Life of the age to come

Posted on August 18, 2010 by PaulVK

Just some more work on my gospel vocabulary.

Here’s another way to think about it belief, consequence, judgment and the life of the age to come.

What Jesus does when he proclaims that the kingdom-of-heaven/earth/eternal-life/being-in-Christ is at hand, is that he declares it is close and available to all of his hearers. We include ourselves in that having heard him. He does not limit it to the future, he declares its advent in the present and if it was present 2000 years ago it is certainly present and available and close at hand right here and now.

What is this thing he is speaking of? He describes what it is like, he makes demonstration of it in signs and healings. It is the undoing of all that we suffer from in our present situation, I like to call that situation “the age of decay”.

Jesus announces “release” (see Luke 4) from the age of decay and he doesn’t announce it as an exclusively future reality, he announces it as a present reality. The wealthy ruler of Luke 18 makes the time mistake too. We inherit (not earn, not appropriate, children inherit) eternal life. It is received, like a child receives an egg from his father (not a scorpion).

The two opposing realities: the age of decay and the age to come have a relational characteristic about them. God, the way he relates, see Luke 5:43-48, his perfection in fact is tied up in how he relates to others. I call this relational polarity. The relational polarity of God is “your wellbeing at my expense” and God does this all over the place. The relational polarity of the age of decay is reversed: “my wellbeing at your expense” and we are all very familiar with this dynamic. It is the dynamic of kings as described in 1 Samuel 8. It is the dynamic of the whore of Babylon. It is the way of the world.

When Jesus talks to the wealthy ruler in Luke 18 it seems clear the ruler is operating under an assumption of a qualification for future reward mentality. Jesus dealt with that pretty straightforwardly a few verses prior with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and what Jesus invites the wealthy ruler into is the life of the age to come at a deeper level today.

CS Lewis likes to make the point that if in fact we really are everlasting beings and that if death isn’t really the kind of hard reset on our consciousness, story and character then what are small flaws today can over the timespan of everlastingness become the horrors of hell. What believing in Jesus really is of course involves assent to a group of ideas about how the world is combined with actions consistent with those ideas.

If we believe that the life of God is available to us, and if we now believe on this side of the resurrection that we are in fact everlasting creatures and will be given a new imperishable body to live in an imperishable world this re-orients how we deal with people around us and the world around us. If we also believe that this world is not merely disposable but in fact decisions made in history as we experience it have consequences on the other side of the resurrection AND that good things we do by God’s grace today bear rewarding fruit after that transition, store up in heaven not for use in heaven but safe outside of the age of decay (where moth and rust don’t consume) to be enjoyed in the world made imperishable then we are freed to do all kinds of generous things.

If however, we are gripped by the assumptions of the age of decay we operate under its rules (Paul talks this way about the Spirit) then we do things under its rules. We live in the age of decay and we perpetuate it by our behavior.

Obedience then has its own reward even though often living as in the age to come in the context of the age of decay predictably leads to exactly what Jesus received, the cross. What we also learn from Jesus is that such cruciform living also results in resurrection.

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Homosexuals who profess Christ

Posted on August 18, 2010 by PaulVK

I thought JR Kirk had a good piece on his blog. I entitled it “final thoughts” but I doubt this will be the last time he writes on it. I like his blog and find it helpful.

Here is the comment I left on his blog:

Thanks for your piece here. I think it is a helpful contribution. I had hoped you would move forward into the area of action or regard. How this gets played out is not in the abstract but in ecclesiastical bodies and assemblies.

I like your point that what we are faced with today are believers who profess homosexual orientation as well as the conviction that they see homosexual practice as not antithetical to a life pursuant to the age to come. Given our context on western democracies a particular church has no power to impede their pursuit of this form of witness, the most it could do would be to excommunicate them and not allow them a particular status (member, office bearer, etc.) within that ecclesiastical group. There are also other ecclesiastical bodies that would permit them full participation in the life of their fellowship. What this affords any particular believer and the trans-denominational body of Christ itself is an opportunity for watchful waiting over this subject. How will the change of this particular element of Christian teaching impact the rest of fabric of Christian understanding? Probably only experience and time will inform us. This means that the conversation may continue for a very long time, as it has for many issues within the church.

