"The Faiths of the Founding Father's"--- David L. Holmes' new book

It is a matter of no little contention whenever the subject of the principles on which our nation was founded comes up. Equally contentious is the issue of what faith or faiths our founding fathers (and mothers) actually embraced. Into this briar's nest comes a very readable compact guide to the latter subject in particular, which is well worth reading and comes highly recommended by Philip Jenkins and others. The title 'The Faiths (plural) of our Founding Fathers' (Oxford: 2006) hints already at the direction the author will pursue.

David Holmes is professor of religious studies at the College of William and Mary, which not incidentally or accidentally was also the college attended by many of the founding fathers, particularly the Virginians such as Jefferson (also Madison and Monroe). Holmes knows well the history of his college, including its reputation for being a center of Deism at the formative period in the 18th century when the Revolution was brewing. It was here that people like Jefferson became exposed not only to the thinking of English Deists such as Lord Herbert (sadly the brother of the olrthodox Anglican minister and poet George Herbert), Joseph Priestley and others, but also to the radical critique of Christianity by Voltaire, and the empiricism of John Locke and others.

What emerges from Holmes careful research is that George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were all strongly influenced by Deistic thought (Jefferson and Adams in particular objecting to the idea of the Trinity, and in general the concept of divine revelation, preferring instead the idea that nature and reason revealed the character of God). In addition there was the syncretistic influence of Free Masonry with its pan-religious approach (involving a bit of Judaism, a bit of Christianity, a bit of Egyptian religion and more) which seems to have had a marked impact especially on Washington.

Holmes carefully documents how these founding fathers avoided getting confirmed in the 'state' church of Virginia (which was the Episcopal Church, unlike in most of New England where Congregationalism was the state church), and did not take the Lord's Supper in these churches by design. In this way they showed their objection to 'priestcraft' and what they took to be the corruption of the originally pure faith of Jesus which was not Trinitarian and did not involve the worship of Jesus. This did not make these men either secular humanists or 'free thinkers' in the broad sense. Our country was certainly not founded by secular humanists. Not even Thomas Paine deserves that anachronistic label. It was however founded by people whose religious beliefs ranged from non-Christian Deism to more Christian Deism, to, in the case of people like Samuel Adams, John Jay and Patrick Henry, orthodox Christianity.

More tellingly, none of the first five presidents would appear to have been orthodox Christians in any modern sense of the term. Indeed most modern Evangelicals would think of them as like either contemporary nominal or very liberal episcopalians (cf. Bishop Spong), if not actual heretics (e.g. in the case of Jefferson who rejected the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus the Trinity, the inspiration and authority of the Bible as revealed religion and so on).

As Holmes points out however, better things can be said of some of the wives of the first Presidents who were much more orthodox and church attending than there husbands (e.g. Martha Washington for example). Holmes convincingly explains the reason for this difference between the Presidents and some of their First Ladies: 1) the women were not allowed to go to college, and so were not subject to the skepticism of Deistic professors; 2) the women could not join organizations like the Masons which encouraged a more pan-religious and Deistic approach to things; 3) the women were charged with educating their children with the tools at hand, the primary tool of course being the Bible. There are other reasons but these make good sense, as the spiritual nurture of the children had been left in their hands. It was the women who arranged the baptisms, weddings and the rest. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Perhaps the most interesting though not necessarily orthodox of the first ladies was Dolly Madison, who grew up Dolly Payne in the Quaker community at Guilford College in Greensboro N.C., but left her plain ways behind when she became the hostesss with the mostess as the First Lady. Holmes has a good way of summarizing a myriad of relevant data, and sifting through the evidence for the relevant material. As he says, it is sometimes difficult to know the religious stand of some of founding fathers and mothers because they were not demonstrative on the subject, because especially in high church Episcopal circles the reaction to wearing your religious heart on your sleeve and being evangelistic was about the same as the reaction of the Anglican Church in England to warm hearted Methodist piety during the same period. It was in 'bad taste' and 'too individualistic and enthusiastic' as the common complaints went.

An especially interesting feature of this boook is that Holmes does discuss, in one of the latter chapters, orthodox Christians like Samuel Adams (yes the one whose daddy started the Boston Ale company which has a modern successor of the same name), John Jay and others. This is insightful because we are able to notice how they interacted with Washington, Adams and Jefferson and how different in their piety they were from these Presidents. This sort of comparative analysis is very helpful and makes the orthodox Christians stick out like a sore thumb.

The upshot of all this is of course that America's leadership at its inception was religiously pluralistic (in a Judeo-Christian kind of way; not like modern world religions kind of pluralism). In short there is no encouragement here either for the secular humanist theory of America's origins or for that matter for the 'our first leaders were mostly orthodox Christians' theory either. Sorry Timothy La Haye, and other Evangelical revisionist historians, but you need fact check as bad as Dan Brown did.

There is also in this book a very fine review as an Epilogue of the faith of the Presidents from Ford through W. It also is illuminating. What is most illuminating is that by any normal measuring stick, the one's most obviously pietistic and church attending were the Democrats, not the Republicans, make of that what you will. What is equally telling is that they were all Protestants of one sort or another, with George Bush senior being the most high church (Episcopalian).

One will find out some unsettling things about Washington, Adams, and Jefferson especially in this book. For example, Washington's own pastor and the chaplain of the Continental Congress, Bishop White states plainly in 1832: "I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation" (pp. 162-63). He ought to have known the truth about this, and Bishop White was countering here early attempts at putting a halo over the head of St. George by writing hagiographic bibliographies in the early 19th century.

Holmes' summary is helpful: "Deists and orthodox Christians alike composed the revolutionary generation. Whatever their private beliefs, most maintained formal affiliations with Christian denominations. In the spirit of the times, some questioned doctrines that they believed could not be reconciled with human reason (e.g. especially Adams and Jefferson, and of course Thomas Paine). As a result they rejected such Christian teachings as the Trinity, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the divinity of Jesus. Yet orthodox Christians participated at every stage of building the nation, and many of the founder's wives and daughters displayed an orthodox Christian commitment." (p. 163).


Here are some questions for thought as a result of reading this book: 1) Is there anything in the Bible that suggests that democracy rather than rule by a king or a emperor, or perhaps a theocracy, is most favored by God? I don't think there is. There is of course plenty in the NT about freedom from sin and freedom to serve God, but that can transpire under various sorts of polities. There is also plenty in the Bible in general about justice, and respect of persons, loving neighbor and the like. But again all these practices can exist under varied forms of governments; 2) Is there anything in the Bible that supports modern notions about nation states, particularly about God blessing or especially favoring not ethnic groups (e.g. Jews) or religious groups (those in Christ), but certain nation states? I must admit I can't find it in there. As Paul says, Christians have and are part of a politeuma, a constituting government that is from above. This stands in contradistiction in Paul's mind to things like countries or humanly constructed empires (see Philippians). 3) Is there anything in the Bible that warrants an open rebellion against a legitimate governing authority simply because there was taxation without representation? This is just the opposite of what Romans 13 would seem to suggest. Paul tells Christians in Rome to pay taxes to the tyrant Nero! By comparison to Nero, King George of Hanover looked like good King George. And of course 'representation' in the colonial sense was very different from the plebs and the patricians in Rome during the Empire. 4) If you ask where the founding notions about freedom, democracy, pure reason, common sense, congresses, no taxation without representation, the electing of leaders come from in America, they seem to have as much or more to do with the spirit of the Enlightenment which was the Zeitgeist of that age (read John Locke who so impressed Wesley on certain points), than it has to do with the spirit or tenor or teachings of the Bible. This is of course a hard truth for patriotic, flag waving, freedom loving Americans to swallow, and I am one of them. But it does raise this question. Is it our Biblical absolutes or our cultural principles, however good, which have most shaped and continue to shape our nation and shaped its governing documents in the first place (e.g Declaration of Independence and Constitution and the Bill of Rights)? I am not sure personally how to answer that question in a full way. Think on these things.

Justification by Doubt

Scholars are a funny lot. I ought to know--- I’m one of them. Some are eccentric, some are eclectic, some are extraordinary. But when you participate in the rarified air of Biblical scholarship, a particular sort of historical scholarship, it seems that this discipline especially brings the peculiar out of the woodwork. Biblical scholarship becomes a ripe field where the odd try to get even. I guess this is to be expected since the Bible is Western culture’s number one all time bestseller, its number one artifact and icon.

But there is a particular trait of some Biblical scholars, indeed many of them, which I would like to comment on, on this blog, because it drives too much of what passes for critical Biblical scholarship. It is the tendency I call justification by doubt. A scholar tries to demonstrate his or her scholarly acumen by showing not merely great learning, but how much he can explain away, dismiss, discredit, or otherwise pour cold water on. This activity in itself is sometimes mistakenly called ‘critical scholarship’ apparently in contradistinction to uncritical or pre-critical scholarship. And having once trotted out this label it is then assumed that any real scholar worth her or his salt will want to be a skeptic so they can then be revered as a ‘critical scholar’. Otherwise they are not really being scholarly.

Here is where I call the bluff of those who think this way. I was recently reading a very fine manuscript by a friend and fellow NT scholar, Craig Evans. He says in this manuscript that sometimes skepticism is mistaken for critical thinking. Some scholars think the more skeptical they are the more scholarly they are being. He adds that adopting an unwarranted and unreasonably skeptical posture is no more justified when it comes to the Bible than adopting a gullible one that accepts anything and everything that comes down the pike masquerading as real scholarship. He is so right about this. Let it be said that the Bible has survived the critical scrutiny of many of the greatest minds that ever existed over the last several millennia. We shouldn’t think that it is now in danger of being explained away or set aside or shown to be irrelevant. As Jerome once put it “Defend the Bible? It needs about as much defense as a lion!”

