The Strangeness of the Isaiah 6 calling

I've read Isaiah 6 more than a  few times over the years. It's a very popular passage for those who sense a calling from God towards ministry. The part that always gets mentioned is the "here am I, send me" part. I love that part too. I really do. But like with so many other passages of scripture, when we read a part apart from the context that surrounds it, we end up doing violence to what God intended in these discrete words.

So in the interest of discretion, let's consider the whole passage as God and his prophet intended:

Isaiah 6:1-13 (ESV)

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." And he said, "Go, and say to this people:

'Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' 

make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed."

Then I said, "How long, O Lord?"

And he said:

"Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste, 

and the LORD removes people far away,

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

 And though a tenth remain in it,

 it will be burned again,

 like a terebinth or an oak,

 whose stump remains

 when it is felled."

 The holy seed is the stump.

Does this sound like the kind of call you want? Tell the people you're called to preach to do exactly opposite of what they're willing to hear? God calls you and guarantee's failure from the outset? Or at least failure by "normal" standards? Yet it seems this is God's way, strangely enough. God never calls his disciples to follow the path of popularity. God never calls his followers to sing the song that resonates with the majority. He offends the popular opinion.

So if someone is actually called in this way, they're gonna be confronted with all of the idolatries that befall their people, whether political or religious. And it's pretty much the case that anyone truly called of God is gonna be hated by the vested interests, both political and religious. For those of us concerned with the things of God, this is something worth considering, today, and in the days ahead.

DREAM PARABLE

 

When I was a teenager, I had a dream. The dream has stayed with me ever since. In the dream, I was alternately placed “on the ground” in the southern regions of Israel; specifically the Negev desert, and looking down from above at a symbolic representation of the entire Middle East. The dream progressed towards greater conflict, switching back and forth, from the immediate experience on the ground to the overhead view. In the initial stages of the dream, I was engaged in dialogue with those around me who represented opposing sides in the growing conflict. As to whether these were Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, I’m not sure. Though it certainly would make the most sense, and at the time it’s what I understood the dream to be about. As I was pressed upon by the opposing sides, I was being asked to choose one over the other. Initially, I listened to their arguments, desiring to make the wisest choice.

As the dream progressed I would find myself looking down upon the region, as if I were situated hundreds of miles above, looking down upon the area as from a satellite. Yet in looking down upon the whole region, I saw it in a symbolic way. The whole area was symbolically represented by a wide swath of a very thin film. It was as if it represented a huge number of people, since it consisted of the vast majority of the Middle Eastern area, wide, but shallow, with only a few, small areas represented by a different symbolism. This other symbolism consisted of small isolated groupings that occupied only small areas, yet which were quite deep (or tall, depending upon the perspective).

In the dream, it was clear that these different images represented varying degrees of spiritual understanding. Thus, for the vast majority of the people in the region, the symbolism was of a spiritually shallow existence, not understanding the things of God. They were, as least symbolically, the most distant from God. Thus, those who were represented by the small, tall areas represented those who were deeper in their understanding of God.

Yet, even with this, I was not comfortable in the dream aligning myself with either side. As the dream progressed, I found myself being pressed from all sides to choose one side or another. On the ground I found the contesting sides becoming more vehement with each passing moment. They were also pressing in on me, becoming more insistent that I choose. As this scene played out, I would find myself looking down upon the scene from high above. Alternately, I would see, whether in my face or from high above, the contesting camps vying for my allegiance.

As the dream became more intense, with each side growing more violent, I was struggling with what choices I should make. As the vantage point shifted, I found myself wavering in my opinion. Initially, I was inclined towards those in the minority, since they represented those who were more spiritually mature and closer to God. These small groupings were spread out over the whole region, even if they only represented a very small percentage of the overall population. Some were in Iraq, more were in Lebanon; still others were in Syria and Egypt. More clusters of these “deeper” ones were situated in various parts of Israel. Yet, small clusters of these people were also spread out over the whole region, stretching out to Iraq and Iran in the east, south to Ethiopia, and west to Egypt and Libya. Yet most of this area was symbolically represented with the vast majority as geographically and numerically wide, yet spiritually shallow.

As the dream moved along, I found myself in the midst of the now warring parties, pulling at me to choose one or the other. My resolve was straining at its limits, trying my best to choose wisely. I began to wonder if it might be better to go with the majority, since they held the numerical advantage. But I knew that they were much farther away from God than the others were. Yet even the minority were not where they should be spiritually. As the dream wound to a close, I was being buffeted on all sides, with the warring parties each pulling at me to side with them. This dream, which had been interesting up to this point, was now becoming a nightmare. As I struggled with what choice to make, and was despairing of what to do, confused and uncertain of what was right or wrong, I cried out to God.

At this point in the dream, I was caught up to the same vantage point as before. But unlike the previous times during the dream, this time I wasn’t alone. I found myself amongst innumerable other people who had also been caught up to this heavenly vantage point. In the dream, what had up to this point become a nightmare, had now become a joyous experience of deliverance. Where I was situated, looking down upon the earth below, was not a disembodied state of floating on clouds, but was still quite physical, yet different than the state I was in below. Whereas before this being “caught up” I had been confused and fearful, I now felt safe and secure. I also now knew that I had been presented with a false choice during the conflict down below. Even during this trial, whether I was on the ground or was seeing it from above in symbolic form, I was not able to see clearly enough to remain steady.

While I was being accosted from all sides seeking my loyalty, I knew intuitively that neither side had an accurate understanding of the truth, even if one was in fact closer than the other. Yet as I became embroiled in the conflict, I began to waver in my own understanding as well. This inner sense told me that I could not in good conscience align myself with either side’s views or actions. Yet I found myself being tempted, both from the external pressures and my own desires; desires that were more concerned with being thought highly of by those around me, and the desire to be on the “winning” side.

In that sense then, I was delivered in at least two different ways; one, from the combatants surrounding me; two, from my own tendency to acquiesce to the impulses that are strongest at the moment. My deliverance then was both external and internal, and because of Who delivered me, my deliverance was also eternal!

This dream has stayed with me for many years now. It is obviously very symbolic, so it shouldn’t be interpreted in a literalistic fashion. Yet in its symbolism, it can be just as easy to leap to fantastic conjectures. Is the dream prophetic of events soon to come? Will the “final” battle in Israel occur in my lifetime? Because I had this dream when I was a teenager (around 1980), I struggled with these questions, especially because I grew up reading and listening to many end times teachers who often said that we were living in the final years of the present age. Is the dream merely the product of undigested food, doing its work while I sleep? Or is it the nocturnal expression of my day time stresses, only set in apocalyptic imagery, both because of my religious tradition, and my tendency, along with many other people, to see myself as being in the center of a great drama?

Any of these are certainly viable possibilities. Although I doubt it is primarily due to undigested food, I nonetheless have to fully acknowledge that it is an expression of my own inner workings. Yet even in saying this, I don’t discount the possibility that it may pertain to events beyond myself. And even if it does (or doesn’t) have to do with any eschatological issues per se, it still serves quite well as a dream parable of sorts of what Christians are to do when confronted by competing claims to allegiance. In this sense, no matter what other meaning(s) the dream may have, it can serve as a symbolic representation of universal principles that can keep us on track. Ultimately, staying on track means relying on God (and His word) through all trials and tribulations, and not giving in to the impulse to go along with the flow or jettison principled means in order to get to some supposedly “good” end. The final lesson I’ve come away with over the years from this dream is that we are always presented in this world with false dichotomies, choices that appear, at least initially, to be the only ones. Yet with discernment, and careful consideration, many, if not most times, we find that the right choice is one we’re not told about by those seeking our loyalty. This aspect of the dream I am certain is true. Don’t settle!

Which God Will It Be? (the Rob Bell, Greg Boyd, Tim Challies edition)

In recent weeks I've been reading the accounts of various theological debates, primarily between the Emergent crowd and what's often called the Neo-Reformed crowd. It all started when a pre-release video was put out to hawk Rob Bell's new book "God Wins" along with snippets from his soon to be released book. From these meager (though not to some) resources many deigned to presume that Rob had "proved" himself a "universalist" though the term never occurs in either the video blurb or in the parts of his book that have been released. That's not to say he doesn't hold to universalism. He may. But the evidence wasn't in yet. The book was released in "pre-publish" form to several people so that they could review it, both those who would be favorably disposed and those who differ deeply with Rob's views, whatever they may be. And now we're finally beginning to see reviews from those who have actually "read" the book. And for me, this is just as interesting.

