This seems a fitting "What do you think?" post in light of last Sunday's sermon in 1 Samuel 2. The Lord fights against his own ministers when they defile his worship and harm his people. Here it is almost December of 2009 and the Sovereign Lord is still fighting for his loved ones and his glory by exposing the scoundrels who stand to speak for him, this time through the instrument of secular journalism. Thanks Aaron Warner for the heads-up on this.
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
by Hanna Rosin from The Atlantic, December 2009
Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre’s success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the pastor’s basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents space from a lovely old Baptist church that can’t otherwise fill its pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—“because Americanos don’t do that,” one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished enough to reflect his wingtips.
It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”
The rest of the article is here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel?pid=ynews
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Weekly E-note 11/20: The Reason for God
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Christmas is not too far off and so thinking about the right gift is even nearer. May I suggest one? Pastor Tim Keller's 2008 New York Times bestseller, The Reason for God, would make a substantial Christmas gift this year.
Keller has a unique gift in giving clear and cogent answers to difficult questions skeptics ask about the Christian faith. He is especially gifted in showing religionists of all stripes, even church-going theologically conservative Christians, the vast difference between religion and the gospel of Jesus. Some chapter titles to whet your appetite: There Can't Be Just One True Religion (Ch. 1); Christianity Is a Straightjacket (Ch. 3); Science Has Disproved Christianity (Ch. 6); Religion and the Gospel (Ch. 11). If you are looking for a meaty gift for another Christian or that beloved committed skeptic, this is it. Here's a snippet from chapter 11:
Christmas is not too far off and so thinking about the right gift is even nearer. May I suggest one? Pastor Tim Keller's 2008 New York Times bestseller, The Reason for God, would make a substantial Christmas gift this year.
Keller has a unique gift in giving clear and cogent answers to difficult questions skeptics ask about the Christian faith. He is especially gifted in showing religionists of all stripes, even church-going theologically conservative Christians, the vast difference between religion and the gospel of Jesus. Some chapter titles to whet your appetite: There Can't Be Just One True Religion (Ch. 1); Christianity Is a Straightjacket (Ch. 3); Science Has Disproved Christianity (Ch. 6); Religion and the Gospel (Ch. 11). If you are looking for a meaty gift for another Christian or that beloved committed skeptic, this is it. Here's a snippet from chapter 11:
The primary difference [between Religion and Gospel] is that of motivation. In religion, we try to obey the divine standard out of fear. We believe that if we don't obey we are going to lose God's blessing in this world and the next. In the gospel, the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Christ. While the moralist is forced into obedience, motivated by fear of rejection, a Christian rushes into obedience, motivated by a desire to please and resemble the one who gave his life for us.The best price I've found online for the paperback edition of The Reason for God is $9.36 at www.monergism.com. Monergism also has great shipping rates. Follow the bookstore link at the top of the page. Grace & peace, John
Another difference has to do with our identity and self-regard. In a religious framework, if you feel you are living up to your chosen religious standards, then you feel superior and disdainful toward those who are not following in the true path. This is true whether your religion is of a more liberal variety (in which case you will feel superior to bigots and narrow-minded people) or of a more conservative variety (in which case you will feel superior to the less moral and devout). If you are not living up to your chosen standards, then you will feel far more guilt than if you had stayed away from God and religion altogether.
When my own personal grasp of the gospel was very weak, my self-view swung wildly between two poles. When I was performing up to my standards--in academic work, professional achievement, or relationships--I felt confident but not humble. I was likely to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. When I was not living up to standards, I felt humble but not confident, a failure. I discovered, however, that the gospel contained the resources to build a unique identity. In Christ I could know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued and that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less. I don't need to notice myself--how I'm doing, how I'm being regarded--so often" (The Reason for God, 180-81).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
What do you think?
The Reality of Hope
by Amy Julia Becker
After she died, it was as if I had broken my arm. A part of me ached all the time, and something that had been functional was now useless, and everything about my daily routine needed to be navigated differently. It was difficult, for instance, to stand in line at the post office or buy groceries or make dinner. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
I had spent much of the final six months of her life with her, my mother-in-law, my friend: Penny. And once she was gone, I missed her. I missed the Penny I knew when she was healthy- the woman who had enjoyed kick-boxing, who loved ice cream and didn't like cilantro, who had hand-addressed our wedding invitations. I missed the Penny I came to know in the midst of her battle against cancer, who, after surgery, laughed so hard in response to a get-well card that staples holding her wound together were dislodged, who walked around the block in sneakers and a nightgown just to get outside, who held my hand as she slept, who said, "thank you" even at the very end.
Six years later, I don't feel her absence in a visceral way. But, just as a rainy day can draw out the pain of a broken bone, so too the grief returns. When we celebrate Christmas. Or when we bought a new house. Or when my husband told our three-year-old daughter about her namesake and she said, "Hug?" and he replied, "One day. One day you can hug her." My grief doesn't compare to the wounds of parents who see their children suffer, or to those of a husband who loses his wife, a young girl whose father dies. Their grief is more akin to amputation, a permanent and irrevocable loss. And yet witnessing the death of a woman I loved changed me forever. Experiencing the reality of death helped me discover the reality of hope.
Hope is a campaign slogan these days, and an effective one at that. Perhaps it is such a compelling buzzword because it conjures up vaguely positive thoughts of the future, of a time when all the things that are wrong with the world will be undone. Somehow. Someday. But I would argue that this popular notion of hope could be more accurately defined as optimism. It is easy to confuse optimism with hope, but optimism in the face of death is merely a form of denial. Optimism insists that it will all work out here and now, and yet the reality of everyday life demonstrates that this is not so. It will not all work out, at least not until the time of the new heavens and the new earth. For as long as sin exists in this world, people will suffer and die.
When Penny first received her diagnosis - primary liver cancer - we were optimistic. Perhaps surgery would eradicate the disease. Perhaps she would live to know her grandchildren. Perhaps she would retire and travel to Italy again. We thought it might all work out. But then came the pathology report, the news that the cancer had gotten into her bloodstream. Those optimistic thoughts were no longer readily available. Optimism failed.
But hope is not optimism, and neither is it false piety. Once Penny died, it was tempting to ignore the sadness and focus upon the promise of eternal life. It was tempting to bypass grief. But I cringed when someone offered, "I guess God needed another angel in heaven." In thinking only of the future, of heaven, that statement skips over the real loss in the present. It implies that God is needy, snatching people away to fill some cosmic void. It implies that it is acceptable for a fifty-five-year old woman to die a grueling death. Statements about God's purpose in death can be used as a cudgel, a way to berate believers into pretending that the loss is not profound, devastating. "Pie in the sky by and by" is no consolation. False piety skips past grief altogether, and, like optimism, it ultimately fails.
Penny's illness followed the liturgical calendar. Her surgery took place on Ash Wednesday, and she had recovered enough from the operation to return to church on Easter Sunday. Even then, she knew she didn't have long to live. We sang Alleluia that Easter Day. And we wept. As we took the Body and Blood of Christ into our bodies, I was reminded that God suffers with us, that God entered into human suffering on our behalf.
Jesus did not ignore the reality of pain. Rather, he engaged it, even as he knew it would be overcome. He knew, for instance, that he would raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet he mourned. He knew God would be faithful, and yet he shed tears of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had hope in the midst of grief, without denying the reality of suffering and loss. His life permits us to forgo false piety and admit that suffering and separation are an offense to God.
And yet, that Easter morning also reminded me that God has triumphed over death. Christian hope hinges on the fact that God has the power to give life to the dead, starting with Jesus, and one day, extending to us all. Hope is a place of tension, tethered between the Cross and the Resurrection, engaging pain and suffering while simultaneously looking ahead to restoration.
In the midst of Penny's illness, I read that the word hope in Hebrew is similar to the word for spider's silk. I also read that spider's silk is stronger than steel, that researchers are hoping to use spider's silk to make lightweight bulletproof vests. I'm not sure the Hebraic etymological connection was intentional, but it provided me with a helpful image: hope as a strand of spider's silk, stretched tight between the pain of the present moment and the promise of a future reunion. Hope is a place between. It is remembering the pain of the Cross and anticipating the reality of the Resurrection. It is an awareness that this world is not yet what it should be, even as God is already at work. Hope is as strong as steel, and as fragile as a thread.
It is our son's first birthday tomorrow. His grandmother will not celebrate with us. I have so many questions for her. Did her firstborn son, my husband, walk early? Did he eat blueberries hand over fist? What was his first word? When did he first sleep through the night?
I hope one day we will sit down together and she will answer my questions. For now, I am sad she is gone. But I am grateful for what her life, and death, taught me. God is present in grief. And God calls us to have a true and living hope, hope that acknowledges all that is wrong with this world, hope that looks ahead to the glory to come.