My main point is this. Skepticism is itself a faith posture, a presupposition that affects and infects how one reads Biblical texts, just as ardent faith is also a faith posture. It is of course necessary for any historical scholar to recognize and take into account what his or her faith posture or inclinations or predispositions are as one approaches the Biblical text.

But here’s the rub. Some scholars, mistaking skepticism for critical thinking, assume that they are being ‘objective’, approaching the text in a value free way with no axes to grind, while person’s of ‘faith’ are approaching the text in a ‘subjective’ manner that is tendentious and necessarily predetermines the outcome of the interpretation of the Biblical text. This is not necessarily true at all on either side of the equation.

There is of course no purely objective value free scholarship out there. It is just that some do a better job of admitting this, and owning up to their presuppositions and inclinations than others do, and some do a better job of being objective than others. And I would say that it is those who are aware of their own commitments and take them into account and even correct for them that are the persons who really ought to be called critical scholars whether they are persons of no apparent faith, agnostic, or persons of one or another sort of ardent faith. A critical scholar is one who is capable of being self-critical and self-corrective, as well as being able to cast a discerning eye on this or that Biblical text.

It also needs to be said that it is not good scholarship to have as a beginning point a posture of distrust towards the subject of one’s historical study. One ought to begin with a posture of trust when approaching a certain historical subject, not with a hermeneutic of suspicion for the very good reason that proving, or even just showing a reasonably strong case for a positive after you have assumed a strong negative is virtually impossible to do. It is like trying to prove you didn’t do something. We all know how hard that is to do. Ancient texts deserve the same respect and benefit of the doubt and willingness to trust and listen at least initially that Biblical scholars want their colleagues to exhibit when evaluating their own modern works.

So in the end, justification by doubt is not a good starting point for critical scholarship. You haven’t necessarily explained something just because you think you have explained it away, any more than you have proved something just because you have demonstrated that the Bible claims this or that. Historical enquiry requires data to be analyzed, not lightly dismissed or simply received. Skepticism is no more scholarly than gullibility. But they both have one thing in common—they are both faith postures, not critical stances.

John Updike's New Novel-- "Terrorist"

Today the news came across the wires that a major terrorist threat had been foiled by Scotland Yard, a threat to blow up one or more flights from the U.K. to the U.S. The alert status for the first time ever for flights from the U.K. to the U.S. was changed to red. With news like this cropping up on an almost daily basis, it is not a surprise that some writer would try to explain to Americans why some people hate us so much, why some people are prepared to blow themselves up in order to destroy some of us and our ever more fragile sense of freedom and security and well-being.

Of course there are the heart-rending stories that also give us hope. Tonight on the news was the story of a Jewish man in the northern Israeli town of Naharia whose two brothers were killed in a Hezbollah rocket strike, who asked that their organs be donated to others. One of the first recipients of one of these body parts, a cornea, was recently given to an Arab man who was blind in one eye and going blind in the other. A tearful meeting was held yesterday between the Jewish man and the Arab man. There were tears and hugs, and the Jewish man said ‘now we are brothers. We need each other.’ We need more of these sorts of acts of compassion and reconciliation in that part of the world.
Thank goodness that the person to tell the story of a Islamic terrorist is someone who actually has the capacity not only to write seamless prose (he has won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Howells Medal and other awards too numerous to count), but one who has an uncanny ability to get inside the mind of his characters, in this case getting inside the very skin of a terrorist, an Islamic fundamentalist, a very bright and spiritual 18 year old boy from New Prospect New Jersey named Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy. But perhaps Updike’s greatest gift, taxed to the maximum here, is his ability to try and understand and view with sympathy a person like Ahmad.

Updike’s greatest writing gift is his ability to describe things accurately, tellingly, and movingly in detail. He has an uncanny ability to give us the exact feel for example, of what a decaying inner city neighborhood is like, what the struggle to survive in such an environment is like, what the hopes and fears are of ordinary people in such settings. There is some irony in this particular novel because Updike, as a Christian, has risen to the challenge of making his two major protagonists in this novel a devout Moslem and an atheistic Jewish high school counselor named Jack Levy. There is in addition the lapsed Irish Catholic mother of Ahmad, Teresa Mulloy, and Joryleen Grant an African American at the fringes of the African American Baptist community, but meanwhile turning tricks for her boyfriend nicknamed Tylenol. None of these characters would we naturally expect to become our ‘new best friends’. Yet through Updike’s magic we begin to see the world through the eyes of these people, and perhaps more tellingly see these people, even Ahmad through the eyes of Christ who loves them. And finally there is also Updike’s ability to absolutely take the pulse of our culture and accurately describe who and where we are at this point in time.

On this last point consider for a moment this passage where Jack the guidance counselor is having a conversation with Teresa about her son Ahmad. Jack says “Kids today have more to worry about that we did. At least than I did…. It’s not just AIDS and the rest; there is a certain hunger for, I don’t know, the absolute, when everything is so relative, and all the economic forces are pushing instant gratification and credit card debt at them. It’s not just the Christian right—Ashcroft and his morning revival meeting down in D.C. You see it in Ahmad. And the Black Muslims. People want to go back to simple—black and white, right and wrong, when things aren’t simple…. All I am saying is that kids like Ahmad need to have something they don’t get from society any more. Society doesn’t let them be innocent any more. The crazy Arabs are right—hedonism, nihilism, that’s all we offer. Listen the lyrics of these rock and rap stars…” (p. 205).

How right this observation is. The great desire for certainty and simplicity and purity in uncertain and unclean times pushes people, perhaps especially devoutly religious people to extremes of belief and behavior. It pushes them out of a trust posture and into a bunker mentality, an us vs. them mentality. It pushes them out of civic virtue and into private schools, private gated communities, private lives. It tears up the very fabric of community life which requires actually knowing and respecting your neighbor, never mind obeying the commandment to love them. Updike knows exactly what he is talking about, and this quest for the certain and the pure and the simple absolute answers in a dirty , fuzzy, pluralistic and relativistic world is precisely what is driving Ahmad, and indeed driving him mad.

I do not wish to destroy the story, with its tensions and suspense, and I would remind Christian readers in advance that Updike is famous or infamous for having a passage or two in his novels involving illicit sex, and this novel is no different. But there is much of redeeming value in this novel, including the fact that Updike helps us to understand the tensions in the Qur’an itself and the reasons Moslem’s disagree about what there religious duty is in relationship to perceived evil in the world.

On the one hand jihad can be interpreted to refer to a holy war on all perceived unrighteousness and wickedness. On the other hand the relevant passages in the Qur’an can be interpreted to refer to the inner ‘struggle’ (‘struggle’ is what the Arabic word itself means) of an individual believer to be pure, his struggle to live in a way that pleases God. On the one hand the Moslem holy book portrays God as a great Creator God who is merciful and all compassionate towards his creatures. On the other hand there are suras in the Qur’an that lead Ahmad to suggest at one point “Who says unbelief is innocent? Unbelievers say that. God says, in the Qur’an ‘Be ruthless to unbelievers’ Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten God. They think themselves to be sufficient. They love this present life more than the next.” (p. 294). Of course at this juncture Ahmad is speaking out of a devout young man’s sense of moral outrage at the world’s wickedness and sin and temptations. There is another and very different side to Ahmad as well, one less bewitched and bewildered by devils and anger, whether righteous or not.

Ahmad has been tutored at length and for years in the Qur’an by a Moslem holy man from Yemen. When one sees the devotion and detailed study involved it makes what most of us do to train our children in the Bible both insufficient and pathetically half-hearted. And no doubt the devout Moslem would point out to the Christian that he sees such tensions in the Bible itself, between the call to Holy war in Joshua, for example, and the Sermon on the Mount on the other. The same reason equally devout Moslems differ on the approach to dealing with evil (namely they can’t agree on exactly what their Holy Book requires of them in a given situation) is the very reason equally devout Christians disagree for example on the war in Iraq. Updike has the ability to raise the right questions, even the deeply religious ones, and one could say that this novel represents the man at his most probing and telling.

I would hope that many of you would read this novel, if for no other reason than we need to see ourselves from time to time as others see us, even as our enemies see us. And how they see us is of course distorted in many ways, but in other ways it is often accurate and telling. I have Moslem friends in various countries in the world. One of the things they regularly ask me is—“Isn’t American supposed to be a Christian nation which follows the teaching of Jesus? If so why then is it the number one purveyor of pornography, raunchy movies, arms and yes drugs to all sorts of immoral people throughout the world?” I have no good answers to such probing questions. I usually just apologize. But it helps me understand why some in a moment of anger might call this nation ‘the Great Satan’. We have so much more power than most other nations, and we seem to often use it in ways that certainly do not match up with the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. God save America from its own worst instincts and worst self. God save us all.

THE MIRAGE

Shimmering, glimmering
Enticing to a fault
Always in the distance
Beckoning to be caught.

The illusion, projection
Of what we hope and dream
Always better imagined
Not being what it seems.

Leading the thirsty one
Down a dusty track
Through a blistering desert
Never turning back.

Oasis, respite
Mirror or mirage
Foretaste of glory
Or desert camouflaged?

Fantasies, fairy tales
Broken or borrowed schemes
Dead end ideas
Ephemeral as moonbeams.

Prosperity, wealth
Beyond one’s wildest dreams
Pleasure though fleeting
Glistens and it gleams.

