Beyond coherence and comprehension, my ability to tell the story of my life in a way that makes sense of my life, the second aspect of meaning in life is purpose.

We spend our life pursuing a wide variety of goals. Many are short-term goals, like going to work or doing a project around the house. And we also work toward long-term goals that span years and even decades, from plans for our career, our homes, or our retirement. 

Accomplishing those goals gives us a sense of satisfaction. Purpose in life, however, is how all these goals work together toward an overarching aim or direction. Purpose helps us choose the goals of life and sort out and prioritize among our goals when choices have to be made in how to direct our time and energy. Purpose asks: What do I want out of life? When I'm moving toward that purpose I experience meaning in life. Purpose gives us a reason to get up in the morning. William James describes this sense of meaning as "a sense of right direction." 

In the last post I described coherence and comprehension as the need and ability to "story" your life. With purpose I think of telos, the Greek word for "end," "goal," and "end goal." Humans are teleological creatures. We need an aim, a goal. To use biblical language, we are eschatological creatures. We live today with a preferred future in mind. Otherwise, we feel lost and directionless. At sea without navigation. In a dark wood without a compass.

In short, meaning isn't just about how the pieces of life "hang together," it's also about where that story is going. Meaning implies that your life has a plot.

As you may likely know, a revolution has occurred in psychology over the last thirty years. Called "positive psychology" many psychologists have turned their attention from mental illness to study happiness, flourishing, and fulfillment in life. Classes in positive psychology are routinely the most popular classes on university campuses, and podcasts sharing the findings of positive psychology have huge followings. 

Early research in positive psychology focused on virtues and character strengths, research that showed us things like the importance of gratitude. More recently, positive psychology has turned its attention to variables associated with transcendence, things like wonder, awe, and meaning.

I want to devote a few posts to meaning in life because, as I recount in Hunting Magic Eels, meaning has become harder for us in an increasingly post-Christian world. Understanding how meaning in life is constructed, what its ingredients are, can help us see more clearly why faith might matter for our mental health.

Meaning in life is a cord woven from three strands. The first strand is coherence and comprehension. 

Meaning comes from life "making sense" to us. We understand how all the parts and pieces of our life, our past, our present, and our future, are put together to make a whole. My life feels "connected" and I have the sense that I "get it." 

We struggle with meaning when we lose this sense of coherence and comprehension. We don't understand what is happening to us. Things feel disconnected, disorganized, random, and chaotic. I can't make sense of my life or the world.

We've all experienced this, how dramatic or traumatic changes in our life circumstances can create a crisis of meaning. We struggle to find a "new normal," a new mental equilibrium in the face of new circumstances. And if we can't mentally get on top of the situation we're prone to anxiety, depression, and other psychological symptoms. 

This is one of the reasons therapy is helpful to us. Or simply talking out loud to a dear friend or family member. And when alone, even journaling works. For many of us, therapy is a "sense-making" journey. Weaving our past and present into a coherent whole, something that we "get" and understand.

Story is an excellent way to describe all this. We achieve coherence and comprehension when we can story our lives, when we can narrate our experience. In fact, narrative therapies explicitly frame the therapeutic task in just this way, as a journey into a new and better story. 

136.

I have often said that the sole cause of our unhappiness is that we do not know how to stay quietly in our room.

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We avoid being alone with ourselves. And that avoidance creates and perpetuates our unhappiness.

When the mind quiets we come face to face with the reality of who we are. And most of us find this to be a very uncomfortable encounter. 

I recall once sitting down in the silence of a Catholic church. Just to sit and rest a bit. And sitting there in the quiet I started to weep. Out of nowhere my deep brokenness rose up and confronted me. I hadn't done a thing to bring it into consciousness. I was just sitting there quietly. Then suddenly, I came into view. And when I saw myself, I wept. 

Seeking to avoid moments like this, our default condition is one of agitation and restlessness. We can't, won't, sit still for fear of encountering ourselves. 

Since I wrote about witchcraft yesterday, I thought I'd follow up with some thoughts about the big drama right now in the witchcraft world: Hexing the Taliban.

If you've not between following WitchTok or witchcraft boards on Reddit there's been a big hullabaloo about witches hexing the Taliban given their recent takeover of Afghanistan. This has created much comment from within the witchcraft community and some trolling from outside. 

A related bit of drama from within this same conversation has been incidences of witches attempting to hex not just the Taliban but also Allah.

You might find this topic bizarre, but it's a great illustration of two things. The first is a big point I make in Hunting Magic Eels regarding the contrast between pagan and Christian enchantments. The second goes to a point I made yesterday. 

Borrowing from Steven Smith's analysis from Christians and Pagans in the City, the point I make in Hunting Magic Eels is the contrast between immanent versus transcendent enchantment. As Smith argues, the difference between paganism and Christianity is the location of the sacred. In paganism the sacred is located within creation, an immanent enchantment that sees creation as being filled with metaphysical powers, energies, and potencies. Christian metaphysics, by contrast, locates the sacred beyond creation, a transcendent enchantment. (Though we should note that this contrast isn't wholly accurate as Christians believe God is both immanent and transcendent.)

Another way of describing the transcendence of God, familiar now to my regular readers, is to say that God's being and existence is unlike created being and existence. God, as Being Itself, cannot be located among created beings, found among the furniture of the universe. Or, as Thomas Aquinas would say, God does not belong to any genus. 

To illustrate St. Thomas' point, I have a witchcraft book on my shelf that has a table in it listing various gods and goddesses that one could appeal to in casting spells. For example, in this table are listed the gods and goddesses Ganash (Indian), Damballah (Haitian), Isis (Egyptian), Brigid (Celtic), and Odin (Norse). These divinities are members of the genus "gods and goddesses." It's this membership that makes a gods and goddess listing in a table possible.

God, by contrast, is not a member of any genus. God cannot be listed under any category of being. God doesn't exist like Odin or Isis. God cannot be found in a table of gods and goddesses. God is what gives gods and goddess their existence.

