Some people criticize the idea of committing to a new habit or pattern after toasting in the New Year. I never understood why.
Who decided that a commitment is only worth making if one keeps it perfectly? Take marriage for example. Does anyone honestly believe that spouses perfectly keep their marriage vows, "to love and to cherish from this day forward..." Who are we kidding? Most spouses do this on a half time basis at best, vacillating between fair and partly cloudy in their ability to convey the selfless love and devotion that they promised at the altar. And over half of all marriages end in divorce. As sobering as it sounds, human beings are by nature promise-breakers. As more and more people will grow up in single parent homes, live through a painful divorce, or bear the scars of abuse at the hands of someone they trusted, we have fewer and fewer examples of faithfulness and promise-keeping.
But we need to keep trying. We need to keep making promises, identifying shortcomings, and resolving ourselves to a better way. Our lives depend on it.
What's the alternative? Who wants to live with the cynicism which condemns an individual to broken patterns, simply because the undoing of those patterns involves a lifetime of struggle?
In the year 1519 Martin Luther, who almost singlehandedly changed history by bringing about the Protestant Reformation, nailed a groundbreaking document to the door of the Wittenberg chapel. This document is known as the "95 Theses," a list of accusations and assertions that rejected and corrected the abuses of the Roman Church.
The first of Luther's 95 Theses reads, "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ... willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance." My translation: the 2nd most famous figure in history, quoting the single most famous figure in history, declares that our entire lives should revolve around confessing our broken patterns and side-stepped promises, and the resolution to live more faithfully.
If he were alive today, Luther would probably criticize New Year's resolutions, not as a waste of time, but for being too infrequent. In fact, he favored daily resolutions, which he referred to as "daily dying," which was the daily recommitment of one's life to a God whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3).
Notice the underlying assumption here: both before and after we resolve ourselves to more faithful behavior, we will continue needing to confess our faithless behavior. We never grow out of our need for life-change. We never outrun our natural orientation to cutting corners. We never rise above our tendency to turn away from promises, and from God Himself.
So thankfully, through the gift of repentance, we access the power of Divine forgiveness, and with it, the grace to try again. In our daily re-comittment to faithfulness, God expects us to heavily rely upon His faithfulness and forgiveness. In many ways, the Cross of Jesus represents God's admission that our resolutions, New Year's and otherwise, are as essential as they are frail.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Birthday and the Self
Today, I rolled out of bed after another poor night's sleep (fellow parents of young children will simply nod their heads in complete empathy), feeling slapped in the face by a particularly nasty cold. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but the thought actually came to me: Wait a minute. Today's my birthday. I deserve a good night sleep, perfect health, and a day to do pretty much whatever I want.
Then, as I changed diapers, fed the kids breakfast, and prepared to go to work, while choking down whatever cold medication I could find in the cupboards, another thought came to me. A very different thought. A foreign thought that invaded the safe confines of my self absorbed world. A message from a totally different universe. A simple, lifechanging prase uttered by someone who gave his life centuries ago: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23, NIV).
Birthdays can serve as a time to be... well... served. A day in which we hope or expect others to call, write, give gifts, and sing us some new version of "Happy Birthday to you." And, if I had it my way, everyone on earth would have the chance to feel so loved and appreciated on at least one special day of the year. On the other hand, birthdays can also point to something totally beyond ourselves.... to a reality far greater and grander than we can imagine.
When Jesus told us to deny ourselves, he didn't mean that we should supress our identity, deny our needs or issues, forget our dreams, or minimize our value as an individual. Quite the opposite, in fact. He told us to deny ourselves because only then can we see ourselves in the Divine context, from the standpoint of a Sovereign who created and sustains all things, and who must be followed as the Center of existance. Thus, whenever I silently step into the center of my existance--and I do so constantly--I find myself in a lonely, dark, and disappointing place, a place where I was never meant to stand. Such is the ultimate supression of self, the rejection of my true, creaturely identity, in favor of a self centered lie.
But today, on my birthday, what if I asked God to kick me out of the center of my life? To boot me off the throne? What if I asked Him to dwell there as the Object of my hope, trust, and worship? What if I denied myself and lost myself in service to a crucified Lord, forsaking every inviting opportunity to live for my personal pleasure, security, or advancement?
Jesus continues in Luke 9 with my answer: For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. Jesus' call to deny the self is not a call to waste away in a loss of personhood. It's the only way to save and find the true self. Living with Him as the center of my thoughts and decisions, rather than my own selfish ambitions and insecurities, is the only way to save myself. Only the Savior saves the self.
We've all been in meetings or relationships where we were obsessed with making a good impression, totally preoccupied with finding the perfect thing to say.... unable to deny the self. But we've also been in situations where we totally lost ourselves in something great: a worship service, a service project, the birth of a child, a wedding, a sunset, putting a child to bed or through college, a world series victory (1987 and 1991 in particular). Those are the best moments of life, I believe, because they give a taste of what it's like to lose yourself, only to find yourself securely contained and defined by something greater.
The fact is that, as one birthday piles on top of the last, and as years pass faster and faster, we are reminded of the fleeting nature of life and time. Since birthdays--like time itself--are an unknown commodity and a limited resource (none us know how many we have left), they can either serve as a cold, hard reminder that our days are numbered, or as an undeserved but welcome invitation to see one's existance as part of something that will last long after we've blown out our last set of birthday candles.
