I just finished reading Rachel Held Evans's newest book Searching for Sunday.

First, Searching for Sunday is such a well-written book. Rachel's writing is always smart, funny, soulful, honest and warm. When you read Rachel you're going to learn something in one paragraph, laugh in the next, and get self-reflective after that. That's what I've always liked about Rachel's writing, the combination of heart and mind, intellect and soul, erudition and passion.

Overall, here is what struck me about Searching for Sunday.

The narrative thread that runs through the book begins with Rachel and her husband Dan, who live in the small town of Dayton, TN, struggling with and eventually leaving a loving but conservative evangelical church. This is a painful leave-taking because this church loved Rachel and Dan and Rachel and Dan loved this church. But the theological and political tensions grew to be too much.

Let me pause here. I grew up in a small conservative church. And I still attend a church that is more conservative than I am. How am I able to tolerate this?

I think a large part of it is due to the fact that the churches I attended, while theologically conservative, were Anabaptist enough to be apolitical. Presidential elections came and went and we never talked about them. Preachers never treated the congregation as a voting block to be sent to the polls.

As I reflect on this in light of Searching for Sunday (I'm thinking here especially of Chapter 8 "Vote Yes On One"), I'm wondering if this isn't evangelicalism's fundamental mistake, the politicization of the church. Evangelicalism has become more concerned with elections than with the gospel. Rather than proclaiming the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus evangelicalism has devolved into a raw, Nietzschean will to power.

No wonder Millennials are disillusioned.

Anyway, after leaving their church Rachel and Dan work with others to start a new church called The Mission in Dayton. That church plant never reaches the numerical and financial "tipping point" to take off, eventually exhausting the small group who started the work. The Mission closes its doors.

A season of disillusionment for Rachel follows. We've all felt it. Maybe we should just sleep in on Sundays and give up on going to church. And if we do go back to church where should we go? Most churches have some sort of baggage that disqualifies them given the "must have" checklist we bring to the table as we shop around. No church is perfect.

Eventually, Rachel and Dan find their way back to Sunday, finding community at St. Luke's Episcopal Church.

This journey of leave-taking and reunion is told through the lens of the seven sacraments--baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, anointing the sick and marriage. While Rachel and Dan are "searching for Sunday" we are introduced or, rather, re-introduced to the church by reflecting upon these seven sacraments. Rachel's reflections upon the sacraments are biblical, theological and historical. You learn a lot of bible and church history reading about each sacrament.

But the thread that holds it all together is how each sacrament, as Rachel experiences it in contemporary contexts in her own life and with fellow believers, brings Rachel back to that grace we call the church. As Rachel writes in her Prologue "Dawn": "It seemed fitting to arrange the book around the sacraments because it was the sacraments that drew me back to church after I'd given up on it."

That is the part of Searching for Sunday that I'd like to dwell on.

In many ways Searching for Sunday is the continuation and sequel to Faith Unraveled (formerly Evolving in Monkey Town). If you read Faith Unraveled you know that it was a book about doubt and questions and Rachel's quest to find a faith that would welcome and embrace those questions.

Those doubts are still very much with Rachel in Searching for Sunday. In fact, to this reader, those doubts seem even heavier.

A lot has been made about Rachel's relationship and conflict with evangelicalism. And much of that disillusionment with evangelicalism is on display in Searching for Sunday, related mostly to Rachel's more "progressive" or "liberal" views regarding gender roles and the inclusion of LGBT persons in the church. Those two issues are a large part of Rachel and Dan's "break up" with the evangelical church they were attending in Dayton.

And yet, as I read Searching for Sunday, doubt remains the deeper issue. Disagreements about gender and sexuality are a part of the problem, but what haunts Rachel from the beginning to the end of the book is doubt.

For example, early the book Rachel laments (emphasis her's),

What if none of this is true? What if it's all one big lie?

In the chapter "Easter Doubt" Rachel tries to describe what it is like to go to church full of doubts. She writes,

[T]here is nothing nominal or lukewarm or indifferent about standing in this hurricane of questions every day and staring each one down until you've mustered all the bravery and fortitude and trust it takes to whisper just one of them out loud on the car ride home:

"What if we made this up because we're afraid of death?"

In the chapter "Wayside Shrines" Rachel is visiting a Catholic monastery looking to pick up the pieces after the failure of The Mission church plant. Rachel finds herself in a conversation with a monk in residence there along with a Catholic woman also on a retreat at the monastery. The conversation turns to a recent tornado in the area that did a lot of damage. Both the monk and the woman express praise that the Blessed Mother protected the monastery from the tornado. Rachel is crestfallen, thrown back into doubt. She writes:

They looked at me, expecting some kind of a response, but I didn't know how to tell them this was exactly the sort of thing that made me doubt...What kind of God pulls storm clouds away from a church and pushes them toward a mobile home park?...

I studied my plate, feeling both guilty for asking these questions and resentful of those who don't. No matter where I went to church, I realized, doubt would follow, nipping at my heels. No matter what hymns I sang, what prayers I prayed, what doctrinal statements I signed, I would always feel like an outsider, a stranger.

Finally, I think it's telling that Rachel begins the book with "Dawn" and ends the book in "Dark." Not your typical progression in a Christian memoir. Maybe Rachel has "found Sunday" by the end of the book at St. Luke's and in the church universal, but the trajectory of the book is from Dawn to Dark.

Doubt still haunts.

All that to say, again, much has been made about Rachel's lover's quarrel with evangelicalism regarding gender and sexuality (see the chapter "Evangelical Acedia" for a status report regarding her relationship with evangelicalism). But I think focusing on that quarrel misses what I think is the deeper story of Searching for Sunday.

Searching for Sunday isn't a story about someone breaking up with evangelicalism to become a mainline Protestant. Searching for Sunday is, rather, a poignant memoir about our desperate struggle to find and hold onto faith in the modern world.

I see this struggle every day in the lives of my students. I feel it in my own life.

Recently I found out some friends of mine have stopped coming to church because, well, they just don't believe anymore.

Maybe we have made all this stuff up because we are afraid to die.

Listen, if you focus on Rachel's squabbles with evangelicalism you'll be missing what I think is at the heart of Searching for Sunday. To be sure, evangelicals aren't helping the doubt-filled all that much, but as Rachel's story in the monastery shows this is a story that transcends denominational lines. Searching for Sunday is a story about doubt nipping at your heels no matter where you go on Sunday morning.

Which is why, to end on a positive note, I think Rachel's focus on the sacraments is so helpful and important. In my own way I'm making the same journey Rachel is making.

Recently, my friend Mark described me by saying that I've practiced my way back into faith. I think that's right. I've practiced my way into faith.

My faith, to connect back to Rachel, has become sacramental. Tangible, communal, relational, physical and incarnational.

