Supreme Executive Power...

In my post-high school days, I spent one summer working for a government sponsored youth acting company. Our purpose was to put on light dramas in surrounding parks for the amusement of park visitors. In one production we included a vignette from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in which I played King Arthur and my co-worker was the indomitable Dennis. For those of you who haven't seen this scene, Dennis is a humorously placed anachronism. He's a modern socialist peasant and in the course of his dialogue with the king questions everything about his kingship. The climax of the encounter is as follows.

King Arthur: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

 It's a clear case of the Emperor not really having any clothes after all. I love it. "Strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords" and "not from some farcical aquatic ceremony" -- it just doesn't get any better than that. Because the truth is that Arthur's kingship is really based on amassed military might and the money to sustain it. And however much you like Arthur, (I loved those legends -- my favourite was Roger Lancelyn Green's King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table) you have to admit that ultimately, mystical kingship origin stories like his are, after all, just a bit of desperate revisionism on the part of those who have the power to justify its continuance.

Let's have a look at the present day Roman Catholicism. No, skip it. Let's have a go at the papacy. Really everything else about Catholicism that grates on me and maybe some of you -- the veneration of saints, priestly celibacy, the hierarchy, the ostentation of cathedrals, etc. etc -- can be put down to pardonable cultural variation. We've all got our quirks. But the underlying assertion that after all, through the papacy, they're the boss over the rest of the church is the central reason that all the rest of the church have not, as some fondly desire, coalesced with them. (Hey, we should be happy. We're not anathema any more -- we're "divided brethren." But when we really get it right, we'll come home to the abuser who was ready and willing to burn us at the stake for thinking differently only a few hundred years ago. Do you really think so?)

And in all truth, the reason the papacy survived all those years, was money and military power. The story that somehow a succession of supreme bishops is inherent in Christ's blessing of Peter is classic power justifying revisionism. It's in the same category as the story King Arthur relates to Dennis. Not a hundred, a thousand, a million years of papal power could justify reading that into Jesus words. In the same way that I have said elsewhere in this blog, that we ought really to have explicit instructions ("after me will come a book") to justify the way we treat the New Testament, a thing like the papacy needs far more than a blessing which could equally well (and much more consistent with everything Jesus did here on earth) have been bequeathed to the whole church, not to a chain of succession. But that is what humans do. We make up stories which justify wars, property grabs, power plays. I still do the same while playing territorial war games with my (adult) kids. Even though I've never had X Y and Z parcel of land, in my chats, I always talk about taking my land back from my opponent. Adds an element of realism even to games with elves, orcs, and mages.

This is also why Pope Francis is so significant. He's the first pope we've heard of showing the level of humility that he does. But what we (non-Catholics) all hope from him is some institutional humility -- a frank admission that whatever allegiance Catholics give him, he has no such claim, tacit or otherwise, on the rest of us for the same allegiance. And I doubt we'll see such a move. The hope that a story like this gives us is, I believe, misplaced. As pope, he must speak for the whole of the Catholic Church, It's a bit like that scene in Ben Hur, where Pilate speaks to Quintus Arius (aka Judah Ben Hur) as a friend and the adopted son of a friend as they converse together on the floor of the council chamber but must speak for Rome when he sits in his governors chair. Whatever properly collegial feelings Cardinal Bergoglio may have had for the rest of the non-Catholic world, now that he is part of the system at the level he is, will surely be trumped by Pope Francis. And the mythic story will continue.

A Question of Paradigm

When I was a young teen living at home, we were heavily into the "Institute in Basic Youth Conflict" materials created by a man named Bill Gothard. He's memorable for many reasons, but one was his way of treating the Bible. He was an ace at formulating a paradigm and then bringing that paradigm to bear on every passage and story that he found. One of his favourite paradigms had to do with life under authority as God's plan for everyone. To go against authority was to against God every single time. We had a book of his called "Character Sketches" which had a two page spread (the thing was as wide and tall as a small newspaper) on the biblical story of Abigail, which ignored David's commendation of her, and the approving tone of the chronicler, and asserted instead that she had done wrong by disobeying her husband. She saved her people from slaughter, and helped David avoid committing a serious wrong, but that wasn't good enough for Bill. She went outside her God given authority, her husband, and that made her a negative character example... Because that's what fit with his paradigm.

