online book group: finishing up What’s the Least I Can Believe…(chapters 19, 20, 21)

(about the timing–so sorry! Apparently my inability to remember to push “attach” also extends to an inability to change posts from “draft” to “publish” sometimes. So…I’ve wrapped up three into one, since it’s the end of summer and time for us to finish this book and move into new things!)

The Holy Spirit

It’s true, mainline protestants often have a difficult time with the Holy Spirit. She’s the least nail-down-able of the three persons of the Trinity, the most elusive and mysterious, and sometimes the most uncomfortable. We’re pretty comfortable with God the Creator or Father or Mother. We’re even pretty comfortable with God the Son, both as an eternal being and as a human being. But when we get into this Spirit business, we start getting all shifty-eyed and nervous. Who is the Holy Spirit? What’s her role in the Trinity and in our lives? How come she’s not obvious like Jesus?

Well…the word “spirit” in Hebrew is ruach and it means breath, wind, or spirit. It’s a feminine noun, so use of “she” is perfectly appropriate. The Spirit can also be called the breath of God or the wind of God. In the first creation story (Genesis 1), a wind from God blows over the waters…in the second creation story (Genesis 2) and in Ezekiel 37 (for example) the breath of God is what turns a body from lifeless bones and dust into a living being–God’s breath is the animating force in creation. In the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit is seen as a dove. In the Pentecost story (Acts 2) the Spirit is visible in fire and audible in wind and in many languages. All of these are good images. The salient point here is that the Spirit of God is moving, active, within and between and around us, animating the creation and giving life. The Spirit leads (after Jesus’ baptism he’s led into the wilderness by the Spirit), empowers (Pentecost, other stories in Acts), and other such active verbs that are about our living a faithful life.

The Trinity is a complex doctrine that basically attempts to explain how we know God. The author gives an example of a person in different roles–mother, doctor, friend, etc. That analogy sort of works, and sort of doesn’t. The thing about the Trinity is that God is not wearing a mask or something, is not acting a part. All the aspects of God are present in all the other aspects. We may see one more prominently than another, but there is no separating the persons of the Trinity, and there’s nothing hiding behind a costume or a role. I like to use the image of AquaFresh toothpaste. Three colors, working together…all of them are toothpaste on their own, but they can never be separated into three separate streaks either. They’re distinct yet inseparable.

The Kingdom of God, as Jesus says, “is among you” or “here” or “near.” When we pray “Thy Kingdom come,” hopefully we mean it! We don’t mean “bring us to your kingdom when we die” we mean “bring your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.” This is not about life after death, it’s about making the kingdom of God visible even here, even now.

What did you think of the discussion of Isaiah 65 as an explanation of Kingdom-of-God things? The author says that because of the description of God’s kingdom in this chapter (combined, of course, with Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of God is among us), health insurance, prenatal care, Medicare, social security, fair mortgage rates, affordable housing, affordable healthy food, minimum wage, employee benefits, child nutrition, education, peacemaking–these are kingdom issues and therefore need to be addressed by people who choose to live in the kingdom of God. What are your thoughts?

The most important words in this chapter are “for those with eyes to see….” It’s possible to look at the world and see despair. Or just everyday average work. Or the kingdom of God breaking through. Which do you choose to see?

Do we believe in getting saved?

Well…yes and no. Yes, in that God’s saving grace has been at work since before the dawn of time and will continue to be at work long after we cease to walk the earth. Yes, in that God’s grace transforms lives of individuals and communities, and that grace saves us. No, in the sense that we have to do anything to earn it or receive it. Grace is a gift given to all–our choice is not even to receive it (one of the tenets of Reformed theology is “Irresistable Grace”), but to recognize it. Again, for those with eyes to see, grace is all around and within us. We can choose not to see, which will change the way we respond but will not change our status as recipients of grace.

This is one of the major differences between our theological tradition as Presbyterians and other traditions, even those that seem awfully close to us (like Methodists!). What do you think of this understanding of grace and salvation?