I’ve been reading Alister McGrath’s book “Heresy” recently and have found it very helpful in understanding why the church eventual cordons off areas of thought or practices as “heresy” in time because it finds these things to unravel the foundations of Christian understanding.

Ultimately in terms of personal ethic homosexuals who profess Christ are the ones who will have to work out these issues for themselves in a more consequential way than those of us who are heteros do. Our situation of multi-denominational churches allows for a sort of freedom of experiment that makes us all responsible for ourselves and brings the consequences of our decisions and behaviors back upon ourselves.
If what we see throughout the rest of human experience is any indication I think we should expect a long and vigorous conversation with lots of surprises. One deep element of this conversation I think will be the highlighting of the broader way in which our culture view sexuality and marriage in an idolatrous light. I also expect us to realize that options and choices themselves do not equal access to the kind of meaning and fulfillment our culture associates with them.

In our context (unlike many Islamic cultures) homosexuals will be free to make their choices and congregate in the Christian assemblies of their choosing. If and how this one element impacts all the rest of the fabric of the Christian life will in fact be seen over time. It may in fact take a lot of time to see it, or perhaps not.

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Douthat and response on gay marriage debate

Posted on August 17, 2010 by PaulVK

Some interesting discussion prompted by Ross Douthat on the gay marriage debate followed by the Patrol blog.

Here’s a comment I made there
I like to talk about “universal” marriage being a custom held in diverse cultures and times that while maintaining an incredible variety of rituals, customs and norms yet had a single idea at its core. Marriage is about the creation of legitimate heirs. Universal marriage therefore is a subset of property law. Christian marriage is a rather different thing. The irony of this debate is that SSM makes little sense in the context of universal marriage (apart from the contemporary American trend of creating a traditional facsimile using reproductive technology or adoption) while at the same time attempting to leverage some of the “value added” properties of Christian marriage, a meaning-witness-creation device.

I think Douthat is correct that we are seeing the culture fruit of the page having turned away from the Western/Christian ideal he lays out. The argument as to whether this “should” happen in the context of the US as secular nation vs. Christian nation (which is what the new-fundamentalism is about according to this article http://bit.ly/bpNN2f) is of course the subject for discussion.

Lots of questions and ironies remain. Is this in fact forcing Christians to adopt more of an “old Fundamentalism” approach to culture, meaning escaping it? Will the continual receding of Christian notions from the culture lead the gay community to abandon traditional Christian notions of marriage to which they are ascribing and we eventually see more of a classical approach which separates marriage (creation of legitimate heirs) from sex (lower classes not participating in marriage because of the diminished incentive for property issues, sex for recreation/need, etc.)?

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“greater-than”, “less-than” and “equal-to” in doctrinal ascent

Posted on August 16, 2010 by PaulVK

When it came to predestination Calvin was dogged and got the support of his city Council after they read his institutes. He broke longstanding relationships because the others no longer held to the view exactly as Calvin did.

In mathematics comparisons are often evaluated according to three measures: greater-than, less-than or equal to. When it comes to the huge world of human relations and where we stand with respect to who God is and what he does, “equal to” is sometimes hard to come by. Find two different people, poke around enough in enough theology and you’ll wander away from “equal to” pretty quickly. That’s no surprise to most of us.

What the church often settles for, however, is “greater than” or “less than”. There’s some wisdom in that because if we only had “equal to” we’d wind up spending all of our time evaluating each other and or cutting ourselves off from each other.

It strikes me that our sensitivities about a lot of things are also connected to these approximate, relational evaluators. We might prefer going to a church that is more theologically conservative than we are, not because we share in all their beliefs, but we are generally comfortable with that bias. Others might prefer a more liberal church for the same reasons. They might not be as liberal as the church or the pastor, but they like the bias, it fits for them in terms of where they feel themselves to be or want to go.

