that I resonate with different faith traditions more than evangelicalism. Although I ask the tough questions about the text and have come to some different conclusions, I can boldly say I have very good, well thought out, exegetically honest, and communally vetted conclusions.

So why do I bring this up in the first place? Because I have gotten the sense through the years, from those who question where I have landed, that they seem to think that I don’t accept the stock answers because I am stubborn, rebellious or perhaps something worse. I get the sense some think I reject the standard issues just because. I have never gotten the sense from any of the more controversial conversations on controversial subjects that I may actually have deeply researched my conclusion. It seems they assume I have not, yet they have and that is why they are right and I am wrong. When in all actuality nothing can be farther from the truth.

As much as it shocks me to think about this reality, I happen to be a public authority and noted thought leader in the technology industry. This position has earned me a spot as one of the few technology columnists for a number of publications including TIME.com. I speak regularly to captains and leaders of industry at CEO summits, industry trade shows, and many other public and private forums as an authority / expert within my field of knowledge. To accomplish something like this one does not formulate opinions or expertise without deeply researching, analyzing, and vetting ideas in order to make conclusions that I do. I would approach conclusions made to my faith with no less diligence than I do in my professional practice.

This is why I titled this post the way I did. I have finally reached a point in vetting my beliefs and working out my salvation if you will where I am absolutely confident in the areas that for me are black and white (there are still grey areas). I know where I stand on many issues, I know why I stand there, and I can back it up with sound plausible exegesis.

It wasn’t easy and I have been fortunate to have access to noted biblical scholars, heads of noted theology schools, as well as read most of the major scholarly works from a wide range of scholars from a wide range of faith traditions. This journey started when I was 27 and I am now 33. That is how long it took for me and for many it probably takes longer.

I realize for many of those I engage with debate and conversation with, that they have as well vetted and rigorously wrestled with these issues and come out on a different side. I respect that wholeheartedly and in most cases can see where they are coming from. I value their efforts and their convictions and have no problem to agree to disagree and go build the Kingdom together.

With many of my answers to some of the tougher and perhaps more controversial questions about the text it is important to note the vast diversity which is the Christian tradition. If you only explore answers to questions within the very short and heavily Calvin based history of evangelicalism then you are missing the bigger picture.

For many Christians the questions that pop out in my mind about many biblical issues may never come up or they don’t matter as much to them to answer as they do to me. I am OK with that and I fully acknowledge that reality. The truth is not everyone thinks like me and that is OK. This journey is still going as there are still matters that lie in tension, in a good way, in my brain. But there is a peace in confidently knowing not only what you believe but why you believe it.

On her blog, Rachel Held Evans has just issued a challenge to Christian men, to respond to John Piper’s recent pontifications on God’s having given Christianity “a masculine feel.” I suppose it will come as no surprise to most of my readers that I take neither a conventional “egalitarian” nor “complementarian” approach to the issue.

Rachel is absolutely right to call Piper out on this. My own first reaction to the suggestion of a “masculine Christianity” is basically one of “eeewww!” To be fair, what Piper actually suggests might characterize such a faith doesn’t sound so far off:

“When I say masculine Christianity or masculine ministry or Christianity with a masculine feel, here’s what I mean: Theology and church and mission are marked by an overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, contrite courage, risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading and protecting and providing for the community. All of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

Interestingly, I rather suspect that if we were to remove the word “male” modifying “leadership” in that paragraph, few readers would find much objectionable in Piper’s description of leadership. This is an important thing to consider. I submit the problem is fundamentally that we have badly misunderstood both gender and leadership as Jesus (and even Paul) taught them, and hence are objecting to all the wrong things. Seriously, what is particularly masculine about “tender-hearted strength, contrite courage, risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice?” I personally know men and women who do, and others who most decidedly do not, exhibit all those characteristics.

Frankly, I’m getting more than a little fed up with the repeated drumbeat of observing “male” or “female” characteristics in God, or in ourselves for that matter. I’m a daddy, it has always given me great joy to embrace and kiss and hold my kids. I could never breastfeed them, obviously, but when our youngest couldn’t nurse, I fed him–and wept many tears over him–while my wife pumped what I would then feed him. Was I getting in touch with “my feminine side” as I did this? Hell no! I was lovingly caring for my son and my wife! I resent the implication that tenderness is uniquely feminine, or the converse that strength is uniquely masculine.

Egalitarians have, in my opinion, been far too acquiescent to these sloppy definitions of gender. Each time one calls out the Pipers and the Driscolls of the church by pointing out “feminine” traits in God, they are tacitly granting these harmful distinctions in gender character (but see my parenthetical comment at the end).

The second key issue I take with this debate is with our definition of leadership in the church. Conservative church leaders insist that pastors, and particularly the “senior pastor,” must be male. Egalitarians object that women are also gifted in the same qualities and should be able to participate in these offices. Neither considers the possibility that the authoritarian structure that is the modern pastorate might itself be unbiblical!

I can think of no better illustration of my point than a passage that is often held up as a prime exhibit of the apostle Paul’s presumed mysogynism…1 Cor. 11:2-16. The common reading of this passage sees all the language that can be interpreted to demean or control women. I’m not going to get into that here. What I want to point out, is verse 5, completely ignored by most it seems, in which Paul doesn’t even question the reality that women are praying and prophesying! One can argue, as I’ve heard before, that prayer is private, but there’s no such thing as private prophecy. Add the record of Philip’s four prophetess daughters (Acts 21:9), and the story of Priscilla and Aquilla (a husband-wife team who schooled Apollos in theology…and Priscilla’s name comes first every time!), and it’s pretty clear that the New Testament church heard plenty from women as well as men.

What we do not find in the New Testament record, is individual church leaders invested with unaccountable, unquestionable authority.  In contrast, throughout Jesus’ ministry we find repeated efforts on Jesus’ part, to disabuse his apostles of the notion they should rule each other or anybody else. In fact, most references throughout Acts and the Epistles to pastors, teachers, apostles, deacons, prophets, or any other function in the church are in the plural.  1 Cor. 12:7 (to each one) and 1 Cor 14:26 (each one contributes) are only two examples of many showing us that the body ought to hear from each other, not merely from a limited cabal of ordained leadership.

So my appeal is that we not correct error with error. The autocratic style of leadership exhibited by male church leaders will not be fixed by simply adding women to the ranks of the autocracy. It will only be repaired when we rediscover the real meaning of Ephesians 5:21 and we all submit ourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ.

One final parenthetical comment.  I remain troubled by the trend among some, while rightly objecting to the male-centric theology that has inhabited the church for too long, to refer to God in female terminology.  This is not least because it seems to me to tilt toward ancient idolatries of goddess worship.  Atheist wags have said in the past that “man created god(s) in his image,” and the gods so created were a pretty disgusting bunch.  No less the goddesses, many of whom demanded various perversions such as human sacrifice, temple prostitution, and other sexual and fertility rites that have been rightly blasted by the prophets throughout the ages.  Feminized idolatry is no less reprehensible than the male version.

Though I am by no means a verbal-inspiration fundamentalist, I do think that God has consistently revealed his character throughout the ages (and in many different cultures) using masculine terminology.  As I pointed out above, the perversion of the concepts of masculine and feminine within our theology and our culture do not change this.  Certainly, whatever the use of male terminology with reference to God may mean, it does NOT carry a sexual component, and any claim to the contrary is blasphemous.  But replacing it with female terminology is, in my view, one of many forms of remaking God in the image of modern humanity instead of the older and more benighted version.  Biblical Christianity deserves better.