Today I'm announcing our new Friday series. On Fridays in the coming months I'll be reading through and reacting to Jordan Peterson's book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. 

I know Peterson is a controversial figure for many, so let me share my particular interest in "the Jordan Peterson phenomenon."

First, as a psychologist who works at the intersection of Christianity and psychology I've had countless people ask me the question, "What do you think about Jordan Peterson?" This series will be a chance to answer that question. 

Second, as the author of Hunting Magic Eels, I'm very interested in the project of reconstruction and re-enchantment in a post-Christian world. And this is my specific and particular interest in Jordan Peterson, how he has managed to engage a large audience to both listen to the Bible and appreciate, from a pragmatic angle, the truths of the Christian faith. This engagement is something churches are struggling to match in gaining a hearing for the gospel. So I'm keen to explore Peterson's particular "magic" in the hope of learning some lessons about how evangelism might look in a post-Christian context. 

Specifically, I'm talking here about the series of lectures Peterson delivered about "The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories." These 15 lectures can be found here. Interestingly, Peterson is not a believer. He approaches the Scripture as a Jungian psychologist. And yet, these fifteen very long and rambling lectures on the Bible were delivered to packed audiences and the videos/podcasts of the lectures have received millions of views and downloads. Which brings me to my question for the coming Fridays: What is the allure, appeal, attraction and fascination with these lectures? This is what I want to explore.

Again, the hope here is to learn lessons about how the church might share the Bible with the modern world. Here's an example. I had a recent conversation with a science department faculty member at my school. He was seeking my advice about a student he was close to. This student was raised in a conservative Christian home with a very literalist way of reading the Bible. Which, obviously, made Scripture conflict with the reigning scientific consensus about things like evolution and cosmology. So when the student came to the university as a science major his faith crashed and burned. And he grew very bitter and angry. As the faculty member shared with me, this student felt that he had been "lied to" by his church.

So the faculty member asked if I had any recommendations about how he might talk with this angry, suspicious student about God and the Bible. And here was my answer: "Have him listen to Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible. If anyone can get an angry young man to take the Bible seriously, it's Jordan Peterson." 

Which is a really sad situation, if you think about it, pointing a struggling student toward a non-believer rather than to the church. But that's the reality of the situation right now, at least as I see it. My hope for this student is that Peterson would become a gateway drug for Christianity at some later point. 

Which brings us to Maps of Meaning.  

Published in 1999 before Peterson became famous, Maps of Meaning is Peterson's magnum opus as a theoretical psychologist working within the Jungian tradition. As a dense, academic tome, Maps of Meaning hasn't been read as much as Peterson's more popular books, 12 Rules to Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. And yet, the core insights of 12 Rules to Life and Beyond Order are all there and anticipated in Maps of Meaning. And most importantly for our purposes, the Jungian analysis Peterson develops in Maps of Meaning functions as the hermeneutical lens through which he reads the Bible in his popular Bible lectures. Basically, though Peterson's thought has developed since 1999, Maps of Meaning functions as a sort of Rosetta Stone that unlocks Peterson's particular take on the world and his Jungian reading of the Bible. In addition, since Maps of Meaning represents Peterson's academic contribution to psychology, it is the book that holds the most interest for me as a psychologist.

And so, on Fridays in the months ahead we'll be walking through Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning. The tour will be eclectic rather than comprehensive, driven by my own interests and my goal in trying to understand what makes Peterson's Jungian reading of the Bible so compelling to modern audiences.

So, the gospel is an epistemological crisis. A Copernican revolution. What we once knew of ourselves and the world has been wiped away and replaced.

Replaced by what? What is the exact nature of the crisis the gospel creates upon our hearing the News?

To return to Part 2, the gospel is news about the crucified Messiah and risen Lord. But what is it about this news that creates an epistemological crisis?

The crisis has to do with the shape of reality. In the crucified Messiah and risen Lord the shape of reality is revealed to be cruciform. And it's this cruciformity which creates the crisis. The cross puts a question mark next to everything.

It might be helpful to see this at work. A great case study is found in 1 Corinthians 1: 

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

In the last two posts I noted how the news of the crucified Messiah and risen Lord created a crisis in how Paul understood the Law and the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. As I mentioned, we see in both Romans and Galatians Paul working through that crisis, rethinking the world in light of the gospel. But here in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians we see a different epistemological crisis, how the gospel puts a question mark next to the philosophical tradition of the Greco-Roman world, question marks against "the philosophers of this age." Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans. The gospel puts a question mark next to all of them. The News of the crucified Messiah and risen Lord creates an epistemological crisis for the entire philosophical tradition of Athens and Rome. What we once thought was wisdom is now, in light of the News, revealed to be foolishness. 

And note that the crisis is produced by the cruciform shape of reality. Greek and Roman wisdom is foolish because it gets reality wrong. The "preaching of Christ crucified" is less about atonement than ontology. The Lord and Judge of all Reality, the Logos holding all things in being, has nail scars. That's a crisis for a world that thinks reality is otherwise. 

And the importance here concerns navigation. Where are we? What sort of world are we living in? We need answers to these descriptive questions before we can locate ourselves and plot a course for our lives. Right living flows out of right description. And it's the News about the true shape of reality that gives us this right description. To continue with the case study of 1 Corinthians, after Paul points to the epistemological crisis created by the cross for the wisdom of the age, Paul goes on to make navigational comments:

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Given the shape of reality, revealed by the News, Paul describes a community striving to navigate its life by conforming to the shape of the Crucified. Because reality has a cruciform shape so does the community. Ethics and ontology go hand in hand. A cruciform community navigates life by rejecting the honor/shame codes of the world. In a cruciform community the weak and powerless have status and honor. Because Jesus is Lord. Because of the News.

