Book Review: Heaven by Lisa Miller

Not long ago I was linking to an article by Lisa Miller in another book review, and now here I am reviewing her own recent book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife (this review represents the recent release of the paperback version). Miller is the editor of religion at Newsweek, where she tends to reap all manner of blessings and curses from a nation polarized about its own religious identity.

She may actually be the person for the job. Miller herself embodies a kind of religious plurality – raised a secular Jew, then later married by a Rabbi and an Episcopal priest in an interfaith ceremony, then finally joining a “progressive, inclusive” Jewish synagogue where she attends regularly with her daughter in order to reconnect with her Jewish heritage.

Given this thoroughly secular Modern pedigree – journalist, theological liberal, and enculturated believer –  Miller would be easy to dismiss by orthodox devotees and she is often the recipient of harsh criticism, particularly from religious fundamentalists. But read this brief article and get to know her just a bit. She is a woman who, every week, weeps during the recital of the Shema. She is a mother who broods over the spiritual development of her daughter, and she is a person whose own religious fears and discomforts are assuaged by a firm belief in “a God who’s love extends beyond the tribe.”

And this, I propose, explains a great deal about Lisa Miller’s book Heaven. In it, she plays the role of spiritual midwife for a culture caught in the terrifying pangs of a pluralistic birthing. Miller has been there, as a daughter, as a wife, a student, a journalist and now as a mother, she has grappled with the tensions of competing religious beliefs that from the inside appear as strangers but from the outside resemble countrymen. She brings this tension to her explorations of the afterlife: “Like so many Americans, then, I approach religion from an uneasy, untraditional place, and like so many, I have struggled with what I believe about heaven” (xxvi).

Miller goes about her task of cultural peacemaking by comparing diverse visions of heaven through a tapestry of traditional teachings, scholarly alternatives, folk reflections, and pop cultural depictions. She writes with the eye of an anthropologist, the mind of a journalist, and the heart of a mother. It is genuinely educational; there is surprising depth of inquiry for a popularly written book and details that most people will find surprising. She wrestles openly and honestly with the influences of outside cultural and cultic beliefs on the development of Judaism, Christianity and even Islam. She places liberal and conservatives in dialogue and uncovers the deep yearnings and affections that feed the comfort that heaven provides.

Yet Miller has a dog in this fight – albeit a reluctant one. Early, while reflecting on research into incipient Judaism, she asks hypothetically, “[If I were an ancient Hebrew] What if my Rabbi’s told me that [the semitic pagan cult of the dead] was forbidden? That these family customs violated God’s law? What would I do? How would I think about my dead?” (36-37). Her proposal is that, in order to find comfort, ancient Hebrews coming to grips with an emerging religion that forbade a daily, imaginary interaction with the souls of dead loved one, the best conceptual alternative might have been the invention of a distant home for dead loved one. For Miller this is more than an honest sympathetic inquiry because it cuts to the heart of her metaphysical assumptions.

The trouble is that Miller, along with most of her theologically liberal cohorts, has more in common with her fundamentalist critics that she realizes – both are Modern foundationalists. Because she believes that a sure knowledge must rest on indubitable foundations, she cannot help but treat mere belief with a kind of paternalism. It’s not just that she handles such beliefs and traditions with skepticism (as we all should), it’s that she never treats these traditions and accounts as potential evidence because, for her, religious beliefs and traditions could never possibly qualify as evidential.

The end result is that the whole book comes off as a bit patronizing with strong undertones of melancholy – because in it we see Miller herself finally lay down any remnant of a belief in an afterlife. Like any foundationalist of the liberal variety she can only protect her own religious belief by bifurcating epistemology and relegating faith to the path of subjective personal experience. Consequently, it doesn’t matter what millions of people from one generation to the next have discovered about God. What matters is her own experience, and, when it comes to heaven, that experience is empty:

Whenever I have asked myself – over and over – “Do you believe in heaven?” I always think of my grandfather. I try to visualize him. I love him, I was there when he died; I miss him and my grandmother every day of my life. Surely if I believe in heaven, I would see them there in my minds eye. Sadly, I don’t (241).