The most important part:

Christianity is not a set of doctrines. It is not a list of 10 things we have to believe.

Christianity is a way of life. It is about following Jesus, listening for God’s call, and living responsively with the Holy Spirit.

We often talk about other religions being different because they demand more in terms of how life is lived–Judaism has rules, Islam has 5 times a day prayer and more rules, etc. They are a way of living, not just a set of beliefs. The thing is: that’s what Christianity is too. In the post-enlightenment period it has become a way of thinking, but that’s not what it really means to follow Jesus. To be a disciple of the risen Lord is to live life in a different way.

So…how will you live as a disciple of Jesus, in the kingdom of God, today? tomorrow? going forward?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapters 17 and 18

Chapter 17: Resurrection Hope

“Hope” is a word we toss around regularly, using it to mean anything from “want” to “wish” to “plan” to “idea”…but what is Hope? And how do we get it, and what do we Hope for?

Someone told me one time to stop using “hope” when what I meant was “wish” or “want” because I was devaluing our real hope–hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. While I still use the word hope a lot, I often think about this admonition. What do you think about it?

Our hope, as Christians, is in God, made known to us in Christ, and sealed by the Spirit. What exactly we hope for…probably varies person by person! Some hope for life after death, some hope for life before death, some hope for something vague and some for something specific. How do we know the difference between Hope and Wish?

Using the framework the author sets up in this chapter, Hope is something that saves our lives day by day, just like the box with the angel picture in Castaway. Hope gives us vision for the future, the will to go on, the ability to move forward into God’s kingdom. And our hope is IN Christ–wrapped up like a present, both fulfilled and yet springing eternal. We have hope because God is doing a new thing, with life springing out of death. The resurrection of Christ is our best symbol of hope–that death is not the end of God’s story, but that God’s own hope for the world is still taking shape.

A friend of mine asks on Facebook every day: “what is saving your life today?” She gets answers ranging from “sunshine” to “cheetos” to “baby giggles” to “church”…What might your answer be?

Chapter 18: Is the Church still relevant?

I confess that this is one of my least favorite questions. Part of me just wants to say “really? relevant? what IS relevant? Who gets to decide?” and the other part of me wants to shout “of course we are!” while also shouting “we’ve never been relevant, and that’s the point!”

So we’ll start with the question: Do you think the church is relevant? Why or why not? What does “relevant” mean to you?

The author’s assertion that “nothing mattered more” to Jesus than establishing the church is, at best, far-fetched. The gospel evidence, in my opinion, is that Jesus’ main issue was the Kingdom of God–its nearness and our ability to see and live in it. The kingdom of God and the church are not necessarily synonymous terms, however much we might like to think that. The teaching, healing, and feeding outweighs the “church” in Jesus’ ministry by about 150x. However, I will concede that Jesus was interested in gathering a community of followers who would then go out and participate in the kingdom of God. Community was an important aspect of Jesus’ life and teaching and healing, and not to be overlooked. In that sense, it’s true that church was his objective…but in the sense that we generally think of “church,” not so much.

What is a church?

It’s not a building.

It’s not just a group of people who come to a building on Sunday morning, or Sunday and Wednesday, or who run youth groups and confirmation classes and weddings and funerals and potlucks and talent shows.

The church is the Body of Christ, the incarnation of God in the here and now, the people who follow Jesus and live Kingdom lives.

This may or may not include talent shows.

It definitely DOES include participating in God’s mission, which Jesus’ reveals to include such activities as: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable, challenging unjust systems, changing the way things are done so that no one falls through the cracks, building diverse communities, caring for one another regardless of our socio-economic status/race/creed/gender/health, and living lives marked by Good News instead of the bad news our world is already so full of.