Both Greg Boyd and Tim Challies were given pre-releases of Rob's new book and have posted their reviews. For those not in the know, these two guys are as theologically polar opposite as you can pretty much get, at least within the Protestant Christian world. Greg Boyd is extremely Arminian in this theology to the point that he advocates a view that's called "Open Theism" which posits that God may not "know" every detail of the future, all in order to preserve a view of human freedom called "libertarian free will." The idea behind this view is that in order for God to be "good" human agency must be uninterrupted, thus even God's perfect foreknowledge would impede that freedom. Therefore, since that "freedom" is essential to us being morally responsible, and in order to maintain God's goodness, his own knowledge must itself be contingent to our "free will" actions. (within Free-Will Theism or Open Theism there are degrees. Some are ontological Open Theists (God "cannot" know the future), which I consider to be open heresy, whereas others, such as Boyd, I consider to be excessively kenotic (God's self emptying prerogative seen in Christ's incarnation) but nonetheless within the pale of orthodoxy [barely])

Tim Challies, on the other hand is a well known figure among the Neo-Reformed. The vast  majority of the critiques of Rob's new book have come from this crowd, The Neo-Reformed are Calvinistic in their soteriology/salvation theology as well as in their anthropology/doctrine of humanity. By the way, as a confession of my own views, I'm quite Reformed and Augustinian about both the human condition and God's sovereignty. But what does it mean to be "Reformed" or "Calvinistic" or even "Augustinian" in our theology, whether about God Himself or about us as humans?

A quick definition of terms might help here. To "be" Reformed is to emphasize certain attributes of God as being preeminent, in particular his sovereignty and holiness, and among many Reformed folks, his wrath. It's also to emphasize the utter devastation to the human condition that occurred at the "fall," the event that forever changed us, not only in our natural state, but also in our relationship with a transcendent and holy God. Since I'm basically a Calvinist myself, I should make clear one thing that's often been misconstrued. To be "totally depraved" is not to be as bad as we can possibly be, but to be thoroughly and completely infected by sin in every part, even if only in the slightest way. I often use the illustration of a glass of water being  tainted by a drop of poison. Whether it's one drop or the whole glass, it's deadly either way. This is the conception of the holiness of God in this vision. In both reviews I noticed how their theological perspectives shaped and eventually determined their reading of Rob's words.

Yet.... Yet....

This little kerfuffle which has garnered so much attention amongst Evangelicals and has even reached the New York Times, betrays, at least for me, a certain theological myopia that has ignored a much larger and richer Christian picture. The "four great Christian traditions" of Christianity seen in Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Reformation Christianity, and Anabaptist/Independent Christianity (inclusive of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements) each have a vision of God's character at their center driving their ethical impulses.

I look back to Paul's description of the divisiveness in the Corinthian church which Paul describes so vividly in chapter 1 of 1st Corinthians. He starts out by commending them, as he typically did to whatever church to which he wrote. But just after that he confronts them on their factionalism. Some of them were following after him. Some were following after Cephas, otherwise known as Peter. Others were siding with Apollos. And some were even saying that they just followed Jesus. Paul criticized "every one of these" factions as being untrue to the gospel message.

It seems that the Corinthians were as prone to seeing God "on our own terms" as we are now. I'll admit that my analysis if this passage may be as much eisegesis as exegetical, but when I see Paul's description, I can't help but notice this four-fold division that fits rather neatly with the divisions of church history.

The initial separation (1054AD)  was between East and West; between the Orthodox East with the Catholic West. As I see it, this represents the Petrine and Apolilnian split. This split was a combination of theology and ecclesiology combining with sinful impulses on both sides. Later we saw the split between Petrine and Pauline understandings of Christianity in the Protestant Reformation, also with sinful and holy impulses driving each side. But what's really surprising is that the followers of Jesus were criticized as well. In other words, each of these views was seen as being separatist, not allowing that God might speak through a slightly different voice.
It seems that Paul says that God speaks through through a multitude of voices, yet ultimately with one voice.

So in light of this dim light, can we see forward toward an ecumenical light? Can we be Christan in a ;large sense? Can we be Christians in that large sense and still be Christians?

Being a Chrstian in the midst of a world of Violence and Clashing Civilizations

Working that out will be more than a semester's work. It's a work that will occupy the rest of my life. But I am grateful that this is a passion that has gripped me.

New Beginning

A post after a long absence bespeaks a new beginning. The question is, what beginning will be renewed? The desire is peace, since that's my namesake. My hope is that my words will speak of a real peace and not of one which will only salve minor wounds when a gaping hole confronts us/me.

Book of Eli review

I just saw the Denzel movie Book of Eli. It's definitely as violent as promised. As a big fan of the whole post-apocalyptic genre I really looked forward to this movie, especially in light of what I've read about the spiritual content that is so obvious throughout the movie. It's not much of a spoiler to say that the "book" in question is the King James Bible that Eli is traveling west to deliver to some mysterious destination where it will be safe. In the movie, Eli is clearly the good guy. Though he's a good guy who can do some serious bad to those in his way. Like I said, if you're at all squeamish about bloody violence, this movie may not be your cup of tea. On a side note, I appreciated a few neat cultural references to the same post-apocalyptic genre. I won't say here what they are, but look closely to the scenery and you'll get a chuckle or two in the course of the movie.

Gary Oldman is, well, Gary Oldman. And he's about as good an actor to play the evil character as you could ask for. After all, he's so good at being bad. My personal favorite portrayal of his was in the Fifth Element.  In this movie however, he's not nearly so refined and well dressed in haute couture. But he is just as depraved. The interesting dynamic between these two characters is that they both see the bible as being incredibly powerful, but in diametrically opposed ways. Eli is driven by a voice telling him to go west so that the book can be protected, whereas Carnegie (a fantastically ironic name for the villain) sees the "good book" as a means to gain tyrannical power over the populace.

The complexity in the movie is that both the villain and the hero use violence to achieve their ends. Eli, however, does seem to know that his violence is contrary to what the book that he's carrying says. Yet, since this is the bible we're talking about, despots the world over have gladly used the useful passages to justify their own violence, conveniently ignoring the passages that would constrain any action on their part. But the bible does offer up the requisite material for both the pacifist and militarist. I guess it's all in how you read it. The movie is complicated. It seems appropriate, since it's dealing with a complicated book.

Two Bodies

Wounded, bleeding, flailing
and even my best success
a failing.
Slipping, sliding
inching ever closer
as the shoreline
slips away.
Grasping at straws
as the one who grasps me
breathes into my gasping
breath.
My body broken
dies a little bit
more today.
My body broken
by hands unforced.
My body broken
by me.
And yet your body
breaks and bleeds
every day
for me.
Your body broken
calls out to me
to die
to me.
Your body broken
nourishes
my body
with new life
that my old body
can never see.
The old wounds of your
new body
call to my wounds.
Bloodied, broken, bruised
still seen
still touched
still real.
Renewed, restored, reborn
resurrected.

Precipice

The world,
and by that I mean
God's plans,
is bigger than,
downfalls
pitfalls
recessions
and
depressions,
individual and collective.
Thank God.

Precipice is an edge
we always
stand upon.
Whether economic,
moral
spiritual
or political.

Always we stand
or fall
depending on
the ground upon
which we stand.

Is it strong?
Is it sound?
Does it stand beneath me?
and ultimately,
does it stand
above
me?

The hands of God

When the poorest of the poor
have called upon you,
have we been there?

They call upon your name
knowing you will deliver.
Do they know that you have called
us who are called by you
to deliver you
to them?

Sun Myung Moon

It seems that Sun Myung Moon was slightly injured in a helicopter accident (a hard landing) either earlier today or sometime yesterday. I've just been reading a book about him and his influence over American politics called "Bad Moon Rising" written by John Gorenfeld. He has also created a short documentary called "King of America" that is just wild. Anyone interested in being faithful to the call of Christ, especially as it relates to being a Christian in America here and now, should see this documentary and read his book.

Wounds

How many wounds must
I inflict,
before You
afflict me
with Your wounds?
You sear me with
Your hands and feet.
Your brow bleeds
onto me.
As You look down
from above.
I hate You.
You are killing me.
I know You must.
I know why.
I also know
that You love me.
And You're bleeding
into me.
So that I might
bleed too.

Into others,
just like me.

Why is this Your way?
Why must You suffer?
Why must You die?
Why must I?

I know.
You've already told me.
And all those before
and after me.

It's who You are.
It's what You do.
Thank You.

The Strange Irony of American Evangelicalism

THE STRANGE IRONY OF AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

One of the tenets of Evangelicalism is that God’s word is final. Scripture is supposed to be our final arbiter of all that is true and good. One of these truths is that human beings in their current state are basically sinful. If that’s true, then that means that every human institution is therefore infected with this basic human malady.

