'No Country for Old Men'-- Is No Movie for the Faint of Heart

Movies about psychopathic killers 'with rules and principles' are not the usual fare of Oscar nominations, at least not for best picture, but 'No Country for Old Men' is an exception to most rules for sure. This movie has been hailed as an instant classic, as near perfect, as a nearly perfect adaptation of a novel for the silver screen, and the plaudits keep on coming. I must admit that it's subject matter kept me away for a long time, but eventually I decided I needed to see what all the shouting was about. Turns out they were right that it is an amazing film, just not in any way a pleasant one.

The movie is R rated due to violence, and clocks in at 2 hours and 2 minutes. Unlike slasher and some pure horror movies this movie is neither mindless terror and blood, nor endless gore without a point. Indeed, most of the movie is a psychological study about the change in character of America over the recent decades, seen through the lens of Texas law men like Tom Ed Bell (brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones), a third generation Texas Law man. The change I am referring to is the lurching towards ever more violence, ruthlessness, and despair in the last century. The movie was filmed around Marfa Texas, as was 'There will be Blood', so I am hoping this helped the coffers of that tiny town in far west Texas, population about 2,000. It is also the place where the classic film 'Giant' was made as well.

Something should be said about the Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan), the two headed director-producers of this and many other interesting films. I have liked their previous, if quirky work, like Raising Arizona (a young Nicholas Cage makes a star turn), Fargo, and my personal favorite 'O Brother Where Art Thou'? a true classic. It is not an accident that these siblings have won Academy Awards before, and I will be surprised if more hardware is not pulled in for this film as well. But back to the story itself. This film will not 'entertain' nor warm the cockles of your heart.

We have perhaps become accustomed to rough justice scenarios in films about Texas, but this film is about rough, and ongoing, injustice that is relentless. As Tom Ed's relative says to him near the end of the movie "you can't stop what's coming". And you get the sense that Bell feels overwhelmed, and instead of trying to stem the tide of senseless violence, he simply retires, and has dreams of joining his father in death. He ruminates about how he expected God to come after him and invade his life in his later days, but instead what happened was malevolent evil showed up on his doorstep.

In this movie the Law, whether the police or the DEA appear as impotent to stop the drug and money trade trapsing across the border from Mexico to Texas. The Law is good, but no match for Evil, particularly as embodied in the person of one Anton Shugar, a hired psychopathic killer, sent on the trail of one Lewellyn Moss who has made the big mistake of trying to take the money and run, from the desert scene of a drug for money swap gone terribly wrong. Indeed, even innocent women are no match for this killing machine, who decides life and death issues by flipping coins.

The title of the movie 'No Country for Old Men' comes from the fact that the old are of course too worn out to deal with such persistent ruthlessness, and this includes old law men like Sheriff Bell. Indeed, it might be said that Texas is but a parable of the whole country which has become 'no place for the old, the tired, the poor, the defenseless, and so on.'

If you are looking for redeeming features in this movie, or silver linings there really are none. It is a profoundly depressing film, which has its greatest success in accurately portraying psychopathic evil in the person of a hit man, which is resilent, takes a licking but keeps on ticking. Don't go see this film unless you are steeling against the heart of darkness which creeps across the land. As for me, I can only imagine that 'There will be Blood' will seem like a joy fest compared to this film. Both seem to suit very well the cold and dark of a January day. I guess I'll go see that other Marfa film next :(

More Talpiot Tomb Stories

Not surprisingly the Jerusalem Post, (which btw made several mistakes in reporting the recent conference in Jerusalem sponsored by Princeton), has now published a further series of articles saying that Ultra Orthodox Jews (the heredi council) are unlikely to agree to the reopening of the Talpiot tomb and the one adjacent to it, because of course it involves sacrilege, and further, the Talpiot tomb had been turned into a geniza, that is a repository of old and worn out sacred Jewish texts. There are thus two good reasons for them to object to this intrusion.

Here is the link for the most recent story in the Post.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1200572484509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The original Post story which involved an interview with Jim Charlesworth who is on sabbatical in Israel until April can be found at the following link---

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1200475897708&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

There are several salient points to be made on the basis of yet other articles, also in the Post (Jan. 25th by David Horovitz in particular. You can type in Talpiot tomb and click on news at Google and you will find these stories quite readily). Here are a couple of key points:

1) Eric Meyers of Duke rightly complained as follows: "Most negative assessments of archeologists and other scientists and scholars who attended [the symposium] have been excluded from the final press reports," complained Duke University's Professor of Jewish Studies Eric Meyers and another dozen scholars in a statement that listed archeological, statistical, DNA and other objections. "We wish to... make it clear that the majority of scholars in attendance - including all of the archeologists and epigraphers who presented papers relating to the tomb - either reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus's family or find this claim highly unlikely."

2) Notice that all the epigraphers and archaeologists think these ossuaries are highly unlikely to have any relationship to Jesus' family. Why is their word so important? Because of course this is a matter calling for expertise, and the real experts in this matter are people like Shimon Gibson and Amos Kloner who dug the tomb in the first place and who stand by their conclusions that it is very unlikely to have anything to do with Jesus, and even more importantly the epigraphers who examined the inscriptions on the ossuary. Let me suggest an analogy in regard to this conference. This would be like going to a medical convention where a new drug was being debated. Of course many doctors would have opinions, but the real experts would be the chemists and toxicologists who would best be able to tell whether the drug showed promise, or was potentially dangerous, even lethal. Well in this case, the real expertise conclude any connection to Jesus is highly unlikely. I agree.


3) A third point needs to be made. No conservative or Evangelical scholars, whatever their expertise, seem to have been even invited to this conference, with the exception of Stephen Pfann, apparently. Jim Charlesworth kept saying that going forward, if further excavation and investigation is allowed, he wants only people who have no emotional stake in this matter one way or another! There are very few people like that out there, frankly, if they do Biblical archaeology, and it is odd that Dr. Charlesworth, an ordained UM minister from N.C., and someone whom I consider a friend, would think he was such a person, or could find any such persons. Perhaps however all he really means is he wants people who are reasonably dispassionate and can follow the evidence where it leads. If so, that is fair enough.

4) A fourth interesting point has come to light. Amos Kloner says that, despite what Joseph' Gat's widow said, Joseph Gat himself never claimed this was likely the tomb of Jesus, and he lived until 1990, long after the tomb had been excavated (the Post had originally said he died much earlier).

About one thing I certainly agree with Jim Charlesworth. This sort of study almost always produces highly ambiguous evidence. More study could produce better questions, but it is highly unlikely to produce anything like clear or certain answers. But then this is often true of archaeological investigation. It provides possibilities, but seldom proofs or refutations of a clear sort.

Let me illustrate why I say this---

Consider the inscription on the so-called Jesus ossuary. It is a 'toe tag' inscription, a mere scrawl for identification of the bones, not an honorific inscription. This inscription, except for the word Joseph at the end of the inscription is basically undecipherable-- the first name could be Hanan, it could be Yeshua, it could be something else. It is absolutely unclear how it reads, as the detailed study by Stephen Pfann made clear last year.

This means, that all the conjecture is inconclusive and could never reach a level where someone could really say 'it is highly probable that...' and back it up. Furthermore, this sup[posed Jesus ossuary is one of the poorer quality ossuaries that were found in the Talpiot tomb. As Charlesworth says, it makes no sense that Jesus would be buried in this sort of ossuary without an honorific inscription, whilst other less famous relatives in the tomb got better ones with clearer and better inscriptions.