It is true that it is impossible to be a Christian without Church–in that, the author is right on. There are no hermits in the gospels, no one who professes faith but stays away from the community of disciples. The book of Acts shows us the first gatherings of the church as a community–from the moment of Pentecost the community was already not optional. Just as you can’t have one grit or one grain of bread or one molecule of juice, we are gathered together to be the body of Christ, and no one can do it alone.

What do you think “church” means? What does it mean to you? How has your Christian life been helped or hindered by the Christian community? How has the church helped (or not) you maintain hope?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapter 16

Chapter 16: Jesus’ Death–what about suffering?

This is one of the hardest topics of life, let alone faith. The fact of suffering always seems so irreconcilable with the idea of God. If God is love, and God is all powerful, then why do such bad things happen? Why do people die young, get horrible debilitating diseases, suffer abuse and disaster and horror? Sometimes the answer is of human origin–we do things that bring consequences for ourselves and others. Sometimes the answer is more elusive–in the natural processes of the earth and the mystery of God’s creation.

What we do know is that God is found in the midst of suffering. Not that God causes suffering, not that God takes away suffering, not that God asks us to suffer in order to become more holy. But that God is THERE.

There’s a crucial distinction to be made here. We do NOT believe that suffering is redemptive. Suffering in and of itself does not redeem us, does not make us more holy, and is not required in order to be a better Christian. But we DO believe that God can redeem suffering–God comes alongside us and knows our every depth. In the crucifixion we see God suffering the depths of human pain and despair, and we know that there is hope on the other side even if we cannot see or feel it.

And this is where I have a disagreement with the author of this book. I would not say that the cross is the center of our faith–I would say that the empty tomb is at the center of our faith. We are Easter people, not Good Friday people. We do not live forever in the shadow of torture and death. Crucifixion is what we humans do to people who live every day most fully with God. Resurrection is what happens when God finishes the story.

What did you think of this chapter? Where have you experienced God’s presence in suffering? Have you ever experienced God redeeming a bad situation? How do you live as part of an Easter People?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapter 15

Chapter 15: Jesus’ Example–What Brings Fulfillment?

In many ways this chapter is very similar to the one about priorities. The stories in particular are built on a familiar refrain. Working to death, to the detriment of relationships and family, in order to have the good life. Then “they realized that their possessions had not enriched them but enslaved them.”

The twist comes in that we make the change from simply recognizing our priorities to acting on them–the author makes the move to say that a rewarding life comes through serving others, as Jesus did. Jesus says he came not to serve but to be served, and asked us to do likewise.

So the question of this chapter is not what our priorities are (the first question), but what will help us have a meaningful and fulfilled experience of life. The examples (Millard Fuller, Jimmy Carter) are great illustrations of the more dramatic expressions of serving others–giving up wealth and grandeur and possessions, moving from the Oval Office to cleaning the bathrooms at church, founding and working for (respectively) Habitat for Humanity.

Most of us are not prepared to make such drastic changes in our lives (though I kinda love the way Jimmy Carter’s church has a rota where every family takes a turn as the janitor or the grass-mower once every other month!). If we are ready to do something like that, great. If not, the first step toward being the servants God calls us to be is to see every aspect of our lives through the lens of God’s mission. Jesus came to earth–the Word of God in flesh–to carry out God’s mission and vision. We, as the body of Christ, are also to work in that same mission. The fancy words for this are “to participate in the missio dei” (the mission of God).

How are you participating in God’s mission? How are you serving others in your job? How are you serving God in your relationships? How are you working for God’s kingdom when you are at home, when you are commuting, when you are at work, when you are at play?

The advice Dr. Green (from the TV show ER) gave his daughter rings true, and follows closely the teachings of Jesus. “Be generous. Be generous with your time. Be generous with your love. Be generous with your life. Be generous.”

How can you be generous with your time this week? with your love? with your life?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapter 14

Chapter 14: Jesus’ Work…Where is God?

My favorite part of this chapter is the story at the end, where the woman couldn’t get into her car and the man who helped her had just been released from prison after serving time for stealing cars, and her response is to shout “Thank you, God, for sending me a professional!” I laughed out loud.