Longing, lusting
For things beyond our reach
Driving our behavior
Not practicing what we preach.

Consumer, consumed
By the inner fire
Not the Holy Spirit’s,
Insatiable desire.


Transitory, temporary
Shelter from the storm
Something to nurse a life along
Someone to keep you warm.

Like David, wizened
And his Shunammite
A beautiful young virgin
To get him through the night.

Settling’s unsettling
To the heart and soul
Made for everlasting love
Not fleeting human dole.

Look now in the mirror
Remember what you saw
The person you’ve just glimpsed
Is you in the raw.

Stop praying for mirages
To suddenly be real
Stop measuring yourself
By how it makes you feel.

Stop measuring your worth,
By how much you’ve achieved
How much you have bought or won
Or suffered or have grieved.

God loves you as you are
Though the image has been broken
Grasp the everlasting life
Not its ghost or fleeting token.

BW3
Aug. 9th 2006

BRAIN FOOD

I’ve got a genuine replica brain,
It’s a collectible rendition,
I grant it’s not the latest model,
But it’s in good condition.

It still processes data pretty well
Though there are some memory lapses
It knows the difference between good and evil,
And even between knaves and apses.

There’s minimal start up time with the help of good coffee
And it can occasionally multi-task
But if you want infallible or perfect
You’d best not ask.

This brain is not for sale,
Nor is it on permanent loan
But what with our new technology
I understand it can be cloned.

If you’re looking for help with the Bible,
Or music and books,
I’ve got a lot of things stuffed in the cortex
That deserves a second look.

If you find someone to clone it,
Please do make it known,
I would like a backup copy
Of my very own.

I’ve got a genuine replica brain,
Though sometimes the synapses aren’t properly firing
This accounts for the forgetfulness,
Just blame it on the wiring.

I was thinking of advertising this on eBay
But then I remembered I had a blog,
If you would like a data dump download
Then reply to this data log.

BW3 Aug. 8th, 2006

A Very Inconvenient Truth

There are a lot of truths that are inconvenient. Some of them begin by nagging you at the very fringe of your consciousness. You can ignore them for whole days at a time, but they just will not go completely away. At the most unexpected time they will suddenly jump on the front burner of your brain and fog up your thinking. Such a truth is global warning. My wife is a biologist and a botanist at a quite conservative Christian college--- Asbury College. The faculty there could not in any way be described as a hot bed of liberalism or ‘blue state’ thinking. It is interesting that even in this bastion of conservatism both religious and political, the truth about global warning has finally become undenial to even many nay sayers at such a place. Partly some of them came to this conclusion after becoming hands on in dealing with the aftermath of Katrina in places like Biloxi and New Orleans. All those Christian workers came back with a new understanding of how nature abused and ignored has an enormous capacity to respond with an overwhelming fury. The changing of the minds of many conservative Christians is perhaps a clear ensign that we are nearly to the point of recognizing we are dealing with an undeniable truth. Christians are sadly often the last to get religion about worldly things that have been obvious to others for many years. I say this to our shame.

Scientists of course pride themselves on trying to stick to the hard empirical data. They don’t tend to make grand pronouncements of any sort without a stuffed stat sheet to back it up. Well the stat sheet is now stuffed with evidence. The ten hottest years on record in our human history have all occurred in the last fourteen years. The most hurricanes ever in one season occurred last year. For the first time ever a huge shelf of Antarctica broke off and disintegrated into the cold waters that surround that continent. The perma-frost split in Greenland last year, for the first time ever, and the sound of huge underground rivers of melted ice can be heard in that land. And there is much more. Of the 946 articles written in peer-reviewed scientific journals over the last decade or so on global warming, they all had at least one point in common--- global warming is real and accelerating at an alarming rate as the green house gases increase exponentially in our atmosphere. Of course there are some popular articles out there that dispute this. None of those articles have been written by any of the scientists whose articles have been accepted in the major scholarly scientific journals. They did not pass the empirical data rigor test--- not even one. Global warming is no longer considered a theory. It is considered a proven fact—yes even in the heartland, yes even by scientists at very conservative Christian colleges. But perhaps you will offer the cynical response of ‘So what?’

If you have children or grandchildren, or are planning to have children, you can’t afford the luxury of that kind of response. Of course it is true that you can try to run away and hide from this truth, for instance by using escapist rapture theology. Who cares if the world is going to Hades in a handbasket, if you will soon be beamed up? But wait, what if the ‘rapture’ is merely a theory more dicey than Darwin’s, and as it turns out a theory without sound Biblical evidence?
What if there will be no escape from the problems of this world for the foreseeable future because Jesus told us to first evangelize all the language groups before the second coming? What if God expects us to properly tend and care for his good and beautiful garden-like creation until his Son comes back? What if when he returns instead he finds us sticking our heads in the sand, and ignoring the many ways we have bruised and abused the earth he created for our eco-system? What if our otherworldly redemption theology involves a gross distortion of the Biblical creation theology?

What if it is creation that God is setting out to redeem--- all of it? What if Paul was right when he says that all of creation is growing longing for the day when humans, and the creation itself will be liberated from disease, decay, death, pollution, poison, and putrefaction? What if there really are crises in this world as big or bigger than terrorism that affect every day lives of persons on all continents? Think for instance of the alarming rise in rates of various kinds of skin cancers, and of infectious diseases spread because the winters are not cold enough to kill off the bugs that carry these diseases in the breeding grounds in Africa and elsewhere? What if it is true that there has been a huge campaign of disinformation about global warming spread throughout the country, and especially throughout its religiously conservative sectors by big oil companies hungry for more profits?

My wife and I went to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ today. And I have to tell you, that whether or not you like Al Gore or agree with him on other issues is irrelevant. If even 10% of the data shared in this movie about global warming is correct, we have a moral responsibility as Christians if we love life, if we love our children, if we seek to emulate a God who loves the world he made, to do something about this now. Even if you don’t care about how this affects you personally at least you should care about how it will affect our offspring. And the interesting thing is we can do something about it. We can reduce our individual carbon footprints. We can stop buying gas guzzling vehicles. We can buy light bulbs that last ten times what the normal bulbs last. We can buy solar panels like you see all over the Middle East and harness the suns’ raise to heat our water. We could finally get our nation to be the last nation to sign the Kiyoto accords so we could all work together on this problem. Did you know that America has the lowest standards of any of the developed nations, including China, when it comes to demanding cars that are energy efficient? I could go on.

Salvation is a great gift from God. Its climax comes when by resurrection we receive new bodies and are fully conformed to the image of Christ. But can you imagine new bodies on an old worn out earth? How incredibly frustrating would that condition be? Have you really reflected on what 1 Cor. 15 means when it tells us that when Jesus comes back he will have some work to do. It will take some time. He will have to put some enemies under his feet before he turns the kingdom back over to the Father. And the very last enemy he must overcome affects all living things. It is not a particular nation. It is not a particular person, say the Anti-Christ. It is not a particular religion. It is death itself. Why is death the last and most stubborn enemy to be overcome by Jesus when he returns? Could it be that the renewal of the earth was just as important to him as the resurrection of believers, because the latter would have to live in the eco-sphere--- hopefully in a new or renewed earth? Blessed are those whom the Savior finds going on about the business he set for us when he returns—saving the world, not just the people in the world, but also the place where believers will finally live for all eternity if Rev. 21-22 is any clue. Think on these things.

A Moslem observes Christian worship

John Updike's riveting new novel entitled "Terrorist', which I will be reviewing once I finish it, reveals a Christian writer trying to think into the mindset of Moslems angry with the West and its culture which is perceived to be decadent, decaying, and in various ways indecent and unclean.

The central figure of the novel is a bright teenager named Ahmad who is a practicing Moslem, son of a lapsed Irish Catholic mother and an Egyptian father, who was not a practicing Moslem. At one juncture in the novel, Ahmad is invited by a girl in his high school to come to an African American worship service where she will be singing a solo. Here are a few of his observations which are interesting and telling, since it is good to know how we look to outsiders.

"The mosque was a domain of men; here women in their spring shimmer...dominate....The black man hands Ahmad a folded sheet of tinted paper and leads him forward, up the center aisle to the front pews. The church is nearly full, and none but the front pews, apparently the less desirable, are empty. Accustomed to worshippers squatting and kneeling on a floor [for prayer], emphasizing God's height above them, Ahmad feels, even seated, dizzily, blasphemously tall. The Christian attitude of lazily sitting erect as at an entertainment suggests that God is an entertainer who, when He ceases to entertain, can be removed from the stage, and another act brought on." (p. 50).

What is striking about this passage is how accurately it depicts the casual demeanor of much of Christian worship, as if one were cozing up to an old pal, and also the consumer, or entertainment character of that worship which has come to dominate a great deal of what passes for large church worship.

I am reminded of Paul's call for orderliness in worship and a sense of reverence before God when he scolds his Corinthians who are all too eager to put their spiritual gifts on display in egotistic fashion. He reminds them, showing his sensitivity to how worship appears to the outsider "If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsiders or unbelievers (the former word is actually 'idiotai'-- meaning an uninitiated person) enter, will they not say you are out of your mind?" (1 Cor. 14.23). Worship as it turns out is not just for insiders, it is also meant to have a prophetic or positive evangelistic impact on outsiders as well.