A still further way to say the same thing is that God creates ex nihilo ("from nothing"). And crucial here is the point that creation ex nihilo isn't some moment in the past, like the Big Bang, when the universe "began." Creation ex nihilo isn't an isolated historical event, it is constant and ongoing, God holding creation continuously in being. Creation ex nihilo is why there is something, right here and right now, rather than nothing. Creation is inherently contingent and, thus, constantly requires the sustaining attention of God. In God we live, move, and have our being.

Which brings us back to hexing Allah. Sharing as they do the same Abrahamic faith with Jews and Christians, Muslims also believe God creates ex nihilo. Consequently, a witch who tries to hex Allah is displaying a metaphysical confusion. A witch hexing Allah is making a category error. For you can only hex a being that exists within the created order. The hex has to be within the same order of being as the object being hexed. Phrased differently, you cannot hex the Being that makes hexes exist in the first place. Hexes and God operate at different orders of being. But even that sentence is an error as God cannot be a member of the genus "order of being." God is what causes orders of being to exist.

You get the point.

All that to say, the whole hexing Allah drama is an interesting case study in the difference between pagan and Christian metaphysics, between immanent and transcendent enchantments. And if this seems to be a pointless academic distinction read Hunting Magic Eels to find out how this distinction affects your life and happiness. Your joy hangs in the balance.

Which brings me to my second point, made in yesterday's post. 

Specifically, yes, witches trying to hex Allah display a lack of metaphysical sophistication. They don't understand God. Fine. But remember the point from yesterday's post: Witchcraft is more about political resistance than religious observance. Hexing Allah and the Taliban isn't really about metaphysics. It's about saying "f**k you" to the patriarchy espoused by the Taliban, in how they view and treat women. Hexing the Taliban, Allah specifically, may be metaphysically confused and nonsensical, but it is an admirable act of resistance and solidarity on behalf of the woman of Afghanistan. 

I've been doing a deep dive into witchcraft lately. I'm discerning if I want to write a book about witchcraft or devote a long, in-depth blog series to the subject.

You might be wondering, "Why witchcraft?"

Three reasons. 

First, the main subject of my latest book Hunting Magic Eels focused on the rising rates of unbelief in our culture--skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism. But as I point out in the book, a lot of the people turning away from organized religion (the Nones) aren't opting for hardcore atheism. Most of them are turning toward alternative spiritualities. Paganism, particularly, is on the rise. As I say in Hunting Magic Eels, paganism is back. And witchcraft most especially. For example, see this and this and this. And if you didn't know, WitchTok is a huge, huge thing.

All that to say, while I do discuss paganism in Hunting Magic Eels, I spend most of the book talking about unbelief and skepticism. But I'm wondering now if I focused on the smaller of the two trends, having focused on atheism and scientism rather than upon paganism and witchcraft.

Second, I think white male church leaders, like me, have had a blind spot here. So I'm trying to correct that. To be simplistic about it, atheism is mainly a white guy problem. And since many preachers are white guys, they tend to focus on what they and their peer group struggle with. Witchcraft, by contrast, is big among young women. A richer and more comprehensive look at modern trends in religious belief has to attend to these sorts of gender differences. Preachers know how to talk to atheists. I don't think many would know how to talk to a witch. 

Third, as pointed out by Tara Isabella Burton in her book Strange Rites, modern witchcraft may be more of a political than metaphysical movement as a reaction to patriarchal structures in the world and in the church. Witchcraft is as much political resistance as religious practice. And if that's so, the church should be listening. The biggest appeal of witchcraft for women is empowerment, which places witchcraft in a critical posture toward patriarchal expressions of Christianity. Going forward, if the church wants to appeal to women, especially among the younger generations, it needs to attend to the political critique of the witchcraft community.

I'd like to follow up on yesterday's post. 

In discussions about the possibility of universal reconciliation one of the things I've noticed is how little the prophetic imagination is utilized in making the case. Of course I may have missed this in other thinkers and treatments, but I haven't seen many defenders of universal reconciliation make much use of the Hebrew prophets.

Most of the defenders of universal reconciliation use either reason or New Testament work to make the case. By reason I mean arguing for universal reconciliation based upon argument or philosophical appeals. For example, arguments about human freedom or a proper definition of justice. By New Testament work I mean things like Greek language work on the word translated as "eternal," unpacking what Jesus was referring to by "Gehenna," or appeals to universalistic texts like 1 Corinthians 15.28.

But what you don't see a lot of are appeals to the Old Testament prophets. Yet in my estimation this is, perhaps, the very best location to see how God's judgment, punishment, and wrath are temporary rather than permanent. 

This is vitally important because, at the heart of the debate, sits our image of God. We can debate free will, definitions of justice, the meaning of the word "eternal," what Jesus meant by Gehenna, or what God being "all in all" might imply. And while helpful, none of these debates get to the crux of the issue: What is God like?

Our best answer to that question is the story of the Old Testament which culminates in Jesus. Specifically, God does punish Israel for her sins, a terrible wrath is poured out. And at that point, with Israel's exile, it really does seem like the story reaches its sad, final conclusion. There's nothing in the story to suggest a different ending. But then, out of nowhere, a song of hope breaks out. This inexplicable narrative turn, this rupture in the story, is ground zero for what will eventually come to be known as "grace." On the far side of God's wrath we hear the words, "Comfort, comfort, my people." We get an answer to the question posed to Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones: "Can these bones live?" The crazy, unexpected answer is, "Yes!"

My point is that when you deeply internalize this vision of God you come to realize a profound truth: With God there is always hope. Even, as Ezekiel learns, after death. Skeletons pose no problem for God. That is the prophetic imagination. Yes, wrath and punishment. But after that, hope. In reading the prophets what you start to appreciate is that what you assume to be the final act in our drama--getting exactly what we deserve--isn't really the end. Not with God. And if you carry that imagination forward into the New Testament you look at things differently. It's a huge paradigm shift, knowing hope exists on the far side of hell. Knowing that dead bones still have a future with God. 

