God How Could You Let This Happen?

As I sit here on the Pier at Garden City beach, safely overlooking the perpetual waves of the mighty Atlantic gently rolling in to meet the Carolina shores, I can sense the disparity between the calm beauty before my eyes and the restlessness of my heart. And as warmly as the morning air of the ocean breezes upon my face, in my spirit, there is the unmistakable chill of sadness and loss — and even of profound defeat. Yesterday, just before dinner time, as my wife and I were making plans for our last days of vacation here in South Carolina, I was looking forward to the fried oysters and scallops and the sound of her laughter as we celebrated the good life. But then the notification from Twitter suddenly flashed across my phone — and I instantly knew that we would have to cancel our plans for the evening. The headline made it clear that tonight there would be nothing to celebrate or laugh about: in Uvalde, Texas, two adults and nineteen children, most of whom were only about ten years old, had been gunned down and murdered in their elementary school.

At first, like most everyone else, I felt a hot flash of burning anger — but not of shock. To my own shame, I have become almost totally desensitized to the now daily headlines of horrific mass shootings in the Divided States of America. Still, this one seemed to hit differently. “They were only little kids” I thought to myself. The all too familiar feeling of helplessness and the suffocating sense of inescapable grief and disillusionment quickly began to set in. I sunk my face into the my palms of my hands and screamed in the frustration of my heart “HOW CAN THIS KEEP HAPPENING? WHY IN GOD’S NAME WON’T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING?!” Just a couple of days ago a deranged racist had committed mass murder at a supermarket in Buffalo. “It. Just. Keeps. Happening.” I felt guilty for not remembering whether the mass shooting from just over a year ago in the city of Indianapolis — just twenty minutes away from my house — happened at the UPS or FedEx building. I couldn’t remember whether it had been nine or ten people who had been murdered in the worst mass shooting in the history of Indiana. I reasoned to myself, probably in a desperate and rather pathetic attempt to console myself: “There are too many mass shootings in our country to keep track of…” In my defense, there have already been more mass shootings in 2022 than there have been days in the year. And as I was considering the horror of it all, a surprising and perhaps even impious question arose in my heart: “God, how could You let this happen?”

A great and terrible question, to be sure. What makes the question infinitely more difficult for me is that I believe in the God of infinite and unconditional Love: a God Who is Goodness and Beauty Itself. I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God— the gentle King of kindness and goodness and peace — the One in Whom we have perfectly seen the Father. My favorite verse in the Bible may be from 1 John 1:5 — “This is the message that we have heard from Him [that is, from Jesus] and announce to you: that God is light and in him is no darkness whatsoever.” As far as I am concerned, this is the good news: there is absolutely nothing at all about God that is not infinitely Good. He is the Good Itself. And yet, I cannot deny that this haunting question still sometimes overflows out of the depths of my admittedly small and sinful heart: “God, how could You let this happen?”

I am certainly not the first person to ask the question. All of the religions flowing out of the Abrahamic tradition have always taught that God is omnipotent: “all-powerful.” And so, logically, although He could prevent evil things from happening, He obviously does not always do so. Though He does not directly will evil — and we could never imagine a more blasphemous thing about a good God Who truly loves mankind than the thought that He directly wills evil for His creatures — He nonetheless does allow it. So, despite the immense complexity and even audacity of the question, in the face of all the great evils of the world, we often ask it throughout our lives. Why? Because most of us desperately want to believe in God’s omnipotent goodness despite all the apparent evidence to the contrary. And when we do ask the question, we are in the very best of company. After all, this is the question that has troubled the greatest minds the world has ever known, from the Hebrew prophets, to the early Church fathers, up through history’s greatest philosophers and theologians, to the most brilliant artists, poets, musicians, and geniuses,^[1] all the way down to the most pure and innocent children, up to and including at least some of those survivors of Uvalde. In the horrific aftermath of what happened in Texas — and what will undoubtedly continue to happen if we don’t do something drastic soon to address this great evil of our time — this must be the question in the hearts of the masses of traumatized children and their parents all over the world: “God, how could You let this happen?” How do Christians answer it?

Again, it is a supremely difficult — and even scary — but honest question. Who possesses the wisdom to totally discern how a good and loving God can allow the most terrible things imaginable to happen every single day to His children? I certainly don’t. We can contemplate and venture our most orthodox and coherent and perhaps even daring theological speculations with all humility, but we should most definitely never offer any kind of “soul-making” theodicies to those who are suffering. In fact, the best thing we can probably do in such situations is to resist the temptation to speak at all and to instead just remain silent and tenderly weep with those who weep. When His good friend Lazarus died, our Lord Jesus did not preach a lengthy discourse on God’s goodness in the face of evil to those who were suffering. Instead, perhaps tellingly, in the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Still, in such terrible moments, most of us cannot help but to wonder in our secret hearts about where God is. “How could He let this happen?” How can we live in both such a profoundly beautiful and monstrously cruel world? And how is it possible for God to be totally innocent in all of this? I believe He is, by the way, but I do not know exactly how. Do you? Does anybody?

Here is what I know — or at least believe: God, in order to be worthy of our love and even worship must be the Good Itself. If He is not the Good itself — if He is in any way evil or even has only the faintest hint of darkness in Him — then He is not worth a moment more of our time or consideration. And yet, as we all know, God does in fact allow the very worst things imaginable to happen. Again, just think: He even “allowed” His own Son — His very Own Heart — to become the most famous victim of injustice and betrayal that the world has ever known: to be mercilessly tortured, mocked, hung on a tree — lynched — and left for dead. God’s own Son was massacred by the hands of lawless and wicked men. Jesus’ disciples and closest friends must have also asked, with us, “God, how could You let this happen?” Christ Himself, quoting the broken-hearted prophet in Psalm 22:1, cried out from the very depths of His being, from His cross, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me? “God, how could You let this happen?” If even the Son of God can be crucified, then apparently anything can happen.

And, as we know all too well, “anything” has happened. For all its goodness and beauty, history is also filled with the absolute worst of horrors. I think of it and tremble: God allowed the utter outrages of the Holocaust. He could have stopped it — but He didn’t. This is a terrible thought, is it not? He allowed the death camps and the atomic bombs to fall on the precious children in Japan. He allowed African men, women, and children to be taken from their homeland so that they could make the white man rich on the backs of their forced and terrible labor. He allows the violence of the cartels and their drugs to find their way to our poorest neighborhoods where they kill our mothers and fathers and kids. He allows our children to be gunned down on the streets and in schools and even in His churches. We could go on and on about the outrages of wickedness perpetrated mostly against the most vulnerable and powerless and often innocent among us. And we all know the terrible things that He has allowed to happen in our own lives. As a hospice chaplain, I see it everyday in the lives of the terminally ill patients I visit with and in the faces of the addicts that I have worked with over the last fifteen years. I am sure that you see it too.

Yet, we still believe that God must be good, do we not? That He must be the wellspring and beginning and end of every good and beautiful and true thing. That He is the Good as such… Is not His goodness our very hope? Though we still sometimes sin against Him and against our brothers and sisters, do we not yet love Him still, with all our hearts and pray to Him and serve Him and sing to Him and even dance for Him? Is He not the love of our lives and the deepest desire of our hearts? Do we not long to be with Him, as a bride desires her bridegroom, to be with Him and with each other, where all pain, sorrow, and sighing have fled away (Isa. 51:11)? Of course we do. Though we do not understand His ways and are sometimes tempted to think less of Him and in our heart of hearts to question His goodness — especially when disaster strikes — we still love and put all our hope in Him to somehow make everything right. What other hope do we have in the face of all this suffering, violence, evil, and death?

Except, even in spite of all our hope, we still know that even “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21) cannot “undo” what has happened in our world. History, at least for now, has lost these precious children. I do not know why bad things happen to good and even innocent people. At the end of the day, the only thing I really have — is hope. I can only hope that God will somehow one day make all things right. And I believe He will. But in the midst of the madness, I can only hope and try to love and comfort those who are suffering. In the final analysis, when we are suffering through the terrors of life, we don’t need answers, we need love. Yes, I can hope with St. Paul that one day, “God will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15.28), that one day there will be no more sirens or guns or terror or funerals for little kids. I can and do hope in the eventual “restoration of all things” but even this powerful hope does not change or take away what has happened. We live on, in tears, and in the hope that things will somehow change and get better for us. But for those little children and teachers and for their families and loved ones, things can never be right again for them. At least not in this life.

And so, in the wake of the loss of life in Uvalde, Texas, along with (literally) about a million others we have lost to guns in this country alone over the last 40 years^[2] (as long as I have been alive), we again grieve together. We lament the societal, moral, heart, and gun problems of our nation and hope for change. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). And, so that we too will be comforted, let us mourn with those who mourn. Let us weep with those who weep. Let us hope with those who hope. Let us love, with the love of God, with the love that St. Paul taught about that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). And when we are tempted to despair at the thought of how God could let all these things happen to us, St. Paul comforts us in the very next verse with the daring apostolic promise that “Love never fails.” God, Who is Love, never fails. If there is an “answer” then this must be it. Maybe, instead of asking “God, how could You let this happen?” there is a better and more important and infinitely more glorious question, asked by St. Paul on behalf of God’s children in Rome — and on behalf of ours too, here in America:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? As has been written: “For your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were reckoned as sheep for slaughter.” Rather, in all these things we more than conquer through the one who has loved us. For I have been persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor Archons nor things present nor things imminent nor Powers, nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

^[1] See especially “Rebellion” in Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

^[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

The Error of Personal Salvation

This is a guest blog by David Rawls

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Colossians 1:19

When I was a freshman at the University of Arizona, I had someone from one of the campus ministries talk to me about Jesus. They asked me the two famous Evangelism Explosion questions created by D. James Kennedy.[1] The first question: “Do you know for sure that you will go to Heaven one day?” And the second is this: “If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into My Heaven?’ what would you say?” Of course as a young college student I had not given these questions much thought. Through our discussion he shared with me that I was going to go to Hell if I did not give my life to Jesus. He asked me if I wanted to go to Heaven. How could I say no. He went on to tell me that if I want to go to heaven all I had to do was pray a sinner’s prayer and I would be assured of heaven. So on that day I said the sinner’s prayer and asked God into my heart. Later that night I went to the local college bar and got drunk to celebrate the fact that I was going to go to heaven. A few years later I actually took my faith a lot more seriously and prayed the prayer again but this time with the idea that I was going to follow Jesus.