God, we want to save our lives, but we know not how. Teach us the strange art of denying our 'self,' taking up our cross, and following your Son. Make that our calling, our ambition, our dream, that we might truly find ourselves in you: complete, whole, and satisfied fully. And may my--and all our birthdays--point us to the New Birth that comes from finally finding oneself, as a small but deeply loved part of the Kingdom of God.
Then, as I changed diapers, fed the kids breakfast, and prepared to go to work, while choking down whatever cold medication I could find in the cupboards, another thought came to me. A very different thought. A foreign thought that invaded the safe confines of my self absorbed world. A message from a totally different universe. A simple, lifechanging prase uttered by someone who gave his life centuries ago: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23, NIV).
Birthdays can serve as a time to be... well... served. A day in which we hope or expect others to call, write, give gifts, and sing us some new version of "Happy Birthday to you." And, if I had it my way, everyone on earth would have the chance to feel so loved and appreciated on at least one special day of the year. On the other hand, birthdays can also point to something totally beyond ourselves.... to a reality far greater and grander than we can imagine.
When Jesus told us to deny ourselves, he didn't mean that we should supress our identity, deny our needs or issues, forget our dreams, or minimize our value as an individual. Quite the opposite, in fact. He told us to deny ourselves because only then can we see ourselves in the Divine context, from the standpoint of a Sovereign who created and sustains all things, and who must be followed as the Center of existance. Thus, whenever I silently step into the center of my existance--and I do so constantly--I find myself in a lonely, dark, and disappointing place, a place where I was never meant to stand. Such is the ultimate supression of self, the rejection of my true, creaturely identity, in favor of a self centered lie.
But today, on my birthday, what if I asked God to kick me out of the center of my life? To boot me off the throne? What if I asked Him to dwell there as the Object of my hope, trust, and worship? What if I denied myself and lost myself in service to a crucified Lord, forsaking every inviting opportunity to live for my personal pleasure, security, or advancement?
Jesus continues in Luke 9 with my answer: For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. Jesus' call to deny the self is not a call to waste away in a loss of personhood. It's the only way to save and find the true self. Living with Him as the center of my thoughts and decisions, rather than my own selfish ambitions and insecurities, is the only way to save myself. Only the Savior saves the self.
We've all been in meetings or relationships where we were obsessed with making a good impression, totally preoccupied with finding the perfect thing to say.... unable to deny the self. But we've also been in situations where we totally lost ourselves in something great: a worship service, a service project, the birth of a child, a wedding, a sunset, putting a child to bed or through college, a world series victory (1987 and 1991 in particular). Those are the best moments of life, I believe, because they give a taste of what it's like to lose yourself, only to find yourself securely contained and defined by something greater.
The fact is that, as one birthday piles on top of the last, and as years pass faster and faster, we are reminded of the fleeting nature of life and time. Since birthdays--like time itself--are an unknown commodity and a limited resource (none us know how many we have left), they can either serve as a cold, hard reminder that our days are numbered, or as an undeserved but welcome invitation to see one's existance as part of something that will last long after we've blown out our last set of birthday candles.
God, we want to save our lives, but we know not how. Teach us the strange art of denying our 'self,' taking up our cross, and following your Son. Make that our calling, our ambition, our dream, that we might truly find ourselves in you: complete, whole, and satisfied fully. And may my--and all our birthdays--point us to the New Birth that comes from finally finding oneself, as a small but deeply loved part of the Kingdom of God.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Hope for the 30-year-old Single
I was privileged to watch two stories unfold this month. The first was fraught with pain and impatient anguish; the second was ripe with joy and celebration. Both stories center on marriage and singleness, from opposing, yet related perspectives.
Story 1 - A dear friend of ours recently turned 30. Personally, I barely remember turning 30, because at the time I had a child, a job, and far too much on my frazzled mind. But for this dear friend, 30 felt like a death sentence, a foreboding drumbeat that underscored the end of youth and the death of dreams. Rather than serving as a day of gratitude and celebration for the gift of life, it was a day of mournful reflection on the haunting scars left by unwanted loneliness, a sobering confrontation with life’s ever-emptying hourglass, which represents the diminishment of possibilities.
Without trying, my wife and I have made a habit of eating quiet meals with, consoling, and praying for such singles, both men and women, who come to us seeking a brief respite from the constant pressure to find a mate. But we minister to such souls from a different universe. After all, we’re happily married (most days, right honey?!), with two beautiful children. So we can only comfort from afar, as it were, with empathy that sees and senses the pain, but isn’t able to identify with it in the fullest sense.
This dear friend celebrated her birthday not with candles, but tears. Not with songs and celebration, but sighs and solitude. We were honored that she was willing to share part of this day with us, pain and all, because it was after all her birthday. And her sorrow shouldn’t cause her to avoid giving voice to her reality with people she trusts, if indeed comfort can be found in doing so. So we celebrated, if one can call it that, the birthday of this dear friend, even as she grappled with the lurking sense that this milestone was nothing more than a sad reminder of unfulfilled dreams.
Story 2– I stood at the altar before a sparkling couple, presiding over their wedding ceremony. Their families and friends looked on with broad grins and tear streaked faces, overjoyed and overcome by the fulfillment of so many hopes and prayers.