As Rachel says near the end of her book,

The purpose of the church, and of the sacraments, is to give the world a glimpse of the kingdom, to point in its direction. When we put a kingdom-spin on ordinary things--water, wine, leadership, marriage, friendship, feasting, sickness, forgiveness--we see that they can be holy, they can point us to something greater than ourselves, a fantastic mystery that brings meaning to everything. We make something sacramental when we make it like the kingdom. Marriage is sacramental when it is characterized by mutual love and submission. A meal is sacramental when the rich and poor, powerful and marginalized, sinners and saints share equal status around the table. A local church is sacramental when it is a place where the last are first and the first are last and those who hunger and thirst are fed. And the church universal is sacramental when it knows no geographic boundaries, no political parties, no single language or culture, and when it advances not through power and might, but through acts of love, joy, and peace and missions of mercy, kindness, and humility.

Amen.

Tonight, as I write this, I'll be going to my own little dysfunctional church family called Freedom Fellowship. There rich and poor will share donated soup. Addicts will break bread with college professors. Criminals will clean up with business owners. White, Black and Hispanic will embrace as brothers and sisters.

Tonight we will anoint the sick and raise our hands in praise. We will celebrate the sacraments. We will confess Jesus as Lord. We will practice resurrection.

Is that faith? I don't know.

But I'm with Rachel on this.

Whatever it is, it is searching for resurrection, it is searching for Sunday.

We are pointing ourselves toward the Kingdom of God.

Whoever says, “I abide in Christ,” ought to walk just as he walked.

--1 John 2:6

A few weeks ago I was with a bunch of my students who were presenting their research at the annual Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) conference. One of the invited speakers at SWPA was Travis Langley, author of the bestselling book Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Night. My colleague David and I also got to visit with Travis during a poster session where we all had students presenting their research.

One of the things that struck me during Travis's presentation was his explanation about why Batman is so popular, perhaps the most popular comic-book character out there. (Superman and Batman seem to run neck and neck in this race.)

Here's what Travis said about the enduring popularity of Batman.

Batman attracts us, according to Travis, because Batman becomes Batman by intentionally undergoing a psychological transformation. Most superheros are superheros because they are an alien (like Superman) or because something happens to them that gives them super-human abilities (like Spider-man).

But Batman is different. Batman doesn't have any special abilities. Batman is Batman because he chooses to become a dark symbol, chooses to become a bat, chooses to become a vigilante.

Basically, as Travis pointed out, Batman is Batman because of his psychology.

Relatedly, Batman's classic adversaries don't have super-powers. Rather, they too are characterized by their own psychological quirks brought on in many cases, like Batman's, by past trauma.

Thus, when Batman confronts an adversary we're not witnessing a clash of powers but a clash of psychologies, two personalities colliding. And we're drawn to the clash as we're keen to see what the adversary draws out of Batman's psyche.

The iconic example of this is Batman's conflict with the Joker. The conflict between Batman and Joker is a psychological conflict, the Joker constantly probing and exploiting the darker elements in Batman's psyche. The Joker doesn't want to beat Batman up as much as he wants to pervert or destroy Batman's psychological and moral integrity. With Batman and the Joker it's a clash of wills--rooted in their respective psychological traumas--rather than a clash of super-powers.

Now this might be a bit of a stretch, but as I listened to Travis describe all this about the conflict between Batman and the Joker I kept thinking about the conflict between Jesus and Satan in the gospels.

Specifically, the clash between Jesus and Satan in the temptation narratives in the gospels isn't a clash between super-heroes with super-powers. We don't see Jesus and Satan throwing thunderbolts at each other from mountaintops. And Jesus and Satan don't destroy a city the way Superman and General Zod do in the recent Man of Steel movie.

No, the battle between Jesus and Satan is more like the battle between Batman and the Joker. The battle between Jesus and the Satan is psychological, moral and spiritual in nature.

I think that observation has important implications for how we envision what is called "spiritual warfare." The battle with the Satan is internal rather than external. The battle is moral, spiritual and psychological in nature.

Satan isn't a super-villain with super-powers confronting us from the outside.

Satan is more like the Joker, a force that probes and exploits the darker elements in our psyche, our fears and our perversions.

Last week I wrote about preterism and the work of N.T. Wright.

Specifically, we discussed how when Jesus speaks about a coming judgment, especially in his Olivet Discourse (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21), he wasn't talking about an otherworldly hell but about the destruction of Jerusalem. As N.T. Wright has observed, "in those famous passages in the Gospels, Jesus is talking not about the end of the world but about the fall of Jerusalem."

In a comment to that post a reader asked the following question:

"If Jesus was simply telling people not to rebel against Rome, how is that relevant to us today? Or should we not try to find personal relevance in the words of Jesus?"

That's a great question, one I wrote about last year:

Again, as scholars like N.T. Wright have pointed out Jesus seemed acutely aware that his people were on a lethal collision course with Rome. If Israel did not repent, if Israel did not listen, she was going to revisit the catastrophe when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. It was all going to happen again, Jesus prophesied. History was repeating itself.

Only this time it would be Rome dropping the hammer.

Jesus saw it coming. And he tried to stop it. But he had failed. And it brought him to tears.

Luke 19.41-44
And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Jesus's lament over Jerusalem helps us unpack how Jesus saw his mission, what he meant when he proclaimed "the Kingdom of God."

Specifically, why did Jesus weep over Jerusalem? It was because Jerusalem had failed to learn "the things that make for peace." And because Jerusalem had failed to respond to Jesus's kingdom proclamation--had failed to learn the things that make for peace, failed to learn that the Kingdom of God was "in their midst"--Jerusalem had set herself on a path of destruction.

What I find important in these observations is how Jesus's teachings regarding salvation and judgment are rooted in the concrete and historical conflict between Jerusalem and Rome. Jesus's kingdom proclamation wasn't about an otherworldly heaven and hell. The kingdom was about learning "the things that make for peace" in this world. Responding to Jesus's message was learning that the Kingdom of God is right here, right now, "in our midst."

Repent and turn back from the path of self-destruction. Learn the things that make for peace.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Relatedly, let's again note that the judgment Jesus spoke of--that place of weeping and the gnashing of teeth--wasn't hell. This was the judgment that Jesus wept over: violent death in this world. Jesus wept that those living by the sword in this world would continue dying by the sword. The "coming judgment" was a personal and communal annihilation because a people had failed to learn "the things that make for peace."

And it seems to me that Jesus's message--his proclamation of the kingdom and judgment--is extraordinarily relevant to this day. Perhaps even more so.

With Jesus we continue to weep over a world that refuses to learn "the things that make for peace." Interpersonally, socially, economically, politically, and ecologically.