This in turn raises the question--- what sorts or forms of worship are both faithful to God and inspire people, both believing and non-believing, to worship God, to be convicted of their sins etc.? What sort of worship is truly soul-stirring, seeker friendly, and also inculcates the sort of reverence for God that is of the essence of true worship (see. e.g. Isaiah 6). It is always a good thing to see ourselves through the eyes of those who are watching us, both with contempt but also with open minds. Therein we learn ways we can better glorify God and edify all those who come into his presence.

Supercessionism, Dispensationalism, and the Present Middle East Crisis-- A Christian Stand

In my current work on a commentary on Hebrews, I have been struck by how forcefully the book of Hebrews completely undercuts a Dispensational approach to the reading of Scripture, and while we are at it, to a blind and unconditional support of the present secular nation-state of Israel regardless of its military practices and policies. This is not to say that we do not need to be equally critical of the inhuman practices of Hamas and Hezebollah, as well. We do. But here are some of my reflections.

Let us broach the question once more of whether and in what sense Hebrews should be seen as a supercessionist document. On the one hand, it is apt to point out that there were a variety of forms of early Judaism, and various of them were highly sectarian. By this I mean that, for example, the Qumran community did not think that the form of Jewish religion practiced in the Temple of Jerusalem was just as legitimate as its own practices and beliefs. Indeed, it thought that Herod’s temple was hopelessly corrupt and would be destroyed, just as Jesus himself appears to have thought. It is not then, just the Christian form of early Judaism that could and did make a case for the obsolescence of the existing cultus in Jerusalem. However, the Qumran community, though a highly eschatological group, did not take the more radical step of suggesting that the Mosaic covenant and its practices in general were outmoded. This more revolutionary notion is found only in the Christian form of early Judaism, and in particular it is found in both Hebrews and in Paul’s letters, and in some respects seems to go back to Jesus himself.

In short, I do not think it is possible to avoid the scandal of particularity when it comes to the Christian form of Judaism. There was an inevitability to the parting of the ways between Christian and non-Christian Jews however long it took in different places, and the parting was only accelerated by the Pauline Gentile mission and its success.

Andrew Lincoln sums up well what is going on in Hebrews—“its writer holds that, while the Scripture is still the authoritative vehicle of God’s self-disclosure, the sacrificial system, the law and the Sinaitic covenant, of which Scripture speaks, have been surpassed by God’s new and decisive word in Christ, and so in terms of present Christian experience are no longer appropriate. The law, its symbols and institutions remain crucial for interpreting the fulfillment of God’s purposes in Christ but do not determine Christian practice. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice does away with the need for the sacrificial system (cf. 10.4-18) and indeed the covenant with Moses can be described as obsolete (8.13). It is in this sense that Hebrews can be appropriately called a ‘supercessionist’ document.”(Hebrews. A Guide, p. 114).

To this I would add the caution that the author no doubt would have argued that he was talking about the completion of the Jewish heritage in Jesus. He would have stressed, had he lived until today, that it is totally anachronistic to talk about the replacement of Judaism as a religion with Christianity as a religion. Our author is not talking about Christianity as some separate religion from Judaism. He is talking about what he sees as the true completion of all the Jewish religion was meant to point to and prepare for and be the basis of. Of course what he says in Hebrews would inevitably be viewed as supercessionist by those Jews who had not and did not see Jesus as the completion of God’s plans for them or the fulfillment of earlier covenants.

Sometimes, in order to escape the notion of supercessionist both conservative and liberal Christians have tried to cut the Gordian knot of this problem by suggesting there are two covenants in operation at once—- one for Jews and one for Gentiles, or one for Jews and one for Christians. Surprisingly enough we find this approach both in ultra conservative Dispensationalism and also in more liberal approaches to Paul and Hebrews. There is a problem, a very serious problem with both of these two tract models. They involve the renouncing of the claims of the NT authors about Jesus as the savior of the world, and also about the true people of God being ‘Jew and Gentile united in Christ’. It also involves applying a very different hermeneutic to the OT than we see being applied in Hebrews.

Here again Lincoln helps us: “Without the conviction that Christ was the surpassing fulfillment of the Mosaic covenant, there would have been no reason in the first place for Jews to have become Christians or to remain Christians under pressure (the issue for Hebrews) or for Gentiles to have become Christians rather than proselytes or God-fearers. Without the conviction that Jesus Christ is the decisive revelation of God for all human beings, however the implications of that conviction are spelled out, Christianity is no longer recognizably in continuity with its Scriptural foundation. The suggestion, sometimes made today, that Christians should think in terms of two covenants, one for Jews, based on Moses, and one for Gentiles, based on Jesus, does not allow Jesus to be the decisive revelation for the people to whom this revelation was given in the first place.” (Hebrews. A Guide, p. 118).

Just so. We must resist the temptation to whittle off the hard edges of this and other NT texts just to make life easier for ourselves. The scandal of particularity cannot be escaped by exegetical gymnastics or hermeneutical legerdemain.

Let me say however what this does not mean. In the first place it does not mean that Jews today are guilty of practicing a false religion, a false faith. This is not how either the author of Hebrews or Paul would have viewed the matter. Even when he painfully discusses the fact that many Jews have rejected Jesus (Rom. 11) and so he says that they have been temporarily broken off from the tree that makes up the people of God, he still envisions a time when they can and in some cases will be grafted back into that people. This is a completionist not a replacement theology, and Christians today must be always reminded that the NT is a Jewish book almost entirely written by Jews, and in the case of Hebrews for Jews. We must be very mindful and wary of how this book has been misused by later Gentile believers to justify all sorts of anti-Semitic acts.

And this brings me to the most important point. Both Paul and our author see salvation as a work in progress that will not be completed until Christ returns and the dead are raised. Only then will there be full conformity of anyone to the image of Christ, and only then will we finally and fully know who is saved and who is not. Between now and then the lost can be saved, and the saved can commit apostasy, and even when Jesus returns there will still be some saving yet to be done it would appear.

This means that Christians must live with the eschatological tension of already and not yet, live with the fact that they are in the midst of salvation history not at its end, and live with the tension that they themselves are not eternally secure until they are securely in eternity. This being the case, humility and not triumphalism is in order. As Jesus warned, many will come from the east and west and replace many of those we expect to sit at the messianic banqueting table. This in turn means that ‘the church’ has not replaced ‘the synagogue’. God is not finished with any of us yet, and God certainly finds reprehensible anti-Semitism in any form, much less in the form it took in Nazi Germany during WW II. If indeed Jesus died for the sins of the world, then he died not just for the sins of his present followers, but even for those who rejected and do reject him, at least in his role as world Savior.

My suggestion would then be that we follow the author of Hebrews’ word in Heb. 12.14 where we are called to pursue peace with everyone and also the holiness without which none of us will see the Lord. We should view every human being as someone whom God loves and for whom Jesus died. We should do our best to love everyone and be more concerned about our own Christ-likeness than other’s perceived lack thereof. We should get our own house in order.

This does not mean that we should neglect a prophetic critique of ungodly behavior whether by Christians or anyone else. For example, Christians have no business blindly supporting Zionistic Israeli policies that lead to the killing of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, any more than we should support the hate-filled practices of Hamas or Hezbollah or Iraqi Sunni and Shiite bombers. Such support violates the very heart or essence of what Jesus himself called his followers to believe and to be. We need to repeatedly ask what would Jesus do? What did he do when confronted by violence? What did he urge his followers to do in Mt. 5-7? Think on these things.

Humor for Tired Parents and their Offspring

"Mary" said the teacher, "I'd like you to come up to the map and point out the Falklands." Mary dutifully came forward and did so. Then the teacher said "Very good, now Alexander, can you tell us who discovered the Falklands?"
Alexander quickly responded: "Mary did sir!"

A father lamented the fact that all three of his children were attending college. He kept complaining he was getting poorer by degrees!

Father to Son: "Do you know what Abraham Lincoln was doing at your age?"
Son to Father: No, I dont, but I know he was President at your age."

And in the kids say the darnedest things department I offer the following actual quotes:

"No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you are stuck with."
Kirsten-- aged 10

How can a stranger tell if two people are married?
Demick age 8 says "You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids."

What are Dates for?
Lynette aged 8 says "Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough."

And lastly the Homer Simpson quote for today--- "Don't keep blaming yourself. Just do it once and then move on!"

CRAVEN IMAGE

When idol becomes icon
The image turns grave
With darkest deception
Convex turns concave.

Windows on heaven
The icon’s true aim
If means becomes end
It’s not quite the same.

But breaking the making
Iconoclasm’s wrath
Is equally misguided
A mischosen path.

See through the icon
The larger design
Wineskins best function
To convey wine.

Sacred cows gilded
Become golden calves
We worship the image
Of things that we have.

Beauty without truth
The glass becomes stained
Discoloration
Verity strained.

Like art that is tainted
Like thoughts quite insane
Showers of blessings
Become Noah’s rain

July 31 2006

Friday Night In Jerusalem---Fear and Faith, Devils and Dust

It was a warm June evening, and shabbat had just begun. I was leading some of my tour group through the Damascus Gate, down the Cardo Maximus, and to the Wailing Wall so they could see what was happening. The Cardo was packed with both Jews and Moslems and tourists milling around. The Orthodox and Hasidic Jews were mostly coming to and from the wall with their families. The Palestinians were out for a night of celebration now that their holy day had come and gone.