I start with this story not because it is wrong to think about one’s eternal destiny but because what I was taught about the salvific work of Jesus was that it was simply about me getting saved. I was told the gospel message and what Jesus did on the cross was about me personally going to Heaven when I died. Even after many years of taking Jesus and the Bible seriously, enrolling in Bible College and graduate school, I still continued to hold this belief that the gospel message and salvation are focused on me. I was not the only one who believed this. It is actually the most predominant idea within our culture. All one has to do to back up this idea that salvation is about personal heaven or hell is to go to any Christian organization and look at their belief statement. Possibly one of the most influential ministries in America is the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Here is what they believe about salvation:

We believe that all men everywhere are lost and face the judgment of God,that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, and that for the salvation of lost and sinful man, repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ results in regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore we believe that God will reward the righteous with eternal life in heaven, and that He will banish the unrighteous to everlasting punishment in hell.

The problem with this belief statement and others like it is that they only frame salvation in terms of one’s personal journey. To be clear, Jesus’ work on the cross does affect me personally, but it’s effect is a part of a much greater issue. Jesus did not simply come for me but he came to defeat the powers of darkness, to destroy all that was evil that held all of creation in bondage. The apostle Paul would say in Romans 8:21 that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.” Salvation, in the eyes of Paul was both apocalyptic and cosmic. This idea is supported by Paul’s words to the Colossians when he reminds them that Jesus came to “reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven”(Colossians 1:19). New Testament professor at Baylor University Beverly Gaventa sums it up well when she says,

“in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has invaded the world as it is, thereby revealing the world’s utter distortion and foolishness, reclaiming the world, and inaugurating a battle that will doubtless culminate in the triumph of God over all God’s enemies (including the captors Sin and Death).”[2]

If we are to understand Gaventa and the narrative of the Bible we must talk about salvation in its cosmic impact. In others words, we must use the language of Jesus when we are told that he came to reconcile all things. If we don’t, we may mistake the problem for the solution or at the very least minimize the problem. So what is the problem and how does cosmic salvation address it?

Years ago I was having problems with the power steering in my car. I decided to pour some fluid into the vehicle to help with the problem. It did not work. The reason it did not work is because I poured the fluid into the container that said “brakes.” Power steering fluid in the brake lines will never fix the power steering problem. It actually will destroy your brake lines. The idea of salvation only being personal is not only the wrong way to address salvation, it can be destructive in its application. The apostle Paul pinpoints the problem in Romans 5:12 when he talks about the disease of sin and death. He says that “therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” The problem that Paul points out is that sin and death is a disease that has spread through the whole World. The problem is not simply that I have done something bad and I deserve to die but that death reigns in the World. Paul Axton says “death is a corruption that infects all of life”[3] The problem to be resolved is death. Death that is, is not simply personal but cosmic. It has infected every area of the cosmos. Where many Christians err is in focusing primarily on sin as a personal problem that leads to death in Hell. The answer to this personal problem is that Jesus must suffer on the cross. This is known as contractual theology or penal substitution. It is the idea that because God is holy that all those who sin must pay a payment or have a debt removed by God. The only way this debt can be paid is through death. The contractual theory goes on to say that God hates sin so much that he must pour his wrath upon us. This is where Jesus comes in. The belief is, that since we would be condemned to hell for eternity if we had to pay this debt, God steps in and gives us Jesus who receives wrath from the Father on our behalf. God takes our punishment so we might live. Notice again that in this theory the main problem is personal sin. Death is simply a secondary problem or a bump in the road to be overcome. Once sin is dealt with we can simply wait so we can go to heaven at some later point. The focus is all on “me” and my sin.

Hopefully you see the problem with this approach. It does not deal with the problem of death infecting the whole World. It is all personal. Nothing is said about how Jesus death and resurrection deal with reconciling all things in heaven and earth. This approach is like pouring fluid in the wrong place. We feel good about pouring the fluid (of personal salvation) but we miss the problem of the whole cosmos needing repair. In Revelation 21 we get a beautiful picture of the New Heavens and Earth coming down to us. This beautiful picture of what God is doing comes on the heels of Revelation 20 in which death and hades are no longer with us. They have been destroyed. The great enemy that has ravaged the World is gone. We can join with the Apostle Paul in saying, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (I Cor. 15:54).

Death which held the cosmos in bondage has now been defeated by the work of salvation which has touched us personally but has brought salvation to the whole cosmos. This type of salvation is not an escape from real world realties. There is no going to heaven when you die but a renewal of this earth and a renewal of our own bodies. Heaven comes to us in the one last cosmic and apocalyptic scene in the Bible.

[1] https://evangelismexplosion.org/two-important-questions/

[2] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul (Louisville: John Knox, 2007), 80.

[3] Class notes

Decoding Your Matrix: Are you ready for the Real?

This is a guest blog by Tyler Sims.

It is 2022 and an opportunity to start the year off with some puzzling questions.

Did you watch Matrix Resurrections? Watching the film created questions for me. I am quite curious about my downloading, processing and uploading of this multifaceted existence.

What reality is being created around you?

What do you see unfolding in the world?

How do you view God in relation to you? Is God here, there, within?

What is r/Reality?

Think for a moment. Feel into your answers. Sense the beat of your heart. The feeling of your gut. How you answer these questions– including their countless offspring –shapes your reality. You are the “processor” forming your reality.

Jesus was a subversive-peaceable agent undermining the regional matrix of His day. He helped people question their experience of Reality and realize the importance of subjective perception. The distinction is key. Subjective perception plays a crucial role in how a person creates their particular reality–lowercase r reality.

Much of Jesus’ work was helping people perceive through the matrix as in Matthew 6. 22: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

The experience of the external world, your reality of God, your reality of yourself is up to you. This creating of reality unfolds presently as you think, feel and sense the world around and within you.

How can this be? You might ask, “Am I omnipotent?” One thing is for sure your perception is potent. More potent, more powerful than you have been taught to understand. You have indwelling power in you to create your reality and influence Reality.

Do you believe it? How does it feel to state, “someone else creates my reality.”? How does it feel to claim, “I create my reality.”?

It is the Matrix programs of various societal structures that teach you otherwise. The government, news media, technocracy and co-opted religious institutions regularly upload programming into your “operating system” and influence your processing.

The message you hear is, “Reality is out of control. Be afraid. Exchange your freedom for the security of consolidated power.” In other words, “You do not create your reality. We-the powers that be-create reality.”

Thus, the Empire claims that only might creates reality. Meanwhile, religious bodies teach of creating reality as God’s business not man’s. Fittingly, the American Matrix uses Romans 13 as proof text for the blessed metaphysical union of the Empire and God’s people. Thus, placing individual and community based reality-creating out of reach. In regards to what’s perceived to be real, the teeth have been removed from the lion so to speak.

Institutionalized church steps in and teaches God’s metaphysical powers and divine will are beyond and above human agency. God’s reality-creating Spirit is approached more as a gentle-lullabye to be conjured at one’s whim through worship songs and morning devotions.

Again, ignoring the embodied power within a reconciled and awakened humanity. The more fully integrated people are seen in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul described them as both BEing the body of Christ and BEcoming the temple of the Spirit. How did creative power and responsibility feel to Ephesians? How did this creative empowerment change everything for the group of people at Ephesus?

Reality-creating empowerment is absolutely subversive to Matrix dogma. It is what got Jesus noticed by the Judeo-Roman matrix and crucified. He claimed to be One with God and He actively created the kingdom of God via communities. Jesus was not passive with his identity as Son of God and he encouraged fellow humans to accept the power of their divine connection to God. For example , in John 17:21 “that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me . Jesus challenged the matrix by more than his words. He embodied reality-creating-power. Jesus felt it in his being. He claimed it.

Jesus was response-able and creative with his Power. How many people are responding with the embodied, felt empowerment of creating? Perhaps this is why the Earth is moaning in the 21st century waiting for the awakening of humans as reality-creating Children of God (Romans 8).

Instead of passively viewing matrix systems wield their power, creative agents respond. Wide eyed (Matthew 6:22) and reconciled humans are those who claim their Divine lineage of co-creating. Consider, Jesus’ blessing: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). They create realities of a peaceable world with every step. How? Through BEing holistically united with God and embodying the movement of the Spirit. They see and feel what is Real. This is the sort of empowered exploration the matrix abhors.

How do you and I start feeling the reality-creating power of BEing within Spirit?

How powerful is it to take responsibility for creating your reality? How does it impact Reality?

This is exactly the power of individuals waking up to being embodied in God as a participant.

Wake up to being descendants of the Father/Creator.

Wake up to being constantly unified through the Spirit .

Wake up to being the flesh of God through the body of Christ.

As a member of the Body of Christ, claim your power. “My business is my Father’s business.” Start creating reality. Connect your creative desire with the Spirit. Claim God’s power in your being. Do not be sheepish about your creative power. After all Jesus said, ““Truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:12”

Some might claim radical creating is idolatry–as Jesus often heard.

But what if idolatry is sitting passive and letting the Matrix-agents proliferate illusion and inequality?

What if it is time to become an awakened agent of creating reality?

Now, what r/Reality will you help create?

Centering Prayer: A Door into the Trinity and Beyond Self

This is a guest blog by David Rawls.

In this blog I will be presenting a method of praying which helps us to better access the Trinity in our prayer lives. Whereas many approach the topic of Trinity and prayer from a theological position, I plan to avoid an exegesis of such terms. It is my hope to provide a rarely used tool called centering prayer, which I believe can help us enter into the Holy Trinity. The Apostle Paul may have had in mind centering prayer when he wrote Romans 8:26-27: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

Centering prayer by its very nature takes the focus off the one praying and seeks to focus on the Trinity. Sarah Coakley believes this type of prayer, found in Romans 8, is a way in which a believer yields to the Spirit which then allows the Spirit to direct toward what is most important. She says, “prayer at its deepest is God’s, not ours, and takes the pray-er beyond any normal human language or rationality of control.”[1] Simply put praying in this manner is a way in which we listen and God talks. Bruce Demarest further suggests that the goal is “to permit the Holy Spirit to activate the life-giving Word of God.”[2]

So, what is centering prayer? Thomas Keating defines it as “a method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God’s presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship.”[3] So what are the practical ways to foster this discipline? Here are a few practical steps which come from Michael Frost’s book Surprise the World.