The Kingdom of God is in our midst. May we repent and be saved from destruction.

There are moments that I have felt and have named
as God. Where I have glimpsed something,
out of the corner of my eye. Something clean, bright
and holy. Epiphanies, as quick and as fleeting as fireflies
dancing. And me, a child rushing
to touch and cherish in the hollow of my hands
before the light dances away.  As it always does. Still
I have seen. Seen the night
illuminated just beyond my reaching.
Even on these the darkest nights. Calling me forward--
watchful, silent and expectant.  

--an unpublished poem

My faith tradition keeps surprising me.

There's a lot that is quirky about the Churches of Christ. Our eschatology is an example. And yet, just when I think we're weird and marginal I discover that, well, through either providence or historical accident we find ourselves right on the cutting edge.

As I've written about before, eschatology within the Churches of Christ has tended toward preterism, generally partial preterism.

To catch everyone up, preterism is the view that all biblical prophecies have already been fulfilled, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. In full preterim this includes all prophecies about Final Judgment, the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead. Partial preterism is the less extreme and more common view, arguing that most of the prophecies in the book of Daniel, the book of Revelation and in Jesus's Olivet Discourse (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21) were fulfilled in 70 AD (and/or with the destruction of Rome) but that Final Judgment, the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead are still to come.

Again, many within the Churches of Christ subscribe to partial preterism. We believe that all that stuff in Revelation about the Beast, 666, the "rapture," a millennial reign and the Antichrist was referring to events that occurred in 70 AD. (Though many think that Revelation is about the destruction of Rome rather than Jerusalem. Still, we concur that most biblical prophecy is over and done with.) According to partial preterism the only event in the future that remains is the Second Coming of Jesus which ushers in Final Judgment. And that final event--the Second Coming--is wholly unpredictable and instantaneous. Jesus will come like a "thief in the night" (unpredictable) and in the "twinkling of an eye" (instantaneous).

Pore over the book of Revelation as much as you like, you will never be able to read the tea leaves.

All of which means that, in the eyes of the Churches of Christ, attempts at working out "end times prophecy," especially in relation to geo-political events (like focusing on, say, the state of Israel), is a total waste of time.

Growing up with preterism made me feel weird. Every time I engaged a Christian outside of the Churches of Christ--Baptists in particular--they had all this apocalyptic "end of days" and "rapture" theology worked out. So when I shared my belief that all that stuff they were talking about had already happened in 70 AD I was met with astonishment and incredulity.

And yet, over the years I've been noticing how preterism is becoming more mainstream. And much of this due to the work of N.T. Wright.

I don't know if Wright would describe his views as preterist. Wright is definitely not a full preterist. But much of Wright's writing articulates a partial preterist viewpoint, especially when it comes to Jesus.

Specifically, Wright argues over and over in his books, a view shared by many biblical scholars, that Jesus was calling Israel to repent as she was on a self-destructive collision course with Rome. Jesus saw the coming violent conflagration and predicted it. And about forty years after Jesus's death his predication came to pass.

All that to say, most of what Jesus was talking about in the gospels in regards to judgment--that place where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth"--isn't about an otherworldly hell in our future. Judgment, according to Jesus, was going to be a concrete historical event.

Hell was coming to earth.

And it did in 70 AD.

Here is how Wright makes these arguments in his recent book Simply Good News:

[R]eaders of the New Testament have made the mistake of forgetting (often because of the [physical/spiritual] split-level universe they live in) that language about such things as sun, moon, and stars falling from heaven was about what we would call political events...Jesus spoke of certain things that were to happen "within a generation." Many modern scholars have supposed that he was talking about "the end of the world," and that he was wrong. But, in those famous passages in the Gospels, Jesus is talking not about the end of the world but about the fall of Jerusalem...And of course Jerusalem did indeed fall to the Romans about forty years after the end of Jesus's public career...

Jesus continually warned his fellow countrymen that if they didn't follow where he was leading, the result would be disaster. He used quite lurid language for these warnings. Even so, the message didn't really get through. He wasn't saying what they wanted him to say. But a lot of those warnings, taken out of context and interpreted through the lens of much later medieval beliefs, made it sound as though Jesus was warning people not that their city and nation would be destroyed but that they were going to hell. "Unless you repent," he says twice in the early paragraphs of Luke 13, "you will all be destroyed in the same way." Read that in the fifteenth century, and it's obvious what it means: unless you give up your sins, you will be thrown into hell for all eternity. Read it in the first century and a very different meaning should be equally obvious: unless you turn from your crazy path of nationalist rebellion against Rome, Rome will come and do to you what it has done to everyone who stands in its path. Jesus's contemporaries took no notice. The warnings came true.

As you can see, all this is very consistent and supportive of the partial preterist position. And Wright's work is full of passages just like these. Jesus wasn't talking about an otherworldly Hell and Final Judgment. Jesus was predicting a concrete historical event, an event that happened in 70 AD.

And yet, there is a new emphasis here with Wright, one that was missing in the Churches of Christ of my youth.

Specifically, I was mainly taught preterist readings in the Churches of Christ so that I could dismiss the "end times" theology of other faith traditions--all that talk about the rapture and the Antichrist--as hogwash. And, to be clear, I didn't mind that. To this day I think "Left Behind" theology is hogwash. And dangerous when it justifies Christians taking sides in geo-political conflicts.

But what Wright is doing here with a preterist reading is a bit more. Wright is rethinking, in light of the gospels, what "heaven" and "hell" might mean. That conversation, the one Wright is having, never came up in the Churches of Christ I was associated with. While preterist we still talked about hell as being an otherworldly torture chamber. But if that's not what Jesus was talking about, if Jesus was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem as we were so fond of arguing, then it appears that the Churches of Christ haven't been preterist enough.

And that's what I find so interesting. Not only is preterism increasing in scholarly respectability, but scholars like Wright are prompting preterist faith traditions like Churches of Christ to dig more deeply into the doctrine.

Within the Churches of Christ we taught preterism to combat "Left Behind" theology. But we've failed to grasp how preterism might allow us to rethink heaven and hell as Wright is doing.

In the Churches of Christ we've used preterism polemically, as a weapon to rebut bad eschatology. But we've failed to invest in preterism as a positive theological resource.

In the Churches of Christ preterism is a theological resource familiar to our people. A resource, if we invested in it, that could profoundly alter how we think about heaven and hell.

"All real living," Martin Buber wrote, "is meeting." One consequence of this emphasis is the recognition that "the fundamental reality of human existence is to be found not in conceptual abstractions, but in concrete human relationships." Not in "I think, therefore I am," but in "How are you?"

