Emergent's Big Problem: Bonhoeffer predicted it.

"In 'Act and Being,' he [Bonhoeffer] used philosophical language to show that theology is not merely another branch of philosophy, but something else entirely.  For him philosophy was man's search for truth apart from God.  It was a type of Barth's "religion," in which man himself tried to reach heaven or truth or God.  But theology begins and ends with faith in Christ, who reveals himself to man, apart from such revelation, there could be no such thing as truth.  Thus the philosopher – and the theologian  who operates on philosopher's assumption – chases his own tail and gazes at his own navel.   He cannot break out of that cycle, but God, via revelation can break in." - p. 89 "Bonhoeffer" by Eric Metaxas.

This quote by Eric Metaxas about Bonhoeffer's view of philosophy and theology really captures the essence of what I've seen as one of, what was at one time,  the big problems in the Emergent Church Movement.  In taking on Philosophy's assumption that either there is no such thing as Truth or that Truth is unknowable by those trying to discern it, Emergent theology is doomed to "chasing it's own tail" and does not end in being able to arrive at knowledge about God.  As Bonhoeffer astutely observed, theology cannot be built on the assumptions of philosopher because theology does not start with man's search for truth but rather it "begins and ends with faith in Christ, who reveals himself to man..."     

If those in Emergent had read Bonhoeffer and Barth, maybe they wouldn't have led so many people down the path of Harnack and Schleiermacher.

Resurrection and Resuscitation

Recently I heard someone refer to Elijah's miracle of raising the Widow of Zarepath's son as "ressurection."  This preacher said  that he thought that this might be the first case of resurrection in the Bible.  But this was not resurrection.  It cannot be.  While it is not stated, this boy must have later died of old age.  This boy may be the first "resuscitation" or the first one raised from the dead in the Bible.  But that is not resurrection.  

Resurrection only happens after we have died and raised to life as imperishable (1 Cor 15:42).  Jesus was the "first fruits" of resurrection (Rom 15:20).  He was the first to actually experience resurrection. He died and was raised imperishable.  Up until now in terms of life on Earth, he is the only one to be resurrected.   But after we die we are all resurrected (Matt 22:32). While the timing of this in the Bible is difficult to understand, it speaks of a first resurrection of righteous before the millennium and the rest after the millennium.   Those of the first resurrection although judged, are saved from sin through faith. (Rev 20:6) Those resurrected after the millennium are judged for what they did on Earth.  (Rev 20:12).  Both live eternally because of resurrection.

This boy, although brought back to life, died.  This was the case for boy raised by Elisha.  This is the case for  the son of the Widow of Nain , the daughter of Jairus, and for Lazarus, all raised by Jesus.  And this is the case, for Dorcas raised by Peter and  Eutychus raised by Paul.  All of these people died again.  But this is not resurrection, rather they were resuscitated or brought back to life.  In French we have the words "ressusciter" and "résurrection."  This is a cause of confusion for many French-speakers because "ressuciter" can refer to the "résurrection."   But  is also can mean "resuscitated" which is simply coming back to life.  But this is not resurrection.  Resurrection involves being "sown perishable and raised imperishable."

So this boy in who Elijah raised was "resuscitated" or brought back to life, like Lazarus.  But he later died.  Both will be resurrected after their final death to be judged and live forever.   Where they spend eternity is dependent on the judgement and whether they are in the Lamb's book of life (Rev 21:27).  

There is a difference and so it is important to understand the difference between what happens when people are raised from the dead through resuscitation and raised from the dead through resurrection.

I preach...

I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today and was coming back tomorrow. —Martin Luther

Jesus or Squirrel

One Sunday a pastor was using squirrels for an object lesson for the children. He started, "I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is." The children nodded eagerly.

"This thing lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)..." No hands went up. "And it is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)..." The children were looking at each other nervously, but still no hands raised. "It jumps from branch to branch (pause) and chatters and flips its tail when it's excited (pause)..."

Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor quickly called on him. "Well," said the boy, "I know the answer must be 'Jesus' ... but it sure sounds like a squirrel!"

Forgiving God

Forgiving God

Forgiveness is something that Jesus told us is of supreme value.  God forgives us so we are to forgive others.  Jesus even says that if we don't forgive others, God doesn't forgive us.  We forgive when we have been wronged.  We forgive when we have been hurt by someone.  Is there ever a time when we need to forgive God?

At first thought the very idea of forgiving God is something that goes against our spiritual sensibilities.  God doesn't wrong us, so why should we forgive him.  Who are we to think that we can forgive God? 

Forgiving God needs to happen when we feel hurt by God.  Even though the Lord never wrongs us, he does allow painful experiences to happen in our lives.  He, in effect, hurts us.  This hurt can cause resentment in our feelings toward God which of course blocks our friendship relationship with him.  "Forgiving God" means coming to grips with the fact that God "leads us into temptation" (but does not tempt us, as God does not tempt man to sin) so that we might be strengthened in our faith.  It has to do more with resolving our feelings of resentment through overlooking God's actions, than actually "forgiving" God.  We accept God for doing what we do not accept in other people because he is God.  I do not accept when others bring pain into my life.  I hold them guilty.  But God is able to use these painful episodes, to cause growth in me. 

There are times when my father allowed me to go through things that caused me to learn lessons.  At the time I resented my father for allowing these things to happen tome.  But in hindsight, I see that he needed to let me experience the consequences of my actions so I would learn.  It is this realization that my father did something valuable for me that allows me to excuse him or overlook his actions toward me. 

It is the same with my heavenly father.  When I realize that all of the pain I am suffering here on earth will be over when I experience the fullness of salvation when I am glorified in heaven, helps me to overlook, "to forgive", God for what he must lead me through to help me to grow. 

All relationships must be kept free of bitterness and resentment through forgiving our those who hurt us.  Our relationship with God is similar in that we too must deal with and resolve the bitterness, anger, resentment and other hard feelings that we have toward God so that our relationship through faith, will grow richer and more intimate.  We do "forgive" God for allowing painful experiences in our lives.  But we do not forgive him for having wronged us for the Lord never wrongs us.  But just as Job resolved his bitter and angry feelings toward God through gazing anew at his wonders, so we can "forgive" God when we realize our own ignorance in comparison with God's surpassing knowledge.  Then we can once again enjoy and rejoice in our God who loves us and cares for us enough to disciple us through pain. 

Paul Luedtke

Nyon, Switzerland

Are we humans beings with spiritual experiences or spiritual beings with human experiences?

So, Joshua Case asked this on Facebook and I couldn't resist. Not sure it's all that bright, but I enjoyed thinking about it.

"Let us create man in our image...male and female he created them." All attempts to separate mankind into constituent parts usually fail dismally. "Man" is created in the image of God. "Man" is living soul because of the "breath of God was breathed into him. Yet "he" is made of the dust of the ground (as material beings we are chemistry). So beings created in the image of God makes us spiritual. But made in the image of God also makes us human, because that is how God intended us to be. But we are human because we only have the image of God in us.

Is God Selfish?

Recently a young German friend sent me an email with a good question. She wrote...

"Hey Paul, How are you doing? yesterday evening I had a really good talk with a friend here who's becoming interested in Christianity and thinking that there could be more to it. She asked me one question I asked myself some time ago but didn't feel necessary to find the answer to it. 

I was talking to her about my believe that every person has a "god given" emptiness inside of him/her that can only be filled by God himself. now the question: Isn't it selfish of God to put an emptiness in us that ultimately only he can fill?

Does this has something to do with our fallenness again? cause we were whole and complete back in paradise. we're perfectly in balance with God and needed nothing. can u give me some help, points, bible texts where I could start thinking and meditation on?

