But yeah, I find myself peaking past Thanksgiving just a bit these days.  Not for all the Christmas hubbub.  More so because I enjoy celebrating advent as a family.  I look forward to dusting off our Joshua Tree, sitting around over dessert and discussing the events leading up to Bethlehem, hanging the ornaments, placing strands of straw in our popsicle-stick manger, and praying together “Come, Lord Jesus.”

So I was pretty excited when asked to submit a chapter for Our Savior Come: An Advent Companion.   It is a neat collection of perspectives and reflections on the events and implications related to Christ’s incarnation.  It’s a daily reader intended to help guide and inspire worship through the season.

I’m not good at sales pitches, but if you’re looking for some good devotional material to help in your celebration of Advent this year…

I posted some extended thoughts on Advent and liturgical seasons on the book’s blog-site.  Oh, and its available in (the much cheaper) e-reader format too.

Why so much outrage over what happened to the victims but very little expressed sympathy for the victims?  Why are millions of not-really-affected readers and commentators so vocal about justice?  Why are they playing the physician – prescribing remedies of healing for the victims…and why is it again that healing always necessitates increasing the pool of suffering?  Why do I feel like talking about the cross (with its innocent victim suffering so the aggressors wouldn’t have to) at this point would be callous nonsense?

I’ll spare you whatever opinions I might have on Joe’s job.  More interesting to me is how our culture (how I) absorbs and dresses the wounds of wickedness.

The early Christian Church really is an incredible phenomenon.   We all know the persecution and martyrdom stories.  I made mention in the previous post about Paul’s transition from comfort, prestige, and power to hardship, outcast-status, and persecution the moment he publicly converts to Christianity.  Its obviously interesting that any religious institution would not only survive under those conditions but actually flourish and quite literally change the known world in a just a few centuries.

The really interesting thing though is the fact the early Christian church is a Jewish messianic movement.  Jesus and His disciples are Jewish.  The Church that gets off the ground in Jerusalem is Jewish.   And these types of movements were by no means uncommon.  There are numerous self-proclaimed Messiahs hitting the streets in Jesus’ day, inviting people to repent and follow their lead that God might usher in His promised kingdom (cf. Mark 1).  There are messianic movements and groups built around these dynamic characters.  But eventually the leader dies off.  And when this occurs, one of two things happens to every one of these messianic movements: (1) it dies with him, or (2) it continues and the new messiah becomes a close kin of the original.  They’d often die away simply because the promises didn’t hold up – the leader dies and the kingdom never comes.  But if the movement continues, you still need a messiah, and closest kin was the likely choice.  Christianity is the only known messianic movement that does neither.  The leader dies, but the movement doesn’t die with it, and it doesn’t centralize around Jesus’ next of kin (the well respected James would have been the most likely candidate).  The messianic figure dies, (a very shameful death mind you), and instead the movement explodes just a few weeks later still centered around Jesus.  And… it explodes with the message, the kingdom of God has arrived!

Rome is still in power.  The Jewish people are still property of this oppressive empire.  Christianity is officially declared illegal and its followers hunted.  And yet the Jesus-centered movement flourishes announcing the kingdom of God has been inaugurated.

Historically speaking, there really isn’t a better explanation for the explosion of the early church and the declaration of the kingdom than the resurrection of the messianic leader.  You could say the Church was duped by power hungry men contriving the idea of resurrection (hiding the body, etc).  But historically, that doesn’t work.  First of all, these men couldn’t have expected power from such a proclamation.  Instead, they would have expected exactly what happened to their leader (a criminal’s death).  And again, there was already an established way of dealing with dead self-proclaimed messiahs who don’t usher in the kingdom as expected.   Historically, it doesn’t hold water to think this band of Jewish people would be duped in such a way.  Some say Jesus feigned death, but then walked out of the tomb (the swoon theory).  But that wouldn’t have swayed anyone to believe the kingdom had arrived.  The only thing that could’ve done that apart from full victory over Rome was the seeing the awaited future resurrection (complete with its bodily change) here in the present.