--James Carroll, Christ Actually (p. 150)

I touch my brother gently
upon his shoulder
and he startles
as a scared, small bird
flushed from a hidden, safe place.
"I am sorry," he says.
"I am sorry. I have only been out
of prison three days."
A body marked with a neuronal stigmata,
a chemistry violently scarred.
A touch is not the advent of grace
but an omen, sinister and foreboding.
A crucified body and mind
that suffers and carries our sin.

But the shared meal awaits us.
Our Eucharist of soup and bread.
The Table soothing the cellular trauma.
Synaptically resurrecting and recreating.
"Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you."

The hot water bites.
The dishes are baptized,
washing them clean.
My sister dries and shares of her surgery.
A pacemaker.
We rejoice that her heart now beats
seventy times a minute.
Each throb, as the blood flows through her,
a hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

Stars sparkle above the trashcans in the alleyway.
The moon shines off the white garbage bag crinkling and full.
Unburdening to end the work.
It is finished.

Turning, returning
home to the sanctuary of praise.

I hear the saints singing.

Guiding me through the night.

Shame has fallen on hard times. Much of this is due to increasing concerns about the public shaming of people on social media. See the recently published book by Jon Ronson So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

I share these worries about the public shaming of strangers on social media, how our outraged Tweets can do serious harm to people--relationally, psychologically and economically. But I'd like to say a few things in praise of shame. Not public shaming, but how shame, as an emotion, is a vital component of what it means to give and experience love.

What I'd like to do is bring into conversation the ideas of Brene Brown (Daring Greatly, The Gifts of Imperfection) and Virginia Burrus (Saving Shame).

To start, if you are familiar with Brown's work you know she makes a distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is "I did something bad." Shame is "I am bad." Thus, in Brown's scheme, guilt is good--it encourages you to take responsibility--and shame is bad.

And that's how a lot of us now think about shame. Shame is bad.

And yet, if you ponder it, shame is actually a pretty important and vital human emotion. To be sure, shame can be toxic. Shame can be weaponized. But shame isn't all bad. We'd worry about living in a world where shame didn't exist.

So let's push back on Brown a bit. "I am bad," isn't shame. It's self-contempt. To be sure, shame can prompt self-contempt and self-contempt can be a toxic or pathological outcome of shame, but shame shouldn't be reduced to self-contempt.

So what is shame? According to Burrus, shame is the confrontation of human limitation, the exposure of our weakness, failure, brokenness and vulnerability. Shame is this experience of exposure.

And Brown gets this. The hot burn of shame we feel in this exposure is what Brown calls the "excruciating vulnerability" we experience when we allow ourselves to be imperfect in front of each other. Shame, at least partly, is what makes vulnerability emotionally excruciating. Shame is the emotional threshold that must be crossed to get us to connection and intimacy.

In short, Brown really isn't against shame. She actually preaches shame when she talks about "excruciating vulnerability." We must risk the exposure--the shame--of being imperfect in front of each other. Connection requires vulnerability, excruciating vulnerability. Shame is at the heart of connection.

As Burrus suggests, shame is the advent of love. Shame creates the opportunity of love. When I expose myself to you--showing you my sin, failure, imperfection, brokenness and weakness--I feel the flush of shame. I stand naked before you. 

And as I stand there--scared and exposed--what I'm seeking is empathy and acceptance. In the words of Brene Brown, I'm looking for "Me too."

In short, what I'm looking for is the bearing of my shame.

When you love you carry the failure, weakness and brokenness of the Beloved. The Beloved hands you their shame and you bear it, you carry it, you share in it. And the Beloved, in turn, carries your shame.

Love is the bearing of shame.

Love is sharing the burden of our common humanity, sharing the burden of our failures, imperfections and weaknesses.

I think that life is hard. I think that life is sad and painful. I think that love is rare and fragile. I think that life is full of loneliness and loss and heartbreak and that we're all desperately grateful for even the smallest scraps of human warmth, kindness and intimacy.

So if I see even the smallest flicker of love, grace or tenderness I want to protect it. I want to fan it so that it might grow. I don't want to move through life extinguishing the flames. I don't want to be the cold, chilling wind blowing the candles out. There are too few. And the night is very dark and cold.

Maybe on some far eternal horizon God will stand in judgment of all the ways we warmed ourselves with whatever affection we could find. Or of how we sheltered those who loved in ways that others found unacceptable.

Maybe. Maybe one day we will plead for a mercy that will not be granted. Maybe.

Shall we be asked to repent of love?

No one knows. So here with you, huddled in the cold blackness, I make my choice.

I refuse to blow the candles out.

--unpublished thoughts about empathy, loneliness and love

I want to pick up on a theme from yesterday's post about the role of human freedom in how we think about hell and the possibility of universal reconciliation.

As long time readers know (and more recent readers who have delved into my early writings on this blog), I used to write a lot about my struggles with what we'd call "free will." Some of my questions and doubts I shared back then about "free will" were (and continue to be) quite alarming to some readers.

I haven't written about this topic for many years so a brief note to update you on where my thinking is currently on this subject.

Perhaps surprisingly, my view of human freedom has become quite Augustinian. Specifically, my view of human freedom is nicely summarized by the famous lines at the start of Augustine's Confessions:

"Our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

It's not that we aren't free. It's just that with our disordered and broken affections our freedom doesn't move us forward, doesn't bring us anything but more sorrow and frustration.

That is to say, I think the discussion about "freedom" and "will" is missing critical and essential parts of human nature. We might be "free" but what do we want, crave, desire, love or care about? The discussion about "free will" is a thin, hollowed out discussion which misses these critical elements.

So it's not that I don't believe in free will. It's that I think a discussion about freedom and will separated from a discussion from affections and desires isn't a conversation that truly reflects human experience. A debate about "freedom" doesn't address what we love and the restlessness that disorders our desires.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about an old and perhaps unfashionable metaphor for sin:

Sickness.

Sin-as-sickness is a metaphor that really preaches out at the prison. The men in the prison know they have made mistakes. They know they have made bad choices. Note how the language of mistakes and choices focuses upon the will, the free will.

But what the men really, really struggle with is this deep sense that sin is a sickness, that deep down their desires are disordered and broken.

Yes, the men in prison want forgiveness for their crimes, for the wicked choices they have made. But what they really, really want is something much, much deeper...

Healing.

What they long for--what I long for--is healing.

Thanks to Alan for sending this video to me. It's a nice theological discussion from 2011 in the midst of the Love Wins debate giving a Catholic perspective on hell and universalism:



I think many readers would land where Fr. Barron lands, universal salvation as a "reasonable hope."

For my part, as regular readers know, my issues swirl around the issue of human freedom. Specifically, I don't think it is psychologically or theologically realistic to believe that a finite human will could resist the infinite love of God for all eternity. Because of this I'm a bit more sanguine about the prospects of hell eventually being emptied.