So, despite having written a book that compiles mountains of evidence that that there may indeed be something beyond the grave, Miller is unable to integrate that knowledge into a holistic worldview that takes faith seriously as a tradition of knowledge. As a result, Heaven, while educational, touching, poignant, and lucid, ultimately comes of as a sad commentary on the impotence of the Modern era to satisfy the deepest longings of humanity. For Miller, this means she believes in some kind of God for goodness’ sake, but can’t seriously accept the notion of God’s present power in human life beyond the immanence of culture.

No wonder she weeps when she hears the Shema.

(I was provided with a copy of this book in return for the review I’ve written. I was in no way required to write either a positive or negative review of the book.)

Technorati Tags: Books, Heaven, Lisa Miller

On giving up my faith for Lent

I’m giving up my faith for Lent.

What does that mean?

It means that in my tradition faith itself tends to be seen as the presence of something, the accumulation of which at certain quantities (nobody really knows how much) will cause mountains to move, businesses to succeed, sicknesses to recede, etc.

It means that in my experience the faith is like a charming general store in a peculiar southern town, where candy, and coffee, and sugar, and flour, and tobacco plugs, and foreign fashions shipped over the ocean, and tools for building and cleaning and repairing every contraption known to man are displayed in glass canisters and behind counters and in topically organized merchandise rows, the buying of which equips patrons for the rigors of Modern life and comforts clientele against the bitter promise of a long anticipated winter that comes before spring.

It means that in practice my faith has begun to feel like the backyard labrynth of a country junker; rusted husks of cars and trucks; stolen street signs and auctioned traffic lights; seas of binder clips and moleskine notebooks; mounds of keyboards and mice and computer monitors; broken spokes and towers of rubber tires; heaps of comic books and textbooks and repair manuals turning to pulp on the lawn.

And yet I keep collecting more.

How can I give up meat or chocolate or ice cream when faith is my grossest consumer indulgence?

So, I hope to spend the next forty days de-accumulating four decades of spiritual hoarding. It means I hope to take kenosis seriously and finally empty my begging bowl. It means I plan to explore faith as absence rather than presence.

And yes, it does mean, for me at least, that in order to do so honestly – in order to take kenosis seriously – I must be willing to risk the loss of faith.

So, how will I do this?

Schedule:

• Confession – Days 1-10: I will attempt to be honest about my actual faith. I’ll spend time examining my choices, actions, habits, relationships, etc. This will be a time of deconstruction.
• Wilderness – Days 11-20: I’ll walk through a journey of trying to discover how I should (and if I should) replace whatever I’ve discarded.
• Testing – Days 21 – 30: I’ll practice approaching my life from whatever changed perspectives I may have encountered up to this point. That shift may be subtle or radical; it may just be a more sincere and consistent practice of what I already profess.
• Covenant – Days 31 – 40: I will reflect on the period of testing, make whatever adjustments I think are necessary, and attempt to establish a renewed rhythm of life that faithfully reflects what I truly value.

• Days 1-3 of each period I’ll take inventory and write conclusions.
• Days 4-8 of each period I’ll explore resources that challenge my faith.
• Days 9-10 of each period I’ll rest and reflect.

Resources:

• Study: I’ll read from a variety of sources – including religious and secular works.
• Reflection: I’ll journal privately. I may or may not pray. I suspect I will be driven to pray more or I will abandon prayer entirely.
• Relationships: I’ll do this with the help of key relationships, beginning with those I’m closest to but extending to others on the periphery of my life when I approach topics that seem most relevant to their areas of wisdom.

I’ll need to take conspicuous steps to lean into the relational portion of this journey. I’m not interested in devising my own personal system of spirituality. That’s probably what I’ve already done. I’m hoping to discover a holistic life of faith grounded in an epistemology I can have confidence in. (I don’t necessarily mean a religious faith – I think everyone lives by faith in something). However, my current epistemological leanings dictate that truth is reflected in the web of my entire context, including history, tradition, culture, and relationships as well as my own personal abilities (indeed, over and above my own personal abilities).