The Cardo gets increasingly narrower as you get further into the city and closer to the entrance to the plaza where the Wailing Wall was. It is lined with shops of all sorts, coffee shops, fruit stands, lingerie shops, you name it. At one juncture we could hear ahead of us rhythmic chanting and suddenly we were pressed up against the shop walls as a parade of young Palestinians went buy with their soccer jerseys on and their soccer balls in hand. They were simply having fun, but the young orthodox Jewish teenager squashed up against the wall next to me was afraid-- very afraid of the loud jubilant Palestinians, even though they were not bothering or antagonizing anyone. Taking off his wide-brimmed hat the young man with his long curls and all black attire put his hat over his face to hide his Jewishness, and then finally turned and faced the wall. I could almost smell the fear coming off of him.

Fear of course is a primal instinct or emotion. The fear can be rational and warranted or irrational and inexplicable. Whatever its source, it often leads to irrational behavior. Fear based practices are precisely what get major wars started. Our current Vice President is famous for enunciating the 1% doctrine. It goes like this. If there is even a 1% chance that someone could drop a major bomb on us, then we are warranted in engaging in pre-emptive strikes and taking them out. These of course are not the rules of engagement of the Geneva Convention, much less a rational policy. It represents a fear-based practice based in the 'get them before they get you' mentality. We see these sort of practices constantly played out in Israel by both the Israelis and the more radical Moslems. And it never solves anything. It just leads to more carnage, more acts of retaliation, and certainly does not fulfill any Biblical prophecies whatsoever, except the adage that we will reap whatsoever we sow.

I understand why that young man was afraid. He probably didn't know any Arabic and couldn't tell what the Palestinian lads were chanting. He probably had never had a Moslem friend in his life. Both sides are too busy anathematizing each other and protecting their children, in the form of preventing them from ever knowing children of other faiths, to make such personal knowledge or experience possible. Ignorance leads to prejudice which leads to fear which leads to violence--- over and over again. If your only images of the 'other' is casual contact or what you see on TV, you never do learn what makes them tick, what is important to them, or even why Jesus died for them as well as for us. And it is becoming harder for cross-- religious friendships to happen in Israel, especially now that the huge wall has been erected around Bethelehem.

The other day Roger Waters of Pink Floyd who was in Israel to do a concert in Tel Aviv (it was later moved to a town where both Jews and Moslems and Christians could all attend), was at the wall. You may or may not remember it was Roger who wrote the classic Pink Floyd song 'Another Brick in the Wall'. Well he signed the Bethlehem Wall with an epithet from that song. It is ironic that a secular rock musician is the only person I know of who this summer managed to bring young people of all faiths together for a concert and a fun evening. It is precisely these sorts of events where one gets to meet, and even gets to know 'the Other'. Notice it is not the religious leaders of any of these three monotheistic faiths who are sponsoring events which might lead to dialogue, understanding, and even friendship. Religion in this case is used to further polarize the situation by stigmatizing one another as 'infidels'. Whatever else one can say, this is not the use of religion Jesus intended when he commanded his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. There is no exegesis of those commands that could warrant the cynical conclusion that Jesus meant we should 'love them to death at the point of a gun'.

Instead of the 1% doctrine, I would like to propose the 100% doctrine. It goes like this. If anyone would come after, follow the example of, or even be a follower of Jesus, he or she must take up their crosses and follow him to Golgotha and beyond. This if course requires many steps of faith. But it also requires a renouncing of fear based practices as well. The only sacrifice Jesus calls us to is not the sacrifice of our intellects, but of our fears and ultimately of ourselves. You will notice he does not call us to offer our enemies as a sacrifice to God. Quite the contrary.

I wanted to take a moment and speak with that young Jewish boy, but there was not time enough for he fled before I could do so, and in any case my modern Israeli Hebrew is not that good. For all I know he might have been just as afraid of me as of the Palestinians. Religion in the hands of people who are chiefly motivated by fear, is indeed a fearsome thing, and is rightly to be feared. But there is a greater thing in this world than fear. Remember the words "Greater is he who is in us, than any of these forces in the world"?

The real issue is not whether we will live or die. Unless Jesus comes soon, we will all die. The real issue for Christians is--- will Jesus find us emulating him, will he find us faithful or fearful when he returns? Maybe Jesus was right to ask at the end of his famous parable of the persistent widow--"but when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?" I wonder. Most of the faith I see in action is either overwhelmed or overruled by fears, cultural prejudices, and sheer ignorance.

I recently was listening to Bruce Springsteen's fine album 'Devils and Dust' Here is one of the verses and chorus from the title cut.

"I got my finger on the trigger
But I don't know who to trust
When I look into your eyes
There's just devils and dust.
We're a long long way from home Bobbie
Home's a long long way from us
I feel a dirty wind blowing
Devils and dust.

I got God on my side
And I'm just trying to survive
What if what I do to survive
Kills the things You love?
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God-filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust."

AMEN to that.

VICE VERSUS VIRTUE---FROM METROPOLIS TO MIAMI

We seem to like our myths about the battle between good and evil relatively clear cut, but we also like our heroes vulnerable, sometimes even indulging in various sorts of guilty pleasures, while supposedly being ‘at heart good persons’. ‘Superman Returns’ is a quite interesting and lovingly crafted update of the Superman saga. Superman in this telling has been away for a while looking for the remains of his home planet, only to discover there really wasn’t anything left. He returns to earth once more, to encounter a much aged Mom Kent (played quite fetchingly by an over 80 Eva Marie Saint no less), and a world which has moved on beyond Superman. Superman’s sometime girl friend Lois Lane has even won a Pulitzer for her story on ‘Why the World no longer Needs Superman’, but methinks she protesteth too much (trying to exorcise the demon of her love for the man marvel). Brandon Routh does a marvelous job walking into the shoes of Christopher Reeve, even to the point of recreating the crooked smile of Clark Kent, and much of the apparel of the characters in this movie seem to have been brought out of mothballs from an impossibly old Goodwill store. However, crime has not been sleeping or become obsolescent, for Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor has every up to the minute techno gadget one could want at the cusp of the 21rst century. It is this juxtaposition of old and new which makes this movie both comforting and unsettling in different ways.
Superman of course is super once more, and up to his old tricks of fighting crime, rescuing damsels in distress, and even taking on his old arch-enemy Lex, who in this incarnation of the tale almost does in Superman by attacking him with shards of Kryptonite. What makes this telling of the tale interesting is that even Superman needs rescuing once in a while, and unlike Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane who could not get his friends to watch with him in his darkest hour, Superman is actually rescued by Lois and her boyfriend through various acts of daring do. And oh yes, there is a little Superboy as well in tow. Seems Superman had not been entirely successful before running off to his home planet in keeping his Super-knickers up. But then Lois always was quite the girl. America increasingly likes their heroes flawed. It makes them more approachable, brings them down to earth a bit, which takes some doing in Superman’s case. Maybe this is why in a sin-riddled era so many people find it hard to find Jesus even approachable much less identify with him. He is just too good to emulate, too good to be ‘you’ (or me for that matter). The cry now seems to be not merely for a believable savior, but one who behaves more like us—even marrying a Mrs. Jesus perhaps.
If ‘Superman Returns’ is quaint, fun, and raises only a few ethical dilemmas, what then should we make of Michael Mann’s recreation of his TV blockbuster--- Miami Vice? First one has to say, that the cinematography in this movie is stunning, and much like some of the best episodes of the TV show, although we are spared the art deco tacky side of Miami culture. Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Fox) in this incarnation dress in basic black and white. Once again we are placed in the seamy and unseemly world of under-cover cop work against the drug lords, and are asked to ponder the question whether it is o.k. for cops to do wrong in order to serve the greater good of preventing major crime. The movie reminds one of the script of perhaps the most famous of the television episodes which also starred Glen Frey (yes the Eagle) getting involved in a Columbian drug bust. Missing in action from the movie is a soundtrack like the one the TV show used to have. Rock and roll has been replaced in the opening scenes with some hip hop, rap, and club music, betokening the change in the music culture and industry since the time the TV show aired. Clearly Rock and Roll isn’t what it once was, in terms of being a creative force and dominant music form in American culture. Rock and Roll may not be dead, but it is on life-support when the only rock tune in this movie is a retred version of ‘In the Air Tonight’ in the trailer, especially when rock and roll created so much of the ambiance of the TV show.
While Farrell and Fox both play their parts well enough the discrepancy in acting ability becomes all too clear when these two are juxtaposed. Fox is expressive and brings life to his character. Farrell is mostly deadpan, and while looking the part of a vice cop, seems like someone sleepwalking through the part. Both men have difficulties with their women of differing sorts. The supporting cast in this movie is strong, but for those of us who love the AFLAC duck commercials, it is hard to erase the image of those commercials from one’s mind when the lead Fed in this movie is the African American man who plays the lead in those commercials!
Not that this movie could not have used some comic relief. The action is taut, there is no filler in this drama, but there are also few, if any, memorable lines either. The bad guys are thoroughly believable, and the good guys have only a modicum of redeeming features—one of which is the loyalty of Crockett and Tubbs to each other and to their difficult tasks. There is not only an effective graininess to the film texture. This is also the case with the lives being portrayed. But the question remains about these cops--- do the ends really justify these kinds of means, including getting in bed with the crime lords in order to expose them--- so to speak? Perhaps we should take the title ‘Miami Vice’ as a double entendre. Who better to dabble in vice, then a vice squad which is so familiar with its practices?
And in the end, the thing these two movies have in common is that the good guys seem to win, for a time, but in the case of Miami Vice, not without the heroes sullying themselves in the process. And with them the audience--- it was rather chilling when the audience in the theater here actually laughed when one of the bad guys got blown to bits by an uber-gun. Have we really become so inured to violence that we can laugh when human life is brutally destroyed or exult, for instance, over the revenge taking of Israel which involves destroying so many innocent lives?
The subtext of a movie like Miami Vice is of course that in violent times one must fight violence with violence ‘by any means necessary’. But if we do this, do not we become what we despise? ‘Superman Returns’ cosmetizes the violence and makes it palatable. ‘Miami Vice’ doesn’t and yet the audience seems to get vicarious thrills in watching the bad guys ‘get what they deserve’. As it turns out, it is not just public discourse that has become coarse in our culture. So has our entertainment, and unfortunately that tells us a great deal about the direction our culture is listing towards. It was an inspired writer who warned that ‘those who sow the wind, will reap the whirlwind’. I fear that the storm warnings for our culture are all too evident--- especially when it even surfaces in our summer blockbusters.

