God Is Relative

2011-05-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

Chapter One

Be Ye Not Mentally Lazy

You may have grown up, as I did, convinced that the authority figures in your world were telling the truth, at least to a degree. I sensed a core of truth in what they so dogmatically said, but I knew in my gut that at some points they were wrong. I recognized that, while maybe they were right, there was more to it than they let on, and often that "more to it" was what mattered most. I also knew that some people and the views they so strongly condemned were not as bad as they were made out to be. I knew that a lot of the wrongs they attacked were not always necessarily, totally wrong. Although at the time I could not have articulated it, I was developing a core of skepticism.

But I was well socialized, so never did I consider challenging any of this. They were bigger, older, smarter, richer, and they held the power to either punish or reward. There was no future in challenging their positions.

On the other hand I knew better than to trust my own mind. In school my classmates made better grades, were better athletes, better looking, and more popular. I was not a leader; no one ever followed or looked up to me. I was painfully aware of my own inadequacies, but although I was not fully conscious of it, I was also vaguely aware of the limitations of those in authority and even of my more popular and more gifted classmates.

I was nearly fifty-years-old before I realized the full implications of those childhood perceptions. Gradually I came to see that my tacit disagreement with society somehow comprised the elements of a more honest and complete approach to truth and life. The seeds of a new way of thinking had been planted; a way I much later came to call The DIALECTIC, the theme of this book.

After floundering through life for long years, I finally learned that it is easy to become a good thinker. Good thinking, however, is in short supply both because many of us are mentally lazy and because it requires something more than mere critical thinking, keen intellect, and formal education.

On the Other Hand

What it takes to become a good thinker is to make,"On the Other Hand," your habitual response to ideas, whether your own or those of others, spoken or written, in formal or in informal settings. No matter what is presented, always consider what might be "on the other hand," because no human statement is, by itself, ever complete, something is always left out, there is always more to be said, and it is always possible that what has been presented might be wrong. Develop a deep sense and appreciation of human limitations, determine to make "on the other hand" thinking second nature, and you are on the road to becoming a good thinker. Results will appear almost immediately. You will become a voice to be reckoned with.

Is that all there is to it? No, but if "on the other hand" thinking becomes a regular practice, you will quickly become a respected thinker. I remember from my youth that the Sears, Roebuck catalog offered a choice of merchandise at varying levels of quality: good, better, and best. You already have read enough to reach the genuinely good level of thinker.

When you come to understand the larger dimensions of THE DIALECTIC--the proper name for "on the other hand thinking"--and when you add to that an elementary understanding of how logical thinking works, you will become a better thinker.

And if you are still here when we come to the last pages of the book, we will consider how you can become the best thinker that can be made out of your unique personality and place in the world.

Becoming a Thinker

Daddy was a workaholic and always gone, Mother was an old-fashioned housewife, a good one, busy doing all the work that entails, so I was pretty well left alone and by default became a lonely, lazy dreamer. I roamed the rivers, creeks, and hills, knowing I had been born fifty years too late to be the cowboy or mountain man that I read and dreamed of. I drifted mindlessly through the years until one day I found myself a high school graduate. I remember three graduation gifts, one of them in particular. Neither the creamy-yellow sport jacket nor the fancy corduroy shirt of many colors ever looked right on me, but somehow I have remembered them. More to the point was Mother's gift of a book of inspirational poetry and prose, Quests and Conquests. For years I enjoyed reading the book but was never inspired to actually do anything. The book didn=t change me, but Mother's inscription written in the front of the book, "Be ye not mentally lazy," haunted me.

Mother's admonition was based on accurate observation. I don't remember having ever thought much about anything for the first twenty years of my life, but when I read her inscription I knew immediately that I needed whatever it was that she was calling for. However, I neither knew what to do about it nor how. The problem was that I had no thinking equipment, skills, or coaching, and had no prior encouragement to think (few schools or homes teach us how to think). It would be long years before I made any progress in that direction, but Mother's words were never far from my consciousness; I felt their challenge continually.

Several years later, I found myself in a theological seminary studying to become a minister. There I heard professor Gordon Clinard declare that the greatest weakness of Southern Baptist preaching was shallowness. Immediately I vowed that my sermons would have depth. During seminary years, I worked, without adequate tools for thinking, at exploring the depths of God's word and of human experience. I was still depending on others, teachers and books, to do my thinking for me, and I still trusted them. Yet I knew they were missing it somewhere.

When I was given my first teaching position and found that I had to teach--and thus learn--logic, I discovered, finally, a method of systematic thinking. Logic, I came to realize, should be required of all high school graduates--not symbolic logic, but traditional, elementary logic.

Now, I was a beginning philosophy teacher and confident of my ability as a thinker. But I had a lot to learn. It took a half-dozen years of teaching philosophy before all of the above began to converge in the idea of THE DIALECTIC. I completely rewrote my philosophy courses, making the DIALECTIC central, and have taught it now for more than thirty years. Mother would be proud of her easy-going son because across the years, among faculty and students alike, I have gained a reputation for making people think. They tell me they now think about things they never thought about before, and from perspectives they would have never before considered. Let's talk about how you can improve your thinking ability and practice.

But on the Other Hand

The words of a Randy Travis song suggest the way. Early in his career Travis sang about a fellow who has just met an exciting woman. She has captivated his complete attention, has him almost spellbound. As he considers the possibility of spending the night with her, he sings, "On one hand I count the reasons I could stay with you . . . all night long . . . and on that hand I see no reason why it's wrong." That is one way for him to look at the situation. But the refrain reveals the rest of the picture, as he sings, "But on the other hand there's a golden band, to remind me of someone who would not understand." He has been tempted to forsake his marriage, and might have done so if he just looked at things from the most obvious point of view, the way he felt. He sings about a strong desire to stay, but the logic of marital love and commitment tells him that, "the reason I must go is on the other hand."

This indicates the importance of DIALECTICal thinking for even the most careless of us. On one hand--every day, throughout the day--we see things we believe to be right and that feel right at the time, but on the other hand there is always more to be considered. On one hand we are ready to act; on the other hand it is always possible that we might be wrong and regret what we did.

In life too much is at stake for our conduct to be decided by one-handed thinking. President Harry Truman once told his cabinet members that he wished they would find him a one-hand economist. He said that every economist that briefed him presented a good analysis of the economic situation, and advised an appropriate course of action. However, Truman complained, once they laid all this out, they would say: "But on the other hand . . . ," and proceed to build the case for a different analysis and course of action. He wanted someone who had the answer.

The truth is that no single way of looking at anything ever sees the whole picture. There is always more. Mortimer Adler made the strange claim that the greatest contribution Greek civilization ever made to our culture was the idea of men and de. These strange words are two little particles in the Greek language, commonly translated into English as on one hand/but on the other hand. When we think of Greek culture, sculpture, philosophy, and drama, we might wonder what Adler was thinking when he made such an audacious claim. Why would he say on the one hand/but on the other hand is the greatest contribution of the Greeks? Because it is a concise expression of that which this book is about, that which we call the DIALECTIC.