The topic of this chapter is less about “Where” God is than about “HOW” God works. Does God work by pulling puppet strings, manipulating the universe until it’s just-so, scurrying around behind the scenes making sure all the pieces fit the way God wants? Or does God work through the creation–or, more specifically, through people?

I think we all know this is not an either/or question. God is not limited in how God CAN work, only in how God CHOOSES to work. And since we would need to be God in order to understand the hows and whys of all that, part of me wants to just shout “it’s not all that black and white–it’s a mystery!” and leave it at that. But I know people have real questions about this. Where can we see God? Where is God when bad things happen? How does God work in a world that seems so filled with badness?

One of my constant refrains in children’s sermons is that we can see God wherever we look–in our neighbor, in our friends, in our parents, in our siblings (shocking though that may be!), even in ourselves. Whenever someone follows God’s will, you can see God at work in them. This is one of the reasons I don’t like to sing “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise…in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” The idea that God is inaccessible to our eyes is foreign to incarnational theology. Sure, we don’t know the fullness of God, we can’t see whether God the Creator has a physical form or what it might look like, but we can certainly see God.

The idea of incarnational theology is simple: God became flesh, and lives/works/moves through flesh even now. We are temples of the Holy Spirit, made in the image of God, so we can be vehicles through which God works and is seen.

The chapter gives dozens of examples, from people volunteering after a disaster to people doing their jobs well with their focus on God. All the examples are great, and we could provide dozens more from our own congregation. But what I’m really interested in today is a two-fold question:

1. Where do you see God at work around you? In your daily life, where’s God?

2. How are you a vehicle for God’s work? How are you, in your daily life, continuing Jesus’ mission?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapter 13

Chapter 13: Jesus’ Grace–Am I Accepted?

In many ways this chapter reads like a recap of John’s sermon yesterday. Many of us feel that we’re unloveable for some reason or another. Many more of us feel we have to earn love, or worse–that we have earned love and others haven’t.

This is the beauty of grace.

Are you accepted? Yes. God loves you exactly as you are. 1 John 4.16 says that God IS love–the very nature of God is love. It is not possible for God not to love.

But what is grace? It’s unconditional, for one thing. It’s freely given. It’s abundant–more abundant than anything we can imagine. It’s love and forgiveness and hope and healing and wholeness all wrapped up into one word. We can’t make it for ourselves, we can’t earn it, and we can’t ration it.

Sometimes in the Inquirer’s Class I talk about the Reformed Christian understanding of grace as being a little like a ball or something made out of the soft side of velcro. We are made out of the scratchy side of velcro. God tosses grace out and it sticks to us, whether we want it or not. (I love the playfulness of this image, too–I think it’s very God-esque!)

But.

There’s always a but, isn’t there?

Grace is not cheap (to use Bonhoeffer’s word). God loves us as we are, but will not leave us as we are. Romans 3 says that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…and Romans 8 says that NOTHING, in life or in death, can separate us from the love of God. And everything else, everything in the gospels, the epistles, the prophets, etc, is about how we are to live. We’ve all received grace upon grace. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. The question is what we do with that grace.

As Reformed Christians, we say that our task is to LIVE as people of grace. The author (who’s Methodist) uses the language of justifying and sanctifying grace–we are justified by God’s grace, made right with God. Sanctifying grace is how we live into that grace and grow into spiritual maturity. Presbyterian language is slightly different but has the same idea. Basically: God calls us to live grace-filled (which can also be written Grateful!) lives, because of what we have received. Sort of a pay-it-forward idea. We don’t do good things, we don’t believe, we don’t act a certain way IN ORDER TO EARN grace. We do good things, we believe, we act a certain way BECAUSE we have grace.