Again, its a historical discussion…an interesting one I think.  I recommend N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God for a much fuller treatment (700+ pages) of resurrection in its historical context.  The simple suggestion here though is that nothing explains why this illegal religion would get off the ground and thrive, why good Jewish leaders and common folk would believe the summation of their story and long, rich heritage had suddenly burst onto the scene, no real reason why people would sacrifice home and comfort, wealth and family to follow a movement centered on a criminalized and crucified messiah, no reason why the early Church starts sacrificially living the future into the present (a separate discussion), unless…they had experienced and so been convinced that death and all of God’s enemies were now defeated foes on account of Jesus’ resurrection from the grave.

History – just another reason why I am believing…

I’m with Paul.  This business of life and faith, this story of God, really all hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  If ever I come across “indisputable” evidence that Christ’s bones belong to the earth somewhere, I will quickly trade my belief for something not so useless.  No offense, but the more liberal camps of “Christianity” that might deny bodily resurrection seem completely pointless to me.  Why bother?  On the other hand, if Christ has been raised, everything I thought I knew about life, death, hope, evil, justice, redemption, the natural world, etc all changes.  (Side: This is why someone who doesn’t believe in resurrection and someone like myself have very little common ground to meet on.  We live, quite literally, in completely different worlds.)

So I’m thinking at this point, I might need to make some kind of case for resurrection so as to explain why I would believe something so uncommon and even strange.  Probably need a few posts to do that.  But before I do, please hear me out:  I’m not saying here the resurrection was some sort of magic trick to validate the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus or anything like that.   That wasn’t Paul’s point either.  Resurrection is so much more than just a stamp of authenticity.  For Paul its the center-point of history.  It’s the key to understanding the whole of creation history.  It’s the locus of meaning for the world.  Resurrection is God’s answer to every human longing, every cry for justice, every search for hope and meaning, every attempt to make sense of life’s beauty, joy, pain, etc.

That to simply say, my view of life and the world I live in sorta stands on one leg.

But so is belief in the resurrection of Jesus warranted?  Obviously, I think so.  Let me just give one reason why here, and then I’ll add a few more later.

Let’s stay with Paul to round this out.  There’s really no explaining the life of Paul apart from an encounter with the risen Christ (as described in Acts 9).  Prior to this event, the idea of one man walking out of the tomb in the middle of history was pretty well inconceivable for Paul.  It wasn’t part of his religious or intellectual expectation at the time.  It was nonsense in the Hellenistic culture he was part of and it went against the religious story he believed.   Add to that, this resurrection rumor was threatening the stability of life in his homeland (messianic leaders and groups typically did).  His intent, for understandable reasons, was to snuff out the Jesus movement before it destroyed the peace his people had worked on for so long.

Paul was also comfortably a part of the religious, social, and political elite in the culture.  To join with a small, unattractive, and oft-despised band of Christ-followers would mean loss of power and privilege.  It would mean himself becoming the object of scorn and hatred…the same scorn and hatred that motivated his (and other social/religious leaders) persecution of Christians.  It would mean leaving the comforts of the synagoge to go worship behind locked doors in undisclosed locations.  It would mean the possibility of trials, separation from loved ones, physical suffering, etc.

Yet, for some reason, this is exactly what happens.  Paul trades everything, his religious perspectives, his security, his position of privilege for a life seemingly with nothing to offer.  The only explanation that stands up to historical reason is that Paul met up with Jesus Christ who he’d previously assumed was dead in the grave.  And as he has this encounter, his religious story now has a whole new center, a wonderfully surprising twist.  Whatever hellenistic ideas he may have flirted with now have a whole new light shining on them.  His take on power, privilege, comfort, security are redefined as he sees the greatest enemy of all (death) swallowed in defeat.  His view towards suffering takes on the color of participation with his new conquering emperor-king.

Paul goes on, most likely, to die a martyr’s death, a martyr for a cause with nothing of prestige or worth in the eyes of the culture.   There’s only one thing Paul stands to gain with his drastic life choice – participation in the life of a risen savior.  And there’s just no reason to expect Paul to believe in such without an actual, worldview shaking encounter with that object of his newly acquired faith.

Another reason I’m believing the Christian story of God?  All the rules.

To clarify, its the rules in their proper context that lead me to affirm this story I read in the Bible.  I know all the rules, commandments, and expectations typically aren’t Christianity’s top selling points.  Along with any other religion, Christianity might be viewed as one of the great inhibitors of personal liberty, an oppressive restraint on our freedom of expression.  It’s requirements limit my true self…or so the argument goes.