Eliminate Distractions

Frost suggests that listening to the Holy Spirit is not an easy task. One must seek to eliminate anything which might be a distraction. It is important to avoid things which might interfere with your contemplative time. Sights, sounds, smells and even taste can become a hindrance to listening to the Holy Spirit. The quieter the place where you will be praying the better to eventually hear the Holy Spirit. Matthew 6:6 reminds us from Jesus’ prayer that one should go into their room or closet. The idea is that one needs to remove distractions. Frost suggests that finding a comfortable position is essential. This of course will depend on a person’s preferences. He also suggests that if you clasp your hands together so that they are not moving it will make you less aware of them while you listen. Closing your eyes is also important as it helps keep light out and helps us focus simply on God. Personally, I have been trying this method at intervals of 10 minutes but Frost suggests 20 minutes or more, as he believes something happens many times 10 to 15 minutes into your quiet time.

Let God In

It becomes important that as you start in contemplative prayer time that you do not begin by asking questions or telling the Holy Spirit what you want. The goal is simply to enjoy God’s presence. Rather than controlling the Holy Spirit you are wanting the Holy Spirit to control you. Frost says that we will be tempted at times to want the Holy Spirit to get to the point or to reveal what he wants. If Coakley is correct, we need to believe prayer is not ours as much as it is God’s. It is up to God to speak and reveal to us. It is our job to let God in and have the place for him to do it. Frost would say, simply let God’s love lavish you. Phil Fox Rose says when we go into centering prayer it is important to “resist no thought; retain no thought; react to no thought.”[4] Our minds are usually busy. To simply not have any thoughts can be discouraging. Frost suggests that we can help our minds by possibly saying things like, “Amen, Abba, grace, love, peace and even let go.” Ultimately, in centering prayer we let thoughts happen. Frost says that the more we practice this discipline the more our thoughts will slow down so that we might hear the Holy Spirit.

Follow God’s Promptings

When we begin to quiet ourselves we may start to hear promptings which God gives us. These promptings can be missional in nature. God may place on our minds a person we need to see or talk to or even revisit. The Spirit may prompt us to help someone in need. Is it possible that when the Apostle Paul received his Macedonian call he was using the centering method? Certainly this fits Paul’s theology of Romans 8 where it seems the prayer life he promotes is focused more on listening rather than petitioning. The prompting can also lead us to a sin for which we need to ask forgiveness, or changes we need to make in the form of repentance. A God-prompting can also help in restoring relationships. Not every encounter will prompt us to do something. It is likely that most promptings simply will be for us to experience God’s presence in our life. In this manner, as we simply enjoy God, we can be certain that the Holy Spirit is groaning and interceding on our behalf (Romans 8:27). This is by no means a secondary reaction but a way to be reminded and encouraged that God is alive and well and that we are loved by Him. Frost says that this is a time when God can bring oxygen to the soul of the believer.

Centering prayer is a great tool for the believer to enter into the life of the Trinity and to be shaped by the Trinity. Referring back to Romans 8, we find that this may be the way a believer can focus on the things of the Spirit and not on the flesh. Ultimately this is one of the themes of Romans 8. This is the purpose of centering prayer. It brings us directly into the Trinity. We are no longer praying to a God “out there” but we enter into the very Godhead itself. Coakley describes it this way; “an act of cooperation with, and incorporation into, the still extending life of the incarnation.” Centering prayer reminds us that as we pray to the Father, the Holy Spirit prays for us in words we don’t even know, to conform us into the likeness of Jesus. This is our goal to be more like Jesus.

[1] Coakley, Sarah. God, Sexuality, and the Self (p. 115). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul, (Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 1999), p. 133

[3] http://www.centeringprayer.com/

[4] Phil Fox Rose, “Meditations for Christians,” On the Way, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/philfoxrose/meditation-for-christians/

Alexander Campbell: A Prophet of Peace

This is a guest blog by David Rawls

In 1988 I was baptized in a little pond in Central Ohio. Shortly after this event, I decided to go to a Bible College to be trained in the Bible so I could help young people who were struggling with life. When I entered Bible College, I was introduced to a Christian movement that I had never heard of before. It was called the “Restoration Movement.” This Movement was a result of 19^th century reformers who saw how denominational churches in America had drifted away from God’s word and teaching. The focus of the Movement was a return to the primitive New Testament church. The Restoration Church had two major themes: biblical authority and the unity of all believers. Men like Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, David Lipscomb, Racoon John Smith and others led this Movement. By 1860 Restoration Churches had nearly 200,000 members. These reformers emphasized such things as believer’s baptism by immersion, regular communion, and local church autonomy. It was the teachings of these reformers which began to shape my life.

Meanwhile, over the last 10 years or so, I have come to the realization that Jesus taught a gospel that was focused on nonviolence or peace. When we look to the gospels we see, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and not to do harm to them. For Jesus, this was not simply words but this is how he lived his life, even to the point of death. Nonviolence was how the church, in its first 300 years, interpreted Jesus’ teaching. It was only after the church was influenced by Constantine that there was a shift in thought concerning peace and violence. In the last 10 years, in my pursuit to understand the peaceful gospel, I have been digging into the early church fathers and the works of Anabaptists. Yet, it is only recently that I was shocked to find out that the early Restoration Movement leaders also taught nonviolence. They believed that nonviolence was part of the primitive gospel of the New Testament. I was shocked, because I had taken classes both in undergrad and graduate school on the history and thought of the Restoration Movement. I don’t remember any discussion of Restoration leaders focus on nonviolence as part of the gospel. Yet, leaders like Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone and David Lipscomb had a rich theology of nonviolence. In this blog I want to look at some of Alexander Campbells arguments for a peaceful gospel. I will be using Campbells “Address on War” as well as the work from historian Craig M. Watts, which will show that Campbell had a well-developed theology of nonviolence.

When it came to war, Campbell believed that Christians could not participate in war, as to do so would mean killing other Christians in other nations. He believed that no nation was Christian except the church. The church was the “one nation composed of all the Christian communities and individuals in the whole earth.” For Campbell, this meant that Christians could not take up arms because they would be killing other Christians. Campbell asked the question, “Can Christ’s Kingdom in one nation wage war against his kingdom or church in another nation?” His answer was an emphatic, “No.” War for the Christian was not an option. His problem was not so much nation against nation as it was a theological problem of church against church. Campbell had a high view of unity and the church could not have unity if Christians were killing other Christians.

To understand Campbells gospel of peace, one must first understand his postmillennialism. He believed that the best way to usher in God’s reign on Earth was for the church to recover the original gospel, which included the gospel of peace. Craig Watts claims Campbell “had no intention of passively waiting for the millennium.” He believed that one had to enact, in the present, his understanding of the future millennium. Campbell maintains that for man, “the principles of his government” are “to give them a taste of, and a taste for, heavenly things.” This meant that the Christian could not participate in war and violence because the millennium would be a time when the earthly powers would, according to Isaiah, “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and learn war no more.” This view had an evangelistic appeal to it as well, because people could get a picture of what the future would look like as they observed the church in the present. This probably explains why Campbell thought unity was so essential. If the church could not be united, why would anyone want to be a part of it in some future state. If the church killed people now, why would people desire to be a part of a future death and dying.

Much of evangelical Christianity is a hodge-podge of thought which tries to tie together a belief in God which separates itself from the ethics of Jesus. Campbell, however, believed that faith and works go together. He believed that the ethics of Jesus are not simply to be admired but are to be practiced. Jesus pacifist ways were to be lived out by the church. Campbell believed that Jesus was at war but his war was not waged like the wars of the World. The World uses swords to subdue its enemy. The World uses violence to beat people into submission. Campbell, though, rejected this coercive method. He said, “To conqueror an enemy is to convert him into a friend.” As he explained, “All arms and modes of warfare are impotent, save the arms and munitions of everlasting love.” This is a courageous contrast to the view of Luther and Calvin, who believed violence was a tool of God. Campbell would have none of this, believing that if one cannot support war by appeal to the life of Jesus, then the Christian has no business in being a part of or supporting any type of violence or warfare. Christian ethics mattered to Alexander Campbell.

Campbell was a deep and systematic thinker. If Christians could not go to war with Christians of other countries, if Christians were to live in such a way as to promote a heavenly new millennium which was free of violence, and if the ethics of Jesus did not promote violence, then the conclusion for Campbell was that Christians had no business in fighting at all. Campbell sums this up in the idea that, “A Christian man can never of right be compelled to do that for the state, in defense of state rights, that which he cannot of right do for himself in defense of his personal rights.” He goes on to say, “No Christian man is commanded to love or serve his neighbor, his king, or sovereign more than he loves or serves himself.” In other words, if a Christian cannot go to war for himself, he also is forbidden to go to war for his country. Many Christians have conceded that we are not commanded to go to war as individuals but have made the argument that we could go to war for our country for a good cause. Campbell rejects this dualistic approach. If one cannot kill for a personal cause, then one cannot kill for the state, no matter how noble the cause. For Campbell, this is a matter of witness for the Kingdom of Heaven. The church must refrain from any violence.

When Jesus was being arrested in the garden, and Peter used his sword to cut off the ear of one of those seeking to arrest Jesus, he told Peter to put away his sword. Jesus famous line, “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword,” was the very line upon which the early church based its commitment to nonviolence. Campbell also saw this as an important ground for his non-violence. He would ask, “Have not all nations created by the sword finally fallen by it?” Although Campbell would not necessarily appeal to the inherent pragmatism of nonviolence, it is a practical witness to the Kingdom of Heaven. Campbell’s observation was that in the moment nonviolence will not necessarily work but over the long haul of history violence has arrived at the same point: failure. Violence has never proven effective. It certainly has momentary victories but all nations have failed or will fail at some point. Jesus teaches us, according to Campbell, that ultimately victory will come by laying down the sword. It will be the slain lamb that will win the day. This is critical to understanding Campbell.