We also, often demand consistency from others that we don’t require of ourselves. This too factors into these mathematical evaluations. I might feel more comfortable with someone whose more consistent on X or Y than I am because I see the value in X or Y, even if I’m not really “equal to” where they are at. All of this is the make up of how we group together and I think it’s helpful just to recognize some of this when see and hear each other.

We also of course have to recognize that all of our spectrums are three dimensional, not two. Someone may be very conservative on abortion or the Bible but think that its unfair for churches not to embrace gay marriage. Others may never want to darken the door of a church that won’t allow women in office but if you change their liturgy from the one they grew up with they’ll call you a liberal. People are madly inconsistent according to the imaginary spectrums that we wish to position them upon.

When we hear theological opinions that we disagree with and find clumps and groups of people congregating around them, its helpful to recognize that probably most of those people will have “greater-than” or “less-than” relationships with those positions while others will have wild inconsistencies with whole ranges of associate positions that usually go together with a particular position. This makes things messy, and it might make you frustrated, but it seems to be just the way it is. pvk

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Words and Consequence

Posted on August 16, 2010 by PaulVK

Now that the vacations are done it’s back to the Tuesday night Men’s group and I’ve got a biography of John Calvin to finish reading. I’m up to Bolsec’s attacking Calvin on the subject of the doctrine of predestination. Bolsec was a medical doctor who was also learned in theology and attended the Genevan “company of pastors” meetings. At one meeting Bolsec got worked up about and went after Calvin’s doctrine without Calvin present. Calvin enters mid-rant and Calvin being Calvin (impulse control over theological argumentation was a bit of a growing edge for old John) the battle was joined in a big way. The meeting ends with Bolsec being taken into custody.

When we read this today our eyes roll and we think “that’s what was wrong with them in those days, they took things too far” and maybe they did. The idea that we ought to be given the right to speak what we think without consequence is deeply ingrained in us and probably for some good reasons. I doubt, however, that we are so completely sold on the idea that we really think that there should be no consequences for anyone saying anything anywhere. Our little experiment with “freedom of speech” has of course yielded a variety of notable exceptions, like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

When it comes to employment issues we also know that there is no such thing as completely “free” speech. Almost all of us know that you can be fired for saying certain things, or even for not saying certain things at certain times. This is true of a CEO and equally true of a lowly customer rep on an 800 number somewhere. In fact, one might argue, the more responsibility one has, like the POTUS in fact has the least free speech. When he says one thing about a planned mosque in lower Manhattan one group is mad, when he says something else someone else is mad. Saying certain things in fact CAN threaten not only your job but also your freedom.
So why is the world like this and why do we want it so?

We want it so because we as persons, actors, agents in this world are given agency and agency requires consequence. To know each other, not just what we do, but also what we think is important for building community and for knowing how that community will travel into the future together. We also have things called agreements where when we come to a conclusion together in mutual or joint agency we expect that others will stick to the words (which embody expectations) that were expressed. This sub-creation in reality that we develop in this way in fact is enormously consequential. All of the mechanism that in fact billions of people depend upon not just for living but also for peace and wellbeing depend upon this network of consequential words. We quite frankly can’t live without it. Ever since two people became a family, this situation has prevailed.

Do you really want to assert that words should always be consequence free? Go ahead, try it. I bet you can’t do it with words and if you do you are undermining your assertion itself.

How this all works is in fact the stuff of culture, the stuff of community, and the stuff of life together itself. This is why we speak.

So go ahead and test the limits. Limits have a way of finding us. If you imagine that you really want a world without consequential words I suppose you should try doing it yourself. My only advice is to not be surprised if an unwelcome consequence finds you quickly.

A wise book says “be quick to listen and slow to speak”.

Words are important.