Thank you so much,

Julie"

What a great question! But I noticed that in fact the premise upon which it was based was questionable. This is what I wrote in response...

Dear Julie,

Does God really give us a "God-given" emptiness? I don't think you'll find that in the Bible. What God does offer us is his love. 

We are created to be in relationship with him. When we don't come to God in faith and live as his child, we experience an emptiness. Augustine said, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you." (Augustine Confessions 1.1.1) This is not a god-given emptiness. It the emptiness we feel because we have not included God in our lives.

Blaise Pascal has often been quoted as saying that, "There is a God-shaped hole that can only be filled by God." But this is not really what he said. He said, "... the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. (Pascal Pensees 425). 

We all experience this emptiness or a lack of completeness because when Adam and Eve sinned, it caused a break in the relationship that humankind had with God. The sin of Adam and Eve separated us from God. And because of that separation, we feel the void of God's absence. That could be called a "God-shaped hole." And yes, because we are fallen at birth because of that "original sin" we experience a separation from God. We all try to fill that emptiness with good things and some not so good. But the void created in us by God's absence can only be filled by God himself. That is why Jesus came to bring us to God. (1 Pet 3:18).

I hope this helps. Do share it with your friend. God is not selfish. He did not put the hole in us. When we don't come to him as his child, we put it there ourselves.

Grace and peace,

Paul

Reading the Bible as Story

In Scot McKnight’s book, “The Blue Parakeet” the idea of reading the Bible as story is a major theme. He says we must read the Bible as story. It is a whole series of stories written in different ways for different reasons. The earlier stories affect the later stories. As he says, none of the stories is the final story. But together they all tell “The Story.” It is a true story. It is a story with power. But most of all it is God’s story

Story is a very important word these days. We hear is quite often on the lips of young people. Some people say they think in stories (probably not most). They have been influenced by the post-modern period that we have all passed through. For post-modernity, story is more important than fact, than science or truth. Truth is something that those in power or those with money use to control the less powerful. (Those who write the story, control the glory). But stories can communicate without appealing to truth or being totally true. Since post-modernity distrusts truth as either being nonexistent or unknowable, it has appealed to story as a way to understand people and the world around us without having to be true. Stories communicate and there is wiggle room in them because the story can be “true” for you but not necessarily true for me. It can tell something of value without having to be true. And that’s okay, because I still understand something about you and the world around me without needing the obsolete and or even dangerous idea of truth.

As a Christian, I can’t accept that truth is non-existent, obsolete or even dangerous. The idea of truth is foundational for us to understand that there is an ultimate reality. There is objective truth no matter how hard it might be, a times, to discern it. Jesus said he was the truth. He said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. So, truth must stand.

But…as we try to understand the world around us, we realize that everything has a story. I have my story…the story of my life. You have your story. The town we live in has a story. The nation we live in has a story. The whole earth has a story. There is a true story for everything. For us to understand each other and the world around us, we need to listen to all the stories. Our existence is a series of interlocking stories.

Many people are uncomfortable with the word story to describe our existence. Some prefer fact and factual accounts. Others prefer more the objective perspective of “provable” history. Still others look to the empiricism, objectivity and precision of science. But all these are simply different ways of telling the story of something or someone. All are trying to communicate something in a fashion that will tell the real story.

I suspect the reason people have a hard time thinking of the Bible as Story is because stories aren’t always true stories. They are often fictional. We tell stories to our children before bedtime. Bedtime stories are meant to put children sleep. Novels are stories. Sometime they are pure fiction. Nowadays we have seen the rise of the “historical novel” where the background is carefully researched history, but the story line is fictional. The characters are real, but they could have been because their character and actions were taken from the accounts of real people living real lives and their real events. We fear that mixing fiction and history will cloud the truth.