I guess this kind of thing is pretty prevalent. I have paradigms, you have paradigms, we all have paradigms. Still, when you run into a glaring example of bringing your paradigm to the text and making it say what you want, it still grates -- just like I expect the above example grates -- on you.

A couple of days ago I was following a discussion on Facebook and stated my disagreement with an article which solved the problem of Old Testament violence, which is an undeniably difficult issue for the modern and post-modern, by arguing that because the person of Satan wasn't clear to the OT writers, often they mistook Satan for God or an agent of God or something like that, and therefore whenever you encounter a passage where God does something violent, it's obviously actually Satan. Simple. (the article was long and very well developed as such things go, but in the end it came down to this, as I called it in my comment, facile proposition) In my rather shocked reaction to this "solution," I raised the issue of the New Testament episode of Ananias and Sapphira and was pointed to this discussion as an answer to my counter-example.

So now I need to summarize the podcast in a few sentences and still do it a modicum of justice. It consists of several people having an impromptu discussion around the question of how to reconcile the concept of a non-violent God with the Ananias and Sapphira incident. And you should know that although I embrace the ideal of Christian non-violence, it has always been rooted in the idea that God --"vengeance is mine, I will repay"-- takes care of all the very necessary righteous retribution and therefore, it's just not our province. It may have been mandated in some form or other to the nation of Israel. But Jesus' Kingdom is a heavenly kingdom, otherwise, as he himself says, we his followers would fight. The necessity of such retribution, in my opinion, is what makes mercy meaningful. He could, he even ought to, cut us off for our misdeeds, but instead took the penalty himself. Also I wholeheartedly affirm his absolute right as creator, guiding history when necessary, to amputate and cauterize his creation at will -- so that it will stay alive and healthy and serve the end he designed for it. So I have never particularly needed a non-violent God. But the group looking at this passage evidently does and did.

So the discussion starts out with one participant "problematizing" the question with a bit of a caricature (only slightly slanted for effect) of what is a flat reading of the text, namely that God, to protect the fledgling church, himself slew the lying couple and then bringing up a bouquet of attendant questions that that might be raised, you know, like why doesn't God do this all the time? Why aren't our sometimes stingy lying congregations all dead by now? Why didn't God kill Hitler to save millions? Stuff like that. Conversation ensues. One person points out the lack of faith demonstrated by A and S; that holding back money was demonstration of Mammon slavery. Finally someone brings up the idyllic nature of the church having everything in common. And suddenly everyone has an 'aha!' moment that this could be like the 'Fall' -- i.e. the loss of innocence -- of the church. Discussion proceeds along this track for some time. Participants bring up parallels to the Fall in Eden. Someone, introduced as a Girardian, talks about "the Satan" and the part that that role (I hope I'm using an appropriate term -- I am not a Girardian and am not likely to become one) plays in creating the lie. After some time the question of the deaths themselves is addressed. The potentially supernatural aspect of the event is downplayed. Maybe they had to do with the physiology of being found out? Someone suggests they might have had weak hearts. The orthodox view of sin is presented, that all sin is dangerous in and of itself and the commands against it are simply God's prescriptions for our safety -- the example given is a comparison to driving around a corner at 50 mph. If you neglect the commandment to slow down, you will die. What about the 'great fear' that fell on all who heard these things? Someone uses the phrase "fear of God" and then accuses himself of reading into the text, because "of God" is not used here. Maybe someone references that "great fear" reinforces the 'Fall of the Church' hypothesis introduced earlier -- if they didn't they should have. Anyhow as far as I can tell the whole discussion concludes that 1) God was not being violent here because the whole event played out on largely a human plane with the obvious interference of Satan or the (!) Satan, 2) Ananias and Sapphira died from a direct internal consequence of their own action, 3) the event was an archetype of the Fall of humanity with Peter's inquiries echoing God's "Where are you?" in the garden. I would like to add 4) because God is not violent anyways, just for the effect the whole discussion had on me, but that wouldn't really be fair.