There’s a great story in Luke 7 about this very idea. Jesus is confronted with a sinful woman who has served him and a righteous Pharisee who has spent his time judging the woman instead. Jesus tells a story in which the moral is that those who are forgiven much THEREFORE show great love. We don’t show great love in order to earn the forgiveness–instead it’s the other way around. The “hence” or “therefore” in the story is one of the best words in all of scripture.

I’m reminded of Papa in The Shack, who says about every single person “I’m especially fond of him.” When asked who’s her favorite, she says “I don’t have favorites–but I’m especially fond of everyone.”

That’s grace.

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapter 12

Each of the chapters about what Christians actually believe focuses on Jesus–grace, priorities, teachings, salvation, etc. Monday we talked about who Jesus is, and today we have the related question of where Jesus asks us to put our attention. Recalling the affirmation “Jesus Christ is Lord” will help us as we seek to keep our priorities in line with following Christ…

Chapter 12: Jesus’ Priority

Many of us struggle with our priorities–where do our resources (attention, energy, time, money) go first, second, third, not at all…? It’s common, at least in the US, for us to claim some things as a priority with our words, but for our actions to demonstrate a different set of priorities. For instance, I don’t think I know anyone who would not list their family among their top priorities. But I also know a LOT of people who spend the majority of their time away from their families. Some will say that they’re away from their families in order to provide for them, and that may be–but the question of “provide what?” is an open one. This chapter has several stories of families that sought good and important jobs that would make a lot of money in order to provide a big house, a summer home, a cushy bank account….but at the expense of actually being together as a family. So what is that family’s priority–family, or money, or work, or a big house?

Most questions posed to Jesus were questions of priorities. They may not have been worded that way, but that’s what they are. When our priorities are out of order, we are engaging in idolatry–we are claiming that something other than following God’s will is most important in our lives. This is not an easy thing to talk about, but it’s a necessary topic, so here we go…

“What is most important?” asks the lawyer/religious leader/rich man/young ruler (depending on which gospel you’re reading). What do you have to do as a child of God, in order to live the life God wants for you? Jesus answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength…love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, Jesus says.

So–our first priority is to love God with everything we are and everything we have–with our intellect, our bodies, our emotions, our spirits, our will, our lives. Our second priority is the flip side of the same coin–to love those made in the image of God (that would be everyone). How do we express those priorities?

I know I’m not the only one to have said this (in part because it was said to me at some point a long time ago, but I can’t remember by whom). What we SAY our priorities are almost doesn’t matter. Instead of talking about them, show me your calendar and your checkbook, and I’ll be able to see your priorities plain as day. Where do you spend your time? With whom do you spend your time? What do you spend that time doing? Where do your precious resources go?

Do we spend our time building relationships between us and God, between us and our neighbor (even when our neighbor is not the person next door in our fashionable neighborhood)? Do we spend our resources building up the kingdom of God? Or do our checkbooks and calendars reveal very different priorities?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapters 8, 9, 10

Again, these chapters seem interrelated, so we’ll address them together. Next week we’ll head into the second half of the book, the section in which the author lays out what Christians do believe. So this is our last day in myths about Christianity!

Chapter 8: Everything in the Bible should be taken literally.

Chapter 9: God loves straight people but not gay people.

Chapter 10: It’s ok for Christians to be judgmental and obnoxious.

I think you can see why I feel these chapters are related. heehee!

So: are we supposed to take the Bible literally? Thielen points out that biblical literalism is a 19th century response to the rise of modern science, and that it has not been the position of the church for most of history. That’s true–for most of history the Bible has been interpreted as metaphor and allegory. Then again, for most of history there was not anywhere near the level of scientific understanding we have now, so interpreting the Bible more literally was also easier…but in any case, the short answer is “no”–because the Bible is a collection of stories about the relationship between God, God’s Creation, and God’s People. When we tell family stories, things can be told from different perspectives or with different details emphasized, yet we simply laugh about how differently we see things in our family. The same is true of scripture–it’s a collection of family stories told from different perspectives, by different people, from different places and times, but about the same thing: the relationship between God, God’s Creation, and God’s People.