The DIALECTIC

The DIALECTIC will not make you a better person--that is a whole different issue--but it will make you a better thinker. It will keep you out of a lot of trouble. You will not be surprised easily or often. It will make it easier for you to understand and get along with other people. Others will begin to respect you and your ideas more than they have in the past. If you are a student, you will become a better learner, performing better in the classroom and making better grades, gaining broader understanding and deeper insight. If you are married, you will become a better and more appreciated spouse. If you are part of a team at work, you will become a better and more valuable team member.

If all this sounds as though the DIALECTIC is some kind of a magic pill or silver bullet, you are hearing it right. No matter who you are, what you are interested in, or what you do, it will fit you. It will apply directly to what you are about. All this, and it is easy to learn and put to use.

Think like an Octopus

"On the other hand." That's the silver bullet. That's all it takes to become a good thinker. It's that simple. But on the other hand, it helps to notice still another hand.

I was sitting at the breakfast table, reviewing plans for my first philosophy class of the day. I was thinking specifically about the dialectic. Then I remembered that I had a problem student in that class. I only had three problem students in thirty-some years of teaching. This was one of them. He was one of those back row, disruptive whisperers. I had spoken to him about it a couple of times, to no avail. He seemed to have a lack of respect for me. So I shifted my mind from preparation for class to preparation for dealing with this aggravation.

I spent two years in the army as basic training officer. I have experience in sounding tough, and I can make the appropriate face to go along with the speech. I=ve never used that style in teaching. However, that morning, I was considering it. On the other hand, I could quietly inform him that if the whispers did not cease, he would receive an "F" in the class. On the other hand, I wasn't sure that would be a fair course of action. In fact, he might dare me to try it (he was the kind to do that). On the other hand, I had to do something because he was disrupting the class. So, on the other hand . . . Wait a minute, how many other hands do I have?

On the other hand is the dialectical formula. It is the way. But on which other hand. Mentally, we have more than two hands. Our left hand has its own right and left hands, and they have theirs. We need to think on as many hands as possible. We need to learn to think like an octopus. An octopus can think "on the other hand" several times before he runs out of perspectives to consider.

The way to become a good thinker is to think like an octopus. Usually there are many hands to consider. Each hand has other hands itself. Don't forget the left hand. Like a construction supervisor, hire other hands if they are needed. Don't settle on an answer, conclusion, or idea until you have to because there are always these other hands to turn to. We will never have time to check them all out, but don't quit early, especially if there is much at stake.

Think dialectically, consider others, even your enemies, maybe especially your enemies, and think like an octopus thinking on all eight hands. However, if we seek to examine all hands, can we ever make a decision?

At some point we have to cut off thought and act on the best judgment we can make at the time, always realizing that what we do may turn out wrong. We have no choice, however, but to use our best judgment at the time, however incomplete it may be.

2010-11-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

An Angry Christian

I am an angry Christian. I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented our dearest loved one. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways, threatening eternal damnation to hell, and demanding that we follow all his rules, rules that take all the fun and excitement out of life. Yet this is the vision of God that vast numbers have somehow picked up in their sermons and Sunday School lessons heard in their childhood as well as individual encounters with “witnesses.”

If you were to read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century you would see that, regularly, this view of God and his representatives on earth is the picture of God that has haunted them across the years since they escaped the regular reminders of his wrath. I am angry because of all those who have been run off without ever seeing God as he is revealed in the biblical story. A re-vision of the biblical God is needed, so we are going to take another look at the Bible. This book will furnish a sketch that emerges from a re-view of the story.

This portrayal of God’s character is not dependent on any selection of specific biblical texts, although many can be found that paint the same picture we are going to unveil. On the other hand, the fabric of most Christian sermons, Sunday School lessons, doctrinal statements, and defenses of the faith have been woven with the threads of many single, specific and scattered Bible verses, often disconnected from any context or setting. That method will not be used here. Rather, we will view the Bible as a whole and see what God looks like in the big picture. (I am aware that there are specific scattered verses that challenge this book’s thesis.) We are going to back off and look again, re-view the central character in the story, then trace some of the defining features that emerge from the resultant revision of the way we view the divine character.

2010-10-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Center of God?

Louis Mauldin, sitting on a bench at a bus stop in Jackson, Tennessee got to visiting with an old man who also was waiting for a bus. In the course of the conversation, Louis asked the fellow if he had ever traveled much. The old gentleman said he had not, then Louis suggested to him some of the advantages of travel, whereupon his new friend said he didn’t need to travel; he pointed and said, “There is north, there is south, there is west, and there is east. I’ve got them all right here. I don’t need to go anyplace else. For the old man, he lived at the center of the world, Jackson, Tennessee.

Some years earlier Louis and I had been in a seminar where Joe Hester was presenting a paper on the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who never traveled more than forty miles from his home in Konigsberg, Prussia because, as Joe told us, Kant believed that Konigsberg was the intellectual and cultural center of the world.

At the seminary where Louis, Joe, and I studied, there was a large rotunda with a map of the world on the floor. A star placed the seminary at the center of the world.

Wherever you believe to be the center of the world, it provides the perspective from which you see all other places. If a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas is the center, then Jackson, Tennessee is somewhat marginal, and Konigsberg is completely out of sight and mind.

For thinking Christians, God is the center of all reality, which is good as far as it goes, but where is the center of God? What in God is central? Is there a place from which to get all else about God in proper perspective? There is no more agreement here than there is among the citizens of the world who would dismiss Jackson, Konigsberg, and Fort Worth and name their own center of the world.
It is very common for Christians to find the divine center in the sovereignty of God. God is in control of all things; he is ruler of the universe. He holds all power and knows all things. Others find the center in the divine freedom. Because he is the Lord God Almighty, he is free to do whatever he pleases, free to create and free to destroy, free to save and free to condemn. Free to love and free to hate. His freedom knows no boundaries. Some locate the essence in a holy, transcendent mystery, a God before whom we stand in awe and fear with no way to plumb the center of such majesty.

Might we consider love, holy love, as the center from which to view all other thought about God? The great creeds, including the Apostle’s and the Nicene Creeds, in their statements of belief in God, completely ignore direct reference to God’s love. The historical confessions of faith, including the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Baptist Faith and Message, give no emphasis to the divine love. In the Westminister Confession, love ranks eighteenth among the varied characteristics of God. The Baptist Faith and Message, in its statement of belief in God give no mention of love, except as owed to God.

When we turn to the great theologians of Christian history (except John Wesley), we find they do not give primacy to God’s love. The faith of ordinary Christians has found one of its most common expressions in the great hymns of the church. When we to turn to the hymnals to find what they say about God, we that they sing most often of the Lord God Almighty, they worship him as the powerful creator, lord and king. They express his holiness and majesty and only then mention his love, if at all. Often love shows up in a third stanza, where it is commonly left unsung.

Certainly there are wonderful exceptions that sing, “Love is the theme, love is supreme,” and “Love Divine, all love’s excelling,” but as exceptions, they only make clear that this is a neglected theme.

2010-10-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

God Changed His Mind.