Amy Julia Becker, a master-of-divinity candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary, is a writer and mother in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her first book, Penelope Ayers , is a memoir about the experience detailed in this essay.
by Amy Julia Becker
After she died, it was as if I had broken my arm. A part of me ached all the time, and something that had been functional was now useless, and everything about my daily routine needed to be navigated differently. It was difficult, for instance, to stand in line at the post office or buy groceries or make dinner. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
I had spent much of the final six months of her life with her, my mother-in-law, my friend: Penny. And once she was gone, I missed her. I missed the Penny I knew when she was healthy- the woman who had enjoyed kick-boxing, who loved ice cream and didn't like cilantro, who had hand-addressed our wedding invitations. I missed the Penny I came to know in the midst of her battle against cancer, who, after surgery, laughed so hard in response to a get-well card that staples holding her wound together were dislodged, who walked around the block in sneakers and a nightgown just to get outside, who held my hand as she slept, who said, "thank you" even at the very end.
Six years later, I don't feel her absence in a visceral way. But, just as a rainy day can draw out the pain of a broken bone, so too the grief returns. When we celebrate Christmas. Or when we bought a new house. Or when my husband told our three-year-old daughter about her namesake and she said, "Hug?" and he replied, "One day. One day you can hug her." My grief doesn't compare to the wounds of parents who see their children suffer, or to those of a husband who loses his wife, a young girl whose father dies. Their grief is more akin to amputation, a permanent and irrevocable loss. And yet witnessing the death of a woman I loved changed me forever. Experiencing the reality of death helped me discover the reality of hope.
Hope is a campaign slogan these days, and an effective one at that. Perhaps it is such a compelling buzzword because it conjures up vaguely positive thoughts of the future, of a time when all the things that are wrong with the world will be undone. Somehow. Someday. But I would argue that this popular notion of hope could be more accurately defined as optimism. It is easy to confuse optimism with hope, but optimism in the face of death is merely a form of denial. Optimism insists that it will all work out here and now, and yet the reality of everyday life demonstrates that this is not so. It will not all work out, at least not until the time of the new heavens and the new earth. For as long as sin exists in this world, people will suffer and die.
When Penny first received her diagnosis - primary liver cancer - we were optimistic. Perhaps surgery would eradicate the disease. Perhaps she would live to know her grandchildren. Perhaps she would retire and travel to Italy again. We thought it might all work out. But then came the pathology report, the news that the cancer had gotten into her bloodstream. Those optimistic thoughts were no longer readily available. Optimism failed.
But hope is not optimism, and neither is it false piety. Once Penny died, it was tempting to ignore the sadness and focus upon the promise of eternal life. It was tempting to bypass grief. But I cringed when someone offered, "I guess God needed another angel in heaven." In thinking only of the future, of heaven, that statement skips over the real loss in the present. It implies that God is needy, snatching people away to fill some cosmic void. It implies that it is acceptable for a fifty-five-year old woman to die a grueling death. Statements about God's purpose in death can be used as a cudgel, a way to berate believers into pretending that the loss is not profound, devastating. "Pie in the sky by and by" is no consolation. False piety skips past grief altogether, and, like optimism, it ultimately fails.
Penny's illness followed the liturgical calendar. Her surgery took place on Ash Wednesday, and she had recovered enough from the operation to return to church on Easter Sunday. Even then, she knew she didn't have long to live. We sang Alleluia that Easter Day. And we wept. As we took the Body and Blood of Christ into our bodies, I was reminded that God suffers with us, that God entered into human suffering on our behalf.
Jesus did not ignore the reality of pain. Rather, he engaged it, even as he knew it would be overcome. He knew, for instance, that he would raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet he mourned. He knew God would be faithful, and yet he shed tears of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had hope in the midst of grief, without denying the reality of suffering and loss. His life permits us to forgo false piety and admit that suffering and separation are an offense to God.
And yet, that Easter morning also reminded me that God has triumphed over death. Christian hope hinges on the fact that God has the power to give life to the dead, starting with Jesus, and one day, extending to us all. Hope is a place of tension, tethered between the Cross and the Resurrection, engaging pain and suffering while simultaneously looking ahead to restoration.
In the midst of Penny's illness, I read that the word hope in Hebrew is similar to the word for spider's silk. I also read that spider's silk is stronger than steel, that researchers are hoping to use spider's silk to make lightweight bulletproof vests. I'm not sure the Hebraic etymological connection was intentional, but it provided me with a helpful image: hope as a strand of spider's silk, stretched tight between the pain of the present moment and the promise of a future reunion. Hope is a place between. It is remembering the pain of the Cross and anticipating the reality of the Resurrection. It is an awareness that this world is not yet what it should be, even as God is already at work. Hope is as strong as steel, and as fragile as a thread.
It is our son's first birthday tomorrow. His grandmother will not celebrate with us. I have so many questions for her. Did her firstborn son, my husband, walk early? Did he eat blueberries hand over fist? What was his first word? When did he first sleep through the night?
I hope one day we will sit down together and she will answer my questions. For now, I am sad she is gone. But I am grateful for what her life, and death, taught me. God is present in grief. And God calls us to have a true and living hope, hope that acknowledges all that is wrong with this world, hope that looks ahead to the glory to come.
Amy Julia Becker, a master-of-divinity candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary, is a writer and mother in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her first book, Penelope Ayers , is a memoir about the experience detailed in this essay.
Friday, November 13, 2009
E-note 11/13: Missions Conference
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
"Across the street and around the world." That simple aphorism has shaped our missions vision and missions giving at TBC. We financially support the Town of Thetford food shelf ("across the street") and we support a church planter in Tajikistan ("around the world"). We support the Navigators campus ministry in New England ("across the street") and we support a sweet missionary in Cambodia named Susan ("around the world"). At Pioneers Club each week we share the Word with our neighbors' children ("across the street") and at Thanksgiving we will collect money to send Bibles to Iran ("around the world"). Our gospel vision is both near and far.
We keep this near and far vision not simply for balance, but rather because we ourselves are in a mission field. We ourselves are situated among the nations where Jesus the Lord of the harvest is gathering a harvest of souls. We are not somehow stationed outside the nations. Mission is here, thus it is always near. It is most near on the Lord's Day when the church of Jesus Christ gathers to worship. Word and sacrament are God's most outward and ordinary means of grace and mission. Thus people are actually being saved by Jesus through the worship service and some won't even know it until months or years later. This is true in Thetford and in Moldova and in Tajikistan and wherever God's people gather and worship rightly in Jesus' name. But mission certainly extends beyond the gathering of the saints. The next most obvious venue for local mission is the home. As fathers and mothers call their families to prayer and obedient faith the work of disciple-making continues and deepens. Children are actually being saved by Jesus through family worship and some won't even know it until months or years later. This is true in homes of the Upper Valley and in homes of Moldova and homes of Tajikistan and wherever Christ is head of house.
So why am I telling you all this? To prepare you for our next TBC missions conference. On January 22-24 our missions committee will be offering you and your children a conference you won't want to miss. The conference is specifically designed for families. There will be seminars specifically for children as well as adults. The theme is "Winning the Next Generation." On Friday night (1/22) a meal and opening session on reaching teens in New England will kick things off. Bob Whittet, professor at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, will be our speaker. Bob has spent years ministering in New England. He will speak directly to the gospel as it intersects youth culture in New England. On Saturday morning (1/23) we will hear from Michayla Best. Michayla is a Children's Mission Specialist with Operation Mobilization. Michayla will direct our attention to international families. She will also lead one of the seminars just for children. Then on Sunday (1/24) Bob Whittet will give the morning sermon as the conference closes. There is more to tell but that gives you the big picture. As you can see we framed the conference around our "across the street and around the world" vision for the gospel. Please save the dates and spread the word. Yours in Christ, John
"Across the street and around the world." That simple aphorism has shaped our missions vision and missions giving at TBC. We financially support the Town of Thetford food shelf ("across the street") and we support a church planter in Tajikistan ("around the world"). We support the Navigators campus ministry in New England ("across the street") and we support a sweet missionary in Cambodia named Susan ("around the world"). At Pioneers Club each week we share the Word with our neighbors' children ("across the street") and at Thanksgiving we will collect money to send Bibles to Iran ("around the world"). Our gospel vision is both near and far.