There was something especially sweet about these nuptials, because of the road that lay behind this couple, now in their forties. They had prayed, waited, hoped, and dreamed for a person to whom they might pledge their lives, but for some reason, they’d been forced to wait and wonder if something was wrong. Did they miss an opportunity at some point along the way, an irreversible mistake that had doomed them to everlasting isolation? Or did they simply lack the ability to initiate and sustain a meaningful relationship, even with the “right person”? And of course, there were all of the Holidays and family gatherings in which they had to answer those annoying questions, like “Are you married yet?” or my personal favorite, “Why don’t you just settle down and have a family?”. Over the years they’d each been to dozens of weddings to watch their relatives, former classmates, and friends launch into a new life with their beloved; They’d sent congratulatory cards to those friends after their first, and then their second and third children were born. They’d even watched some of those friends throw away their relationships through tragic decisions, and asked themselves, "How could God allow someone them to waste a marriage, while I would do anything to pour my heart into my own marriage vows."
So as this beaming couple stood, facing one another, clutching the other’s hands, their eyes told a lifelong story that was being climactically fulfilled before us all, as they uttered the words that had previously been confined to their dreams: “I take you to be my wife… to be my husband, from this day forward, in sickness and health, in good and bad times, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part.” Never have I seen such solemn words spoken with such ecstatic joy.
As I reflected on these two stories unfolding in different corners of my life, I almost went there. But I didn’t. I almost reasoned that our 30-year-old friend, and the countless others in her shoes, should take heart, because they still have a few good years left to find their match. I almost said that the 40-something couple is a cause for them to hope, in that such singles still have time to find ‘the one.’
I suppose there’s truth to the ‘never too late’ mindset that we often use to comfort anxious singles. But I don’t think that singles who dream of marriage need to hear that as much as they need a different reminder. I think, most of all, they need to be reminded that God has a plan for their lives, which is not shaken or delayed by singleness. They are 100% of a person, His person, complete in Christ regardless of their marital status. They have value in this life and the next, and they are an important piece of God’s plan to make this world a better place.
I'm not making this stuff up. God promises. In fact, the Bible talks about the future of the world as a great Marriage, an everlasting Wedding Feast in which God joins with His poeple forever. Even human marriages pale in comparison with this Great Union, and at their best only point toward it as the ultimate expression of where God is taking the world. This means that both singles and married couples serve as powerful reminders of the now/not yet reality of God's Kingdom, their marital relationships (or lack their of) shining a radient shaft of light toward the day in which God completes His plans for the world. God will one day join Himself to us, in a way that we cannot yet fathom. In the meantime, we sense the world's cosmic yearning in the aching hearts of singles who want but have no spouse beside them, and we get a foretaste of Kingdom come through spouses who both make and keep their marriage vows.
So singles should see the happy couples around them not just as a sign that hope remains for their marital aspirations (true as that may be), but as the pronouncement that hope remains for the world, which they're a part of! Faithful marriages show all of us not what humans can ultimately become on our own, but what we'll all have someday with God. Faithful, healthy marriages give us confidence that God is good, that God’s promises can and will be kept, and that God never delays the most important things to anyone—forgiveness, mercy, healing, and hope through the Cross of his Son.
Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Luke 11:11-13
Story 1 - A dear friend of ours recently turned 30. Personally, I barely remember turning 30, because at the time I had a child, a job, and far too much on my frazzled mind. But for this dear friend, 30 felt like a death sentence, a foreboding drumbeat that underscored the end of youth and the death of dreams. Rather than serving as a day of gratitude and celebration for the gift of life, it was a day of mournful reflection on the haunting scars left by unwanted loneliness, a sobering confrontation with life’s ever-emptying hourglass, which represents the diminishment of possibilities.
Without trying, my wife and I have made a habit of eating quiet meals with, consoling, and praying for such singles, both men and women, who come to us seeking a brief respite from the constant pressure to find a mate. But we minister to such souls from a different universe. After all, we’re happily married (most days, right honey?!), with two beautiful children. So we can only comfort from afar, as it were, with empathy that sees and senses the pain, but isn’t able to identify with it in the fullest sense.
This dear friend celebrated her birthday not with candles, but tears. Not with songs and celebration, but sighs and solitude. We were honored that she was willing to share part of this day with us, pain and all, because it was after all her birthday. And her sorrow shouldn’t cause her to avoid giving voice to her reality with people she trusts, if indeed comfort can be found in doing so. So we celebrated, if one can call it that, the birthday of this dear friend, even as she grappled with the lurking sense that this milestone was nothing more than a sad reminder of unfulfilled dreams.
Story 2– I stood at the altar before a sparkling couple, presiding over their wedding ceremony. Their families and friends looked on with broad grins and tear streaked faces, overjoyed and overcome by the fulfillment of so many hopes and prayers.
There was something especially sweet about these nuptials, because of the road that lay behind this couple, now in their forties. They had prayed, waited, hoped, and dreamed for a person to whom they might pledge their lives, but for some reason, they’d been forced to wait and wonder if something was wrong. Did they miss an opportunity at some point along the way, an irreversible mistake that had doomed them to everlasting isolation? Or did they simply lack the ability to initiate and sustain a meaningful relationship, even with the “right person”? And of course, there were all of the Holidays and family gatherings in which they had to answer those annoying questions, like “Are you married yet?” or my personal favorite, “Why don’t you just settle down and have a family?”. Over the years they’d each been to dozens of weddings to watch their relatives, former classmates, and friends launch into a new life with their beloved; They’d sent congratulatory cards to those friends after their first, and then their second and third children were born. They’d even watched some of those friends throw away their relationships through tragic decisions, and asked themselves, "How could God allow someone them to waste a marriage, while I would do anything to pour my heart into my own marriage vows."