God changed his mind. While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites collected all their gold jewelry and asked Aaron to melt it and make them a god. So he molded a golden calf and it was declared their God that had brought them out Egypt, implicitly rejecting the God who indeed had rescued them from Egyptian slavery and intended to make of them the special people whom he would use to bring healing to his broken world. He had called them out of Egypt because he had for them a world-class task to perform.
World-class deeds demand world-class discipline. It is not easy to perform tasks of this dimension. If God’s intention were to be accomplished, if ease were to be brought to the dis-eased and hurting inhabitants of the earth, then they must trust God to do right by them and thus must obey all he requires of them. By choosing to spurn the Lord God in favor of a God made of a precious metal, they have blocked the road to hope for the rest of the world.

God was angry, angry enough, he said, to destroy them, and start over with Moses and his descendants to build a special people for this special purpose. According to Exodus, chapter 32, He explicitly told Moses, “Don’t try to stop me” from destroying them. However, Moses stood up for God’s purpose and for his people and argued that God should change his mind.

God saw that in Moses he had a leader who would stand for God’s people and purpose even in the face of God’s instruction for him to keep his mouth shut, and in the face of God’s offer to make a new start: rather than the descendants of Abraham, it would be the descendants of Moses who would fulfill God’s purpose. Quite an offer for Moses. But Moses was committed to God’s original plan and pleaded for God to reconsider his threat of destruction. “So,” in Exodus 32:14, we are told that “even though the Lord had threatened to destroy the people, he changed his mind and let them live.”

Are we to understand that a human being can argue with God and win? Are we to understand that the eternal Lord God Almighty can be persuaded to change his mind? This goes contrary to the entire history of Christian orthodoxy. Historically, Christians have always believed that God was immutable, could not change. It was understood that God was perfect–else he would not be God–and that for him to change in any sense would take away from his eternal perfection. Perhaps there is some other way to understand the biblical statement that the Lord changed his mind. Or, can we at least consider that here the Bible means literally what it says? Is it possible that we also should consider changing our mind about what God can and cannot do?

God changed his mind again. Prior to the Israelite occupation of the land of Canaan, God has appointed their leaders, Moses and Joshua, then a series of judges. They had neither the prerogatives nor the authority that goes with royal status. Samuel was the last of these judges, and in his old age the people who had greatly respected him had no respect for his sons. They came to Samuel and asked that he choose “a king to be our leader, just like all the other nations.” In I Samuel 8:7 The Lord told Samuel, “Do everything they want you to do. I am really the one they have rejected as their king.”

At the foot of Mount Sinai they rejected the Lord God as their God and chose instead the golden calf, so now they have spurned God as their king. They have done this out of their desire to be like all the other nations, even though God intended for them to become a separate nation with a holy purpose, a special purpose that distinguished them from all other nations. This time, however, rather than threatening their destruction, he had Samuel warn them that with a king they would have taxes, military draft, involuntary servitude to the king and all the things that kings burden their people with.

Even with this warning, the tribes of Israel still wanted to be a nation with a king, so, God changed his mind. Even though he wanted them to see him alone as their king, he told Samuel to give them a king. Not long afterward, God told Samuel to anoint Saul, the son of Kish, to be their king. God did not want them to have a human king, but when Israel insisted, God changed his mind and gave them a king, a king of his own choosing.

We could go on along this line. Saul was God’s choice, but Saul proved a disappointment and God rejected him and named David king in his place. Later, having chosen and anointed David’s son, Solomon as king, God rejected a failed Solomon and divided his people Israel into two nations, one retaining the name Israel; the other becomes Judah.

In the story of Jonah, God’s word to the evil city of Ninevah is, “Forty days from now, Ninevah will be destroyed.” This is God’s word. But the people of Ninevah heard, believed, and changed their attitude and their ways. So God did not destroy them as he had said, unconditionally, he would. In other words, in light of their response to his prophetic word, God changed his mind and preserved them.

God continues to struggle with a recalcitrant Israelite people, sometimes they trust and obey, other times they rebel and choose what they believe will be better ways. Finally, in the days of his prophet, Jeremiah, God acknowledges that the agreement he had made with Israel has been broken beyond repair. In Jeremiah 31:31-34 God indicates that in the future, at an appropriate time, he will establish a new agreement, covenant, testament with Israel. Israel effectively and repeatedly has stymied God’s loving action on behalf of the world. So God makes a change in his plans and prepares for a fresh start. Again, God has changed his mind.

Why have I insisted on reciting these instances (there are more) where God changed his mind? Am I trying to make it look like God has less control of his world than we have thought? Am I trying to bring God down to human capacity? Am I in some sense attempting to diminish God to make him easier to deal with? No. I want to demonstrate something of what it means to say that God is love.

Rather, I am using biblical evidence to show that god is not an uncaring, removed, autocratic ruler who will always get his way, no matter what his subjects think or do. Rather, God cares and is actively involved in his world; he and his human creation have an interactive relationship in which each often influences what the other will do. God’s core relationship with humanity is not one of power and control, but of caring, responsive love. God’s words and actions are intended to affect what we do; our words and actions affect, to some degree, what God does.

Moreover, if God is affected by what we do, this not only means that God sometimes changes his mind, but also that God has affections, that God has an emotional life. This contradicts the ancient idea that one of God’s attributes is impassibility, that he has no feelings, remains untouched by anything outside of himself. Otherwise, it was believed that is anything affects the divine equilibrium, it would mean that God changes. The traditional doctrine of immutability says that God cannot change, and the traditional doctrine of impassive means that God remains unaffected by anything. He is always the same, untouched by the human situation. Not so. The biblical story of God shows repeatedly that he has an active emotional life, that his feelings change from time to time.

Certain things please God, other thing anger him. God does some things according to his own good pleasure. He is at times frustrated. There are things he hates and despises.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem and at the tomb of Lazarus. He despaired on the cross and was thirsty. On the cross, God in the flesh suffered.

[These last paragraphs only outline the idea. In the next day or two I intend to fill it out and clarify it.]

2010-10-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

A Religion of Rules?

Something about hard-edged and inflexible rules invites rebellion. We persistently search for loopholes, and routinely plead mitigating circumstances when we have disobeyed the law. When loopholes are locked shut and nothing is allowed to mitigate the harshness of punishment, we either submit or rebel. Human frailty feels the need for a little flexibility on occasion. Most of us believe that there are times when the law should be bent a little, if not broken. Most societies understand the dangers of rigid rules that demand obedience or else. Rules are essential; they must be followed; a society cannot exist without certain disciplines, but clear-thinking societies know that sometimes the law should be administered with a degree of moderation.

A religion of rules without emphasis on relationship breed rebellion against the rules and thus, against the religion that seeks to bind its adherents to the letter of the law, or else, it breeds those who believe in the literal letter of the law, ignoring its spirit and purpose. The apostle Paul tells us that the law was intended as a tutor helping us to understand major features of how love goes about its business. Rules, Paul says, are not an end in themselves. They serve a purpose: to lead us beyond the law to the freedom of following the spirit of the rules, to accomplish that which commandments by themselves cannot ever achieve.

But on the other hand, a religion of relationship, a religion of love without rules reduces religion to fickle feelings. We cannot love by a rule book, but love without boundaries risks a disconnect from the very meaning of love. Relationship requires rules, yet we cannot establish and maintain good relationships if we live purely by a set of rules.