The Conquest of Faith and the Climax of History

The Conquest of Faith and the Climax of History-- Heb. 12. 1-4, 18-29
Delivered at St. Salvator’s Church St. Andrews Scotland July 21 2006 for the Hebrews Conference

In 1993 I managed to run the Boston Marathon--- yes all 26 miles of it. I had trained for it, but nothing could ever prepare you for that sort of life experience. I knew that the only way I would ever see the ‘archegos’ the trailblazer out in front of the pack, was if I went up to the starting line before the race began and looked at the Kenyans and Nigerians with their huge upper legs and otherwise lanky and diminutive frames. They would run the race in just over two hours. It would take me about five. But there were many things I learned along the way. For one thing I learned that I needed to follow the leader and go exactly the same path he had trod. Going off the course would disqualify me. Nor was I to follow the pseudo-runners, like the man wearing a rainbow afro wig and zigzag across the couse for a few miles with a T-shirt on which read ‘Kiss Me, I’m Jesus’. No he was not my trailblazer either. For another thing, while I could take encouragement from the cheering of the great cloud of witnesses lining the race course which wound through numerous small Massachusetts towns like Ashland before arriving in town, still I would have to run the race myself. They could not do it for me. I took inspiration from a man running while pushing his quadrapelegic son the whole 26 miles down the course, and from a 74 year old lady who urged me to run with her up heartbreak hill. When I entered the city exhausted, as it was very hot that April Patriot’s Day, I was roused to new life by the cheering Harvard and BU students riding the above ground tram as I headed for the Prudential center. And when I turned the final bend and saw the finish mile I kept repeating to myself the title of one of my favorite old books--- Are you running with me Jesus?’ Finally I fell into the arms of one of my best friends, who took my picture crossing the finish line. Suddenly I was wrapped in a NASA foil blanket and give fruit juices and I collapses in a happy heap. I had finish the course.
The great encomium of faith we find in Heb.11 begins with the following stirring phrase--- “Now faith is the substance/assurance of things hoped for, the proof/conviction of things not seen. About these things the ancients bore witness.” On this showing faith is not about looking back in longing or in dread or in belief, it is about looking forward towards our hope with conviction and assurance, for the very existence of the miracle of forward looking faith is called a proof of things not seen. But this stirring beginning to the ‘hall of faith’ chapter in Hebrews has an equally stirring climax, only its not in Hebrews 11, it is in Heb. 12.1-4 which has been read as part of our lesson for today.

Unfortunately Stephen Langton (1150-1228) the one time Archbishop of Canterbury, did not serve us well when he provided us with the still current division of the Bible into chapters and verses, which divisions I keep having to remind my students are not inspired, and indeed sometimes are not even very inspiring. Especially unfortunate is the separation of Heb. 12.1-4 from the material in Hebrews 11, for in fact Christ is the climactic exemplum of faith, as we shall see, the paradigm and paragon of true forward looking faith and faithfulness in this sermon called Hebrews.

Famously Jesus is said to be the pioneer and perfector, or trailblazer and finisher of faith. You will notice that I did not say “of our faith”. There is no word ‘our’ either hinted at or explicit in the Greek text. Our author is telling us that while in the marathon race to the finish line of life we are surrounded by many forward looking folk, a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, never the less we are meant to cast off our leg irons and arm weights and focus entirely on Jesus, the leader of the pack, the trailblazer of our path into the heavenly sanctuary, the pioneer of true forward looking faith and faithfulness. Our author goes on to make VERY clear he is saying Christ is our ultimate example of faith and faithfulness for he goes on to add “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Heb. 11-12 brings to mind the words of the naturalist John Muir who said, ‘we look at life from the backside of the tapestry. What we normally see is loose ends, tangled threads, frayed chords. But occasionally light shines through the tapestry and we get a glimpse of the larger design. Heb. 11-12 is giving us that big picture glimpse.

Our author is worried about the level of morale amongst the Jewish Christians in Rome in the 60s, who have already seen Peter and Paul go down for the count, and while they themselves have not yet suffered to the point of bloodshed, they have had property confiscated and they have seen their leaders martyred. The temptation to go native, or to turn back to a safer more licit form of religion must indeed have been great. Our author, who provides stern warnings against apostasy throughout his epideictic discourse (see e.g. Heb. 6) is certainly one of those who believes that the Christian believer is not eternally secure until they are securely in eternity.

Thus he exhorts the audience, with real concern about their breaking or abandoning faith, to follow the example of and keep their eyes on the trailblazer Jesus, to endure the same sort of shame he did, to die if need be, and to sit down with him in glory. Thus far our author sounds rather like an ancient version of those who promise pie in the sky, by and by and we must indeed seriously ask has our author exchanged eschatological afterlife thinking for ethereal other world thinking? Many have thought so, and have drawn analogies with Philo, or the neo-Platonists. I am unconvinced however, for our author is not at the end of the day a Platonist who sees this world as but a pale shadow of eternity, he is an early and thoroughly eschatological Jewish Christian, as my old mentor C.K. Barrett long ago pointed out, commenting on the eschatological character of Hebrews. In fact, as it turns out, our author is much like the author of Revelation affirming both a vibrant afterlife and a glorious other world as lying in the future of true believers. In different places in his discourse he places different stresses on one or the other, but at no point has he simply exchanged his eschatological birth rite for pie in the sky by and by.

This becomes especially clear not only when we consider our author quoting Hab. 2.3-4 in Heb. 10.37—“he who is coming will come and will not delay” or Heb. 10.25 where we hear about “the Day” of judgment and redemption that is coming, or Heb. 9.28 where we hear that Christ will appear a second time not to bear sin but to bring salvation. Or Heb. 13.14 where the heavenly city ‘to come’ is to be entered not merely by dying but by resurrection from the dead, and we could go on. What is surprising in this epideictic discourse is not the focus on what is true now in heaven, for the time focus of such rhetoric is the present time, what is surprising is the future references we do have in a piece of rhetoric which is not deliberative in character and is not arguing for an adoption of some new course of behavior or action in the near future. Instead he is arguing for persevering in the beliefs and behaviors the audience had already embraced long ago. And this brings us to the remarkable theophanic language used in the peroration in Heb. 12.18-29, the truly stirring and emotive climax meant at once to thrill and send a chill down the spine of the audience as final judgment and final salvation is vividly depicted.

Here we have a tale not so much of two cities as of two theophanies. God comes down on Sinai mountain and the people cannot bear the numinous presence and the trumpet blast and the final words of doom and gloom on a sinful people who had been building golden calves while Moses was visiting with God up the hill. No, says our author, if you will preserve in true faith, a better fate awaits the present audience he addresses. Rather, he says you have come to the very edges of a very different mountain--- Mount Zion rather than Mount Sinai. Our author has perhaps learned this contrast from Paul (see Galatians). It’s the heavenly city, the better country that Abraham saw from a far, that they have now drawn near to. Is our author envisioning his audience being raptured into heaven, into the presence of the angels and the living God or simply dying and going to heaven?

In fact he is not. Like the author of Revelation he envisions a corporate merger of heaven and earth, or perhaps better said, a replacement of this current world, both heavens and earth, that is wasting away, with an eternal form of heaven and earth, which when Jesus returns and the dead are raised will become heaven on earth. Our author says we who are still earthbound are receiving a kingdom (12.28), the very one devoutly to be wished and long prayed for—“thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”. And so it is that our author envisions the second coming as a second theophany, a coming down of the heavenly city to earth, a final judgment and redemption in space and time, not an escape into the bodiless existence of a purely spiritual heaven without a final resolution of the matters of justice and redemption. John Chrysostom ably summed up things in his homily on this very text, and I am paraphrasing him here-- At the former theophany the people stood far off. At the final one they are said to have drawn near and are beckoned to stay close. At the former theophany they are in the wilderness, at the latter they are at the gates of the new Jerusalem, the ultimate symbol of true human civilization. At the former theophany there was gloom and darkness at the latter a festal celebration complete with partying angels. At the former theophany the people begged God to speak through Moses and not directly, at the latter they are urged to listen directly to God. At the former theophany even Moses the mediator trembled and no one dared to touch the holy mountain, but at the latter Jesus the mediator will be present and God’s people are beckoned to enter in at his return. At the former theophany sinful Israel is present, at the latter the spirits of just persons made perfect. At the former theophany there is blood from violence and judgment on sin, but at the latter theophany there is only the sprinkled blood of Jesus which preaches peace and enables mercy. At the former theophany worship amounts to fear and trembling before God, at the latter worship involves awe and wonder and thankfulness and acceptable worship of God.