This is a brief overview of some of Campbell’s views on nonviolence and the way of peace. Hopefully, the reader recognizes that within the 19^th century Restoration Movement, the belief that restoring the ancient church of the New Testament required commitment to nonviolence. For those, like myself, who presumed examples of peace must be sought outside of the Restoration Movement, the good news is that we no longer need look beyond our Movement. Certainly, we can learn a lot from other tribes of Christians but we can also know that these reformers took the gospel of peace seriously. It is now up to the spiritual descendants of Campbell to once again raise the banner of peace. Nonviolence is not simply a secondary issue for the church but is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus. It is time to make the Restoration Movement great again by lifting high the name of Jesus. We do this by living out the peaceful ways of Jesus.

“Vote for Tiberius?” Asked Jesus. “Never!”

This is a guest blog by Allan Stuart Contreras Ríos

“We use violence to get peace and wonder why it isn’t working. That’s like sleeping with a football team to try and be a virgin.”
– Tom MacDonald

Karla and I used to have a neighbor who was a drug dealer – Güero. Everybody around here knew this, although nobody talked about it, especially around him. One night, a few days after New Year’s, Karla and I were buying some tacos at a taco stand on the corner of the street we live on.

Right next to us was Güero buying tacos as well. Everybody felt nervous around him . . . but one learns how to try to ignore this and “act normal” around people like him. Suddenly his phone dinged. It was a text message. We do not know what it said, but we think we do because of what happened next. He got nervous. Yes, as nervous as we were around him. Who was he afraid of?

As fast as he could, he paid for his tacos in advance saying he would come back for them in a few minutes. He walked behind Karla, then behind me, then he turned around the corner. At the same time Karla started adding cilantro to her tacos and salsa to mine I heard gunshots. I looked to the left and there was a Jeep parked right next to me with two guys shooting Güero from the windows. It all happened in a matter of seconds. Güero was dead before he hit the ground.

Although this was a scary situation, it was also a relief for our neighborhood, the bad guy was dead. We could all feel better, safe . . . . until some people moved into Güero’s house.

It was a couple of years later, during the pandemic (July or August of 2020 I believe), that Karla and I woke up, went to the kitchen to make some breakfast, and saw that our house was surrounded by the military.

I opened the door and asked one of them, “Can I help you?”

He said, “Do you know your neighbors from that house?” and pointed toward Güero’s house.

“No.”

“Then you cannot help us.”

A few days later, we heard from other neighbors that somebody snitched on those who lived in Güero’s house, and the police found drugs, guns, and several mutilated bodies. It has been almost an entire year since then and we still have cops basically living on top of our roof to keep watching Güero’s house (they actually made a little grill on our roof and have several chairs).

Day and night, Güero’s house is surrounded by cops. And, because of that, mine too. All this to say, we know the violence of our world. We have experienced it firsthand. And although this worries us, of course, this type of violence is expected from those who do not know God. You know what is troublesome? Violence also happens from those who claim to know God.

When I was a student at CCCB I was a supply preacher. One Sunday I was sent to a small church to deliver a sermon. I got there 30 min. before the church service started, but there was no parking lot. I parked at the end of the road, right next to the church. I opened my Bible and went over my notes repeatedly (I used to get more nervous preaching in English than Spanish). Suddenly I heard a metal knocking on my window. As I looked through my window, I saw the barrel of a shotgun looking back at me. I raised my hands, and the angry guy holding his gun asked me to roll my window down, slowly. I did. He asked me what I was doing parking on his lawn. I explained why I was there and asked him to allow me to park somewhere else, my intention was not to disturb him, and to stay alive, of course. Thank God, he let me go.

A few minutes later, people started walking into the church’s building, I could not get out of my car and into the church fast enough. As I walked in and started greeting my Christian siblings, I started feeling peace again. I was able to breathe a little bit better. They probably could not tell, because of my skin color, but I am sure I was pale. Unfortunately, as soon as my heart calmed down, I saw the angry man walking into the church’s building with two kids, my heart stopped.

He was a church member. Not only was he a church member, but he was also one of the church’s leaders.

You might think that this is one isolated situation. Unfortunately, this is one of several times in which I feared for my life in a church. See the incongruency?

A. W. Tozer once said that “Christianity is so entangled with the world that millions never guess how radically they have missed the New Testament pattern. Compromise is everywhere.” For example, there is a tendency within churches in the Restoration Movement to ignore Church history. It is assumed that from Constantine until the rise of the Stone-Campbell Movement the Church compromised with the world. The Church rejected the Lamb to marry the Roman Emperor. Unfortunately, they fail to see that they have made the same compromise.

Many Christians fight over the “right” side of political disputes, or which amendments or rights need protecting. As Greg Boyd asks, “Where in the New Testament are we taught to rally around anyone other than King Jesus? Where do we find any hint of a suggestion in the New Testament that part of our job as followers of Jesus is to weigh in on the political disputes of the country we happen to live in? We certainly don’t find such a hint in the ministry of Jesus, whose example we’re repeatedly commanded to follow.”[1] When Jesus was tempted by Satan, one of the temptations had to do with political power. As Christians we are to aspire to overcoming, as Jesus did, the archetypical wilderness temptation of gaining political power.

Consider that nationalism teaches us to hate other people, even people that we have not met, and then it teaches us to feel pride in our hatred. At a Christian camp in the USA, we gathered to pledge allegiance to the American flag, and then to the “Christian” flag (which was a little below the Stars and Stripes). I did not pledge allegiance to the American flag for obvious Mexican reasons, and I did not pledge allegiance to the “Christian” flag because that was totally new to me. What was shocking was that some people were offended by my actions, or might I say inactions. But what was even more shocking was that they were offended, not by my not pledging allegiance to the “Christian” flag, but by my failure to swear allegiance to the American flag.

Tony Campolo repeats a story Philip Yancey told him concerning a friend during WWII. This friend was part of a special unit during the Battle of the Bulge that was sent out every morning to kill wounded German soldiers left on the battlefield the night before. One morning he came across a German soldier who was not wounded, he was only tired. His friend raised his gun at the German, and the German asked him to give him a moment to pray. Yancey’s friend lowered his gun and asked the German if he was a Christian, to which he replied “Yes.” “I am a Christian too,” responded Yancey’s friend.

They sat together under a tree. They prayed together. One of them had a Bible and they both shared Bible verses with each other. They showed each other their family pictures and prayed for each other’s families. After all this, Yancey’s friend stood up, looked at the German brother in Christ and said, “I guess I will see you again in Heaven one day,” and shot the man in the head.[2]

The devotion to a nation justifies acts of violence, even against Christian siblings: something Jesus would never condone. This justification comes in all shapes and sizes: crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, etc. The Church has been guilty of all of these horrors. This is not simply the problem of a portion of the church, as many Christian groups have fallen into Satan’s temptation of political power.

Gandhi said, “I don’t reject your Christ, I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.” The early disciples understood Jesus was the head of the Church, but over time “the institutional church seems to have been severed from its head, and as a result became one of the most violent religions in history.”^[3] While many might point to this violence as grounds for rejecting Christianity, the violent history of the Church contradicts Jesus’ teaching. As G. K. Chesterton said, “The way of Jesus has not been tried and found unfruitful. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” In other words, the problem is not in what Jesus taught, the problem is many Christians are not doing what He said.

Jesus’ teaching to “love your enemies” is without ambiguity – it cannot involve violence. It is impossible to murder the enemy you are supposed to love without disobeying Jesus or betraying his Kingdom. No war is a just war, it is just war.[4] To engage in violence means to reject the eschatological hope of the peaceable Kingdom – the New Creation in Christ.

It saddens me that many of my Christian brothers and sisters seem unaware of the basic teaching of Jesus. They stand by, like the unrepentant Paul at the stoning of Stephen, approving of various forms of violence. Not only that, they join in the killing by joining the military. This is no surprise, as they are heeding a violent gospel preached with a national flag as backdrop. “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in war so that peace may increase?” (Rom. 6:1). Of course not! Jesus Himself taught us differently when He said, “Put your gun back into its place; for all those who take up a gun shall perish by the gun.” (Matt. 26:52).[5] Can you imagine what the Church and its history would look like if those who claim to follow Christ actually lived like Him?

The story that sums up Jesus’ political dealings occurs when Jesus was confronted by the religious leaders and they asked Him, “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” This is not only a political but a religious question, since Caesar considered himself a god. In other words, they are asking, “Should we pledge allegiance to the Roman god or not?” If Jesus said “Yes,” He would be a traitor to the Jews and God, and if He said “No,” He would get in trouble with Rome.

Jesus asked them for a denarius. “Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” He asked them. “Caesar,” they replied. Tiberius image, the Roman Emperor during Jesus’ crucifixion, was on the coin along with the inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus, High Priest.” (Perhaps they are in danger of falling into idolatry, since they are carrying Caesar’s image in their pockets.) “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” Jesus said. Another way of saying this is “Give to Caesar what is made in the image of Caesar. Give to God what is made in God’s image.”

Many Christians live in the hypocrisy Jesus is exposing. To ask questions about how much violence we can use, which wars are justifiable, how much nationalism contradicts Christian belief, is to edge toward idolatry. It is as if the Jews were asking Jesus, “How much of this idolatrous metal can we carry around without breaking the Law?” As Greg Boyd says, “Since it all bears Caesar’s image, give it all back to him! The only important question we ought to be wrestling with is whether or not we are giving back to God all that bears his image—namely, our whole self.”[6]

Jesus did not compromise. He did not say, “Let’s vote for Tiberius and hope for the best. Let’s Make Israel Great Again.” Like the prophets of old (who were killed for their words), Jesus exposed idolatry without compromise. His life was a witness to God’s Kingdom and in direct opposition to worldly kingdoms – an opposition for which he was killed. As Christians, participating in the world’s violent ways, in any shape or form, is to conform to the world which killed him. It is to exchange our vocation as God’s image-bearers for the world’s image. It is to give to Caesar what is God’s.