So as this beaming couple stood, facing one another, clutching the other’s hands, their eyes told a lifelong story that was being climactically fulfilled before us all, as they uttered the words that had previously been confined to their dreams: “I take you to be my wife… to be my husband, from this day forward, in sickness and health, in good and bad times, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part.” Never have I seen such solemn words spoken with such ecstatic joy.
As I reflected on these two stories unfolding in different corners of my life, I almost went there. But I didn’t. I almost reasoned that our 30-year-old friend, and the countless others in her shoes, should take heart, because they still have a few good years left to find their match. I almost said that the 40-something couple is a cause for them to hope, in that such singles still have time to find ‘the one.’
I suppose there’s truth to the ‘never too late’ mindset that we often use to comfort anxious singles. But I don’t think that singles who dream of marriage need to hear that as much as they need a different reminder. I think, most of all, they need to be reminded that God has a plan for their lives, which is not shaken or delayed by singleness. They are 100% of a person, His person, complete in Christ regardless of their marital status. They have value in this life and the next, and they are an important piece of God’s plan to make this world a better place.
I'm not making this stuff up. God promises. In fact, the Bible talks about the future of the world as a great Marriage, an everlasting Wedding Feast in which God joins with His poeple forever. Even human marriages pale in comparison with this Great Union, and at their best only point toward it as the ultimate expression of where God is taking the world. This means that both singles and married couples serve as powerful reminders of the now/not yet reality of God's Kingdom, their marital relationships (or lack their of) shining a radient shaft of light toward the day in which God completes His plans for the world. God will one day join Himself to us, in a way that we cannot yet fathom. In the meantime, we sense the world's cosmic yearning in the aching hearts of singles who want but have no spouse beside them, and we get a foretaste of Kingdom come through spouses who both make and keep their marriage vows.
So singles should see the happy couples around them not just as a sign that hope remains for their marital aspirations (true as that may be), but as the pronouncement that hope remains for the world, which they're a part of! Faithful marriages show all of us not what humans can ultimately become on our own, but what we'll all have someday with God. Faithful, healthy marriages give us confidence that God is good, that God’s promises can and will be kept, and that God never delays the most important things to anyone—forgiveness, mercy, healing, and hope through the Cross of his Son.
Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Luke 11:11-13
Friday, November 13, 2009
The History Behind "The Anderson Struggle"
I grew up on a farm in central Minnesota, where we raised cattle, grew corn, beans, and wheat, and bailed hay (my personal favorite). Other than the constant rock-picking required to clear the fields of glacially deposited rocks, it was a great way to grow up.
Our narrow gravel driveway was about a quarter-mile long, which meant that if we were late for the school bus in the morning, we earned the right to a 400 yard dash while carrying a backpack full of books, often through the snow. At the end of the driveway stood an ordinary telephone pole, with outstretched arms holding wires and power lines that kept us connected to the grid, so to speak. For a time, my parents had a sign nailed to that telephone pole, which was visible to those who slowly rumbled by in tractors and to those who sped past in cars. The white, wooden sign simply read, "The Anderson Struggle." It wasn't a proud sign. It was a humble indication that a hard-working, Scandinavian clan called these rolling hills their abode, working, praying, and struggling their way though each God-given day. Wired to the bottom of that sign were five smaller signs, one atop of the other, bearing the names of each person in our family... the proud members of the Anderson Struggle. When the wind blew, passers by could hear the wires that fastened these signs moaning and groaning.
It was just a matter of time before someone decided to take a shotgun to that sign. I'm not sure why. I suppose it was something to do on a Saturday night. We left it up for a while, BB holes and all. Besides, it kind of fit with the title, "The Anderson Struggle." Life often was a Struggle. My parents raised us through years of drought, low grain prices, and tight budgets. At other times, a badly needed rain would come, which meant two very exciting things: we couldn't work, and the crops would be in better shape, meaning that we could pile into our Ford LTD and treck to the nearby metropolis of Alexandria (all of 7,000 people) to do some long-awaited shopping. To this day, I still love the rain, despite the fact that I now work and rarely shop as the clouds deposit their aquatic gift.
Not to sound trite, but there is something beautifully Christian about my upbringing, a childhood lived beneath the banner of struggle. While we've heard how Islamic adherents ascribe to some form of 'Jihad' or 'struggle' as a basic tenat of their faith (sadly, some have perverted God's call peaceful submission to justify unspeakable acts of evil), Christians also acknolwedge a call to Struggle... in service to a Crucified Lord. After all, He himself hung on a poll for our salvation, as onlookers gawked and mocked. And He said that if anyone wants to follow Him, they must take up their own cross to do so.
As the wind blew that fateful Good Friday, whistling past a sign that was fastened to His pole to satirize His self-proclaimed Divinity, I imagine that passers by also heard the unmistakable sound of His moaning... His struggle.
Our Lord called His followers to struggle, to live in humble protest against the powers of sin, death, and the devil, sacrificially serving on behalf of the unfolding Kingdom that His death and resurrection would unleash.
May we all struggle well.