We keep this near and far vision not simply for balance, but rather because we ourselves are in a mission field. We ourselves are situated among the nations where Jesus the Lord of the harvest is gathering a harvest of souls. We are not somehow stationed outside the nations. Mission is here, thus it is always near. It is most near on the Lord's Day when the church of Jesus Christ gathers to worship. Word and sacrament are God's most outward and ordinary means of grace and mission. Thus people are actually being saved by Jesus through the worship service and some won't even know it until months or years later. This is true in Thetford and in Moldova and in Tajikistan and wherever God's people gather and worship rightly in Jesus' name. But mission certainly extends beyond the gathering of the saints. The next most obvious venue for local mission is the home. As fathers and mothers call their families to prayer and obedient faith the work of disciple-making continues and deepens. Children are actually being saved by Jesus through family worship and some won't even know it until months or years later. This is true in homes of the Upper Valley and in homes of Moldova and homes of Tajikistan and wherever Christ is head of house.
So why am I telling you all this? To prepare you for our next TBC missions conference. On January 22-24 our missions committee will be offering you and your children a conference you won't want to miss. The conference is specifically designed for families. There will be seminars specifically for children as well as adults. The theme is "Winning the Next Generation." On Friday night (1/22) a meal and opening session on reaching teens in New England will kick things off. Bob Whittet, professor at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, will be our speaker. Bob has spent years ministering in New England. He will speak directly to the gospel as it intersects youth culture in New England. On Saturday morning (1/23) we will hear from Michayla Best. Michayla is a Children's Mission Specialist with Operation Mobilization. Michayla will direct our attention to international families. She will also lead one of the seminars just for children. Then on Sunday (1/24) Bob Whittet will give the morning sermon as the conference closes. There is more to tell but that gives you the big picture. As you can see we framed the conference around our "across the street and around the world" vision for the gospel. Please save the dates and spread the word. Yours in Christ, John
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What do you think?
Marching To Zion
by Michael S. Horton. Horton is professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), host of the White Horse Inn, national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of many books, including The Gospel-Driven Life, Christless Christianity, People and Place, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, and Too Good to be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype.
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On a cold November day in 1095, Pope Urban II roused the great crowd assembled before him to take up the cause of holy war against Islam. Instead of fighting each other, the people were told to unite against the common enemy and retake the Holy Land. "If you must have blood," he exhorted, "bathe in the blood of infidels." Substituting itself for its ascended Lord, the church assimilated a civilization to that ecclesial body. The church father Eusebius declared that it was from Christ and by Christ that "our divinely favored emperor [Constantine], receiving, as it were, a transcript of the divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the administration of this world's affairs." Included in this, says Eusebius, is that the emperor "subdues and chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the usages of war."
Though less violent, many Christians in America still demand visible symbols of Christianity in the culture. Ironically, many Christians today who decry the legacy of "Christendom" nevertheless confuse the advance of Christ's kingdom of grace with the common activity of Christians working alongside their neighbors in culture. While we may still tolerate the ordinary means of grace, we grow impatient with this apparently meager visibility of Christ's reign in this present age. Across the political spectrum, many proclaim that Christ's kingdom is advanced not by proclaiming the forgiveness of sins in Christ's name so much as by cultural transformation. We seem to hear less today about Christ's unique person and work than we do about us and our mission of "incarnating," "redeeming," and "reconciling."
Misunderstanding the March: Replacing Jesus
Where did Jesus go after he accomplished our redemption? And how did the church--and allegedly Christian empires--come to think that they could keep his seat warm until he returned in power and glory to reign on the earth? The disciples themselves missed the point of Jesus' journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. They expected Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem to be the victory celebration and that they would sit at his side for the inaugural ball. He had prepared them for his departure in the Upper Room, as he explained how his ascension to the Father meant that the Spirit would descend to dispense the gifts of his victory. Even after the resurrection, when he explained how all the Scriptures pointed to his saving work, they were not ready for his ascension. Just before this momentous event, they still asked, "Lord, now are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6, emphasis added). They were still thinking about a kingdom of earthly power here and now, not a kingdom of grace. They were ready for the ax to fall, for the sheep to be separated from the goats, and for fire to consume the enemies of God. Instead, they were told to go throughout the world preaching the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ until he returns at the end of the age. As they stood gazing at the ascending Lord, the disciples were told by two angels, "'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven'" (vv. 10-11).
Refusing to be located in the time between the times, the church often substitutes itself for its absent Lord. Just compare the pomp and circumstance with which Memorial Day and Independence Day are celebrated in churches across America with the relative obscurity of Ascension Day. Nobody expects The New York Times to celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death each week, but why should the church give the impression that there is something more important and more impressive to focus on than this report?
Obviously, a cure for AIDS would grab the front-page headline for weeks on end. We would all dance in the streets. Right now, there are Christians working alongside non-Christians in labs and on the field to try to achieve that success. In our common callings, we are not ushering in Christ's kingdom of glory and power, but sharing with non-Christians in temporal blessings and woes and loving our neighbors through the gifts we have been given by God's common and saving grace. Only the church, however, is commissioned as Christ's agency to announce each week that the whole kingdom of Satan has been toppled forever; that we are now in the hand-to-hand combat phase of ferreting out guerilla strongholds that have not yet yielded to the truth of their defeat, and awaiting the return of the King for the last battle. The end of all disease, poverty, oppression, violence, disaster, idolatry, and sin is at hand. Which is more powerful: the announcement of God's work or the calls to our work? Once we realize that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, our action becomes a "reasonable service." If our service is front and center, however, the church may easily (wittingly or unwittingly) proclaim itself as the Messiah.
Knowing What Time It Is
We still have trouble knowing what time it is or what kind of kingdom Christ has inaugurated. If we are still thinking in terms of a fully consummated kingdom of glory and power present now in the world, whether as the church or as Christian movements, then the gospel will be considered foolish and the divinely prescribed methods of delivery (preaching and Sacrament) will be judged too weak to really grab the world's attention. The challenge for us, as for the first disciples, is to believe in a kingdom of grace and await the arrival of the kingdom of glory.
When an agnostic creates a cure for a terrible disease, we neither reject this gift of God's common grace nor imagine that he or she is advancing Christ's kingdom. It was not simply to believers but to all human beings that God gave the commission, "Be fruitful and multiply," as his stewards of the earth. God preserved and protected Cain, the idolater and murderer, because he wanted the secular city to continue.
The Great Commission, however, is not the cultural mandate, and the kingdom of Christ cannot be identified with any of the kingdoms of this age. Like the exiles in Babylon, New Testament believers are called to participate in the common life of their captive city, while remaining "exiles" and "sojourners" in their hearts. We share the travails and joys of the secular city, while witnessing to the greater judgment and salvation found in Zion. If we could resolve our top ten crises in the world today, we would still have the devil on our back, sin mastering our heart, and everlasting death as the penalty for our mutiny. Do we really believe that our greatest crisis is the wrath of God and our greatest solution is the death and resurrection of Christ?
As a minister, I am called regularly by God to make a political speech--a deeply partisan political speech. However, it is not to rally the troops in defense of Christendom against the infidels of various sorts. It divides not between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, but between Christ and Antichrist. As heralds and ambassadors of the age to come, we are given the commission to go into all the world with the announcement that Jesus Christ is Lord and King, the only Sovereign who holds the keys of death and hell--who opens and no one can shut, who shuts and no one can open. It is he alone who will rid the world of evil by his wisdom and might, subduing chaos, and leading his own into the place that even now he is preparing for them.
In this covenantal gathering, the cross is raised, not as a cultural symbol but as the proclamation of Christ crucified for sinners. Our role is not to represent Western civilization, democracy, or the free world, nor to oppose these systems, but to announce and to exhibit--however imperfectly--the triumph of Christ's weak kingdom over the powerful kingdoms of this age. For now, we pray for secular rulers, pay our taxes, and fulfill our callings together with our non-Christian neighbors and citizens. As Calvin pointed out, the distinction between the "two kingdoms" does not mean that Christ is not king already, but that for now he rules both kingdoms in different ways. The kingdom of God advances by Word and Spirit, while the kingdoms of this age progress or decline according to the light of God's moral law inscribed on the conscience in creation and the Spirit's work in common grace. The cities of this age rise to the heavens in pride, but the City of God--the New Jerusalem that is coming down out of heaven as a bride prepared for her husband--alone promises and gives true liberty to its sons and daughters beyond the ultimate triumph of death and hell. We witness to the ascended King who will return again to judge the living and the dead and to reign forever.
From Royal March to Enthronement (Psalm 68)
Unlike the first Adam, who led creation on a detour in the thanksgiving parade from its appointed path, this Servant of the Lord finally fulfilled our human destiny. Psalm 68 records a royal march of Israel, foreshadowing the faithful Servant, Jesus Christ. The psalm begins with the battle cry, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered!" (vv. 1-3). As Jewish scholar Jon Levenson observes, Zion represents the eschatological destination of the people of God, a mountain that rises far above the failures of the human partner in the covenant and exists by God's grace. Psalm 68, then, "records a march of YHWH from Sinai, a military campaign in which the God of Israel and his retinue...set out across the desert."