And let me repeat once more--- there is, as of yet, no new evidence supporting any side of this debate. The conference simply rehashed the old evidence, and suggested further study should be done.

Shimon Gibson says the adjacent chamber in the Talpiot tomb should be examined as he opines that it may provide the clues to what sort of Jewish family owned this expansive, and I might add, expensive, rock cut tomb with an ornamented decoration over the tomb. The evidence we have about Jesus' family however does not match up with the social evidence found in the tomb thus far, indicating the social level and status of this extended family. Jesus' family was not well to do, from what we can tell, and furthermore, they did not bury Jesus anyway. Joseph of Arimathea did. Nor was James buried in this locale either, according to Eusebius.

Stay tuned, but don't expect much between now and April. Charlesworth may well not be able to get past the objections of the ultra Orthodox to further snooping in this Jewish graveyard.

Babies Sweet enough to Eat

My Florida cousins sent me these pictures. Believe it or not, there is a woman who makes marzipan babies-- yes babies made out of frosting! And here are the pictures to prove it.
This woman has some serious talent.

Having seen real premies (prematurely born infants) I have to say these are remarkable replicas. And they remind us--- those 'buns' in the oven, well they are much more than buns or fetuses, they are little people!!! And anyone who doesn't think so--- well they really frost my cake :)

The Life of an Airhead-- Those who Spend Too Much Time in the Air

You know you spend too much time in airplanes and airports when:

1) The TSA people at your home airport know you by name

2) The ticket counter people from all the airlines know you by name

3) The stewardesses on the planes often know you by name

4) You schedule your flights to stop in certain airports because you have 'favorite airport restaurants' along the way

5) You avoid certain major airports like the plague (e.g. Chicago O'Hare)

6) You unconsciously remember not to wear a belt and a watch on the day you are flying so you don't have to disrobe when going through security at the airport.

7) Your luggage has more stickers on it than a leading political candidate in the 2008 presidential race.

8) You get offered American Express cards on 7 different domestic airlines.

9) You can actually tell people what the shortest Delta route is (Cinci to Dayton), and the longest non-stop commerical flight is (Singapore to Newark-- 19 hours, been there, done that).

10) You average 50 flights a year.

11) You know how to to make the ticket agent give you a FEM (a faulty equipment manifest) when a plane doesn't fly due to mechanical issues, so you can fly free on another airline.

12) You know all the code share partners on all the airlines you regularly fly.

13) You've figured out how to be almost always first on and first off the plane without usually flying first class (that bulkhead seat and you have been bonding for a while, and you don't ever gate check luggage or have pink tag bags).

14) You've figured out that it is cheaper to take the taxi to the airport than to park there for 2 or more days.

15) You know what movies the airlines are showing month by month on cross country and Trans -Atlantic flights, so you can plan ahead.

16) You've figured out the most comfortable spots to sleep in an airport if you happen to be stranded there-- the carpeted floor at the end of a terminal behind an unused counter works well.

17) You've seen Air Force One parked at various airports you have been stranded at.

18) You've heard stewardesses say such choice things over the plane intercom as:

a) 'welcome today to your final flight, ladies and gentleman'

b) 'in the event of an emergency landing put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye'

c) 'We will be serving cocktails in the cockpit shortly, if you would like one'.

d) 'After the meal is served you may feel some turbulence in your stomach'.

e) ' Our pilot for today is Captain Neil Armstrong, and his first mate Buzz Aldrin'

f) ' We will be landing soon and you will be able to turn on your wives and call your cellphones'


19) You've talked the airlines into giving you a cab ride from the Cinci airport to the Lexington airport, instead of a meal voucher and a hotel for the night.

20) They sing Happy Birthday to you on the airplane on the right day, even though you never told them what the right day was.

21) You are thinking of writing a guide book entitled 'Gullible's Travels'

Unfortunately, I can account for almost all of the above.

BW3

Canny Carnoustie and Delightful Durham

Behold the clubhouse at Carnoustie in Dundee, Scotland. The day was 1 /16/ o8, and the weather was bonny. The next picture is of me with my doctoral student at St. Andrews Aaron Kuecker. This word just in-- he beat me by 9 strokes, but then again, he is half my age and taller. We both scored under triple digits on this most difficult of all British Open courses on a truly bonny day in Scotland. The sun however, when it does shine, only does so from about 8:30 to 4ish in northern Scotland in January. We were truly blessed to have such a day to play.

Behold a little further down the obstacles in our way-- heather, still blooming, and gorse-- faith and begorry. Its enough to make a man want to hurl his haggis. And then there are the undulated greens and pot bunkers. You will also find here a picture of the hole called Spectacles due to its two massive man eating pot bunkers. Whilst my golf balls managed to avoid a watery grave throughout the round, as I baptized none, I did manage to find 3 pot bunkers and some rough rough along the way. If only, after parring the first hole I could have kept going that way throughout the round. But it was not to be. You'll find as well a further picture of Aaron and myself at the end of the round as well, near the clubhouse.












The remainder of the pictures in this blog are from my spiritual home, Durham, where I did my PhD between 1977-80. The first picture is of one of the stained glass windows in the Galilee Chapel of that great Norman Cathedral, Durham Cathedral. It is certainly the greatest Norman structure of any kind in Europe, dating to the late 11th century A.D. The second picture shows the Cathedral as it appeared last week from the Wear river. The Cathedral sits on a peninsula as the river winds in a remarkable U shape around this bit of land, turning it nearly into an island. The second cathedral picture looks from the opposite direction on Framelgate Bridge, the main bridge into the old city across the Wear. I also took a picture from within the cathedral cloister on Saturday morning when it was a bit more sunny.








Below these pictures we have a shot of a house on the Bailey at dawn in the shadow of the cathedral (note the three bottles of milk-- yes they still deliver them that way. It beats wasting carton after carton). The next picture looks out the window from my room at St. John's college where I lectured on Friday. What you see is the Norman chapel across the road, which also lies in the shadow of the cathedral, and the last picture is of the same little chapel. Sir Walter Scott was to say of Durham Cathedral and Castle that it was half castle against the Scot, have cathedral to God's glory. Here the bishops who were also princes resided. Originally on Palace Green there was not a proper University, but rather Bishop Cousins library, a hospital or infirmary and the usual ecclesiastical buildings that would surround a cathedral, such as the chorister's residences and school. Today, all the buildings on the top of the peninsula belong to Durham University save for the cathedral, the cathedral close, and its buildings.



There is however still the finest Theology department in the land to be found here, perched next to the Cathedral in Abbey House on Palace Green. It is still one of the finest places in the English speaking world to take a theology degree, whether at the Undergraduate, Graduate, or Post-Graduate level. I remember all too well my first class I sat in on as a doctoral student at Durham. It was John Rogerson's class on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the class consisted of 3 under-graduates and me. Imagine my further surprise when these three under-graduates could all rattle off the proper translation from the unpointed Hebrew photocopies without batting an eye. If this was what under-graduates could do , I could only imagine what it took to do doctoral work in such a subject.

