A Personal Relationship with Jesus?

Recently a good friend of mine asked me a great question. He is a person of considerable spiritual depth and commitment to Christ, yet he has never been part of Evangelicalism. And he asked: 

What do [Evangelicals] mean by accepting Jesus as one’s “personal” Lord? Or having a “personal” relationship with Jesus? Like do they mean some sort of "warming-of-the-heart" kind of experience? Or is it some rejection of [the idea that Christ must be] mediated through the Church as an institution?

As someone who came to faith in Christ in the Evangelical world of the early 1990's, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I have a "personal relationship with Christ" which began when I "accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior". I have a definite time when Jesus became real to me, and I can pinpoint when I prayed a "sinner's prayer" to receive Jesus. And I have "witnessed" to thousands of people the lifesaving power of Jesus, known in his death and resurrection. I have shared the "four spiritual laws". I have asked people "who is on the throne" of their life. So, I began my response as follows:

On the meaning of Kenosis

What does it mean for God to be incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ? To get at this, let's begin with a thought experiment. Try to differentiate between what makes your self “you” and the powers that your self wields. You have a self consciousness of “I, me, my”. Your self also wields powers like physical extension and movement, knowledge and speech. You could be yourself while diminishing in power: If you lost some limbs or lost some memories, you would not cease to be yourself. You would still have a continuous experience of “I, me, my” animating your powers and experiencing your experiences. 

In a similar way, the Divine Self empties its powers to become incarnate... 

John Seven Twenty Four

“Do not judge by appearances...”

Let not popularity or power beguile you 

Do not look at self promotion or propaganda

Don’t be fooled by masks or makeup 

Or the sly salesmanship of snake oil sellers

Confusion is their strategy

False promises their bait

For they whisper what you want to hear in one ear

While their fingers pick your pockets

“But judge with right judgment.”

There is a standard we stand or fall before

There is a justice to which we are accountable

There is a Love who wants the best for all her children

There is eternal Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

That calls us home

And our judgments must point in that direction

Or they will direct us to destruction 

(A Meditation on John 7:24) 

On reading while walking

This is probably old hat to many people, or just not needed for your lifestyle. But if this helps, here’s a life hack: I love reading, and the experience of seeing and digesting the written word. Audio books or podcasts or lectures are nice, but don’t really do the same thing for me. But the problem with reading is that it is very sedentary. 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Scripture

At the school I serve as chaplain, I was recently asked to provide some Scriptural reflections on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Earlier, I did an essay for my previous school on how these values are rooted in Episcopal Identity and the foundational beliefs and prayers of the Episcopal Church. Not only that, but the Christian vision of God leads us to these values, because the very idea of God as the Trinity leads us to embrace diversity, and the Incarnation of God in Christ leads us to embrace inclusion. These ideas of God are, in turn, rooted in the self-revelation of God which is recorded in Scripture. So now it is time to dig into the foundational texts of the whole Christian Faith, and the founding stories of Jesus and his Apostles, to understand how they inspire us to create communities of diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice. 

Resurrecting the Matrix: An Ideological Review

I just saw Matrix Resurrections. Here are my responses in no particular order:

Stupidity as a gateway to Fascism

These excerpts on stupidity as a gateway to fascism are taken from a circular letter, addressing many topics, which was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to three friends and co-workers in the conspiracy against Hitler, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany:

Religious Fascination

I am fascinated by religion, and the process by which humans have created structures and norms and beliefs and practices which allow us to connect with the deepest aspects of who we are, the Source we come from, and the Destiny we are headed toward. I am fascinated by the sheer variety of rituals and art and foods and clothing through which people get glimpses of the Divine. I am fascinated by the constellations of overlapping and diverging beliefs about God and creation and humanity and final destiny. I am fascinated by the process of moral reasoning, through which ancient texts collide with contemporary experience to forge new paths into a (hopefully) better future. I am fascinated by how all of this intersects with our particular place in space and time, in the unfolding of history and culture, to form our sense of personal identity and collective destiny. But to truly study and embrace religion, we also have to embrace something like this insight from Acts:

God Insists

Two quests for God seem equally misguided: The quest to abolish God, and the quest to establish God. 