All this illustrates how the gospel "does its work" in the world. The News communicates the cruciform shape of reality. This creates a crisis for the world, calling for a response. With the News comes truthful description, and that map provides us a means of navigation. 

So, the gospel is the news that Jesus is Lord, that the crucified Nazarene has been raised from the dead and now sits at God's right hand.

Which raises the question: What is the import of this news?

There are many answers to that question. The gospel is vast. But I'd like to suggest that the gospel is, fundamentally, an epistemological crisis.

Now, I confess, I hesitate to use the word "epistemological" here. Reaching for a big, philosophical word like that makes the gospel seem arcane and hard to understand. So for broad, accessible communication better words and descriptions should be found. But I'll need to describe what I mean first by "epistemological crisis" before alternative labels are proffered.

So, what do I mean when I say that the gospel is an epistemological crisis?

The answer comes from the work of those who have described Paul as an apocalyptic thinker. Apocalypse, you'll recall, means "unveiling" or "revelation." Paul receives the gospel as "an apocalypse of Jesus Christ." This apocalypse is how Paul gets the news that Jesus is Lord. 

And the news becomes an epistemological crisis for Paul. Everything Paul thought he knew about the world comes crashing down when he encounters the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. The revelation that Israel's Messiah was crucified and raised from the dead causes Paul to rethink everything he thought he knew about God, Israel, sin, death, the Law, and the promises made to Abraham. We see the outcome of this rethinking in books like Galatians and Romans. So if you want to see the impact of the gospel, look at the letters to the Galatians and the Romans. Those letters are the fallout of the epistemological crisis.

To be sure, the gospel has practical, moral, social, political, economic, psychological, theological, biblical, missional, and philosophical consequences. But these consequences flow out of the news that Jesus--crucified, buried and raised from the dead--is Lord. It is this news, this unveiling of reality, that causes us to rethink everything in life. 

To take one example from Paul, the news that Jesus is Lord caused Paul to radically rethink the relationship between Jew and Gentile. And not just Jews and Gentiles, as Paul says:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

And,

Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Lastly,

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.

Paul's prior mental structures for navigating and understanding the world have been dissolved by the gospel. This is what I mean when I say the gospel is an epistemological crisis. The gospel places a massive question mark next to every understanding that you might have about yourself and the world. Everything you thought you knew about anything, upon hearing the News, undergoes, to use Paul's words, "a crucifixion." An old model of the world passes away, and a new world emerges. The gospel is akin to a Copernican revolution. What we once knew to be the center of the cosmos is revealed to be an error, and a new center--the crucified Messiah--along with a new cosmology comes into view. 

To which we'll turn in the next post.

The first and most basic thing to know about the gospel is that it's news. The gospel is an announcement about an event.

It's important to get this right, as we can get confused about the nature of the gospel. We can be tempted into thinking the gospel is a political project, some social engineering to improve the world, a path toward enlightenment, a therapy, or a technique for actualizing in getting your best life now. But as I pointed out in Part 1, the gospel is none of these things. The gospel isn't a technology, something that we can put to use to achieve some good we select for ourselves.

And neither is the gospel a presentation of a theory of atonement, a theological speculation concerning how Jesus's death on the cross saves us. 

So, the gospel is news. Not technology, not theology, not theory. News. Which raises the next question: News about what?

The simplest and shortest way of sharing the news is the statement "Jesus is Lord." A bit longer and fuller sharing of the news is the news about the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. For example, here is Peter sharing the news in Acts 2, on Pentecost:

"God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear...Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” (Acts 2.32-33, 35)

Here is Paul sharing the news in Acts 17, on Mars Hill: 

"In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17.30-31)

The consistency of the news presented is striking given Peter and Paul's very different audiences. Peter is sharing the news in Jerusalem with Jews, and Paul is sharing the news in Athens with Greeks. Yet the news is the same. The news is about Jesus, how his death and resurrection reveal him to be "Lord and Messiah" and "the judge of the world." Again, the simplest way to share the news is "Jesus is Lord."

This much seems clear, obvious even. Jesus is Lord. But this raises still another question: What is the import of this news? Why does it matter? What impact does it have? How does it change anything, if at all?

During the autumn I gathered here in Abilene with a group of preachers, along with my colleague Randy Harris, to talk about Hunting Magic Eels and preaching in a secular age. 

During our final session we had a Q&A, and Nathan Burrow, our co-host, asked Randy and I to answer the following question: What is the gospel?

My answer had three parts.

The first part of my answer was a negation: The gospel is not a technology.

There is a huge temptation in churches to turn the gospel into a technology. We are constantly instrumentalizing the gospel, God, and the church, morphing them into tools. We want the gospel to be useful.

The first way we turn the gospel into a technology is to see the gospel as a tool for self-actualization and improvement. The gospel gives us advice, tips, and techniques for living. The gospel improves us, helps us reach our goals. The gospel helps us with our parenting, our relationships, our work, and our emotional well-being.

The second way we turn the gospel into a technology is as a tool for social change. The gospel is a technique for changing the world. 

Again, we want the gospel to be useful. Because if the gospel isn't a technology we lose interest. If the gospel isn't useful we conclude "What's the point?"

I would argue that this "technological imagination" is what is killing the church. For the church to "matter" the church has to be useful, the church has to be a technology. Otherwise, if the church doesn't help us self-actualize or change the world for the better, it becomes "pointless" in our eyes. Useless.

But God, the church, and the gospel--these are not tools. They are not means to our ends, techniques we use to achieve our personal or social goals. The gospel is not a technology. 

In 2019 I shared the reflection below about how Christmas saves us.

Specifically, when we think of salvation most Protestants ponder the crucifixion of Jesus. We're saved because the death of Jesus is an atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

This is true. Salvation involves the forgiveness of sins. But there's also a way Christmas saves us as well.

According to the church fathers, the Incarnation saves us ontologically.