Ironically, that will mean visiting a few churches. I need to see church, and the Christian faith, differently.

It also means, among other practices, I’ll blog about some of my experiences. This week, my blogging will follow the Confession theme, and, appropriately, I’ll conclude my processing of the closing of Ikon Community. I’m counting on the interaction here to take its place in what I hope will become a web of meaning that will be woven over the next 40 days.

Consider yourself invited.

Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Disciplines, Faith, Lent

Book Review: Unprotected Texts, The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire

Jennifer Wright Knust is bound to be stoned in the courtyard of conservative Christian public opinion this year, thanks, at least in part, to the bang-up job someone is doing on her PR team.

I mean that with all sincerity and admiration.

Newsweek’s Religion Editor, Lisa Miller, picked up on Jennifer’s recent book, Unprotected Texts, The Bible’ Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire and parlayed it into an article, titled, “What the Bible Really Says About Sex.”

Sensing God needed someone to defend the bearded old man’s sexual honor, Al Mohler drew his pistol with “What the Bible Really Says About Sex…Really?” Sadly, yet predictably, Mohler’s argument can be boiled down to “Librals are stoopid.”

Though clearly biased, Jennifer Wright Knust is anything but stupid. More importantly, she never condescends to the personal attacks so prevalent among theological populists like Mohler. In Unprotected Texts she provides an accessible survey of the complexities of sexuality, family, gender roles, and the sexually charged political power struggles found in Jewish and Christian scriptures. Her writing is crisp and energetic, instructional and engaging, and even, at times, personally touching in a way that scholars often attempt, yet rarely accomplish.

It’s a good thing too, because if you lean towards a conservative hermeneutic, Knust is likely to ruffle your feathers. She attempts to dismantle virtually every pillar of conservative family-values, including the ideal of the nuclear family (a modern myth), the exclusivity of male-female marital sex (the exception, not the rule), the high value for marriage (Jesus and Paul barely tolerate marriage), male and female roles (the bible contradicts itself depending on the cultural milieu), and the sinfulness of homosexuality (it’s complicated).

In fact, that pretty much sums up Knust’s arguments about the Bible and sexuality: it’s complicated:

The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code, but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God (p17).

Mohler is right about one thing: these arguments are nothing new, and proclaiming so is where Lisa Miller, in particular, stumbles in her Newsweek article. Still, while this perspective of scripture as a complicated and conflicted dialectic may be old news to scholars, it is still frighteningly rare among everyday folks.

Frightening, I say, because a divergent hermeneutic – where the bible is acknowledged to be a variety of irresolvable divergences – is almost certainly correct. One simply cannot take scripture seriously (as Knust puts it) and fail to notice that it often argues vigorously with itself. Historically, it’s the attempt to force scripture into a seamless and systematic convergence of unquestionable control that leads people to malign and maim others in the name of God.

As I’ve argued before, being intellectually honest enough to live in the tension of irresolvable divergence is an important means of reflecting genuine Christian humility, or, what Leslie Newbigin called a “proper confidence.”

That doesn’t mean I’m with Knust on everything in this book. Her bias leaves little room for a nuanced interaction with opposing views and the overall effect is that certain speculations appear to be well-grounded facts when, in fact, they’re little more than modern academic fancy (i.e. the assertion David and Jonathan’s relationship was sexual).

Moreover, internal conflict in scripture doesn’t necessarily preclude congruence. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine having a proper confidence in Christ, much less Christianity, without a sense of congruence within certain themes. Yet, Knust offers almost nothing to identify the internal congruences of scripture (except the congruence of conflict). She seems content to commend the golden rule as the highest expression of scripture without explaining exactly why this ethic warrants preservation in the midst of so much textual excising.

Still, Knust’s book represents an important perspective in a world that seems to be increasingly prone to religious extremism in the form of sexism, misogyny, and violence. There are practical, real-life implications at stake: people still get literally and figuratively stoned in this world for speaking or acting in ways contrary to entrenched social and religious mores.

As Knust herself says in the introduction: “sluts should live” (p17).

(I received a galley copy of Unprotected Texts free of charge by the publisher in return for agreeing to review the book. I was not asked to offer either a positive or negative review.)

