What struck me was that in an environment where deep bitterness has already taken root it is very difficult to even broach the topic of forgiveness. The notion of forgiveness is offensive to the embittered person. The beauty and hope that forgiveness can offer is eclipsed by the desire for the destruction of the adversary. Forgiveness is not only unwanted, it is offensive because the need and thirst for vengeance and vindication is all that remains.
This reminds me of CS Lewis’ treatment of “ghosts” in “The Great Divorce” where a person who grumbles in the end is reduced to just a grumble.
It also enlightened the irrationality of evil. We get to a place where we know the conclusion of our actions will simply be destruction but we go there anyway knowing that all we will leave is rubble, but we care not.
Even the mention to the embittered party by a third party that emotional relief from their suffering could be found in forgiveness is seen as yet another violation of justice or fairness. This person has taken it upon him or herself to be the guarantor of justice (something only God ultimately can accomplish) and intends to see that there be further violation if it is within their power. Forgiveness simply appears unjust and wrong and they will say so.
Last week I preached on Jesus healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath where the synagogue leader objected to her release after 18 years of bondage. From our vantage point we marvel at the obtuseness of the synagogue leader’s protest. How could he possibly object to such a glorious thing? But this is the subtle strength of the bondage of sin in our lives. We must save ourselves, we just position ourselves as the guarantors of justice and rescue (because we deeply suspect God has abdicated and will not come through) and therefore forgiveness, mercy and rescue on someone else’s terms are seen as a threat that must be countered. We see that in the elder brother of Luke 15 in his implicit condemnation of his father for his mercy and imagining himself as being more just and more wise than his father. Hell is exactly that place.
In the end hell is a place where all its citizens are united by only one thing, the conclusion that God is unjust and that they are prepared to commit to never having anything more to do with him. Their leader is the dragon of Revelation 12 who is already practiced in setting up alternative regimes. In such a kingdom forgiveness becomes the deplorable word that as in CS Lewis’ “The Magicians’ Nephew” threatens to destroy and is therefore banished from the language.
In the light of it’s reverse we can see its power. Forgiveness must be banished by the bitter because it holds the power to destroy their alternate world. This is why those who killed Jesus, who were bitter enemies of each other, could come together around only one thing, this thing.
This is a posting I wrote for Calvin in Common. This conversation centered around whether Calvin has lost its way by not faithfully teaching its students the most up to date scientific positions regarding earth origins and like matters. I haven’t attended Calvin for 23 years so I can’t say what they do or don’t do, but I think a school like Calvin has a different role to play, and an important one, as opposed to any state university.
Kuhn’s work on paradigms (which I read at Calvin) pretty clearly demonstrated that “facts” find their interpretations within paradigms which are structural contexts through which the facts find their meanings. (This of course being a paradigm as well but we can’t communicate without these communities of understanding.) Again, I think a competent education within our cultural context requires both a treatment of evidence but also a treatment of the paradigms used to interpret that evidence. This isn’t all esoteric. A perusal of Nova on PBS regularly shows the kind of paradigm conflicts that about regarding a good many things. Many of the more interesting treatments recently regarding climate change, past extinctions, etc.
I think it’s more helpful to talk about evidence (data) and paradigms, models, theories, etc. which become the framework within which the evidence finds meaning and in fact becomes story.
A Christian college always has at least two stories it’s dealing with. It’s got the Biblical story and other stories derived from disciplines and cultures. It’s tempting to just shelve the Biblical story but then the college isn’t offering anything different from UC Berkeley or any other secular university. What I hope for Calvin is that it is competent in multiple stories.
Now someone might suggest that the Biblical story isn’t worth treating in matters such as geology. Clearly the Bible isn’t a geology book but part of what Calvin does have to offer is the study of geology within the context of the Christian tradition and given the world population of Christians that has clear value. A Christian geologist will be working on competency in both books and offer guidance to students as to how he or she has worked through these issues.
Now one might say “you should be a geologist on work hours and a Christian on Sundays”. We all know that doesn’t go very far. Francis Collins in his work has in my opinion demonstrated more competence in his field of genetics than with the story of the Bible, but that should be no surprise. I wouldn’t want him, however, to not engage in the working out of these two stories. He has to for his own reasons and although what he does with the Bible might not be what I would do with it that’s OK with me because for his own integrity as a Christian and a scientist he needs to work through these issues for himself. That is what I hope Calvin can equip their students to do.