This brings us back to the opening definition of faith. It is not just about faith in things in heaven not currently seen. It is also about things hoped for in space and time that are coming to a theater near us when Jesus comes back. In his recent scintillating Freitas lectures at Asbury Mark Allan Powell spoke about the difference between Christian faith’s great expectations and the resort to calculations or prognostications. The early church earnestly expected Christ to return, but that expectation was not trivialized into calculation. Expectations, even great expectations are not dogma or doctrine, they are things devoutly to be wished and earnestly desired. They are based on the promises of God, but they do not try to resolve the tension between the already and the not yet by giving way to predictions.

The earliest Christians, including the author of Hebrews knew that God has revealed enough of the future to give us hope, but not so much that we do not need to live by faith. Indeed, our author insists that we must live by faith just as all those who have come before us, including Jesus, the ultimate model of faith and faithfulness, have done. We have assurance of what is hoped for, but this is in no way the same as having knowledge of when faith will become sight, and hope will be realized. When faith degenerates into speculation, or even worse into pretended knowledge that “the end is at hand” then it ceases to be the hopeful forward-looking, trusting of God about which our author speaks.

It is ironic to me that both Albert Schweitzer and modern Dispensationalists are wrong about the eschatology of Jesus, Paul and other NT writers in the very same way. Schweitzer thought that Jesus and his followers believed and predicted that the end was definitely at hand, and acted accordingly, though bless their hearts, they were wrong. Modern Dispensationalists think the end is now at hand and think they can prove it with multi-colored charts, Left Behind novels, and escapist theology. One has to say, that bad theology came out of that revival in Glasgow in the 1820s which Darby attended and which got the rapture theology rolling for the Plymouth Brethren, then for D.L. Moody, then for C.I. Scofield and on and on.
And what is interesting about this comparison of two bad misreadings of the early Christian hope is not just the misreading of the NT evidence, but the fact that in both cases expectation was wrongly assumed to equal prognostication or prediction, which is not the case. Indeed, to predict the timing of Christ’s return with accuracy would make unnecessary the very sort of trust in God, and assurance about the future hope that our author says we should embrace and insists is essential for a Christian as they look forward into the future. Great Expectations when coupled with true faith and trust, should never degenerate into paltry prognostications of whatever sort. That is just human beings getting an itchy trigger finger and not being able to leave matters in God’s hands. I want to leave you with two stories of forward looking faith.

Adoniram Judson was a remarkable missionary to Burma, remarkable not least because he seemed to have no success, no converts for well over a decade yet he stuck to it. Indeed the tribes he was ministering to had become impatient and hostile towards him. There came a day of confrontation when the chief of one tribe was ready to throw Judson to the flames and had him tied up. He came and eyeballed Judson and said “what do you think now of your God, now that you are about to die?” Judson stared right back at him and said in memorable words “the future is a bright as the promises of God”. Famously, it was the tribal chief who blinked, untied Judson, and said he would hear more of this God. This was the day Christianity took root in Burma. Notice Judson did not say “the future is as bright as the predictions of human beings.” He knew the difference between trusting in God’s promises, and reducing expectations to calculations.

I was privileged enough to study in seminary with Elizabeth Elliot, the wife of Jim Elliot, the subject of the recent movie “The End of the Spear”. It is a stirring and true tale of young Christian couples working with the violent Waodani Indians in South America. On furlough, and shortly before he was martyred, Jim Elliot was asked by a reporter why he was so hopeful in his work with such resistant and violent people. He replied “He is no fool, who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” Shortly thereafter, Jim was killed by one of the Waodani. Only a couple of years ago at Franklin Graham crusade in Florida, the man who killed Jim Elliot came and gave his testimony. He said: “Formerly, I lived badly badly. But when Jim Elliot came and helped me to see Jesus, and then gave up his life for me, I knew I must respond in faith.” Indeed so. The great cloud of witnesses referred to in Hebrews did not cease to march the trail into glory in the first century. It has continued on into the present.

The question for us is—will we embrace this faith in God’s promises, will we live as the church expectant, not the church triumphalistic? Will we fix our eyes on Jesus and follow his model of trust in God and faithfulness unto death? If we will, then indeed there is assurance of things hoped for, and even internal proof of things not seen.

AMEN

Bonny St. Andrews

The third oldest university in the United Kingdom is St. Andrews University, with 5,000 undergrads today and numerous grad students. The town itself is a little seaside village on the west coast of Scotland, and let me tell you--- the water is very cold in the North Sea. I went swimming yesterday and it was the hottest day on record in St. Andrews. It didn't matter--- the water was still about 50F max. The town has a long religious history, with a ruined abbey and a castle keep where John Knox was imprisoned among its other intereting sites to visit. Of course today it is most famous for its golf course, the Old Course, which has hosted many a British Open. I played it on Friday-- 2 pars, one bird, and though the cost was very pricey (think hundreds of dollars) the experience was priceless. Hope to post some pictures when I get home, including one of me on the famous 18th hole bridge. St. Andrews, without question, is one of the best places in the world to study theology with a world class faculty, to which has just been added Marcus Boeckmuhl from Cambridge. I have had a wonderful time with my old friends Richard Bauckham (who is soon retiring) and Bruce Longenecker. Now we are beginning an important conference on the book of Hebrews with papers by Richard Hays, Morna Hooker, Richard Bauckham, Craig Blomberg, yours truly and lots of others. It promises to be grand. More anon.

The Life of the Mind--Fragile but Fertile

The life of the mind is fragile. I have been constantly reminded of this from my time in academia. I have seen one academic after another fall prey to chronic fatique, and I learned only the other day from a brain expert that for academics, one can spend up to 75% of ones latent energy in brain work. This is why a person can completely tire out after only sitting in a chair and reading and thinking most of the day. Another aspect of this is that the mind is subject to the affective side of our lives, such that if there is a lot of emotional turmoil it become difficult not only to concentrate or focus but even just to think coherently. We are psychosomatic wholes, and we think too little about the effect of the mind on the body and vice versa. There is something to the saying 'as a person thinks, so they are' though this has degenerated into nonsense about thinking one's health issues away or 'the power of positive thinking' as if it were a panacea that culd cure all ills. It is the height of irony that Mary Baker Eddy who was one of the most unwell religious figures I know of of, touted the nonsense of mind over matter, or even illness is a mental illusion that we hear in American culture from time to time.

But there is another side to this-- namely that God has put eternity in our minds, so we will not be content with the temporal. Several small things seem to point to this. Have you noticed how when you havent seen a person for a long time and then see them again you are surprised to find them different or aged or both? Your mental image of them has not changed, even though you know rationally they have aged. Why? Or again the siren song of the brain tells us we can do things that we actually could only do when much younger. I call this the mind writing checks the body can no longer cash. It happens to me when I try to play sports, say basketball for instance. Afterwards, when I am sore and tired my body reminds my brain that I was way over optimistic about what I could manage.

The mind is something far greater than just the brain hardware, and it is truly amazing to study how the mind can rewire itself and restribute the work load when some of it has been damaged by stroke or disease. There is a sort of mental compensation faculty built in. And it is clear from Alzheimer studies that memory and remembering is a key to being a normal function person, or even to have a personality.

The ancient Egyptians were smart about many things, but not about the mind. They thought the grey matter of the brain was detritus and could be sucked out of the skull and thrown away while the internal organs were a key to the afterlife and needed to be mummified and preserved in canopic jars. The Hebrews thought that mind and the heart were intertwined. Sometimes they spoke of the thoughts of the heart, sometimes the thoughts of the mind, but the heart was seen as the control center of the personality, whereas we now know the mind is. Yet there is wisdom in what Carson McCullers used to say that the heart has 'reasons that reason knows not of'.

And finally what exactly did Paul have in mind when he exhorted us to have the mind of Christ? Its worth pondering.

Durham Days

From 1977-80 my wife and I lived in Durham and our daughter Christy was born here. It is nice to be back in beautiful Durham (google Durham Cathedral and oggle the pictures). I have had a glorious day with members of the Divinity Department (Loren Stukenbroeck, John Barclay) and spent some good time with my former mentor C.K. Barrett and his wonderful wife Margaret. Kingsley is now almost 90 but his mind is still quite keen, and he still loves to teach the Greek NT. My visit with him was followed by dinner with my good friends Bishop Tom Wright and his wife Maggie. It has all too seldom been noticed in the U.S. that the epicenter of excellent, and I might add mostly orthodox NT scholarship has been Durham England (not somewhere in the U.S.) for the last 150 years--- the following names should be very familiar to those who read NT literature--- B.F. Westcott, J.B. Lightfoot, Alfred Plummer, C.K. Barrett, C.E.B. Cranfield, James Dunn, and now John Barclay and Tom Wright. To this we could add other Durhamites like Morna Hooker, John Painter, and last but not least yours truly. There is hardly any place better on earth to study the NT than here, in the shadow of the world famous Norman Cathedral. But that is not all for you see Durham has been a living center of Christianity since the time of the Venerable Bede, who single-handedly helped save the church from the Dark Ages and wrote one of the first full commentaries on James and Jude. It is a rich heritage, and a tough one to live up to.

When I went into the Bishop Aukland palace where Tom Wright lives I was stunned by all the pictures of the great scholars and bishops who passed through here going all the way back to St. Cuthbert. Equally impressive were the huge number of bookshelves in this palace. You see Durham bred scholarly bishops like Lightfoot and now Wright. They believed in a learned clergy, not just learned scholars. I do as well. Clergy should be the Bible experts for their people. But there is another wonderful dimension to Durham as well--- it is a center for Wesleyan studies as well as it is a Methodist stronghold.

It is a blessing to be back in Durham, one of my spiritual homes.

The Red Mist

Seeing red, a red sea
fogs up the brain
Acting irrationally
Bordering on insane.