Our narrow gravel driveway was about a quarter-mile long, which meant that if we were late for the school bus in the morning, we earned the right to a 400 yard dash while carrying a backpack full of books, often through the snow. At the end of the driveway stood an ordinary telephone pole, with outstretched arms holding wires and power lines that kept us connected to the grid, so to speak. For a time, my parents had a sign nailed to that telephone pole, which was visible to those who slowly rumbled by in tractors and to those who sped past in cars. The white, wooden sign simply read, "The Anderson Struggle." It wasn't a proud sign. It was a humble indication that a hard-working, Scandinavian clan called these rolling hills their abode, working, praying, and struggling their way though each God-given day. Wired to the bottom of that sign were five smaller signs, one atop of the other, bearing the names of each person in our family... the proud members of the Anderson Struggle. When the wind blew, passers by could hear the wires that fastened these signs moaning and groaning.
It was just a matter of time before someone decided to take a shotgun to that sign. I'm not sure why. I suppose it was something to do on a Saturday night. We left it up for a while, BB holes and all. Besides, it kind of fit with the title, "The Anderson Struggle." Life often was a Struggle. My parents raised us through years of drought, low grain prices, and tight budgets. At other times, a badly needed rain would come, which meant two very exciting things: we couldn't work, and the crops would be in better shape, meaning that we could pile into our Ford LTD and treck to the nearby metropolis of Alexandria (all of 7,000 people) to do some long-awaited shopping. To this day, I still love the rain, despite the fact that I now work and rarely shop as the clouds deposit their aquatic gift.
Not to sound trite, but there is something beautifully Christian about my upbringing, a childhood lived beneath the banner of struggle. While we've heard how Islamic adherents ascribe to some form of 'Jihad' or 'struggle' as a basic tenat of their faith (sadly, some have perverted God's call peaceful submission to justify unspeakable acts of evil), Christians also acknolwedge a call to Struggle... in service to a Crucified Lord. After all, He himself hung on a poll for our salvation, as onlookers gawked and mocked. And He said that if anyone wants to follow Him, they must take up their own cross to do so.
As the wind blew that fateful Good Friday, whistling past a sign that was fastened to His pole to satirize His self-proclaimed Divinity, I imagine that passers by also heard the unmistakable sound of His moaning... His struggle.
Our Lord called His followers to struggle, to live in humble protest against the powers of sin, death, and the devil, sacrificially serving on behalf of the unfolding Kingdom that His death and resurrection would unleash.
May we all struggle well.
My reaction to Greg Boyd's reaction to John Piper's reaction to God’s alleged reaction to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly...
If the title alone doesn't cause you to look elsewhere for intellectual stimulation, then allow me opine further, in order to share several thoughts about a recent online exchange between two men that I respect tremendously. In an August 2009 blog entry, Pastor Greg Boyd criticized Pastor John Piper’s own online declaration (both links are below), related to the tornado that struck the Minneapolis Convention Center and the nearby Central Lutheran Church at the precise moment that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly was scheduled to begin debating controversial measures (the ELCA later approved those measures, which allow churches to perform sex unions and hire non-celibate, homosexual clergy). For Piper, God ordained the tornado as a means of judgment upon the ELCA, because of that institution’s endorsement of a sinful behavior. Though Boyd shares Piper’s traditional views of sexuality, he disagreed with Piper’s meteorological analysis and prophetic interpretation. Boyd pointed to other tornadoes that struck the metro at the same time, and to tornado-prone states like Oklahoma, rejecting the idea that tornadic activity discernibly points to Divine judgment. Boyd further declared that if God were to judge His people in such ways, He wouldn't leave out the many suburban churches who fail to adequately assist the poor, nor would he spare such places as sex-slave houses.
At this point I became confused. Boyd seems to assert that congregations who fall short in their charge to help the poor (for Boyd, many churches “condone, if not Christianize, greed and apathy toward the poor”) are as if not more deserving of judgment than a denomination that formally affirms same-gender intercourse (the latter, according to traditionalists, constitutes a formal endorsement of sin). This is a troubling comparison, which reeks of the same judgmentalism of which Boyd accuses Piper. While all of us fall short in serving the poor, I'm aware of no church that has formally declared a policy of ignoring, harming, or trampling the poor. Quite the opposite. I’ve worked in a handful of congregations over the past decade, and each has tried to help the poor while struggling to pay their own bills, and every one of them would confess to falling short and would ask for God’s forgiving guidance in the future. To compare every congregation's ongoing struggle to love the poor with a denomination officially rejecting thousands of years of orthodox, biblical teaching, is a saddening mischaracterization that utterly distorts the issue.
Further, in making his case, Boyd cites the number of times in which poverty is mentioned in the bible, which apparently should lead us to prioritize that issue over and against homosexuality, which is “only” condemned in a half dozen biblical passages. To this I say: beware of quantity hermeneutics, or the method of biblical interpretation that boils everything down to raw numbers. The idea that one should afford more value to biblical words of concepts just because they are often repeated is difficult to absorb. The word “Trinity,” for example, appears nowhere in the bible, while the word “shoes” appears 21 times. Am I to assume that my smelly sneakers (don’t get my daughter started on that) are at least 21 times more important than the Trinity? And the word “Savior” is mentioned only 37 times in the bible, while the name “Saul” appears 391 times. Which would you say is more important? Further, Jesus’ crucifixion is given very little space in the overall length of the gospels, but few would disagree that the brief story of Jesus on the cross is the most important story in scripture, around which every other passage takes its proper place.And while homosexual activity is specifically condemned “only” 5 times throughout the Old and New Testament, heterosexual marriage is affirmed constantly, repeatedly used as a powerful metaphor for the Kingdom of God and for God’s covenantal relationship with His people. To me, this means that God's affirmation of marriage and sexuality—and His boundaries around them—are a central biblical theme of significant importance.