Proverbs 31 and the Noble Spouse

Recently on social media I read a thought provoking post that dealt with both the problems and enduring value of the “Noble Wife” passage in Proverbs 31. I think a simpler way to get at what they were saying is this: Proverbs 31 is an enduring list of virtues and values written in a culture that was cursed with patriarchy (if you read the consequences of sin for our first parents in Genesis 3) and tended toward misogyny (if you read many instances of the use and abuse of women in the books of Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles). Now we realize that in Christ there is “no male or female, no slave or free” (cf. Galatians 3). So the virtues are still valid, even if the patriarchal structure they were expressed in is obsolete and oppressive. 

Therefore, let’s extract the virtues and jettison the potential misogyny of the passage by simply universalizing for all people. It may have been first directed at women, but now it is directed at EVERYONE. An interpretation of this passage “in Christ” describes a hard working and virtuous spouse. Period. Regardless of whether that spouse is a man or woman. As such, in this text we find that we are ALL called to diligence, hard work, wisdom, discernment, and responsibility as spouses and partners. 

We might even imagine that we are translating Proverbs 31 into a language that does not conceive of gender the same way English and Hebrew have in the past. After all, English seems to be losing gendered grammar and vocabulary quite quickly, just as many other gendered languages have before us. So, imagine translating Proverbs 31 into a language that only has the word “spouse” or “companion”, and not “husband” and “wife”. A language into which “he” and “she” doesn’t really work. If we do this, we might read Proverbs 31 like this:

Arguing for the sake of God

Recently I saw someone post the meme “If only we fought as hard to understand as we do to disagree”. It is a beautiful sentiment. But I’m not sure I fully agree. 

Rabbinic students in Yeshiva are taught to “argue for the sake of God” or even “argue for the glory of God”. Argument— even vociferous argument— is often a means to deeper understanding, as long as it is combined with humility. It is often only by energetically dissecting and deconstructing inadequate ideas that we arrive at better ideas. 

A key Rabbinic text for this comes from Pirke Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) 5.20: “Any controversy waged in the service of God shall in the end be of lasting worth, but any that is not shall in the end lead to no permanent result.” Indeed. Debate on behalf of that which is intrinsically Good and True and Beautiful will inevitably lead us into communion with God who is Goodness and Truth and Beauty, provided that we act and argue in ways that are good and true and beautiful. 

How do we do this, in the midst of a heated argument, without slipping into evil and deception and ugliness? The difference, it seems to me, is that at Yeshiva the day’s arguments always end in prayer, as every disputant stops to acknowledge their smallness before, and constant dependence on, God. Perhaps if this was where all of our arguments ended, we would have better arguments. 

Why we really believe what we believe

So I’m on this religion discussion board, and recently the rather mundane observation was made that people’s religious beliefs tend to mirror their family of origin. Overwhelmingly, Muslim adults were born into Muslim families. Jewish adults were born into Jewish families. Christians in Christian families, Hindus with Hindus, Buddhists with Buddhists, etc. A very low number of people, statistically, tend to adopt a spiritual path that they did not grow up around and have extensive interactions with. Many Christians who commented on this discussion board seemed to have a huge problem with this mundane statistical fact. They found this undermined the veracity of their belief (because they assumed that a belief handed down from others is somehow less true), as well as the authenticity of their belief (because most wanted to think of their belief as something they chose for good reasons). But is this the case?

Atonement, Substitution, and Bad Analogies in Reformed Theology

Recently I was in a discussion with someone about the Reformed Theologian Michael Horton, and how he appropriates and comments on the language of sacrifice used by the early Church Fathers such as Athanasius and Chrysostom in his work on Justification. To be fair, I have only read a few pages from this particular work. But, speaking as a former Reformed theologian (Amyraldian, Infralapsarian, Four Point Calvinist to be exact), I have read a ton of stuff like this: Calvin, Berkof, Grudem, Erickson, Packer, Sproul, early Horton, and the like. I would say the entire Reformed tradition is all just an adventure in error, except for folks like Karl Barth and Jan Bonda and William Barclay. Horton here is trying to take the great riches of the Orthodox Theosis tradition, cut off its limbs, and shove its corpse into the coffin of Reformed Theology. Spoiler alert: I have a lot to criticize in the Reformed tradition, particularly in its vision of salvation and the ideas embedded in the so-called "TULIP" of Calvinism. Better off to ditch the Horton and just read the original sources. 