At the end of it all, I'm not convinced. And I'm somewhat disappointed because one of the participants is a friend and someone whom I would still probably go to for advice on understanding some difficult Bible passage. But the whole thing reminded me so much of Bill Gothard's treatment of Abigail. The text must line up with the ideas and ideals we bring to it. If it doesn't, well we make it line up. I see key things that the discussion ignored or passed over. First and foremost, the approving tone of the chronicler must be brought into account. This is a memory shared with Luke (?) some years after the fact. And the retrospect of those years has not given the relater any pause. You don't get a sense of doubt or of a haunting question ("What was that about?") about the story. Secondly the "great fear" that is mentioned (and immediately discounted in the aforementioned dialogue) is immediately followed by a glowing description of the outflow of miraculous power. This does not add up with the idea of a Satanic fear. And it also ignores histories of past revivals which have frequently experienced "great fear" moments which have evidently been integral to the revival just like this seems to have been integral to the awakening in Jerusalem. Thirdly exactly counter to one of the comments (one I neglected to mentioned earlier, sorry.) the whole thing looks exactly like a law court. Peter gives a judgement "Lying to the Holy Spirit" and the sentence is executed. It really smacks very much of that whole "what you bind/loose on earth is bound/loosed in heaven" passage that I find so problematic.

In fact if there's an Old Testament parallel passage it's not the Fall, it's the Achan incident. Jesus was certainly the "prophet like [Moses]" and Peter might fill the role of Joshua, and the couple, well what could be more obvious?

So after all this, what's my take on this incident? What do I have to offer as an alternative view? I'll take a shot at it. In earlier blog posts, I have earnestly argued that the presentation of the Gospel and the practise of the church must fit into its own culture and time. Usually, I'm saying don't try to bolt the past onto the culture of today. Here I'm on the corollary though opposite tack. Let's not measure the actions of God and the early church in the first century by a 21st century yardstick. The value of a single human life or even of two human lives was obviously valued lower than the righteousness of the community. Even if you just look at this story, that's obvious. There's no mention of people even 'falling away' from the church over this incident. The event just heightens the reputation of the church. More people come all the time. Maybe Peter should have been more merciful to Ananias. Maybe he shouldn't have so tested Sapphira. Maybe Paul shouldn't have pronounced blindness upon Elymas. But these things happened and they seem to completely fit inside the time. As I have mentioned elsewhere, God seems to work with the culture before him, changing what can be changed and being present anyway even when stuff happens which our culture would have a problem with. That, off the cuff anyway, is my take.

So I may disagree and my take may be diametrically opposed to theirs, but there is certainly room for both the aforementioned discussion group and me in the faith. Jesus will completely and totally give us understanding when he comes. Until then we struggle to grasp all that the biblical record and our own experience presents us with. I imagine that one of Jesus' first sit downs with the church in the consummated kingdom will be to help us clearly and finally understand his character. At that time what exactly happened when Ananias died might interest us or it might not. If it does occur to me at that time I will raise the question then.

Jesus Feminist: A Book Review

I have a friend who is a published author. She has a blog that is very popular (with my wife for instance) and can turn a darned lovely phrase whenever she has a mind. And she's a really nice person and I do not scruple to use the term "nice." You'll get the idea of what she's like when I say that I don't use the word "nice" in any shallow sense.

So I'm showing a fair amount of temerity to take on the task of reviewing the book that has propelled her onto, if not a global stage, then at least onto an off-and-on extended world tour. What if I don't actually like it? What if I violently disagree with it? What would my wife say? My objectivity and social life might come into conflict.

Well, they haven't. I haven't really anything negative to say about the book, try as I might. So I feel quite safe about saying the following.

The first thing that struck me about the book was its tone. It's a very gentle volume. To be sure there are times when Sarah is presenting harsh realities, but the style never varies from the warmth she establishes at the beginning by inviting the reader to metaphorically sit by her at a beach bonfire. It's a book meant to inspire, not argue, to encourage, not score points. The simple call at the beginning to join her at the campfire out of the place of warring issues just by itself speaks eloquently to the futile obsession we have about such things as doctrine or issues.