Come to think of it, I would expect a biblically-minded leader like Boyd to more clearly articulate his concerns about the ELCA's treatment of sexuality. In his blog entry, he merely remarks that homosexuality “should not be affirmed as God’s ideal,” saying nothing about the ELCA’s decision itself or the impact it will have on the wider Body of Christ. For if the ELCA's new teaching (which passed by a single vote at the assembly) amounts to the rejection of essential biblical principles, which have been foundational in and beyond the church for thousands of years, then that teaching points to a paradigm shift in which no biblical ideal is safe from critical revision, including the many verses dealing with poverty. Moreover, Boyd ignores the connection between poverty and the breakdown of marriage, as the misuse of sex and the deterioration of the family structure directly correlate to serious social problems, such as crime, chemical abuse, violence, and yes, poverty.
Boyd really lost me in his discussion of Mark 4:41, a passage cited by Piper, in which Jesus silences the wind and sea. Boyd asserts, contrary to Piper, that the Greek word for "silence" (which can mean 'to muzzle') refutes the idea that God is in complete control of severe storms. For Boyd, since Jesus "sometimes" uses this word when confronting demons, it means that "some life-threatening storms have a demonic purpose behind them that resists God's good purposes." But this theory is packed full of problems. First, the word for "silence" is used by Jesus in Mark 1:25 and Luke 4:35 to cast out demons. That's it. The other five biblical references of this word have nothing to do with demons. They include a "speachless" man (Matt 22:12), Jesus' "silencing" of the Sadducees (Matt 22:34), Jesus' calming the storm here in Mark 4:39, the literal, "muzzling" an ox (I Tim 5:18), and the "silencing" of ignorant talk (I Peter 2:15). How Boyd is able to assemble these references into a theory for demonic storm-control is beyond me. Further, while Boyd rejects Piper's assertion that God might send a particular life-threatening storm, Boyd seems more than comfortable with the devil doing so. Would Boyd have us believe that God does not or cannot send such storms, while the devil can and does? If so, can he point us to a biblical passage in which Satan, and not God, causes (as God does with the Exodus plagues) or approves (as God does in Job) such cosmic signs and calamities?
As a side note, I'm a born and raised Lutheran, and I appreciate Luther's tendency in this area. He saw both Satan and God as capable of causing cosmic events, but he constantly rejected speculation. Luther refused to identify the nature and will of God beyond that which He revealed in the Cross of Jesus. At its core, Lutheran theology rejects speculation about God's will outside of Christ's redeptive act, as well as the formulation of obscure theories for the demonic.
I was also intrigued by both pastors’ analysis of Luke 13:4-5. As Boyd notes, Piper seems to forget that Jesus was telling this story in part to reject the confident speculation about God's will in times of tragedy. On the other hand, while Boyd acknowledges Jesus' call for repentance in this passage, Boyd eliminates the possibility that this call may extend beyond the individual, to a group or even a denomination, and that God may call His people to repentance through other Christians. Boyd essentially boils the passage down to the popular yet simplistic bumper sticker "don't judge," which has so paralyzed the church in recent years. Does Boyd intend to assert that personal repentance is the only application of this and other passages dealing with sin and repentance? Does he honestly believe that the only plausible response to the unfaithfulness or false teachings that one might encounter in the Body of Christ is private confession? Does he not see the countless examples in scripture in which Christians are called to humbly identify and boldly deal with unfaithfulness in the Christian flock? Though Boyd rightly calls us to join Paul the Apostle in seeing ourselves as the ‘worst of sinners,’ he ignores the amount of ink that Paul himself devoted to calling others to repent from false teaching or sinful behavior. I’ve heard Greg Boyd preach, and he’s excellent. And I assure you, he does far more in the pulpit than acknowledge his own failures and call himself to personal repentance. And obviously, the same is true with his blog!
Repentance must start with the individual, but since I don't live in a phone booth, it cannot end there. Yes, each of us must humbly take note of the undefined calamity around us, and because of it be driven to the Son of God in repentance. But we also must lovingly call our fellow Christians to repent when we see them stumbling. Ironically, Boyd quotes Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:4 (in which Jesus rebukes those who point to the speck in another person’s eye without noticing the plank in their own eye), but Boyd completely misses verse 5: “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Jesus expects His followers to both reject Sin in their own lives, and to lovingly and humbly call one another to do the same (just as Boyd does with the issue of poverty). To reject one in favor of the other is to selectively interpret God’s Word.
I would part ways with Piper on this point: Unless he is directly relaying a prophetic Word from God, he goes a step too far in asserting with presumed certainty that God issued the tornado to judge the ELCA Assembly. I dare not declare any Divine purpose in nature that God has not declared Himself or through an appointed messenger. However, Boyd is wrong to reject the possibility that God may in fact have been speaking through this storm. If Boyd claims to value that which is repeated often in scripture, he should take careful notice of the regularity in which God judges His people through natural phenomena. Few of us possess the prophetic gifts and wisdom to declare God's will in everyday events with certainty, but all of us should stand aside and humbly ask what God might be doing, and then prayerfully go to God's Word for guidance. Ironically, in declaring that God was NOT speaking through the tornado, Boyd commits the same error for which he accuses Piper, which is to stand above worldly events and dictate the activity (or inactivity) of God.