I mentioned its the context that interests me.  Let’s talk ten commandments for instance.  If you go and read that passage (Exodus 20), you’ll see yes, there is binding and restraining going on.  But the first person to be bound is actually God Himself.  The law is given in the context of a covenant arrangement.  God is pledging Himself to be and act a certain way towards His people, and He is calling them to do the same towards Him.  You’ll notice those ten commandments are not given to just anyone, they’re given to a people God is entering into covenant relationship with.  In fact, at the various points throughout the Bible, laws and rules are only given to people in relationship with God.  The point? Law is relational.  And…relationship is restraining.

When I married my wife, I willingly bound myself to be and act a certain way towards her.  My prior liberties and freedoms, my whole way of life, was restrained via our pledges of commitment (covenantal law).  As I’ve taken on the relational role of a parent, I’ve bound myself to be and act a certain way forever on their behalf.   All relationship ventures involve a personal binding as I give part of myself away to another.

It is that relational aspect of Christianity that is more the selling point for me.  But what about all the other religions with their laws and commandments?  Aren’t they all relational then?  The uniqueness of Christianity is that relationship lies at the core identity of God.  The Bible presents God as relationship – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons, one God.  I won’t try to fully explain that here (not that I even could).  And within that relationship, we see mutual self-giving, mutual love and submission to the other.

In John 15, as Jesus is giving His final commandments to the disciples, He calls them to remain in His love and keep His commandments, just as He remains in the Father’s love and keeps the Father’s commandments.  In other words, our law-keeping is patterned after the law-keeping and relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit.

It seems to me the whole issue with the rules and commandments should only apply in a world where there is no such thing as relationship.  We all sense true relationship requires restraint, signing a part of ourselves away on behalf of another.  If we’re not giving ourselves away, we’re just using people (or steering clear of them altogether) for personal gain.

The thing is too, we all sense quite deeply we’re made for each other.  Psychology has been saying this for years.  Science has joined the discussion recently.  We’re designed for relationship.  We long for it.   We search for it.  And yet relationship, like peace and justice so easily eludes us.  It withers and breaks.   Simultaneously, we know in our bones, we were made for relationship and that our relating is to some extent broken.  Enter the Christian story.

Christian law and relationship begin with the God who willingly binds Himself, first within Himself, and then to us.  It a story all about the God who binds Himself to be and act a certain way towards His people…even at great personal cost.  Its the story of Jesus Christ who endures the ultimate restraint on life and liberty.  Its the story of death on a cross, the ultimate self-donation, to restore and preserve relationship between God and His people…and between those people themselves!

Its a story that answers my longing, my true self designed for authentic relationship and gives shape to my quest for relationship-restored.

Authors prescribing their ten steps to change, interested readers buying in, Progressive politicians pushing a society in healthier directions, protestors arguing against injustice,  counselors and therapists picking away at emotional distress, apocalyptic news commentators, diner companions mulling the various crises we face…all share one simple thing in common – a common sense that the world has fallen off right-ness and desperately needs repair.  But why that common consent?

C.S. Lewis was known occasionally to draw a wiggly line across his chalkboard.  He’d then ask the present company to describe the line.  When they’d respond, “it’s crooked,” he’d ask them how they knew that.  The obvious answer is because they know what a straight line looks like.  Anyone with a sense of straightness knows a crooked line when they see it.

In a similar way, we all share the sense the world is out of shape, partly because we also share a sense of what the right shape is.  We recognize injustice because we instinctively know the shape of justice (right-ness).  We mourn, long for deep health and meaning, search out avenues of help, take up all manner of coping practices…because we are haunted by the quiet sense this is not the life we are made for.  Rightness, real life, has somehow slipped our grasp.

And here’s the other thing, we know its out of shape, but no matter how much we try to put it back to right, the sense remains.  There are always more books (self-help) to write.  There are always newer visions of progress to replace the old and the promises that wound up short.

Typically, the problem of evil is used in arguments against God.  But in a god-less world, or in a world of nothing but natural interactions between matter and energy, evil doesn’t exactly make sense.  Death and decay, tension and loss would be just natural parts of life. Strife and oppression, selfish pursuits of power and prosperity, would be “natural.”  Evil and injustice only make sense if there is more going on than just matter-in-motion, if there is some transcendent (unnatural) standard of justice and goodness to compare to.