And you know this not because of any argument or philosophical debate about Greek words or definitions of justice. You know this because you've seen this story before. You're now reading the New Testament knowing what God is like. So, yes, you do see language in the New Testament about punishment and wrath. But as a student of the prophets bumping into hell is wholly expected. And yet, you look at that language differently. You've seen the tide of wrath turn before. You know the end of the story isn't really the end. So you expect it shall happen again. For God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. With God there is always hope. 

I was reading through the book of Jeremiah and reached Chapter 17, the last verse of which reads:

"But if you do not obey me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying any load as you come through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses." (Jer. 17.27)

The line that caught my attention was the reference to "an unquenchable fire." This phrase caught my attention because of New Testament descriptions of an "an unquenchable fire," passages often used to justify a vision of hell. For example, John the Baptist says this about the coming ministry of Jesus:

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3.12)

It's not surprising that John the Baptist would pull language and images from the Old Testament prophets, here, echoing Jeremiah, a reference to "unquenchable fire." I raise this connection, though, to make an observation.

Specifically, many have pointed to texts like Matthew 3.12 as evidence that the punishments and fire of hell are eternal and everlasting. That is to say, to use the term of art, hell is "eternal conscious torment." 

And yet, Jeremiah's reference to "an unquenchable fire" doesn't imply eternal separation from God. As we know, while the prophets did prophecy judgment against Israel, culminating in her exile, we also know that after the exile the prophets turned to proclaim a message of hope, salvation, and future reconciliation between Israel and God. For the prophets being punished with "an unquenchable fire" didn't mean that you couldn't or wouldn't be reconciled to God in the future. 

All this is just another reminder that when we hear talk of judgment from Jesus and John in the gospels we have to keep the Old Testament prophetic backdrop constantly in mind. When we hear Matthew 3.12 we need to keep in mind Jeremiah 17.27 which helps us understand that being punished with "an unquenchable fire" doesn't foreclose on hope.

562.

There are only two kinds of people: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

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I've been listening to Christianity Today's podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Well worth a listen.

In following the dramatic rise and fall of Mark Driscoll in the podcast one sees the point Pascal is making here. When sinners think they are righteous they can do tremendous damage. I think religious leaders are particularly prone to this temptation as they frequently see themselves as doing the Lord's work, agents of God's purpose and plan. Righteous instruments. And when that happens, when a thirst for fame or power gets painted over as godly and good, well, disaster awaits. 

And we all struggle with this. For example, social media is so toxic because people believe they are righteous in acting so terribly. If Twitter is anything it is a mob of sinners who think they are righteous.

As Freud pointed out so long ago, we struggle to face hard truths about ourselves and tend to act defensively, with denials and rationalizations, rather than admit our failings. I think Jesus said it best:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Last post revisiting parts of my 2016 series about using pirates as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God. 

Let's revisit why many sailors turned to a life of piracy. Press ganged into service at the gun point of an empire, the life of a seaman was basically that of a slave. For these seamen, piracy offered the prospect of freedom. It was this same allure of freedom that also attracted women, who faced oppressions of their own, to the life of piracy.

But a life of piracy offered more than freedom. While life aboard a pirate ship was no utopia, pirate ships governed by the pirate codes were noteworthy for their democratic and egalitarian structures, very different from the ships of empire. Equal voice and fair distribution were values among the pirates, in stark contrast between the hierarchical and unfair distribution experienced on the treasure ships of the empire.

Again, this isn't to deny that pirate ships were filled with violence, simply that the more democratic and egalitarian life aboard a pirate ship was attractive to those pressed ganged into service and who lived a life of forced labor. The dream of a more democratic and egalitarian life under the pirate code was a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven where even the "least of these" are honored and given a voice.

As Jesus said, the kings of the world lord over us. The seamen aboard the treasure ships of empire knew this reality up close and personal. But there shall be no lording over, Jesus said, in the kingdom of God.

We see Jesus' alternative political reality emerge in the early church where members held nothing as his or her own but shared with each who had need. A new world was emerging in the shell of the old.

And who was attracted to the life of the early church? Slaves and women, those who were being lorded over by empire. No wonder they were attracted to this new movement, an alternative political reality where lording over and domination were replaced by the care and koinonia of the kingdom.

Oppressed and beleaguered, the first Christians flocked to the church because of the pirate code of the kingdom of God.

When you think of pirates you think of things like eye patches, peg legs, hooks, parrots, and buried treasure.

And you also think of the Jolly Roger.

The skull and crossbones on a black flag--the Jolly Roger--is one of the most recognizable pirate symbols. But what did it mean to sail under this sign of death?

No doubt, the skull and crossbones, as a sign of death, was meant to stir up fear onboard the ships the pirates attacked. "Death is coming for you!" the flag declared.

But in his book Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, And How They Can Save Us Kester Brewin suggests that the skull and crossbones symbol--the sign of death--had other, deeper meanings for the pirates.

According to Brewin, when the pirates raised the Jolly Roger they were also saying something about how they saw themselves in relation to the world. Specifically, they saw themselves as dead men. Sailing under the sign of death the pirates declared that, being already dead, they were immune to the fear of death.

Here is how Brewin describes the deep symbolism of the Jolly Roger:

For all sailors the skull and crossed bones was a familiar ensign. It was entered into the ship's log when a member of the crew died...The raising of the Jolly Roger was thus deeply significant. It represented the pirates embracing of their fate--they were going to die--and yet their resistance of death at the hands of their despotic masters...

The Jolly Roger was doubtless designed to inspire fear and supplication in the hearts of those they attacked, but there is something more profound and heartfelt in the symbolism. The skull and crossed bones does not just mean 'we are bringing you death'; rather it announces 'we are the dead.' We the shat-on, the abused, the flogged, the one you have treated as less than human, have escaped your power, have slipped away from the identity you foisted upon us. We, the ones you took for dead, are returning as the dead--and thus free of all fear, free of all human labels or classifications or ranks. We might say that the pirates did not raise the Jolly Roger as a symbol of violence, but rather as a declaration that no more violence could be done to them. They were dead, and yet lived still...