I would also suggest that a Christian college has a certain advantage over a secular education BECAUSE professionals in varied academic stories have to wrestle with at least two books. A mono-paradigmatic approach to the world I think is less engaging than realizing that history is in fact a struggle between paradigms. Working to square stories from radically different cultural contexts such as the multi-cultural Christian tradition with modern scientific or academic traditions should stretch anyone’s gray matter hopefully leading not just to someone’s ability to claim “this I believe” but also a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of what belief is and why diverse people have a diversity of beliefs. To me that is of great value not only within our cultural context but within a fast changing multi-dimensional context as the world is becoming.
If I might make an argument for the value of traditional religious commitment in general it would be that it forces the adherent to live in at least two worlds. Someone who only knows one world knows their own world less than if they know at least two worlds. Having been blessed to have been a foreign missionary and always having to have navigated conflicted cultural contexts I can see this in my own life. The fish who has only known water doesn’t really know water. Once the fish learns what the absence of water is it will know water better.
Why is the Christian story so engaging, delightful and transformative? The Christian story has within it the movement of the best of stories. The best stories are like the best flat panel TVs. They have the sharpest movement, the truest blacks, and the brightest most vivid colors. The Christian story has all of those thing. It has the drama an ancient paradise, lost and nearly forgotten. There are many episodes when that paradise seems nearly regained, remembered or partially tasted. Then in Jesus that hope comes rushing in full force and multitudes are swept up in the enthusiasm. Then it is all suddenly dashed, lost, crucified and despair seemed to have won once more. On the third day an inkling the likes of which made all previous inklings look dim explodes and the world is changed. The unfolding of that change has within it all of the drama of the meta-story, down to the individual. It’s like the Chesterton paraphrase. Everybody wants two things: security and adventure. Only in Christianity do you get both.
Posted intheological|Comments Off on The Christian Story
One of my favorite Tim Keller sermons is entitled “Praying our Fears” (free download).
He used an illustration from a George MacDonald fairy tale “The Princess and the Goblin”. Here the little princess meets a “grandmother” who is more than one might expect. She fears the goblins and so the grandmother gives her a ring with an invisible thread that will always lead the little girl back to her if she is afraid. Here is the section. You can find the whole book on the Project Gutenberg site.
The lady put her hand in the fire, brought out the ball, glimmering as before, and held it towards her. Irene stretched out her hand to take it, but the lady turned and, going to her cabinet, opened a drawer, and laid the ball in it.
‘Have I done anything to vex you, grandmother?’ said Irene pitifully.
‘No, my darling. But you must understand that no one ever gives anything to another properly and really without keeping it. That ball is yours.’
‘Oh! I’m not to take it with me! You are going to keep it for me!’
‘You are to take it with you. I’ve fastened the end of it to the ring on your finger.’
Irene looked at the ring.
‘I can’t see it there, grandmother,’ she said.
‘Feel – a little way from the ring – towards the cabinet,’ said the lady.
‘Oh! I do feel it!’ exclaimed the princess. ‘But I can’t see it,’ she added, looking close to her outstretched hand.
‘No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it. Now you can fancy how much spinning that took, although it does seem such a little ball.’
‘But what use can I make of it, if it lies in your cabinet?’
‘That is what I will explain to you. It would be of no use to you – it wouldn’t be yours at all if it did not lie in my cabinet. Now listen. If ever you find yourself in any danger – such, for example, as you were in this same evening – you must take off your ring and put it under the pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your finger, the same that wore the ring, upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you.’
‘Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, grandmother, I know!’
‘Yes. But, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.’