So am I saying evil is reason to believe in the God of the Bible?  Not necessarily.  I’m more suggesting that our common sense of right and un-right points to, hints at, purpose and transcendent value.

Actually I think the existence of evil is a major problem for God.  And I wouldn’t be too interested in a religion that didn’t view it as a major problem.  Why am I believing the story of the Christian God?  Because it’s the only story wherein God takes evil and pain, suffering and death seriously.   Instead of simply explaining it away with inspirational pep talks and existential reasoning, instead of remaining safely removed from it all and one day bringing His followers out of the mess too, God enters into the heart of all that is not right.  In love He takes the very worst of it upon Himself, enters death itself (the cross), all for the sake of restoring what once was lost.

There’s so much more to say on that, but at this point, I’ll leave it at – I am believing the Christian story of God partly because the way I see it, it is the only story that takes evil and death, plus our common experience of it, seriously.

Part of me really doesn’t want to chime in.  As Christopher Hays advised just last week, we Christians sometimes need to just chill out.  When we don’t, stuff we don’t like winds up selling like hotcakes.

What interests me though is not so much the ideas of Rob Bell, but more the way folks from my own side of the Christian fence talk and defend.  We tend to be pretty interested in doctrinal issues, rightfully so I think.  Sometimes though, the impression conveyed in our God-talk is that our whole identity and raison d’etre is the defense of the propositions we hold dear.  Part of me understands this because we view it as defending God, or better yet, advocating for God and the rich life that is only enjoyed through reconciliation with Him.  But another part of me really wonders if we’ve gotten off track in our whole defending bit.

Here is Rob Bell proposing “Love Wins” in the end.  The response?  Denouncement, dismissal, and carefully reasoned Biblical rebuttals.   Okay, but seriously, shouldn’t we at least, even first and foremost, be recognizing and even sympathizing with the sentiment that motivates Bell (down right or wrong paths)?  Shouldn’t our first responders make every effort to convey to a Hell-drowned world the agony and tears that first consume us when we merge our doctrine with the real lives we rub shoulders with?

As I read the responses, I can’t help but wonder, where are the pleas of Abraham as he stood between God and Sodom?  Where are admonitions of Moses (“God, you can’t do this!”) as he dared come between God and His rebellious people?  Where are the cries of Jeremiah, the agonized heart of Paul, and not least of all the tears of Jesus as He mourned over His city that would not turn?

Is it wrong that every ounce of my heart hopes I’ve got it wrong, wishes that I could look at my neighbor and know that Christ’s love will certainly win out over his sin?  Is it wrong of me to wanna read 1 John 2:2 simply at face value?  Is it wrong that my heart, whether I want it to or not, resonates with Bell’s heart?

I digress a bit.  Getting back to my concern about our way of defending doctrine, the responses I read suggest to me that perhaps we’ve detached ourselves from the real and hurting world to go conduct business in the realm of abstract propositions.  And I think we are prone, for some reason, to do this a little too often.

The consequences are severe in this case.  The world reads us talking about hell with coldness, apathy, and maybe even scorn towards those we view on the road thereto (did you notice the title of the Times piece?).  They perhaps wonder if they aren’t a distant second-best to our beloved doctrine.  Maybe they’ve long since stopped caring.

Furthermore, if our doctrine-talk becomes detached, haven’t we lost the essential nature of doctrine?  Wouldn’t that suggest we’ve forgotten how the supreme truth-content, the ultimate doctrine of God (Heb. 1:2) lived in walked among us, with flesh and bone, along the darkened streets of a shepherd-less world.

Doctrine should always be real-world stuff.  It’s God-talk with human skin.  Its hell-talk with tears, cruciformly standing between God and sinners, longing to do so even to the very end.

Let’s get the inconvenient matters out of the way.  Why am I believing the story of the Bible to be the true and defining story for the world?  Well, one reason is that I’ve been conditioned to do so.  As much as I might like to consider my faith journey an objective inquiry into brute fact, its just not the case.

That conditioning has come from various streams.  One of those streams I believe is God Himself.  I believe His self-disclosure in my life has been a hard-wiring of sorts.  And I would say His gracious work of rescue and reconciliation, applied to me, has effectively changed the way I look at the world.

