[+/-] About Hell and Stuff Like That

"I'd been avoiding the subject of hell for some time, living in denial. We gentle Christians often do this. The harsh reality of our theology works against what we discover in real life." - Real Live Preacher

I think I'm starting to believe that there are many ways to heaven. (I think this is called pluralism.) I don't really want to believe this in some ways, but I do. My reasoning is simple:

I do not accept that any person who is earnestly seeking to find God and find truth will ultimately become a Christian. Both from a logical point of view and from my own experiences, I do not believe that the Christian God will make himself known to anyone who really desires truth. I believe that a person of sincerity and humility of any background can end up believing in any number of religions and worldviews. I do not believe that someone who dies as a Muslim or a Atheist or a Buddhist did not become a Christian because of his or her own refusal to accept the "obvious truth" of Christianity.

From my point of view, a Jewish Rabbi who "taught himself Greek just so he could look into this 'New' Testament" (rlp) and ultimately rejects it cannot be condemned for doing so. I cannot believe in a God who would place people in a situation where their earnest quest for truth would end with the wrong conclusions, and then damn them for it. If that is who God is, then I want nothing to do with him. If you can prove to me that that is who my God is, I don't think I could stand to be a Christian any longer. If my only options are to burn in Hell or live forever with a God like that, then it would have been better if I had never been born.

My conclusion is that any sincere, humble, truth-seeking person will ultimately be accepted by God, regardless of what creed they come to profess. This feels ugly and awkward to me, but I see no other possibilities. I think CS Lewis would agree with me, to a point (See The Last Battle and The Great Divorce) but other than that I may be on my own in this view. (What I mean is that besides Lewis I'm not sure who I could appeal to in order to still come across as a good Christian boy, and yet hold this view. Anyway, I don't think Lewis takes this as far as I would.) I'm not sure what my church, my camps, or the other places where I volunteer will think of this. Coupled with my general distaste for evangelism, I guess this means I'm really not an asset to them in accomplishing what is often a major goal - converting people to Christianity. Also they tend to want you to agree with their basic creed or whatever in order to work with them, and usually that includes something like "the only way of salvation is through personal acceptance of the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ on the cross and His consequent resurrection" (from a camp's website). At this point in time I disagree with that statement.

I don't want to sound like I think people shouldn't bother with seeking for truth just as long as they're sincere or nice or whatever. And I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to leading someone to Christianity, or towards Christianity, if I thought it best. (Though I'm never doing this again. (I'm referring to the story in the middle of this post.) By the way, I say "lead to Christianity" not "lead to Christ", because I think that's a very misleading statement. If there's someone out there who can actually lead people to Christ, I'd like to have a talk with them.) I just don't believe that convincing someone to pray a certain prayer or to identify themselves as a Christian is always a positive step.

I'm feeling a sense of loss now. A year and a half ago I was a good young Christian, confident in my beliefs, preaching the gospel to cabin loads of boy and excited about going to Bible School in the fall. Now I'm coming to realize that my "crisis of faith" is maybe more than a blip on the screen, and maybe I'll never be a good Christian again. I do miss that. I wouldn't want to go back, but I miss it. Last summer I really wasn't up to snuff theologically, and I told them so, but they were happy to have me anyway. I don't know why they let asked me to counsel, but I guess they thought I was just going through tough times or something and soon I'd be a good boy again. (After all, I'm a Christian. I've got eternal security. Sooner or later I'll come around.) I'm realizing that some parts of my life are over now. I guess sooner or later some people will get tired of waiting for me to snap out of it and I won't be able to do ministry anymore. It's sad because I don't feel like some kind of spiritual invalid, having needs but unable to help others, but I think sooner or later some people will start seeing me like that. What good is a Christian who doesn't want to convert people, who doesn't think we need to?

[+/-] The Bible Part 2

This is the promised follow-up to my post on the Bible. I intend to discuss some of my assertions in a bit more detail and provide you with what evidence I have to support them, as clearly and concisely as possible. Many of you may not be interested in this, and that's fine. But if you love digging in the Bible, or if you found my last post to be in any way interesting or thought-provoking, you may wish to read this. By the way, I'm not an expert in any of these areas, so I'm likely to be misinformed or wrong or whatever. If any of you can correct me on anything, please do.

But first
Before I really get started, I must explain what I'll call the Culture Clause. This thing is the duct tape of Bible defense. The gist of it is that everything was radically different for the original readers of the Bible. Ethics were different. Language was different. Above all, the expectations about what is academically credible were different. Plus, the original readers of many Biblical books were a very specific group of people - a single man, a church, or a small group of churches. Often the writer had visited and preached to them before. Sometimes he had written them other letters that we don't have. Each letter was written to address a certain issue or issues, the natures of which have been guessed at by scholars, but the nuances of which are lost to us. Because none of us know much about these original recipients - their culture, their personal backgrounds, their expectations - we cannot say which parts of the Bible (if any) really are bunk, and which parts only appear to be bunk because of our ignorance. It is unfair to critique the Bible according to modern standards, but we (or at least I) don't know anything about the standards of it's own day, much less the reasons for writing each book or the background of their original recipients. So we (I) go ahead and critique the Bible by our standards, and then qualify any and all conclusions with the Culture Clause. It applies to everything from ethical problems to bad scholarship to contradictions. Any problem in the Bible that cannot be explained can be excused, and the number one method of doing so is the Culture Clause.

A simple example would be the chronology of John, which is out of synch with the rest of the Gospels. John places Jesus' clearing of the temple near the beginning of his ministry, which totally contradicts the other three accounts. This is problematic to the modern reader because it looks as if the disciples couldn't keep their story straight. Yes, some modern authors do play with chronology using foreshadowing and flashbacks and whatever, but not without making it clear that they are doing so, particularly in non-fiction. If I claimed to give a factual account of someone's life and then changed the order of events I would be called a liar, and the credibility of my testimony would be ruined. However, those who are comparatively knowledgeable about such things tell me that it would be perfectly acceptable in John's day to change the order of events in a "factual" account. Since we must judge John by the standards of his culture, not ours, he's off the hook. This is the Culture Clause in action. The problem is that we - or at least, I - really don't know what all the rules for credibility were in Bible times. So we're stuck just giving them the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things, assuming that the issue is cultural.

And another thing
I want to be clear about my goal in all of this. There's a popular argument that the Bible must be guarded by God because of it's high degree of accuracy. Even after thousands of years of copying, this collection of books is still quite true to the originals, or more accurately, to the earliest available copies. In addition, there are few, if any, verifiable contradictions within the Bible, and (according to Christian sources) the Bible is extremely historically accurate. Add in the dozens of Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus, and the only plausible explanation is that God himself oversaw the writing and preserving of the Bible. It is this argument that I want to challenge. Ok, here we go.

Matthew
Prophecy quoted in the book of Matthew is almost always misquoted - that is, the wording in the NT quotation almost always varies at least slightly from the OT original, as translated by the NIV. I recently examined at all the OT quotations I could find in Matthew for both quotational and contextual accuracy, but I have not looked at most other NT books in any detail, so I cannot comment on them. A standard example of the minor quotational inaccuracy (different wording, but recognizable) which can be found in nearly all the quotes in Matthew is Mt 2:6, which quotes Micah 5:2a (discrepancies in italics):

" 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.' " (Mt)

"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel..." (Mc)

An example of one of the better (more accurate) quotes would be Mt 2:18, which quotes Jeremiah 31:15 (discrepancies in italics):

"A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." (Mt)

"A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more." (Jr)

This quotational inaccuracy is perhaps not so much of an issue as it appears to be, because the OT was originally written in Hebrew, whereas the NT was written in Greek. So either the NT writers were personally translating from Hebrew texts, or (more likely) they were quoting form the Septuagint (LXX). It might be interesting for someone who knows Greek to compare NT quotes in their original Greek to LXX texts and see if they look any more accurate. (Note: I checked Mt 2:6/Mc 5:2, in Greek and it looked equally bad. I can't read Greek, but I could tell that about the same number of words were different.) Actually, my guess would be that the (primarily) uneducated men who wrote the NT weren't all that familiar with the OT in any language. It might be more remarkable that they're as accurate as they are. I remembered that Paul grew up as a Pharisee, so if anyone was likely to quote the OT accurately it would be him. I checked the first 8 chapters of Romans, and at least in these chapters he's quite good. Not letter perfect, but good. If he is equally accurate in the rest of his writings, perhaps he could serve as the standard of good first century scholarship, against which his sloppier co-writers could be measured. The question is, was Paul going beyond the call of duty in being reasonably accurate with his quotations, or was this level of accuracy expected in the 1st century? I don't know. Maybe no one does. (See the Culture Clause.) Anyway, it seems to me that a book which is supposedly inspired and guarded by God so as to be kept from theological error would also be without historical and quotational error.

To restate: it makes sense to me that if I want to determine if the Bible is totally doctrinally sound, which I cannot directly confirm, I should test its accuracy in areas that I can confirm. At least, this is a common argument for apologists (see paragraph 4). It is also fitting with the logic of Luke 16:10-12. If I cannot trust the Bible to be accurate in worldly matters, how can I trust it to be accurate in heavenly ones? So in this case, we have quotations that range from "pretty good" to "highly suspect" on my own subjective scale. (Examples of poorer quotations are coming later.) In regards to the Bible's historical accuracy my personal knowledge is close to nil, but I've been let to believe that the Bible falls somewhere in the "pretty good but not perfect" range. I will make no attempt to analyze various claims regarding the compatibility of any part of the Bible with archeological or extra-Biblical evidence. Christians tell me it's very good, but many secular sources disagree. I don't know who's right, so I will ignore the whole thing. (Though I would suggest that if all you've read on this issue is Lee Strobel, you're not getting a very balanced view.) However, there is at least one concrete example of historical disagreement in the Bible: the famous (to me) Matthew 8 discrepancy, which was alluded to in my previous post.

Two men or one?
In brief, the story (recorded in Mt 8:28-34, Mk 5:1-17, and Lk 8:26-37) has Jesus cast a bunch of demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs. The problem is that Matthew records that there were two demon possessed men, whereas Mark and Luke only mention one. To me this is a clear-cut contradiction. Others have disputed this conclusion, saying that perhaps Mark and Luke's sources didn't see the second man or didn't consider him to be worthy of mention, or something along those lines. I've studied this in reasonable detail, and I could write pages on it, but maybe it would be better if you just contact me if this interests you at all. Now, if we take the Bible as a whole, and recognize that nearly all events it records are impossible to verify with any degree of certainty because of it's antiquity, then wouldn't the easiest type of historical error to spot be a simple numerical contradiction, such as this one? If this is indeed a significant, clean-cut, inexplicable contradiction, doesn't that cast doubt on the rest of the history in the Bible, which we cannot easily verify? (Again, some would dispute the that this is an inexplicable, inexcusable contradiction, but none of their explanations are convincing to me.) If we admit that the Bible contains an unknown degree (but at least some degree) of historical inaccuracy, doesn't that cast doubt on it's theological accuracy? At the very least, it must refute the common claim that the theological inerrancy of the Bible should be accepted because of it's historical accuracy. (Once again, the Culture Clause is the best excuse for this apparent error. I've heard it argued that 1st century Jews would have no problem with this glaring numerical inaccuracy. I can't comprehend how this could possibly be, but I'm not an expert, so I can't say for sure.)