Ontology concerns the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. So when I say Christmas saves us ontologically I'm saying that God does something to human being, to the nature and mode of our existence. Crudely, God saves "what we are made of." Specifically, after the Fall, humanity was in a weakened ontological state. We were separated from God, and therefore vulnerable to the forces of death, decay, and dissolution. As Athanasius describes the situation in On the Incarnation, "For the nature of created things, having come into being from nothing, is unstable, and is weak and mortal when considered by itself."

Consequently, separated from God humanity was dissolving, fading away. As Athanasius says, "For these reasons, then, with death holding greater sway and corruption remaining fast against human beings, the race of humans was perishing, and the human being, made rational and in the image, was disappearing, and the work made by God was being obliterated."

So, our predicament here was ontological. Constitutionally, human being was unstable, weak, mortal. We were fading, disappearing, on the road to oblivion.

But on Christmas, in the Incarnation, God reunites Himself, through the Son, with human being. When the Word is made flesh an ontological stabilization occurs, anchoring human being and saving us from dissolution and oblivion. As Athanasius says,

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.

And that's how Christmas saves us. Through the Incarnation, human being is reunited with God and is now stabilized and protected by the Word, and we experience this ontological gift in our reunion with God through the Spirit.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

--W.H. Auden, "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio"

What is the nature of Christian belief? 

In his book Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger writes this:

For to believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world; taking it as the firm ground on which I stand fearlessly. Using rather more traditional language, we could say that to believe as a Christian means understanding our existence as a response to the word, the logos, that upholds and maintains all things. It means affirming that the meaning we do not make but can only receive is already granted to us, so that we have only to take it and entrust ourselves to it...And further: Christian belief means opting for the view that what cannot be seen is more real than what can been seen. It is an avowal of the primacy of the invisible as the truly real, which upholds us and hence enables us to face the visible with calm composure--knowing that we are responsible before the invisible as the true ground of things. 

Christian belief means "entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world." That is to say, belief involves accepting the truth that 1) meaning exists, and that 2) this meaning exists prior to me and the world. We do not create meaning, not in any durable, permanent sense. Meaning is something we receive or, rather, perceive. And having once perceived it, we make this meaning the ground and foundation of our being. We become "responsible" before it.

This is how faith differs from materialism. Faith assumes the "primacy of the invisible." What is most true--meaning--is invisible. Materialism, by contrast, assumes the primacy of the visible, observable, and scientific. 

And if I could add anything to Ratzinger's account, I'd add in value. The primacy of the invisible means the ontological primacy of meaning and value.

Framed this way, the contrast between faith and materialism concerns the ontological status of meaning and value. Is the cosmos suffused with meaning and value? Or is the cosmos an existential void? Does the universe speak? Or is it mute?

Christian faith confesses the logos, the ontology of meaning. 

I've been reading Joseph Ratzinger's classic book Introduction to Christianity. 

In the fist chapter of the book Ratzinger gives a definition of faith that emphasizes what he calls "the primacy of the invisible." I'll share some of that definition in the next post. In this post I want to set up that discussion up with an illustration. 

During the last summer fire season you might have seen a story about the oldest trees in America. Some of the giant sequoias in California’s Sequoia National Park are over 2,000 years old. Imagine that. 

The trees at the time of the story were being threatened by a local wildfire. So steps were taken to wrap the trees in protective blankets.

Which might raise a question in your mind. What does wrapping ancient trees in foil have to do with God?

As I argue in Hunting Magic Eels, human life requires a sacred texture. Life needs to be imbued with value and meaning. Trouble is, as I also argue in the book, the "scientific gaze" bleaches the world of value and meaning. And there is something in us that recoils in horror at a purely materialistic description of the world. This is why we wrap old trees in foil.

Viewed through a materialistic lens, a 2,000 year-old sequoia is just a tree, an expression of organic chemistry. But this purely scientific description of the sequoia misses its value and meaning. And it's this value and meaning that causes us to treat these trees as holy--as sacred and set apart. Different, in a qualitative way, from other trees. This is what Ratzinger means by "the primacy of the invisible." There are things that are true about this world that science cannot measure. In fact, these invisible truths are the truest things in life. Truths that demand energetic moral responses. Truths that make ethical demands. Truths that have causal effects and impacts upon the world. 

In the case of the sequoias, what is invisible about them is primary.

As an author, you feel particular pride in certain parts of the books you write. And often, at least in my case, the parts you like as an author are the least favorite parts of your audience.

This is the case for Hunting Magic Eels. One of the parts I'm very proud of in the book is Part 4. After an entire book preaching about our need to recover enchantment, I turn to talk about spiritual discernment. And for some readers and reviewers, this turn wasn't appreciated. It felt like, I'm assuming, that I "took back" some or much of what I'd written in Parts 1-3. 

And yet, I'm proud about the turn toward discernment in Hunting Magic Eels because most books out there on the market that have dealt with this topic don't make this turn. Most books just climb the summit of "Let's be more spiritual!" and end the journey there, all uplift, transcendence, and positivity.

But me? Well, for me we've not arrived at the summit of spirituality until we arrive at the cross.

Nothing could be more in tune with the times than preaching a "spiritual but not religious" Christianity. And by "spiritual" I mean what I'll call an "enchanted humanism." Love plus woo-woo. Tolerance with some spiritual uplift. 

And there's a whole lot of that in Hunting Magic Eels. The concluding message of the Epilogue is that "Love is the enchantment of the world." I'm totally in on the "Love plus woo-woo" message.