As important as Sinai is in the march, it lies midway between Egypt and the earthly Zion: Canaan. The focus shifts from Sinai to Zion, for example, in Psalm 97 (cf. Ps. 68:8-9; Deut. 33:2; Ps. 50:2-3).
The transfer of the motif from Sinai to Zion was complete and irreversible, so that YHWH came to be designated no longer as "the One of Sinai," but as "he who dwells on Mount Zion" (Isa. 8:18)....The transfer of the divine home from Sinai to Zion meant that God was no longer seen as dwelling in an extraterritorial no man's land, but within the borders of the Israelite community.
And in the Zion traditions, Levenson comments, "there will emerge something almost unthinkable in the case of Sinai"--an unconditional divine oath that God himself, above all the vicissitudes of human disobedience, will somehow arise and scatter his enemies and save his people. So Zion takes on a cosmic, universal role that Sinai never did. "Not only Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but even the people of Israel can be designated as Zion," as in Isaiah 51:16 and Zechariah 2:11.
Leading captivity captive, ascending, giving gifts to and receiving gifts from even his enemies, crushing the head of the serpent, and dwelling forever in Zion (Ps. 68:19-23), this is the King who "daily loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation," from whom alone we receive "escape from death." Although Levenson interprets Psalm 68 as a march from Sinai to Zion, echoing the trial of Adam from commission to consummation--and even points out the failure common to both--he concludes that Zion is finally absorbed into Sinai within Judaism. The ascent of Mount Zion, he suggests, is an allegory for "the ethical ascent of man." Levenson even recognizes that this is where Christianity and Judaism part ways: Where the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 transfers Jewish atonement from the earthly Zion to the inner hearts of the faithful, the New Testament announces that Christ is the true Temple and those who believe in him are his living stones.
From his victory on the mountain of Golgotha to his ascension to the true heavenly Zion and enthronement as the King of kings and Lord of lords, Yahweh leads captivity captive. This is already anticipated at various points in Jesus' ministry. The return of the Seventy in Luke 10 anticipates the victory march. Jesus pronounces the "woes"--the covenant curses--upon the enemies of his kingdom, including Israel's religious leaders, while the Seventy return with joy, breathlessly reporting to their Lord, "Even the demons are subject to us in your name." And Jesus said to them,
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.
As the Captain of salvation, Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry marched from Sinai to Zion, leading captivity captive. Resisting the way of glory falsely promised by Satan in the temptation, Jesus went the way of the cross, marching all the way to the gates of hell to crush the serpent's head and to throw open the prisoner's doors. Psalm 68 ends with the arrival of the military procession--drawn from Israel and the nations--into the sanctuary of the Great King who has ascended in triumph. In his Upper Room discourse (John 14-16), Jesus prepared the disciples for his departure. He would be crucified, buried, and then rise again on the third day. Then he would ascend, both to send the Spirit from his throne and to prepare a place for us.
In the meantime, on the basis of his victory ("All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me"), he commissions them to "go into all the world," proclaiming, teaching, and baptizing. In his covenant with Abram, God promised that in him and his heir (Jesus Christ) all the nations of the earth will be blessed. This hope was kept alive by the prophets. Even in the process of pressing God's charges against Israel for violating the Sinai covenant, they prophesied the day when God himself would descend and build a highway from Jerusalem to Egypt, Assyria, and all nations. A remnant from all peoples would be gathered into the royal march of the Great King, not to an earthly mountain and temple but to the heavenly reality that the earthly Jerusalem only prefigured.
The Conquering King Ascends
Christ's ascension opened up a fissure in history, locating the church in the precarious collision of the two ages: this age of sin and death, and the age to come. It is easy in the absence of Christ's visible reign in the flesh on the earth to substitute ourselves or the church. What we are doing right now on earth becomes the front-page news. However, we miss the whole point if we fail to see that it is still what Jesus is doing that is the big news. He ascended to heaven in order to rule and subdue history to his gracious and holy designs, to dispatch his Spirit to sweep sinners into his victory parade, and to spread his kingdom of peace to the ends of the earth. This may not capture the world's headlines. In fact, Peter describes these last days as an era in which scoffers mock, "Where is the promise of his coming?" After all, it seems as if "all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation" (2 Pet. 3:4). Nevertheless, as Peter goes on to relate, this era of apparent weakness for God's kingdom is actually due to God's patience. His energetic activity may not be seen in the daily press, but it is reaping a harvest of redeemed sinners from the ends of the earth.
In Ephesians 4, we--the new covenant believers--get swept up into this victory march. Just as the dragon's tail swept a third of the angels from heaven in his fall in Revelation 12, the Savior's ascension sweeps into his wake a remnant from every tribe and tongue on earth. However, this triumphant march is not like the holy wars of the Old Testament. Christ does not call his people today to drive the serpent's emissaries out of a supposedly holy land or to rule over them by the temporal sword. He came to crush the serpent's head himself. In this contest, Jesus must fight alone. No one but Jesus hung on that cross, bearing the weight of the world's sins. Nevertheless, his resurrection draws innumerable captives into his train. He reigns as victor for us in heaven, while we bring news of his victory to the earth. The world does not welcome this news any more after his resurrection than when he first arrived. The announcement of good news provokes the rage of the dragon; and although he knows that he has lost the war with the seed of the woman, he spends his last days in pursuit of his co-heirs.
Ephesians 4:1-6 records a march as believers "walk in unity." As he writes this Epistle, Paul himself is under house arrest in Rome, "the prisoner of the Lord." Even in prison, he is not the captive of Satan or Caesar; he is the Lord's prisoner and under his reign. Despite their intentions, the devil and his ambassadors are actually serving the Lord's reign through Paul's ministry. He calls the Ephesians to "walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (vv. 1-2). This exhortation stands in sharp contrast to the old covenant command to eliminate the serpent and his seed from God's holy land by the sword. Yet it also stands in contrast to the complaining, backbiting, and attempted mutiny against Moses' leadership exhibited by the Israelites on their march through the desert.
Having been raised from spiritual death and seated with Christ (Eph. 2:1-6), saved by grace alone through faith alone (vv. 6-8), believers are predestined to walk in good works together toward their destination (v. 10). With the two hands of Word and Spirit, the King creates a body of which he is the head. That unity is already lodged in God's election, redemption, calling, and sealing elaborated in Ephesians 1. We must be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:2). Yet the preservation of this unity depends ultimately on its source. In other words, we cannot drum up this unity by our own resources. It cannot be enforced. The imperative to preserve this unity depends always on the indicative fact that we are united by Christ and his gospel. "There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph. 4:4-6).
Notice what is not included here: one universal pastor or form of church government, one movement, one program, or one experience. Longing for a more visible security than the gospel we hear proclaimed, we are easily misled into thinking that if we could only unite behind a pope or a charismatic leader or a revival or social program, we could really know who is in and who is out. At last there would be true unity. Doctrine only gets in the way. Let's just love Jesus and transform the world.
However, we are directed here to find our unity precisely in the doctrine: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." If you want to find the "one body" and "one Spirit," you must look for the place where Christ is proclaimed in Word and Sacrament. The King not only saves, he preserves the body that he has saved through his current gift-giving reign.
We are one in Christ (Eph. 1-3); therefore, let us walk together according to this high calling. Our Conquering King will not keep the spoils of victory all to himself. As he lived for us, died for us, and rose for us, so he rules for us in heaven until all of his enemies and ours are defeated.
Far from establishing a clericalism that excludes laypeople from Christ's gifts, the ministry of Word and Sacrament that Paul highlights in Ephesians 4 is the means through which Christ distributes them for the completion and maturity of the whole body in the gospel. Ironically, many Christians today as in the past imagine that the Scriptures offer a blueprint for transforming the kingdoms of this age, while claiming that the Bible is relatively silent on the doctrine or at least on the worship and government that Christ has instituted for his church. The reverse, however, is the case in the New Testament. The doctrines and imperatives for godly living are clearly revealed. Through the apostles, Jesus has given clear instructions on the proper ministry of his Word and Sacraments as well as the offices in the church and their qualifications. Yet beyond the call to diligence and loving service in our secular callings, the Scriptures do not offer Christians a blueprint for economic development, civil legislation, social progress, and political stability. As "salt" and "light," Christians make a difference in all sorts of ways in varying degrees, but salt is a preservative not a savior.