Then there was Barrett's famous NT seminar which I attended weekly during term. I was seated beside Lord Michael Ramsay, the former archbishop, whose eyebrows were so grand and bushy, I could barely see Barrett at the end of the the table through them. Cranfield was there, Rogerson was there, guests like Metzger and Davies were there, and of course Barrett's petrified doctoral students. We all sat there awaiting our turn to translate from the Didache, after which we would be asked questions. It was rather random, so one never knew when you might be called upon. I was asked early on to translate from the Lord's Supper bit of the Didache. I did so mustering up my courage and then gave a rather timid explanation for the text's meaning. Barrett, peering around Ramsay's eyebrows asked me-- "And what precisely do you mean by that?" I was sorely tempted to respond "Honestly, I didn't mean anything by that." But I gave some sort of feeble reply, and the conversation moved on. These were deep waters, and there was no chance of faking it when it came to the reading of the primary sources-- you would be quickly exposed if you tried to bluff your way through it. After many more courses (which were all voluntary so far as the degree was concerned, but ever so necessary if one wanted to become a real scholar), courses like Theology and Ethics of the NT (Barrett), Romans (Cranfield), Calvin and Luther (T.H.L. Parker), and various others, I managed to write and finish my doctoral work, and went home with our new daughter (Christy, born in Durham), and the prospect of pastoring four churches-- I figured it couldn't be more daunting that Barrett's seminar--- I was right, if the issue was the intellectual challenge, but wrong, when considering the personal and spiritual challenges of pastoring four churches.

Hope you enjoy the shots and the reverie.

The Jesus Tomb Redux--the Jerusalem Conference

Gadflies enjoying buzzing around dead meat. In fact they are positively attracted to it, precisely because it produces 'buzz'. The news this past week provided us with a perfect illustration of this principle.

There was a conference in Jerusalem sponsored by Princeton U. with 50 invited scholars present and hosted by Jim Charlesworth to rehash the Jesus tomb theory. Here is the link to the Time article about it---

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1704299,00.html

Let me be clear that no fresh evidence came to light from this conference, except one somewhat surprising revelation-- the widow of Joseph Gat, Gat being one of the original archaeologists who dug the Talpiot Tomb, revealed that her husband thought back in the 80s that this might be the tomb of Jesus, but he kept these views to himself, because. his wife averred, being a Holocaust survivor he was fearful of an anti-Jewish reprisal had he made his views known. This is sadly understandable. Here is the link kindly sent to me by two persons of the interview with Mrs. gat on CNN---http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/01/18/wedeman.revisiting.jesus.tomb.cnn


So let's review for a moment what most scholars concluded was the case about this tomb:

1) it is too far out of town; and 2) too ornate a tomb to have been the Jesus family tomb, especially if James was buried in it because 3) his shrine was near the Temple mount and this tomb is miles away, and furthermore the Gospel evidence, as we have it, suggests Jesus was buried hastily near the place of this crucifixion; and 4) Jesus' crucifixion is one of the most reliable pieces of multiply-attested historical evidence we have from antiquity, including from non-Christian Jewish and Roman sources.

Because of some of these factors, Simcha Jacobivici's documentary argued that Jesus was reinterred later at the Jesus family tomb, perhaps very soon after his initial interment in Joseph's own family tomb. Of course this is an argument entirely from silence, not from evidence or even inference. We have no historical evidence of Jesus being reburied in the Talpiot area, much less being buried for the first time there, unless one can force the Talpiot tomb's inscriptions to provide such evidence. But they positively resist such an analysis.

Let us review then the onamasticon (or name list) evidence as well. Close examination of the inscription on the so-called Mary Magdalene ossuary revealed that instead of saying 'Mariamne' or Maria the Master, it in fact listed two names--- Mary and Martha. Secondly, the so-called Jesus ossuary with an inscription of 'Jesus son of Joseph' is unlikely to have been the way Jesus' would have been listed had he even had an ossuary and had undergone re-interment. Why? Because it was well and widely known that Joseph was not Jesus' father, and as I pointed out in my previous post last March on this blog, only outsiders who did not know the situation called Jesus--' son of Joseph'. There is no evidence any member of the family ever did so, and Luke, who offers us the virginal conception idea in Lk. 1-2, quite rightly in connnection with his genealogy of Jesus in Lk. 3. use the phrase 'as was supposed' when relating the name Jesus to the phrase 'son of Joseph'. This signals the dubious nature of such a view in Luke's mind. None of the other names on the other ossuaries are helpful for resolving this matter. The James ossuary does however confirm what the Synoptic Gospels especially suggest--- that Jesus had brothers and sisters, the other children of Mary (and Joseph).

It is worth pointing out as well, that if this were a Jesus family tomb why exactly are neither Joseph nor Mary buried there (and why would such a tomb be in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee)? According to later church tradition Mary died in Ephesus and was buried there, having moved there with the Beloved Disciple.

What does indeed bother me about Jim Charlesworth's reported remarks, who says he has doubts about the Talpiot tomb theory anyway, is that he makes the unhelpful remark that this whole matter is irrelevant to Christian faith, because even if it were true, it would simply mean that Jesus had a spiritual body or a spiritual resurrection.

He surely knows better than to misrepresent the view of resurrection found in both early Judaism and early Christianity in this manner. As Tom Wright demonstrated at great length in his landmark study on 'Resurrection and the Son of God' (Fortress Press), resurrection everywhere refers to something that happens to and involves a physical, not some ethereal spiritual body. Paul in 1 Cor. 15 does not in fact refer to a 'spiritual body'. What 'pneumatikon soma' means is a body totally empowered by the Spirit, not a body made out of spiritual material (an idea that would have been a non sequitur or oxymoron-- 'spirit refers to something non-material, and so not a material component or physical substance of a body). The term Spirit, in the phrase 'life-giving Spirit' is set in contrast to the phrase about Adam as a 'living being' (i.e. with physical breath). Thus in this phrase Spirit, has the same meaning as it does in John 4 where Jesus refers to God as Spirit (i.e. a divine being). The point of the contrast is to make clear that while Adam had physical existence and so was alive as a human being, Jesus as the risen Lord has the ability to do what only God the Spirit can do-- namely give life. None of the discussion in 1 Cor. 15 has anything to do with a 'spiritual (i.e. non-material) resurrection body'. Note that there is plenty of talk in the ancient world about human spirits or souls, or even animal spirits, but in neither case are either viewed as a 'material' or physically substantive part of a creature's body. Thus when Jesus says 'into thy hands I commend my spirit', he is referring to his personality or the non-material part of who he is.

What the Jerusalem conference does call for is a further investigation of this matter, which is fine. But unless there is some new and compelling evidence (and Joseph Gat's personal opinion does not count in that category), since both the DNA and the statistical evidence offered by Simcha Jacobivici's Discovery Channel special were shown to be very flawed, and this is one of the main reasons the theory was rejected by the vast majority of scholars, then there is no reason to change the previous overwhelmingly negative majority view of the evidence. Actual promising new evidence would be required.

But this lack of solid evidence of course never prevents gadflies who are not scholars but rather sensationalizers of ideas which they think have buzz, or potential buzz, from gadding about what most have regarded, quite rightly, as a dead issue--dead meat.

I suspect this revival of the theory without new evidence will simply die an even quicker death than the first presentation did, and will not find the press much interested in a Jesus tomb redux theory. The News cycle (or as I like to call it, the spin cycle) on a story without any new dimension is typically very short.