Rules sometimes are intended to be rigidly adhered to and strictly enforced. On the other hand are rules of thumb, rules that tell us what, in general, what most of the time, we should do. Law guides behavior and educates us in the ways that work most effectively.

2010-10-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

The Bible Is Relative

The Ten Commandments commonly are understood by Christians and Jews as universal and absolute, binding on everyone. But they are not. They are relative to the people of Israel, as surely as the Sermon on the Mount is relative to the followers of Jesus. The Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites shortly after their escape from Egyptian bondage under the leadership of Moses. They were not given to the world. In them, God did not address all the peoples of the earth: they were not given to the Cherokees, the Finns, the Yoruba, the Saxons, nor the Aztecs. In introducing the Decalogue, “God said to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where were slaves,” and then begins telling them, “You shall, and you shall not . . ..”

“You” specifically, not everyone. He has a claim on them because he had rescued them and established a covenant relation with them, therefore he lays out the fundamental demands of that covenant. He has established no such relation to the Mongolians, the Germans, the Hittites, or the Egyptians. The Commandments are to be understood as relative to Israel and their covenant with God. They are to be understood as relative to the formative time in their history. Paul of Tarsus, in chapter 2, verses 12-15 of his letter to Roman Christians, tells that God will deal differently with those who do not have this Law; he will deal with all according to their situation.

The case is similar with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus retired to a mountainside with his disciples and began teaching them the nature of his kingdom. Again, he did not address the Romans, the Poles, the Syrians, nor the Iroquois. The Sermon on the Mount is to be understood as teachings for those who would commit to Jesus. God does not expect the same of unbelievers.
The Bible as a whole, and in its parts is relative. It does not deal in absolutes. It does not tell of God in abstractions, but always in relation to the human situation. Our knowledge of God is not complete, we know in only in part, only as he has chosen to reveal himself to us. In the big picture, Genesis 1-11 is relative to the rest of the Bible. It lays out the background against which the need for redemption is seen and provides the setting in which the story of redemption is told. We are to understand Genesis 12 and all that follows as God’s response to the conditions laid out in Genesis 1-11.

To touch on just a few of the relativities of the Old Testament, Abraham is important as the father of God’s covenant people. He is not important in and of himself, and yet, all the rest of the Bible is about him and his descendants. (Genesis 1-11, in contrast, deals in universal terms, with universal peoples.) Moses and David are important in their role as leaders of Israel; Elijah and Isaiah, along with the rest of the prophets, deliver messages from God relative to Israel (later, Israel and Judah).
In the New Testament, the first three gospels are relative: Matthew to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, Luke to the Gentiles. The epistles of the New Testament are relative to the unique situation and needs of the church to which they are written; the epistles to Timothy and Titus are relative to their pastoral responsibilities.

God speaks to people in all subsequent ages through the words of the Bible, but our understanding of what he has to say is relative to the original setting and purpose. You will search in vain for anything generic or absolute in the Bible.

2010-09-29T10:04:00.001-07:00

God Is Relatively in Control

The sailor cannot control the wind, but can control the set of his sails and thus reach his destination. The wind cannot be restrained but the sails can be regulated and the boat directed. The management of the boat requires both the wind and control of the sails. The sailor is dependent on the wind and on his knowledge and skill in making continual and appropriate adjustments of his sails to the wind. Moment by moment the wind determines what must be done; moment by moment it is in control, but the long-term direction is under the control of the competent sailor.

When Christians give assurance by saying, “God is in control,” what do they mean? Do they mean total control, or the kind of control the sailor has over his boat, relative control, control relative to the wind in case of the boat and control relative to human activity in case of the course of history? Some seem to think that God is in control of every single event and decision, just as a sailor might set his direction and move in a straight line toward his destination rather than having to tack back and forth before the wind. Control is an ambiguous concept.

“Don’t worry, God is in control,” I heard the morning after the attack on the world Trade Towers in September 2001. For a long time this offended me. I asked, “Was God in control of the terrorists who flew the instruments of death and destruction?” It seems blasphemous to think God was in control of those airplanes or the crew that had taken control of the flight. Who was in control of the event? Clearly evil was in control in this event.

To be “in control” is to be able to determine what takes place, relatively. Control is never over every detail unless you choose to believe that God preprogrammed creation and history down to the least particular. On a basketball court, who is in control of the game: the referee, the coaches, the captains of the teams, or the spectators and cheerleaders? The referee and umpires make the game run according to the rules. The coaches control who plays and, to a degree, what plays will be run. Each individual player has immediate control over his own actions. The team that has the ball can be said to be in control of the ball, but a team that continually has the leading score is said to control the game. Control is a relative matter. Not even the most effective tyrant can control all times, places and persons that are under his subjection. The mind and actions of the individual can never be under total control.

And God is not a tyrant, although some ideas of absolute divine control make God, in effect a tyrant who bends everything to his will. God is love and his control is that of a loving father who allows considerable freedom to his children. Loving control is a guiding control; it is freeing rather than restrictive. God sets the rules of the game of life. He trains and coaches those who are responsive to his guiding control.

In the big picture, everything goes in God’s providential direction, but he does not dictate all the details. Many of these are left to human free choice. The wind can blow hard against God’s desire and purpose, but as the expert helmsman sets his sails to take advantage of whatever wind blows, so God works all things together, including all that is counter to his will, to accomplish his will. In a world where the fierce, unpredictable winds of freedom and chance blow, God maintains overarching control.

At the World Trade Towers, as in the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge regime of genocide of the 1970s, the Ruandan genocide of 1994, and all the other unspeakable atrocities of history, the heart of God bled as he saw the evil his imago dei creatures imposed on each other and suffered at the hands of each other. God was not in control of these events as he is not in control of the evils we bring about and suffer in so many of in our individual lives. Nonetheless, God is wounded, but not defeated. The battle is long and hard, but it is not done. In spite of all appearance, God does not lose control. In spite of all that seems to count against him, he remains the only force that can be trusted. Yes, God is in control.

2010-09-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Relations, not Facts

Recent polls show that most Americans do not know the names of the four gospels, where in the Bible to find the Ten Commandments, any of the words to the 23^rd Psalm, nor that the Bible comprises sixty-six books. That indicates a lack of biblical knowledge at one level, but only a most basic level. This is disturbing to some of us, but such knowledge does not get at what the Bible is about. Bible study should focus on what it all means, and what it means to us and our world.

Before we begin studying the details, individual or small groups of verses, before we let ourselves get bogged down in controversy over any of the passages that are difficult to understand, we should look for the larger meanings, the purpose, intention, and aim of it all. What the Bible or any of its parts are all about is not a body of facts and information. It is about the nature and purposes of God, particularly in relation to his human creation.

Basically and ultimately the Bible is not about principles, ideas, doctrines, or rules for living; it is about relationships: God’s relation to his creation, particularly the human creation, and our relationship to him.