Is the Bible divinely dictated, inspired, or a completely human document? As Reformed Christians, we affirm that the Bible is inspired–it is God-breathed, as 2 Timothy says–but not dictated. The Spirit of God was moving through the communities and people who produced the text, and is still moving through the word today, pointing us to where our attention should be: on God.

Interestingly, I had a conversation about this topic with the Rabbi from the McHenry County Jewish Congregation, and she said this is not really a debate in the Jewish community. She says that it doesn’t matter who wrote the Bible (but, for the record, it was people), because they are sacred stories that have been guiding their life with God for thousands of years, and that’s enough authority.

The question of chapter 9 is directly related to chapter 8 in many ways. Those who say that to be homosexual is a sin are also often those who take the Bible completely literally and claim it is inerrant and infallible in all things. In the Presbyterian Church, those people have managed to frame the discussion around inclusion or noninclusion as being about biblical authority, claiming that those who disagree with them don’t take Scripture seriously. As we have seen, it is possible to take Scripture very seriously and yet understand that it comes to us from a time and place very different from our own–so how is the Spirit moving through the word to speak to the church today?

The Bible is silent on the issue of committed same-gender loving relationships. In fact, the Bible is very nearly silent on the issue of committed monogamous loving relationships, period! The standard relationship in ancient times was the arranged marriage–the daughter was transferred as property from one house to another, often for economic or political reasons. There was often more than one wife in a household, again for economic or political reasons.

In Leviticus, which is the book often turned to for “proof” that God hates gay people, there is one verse that prohibits using someone of the same gender to fulfill your own lust. There are surrounding verses about not using people of different gender to satisfy your lust. And there are surrounding verses that say you cannot wear clothes of mixed fibers, that you must not round off your haircut or beard, that you must stand when in the presence of someone older than you, that you can’t sow two kinds of seed in your field, that you can’t eat shellfish, and that you must treat the foreigner among you as one of your own family.

Meanwhile, Jesus had nothing to say about people in same gender committed loving relationships. He had lots to say about commitment, and relationships, and love, and where our focus should be. And he had lots to say about how people are created in the image of God. And he had lots to say about not turning PEOPLE into objects or issues.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God. period. (1 John 4)

And again, chapter 10….the short answer is: NO. it’s not ok for us to be judgmental or obnoxious! Matthew 7 pretty clearly states that it’s not our job to judge. And pretty much every parable and every healing story and every encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees you can find in any gospel account is about not making judgment based on appearances. Our task as people of God is to love God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We can’t love our neighbor if we’re busy judging them.

So–what did you think of the first half of this book? What questions remain for you? What do you hope is addressed in the second half?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapters 6 and 7

These chapters are closely related in many ways, tackling some tough issues that a lot of Christians (and non-Christians) have questions about, but that are not explicitly dealt with very much in scripture. So while these questions occupy a lot of our cultural consciousness of religion, it’s important to remember that they did NOT occupy the consciousness of biblical writers at anywhere near the level we see today.

Chapter 6: Bad People Will Be Left Behind And Then Fry In Hell
Chapter 7: Jews Won’t Make It To Heaven

There are approximately 2 verses in the gospels that address the chapter 6 question in any sort of direct-ish way–the one cited at the beginning of the chapter (Matthew 24.36) and the one from which the rapture idea comes (Luke 17.34-5).

When read together, it seems clear that this is a mystery beyond our understanding…which doesn’t stop people from trying to understand, quantify, chart, and schedule. Unfortunately, that is just never going to work. God is always going to be a step ahead, is always going to be bigger than even our wildest imagination, and is always going to be working for the redemption of the world even when all we seem to want is to be rid of the world. So, I’m sorry, but this rapture-and-left-behind business is going to have to be called out for what it is: anti-faith. If faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11), then attempting to know the time when God might end the world as we know it AND claiming to know the way it will end and what a new heaven and new earth will be like is the opposite of faith.