It is this fearlessness in the face of structures that have oppressed and marginalized them that marks the pirates out...Drawing together what this extraordinary powerful flag meant, [Rediker] concludes that it serves to sum up piracy altogether: 'a defiance of death.'

Obviously, there are a lot of Christian resonances here.

Like the pirates with the Jolly Roger, Christians also live under a sign of death. The sign of the cross.

And this sign functions for Christians in very much the same way Brewin describes how the Jolly Roger functioned for the pirates. Under the sign of the cross Christians declare that they have died to the world. Christians live as the dead and, thus, live freed from the power and threat of death. In the words of Brewin, no more violence can be done to us. And it was this fearlessness among the early Christians--following the example of Jesus before Pilate--that made their witness so potent and powerful. Already living as the dead, there was nothing the empires of the world could do to threaten the followers of Jesus.

I've written an entire book about all this. Beyond a fearlessness in the face of the threat of death, in The Slavery of Death I talk about how our emancipation from the fear of death also affects how be build and bolster our self-esteem. Defying death means dying to the ways our culture defines a significant and meaningful life. Empires don't just threaten death, empires define who is or is not successful, worthy and significant. Empires tell us who are the winners and who are the losers.

Living as the dead, then, means being immune to the ways our culture variously praises and shames us as we seek first the kingdom of God. This immunity--found in renouncing the idolatry of our age--creates the capacity to live resurrected lives, lives set free from our slavery to the fear of death (Heb. 2.14-15).

Like the pirates, Christians sail under the sign of the cross in a fearless defiance of death.

Kester Brewin makes the argument in Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, And How They Can Save Us that pirates always emerge when economies become blocked by the powerful. During the Golden Age of piracy wealth was flowing from the New World to the Old, enriching the empires of Europe. The seamen who made this transport possible were blocked from this wealth, often pressed into naval service at the point of a gun. Press ganged into service by the empire, life aboard the ships of England, Spain, France and Portugal was functional slavery. 

So a life of piracy seemed an attractive alternative. Though perilous, the life of a pirate offered freedom over the slavery of empire.

And this freedom was the great affront of the pirate to the empires of the world. The ships of England, Spain, France and Portugal carried letters from their kings allowing them to act as pirates. When a English ship attacked and robbed a Spanish ship this was legitimate, sanctioned by the king of England. The English ship was not a pirate, but a privateer.

To the pirates, that seemed to be a distinction without a difference. When robbery was sanctioned by empire it was legitimized, not robbery but business as usual. But when pirates, unaffiliated with any empire, robbed a ship? That was an affront to empire. High treason. A crime. Immoral. A sin. When captured, pirates were summarily hanged.

In short, Kester Brewin argues that piracy emerges when access to the common good becomes blocked. And more often than not, it's empire who is doing the blocking, legitimizing their own robbery, injustice, and oppression while condemning it in others.

Piracy, thus, emerges whenever and wherever an economy has becomed blocked. Pirates are symptoms that injustice is talking place. As Brewin writes:

I want to argue that pirates emerge whenever economies become 'blocked.' To put it another way, wherever we see piracy we are looking at a system in trouble, a trading structure that is unjust...

In the hands of Brewin this understanding of piracy is a powerful tool to talk about our current political and economic systems. I encourage you to read Mutiny! to ponder his analysis.

For my purposes, I want to ponder how Jesus and the early church acted as pirates.

Specifically, I think you can make a really strong case that the reason Jesus was killed was because he was a pirate.

The conflict that brought about Jesus' death was his clash with the temple. Jesus' temple action was the precipitating event leading to his arrest and trial. And Jesus' claims about "tearing down the temple" were the main issues being debated during his trial before the Sanhedrin.

Jesus had been picking a fight with the temple for some time. What was the issue?

Following Brewin, the temple represented an economy that had become blocked. Access to God, community and salvation was being controlled by wealthy and politically powerful elites. Large portions of Jewish society--the poor and marginalized--were being shut out of God's kingdom economy.

And so, a pirate emerged.

Jesus began to offer forgiveness on the street, free of charge. And the problem with this was that the forgiveness Jesus offered was not legitimized or sanctioned by the temple elites. That was the question Jesus faced over and over again: "Who authorized you to do this?"

Jesus was a pirate, acting outside the structures and controls of empire. Jesus cracked open a blocked economy, granting access to those who had been excluded and marginalized.

As Brewin writes, pirates emerge to raise "merry hell" whenever "the voiceless find their path blocked."

Jesus, as a pirate, raised merry hell, and he was killed for it. For the kingdom had begun to unblock God's economy, letting in the voiceless, excluded and marginalized. And for that the empire executed Jesus as a criminal and bandit.

In all seriousness, Jesus was crucified for being a pirate. Jesus wasn't killed for being a kind human being. He was killed because he was offering access to the kingdom of God outside the boundaries of legitimizing authority.

So, raise a glass today for the pirates of the kingdom! Join the kingdom's mutiny against the empires of the world. The tide is up and the winds of the Spirit are blowing. Shake out the main sail and pull up the anchor.

Set sail and raise the kingdom's pirate flag.

This summer my son and I watched a pirate documentary series, and it put me in mind of a series I did five years ago entitled "Jesus and the Jolly Roger." The series was inspired by my friend Simon Nash who put me onto the book by Kester Brewin Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, And How They Can Save Us. In thinking again about pirates this summer, I revisited those old posts and wanted to share them again:

I found Brewin's book utterly fascinating and fun, a hard to classify book that fuses theology, history, pop culture and economics. That said, this short series is not a review or accurate summary of Brewin's book, which is more about economics than theology. This series, rather, are riffs inspired by Brewin's take on pirates.