The Bible is about faith, forgiveness, trust, peace, patience, compassion, rebellion, hatred, lust, guilt, and the rest of the entire spectrum of personal relationships positive and negative. It is about love, the foundational relationship, the one that produces joy and peace. Bible study at its best explores these relations and their connection with each other. The meaning and significance of the biblical story is relational, relate-ive. The big picture must be understood before the details can find where they fit into the whole. And yes, it remains true that we can’t do much of this until we know the four gospels and the fundamental facts.

2010-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

God Doesn't Know?

It seemed that everything God had done for Israel was in vain, accomplished nothing, and was treated by his people as worthless. Was God disappointed? Can God’s feelings be hurt? Does God have feelings, or is he impassive? According to the prophet, Hosea, God is frustrated and doesn’t know what else he can do to get them to keep their covenant commitments to him. Hosea indicates that God has tried everything he knows how to do, all to no avail. He rescued them from slavery, made them his special people–a people with a special purpose, for the rest of the world–has blessed them with a great land, defeated all their enemies, sent them prophets, warned them of the dangers if they did not do right, has loved them with an everlasting steadfast love. He has even tried punishment–severe punishment. Nothing has gotten through to them. They have ignored God and done it their way. And continue to.

According to Hosea, it is God’s own words that tell us he doesn’t know what to do with them. Can this be? God is supposed to know everything, but he doesn’t know how to do with this intransigent nation of rebels. Maybe we have been wrong. Maybe there are things God doesn’t know. We’ll have to explore this. If there is that which God doesn’t know, perhaps even can’t know, we must abandon the ancient idea that God is omniscient, all knowing. Is Hosea wrong, or have we been wrong all these centuries? It may be that God is more complex than we have simplified him to be, than our creeds and doctrinal statements have been able to formulate; it just may be that there is more to God than can be fitted into our formulas.

2010-03-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Misunderstanding of God.

We tend to take on those traits that characterize the god we believe in. This is why I oppose absolutist views of the Christian’s God. Those who understand a god as absolute, tend to emphasize on absolute divine sovereignty, that is, that the god exercises complete control of all things. They also emphasize power and the divine right to use this power in any way the god might choose.

The followers of an absolute god tend to exercise full sovereignty over their churches, they seek to control the lifestyle of the group, and power is exercised to maintain this sovereignty and control the behavior of the believers. Everything becomes inflexible, unchallengeable, and permanent in form and content. I’ve been in many Christian churches in the past seventy years and too often this has been the pattern I have observed.

It is such a misunderstanding and thus, misrepresentation of the biblical God that I am opposing in this blog. I am motivated by this widespread misunderstanding, this misrepresentation of God.

I readily grant there are biblical foundations upon which such a view of God can be built. In the Bible, God regularly exercises his sovereign power. The ultimate issue is whether to give God’s mighty power the preeminence or whether, in the total biblical message, God’s love is given priority over all else. I am convinced that God is love, holy love, and that all other attributes of God are subordinated in the service of that love.

Love is a personal relationship, and the Christian community should be relate-ive, relational, that is, a community characterized by the obvious exercise of holy love.

This is the basic rational for what I am blogging.

2010-03-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

No Absolutes

When I say there are no absolutes, I am aware that I don't intend the common usage of the word. In its root meaning, however, the word means, "away from, separated from, apart from anything at all." It means, "non-relate-ive. It means "related to nothing, dependent on nothing, connected to nothing.

Nothing exists in such a totally disconnected way except as an abstract idea in a human mind. We can mentally abstract things from the real world (a world of connections and relationships) and think of them as totally separate from all else. When we leave the world of our ideas, however, we can name nothing that is not related to something else.

What about God? I believe in the biblical God who is known as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is not a solitary absolute. God was never lonely. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Both love the Spirit. The Spirit loves them both.

2010-03-02T06:41:00.000-08:00

The Divine Relativity

Again, I want to make it clear that I am using relative and absolute in a special sense, a sense that grows directly out of the root meaning of the terms.

For me, relative means related, related to something; it means relate-ive in nature, relational in essence. And since I believe that everything is related to something else, I believe that everything is relate-ive–relative–and cannot be rightly understood apart from relationship.

God is relate-ive in essence, because God is essentially trinitarian: Father, Son, Spirit in an eternal relation of love. Love is neither an idea, a principle, a force, nor a law. It is a relationship. God is love; God is relative.

I do not use relative in the sense that says the meaning or value of anything is up to each of us to decide for our self. I do not mean that everyone has their own truth or their own definition right and wrong. Although in one sense I believe everything is relative, I completely reject relativism as it is commonly understood.

I will deal with the way I use “absolute” in the next blog.

2010-02-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

Orthodox Christian Relativity

To some recent respondents:

I may have, unintentionally, misled some with my use of “relative” and “absolute.” I agree with all criticisms if I meant these words in the ordinary sense. I need to define my terms more specifically. The root meaning of relative is “relate-ive,” and that is what God is all about. God is love. Love is a relationship, not a principle, a thing, or a theory. The incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of Jesus are all meant to make possible a restored relationship with God. A Christian is a person who is in right relationship with God.

God is love. God is all about relationship. Sin is anything that disrupts our relationship with God. God is eternally trinitarian. Christianity is not a mere monotheism, it is a trinitarian monotheism. The God Christians worship, serve, and trust is Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal relation to each other. This is one way I use the term, “relative” in connection (relation) with God.

There is a second use of the term, however, in my theology. That is that God relates to his creation according to his purpose, human need, or the historical situation. This has many implications I will deal with another time. It means, among other things, that he dealt with Israel differently than he dealt with the New Testament church. He dealt with ancient Egypt differently than he dealt with the Roman Empire. As I wrote before, Jesus dealt with each individual relative to their unique situation, and the New Testament epistles are relative to local situations.

One specific issue needs to be addressed. The book of Hebrews doe not says that “God” is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It speaks of Jesus as “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” One of the major emphases of Hebrews is that Jesus was in all points tested like we are, that he is our brother (See ch. 2), that he understands by experience what our life is like and therefore can be a faithful high priest on our behalf. That is who he was yesterday (in his days on earth), that is who he still is, and that is who he will be forever: “our “faithful and merciful high priest.” That will not change.

Now to the word, “absolute.” “Ab,” plus “solvere.”
ab-prefix, from L. ab-, ab "off, away from," from PIE base *apo-“
L. solvere "to loosen, dissolve, untie," from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *swe- + base *leu- ‘to loosen, divide, cut apart’ (cf. Gk. lyein ‘to loosen, release, untie,’ away; see ab-1 + solvere, to loosen.”

The above demonstrates the historical roots of “absolute.” It means “away from,” “loosened from any connection to,” i.e., “all by itself with no connections–relations--to anything.”

This would be true of a mono-theistic God, but the God who is a trinitarian monotheos is not separate from all connections or relations. Rather, as Father, Son, and Spirit, God is eternally relational in his very nature. He is not a “lone.” He is one God, an eternal, divine relationship–a relational mystery.

To believe God is absolute in the sense I have just described is heresy. I understand why so many use the term, however. Absolute is commonly understood as the ultimate, the highest and supreme attribute that can be given to anything. It is used as a term of worth-ship. I understand that, but consider the word misleading. Here are the words I use for the same: ultimate, universal, supreme, and, of course, holy.