Herein is the rub.

This is where political ideology and the Christian gospel immediately find themselves at odds. If you’re on the left, your immediate assumption is that the guilt lies within those who belong to the social class that owns the means of capital. In that case, leftist anthropology is thoroughly (yet, ironically only selectively) Augustinian. Yet when it comes to a government owned and operated “by the people” (properly administrated of course through the proper party officials), their view of the human condition becomes suddenly sanguine (to use another Christian term, Pelagian). This expression of power, as opposed to any other expression of power, has been expunged of any selfish motivations. Therefore these public servants can be trusted to provide a pure expression of unsullied motivations, all of which are for our common good.

Needless to say, this is not a consistent expression of the human condition, nor is it a consistent (or accurate) analysis of that human condition’s development into public policy.

I would like to say that this is not true of Evangelicalism as it is practiced.

However, American Evangelicalism seems to suffer from some (well, all) of the same maladies that have infected other political ideologies that have preceded it. Positively, American Evangelicalism, as in a mirror image of its nemesis, secular humanism, has presented a view of governmental ineptitude that is an exemplar of human failings. It has also illustrated the point that human self-will is constantly seeking to aggregate power to itself at any cost. Government, whether democratically elected or imposed from some powerful elite, seeks to increase its own power constantly through coercive means. In fact, the Constitutional founders understood this reality so much that they intentionally created a government that was divided into three parts in order to keep any one part from tyrannizing the public. It’s worth reading the Federalist Paper number 10 to understand more fully their Augustinian framework.

Yet this same assessment of the human condition seems to fall by the wayside when it comes to certain economic and corporate interests involved in the equation. The profit motive is seen as nearly sacrosanct. Meeting the bottom line is seen as being something close to our highest calling. The quarterly dividends are seen as being an expression of the loaves and the fishes. A 401K is merely casting our bread upon the waters.

Is this what Christ has called us to?

Much of American Evangelicalism would have us believe that we should elect certain political figures in order to bring about revival. In 2000 it was assumed that this meant George W. Bush. Right now, depending upon your political persuasion, it might mean John McCain or Barack Obama (or some other political savior).

NAVIGATING A DIFFICULT MIDDLE GROUND

As Christians, whether we’re American or not, we should be most concerned with enacting Christ’s Kingdom in our midst according to His word and His means. The temptation in the midst of this political campaign is to give ourselves over to a partisan spirit that says God is on one side over another. Are there issues in this campaign that are mentioned directly in Scripture? Yes, there sure are. Do some of those issues tend to favor one party over another, while other issues end up favoring the opposing party? Yes, this is also true. We can’t help but see some of those issues lived out in our midst as we decide which is the best course to take in the days and years to come.

Abortion, immigration, idolatry, sexual expression, stewardship, injustice, poverty, just to name a few.

Ultimately, we must decide whether our allegiance is to a party or ideology that would have us swear ourselves to some god that cannot deliver, some sorry deity that stands cold and lifeless before the Creator of the universe.

If we would call ourselves Christian, then we must be willing to stand against our own ideological and political foundations, and stand only and always on the one foundation that can actually save us.

One of the most pressing problems facing Christians in America is the sense of what it even means to be Christian in America.

To be an American Christian is to travel a road that navigates between the poles of nationalism, individualism, and ideological idolatry, the deifying of political ideologies, both left and right. To be an American Christian is really not that more difficult than being a Russian or British or Chinese or Egyptian Christian. Each of them has their own particular challenges. Each of them has to decide, in their particulars, what it means to be faithful to Christ’s gospel.

Every culture has its points of agreement and conflict with Christ’s demands.

Every culture has its own idolatries, every culture, even our own.

This is a difficult concept for many American Christians to accept. Part of the mythologizing of America’s supposed Christian foundations dovetails what it means to be Christian with what it means to be American. Therefore, if America, as a culture is guilty of a particular idolatry, such as racism, nationalism, rampant individualism, and so on, then this mythologized America has to be reconciled with an equally mythologized Christianity.

One tactic is to deny these idolatries in the first place in order to make America more Christian in its history. Many history books, whether produced by earlier generations of public schools, or more recent revisionist “Christian” histories produced through numerous home-school curricula, present a picture of American history that is half true at best, and in some cases is intentionally untrue.

Another tactic is to plunder the Christian Scriptures in order to ordain certain national and ideological prerogatives as God-given-from-on-high. Declaring slavery righteous by quoting obscure passages from Genesis, using other passages to “prove” that women are weaker and therefore should not have the right to vote or even hold property, or the ever popular America is the new Israel and all the inhabitants before it are beastly savages in need of conversion, or if need be, extermination, since they are the modern equivalent of the ancient Canaanites. There are, unfortunately, many other examples, but these should suffice.

As stated earlier, the secular left is no less guilty of this kind of manhandling and ham-fisted manipulation of Scriptural language. It’s just that, at least in more recent times, they haven’t been nearly as good at using religious lingo as the political right. The modern secular left, similarly to most modern journalism, just doesn’t “get religion”, and so they have ended up embarrassing themselves when they try to utilize religious language in order to win votes or influence public opinion.

In earlier years however, religious liberals and their secular, political counterparts were quite able to sway public opinion with religious rhetoric that invoked salvation language, even if it was robbed of any doctrinal content related to Christ on the cross. The Social Gospel of the turn of the century was a conscious attempt to wed Christian terminology and imagery with the dominant political and scientific ideologies prevalent at the time.

The seeds of the Social Gospel, just like the more recent Religious Right, were both born out of the Americanized Christianity of the mid-1800’s. This was a Christianity that emphasized an internal experience over any traditional practice or doctrinal control. This was also a Christianity that eschewed any oversight by ecclesiastical authorities that might restrain its more radical impulses. This was also a Christianity that fed at the intellectual trough of modern rationalism, informed most recently by the brilliant insights of an explorer son of a minister who revealed the deep truths of evolution.

Whether “evolution” as a scientific theory is true or not is less important than its impact upon American social thought. Darwin’s influence extended far beyond his merely scientific theories concerning how species came into their current form. His ideas were so radical (and convincing) that they were immediately appropriated by many others, far and wide, for purposes social, not to mention spiritual.

Here we see both the left and the right, politically using both the recent theory of evolution as well as Christian language, in order to advance their particular agendas. On the right evolution and certain Scriptural passages dovetailed nicely in order to once again “prove” that social and racial hierarchy was not only God-given, but naturally “ordained” as well.

The left, both religious and secular, on the other hand, was using the newly ordained scientific priesthood of evolutionary teaching to offer up a new millennial vision which would bring us into the new realm of human cooperation through international organizations such as the League of Nations, later to be called the United Nations. It should not be a surprise to anyone that a passage from the prophet Isaiah decorates the wall outside the U.N. headquarters in N.Y.C. declaring that nations shall turn their swords into plowshares.

Religious, transcendent language, it seems, is essential to getting the public to go along with uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous public policy.

It seems that governments and social movements, both minor and major, need religious and transcendent language in order to galvanize the public. Whether it’s a “crusade” or a “jihad” or a “czar”, it seems we need certain terminology to get the public, the masses, behind whatever policy is being propounded. Playing the public by tapping into its reservoir of interior anxieties works in the short term. But the long-term consequences are hell.

I guess my question to American evangelicals is this: What the hell are we doing unleashing these dark impulses for short-term political gains?

Where is the gospel?

Where is the self-sacrifice?

Where are the actual actions of Jesus?

Are we going and doing likewise?

If we did, might it make a difference in how we interact with both the Republican and Democratic parties?

Might we finally be able to speak with authority to those before us, as though they held political authority?

The gospel judges everyone.

Everyone.

HIDDEN IN YOUR WINGS AM I

The comfort you give is beyond what words can share.

My downcast mind is staid by your unfailing love.

I cannot comprehend the love you have for me.

My questions,

My doubts,

Are laid waste by your great love, poured out for me.

Hidden in you wings am I.

Resting finally from all my works.

Your solace calms my nerves by your hand,

Which restores my soul.

My legs, hands, feet, are weak,

Unable to do your work,

Which you have called me to,

But which you have done for me.

It doesn’t make sense that you should do what is required of me.

And yet you do.

You are my obedience.

You are my holiness.

You are my Adam, as I fall into you.

How can you be my all?

How can I stand in you?

And yet everything I am is because of you.

May I be hidden in you?

Will you hide me in you?

Who I am already is all because of you.

Because of you I am already hidden in you.

Hide me in your love.