Let's start by asking the obvious question: Are you serious, pirates? 

Yes, I'm serious. I'm taking a cue from Jesus, his parables in particular. Jesus's style in telling his stories was often to jolt or startle his audience into new perceptions. In describing the kingdom of God Jesus would make comparisons that were, by turns, shocking, charming or bewildering.

The kingdom of God is like a son who asked his father for his half of the inheritance.

The kingdom of God is like a farmer going out and sowing seed.

The kingdom of God is like a manager ripping off his boss.

The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in field.

The kingdom of God is like a net full of fish, some valuable some trash.

The kingdom of God is like a wedding banquet where everyone rejects the invitation.

The parables are not moral fables. Jesus used comparisons like these not to make a moral point but to draw our attention to some facet, some aspect of the kingdom of God.

So that's what we're going to do in this series.

The kingdom of God is like a pirate...

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Self love. The nature of self-love and of this human self is to love only self and consider only self. But what is it to do? It cannot prevent the object of its love from being full of faults and wretchedness: it wants to be great and sees that it is small; it wants to be happy and sees that it is wretched; it wants to be perfect and sees that if is full of imperfections; it wants to be the object of love and esteem and sees that its faults deserve only dislike and contempt...

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Without God all you have is yourself. So we try to build a foundation of happiness upon ourselves. Trouble is, we're a mess. And we know it. 

In Hunting Magic Eels, in the chapter "The Good Catastrophe," I echo Pascal in describing how the modern pursuit of self-esteem has become a mental health disaster. I write:

Our culture keeps turning us inward, telling us that self-esteem is the pathway to mental health. We’re told that cultivating a healthy self-esteem is critical to emotional well-being. So we try to instill self-esteem in our children, our loved ones, and ourselves, attempting to nurture a healthy self-concept. 

But let me ask you some questions: How’s this working out for you? How healthy is your self-esteem? What about your children and loved ones? How are they feeling about themselves? The data here is pretty clear. While America is the most affluent nation in the history of the world, our rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and addiction are all skyrocketing. We’re not doing very well. We are a deeply unwell society. 

What’s gone wrong is that the marketed cure is a poison. Our problem is self-esteem. Because at its heart, self-esteem is an evaluation: How am I measuring up? We answer this question in one of two ways. First, we compare ourselves to others...This is why social media is such a curse. Through Facebook and Instagram, we compare our sad lives to the curated images of happiness from our friends, family, and coworkers, triggering massive amounts of envy and dissatisfaction. Our lives don’t measure up. 

Second, when we’re not comparing ourselves to the lives of others, we judge our self-esteem by assessing our performance in meeting our goals and expectations...Self-esteem informs you, emotionally, how successful you have been in reaching the goals you’ve set for your life. If you’re achieving your goals, you feel increased self-esteem. If you’re falling short of the life you want for yourself, you experience lower self-esteem. 

Few of us, though, have the life we’ve desired, planned, or dreamed for, at least not 100 percent of that life. Most of us are living with unfulfilled or even broken dreams. Life hasn’t quite turned out the way we planned, not completely. So we experience all the symptoms of low self-esteem: depression, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, shame, envy, and resentment. 

Stepping back, it’s really no wonder we’re all so unhealthy and unhappy. We’ve told ourselves that a healthy self-esteem is the surest route to happiness, but self-esteem is rooted in evaluation, comparison, and performance. Linking our psychological health to our ability to compare well to others and succeed has been a complete disaster. Our emotional well-being has become a tragic roller-coaster ride. We feel good about ourselves when things are going well but fall into depression when things are not. We’re up, and then we’re down. Self-esteem isn’t a thermostat, set and steady; it’s a thermometer, rising and falling in response to the events in our lives...It seems pretty clear: self-esteem can never be a stable and durable foundation for joy. If we’re building our happiness on self-esteem, we’re building that house on a foundation of sand.

When I was a child, we sang a song during our weeks of Vacation Bible School, "His Banner Over Me Is Love":

The Lord is mine and I am His
His banner over me is love
The Lord is mine and I am His
His banner over me is love
The Lord is mine and I am His
His banner over me is love
His banner over me is love!

He brought me to His banqueting table
His banner over me is love
He brought me to His banqueting table
His banner over me is love
He brought me to His banqueting table
His banner over me is love
His banner over me is love!

Theses lyrics come from the Bible, the Song of Songs:

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me is love. (Song of Songs 2.4)

Song of Songs is an erotic love poem between two lovers, but both the Christian and Jewish traditions have also read the poem allegorically, as a love song between God and His people. The children's song "His Banner Over Me Is Love" is an example. 

In Hunting Magic Eels I make the observation that faith has an emotional, even romantic aspect. I was reminded of that fact recently upon hearing a story about the death of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was traveling and seems to have suffered a stroke of some kind. As he languished, he dictated his final theological reflections, a commentary on the Song of Songs. Even St. Thomas, that most logical and rational of minds, embraced the romantic aspects of faith.

Like a tragedy, [the life and crucifixion of Jesus] stirs up pity and terror in us. Like a tragedy it requires us to contemplate the world’s darkness. Like a tragedy, it draws attention to waste. It shows us a life that need not have been extinguished being extinguished, without particular malice, by the normal processes of the world. It shows us that accident, injustice, spoilage, are all standard, all in the pitiably usual course of things. Here it’s important that Jesus’s death was an obscure one, when it happened. He’s not an Oedipus or a Prince Hamlet, someone falling from greatness. His death belongs beside the early cutting-short of the millions of lives of people too poor or too unimportant ever to have been recorded in the misleading story we call history; people only mourned by others as brief as themselves, and therefore gone from human memory as if they had never been. Jesus dies like a migrant worker who suffocates in a freight container, like a garbage-picker caught in a slide, like a child with an infected finger, like a beggar the bus reverses over. Or, of course, like all the other slaves ever punished by crucifixion, a fate so low, said Cicero, that no well-bred person should ever even mention it. Christians believe that Jesus’s death is, among other things, a way for God to mention it, loudly and with no good breeding at all, a declaration by the maker of the world, in pain and solidarity, that to Him the measure of the waste of history is not the occasional tragedies of kings but the routine losses of every day. It is not an accident that Christianity began as a religion ‘for slaves and women’. (Nietzsche—he thinks this is a criticism. It’s a compliment.) It is not an accident that, wherever it travels, it appeals first to untouchables. The last shall be first and the first shall be last, said Jesus. You’d have to turn the world upside down to do justice to God’s sense of the tragedy of it.