This is a bit long for a single blog, but I must make one additional statement. I am a Christian. I’ve trusted my life into the hands of the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the one who by his life, death, and resurrection made complete atonement for sin. I believe the historical statements of orthodox Christian theology. I do interpret the meaning of these doctrines differently than they have been commonly interpreted, but I do completely believe in the meaning of traditional Christian thought.

I believe a Christian is a person for whom Jesus Christ is decisive and definitive in all things present, past, future, and eternally.

On the other hand, I don’t worry about human judgments of my relation to God. I don’t have to be conservative, liberal, evangelical, Catholic, orthodox or neo-orthodox, post-modern, emergent, or traditional. “On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.”

2010-02-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

No Biblical Absolutes

Contrary to popular understanding, the Bible delivers us no absolutes. Everything in the Bible is relative: on one hand, to God, and on the other hand, to some particular person or group, occasion, or need.

The ten commandments are not absolutes, they are addressed only to God’s covenant people, Israel–not to the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, nor to the Yoruba or Arapaho.

The Sermon on the Mount contains no absolutes; it is addressed to the larger group of his disciples. These teachings relate specifically relate to those who commit to follow Jesus and allow their life to be disciplined by him.

The need to be born again is not presented as an absolute necessity. Only Nicodemus is told that he must be born again. Jesus says to one that all he needs is to sell out and follow Jesus. Another is told to leave his parents and follow Jesus. Still another, the Gerasene demoniac, is not allowed to follow Jesus, but told to stay in his home territory. There is no single “plan of salvation.” Jesus deals with everyone differently, relative to their personal condition.

The epistles of the New Testament offer no absolute teaching or rules. Each epistle is written relative to the needs in a particular church. The Galatian churches are not taught the same thing about women in the church as the Corinthian church. Different places, different situations. The letter called Philemon was written to Philemon relative to a runaway slave named Onesimus. Paul deals with rules differently with Timothy than he does with the Galatians. The book of Hebrews is written relative to Hebrew Christians and relative to the Hebrew Bible book of Leviticus.

Christians are not to try to impose absolutes on anyone, but to serve as faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, living out all the things he has commanded them.

2010-02-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last week we attended, along with maybe two hundred others, my brother-in-law's 90th birthday party. About half of these were relatives, many, like me, relatives by marriage.

We use the word "relative" in two or three different ways (at least). In speaking of the divine relativity, I use it in two of these senses.

We all have relatives, people we are related to. This is one usage. Human's are, by nature, inescapably, relate-ive. We are related to people, we relate to non-family members also. We are relative. In this sense, God is relative.

The common understanding of things that are "relative" is that there is no definite truth or goodness. That these--and other matters--are just "relative to the individual. No universal true, no universal good. It is a matter of personal choice.

Relative, by its nature, means "related to something or someone." In the common usage, it seems to mean, "related strictly to each individual or individual group." This usage, I reject as nonsense.

Another common usage of the term is that things are relative to the situation, relative to a context. Specific instances of right and wrong, truth and falsity may in some real sense be dependent on the particular time and place. God seems to be relate-ive in this sense. When we read the Bible, God appears--and acts--in ways that, by common standards, are not consistent with each other. God changes, relative to the circumstance.

In the end, everything is relative to God; God is relative to everything. God and thus, all reality is relational. God relates, we relate. God cares and is involved.

2010-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Bible is about relations and relationships, not ideas, doctrines, principles or propositions. Everything about it is relate-ive.

2010-02-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

I am Back

It has been over a year since I have blogged. I took time off to finish writing a book that I began years ago. The first full draft is now finished. I expect to edit and rewrite for a few months, then publish late this summer. The book focuses on how to become a good or better thinker.

I intend to serialize it, a chapter per month, on my “Considerate Thinking” blog. Meanwhile, I am posting snippets of it on Twitter daily. Check Twitter–wallaceroark. http://twitter.com/#home

I hope to update at least two of my several blogs (see the bottom of My Profile) each week

2008-02-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

God is relative, there are no absolutes, and that is the good news. Succinctly stated, that is the theme of this blog. I reason from this duofold major premise: the biblical statement that God is love, and its theological corollary that Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism.

The practical purpose is to return Christian thoughts and feelings to our responsibility–our sole responsibility–to love God and to love our neighbor, to turn our thoughts and feelings away from the notion that our responsibility is to obey the rules if we are not to face the terrors of a despotic God.

Edmund Morris, in Theodore Rex, quotes President Roosevelt I: “. . . of one thing I am sure . . . the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.”

What Roosevelt says next is a good statement of what I think and how I feel about the “God Is Relative” blog: “. . . it may be that I am wrong, but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong.”

2008-02-10T18:44:00.001-08:00

John Said:

God is open. Incandescent. Welcome mat out.
Is that what follows
or what will or might follow?

Logic is the study of what follows.
Maybe. Probably. Certainly. Impossible.
Could be, who knows? Non sequitur.

Maybe it is possible, after all.
God created it, but cannot lift it--
without our help.
Somewhere, in all of this,
there is a big, big rock.

And it is falling,
gathering moss and souls
and nations and centuries.
Can it be stopped?

Not by Sisyphus.
Not without the holy dynamis

Is He in it with us?
Did it hit him?
Or is it
the other way around? Or . . .

What do I know?
God knows.
But what does he know?
And when?

Open question.
Curtain opened,
not completely.

2008-02-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

Unintentional Saboteurs of the Christian Faith

They were in the coffee room, upperclassmen, three of them, preparing to become Christian ministers. My office was just around the corner so I heard everything they said. It was midmorning, September 12, 2001. It was not just their words; I could hear their posture, gesture, tone, and attitude. These were Christian Studies majors (Christ-ian Studies).

I have read all four accounts of the Jesus story. I have taught Christian Studies for thirty-some years. I taught "The Life and Teachings of Jesus” for more than twenty years. Jesus did not get his words and attitude from his surrounding culture. These fellows did. They sounded just like their surrounding culture.

They were venting. I wasn't at all surprised by the response of the typical citizen. It was in complete accord with the character of their culture, their socialization. It was what patriotic emotion deemed appropriate. But these guys called themselves followers of Jesus; they claimed to be believers.

There was a disconnect. And they were not the only ones in the Christian community saying things like this.

We ought to nuke Afghanistan back into the Stone Age.

Yeah!

We ought to bomb Afghanistan off the map.

This did not come from Jesus. They were not following the one they called their Lord. Claiming to be, studying to be, and training to be God's representatives, they misrepresented the God who came to us in Jesus Christ, "God among Us," "Immanuel."

September 12, 2001 is not the only time God's "representatives" have misrepresented God. For a variety of reasons, and to the undermining of Christian faith, this kind of unintended and unconscious sabotage has a long and widespread history.

Don't look at or listen to them. Pick up a Bible; read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Look at, look to, and listen to Jesus.

2007-10-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

The heart of the word, "god," is power. In all religions, God is seen as transcendent power. This is the one idea that all concepts of God share.

Today I picked up an old collection of theological essays, Frontline Theology, edited by Dean Peerman. I read "Religion, Faith, and Power," by Richard R. Niebuhr. I've like Niebuhr for a long time.