"The secular" is not a place, but a time. It is not a period in which Christ is absent, much less a supposedly neutral space to which he is barred access. The term saeculum, apparently coined by Augustine, simply means "of the age." While the Greeks divided reality into "this world" of shadowy appearances (the physical realm) and the "other world" of true reality (the spiritual realm), Jesus and Paul divided reality into "this age" and "the age to come." Biblical eschatology knows nothing of a salvation from the realm of time, space, and matter, but only of the salvation of the whole creation at the end of the age. So the question is not whether Christ is now Lord of the whole earth, in all of its spheres, or whether the creation itself will be renewed. Rather, it is a question of timing. As Paul teaches in Romans 8, we have already been justified--no longer condemned, we have been renewed definitively by the Spirit who indwells us. Yet we wait patiently for Christ's return, when the children of God will be raised immortal and the whole creation will share in the triumph of God's everlasting Sabbath. In between these two advents of Christ, we live not in the shadows but in the tension between this present age, dominated by the powers and principalities of sin and death, and the age to come, ruled by the power, righteousness, peace, justice, and grace of our triune God.
Joining the throng of pilgrims to Zion, away from the thrall of Vanity Fair, we testify to the world that there is something greater, richer, deeper, and fuller than our best life now. Through preaching and Sacrament, the Spirit brings the "solid joys and lasting treasures" of the age to come into this present age that is passing away. By caring sacrificially for brothers and sisters who are overlooked by the regents of this passing age, and belonging to a communion of saints that defies the natural, cultural, or political affinities of the temporal city, we already indwell a new creation that will be consummated when Christ returns. In our common prayer, songs, and service, we point ourselves and our neighbors to another King who makes his subjects co-heirs and fellow children of the Father. And in our common witness, we become God's means of gathering strangers to the Sabbath feast. Then, as we are scattered into the world as "salt" and "light," we pursue our callings as parents, children, volunteers, citizens, Little League coaches, employees and employers with the assurance that our primary citizenship is in Zion.
So now we have Christ's answer to his disciples when they asked at his ascension, "Now are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" Right at the moment they ask this, Jesus leaves. But where does he go? He goes to heaven to claim the prize of his victory--not only for himself but for us. And he sends his Spirit to lead the ground campaign of grace.
In this present phase, we are neither merely waiting for Christ to establish his kingdom nor building his kingdom of power and glory through our own impressive campaigns. Rather, we are recipients and heralds of his victory and his heavenly reign at the Father's right hand. We live now as those who have already been justified and transferred from the tyranny of Satan and sin to the liberating reign of Christ and the age to come. In the ministry of Word and Sacrament, in the fellowship of the saints that transcends earthly divisions and demographics, in the diaconal care for those in need, and in its mission to the world, the church testifies that Christ is already Lord and will consummate his kingdom when he returns. Just as Daniel prophesied, this Kingdom of David's greater son endures from generation to generation and brings the liberated captives into the everlasting rest. There is only one kingdom that cannot be shaken. "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28).
by Michael S. Horton. Horton is professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), host of the White Horse Inn, national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of many books, including The Gospel-Driven Life, Christless Christianity, People and Place, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, and Too Good to be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype.
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On a cold November day in 1095, Pope Urban II roused the great crowd assembled before him to take up the cause of holy war against Islam. Instead of fighting each other, the people were told to unite against the common enemy and retake the Holy Land. "If you must have blood," he exhorted, "bathe in the blood of infidels." Substituting itself for its ascended Lord, the church assimilated a civilization to that ecclesial body. The church father Eusebius declared that it was from Christ and by Christ that "our divinely favored emperor [Constantine], receiving, as it were, a transcript of the divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the administration of this world's affairs." Included in this, says Eusebius, is that the emperor "subdues and chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the usages of war."
Though less violent, many Christians in America still demand visible symbols of Christianity in the culture. Ironically, many Christians today who decry the legacy of "Christendom" nevertheless confuse the advance of Christ's kingdom of grace with the common activity of Christians working alongside their neighbors in culture. While we may still tolerate the ordinary means of grace, we grow impatient with this apparently meager visibility of Christ's reign in this present age. Across the political spectrum, many proclaim that Christ's kingdom is advanced not by proclaiming the forgiveness of sins in Christ's name so much as by cultural transformation. We seem to hear less today about Christ's unique person and work than we do about us and our mission of "incarnating," "redeeming," and "reconciling."
Misunderstanding the March: Replacing Jesus
Where did Jesus go after he accomplished our redemption? And how did the church--and allegedly Christian empires--come to think that they could keep his seat warm until he returned in power and glory to reign on the earth? The disciples themselves missed the point of Jesus' journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. They expected Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem to be the victory celebration and that they would sit at his side for the inaugural ball. He had prepared them for his departure in the Upper Room, as he explained how his ascension to the Father meant that the Spirit would descend to dispense the gifts of his victory. Even after the resurrection, when he explained how all the Scriptures pointed to his saving work, they were not ready for his ascension. Just before this momentous event, they still asked, "Lord, now are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6, emphasis added). They were still thinking about a kingdom of earthly power here and now, not a kingdom of grace. They were ready for the ax to fall, for the sheep to be separated from the goats, and for fire to consume the enemies of God. Instead, they were told to go throughout the world preaching the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ until he returns at the end of the age. As they stood gazing at the ascending Lord, the disciples were told by two angels, "'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven'" (vv. 10-11).
Refusing to be located in the time between the times, the church often substitutes itself for its absent Lord. Just compare the pomp and circumstance with which Memorial Day and Independence Day are celebrated in churches across America with the relative obscurity of Ascension Day. Nobody expects The New York Times to celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death each week, but why should the church give the impression that there is something more important and more impressive to focus on than this report?
Obviously, a cure for AIDS would grab the front-page headline for weeks on end. We would all dance in the streets. Right now, there are Christians working alongside non-Christians in labs and on the field to try to achieve that success. In our common callings, we are not ushering in Christ's kingdom of glory and power, but sharing with non-Christians in temporal blessings and woes and loving our neighbors through the gifts we have been given by God's common and saving grace. Only the church, however, is commissioned as Christ's agency to announce each week that the whole kingdom of Satan has been toppled forever; that we are now in the hand-to-hand combat phase of ferreting out guerilla strongholds that have not yet yielded to the truth of their defeat, and awaiting the return of the King for the last battle. The end of all disease, poverty, oppression, violence, disaster, idolatry, and sin is at hand. Which is more powerful: the announcement of God's work or the calls to our work? Once we realize that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, our action becomes a "reasonable service." If our service is front and center, however, the church may easily (wittingly or unwittingly) proclaim itself as the Messiah.
Knowing What Time It Is
We still have trouble knowing what time it is or what kind of kingdom Christ has inaugurated. If we are still thinking in terms of a fully consummated kingdom of glory and power present now in the world, whether as the church or as Christian movements, then the gospel will be considered foolish and the divinely prescribed methods of delivery (preaching and Sacrament) will be judged too weak to really grab the world's attention. The challenge for us, as for the first disciples, is to believe in a kingdom of grace and await the arrival of the kingdom of glory.
When an agnostic creates a cure for a terrible disease, we neither reject this gift of God's common grace nor imagine that he or she is advancing Christ's kingdom. It was not simply to believers but to all human beings that God gave the commission, "Be fruitful and multiply," as his stewards of the earth. God preserved and protected Cain, the idolater and murderer, because he wanted the secular city to continue.
The Great Commission, however, is not the cultural mandate, and the kingdom of Christ cannot be identified with any of the kingdoms of this age. Like the exiles in Babylon, New Testament believers are called to participate in the common life of their captive city, while remaining "exiles" and "sojourners" in their hearts. We share the travails and joys of the secular city, while witnessing to the greater judgment and salvation found in Zion. If we could resolve our top ten crises in the world today, we would still have the devil on our back, sin mastering our heart, and everlasting death as the penalty for our mutiny. Do we really believe that our greatest crisis is the wrath of God and our greatest solution is the death and resurrection of Christ?
As a minister, I am called regularly by God to make a political speech--a deeply partisan political speech. However, it is not to rally the troops in defense of Christendom against the infidels of various sorts. It divides not between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, but between Christ and Antichrist. As heralds and ambassadors of the age to come, we are given the commission to go into all the world with the announcement that Jesus Christ is Lord and King, the only Sovereign who holds the keys of death and hell--who opens and no one can shut, who shuts and no one can open. It is he alone who will rid the world of evil by his wisdom and might, subduing chaos, and leading his own into the place that even now he is preparing for them.