[1] Giles, Keith,. Jesus Untangled (p. 13). Quoir. Kindle Edition.

[2] Tony Campolo – WWII Story: Christians vs. Christians? – YouTube

^[3] Bruxy Cavey, The end of religion: encountering the subversive spirituality of Jesus (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2020).

[4] Roland H. Bainton; Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace. A Historical Survey and Critical Re-Evaluation. p. 222

[5] I am aware Paul and Jesus did not use these exact words, I am updating them to drive the point home. Nobody goes to war with swords anymore.

[6] Giles, Keith,. Jesus Untangled (p. 14). Quoir. Kindle Edition

Intellectualism, Arrogance, and Peaceful Theology

Or, “Why arrogance has no place in a peaceful theology“

Getting a Handle on Intellectualism

One of the early issues I began wrestling with during my education was the prevalence of anti-intellectualism in the evangelical traditions I was familiar with. Marva Dawn’s Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down and offerings from Robert Weber helped me articulate the irony of the banality of contemporary worship songs, shallow preaching and religious practices, and a people more informed by Fox News than by solid biblical and theological training, but who still acted and spoke with a supreme sense of certainty about their rightness about social issues and religion. I felt that the Church I was seeing reveled in self-certain ignorance. And I wanted to change it.

Anti-intellectualism (being a symptom of right-leaning politics as well) is a worldview that reacts to new learning or new information which challenges the status quo by assuming that the new information is suspect, biased, a corruption of “traditional values,” or (in religious circles) a lie of the devil.

Of course, it’s always selectively so. Science is a liberal, socialist plot foisted by the “elite” when it presents evidence for its theories on origins or warns about the dangers of climate change. But we’re generally all grateful for science when Aunt Mildred needs a heart transplant. Similarly, all university professors are atheist, liberal, socialists trying to brainwash our youth when our youth outgrow their parents’ worldviews, but we don’t question whether our kids need to go to college if they’re going to be successful capitalists.

Such were the ironies of anti-intellectualism. But I actually am not writing about that today. My intent, instead, is to introduce anti-intellectualism as a springboard to criticize an equally problematic -ism, intellectualism.[1] But first, another analogy:

In the same way that anti-intellectualism holds hands with anti-science, I want to suggest that scientism (which my good friend Paul wrote about some years ago) is akin to intellectualism.[2] Whereas, science is a precise system for studying phenomena (i.e., physical reality), scientism is an extreme view pervasive in some segments that elevates science to something solipsistic, either answering questions (noumena, metaphysical) that it cannot and should not be expected to answer, or dismissing those questions as irrelevant outright. In that way, scientism perverts the scientific discipline into something other than it is.[3]

Similarly, while I like to think that most intellectuals may not be the demons that anti-intellectualism has made them out to be, intellectualism happens when intellectuals elevate reason and learning to something unhealthy, or even obscene. The danger (as with scientism) is that, in becoming an intellectualist, the intellectual forgets that there is more than one kind of intelligence, and the intellectual collapses into a type of epistemological solipsism, where all the relevant questions and solutions are asked and resolved through a specific process of inquiry available only to the intellectual. Another name for this is “the Ivory Tower.”

Like all things, science and intellect are good, even marvelous things, in the context of the whole of human endeavors. But they are perverted into something cold, cruel, and evil in isolation.

The damage and resentment that this kind of solipsistic intellectualism causes is illustrated brilliantly in Wendell Berry’s Remembering. In it, Andy Catlett, a late-mid-20^th century Kentucky farmer, laments the industrialization of farming that happens when the academy and the corporation are applied to agriculture. In this brief quote, Andy, who has had enough intellectualist pontification, speaks out at a farming convention:

I don’t believe it is well understood how influence flows from enclosures like this to the fields and farms and farmers themselves. We’ve been…hearing about the American food system and the American food producer, the free market, quantimetric models, pre-inputs, inputs, and outputs, about the matrix of coefficients of endogenous variables, about epistemology and parameters—while actual fields and farms and actual human lives have been damaged. The damage has been going on a long time. The fifteen million people who have left the farms since 1950 left because of damage. There was pain in that departure….
I think that bill came out of a room like this, where a family’s life and work can be converted to numbers and to somebody else’s profit, but the family cannot be seen and its suffering cannot be felt.[4]
Andy Catlett

For Andy, the issue is that there are other types of intelligence, other interests besides profit, which in this case the intellectuals and the profiteers seem to have forgotten. Their own assumptions are too solipsistic. They’ve collapsed into themselves; and harmed the people around them.

What does that have to do with Forging Ploughshares?

Peace Theology Against Intellectualism

I’d propose that if, when asked the question, “What do you think has happened in American culture and politics to bring us to the Trump/post-Trump era?” your first response is to quote some obscure piece of text from Bernard Lonergan instead of asking questions about the reality of people’s access to health care, clean water, or food, then…it may be time for some reflection. If people’s satisfaction with their work or their lives, or how and why they feel left out of cultural conversations, or their debt and financial woes, or the opioid crisis, or how they have been exploited and tossed aside doesn’t seem as relevant as Hans Urs von Balthasar’s work on theological aesthetics, you may be approaching the line separating being an intellectual from being an intellectualist. In other words, it’s possible that some of us, even some of us who are contributing to Forging Ploughshares, aren’t operating with the rest of us here in the real world. And sometimes I get the feeling that we like to hear ourselves talk.

How the Universalism fad has made it worse

Years ago, the pop-theologian Rob Bell wrote his own little treatise on universalism: Love Wins.[5] In it, Bell argued for the position that all people will, after dying, be offered unlimited second chances to come to belief in Christ so that, eventually, all people will “go to heaven.” Bell certainly wasn’t the first to argue such and wasn’t the last. Yet, at most the effect of the book was a momentary blip on the theological radar. Here and gone. Why did Bell not unleash the floodgates of the current universalism obsession with Love Wins? Why no movement? We’ll get there.

For my own part, I remember thinking Love Wins was a little flaky, but still thoughtful. But, because my foray into William Hasker’s emergent dualism had led me to annhiliationism (please read the footnote),[6] I remember also feeling a sense of kinship with Bell and I kind of rooted for him a little. I get it. He was offering up an alternative. I could appreciate it because he seemed honest, sincere, and I found dialogue was still possible with the people who read it.

It feels important for me to restate that before the David Bentley Hart thing, I didn’t really have a problem with universalists. I have had many conversations with people who wear that label and maintained friendship!

The latest form of universalism, though, established by Hart’s That All Shall be Saved, has a far different mood. In terms of academic seriousness, Hart is, far and away, light years beyond Bell’s argument. But, substantially, I take that to be the extent of the difference. The eschatology is the same as Bell’s: all people, after dying, will be offered unlimited second chances to come to belief. Hence, all will “be saved.”

So, why the movement after Hart? The difference, dear friends, is intellectualism. What do I mean?

Hart’s Universalism is an Intellectualist Universalism

The problem that Hart presents is essentially that human will is incapacitated by the failure to understand the Kingdom of God. Being lost is being intellectually challenged (a restatement of Calvinistic original sin) from seeing God’s right way. There is no evil, just foolishness and misunderstanding.

The solution? As I was told while recording a podcast recently, “once people understand the Gospel, they WILL accept it.” Once their intellect is corrected or restored (whether here or after death), they will choose it (merely reworded irresistible grace).

This, of course, precludes the possibility that someone might actually understand salvation and still reject it. It also would seem to rule out the notion that someone might not fully understand it and still choose it, if the issue is simply an intellectual one.[7] I’ll get to what I take to be a problem with that momentarily.

And that is the point I am attempting to make without belaboring: this view of universalism is predicated on an intellectualist understanding of what sin and salvation are. The whole thing is merely a problem of the intellect which is solved by a correction of the intellect. Is it any wonder it’s found such popular acceptance among intellectual progressives who want to reject their evangelical roots and feel intellectually superior? I attest that what has risen in the current universalist mood is an intellectualist arrogance that is nearly unbearable for those of us who think differently. Why?

Hart’s Intellectualist Universalism is arrogant and his followers are, too

An honest conversation with anyone who has read even a section of Hart’s book elicits a response that Hart is, at least harshly critical of people who disagree with universalism. Others have described it as being downright cutting and hostile to those who disagree. And it’s not hard to see why.

To begin, might I, for a moment, comment on the ableism of Hartian universalism? Might I point out that the arrogant assumption of sin as merely a failure of the intellect to properly understand the gospel implies that those who do not accept it are mentally impaired? Does this not also imply that those with mental or intellectual disabilities are more sinful by virtue of the fact that sin is no more than the fallen inability to understand truth? Is this not the height of power and arrogance that Jesus meant to undo in the Gospels?

And furthermore, does this not imply a hierarchy of intellect in which the universalist is at the peak? I think, ultimately, this is the arrogant, undeniable conclusion of this recent form of universalism.

In fact, Hart’s universalism is expressed best (as it is expressed by Hart) with a generous helping of condescension and disdain, a general sense of certitude that “this position is the ‘informed’ one and that all others are simply backward, ignorant, small-minded: or foolish.” If all sin is, simply, foolish misunderstanding, it follows that people who don’t understand it that way are simply not as intellectual as the universalist. And that assumption tends to emerge anytime I end up in dialogue with someone who follows Hart, as these recent interchanges went:

“Universalism is undeniable, once you understand it.”
In response to a previous article of mine, “His Christology is good, but I don’t think he understands universalism.”
“I think your understanding that God can only work with someone on this side of death is crude and small-minded.”

To be a universalist along Hart’s lines is to believe not just that sin is a failure of intellect and salvation is a restoration of intellect. It is to believe that those who understand this are of the highest intellect, and that all objections are intellectually inferior to this position. In other words, if people don’t choose the Gospel (which is understood to apply to everyone once they understand it), it’s because they don’t understand it—including those of us who reject their universalism (we just don’t understand it—if we understood it, we’d accept it).

This form of solipsistic intellectualist universalism comes packaged with an obnoxious, self-sustaining pretense that has made reasonable dialogue impossible. It mocks questions, rolls over objections, commandeers honest conversations, and shouts down dissent. It is self-righteous, self-important, and it has hurt honest, seeking people who just don’t see it the same way.