The larger issue of this chapter is in the term “Bad People”–which makes it even more related to chapter 7, about people who are not Christian…and don’t forget about the people who are Christian and may also act like bad people…

And once again we run into the problem in which scripture, particularly the gospels, are strangely silent. There are not many passages that, when read in their context, tell us what happens when people die or when the world ends. In fact, I may even be willing to go out on a limb and say that, when we read the whole gospel, we won’t find any. Sure, we’ll find verses that we can pluck out, or parts of sentences, or one sentence from a paragraph, but when we read the whole thing together….I just don’t think we’re going to find what people seem to think is in there. Just as we don’t get to determine who is wheat and who is weed (Matthew 13.24-30), just as we don’t get to determine where seeds fall (Matthew 13.1-9), we also don’t get to determine what kind of people God chooses, or when, or how. It may look grossly unfair to us (Matthew 20.1-16), or it may turn out to be good news no matter which part of the story we find ourselves in (Luke 15).

Regarding people of other religious traditions: it is important that we don’t water down our tradition in order to be more palatable to others, just as it’s equally important that we don’t water down other traditions to be more palatable to us. The third view Thielen explains, of respecting other traditions as ways of knowing God, reminds me of the idea that God meets us where we are–and that God is capable of being all things to all people, though we are not. Do we affirm that Christ is The Way, The Truth, and The Life? yes. Do we affirm that in Christ we can see God most fully? yes. Do we affirm that if you don’t know God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, God doesn’t love you? no. Even NO, with capital letters. For God so loved the world…not just the chosen people. How that all works, and what that means for after we die…does that matter? The whole Old Testament and the gospels, and even most of Paul, are mainly concerned with life before death, not after.

There is a line in a song at the end of the new musical The Book of Mormon that says “who cares what happens when we’re dead–we shouldn’t think that far ahead!”

In other words: we just don’t know. If we did, we’d be God…and, honestly, we’re not.

I do want to address a few things that Thielen makes as categorical statements that need more explanation than he seems to have space for at this point in the book. Whether he’ll address them again later, I’m not certain, but we’ll find out!

1. On page 33 he has a section titled “All you need to know about the Second Coming of Christ.” In that section, he makes some claims that would probably be disputed depending on which theologian or biblical scholar you’re talking to. The main issues are with points 1 and 3.
From point 1–Yes, the Bible does clearly affirm that Christ will come again. It does not clearly affirm that that means “the end of history.” Instead, it affirms that there will be a new heaven and a new earth–or, rather, “I SAW a new heaven and a new earth.” To “end history” has some pretty clear connotations in our context that I do not think are supported by the biblical text. Not to mention that if history ends then…what happens in the new heaven and new earth? Isn’t that just new history?
In point 3 he says that we need to be ready, and the way we prepare is by affirming our faith in Christ. I notice he doesn’t give a biblical citation for that as the key to readiness…though there are multiple places where Jesus says he’ll come and people will say “Lord, Lord” (which sounds like an affirmation of faith!) and he will say “I do not know you.” I do think we need to be ready, but I remain unconvinced that the standard of readiness is an affirmation of faith–that sounds an awful lot to me like there is some intellectual or emotional standard to which we must assent in order to be good enough, and my Reformed self just won’t go for that. But I’m willing to converse and be convinced, so tell me what you think!

2. Hell, or not, or something in between….Again, this section is too sparse to be of much value. I think we’ll be better served by doing a separate book/Bible study on this topic. Perhaps our next book will be Love Wins, by Rob Bell…

So–what did you think of these two chapters? What experiences of interfaith dialogue do you have? What questions do you still want to ask? What would help you in your conversations with other people (Christians and non-Christians) on these big topics?

online book group: What’s the Least I Can Believe, chapters 4 and 5

Well, Monday’s storm put a damper on our ability to get online for the book group, but it didn’t dampen our reading spirit! So today we’ll talk about chapters 4 and 5, to catch up. Then, because the chapters are so short, we will start doing 2 chapters per post next week.