The name of the book Jesus Feminist, really only applies to part of the book. A lot of it could just as well be called Jesus: Friend of the Downtrodden and Jesus: The One Who Helps You Live. I, whom you'd think, as a man, should be reading this book from the outside, frequently was caught off guard by the simple wisdom and learned a thing or two, as the saying goes. Ultimately Sarah is doing her best to inspire women to come and be equal partners with men. But in the mean time, she's dishing up a lot of encouragement to any else who would want to join her at her bonfire.

There are two or three chapters of fairly low-key case stating -- something for the proof texters to chew on. But this is not really why to read this book. You are probably already convinced of one side or the other and you will either find yourself in the choir being preached to, or in the crowd yelling "Crucify!"

Some of the book I skimmed for the opposite reason that I skim most Christian books. Most of the time I will skim a book when the presentation at the beginning is so bad that I view the unfortunate collection of paper in my hands as a complete write-off -- but for whatever reason I still have to finish it. Sarah's book got skimmed because I could see where she was going and needed no further elucidation. She already had me singing along pages ago.

Sarah's feminism should scare no one. This is not a placard waving manifesto. The title might be misleading to some on that point. This is an invitation to live and not even waste a "damn" on the torpedoes. More could be said. But this for sure. Good on you, Sarah!

The Story We Are Actually Telling

Here's an example of how we're missing it when it comes to the resurrection. What's your typical evangelical conversion experience? I come to God through Jesus as a sinner, I pray the 'sinner's prayer,' he forgives me, lives in me by his Spirit, and lets me into heaven when I die. I am also baptized and have communion as symbolic of this experience. That's certainly pretty well what happened to me. So what's the problem?

Last night I realized that that does not line up with Jesus' death and resurrection very well.  I mean it actually changes the story by downplaying the resurrection. The real story of the Gospel is that Jesus was born as a baby, lived an obedient life in the power of the Holy Spirit, was put to death, bearing our sins in some sacrificial manner (yes I'm being vague here. I'm trying to avoid taking sides in the current brouhaha over in what sense he has died for our sins), rose again bodily, ascended bodily into heaven and will come again to rule. Do you see a conflict? What's always been told us, especially in our conversion narrative, as primarily important, is that Jesus has provided a way into heaven. But if that's so central, the resurrection is an embarrassing detail and the second coming is an anticlimax. We might as well eviscerate his story and say that he went to hell with our sins, left them there and attained heaven on our behalf so now we can also go there too. We need never again mention his coming back in the body. Who cares about his body? He's in heaven now. That's what counts. Who cares about our bodies? We'll be in heaven.

So. Big surprise. We're not getting it. Over years of evangelism we've boiled down the message to 'pray the sinner's prayer and escape hell.' The early church grappled constantly with all the resurrection could mean and we, all too familiar, ignore it. Can we go back and start examining it again? Do we realize what an absolutely shocking anomaly it is? Can we see again that it changes everything? Yup. It's time to grapple some more...

Resurrection Theology

I grew up loving heaven. The best part of the entire Narnia series was when the children ended up in Aslan's country and never had to leave. Whenever I thought about angels and glorious spiritual realities beyond my ken I would have this sense in my physical body of buzzing and tingling that I only later associated with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Everything "heaven" was precious and wonderful. I could hardly wait to get there. I even seriously entertained thoughts of suicide on that basis, not that I would have ever carried them out. It was against the rules.

So what would cause me to question this? Try Surprised by Hope by NT Wright. If once you are aware that the primitive Christians were not at all about heaven, (If they had the response would have been "everyone knows about the after-life and everyone has a different version -- who cares about that new Jewish cult?") but rather the resurrection, you suddenly have a different end in view. We're all coming back! Heaven separated from Earth is not God's ultimate plan. We're coming back and heaven's coming with us.

So much of our theology revolves around heaven. But heaven is incomplete. Heaven is not our home. The gospel song, "I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore" -- I used to sing it to myself constantly -- is not actually telling us the truth. Otherwise why would the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6 be so particular about what happens here on earth. No, the happy ending is so obviously "Now the dwelling place of God is with men!" And no, I'm not proposing some turn-of -the-last-century liberalism that says if we all work together in a non-miraculous way (who believes in miracles anymore, anyways, right?) we can bring peace on the earth and make it into heaven. But read the book of Acts and understand this statement: "With great power the apostles were testifying to the resurrection of Jesus." When was the last time when you heard someone doing that?