"He will be called a Nazarene"
Perhaps you find the Mt 8 problem unconvincing, or you're not willing to cast doubt on the historical accuracy of the whole Bible simply on the basis of this one inconsistency. In that case, it's time to go back to prophecy. The worst quotation in Matthew (again, I haven't gone through the prophecies in most other NT books in any detail) is probably in Mt 2:23: "He will be called a Nazarene". The NIV does not even footnote a reference for this "prophecy" because no one is sure to which OT passage Matthew is referring! In fact, the study note on this verse says that the "rather obscure town" of Nazareth is "nowhere mentioned in the OT". The best they can do is note that several OT passages predict that the Messiah will be despised (e.g., Ps 22:6 and Is 53:3) and that "in Jesus' day 'Nazarene' was virtually a synonym for 'despised'". That seems pretty weak to me.

"Let all God's angels worship him"
A similarly dubious quotation can be found in Hebrews 1:6: "Let all God's angels worship him". This is a quote of a non-canonical addition to Dt 32:43. Almost no English traslation considers this phrase in it's original context to be canonical. (Not even the normally inclusive KJV. In fact, out of the 17 translations available to me, only the NLT includes this phrase, while admitting that it is found only in the Dead Sea Scrolls and LXX.) What do you do when an "inspired" NT writer disagrees with virtually every Bible traslator in the past 400 years about what is the original, prophetic word of God? I can think of three options.

First option
Assume that the writer of Hebrews considered this phrase to be the word of God was mistaken. This raises a number of interesting questions: Is it possible for a man who is inspired by God (whatever that means) to be mistaken about what God said? If he can be mistaken about which words in a text originated from God, is it possible that he could be mistaken in his own beliefs about what God is saying to him, and thus record incorrect doctrine as "God's word"? Is it possible that the author of Hebrews was not inspired by God? If a NT writer who is believed to be inspired by God could make this kind of error, couldn't the church fathers who established the cannon make a similar error and include or exclude the wrong books? (Well, I guess they did make at least one similar error. See the 5th and 4th last paragraphs of my previous post.)

Second option
Assume that the writer of Hebrews was inspired to see that this phrase was actually the word of God (i.e. should be considered canonical), and the modern Bible scholars who disagree are mistaken. This seems unlikely to me, but I'm sure someone will take this view. Again, this raises several questions: If the best available manuscripts are wrong on this point, isn't it possible - even likely - that they are wrong on many other, far more significant points? If Bible scholars are nearly unanimous on this point, and yet are wrong, doesn't this cast doubt on any other Biblical issue that they agree on?

Thrid option
Bust out the Culture Clause. Assume that the writer of Hebrews was not particularly concerned with whether his quotations of God are accurate. People in first century Israel thought differently than we do. Obviously, they did not judge Biblical texts by modern standards, or they would never have accepted them. So then, as with most apparent errors in the Bible, the question ultimately becomes whether the original readers would have cared. In this case it's impossible to know, because the LXX, from which the writer is presumably quoting does contain the phrase in question. So because the book of Hebrews would have been read by those who also read and accepted the LXX, this would not be an issue for them. For us, the inconsistency between the gospel accounts, the chronological errors in John, the chronically sloppy quotation, and the apparent disagreement about what is canonical would surely be enough to dismiss the Bible as flawed. Would it have been enough for the original readers? I don't know. Maybe you do.

If you choose the 3rd option in this case (probably the best choice if you've predetermined to have as much faith in the Bible as possible) there are still troubling questions to ask. What might it mean if Biblical authors just aren't all that concerned with accuracy? Is it possible that they took their writings less seriously than we do? Is it possible that they would be uncomfortable knowing that we analyze these texts to the most minute degree, studying them our whole lives, living by them, preaching whole sermons on the placement of a single word or the meaning of a single name? (Yes, I've heard it done.) Is it possible that the Bible might be accurate in the big things, but not the little things? Is it possible that we're wasting our time pouring through our Bibles and studying the meanings of Greek words to find out whether women should cover their heads in church or whether social drinking is ok or whether homosexuals can be Christians? I know that's scary, but is it possible? Perhaps the better question would be is there another possibility?

Problems in Jude
You can hardly talk about problematic passages without mentioning Jude. He manages to make two very questionable allusions to non-canonical texts in a letter hardly a page long. The first is to the Testament of Moses (v.9), which was likely written no more than a century before Jude's letter. The second is to the book of Enoch (v. 14-15) which was written about two centuries before. In the latter case he actually quotes from this book as if it were prophesy, and exposes his belief that the 1st century B.C.E. text was written by Enoch himself, the "seventh from Adam", who lived thousands of years earlier. I find my NIV Study Bible's assertion that "Jude's quotation of the book [doesn't] mean that he considered it inspired" to be thoroughly unconvincing in both cases. At the least, this witness to Jesus' resurrection and leader of the 1st century church makes no attempt to distinguish between historical fact and popular myth in what is considered to be an inerrant, inspired text. This is not reassuring to me. If Jude sees no need to distinguish between myth and fact, what about Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? How do we know they're not mixing some myth into their Gospel accounts or the stories of the early church in Acts? Also not reassuring is my Study Bible's assurance that "under the influence of the Spirit, the church came to the conviction that the authority of God stands behind the letter of Jude". It sound to me like they're saying, "We know this letter is inspired, because the inspired church said so." I do not belief that the Holy Spirit necessarily "influenced" the church to pick all the right books. If you do believe that the early church was guided by God to select the right books, then you're welcome to accept Jude as canonical, along with the Apocrypha. If you do not wish accept the Apocrypha, then it seems to me that you must allow for the possibility that the early church included other books they should not have.

Context
Another problem with quotations in the NT is they are often taken completely out of context. We excuse this because of our preconception that the authors were inspired, i.e. guided by God to see prophecies and fulfillments thereof that are invisible to the rest of us. From a quick scan of Matthew, I'd say there's a fairly even distribution of 1) prophecies that seem legitimately Messianic, 2) prophecies that are vague and could go either way, and 3) prophecies that in their original context are either not prophecies or seem to have nothing to do with the Messiah. An example of the third kind would be "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Mt 2:15), quoted from Hosea 11:1. At first glance this phrase does not appear to be a prophesy. Even ignoring the past tense (apparently Hebrew verbs don't have tense) there is no reason to believe that the statement "out of Egypt I called my son" is anything other than a reference to the exodus of Israel thousands of years before. This interpretation is totally confirmed by checking it's immediate context in Hosea. At this point, the good Bible student will say, "But there can be more than one fulfillment to a prophecy." To this I would respond, "True, but there is no reason to think this is a prophecy, in fact, the context suggests the exact opposite." I suspect my hypothetical friend would then say, "Well, Matthew thought it was, and he was inspired by the Holy Spirit." I would then point out that the inspiration of Matthew is precisely what I am questioning, and to appeal to his infallibility is (once again) circular reasoning. I think we allow Biblical authors to get away with murder (so to speak) because we presuppose that they are inspired by God, and therefore cannot be wrong. If we could step outside of Sunday school for a minute, we'd see that there are a lot of problems with these texts.

Based on my scan of Matthew, it seems that a significant percentage of the "prophecies" the NT applies to Jesus give no indication of being messianic prophecy in their original context. Conversely there are clear Messianic prophecies in the OT that are either not fulfilled or incompletely fulfilled by Jesus. These are conveniently excused because of the NT concept of the second coming of Christ, in which he will presumably fulfill the remaining prophecies. I'm sure this is very problematic for Jews who are waiting for the Messiah to come, or who wish to compare Jesus of Nazareth to the Messiah foretold in the OT. I'd like to compare a list of all passages considered to be Messianic prophecy by Christians to a list of those considered to be Messianic prophecy by Orthodox Jews. I suspect they would be significantly different. Anyway, I think it's misleading for Christians to say "Look, Jesus perfectly fulfilled all Messianic prophecies!" because many of the supposed prophecies he fulfilled are not considered to be Messianic by anyone who isn't already convinced that Jesus is the Christ, and many legitimate Messianic prophecies have yet to be fulfilled by Jesus. If any of you know any knowledgeable Orthodox Jews, I would very much like to meet them and learn from them.

Ok, I'm about done
This has been a tough post to write. I really tried to make it as clear and complete and concise as possible. Hopefully I've explained my position adequately. Hopefully I was able to cast a new light on a few things. Hopefully someone's actually read this far. In conclusion, while I agree with apologists who say that examining the Bible's historical accuracy and integrity is a good ways of determining it's theological and doctrinal accuracy, I do not agree with their conclusion that the results of such an examination are favorable. I also do not agree with the logic that says a reasonable level of accuracy in trivial matters suggests flawlessness in more important ones. At the most, if most history and most prophecies and quotations thereof in the Bible are accurate, it would suggest that the ethical, doctrinal and theological teachings in the Bible are mostly true. Of course, the uncertainty resulting from the culture gap casts doubt on all conclusions.

I do not know if there are any other compelling argument for the inerrancy of the Bible. If there are, I've forgotten them. If it interests you, I personally still believe the Bible to be mostly true, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Of course, certainty is not a requirement for faith, in fact, certainty makes faith unnecessary. On the other hand, I think the implications of the above evidence should not be underestimated. (Not completely sure what that means.) Sorry for the absurd length of this post. I'm finished now. I welcome all comments, corrections or opinions.

[+/-] The Bible

In English 101 they teach us how to write idiot proof essays. My teacher says, "The reader is evil and perverse. Anything that can be misunderstood will be." He teaches us how to read sentences by sentences backwards through our paper and make sure that each one makes sense. He teaches us how to check our pronoun references and make sure they're inescapably clear. (Which means you have ridiculous stuff like "Johnny punched Billy, because Johnny was mad at Billy." It's yucky, but it's idiot-proof.) He teaches us (I should probably say "My English teacher teaches us") to make sure that each of our topic sentences clearly relate to our thesis. He teaches us that to give a piece of evidence you need to do three things: introduce the evidence, give the evidence, and then restate how the evidence proves your point (because by this time, your evil and perverse reader has forgotten your original point and is forming his own opinions of what the evidence may mean). He teaches us that any time you quote someone, you must triple check your source to ensure that your quote is absolutely correct, because the slightest quotational error will make you appear sloppy and incompetent, thus tainting the overall credibility of your paper. He teaches us that we should not try to be funny or interesting, because wittiness often comes at the expense of clarity. He teaches us that in writing there are venial sins - spelling and grammatical errors and other such things - and then there is the cardinal sin of unclarity. The former make you look silly, but they are forgivable. The latter damns your paper to literary hell. Paul would have benefited from my English 101 class.

I've read a reasonable number of books in my short life. Some have been boring or poorly written. Some have been confusing, over my head, irritating, trite, or absurd. Some have been translated from other languages. Some have been hundreds or thousands of years old. But I've never read a book as confusing, ambiguous, as open to interpretation, as poorly researched and supported, or as self-contradictory as the Bible.