Then later in the book
That same morning early, the princess woke in a terrible fright. There was a hideous noise in her room – creatures snarling and hissing and rocketing about as if they were fighting. The moment she came to herself, she remembered something she had never thought of again – what her grandmother told her to do when she was frightened. She immediately took off her ring and put it under her pillow. As she did so she fancied she felt a finger and thumb take it gently from under her palm. ‘It must be my grandmother!’ she said to herself, and the thought gave her such courage that she stopped to put on her dainty little slippers before running from the room. While doing this she caught sight of a long cloak of sky-blue, thrown over the back of a chair by the bedside. She had never seen it before but it was evidently waiting for her. She put it on, and then, feeling with the forefinger of her right hand, soon found her grandmother’s thread, which she proceeded at once to follow, expecting it would lead her straight up the old stair. When she reached the door she found it went down and ran along the floor, so that she had almost to crawl in order to keep a hold of it. Then, to her surprise, and somewhat to her dismay, she found that instead of leading her towards the stair it turned in quite the opposite direction. It led her through certain narrow passages towards the kitchen, turning aside ere she reached it, and guiding her to a door which communicated with a small back yard. Some of the maids were already up, and this door was standing open. Across the yard the thread still ran along the ground, until it brought her to a door in the wall which opened upon the Mountainside. When she had passed through, the thread rose to about half her height, and she could hold it with ease as she walked. It led her straight up the mountain.
After leading her up a good distance, the thread turned to the left, and down the path upon which she and Lootie had met Curdie. But she never thought of that, for now in the morning light, with its far outlook over the country, no path could have been more open and airy and cheerful. She could see the road almost to the horizon, along which she had so often watched her king-papa and his troop come shining, with the bugle- blast cleaving the air before them; and it was like a companion to her. Down and down the path went, then up, and then down and then up again, getting rugged and more rugged as it went; and still along the path went the silvery thread, and still along the thread went Irene’s little rosy-tipped forefinger. By and by she came to a little stream that jabbered and prattled down the hill, and up the side of the stream went both path and thread. And still the path grew rougher and steeper, and the mountain grew wilder, till Irene began to think she was going a very long way from home; and when she turned to look back she saw that the level country had vanished and the rough bare mountain had closed in about her. But still on went the thread, and on went the princess. Everything around her was getting brighter and brighter as the sun came nearer; till at length his first rays all at once alighted on the top of a rock before her, like some golden creature fresh from the sky. Then she saw that the little stream ran out of a hole in that rock, that the path did not go past the rock, and that the thread was leading her straight up to it. A shudder ran through her from head to foot when she found that the thread was actually taking her into the hole out of which the stream ran. It ran out babbling joyously, but she had to go in.
She did not hesitate. Right into the hole she went, which was high enough to let her walk without stooping. For a little way there was a brown glimmer, but at the first turn it all but ceased, and before she had gone many paces she was in total darkness. Then she began to be frightened indeed. Every moment she kept feeling the thread backwards and forwards, and as she went farther and farther into the darkness of the great hollow mountain, she kept thinking more and more about her grandmother, and all that she had said to her, and how kind she had been, and how beautiful she was, and all about her lovely room, and the fire of roses, and the great lamp that sent its light through stone walls. And she became more and more sure that the thread could not have gone there of itself, and that her grandmother must have sent it. But it tried her dreadfully when the path went down very steep, and especially When she came to places where she had to go down rough stairs, and even sometimes a ladder. Through one narrow passage after another, over lumps of rock and sand and clay, the thread guided her, until she came to a small hole through which she had to creep. Finding no change on the other side, ‘Shall I ever get back?’ she thought, over and over again, wondering at herself that she was not ten times more frightened, and often feeling as if she were only walking in the story of a dream. Sometimes she heard the noise of water, a dull gurgling inside the rock. By and by she heard the sounds of blows, which came nearer and nearer; but again they grew duller, and almost died away. In a hundred directions she turned, obedient to the guiding thread.
At last she spied a dull red shine, and came up to the mica window, and thence away and round about, and right, into a cavern, where glowed the red embers of a fire. Here the thread began to rise. It rose as high as her head and higher still. What should she do if she lost her hold? She was pulling it down: She might break it! She could see it far up, glowing as red as her fire-opal in the light of the embers.
But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon recovered the level of the thread only however to find, the next moment, that it vanished through the heap of stones, and left her standing on it, with her face to the solid rock. For one terrible moment she felt as if her grandmother had forsaken her. The thread which the spiders had spun far over the seas, which her grandmother had sat in the moonlight and spun again for her, which she had tempered in the rose-fire and tied to her opal ring, had left her – had gone where she could no longer follow it – had brought her into a horrible cavern, and there left her! She was forsaken indeed!