Any historian worth his salt will tell you that mere possibilities, while worth exploring, do not become probabilities by stringing together flawed evidence on hyped up by docu-dramas. A hypothesis becomes viable when it explains most of the evidence we already have and illuminates certain things previously obscure. But what the Talpiot tomb theory requires is that we reject or ignore most of the hard evidence we have, and put in its place evidence that is so tenuous that if even one link in its chain is weak, the whole theory falls apart. Such an approach cannot be called responsible historiography.

Rethinking the Number of the Beast

The following was sent to me by one of my students, who in turn got it from a UMC Church source-- This just shows that it is not true at all that the United Methodist Church is uninterested in apocalyptic speculations :) Thanks to Arlen for the picture.

BW3
----------------
The Number of the Beast

We all know that 666 is the Number of the Beast. But did you know:

· $665.95......................Retail price of the Beast
· $699.25......................Price of the Beast plus 5% sales tax
· $769.95......................Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
· $656.66......................Walmart price of the Beast
· $646.66......................Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
· 00666.........................Zip code of the Beast
· 1-666 .........................Area code of the Beast
· 1-900-666-0666 ............ Live Beasts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute.
· 670............................Approximate number of the Beast
· DCLXVI.....................Roman numeral of the Beast
· 666.0000.....................Number of the High Precision Beast
· 0.666 .........................Number of the Millibeast
· / 666 ..........................Beast Common Denominator
· 666 ^ (-1).....................Imaginary number of the Beast
· 1010011010..................Binary of the Beast
· Phillips 666..................Gasoline of the Beast
· $6.66 9/10....................Price of a Beast gasoline
· Route 666....................Way of the Beast
· 666 F.........................Oven temperature for roast Beast
· 666k..........................Retirement plan of the Beast
· 6.66%........................5 year CD rate at First Beast National Bank, $666 minimum deposit.
· i66686........................CPU of the Beast
· 666i .......................... BMW of the Beast
· DSM-666.....................Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
· 668............................Next-door neighbor of the Beast
· 666 mg........................Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
· Lotus 6-6-6...................Spreadsheet of the Beast
· Word 6.66....................Word Processor of the Beast
· 6 h. 66 min....................Beast Standard Time (BST)
· Boeng 666....................."A jet for the Beast Age"
· Beverly Hills 66666..........Beast's favorite TV show
· 6/6/66..........................The birthdate of the Beast
· 666-66-6666..................The Social Security number of the Beast
· 6666............................The PIN of the Beast
· 25.806975.....................The square root of the Beast
· Motel 666......................Beast Western
· Windows 96 ver.666.........OS of the Beast

THE FIRST MAJOR DISCUSSION OF THE YEAR-- 'THE WILL OF GOD'

Its time for us to have one of our lengthy theological discussions of the year, and since this is the time of year where Christians and others tend to ask--'What is the will of God for my life this year?', I thought it a propitious moment to unveil an important little study by Dr. James Howell which will eventually be published by Westminster/John Knox. This study on the Will of God is 55 pages long in single space typescript, and so if you do not have time to read it all, then by all means pick a chapter or two out of the ten, and read and comment on those. The whole study however is very well worth the read, and is well written as well. Dr. James Howell is a friend of mine who is the senior pastor at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte, and is himself a theologian of great merit with degrees from Duke and Princeton. You will not only find interesting theological discussion, you will find some very helpful pastoral reflections on dealing with difficult issues in this little treatise as well.

So, rev up your engines and discuss away, and Dr. Howell will be entering the lists of the discussion from time to time to stimulate things. I shall be away from the blog over the course of the next week and a bit, while I am off in the U.K. lecturing and dealing with a doctoral student. Enjoy, and remember-- play nice :) BW3
----------------------------------
THE WILL OF GOD

by

James Howell

1. Introduction

Most theological questions I field from people have to do with one enormously important yet maddeningly elusive subject: the Will of God. As it turns out, the Will of God is not just one, but two things, although they are intimately related in surprising ways.

There is the question of What is God’s will for me? What am I supposed to do with my life? or what should I do in the next five minutes? If I knew clearly what God wanted, couldn’t I at least get moving on it? Would it be something I could happily embrace? Or might it scare the daylights out of me?

Then there is a second question, which doesn’t look forward to what I’m about to do, but instead looks back to something that happened, usually something awful – but not always. My husband was killed in a crash. The boss fired me. The tsunami destroyed tens of thousands of lives. Somebody offered to buy my business. Cancer was diagnosed. I won the lottery. My marriage dissolved. Was it God’s will? What was God’s will? Why do bad things happen? How do I make sense of suffering and evil if God is good and has a plan? How many thousands of times have we muttered “Thy will be done”? What exactly have we been praying for? And what might the answer look like?

We can make a distinction between these two questions, What does God want me to do? and Why did what happened actually happen? At some moments in life, one question may feel more urgent than the other. But over a lifetime of bouncing from one question to the other, we discover the two questions are intimately related; the two become one question, or perhaps we can answer What does God want me to do? more wisely because we have wrestled with Why do things happen? and vice versa.

The Mystery Made Known

It’s hard to think of more important questions, for they cut right to the heart of the purpose and direction of my life. I want my life to make sense. Something in me resists the idea that my life is random, although it can feel that way. In the funny and emotionally profound movie, Forrest Gump, Forrest stands over the grave of his young wife and muses, “Jenny, I don’t know if Mama was right, or whether it was Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think, maybe it’s both. Maybe both are happening at the same time.” Maybe we have a destiny, maybe we’re just floating, maybe we are responsible, maybe God is orchestrating things, or maybe God leaves us largely to our own devices. How could we ever know?

I suspect that, when we explore questions about God’s will, we assume it’s hard to decipher, that God has hidden his will, and I’m like a child poking my head behind bushes trying to find the little eggs God has tucked away with a message of truth inside. God’s over on the sidelines, saying “You’re getting warmer!” or “colder!” – or just not saying much at all.

In Bible times, the pagan religions were all about divination, seeking “signs” to figure out the divine will. They cut open animal cadavers and read livers, they unleashed birds and traced their pattern of flight, they studied the stars in their courses out in the dark. People were nervous all the time, fearful they had failed to figure out the whims of arbitrary, petty gods.

Israel, and then the writers of the New Testament rejected all this. “God has made known to us the mystery of his will” (Ephesians 1:9). Yes, God’s will has a mysterious element – but God has made it known. In fact, God is bending over backwards to make God’s will known to us. God doesn’t want us to lay out fleeces or gaze about for signs, which are notoriously subjective. God wants a relationship. We don’t need to purchase an answer machine if we rely on a growing friendship with God.

We will never know God’s mind fully. The glory of God resides in the humbling truth that God is magnificently large, staggering our small minds in scope and complexity, and our most brilliant theological thinking barely brushes the hem of God’s garments. But we can know enough about what God wants us to do. And even when there is grey area and some confusion, we can still keep moving faithfully. We can understand wrecks, cancer, hurricanes, and all kinds of evil without twisting God into a vengeful tyrant, and we can discover God’s love in the thick of our darkest days.