I'm not saying the Bible was always confusing and academically questionable. I suspect that 1 and 2 Corinthians made a good deal of sense to the Corinthians, that Hebrews was at least marginally decipherable to the Hebrews, and that Titus had very little trouble understanding Titus. I'm even willing to believe that there was the odd Roman who felt he had a reasonable grasp of Romans. The problem, I'm willing to suppose, is not that Paul was on crack, but that it's been 2000 years since he wrote. I am an English speaking Christian in the 21st century, and I am not Corinthian, Hebrew, or Roman, nor (to my great disappointment) is my name Titus. So the problem is probably the culture gap. Rationally speaking, it's unlikely that any of the New Testament authors were mentally imbalanced (though Paul really makes me wonder sometimes) but they did manage to write one crazy, confusing book. Consider:

New Testament interpretations of Old Testament prophesy generally range from suspect to appalling. If we didn't have this preconception that these guys were somehow guided by God himself to see the fulfillments of indecipherable prophetic babble, we would surely laugh them out of town. Many "prophecies" quoted in the New Testament don't appear to be prophesies at all when viewed in context. Nearly all are misquotes (though this is forgivable to a point, because they're already writing in a different language than the original). In a few cases the quotation is so bad we're not exactly sure which Old Testament verse the author had in mind. In at least a couple cases the writer quotes as scripture - even as prophecy - a phrase which no modern translation considers canonical. (This puts us in a sort of a Catch-22 if we want to believe that God kept the Bible error-free even in it's original manuscripts, because even at that point our Bible contains discrepancies.)

Again, the culture gap is a huge problem. First of all, the original recipients necessarily had greatly different expectations and preconceptions. John's flawed chronology was apparently deliberate, and must not have seemed like lying to the original readers. Matthew's little counting error in Mt 8 apparently did not suggest to his readers that he was an unreliable witness. At least some 1st century Jews weren't too suspicious of what looks like constant fudging of messianic prophesies. And then of course there's the assumed knowledge underlying the epistles. These letters were written to specific churches or groups of churches not to lay down the fundamental points of doctrine, but to respond to that specific churches specific needs. Understandably, the content of these letters is often difficult to apply to modern churches. For example, one of the primary themes throughout the Epistles is the tension between Jewish and Gentile believers. Unless you attend a Messianic Jewish church, this is probably not a pressing concern for you. Frequent allusions are made to other letters which no longer exist or to prior verbal teachings, leaving us to speculate about the author's meaning. I see no indication that the Bible was written with any thought to the modern western reader, and I see no indication that God will help the sincere seeker to find "the truth" on any specific doctrine.

A couple months ago I spent a weekend at a conservative Brethren Bible Camp. A number of significant things occurred, not the least of which is that I spent some time reading a booklet on Charismatic stuff. This particular booklet was titled "Someone, Please Cry Wolf", and was written by David Wilkerson. (Yes, "The Cross and the Switchblade" David Wilkerson.) His opinion was that the Charismatic movement - centered, apparently, around the speaking of tongues - is a terrible Satanic attack on the church. It really frustrated me. I mean, I'm not Charismatic by any stretch, but Mr. Wilkerson's position - that the Charismatic movement is the greatest Satanic deception of our time - seems absurd to me. The only problem is that his views are supportable by scripture. Seriously, I looked it up. I can't remember all of it now, but I remember that some of it was a bit silly and out of context (out of context... Where have I heard that before?) but the majority seemed to be valid Biblical interpretation. On the other hand, I've heard Charismatic slants on some of the same verses that support opposite conclusions.

This is true for a wide range of issues. I can prove to you from the Bible that women should be totally submissive to men and not participate audibly in Church. I can also prove to you from the Bible that we should abolish all gender differences and allow women to be pastors. This bothers me. There's something troublesome to me about a book which can be taken to say that homosexuals are hated by God and doom nations to his wrath (here), or that homosexuality is not a sin (here). It's fashionable in my circles to focus on the love in the Bible. God is love. We are called to love. It's all about the love. Anything in the Bible that contradicts this preconception is either spun or shrugged off. (Conveniently, the God of Hatred and Wrath appears mostly in the "Old" Testament.) We downplay any rules or commandments as well as anything derogatory or condemning, and focus on tolerance and compassion. But sadly, I can't honestly claim that all who disagree with me are distorters of the Scripture (any more than I). They simply have different, yet comparatively valid interpretations of the Bible, influenced by their own preconceptions. The Bible is a very difficult book to try to live by, because it was never intended for that purpose. It's not a manual. It's got some teachings in there about how to live your life, but these teachings are generally cryptic, insufficient, contradictory, and/or addressing issues that are no longer relevant.

Furthermore, I'm not sure that I trust the Bible to have ever been "inspired by God" (meaning without errors), nor am I convinced that the Book I call the Bible contains all the stuff it should and none of the stuff it shouldn't. The cannon of Scripture was established hundreds of years after the alleged authors penned their original manuscripts. Even if we presuppose that the authors of our Bible were guided by God to write only what was doctrinally true (I don't know of any good way of verifying this theory, except to examine their historical accuracy and internal agreement, which in my opinion yields unsatisfactory results) I don't see any reason why we should assume that Augustine and friends were guided by God to include and exclude exactly what they should. It seems clear to me that God is not particularly interested in preserving these books in their original form, or in presenting any kind of clear and unified doctrine. So why should we assume that he guided these men to pick the right books?


Actually, in addition to our Bible, these men of dubious scholarship included the Apocrypha, which was officially considered to be the inspired word of God for the majority of Church history (300s-1500s). Either they were mistaken about what is scripture or we are, so don't try to tell me that God wouldn't allow "His Word" to contain large-scale errors. And anyway, the majority of humans who have ever lived never saw a Bible - with or without the Apocrypha. So why must we be the fortunate ones who get God's truth in a neat little package? Don't talk to me about what God would or wouldn't allow. We live in a free and peaceful nation - most of us have never known hunger or seen war. In this we are among the most fortunate people who have ever lived, and thus we have all kinds of irrational ideas about what God would and wouldn't allow. We figure he'd never let us die of hunger, or be enslaved or raped or tortured or wiped out by a plague or a nuke or a genocidal regime. Every one of these things have happened to people - Christian and non - in the past. Most are happening somewhere in the world as you read this, and will continue to happen for as long as this world lasts. More significantly (to the topic at hand) God allowed unknown generations of "Old Testament" Jews to live and die under the law, not to mention the rest of humanity at the time, who had no opportunity to even hear of the "one true god". For hundreds of years Europe was controlled by a corrupt Church hierarchy which oppressed the common people and twisted and manipulated Christianity to achieve wealth and power. The common people of this era were unable to read the Bible and mixed Christianity with superstition, and the rest of the world knew nothing of Jesus. Even today, various cults and spin-off religions add or subtract from the popular cannon of scripture, and thus millions are prevented from reading the Bible as we know it. (Not to mention that the majority of Western Christians will never read their Bible cover to cover, and few if any of our churches dare look honestly at every part of the Bible.) Throughout the world today many will never heard the name "Jesus", and billions of those who have know Christianity only as the driving force behind imperialism, materialism, oppression or immorality. The Jesus the world sees is tall and white, though more often the icon of Christianity is the Pope, a televangelist, or George W Bush. So tell me again why I must believe that my Bible is without significant theological errors.

There you go. That's my best attempt to (briefly) rip to sheds the credibility of the Bible. Why have I done this? A few reasons. First of all, this is the way my mind naturally works. I am suspicious of everything, and I can't accept the Bible without putting it to the test, nor can I shrug off what I find. It's important to mention that I am no scholar. (Well, I may technically be a scholar, depending on your definition.) As usual, my assertions are based on insufficient research and tainted by my own prejudices. I do not wish anything in this blog to be understood as "fact", but rather as my own opinions and beliefs.

So why would I, as a professing Christian who desires to mature in my knowledge and practice of Christ's teachings bring such accusations against the "Word of God"? Part of it is that I have a feeling most Christians have an dangerously inaccurate understanding of the credibility of their beliefs. The idea that Christianity is irrefutably true, and anyone who does not come to this conclusion is deceiving themselves seems to me to be totally without basis, and I suspect that most who hold this view simply haven't been exposed to good arguments against Christianity. (It would be presumptuous for me to think that I can personally reverse this, or that I am capable of presenting the most clear and compelling arguments against the Bible, but I can do my part.) I believe that many Christians feel threatened when their faith is persuasively questioned (as I once did) and I kind of hope we can get over that. There are problems with Christianity, and I believe that if we're going to be honest, we need to look them in the eye.

The other reason I do this is that I want to see if anyone can correct some of my beliefs, or at least, open my eyes to an alternative view. As I said, my research in these areas is pretty shallow, by some measures, and I don't doubt that some of you who have studied deeper have reached more accurate conclusions. And as a cynical person I am biased against this stuff, and I hope that your own biases, if shared, may enrich my thought. Think of me, if you wish, as Glaucon defending injustice to Socrates - not because he believed what he was saying, but because he wanted to hear Socrates defend justice in the most compelling way possible. (I'm sorry for my snobbish allusion to Plato. In my defense, I'm currently writing a paper on Plato's Retreat, so everything I think of reminds me of something from the book.) Ok, I'm quite done now. I welcome your comments.

[+/-] I Am a Hypocrite

Please watch this.
God damn it, children are slaughtered in our world, and we don't care. Genocide is carried out in our world. We don't care. It's true what they say in this trailer: "If people see this they say 'Oh my God, that's horrible.' Then they go on eating their dinners." That is what we do. That is what I do. I'm coming to a whole new understanding of the word hypocrite. How can I call myself a follower of Jesus Christ and not do something about this? I don't deserve to say the name of Jesus, I don't deserve to live, if I do not do something about this. People are dying, and I am consuming. That must change. Jesus Christ, I beg you, change me.

[+/-] Seeking the God of Jacob

Some days I struggle heroically against the phrase "relationship with God". Other days I give up and go with it. Today is a day of the latter sort. I tell you this because I'm about to talk about my (ug) relationship with God, and I feel the need to apologize for this crime.

The thing about my relationship with God is that it's so different from any other relationship, because God is so incredibly different from anyone else with whom I relate. First of all - as anyone who reads this blog regularly should have drilled into their head by now - God has absolutely the world's worst communication skills. Which is my bitter, sarcastic way of saying he is silent and detatched. He doesn't tell me what he thinks, or how he feels, or what I'm doing wrong, or why he does what he does, or anything at all. In terms of two way communication, my relationship with God is on the same level as my relationship with William Shakespeare. At least with Will I have the excuse that he died before I was born. Which raises an interesting question... but I'll come back to that.

The second - perhaps the most significant - way in which my relationship with God is different is that He is God. Holy dang, that's crazy. I'm seeking (if indeed I am seeking) a relationship with God. The Lord. The one whose name is spelled in small caps in my Bible, the one whose personal pronouns are capitalized, the one who speaks in red ink. Get what I'm saying here?
These two points together make this relationship totally impossible. There is nothing I or any creature that ever lived can do to have a relationship with God if he is not willing to communicate. For this reason, several months ago I promised myself that I would stop seeking a relationship with God.

That's my mind speaking. I have a good mind - a mind that calculates and reasons and works things through. But I also have a heart - a heart that longs and yearns and desires. And for this reason, several days ago I broke my promise. I sought God.