In this covenantal gathering, the cross is raised, not as a cultural symbol but as the proclamation of Christ crucified for sinners. Our role is not to represent Western civilization, democracy, or the free world, nor to oppose these systems, but to announce and to exhibit--however imperfectly--the triumph of Christ's weak kingdom over the powerful kingdoms of this age. For now, we pray for secular rulers, pay our taxes, and fulfill our callings together with our non-Christian neighbors and citizens. As Calvin pointed out, the distinction between the "two kingdoms" does not mean that Christ is not king already, but that for now he rules both kingdoms in different ways. The kingdom of God advances by Word and Spirit, while the kingdoms of this age progress or decline according to the light of God's moral law inscribed on the conscience in creation and the Spirit's work in common grace. The cities of this age rise to the heavens in pride, but the City of God--the New Jerusalem that is coming down out of heaven as a bride prepared for her husband--alone promises and gives true liberty to its sons and daughters beyond the ultimate triumph of death and hell. We witness to the ascended King who will return again to judge the living and the dead and to reign forever.
From Royal March to Enthronement (Psalm 68)
Unlike the first Adam, who led creation on a detour in the thanksgiving parade from its appointed path, this Servant of the Lord finally fulfilled our human destiny. Psalm 68 records a royal march of Israel, foreshadowing the faithful Servant, Jesus Christ. The psalm begins with the battle cry, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered!" (vv. 1-3). As Jewish scholar Jon Levenson observes, Zion represents the eschatological destination of the people of God, a mountain that rises far above the failures of the human partner in the covenant and exists by God's grace. Psalm 68, then, "records a march of YHWH from Sinai, a military campaign in which the God of Israel and his retinue...set out across the desert."
As important as Sinai is in the march, it lies midway between Egypt and the earthly Zion: Canaan. The focus shifts from Sinai to Zion, for example, in Psalm 97 (cf. Ps. 68:8-9; Deut. 33:2; Ps. 50:2-3).
The transfer of the motif from Sinai to Zion was complete and irreversible, so that YHWH came to be designated no longer as "the One of Sinai," but as "he who dwells on Mount Zion" (Isa. 8:18)....The transfer of the divine home from Sinai to Zion meant that God was no longer seen as dwelling in an extraterritorial no man's land, but within the borders of the Israelite community.
And in the Zion traditions, Levenson comments, "there will emerge something almost unthinkable in the case of Sinai"--an unconditional divine oath that God himself, above all the vicissitudes of human disobedience, will somehow arise and scatter his enemies and save his people. So Zion takes on a cosmic, universal role that Sinai never did. "Not only Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but even the people of Israel can be designated as Zion," as in Isaiah 51:16 and Zechariah 2:11.
Leading captivity captive, ascending, giving gifts to and receiving gifts from even his enemies, crushing the head of the serpent, and dwelling forever in Zion (Ps. 68:19-23), this is the King who "daily loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation," from whom alone we receive "escape from death." Although Levenson interprets Psalm 68 as a march from Sinai to Zion, echoing the trial of Adam from commission to consummation--and even points out the failure common to both--he concludes that Zion is finally absorbed into Sinai within Judaism. The ascent of Mount Zion, he suggests, is an allegory for "the ethical ascent of man." Levenson even recognizes that this is where Christianity and Judaism part ways: Where the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 transfers Jewish atonement from the earthly Zion to the inner hearts of the faithful, the New Testament announces that Christ is the true Temple and those who believe in him are his living stones.
From his victory on the mountain of Golgotha to his ascension to the true heavenly Zion and enthronement as the King of kings and Lord of lords, Yahweh leads captivity captive. This is already anticipated at various points in Jesus' ministry. The return of the Seventy in Luke 10 anticipates the victory march. Jesus pronounces the "woes"--the covenant curses--upon the enemies of his kingdom, including Israel's religious leaders, while the Seventy return with joy, breathlessly reporting to their Lord, "Even the demons are subject to us in your name." And Jesus said to them,
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.
As the Captain of salvation, Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry marched from Sinai to Zion, leading captivity captive. Resisting the way of glory falsely promised by Satan in the temptation, Jesus went the way of the cross, marching all the way to the gates of hell to crush the serpent's head and to throw open the prisoner's doors. Psalm 68 ends with the arrival of the military procession--drawn from Israel and the nations--into the sanctuary of the Great King who has ascended in triumph. In his Upper Room discourse (John 14-16), Jesus prepared the disciples for his departure. He would be crucified, buried, and then rise again on the third day. Then he would ascend, both to send the Spirit from his throne and to prepare a place for us.
In the meantime, on the basis of his victory ("All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me"), he commissions them to "go into all the world," proclaiming, teaching, and baptizing. In his covenant with Abram, God promised that in him and his heir (Jesus Christ) all the nations of the earth will be blessed. This hope was kept alive by the prophets. Even in the process of pressing God's charges against Israel for violating the Sinai covenant, they prophesied the day when God himself would descend and build a highway from Jerusalem to Egypt, Assyria, and all nations. A remnant from all peoples would be gathered into the royal march of the Great King, not to an earthly mountain and temple but to the heavenly reality that the earthly Jerusalem only prefigured.
The Conquering King Ascends
Christ's ascension opened up a fissure in history, locating the church in the precarious collision of the two ages: this age of sin and death, and the age to come. It is easy in the absence of Christ's visible reign in the flesh on the earth to substitute ourselves or the church. What we are doing right now on earth becomes the front-page news. However, we miss the whole point if we fail to see that it is still what Jesus is doing that is the big news. He ascended to heaven in order to rule and subdue history to his gracious and holy designs, to dispatch his Spirit to sweep sinners into his victory parade, and to spread his kingdom of peace to the ends of the earth. This may not capture the world's headlines. In fact, Peter describes these last days as an era in which scoffers mock, "Where is the promise of his coming?" After all, it seems as if "all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation" (2 Pet. 3:4). Nevertheless, as Peter goes on to relate, this era of apparent weakness for God's kingdom is actually due to God's patience. His energetic activity may not be seen in the daily press, but it is reaping a harvest of redeemed sinners from the ends of the earth.
In Ephesians 4, we--the new covenant believers--get swept up into this victory march. Just as the dragon's tail swept a third of the angels from heaven in his fall in Revelation 12, the Savior's ascension sweeps into his wake a remnant from every tribe and tongue on earth. However, this triumphant march is not like the holy wars of the Old Testament. Christ does not call his people today to drive the serpent's emissaries out of a supposedly holy land or to rule over them by the temporal sword. He came to crush the serpent's head himself. In this contest, Jesus must fight alone. No one but Jesus hung on that cross, bearing the weight of the world's sins. Nevertheless, his resurrection draws innumerable captives into his train. He reigns as victor for us in heaven, while we bring news of his victory to the earth. The world does not welcome this news any more after his resurrection than when he first arrived. The announcement of good news provokes the rage of the dragon; and although he knows that he has lost the war with the seed of the woman, he spends his last days in pursuit of his co-heirs.
Ephesians 4:1-6 records a march as believers "walk in unity." As he writes this Epistle, Paul himself is under house arrest in Rome, "the prisoner of the Lord." Even in prison, he is not the captive of Satan or Caesar; he is the Lord's prisoner and under his reign. Despite their intentions, the devil and his ambassadors are actually serving the Lord's reign through Paul's ministry. He calls the Ephesians to "walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (vv. 1-2). This exhortation stands in sharp contrast to the old covenant command to eliminate the serpent and his seed from God's holy land by the sword. Yet it also stands in contrast to the complaining, backbiting, and attempted mutiny against Moses' leadership exhibited by the Israelites on their march through the desert.
Having been raised from spiritual death and seated with Christ (Eph. 2:1-6), saved by grace alone through faith alone (vv. 6-8), believers are predestined to walk in good works together toward their destination (v. 10). With the two hands of Word and Spirit, the King creates a body of which he is the head. That unity is already lodged in God's election, redemption, calling, and sealing elaborated in Ephesians 1. We must be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:2). Yet the preservation of this unity depends ultimately on its source. In other words, we cannot drum up this unity by our own resources. It cannot be enforced. The imperative to preserve this unity depends always on the indicative fact that we are united by Christ and his gospel. "There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph. 4:4-6).
Notice what is not included here: one universal pastor or form of church government, one movement, one program, or one experience. Longing for a more visible security than the gospel we hear proclaimed, we are easily misled into thinking that if we could only unite behind a pope or a charismatic leader or a revival or social program, we could really know who is in and who is out. At last there would be true unity. Doctrine only gets in the way. Let's just love Jesus and transform the world.
However, we are directed here to find our unity precisely in the doctrine: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." If you want to find the "one body" and "one Spirit," you must look for the place where Christ is proclaimed in Word and Sacrament. The King not only saves, he preserves the body that he has saved through his current gift-giving reign.