I argue that Milton, hardly the keeper of eschatological orthodoxy, was right when he said that there are will always be people who choose: “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.” And, if you want to know the truth, the desire to reign is what I feel has emerged when discussing “universalism” with Hartian universalists.

Say what you will about Rob Bell’s book on universalism; at least he wasn’t a pretentious d*ck about it. But the more I talk to Hartian universalists, the more convinced I am that the pretentiousness is the attraction for smug progressives[8] who are completely certain that they’re more intellectual than you are. For them, the Good News is that, someday, God will make sure the rest of us lowly cretins agree with the universalists so that, in the end, the only people in heaven will be the universalists. Then we’ll all know…they were right.

And the more I talk to Hart’s followers, the less I find their position comports as a peaceful theology. It feels, instead, more like people trying to win arguments and prove their superiority. It feels less like the cross and more like people struggling to overpower their enemies.

[1] Here, I want to be careful to note that I am using the standard suffix “-ism” to imply an extreme or dogmatic position.

[2] What my friend Paul does not know but that I still talk about was how many of my science friends and my theological friends both took exception to that article—for the same reasons, but from different viewpoints. It was fascinating.

[3] For my part, aside from the obvious advantages for the military in the Department of Education’s interest in STEM over and against the liberal arts in education, the best reason I can see for doing STEM and de-emphasizing literature, history, art, music, home economics, and shop class is that science and technology are achieving religious status. The questions that other disciplines answer are superfluous at best. Hence, scientism.

[4] Wendell Berry, Remembering: a Novel. Counterpoint, Berkely, CA. Pgs. 19-20.

[5] Perhaps the benefit of this outing for universalism was that it acted as a “fuzz buster” (you’d have to be a child of the 90s to truly appreciate the reference), exposing objections from folks like John Piper, who, famously, said “Farewell, Rob Bell.”

[6] If, unlike non-physical persons such as God or angels, what we call soul or spirit is a product of our physical being, then it makes no sense to say that there can be life for us apart from that physical being. For this reason, I began to explore an earthier sense of what Jesus’ Kingdom was all about; and my view of resurrection became a restored physical life on a restored physical world. For that reason, an eternal hell apart from a resurrected body ceased to make sense. This means, though, that neither does the option of making the choice to follow Jesus “after we die” unless that person is also raised to physical life in the resurrection. And how, in a resurrected world in which everyone is raised, regardless of whether they chose not to follow Jesus, would that resurrected world be any different from the world we live in now (except being more crowded and, thereby, more broken)? And, if that resurrected world is no different than the one we live in now, why should we think that those who refuse to follow now would choose to in the next world? Most “universalists” have blocked me, invited me to leave the conversation, or walked all over me before I could even set up my question. Their intellectualist assumption won’t allow for alternative objections other than the ones they feel Hart has already debunked: and that is precisely because their certainty is established by the assumption of intellectual superiority. The problem with we who disagree is that we just…don’t understand. God will prove them right, someday.

[7] For my own part, I take the story of the rich young man in Mt 19, in which Jesus explains that he must relinquish his power and wealth to be a part of the Kingdom and he walks away disheartened to be a story not of someone who rejected because he did not understand. He rejected because he did understand.

[8] As someone who has considered himself some type of “progressive” for a while now, I know we can be smug. But we needn’t be.

Sorting Out Atonement Theories

This is a guest blog by Allan S. Contreras Ríos

“To land our ‘sins’ onto a dead first-century Jew is not just ridiculous; it’s disgusting. To suggest that some god projected our ‘sins’ onto that man is even worse: it’s a sort of cosmic child abuse, a nightmare fantasy that grows out of— or might actually lead to!— real human abuses in today’s world. We can do without that nonsense.” -N. T. Wright.

“WHY DID JESUS DIE?” IT IS A QUESTION TO WHICH CHRISTIANS automatically answer, “For our sins.” Although it may be a satisfactory answer within Christian circles, this answer might alienate those seeking some semblance of coherence, particularly inasmuch as this entails an angry God sending his innocent Son to die for all who reject him which, frankly, does not make much sense.

Western theology has passed along the idea that God requires a sacrifice in order to forgive humanity’s sins. This becomes an interesting (ironic) doctrine when analyzed in light of the teachings of Jesus and within light of the counter-prophetic message that sacrifice is a human, and not a divine, innovation. Why would Jesus ask humankind to forgive others 70 times 7 (Matthew 18:21-22), when God cannot forgive humankind unless something or someone dies? If God really wants to forgive and restore humankind, why does He require a sacrifice? Jeremiah 7:22 says “For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Either something is wrong with many of the traditional atonement theories or something is wrong with God (He is schizophrenic and/or sadistic). The major western theories all partake of the same basic errors, which I briefly describe below, before pointing toward what I take to be a more biblical understanding of why Christ died.

Contractual Theories

In summary, contractual theories teach that humans are sinful (as in original sin/total depravity), everyone violates the Law (in which life resides), therefore they are damned. The Contract (Covenant) humanity and God had was not working, therefore God provides a way out in Christ, who satisfies God’s justice by taking humanity’s punishment on Himself, and imputing to them His righteousness through faith in Christ’s sacrifice.

There are several problems with the basic assumptions of the contractual approach, in that they contradict what the Bible teaches:

Life is in the Law, contrary to what Romans 8:2 says (life is in the law of the Spirit in Christ).
Those who killed Jesus acted according to God’s will.
The ultimate purpose of the mission of Jesus is not to restore all things (Acts 3:21), but to die as a sacrifice.
It assumes some satisfaction (of divine wrath) is required for forgiveness.
Humankind has a debt to pay that requires human blood from a demanding God that rejected sacrifice in several verses in the Old Testament.
God demands humankind to forgive their neighbor, but He cannot do that Himself without the death of someone.

These theories claim that justice needs to be done in order for forgiveness to be granted, but when justice is done, forgiveness is no longer necessary. So, why is there a need to forgive if justice was done in the death of Christ? The obvious answer is, Jesus’ death is not just, but far from it, an innocent man is killed to spare the truly evil guilty ones that, paradoxically, kill him according to God’s will. Justice is absent when violence is done, and violence is precisely what the cross represents: namely, human violence against its own Creator.

The theology of the early Church became corrupted through time due to the events surrounding the “conversion” of Constantine who merged Church and State and this may go a long way in explaining the multiplication of perverse theories of atonement. In addition, several atonement theories arose which were intended to illustrate the death and resurrection of Christ (at specific times in history),^[1] and not necessarily to pose singular or dogmatic understandings, but which unfortunately ended up being codified into doctrine.

The theories can be sorted according to the problem Christ would solve, specifically within the various persons (Satan, Man, God) which contain the obstacle to salvation. The question arises as to the person and the nature of the obstacle?

According to Ransom theory (developed by Origen, 185-254 AD), sinful man is controlled by Satan, therefore, the death of Christ is a payment to Satan to free the captives. Sometimes this ransom is illustrated as a hoax; in other words, Jesus ripped off Satan. Somehow Jesus ensures the escape of mankind from the hands of Satan, and then he scams Satan by escaping through the resurrection. The problem with this theory is immediately obvious, if God or Jesus owes something to Satan, is Satan more powerful than God?

The Man theory has multiple variations, but essentially holds that the death of Christ serves as a catalyst to inspire the reformation of society, that is, to bring about repentance and to halt rebellion against God. God could have forgiven without the cross, but He uses the cross to persuade humanity to repent. In this theory, salvation depends entirely on the human response, that is, on human repentance. The two main variations of this theory are:

The Moral Influence Theory. This theory (held by Abelard; 1033-1109) teaches that God wanted to forgive man, but the problem lay in how to convince man that he could be forgiven. On the cross Jesus demonstrates the love of God and His willingness to forgive. Man, turning to see the cross and the love of God it portrays, rekindles his love for Him, repents, and then God forgives him.

The Governmental Theory. This theory teaches that God is a ruler who uses Jesus as an example to impose fear on the hearts of sinners. This theory emphasizes the seriousness with which God regards His law, such that whoever breaks it suffers the wrath of God. As God demonstrates His wrath through the cross, He persuades humanity to respect God’s moral law.

The main problem with the Man Theory is the fluid (it seems to illustrate opposed notions in the two versions of the theory) and the non-essential purpose it assigns to Jesus’ sacrifice (any number of things might illustrate the love or moral seriousness of God). If anger falls on the one who breaks God’s law, what law did Jesus break? Wasn’t He innocent? Was there not a simpler way to demonstrate His love than the murder of Jesus? If the crucifixion was not necessary, then why carry out such a plan?

In the God Theory it is taught that the death of Jesus removed the obstacle to forgiveness within the nature of God. God’s loving nature wants to forgive humanity, but His holiness does not allow it and demands that there be punishment. Therefore, before sins can be forgiven, God’s justice must be satisfied. The main variants of the theory are:

Divine Satisfaction. In this theory (held by Anselm;^[2] 1093-1109 AD) sinful man must pay a debt to satisfy the honor due to God or suffer eternal punishment. But, since man constantly sins, it becomes impossible to pay a debt that continues to increase. Since Christ was sinless, He can and does pay the debt of all humanity.

Penal Substitution. This theory (held by Calvin; 1509-1564 AD) is a modification of divine satisfaction, with a shift in focus from satisfying honor to appeasing anger. Since man broke God’s law the exact penalty prescribed by the law must be paid. In order to save a few, the elect, God transfers His punishment to a substitute: Jesus. Christ takes upon Himself the divine anger and suffers the penalties and imputes His justice to the elect.

Divine satisfaction and penal substitution are focused on the exchange between the Father and the Son: an infinite offense against the infinite honor of God that required a divine exchange (between the Father and the Son) that basically leaves out finite humans. Instead of being rescued from sin, death, and the Devil (which was the primitive belief about the ministry of Christ), a change arises in which humanity is now being saved from the law, justice, and God.^[3] Salvation means that God’s wrath is removed or His honor is reestablished through the death of Jesus.