I'm sorry, I need to interject here. I need to apologize, because as I write this I'm thinking about how to make it sound good, and how to convince you of stuff, and how I can maybe move you. This is my constant struggle - to know when to turn off writerman and just be as real as I possibly can. I don't want to manipulate you now, or push on you some kind of impression of God or myself. I hate that I feel sometimes like I'm taking God to court, and you're my jury. Like if I can convince you that God has wronged me somehow, he'll have to give me what I want. This is sick, but I can never totally overcome it. But I want to do my best here. I write this for myself as much as for you, to remind myself to keep my focus.

The other night my heart was longing for an encounter with God, and my head, which says this is stupid and counterproductive, conceded. And I cried out to God. I longed for him. I begged him to draw near to me. It makes me think of my favorite worship song, "Give us clean hands". It goes like this:

We bow our hearts, we bend our knees
O Spirit come make us humble
We turn our eyes from evil things
O Lord we cast down our idols

Give us clean hands give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another

O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob
O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob

This song is so powerful to me because it talks at the beginning about us doing the worshipy stuff - preparing our hearts and our bodies and turning our thoughts toward God. But then most of the song is this desperate plea for God to help us worship him. It acknowledges that we need God to help and guide and strengthen us, making us humble, washing our hands and our hearts, giving us the dedication and the strength to seek Him, and Him alone. This song rocks me. (Ya, and it's cool that it says "God of Jacob". Kind of personalizes it. Except of course that my real name isn't Jacob.)

So the other night I bowed my heart and bent my knees and begged God to draw near to me. I tried to come not on my own merit - my own humility or goodness - but with only a desperate need to encounter God, trusting him to do what I cannot to reconcile us. Shit, I hate that I'm writing this. Whatever I say, it's either bragging or whining or manipulating. It's selfish, because I don't know how it will affect some who will read it. (If any of this bothers you, I hope you'll talk to me about it, or to someone you trust.) And I feel like I should stop talking about this stuff, because my whole blog seems to be harping on this subject, and every attempt to get away from it has failed. Ok, let me try this again:

I'm discouraged and confused, because I really want to believe that there is a God who loves me and is near me. As much as I talk about being in a God-forsaken world, I can't just accept this analysis. I don't know if this is God's gift to me or if it's my greatest weakness, but I cannot truly forsake this hope that someday - even today - God will make himself known to me. (Please don't talk to me about heaven. I know about heaven, but it does me no good here and now. Unless you think I should kill myself.) I cannot forsake this hope, but neither can I embrace it. I live in limbo between hope and apostasy. Every now and then, the hope wins out and I fling myself at Gods feet again, trusting him, begging him once more. But with no result. And this is where I get depressed. The familiar hopeless fury hit me yesterday. But I decided I didn't want to do this phase in my cycle. I need to feel like I'm making progress somewhere.

I think about the people who will read this. I suppose that's you. There are two camps on this God-seeking issue: there are those that tell me to go for it, keep seeking, don't give up, and then there are those that say this is hopeless, a waste of my time and energy, and will only ever drag me down. I've tried to believe both, at one time or another, but I can never make it stick. As long as God turns me down, I will never be able to fully believe that he wants a relationship with me, and as long as I have this desire, I will never be able to fully believe that he will not fulfill it.

You know what drives me crazy? I've told you before, but it's gnawing at me, so I'll tell you again. What really drives me crazy is that it's my fault. Why is Jacob angry with God? Because he is imperfect. If I feel wronged by God, it's my fault. I want so badly to scream at Him, to tear a strip off God for this shit he puts me through, but I can't. I can't. Every time I try, the words die in my throat. I can never bring myself to really yell at God because I know that he is by definition good and just and loving, and everything he does to me is for my own good, and if there's anything that's truly wrong between us, it's my fault. Which leaves me with this maddening rage that I cannot release. And anyway, how can I be angry with someone who may not exist? The other thing is that whatever my problem is, he know it. He knows what prevents me from either having the relationship with him that I desire, or from killing that desire. He knows, but he won't tell me. He won't even tell those people he apparently speaks to, so that they can tell me. See, this is the part where I want to say "God is a jerk and I hate him", but I can't.

I think I've given up all hope of making this into a coherent, focused entry. But that's ok. I'll just keep jumping around. Next point: I'm trying to finally think through what it is I want from God. What am I actually asking when I pray that he would "meet with me", or a thousand other phrases? If I say I'm seeking a real relationship with God, what do I mean? I think what I'm looking for is an interaction - a divine parallel to the kinds of things that my friends do for me. Things like talking with me, showing that they're interested in me by looking into my eyes, showing their delight in me by smiling at me, or giving me a physical sense of their nearness by touching me. I think I want something like this with God. But as always, my desire is more complicated then that. I think part of it is just wanting assurance that I'm right to believe that God exists. Not that it would allow me to go out and convince people of his existence (I'm not really into that) but it would be nice to know for myself that there is a God out there who knows me and loves me and hears me. And then I think there's part of me that just wants a cool experience - something like being knocked to the floor, or seeing a flame above my head, or feeling some kind of crazy sensation. I don't do drugs, but I want to get high on something, so I go to God and ask him to give me a fix - to stimulate my senses in some amazing way.

Again, I don't know if it's right or profitable for me to seek this - that why it ruins me to think about it. Whether I'm feeding or fighting this urge I feel guilty, as if both are somehow shameful or wrong. There's no rest from this struggle. It's an ache that won't go away. I'm trying to remember how I was doing a few days ago, before this happened. Was I happy then? Was I doing the things God wants me too? Maybe. I think I though I was, for the most part. I can't remember. I can never remember emotions.

Where do I go from here? I really don't want to fall back into darkness, like I was in the summer. I don't want to be depressed again. But what can I do? I can't not care about this, and I can't do anything about it. What's the point of fighting the depression? I'll only be fooling myself, drugging myself, pretending to myself that it's all ok.

I hate this kind of existence. I hate always wondering if I'm lying to myself. I hate never knowing when I'm real. I hate this nagging suspicion that I've never been real.

God, if you exist, deliver me from this.

[+/-] Prayer and the Art of Midterm Writing

"Why did you choose to love a God? I think you'll find the romance... one-sided."

I threw that quote in because I liked it when I first heard it, but I couldn't find it until now. It's from the movie Troy. And now on a completely different note:

I wrote a Philosophy midterm recently - an in-class essay. we've been reading through Plato's Republic, so the assignment was to write about one of the theories presented so far. He gave us the list of topics a week before the test. I started thinking about it at maybe 10 or 11 the night before. I soon realized that I knew nothing about most of the subject options, because of course I am way behind on my reading. So I decided that I would tackle Glaucon's theory of the nature of justice, because that's right near the start of the book. Then I realized that I had no idea how to defend or attack this theory.

It was late in the evening and I was sitting on my bed feeling stupid and worthless, trying to find something in Glaucon's argument that could be disagreed with. Soon I started thinking about how I'd gotten 42% on my Political Science midterm last week (to this day I don't know why, though I plan to talk to my prof about it) and how I was probably just really dumb or something, and how I'd flunk out of College and have to work on an assembly line at the dessert factory for the rest of my life. I wasn't actually thinking all of that, but I was feeling pretty bad about the whole thing. So I did something I usually try to avoid doing. I prayed. I prayed that God would grant me some kind of incredible philosophical knowledge so that I'd be able to find something to say about friggen Glaucon and his theory and that I'd get a good mark on my exam. I really try not to pray for marks in school, because it feels like I'm turning God into a vending machine, but in times like this I have no other choice. So I prayed. Then I went to bed.

In the morning I got up and started thinking about Glaucon. Within about 10 minutes of mulling I had my argument. It was all so simple. I don't know why I couldn't get it last night. In fact, I really don't know why Plato didn't think of this. (Probably because there's some glaring logical flaw I can't see.) I went to school and wrote my paper and I felt good about it. I got it back today and he gave me a 90 for it. So that's cool. (I mean, he didn't say "Holy shit, you've solved one of the great philosophical problems that has plagued philosophers for the last 2000 years!" but I got a good mark.) Which leave me with one problem: I think God may have just answered a prayer. I mean, it's like just about any answered prayer in that it seemed kind of silly and obvious once I saw it, and there's maybe even odds that I just thought it through on my own, but I did come humbly before God and ask him to help me out. So I think I might be stuck with an answered prayer. At least, I should probably give Him the benefit of the doubt.

God is so confusing - did you notice that? Maybe this is supposed to be a faith building thing, so that I'll realize that God can and will do this one really huge thing that I'm asking him. Maybe it's an encouragement that I'm not stupid at school. Maybe it's just a random answer to prayer for no reason I'll ever know. Or maybe I'm a smart boy and I figured it all out by myself, and God had nothing to do with it.

I'm reading Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire again, because I'm thinking about prayer. It's so weird. First of all, Jim Cymbala sounds a bit conservative to me now, and it's weird to think that God's working powerfully through his ministry. But more significantly, he prays and stuff happens. Bi-ZARRE. I can just hear my Bible School teachers: "there are two viewpoints on this book: descriptive and prescriptive. Scholars are divided over whether this is meant to be a model for our churches here and now, or whether it's simply the way God related to a certain group long ago in a land far away."

People tell me to test God out on this prayer thing. They tell me I should find something and pray about it and believe it will happen, and God will come through. Which sounds like spiritual suicide, but I've decided to do it. I've found something that I care about and I've decided to pray hardcore that it will happen and try my best to believe. This is scary because of the huge risk involved. I guess I'm betting the farm on this one - if it doesn't work out my faith will probably be crushed. But as some guy named Arthur C. Clark once said: A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

[+/-] Batter My Heart

I found this poem the other day. I love it. I think it expresses beautifully the way I often feel about my relationship with God.

Holy Sonnets: XIV

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

- John Donne

[+/-] A Prayer

This is a bit of a departure for me, but I just wanted to share a quick thought with you. This morning I was singing an old chorus to myself and I suddenly heard the worlds differently than I ever had before (I think because I still have that stuff from Matthew 25 fermenting in my mind). The song was Open Our Eyes Lord, and it's my prayer for today.

Open our eyes, Lord
We want to see Jesus,
To reach out and touch Him,
And say that we love Him.
Open our ears, Lord
And help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord
We want to see Jesus

I sang that song through a few times, thinking about each line in the light of Jesus' statement that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." What might it mean for God to open my eyes and let me see Jesus? How I could reach out and touch him, or say that I love him? How I could listen to Jesus? I guess I'm taking an almost transubstantiational view of service. It's a little more mystical than I like to be, but it's beautiful.

[+/-] Love

I watched Fahrenheit 9-11 the other day. It was kind of frustrating. I'm not a big fan of George Bush, but it's clear that Michael Moore has no interest in presenting an unbiased story. Basically, he's just the left-wing propaganda alternative to all the right-wing propaganda out there. It's irritating because I think there's some important information in there, like the election scam and the Iraq/WMD scam, but it's all sensationalized into near-obscurity. It seems that Moore's primary goal is not to expose conspiracy and injustice, but to make Bush look like a buffoon. It's not about being the voice of justice or compassion or whatever, it's about providing a flavor of closed-minded, wild-eyed, slogan-shouting dogma for those with liberal tastes. It's about fighting propaganda with propaganda.