In the course of his essay, he says: "If I must choose one word now to indicate the meaning of the word, ‘God,’ it is power. (Of . . . alternatives available . . . This one [power] seems to me the most universally significant.)." That sounds almost like what I wrote above. I would agree with Niebuhr if by, "God," he means "god."

The Christian God is distinguished as the God whose power is love,
whose power is subordinated (sub-ordered, arranged beneath) to love,
whose power is in the service of Holy Love.

The power of love, not the love of power.

2007-10-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

Open Theism Again

He was talking about me. How do I know? Because he had been kind enough to let me know before mailing the letter for publication in the Texas Baptist Standard. For months this San Antonio pastor, a former student of mine, had been emailing, calling on me to repent of the “heresy” of Open Theism.

I am recording here a part of my response to the published letter, a letter that was the opening volley in a war against open theism among Texas Baptists. I record this, hoping to further an awareness of the nature of this controversial doctrine of God’s relationship to the future.

Sad to say, I have been told by people wiser than myself that there is no chance that open theism will ever find favor among Baptist Christians. So far as I know, I am the only Texas Baptist to openly identify with open theism, but I disagree about its future. The views of Copernicus, Columbus, and Semmelweis, although widely believed today, were a long time gaining acceptance. This is a pattern well-known to historians.

The fact is that I strongly affirm most of what my adversary says open theists deny. Using the language of his letter, I believe “God is: holy, good, loving, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-present,” although I define omniscience more precisely than it is understood traditionally. I also believe “salvation is: by grace alone, through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone.”

Again using his language, I do not “deny the foreknowledge of God,” although I understand it differently than many do. I certainly do not “describe God as one who makes mistakes,” or who “repents as a man.” [Italics mine] God does not make mistakes nor does he repent in the ways characteristic of humans.

I do affirm that God “risks, regrets, and repents,” but not as men repent. Also, in contrast to the charge in the letter, I strongly affirm God’s capability to work all things together for good.
__________________

To move now beyond the letter and my response, I believe that open theism clarifies what Christians believe about God. The truth is that most of us live by a theology of openness whether our doctrinal understanding agrees with it or not. Open theism is an effort made to bring our doctrine and our practice into harmony. It can help us integrate thought and life and lead us toward greater Christian integrity.

The alternative to open theism is a closed theology in which everything in history and eternity is already a “done deal,” and we are without choice. Moreover God is without choice. Open theism denies such a closed world. It affirms the good news that the future is open–that God is open. We live in a world of possibilities; nothing has to remain as it is; no one has to go on living as they have. Change is an open possibility.

The Bible (The New Testament as well as the Hebrew Bible, which was Jesus’ Bible, and which is the Christian’s Old Testament) is at it heart and in its purpose a gospel message. It is good news. Open theism is rooted in the gospel story, in the love of God, in what prayer is all about, and what evangelism is all about. Its major challenges come from concerns about divine sovereignty, prophecy, foreknowledge, predestination, and foreordination, and in the immutability–unchangeability–of God, all of which I will address another time.

Open theism is the theology Christian actually live by, that unconsciously we believe. We live believing the good news that the future is open, that it depends on how we decide to relate to God. We are free to repent of our sinful ways and turn to the God whose arms are “open wide.” Our future is open. It is not already in and done from all eternity.

We pray believing that prayer affects God. Prayer, by itself, does not change things. It does not operate by some kind of independent magic. It is God, who in response to our prayers, changes things. Some things will not happen if we do not pray; some things will happen only if we do pray.

What God will do in the future depends in part on our prayer life, our living relation to him. Although many of us would hesitate to say it explicitly, in practice we believe that prayer can change what God will do. The future, under God’s control, is partly dependent on us.

We evangelize the non-Christian, believing who although lost at present, their future is open. Although now in their unforgiven sin, they stand under the wrath of God, if they repent and believe the gospel, we know that God’s gracious love stands ready to forgive and accept them. It has long been observed that although many Baptists preach Calvinistic sermons, they extend Arminian invitations.

Open theism, contrary to some representations of it, does not necessarily choose sides in the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. If these systems are defined in narrow form, open theism rejects them both. On the other hand, it affirms–as historic Baptist practice and cooperation has done–features of both. It is a mistake to cast open theism as merely another way of describing the old predestination/free will debate.

The biblical statement, “God is love,” is the defining foundation for open theism. Love is not God, but God is love. Holy Love is the very heart and character of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ. All other attributes and actions of God flow from his holy love.

Love is a relationship–a personal relationship. It is neither a principle nor merely a power. It is a word used to describe personal relationships that are as God intends.

Love by its very nature is grounded in freedom. Love cannot be forced; it must be freely chosen, else it is not love. This is why God created the human with freedom of choice. We are created for a relationship of love with God and with each other. God loves us and desires our love, but in the very nature of love cannot force that love. Our rejection of God always disappoints him; our love for, trust in, and worship of God always pleases him.

We miss the major thrust of the Bible if we think that our response doesn’t affect God at all, that it makes no difference to him. And if it does make a difference--any difference--to God, then, in some sense, our decisions change something within the very heart of God. We make a difference to God, and we are dealing with a God who is open to reconsider some of his actions. If this is really so, the story of this kind of God is good news.
____________

We will explore this further.

2007-10-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Open Theism"

If God is relative, not absolute, than it would seem that God is subject to change, and of course we all know that God cannot change. Again, we are under the influence of Aristotle and his Unmoved Mover, and are still in agreement that Patripassionism is heresy. Yes, God changes.

Note the several references in the Scriptures where it is said that God repented of one thing or another. We all understand that God has not done something wrong for which he must repent, but we also must recognize that God, in some sense, changes course in these passages. God is often frustrated, but never thwarted. If he fails to find those who will trust and obey, he continues to move to accomplish his will and purpose. I

t was not God’s will that Israel have a king in the days of Samuel, the judge of Israel. God was their king. But when they were insistent, God made a shift, relative to their stand, and gave them Saul as king. God could accommodate himself to the situation, and did. When Saul became a disappointment, God selected David as a replacement; when David failed at significant points, Solomon was God’s choice, but God again found the need for a course correction after the failure of Solomon.

Nowhere is change more evident in God than in the Incarnation. God, by divine knowledge and creative experience knew everything about human being, but he did not know by experience what it meant to be a human being until Mary had her child named Jesus who was in all points human. This is something new for God, to be Emmanuel.

And when Jesus prayed in agony in Gethsemane, and later on the cross asked in despair why God had forsaken him, surely no one is prepared to say this made no difference to God. The full story of God’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth means there is some kind of difference in God after the incarnation. God, in some sense, is changed.

Now Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the second “person” of The Trinity, knows, bu experience, what it is like to live as a human. That is who he was on this earth, and as the writer of the Hebrews notes, that is who is now, and always be: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Rather than proving that God doesn’t change, it refers to the fact that God is changed forever as a result of the incarnation.

God’s character doesn’t change, God’s purpose doesn’t change, but because his character and purpose are relational in nature, it is God’s character to be free to change, relative to the living people and their free responses as they are involved in the working out of his purpose.