I hear people saying “we should stop arguing with each other and just love each other.” Well, I suppose we don’t need to argue with each other, but I also think we can’t as human beings really love each other without words, and we’re not going to honestly relate to one another or be able to respect each other without talking about the words we disagree about. It hasn’t been done because it can’t be done and it won’t be done. Like it or not we’ve been given these powerful things called “words” upon which all human culture is built. Like it or not loving each other will always involve them even its hard. pvk

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On God’s Freedom and Ours

Posted on August 13, 2010 by PaulVK
A key element of the arminian/reformed conflict revolves around the idea of freedom. One of the things I think we are seeing today is our beginning to understand the complexity of freedom, in particular the limitations of our own freedom. The modern discipline of psychology has created a science of predicting human behaviors the authors of which can’t help but assume to be simply “free”. Sociology has done the same thing. Demographics likewise and now we add to it evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology and discoveries in studying the brain. The 20th and 21st centuries have brought forward a vast body of evidence to indicate that we are no where as free as we have imagined ourselves to be.
I think it is also fairly easy to say that our freedom is a diminutive shadow of the larger source freedom we inherit from our creator. God is FREE in a way our own freedom aspires to become. This, like many comparable human limitations is difficult for us to come to emotional terms with, the outcome of which is usually our rebellion and resentment towards God.
I think that Calvinism also is very right in wanting to emphasize that whatever our participation “salvation is of the LORD”. Arminians of course say this too. I remember being in Seminary going through the Canons of Dort on Soteriology with Plantinga and thinking that all five points are like fingers connected to the palm of the hand which is basically this point. Salvation is ultimately something God does FOR us and TO us in a way that probably mirrors a blog post I wrote years ago thinking about prayer while pushing a Costco cart while my then small son Ben thought he was doing all the work. (https://paulvanderklay.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/prayer-pushing-the-costco-cart-with-ben/)
The issues of our participation in our rescue (which I think Paul and Jesus clearly assume) very quickly get complicated by our inability to both understand what freedom means for us and how in fact God works through history and through his Spirit in our minds and hearts. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity gets into this (really must know that book better!) when he notes that we don’t work with God like two guys making a brick wall. The interplay is much more intimate and complex than that. It’s really tough to say “I did this, God did that” not because God’s work is confusing or mixed, but because of our limitations in knowing our own freedom. The tougher part is really saying “I did this”. Did you really or were your actions easily accountable to heredity, upbringing, your training (sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology, brain chemistry, etc.)
None of this limits human agency and we understand this. We ARE real agents and we ARE responsible for our words and actions, but our agency is always qualified by the world of things that we are subject to in ways that God can never be.
CS Lewis also in “The Great Divorce” and “Mere Christianity” if I’m not mistaken has a terrific section on freedom. I think it is in the Great Divorce when the dragon on the shoulder of the pilgrim gets dealt with by the angel. That decision was most free and every free moment was bound up in it.
One of the things I love about Calvinism is how little sense it makes of this because I think we are correct in our limitations in making sense of this. We are terribly confused creatures and the more we learn, even with science today, the more we begin to see how confused and limited we are, even while we grow in understanding and power. God’s freedom is therefore so much more great, and our freedom dependent upon his own. He makes us free because he is free. Rebellion itself, however, confuses us because in it we imagine ourselves to be stepping towards freedom when in fact we are walking away from it. pvk
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The American Political Left’s ambiguous relationship with Pacifism

Posted on August 13, 2010 by PaulVK
http://www.cpjustice.org/files/lovingourenemies.pdf

From the Center for Public Justice. When I read this I thought of this group (Calvinincommon.org). When I listen to the American political left I hear a deep ambiguity about the use of violence. On one hand I hear some aspirational pacifism, but on the other hand there is a militant energy that believes in the power of threats of retribution (often political, social (shame, regret) or economic) to achieve its goals. I think this inconsistency undercuts the legitimacy of the left because they can’t seem to make up their minds if they really want to be pacifist when threat clearly seems to be their tool of choice.

Pacifism can be enormously powerful but only when those who flirt with it are willing to go all the way. Apart from that it looks more like the kind of scrawny, whining victim power that feeds on a self-indulgent self-pity.

All pacifism leverage a “greater good” in order to seek the energy for sacrifice. Christian pacifism I believe ultimately leverages a judging God and the received resurrected body of Jesus as the source of its capacity to endure loss in the hope of a cruciform redemption of one’s adversary since ultimately our enemy is not of flesh and bone. pvk

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More network/family, less warehouse/dispensary

Posted on August 12, 2010 by PaulVK

At our last cluster meeting before the summer break it was my turn to present and so I facilitated a discussion in our cluster about what they want from CRHM and the denomination. What would be helpful? What would the dream regional ministry team/CRHM look like to them. It was a good conversation I thought.