That being said, the movie did have some compelling content. The part that really struck me was a clip of a distraught Iraqi woman outside her demolished home, weeping and crying out to Allah to avenge her. I found myself agreeing with her - hating these people and these powers and this hypocritical, superficially compassionate culture we live in that commits such injustices, and hoping that God will hear her prayers and kick someone's ass.

Remember, O LORD , what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!" O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us - he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

(ten points to anyone who spotted the inconsistency in me wishing God will pour out wrath on "Edom" in this case.)

We recently had a civic election. I've always thought civic elections are the dumbest of all elections, because no one really knows who has what opinion on what issue, and the issues themselves really don't matter. I didn't pay much attention, but I'm pretty sure one of the top issues for most of the city council candidates in my ward was sidewalks. "Vote for Bob, he'll fix your sidewalk." This strikes me as stupid. We're also supposed to vote for school-board trustees, but I didn't know the name of a single person who was running until I read the official list a half-hour before going to vote. (There were only two candidates. I voted for the guy, because my mom knew him once, and she said he was nice.) Even the mayoral election is a bit of a joke. It seems like half the atricles I read in the paper were about who's signs were better, or who's wife throws better parties, or whether so-and-so should have been a bit more diplomatic about a certain issue. My voting it's self is largely based on appearances. What's-his-name is well dressed. This guy's too cocky. That guy's got a dumb slogan. If anyone hasn't figured this out yet, elections are popularity contests. We talk about freedom and democracy but we really care mostly about being impressed, flattered, or entertained.

The day after the election I was walking downtown and came across a news crew who were asking people what they thought of the election. I wanted to tell them that I thought it was a joke because we are so uninformed, that I thought it was hypocritical, because we really only care about a person's appearance and charisma and the design of their yard signs, that I thought it was overblown, because the issues are sidewalk cracks and potholes, that I thought it was shameful because we care more about whether we cheered for the winning guy in our little contest than famine and genocide and injustice throughout the world.

I read an article on Michael Moore a while ago in which he said that politics has become popular (in the States). Everyone has an opinion now, and it's uncool to be politically apathetic. This can be good, but what we seem to have now is a lot of people with uninformed opinions, which is quite dangerous. What I see happening is basically politics as a sport. Pick a guy and cheer for him. Be passionate and dogmatic about it. Believe that the opposing candidates are evil. Perhaps it's uncool not to vote, but it's still not uncool to be uninformed. It's funny how much I can form passionate opinions based on a half-hour discussion with a friend about who's doing a better PR job. It's funny how my feeling that I should care about politics can turn me into some kind of zealot, and it hardly matters for what or for whom. Pick a team. Because I live in Alberta, I cheer for the Conservatives. Liberals are scum. If I lived in Ontario, it is likely that I would be a Liberal fan. If I was a French Quebecer, I would almost certainly support the Bloc. And it's not just politics - we do this in all kinds of areas. I figure it's cool to be pro-peace, socialist, anti-America, Christian, religiously tolerant... and an Oilers fan. But I've said all this before.

I've decided to sponsor a child through Compassion Canada. Some people think you should keep this type of thing secret - don't let your right hand know what you're left is doing-type thing - but I figured "what the hell, you guys already know most of what I do - good and bad." I've decided to sponsor a child because I am filthy rich, and people are living in squalor. I'm going to put at least $35 a month of my money where my mouth is, because it doesn't matter that I feel bad for people if I don't help them. You might say I'm "buying a pennyworth of paradise", but it's a start. Quick Bible story, from the Jacob Heretical Version.

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' "They also will answer, 'Ok Lord, let's skip the "when did we see you hungry and so forth and did not help you?" bit because we just went through that with the other group, and the dilalogue will seem a lot more realistic if we don't all repeat each other. (Seriously God, fire your editor.) But let us say in our defense, God, that we really did care when we saw those street people, and when we heard about disasters and famines and war on the TV. We really cared God, we felt just awful about it, and we meant to do something about it. You know, we talked to our friends about it. We wrote about it in our blogs. God, we hated multi-national corporations with the best of them. We just never got to the... you know... the feeding and the sheltering and the clothing and the visiting.' He will reply, 'To be fair then, I should think about letting you into heaven.'

I think this is a bit of a "problem passage" (free translation notwithstanding). Seems pretty clear that those who don't show love to other people will burn in Hell. (As a point of interest, can anyone refute this interpretation?) The Bible's pretty clear that Love is something you do, not something you feel. The following verses on the importance of love (from a more widely accepted translation.)

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love... he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth.

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

Love is not a feeling; it is a decision. It is not simply action, (1 Cor 13) but it requires action. Love is an attitude that is acted on. Love is a process. Love is not about trying to like everyone, in fact, love is greatest when it is directed toward those we really don't like. ("Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven... If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?")

This whole post seems a bit disjointed to me. I'm not sure how to tie it all together. I guess the gist of it is that I'm thinking that our western culture is hugely hypocritical. We like to think that we care about justice and freedom and equal opportunity, but we don't. We care about ourselves - our comfort, our convenience and our wealth. I'm still working this through, and if it I'm speaking in generalities, it's because I'm still uninformed about what's happening in our world. I want to become informed about injustice and inequality, but more than that I want to do something about it. I want to love.

[+/-] Faith

For those who are keeping track, the new best thing ever is reallivepreacher.com. Big thanks to my good friend Søren for hooking me up. Seriously, if you're ever looking to read a good blog, you gotta check out the preacher. This guy is pure, raw awesome. (If you do read it, read in chronological order, starting with the very first post. It will take you a long time, but if you're serious about reading a blog, this is the only way to do it.)

Talked to an elder from my church the other day about the whole idea of giving away huge amounts of money and trusting God to provide when I need him to. He asked me what exactly I expected God to do. I said I wasn't expecting anything specifically, just that he would keep me fed and clothed and pay my tuition, at the least. Sure, God might provide money in miraculous ways, or somehow give me back twice what I gave, or show me how he used my money to do wonderful things and advance his kingdom. Any of these things would be cool, but at the least, I would expect God to meet my physical needs and pay for school. He asked how I'd feel if God didn't meet these requirements. It hadn't occurred to me. I had thought about the possibility of God "failing" me - breaking my trust and leaving me destitute - but I hadn't considered that such a result might conceivably be the divine plan of an active and involved God. At this moment I realized that God allowing me to give recklessly and then suffer for it would not necessarily mean that he wasn't watching over me, just that he chooses not to intervene in my life.

More and more I'm realizing that there is nothing I can do to force God to act visibly in my life. He cannot be bribed, tricked, goaded, coerced, bought, threatened, taunted or bought. He is not a vending machine. He is not a businessman. He is not a trader or a philanthropist or a rich uncle. God does not make deals. He needs nothing. He wants nothing, except my obedience. God is sovereign and supreme. He is eternal, immortal, invisible. He understands me perfectly, even when I don't understand myself. I am his possession, to do with as he pleases, and he is my lord and master, acknowledged or not, immovable and unquestionable. He is God.

I heard a Pentecostal preacher once who said that he really didn't have any proof for the existence of the God of the Bible, except that his promises can be tested and found to be true. This was surprizing in its self, because I figured a charismatic big-wig would have had his share of supernatural experiences. If I were to ask a Pentecostal preacher why I should believe in God, I would expect to hear about signs and wonders and how he can feel the Holy Spirit moving and stuff like that. But this guy apparently wasn't like that. (I'm not saying that no-one has real spirit-experiences, just that this guy seemingly hadn't. I liked him - he reminded me of me, only he was older and smarter and a better speaker.) This guy says if you want proof that God is active in our world, test his promises. The specific promise he was focusing on that night was the tithing promise in Malachi 3:10-12.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.

Unfortunately, Pentecostal Preacher didn't really explain why he thought this promise still applied to us, new-covenant North American Gentiles 2400 years later. I mean, maybe it does apply, sort of, in some watered down form, but I don't think it has to. And from what I've seen, God doesn't always pour out material blessings on those who tithe. I'm not even sure if God would look after your most basic needs if you tithe. If a starving beggar-boy in a third world country gives away a penny out of every dime he makes, will God keep him from dying? I don't know, I haven't tested this, but I doubt it. The problem with these promise-claimer people is that they'll take any promise or blessing anywhere to anyone and claim it for themselves, ignoring both scriptural and cultural context as well as any restrictions and concurrent curses or punishments. I'd like to study the promises in the Bible some day and make a list of exactly what is promised that probably applies to me today. Here's a few off the top of my head.

1. "I am with you always." I'm sure this is true, but it's not very tangible, and it's definitely not testable.

2. "You will receive power." This is difficult. If we assume that we are still bound to the "great commission", we must also assume that we either have or may receive this "power". Both the context and the Greek word "dunamis" suggest that "power" means tongues and miracles and some kind of supernatural boldness. However, if we believe that we as present-day non-charismatic Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we must assume that "power" does not refer to anything tangible - that is, anything that we might normally call power. Quite a stretch, I think. Another thing: it's not just Acts that places this emphasis on power, the other version of the great commission (Mt 28:18-20) has a similar "power clause", and if you read Mark 16:9-20 as scripture, this version also hinges on the reception of power. So do the sendings out of the disciples in Mt 10/Mk 6/Lk 9, Mk 6 and Lk 10. (There are numerous other references to the vital role of miracle in evangelism that I could give you if you're interested.) You could argue that the calling of Saul in Acts 9 did not promise miraculous power, but it certainly demonstrated it, both in the voice from heaven and the curing of his blindness, and Paul himself did perform many miracles, both for their own sake and for evangelism. If you like searching your Bible, I challenge you to find any call to evangelism by Jesus that is not directly tied to miraculous power. Or find a conversion in Acts which is not explicitly linked to either a miraculous calling or a display of spiritual power. (By my count there are two.) If you can explain to me why I am still called to evangelize without miraculous power, I would be grateful. ("If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice–nor do the churches of God.") This is one of the great Jacobian conundrums.

3. "Ask and it shall be given to you." Uh-oh, this is another tough one. I think there are limitations on this. I think people have made excuses about why this doesn't work out in practice the way it looks in red ink. Right now I'm having a hard time caring. This is another frustration for another day.

4. "I will come back and take you to be with me." Wonderful. Seriously, this is cool. This is why it's worth it to be a Christian. But without in any way limiting the coolness of this promise, allow me to note that is is not testable until it actually happens.

There are probably more of these promises, but that's all I could think of quickly. What I'm trying to get at with all of that is that there really aren't any categorical, testable, claimable promises out there. There are promises that are vaguely comforting but totally non-specific and non-experiential (eg. #1). There are the ones that seem to have been broken, which some conclude must have expired without notice (#2). There are the ones that are seem to be real and exciting and significant but don't live up to our expectations, and to which we must add all kinds of provisoes to excuse (#3). And then of course there are the future promises, which will hopefully be fulfilled in spectacular fashion some day, but do little for day-to-day life (#4). There are no fleeces for us, there are no dares from God, there are no real and testable promises. If anything, the promises of God disillusion and confuse me, particularly those of the 2nd and 3rd category.