‘When shall I wake?’ she said to herself in an agony, but the same moment knew that it was no dream. She threw herself upon the heap, and began to cry. It was well she did not know what creatures, one of them with stone shoes on her feet, were lying in the next cave. But neither did she know who was on the other side of the slab.
At length the thought struck her that at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She rose at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led her hand up to the heap of stones – backwards it seemed nowhere. Neither could she see it as before in the light of the fire. She burst into a wailing cry, and again threw herself down on the stones.
Read the story if you want to see how it ends. Chapter 21 is next.
Sometimes things just click and it seems as if God is doing stuff in a vivid way. I felt that way about both the Sunday School class and the sermon on Sunday. It usually isn’t both. The Sunday School class seemed particularly blessed at the lesson on Revelation 14:1. It was sweet. Same with the sermon. I usually don’t post the links to my audio files here, but I will for these.
Churches, “ministries” and Christian bookstores abound with programs that promise spiritual transformation for those who would dedicate themselves to these programs. Recently a friend sent me a link to a new program promoted by Rick Warren: https://www.lifeshealingchoices.com/. The introductory video offers dramatic results for those who devote themselves to its process. I have no reason to question the truthfulness of Warren’s claims. I’m sure this program has helped many men and women find sanity and healing. This happens every day for millions of people around the world in many many recovery programs. I don’t want to take anything away from that. But I wonder if we’re looking at the wrong thing. Maybe it’s not the program that produces the saints as much as it is the suffering that gets re-contexted.
Almost everything I read from Jesus or the rest of the New Testament tells me that the path to spiritual transformation is obvious and universal on planet earth, it is suffering. Even though Jesus seems to say it again and again we only tend to highlight it when we read him in the Beatitudes or his statements about cross bearing. It is also highlighted in numerous other New Testament books, especially the book of Revelation. The righteous get crushed to powder by the devil, the age of decay and the flesh but out of that crushing God brings about the new creation. It can’t be more plain.
What isn’t plain is why some who are crushed sink into bitterness, self-pity and despair, while others come out shining like the sun, like Mabel. The story of Mabel wouldn’t be spectacular if it wasn’t so uncommon. Visit a nursing home and you’ll find what many who live there are nursing are resentments. Nursing resentments is the broad path, the one that leads to destruction. Mabel walked the narrow path and it was her joy.
Why was Mabel different? Ortberg notes the spiritual disciplines she cultivated in her hours of what is labeled by us as incapacity. Certainly others don’t lack the opportunity to practice such things, they simply don’t. A couple of months ago I conducted a worship service at a nursing home, just a few poor souls showed. In my experience that is the norm. There is no question that the spiritual disciplines strengthened Mabel and turned her into the spiritual athlete that she became, but it seems her practice of them was a symptom of a deeper health rather than simply the cause of it.
The most convincing experiential artifact for confirming the doctrine of election by general revelation is the mystery illustrated by Mabel. Suffering comes to us all, and the resurgent Reformed preachers that exhort us to “not waste your sufferings” are exactly right, yet the reality is that most of us do. In some, however, something remarkable grows from the inside and bears the kind of dramatic fruit that Jesus describes as “30, 60 or 100 fold”.
Suffering is obviously NOT a prescription for spiritual growth that pastors should start dispensing. “You’d like to grow? I can help you with that. Give me your ATM card and car keys…” Pastors don’t need to artificially generate suffering for their people, the devil, the age of decay and our broken natures are all too happy to oblige. Yet we as pastors perhaps should note that most of the packages available in the Christian market place are good advice that are either knock offs (or have been knocked off by) nearly every other “self-help” or religious self-improvement outfit around. The tried and true, going back to the life of Jesus himself (and further back as can be read in the OT) is the cruciform way.
We go to God and ask to become a saint. What if God says to us “OK, but I’ll have to crush you into powder first, but from that powder I will remake you into the kind creature that makes the language of “creation 2.0″ look weak.” What would we say? What do we say as we begin to realize that the crushing process takes place over time and that all along the way we are offered “outs” and exits to escape the pain and nearly everyone one around us tells us that the crushing isn’t necessary and that creation 2.0 is too much to hope for?
Maybe what Jesus said in his beatitudes (and in how many other different places and ways) is true, that the truly blessed have fewer “outs”, but in fact find joy even in the midst of crushing and that joy simply grows louder, deeper and longer as they travel from the foothills further up and further into the holy mountain.