But as a Christian, for me, love has to have a cruciform, Christological shape. The love God is calling me toward, woo-woo and all, isn't very attractive to me. I've never been fond of my enemies. I quite hate them. And when I look at social media I feel a lot of contempt in my heart for all the idiots out there. Basically, readers who were interrupted by Part 4 of Hunting Magic Eels had never read Stranger God. But if you'd read Stranger God, of course you'd know Part 4 was coming in Hunting Magic Eels. Love is hard, really, really hard. Love is the narrow door that few find. And that's something I don't think most authors about "spirituality" ever get around to saying or honestly confronting. Most people read for affirmation and enjoyment. We like books that affirm who we already are over books that challenge our moral self-assessments. 

Truthful books about love are rare. They are too chafing and challenging. Truthful books about love afflict and wound us. 

Phrased theologically, yes, enchantment is vital in our disenchanted world. More woo-woo, please! But love requires more than "enchanted humanism." We need Jesus. We need the cross. What we need is a Christological enchantment.

Due to a heavy speaking/traveling schedule this fall (and a warm thank you to all the churches who invited me to speak this past semester) and Sunday teaching responsibilities at my own church, I was unable to visit the prison much this fall. Because of COVID, our Monday night bible study is still on hold, but I can still participate in the prison church services on Sunday. 

This Sunday, yesterday, the church service was a two-hour Christmas celebration. The centerpiece was a Nativity play. And what a treat that was! The whole production had a delightful "homemade" feel. Or should I say "prisonmade" feel?

The men leading the service had pooled their commissary resources to provide drinks and cookies for the eighty men who attended. Red and green streamers with paper decorations adorned the walls. A string had been strung across the front of the multipurpose room to create a makeshift stage. Seven or eight sheets had been tied together to create a curtain that was pulled back and forth between each scene. All the costumes were also improvised with towels and sheets, from the angels to the shepherds to the wise men to Herod to the Holy Family. And yes, with much hilarity, an inmate donned a makeshift wig to play Mary. It was pretty funny seeing Mary with a beard.

The script was also written by the men. The play was a series of paired, back to back scenes. The first scene dramatized an Old Testament prophet followed by a scene from the birth narratives of Luke and Matthew showing the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy. We'd see, for example, the word of the Lord coming to Isaiah or Jeremiah followed by a depiction of an event in the gospels, from the Annunciation to the birth of Jesus to the visitation of the magi. Between these prophecy/fulfillment scenes the praise band would play songs, a mix of praise songs and Christmas carols, and we would worship

The prison Nativity play was, dramatically speaking, all over the place, by turns devout and hilariously farcical. Exactly what you'd expect with a bearded Mary and tattooed angels dressed in sheets. We praised the Lord and laughed uproariously. It was a highlight of my Advent season.

And mixed in with the joy were all the hard, sad things. This has been a very difficult season for the men in our study, not having us out there as much. There is so much pain and darkness in the world where they live. Which was why our Christmas service was such a blessing. 

"Shepherds"

We were sent seeking--
and this, I know,
is hard to believe--
by a sky filled with angels.
Sent seeking to find,
what? An infant?
One newly born,
lying in a manger.
So this we sought.
Who were we to refuse
the imperatives of heaven?
And we found the child,
the town being small
and his cry easily heard
on the breezes of a silent night.
We gazed, standing awkwardly,
intruders in an intimate space.
We glimpsed no further amazement.
You, had you been there,
would have discerned nothing
unusual or remarkable.
But we saw something more.

We beheld a baby with news
ringing in our ears.

913.

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

///

This will be our last week with Pascal. Next Friday will be Christmas Eve, and the Friday after, New Year's Eve, I'll be sharing our new Friday series.

As this is our last Friday with Pascal, it's only fitting that we should end with his death.

As I recount in Hunting Magic Eels, when Pascal died it was discovered that he had copied out the pensée above and sown it to the inside of his coat. As should be clear if you read the pensée, on the evening of November 23, 1654 Pascal had a profound, and clearly life-changing, encounter with God. A vision of fire. A vision of tears. A vision of joy. 

Personally, I've never had a religious experience quite as intense as what Pascal describes here. But as I share in Hunting Magic Eels, we have mystical experiences all the time if we were but open and attentive to them. The world is filled with fire and light. 

Apologies to longtime readers, but with this blog now running on Substack there are some new readers with whom I'd like to share some old posts. 

I've been blogging since 2007, and over the years I've written many Advent and Christmas reflections. Four of these have been particularly popular, and I want to share them with new readers, and again with longtime readers who would like to revisit some memories and old favorites:

Here are the most popular Advent and Christmas reflections that I've written:

Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
Perhaps my most viral Christmas post, a playful meditation using the Christmas TV classics How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas to sneak up on "the true meaning of Christmas."

"Watching Their Flocks By Night": An Advent Meditation
Another hugely popular post using research about cultures of honor and violence in herding cultures to recover the scandal of having shepherds standing around the manger.

Christmas Carols as Resistance Literature
Christmas carols as subversive? In this post I talk about two Christmas carols--O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear--to highlight the political commentary in the lyrics. Beyond being shared a lot on social media, this post has been used by churches for sermons and Bible classes during the Advent season.

Piss Christ in Prison: An Unlikely Advent Meditation
As you can tell from the title, an edgy post from my prison Bible study. Leaning on my book Unclean, I use Andres Serrano's controversial artwork Piss Christ to recover the shock of the Incarnation in its message of scandalous, unbelievable grace.

This post is related to my recent postings about John Brown after reading David Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist. It's an observation about Calvinism as stoicism.

Specifically, you'll recall that John Brown was a staunch Calvinist. And in reading Reynolds' biography I was educated in how Calvinism operated in Brown's life as he faced hardship, failure, disappointment, and tragedy. We tend to judge theological systems from "the outside" as it were, evaluating it as a set of propositions that strike us as plausible or implausible. But watching theology from "the inside," as a form of coping in the life of the believer, is a very different thing. And that's the education I got reading about John Brown, how Calvinism can function as a coping strategy. 