Cadence and Rhythm

Times of testing,
given over to the gentiles
of my heart.
Shape my desires in such a way
that new reservoirs of hope
open up my eyes.
These are days of hope,
that spring from
depths of despair.
God has given me
all that I might need.
So that I might search for him
in all that I desire.
Search me out
and seek me now
so that I may be found
in you.
Cadence and rhythm
are only found
in you.

Lord of All

Lord of elements, wind and rain,
calm the tumult of my soul.
Speak peace into chaos, calm
into raging waves.
Speak words of rest into
restless hearts filled with
clouds of doubt and pain,
such as mine.

Lord of spirits, reign supreme
over rebels, con-men, hustlers,
windswept mists driven by
powers of deceit.
Restore the child in my heart
by a truthful word spoken
to a lie believed too soon
such as mine.

Lord of the heavens, brought down low,
lift our hearts above the clouds.
See into our darkness, open our eyes
to the beauty all around.
Lift our feet upon the Rock
that stands beneath our strength,
and splits open tombs held closed,
such as mine.

Lord of the earth, bridge between
the spirit and the flesh.
Join together my longing grasp
with Your consummating touch.
Fill with life the desolated emptiness
that speaks with muted cries
of a heart longing for reunion,
such as mine.

When Temples Go Bad, Next on Fox!

Digging through the walls

Temples are places where the divine meets the human. Temples have been around since the beginning of human history. They’re as natural as anything we’ve ever known or done. It’s a part of who we are as human beings that we seek to connect or reconnect with some sense of the divine. We seem to have ingrained in us some sense that we need to meet up with the gods or a particular god. Thus we build temples. Years ago I went to Arizona to attend a conference on church growth and evangelism. One day I had enough free time that I was able to drive north towards the Grand Canyon. I didn’t make it to the Grand Canyon, since it was further away than I thought. That and I got caught in a snowstorm halfway up there. So I ended up turning around and stopping at Red Rock Canyon in Sedona instead. I drove through the town, noticing that there were numerous ‘new age’ type stores, but didn’t pay much attention to it, as I was headed for the park. Once I got to the park, I parked my rental car and hiked up the path to one of the peaks overlooking the area. There were some other tourists around along the pathways, so I found my way off the beaten path and headed up to an unpopulated area near the top of a peak. I remember that it was spectacular. The soil is really red. As you look around you, all you see are the surrounding peaks of the other mountains. As I drove up I could imagine the early people riding across the valleys, hunting deer, living off of the land. As I found a secluded spot near a mountaintop, I rested and just sat, enjoying the splendor of the surrounding scenery. But as I wandered a bit more, I came across something that I hadn’t seen in years, not since my childhood on Staten Island. In a clearing on one of the plateaus was an altar. It had been set up by someone else who had climbed the same mountain. They had climbed up seeking a place alone. They had sought a place to meet the divine. They had set up an altar. It wasn’t much. It was a simple collection of stones set up in an unmistakable arrangement. It was built with the idea that it would help in the establishing of a connection with spiritual reality, whatever that reality might be. Maybe it was offered to a god the supplicant or supplicants knew by name. Maybe it was seen as an impersonal force that nonetheless needed a structure to help in the sending and receiving of spiritual signals. Maybe it was seen as a way to communicate with previous generations passed on before. I wondered if anything had been sacrificed when the altar was built. I don’t recall seeing any remains. I think there were items that had been left on the stones, personal items of importance to those who had climbed up high, hoping to somehow connect with some ‘other’ or others. Beckoning to some great unknown, hoping that there is someone or even something there to listen to words spoken, words cried out, words unsaid, needing to be said. I’m sympathetic to their need. I know that I want there to be someone or something ‘out there’ who can hear me ‘down here’ and maybe even give an answer or two. We all climb hills. We all instinctively climb upward, seeking to find answers that seem not to reside in us. I am sympathetic to there needs. But I still destroyed the altar.

Would you drink water from a spring near Love Canal? Would you dare risk putting a cup to your mouth, knowing what might be in the water? Maybe it’s clean. It probably isn’t though. It’s probably been polluted by the nearby toxic waste that will not stay put. The pollution has seeped down and out into the soil and underground springs. Deep waters normally safe are no longer safe. If I were to block up a spring I knew to be polluted, yet nearby others cried out from thirst, I would, at first glance seem heartless, cruel even. Drinking waters from broken cisterns is a double tragedy. The cisterns are useless for what they’re intended. They can’t hold the water needed so badly. But the water that gives life is spilt. Is falls to the ground, unused. Energy spent to no end.

Temples meet us in the heights. They lift us up. They fill a need. The issue isn’t whether temples are needed or not. We cannot avoid temples no matter what we do. The question is what temple and to what end? The Jewish and Christian scriptures are filled with temples, both sacred and idolatrous. As we’ve seen before, the first temple was the Garden in Eden. It was a place set apart from the surrounding environment. It was a place of life, cultivation, name-giving, and authority. It was the place where God dwelled more tangibly than anywhere else. It was where He rested after His great creative work. We, through our primordial ancestors, the first couple, were called into His presence, breathed into and given life. We were called to bring order out of and into the chaos of the surrounding world. We were called to be the intersecting point between heaven and earth and spread the garden outward. Remember, we are soil and spirit, and we are very good.

When sin entered into the picture, when sin entered into our experience and we entertained sin, sin entered into us. We knew sin. Sin knew us. God recognized sin. God acknowledged sin’s presence, even in the garden. God warned our parents, our human representatives, of its presence, and of its consequences if partaken of by them. When our parents were bedazzled by the delights of knowledge and thought that being in the garden would automatically keep them safe, they took, ate, knew, and were blinded to God’s presence even as they saw their own nakedness. Then they were expelled.

We’ve been climbing hills ever since. It didn’t take long for the death predicted by God to fully enter into the picture. Only one generation after our first parents two brothers competed over a sacrifice to God. One’s was accepted, the other’s wasn’t. Words came to blows. Blows came to an end. One brother lays dead. One brother offers up meat. It’s accepted. Another brother offers up grain. It’s rejected. One offering from the soil is inadequate to the task at hand. It seems God wants more. The other offering takes a life as a first-fruit. God is pleased. If God won’t accept a grain offering, but wants an offering of blood, then he’ll get blood. Since death entered into the picture in the garden, death has spread out into the surrounding environment ever since. Abel’s blood still cries out and the soil still groans beneath our feet.

Throughout human history, there are two basic types of temples gone bad. The first type is the one that starts out bad. Like the tower at Babel, built to reach up to the heavens. But we also see it in Pyramids, various smaller hilltop sanctuaries, Pantheons, Monoliths, and any number of other meeting places of the gods. In each of these, the gods intersect with humanity, usually through a vice regent. Either it’s a priest or a king. Sometimes it’s both in one person. Usually that person is seen as a direct descendent of the gods himself. Sound familiar? Scary? It should sound familiar. But it shouldn’t be too scary. Again, even though there are numerous similarities between the Hebrew/Christian writings and the surrounding cultures they inhabited, common language and common imagery do show neighborly relationship but not necessarily total dependence. Again, the surrounding cosmologies had their similarities to the Hebrew narrative, but their differences were also quite striking. It’s in seeing both of these that we can better discern how to be on our guard to any idolatries that might make a claim to our spiritual loyalties.

In a little bit, we’ll look at the problem of when good temples go bad, and how that needs to be understood accurately. But for now, we should see how ‘out of the gate’ bad temples distort God, humanity, creation, and our relationship to God.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY

Ready made gods serve our whims. But these same gods do eventually want something, or better yet, someone, in return. The light gleams brightly and my eyes are dazzled. Its’ sharpness is almost painful. But it’s a pain that gives me that immediate rush I love. Every ounce of my being quivers in delight at the filling I’m feeling. Rushing torrents of power course through me and I feel so alive. I have the gods in my hands. I control them. I am their master. Our gods are the ones we seek after. They’re us, but more manageable. They’re us, but more powerful. They’re us, but more of what we wish we were. They’re us, and that’s why we hate them so much. Our gods are always too much and not enough. They always promise us more than they can deliver. As we gaze into their awful visage, we are transformed into their image. We ultimately become what we most fervently dwell on, or more accurately, dwell in.

My needs are many and my wants are even more. I want love. I want sustenance. I want meaning. These are all good, legitimate wants, even needs. But my wants go beyond my needs. My wants stretch out my needs until they don’t fit me anymore. My wants need more than my needs ever wanted. I’ve become super-sized in my appetites. And I need a super-sized god who can feed that yawning emptiness. But the strange reality is that this god of my understanding ends up being lesser than anything I could ever actually need. My super-sized god gives me fast food spirituality. He, she, it, ends up mal-nourishing me as I gorge myself on its paltry poisons masquerading as food for my soul. Instead my soul becomes the food fed to my gluttonous appetite god.