Hell exists. And will be "crowded" for a season. But hell is eventually emptied. Not forcibly emptied, but emptied because of God's infinite patience.

"But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."  --Jesus

I think this command of Jesus--the heart and soul of his Kingdom vision--is felt more acutely in Christian/Muslim relations than anywhere else. So I'm grateful for my friends Josh Graves and Sean Palmer. Josh for writing the book and Sean for providing us this review.

///     

Christians and Muslims make up half the world's population and the world is at war.

The September 11th hijackings and attacks, orchestrated and performed by Al-Qaeda, introduced many western Christians to the battle between certain elements within Islam and the rest of the world, particularly the Great Satan, America.

In part, the response of the West has been to return bloodshed for bloodshed. Regardless of the merits of the on-going military conflicts in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and other contested territories, the fact that eyes are being exchanged for eyes cannot be ignored by the church. At the same time, too many of the voices calling for increased violence or tensions or exclusion toward Muslims, both in the U.S. and around the world, are Christian.

Into the discussion of relations between Christians and Muslims enters Dr. Joshua Graves (a friend) and his newest book, How Not To Kill a Muslim: A Manifesto of Hope for Christianity and Islam in America. In short, Josh gives Christians a framework in which to engage, not only the idea that there are Muslims in the world and we have deal with their presence as a reality, but that there are Muslims in the world and the way of Christ mandates we see and love them as neighbors.

At the heart of How Not to Kill is a fundamental assumption: The Christian community has lost her story. The story, Josh argues, begins with the obvious and simple fact the Ismael and Isaac, central figures in the story of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are brothers. What's more, and this is the central textual argument, is that Jesus' parable of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10) is the primary model for enemy/Other-love and requires Christians to view their Muslim neighbors with grace, love, and compassion.

The story we've lost, Josh argues is the story of the Bible.

Arguing for a different kind of interaction with Muslim and Islam is where Josh does his best work. His prescription: Knowledge of God and knowing of neighbor.

While I don't want to step on his punchline, suffice it to say that what is being called forth is a life rooted in the story of God more than a life rooted in headlines and/or misinformation. The headlines of the day, Graves asserts, create and nurture fear, rather than engagement. What's more, it's a story either ignorant of or ignoring the Biblical narrative and the nature of God revealed in the ministry of Jesus. Add to that the fact that most American's knowledge of Islam could fit onto a Post-It Note and we have a recipe for exclusion rather than embrace. Perhaps the best part of How Not To Kill is Graves' final chapter, 'Islam For Dummies,' where he simply lays out the meaning and history of many of the terms popularly used but largely misused about Islam.

What is striking about this engagement is that the book itself is the result of intentional engagement of Christians with Islam and Muslims in Nashville where Graves lives and minsters. This fact alone saves the book from the theoretical wasteland so easily accepted in the church and academic theology. What's more, many conversations about Muslim and Christian relations get side-tracked by discussion of ISIS, Syria, the Iran deal and other particulars you and your neighbor can't do anything about. Here, Graves hold our feet to the fire regarding persons living in and shaping our local communities; people we can actual have coffee, lunch, and prayers with. How Not To Kill gently reveals our own lack of love, grace, and humility or our stubborn, self-serving refusal to engage with others at all.

Yet as I read the book, I was haunted by a sense that there were a few things Josh would like to have done differently.

While Josh begins a needed conversation between Muslims and Christians -- and in particular educates Christians about Islam -- that education seems preliminary. Throughout the text, I kept coming back to two questions. The first was, "Is Josh fairly representing conservative Christians?" My sense is that many, if not most, of my conservative friends would read How Not To Kill, might say, "That's not really what I think..." or "That's not fair...."

I'm not arguing that the book in uncharitable, but rather incomplete in this regard. Since the genesis of the text began with actual people with real questions, it would have been nice to have some thoughtful, coherent arguments exposing how more conservative readers have worked through these issues and why what seems like hate or disrespect to some may be their attempt to "not kill a Muslim." Even if some feel that the elimination or marginalization of Islam is best for the world, why they believe that's the case. In short, I don't think Josh (again, my friend) makes their case well for them (though I'm sure they're making it in their own forums).

The second area I felt the book was incomplete was that it leaves the reader (at least this one), saying, "Yeah, but what about ______." I say this as a positive. As I turned through the pages, I wanted to hear more. More about Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac; more about Jesus and the images of God (a chapter that was absolutely beautiful and may be the inspiration of my first tattoo); more about American immigration law and interpreting Jesus' teaching in view of His actions rather than a separate theological compartment.

I would have loved for Josh to tackle the issue concerning the ascendancy of Christian Zionism and how it is affecting American Christian's relationship with Muslims and why, for some, and American agreement with Iraq -- or any predominantly Muslim country -- necessarily jeopardizes Israel. Where most books I read are too long; this one is too short.

And, that, perhaps, is the most glowing review I can give. When the book was over, I didn't want it to be over. I wanted to know more, in Josh's words, "see more." And that's the reason, I think you should rush out to get your own copy. Then read it. Read it again. And order a few copies for your friends.

You can order one or more copies here and here.

///

Sean Palmer, the author of this review, is the Lead Minister at The Vine Church in Temple, TX. Profiled in Christian Standard Magazine’s “4O Leaders Under 40” issue, Sean is a blogger, speaker, writer, and teacher to various age groups and travels annually across the U.S.

You can find more of Sean’s writing at his blog, The Palmer Perspective as well as Wineskins.com and Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed.

You can also follow Sean on Twitter.

Faith, as I've come to see it, is less about believing in objects existing or not existing than it is about valuation.

To be a human being we have to add value to the world. Otherwise the world is just a swirling mass of elementary particles with each particle, to use religious language, no more holy or sacred than any other. To be human is to lay value on top of existence. And everyone does this, consciously or unconsciously.

Faith is the activity of hallowing, the practice of picking out patterns from the indifferent egalitarianism of particle physics to say that these things are sacred, these things are holy, these things are worthy of honor, these things are worthy of care, these things are worthy of emulation, and these things make us human.

Faith, then, is any reflective and intentional system of valuation. And more.

Faith is a system of valuation that is accompanied by personal and social rituals that help inculcate and form the values of interest. Such rituals are especially important if the valuation being aimed at goes against the grain of self-interest, as it does in the Christian faith. Learning to hallow in a certain way, for some faiths, is very difficult, unnatural and effortful. Faith, then, is a lifelong process of being shaped into a certain kind of human being. Faith posits avenues of formation, personal and corporate pathways to move us closer to the things we value. These are rituals and liturgies, repetitive habit-forming activities that remind us of our values, shape the virtues needed to embody our values, and create experiences where the values are physically enacted, where you are literally practicing what you are preaching.