Chapter 4: Women Can’t Be Preachers and Must Submit to Men

Well, obviously anyone at RCLPC has already come to terms with this myth, since we have a woman preacher!  In addition to the Galatians 3.28 text cited in the chapter, there are lots of examples of women surrounding Jesus and even Paul–women who clearly do ministry and even some who preach. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but among them would be: the women who followed Jesus and used their resources (which must mean their independent wealth) to provide for other disciples; Mary and Martha, who live alone and provide for themselves as well as being disciples in their own right; the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, who is arguably the first preacher to tell the good news; the women at the tomb who rush back to proclaim He Is Risen!; Paul’s fellow leaders Junia and Lydia, who were apostles and teachers. There are many more, though they don’t always have names in the written record.

The bigger question in this chapter, which is not adequately addressed (in my opinion) is submission. Now obviously I’m not going to advocate for all women to submit to all men, or for unequal relationships of any kind. I am, however, going to advocate that ALL people, women and men, should submit–to Christ. We do not submit to one another as simple human beings, we submit when the Spirit of Christ is present and we recognize that authority. To submit to the Lordship of Christ is not to abrogate our responsibilities as human beings, nor is it to demean ourselves–instead, it is to recognize our true selves and to whom we belong (as the first questions of the catechism say: “who are you? I am a child of God, and I belong to God, who loves me.”). This kind of submission is something to strive for, not to avoid. But to be clear: it does not mean demeaning, using, objectifying, or hierarchy-izing (yes, that’s a new word) our human selves or human relationships. period. It is before Christ that EVERY knee shall bow. For the rest of us, it’s about mutual love and upbuilding, bearing one another’s burdens, having compassion for one another, respecting one another as beloved children of God–and that goes both ways, gender-wise.

Chapter 5: God Cares About Saving Souls But Not About Saving Trees

If RCLPC believed this to be true, we wouldn’t have an Earth Care Team, would we?!

As I was reading this chapter, I kept thinking, “I’m going to blog about how faith is personal but not private!” and then I turned the page to find the Jim Wallis quote staring me in the face. So I guess we are going to talk about how faith is personal but not private–because it’s right there in the book! While faith is intensely personal–God desires our transformation into people who are more and more Christlike–it is also intensely public, because our transformation is not for ourselves but for the world. Jesus did not talk about simply thinking the right thing, he talked about (and lived) doing the right thing. Paul did not write only about worshipping correctly, he talked about the whole community being changed together into the body of Christ. The Old Testament is almost never about our internal faith situation–it’s about a whole people, interconnected, interdependent–when one does wrong, all suffer, and when one does right, all celebrate.

The issue at the title of the chapter, but then neglected for the rest of the content, is that of environmental stewardship. While Thielen uses it as just one small example of doing justice, I think it deserves more time and space and energy than that. The very beginning of our story involves God creating and calling everything Good, then asking humans to take care–to be good stewards of a gift meant for all of us to enjoy together throughout generations. Scripture is littered with references to the land being sacred–and not just any land, not just “the promised land” but all Creation. Indeed, we might even suggest that all of God’s creation is promised land–in the sense that it is a sign and symbol of God’s promise and God’s trust in us.

Too often it seems that trust has been misplaced–and scripture is concerned with how we exploit, whether we exploit people or resources or land or God or ourselves. Any exploitation is the opposite of good stewardship. So how can we, as people who follow Christ, be better stewards of the gift of God’s creation? And how can we encourage others to be better stewards? This world was not given to us to use up, it was loaned to us by a Creator who wants to see all creation redeemed. As of now, creation groans (Romans 8), but we know that all the earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24)–and God will always fulfill the promise. And oftentimes, God fulfills promises through the most unlikely of people–maybe even us.