Our idols sell us to the highest bidder. We bid ourselves out to those who promise us everything, but in the end take us for all we’re worth. That’s the irony of idolatry. We sell ourselves for such a cheap price, when the One who made us tells us we’re priceless and offers Himself as the only payment worthwhile, just so that we’ll be able to take freely from the table prepared before us.

In days of yore, our ancestors built towers, shrines, and various other temples to reach out and placate deities afar off. Our modern totems speak volumes of what our idols are today. We have our towers. We have our shrines. And of course we have our many temples that speak to our ‘gods’, whether they are traditional spirit beings or our recent tendency towards material satisfactions. Being sold a bill of goods until you’re sold off as a bill of goods isn’t very good. But to our culture of consumerism, everything is a product including us, especially us. Walk through a mall sometime. Visit the latest incarnation of the oldest faux temples. It’s striking how much has stayed the same.

BEHIND THE WALLS

I titled this essay “Digging through the walls” because in Ezekiel, he is told to dig through the walls of the Jerusalem Temple. When he does so, he finds that they hide an untold number of abominations and idolatries. These are the hidden things of the priesthood. These are the secreted away corners that they don’t want anyone to see or find out about. The Jerusalem Temple was commanded by God Himself to be built by David’s son Solomon. The true God of Israel, Yahweh, not the false gods of the surrounding peoples, called for this temple to be built to honor His name above all other names. And yet this same temple had become corrupted. It held detestable things inside it. It had become a haunt of wickedness and rampant immorality. This temple that God had commanded to be built and had commended to His people was now a hateful thing in His eyes.

This is a work in progress, so I'll hopefully wrap it up soon. But since I'm moving right now, we'll see when that'll happen!

Building the Third Temple

BUILDING THE THIRD TEMPLE

What does it mean to build the third temple? Should we be looking about for a red heifer, in hopes that it might cleanse some future temple in Jerusalem? As the previous weeks have shown, the Old Testament tabernacles and temples all hearkened back to the Garden of Eden. Then we saw that when Jesus came, He was God “tabernacling” in the flesh. John uses the most explicit temple imagery regarding Jesus. Jesus is the new temple. He replaces the old, temporary, hand-made temple that stood in Jerusalem. While Herod’s temple stood as the second “incarnation” of God’s dwelling place in Jewish history, God’s kingdom was still a far off hope, not yet realized. Herod’s temple was a temple built from violence. It was a temple that reflected more his own quest for glory than the dwelling place of the shekinah glory of God.

When Christ came and began proclaiming that the kingdom of God had been inaugurated with Him, He spoke of the promises of the prophets being fulfilled in Himself and His ministry. The prophets promised that a new temple would come that would not be made with hands. Instead, the final temple would be built by God Himself, and this temple would be the perfect embodiment of where righteousness would dwell. This temple would be built with living stones that would cry out praise to God and proclaim His faithfulness to all the creation. Christ was the Cornerstone of this new temple that would spread out across the world. The stone would be the Cornerstone that would become a mountain that would fill the whole earth.

That building project has been going on for two thousand years now, and each new believer and the sanctifying presence of God within them has spread out God’s recreating work until the day when God says “It is done” and all of normal human history will be wrapped up and all things will be reconciled and made new. As we have become believers, the temple has been built. And with each new believer, the building project continues. But the temple grows in other ways too.

As the primordial garden brought order into chaos, life out of death, fertility out of desolation, and the direct rule of God through His appointed vice regents, the new, third temple inaugurated by Christ has the same effect on the surrounding world, even to today. It will reach its climactic pinnacle at the end of history when God, through Christ, will radically intervene into our mundane history and set things right. Christ will vindicate those who have put their trust in Him and have been willing to suffer for His name’s sake, even unto death.

The new third temple, like the previous temples, and the garden before them, will have a dual focus in enacting its God-given purpose. It will minister to its own, the covenant people called by God’s own name, in order to sanctify them through and through. This ministry of sanctification, of making a holy people unto Himself, is not an end in itself. The point of making a people that are holy, set apart to do the Lord’s work, is to have them get about the work at hand! We are made holy in order to be used by God to bring in righteousness. We are called to be light shining in the darkness. We are called to be salt that preserves. We are called to follow in the footsteps of our master, friend, and older brother, Jesus, and take up our cross, kneel low to wash feet, turn over tables in holy places defiled by lust and greed, and more. Jesus even says that we will do greater things than He did during His ministry. That’s hard to imagine. But He did say it. Do we believe Him? Can we trust His word? Are we yet fulfilling His word for us?

This third temple is to be the place where righteousness dwells. It is the place of the New Covenant people. We are the ones the prophets spoke about when they said that hearts of stone would be made flesh. In the New Testament witness, we see the most explicit temple imagery in the letter to the Hebrew Christians and in Peter’s first letter to the exiles spread out over modern day Turkey, not to mention John’s Revelation. All of the New Testament writers understood that Christians, those who trusted in Jesus as Messiah, were the true heirs of the Old Testament promises. Their words were no more radical than anything the Old Testament prophets had said concerning the people of their own day. Jeremiah made it abundantly clear that just saying “the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” as some magical incantation, would then, nor will it now, protect a rebellious people from God’s righteous judgment.

The New Covenant, New Living Temple people of God, made up of believing Jews and gentiles, are to be the temple of God on earth. And being the temple on earth means doing the work of the temple. Remember that the temple of God is where God dwells directly. It is where God reigns directly. It is where God does the work of bringing reconciliation to the world broken by sin and rebellion. Thus it is the place where sacrifice happens. In the garden God dwelled. God reigned directly. God cultivated an oasis in a land of chaos. When rebellion occurred in the garden, God expelled the offenders, but also clothed them with an animal skin to cover their nakedness. The tabernacles and subsequent temples also served those same purposes. Christ comes in the flesh as the embodiment of God’s presence and reign. He finally fulfills the garden mandate. He obeys as Adam and Eve had not. He becomes our covering, sacrificed for our sin, covering our nakedness.

Since Christ fulfills the reason for the garden, the tabernacle, and the temple, and we are in Him, we reside, spiritually now, fully at His return, in the place of rest that is His body. The work has been done. It is finished. Now the kingdom spreads like a fertile vine in a land already full of weeds. It springs up with life giving water, feeding all those who would drink from this One Spring. Wrapped in His cloak, we are hidden in His life because we have already shared in His death. And unlike the kings and kingdoms of this fallen world, we set out to spread the kingdom of God by following after our greatest example, Jesus.

To know how best to bring about the kingdom of God means that we need look no further than the life of Christ. He alone is our standard. He alone is our starting point and goal. He leads us to the cross, only to see us through to the broken open grave. The consummation of the kingdom of God, when the kingdoms of this world will be the kingdom of Christ, will not fully come about until His return. But what will be seen in fullness then, vindicated then, finalized then, is now seen only in part.

The temple image is very physical. It immediately brings to mind brick and mortar. It’s very ‘this world’ in its impact. But the kingdom of God being spread out across the world through the ministry of the church doesn’t seem so physical, since we have no physical holy place in Jerusalem, Rome, or Athens. This lack of a physical building is often thought of as being more ‘other-worldly’ because of that difference. After all, we’re the ‘heavenly’ people of God, whereas the Jews were the ‘physical’ people of God. At least according to the dispensational understanding. But if the dispensational view that sets apart the Jew from the gentile is wrong, and I believe it is, then how should we see the temple at the end of time? What is the temple in Revelation?

REVEALING THE HIDDEN TEMPLE

The temple in Revelation is seen in different imagery from chapter 1 through to chapter 22. The fact that Revelation itself is written in a seven-fold manner attests to a very Jewish, Zechariah influenced literary motif. Revelation uses much, if not most of its imagery from Jewish apocalyptic writings such as Daniel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel. All three of these Jewish apocalyptic writings are very temple oriented themselves. Since they were all written during the exile, when the first temple had already been destroyed, and the hope for a new temple was only on the horizon, or at best only getting started, as in Zechariah.

The seven lamp-stands that are featured in chapters one through three are symbolic of the fullness of the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling in their midst. The lamp-stands are menorahs, which are standard temple décor. So already, John is linking the churches and the presence of God together in a way that hearkens back to the Jerusalem temple. As a side note, whether John wrote his revelation before or after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD does not dramatically change the importance of the imagery he uses throughout the book. If he wrote it before the destruction, and the temple was still standing, his temple imagery would point out to those reading it that they were the true Jews, the true priesthood, and the true temple of God, not the unbelieving Jews who were persecuting them. If he wrote it after Titus’s army destroyed the temple, then his temple words and images would simply be a way of pointing out that the old Jerusalem temple was done and over with and that the only true temple left was the one made up of those who belonged to Jesus Christ.