And, finally, faith incorporates a diagnostic element, an account of human nature and social life that attempts to explain why the values we are striving for are hard to attain. Faith gives an account about why the things that make us most human are not natural and require enormous effort. For example, if one values, honors and hallows something like kindness faith will give an account about why kindness is so hard, why it is so scarce, and why it will take a lifetime of training to become more and more kind.

--from an unpublished post experimenting with a definition of faith, faith as valuation and hallowing

In yesterday's post I included the word "relaxed" in a list of traits that I felt characterize what it means to be a Christ-like human being.

But relaxed isn't a word you hear a great deal in discussions of Christian virtue and character. And yet, I think relaxation is key, a foundational issue.

Non-violence flows out of relaxation. Kindness, gentleness and mercy all flow out of relaxation. Joy and gratitude are rooted in relaxation.

And by relaxation I mean being physically and mentally at ease. Being non-anxious. Peaceful and calm in body and mind. Non-defensive. Non-neurotic. Unselfconscious. Emotionally quiet and still.

Most of us are not relaxed in this way. We are constantly being triggered by the successes and failures of others. We are emotionally reactive--always being angered, disturbed or upset by other people. Our fuse is short. Our nerves are on edge. Our stomachs clench and turn. Our heartbeats race. Our thoughts swirl and obsess.

We feel jerked around by events, small and large. We feel pushed and pulled by every little thing. We feel knocked off balance.

We crave. We desire. We worry. We obsess. We ruminate. We rant. We self-medicate. We despair.

We are not relaxed.

And it's difficult to be a human being if you aren't relaxed. It's difficult to be emotionally available to others if you aren't relaxed.  

So how do we become relaxed?

Religious traditions differ in how they answer that question. The stoics have their approach. So does Buddhism.

Jesus's answer is twofold.

First, trust. Trust that God will take care for you. Consider the lilies and the birds.

Second, place your heart in a location where moth and rust do not destroy or thieves break in and steal. Your heart must be "hidden in Christ" in a place where death has no dominion.

Trouble is, these recommendations strike us as pious platitudes. Trust. Lay up your treasures in heaven. These are the sorts of things we tell children in Sunday School. These are recommendations we find in inspirational books and on bumper stickers.

Trust. Lay up your treasures in heaven. We are way, way too sophisticated for that. Life is too dark and too hard for such saccharine recommendations.

But hold on, just for a second. Put your cynicism and your education aside for a moment.

Seriously, stop and consider the lilies. Consider. Consider the birds.

What would it mean to live like that, if just for a moment, today? What would it look like to live like the flowers and the birds?

And what would it mean that my heart was hidden in a place where what I treasure couldn't be lost, broken or destroyed?  What would it mean to "seek first the Kingdom"?

Might I become more relaxed? More natural? More at peace? More awake? More aware? More free? 

True, we have our doubts about all this.

It all sounds so childish and childlike. Like a lesson we've heard before but never learned.

It's almost as if one must become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Consider.

As a faculty member at a Christian university you put yourself out there, even if you don't want to or feel inadequate, as a Christian role model. At ACU a question about being a Christian role model is included in the course evaluation forms students fill out each semester about your performance in the classroom.

So it makes you wonder, what sort of role model am I?

The other day I was discussing this with my students in my statistics class. Half-joking and half-serious I told them this:

"This is what I'm after: I want you to think I'm the most religious person you know and the least religious person you know."

That may sound weird and paradoxical, but I am getting at something real here. I think many of my students would say that I'm one of the most religious people they know while at the same time being one of the least religious people they know.

You may wonder, How's that work?

I could write a lot about this, but the short answer is this.

I use my religion to become a human being. Religion, for me, is the praxis of becoming a human being. Students can see the praxis--the hard work I'm putting into religious observance--but the outcome of that work isn't religious piety but a human being who is joyful, relaxed, kind, non-judgmental and emotionally available.

Not saying I've reached those goals, but those are the outcomes--being a human being--my religious observance is aiming toward.

Or, phrased more conventionally, I practice my Christianity in order to be conformed into the image of Jesus. Christianity is the religious praxis of becoming Christ-like.

Another story from the Good Friday vigil we held with some friends last week.

As I mentioned yesterday, the sanctuary was dark except for a few candles. And to mark the passage of time, at the top of each hour, someone would read a passage of Scripture.

For me, that was the most haunting and powerful part of the experience. Listening to Scripture being read into darkness and silence makes the words so crisp and distinct. I don't know how else to say this, but darkness and silence makes Scripture so vivid.

And it's also comforting to hear the voices of your brothers and sisters in the darkness. A story of the night from Jana.

During the vigil Jana purposefully dozed a couple different times as she had a huge all-day rehearsal with her theater students in the morning. At one point, in the wee hours of the morning, Jana woke up to hear Julie's voice reading Scripture.

And the sound of Julie's voice was reassuring and comforting and sweet. For second when Jana woke up she experienced a bit of alarm and disorientation. "Where am I?"

But as she listened in the silence to her sister's voice softly filling the darkness Jana realized that she was safe.

She was at church. She was home.

Last week on Good Friday a few dear friends gathered with Jana and I at church to hold vigil through the night. We lit candles in the darkened sanctuary and kept watch as the hours of the night passed. At the top of each hour, to mark the passage of time, I set my phone to sound a tolling bell and we would listen to someone read a passage of Scripture. Not everyone stayed the whole night. But a few of us made it through to morning.

Pictured here are some of the candles along with the Christ the Bridegroom icon Ben brought to the vigil. A perfect icon for a Good Friday vigil:

Matthew 25.1-13
Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.

But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’

And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. 

To pray through the night I used a couple of different prayer books. I like Catholic prayer books during Passion Week because there are many Catholic prayers that focus upon the five wounds and blood of Jesus.

In the wee hours of the night I was praying through a litany of The Precious Blood of Jesus. A litany, if you don't know, is a series petitions echoing a repeated chorus. The litany I used is similar to this one I found online (which I've abridged a bit):

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy

Blood of Christ, only Son of the Father
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, incarnate Word
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, of the new and eternal covenant
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, that spilled to the ground
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, that flowed at the scourging
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, dripping from the thorns
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, shed on the cross
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, the price of our redemption
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, our only claim to pardon
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, our blessing cup
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, in which we are washed
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, torrent of mercy
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, that overcomes evil
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, strength of the martyrs
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, endurance of the saints
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, that makes the barren fruitful
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, protection of the threatened
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, comfort of the weary
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, solace of the mourner
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, hope of the repentant
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, consolation of the dying
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, our peace and refreshment
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, our pledge of life
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, by which we pass to glory
~be our salvation
Blood of Christ, most worthy of honor
~be our salvation

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
~have mercy on us
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
~have mercy on us
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
~grant us your peace

No doubt many readers will be a bit spooked, disturbed and freaked out by a litany meditating upon blood. I understand. But my impulses during Passion Week can be quite Catholic. There is a medieval monk deep in my soul and he likes to make an appearance during Passion Week. To be sure, there are problems with any theology when pushed to the extreme but, crazy as it may seem, I actually like to focus upon the Passion during Passion Week.