The very effort to discover God’s will is itself something God wills; the quest itself is fulfilling. To quit caring about God’s will, to do whatever I wish, to decide there’s no meaning out there, is horror and madness. To pursue God’s will, to insist there must be meaning and to grapple with God until we get at least a hazy glimpse of it, is happiness.

Questions are Good

The Will of God isn’t so much the answer to the quiz, and we flunk if we don’t get it. The Will of God, for us, is a question – and questions are good! Sometimes we foolishly think faith is about having the answers. I hear people say “I know I’m not supposed to question God; I am supposed to have faith.” But faith is the raising of questions before God. Jesus said “Unless you become like children you will never enter the kingdom.” Children never stop asking questions, and they are under no illusion that they have all the answers. Faith is learning to ask all our questions, and even how to ask better questions.

To explore God’s will, we never stop asking questions, and we also listen. Find someone who seems to live in sync with God, who exhibits some well-cultivated ability to do God’s will, and listen. Find someone who is suffering, don’t avert your gaze, and then listen. In his chilling memoir of barely surviving the concentration camp, Elie Wiesel wrote of the “flames that consumed my faith forever,” the “moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.”[1] To know God we go where faith may not survive, where God seems remote or as good as dead. What did Jesus cry out with his last breath? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When we talk about God’s will, people get upset, they disagree fiercely, they can’t always think straight. The stakes are high, and generally speaking if people get engaged in conversation about the Will of God, it is because they have personal stories. “Why do bad things happen?” is rarely a parlor game for intellectuals. When we hear someone questioning the Will of God, we can bet that is somebody who knew somebody, who loved somebody, who lost a love, who failed and cannot shake the regret, who cannot dodge the shadows any longer.

If we grapple honestly and faithfully with the Will of God, we will not emerge with simplistic, black and white tidbits of truth. In our culture of soundbytes, instant messaging and blogs, we may feel disappointed when the easy answers we thought would suffice flutter to the ground like dead leaves.

While writing this book, I found myself on a radio show talking about the Will of God. The host, not the friendliest interlocutor on matters of faith, posed a hard question my way just as the producer was gesticulating that the commercial break was rushing headlong our way: “How can you know what God wills? Give me an answer in three seconds.” All I got out was something like “Uhhh…” and the ad jingle commenced.

I do not know God’s mind on everything, but I do know that it is God’s will that you cannot say anything meaningful about God’s will in three seconds. Quick three-second soundbytes about God are in plenteous supply, as are the blog-length little digests, and they misconstrue God’s will every time.

We’ve all heard the bland truthiness plenty of spiritual people cling to as self-evident: “God is in control of everything,” or “We cannot know why God caused that car accident,” or “The door was open, so it must be God’s will,” or “God needed your spouse in heaven more than you did,” a monotonous string of half-truths, half-baked. Once upon a time, when a great thinker paused for a good while before saying anything, you knew genuine wisdom was being formulated; now we scoff if a politician pauses for three seconds before blabbering a truthy soundbyte. To speak truly of God, to do God’s will, you pause, you stammer, you’ve barely started the “Uhhh…” and the ad is zinging away, but perhaps God’s will was voiced in its failure to get a quick word in.

But we had better get some words in. Critics of Christianity have always browbeaten our faith precisely because of our awkward failure to answer the problem of God’s will. The Church’s first critics ridiculed a faith whose very founder suffered an ignominious fate, and in modern times authors trash Christianity and become bestsellers. To despisers of the faith, atheism’s clinching argument is the very existence of evil. They have good questions, but we can understand evil and suffering, all the while grieving, resisting and hoping. If we probe the questions, we begin to notice that the God being bashed isn’t our God at all, but a straw man, a fiction that we have allowed to be fashioned in the public’s mind because we who believe have settled for simplistic answers to mind-boggling questions.

But we can do better. We can know enough…

Part I

2. The God Who Wills

Before we can say anything meaningful about the Will of God, we have to ask, Who is God? and what is God like? Sometimes we are tempted to say something or another about the will of God that frankly casts God as an unsavory brute, or as an iron-fisted despot, or as a spongy player of games. We need to say true things about God, and if we can divine who God really is, then we may as a natural reflex understand God’s will.

In the intellectual climate in which we have been reared, much like the philosophical world in which Christianity was born, God is defined with lots of omni-, in-, and un- prefixed words: omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, ineffable, unchanging. But do a string of grand adjectives tell the deep truth about God? In their effort to safeguard God’s greatness, do the omnis, ins and uns somehow close a curtain on the heart of God? Does the Bible insist on so many expansive adjectives to explicate who God “by definition” must be?

The miracle of the Old and New Testaments seems to be that God is better than all the definitions. God is more like a story, a poem, an experience, intensely personal, breaking your heart and then thrilling your soul. Yes, God is all-powerful, but God’s power is consumed with love – and not some wispy, flighty kind of love, but love that is solid, strong, courageous, enduring.

The phrase “God’s will” might feel like cold steel, an inflexible decree etched into time by a mighty potentate. But the will of the God of love is fraught with emotion. God is closer to me than my next breath, and God is determined to have a personal relationship with me. God loves me more than I love myself – and when you love, you will the good of the other person. You have desires for them; you desire love from that person, you long for excellence in them. God has wishes, God has a purpose, God makes choices, God is pleased (or displeased), God promises (and keeps promises), God delights, God grieves.

To know God’s will, we must know God’s heart. As shrouded in mystery, and as occasionally baffling as God can be, we can know God’s heart – and perhaps it would be helpful to think back into the recesses of time to weigh what is in God’s heart.

When God was Young

Let us go back to the beginning… or even before the beginning. Think back, far back in time, before your grandparents lived, before the great inventions of the modern world, before the Roman Empire, before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, before the Big Bang, or however it is you think the world came to be, before time itself, back when God was young.

God had a very important decision to make: “What kind of God am I going to be?” A perfectly understandable option would have been for God to settle on “I’ll just be God,” and no one would have questioned God. But this God felt in God’s heart some urge to make something instead of dwelling in divine isolation, however splendid. That urge in God’s heart to make something is the beginning of the Will Of God. God willed to make something.

As we now know, God made something that is so mind boggling, so grandiose and yet delicate, so ridiculously massive and yet unfathomably tiny, that you could spend your lifetime trying to comprehend it – and you would never get your mind around one millionth of it. God cast the galaxies across the expanse of space, God made this earth with a stunning array of life and wonder. You cannot begin to take it all in.

God decided to make something – but that wasn’t enough. As much as God delighted in constellations, nebulae, mountains, glaciers, forests, bacteriae, orangatangs and wildflowers, God was lonely. Or so it seems: God wanted some creature with a peculiar affinity to God’s own heart. Having made something as extraordinary as the universe, God then made us. A woman, a man, a child, more women, men, children, and finally you, me, us.

At this crucial knot in time, God had another important decision to make: “How will I connect with these creatures that I’ve made?” God had a number of options. God could have said, “I will fashion a network of strings, and attach them to the heads, hands and feet of each person. I will control them like marionettes, manipulating them so they will always do my will. They will never do wrong. They will never hurt one another. My will never will be left undone.” But God decided not to attach those strings to our heads, hands, and feet.

God could have said, “I will overwhelm them by my power. I will impress them with miracles repeatedly, I will make them tremble in awe so they dare not cross me. I will dazzle them with displays of my might, and guarantee that my will is done.”