John also would want to make it clear that no other temple would suffice in revealing God’s holy presence. The Roman emperors had temples to their own glory set up all throughout the Roman provinces, and any good Jew or Christian that these were idolatrous and blasphemous competitors to what God had commanded. Much of what John wrote was concerned to keep his readers strong in the faith in the face of severe persecution and temptation to give in to the ‘little pinch of incense’ that the emperor demanded.

Most likely John was writing to a community fighting a two front war. On one side were the other Jews who did not believe in Jesus and who were accusing Christians of every possible crime against the empire, and on the other side was the empire itself, trying to either co-opt or wipe out this still young community of Jewish and gentile believers in this Jewish Messiah. The Revelation was given to give hope to a desperate band of believers, warning to others among them, and a promise that God, through Christ, and in a mysterious way His church, was going to overcome and defeat the kingdoms of this world. I believe that the book was written later, so that the Jerusalem temple had already been destroyed by Titus’s army. Thus the temple language used by John spoke to a temple that was currently hidden from sight, but “real” nonetheless. The temple in Revelation is in the heavens until its “revelation” later on when it descends to earth.

Chapter 4 of Revelation is a scene of the throne room of heaven where the four living creatures, as in Ezekiel 1, continually praise God. Chapter 5 has the prayers of the saints in bowls of incense. Chapter 6 has the souls of saints under the altar asking how long before their blood would be avenged. Chapter 7 has the 144,000 Israelites sealed and the great multitude from every nation praising God who “serve him day and night in his temple”. John continues to reside in the heavenly temple courts seeing these fantastic visions of what was soon to come.

Chapter 11 has the most temple language so far, and has John being told to measure the temple, the altar, and those who worship there, but not the outer court. That’s left to the nations to trample for a season. Interestingly, the outer court of the temple is also referred to as the ‘holy city’ in this same passage. At the end of chapter 11, the heavenly temple is opened and the ark of the covenant is displayed for all to see. Chapter 14 has the Lamb on Mount Zion with his 144,000 ready to do battle. Chapter 15 has the sanctuary of the tent of witness being opened and the fiery judgments of God ready to be poured out on earth.

To be continued...

The Temple in Scripture

God's House
The Temple of God. It's where God lives. He's present there in a way that He isn't elsewhere. But how can that be? God is omni-present isn't He? He is. But even at the very beginning of creation, God decided to build a place where His presence would dwell more tangibly than anywhere else. That first place is the garden. It's the first temple of God. God walks around its environs freely and nothing in that holy place is disturbed by His immediate presence. He takes a creature out of the ground outside of the garden and fashions a man, adam, from adama, which means dirt, soil, earth. He then brings him into the garden, breathes life into him so that he is now a living being, and places him in charge of the garden. Up to this point every thing has been 'good' but now adam is standing there twiddling his thumbs and God says for the first time that something isn't quite right. He even says that this situation is 'not good'. First God brings all the critters that He had made before adam up to adam in order to name them (an act of dominion by the way. We name that which we have power over). But none of the animals is quite right for what adam 'really' needs. Adam needs someone like himself. God knocks him out, splits his side, builds a woman, and then adam sees another living being just like him, but different. Humanity version 2.0! Now that's very good!

So they get to work. It's not hard. All they have to do is tend the garden and do like the rest of the critters by being fruitful and multiplying. Eventually, even if there were no rebellion,the garden would have had to grow beyond it created space. All these critters, plants, and humans multiplying would have led pretty quickly to some mighty cramped quarters. And besides, outside the garden was barreness and chaos, and it needed to be restored (if you hold to an angelic fall preceeding the human one) or organized/ordered in order to reflect the heavenly/cosmic temple. Either way, this primordial couple had some work to do, and they were God's vice regents in charge of getting it done.

Shiny Serpents
But even in this primordial paradise, there were other creatures that had other ideas. A creature that can be seen as a spirit being also lurks in this garden. He speaks to the woman first, asking her about what God had said previously. Did God really say...? Something in this line of questioning must have tickled the ear of Eve (the name means the mother of all living), so that the words sunk down into her. She listened to these accusing, questioning words. But so did the man, Adam, standing next to her. They both gave in to the impulse to take the shiny serpent's word over that of the One who had created them. Somehow they didn't take seriously the warning that they would 'die' that very day if they disobeyed God's command.
This shiny serpent (I use the term 'shiny serpent' because the Hebrew, nachash, can be translated either as a noun, serpent, or as an adjective, shiny one. Since later Scripture describes our great adversary, Satan, as being both, I lean towards a both/and rather than an either/or approach to translating the term) gets them to take the first bite. Their eyes are opened now. They see they're naked in a different way than before. Before this moment they knew they were naked, but they were OK with it. They weren't ashamed. Now they were. Something had changed. Now they had something to hide. Something, or better yet, someone, had to die.

Eviction
They hear God walking around nearby. They're scared. They run and hide. They cover up. God asks His own questions. He isn't so much interested in finding out what happened. He knows full well what just went down. He wants to know their 'story'. How are they going to explain themselves. Thus from this moment on, we find our own story told for the first time here. It's not my fault! God asks the man. It's the woman's fault who 'You' gave me (bad move!). God asks the woman. It's the shiny serpent's fault. God doesn't ask the shiny serpent anything. All three get judged. The man has to work harder to get the same or lesser results. The woman gets painful childbirth and submission to the man. The shiny serpent gets thrown to the ground and a death sentence that is irrevocable, even if somewhat delayed in the sentencing phase.
Meanwhile, the first couple get their walking papers. They get the very first pink slip from the royal residence. They're evicted from the garden. Their charge, their responsibility, is still intact, but now they get to share in the primordial chaos surrounding them. That chaos is now in them. They now are that chaos.
God was pleased to have them dwell in His midst as long as they 'dwelled' in His Word, His command. But now that they had decided to follow a different path, He sent them out from His midst. A flaming sword made sure that they could not turn back to where they had come from. They were now 'separated' from God because of their rebellion, their sin. Their relationship with God had been ruptured. They were no longer on speaking terms. The honeymoon was over. The sweet communion was over, it was dead. And soon they would be too. And the dying began.
Every time someone in Scripture is confronted with the immediate presence of God since then, they always cry out "Woe is me! For I am undone!", "Get away from me, a sinful man!", "I fell as a dead man." To be in the presence of God without some sort of mediation was and is a very dangerous thing. In fact, it's deadly. All of the Biblical writers knew that. We would do well to know that too. To entertain God glibly is to invite His holy wrath. Strange fire still burns deadly. God will not be mocked. But God was also pleased to provide a way. More temples will show up.

The greatest 'cover up' in history!
Something, or as I put it earlier, someone, had to die. An animal, we don't know what kind, was sacrificed in order to provide a covering for the man and the woman. This second 'skin' would protect them until something better came along. Temples throughout the world have, almost to a one, a sacrificial system in place to appease various deities. A pinch of incense here, a pure virgin there, a grain offering can't hurt. Somehow, we have to get those angry gods off our backs. That, and they always seem to have these temples on hilltops and mountaintops where high priests and kings intercede between us and them. The Bible also talks about temples on mountains, gardens, sacrifices, and being 'right' with God. Why is it all so familiar? Did all of these pagan religions and cultures 'borrow' these ideas from God's people? Worse yet, did the Hebrews 'borrow' these ideas from their pagan neighbors? Which came first, the sacrificial chicken or the fertility egg?
These kinds of questions scare us. Can I hold on to my faith in what the Bible says when I find out that there were/are religions that speak of almost all the same themes? In reading about the Temple and its importance to the church's ministry, I was surprised at how much overlap there was between the Biblical witness and the imagery and even content of the surrounding cultures. The Ancient Near East (ANE) is filled with creation narratives and judgments from the gods on humanity. Yet in each of these accounts, there are also striking differences between the Biblical account and what the ANE describe.
While to our modernistic and materialistic ears the Biblical account of creation and the fall may seem quite fantastic, it is surprisingly tame and materially coherent compared to the surrounding narratives of the ANE. The striking similarities between the Biblical narrative and the surrounding culture is counterbalanced by the wildly fantastic differences found in some of those other stories. Yes, they all have similar creation narratives. But unlike the Biblical narrative, which sees the physical realm as inherently good, the surrounding tales find the physical creation being born out of conflict and violence. We, as physical beings, exist because of war. We are the offspring of violence. In other words, what's the matter with matter? In the Hebrew Scriptures, nothing. In much of the surrounding narratives, everything.
Thus the 'end' or 'purpose' of our story in the pagan world is to either escape this inherently flawed world (think gnostics) or duke it out on the ground level in imitation of the pantheon of gods vying for head man (or woman) on the totem pole. In either case, we escape or we compete violently to get the upper hand.