I think we pastors are cowards. We dare not say these things because 1. we have not necessarily traveled far in it ourselves 2. because it sounds so absolutely crazy and what we’re seeking is acceptance and respectability.
The good news is that the good news is just as real today as it has always been. God creates for himself Mabels and saints using even the worst the devil can dish out. In a Tim Keller sermon kicking off a series on Job a bit ago Keller says that God allows the devil to just enough to undo his own schemes. I think about that a lot and sometimes kind of believe it. It rings true to the book of Revelation.
In Revelation 14, after the dragon and his beasts have been allowed to make war on the saints and defeat them the Lamb is seen to be standing on Mount Zion with his holy army of 144,000 saints who have conquered in the fashion of the Lamb. It makes me think of the scene in the LOTR movie “The Two Towers” when Gandalf finally appears in the east on his white horse with his army to save the defeated huddle in Helm’s Deep. I cry every time I watch that scene.
Every person in our churches and communities, has suffered or will suffer. The ground work is laid for the most biblical, the most proven spiritual growth plan we have. Do we have the courage to name it?
The Need for Calvin College
This is a posting I wrote for Calvin in Common. This conversation centered around whether Calvin has lost its way by not faithfully teaching its students the most up to date scientific positions regarding earth origins and like matters. I haven’t attended Calvin for 23 years so I can’t say what they do or don’t do, but I think a school like Calvin has a different role to play, and an important one, as opposed to any state university.
Kuhn’s work on paradigms (which I read at Calvin) pretty clearly demonstrated that “facts” find their interpretations within paradigms which are structural contexts through which the facts find their meanings. (This of course being a paradigm as well but we can’t communicate without these communities of understanding.) Again, I think a competent education within our cultural context requires both a treatment of evidence but also a treatment of the paradigms used to interpret that evidence. This isn’t all esoteric. A perusal of Nova on PBS regularly shows the kind of paradigm conflicts that about regarding a good many things. Many of the more interesting treatments recently regarding climate change, past extinctions, etc.
I think it’s more helpful to talk about evidence (data) and paradigms, models, theories, etc. which become the framework within which the evidence finds meaning and in fact becomes story.
A Christian college always has at least two stories it’s dealing with. It’s got the Biblical story and other stories derived from disciplines and cultures. It’s tempting to just shelve the Biblical story but then the college isn’t offering anything different from UC Berkeley or any other secular university. What I hope for Calvin is that it is competent in multiple stories.
Now someone might suggest that the Biblical story isn’t worth treating in matters such as geology. Clearly the Bible isn’t a geology book but part of what Calvin does have to offer is the study of geology within the context of the Christian tradition and given the world population of Christians that has clear value. A Christian geologist will be working on competency in both books and offer guidance to students as to how he or she has worked through these issues.
Now one might say “you should be a geologist on work hours and a Christian on Sundays”. We all know that doesn’t go very far. Francis Collins in his work has in my opinion demonstrated more competence in his field of genetics than with the story of the Bible, but that should be no surprise. I wouldn’t want him, however, to not engage in the working out of these two stories. He has to for his own reasons and although what he does with the Bible might not be what I would do with it that’s OK with me because for his own integrity as a Christian and a scientist he needs to work through these issues for himself. That is what I hope Calvin can equip their students to do.
I would also suggest that a Christian college has a certain advantage over a secular education BECAUSE professionals in varied academic stories have to wrestle with at least two books. A mono-paradigmatic approach to the world I think is less engaging than realizing that history is in fact a struggle between paradigms. Working to square stories from radically different cultural contexts such as the multi-cultural Christian tradition with modern scientific or academic traditions should stretch anyone’s gray matter hopefully leading not just to someone’s ability to claim “this I believe” but also a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of what belief is and why diverse people have a diversity of beliefs. To me that is of great value not only within our cultural context but within a fast changing multi-dimensional context as the world is becoming.
If I might make an argument for the value of traditional religious commitment in general it would be that it forces the adherent to live in at least two worlds. Someone who only knows one world knows their own world less than if they know at least two worlds. Having been blessed to have been a foreign missionary and always having to have navigated conflicted cultural contexts I can see this in my own life. The fish who has only known water doesn’t really know water. Once the fish learns what the absence of water is it will know water better.