And when the story does turn the world upside down, or the order of nature anyway, by telling us that Jesus lives again, it isn’t suggesting that he didn’t really die, or that he won’t really die. The happy ending makes a promise sized to the utmost extent of our darkest convictions. It says “Yes, and…” to tragedy. It promises, bizarrely enough, that love is stronger than death. But it does not promise that death is imaginary, that death is avoidable, that death is temporary. To have death, this once, be reversed is to let us feel the depth of our ordinary loss in it, not to pretend it away. Some people ask nowadays what kind of a religion it is that chooses an instrument of torture for its symbol, as if the cross on churches must represent some kind of endorsement. The answer is: one that takes the existence of suffering seriously.

--Francis Spufford, from Unapologetic

As discussed in the last post, there is a struggle to maintain logical consistency in Christian theology when trying to address the problem of evil, the famous trilemma that God is powerful, God is loving, and yet evil exists. But as noted in the last post, Karen Kilby suggests that perhaps we shouldn't push here for logical consistency. Perhaps we should confess all three parts of the trilemma as forcefully as we can and leave the issue of consistency to the side. 

In thinking about this, I'd like to suggest that the problem of consistency isn't just a problem for Christianity. As I've pointed out before, evil is a problem for materialists as well. For example, we could set out a materialist version of the trilemma:

1. The material universe is all that exists.

2. Any material configuration of the universe is neither good or bad, right or wrong.

3. Evil exists.

#1 is just the metaphysical commitment of materialism. So there shouldn't be much debate there. Any pushback would come with #2 and #3 and their relationship.

Specifically, by #3--"Evil exists"--we mean the claim that something is "wrong" with the material universe. And by "wrong" we mean something more than "wishing it were otherwise." "Evil" is a stronger, moral claim that goes beyond our preferences and wishes. To say that evil exists is saying something more than that I prefer or wish the universe were otherwise. To be sure, we do wish the universe were otherwise, but that doesn't make the universe "evil."

Why? Because of #2. The material arrangements of the universe are simply what they are, neither good or bad, right or wrong. 

Now, the way the materialist threads this trilemma is to redefine what we mean by "evil." Specifically, "evil" just means "great pain." And it's true that material arrangements of the universe cause us great pain, that we experience life as an "evil." In that sense, we can reject #2 as false. Specifically, the current material configuration of the universe can be called "bad" because it is causing us great pain. 

And it's here where we'd start to settle into a good debate. Is pain the same as evil? How can pain be "bad"? And even if great pain is "bad," in that I wish life were otherwise, is it wrong that the universe is the way it is, since the universe can't be anything other than what it is? And so on.

Now, to be very, very clear. I'm not saying a materialist can't find a way to harmonize this trilemma. But I am suggesting that such a harmonization would involve adjusting meanings of words like "bad," "wrong," and "evil." Not unlike how Christians rethink a words like "power," "love," or "evil" in their own trilemma. 

The point I'm making is this. If we say "evil exists" both the theist and the materialist have a problem on their hands. For both the theist and the materialist evil creates challenges of logical consistency. True, many, from both camps, think those challenges can be met, while others think the tradeoffs required to achieve that consistency gives too much away.

The classic problem of evil is how to resolve the logical consistency of three propositions:

1. God is all-powerful.
2. God is loving.
3. Evil exists.
   

Most theodicies tend to work the power angle, placing some limit on God's power, even if it's a self-limitation to allow space for human freedom and responsibility. 

Regardless, the main stream of theodicy is to make these three propositions all hang together so that some sort of logical consistency is obtained. 

But in her essay "On Evil and the Limits of Theology" Karen Kilby goes in a very different direction. Specifically, Kilby suggests, why not just admit it all doesn't make any sense? Kilby summarizing her position:

My proposal, then, is that these questions, these concrete and theological versions of the so-called 'problem of evil' ought to be acknowledged as completely legitimate and as utterly unanswerable. Christians believe God is working salvation and trust that ultimately God will bring good out of all conceivable evils, but this does not make these evils goods, nor render their presence explicable, nor allow us to understand how they can take place in the good creation of a loving and faithful God. Sometimes of course we can already see, and must look for, good coming out of evil - suffering can bring growth, sin is an occasion to turn back to God's forgiveness with trust, dependence and gratitude. But we cannot turn these things into explanations, in part because suffering can also, through no fault of the sufferer, bring about degradation and corruption, and sin can build on itself and perpetuate itself. When we see good coming from evil, we can see this as the beginning of the hoped for work of God, but not the beginning of any kind of explanation.

I have said that questions arise which should not be pushed aside and cannot be answered. Another way to articulate this is to say that it is of the very nature of Christian theology to make affirmations about the goodness, faithfulness and creative power of God on the one hand, and the brokenness of creation on the other, that it cannot co-ordinate or make sense of. There are points, then, at which systematic theology ought to be, if not systematically incoherent, then at least systematically dissonant. Just as believers may have to live with evils they cannot make sense of or integrate into any larger positive picture, so too theologians may have to live with points of systematic incoherence that they cannot make go away, not even by dismissing the problem and changing the subject, and that we cannot resolve, not even by saying that God suffers.