For many of us, from the outside, Calvinism is abhorrent as it claims that all the pains and evils we experience in life are "God's will," a part of "God's plan." We recoil in the face of the suggestion that God wills accidents and cancer diagnoses. 

But that's not how John Brown experienced it, and I'm assuming his experience was typical for generations of Calvinists. Brown lost a wife, many children in childbirth, and the killing of his sons. He also experienced acute poverty, business failures, and, of course, the gallows at Harpers Ferry. And in the face of all of this Brown approached it with calm and equanimity. Oh, to be sure, it was a life filled with tears, sorrow and displays of grief. But comfort, courage, and equanimity was found as Brown coped with suffering in the Calvinist belief that God was providentially at work in all things. 

Watching this in the biography, it occurred to me that Calvinism, as a coping strategy, was a resource that facilitated resignation and acceptance in the face of negative life events. Calvinism functions as a form of Christian stoicism. Where the stoic philosophers of Greece advised equanimity in the face of fate, the Calvinistic stoics advised equanimity in the face of God's providence. 

Linking this to observations I've made before on the blog, one of the reasons we modern Christians have balked at Calvinism is due to how we've grown less stoical over the generations. We are more reactive than our forebears to the existential shocks of suffering and death. Resignation isn't our thing. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away" doesn't help us cope, the way it helped Job and generations of Jews and Christians. We've lost cultural and personal capacities for stoical acceptance, making Calvinism as a coping strategy difficult to embrace. 

What I'm suggesting here is that our aversion to Calvinism isn't theological, it's psychological. For many modern Christians, Calvinism no longer helps us cope.

Okay, so now we arrive at the biggest theological issue regarding John Brown.

Violence.

To set out the question right here at the start, this post is about the location of slave revolts within the theology of just war. Brown raised this question in my mind, but this isn't a post aimed at justifying any of Brown's violence. Yet Brown's goal in attempting a slave revolt to overthrow American slavery presents to just war theory an atypical case study that I haven't seen a whole lot of reflection about. According to just war theory, can a slave revolt be justified?

To start, it is very hard to justify the earliest deaths associated with John Brown, the murdering of five people at Pottawatomie in the Kansas territory. 

The Pottawatomie murders were a response to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces. In retaliation for pro-slavery aggressions in "Bleeding Kansas," Brown and his followers, his sons among them, dragged James Doyle, along with his sons William and Drury, Allen Wilkinson, and William Sherman out of their houses in the dead of night and killed them. The murdered men held pro-slavery views, but themselves owned no slaves. Supporting slavery was enough, so they were killed. 

It's very difficult to defend Brown's violence at Pottawatomie. His subsequent violent actions after Pottawatomie, up to and including the raid at Harpers Ferry, are more defensible. Though I'd expect most people would decline to defend any of it. 

Which brings me to my question. Specifically, how do Christian just war advocates evaluate slave revolts?

What John Brown was trying to accomplish at Harpers Ferry was a slave uprising and revolt. The plan was to seize, hopefully without bloodshed, the stash of arms held at the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. While that seizure was happening, parts of Brown's party would alert the slaves in the surrounding area. Brown expected the slaves to rally to him. Brown's group and the escaped slaves would then slip away into the nearby Appalachian Mountains. A student of guerrilla warfare and slave revolts, Brown felt a small force of fighters in mountainous terrain could avoid capture and hold off the superior forces of the federal government. From his bases in the mountains, Brown planned to lead raids upon southern plantations to free slaves in an attempt to spread fear and create pressure upon the slave-holding states.

That was the plan, but it didn't materialize. The slaves around Harpers Ferry didn't swarm to Brown and he lingered too long waiting for them, eventually becoming trapped. In addition, the raid didn't avoid bloodshed. Brown and his party killed six people at Harpers Ferry. 

Now, was that violence justified? The knee-jerk response, I'm assuming, is to answer, "No." Of course, for Christian pacifists that "No" is a principled unconditional "No." But most Christians aren't pacifists, most Christians, at least of my acquaintance, espouse some form of just war theory, that violence can be justified in the face of evil or used to protect the innocent.

If so, slavery was a great evil. The greatest evil, in fact. And if that's the case, wouldn't slaves using violence to free themselves be justified? How does just war theory deal with slave revolts?

I'm not trying to justify John Brown or slave revolts, but I am asking a question about what I think might be a blind spot in just war theory. Specifically, just war tends to focus on violence between nation states: Can declaring war upon another nation state be morally justified? And can Christians serve as soldiers in such a just war? Many if not most Christians answer those questions in the affirmative.

But what if the situation concerned an evil state, say a state that had legalized slavery? Would the slaves in that state be morally justified to use violence to free themselves? 

The question here involves the issue of legitimizing authority in just war doctrine. Generally, only a state can legitimize the use of violence. If so, a slave revolting against the state would be, by definition, an illegitimate and unjustified use of violence. Slaves, in this view, don't have the political authority to declare war. 

But, to my eye, that seems to be a contestable conclusion. Yes, the Bible says that slaves should obey their masters. But that command is justified through Jesus' prior example of nonviolence, his turning the other cheek and not resisting an evil person. This is the moral logic of 1 Peter 2.11-25. But according to just war theory, Jesus' nonviolent example and his peace commands do not hold universally. According to just war theory, Jesus' nonviolence can be set aside, which seems to suggest that a slave could also, under conditions, set aside that example. Goodness, the Founding Fathers took up arms against the state because of unfair taxation. But a slave can't take up arms against slavery?

We could also argue that just war isn't the right place to have this discussion. Could, for example, a slave revolt be better described as an act of self-defense?

Perhaps what we are talking about here is something different than just war, and I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I've started with just war because just war is a location where Christians have done a lot of reflection about the justifiable use of violence. But that body of theological and ethical thought might be ill-suited to address how Christians are to respond within oppressive, evil states. And let's also point out some inconsistency here as most Christians, I'm assuming, are fine with the American revolution. But the American revolution was a revolution, it wasn't a just war between two rival states. The American revolution was an uprising of citizens against their own state. 