I think that the death that was warned of in the garden was the separation of heaven and earth. Certainly when redemption is complete, they will be one, indicating that it's a return to a possibly former, certainly intended state.

These thoughts are incomplete. I could try to rewrite the aforementioned book for you but maybe you'll want to read it yourself. There's so much here that I am constantly mulling over, just because I've never thought this way before...

Doctrines and labels

My daughter called me the other day. She was in the throes of debate with a staunch Calvinist. (And what two words go together better than "staunch" and "Calvinist"?) As a result of their discussion she wanted to know what I thought of "total depravity," by which her friend meant a complete inability on the part of humanity to choose what is right. I replied that whether or not such a thing is true is actually moot so long as the Holy Spirit is in the world doing the work Jesus described, that is, convicting the world. It made me ponder once again what power a labeled doctrine has. Once there is such a label, be it transubstantiation,  inerrancy or total depravity, it presents to the world an in or out, good or bad choice-- if you agree, you're in, and if you disagree you're out. That's power, that is. Now maybe we need some such labeled doctrines, but at risk of tritely quoting Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. Let's try to have as few as possible.

Pardonable Subjectivism

Question for Christians: How do you treat the personal story of someone's conversion? I mean when someone recounts to you their conversion story, what to you do about it. Do you, on one hand, analyze the account to death and point out its theological faults, or derive a deep abiding doctrinal statement from it, blithely bending and twisting what you thought you knew to fit with your friend's account? Or would you generally take a middle road and allow the person his private perceptions of how and why God has worked in his life without giving it universal application?

Second question, more theological this time: In the context of the above, taking into account God's universal love for us, how would you respond if someone told you that God, counter to your intuitive understanding of that love, saved him, showed mercy to him, gave grace to him, loved him, etc. (and yes, I lump these together on purpose. I think that we split hairs far too glibly in these matters.) only because of some extenuating circumstance and that otherwise he would have been passed over? Would you try to explain to that person, that no, God has mercy on everyone, because that is his nature and it's not at all about us or would you pass it off as not that vitally important?

Third question: What if this person was the Apostle Paul? In 1 Timothy 1:13 he says precisely the kind of thing I refer to in question-- that he was shown mercy because of his ignorance. Now what do you do? You see, a couple of days ago I was reading this. It's written by a friend, whom I disagree with sharply on many occasions and issues, but whose erudition and Bible scholarship are several "pay-grades" above my own. I was appreciating his exposition about the various biblical words for ignorance, when suddenly I thought, "Wait a minute. Saying something that seems to abrogate God's universal mercy is not allowed or maybe taken seriously from anyone else, but if Paul does it we have to alter our theology?" It's a question of paradigm. If we look at the Bible as inerrant (I'm starting to call this the "the book done fell from the sky" theory) we are forced to make everything in it true in an absolute sense and it has to distort our theology. That's why my friend sees a necessity to categorize different kinds of ignorance.

There's really another way. Let's remember who we all are. Paul is not the uniquely anointed leader of a church filled with people otherwise disconnected from God who need him to disseminate all that is true. He is one of many sons of God (ideally!) equally filled by the Holy Spirit. He has a very significant voice among us, but by very definition of what it means to be the church, if we really want to look ourselves as all (including Paul) members of the body of Christ (Paul's own metaphor) then we cannot claim absolute error free communication will come from any one of us. We are all here to complete each other. Moses' prophetic prayer -- to which the church is the fulfilment-- says it all. "Oh that God would put his Spirit on all his people..."

And when it comes to Paul's take on why God showed him mercy or indeed his claim to be the chief of sinners, which I really have heard people take literally, ("You can't claim to be too bad to forgive; Paul has already declared himself to be the worst of sinners and God forgave him...") the question becomes "Why do we have crank up the doctrine mill for a subjective throw-away comment about something very personal -- Paul's conversion experience?" I say we allow him this subjectivism. We certainly allow it for each other. But let's not try to theologize around it.