Standard discussions of theodicy set up three apparently incompatible propositions: God is powerful, God is good, evil exists. What is at stake here can be summed up with a variant on this trilemma. One might say instead that there are three features of a Christian theology, all of which are desirable, but not all of which can be achieved: a theology ought to provide a fully Christian picture of God; ought to give, or at least leave room for, a full recognition of the injustice, terror and tragedy that we participate in and see around us; and it ought to be coherent. I am suggesting that not all of these can be achieved. Something has to be sacrificed. Process theology sacrifices the traditional picture of God to achieve a coherent system that allows for evil. I have outlined how theodicies tend to sacrifice the full recognition of evil to hang on to what is at least thought to be a traditional conception of God while maintaining coherence. The option I am recommending is to sacrifice neither the picture of God, nor the recognition of the range and depth of evils in God's world, but instead the possibility of a manifestly coherent theological vision.

Basically, give up trying to achieve logical consistency. Accept the dissonance. 

The "win" here is twofold. 

First, we don't have to distort God or the experience of evil. We don't have to squeeze God into a box, and we don't have to minimize the full horror of evil. If we accept the dissonance we can say everything we want to say, and say it boldly. 

A second win, at least for some, is that this view privileges the moral response to evil over the intellectual. That is, we don't let a desire for neat, clean, tidy, and logical arguments minimize a full confession of the horror and assault of evil. By confessing the mystery of evil we allow evil to be fully and bewilderingly evil.

165.

The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever. 

166.

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.

///

How cheerful!

Obviously, we are still here with Pascal's interest in using an awareness of our mortality to existentially wake us up. Most of us, as pointed out last week, distract ourselves from our predicament. As Pascal says, we "put something in front of us"--from social media drama to our whiskey collection--to stop us from seeing the last bloody act where they thrown dirt over our heads.

Pascal's method here is actually quite biblical. There are many places where the Bible uses death to bring the priorities of our life into focus:

For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90.9-10,12) 

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7.2)

In reading Karen Kilby's article "Evil and the Limits of Theology" I had some notes and  thoughts I wanted to share in a few posts.

The first was her distinguishing between the intellectual, the moral and the pastoral responses to evil. These distinctions aren't new with Kilby, but her article made them new to me.

Well, in truth, I was aware of these distinctions, I'd just not see them so cleanly labeled and set side by side, accompanied by commentary about how we need to keep them in their lanes to avoid bad conversations about evil. 

Summarizing, the intellectual response to evil are all those abstract theological debates about why God permits evil to exist. 

The moral response to evil is how we should refuse to be reconciled to evil and should struggle against it in the world. 

Finally, the pastoral response to evil is how we come alongside those who are suffering or who are victims of evil.

Again, the point to be observed here is that we need to keep these responses distinct and separate or great damage can be done.

For example, pastoral damage can be done if we try to offer an intellectual response to evil by a graveside. No one needs to hear "the reason" why a child has died. People who are suffering don't need an intellectual explanation about "why" this pain, loss, or suffering has occurred. Unfortunately, this is a too common mistake, as people have felt that a theological "explanation" might help soothe and salve the pain of a sufferer. But as we (should) know, our pastoral response to evil shouldn't be logical or theological. We don't share a "reason" or "explanation." We simply share presence, tears, grief, and love. We shouldn't be doing a lot of talking and explaining around pain.

A second thing to monitor is letting the intellectual response bleed into our moral response. This concern gets less attention, but it's still a big issue. Specifically, any intellectual "explanation" of evil has the potential to lessen its force, weight, and impact. If evil has a "reason" we become, in some small way, reconciled to its existence. This weakens our moral response to evil, our absolute, undiluted antagonism towards its existence. 

And as Kilby points out in her article, some have even made this same argument about God's presence as a theodicy. That is, we don't know why evil exists, but we do know that God in Christ is "with us" in our pain. Some have argued that even this small bit of consolation, when offered to others, is an attempt to dilute or lessen the full force of evil. God's presence is a consolation, but any consolation in the face of evil is a lessening, a small reconciliation with something that we must remain 100% unreconciled toward.

Now, you may or may not like that idea. For my part, the conviction that God in Christ is with me in suffering is a bit of a lifeline. Still, I appreciate the point that any consolation has the potential to minimize the radical intrusion of evil into human existence, its wounding and primal scream. But I think the real issue here, again, is when that consolation is pushed onto others rather than claimed for oneself. Because I think it is also problematic to tell those in pain what they can or cannot do to find consolation and comfort. Yes, consolation can never be forced from the outside, but we should be allowed to take our own personal journey. 

Anyway, the point to be observed here is how there are three responses to evil--the intellectual, the moral and the pastoral--and that we have to pay attention for them to stay in their lanes. 

In this series we've been focusing upon how disenchantment facilitated the rise of penal substitutionary atonement in the West. Today a final post to point out how this development really didn't end with forensic views of salvation. Penal substitutionary atonement itself gave way to the moral influence view of atonement.

Recall the very first post of this series, about the demise of Christus Victor atonement. In that post we observed how when beliefs about the role and power of the devil became harder and harder to believe in it paved the way for "satisfaction" views of the atonement, culminating in the modern popularity of penal substitutionary atonement. In these satisfaction views the only actor we needed was God, his wrath toward sin and his gracious provision of an atoning sacrifice. Unlike Christus Victor, no devil was necessary for any of the satisfaction theories to "work."

But what happens when disenchantment deepens, as it did in the West after the Enlightenment? What happens when God himself becomes an object of doubt and skepticism? 

Well, the satisfaction theories will falter and give way to the most disenchanted of the atonement theories: the moral influence view. You don't even need God in this view. All we need is goodness itself.

As we've observed, penal substitutionary atonement helped pave the way for this view by cashing out "goodness" within a consequentialist framework, as good versus bad behavior leading to either reward or punishment. The mystical union of the prior participatory metaphysics was traded for the moralism of Protestantism. 

In the West we underwent what I describe in Hunting Magic Eels as "the mystical to moral shift." We began to seek the good over God. Right moral action, and nowadays right political activism, became the entire aim of "following Jesus." 