Technorati Tags: Al Mohler, Gender Roles, Jennifer Wright Knust, Scripture, Sex, Sexuality, Unprotected Texts

The Lord’s Prayer as Political Manifesto

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

Matthew 6:9-13

Recently a friend posted this question on facebook:

What does it look like when the Kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven”?

This is a question Christians often find difficult to answer. In the tradition I hail from (Charismatic/Pentecostal), it usually sends us into speculative reveries about “heaven”, or worse, about bringing the “power” of God into our lives to combat the devil.

But – typical of ancient Jewish rhetorical forms – the question inherently posed is answered by the prayer itself: The “kingdom” (or God’s will) will come “on earth as it is in heaven”:

• When there is daily bread for everyone (v11),
• When the practice of forgiveness routinely breaks the cycle of retribution (v12), and
• When people faithfully do what is right because evil no longer makes sense (v13).

Very simply, Jesus’ prayer evokes a life of goodness for all. Set within the context of a prayer, Jesus names goodness and shows that it springs from an overall posture of reliance upon God.

It helps to know that, like much of what Jesus said, his prayer is an echo of the great eschatological passages in Isaiah like 2:1-5 and 65:17-25. The future hope Jewish prophets spoke of was a redeemed earth, finally free of the evil caused by foolishness and vanity. Look at how Isaiah describes this great end-times hope in Chapter 65:

20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²² No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
²³ They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
²⁴ Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.

What’s being depicted here is a good life on earth, involving the joy of birth, the blessing of a long life, the dignity of work, the pleasure of eating, and the love of family and community. We see true peace, in the Jewish sense of shalom; completeness.

Now, it is patently obvious to me that these passages (both in Matthew and Isaiah) are about down-to-earth problems and down-to-earth solutions; not earth-bound problems we escape by flying away to an ethereal plane of existence, or “spiritual” problems combatted by the genuflections of a voodoo Christianity. Yet that is often what Christians have in mind when they speak of “heaven” and “the kingdom” and it tends to imprison us in abstract conversations and ridiculous theatrics.

Meanwhile, a couple thousand years later, the earth is still groaning for this good future to become a present reality.

It’s time to grow up. As long as the religious concept of evil remains limited to the personification of a mythical creature and our ability to imagine better possibilities remains limited to a mythical place, we will be forever relegated to the individualized realm of dualistic pietism.

We must follow Christ and the prophets in moving beyond our childish metaphors and concretely name evil for what it really is – starvation, exploitation, exclusion, vengeance, violence, and the like – so we can name goodness for what it really is: equality, provision, peace, and so forth.

Moving toward the reality of such things is extremely difficult, but not impossible. Not only is there is no theological impediment to God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven”, it is, in fact, our theological imperative to cooperate with this effort, inaugurated by Christ in earnest over 2000 years ago. It will not happen except through us.

That is what the Lord’s prayer is really about. We don’t pray so God will do something for us, we pray so God will do something to us. We don’t pray to pass responsibility on to an invisible other, we pray for the stuff that will get us off our knees and cause us to roll up our sleeves.

The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer to end all prayers because in it, Jesus not only teaches his disciples how to pray, but how to stop praying.

The Lord’s Prayer is not a protective charm. It’s not about magic, voodoo, or “spiritual mapping.” It’s about naming the concrete goodness of God, discovering a gift of faith for that goodness, and then bringing that goodness into reality by the sheer political will that such a gift empowers.

Technorati Tags: Isaiah, Jesus, Matthew, The Lord's Prayer

This is my burrito, broken for you

One of the things I love about forming new relationships is recognizing that moment when I’ve entered into the cycle of gifts with someone, because that is when grace begins to grow. This happened for me recently at work with the ladies at the front desk.

I’ll explain in a minute, but first, a quick word about grace and gifts.

Grace, you see, isn’t an abstraction. Rather, it’s born by the corpus of a gift. This, in my opinion, is a critical point to understand, because like most things theological, we have a tendency to abstract grace into oblivion.