The red mist permeates
The facets of the mind
Acting on impulse
Wits left behind.

Shots fired in anger
Impulses expressed
Leaves us walking wounded
Depressed and distressed.

Be angry, but sin not
Thus says the Word
Or pay the price for petulance
The cost remains absurd.

When sun sets on angry
It seethes in the brain
Permeating one’s thinking
A form of mental rain.

While there is righteous anger
It’s seldom the case
This is the motivator
Of acts done in haste.

Anger leads to violence
More often than not
Stealing what righteousness
A fallen person’s got.

Part the red sea in your brain
With the Spirit’s aid
Or leave a trail of victims
From choices you have made.

BW3
July 10 2006

Rob Bell Hits the Rock Venue Circuit

I am providing here a link to a New York Times article about Rob Bell's summer tour, which does not rely on multi-media pyrotechnics yet is appealing to many young folks around the land. Read the article and give me your reaction. I personally like what he is doing, having meaningful conversations with a Christian orientation to audiences in secular venues. Here is the link. The original article is in Saturday's paper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/us/08minister.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Pirates of the Carribean II--- Yo Ho Ho....

It is usually the case that the second part of a trilogy is less satisfactory or satisfying than either the first, which sucks you in, or the final one which resolves the loose ends and tidies up the plot. Clearly enough, 'Dead Man's Chest' the second of the Depp 'Pirates' sagas falls into this classification, rather like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It is two and a half hours long and it is rather dark to say the least-- featuring the Machiavellian Davy Jones who shows up to tell Jack Sparrow his time is up. There are plenty of ghoulies in this movie like in the first, only more so, and I wouldn't really recommend this movie for children. It is too dark, despite its humor, sight gags, and yet another enjoyable performance by Johnny Depp.

However even Depps swagger, humor, and wonderful facial expressions can not entirely lighten the mood of this movie, which at junctures turns into something of an allegory about how Sparrow has no moral compass, and needs to grow a conscience. There are also some hilarious reflections on life and death by two members of Sparrow's crew, with the one eyed man being something of a philosopher. This is only just a little more surprising than the portrayal of Davy Jones as a maniacal organist.

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley both reprise their roles admirably and well, but in the end the movie stands or falls with Depp, and we really needed more in depth Depp in this movie than we got. Then too, even for an action film, there was too many totally impossible actions scenes for one to willingly suspend one's disbelief in every case. Something should have been learned from the overkill of this sort of stuff in the King Kong remake. Hopefully there are still some better summer movies than this yet in store, but this one has enough redeeming features to make it worth watching. Part three which has already been filmed (made at the same time as part 2), will hopefully put the fun and swash back in the buckle of this series of films.

Reflections on Growing Old

The following are comments by men and women over 50 on their creeping decrepitude. As my English Prof at Carolina once said--- 'there are days after 40 when you realize your body is your mortal enemy.'

The nice thing about growing senility is you can hide your own Easter eggs, and you can also pray the senility prayer---

'Lord grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.'

'My memory's not as sharp as it used to be. Also my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.'

'Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get up again.'

'Don't think of it as hot flashes, think of it as your inner child playing with matches.'

'Its scary when your stomnach starts making the same noises as your coffee maker.'

'The elderly widow was approached by the undertaker with the question: 'How old was your husband when he died?' She replied 'He was 98, two years older than me.' She then paused and added :' Its hardly worth my going home now is it?'

The elderly gentleman said--- 'I have had bypass surgery, am largely deaf, and have both prostate issues and old age diabetes, and take about 40 different medicines that give me dizzy spells, but thank God I still have my driver's license!'

'These days about half the stuff in my grocery cart says 'For fast relief.'

An elderly widower asked the preacher to arrange to have him be cremated when he died, and have his ashes scattered over Walmart. When the preacher asked why the reply was 'This way I know my offspring will visit me twice a week.'

A news reporter interviewed an 104 year old lady about what was the best thing about being 104. Her reply was 'There's no peer pressure.'

The Guy's Rules

I pass these along as they are from a Canadian friend who gave them to me. These are the things some men wish women knew, but usually are too cowardly to tell them. Please note that these are numbered and placed in a certain order on purpose. Please also note that I don't necessarily agree with them all.

1) Men are not mind readers.

2) Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If its up, put it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down though we need it up usually.

3) Watching sports on Sunday after church. Its like the full moon or the changing tides. Its inevitable--- let it be.

4)Shopping is not a sport, and no we will never think of it that way. And please stop telling us how much you saved by buying something.

5) Crying is emotional blackmail. Yes, we know it works sometimes.

6) Subtle hints do not work for most of us. Strong hints don't usually work. |Just tell us what you want, and assume we are thick as a post.

7) Yes and no are perfectly acceptable answers to most questions. We are not being coy.

8)Come to us with a problem if you want help solving it. If you only want sympathy, that's what your girlfriends are for.

9) A headache that lasts for 10 months is a problem. See a doctor.

10) Anything a guy said in an argument 10 months ago is inadmissable in a current argument. In fact all comments become null and void after seven days. They have a shelf life.

11) If you think you're fat, please do not ask us our opinion. There are no right answers to such a question.

12) If something we've said can be interpreted in two ways, and one of them makes you mad or sad, then of course we meant it the other way.

13) You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done, not both. If you already know the best way to do it, then perhaps you should do it yourself.

14) Whenever possible, if you have something important to say during a sports match or movie on the TV, please wait until the commercials.

15) Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

16) If it itches it will be scratched. Men do that--- yes even in public.


17) All men see in only 16 colors, like a Windows default setting. Peach for example is a fruit, not a color. We have no idea what mauve is. Also, men only smell certain things-- things like hamburgers cooking.

18) If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you'd rather not hear.

19) You have enough shoes and too many clothes.

20) If we ask what's wrong and you say 'nothing' we will assume you are telling the truth. Don't be shocked if we don't ask again in five minutes.

21)I am in shape. Round is a shape!

More of Omar's Story

Last summer my older cousin Ali was able to come in from Ohio to be at our wedding. I think it was really good for my dad to have someone from back home who was able to be there, and he filled in as my grandmother’s escort, sitting with her on the front row.

Ali was forced to serve in the Iraqi Army in the first Gulf War. Other cousins were also conscripted, stationed on the front lines and in Kuwait City. Some of them were rounded up in the mass-surrenders after the ground war began, and they all made it home. But Ali had a different story. He was a field surgeon on the front lines with the Republican Guard. Sadaam thought that if he placed the medical units close enough to the rest of the soldiers then the Americans wouldn’t bomb and shell them. He was wrong.

Somehow the Iraqis knew when the American ground troops would be coming over the dunes, and so they were given a five-day pass to go home to Baghdad and say their goodbyes. Ali knew it would be a meat-grinder, and he knew that under Sadaam desertion meant death and trouble for your family. So while he was in Baghdad he had another surgeon friend take out his perfectly good appendix. While he was in the hospital, his entire unit was annihilated.

Around that same time a Marine friend of mine named Nelson had been part of an artillery outfit that was shelling Iraqi positions inside Kuwait. Suddenly an Iraqi artillery shell slammed into the hood of the truck Nelson was standing next to, but it was a dud and didn’t go off. He lived to come home and tell me that story.

Also at our wedding, only four rows back from Ali, was my friend Joe, who is an Army Ranger veteran. On the other side of the isle from Ali was one of my two mother in laws, whose stepbrother was part of the Army forces that moved through the same area of Kuwait where Ali had been. On another pew was my friend Johanna, whose husband has served in Afghanistan and is now training for Special Forces duty in the Middle East.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The best phrase came from a taxi driver in Cairo, right after the invasion of Iraq three years ago, who upon finding out that my brother was half Iraqi and half American said, “Ahhh… is funny. Your country is attacking your country.”


I have often become frustrated when I have heard people in my church make statements like, “Remember who we’re fighting here,” before they lead prayers for our military victory. A professor here once said that the only two choices we have is to either “convert them or keep them from hurting us.”

Well… first of all you can’t fight and win a “war on terror.” Terrorism is a method, not a country or ideology. I once heard it said that fighting a war on terror is like having the flu and declaring a war on sneezing: you’re only attacking the symptoms. As long as there have been people, there has been terrorism.

But what frightens me is the mindset in this country, and in the church, that seems to think terrorism was born and raised in the Middle East, and if we can take out the Muslim Arabs then the world will be a safer place. Put this idea up against the ideas in large parts of the Arab world that America has, in a sense, been a terror herself with her policies toward the Middle East. So you get what we had last week. The cycle continues, and we have “become a monster to defeat a monster.”

So who is the enemy? I believe that on this side of the Cross, according to the Scriptures, that “we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12)

If you track through the entire story of Scripture, you see that while God may have fought battles on Israel’s behalf in the Old Testament, the trajectory was always towards the Cross, which redeemed the Creation intent. Jesus set for us an example of living and witnessing that intent through loving, serving and forgiving our enemies. The way of Christ was not to kill and destory those who had abused and killed Him. But for some reason we still say, “in God we trust” while we drop the bombs (just in case God doesn't come through, I suppose).

Imagine what would have happened if the entire mass community of Christians who prayed so fervently for our troops to “defeat the enemy” would have instead prayed against the real Enemy and for peace between humanity.

So who is the enemy? Well, I have Iraqi Army veteran family and U.S. Army veteran friends. I have been raised by Southern Methodists and Shiite Muslims. I cannot abdicate the gospel message of Christ to a bomb, but can only bear the Cross, the ultimate battlefield victory over the Enemy.

Omar