But God decided to do something more impressive. Instead of manipulating us, instead of overwhelming us, God decided to love us. What a terrible risk for God to take! If you have done any loving, you know your heart gets broken. God wanted to love, God was and is Love, so God took the risk, knowing fully well that his heart would be broken. This was the most wonderful moment in the history of the universe: when God decided to love.

Looking back, we need not be surprised. God is love. God within God’s essence has never been anything but love. As we will see, before God made anything, God was a communion of love. Not to love would have been out of character for God. Manipulation and domination would in retrospect have been impossible for God, since God is love.

When God was young, God courageously took on the risk of evil – and a hidden aspect of that risk was that God’s own self would be shrouded, concealed behind the smoke of God’s people behaving badly, questioned and even disbelieved when God’s people couldn’t see God out in the open running the show smoothly. It seems that God understood what was at stake, and perhaps even how marvelous it would be when we did notice the love of God in the thick of mystery and even peril, how the virtues of an open world, with light and shadow, with freedom squandered and then graciously returned, with love’s failure but then love’s restoration, outweigh what any other world might be like. Yet even if we wish the universe were different, at the heart of literally everything is this: God decided to love.

Is God in Control?

Funny thing about love: Love can do many things, but Love never controls. Believers ask, Is God in control? Surely God is in control! But God is love, and as Paul wrote so eloquently, “Love does not insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:5). God has something God wants you to do, to be; God very passionately wants things to turn out a certain way, a good way. Because of this, God loves. A God who loves cannot pervert love by acting as a tyrannical megalomaniac who must have his way or heads will roll.

Is God in control? In a way, Yes – long-term, eventually, big picture, Yes. But day in and day out, No, God does not control things that happen, or you and me. At times I do God’s will, but often I do not, and you don’t either. God chooses not to determine everything; love does not insist on its own way. So we cannot simply conclude that whatever happens equals God’s will. God’s will doesn’t happen lots of times. Otherwise we needn’t bother hunting down terrorists or criminals (unless we want to reward them for doing God’s will).

If God loves more immensely than we can fathom, and yet if God does not insist on having God’s way in every little thing, then God’s heart is broken – all the time. “Love bears all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7) – and we see this God of extraordinary grace grieving throughout the Bible, and history. God waits, quietly, arms outstretched, pleading with us: “I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said ‘Here I am’” (Isaiah 65:1). Instead of huffing and puffing and blowing our house down, God stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20).

But to say that God does not control everything, to say that God is not a divine manipulator begins to feel like we are saying God is remote, God is uninvolved, God doesn’t care. Or else, God cares, but God is rather helpless, sobbing in exasperation on the sidelines when his team has just fumbled the game away. God is far from uninvolved. God cares, more than you and I do.

God sees each one of us at every moment, with the intensity of a parent who looks up at the stage during a ballet recital: yes, there are two dozen ballerinas circling after an echappé, but the parent sees just one, my daughter, the love of my life. God, with extraordinarily focused panoramic vision, can pull this off for me, for you, for everybody else reading, those not reading, a few billion people simultaneously, not to mention my dog and the bird that just flew by my window.

Is God Like a Parent?

Now you may be feeling suspicious of this notion that God is in any way like a parent. Fond as many people may be of it, the idea of God-as-parent is riddled with difficulties. I cannot look at my earthly father and say “God must be like that.” God isn’t reducible to the best humanity can muster. God is logarithmically beyond you and me on even our best days.

We cannot speak of God, as Karl Barth put it, by speaking of ourselves in a loud voice. God is so much greater, so unspeakably resplendent, so breathtakingly magnificent that our most cunning words, our most artistic painting, our most resounding symphony – the sum of all human genius only brushes the hem of God’s garment. God truly is omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, ineffable, omnipresent; God is so… well, words fail us, as even the in-, un-, and omni- words crumble under the weight of God’s reality.

And yet, because God is all love, before and after anything else, then God wants to be known, God wants a relationship, God wants to approach us and be approached by us. The way God does that is a mind-boggling surprise, and yet exactly what we would expect from a God who loves us. To understand God’s will, we can look into our own hearts, our own minds; we can listen to our own bodies. We see plenty there that is not of God; and yet God invites us to look and listen.

And why? God tries to connect with us down here, across the huge chasm between us and God; and how does God do it? Genesis tells us that God made us “in God’s image.” There is something in me that mirrors the mind and the heart of God. If I want to know the mind and the heart of God, I can look into my own mind and heart, and I can learn something there about God. God had to decide “What kind of God am I going to be?” You and I have to decide, all the time, “What kind of person am I going to be?” – and so maybe from how we think about “What kind of person am I going to be?” or even “What is a parent like?” we can learn about how God decided to be the kind of God he decided to be.

I am a father. What kind of father will I be? Or at this point, what kind of father have I been? The Apostles’ Creed speaks of God as the “Father Almighty”; and we could just as viably think of God as the “Mother Almighty.” But the one thing fathers (and mothers) like me down here on earth learn is that we are not almighty! I used to think I would be the kind of father who would shelter my children from all harm. What I have discovered is that the effort to shelter your children from all harm causes your child great harm.

I thought if I just hugged them enough, read to them every night, got them on the right team and with the right teacher, and we did Church, mission trips, prayer and Bible reading, they would turn out to be fantastic people – like following the recipe and baking a cake, perhaps? But then you discover that children are unique mysteries, and no formula can manufacture the person that fits your blueprint. They always surprise you, both by breaking your heart and also by blossoming in some unimagined way.

I think I also rather naively thought my children would always be with me, in my arms or holding my hand. But early on you hesitate but then relent, and you watch through tears as your child toddles off to day one of Kindergarten, or you drive to a college campus and leave your child who’s no longer a child at all, and it feels like it’s for good. Love lets the beloved child go, still loving, but letting go.

God really is a father, a mother to us. God gave us life, God loves. God is a spendthrift creator, not churning us out with a cookie-cutter, adding one by one to a long line of toy soldiers. God weaves into each person’s DNA some dazzling potential for us to turn out not just one way but a dizzying number of ways, and God enjoys watching, waiting. God scoots us out into the world, hoping we will pay regular visits back home, and read the letters God has written, and live in a way that makes the family proud.

God is well aware that it’s dangerous out there. God made “out there”! But God decided “I will not shelter them from all harm. What I will do is – I will love them, I will send my Son to be their brother. I will enter into their lives into such a powerful way, that they can come to know my heart, so they can know my mind. And then they will know what I am calling them to do, what my will for them is this afternoon, so that whenever they suffer, they can look to my son.”

We cannot forget for a moment that God is Almighty in a way mothers and fathers are not. But then what does the Almighty-ness of God look like? We see God’s might in God’s son; we know what we know about the Will of God by looking to God’s son.

Jesus is the Answer

One day, this man named Jesus, who lived in the Middle East two thousand years ago, told his closest friends, “He who sent me is with me, for I always do what is pleasing to him” (John 8:29). You and I might fantasize being able to say “I always do what is pleasing” to God, but that would be fibbing. And yet we can still dream, can’t we?