Pastors of a certain persuasion tend to describe grace as the ultimate Get Out of Jail Hell Free Card; so cosmically magnanimous that the impulse to sin withers. In a word, for them, grace is freedom.  I think there’s truth to this, but it’s mostly overstated and largely unhelpful on a practical level. Worse, this freedom is often made into a badge that, ironically, excludes and vilifies others.

Pastors of another persuasion often describe grace as a divine ability, given for the transformation of self and others. In a word, grace is power. While I think there’s truth to this as well, it’s often given to a level of theatrical absurdity (“these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”) I just can’t stomach anymore and prone to a level of abuse that none should tolerate.

I’ve come to the conclusion that grace is far more ordinary. I think grace is a gift. I know, I know… everybody thinks that. Unfortunately, we’ve even made that concept abstract to the point of  obliteration (If you think grace being a gift simply means it’s free then you don’t understand how gifts worked in archaic societies – or modern societies for that matter). So perhaps it would be more helpful to say that gifts are grace. I mean that quite literally: every gift is grace.

Like my breakfast burrito.

This particular form of grace came to me this morning, but its genesis began a few weeks ago. I had moved into a new office at the front of the building, where two hard-nosed, battle-tested women run the font desk like a special forces commando unit. I needed to build a good relationship with them, so I gave them a gift.

I told them the story of my daughter driving her Volvo station wagon through our garage door that morning.

That was my gift. I told them the story, and told it well. I used hand gestures and rolled my eyes, and made them laugh and gave them surprise. Telling stories is a gift I have – literally the corpus of a grace given to me – and therefore it’s a gift I have to give. When I give it, grace is passed and grows in the giving.

Since that day, we say hello and good morning. They ask about my daughter and I ask about their families. In this way, grace grows through small, ordinary gifts until it’s too big to contain, so more giving is required.

That’s how my burrito came about. This morning one of the ladies stopped at my desk and asked, “I’m going to get a breakfast burrito, you want one?” My eyes grew wide, “Yes please.” Grace is always given as a gift and it always returns as a gift, you just can’t control when or how. For me, this morning, it came in a burrito.

Now, there is freedom in this gift. Power too. A great deal of both, in fact. But more importantly – and this is what we radically miss in popular theological imaginaries – there is breakfast. That is, there is a form of grace (it’s love, really, isn’t it?) that I can take and eat and remember, that will sustain me now and in the future, by the flesh and by the spirit. If, as creatures of matter, we cannot conceive of how a breakfast can and must be the logical and spiritual outcome of the gospel of grace then our theologies have failed us.

So now I’m eating grace. Actually, my friend and I both are. We’re sharing a communion of potatoes and peppers wrapped with eggs and bacon and cheese inside a warm tortilla. As usual, it’s more than I need.

I guess I’ll have to give some away.

Technorati Tags: Burritos, gifts, Grace

3 questions about Jesus: JR Woodward

My friend JR Woodward is the last to tackle our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker | Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko | Steve Burnhope | Jason Evans | Daniel So | Bryan Dormaier | Sean Campbell).

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I was driving in Columbus, Ohio, when I came upon a hitchhiker who alternated between holding his thumb out and clasping his hands together as if he were praying. I picked him up.

His name was Mike, and I soon discovered he was a hard-core Aryan, pointing to a passage in scripture about being “a chosen people” as the reason for his convictions. I asked if he would be willing to reread the passage in context. He agreed.

As I reached in the back seat to grab my Bible he pulled a gun and pointed it at my head. I assured him I was just getting my Bible, so he put his gun away, and my heart started to beat again.

I realized Mike had no place to stay that night, so I invited him to stay with me.

“You mean you would trust me to stay with you after pulling a gun on you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “because God has given me a love for you that I can’t explain, and He loves you.” Tears welled in Mike’s eyes.

We talked until 4 a.m. and I told him about the Jesus the apostles wrote about, this Jesus who had become my hero, my savior and my example. I told him how Jesus was the liberator of those oppressed, the lover of those rejected, and the deliverer of those seduced by consumerism. He cried most of the night.