And it helps, of course, that I have well-worked out atonement theology that guides me in praying a Passion-related litany. When I think of the blood of Jesus I don't think about how blood satisfies the wrath of God. When I think of the blood of Jesus I think of love being poured out.

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

After reading the litany of the Precious Blood I picked up my notebook and jotted down a few lines in the candlelight.

the litany of
the Precious Blood of Jesus
I pray
the insistent repetition
like a heartbeat
like a rhythm of breath
as vital and as necessary
reckoning the accumulating weight of sorrow
accounting each drop
collecting the pain
following the etching of crimson on wood, flesh and earth
tracing the rivulets of love

On a day, Holy Saturday, when we ponder the creedal confession that Jesus "descended into hell" a meditation from 2012:

St. Augustine once compared the cross of Jesus to a mousetrap--crux muscipula diaboli.

"The cross is the devil's mousetrap."

This idea strikes modern Christians as alien and strange. Largely because we have lost the Christus Victor frame of the early church. For those new to this blog or these ideas, Christus Victor was the dominant view of the atonement for the first thousand years of the church. It is the view that the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus was involved in liberating us from our captivity to sin, death, and the Devil.

Then as now, Christians tend to push past general formulations such as this--Christ rescues us from the Devil--to ask question about mechanisms. We move from "What happened?" to "How did it happen?"

For example, modern Christians subscribing to penal substitutionary atonement often ask about the mechanisms at work in the theory: Why does God demand our death and how exactly does Jesus's death satisfy God's wrath and justice?

In a similar way, the early Christians wondered about the mechanisms of Christus Victor: How exactly did Jesus liberate us from the power of the Devil?

These sorts of questions lead us out onto thin ice. When we turn to stories about mechanisms--hypothetical scenarios about how it all works--we start to get specific about things that the bible only hints at. No doubt, for example, the bible suggests that there was a substitutionary facet to the death of Jesus. Something bad happened to him that should have or could have happened to us. But how, exactly, that substitution "worked" in saving us is hard to say as the bible doesn't get into specific mechanisms. In fact, most biblical scholars would say that substitution isn't really a mechanism, it's a metaphor, and that what we have in the bible are a lot of metaphors without a lot of unpacking of those metaphors.

And yet, not being content with poetry what a lot Christians have done throughout the ages is to fixate on one particular metaphor and then unpack the hell out of it, specifying in great and specific detail how this one particular metaphor might literally and mechanistically "work." These attempts are sort of like reading a great poem and then insisting in your English term paper that this is what the poem literally means. That's fine if you are a 5th grader, but we expect more from adult readers of poetry. And Scripture.

Still, we thirst for mechanisms. We like to get specific. We crave cause and effect stories. And so, in unpacking the Christus Victor metaphors of ransom and liberation in the bible, Augustine posited a mechanism. How did the cross save us from the Devil? The cross, he suggested, is like a mousetrap.

How so?

The idea goes like this as unpacked by various church fathers. From the beginning of Jesus's ministry Satan tries to thwart Jesus. But failing to get Jesus to fall into sin Satan ultimately decides to kill Jesus, to just get rid of the guy. (Recall that Satan enters Judas's heart suggesting that the death of Jesus is Satan's idea and plan.) Satan, we know, eventually succeeds and Jesus is killed. Thus, Satan, who possesses the keys to Death and Hades, now "owns" Jesus and has him locked up in Hades.

Satan has taken the cheese.

However, what Satan doesn't know is that Jesus isn't just another human being. Jesus is God Incarnate. In this Jesus is sort of like a Trojan Horse. So when Satan takes Jesus to Hades--Surprise!--he finds that the enemy has entered the gates. There in hell Jesus takes the keys of Death and Hades from Satan, binds him, and then releases the captives. In Christian theology this is called the Harrowing of Hell.

The mousetrap snaps.

Modern Christians tend to find this whole scenario pretty weird and implausible. But I'm fond of this story. I find it theologically rich and interesting, and it has its advantages over penal substitutionary atonement.

So here on Holy Saturday, as we ponder Jesus being in hell, are two reasons why I like the mousetrap story.

First, I think it is a recurring theme in the New Testament, and in the gospels in particular, that the Kingdom of God is hidden. And why is it hidden? Because it is small, weak, and powerless. The Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst. But the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed--too small for us to see or notice. Like the homeless Lazarus at the rich man's gate. Or the child standing off to the side while the adults are talking. Or the slave who is washing your feet. The Kingdom of God is in all these places. But we can't see it.

Thus it is not surprising that those without the eyes to see it will miss the Kingdom and will fail to appreciate its logic and power. In the words of St. Paul, the cross will always be foolishness to the world. Satan cannot see the power of God in the cross. And most of us can't either.

Second, the mousetrap story suggests that evil, in its exercise of power, will overreach. God, by contrast, by allowing evil to overreach, saves us non-violently, with powerlessness. Being Love God appears weak, allowing Satan to kill, allowing Satan to use power and violence to accomplish the purposes of evil.

On the surface, God appears to be the mouse, the dead thing caught in the trap, the one hanging on the cross. God absorbs violence but overcomes it with love. What looks like a dead mouse to the eyes of the world--Jesus hanging on the cross--is actually the power and Kingdom of God. In the biblical imagination, Jesus is enthroned on the cross.

The dead mouse is actually the mousetrap.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why God doesn't use power in this world. I wonder if this is why God doesn't come down and start knocking heads together to make it all work out right right now. I wonder what that sort of god would look like, a god that started kicking ass and taking names to force the world into compliance. A little like Satan?

But maybe God is powerfully at work in the world, but in the hidden, powerless way Jesus described in his Kingdom parables. Maybe, as St. Paul said, God is using the powerless and weak things of the world to shame and defeat the powerful.

Maybe there are mousetraps all around us.

As a Good Friday meditation some reflections from 2012 about the Isenheim Altarpiece.

The Isenheim Altarpiece was painted by Matthias Grünewald some time between 1512 and 1516 for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim (then in Germany). This complicated work of multiple panels depicts four biblical scenes--the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Lamentation, and the Resurrection. The first view of the altarpiece is of the Crucifixion (upper panels) and the Lamentation (lower panels). The Crucifixion panels are by far the most famous aspect of the altarpiece:


The Grünewald Crucifixion is considered to be one of the more painful crucifixions ever painted. Perhaps more horrific crucifixions have been painted since the Isenheim Altarpiece, but relative to the genres of its time (and even today) the Grünewald Crucifixion remains unique in the risks it took. But more than this, the fame of the Isenheim Altarpiece is largely due to the fact that this Crucifixion scene was used in a church. Few churches have a Crucifixion scene this difficult as the focal point of worship.