Part of what I heard that was significant from them were a few complaints or unfulfilled wishes:

1. “I feel like there are resources up there that could be useful but I can’t find them
2. I that there may be help but I don’t even know about it until its too late.”

Now I know these guys and I know that networks take people on both sides to be active and that part of the lack they are voicing is because we all really want everything we want or need to plunk into our laps before we even know we need it, but to me it highlights the catch 22 of our information age. When information is omni-available (which it nearly is) most information failures are really filter failures. Information isn’t really just stuff and we need more of it (like we think about money), we need the right stuff at the right time and we ourselves need to be in a position to hear (let him who has ears to hear…).

Dominant in the industrial age has been the metaphor of the warehouse. A warehouse accumulates assets, puts them on shelves or in cubicles in some arrangement that facilitates the curation of those assets. Libraries are warehouses of books that hold information and all of the accouterments of libraries are supposed to help the seeker find what they are looking for which is what they think they need for a particular thing.

As Google makes all words searchable increasingly people are realizing that the problem is no longer really a situation of access, it is in ourselves. We don’t know what to look for. We don’t even really know what we need. What we discover is the difference between information and wisdom. Machines can now puke information into screens, tablets, phones and paper, but wisdom is needed to make things happen.

If you look at a tool like Twitter, or the re-working of a tool like Digg, you begin to see that the tech folks have figured out some of the limits of information management and that only people are capable of wisdom. You follow someone on Twitter, you don’t subscribe to or follow Google, you couldn’t.

Why do I value my CRC kin? A denomination is really an extended filter. There are many smart church guys out there writing lots of things that can be read for profit, but there is something about my kin that is shaped like me and therefore adds value to the filter. Every family in a sense has its own language because they have their own shared history which is what gives words their meaning and their resonance and their power.

The whole “resourcing” model I think is predicated more on a warehouse metaphor than a network metaphor and for that reason I think increasingly loses value in a diverse environment. We need better networks not bigger warehouses. I think denominations have in a way misunderstood their role. We are a tribe whose shared history is itself the valued filter that creates the value for the task of journeying together into the future. Because the change cycle is so fast networks need to move more quickly and filters more unobtrusively and denominations can do that. What denominations afford is a context for generative conversation because I am not simply a generic consumer seeking to access a box of a think called information from a shelf, but I have a part of the story of how we’ve gotten here, and my vocabulary has been shaped by all of the conversations that have gone on before, and a person can be known and know like no warehouse ever could.

The key thing CRHM offers to this larger ecosystem is setting the tables, creating the connections and space for the conversations, helping not the blank exchange of data but the exchange of life and stories in the far larger narrative of Jesus sharing not a bit of discrete information with us but rather is actual life.  Perhaps rather than imagining the agency as a warehouse that dispenses (I heard that metaphor plenty at the Network conversation a few summers ago, thankfully their cyber incarnation is less warehouse and more of an attempt at social network) better to imagine it as a church within its meeting house. There are large sessions going on in the main sanctuary, conversations happening in the alcoves, break out groups going on that are both planned and ad hoc, community being built as children are cared for and coffee made in the pots. The value is created in the shared living, not gathered in boxes or jugs and fed-exed to others.

The challenge is to multiply the connections, or possible connections without over taxing the participants. That too requires wisdom.

The moral of the story is, more network/family, less warehouse, dispensary.

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WCRMT_SFSD

Posted on August 12, 2010 by PaulVK

Some in house work here in the CRC

West Coast Regional Ministry Team Self-Funding, Self-Directing document

Ministry Share analysis of WCRMT

My open response to the SDSF document

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Self-righteousness

Posted on August 11, 2010 by PaulVK

One of my favorite Tim Keller sermons is one on Romans 7 entitled Splitness where he makes extensive use of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here is the part of the book he quotes from for the meat of his argument. I used it for a sermon on Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl
for licence.

It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot
where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent’s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint;
and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.

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