In this perverse alternative to Christianity, instead of the disciple taking up his cross and following Jesus, Jesus dies in his place so that the disciple no longer has to die. Salvation is focused on the death of Christ: in Catholicism it is a continuing death and in Protestantism it is death mostly in isolation from His life. This is typically linked to the denial of the body as a means for the salvation of the soul. Instead of the Father and the Son being united to defeat evil, death, and the Devil, now it is the Son who suffers the wrath of God for humanity.

Instead of resurrection being the sign of a completed mission against evil, now resurrection is secondary to the penalty or substitution exacted on the cross. In this alternative Christianity, the State (the Roman Empire) is now part of the divine order, instead of being the servant of the prince of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). The death of Christ, instead of suspending, displacing, or rendering the law useless, requires Roman law and the Mosaic law. Law is integral to the logic of the governmental theory, divine satisfaction and penal substitution and the law, rather than being suspended or displaced, is left in place as the logic that required or justifies the death of Christ.

In short, there are a multiplicity of atonement theories, several of which do not focus on biblical exegesis. As mentioned above, the function of some was merely illustrative and they did not purport to be biblical. The theories are dense and complex, and each Christian has a responsibility to scrutinize the Bible and study these theories and hopefully leave behind those unworthy of the God found in Christ. No theory may be complete or perfect, and thank God, humanity will not be saved according to the correctness of their theories. Like Michael Hardin says (in Finding Our Way Home), “God forgives our theology… just like He forgives our sin.”^[4]

What can be said, without a doubt, is that the image of a God who demands satisfaction for His honor or wrath is not the God of the Bible; it is a paganized notion. The larger problem with many of the atonement theories is that, as Richard Rohr puts it, “to turn Jesus into a Hero we ended up making the Father into a ‘Nero’.”^[5] In other words, God becomes the first to persecute the Body of Christ.

The reality is that the cross is a confrontation, but not between the Father and the Son, but against the forces of evil that murdered Him. It is the overthrow of death, nationalism, ethnocentrism, racism, self-centeredness, machismo, feminism, and every form of evil that results in violence and death. It is not the “violence of God” that murders Jesus, it is the violence of human evil that murders Him.

Rightly understood, this accords with the classic understanding of Christus Victor, which Gustaf Aulén maintained was the understanding of the first church and to which he advocated a return. The Christus Victor paradigm understands the word of Christ in terms of His conflict with, and triumph over those elements of the kingdom of darkness that enslave humanity, that is, Satan and his demons, sin, death, and the curse of the Law. Though it may be a parallel to Ransom Theory, the theory need not be associated with the cruder elements of this understanding^[6] and it also stresses Christ’s victory over sin and is thus centered to an equal degree in the idea of the resurrection.

In conclusion, to think that God is angry and wants to send everyone to hell is not biblical. The story the Bible tells is of God’s search for a relationship with His human creation, and this creation constantly turns away from Him, choosing to abandon the singular source of life. This is precisely what sin is, not just the breaking of moral codes, but idolatry and the distortion of human identity because of that idolatry. It is exchanging life for death. It is offering God death instead of sacrificial life. It is exchanging the covenant with God and making a covenant with death itself.

N. T. Wright describes (in his book The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion) the three-layered error in modern Christianity: we Platonized our eschatology (by substituting the promise of being a new creation for ‘souls going to heaven’), we moralized our anthropology (by substituting the biblical notion of human vocation for a qualifying test of moral performance) and we paganized our soteriology (by substituting the genuine Biblical notion of forgiveness with the idea that “God killed Jesus to calm His anger”).

Christianity, under the influence of Plato (and Platonist theologians), inevitably interprets God as a violent god, but perhaps people will distance themselves from that god and be drawn to the God of the Bible. The hope is that by moving away from the repulsive god of a failed atonement theory the true God will be sought, though, this is often not the case.

[1] The error of many of these atonement theories is locating themselves in a specific time and space other than the time and space in which Jesus died. That is, they try to explain the purpose of Jesus’ death according to the historical context that surrounds them. For example, Satisfaction theory repeats themes from its medieval context. Not that this is necessarily bad, because Jesus died for everyone in all times. But you cannot speak of His death and resurrection without placing them in their own context. Another example of this error is the one that N. T. Wright rightly points out, and that is, even, many of these atonement theories are not based on the Gospels, but on the letters.

[2] Augustine is the theologian who most influenced Western theology and that is why it is necessary to mention the following: Augustine, who had Neo-Platonic notions, leads theology to reinterpret human subjectivity and the functioning of truth. It fails to appreciate the embodied nature of truth, and unfortunately this infects the rest of theology with a dualistic tendency, thus fusing it with Greek philosophy. The interaction between soul and body becomes more Greek than Judeo/Christian. It begins the belief that the soul is eternal and is trapped in a human body. And it is Augustine who mystifies sin, opens the way to the atonement theory called “divine satisfaction” that is today’s standard imposed in most Western churches and that Anselm developed later.

Anselm completely absorbed the change that Constantine brought about and gives life to the Satisfaction theory. In this atonement theory, God is the object, and the human is the subject. This theory used Roman law as a metaphor (and, on behalf of Anselm, his intention was only to make an illustration). Unfortunately, his illustration became the only way to see the cross of Christ in Western theology.

“In ancient times, Christ was seen first and foremost as the conqueror of the devil and his powers. His work consisted above all in freeing humanity from the yoke of slavery to which it was subjected. And so, the worship of the ancient church was centered on the Resurrection. But in the Middle Ages, particularly in the ‘dark ages,’ the emphasis shifted, and Jesus came to be thought of primarily as the payment for human sins. His task was to appease the honor of an offended God. In worship, the emphasis fell on the Crucifixion rather than the Resurrection. And Jesus Christ, rather than the conqueror of the devil, became a victim of God. In Why God Became Man, Anselm clearly and precisely formulated what had become the common faith of his day [Justo L. González, History of Christianity: Volume 1, vol. 1 (Miami, FL: Editorial Unilit, 2003), 424-425.] Translated by me.”

[3] A violent atonement theory – a theory that uses violence to generate its meaning – will only serve to multiply and even justify violence in the world.

Calvin, one of the most influential theologians, is a good example of the violence that this blog criticizes. He agreed with the murder of heretics and blasphemers (who would determine who was a heretic? Him?), to the point that, according to A History of the Church by James North “Servetus was burned to death in Geneva by Calvin and his followers (p. 350).”

Although there is debate as to how much Calvin directly influenced the assassination of Servetus, and other assassinations (sometimes the number exceeds 58), there is no doubt that his theology justifies such acts and greatly influenced during the Protestant Reformation.

[4] Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin, eds., Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2007), 64.

[5] Ibid, 208.

[6] Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 AD) illustrates the Devil as a fish, Jesús is the bait and hook, God is the fisherman. Augustine (354-430 AD) used an example similar to Gregory’s: a mousetrap. Jesus on the cross was the bait, a man without sin. Satan kills Jesus, but at the same time falls into the trap and is mortally wounded.

On the universal necessity of our crosses

Being saved is participation in the cross of Christ—undoing evil by living a cruciform life in the face of that evil. And, for this reason, it is the only real-world answer to the real-world problem of evil.

The faith I grew up with had a singular notion of the meaning of the cross: it was simply the necessary price that someone had to pay in order to satisfy God’s need to punish us for our sins. This “vicarious” sacrifice ensured that God’s retributive justice was satisfied so that his forgiveness could be extended on an individual basis to each sinner. As such, it was done for me as something I could not do for myself. Jesus “took your punishment,” he “lived the life he lived and died an innocent man so you don’t have to.” Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo established for us this principle: Jesus is God become human because no mere human could do what God could do, but a human must do it–hence “why God became man.” And, because he did something which was not possible for us, we reap the benefits at no personal cost.

My oversimplification here is intentional. At Forging Ploughshares, Paul and the rest of us who have contributed have written, interviewed, and podcasted extensively on the problems of penal substitutionary atonement.

To my mind, though, the brilliance of penal substitution as it is developed in the centuries post-Anselm is its simplicity and ease. The problem Jesus came to solve? Well, we’ve committed “sins,” actions God didn’t want us to do that, once done, irreversibly give us a mystical mark as “sinners,” prohibiting our entry into heaven and destining us to eternal suffering or destruction. The “defeat of death” in the resurrection spoken of throughout the New Testament is simply the promise of eternal life, post-mortem in heaven purchased entirely by someone else.

Because of the mystical nature of what this salvation is, the real question for the reformers who ran with Anselm’s initial theory was always “what then must be done to apply the effects of Jesus’ death and resurrection to the individual sinner?” And, because of their rightful distaste for the corrupt Roman Catholic church of their day, they became convinced that nothing was required but a nebulous “faith.” Ultimately, while Luther and Calvin transitioned Anselm’s initial medieval analogies to more contemporary court analogies, the thrust remained the same: Jesus had done something for you that you are incapable of doing.

As far as I could tell from my conservative (one-step-removed-from-Reformed) Bible college education, the only issue left for the church to resolve was to kibitz over the details of who qualifies to receive the mystical “salvation.” Is it anyone who repeats the magic words “I believe?” Are there other requirements, such as baptism? How many sins can I still commit before I lose that salvation? Can it be lost? Are there just a few people who are saved? Or, does it sort of automatically apply to everyone, universally?—an idea that has experienced a bit of a renaissance in the past year or two. From the perspective of a Gospel predicated on something Jesus does for us, the people who argue all of these positions must feel that concepts like universalism and infernalism are polar opposite. But they are both predicated on the same assumption: that the problem of evil and death is mystical, otherworldly, and that it is defeated by someone else for you.

About fifteen years ago (around 2005, give or take a year), my friend Paul Axton began to drop hints to me that there were other ways to look at the cross. Maybe the cross wasn’t something that was done for us, but something that we were invited to share. It’s still not entirely clear to me whether to thank Paul or curse him, because the question changed everything for me—and there is no doubt in my mind, it did so at great cost to both of us.

What happened for me was a shift to what I now consider a much more practical, physical, and human understanding of the point of the cross. I no longer believe that the cross solved some mystical problem for God that prevented him from allowing us to live with him forever after we die. The removal of the sting of death has literally nothing to do with moving on to a disembodied heaven. The problem of sin isn’t that it prevents escaping the planet. The problem of sin is that it corrupts God’s good creation.