The reason for approaching the Bible as story is because in reality, it is a story. It is God’s story of himself creating, interacting, redeeming and bringing to culmination the world around us. We must not deny that it is a story…God’s Story. But it is a true story. It is a powerful story. God tells us this story so we can understand him and his love for us. It tells us how to love him back and love the people he so loves.

As student of the Bible and theology now for nearly 30 years and I have seen people treat the Bible in ways that was never intended. People see the Bible as if it were written in the 20th century. They see it as a textbook. They want it to be history has they read it now. They want the biographical accounts of figures as though they were written from the perspective of a “modern.” Some think they can distill science out of the Bible. Some appeal to the precision of Greek and Hebrew languages and surmise that because of this precision one can simply exegete the texts based on a grammatical-historical basis and arrive the real meaning of a text based simply on the reading of an isolated bit of text. Still others see the Bible as communicating directly to them with no notion of it place in history or the culture from which is came.

The Bible is a series of writings done from 1500 B.C. to nearly 100 A.D. It uses many different ways of speaking: history, poetry, narrative, parable, metaphor, fiction, prophetic, apocalyptic and more. All demand that the reader pay attention to the way the writer wrote. All demand that the reader keep the writer’s words in their historical and cultural context. All demand that the reader keep in mind where the writer’s words…his part of the story…fits into the overall story. But most of all, the reader must keep in mind that the Bible is telling a story through the patchwork of stories, accounts and different kinds of writing.

Yes, the grammatical-historical method of reading the Bible is good. Yes, because of the descriptive nature of the accounts, we can see direct correlations between the physical world of the writer and how we see our world. Yes, there is a certain precision in the language. But, we must not make the mistake of expecting more precision from the language than it can give us. We must be careful not to think that the Bible is scientific. It does not have that optic. We must be careful that in exegeting the passages we study, that a too reductionist approach will not yield the message the author was conveying.

We need to remember that the Bible is story…God’s story told through the stories of the writers that he chose and that he gifted to write the story. And such, we need to become “his-storians.” We need to read the story. Listen to it time and time again. Get to know the fabric, the warp and the woof of the story. We need to learn when something is speaking figuratively or factually. We need to know when the meaning of a text must be qualified by its historical setting and background culture. We need to learn to ask the right question as we read so that we can get the right answers.

The more we listen to the story, the more we’ll understand the story. That is why even those who don’t know the Greek and the Hebrew (while being very important for translation and exegesis) can still understand the story. The story communicates. God made it that way. He speaks a language we can understand because it is a story of our earth, our world and the people around us. As “his-storians” we can hear his voice. But we will only hear it when we listen to God as the master storyteller. After all, it is his story.

Christianity is not a religion...really?

“Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.” I sometimes hear this when conversing about what it means to be a Christian. When I hear it, I often appreciate the intention of the speaker because it’s good to draw a distinction between what some mean as religion and what Christian believe.

But…I always cringe because strictly speaking it is quite proper to speak of faith in Christ as religion. But, what the Christian means by religion and what the average person on the street means is different.

For the Christian, the word “religion” is the life that one lives out of faith in God. Religion is the life that comes from seeking to live the will of God and the values of God.

This understanding comes from the way the English word translates several Greek words from the New Testament. One word is "deisdaimonia" and is used in Acts 17:22 and 25:19. This word comes from two other words: "deos" meaning awe, fear or reverence, and "daimonion" meaning demon or god. Literally the word means awe, fear, or reverence of demons or of God. Paul uses the word when he describes what he has seen in Athens. He speaks of the Athenians as “deisdaimonia,” or religious, when he refers to their “objects of worship” (Acts 17:23) and to an altar that had the inscription “to an unknown god.” Paul has chosen this word meaning “awe of god” to describe the attitude of the Athenians toward their objects of worship and the inscription, to an unknown God. “Religion” or “Religious,” in this case refers to man’s orientation of awe or reverence toward the gods or God.