Sometimes we debate God’s will, as if it is a memo God thought up just a few minutes ago. But to know God’s will, we Christians need to go back in time and get as close as possible to Jesus. Or perhaps we have built within ourselves a sense of the risen Christ’s presence in our time. He is the ultimate embodiment of God’s will: he exhibited God’s will, spoke of it, fulfilled it. God became flesh; so if you want to see God, start with your own heart, your own body – for we believe God took up residence in a body, with a heart, in Jesus, who loved, laughed, desired, hungered, yearned, was disappointed, frustrated, and enraged, yet dreamed, wept, and finally leaped for joy.

Jesus is the answer to both our questions: What does God want me to do? and Why do bad things happen? – as we will see. The more we know about Jesus, the more we focus on what Jesus did and said, on who he was (and is), the closer we will be to God’s will, the more clarity we will have about God’s will.

Not long before she died, Dorothy Day, one of the most stellar, down to earth, compelling Christians of the twentieth century, was asked to write some autobiographical reflections on her life. All she came up with was this:

The other day I wrote down the words ‘a life remembered,’ and I was going to try to make a summary for myself, write what mattered most – but I couldn’t do it. I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and His visit to us all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have had Him on my mind for so long in my life![2]

We could shorten this book considerably and simply say “Keep Jesus on your mind, and you will understand and do and be well within the Will of God.” Of course, we need the real Jesus, not one we fabricate to suit our personal preferences. Jesus spoke, and his words rattle our complacent spirituality and turn our comfortable lifestyles upside down; but didn’t that voice from heaven say “This is my beloved Son, listen to him”?

What did he say that could unveil God’s will for us? “Do not lay up treasure on earth,” or “Love your enemies,” or “When you have a dinner party, do not invite those who can invite you in return, but invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.” We may wish Jesus had said less, or something different. His words shock, jostle us off balance – and the mystery of God’s will turns out to be nothing more than our decision to refuse him, to say “Not your will, but my will be done.”

Jesus was more action than talk, and we mimic Jesus: we see him touching the untouchable or feeding the hungry, and we go and do likewise with the best motives we can muster, with the humble confidence that we are in God’s will. We can even dare to go where Jesus’ closest friends failed to go, to the cross. We see his holy, beautiful hands, side and feet pierced, we see him forgive those who just perpetrated this evil against him, we hear him welcome a common criminal into paradise, we are moved by his tender care for his mother watching her son die a horrific death – and we feel a profound understanding of suffering, evil, love, and God’s purpose building in our souls.

Jesus, too, had a choice to make. What kind of Son am I going to be? In recent years, those early gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible have gotten a lot of attention. One imagined Jesus trying to figure out what kind of kid he was going to be. Jesus was playing one day when another boy poked fun at him. Wielding not playground kid power, but divine power, Jesus waved his finger and struck the boy dead. Then, with the love of God rippling through his heart, he was filled with remorse. So he deployed that same power which struck the boy dead to raise him back to the land of the living. Jesus, in this legend, was trying to figure out, “What kind of kid am I going to be?”

Was Jesus’ Death God’s Will?

Jesus, perfectly mirroring God the Father, decided to be the kind of person who loves. The Gospel of John says, “Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends.” Was the death of Jesus God’s will?

For decades, Leslie Weatherhead’s insightful book, The Will of God, has rightfully been a bestseller. If I could correct one weakness in his book, it would be the way he thinks about the death of Jesus. He seems to say that God was trying other strategies to save us. But that just wasn’t going too well for God. So God thought, “I’ll send my Son down, and maybe they will listen to him.” But they didn’t listen to him; they killed him. God didn’t want him to be killed, but it happened, and God made the most of it.

I don’t think that’s right. The Bible’s authors did not reduce Jesus to some “plan B” on God’s part.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3).

He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20).

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God (John 1:1).

He is before all things… in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:17).

I think that before God made the first star, God made up God’s mind to make the world and to make us in the world, and God decided we would be mortal – knowing that we would break God’s heart, and each other’s hearts. And yet God knew that this was the only way that we would really treasure life, and appreciate the glory of the resurrection, and love.

So when God decided to make us mortal, God at that same moment decided that “Mortality is so bad, death is so painful, that I will let my own heart be shattered; I will send my own Son. I will let the world unleash its fury on him. He will suffer a terrible, unjust, untimely death, when he is too young. And when that happens people will know that I understand their pain and anguish from the inside. But I won’t leave my Son dead in that grave. I will raise him up so that the people that I have made and that I love so much will always have hope.” God decided that before God did anything else.

Jesus is the power of God. But Jesus was not an arbitrary show-off, like Bruce Almighty, the film character who was temporarily granted God’s power – and sophomorically burst about doing what you and I might do were we all-powerful. Jesus was humble, meek, merciful. Christmas celebrates the truth that the power of the entire universe was focused into a very small bundle of an infant crying in the dark in Bethlehem. Lent disciplines us as we walk for forty days with this Jesus who did not turn stones into bread even when he was hungry. In Holy Week we follow the children’s band, waving palm branches, puzzled but mesmerized by the love of this humble savior who governed the world by standing silent before a fake governor, Pontius Pilate. He didn’t explain evil, he didn’t crush evil; he bore evil, he triumphed over evil, but in a hidden, proleptic way.

Jesus didn’t thump his enemies, or call down thunder on those who imitated him badly. He was merciful, open, receptive; his love was resistible, and evil crossed him in cruel ways. So in Jesus, we see that God’s will isn’t an ironclad steamroller. You need not fear a mistake or two (or a thousand): God’s will isn’t a long railroad track, and if you get derailed you are unsalvageable wreckage. Jesus joined hands with people who had lost their way, and loved them, stuck with them, died for them, and didn’t linger in the tomb for long. God’s will is like that.

But to many of us reading, Jesus strikes us as a once-upon-a-time wax figure in the museum of religious relics. Can Jesus help in the complexities of today’s world? Between the internet, globalization, terrorism, the march of science and the nihilistic lure of our consumer culture, is it really so simple as merely keeping Jesus on my mind?

The Holy Spirit

Jesus anticipated his own absence from the world scene, which perfectly mirrored the way God had always been very present but not in your face. On the night before he died, he unveiled the steady tenderness in the heart of God. “I will not leave you desolate” (John 14:18). Here’s the plot: God the Creator made everything when time began. Then, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son, Jesus, who was in some way God incarnate, the Word made flesh. But when he left, when his earthly term was finished, he pointed to yet another, a third person within God, the lingering presence of God: the Holy Spirit.

Within the broad spectrum of Christendom, there seem to be two kinds of people: those who are very confident about the Holy Spirit, what the Spirit has just said, what the Spirit is urging, how the Spirit is empowering me right now; and then there are also those who are baffled by the whole idea of the Spirit, are uncertain of the Spirit’s movements, and frankly do not know what to say (if anything) about this mysterious third person of the Trinity. These two groups drive each other to distraction, and when it comes to the Will of God, both are right in a way, and both come up short in another way.

There is a Holy Spirit. God loves so much that God never leaves us alone. In worship, the Spirit moves, teaches, heals; every breath you take is the Spirit’s gracious labor over your life; all insights, every recognition of theological nonsense, the motivation to holy actions are all the Spirit’s relentless activity. Without the Spirit, we quite literally don’t have a prayer of knowing or doing the Will of God.