I'm also very aware that this post is likely making people uncomfortable as we are in a political moment where many on the political left and right, from Antifa to the January 6th insurrectionists, are increasingly justifying violence to achieve their political goals. But this is where some of the reflections from just war theory are helpful as they insist on a moral calculus that considers things like the magnitude of the harm being done and the principle of last resort, where all peaceable means have been wholly exhausted. Losing a democratic election, in either 2016 (looking at you, Antifa) or 2020 (looking at you, Jan. 6th insurrectionists), doesn't seem to, even remotely, meet such standards of justifiability. 

John Brown, by contrast, was facing something very different. John Brown was dealing with chattel slavery, enshrined in and protected by the US Constitution. And chattel slavery is, I think we can all admit, one of the most egregious evils in the history of the world. Further, in America it was an evil that, given its constitutional legitimacy and protections, was going to be almost impossible to change via electoral politics as they stood at the time. It was going to take bloodshed to end slavery in America. And it did. The harm was among in the most evil in history, and peaceable means, seen clearly now in retrospect, had been exhausted. So was a slave revolt in that situation justified? 

That was the question that kept haunting me in reading David Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist. 

I've never been a fan of Calvinism. For most of my life I've considered Calvinism to be the very worst specimen of Christian theology. Odious. Especially during the earliest years of this blog, when the "young, restless and Reformed" movement associated with Mark Driscoll and others was all the rage.

But then I encountered Marilynne Robinson, who exploded my stereotype of what it means to be a "Calvinist." Marilynne Robinson is about as far from Mark Driscoll as you can get, and yet here she was, a passionate admirer of John Calvin and self-identified Calvinist. What I found in Robinson was a deeply human and humane vision of Reformed theology, something I just didn't think was possible. 

And I have to confess that this was really my own fault. For years I'd heard theologians say that John Calvin was much more nuanced than his modern-day interpreters, like the fire-breathing, "How dare you!" Mark Driscoll. 

The other thing that chastened my opinion of Calvinism, a lesson I also learned from Marilynne Robinson, is the role Calvinism played in the American abolitionist movement. This association between American puritanism and abolitionism is amply demonstrated in David S. Reynolds' biographies of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown. This connection also gave me pause. I'm not going to throw the theological system behind the most significant moral revolution in American history under the bus. Mad props to Calvinism. 

And John Brown vividly illustrates the point. John Brown, the least racist person in America, was a staunch Calvinist. 

All of which raises the question: Why did Calvinism fuel the abolitionist movement? 

According to Reynolds, Calvinism fed the abolitionist belief in "the Higher Law," the belief that we owe ultimate allegiance to God's Law over any human law. Given their strong belief in the sovereignty of God, it's not hard to see how a Calvinist would embrace the view that a Higher Law stood over the United States Constitution and its statues, providing the religious and moral justification for defying things like the Fugitive Slave Act and working for the Underground Railroad. 

All of that to say, we tend to think of Calvinism as a deeply conservative theology. But for much of American history, Calvinism was liberation theology, the most radical and revolutionary theological movement in the United States. 

"Annunciation" 

The stars spiral and turn.
Planets twirl.
The needy earth spins
around the axis of her heart.

The cosmos hesitates, holds, waits,
in the spaces of her breathing
awaiting news of its future tilt.

Angel wings beat time with her pulse.
Celestial lives paused and indeterminate.

She is the threshold,
the hinge of the door,
the finger asked to turn the page.
Or not.

Her yes will mark
our before,
our after.
Our old
and all that will be made new.

372. 

To be a member is to have no life, no being and no movement except through the spirit of the body and for the body. The separated member, no longer seeing the body to which it belongs, has only a wasting and moribund being left...

But in loving the body it loves itself, because it has no being except in the body, through the body, and for the body...

We love ourselves because we are members of Christ. We love Christ because he is the body of which we are members. All are one. One is in the other like the three persons [of the Trinity].

///

There's a lot to unpack here. Theologians will be particularly pleased with Pascal's Trinitarian move at the end, how the "at-oneness" of Christian koinonia is a participation in the divine community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

For my part, let me settle on the point today that you can't be a Christian all by yourself. The heart of Christian praxis is the ecclesia, the "laboratory of love" to use my description from Reviving Old Scratch. 

Of course, this message about the necessity of the church isn't going to be a welcome message. But truth be told, I picked Pascal's Pensées for Fridays precisely because I knew it wouldn't be popular. 

I've been reading Alan Kreider's book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Among Kreider's points is that it was the ecclesia that drove the improbable rise of Christianity in the first three centuries of the church, the way the body of Christ cared for and loved each other, especially for the poor among them. Christianity simply is the church.

Listen, it's easy to sit in front of a screen and conclude that the church is dead. From the abuse scandals of the Catholic church to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast to evangelicals behaving badly pretty much everywhere. It's a train wreck and things look pretty grim and dire.

But here's my news, news that will never make the news. Because of what I get to do as an author and speaker, I've spent a lot of time in local churches. Most of them pretty small. And those churches just encourage the hell out of me. They inspire me. Why? Because those small, local churches are the repositories of the "patient ferment" of the ecclesia, the humble people who will never make a Twitter feed or podcast who are doing the daily, loyal work of caring for each other. Line the pastors up and have them share their stories and name the names. They have a list of heroes, the saints in their churches who are doing incredibly hard and beautiful things. All of it unseen and unknown. People you've never heard of. The church no one will ever hear of. 

And so, here is my gentle, albeit unpopular, encouragement: Go to church. 

I recently finished David S. Reynolds' book John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. Highly recommended! The book sent my head spinning in a lot of different directions, and I thought I'd share three observations across three posts, a thought about the Bible today, then Calvinism, and lastly a thought about violence. 