The tangible, supernatural expression of God is not to be had - at least, it is not to be dished out on request to people like me. The promises of God are expired, or yet to be fulfilled, or do not deliver what they seem to pledge. What's left? (Please note, I'm not angry about this. I have been in the past, but I'm not now. I'm not saying God is a jerk. I'm not saying I have it rough or it's not fair or God owes me something. I'm not whining, I'm not asking for your sympathy, I'm just saying that this is my life as I see it. Please bear this in mind.) God is silent towards me. You know this. I pray, God is silent. I read, God is silent. I fast, God is silent. This is a fact. You can say that he's speaking and I'm not hearing, but it's all the same. I've put forth my best effort and God has chosen not to respond in a way that I can perceive, therefore he is silent. God's promises are riddles. They are not testable, they are not bankable. God is silent.

Some Christians will tell you that anyone who doesn't believe in God is either deluding themselves or consciously denying what deep down they know is true, presumably so they can continue to live in sin. This is stupid. People who say this, I think, don't listen to non-Christians, they just preach at them. Well, I shouldn't say that. I haven't done a fair test on a representative sample of all those who reject Christ. What I should say is that in my experience, there is no one reason that people to either accept or reject Christ. In fact, there is no compelling reason that all people should believe in Christ. There are no easy answers or easy divisions or easy graphable data. (Well, there is one thing: the vast majority of Christians I talk to say that they are Christians because they feel like they need to be. They didn't like how they were before, or they're afraid of life or death, or they feel like they need to believe in God to be able to function. Not scientific reasons. Not supernatural experiences. Psychological needs. Draw whatever conclusions you like.) What I'm getting at here is that the world doesn't work the way we Christians would like it to. We'd like to have a world in which scientific evidence compelled us to believe the Christian God, a world in which all good and honest truth-seeking people eventually became Christians, and only the deliberately evil and perverse resisted. We try to convince ourselves we live in such a world, but we don't. I'm not saying Christianity is stupid, just that non-Christianity is not stupid. This is a tough thing for some people to accept, but from where I stand, there is no other option. It seems to me that God has carefully and meticulously created my world to appear Godless. He's wiped away all his fingerprints and spread a film of dust across the floor. (I do think intelligent design is the most logical explanation for the existence of this world, but daily life is a different story.) I see very little in the world today that suggests to me that God is active. I've come to believe this is part of God's plan - it could hardly have escaped his notice.

It's funny how really stupid things can affect me sometimes. I try to be a good cynic, but I'm just too emotional, and sometimes the stuff I sneer at breaks through and affects me. So I have a confession to make: the other day I watched part of a direct-to-video animated movie. It wasn't Disney (I'm not that depraved) but it was direct-to-video. It was called Joseph: King of Dreams, and it was done by the Prince of Egypt people. In my defense, it was a Saturday and I had an exam on Monday, so I was in procrastination mode. My diversion radar was searching desperately for a way to put off the inevitable studying. It found a movie. It wasn't very good, but somehow in spite of the mediocre script and the mediocre animation and the mediocre songs, one scene managed to resonate with me. It's the one where Joseph's brothers throw him in a pit, and then decide to sell him as a slave. Joseph is thunderstruck. The slave traders are dragging him away and he's pleading with his brothers, shouting "I'm your brother! I'm your brother!" It struck me that Joseph really got hosed here. And for some reason I saw this guy not as Perfect Joseph from the Bible, this glowing saint in a painting, the man of whom we have no record of sin. I saw him as just a normal guy who was shamed and betrayed and forced into slavery. It's really beyond imagination, that the people closest to him could come to hate hate him so much that they disowned and abused him and sold him to foreign slave-lords for a few petty coins. I was trying to think of a modern equivalent for this - something someone could do to me that would have that kind of impact. The closest I could come is if I were a young woman, and a trusted friend or relative took me away to another city and forced me to become a prostitute. This is powerful stuff. And it made me wonder what was going through Joseph's head as they dragged him to Egypt and sold him as a laborer, or as he was framed and thrown in prison for following God's commandments. He'd had some cool dreams once, but that was long ago. There's no record of God comforting or reassuring him at any time. And I can't say this for sure, but I'd bet that Joseph was pretty mad at God sometimes. I remember reading my picture bible as a child and seeing the picture of Joseph in the dungeon. Scruffy, dirty men brood in the corners, glaring at the hansom young Joseph who kneels saint-like and serene in the center of the cell, praying. I bet this isn't how it looked when Joseph was first thrown in prison. I bet he was very, very angry at God. But we know that at some point Joseph decided to trust God. In the animated movie he sings a corny song that says "You know better than I. You know the way. I've let go the need to know why. For you know better than I." Somehow that resonated with me.

But let me back up. At the beginning of this entry I talked about the possibility of "risking" hugely for God and having great faith that he will provide, and getting burned for it. I think this is very possible, in fact, I think this is the most likely result of trusting God with your physical needs. As I said, God has created this world to appear Godless. So what do I do? I think it would be wise in this world to just live my life and do whatever makes me feel godly. Develop a disciplined devotional life. Become good at writing and good at exhorting, so that I could create a really uplifting and inspirational blog thing that people will read and think was so cool and so honest, so real. I could do this, I think. Probably I could even fool myself, unconsciously writing the script of my life to bring me to some powerful climax of brokenness and faith. I could throw a veil of godliness over my heart and a veil of contentedness over my mind, and only God would know that it was all self-serving and self-deceiving, a prozac lie. Part of me wants this. Part of me wants to find a drug that will help me forget, an alcohol which will wash away the insatiable longing, soothing my mind and whispering that everything is fine now, I am content and fulfilled, and tomorrow does not exist. I hate my life. I cannot truly live, as I count living, and I cannot die until he calls me. In the mean time, what do I do? In an earlier post I spoke about my desire to find a clay that will dull the edge of my hunger. A patch for my God-shaped hole. This sounds scary and wrong, but what else can I do? If your father does not feed you, you must beg and scavenge, swallowing whatever slime or mould you can find to keep you breathing. This is the way of things in our world.

What I'm talking about is what I call survival spirituality. This is something nearly all of us do, I suspect. It's a process of masking and bandaging our disappointments and disillusionments, guarding ourselves against further hurts by risking nothing and covering up for God. We throw excusing clauses on our prayers - "If it be your will" type stuff. We say this not out of a genuine, tried and tested trust in God's judgment, but out of caution, out of a need to provide God with an out. Survival Spirituality is a Jenga game. We trust seldom and trust safely. We analyze the risk of being let down, we search for an easier way, we test the ground carefully - a wiggle, a jiggle. The trusting its self is done breathlessly. We cringe, anticipating a collapse at any time. We cover up for God the way a child covers up for a negligent father. We take on God's responsibilities, we make excuses, we cover our scars and hide our hunger. We thought we understood God once - we thought he had promised us good things, but we paid the price for our naivete. We shrug off this innocent blunder with an uneasy laugh, "Of course, we didn't know better. But what do you expect? This is the way life is in this world, this is how it's always been." If you press us we become defensive of God. "What are you saying? Who are you to tell God what to do? He died for you, he loves you, and he's coming back. He hasn't forgotten us, he just needed to leave us for a while, to let us grow up. We have to be able to face our disappointments and overcome our childish fantasies. You've got to come to God with a rational, grown up faith. You've got to be sensible and reverent. Anyway, he's given us so much. Isn't it a little ungrateful of us to ask for more?" We have excuses for all the confusing promises, we have explanations for the silence and the distance and the pain. "Yes, we're a bit hungry, but hunger can be a good thing. You've got to be hungry to want the bread of life. Some day, we'll be filled. But we live in a fallen world, and what did you expect..." This is how we survive.

I admit I've cast this in a very negative light. Perhaps I'm being selfish or manipulative. Maybe I just need to grow up. But I'm hungry. And honestly, I hate my life. I hate my emptiness and my tepidness. I hate it, I hate it. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. I want to know Christ. I want to know the power. I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. Please, anyone, this is what I desire. I want Christ and power and suffering. Show me Jesus or give me hell.

(I write these posts over a period of several days. I need to tell you that the stuff above about "hunger", about hating my life and wanting to wash away my restless pain with some kind of spiritual drug seems strange to me now. Now, as I write this bracket, I am fairly content and fairly peaceable towards the silent God and my everyday, pallid world. I'm not saying that the longing and the emotion expressed above are lies, only that I do not feel this way all the time. Which is my true self - the contentedness or the restlessness? Which is better? I don't know. Jacob is a strange creature, I haven't yet figured him out.)

I'm always confused when people compare modern-day faith with the faith of Bible characters. To me, there is little similarity. When we talk about "having faith in God", we either mean believing he exists, or we mean... Something weird and nebulous that I don't understand. Something about how God will "always be there for you" or "never let you down" or something comparatively empty and enigmatic. Or sometimes we mean that we think God has "called" us to do something, and we have to have faith that he is in fact calling us, and that whatever happens, if we follow [what we believe to be] his "call", it will work out well. I don't see much in common between this faith and Biblical faith. Biblical faith (with the exception of a few people like Joseph) is of the kind where God saying to Moses "Yo, I'm God. See this burning bush? See my power? Here I'll teach you some tricks, and then I want you to go defy Pharaoh. Don't worry - I'm powerful, and I'm going to use you to bring him down." And then Moses has to have faith - not that God exists, not that God is powerful and active, not that God is calling him, but that God is telling him the truth. Biblical faith is Joshua being visited by an Angel who tells him to do something really stupid, and God will give them victory. All Joshua has to do is believe that God is telling him the truth. Biblical Faith is Abraham believing God's covenant, it's Gideon trusting God with his battle plan, it's prophet after prophet coming before evil kings and speaking the words given to them by God himself. Biblical faith is Peter - who by the way has just seen Jesus feed 5000 men, and who now sees Jesus walking on water, and who has Jesus' personal assurance that he won't sink - stepping out of the boat. Are you following this? Me trying to figure out whether I should give away all my money or become a vegetarian or continue to be a Christian has nothing in common with the faith of most Biblical characters.

But it does have something in common with the faith of Real Live Preacher. This is a snippet from his life story:

Turns out Christianity is an Eastern religion. The earliest Christians were Hebrews. Semites. People of the East. They did not know how to separate mind from body. They were holistic before holistic was cool.

In our world we have separated mind from body to our great loss. Here a man may betray his wife and neglect his children, but say he loves them "down inside."

Bullshit. There is no "down inside." Love is something you do, not something you feel.

Likewise, we think having faith means being convinced God exists in the same way we are convinced a chair exists. People who cannot be completely convinced of God's existence think faith is impossible for them.

Not so. People who doubt can have great faith because faith is something you do, not something you think. In fact, the greater your doubt the more heroic your faith.

I learned that it doesn't matter in the least that I be convinced of God's existence. Whether or not God exists is none of my business, really. What do I know of existence? I don't even know how the VCR works.

What does matter is whether or not I am faithful. I think faithful is a hell of a good word. It still has some of its original shine. It still calls us to action.

So that's it. I like this idea of faith being faithfulness. I like that I don't have to sweat it when I wake up some mornings and the whole idea of God seems stupid. I like that my job is not to convice other people of God's existence, but to denonstrate my faithfulness to his teachings. Here's some more RLP. This is a conversation between him and his friend George, who is terminally ill:

One day George said, "I wish I could believe in God. I really do. I'd like to go to your church, and sing hymns, and be a part of something bigger than myself. I'm at the end of my life, and I don't think I've made a real difference in the world. My life hasn't really mattered to anyone. But, I just can't believe in God, so..."