To come to grips with the Grünewald Crucifixion one needs to see aspects of the painting close up. First, a close up of Jesus' body:


One can see the torn flesh with many pieces of thorns or wood embedded in the body from the scourging. Even more difficult is the sickly green coloration that is employed:


These are difficult images. So difficult that we might ask: How could this horrific picture be the central worship image of a church?

The answer to this question comes from noting that the monks at the Monastery of St. Anthony specialized in hospital work, particularly the treatment of ergotism, the gangrenous poisoning known as "Saint Anthony's fire." In ancient times ergotism was largely caused by ingesting a fungus-afflicted rye or cereal. The symptoms of ergotism included the shedding of the outer layers of the skin, edema, and the decay of body tissues which become black, infected, and malodorous. Prior to death the rotting tissue and limbs are lost or amputated. In 857 a contemporary report of St. Anthony's fire described ergotism like this:

"a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death."

The theological power of the Isenheim Altarpiece is that Grünewald painted the gangrenous symptoms of ergotism into his crucifixion scene. As the patients of St. Anthony's Monastery worshiped--and a more hideous, ugly and diseased congregation can scarce be imagined--they looked upon the Isenheim Altarpiece and saw a God who suffered with them.

In a fascinating insight, my colleague Dan at ACU has pointed out to me that when the Crucifixition panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece are opened we notice the following. In the upper panel, upon opening, the right arm of Jesus is separated from his body. Below the Crucifixion scene in the lower panels depicting the Lamentation the same opening separates the legs of Jesus from his body. In short, as the Isenheim Altarpiece is opened Jesus becomes an amputee, losing an arm and his legs. We can only imagine the power of this imagery among a congregation of amputees.

You can see Dan's observation best in the following image. I've highlighted the division in the panels with a bold white line. Again, note how when the panel is opened the right arm (in the upper picture) and the legs (in the lower picture) become detached from the body:


I don't understand a lot about what happened on Good Friday. But what I think about the most is how, in the crucifixion, God participated in the horror of the human condition and stood beside--eternally--the ugly, cursed, and god-forsaken. Like the congregation of amputees at the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim.

Some selections from Jurgen Moltmann's book The Crucified God:

The crucified Christ became the brother of the despised, abandoned and oppressed. And this is why brotherhood with the 'least of his brethren' is a necessary part of brotherhood with Christ and identification with him. Thus Christian theology must be worked out amongst these people and with them...in concrete terms amongst and with those who suffer in this society...Christian identification with the crucified necessarily brings him into solidarity with the alienated of this world, with the dehumanized and the inhuman.

...

The church of the crucified was at first, and basically remains, the church of the oppressed and insulted, the poor and wretched, the church of the people.

...

But for the crucified Christ, the principle of fellowship is fellowship with those who are different, and solidarity with those who have become alien and have been made different. Its power is not friendship, the love for what is similar and beautiful... but creative love for what is different, alien and ugly...

I finally got to watch the movie Killing Jesus which debuted on the National Geographic station on Sunday.

I think many progressive Christians would balk at the movie because it is based off of Bill O'Reilly's book (with Martin Dugard) Killing Jesus. But here's my assessment.

I think Killing Jesus just became my all-time favorite Jesus movie.

Here are three quick reasons why progressive Christians would like Killing Jesus:

First, the movie (and the book) attempt to portray the historical aspects of the gospel story. The theological, supernatural and miraculous aspects of the story are downplayed. What this means is that Killing Jesus is about the cultural, historical and political reasons Jesus was killed. Jesus's confrontation with "the principalities and powers" makes Killing Jesus a whole lot more attractive to progressive Christians than a movie like Gibson's The Passion with its emphasis upon penal substitutionary atonement. If you think Jesus was killed because of his conflict with Empire then this is the movie for you.

Second, finally we have a Jesus movie where Jesus isn't a white guy of European descent. In Killing Jesus we have a Jesus that looks like a Palestinian Jew. Haaz Sleiman, the actor who plays Jesus, was born and raised in Lebanon. We finally have a movie where we can say, "I think Jesus might have actually looked like that guy."

Third, progressive Christians like a low Christology. Given its focus upon historical events, as mentioned above, Killing Jesus downplays the supernatural. There are a few miraculous moments in the movie, but there are also "miracles" of a more human sort. Specifically, the scene with Jesus and the lepers is one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen in a Jesus movie. Jesus's healing of the leper isn't supernatural but I think it's miraculous. That scene with the lepers captures everything I was trying to say in Unclean.

And a final note about the low Christology. The most theologically fascinating aspect of Killing Jesus is how Jesus comes to gradually discover his identity and vocation as the movie progresses.

For example, Peter's confession of Jesus is a moment of discovery, for both Peter and Jesus. Who am I?, Jesus asks. Jesus isn't quizzing his disciples, Jesus is asking the question for himself. Who am I? And when Peter confesses, "You are the Messiah," Jesus's suspicions about himself are confirmed. Through Peter's confession Jesus's vocation comes fully into view. Peter's confession is preformative, the confession makes Jesus the Christ.

This aspect alone will make Killing Jesus a theological case study for decades to come. The movie explores some interesting Christological ideas.

The other day I came across the song "Unstoppable Love" by Jesus Culture. It's definitely a song from the worship genre of contemporary Christian music. So if you don't like this genre you might not like the song, musically speaking.

What struck me about the song, especially given the song's popularity in evangelical circles, is that, well, it's a song that beautifully expresses the theology behind universal reconciliation. Seriously, if you sing this song you believe in universal reconciliation.

From the chorus of "Unstoppable Love":

God, You pursue me, with power and glory
Unstoppable love that never ends
You're unrelenting, with passion and mercy
Unstoppable love that never ends

No sin, no shame, no past, no pain
Can separate me from Your love
No height, no depth, no fear, no death
Can separate me from Your love

God's love is unstoppable, unrelenting and it never ends. Not even death can stop it. I don't know how this song, theologically, avoids being a song about universal reconciliation.

Well, I guess you can sing this song if you endorse the doctrine of election that God's love is "unstoppable" for the very few people whom God elects, the belief that God's love is "unstoppable" if God happens to love you. And if not? Sucks to be you!

But if you believe what 1 Timothy 2.4 says, that God "desires all people to be saved," and that God's love is "unstoppable," I don't know how you avoid the inevitable conclusion of universal reconciliation.