We are one in Christ (Eph. 1-3); therefore, let us walk together according to this high calling. Our Conquering King will not keep the spoils of victory all to himself. As he lived for us, died for us, and rose for us, so he rules for us in heaven until all of his enemies and ours are defeated.
Far from establishing a clericalism that excludes laypeople from Christ's gifts, the ministry of Word and Sacrament that Paul highlights in Ephesians 4 is the means through which Christ distributes them for the completion and maturity of the whole body in the gospel. Ironically, many Christians today as in the past imagine that the Scriptures offer a blueprint for transforming the kingdoms of this age, while claiming that the Bible is relatively silent on the doctrine or at least on the worship and government that Christ has instituted for his church. The reverse, however, is the case in the New Testament. The doctrines and imperatives for godly living are clearly revealed. Through the apostles, Jesus has given clear instructions on the proper ministry of his Word and Sacraments as well as the offices in the church and their qualifications. Yet beyond the call to diligence and loving service in our secular callings, the Scriptures do not offer Christians a blueprint for economic development, civil legislation, social progress, and political stability. As "salt" and "light," Christians make a difference in all sorts of ways in varying degrees, but salt is a preservative not a savior.
"The secular" is not a place, but a time. It is not a period in which Christ is absent, much less a supposedly neutral space to which he is barred access. The term saeculum, apparently coined by Augustine, simply means "of the age." While the Greeks divided reality into "this world" of shadowy appearances (the physical realm) and the "other world" of true reality (the spiritual realm), Jesus and Paul divided reality into "this age" and "the age to come." Biblical eschatology knows nothing of a salvation from the realm of time, space, and matter, but only of the salvation of the whole creation at the end of the age. So the question is not whether Christ is now Lord of the whole earth, in all of its spheres, or whether the creation itself will be renewed. Rather, it is a question of timing. As Paul teaches in Romans 8, we have already been justified--no longer condemned, we have been renewed definitively by the Spirit who indwells us. Yet we wait patiently for Christ's return, when the children of God will be raised immortal and the whole creation will share in the triumph of God's everlasting Sabbath. In between these two advents of Christ, we live not in the shadows but in the tension between this present age, dominated by the powers and principalities of sin and death, and the age to come, ruled by the power, righteousness, peace, justice, and grace of our triune God.
Joining the throng of pilgrims to Zion, away from the thrall of Vanity Fair, we testify to the world that there is something greater, richer, deeper, and fuller than our best life now. Through preaching and Sacrament, the Spirit brings the "solid joys and lasting treasures" of the age to come into this present age that is passing away. By caring sacrificially for brothers and sisters who are overlooked by the regents of this passing age, and belonging to a communion of saints that defies the natural, cultural, or political affinities of the temporal city, we already indwell a new creation that will be consummated when Christ returns. In our common prayer, songs, and service, we point ourselves and our neighbors to another King who makes his subjects co-heirs and fellow children of the Father. And in our common witness, we become God's means of gathering strangers to the Sabbath feast. Then, as we are scattered into the world as "salt" and "light," we pursue our callings as parents, children, volunteers, citizens, Little League coaches, employees and employers with the assurance that our primary citizenship is in Zion.
So now we have Christ's answer to his disciples when they asked at his ascension, "Now are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" Right at the moment they ask this, Jesus leaves. But where does he go? He goes to heaven to claim the prize of his victory--not only for himself but for us. And he sends his Spirit to lead the ground campaign of grace.
In this present phase, we are neither merely waiting for Christ to establish his kingdom nor building his kingdom of power and glory through our own impressive campaigns. Rather, we are recipients and heralds of his victory and his heavenly reign at the Father's right hand. We live now as those who have already been justified and transferred from the tyranny of Satan and sin to the liberating reign of Christ and the age to come. In the ministry of Word and Sacrament, in the fellowship of the saints that transcends earthly divisions and demographics, in the diaconal care for those in need, and in its mission to the world, the church testifies that Christ is already Lord and will consummate his kingdom when he returns. Just as Daniel prophesied, this Kingdom of David's greater son endures from generation to generation and brings the liberated captives into the everlasting rest. There is only one kingdom that cannot be shaken. "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28).
Thursday, November 5, 2009
E-note 11/5: The Death of Arrogance
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
This week as I prepared the first sermon of a new series in 1 Samuel, I became painfully aware of the destructive power of arrogance. The first sounds of arrogance in 1 Samuel come in chapter one from the very fertile Penninah who has many sons and daughters. In her arrogance she verbally harasses Hannah for being infertile. What is arrogance? Arrogance is the wickedly happy belief that you have come to the good place you have come to on your own wits or strength. In whatever way you are special you got that way without God. That is the presumption of arrogance. It is not arrogant to be pregnant. It is arrogant to boast in one's fertility and not God's goodness. It is not arrogant to have morally upright children. It is arrogant to boast in one's morally upright children and not God's mercy. It is not arrogant to know the Bible well. It is arrogant to boast in one's knowledge and not God's illumination. Arrogant people have something and they think they gave it to themselves. You can be geographically arrogant: "I'm from a special place and you are not." You can be intellectually arrogant: "I know stuff and you do not." You can be financially arrogant: "I have earned this much and you have not." Everybody is from somewhere and everybody knows something and everybody has more than somebody but the arrogant only thank themselves for it.
What does God think about arrogance? God hates it. I'm sure that is no surprise. But this might be: God is going to wipe the arrogant from the face of the earth. Later in 1 Samuel the arrogance of King Saul is described as "arrogance like the evil of idolatry." Arrogance makes you a rival with God. Arrogance is the folly of self-deification that leads to self-worship, thus an evil that God can leave no quarter upon the earth.
The arrogant will never stand in the presence of God (Psalm 5:5). This is what makes the coupling of two realities, "gospel and arrogance," so different than the coupling of another two realities, "the world and arrogance." In the coupling of "gospel and arrogance" there is no tolerating arrogance. Every shade of arrogance is expiated in Christ crucified. In the coupling of "the world and arrogance" arrogance still remains under a host of social concessions. Because the world is left to work on arrogance alone, the world never actually succeeds in killing arrogance off. The world knows it is impossible to put an end to arrogance so a host of malleable social compromises are made: it is okay to be a little arrogant as long as you don't hurt someone or as long as you have done something more significant than the rest of us, like writing a book or winning the superbowl or getting an A+ or having your own radio/television program or being a smart aleck who cleverly marginalizes "our" political opponents with words. So the world erects limits and boundaries to tame arrogance. In short, the world uses Law to deal with arrogance. But God uses Gospel. Only the Gospel allows us to expose all arrogance to the light, not just the versions that hurt others, but even the versions that make us laugh (sarcasm) or the versions that we admire (athletic arrogance) or the versions that we covet (financial arrogance). Why does the Gospel allow light to be thrown on all gradients of arrogance? Because in the Gospel we have the only way to condemn all arrogance and still live; even more, still be loved. The world scrimps on arrogance because to hate every last drop of it, like God does, would be self-condemning. But in Christ we can hate it all because in Christ crucified our sin has been justly condemned before God and we have been graciously accepted.
Does that mean it is now okay for a Christian to be arrogant? No. May it never be. The Christian alone has every reason not to be arrogant. Only the Christian knows that arrogance will never see a day in the new creation that has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus. So the Christian can hate all the arrogance he finds in himself without self-condemnation. Those of the world, using the law, can never sufficiently hate all arrogance because of self-condemnation. In the Christian arrogance is put to death (mortified) by faith. Not by faith in the rules and hedges and compromises against arrogance. But by faith in the Son of God who graciously put arrogance to death in his own flesh and blood. The Christian is now allowed to believe the whole truth about arrogance - its diabolical wickedness and its radical remedy in death - and as the Christian practices this believing, this Gospel-receiving, at each showing of arrogance then the Spirit of the Most High God cuts away and creates a new heart. Arrogance is not a mild social nuisance. It is an evil that is only challenged and corrected in Christ crucified, the one and only God. Yours in Christ, John
This week as I prepared the first sermon of a new series in 1 Samuel, I became painfully aware of the destructive power of arrogance. The first sounds of arrogance in 1 Samuel come in chapter one from the very fertile Penninah who has many sons and daughters. In her arrogance she verbally harasses Hannah for being infertile. What is arrogance? Arrogance is the wickedly happy belief that you have come to the good place you have come to on your own wits or strength. In whatever way you are special you got that way without God. That is the presumption of arrogance. It is not arrogant to be pregnant. It is arrogant to boast in one's fertility and not God's goodness. It is not arrogant to have morally upright children. It is arrogant to boast in one's morally upright children and not God's mercy. It is not arrogant to know the Bible well. It is arrogant to boast in one's knowledge and not God's illumination. Arrogant people have something and they think they gave it to themselves. You can be geographically arrogant: "I'm from a special place and you are not." You can be intellectually arrogant: "I know stuff and you do not." You can be financially arrogant: "I have earned this much and you have not." Everybody is from somewhere and everybody knows something and everybody has more than somebody but the arrogant only thank themselves for it.