You should never tell this preacher you don't believe in God.

"You don't believe in God? So what. Sometimes I don't either. The important question in life is not a question of belief. What's really important is whom you serve. I think it's serving God that makes life meaningful."

"You mean I could go to church, and sing, and do stuff, and all that, without believing in God?"

"Hell yes. I hope so, or else I better find another fuckin job."

"You don't believe in God?"

"Well, I do now, mostly. I still have my bad days. It's complicated. Belief comes later for some people, for people like you and me."

"What would I do? How would I get started?"

"I don't know, I guess just come to church and sing."

Understand that this preacher NEVER asks people to become Christians. If anything, I shoo people away. I consider Christianity to be a pretty stiff commitment, and I don't ever sugar coat it.

If someone is seeking a spiritual path and wants to journey with me, I'm fine with that. I'll shoulder my pack, help get his adjusted, and we'll move on down the road together. I don't really give a shit about making converts. That's not my business. I will walk with people though, if they want.

That's really all church is about anyway. We're a bunch of rag-tag pilgrims sharing the road and taking turns shielding each other from the wind. Sometimes we carry each other's packs for a spell. We share maps and provisions and friendship. We serve God by serving each other.

This makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense for God to insist that we always believe in him, or that we be able to make other people believe in him. It does make sense for him to say "This is what I want from you: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." I can do that.

If this sounds weird to you, I've got another story - the story of Mother Teresa (found through the Preacher), which I think may be the modern equivalent of the Joseph story I was searching for above. The gist of it is that Jesus appeared to her in visions and called her away from her beloved life as a nun to service in the slums of Calcutta. However, the visions ceased abruptly when she arrived, and she began to feel an isolation from God which remained until her death. This is amazing to me. Brother Lawrence lived with chronic pain, but he felt a closeness with God throughout his life of service. Yet Mother Teresa, perhaps the most admired and venerated Christian of the last century, did her service in depression and darkness. I'm awestruck.

I'm thinking now that if Mother Teresa could do what she did for so long while feeling abandoned by God, maybe it's alright that I feel hungry. Maybe it's an honor that I am one of those who "do not see, yet believe". (Or perhaps more accurately: do not believe, yet are faithful.)

So that's what I'm thinking about faith.

[+/-] Lockouts and Lilies

Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a hockey league. Specifically, the National Hockey League. The NHL was comprised of 30 teams and roughly 900 players. These players were all absurdly overpaid, with payrolls eating up roughly 75% of team revenues and annual losses climbing above a quarter billion league wide. A few bonehead General Managers were signing bad players for huge money, thus pressuring small-market clubs to either over-spend (and fold) or suck (and fold). Put simply, the league was in deep poop.

Then one day the Collective bargaining Agreement expired, bringing a glimmer of hope to poor goodness-deficient teams everywhere, and one last chance for the league to prove to their fans that they didn't deserve to be boycotted, tarred and feathered, or institutionalized. But hope soon began to fade as the League and the NHLPA soon demonstrated that their primary interest was spewing rhetoric in the media. All those not having financial interests in the manure industry were disappointed. But the real and underlying disappointment was this:

The players were completely missing the point. They thought they were in a battle with the owners, which is technically accurate but ignores the fundamental truth of their situation. Ultimately, the players demands for money were an insult to the fans, because ultimately it is the fans, not the owners, who pay their salaries. And to make comparisons to professional basketball players or football players or baseball players is stupid. What some pitcher makes is totally irrelevant to what a goalie should make. Baseball players do not relate directly to hockey players, they're simply a different class of overpaid athlete. What is relevant is the relationship between hockey players and hockey fans, and as I see it, the facts are as follows: The players do not care about the fans. They're not interested in what an average fan makes or how they live. What a player knows is that he was born with an incredible gift in a capitalistic, entertainment-crazed world, and based on the great laws of supply and demand he deserves to be paid outrageously. The roles of the fans are to support his greed and boost his ego.

So why am I ranting about Hockey players? Well, I'm not Nathan - I'm not even Pa Grape - but I think I speak truly when I say "We are those men". Consider: The world we live in is fake. We are a tiny percentage of overindulged aristocracy over a mass of poverty and hunger. Our lifestyle is totally unsustainable. We can only live as we do by oppressing (or at the least, ignoring) other people. You can only wear fancy jeans and own a nice stereo and TV and Car because someone somewhere is underpaid. Indirectly, you can only keep and spend your money by somehow convincing yourself that you are worthy of your salary and your lifestyle, and (by implication, though none of us like to think this far) that those who are starving are worthy of death.

What am I getting at? I'm not asking you to feel guilty - that won't help anyone. Guilt's only desirable effect is motivation, and it's a rather poor motivator. Guilt, at least by it's self, tends not to create any meaningful or lasting changes because what really motivates a guilty person is a desire to stop feeling guilty. Don't feel guilty, but feel convicted to actually do something. What? I can't answer that, but Jesus can. "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

There are 2 problems with me saying that. First, I really don't know how to interpret that comment. Tony Campolo would tell you that when Jesus says "sell everything you have and give to the poor", what he means is actually go sell everything you have and give to the poor. (Incidentally, if you're a Tony fan, www.tonycampolo.org looks pretty cool. There's about 20 messages on there that you can listen to for free. So exciting!) For myself, I'm not really sure what this verse means. I don't accept the thinking that "Jesus only said you'd do that if you were perfect, but none of us are perfect so we can ignore it." We can and should be striving for perfection. But what do you think? How do you read this verse? Should we be seeking total poverty? I think another renowned speaker (whose name eludes me at the moment) said it's good to go to fancy restaurants sometimes. I hope he's right, because I like the occasional fancy meal. And after all, Jesus was known for going to feasts.

You know, I think God is a lot more interested in the attitude of our hearts than how much money we give and how much we spend. If you truly give sacrificially and you're at peace with God and you're not burying your head in the sand so you don't have to think about the starving children in Haiti, and if you also sometimes go to a nice restaurant with your honey, I don't believe that's wrong. I don't think God's interested in squeezing every last dime out of you, I think he's interested in getting you to truly and practically love the people around you. Buying bread for the homeless will not get you to heaven any more than buying indulgences. (But it will feed the homeless.) Giving is good for others; loving is good for you.

By the way, it's almost cliche to say "I'm not perfect in this area. I'm preaching to myself." But, seriously, I'm preaching to myself! I don't write this to rag on you, I write it because it's been on my heart. I'm convicted of this stuff and I want to get your feedback and allow you to be convicted too, at your discretion. Don't think I'm sitting here thinking about you and how sinful you are because you wear nicer pants than me. (Actually, I just bought a new pair of pants, which is probably why all I can think about is pants. They look cool, I think. They cost me 40 bucks, which is more than my miserly claws like to let slip, but they make me feel sexy.) Basically, the second problem with me quoting the "sell everything" bit is that whatever Jesus really meant, I have a hunch I'm not doing it.

(Ok, this next part's going to look like a total change of topic, but it all relates in the end. Stay with me.) I was reading Acts the other day. It's an awesome book. Very exciting. In fact this book is more or less the model for all exciting (by which I mean "Charismatic") Churches today. Acts is the story of the time when the church was awesome, when it was everything we all want it to be. A brief list:

1. Apostles. They had the Apostles! Lucky dogs. I mean, they had all 12! (...Or 11. Or maybe 13. However you count it, the point is they had them all.) How unfair! In fact, they had all the guys who hung out with Jesus. Can you imagine how cool it would be to have an Apostle in your church? If you had a question, you'd be like "Hey Thaddaeus, what did Jesus really mean when he said 'sell everything you have'?" and Thaddaeus would be like, "well, you don't get the full picture in the Gospels, but it was clear to those of us who were there that it was like this..." Man, why can't I have Thaddaeus? He hardly did anything, I mean, he's only mentioned twice in the whole Bible. It's not like I'm asking for Peter or someone important...
If you've never wished you had an Apostle around, it's probably because you've never thought about it. I mean, the whole Catholic Church is based on Apostle envy. That's why they've got to have Popes and Cardinals and all those guys - they just can't handle not having an Apostle around to tell them what to do.

2. The Holy Spirit, signs and wonders. I guess you could say that the whole Charismatic movement is based on Holy Spirit envy. The early church pretty much got the biggest and the best of all that miracle-type stuff. Yes, God still does cool stuff in Africa, yes, God miraculously healed you're Pastor's friend's Great Aunt, and yes, you can speak in tongues, but none of this happens nearly as frequently or dramatically or publicly as it did then, and the results are really not comparable. Most importantly, none of it ever happens around me. (Which is really all that matters. Not to beat around the bush, Spirit envy is very big in my life.) I don't want to get too deep into this issue here. All I'll say is this - despite the fact that the 1 Corinthians 13:8 excuse is absurd, you cannot deny that things are different now. Maybe it's that you don't have enough faith. Maybe it's just that we don't have any of those danged Apostles around. But something is different. It is.

3. Persecution. It's true. One of the major problems with Christianity (at least, western Christianity) today is that you just can't get persecuted any more. Maybe most of us aren't openly envious of this anymore, except maybe a few loud-mouth fanatics, (for example, our friends at www.godhatesfags.com) whom we all secretly hope are not really Christians. The fact that you can walk down the street in broad daylight wearing a cheesy Christian T-shirt or broadcast Gospel messages on the radio or hand out tracts on street corners and not get killed by a mob or imprisoned by the state is at once a blessing and a curse. We get all worked up because our country is supposedly becoming more immoral, or because they teach evolution, not prayer in our schools, or because we drew a line in the sand and made society choose between us and the "fags", and they chose them. This is not persecution. This is what happens when nations that used to be officially ruled by Christianity (a virtually unworkable situation, if you ask me) become secular again, just like they were in the first century. I think if we're honest with ourselves, we'll realize that we're not angry because the world won't listen to Jesus (it's always been like that, no matter how official Christianity was). We are angry because we can't tell everyone what to do anymore and pretend we're all Christians. We have to be different. Suddenly, there's a world out there, and we have to be in it. But this is not persecution.
Why would anyone want to be persecuted? Those who have experienced real persecution - in Islamic nations or the old Soviet Union for example - will tell you that it only strengthens the true Christians. There are no pew-warmers in an underground Church. Christ was crucified by the state, and modern Christians want to be the state. That seems odd to me. Anyway, the point is that the Church in Acts was persecuted, and I'm envious.

4. Growth. As Evangelicals, we're all pretty envious of how successful those early Christians were. Why can't we have a event that results in 3000 new converts? (The answer seems obvious to me from the context, but never mind.) We are the self-proclaimed evangelists - the zealous preachers. Our goal is to experience radical growth, to "win" souls. So... when's the last time your church saw 3000 people "saved" in one day? (Sorry, "last year at YC" is incorrect.) Can you really say the the Lord is adding to your number daily? No? Ya, me neither. I don't understand it, we tried everything! We've got powerpoint, we've got Simpsons clips in our sermons, we've got a coffee bar... what's it gonna take?