Later that week he took me to a Chinese restaurant and continued to inquire about Jesus.  I told him how Jesus lived his life for the sake of others, how he died so we could live, and how he rose again to show what God was going to do for the world.

Something in Mike changed that evening; he understood in a profound way who Jesus was and what he had done for him and the world. When I left Columbus, Mike’s heart wanted to share with his Aryan friends what he had learned, hoping they would let go of their racism and be part of a community that included people from every race, tongue, tribe and nation.

As I reflect on his story, I’m reminded that Jesus invites each one of us to partner with Him in the renewal of all things. And if Jesus can turn a racist into a lover of all, there is hope for everyone.

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JR Woodward is the co-founder of Kairos Los Angeles, a network of churches in the LA area.  He is also co-founder of the Ecclesia Network, a relational network of missional churches, and the co-founder of the Solis Foundation which gives micro grants to help start small businesses in Lodwar, Kenya.  He is finishing his Masters of Art in Global Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary and he compiled and contributed to the book ViralHope.  You can learn more about him at (jrwoodward.com).  You will find him blogging at (jrwoodward.net) and tweeting @dreamawakener.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, JR Woodward

New missional opportunities in theological education

One of the more exciting recent developments in Christendom is the radically changing nature of ministry training. Education in general is being severely tested in our rapidly shifting culture, and seminary education is not immune to those pressures. Consequently, we’re seeing some interesting experiments on the landscape.

I was fortunate to be part of one of those experiments. Many of you know I just finished an MA in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. Rather than train college graduates how to be professional ministers in Christendom churches, the MAGL was designed to equip ministers from all over the world to be missionaries in their own context, and to shift the locus of learning from the teachers to the students by grouping experienced and highly diverse students together in small learning communities called cohorts. It was an amazing experience that deeply affected my perspective on the Kingdom and on culture. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a ministry education that challenges the status quo.

Since the MAGL started about 10 years ago other schools and programs have followed suit, developing their own highly unique approach to missiological training programs for ministry in the 21st century.

One of the latest programs to enter the fray is the Doctor of Ministry in Missional Leadership from Northern Seminary in the Chicagoland area. My good friend, and fellow Fuller alum, JR Rozko has been working with some amazing missional thinkers and scholars like David Fitch, Alan Roxburgh, and Craign Van Gelder to put together an exciting new program of missional training that not only unique in content and format, but relatively affordable as well.

Things are changing fast. If you’re a minister looking to be further equipped at the graduate level for leadership in a post-Christian and post-Secular Western world, consider checking these programs out. You won’t be sorry.

Technorati Tags: David Fitch, Fuller Seminary, JR Rozko, Northern Seminary

3 Questions about Jesus: Sean Campbell

We have a couple of late addition to our 3 Questions About Jesus series. This week, my good friend Sean Campbell tackles the questions, Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker | Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko | Steve Burnhope | Jason Evans | Daniel So | Bryan Dormaier).

_______________________________________________________________________

After losing what seemed like the same argument again and again, my wife finally clued me in. She had probably been telling me for a while, but I tend not to pick up on these things quickly. She said that behind every difficulty we’ve ever had, she always wanted to know that I still loved her, or, rather, that she was still lovable.

God gives us relationships as metaphors to better understand how he relates to us and how we can relate to him. One clear metaphor he gave us was that of husband and wife. Jesus came that we might know not only that we are lovable, but, also, that we are desperately loved.

What’s more, when my wife handed me this epiphany, I was offended. (And this is the risk God takes when giving us relationships as metaphor. They’re nearly always flawed.) I actually wondered how my wife could suspect me of not loving her; I tell her I love her multiple times every day and I always have. How could she have such a warped picture of me? But as I reflected on this, I realized that this assurance is a deep need of hers and it is also an important part of the metaphor.

Jesus came not only to demonstrate the Father’s love for us, but also to defend his character. You see, God also wonders how we could have such a warped picture of him. We all do. And this is why he sent his son, to daily tell us he love us, that we’re still lovable, and he hopes, that as he remains faithful in this, we might begin to correct our image of him and see him for who he is. This is what Jesus accomplished.