This gave rise to what is called the moral influence view of the atonement. Jesus "saves" us by showing us how to live. Jesus teaches us the ways of justice, peace, and love. When we follow Jesus as "the Way" we experience healing, wholeness, and shalom. 

To be sure, this view can be infused with enchantment. We can speak of Jesus as a moral and spiritual guru, as an enlightened being who first exhibited a "Christ-consciousness," a plane of moral and spiritual insight that allows us to perceive and experience the unity and oneness of the cosmos. (Note: Psychedelics can help.)

But really, you don't need any New Age woo-woo. It's just not necessary. The key thing is being a good person. Love. Be a kind human. Speak the truth. Be Woke. Fight for justice. Care for the planet. Do these things. This is all you need. It's the last stop on the train ride to a disenchanted salvation, a salvation where you save yourself.

In Part 2 of this series I argued that as the participatory metaphysics of the early Christians faded in the West our view of salvation became less ontological--divine union with God--and more consequentialist. Salvation became less about participation in the divine life of the Trinity and more about avoiding hell and getting to heaven. 

In this post I want to say something more about that. Specifically, how is salvation supposed to flow out of "divine union" with God? How's that supposed to work?

Again, the imagination required here is hard for us disenchanted, Western Christians. But here's a try.

In the early Christian imagination, and I'm speaking here of the church fathers, mortal human life was unstable and prone to dissolution, decay and death. This part, I'm guessing, is not too hard to understand. From dust we are and to dust we will return.

In the Incarnation corruptible human life was reconnected with God's own Life. Through the Incarnation an ontological merger occurred, a metaphysical connection was established between our life and God's Life. And through that connection our life is rendered immune to death, incorruptible. 

Notice the difference here between life as consequence (getting to heaven) versus life as ontological change. It's a very different way of thinking about how salvation involves the defeat of death. Here's how St. Athanasius describes this in his famous treatise "On Incarnation":

For the nature of created things, having come into being from nothing, is unstable, and is weak and mortal when considered by itself...So seeing that all created nature according to its own definition is in a state of flux and dissolution, therefore to prevent this happening and the universe dissolving back into nothing, after making everything by his own eternal Word and bringing creation into existence, [God] did not abandon it to be carried away and suffer through its own nature, lest it run the risk of returning to nothing...lest it suffer what would happen...a relapse into non-existence, if it were not protected by the Word.

Note how the issues here are ontological. The created, mortal world is "unstable," in a state of "flux and dissolution" when separated from God. On its own, created reality is "dissolving back into nothing[ness]." That was the ontological predicament requiring rehabilitation, rescue, and saving, and it was accomplished through the Incarnation by (re)establishing an ontological connection between material reality and the Word. And it was precisely for this reason that the early church considered the Incarnation itself to be the critical, decisive act of salvation, and the resurrection the subsequent confirmation that death could not destroy mortal flesh when it had been mystically united with God's very Life.

All of this is pretty foreign to Western Christians. The metaphysical picture here is way too enchanted. As disenchanted Christians we can't fathom why the Incarnation made such an ontological difference, a difference vindicated in the resurrection of Jesus. Yet it was because of these enchanted ontological commitments that the early church focused salvation history upon Christmas and Easter. Disenchanted modern believers, by contrast, have lost this enchanted, ontological thread and have therefore focused salvation history on the only thing remaining in the story: Good Friday. And with that shift, with the marginalization of the Incarnation and Easter in salvation history, forensic notions of salvation focused on the death of Jesus came to predominate. 

Beyond the decline of Christus Victor atonement, another big reason for the rise of penal substitutionary atonement in the West was the loss of a participatory metaphysics.

"Participatory metaphysics" is a theological term used to describe the Christian notion that God holds all things together and permeates all things. All existence is held in being by God, and humanity can deepen that union. Material life can "participate" in the life of God, merging the human and the divine spheres of existence. Salvation looks here like Jesus in his transfiguration. Salvation via divine participation and union is described as theosis, deification, or divinization. 

I'll have more to say about that in the next post, but for this post I want to highlight the location and nature of "the good" in a participatory metaphysics in contrast to modern Western materialism.

Specifically, in a participatory metaphysics "the good" is an ontological reality, God's presence in all things. Thus, salvation is seeking and uniting with this good. And, obviously, this view of reality is very enchanted given that the material world is suffused with spiritual life.

But with the rise of disenchantment in the West we began to perceive material reality as just that, raw material, material devoid of any spiritual vitality or moral grain. "Goodness" was no longer an ontological reality existing independently and prior to human consciousness. "Goodness" became a subjective, interior phenomenon. In a disenchanted cosmos, material reality cannot be good or bad. It's just neutral "stuff." But material reality can impinge upon my subjective consciousness, and my consciousness can call certain states of affairs "good" or "bad." Eating chocolate is "good" to me. Cutting my finger is "bad."

Summarizing, when the material world becomes disenchanted "goodness" exists not in the world but in our minds, in our reactions to the world. Goodness shifts from being objective to subjective, from being ontological to phenomenological. 

What does this have to do with salvation? This, I think. When "goodness" shifts toward the psychological and subjective salvation becomes less about uniting with the good than receiving something we subjectively register as good. We shift from divine union to consequence, from ontology to reward. Basically, what is "good" about salvation is heaven. Heaven is "good" not as mystical union with God but as a reward that I would enjoy and be happy with. Notice here how "goodness" exists as our psychological response to salvation.

Basically, the demise of a participatory metaphysics in the West shifted thoughts about salvation toward consequentialism, "good" and "bad" registering as "reward" or "punishment." In a thoroughly disenchanted cosmos, stripped of any moral texture, the only "good" I can receive from God is in some future consequence and reward, a heaven in the afterlife. This metaphysical shift in the West, the loss of a participatory metaphysics, fueled the rise of atonement theories which turned away from divine union to reward and punishment, goodness as consequence. Salvation was reduced to "going to heaven."