If you've ever thought about John Brown you have likely formed some impressions and opinions about him. Most people assume he was insane, a violent religious fanatic and zealot. I'll get to the violence in my third post of this series. But regarding his sanity, Reynolds' assessment is forceful, persuasive, compelling, and clear: John Brown was sane. 

More, there are many things to admire about John Brown. And here's the best of them: The universal assessment of the black folks who knew John Brown intimately and well was that he was the least racist person in America. 

What's noteworthy about this fact is that the America abolitionist movement was steeped in racism. The (near) universal assumption among the abolitionists was that, while blacks should be emancipated, this did not mean that blacks were the equal of whites. Most abolitionists, even the most radical, still held the black "race" to be inferior to the white. Being anti-slavery didn't mean you weren't racist. Most abolitionists were racist.

John Brown was different. Singular, even. Brown treated black folks as absolute equals--morally, spiritually, and intellectually. When it came to transcending racism John Brown was in a class almost by himself in the American political and religious landscape. Brown's moral witness in this regard is truly remarkable. Almost, given his time and place, unfathomable. 

But it gets even more interesting. Brown's absence of racism was driven wholly by his Christian convictions. The least racist person in America became the least racist person because he was a devout Christian. 

And some of the stories in this regard are mind boggling. One of my favorites is how Brown and his followers freed eleven slaves in Kansas and then transported them over a thousand miles to Canada. During the journey they took some pro-slavery prisoners in "the Battle of the Spurs." To lessen their chance of escaping, Brown made the prisoners walk. But Brown, not wanting the prisoners to feel that they were being punished, chose to walk in solidarity beside them, all the while lecturing the prisoners on the evils of slavery. You'd think that would annoy and alienate his prisoners. But something interesting happened on that journey. The prisoners elected to join Brown and his party in their evening and morning prayers. I find this story utterly charming. After his release, one of the prisoner's declared that John Brown "was the best man he had ever met."

I found all this fascinating as we all know that slavery was a big theological debate before and during the Civil War. See Mark Noll's book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. As we know, the Bible was used to both attack and defend slavery. Same holy book, two different moral verdicts.

Whenever I look back at historical moments like this, I always ask myself the question: Which Christians got the Bible right at the moment of crisis? And which Christians got it horribly, even wickedly, wrong? For example, in the face of Hitler and the Nazis I look to people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the White Rose as Christians who got it right. In a similar way, in the face of American slavery which Christians got Christianity right, and which got it wrong?

It's hard not to read Reynolds's book and conclude that on the questions of race, slavery, and human equality John Brown was one of the the best white interpreters of Scripture in the history of the United Sates. On these issues, as a white reader of the Bible, Brown absolutely nailed the hermeneutical question in a way unparalleled in American history. 

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

This semester I was invited to write a devotional meditation that could be used by our students as a part of a spiritual formation week. The topic I was assigned was wisdom. 

Below is what I shared with the students.

///

Let’s start with sex. And we might as well throw in smoking weed and drinking.

As a professor, students frequently approach me with questions about sex and drug/alcohol use. The questions are always framed like this: “Is this behavior right or wrong?”

My answer to that question has been: “Rather than ‘right or wrong’ the better question would be: Is this wise or foolish?”

In the Old Testament wisdom is the art of living well. Life has a logic to it. Your choices today set you on a path, point you toward a goal, bring you to a destination. Wisdom is forecasting: Where is my life headed? In one year? Four years? Ten years? Fifty years?

When students ask me about sex or drug/alcohol use I want them to forecast their lives. Look at your sexual behavior, honestly, and tell me, long term, where are you going to end up? Where are your choices taking you? Same with drug/alcohol use. Wise people ponder such questions and make their choices accordingly. As I shared with my college-age sons this summer: “Everyone gets to where they are going.”

The reason for this, as I said, is that life has a “logic” to it. Like gravity, wisdom is embedded into the fabric of the universe. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is personified and declares:

“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.” (Proverbs 8: 22-23)

Wisdom is the “grain of the universe,” the moral logic God has built into creation. Follow this grain, live wisely, and life goes smoothly. Go against the grain and you’ll cut and wound yourself. As Wisdom goes on to say in Proverb 8:

“Now then, my children, listen to me;
blessed are those who keep my ways.
Listen to my instruction and be wise;
do not disregard it.
For those who find me find life
and receive favor from the Lord.
But those who fail to find me harm themselves.” (Proverbs 8: 32-33, 35-36a)

It’s a serious question: Are you harming yourself with the choices you’ve been making?

In the New Testament, Wisdom becomes identified with Jesus, the Logos or Word who creates and becomes the moral grain of the universe:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created…All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1.15-17)

The moral logic of creation becomes visible to us in the life of Jesus. Jesus is wisdom incarnate, wisdom in the flesh. To live wisely, to follow the grain of the universe, is to imitate Jesus. This changes how we might think about questions of “right versus wrong.” Is it “wrong” to build a house out of marshmallows? Well, not exactly. But it is foolish. The same goes for how you build your life. As Jesus says at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

Life is full of storms. You might be in a storm right now. Look at the choices you are making. Are you building wisely? Because you will get to where you are going.

I saw a bumpersticker the other day. "Be kind," it said.

My reaction was, sadly, pretty cynical. "You don't believe that," I thought about the driver.

Here's why I had that unkind reaction. The advice to "be kind" is everywhere now. And I wholly agree with the admonition. But where I differ from most folks is that I think kindness is, well, extraordinarily difficult. This is a major theme in Stranger God. Asking people to be kind is akin to asking people to play a song on the piano, paint a landscape, or drive a ball down the middle of the fairway. These things are possible, for anyone, but they take a lot of practice. And so does kindness.