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Sean is software engineer for a startup in Carlsbad, California. He is married with four children.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Sean Campbell

3 questions about Jesus: Bryan Dormaier

My friend Bryan Dormaier is next to answer our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker | Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko | Steve Burnhope | Jason Evans | Daniel So).
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Is there anything worse than a person who only does things looking out for themselves?

You know the type- the only thing they worry about is how things will effect them. And we all know if we’re honest that we do it, but at the same time we see it in others and it disgusts us.

If I am to talk about Jesus in the most basic way I know how, I think that Jesus was all about saying that worrying first about oneself is not a good way to live. One of the sayings of Jesus that I find most interesting was about wheat. He said, “think about wheat – if the kernels stay on the head, what good do they do? They remain just one grain. But if they are willing to give their lives, ‘if they fall to the ground and die,’ they produce something much greater than themselves, something exponentially greater, for think, from one kernel of wheat, an entire plant grows and that plant grows many kernels.” And so in this way, Jesus says, “if you want to have a meaningful life, it has to be about something greater than your self preservation.”

Another time, Jesus was asked to sum up what it meant to live the spiritual life. He answered two things: love God first and foremost, and love others as much as you love yourself. In doing so, he said, you really would be living the spiritual life.

But Jesus didn’t just put this forward as some sort of romantic idea, this idea – that life is best lived for serving others than for serving ourselves was the message that Jesus lived in his actions. That is, the Christian story says that Jesus willingly let himself be arrested and killed for teaching this message, he took his message that self-preservation isn’t what life is all about to it’s logical end, that when it became an unpopular message he allowed himself to be murdered to illustrate his point.

Now, the Christian story is told by people who followed Jesus and believed that not only was he a fantastic human, but he was also God. And as proof they offered that after he had died, he came back to life – an almost unbelievable thing. But for these early followers of Jesus, it was an authentication to that entire way of living, that life is about more than ourselves and that God wants us to not be focused on ourselves because God is not focused on Godself but on serving others.

This is why I think Jesus is so important, because if that kind of God exists, I believe it is very, very good news.

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Bryan Dormaier is a graduate of Multnomah Biblical Seminary where he received his Masters in Pastoral Studies. Bryan also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Whitworth University, in Spokane, WA. He is currently involved with a missional church plant in the Portland area.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Bryan Dormaier, Jesus Christ

The Parable of the Hungry Girl

This parable is dedicated to John MacArthur, who at a recent conference said, “You can get Jesus mostly right and still go to hell,” and to Rick Holland, who at the same conference said, “Right doctrine is the litmus test for your life.”

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Once there was a little girl at play in the garden when suddenly she realized she was hungry. Immediately, she went looking for her father who was at work in the fields.

“Father,” she said, “I’m hungry. Will you give me something to eat?”

“First you must tell me why you are hungry and how I am able to feed you.”

“I’m hungry because I need to eat, and you’re able to feed me because you’re my father.”

“That’s only partly true. Go to your room and come back when you know the whole truth.”

So the little girl went away a little hurt, confused and still hungry. Later that night while her father ate dinner at a table filled with deliciously prepared food, she came to him again.

“Father,” she said, “I’m hungry. Will you please give me something to eat?”

“First you must tell me why you are hungry and how I am able to feed you.”

“I am hungry because my stomach is empty, and you are able to feed me because you grow food in our fields.”

“What you have said is more true than before, but there is still much you do not understand. Go to bed and come to me when you know the whole truth.”

Every day the little girl grew hungrier and weaker than the day before, and every day she begged her father for mercy. Yet she still did not fully understanding why she needed it, or how he was able to give it. So every day he turned her away.

Several weeks passed and eventually the little girl died of starvation. At her death bed the father lamented, “If only you knew that your hunger wasn’t a temporary problem, but that you were born without the ability to sustain yourself. If only you knew that your food came by the seeds of the earth, the rain from the sky, the rays of the sun, and the work of my hands. Then, you could have admitted your brokenness and weakness in full humility, and truly realized your utter dependence on my work and sacrifice.

Then, you would have been worthy of my mercy.”

Technorati Tags: Parables, Soteriology, Theology