Another stream is the community in which I’ve developed.  My family growing up always lived out a God-colored view of life and the world.  The communities of faith I’ve been part of, with their creeds, Christ-centered worship, participatory rites (baptism, communion, etc), yearly celebrations (Easter, Christmas, etc) and intentional life-on-life investments have all helped imprint the Christian story of redemption onto my own.  And let’s be honest, growing up American has helped quite a bit too.  Had I grown up in other cultures, the likelihood is high I’d have been conditioned to view the world through completely different lenses.

I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think belief is ever just me and my Bible or me and the world I take in through the senses.  It’s a relational affair.  It happens in community… even community that might fundamentally differ with my belief system.   As a Christian, genuine belief happens in community with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, together with the Spirit-formed Church, all inside the cultural context in which God has sovereignly placed me.  Part of having this Biblical worldview involves believing proper growth (be it in knowledge, moral maturity, servant equipping, etc) doesn’t happen in isolation (cf. Eph. 4:12-15).

Does that disqualify me from objective conversation about the world?  I don’t think so, because I believe everyone comes to the table pre-conditioned.  We all look at the world through tinted lenses.  We’re all products of our community’s culture.   And we all absorb external voices/forces that influence the mind.  Even a-theistic evolutionists would be the first to admit natural selection does some funky hardwiring in our belief systems (i.e. belief in God is a survival mechanism).

We’ll likely get into more of this down the road.  But let me sum up:  (1) my reasons for believing involve conditioning from outside myself, and (2) be forewarned, the reasons for belief I give moving forward will necessarily be ones that make most sense to the worldview I already come to the table with.  Circular reasoning?  Perhaps.  But if we all come conditioned, circularity is going to be tough to avoid.

Anyone think we manage to escape pre-conditioning, that we are all unbiased, objective observers of the real world?

Before answering the “why”, I think it’d be helpful to answer the “what”.   Sitting at a pub, talking life and religion with some folks last night, I found myself saying on more than one occasion, “That’s not really what Christians believe.”   The broader culture can easily lump Christianity into vague religiosity.  Plus, lets face it, Christians themselves cover a pretty broad spectrum of belief.   The way I see that spectrum, you have God’s revealed view of life and the world on one end, and the culture’s take on life and the world on the other (not that they’re necessarily polar opposites, more like bookends).  Christians fall across that spectrum, absorbing both revelation and the cultural air.  It’s not my intention here to guess where I fall on that spectrum.   I’ll just describe my  little neighborhood on the spectrum (my understanding of life and the world) for clarity’s sake moving forward.  And admittedly, I’m limiting and coloring it all a certain way in anticipation of the conversation ahead).

I do NOT believe the universe is objective.  I believe it is subjective, meaning it is continually the product of the mind and will of God.  So…I guess you could say I don’t believe in objective truth.  In my view, all truth is God’s truth (which makes it personal).  This also means there is no event in which God is not directly involved.

That God is involved does not negate the natural-ness of the universe.  I believe God works through natural processes (ones He designed and maintains).  So in every event, I expect a natural and divine explanation operating simultaneously.  Put another way, I fully affirm scientific endeavor and don’t anticipate a conflict between scientific discovery and God’s revealed descriptions of the world.

Closely related, I believe we are embodied souls, which means our lives, in full, are the combined activity of physical (chemical, etc) processes and an active (worshipping) heart (I use heart and soul interchangeably).

I believe men and women’s rejection of God and His intended order have cursed effects on life and the world.  Lets name that effect death.

I believe God through Jesus Christ has defeated death, ironically in death…and then resurrection, and so begun the great rescue of His world and the life He intends for His people and His creation.

My life is identified in participation with the resurrection of Jesus Christ (by His Spirit).  I am what I am because that resurrection life is at work in me.  I am seeking to live consistently that resurrection life in the here and now (which, oddly enough, is supposed to look more like the cross of Christ – sacrificial, self-giving love to God and neighbor).   I look forward to the day when death will have no more effect over me – body and soul – and I will live in uninterrupted enjoyment of resurrection life.

That future life will be lived in a world where death no longer has any sting as Christ victory is applied finally and eternally.

Okay, well there it is.  There’s certainly much more to say about Christian belief.  But that, in a small nutshell, is my Christian take on the world and life in this world.  That’s the worldview I’m arguing both from and for.  Yeah, I know that makes my argument a bit circular.   So I’ll need to explain why I think that’s okay…or why I think we all argue the same way.   Dot, dot, dot…