I don't know if you've noticed, but kindness as it exists in the world today is pretty darn tribal. As I point out in Stranger God, that's the dark side of kindness that no one talks about, its insularity. And that insularity is right there in the word itself, staring you in the face: the root of the word kindness is "kin" and "kind." Kindness is what I extent to my "kin," what I share with the same "kind" of people as myself. But when kindness is tribal it's not really kindness, not as Christians understand it. We are kind right up until the point where we reveal our politics, or share a view about, say, vaccines or masks. At that point, all bets are off and kindness goes out the window. Kindness stops when I reach the edge of my tribe. Kindness stops when I realize you're not one of my kind.

I want the world to be more kind. But it takes a lot of work to be kind to those outside your tribe. 

"Exile"

The alchemy of time,
and promises too often deferred,
transmutes hope into pain
and the dull ache of longing.

It hurts to remember,
to repeat the story,
each telling a cut,
rubbing the worry stone smooth
and picking at the scab.

The night has become so long
I have come to doubt the dawn.

417.

Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, or God or ourselves.

///

Pascal's Wager is rightly famous, but the question "Does God exist?" isn't really the ultimate question. The ultimate question is the nature of God, and therefore the nature of human being and existence itself. The Christian confession is that Jesus Christ is, in the language of Scripture, "the image of the invisible God" and "the exact representation" of God's nature.

Beyond God's nature, there is also the shape and content of our own nature. Christ is the "son of man," which some translations render as "the human one." We point to Christ to define and describe what it means to be a human being. A falling away from Christ is a falling away from our humanity. 

Jesus is why I'm religious and not spiritual. Spirituality is vaporous and vague. Spirituality can mean almost anything. But Jesus is definite, specific, and particular. Scandalously so. And it's this concrete specificity, the sharp-edged exactness of the image, that makes me profoundly, unapologetically religious.

In a world so wired and interconnected,
our anxious hearts are pummeled by
an endless barrage of troubling news. 

We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord,
than we can rightly consider,
of more suffering and scandal
than we can respond to, of more
hostility, hatred, horror, and injustice
than we can engage with compassion.

But you, O Jesus, are not disquieted
by such news of cruelty and terror and war.
You are neither anxious nor overwhelmed.
You carried the full weight of the suffering
of a broken world when you hung upon
the cross, and you carry it still.

When the cacophony of universal distress
unsettles us, remind us that we are but small
and finite creatures, never designed to carry
the vast abstractions of great burdens,
for our arms are too short and our strength
is too small. Justice and mercy, healing and
redemption, are your great labors.

And yes, it is your good pleasure to accomplish
such works through your people,
but you have never asked any one of us
to undertake more than your grace
will enable us to fulfill.

Guard us then from shutting down our empathy
or walling off our hearts because of the glut of
unactionable misery that floods our awareness.
You have many children in many places
around this globe. Move each of our hearts
to compassionately respond to those needs
that intersect our actual lives, that in all places
your body might be actively addressing
the pain and brokenness of this world,
each of us liberated and empowered by
your Spirit to fulfill the small part
of your redemptive work assigned to us.

Give us discernment
in the face of troubling news reports.
Give us discernment
to know when to pray,
when to speak out,
when to act,
and when to simply
shut off our screens
and our devices,
and to sit quietly
in your presence,

casting the burdens of this world
upon the strong shoulders
of the one who
alone
is able to bear them up.

Amen.

(This prayer comes from the amazing Every Moment Holy, an absolutely must-have prayer resource that I find myself turning to over and over again. Get yourself a copy. )

I've found myself growing inpatient with people and I need to repent of that.

If you're a longtime and regular reader you've watched me, over the history of this blog, make a journey from deconstruction to reconstruction. From The Authenticity of Faith to Hunting Magic Eels. 

I've also taken to describing where I am in the Christian landscape as post-progressive. Not ex-progressive, but post-progressive, taking the positive things from progressive Christianity and moving on to a distinctively different location. And a lot of that movement has to do with issues of deconstruction and reconstruction. 

One of my criticisms of progressive Christianity has been its reactivity toward evangelicalism. Many progressive Christians are ex-evangelicals, and that history casts a long shadow. The faith of many progressive Christians is devoid of any positive content (Do you actually believe in God? Read the Bible? Go to church?) and is mainly maintained as a vestigial and critical posture toward evangelicalism. Much of progressive Christianity among the ex-evangelicals is a reactive, Oedipal stance. 

And yet, I have to confess that it's very, very hard to escape being reactive. I know this because, as I've made my own journey into reconstruction, I've found myself growing impatient with people in the phase of deconstruction. Since I've been through that phase already, and see its various issues and limitations, I want to quickly point people toward reconstruction. Because, naturally, I think this is the better, more healthy location to be.

Trouble is, I'm not letting people take their own journey. I walked through the Valley of Doubt, for twenty-years I walked through it. Yet here I am getting impatient with people who find themselves on a similar journey? I'm being hypocritical. 

Some of this, of course, is just wanting to be helpful. When people are struggling with doubt and deconstruction you want to share what you've found helpful. But still, we need to be patient and let people take their own journey at their own pace. For goodness sake, I deconstructed for twenty years. So what makes me think that one conversation with a person is going to result in decisive, rapid change? I find myself holding onto some very stupid expectations, which leads to some very stupid disappointments. 

So, yes, reactivity is hard to escape. We tend to judge the world from where we stand today, forgetting where we were yesterday. And it's very hard to see yourself as being in a good, right, and healthy place without that taking on contrastive aspects in relation to other people. Our self-concepts are highly contrastive, so prone to making evaluative comparisons between my right versus your wrong. 

All that to say, I'm entering a season where my reconstruction is starting to lose, by the grace of God, its reactive, contrastive, comparative edge. Everyone is on a journey. Let's give each other the space and time to make it.