Tiptoeing through the TULIP

This is a 2007 two-part attempt at presenting theology as a dramatic discussion inspired by Peter Kreeft, Bryan McLaren, and Roger Olson. I have not re-visited it in years because it is almost impossible to NOT sound preachy. Nevertheless, Part 1 "Tiptoeing through the TULIP" is a helpful exposition of my Soteriology, and Part 2 "What the hell is Hell?" is a helpful exposition of my Eschatology. 

Here in Part 1 we have a discussion about salvation, particularly what it means to be "saved", and who gets to be saved. Our characters represent the views of particular Christian traditions about salvation. 

What the hell is Hell?

This is a 2007 two-part attempt at presenting theology as a dramatic discussion inspired by Peter Kreeft, Bryan McLaren, and Roger Olson. I have not re-visited it in years because it is almost impossible to NOT sound preachy. Nevertheless, Part 1 "Tiptoeing through the TULIP" is a helpful exposition of my Soteriology, and Part 2 "What the hell is Hell?" is a helpful exposition of my Eschatology.

Here in Part 2 we continue a discussion about salvation, particularly what heaven and hell are, and who goes to each. Our characters represent the views of particular Christian traditions about salvation. 

A Prayer for too much to do

Lord Jesus Christ, you had too much to do, too many people to help, and not enough time or resources to do it all. And yet, you took one moment at a time, one person at a time, one event at a time: And you did the best with what you had, to bring about the best in everyone. Send forth your Spirit of wisdom, kindness, and strength to help us to do the same. In the midst of constant activities and expectations and duties and needs: Help us to do the best with what we have, to bring about the best in everyone. Grant us your Spirit, that we may take one moment at a time, one person at a time, and one event at a time, and experience your presence in the midst of it all. And, when possible, give us times of rest and restoration to recharge us to accomplish all you have set before us. It is in your Love we pray. Amen.

A Post Pentecost Poem

We Christians love to affirm:

.

Semper Reformanda!

Always reformed

Always reforming!

Until that reformation

Reforms the way we read the Bible

Reforms the kinds of families we approve

Reforms our understanding of how God made us

Through the unfolding dance of evolution

Reforms the ways patriarchy and hierarchy 

Have silenced and sidelined

Women and Queers and Outsiders

So we can at last hear Christ

Speak through them!

.

When Reformation reforms too much

We cling to Tradition

To keep the boundary stones

Firmly in place

Predictably

Immovably

Inertly

In place...

Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Episcopal Identity

In the media and in education it seems we hear a great deal lately about words such as "diversity", "inclusion", "equity", and "social justice". These are often conflicted and politicized terms, but they are also terms which are deeply rooted in the Christian Story and Episcopal Identity. I would like to offer a brief reflection on diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice as a chaplain dealing with diverse groups and cultures in the context of Episcopal schools and churches. But I must begin by saying I am not an expert by any means, and there is a vast literature to help our understanding from pastors and prophets, practitioners and professors, and many others who speak to equity and inclusion issues that affect different cultures, ethnicities, identities, and abilities.

Since I cannot effectively speak directly to all these experiences and concerns, due to my lived experience, I feel that the best way I can help move this conversation forward is by talking about how these issues are expressed in Scripture, in the history of the Episcopal and Anglican traditions, and in how we pray and worship together. Because, at the heart of Episcopal identity is the idea of "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Agendi", which means that "How we pray shapes how we believe and how we live". And it turns out that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice have been at the heart of how we believe and pray and worship for decades and even centuries. With this in mind, what I want to do is take the everyday definitions for these terms as found in Merriam-Webster, and look at how they unfold in the Bible and in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer [BCP].

A Prayer for Uncertainty

A poem and a prayer for those facing an uncertain future and trying to find the way forward. Let us pray:

Did Christ have to die on the Cross?

On Holy Saturday I often do a lot of thinking about the meaning of the Cross and Death of Christ. I've written before about how I explain the meaning of Christ's death, and the role it plays in bringing atonement, or "at-one-ment", with God through Christ. But here I would like to ponder the meaning of Christ's death in light of the questions: Did Christ have to die? If so, did that death have to happen by crucifixion? In what sense did God "will" for Christ to die, or even "cause" Christ's death?