"Ok, what's your answer Jacob?" you say. "You wouldn't think of asking all those questions unless you had an answer, right?" Well my friends, I do. Perhaps not an answer, but a proposition. A hypothesis. It's difficult, it's daunting, but I think it's feasible. And you don't even have to take a prescriptive view of Acts to make this work - it should be attainable for Christians of all exegesical persuasions. It's based Acts 2:44-45, "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need."

You can that simmer for a few minutes, because now I'm going to rant about our culture. I hate money. I hate the influence it has on my life. I hate nearly all interactions related to money. I hate how my parents always nag me to pay everyone for everything, and how the people who I try to pay almost invariably refuse. I hate how people feel like they need to pay me for helping them. I hate how people will whine about how they have no money and then be indignant when I offer to give them money or even pay for something simple like a meal. I hate how people (myself included) are embarrassed to make money, to have money, to not have money, to give or to save or to spend or to need. What is money? When did it become this holy thing, this sacred commodity with it's own 10 commandments? I'll tell you what money really is: it's foodstamps. Clothes-stamps. Stuff-stamps. It is not holy or magical or even particularly significant. The importance of money is this: you need a certain amount of it to be able to eat or drive or have stuff. Some of us have more than we need, and others have less. Why do we make a big deal about this? Money is not value or pride or success, it's math. Johnny has two apples. He needs four apples. Billy has five apples. He only needs three apples. Here, I'll write this out, so it'll be just like Grade 1 again.

5 - 2 = 3
2 + 2 = 4

There. Unless you live in Oceania, there shouldn't be any problems. But there is. I know, I feel it too. It looks fine on the chalkboard, but to actually give Johnny two apples - or, say $2000 - is really, really scary. I'd like to at least know Johnny first. I'd like to know how his credit rating is, when he's going to pay me back, and what's wrong with this Johnny guy anyway, that he can't take care of himself? Unfortunately, these are not the right questions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting we throw large sums of money at anyone we meet on the street. Prudence is still important. But If we know that someone has a legitimate need and that they will use our money to meet that need, then what's the problem?

By the way, I'm not talking about lending. I mean giving. Actual, for real, giving. Not "pay me back with no interest." Not "pay me back when you can." Not "If you happen to have a lot of spare cash some day, think of me." I mean giving. Scary, hey? Not that lending with the expectation of being paid back is never right, or that we should necessarily cancel all debts owed to us or assume that our own debts will be canceled. But think about this: What if somewhere in the world there was a person - call him Billy, for continuity - who had a lot of money that he really didn't need. Imagine that one day Billy meets another guy - I guess that would be Johnny - who needs a lot of money he doesn't have. (Now hopefully your imaginations are warmed up, because here comes the really crazy part.) Imagine Billy's really out of touch with culture somehow and he just doesn't get all The Rules about money and what The Objective of The Game is, and he just thinks "Hey, I can meet this guy's need". So he offers Johnny the money he needs. And by some freak coincidence, Johnny's this weird guy who's never clued in about The Game either, and he doesn't realize that it's against The Rules to accept money from someone. Johnny accepts. In this scenario we're imagining, Billy isn't looking to be repaid, or for other people to think he's a great guy. (He doesn't tell anyone - it's just not a big deal to him.) He's not seeking eternal rewards or even the gratitude of Johnny. Johnny, incidentally, is grateful, but he's not embarrassed because he doesn't listen to society's BS about money. He doesn't feel ashamed to be in need or inferior for having received what the world would call "Billy's money". Neither does he feel obliged to repay Billy, unless Billy himself should some day be in need. As it turns out, one day Johnny does finds himself with some extra cash, but rather than "repay" Billy, he notices that Sally is in need, so he gives to her.

I know that whole story is pretty far-fetched. Honestly, I couldn't think of a plausible explanation for Billy and friends to be so unconcerned with society's expectations. The only thing that might do it is if they read their Bibles a lot, specifically the teachings of Jesus. I want to quote one of my all time favorite passages: Luke 12:22-34. It's perhaps one of the most beautiful and most daunting teachings in the Bible. (This is the Message, BTW.)

"He continued this subject with his disciples. "Don't fuss about what's on the table at meal times or if the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your inner life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the ravens, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more. Has anyone by fussing before the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? If fussing can't even do that, why fuss at all? Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don't fuss with their appearance--but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the wildflowers, most of them never even seen, don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?"What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don't be afraid of missing out. You're my dearest friends!The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself. Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can't go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."

Wow. That's awesome. Read it over a few times. Meditate on it. Write it down, print it off, or grab a Bible. Go off by yourself an think and pray about that. Let it rock you. You can come back when you're done, I'll wait.

I want to come back to Acts 2:44-45, "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." Is that possible in our culture? Will it work? Can we sell our stuff and give recklessly and not worry about tomorrow? I don't know. But I think it's worth a shot.

It's time I quoted from Les Miserables. This is part of the conversation between Jean Valjean (a dangerous ex-convict) and the Bishop of Digne, who has just welcomed him into his house.

"Monsieur le cure," said the man, "you are very good. You don't despise me. You have taken me in and lighted your candles for me. But I have not concealed from you where I come from and what I am."
The bishop, seated at his side, laid a hand gently on his arm.
"You need have told me nothing. This house is not mine but Christ's. It does not ask a man his name but whether he is in need. You are in trouble, you are hungry and thirsty, and you are welcome. You need not thank me for receiving you in my house. No one is at home here except those seeking shelter. Let me assure you, passer by though you are, that this is more your home than mine. Everything in it is yours. Why should I ask your name? In any case I knew it before you told me."
The man looked up with startled eyes. "You know my name?"
"Of course," said the bishop. "Your name is brother."

(Later that night Jean Valjean, whom the bishop has allowed to sleep in his guest bed, wakes up and decides to steal the bishop's silverware, the one luxury in his humble house.)

At sunrise that mourning Monsieur Bienvenu was in his garden. Mme Magloire came running out to him in great agitation.
"Monseigneur, monseigneur, do you know where the silver-basket is?"
"Yes," said the bishop.
"Thank the Lord! I couldn't think what had happened to it."
The bishop had just retrieved the basket from one of the flowerbeds. He handed it to her saying, "Here you are."
"But it's empty!" she exclaimed. "Where's the silver?"
"So it's the silver you're worrying about?" said the bishop. "I can't tell you where that is."
"Heaven save us, it has been stolen! That man who came last night!"
With the zeal of an elderly watchdog Mme Magloire ran into the oratory, peered into the alcove and came running back to her master, who was now bending sadly over a cochlearia that had been damaged by the basket when it fell.
"Monseigneur, the man's gone! The silver has been stolen!" She was looking about her as she spoke. The wall bore traces of the thief's departure, one of its coping-stones having been dislodged. "That's the way he went - he climbed into the lane! The monster - he's gone off with our silver!"
The bishop after a moment's pause turned his grave eyes on her and said gently:
"In the first place, was it really ours?"
Mme Magloire stood dumbfounded. After a further silence the bishop went on:
"I think it was wrong to keep it so long. It belonged to the poor. And what was that man if not one of them?"

The bishop. So hot right now. But where were we? I think I quoted all that just to say that that's the kind of attitude I aspire to. I want to get this through my head that everything I have - even the money I made toiling on an assembly line this summer - is a gift from God. I'm a steward. I've been entrusted with a certain amount of money, first to meet my own needs, and then to do God's work - that is, to help those around me. I was sitting around the other day, considering the lilies, and I thought "Why the hell do I have 6000 bucks sitting in a bank somewhere?" I mean, sure it's "safe" there, and sure I'll need some of it next year, but why don't I invest it somewhere? There in the bank it's making some stupidly low amount of interest which the ING guy on the TV says won't even cover inflation. What a ridiculous situation! That's it! I'm switching banks!"

I had an idea to write a skit about a young man who decides to switch to "the Bank of God". He walks into this bank and chats with the receptionist about how stashing his cash in earthly banks is hardly better than burying it in the ground, and it would be far better to "invest" it somewhere. Think about this: how would you like to have God as your financial advisor? What sort of a return do you think He could get on an investment? Do you think if I gave "my" 6 grand to God He might be able to do something worthwhile with it? Do you think He'd be able to pay my bills somehow if I entrusted my finances to Him? Do you think that this might be a more exciting, more rewarding, more Christ-like way to live? I think so.

And now it's time for confessions. The fact is, I reasoned this out days ago (it takes me a while to write a post like this) and I still have all my money in the care of the RBC, safe from thieves and from God. Why? There are a number of reasons, I suppose, but what it boils down to is that I don't trust God. I don't trust him on at least two levels.

First, I'm not totally convinced that he exists, in the way that a Christian is supposed to believe he exists. I have no truly compelling evidence for God's existence, in fact I'm an Arts student, so I am daily bombarded by viewpoints and facts that explicitly or implicitly contradict this Christian notion of God. To this day I feel nothing when I worship or pray that might be confused with a sense of God's presence. I am a believer in Christ, but only through conscious choice. My heart, my gut, do not believe, but I've though it through and I've said in my mind "Jacob, you're going to believe this." I think this is a legitimate form of belief, but it's not very conducive to acting in faith.

Second, my history of acting on my theories of what God wants or will do is quite discouraging. If you know me at all you know that most of my problems today stem from the fact that I once believed God would tangibly reveal himself to me if I really wanted him to. I had what I thought was pretty solid logic to support this belief, backed up by what I believed scripture was saying and by the encouragement and affirmation of friends and mentors. And we all know where that got me. I've recovered from this fiasco - or at least, I seem to be in the process of recovery - but I am legitimately wary of reasoning out how God will respond to my actions. Everything I've said above looks solid to me, but from my own experience I see no reason why it shouldn't blow up in my face. If this were to happen, I'd likely have deep, deep damage done to my faith, in addition to being out 6000 bucks. What this means it that it's fine for me to say "Probably God want's me to do this risky thing for him", but when it comes to literally putting my money where my mouth is, I'm cautious. "I won't be broken again."

On the other hand, I'm longing to do something real about my faith. I hate this lukewarm life - going to church, going to school, trying to be nice and to learn to pray again. I'm desperate for something real and vibrant in my Christian life. I used to ask God to rock my world, but he never did (at least, never in the ways I wanted him to), so now I ask other people. I've started saying stuff like this to big-name Christian leaders:

"I'm about disgusted enough with this infectious ho-hum cultural mindset to do something crazy for Jesus. Don't give me your pretty words and your nebulous challenges. Put a sword in my hand and point me toward the Philistines. There will be bloodshed. I'm not sure that I'm up to the task (whatever it may be) but I'm tired of sitting idle, and I think I'd rather die than live the rest of my life with this rancid complacency."

This is a scary thing to say. I'm afraid that sooner or later it'll get me shipped off on a mission to some "godforsaken" corner of Africa. But like I said, I'm sick of this casual Christianity that we all seem to do. I tried going the route of real interaction with God, and that didn't really work out. So I'm thinking about trying to live radically and dangerously and practically for God, which is riskier maybe, but would still be very cool if it worked. But it's so scary. I don't know what to do. God, apparently, wants me to struggle through this on my own, make my own theories about what he wants from me, and screw up a lot.

Holy crap, where's Thaddaeus when you need him? Heck, I'd settle for Balaam! Someone, please tell me what God wants me to do! No takers? I thought so. Very well. (I'm being sarcastic now. Your opinions, as always, are greatly valued. Seriously.)