And yet, the Spirit is elusive. Even the most brilliant Christian artists, who have painted the Creator and sculpted Jesus so magnificently, have faltered with the Holy Spirit. Frederick Dale Bruner called the Spirit the “shy” member of the Trinity, as if the Spirit prefers anonymity, as if the Spirit’s true joy is like the guy in the lighting crew or the woman who supplies costumes for the actors out on stage, preferring the spotlight to fall on others. The Spirit is demure, preferring our focus be on God the Father, on God the Son.

This habit of the Spirit, to lurk in obscurity, to make things happen without demanding credit, tells us something crucial about the heart of God. If we want to know and do God’s will, if we want to make sense out of suffering and why evil tramples the good, we have to acknowledge at the outset that there is something in the heart of God that will be forever backstage, out of the bright lights. God is elusive, God is there but hidden in shadows, God acts in ways we cannot see or fully understand. There is an anonymity about God’s involvement in the world. If someone trumpets crystalline clarity about God’s will, that person hasn’t come to know the shy member of the Trinity.

What God Has Already Willed

And yet if someone shrugs and despondently announces that we just can’t know much about God’s will, then that person also hasn’t come to know this shy member, who wants us to know about God and fulfill God’s will more than we do. This is in God’s heart: for us to know enough about God and God’s will.

In the introduction, we highlighted these words: “God has made known to us the mystery of his will” (Ephesians 1:9). Now let us extend that a bit with more wisdom from Paul: “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature… has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). What is the largest, most illuminating textbook in our course on the Will of God? Just look around. If you want to know what God wills, consider what God has already willed, and from that we can pick up on patterns in God’s heart, the habits of God’s desires.

Look at the world, God’s masterwork. Don’t let the view get blocked by all the phony man-made stuff – which might be evidence of God’s will, but just might be human chicanery. Look at the beauty of creation, the expanse of the galaxies, the delicate petal of a rose, the clouds gathering, the scampering of a chipmunk, the face of your grandmother or the fingers of an infant. Feel the warmth of the sun or the breeze at your back, hear the boom of thunder or the crickets chirping in the dark.

God willed it, God sustains it, God keeps the loving promise to the universe and to us who to this moment depend upon God “in whom we live and move and have our being.” God made everything, and called it “good,” although this goodness is tricky for us to perceive. We see what we think is good but it’s a faked good in a fallen world, and we fail to see the true good because our vision has been blurred.

In some church traditions, Christians greet one another by saying “God is good,” and the response is “All the time.” In my unscientific poll, those most likely to indulge in this litany of greeting are the poor, those living in challenging circumstances. Take rich, comfortable, educated people and say “God is good”? Most will squint a little, pause, and then engage you in some banter about when they think God is good and when they kind of wonder. Travel the world, and you find Christians in exceedingly poor regions, in Africa, South America, and Asia, who are buoyant with a rich awareness of God’s goodness. God is good, all the time.

And not just occasionally, or in special circumstances. We think too narrowly about the notion of God’s “intervention,” as if God is generally uninvolved; but then suddenly God dips a divine finger into the course of events. But God is not a distant relative who pops in occasionally with a gift; God doesn’t need to show up because God is already there.

If we cut to the heart of things, nothing is merely “secular” as opposed to “sacred.” God made it all, God is in the laws of gravity and photosynthesis, the breaths you take as you read and the stars tracing their courses across the sky. We have thrown mud on the sacred, and twisted it into contorted shapes. But like an old coin, no matter how scratched, faded, or tarnished, even if it has been run over by a train, the image is indelible, the sacred is everywhere.

Creation teaches us that God wills beauty, and that God is delighted when your jaw drops over some wonder you hadn’t noticed a minute ago. And God made the world so big that you can never see it all; yet earth itself is barely a grain of sand on the vast seashore of the universe which borders on – what? – God? God’s purpose is big, really large, hugely enormous, never to be reduced to me and my petty agenda.

During the agony of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln spoke to combatants, Yankees and Rebels, the blue and the gray: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; each invokes His aid against the other… The prayers of both could not be answered… The Almighty has His own purposes.”[3] What did God say through the prophet of old? “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). This world cannot be mastered: for all our wizardry and technology, the wind and sea are too powerful to submit to the human enterprise; for all our brilliance in medicine, people we love still get sick and die, and they always will.

So God’s will isn’t for me to be able to manage my little world to my satisfaction, God isn’t a tech-help, fix-it assistant I summon and then send back home when what’s broken works again. God’s will isn’t total security, health and happiness. God made the world with an edge, with some peril built in. Dante spoke of “the love that moves the stars,” but love never guarantees smooth sailing. If you love, you laugh, but you also weep, and when we probe the hidden plot of the world God has willed we find both delight and agony. Evidently, this is God’s will.

If God loves, then this world and our life in it are in fact about the drama of love offered, love blossoming, love missed, love refused, love relentless, love finally noticed, love ultimately returned, love consummated. Love thrills, and love hurts. In Evil and the God of Love, John Hick tried to explain why God would make such a world:

If there is any true analogy between God’s purpose for his human creatures, and the purpose of loving and wise parents for their children, we have to recognize that the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain cannot be the supreme and overriding end for which the world exists. Rather, this world must be a place of soul-making. And its value is to be judged, not primarily by the quantity of pleasure and pain occurring in it at any particular moment, but by its fitness for its primary purpose, the purpose of soul-making.[4]

God’s Will is a Relationship

God’s purpose, we hope, is far more than merely the making of souls. But since we have begun with who God is, we can explore the Will of God having banished the bad idea that God is capricious, or a stern rule-enforcer. God is personal, God is love; we know beyond any shadow of doubt that God wills a relationship with us. God is rouse-able, as in Jesus’ story about the friend banging on the door at midnight for some bread (Luke 11:5-8). If we apprehend God’s will, it is not through intellectual banter, but by prayer.

So let us pray these words St. Francis encouraged his friends to pray:

Almighty, eternal, just and merciful God,

grant to us the grace to do for you

what we know you want us to do.

Give us always the desire to please you.

Inwardly cleansed, interiorly illumined

and enflamed with the fire of the Holy Spirit,

may we be able to follow in the footprints

of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Continuing prayerfully, we turn now to explore the question, “What does God want me to do?” We might admit that we feel a little bit impatient. If I am reading a book called The Will of God, I have an urge to thumb ahead to the later chapters to get on with the big question of “Why do bad things happen?” Feel free to do so. And yet I believe we are unlikely to make much sense out of the question, “Why do bad things happen?” if we haven’t invested our lives in answering (and then getting busy with) the question, “What does God want me to do?”

At one level, lots of bad things happen because people don’t do what God wants them to do, whether I bring suffering upon myself, or the horrid decision-making of somebody else brings suffering on me – or if my horrid decision-making brings suffering on somebody else! As Stanley Hauerwas put it, instead of asking “Why do bad things happen?” we might be wise to ask “Why do people sin so much?”

But there is more. To grasp the logic of why things happen, to have a feel for the way God acts (or doesn’t seem to act) in the world, we need to be the kind of people who think about God all the time, trying to do what God wants, sensing God’s presence, God’s direction, God’s patience in the things we do day to day. And, if we are more practiced at doing God’s will, and if we are more familiar with the heart of God, we’re better prepared to weather the bad things that happen – not to mention the fact that we’re also better prepared to help others who suffer when their bad things happen.

So, let us together begin to explore the first of our twin questions regarding the will of God. What does God want me to do?

3. God’s Will For Me