One final issue should be dealt with on this subject. I’m concerned that important justice themes like “poverty” are too often used a sort of trump card, a rhetorical device and discussion-stopper, rather than a topic of prayerful importance. If we are to fully acknowledge and honor the poor, we shouldn't insert that subject into other conversations as a means of striking guilt into our opponents or cutting off an otherwise healthy dialogue. Poverty issues are of critical importance to our nation and church, deserving of our respect and attention. However, the topic of “poverty” shouldn't prevent other important discussions. In fact, Jesus forbids it. In Matthew 26:11, the disciples ridicule a woman for anointing Jesus with expensive oil, arguing that she should have sold the oil and given it to the poor instead. But Jesus says, “Why are you bothering this woman. She has done a beautiful thing to me.” For Jesus, there are avenues of fidelity in addition to caring for the poor, which have their proper place in the Christian life. Jesus goes on, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
The ongoing reality of poverty shouldn't trivialize discussions about faithfulness to God in other critical areas, including marriage and sexuality. Jesus reminds us that we will always have the poor among us, and He commands us to care for them; but he also gave us the Great Commission, called us to reject sin, and reminds us to place no agenda or activity above worshipping God with our lives and bodies. The ever-present reality of poverty should never be used to downplay other aspects of Christian discipleship, nor should it prompt us to become apathetic in the face of false teaching. On the one hand, Jesus expects and commands us to help the poor among us; on the other, he expects us to be faithful to His Word. We are not given the authority to choose one over the other.
John Piper's blog:
Greg Boyd's blog:
At this point I became confused. Boyd seems to assert that congregations who fall short in their charge to help the poor (for Boyd, many churches “condone, if not Christianize, greed and apathy toward the poor”) are as if not more deserving of judgment than a denomination that formally affirms same-gender intercourse (the latter, according to traditionalists, constitutes a formal endorsement of sin). This is a troubling comparison, which reeks of the same judgmentalism of which Boyd accuses Piper. While all of us fall short in serving the poor, I'm aware of no church that has formally declared a policy of ignoring, harming, or trampling the poor. Quite the opposite. I’ve worked in a handful of congregations over the past decade, and each has tried to help the poor while struggling to pay their own bills, and every one of them would confess to falling short and would ask for God’s forgiving guidance in the future. To compare every congregation's ongoing struggle to love the poor with a denomination officially rejecting thousands of years of orthodox, biblical teaching, is a saddening mischaracterization that utterly distorts the issue.
Further, in making his case, Boyd cites the number of times in which poverty is mentioned in the bible, which apparently should lead us to prioritize that issue over and against homosexuality, which is “only” condemned in a half dozen biblical passages. To this I say: beware of quantity hermeneutics, or the method of biblical interpretation that boils everything down to raw numbers. The idea that one should afford more value to biblical words of concepts just because they are often repeated is difficult to absorb. The word “Trinity,” for example, appears nowhere in the bible, while the word “shoes” appears 21 times. Am I to assume that my smelly sneakers (don’t get my daughter started on that) are at least 21 times more important than the Trinity? And the word “Savior” is mentioned only 37 times in the bible, while the name “Saul” appears 391 times. Which would you say is more important? Further, Jesus’ crucifixion is given very little space in the overall length of the gospels, but few would disagree that the brief story of Jesus on the cross is the most important story in scripture, around which every other passage takes its proper place.And while homosexual activity is specifically condemned “only” 5 times throughout the Old and New Testament, heterosexual marriage is affirmed constantly, repeatedly used as a powerful metaphor for the Kingdom of God and for God’s covenantal relationship with His people. To me, this means that God's affirmation of marriage and sexuality—and His boundaries around them—are a central biblical theme of significant importance.
Come to think of it, I would expect a biblically-minded leader like Boyd to more clearly articulate his concerns about the ELCA's treatment of sexuality. In his blog entry, he merely remarks that homosexuality “should not be affirmed as God’s ideal,” saying nothing about the ELCA’s decision itself or the impact it will have on the wider Body of Christ. For if the ELCA's new teaching (which passed by a single vote at the assembly) amounts to the rejection of essential biblical principles, which have been foundational in and beyond the church for thousands of years, then that teaching points to a paradigm shift in which no biblical ideal is safe from critical revision, including the many verses dealing with poverty. Moreover, Boyd ignores the connection between poverty and the breakdown of marriage, as the misuse of sex and the deterioration of the family structure directly correlate to serious social problems, such as crime, chemical abuse, violence, and yes, poverty.