A Violent Peace
But what about the blood? Many people get queasy at the sight of blood. Some Christians do too. Blood seems, well, so bloody. The whole idea of blood sacrifices seems like something more akin to a vampire movie than to anything modern Christians could believe. But it's our modernism that's the problem, not the blood. Christianity has always acknowledged the importance of blood. After all, it's the blood of Jesus that washes away my sins isn't it? Nothing but the blood? We sing it, but it still makes us uneasy. Blood implies violence. But isn't the gospel about peace? Is the gospel message about God reconciling a people to Himself. He makes peace with us, His enemies. But how does God, at least the God of the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures, make peace?

Before we get to how God makes peace, let's get a better idea of why there needs to be peace in the first place. If we need peace, maybe that's because there is currently war. But if we need peace because there is already war, then how did we get war? War came about because of rebellion. Back at the beginning, as we saw earlier, there is a rebellion. There is a rebellion of humans against God. But there is also a rebellion of the angelic realm against God too. We know that not only from the Genesis account with that nachash character asking all the wrong questions, but because of other accounts that tell us about an earlier (apparently) cosmic rebellion. Isaiah alludes to it in chapter 14:12-14 when he speaks of the fall of the king of Babylon. Ezekiel too speaks the same way when he describes the fall of the king of Tyre in chapter 28:11-19. While this is a lament against the king of Tyre, verse 14 seems to point pretty strongly towards something or someone beyond and before a mere mortal king. By the way, it's in this passage that we see the garden of God, Eden, also being described as the holy mountain of God. There are several other passages that also describe the cosmic rebellion, but the main concern here is to bring out that there was a spiritual rebellion among these angels and other spirit beings that occurred before the human fall. One of the characteristic features of these descriptions of the cosmic fall is that these powers are always violent and perpetrate injustice. They are unholy, both in their idolatry and in their impurity.

Meanwhile, back to the blood. One day Abraham gets told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Go up to this mountain and offer him up as a burnt offering. Again, this is hard stuff. We recoil at this idea. We always breath a sigh of relief when God intervenes through His angel by providing a lamb/ram tangled in a thicket nearby. "God Himself will provide a lamb." That was the promise to Abraham. He did provide Himself a lamb to Abraham. The Son of promise lived so that a still later Son of promise might die.

To be holy is to be in the presence of God. To be holy is to have the presence of God in your midst. To be holy is to dwell with God. To be holy is to have God dwell with you.

In the Mean Time
God meets people in all kinds of interesting places. He meets them on roads to Damascus. He meets them when they're asleep. He meets them out in open fields while they tend flocks of sheep. He meets them in burning bushes. He just shows up. Sometimes a particular person is looking for God. Many times they're not. In fact, sometimes they're running headlong in the other direction. But each time God meets someone, they remember the spot they wer at when it happened. It's kind of like "Where were you when 9/11 happened?" We all know. It's seared into our memories because ot was such a traumatic event. Well, meeting God is traumatic too. You don't soon forget that moment either. That is, of course, if you live to tell about it.

Each time someone met God in the period of the patriarchs, they set up altars, usually a collection of stones, in order to commemorate the event. It also set aside that spot as a sacred space, holy ground. It's the place where God met with us. Heavenly-earthly intersections. Portals to the spiritual realm that had a dangerous, special significance. Take off your shoes. Treat this spot with care. God was here. These stones remember that. These meeting places are heavenly footsteps, spiritual impressions left behind that somehow still resonate with a shimmer of His presence. He keeps showing up. First with the first couple in the garden. Then with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even more so with Moses. We see a much more developed scene of the heavenly realm when God talks to Moses. He even commands Moses to build a tabernacle that corresponds to the heavenly original! He gets the specs direct from God! That way, whenever they moved, God's special presence (His shekinah glory) moved with them. He traveled with them as they sojourned through the wilderness. Eventually, they would make it to the promised land. But not yet. Even more temples were to come. A king would need to build a more permanent structure. But the temples soon to be built left something to be desired. They were too handy so to speak. That's not the kind of temple God really wanted anyway. But it's a good pointer to the real deal.

The first Temple; that is, the Temple of Solomon, was commanded by God. He had commanded David, but David was a man of war, so he couldn't lawfully construct the temple (1 Kings 5:3). Only a man of peace could build the temple. David's son's name Solomon means "peace." It's a variant of the Hebrew word shalom. God's Temple could only be built by a man of peace, during a time of peace or rest. Thus David could not, but his son, Solomon, could and would. God commanded the Israelites to build Him a Temple in order to make His name known (1 Kings 5:5). But even Solomon seemed to acknowledge that what he built was wholly inadequate for the task at hand.

Looking for God in all the wrong places
There were other "temples" too. Human beings can't help but be religious. We have to worship something! Either it's going to be the God who actually created all that is, or it's going to be other spiritual beings in the heavenly realm, or it's going to be a creation itself, or it's going to be the most available candidate for worship, ME! As Bob Dylan says, "ya gotta serve somebody."
Temples, towers, shrines, altars. They all evoke images of sacred space, holy ground, places of worship. All of human history is filled with these places in one form or another. According to the Biblical account, the prototypical idolatrous temple is the tower of Babel. It's the original rebellious power. All other images of rebellion and idolatry hearken back to that original act and place. Whether it's the Assyrians, the Baylonians themselves, the Chaldeans (another name for the same people), or the later Persians, Greeks, or Romans, they all speak of setting up a counterfeit version of what God intended. It's what I like to call the "evil twin skippy" effect. It looks like the real thing, but it's a counterfeit. It has to approximate the real thing in order to be able to pass itself off as the real thing, and I'm not talking about Coke!

The idolatries and false temples of the Old Testament, and of the other parts of the world even up to today all speak to this copy-cat tendency.

A Secular Faith

A SECULAR FAITH:

WHY CHRISTIANITY FAVORS THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

By Darryl Hart

Darryl Hart has written an unusual book. It is unusual primarily because he argues for a secular viewpoint regarding governance, yet from a conservative protestant perspective. Typically, most advocates of governing from a secular basis have themselves come from a non-religious, or even an anti-religious perspective. Hart’s twist is that he is a religious conservative, and argues his thesis for a secular politics from his theological orthodoxy, not from any underlying liberalism.

In writing his book, Hart is concerned to protect the orthodoxy of basic Christian teaching and practice from the corrupting influence brought about by politicizing the faith, whether from the left or the right. In the Preface, as well as in the Introduction, Hart presents his argument that Christianity is essentially an apolitical faith, and that any attempts to use it for political ends “fundamentally distort the Christian religion because it is essentially an otherworldly faith.” (p.16). Thus Hart offers up what he calls a “Christian secularist” alternative to “values evangelicals” on the one hand and “legal secularists” on the other.

In chapter 1, “City on a Hill,” Hart recounts the famous sermon of John Winthrop aboard the Arbella called “A Model of Christian Charity” and shows how influential that sermon has been to America’s self conception since then. Yet, more importantly, Hart points out that Winthrop’s understanding of the Puritan experiment in America was “an effort to perpetuate Christendom” (p.38); a concept that Hart clearly is glad to see as a past tense reality.

In chapter 2, “Whose Freedom, Which Liberty?” Hart describes in great detail the work of John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. I had always understood Witherspoon to be one of the most orthodox Christians among the founders of the nation, yet I had not realized how politicized, and thus distorted, Christian teaching had already become, even with him. He basically argued that ““the temporal and eternal happiness of us and our society,” depended on political autonomy” and that “true religion, that is, Protestant Christianity, flourished only where civil magistrates protected civil liberties” (p.51).

Witherspoon also argued that not only did ‘true religion’ only flourish under civil liberties, but that ‘true religion’ itself was responsible for those very liberties. Hart goes on to describe how this unproved assumption permeated American Christian thinking from Witherspoon, and his “Christian republicanism,” through to the Social Gospel era, even to the modern “Christian Right” and their conservative allies. Later on in the same chapter, Hart points out that the Westminster Assembly, which produced the famous Confession of the same name, met during deeply politically charged times. Yet in the parts of that confession that would seemingly have the most political importance, in those parts that spoke of Christian liberty, “the Westminster divines paid no attention to politics.” (p.62). And as he says on the next page, “this freedom had nothing to do with politics because it was as much the privilege of the “martyr at the stake, the slave in his chains, the prisoner in his dungeon, as well as the king upon the throne.”” (p.63). Basically, for Hart, a Christian is free because of Christ, not because of any civil liberties he may or may not enjoy. Amen to that!