This means that the problem the cross resolves is more complicated than “going to heaven.”

In the creation narrative, we are told that humans were created to live and thrive on this planet as physical “images,” representations of the divine creator who made it. In this story, God is portrayed creating the universe through a cosmic speech act (he speaks and it comes to being). When people (the images) are created, he calls them to mimic the speech act by naming what is created. Thus, the role of the images of God is to partner with God in the ongoing work of caring for one another and that creation, to be co-participants, co-creators in the ongoing creation of the universe. As John Walton has stated, God’s “resting” on the seventh day is his sitting on his throne in his new cosmic temple so that the real work of partnering with his new friends in the joyous work of his kingdom could begin.

In the story, the created “images” weren’t satisfied with their image-hood and chose to know what was not for them to know. They chose to decide for themselves what is good and evil, to be other than little copies of God—and in fact, to make God in their own image. And, since they were no longer living as God’s images, they began naming things improperly. The earth, its creatures, and one another were all named for exploitation. For this, they were cursed—but we must carefully understand this.

The curse, of course, was death. But this was not the carrying out of some divine ultimatum or threat. He didn’t kill the people in the story. All of God’s statements in the fall narrative seem to be God’s observations about the state of things, rather than punishments. That they would now “die” seems to have deep implications: rather than having work to do, they would now have to work simply to survive. Rather than having loving relationships like the persons in the trinity, they would rule over one another. Rather than having access to the Tree of Life, their lives would be predicated on, and ruled by, their deaths. All of life had now become a competition to avoid death, a zero-sum-game of chasing power through violence. As a symbol of this new defining characteristic, they were now even clothed with death.

And there it is. The problem of sin and death isn’t some mystical problem which must be undone in the mind of God to allow entrance to heaven after we die. The problem of death is that it has become the defining characteristic in our lives. And sin is the violence we do to the world, to the people, to ourselves, and to God in order to try to get as much life lived as we can in view of our death, even if it means killing someone else, before we ourselves die. This, we call “evil.”

Again, the problem of death isn’t about what happens after. The problem of death is always the evil we are doing before because of our impending deaths. The problem of death is real world evil. Something that is intended to be resolved before we die, not after.

Enter Jesus into this understanding and you find the core problem which penal substitution attempts to resolve is dismantled. Jesus is not solving some meta-cosmic problem, but the real world problem of evil. His death on the cross is the undoing of the necessity of power by the acceptance of death made possible by the resurrection. As such, the cross was the ultimate undoing of the pursuit of power through violence. How so?

If the problem of evil is the attempt to escape death, salvation from evil is the acceptance of our own death–the acceptance of the cross and a cruciform life.

Death isn’t defeated in such a manner that we no longer have to die. No, we are promised that we all still die. Death is defeated in that it no longer rules over us while we live.

Which means, Jesus didn’t “do it [die] so that you don’t have to.” He died to restore to us the image of God by our acceptance of our death by participation in the cross. Jesus restored divine image-hood by demonstrating death’s defeat and calling us to follow. When Jesus bore the cross, he was saying, “Here is God.” When he quoted Psalm 22, crying, “why have you forsaken me” he was calling to mind the psalm’s own solution: he hasn’t forsaken the suffering one. He is here in the suffering with us because he has always been a suffering God. To be like him is to suffer, with him. And being like him is the entire point of this.

Salvation is not a status purchased for us. Salvation is the lived reality of the cross. It is the return to true human image-hood by the mimicking of God. On the cross God was showing us that this is the God he is—and to be human is to be like him. Therefore, his call for us is to pick up that cross and follow. “If you want to be my disciple, you must pick up your cross.” “You will share in his glory, if indeed you share in his suffering (Ro 8).”

This is the entire point: dying on our crosses is salvation, not a mere eternal destination. Salvation is the lived reality of a restored image-bearing done by sharing the cross of Christ. That means that Jesus’ cross wasn’t the only one that is necessary to “be saved.” Carrying our cross is what being saved is.

If, then, as some are saying, “Jesus defeated death for all, no matter whether they share the cross of Christ or not,” they are actually saying Jesus has not defeated the problem of evil and death in this world but in the next world. If it is not necessary for us to bear our crosses, then we are left with some mystical understanding of what Jesus died for, and we are left with the same problem of real-world evil and death.

In fact, real world evil is ultimately dismissed by the universalist’s claims as nothing more than “foolishness.” This, I take to be a denial of even the necessity of the cross of Christ. Was it merely people’s foolishness that crucified Jesus? Were they just tricked? If the problem in this world was nothing more than foolishness, could it not have been cured by a divine critical thinking skills course? No, on the cross, Jesus faced true evil. And we face it as well on our crosses.

Again: to deny the necessity of carrying our cross is to deny the real-world solution to the real-world problem of sin and evil that murdered Jesus. It is to say it was not necessary for 2nd and 3rd century Christians to face the lions in the arena. It is to tell the martyrs that their sacrifice was in vain, that it was unnecessary. It is to say to me and my friends who’ve lost jobs and dreams and livelihoods that, “You didn’t have to do that. It was done for you no matter what.”

I am frequently told that unless I believe that all people are saved regardless of their participation in the cross, I am just not loving or “hopeful.” But a mystical escape from the world is simply not the kingdom my imagination has been taken captive by–I find no hope in it. My hope is in a kingdom defined by a people who are willing to bear the cross of Christ. This I take to be a beautiful kingdom of those willing to live like God by dying like God. It is a kingdom with a real solution to real evil right here in this real world. And a resurrection peopled by those who never understood the cost of this cross would be a resurrection of the fallen earth in which we currently reside.

And in this real world, where millions of people who call themselves Christians are willing to cause harm to anyone else in the name of “freedom, security, and the economy” the notion of changing that theology to one that says “You actually can be his disciple (or share the benefits of the cross) without carrying the cross,” is one I gladly, wholeheartedly, and passionately–even angrily–reject.

Theo-ecology: Western Wildfire’s Prophetic Cry

The following is a guest blog by Tyler Sims.

Smoke choke. Two words I never heard before. Two words I now know intimately, like a dial on the stove top turning up the heat. “Smoke choke” seared in me a desire for theological action regarding creation care and climate change.

The mega-wildfires of the West had sent their foreboding herald. In the sleepiest moments of night an ominous smoke crept over the entire West Coast and into communities of the Olympic Peninsula. Our town is situated near the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States. We were caught unaware.

Smoke Choke, September, 11, 2020:

Setting the fan on low I welcome the cool air from nearby Salish sea. My kids will sleep well tonight.

The morning light peeps through our window’s edge. A burning courses down the length of my throat. Stinging tears perch on the creases of my eye lids. There is a strange haze highlighted by a 7 A.M. burnt orange sun. Our home smells slightly of some odd aroma. It smells of sharp and sweet burnt plastic. My lungs constrict. Fumbling for my inhaler, I puff the stuff of pulmonary salvation.

Seattle’s news update explains our air quality is now hazardous. Mega fires with their own weather system send their message: Hazardous. What does it mean? It means the air my daughter and son breathe is poison. Each breath could deliver poisonous microscopic particles deep into their lungs.

September 12, 2020

Seattle’s Komo news demonstrates making homemade filters out of box fans. One HEPA filter and copious amounts of duct tape forms the makeshift adaptation. It is too little, too late for our drafty home. Words of complaint fall from my lips, “My throat is still on fire.” The asthma attack tightens its vice. “Do you think the hotel will have clean air?” Andrea asks.

Driving away, the car mirror reflects a hazy image of the neighborhood. The radio blares the height of a smoke plume on top of Western Washington–6,0000 feet. A meteorologist explains, “It’s called an inversion– meaning the clean air is trapped above 6,000 ft of smoke.”

At the hotel Sophia and Ty spill their toys over patterned carpet. There are no advertisements regarding Quality Inn’s air quality. A few breaths in and it’s clear; we escaped the poison air.

“Hazardous,” is the message of mega-fires from the chaparral mountains in California. “Poison” is the message from the evergreen mountains of Oregon. Beyond the flames, what does the message communicate?

It communicates the prophetic witness of fire. In ecology, or the study of Eden, fire is a renewing agent. It burns through the old and worn out stands of forest–a function often thwarted by mankind’s forest management. Pioneer species and other plants dominate recently burned areas. These pioneer plants–sometimes forming wildflower meadows–renew the soil.

As time passes, newly conditioned soil begins transitioning to larger, more nutritious plants. Perhaps Jesus had this in mind when commenting, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Luke 12:49

Let’s lean into the interpretation of Jesus wanting fire for dramatic renewal. Consider the ecological function of forest fires coupled with the mind-boggling size of West Coast wildfires. What are the forests pleading? What is the earth asking? What is creation groaning?

The earth is asking for renewal. The forests are asking for a restart. Perhaps creation …

waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
-Romans 8:19-22

The initial devastating destruction of wildfires mirror society at large. Society is dependent upon a death-dealing transaction of negligent thinking translated into a fiery blaze of irresponsible human industry. For example, technology’s codependence on manufacturing promotes exploitive resource extraction which harms the earth and props up unsustainable carbon industry.

It is a global societal pattern akin to the early and chaotic stages of a spreading fire.

Wildfires also tell us that gluttonous earth consumption is hazardous and ignoring the earth is poisonous. Within the literal smoke the fate of creation and humanity become united. The smoke is burnt particles of industry: cars, gasoline, non-renewable materials and pollutants. The smoke is also burnt homes, animals, plants and human life. Prophetic fire warns us and smoke compels us to change.

Fire is a startling teacher and yet it heralds good news too. After the flames arrest our attention we can choose to start anew. We can choose a new relationship with creation by working with the ways of the earth (ecology), not against it. We can renew our relationship with God as cultivators instead of consumers. We can forge new relationships with each other as fellow cultivators, not destructive competitors. Yes, it’s hard work. But don’t worry; we have help.

“One who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Luke 3:16

Do-ology Challenge: Get some dirt in the game! Replace smart phone time with planting real trees via a conservation app. https://www.forestapp.cc/