Boyd really lost me in his discussion of Mark 4:41, a passage cited by Piper, in which Jesus silences the wind and sea. Boyd asserts, contrary to Piper, that the Greek word for "silence" (which can mean 'to muzzle') refutes the idea that God is in complete control of severe storms. For Boyd, since Jesus "sometimes" uses this word when confronting demons, it means that "some life-threatening storms have a demonic purpose behind them that resists God's good purposes." But this theory is packed full of problems. First, the word for "silence" is used by Jesus in Mark 1:25 and Luke 4:35 to cast out demons. That's it. The other five biblical references of this word have nothing to do with demons. They include a "speachless" man (Matt 22:12), Jesus' "silencing" of the Sadducees (Matt 22:34), Jesus' calming the storm here in Mark 4:39, the literal, "muzzling" an ox (I Tim 5:18), and the "silencing" of ignorant talk (I Peter 2:15). How Boyd is able to assemble these references into a theory for demonic storm-control is beyond me. Further, while Boyd rejects Piper's assertion that God might send a particular life-threatening storm, Boyd seems more than comfortable with the devil doing so. Would Boyd have us believe that God does not or cannot send such storms, while the devil can and does? If so, can he point us to a biblical passage in which Satan, and not God, causes (as God does with the Exodus plagues) or approves (as God does in Job) such cosmic signs and calamities?
As a side note, I'm a born and raised Lutheran, and I appreciate Luther's tendency in this area. He saw both Satan and God as capable of causing cosmic events, but he constantly rejected speculation. Luther refused to identify the nature and will of God beyond that which He revealed in the Cross of Jesus. At its core, Lutheran theology rejects speculation about God's will outside of Christ's redeptive act, as well as the formulation of obscure theories for the demonic.
I was also intrigued by both pastors’ analysis of Luke 13:4-5. As Boyd notes, Piper seems to forget that Jesus was telling this story in part to reject the confident speculation about God's will in times of tragedy. On the other hand, while Boyd acknowledges Jesus' call for repentance in this passage, Boyd eliminates the possibility that this call may extend beyond the individual, to a group or even a denomination, and that God may call His people to repentance through other Christians. Boyd essentially boils the passage down to the popular yet simplistic bumper sticker "don't judge," which has so paralyzed the church in recent years. Does Boyd intend to assert that personal repentance is the only application of this and other passages dealing with sin and repentance? Does he honestly believe that the only plausible response to the unfaithfulness or false teachings that one might encounter in the Body of Christ is private confession? Does he not see the countless examples in scripture in which Christians are called to humbly identify and boldly deal with unfaithfulness in the Christian flock? Though Boyd rightly calls us to join Paul the Apostle in seeing ourselves as the ‘worst of sinners,’ he ignores the amount of ink that Paul himself devoted to calling others to repent from false teaching or sinful behavior. I’ve heard Greg Boyd preach, and he’s excellent. And I assure you, he does far more in the pulpit than acknowledge his own failures and call himself to personal repentance. And obviously, the same is true with his blog!
Repentance must start with the individual, but since I don't live in a phone booth, it cannot end there. Yes, each of us must humbly take note of the undefined calamity around us, and because of it be driven to the Son of God in repentance. But we also must lovingly call our fellow Christians to repent when we see them stumbling. Ironically, Boyd quotes Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:4 (in which Jesus rebukes those who point to the speck in another person’s eye without noticing the plank in their own eye), but Boyd completely misses verse 5: “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Jesus expects His followers to both reject Sin in their own lives, and to lovingly and humbly call one another to do the same (just as Boyd does with the issue of poverty). To reject one in favor of the other is to selectively interpret God’s Word.
I would part ways with Piper on this point: Unless he is directly relaying a prophetic Word from God, he goes a step too far in asserting with presumed certainty that God issued the tornado to judge the ELCA Assembly. I dare not declare any Divine purpose in nature that God has not declared Himself or through an appointed messenger. However, Boyd is wrong to reject the possibility that God may in fact have been speaking through this storm. If Boyd claims to value that which is repeated often in scripture, he should take careful notice of the regularity in which God judges His people through natural phenomena. Few of us possess the prophetic gifts and wisdom to declare God's will in everyday events with certainty, but all of us should stand aside and humbly ask what God might be doing, and then prayerfully go to God's Word for guidance. Ironically, in declaring that God was NOT speaking through the tornado, Boyd commits the same error for which he accuses Piper, which is to stand above worldly events and dictate the activity (or inactivity) of God.
One final issue should be dealt with on this subject. I’m concerned that important justice themes like “poverty” are too often used a sort of trump card, a rhetorical device and discussion-stopper, rather than a topic of prayerful importance. If we are to fully acknowledge and honor the poor, we shouldn't insert that subject into other conversations as a means of striking guilt into our opponents or cutting off an otherwise healthy dialogue. Poverty issues are of critical importance to our nation and church, deserving of our respect and attention. However, the topic of “poverty” shouldn't prevent other important discussions. In fact, Jesus forbids it. In Matthew 26:11, the disciples ridicule a woman for anointing Jesus with expensive oil, arguing that she should have sold the oil and given it to the poor instead. But Jesus says, “Why are you bothering this woman. She has done a beautiful thing to me.” For Jesus, there are avenues of fidelity in addition to caring for the poor, which have their proper place in the Christian life. Jesus goes on, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
The ongoing reality of poverty shouldn't trivialize discussions about faithfulness to God in other critical areas, including marriage and sexuality. Jesus reminds us that we will always have the poor among us, and He commands us to care for them; but he also gave us the Great Commission, called us to reject sin, and reminds us to place no agenda or activity above worshipping God with our lives and bodies. The ever-present reality of poverty should never be used to downplay other aspects of Christian discipleship, nor should it prompt us to become apathetic in the face of false teaching. On the one hand, Jesus expects and commands us to help the poor among us; on the other, he expects us to be faithful to His Word. We are not given the authority to choose one over the other.
John Piper's blog:
Greg Boyd's blog:
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