What does God think about arrogance? God hates it. I'm sure that is no surprise. But this might be: God is going to wipe the arrogant from the face of the earth. Later in 1 Samuel the arrogance of King Saul is described as "arrogance like the evil of idolatry." Arrogance makes you a rival with God. Arrogance is the folly of self-deification that leads to self-worship, thus an evil that God can leave no quarter upon the earth.
The arrogant will never stand in the presence of God (Psalm 5:5). This is what makes the coupling of two realities, "gospel and arrogance," so different than the coupling of another two realities, "the world and arrogance." In the coupling of "gospel and arrogance" there is no tolerating arrogance. Every shade of arrogance is expiated in Christ crucified. In the coupling of "the world and arrogance" arrogance still remains under a host of social concessions. Because the world is left to work on arrogance alone, the world never actually succeeds in killing arrogance off. The world knows it is impossible to put an end to arrogance so a host of malleable social compromises are made: it is okay to be a little arrogant as long as you don't hurt someone or as long as you have done something more significant than the rest of us, like writing a book or winning the superbowl or getting an A+ or having your own radio/television program or being a smart aleck who cleverly marginalizes "our" political opponents with words. So the world erects limits and boundaries to tame arrogance. In short, the world uses Law to deal with arrogance. But God uses Gospel. Only the Gospel allows us to expose all arrogance to the light, not just the versions that hurt others, but even the versions that make us laugh (sarcasm) or the versions that we admire (athletic arrogance) or the versions that we covet (financial arrogance). Why does the Gospel allow light to be thrown on all gradients of arrogance? Because in the Gospel we have the only way to condemn all arrogance and still live; even more, still be loved. The world scrimps on arrogance because to hate every last drop of it, like God does, would be self-condemning. But in Christ we can hate it all because in Christ crucified our sin has been justly condemned before God and we have been graciously accepted.
Does that mean it is now okay for a Christian to be arrogant? No. May it never be. The Christian alone has every reason not to be arrogant. Only the Christian knows that arrogance will never see a day in the new creation that has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus. So the Christian can hate all the arrogance he finds in himself without self-condemnation. Those of the world, using the law, can never sufficiently hate all arrogance because of self-condemnation. In the Christian arrogance is put to death (mortified) by faith. Not by faith in the rules and hedges and compromises against arrogance. But by faith in the Son of God who graciously put arrogance to death in his own flesh and blood. The Christian is now allowed to believe the whole truth about arrogance - its diabolical wickedness and its radical remedy in death - and as the Christian practices this believing, this Gospel-receiving, at each showing of arrogance then the Spirit of the Most High God cuts away and creates a new heart. Arrogance is not a mild social nuisance. It is an evil that is only challenged and corrected in Christ crucified, the one and only God. Yours in Christ, John
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
What do you think?
Collision: Is Religion Absurd or Good for the World
First published in the Huffington Post, 10/20/2009
Last fall, we went on tour debating the topic “Is Religion Good For The World?” Our arguments were captured on film for a new documentary, Collision. Are our morals dictated to us by a supreme entity or do discoveries made by science and reason, make Atheism a natural conclusion? You decide.
Religion Is Absurd
by Christopher Hitchens
Religion will always retain a certain tattered prestige because it was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and because it continues to ask "why". Its incurable disability, however, lies in its insistence that the answer to that question can be determined with certainty on the basis of revelation and faith.
We do not know, though we may assume, that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors (the erectus, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, with whom we have a traceable kinship as we do with other surviving primates) had deities that they sought to propitiate. Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has ever taken their existence into account, or indeed made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story. Instead, we are asked to believe that the essential problem was solved about two-to-three thousand years ago, by various serial appearances of divine intervention and guidance in remote and primitive parts of what is now (at least to Westerners) the Middle East.
This absurd belief would not even deserve to be called quixotic if it had not inspired masterpieces of art and music and architecture as well as the most appalling atrocities and depredations. The great cultural question before us is therefore this: can we manage to preserve what is numinous and transcendent and ecstatic without giving any more room to the superstitious and the supernatural. (For example, can one treasure and appreciate the Parthenon, say, while recognizing that the religious cult that gave rise to it is dead, and was in many ways sinister and cruel?) A related question is: can we be moral and ethical in our thoughts and actions without the servile idea that our morals are dictated to us by a supreme entity?
I believe that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative. Tremendous and beautiful things have been achieved by science and reason, from the Hubble telescope to the sequencing of the DNA of obscure viruses. All of these attainments have tended to remind us, however, that we are an animal species inhabiting a rather remote and tiny suburb of an unimaginably large universe. However, this sobering finding -- and it is a finding -- is no reason to assume that we do not have duties to one another, to other species, and to the biosphere. It may even be easier to draw these moral conclusions once we are free of the egotistic notion that we are somehow the centre of the process, or objects of a creation or a "design". Dostoevsky said that without belief in god men would be capable of anything: surely we know by now that the belief in a divine order, and in divine orders, is an even greater license to act as if normal restraints were non-existent?
If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed -- let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols -- we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have "rights", is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all to faith or certainty. The real "transcendence", then, is the one that allows us to shake off the notion of a never-dying tyrannical father-figure, with its unconsoling illusion of redemption by human sacrifice, and assume our proper proportion as people condemned to be free, and able to outgrow the fearful tutelage of a supreme supervisor who does not forgive us the errors he has programmed us to make.
***
Atheists Suck at Being Atheists
by Pastor Douglas Wilson
From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration.
We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress.
If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that?
So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.
If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.
It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other.
Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing.
You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the numinous or transcendent. Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.
First published in the Huffington Post, 10/20/2009
Last fall, we went on tour debating the topic “Is Religion Good For The World?” Our arguments were captured on film for a new documentary, Collision. Are our morals dictated to us by a supreme entity or do discoveries made by science and reason, make Atheism a natural conclusion? You decide.
Religion Is Absurd
by Christopher Hitchens
Religion will always retain a certain tattered prestige because it was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and because it continues to ask "why". Its incurable disability, however, lies in its insistence that the answer to that question can be determined with certainty on the basis of revelation and faith.
We do not know, though we may assume, that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors (the erectus, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, with whom we have a traceable kinship as we do with other surviving primates) had deities that they sought to propitiate. Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has ever taken their existence into account, or indeed made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story. Instead, we are asked to believe that the essential problem was solved about two-to-three thousand years ago, by various serial appearances of divine intervention and guidance in remote and primitive parts of what is now (at least to Westerners) the Middle East.
This absurd belief would not even deserve to be called quixotic if it had not inspired masterpieces of art and music and architecture as well as the most appalling atrocities and depredations. The great cultural question before us is therefore this: can we manage to preserve what is numinous and transcendent and ecstatic without giving any more room to the superstitious and the supernatural. (For example, can one treasure and appreciate the Parthenon, say, while recognizing that the religious cult that gave rise to it is dead, and was in many ways sinister and cruel?) A related question is: can we be moral and ethical in our thoughts and actions without the servile idea that our morals are dictated to us by a supreme entity?
I believe that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative. Tremendous and beautiful things have been achieved by science and reason, from the Hubble telescope to the sequencing of the DNA of obscure viruses. All of these attainments have tended to remind us, however, that we are an animal species inhabiting a rather remote and tiny suburb of an unimaginably large universe. However, this sobering finding -- and it is a finding -- is no reason to assume that we do not have duties to one another, to other species, and to the biosphere. It may even be easier to draw these moral conclusions once we are free of the egotistic notion that we are somehow the centre of the process, or objects of a creation or a "design". Dostoevsky said that without belief in god men would be capable of anything: surely we know by now that the belief in a divine order, and in divine orders, is an even greater license to act as if normal restraints were non-existent?
If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed -- let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols -- we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have "rights", is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all to faith or certainty. The real "transcendence", then, is the one that allows us to shake off the notion of a never-dying tyrannical father-figure, with its unconsoling illusion of redemption by human sacrifice, and assume our proper proportion as people condemned to be free, and able to outgrow the fearful tutelage of a supreme supervisor who does not forgive us the errors he has programmed us to make.
***
Atheists Suck at Being Atheists
by Pastor Douglas Wilson
From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration.
We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress.
If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that?
So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.
If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.
It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other.
Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing.
You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the numinous or transcendent. Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.
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