In the next chapter, “For Goodness’ Sake,” Hart illustrates the moralism that many, if not most, of the founders infused into public schooling and how they used Christian language to legitimate that political purpose. Yet it was a Christian language that was gutted of any particular doctrinal content, leaving only the ethical behavior, so that better citizens might be produced. Yet biblical and historical Christianity has always held that true Christian faith must have the doctrinal underpinning in order to make any sense of the ethical behavior. As Hart says,

What is remarkable is that more Protestants did not see the problem, and that present-day Protestants who advocate religion in public schools do not understand the way in which their religion is abused when used only for its ethical norms while neglecting the centrality of its redemptive message. One plausible explanation for the disparity is that the believers who desire a common morality for public institutions like schools are actually better republicans than they are Christians. (p.93)

In “Under God” Hart has two main points. The first one is that America is no more “under God” than any other nation, in the sense that God is “over” every nation, whether they acknowledge Him or not. Our saying so or not changes that reality not one whit. He then goes on to describe the development of the redefined “kingdom of God” theology that shaped America’s “Christian” identity between the Civil War and World War I. A theology that, in Hart’s estimation, was “fundamentally flawed.” (p.116). Essentially, the state’s purpose is justice and the church’s purpose is mercy. And “[t]o confuse the two is to misconstrue the bad cop (the state) and the good cop (the church).” (p.122). And both Christian liberals and conservatives have “to answer the question of whether in fact God or liberal democracy is Lord.” (p.122).

Hart follows up with “The People’s Faith,” which describes the democratic impulse in America’s religious life, best described by its anti-creedalism and its anti-clericalism. This also left American Protestantism deeply anti-Catholic and led to the chronic “Americanist” controversies. But primarily, Hart is concerned to point out how a “democratized” Christianity presented itself as the necessary ingredient for a successful democracy. This interplay is described and challenged by Hart, as well as by such luminaries as J.Gresham Machen and Stanley Hauerwas. In other words, just because American Christianity got “democratized” doesn’t mean that democracy “needs” Christianity.

In “Impersonal Politics,” John F. Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism, and Al Smith’s before him, was seen as being too influential for many American Protestants. Since the constitution made clear that no religious test could be required for serving in any public office, these candidates had to prove that they were not “too” Catholic. Oh, how times have changed! Now, every candidate for elected office, especially the presidency, has to prove how their faith has impacted their policy decision-making, or else they are seen as suspect. More interestingly, Hart brings out how American Christians have given themselves over to a view of the self that is not necessarily biblical, but may in fact be more informed by modern therapeutic concepts and political ideologies.

Hart advocates a Christian life that is better understood as a “hyphenated” existence, segmented by parallel commitments that don’t necessarily always overlap. Hart also brings up the apparently contradictory advice given in the two scriptures of Luke 16:13 and Matthew 22:21, where believers are alternately told to not serve two masters and to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. His answer to this dilemma is strikingly similar to what John Piper says in his recent book, “What Jesus Demands From The World.” Basically, “by serving Caesar, Christians may better serve Christ.” (p.174).

In “The Tie That Divides” Hart gives a broad overview of the work of the Protestant ecumenical movement in the twentieth century through the Federal, then National Council of Churches, which sought to further “christianize” America through social action and influence. All the while radically watering down the doctrinal content of the Christian message in order to make the appeal as broad as possible. He also shows the similarity of the National Association of Evangelicals to the earlier ecumenism, in that they also sought to set aside divisive theological issues among “conservative” Protestants so as to better influence and impact the greater culture. Hart more than adequately points out the fundamental difficulty of giving up theological distinctives in order to “redeem” the culture.

In “The Dilemma of Compassionate Conservatism” Hart enters into the current period of values politics. Here, Hart argues his most contentious view, that the pursuit of “Christian politics” is a fool’s errand. He recounts the developments over the last thirty or so years of the re-entry of the fundamentalist and evangelical fold back into politics, after having self-segregated themselves to pursue the saving of souls to the exclusion of the culture wars. Hart’s description of the difficulties inherent in president Bush’s Faith Based Initiative is well put when he says,

the issue of federal funding for religious charitable organizations begged a fundamental question in pursuit of the legal one. Instead of asking whether the constitution permitted such entanglement of religion and politics, Bush, DiLulio, and others weighing in should have been asking whether the teachings of Bush’s favorite philosopher were compatible with the essential logic of the faith-based initiative. (pp.212-213)

Later in the same chapter, Hart describes the efforts of evangelical progressives such as Jim Wallis and Ron Sider to reintegrate “evangelical” beliefs into public policy as early as the seventies. How that re-engagement first showed itself in the Christian Right of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. And then the ultimate irony of how “[n]ot until George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and his faith-based initiative did the largest and oldest institutional guardian of the evangelical movement adopt a social agenda comparable to the 1973 Chicago Declaration of the evangelical left.” (p.225).

Further along in this same chapter Hart becomes clearer in his own affinities regarding Christian involvement in public affairs when he mentions the impact of Calvin College and Seminary and their influence from Abraham Kuyper, who ultimately believed that “all of life is religious” (p.229). Hart’s critique of this perspective becomes obvious when he says, “The idea that the affairs of civil society or public policy are part of a cosmic contest between the forces of good and evil nurtures a zero-sum approach to government that leaves little room for compromise and raises questions about what to do with nonbelievers and idolatry.” and even more troubling, that “the most God-honoring state would at least be one that tolerates only the true faith, with theocracy being a distinct possibility.” (p.229).

Next, Hart offers a view that is better understood as Lutheran than Reformed when he argues for a “two kingdom” approach to the church’s interaction with civil society. He also parts company with many of his Presbyterian brethren when he argues for a much more discontinuous view regarding the church and Israel in the Old and New Testaments. Hart’s no dispensationalist, but he clearly repudiates, without even having to directly say so, the theonomist and reconstructionist view, which sees almost total continuity between the covenants and the church and Israel.

The traditional Lutheran two kingdom theology sees the church being responsible for spiritual needs and the state being responsible for the physical, temporal realm. The other distinctive that is seen much more clearly in Lutheran thought, is that they emphasize the theology of the cross, which takes more seriously the value of redemptive suffering, over the theology of glory typically seen in Reformed circles, which tends towards identifying the church with Israel “entering and inheriting the land” during this age. This mindset naturally leads to a “dominionist” attitude that sees the use of statecraft and its’ leverage as being a necessary component of “bringing in” the kingdom of God.

Finally, in “A Secular Faith,” the final chapter, Hart offers up his defense of the “Christian secularist” approach to the church’s appropriate interaction with the larger culture. He argues that not only did the reformation secularize the West, leading ultimately to the disestablishment of the church in the French and American revolutions, but that Christianity (and even earlier, Judaism) were/are inherently secularizing religions. Since Judaism posits a transcendent God that cannot be manipulated magically by its adherents, and Christianity cleaves even further the sacred/secular divide through the teachings of Christ and the apostles, contra the monistic political/religious construct of Islam, and Protestant Christianity has deepened that secular impulse, we, as American Protestant Christians, should welcome living hyphenated lives that can be “in, but not of” the world around us. As Hart says at the end, dare to be a Daniel! Since “This Daniel, the assimilated and devout prophet, may be the best model for American Christians wanting to know how to participate meaningfully in public life.” (p.256).

Darryl Hart has written an unusual book. But it’s also an important book for anyone concerned to be faithful to Christ and his call to our lives as Christians. Whether you agree with everything Hart says or not is less important than acknowledging the importance of how our interaction with American politics has impacted our witness as Christians, whether individually or as a church. If Hart is largely right, then we need to reconsider where we spend our energy. Are we going to run around, seeing who we can get elected into various offices in order to bring about certain legislation that we see as being more “Christian” or “evangelical,” or are we going to get to the work that Christ and his designated heirs commanded us to do?

And if there is a concern that Hart is advocating a type of Christian quietism that reverts back to the self-segregation that typified an earlier American fundamentalism, he points out that “with a properly high estimate of the created order, human nature, and the relative importance of civil society for maintaining order and restraining evil (at least), Christians may fruitfully participate in public life not as a site of redemption but as an essential part of their humanity.” (p.257). In other words, “secular politics is thoroughly compatible with orthodox Christianity.” (p.257). As a thoroughly political person who is also trying to be faithful to my Christian calling, this is music to my ears!