In Acts 25:19, when talking to King Agrippa over the court case of Paul, Festus the then governor of Caesaria Maritima, used the word "deisdaimonia" to refer the belief of the Jews and their conflict over Paul’s message of Jesus’ resurrection. Here, religion translates "deisdaimonia" and refers to the belief of the Jewish accusers of Paul.

Another Greek word in the New Testament, is "threskeia" meaning religion or worship. It is used Acts 26:5, James 1:26 and 27. In the Acts passage, Paul uses “threskeia” and referring to the worship or belief of his former sect, the Pharisees. The Pharisaic worship or belief is a subset of the greater “belief in God” or religion that was Temple Judaism. Paul uses the word to speak of a particular belief system within a belief system.

In James "threskeia" is used in 1:26 firstly to refer to ones belief or faith in God, but then in verse 27 he uses the adjectival from "threskos," or religious, to describe the kind of behavior that belief should spawn or promote in the believer’s life namely: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

A third word that is translated “religion” is "eusebeo" often transated to worship, or show piety, and is found is 1 Timothy 5:4. This verb is a close neighbor to the New Testament words "eusebeia" meaning godliness or piety, and "eusebes" meaning devout, pious, godly, reverent. The word "eusebeo," a verb, describes the Christian belief of the people to whom Paul is referring. He seems to choose the verb form to describe the active belief of the Christians that should be put into action through caring for their own families.

Finally, in Hebrew 10:11, the word "leitourgeo" meaning to perform religious duties. It is the verbal form of "leitourgia" meaning religious service, ceremony, service. The writer of Hebrews speaks of the duties of the priest in the Hebrew system of Temple worship as religious. Here religion is the execution of organized traditional Jewish worship.

Today in common usage, the word religion has quite a range of meaning. Most use the word to refer to some type of belief in God or some type of traditional organized religion like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and the like. It can also mean something that someone practices consistently and continually.

Many Christians are uncomfortable referring to their belief in Christ as simply another of one the world belief systems. As well, many Christians are uncomfortable with being called religious when this simply means being a member of a church, or a part of some sort of organized “religion.” Of course this discomfort is for good reason because Christian belief goes much deeper that simply following traditions, or holding merely intellectually to a system of believe or a code of ethics. Being a Christian involves both “head” as a way of believing, but also “heart” because being a Christian means loving God. For the Christian following the form Christianity without faith is not possible. To simply have intellectual ascent without true love for God from the heart is not true belief. That is why some have chosen to say, as in the words of Bill Hybels, “being a Christian is not a religion but a relationship.”

But is this strictly true? Is it right to say Christianity is not religion? Or is it intellectually wrong to refer to faith in Christ as a religion? No, not really, if one looks at how the writers of the New Testament thought of religion. For them religion was simply how one orients themselves toward God through faith, or worship, piety, or even idolatry. It was a serious way of acting in the world with regard to God or the gods.

For the Christian to refer to his religion or the way he or she believes about God is a mark of identity. I am a Christian. I have a religion, a way of orienting myself toward God. Christian belief is the religion where faith is a relationship with the living God through his son Jesus Christ made possible by the power from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Religion is not how we get to God or how we please God so he’ll let us into heaven, rather it is our orientation toward God and the life we live having found God, or rather, after he has found us. My religion is living relationship with God that affects every part of my life and causes me to live out the wonderful values of God. Love of God and people, joy in life because of God, forgiveness when people have wronged me, serving the needs of others, having the certain hope of spending eternity with God, not letting the evil of the world take over my life but rather pursuing a life of goodness and holiness, treating God’s creation with awe, respect and care, are all part of what it means to have belief in Christ as the religion of my life.

By all means, we need to distinguish between what “religion” means to the average person on the street and heartfelt faith in Jesus. But, to say that being a Christian is not a religion, well…you’d be on thin ice or even in error.

So, if you want, you can say, “being a Christian is not a religion, but a relationship.” It sounds nice and it even alliterates. But James, Jesus’ half brother might respond by saying:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. - James 1.27