God is love, God can be trusted eternally; Jesus is the truth and the only way. In him alone is life and that life is the light of men. This truth doesn’t change.

But God is alive and dynamic, not a mere eternal principle, Force, or Absolute Idea, so there is a continual process of change in God as he still suffers for us, in us, and with us. Since we are free and God is free, the future depends on the way we respond to God: in faith and obedience, or in rebellion and disbelief.
___________________

Another potential objection immediately arises. If the future is dependent on our response to God’s initiative, then it would seem that God would not know what the future will be, the future would be open. Doesn’t God know everything? Isn’t God omniscient?

The answer lies in the distinction between the potential future an the actual future. The eternal, holy God who created the entire world knows everything that has happened--the actual past--knows everything that is on the scene of the present--the actual present--and knows all future potentiality. Nothing could occur that would surprise God or catch him unprepared. But the actual future is another matter.

H. L. Cravens, a legendary teacher at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, was a nationally acclaimed, championship checker player. Occasionally on days set aside for fun, he would challenge as many university students as desired to play him in a game of checkers--all at once. Tables were set up and as many as sixteen checkerboards might be lined up as students took him on.

Dr. Cravens stepped to the first table, the first checkerboard, and moved a checker, then to the second board, and on, until he had played each student. Then he would walk back to the first table and start again with the first student’s game. He took only a few seconds at each board. In a short while, a few boards began to be folded, then more, until only two or three remained. Dr. Cravens always defeated all challengers, although I do remember one fellow who claimed, “I almost beat him.”

For years I assumed that my friend knew all possible moves on a checkerboard, and had strategies for dealing with any of them. I suspected that after the first two or three moves he knew whether his opponent was a serious player or not, and that he could usually predict what each player was likely to play next.

A couple of days before his death, visiting in his home, I told him I had often spoken of his checker knowledge as analogous to God’s knowledge. He confirmed most of what I said about his knowledge of checkers, but noted that he did not begin to know all possible moves that might develop during the course of a game between skilled players. He believed those moves to be almost infinite in number.

He did agree that after the first few moves he knew what kind of player he was up against, and that at any given moment he knew not only what possibilities there were for the next move, but also what move a player was likely to make. He also knew ahead of time how he would respond, depending on what choice his challenger took.

As indicated earlier, I see H. L.’s knowledge of checkers as a pointer to God’s knowledge of the future. The world and human history are infinitely more complex than a checker game, but God created it all and does know all its possible moves. Humans were created with genuine freedom, but again, God knows all possibilities that exist for humanity as well as for each person. In the sense that he knows all future possibilities and cannot be surprised or caught unprepared, God knows everything. But because God is love--relational--and because he created humans with the freedom that love entails, God does not know the actual future until it happens.

At any given moment, he knows not only what moves are possible, but he knows what moves are likely because of the pattern and character of the past. He is prepared to accomplish his purpose not matter what human choices are made, but if the human is genuinely free, God cannot know which option will be taken until it is actually taken.

God can be trusted to complete the creation and redemption he has begun; he will not be defeated. There will come the time when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” the day when the victory will be complete and he will be known as “King of Kings and Lords,” will put all enemies under his feet, “and he shall reign forever and forever.” But until then, both God and his creature struggle with the powers of evil, and the moment by moment development of this conflict is open and unknowable in its actuality until that moment happens.

To repeat, God knows all the past, the entire present scene, and all potential futures, but he does not and cannot know the actual future until it occurs. Our understanding of God’s knowledge hinges on the distinction between potential and actual future events. More fundamentally, it hinges on our understanding of the relation between love and freedom.

2007-09-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Is Faith What God Is About?

This post is an expansion of a blog I wrote March 6, 2007. It is for the most part an expanded look into “faith.” This is not a complete overlap of the other. They complement each other.

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The preacher asked “What is God about? It was the kind of question that I pay attention to. If I can know what God is about in this world, then in the limited time I have remaining in life, I want to be about the same thing.

The question was rhetorical, so I was not surprised when the minister gave us the answer: “He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith . . .” A little later he spoke again of faith, this time in relation to the book that stirs all kinds of imagination, the biblical book of Revelation. “Revelation,” he said, “is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith.” He referenced Revelation 7:14-17.

So God is about getting us to the point of faith; the book of Revelation is about those who have faith. Is faith what it is all about? I remember a Bible professor who in all kinds of contexts, not just religious, was frequently heard to say, “You just have to have faith.” What was that supposed to mean?

If faith is the final word, it is meaningless. Faith without an object is dead, being alone. Faith is always “faith in.” Depending on the object of faith, we can speak of species of faith: religious faith (whether Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or some other), political, economic, national, scientific, or secular.

Strangely, the president of the United States has spoken much about “faith-based initiatives.” Others, following a similar line of thinking speak of “faith communities.” The fact is that all initiatives are faith-based. All true common-unities share, among other things, a common faith. In my hometown, we had a highschool football coach whose teams had won more state championships than any other team in the United States. The town, the bankers, and the young football players had great faith in this phenomenal coach.

We live by faith–all of us. We live by what we believe in, what we believe about. We make our decisions and take action based on those things we are convinced of, those things–persons included–that we trust. The atheist is a believer. The atheist believes there is no god.

Faith is not a stand-alone word. Faith is not an end in itself. The Christian Bible says: “Faith without works is dead.” A favorite Christian hymn says:“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way . . ..”

Faith, and I’m not speaking just of religious faith, is mediate a medium, an intermediary, a go-between. Faith is an attitude, a stance. It is a bridge, a door, a relation, a motivator, a means, a way, an enabler.

Faith always points beyond itself, as do its synonyms: trust, confidence, commit, rely, accept, conviction, convinced, depend on.

A faith refers to an organized structure derived from the above, it has content and related constituents. In this sense it is a complex.

Faith may be merely intellectual, personal, or pragmatic, the coalescence of all three.
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Now, having given something of a wordy disquisition on the word, faith, I return to the question of what God is about, the question that got all this stirred up within me. What is God about?

The Bible says “God is love,” and Jesus, when asked what the greatest of all God’s commands was, answered, saying that everything God is about can be stated concisely. All God wants of his human creation is for them to love God and to love each other. If God is love, and if love is all he desires, it seems clear to me what God is about: God is about love.

Faith is an attitude, a chosen stance that puts its confidence, its trust in God. When a person adopts this relation to God, the way to love is opened, the person accepts God at face value, and commits their life to the practice of the divine love that faith enables them to accomplish.

Faith is the necessary intermediary between their old life and their new life of reliance on God. Faith does the work; love is the accomplishment.
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But even love is not what God is about, not ultimately. Why love, except that God commands it? Love leads to what it is all about, what in the end God is, has, and always will be about.

Love changes things, changes everything. If you’ve ever been “in love,” you know this. Love is enjoyable, when under its spell, all else is forgotten and we are at peace. We feel that our life has been enriched beyond measure.

I summed it up best in the March blog:
“What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.”

2007-09-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Music, in it simplest form, is much like a trip from the house to the mailbox, perhaps along the way making a brief stop to pick up the newspaper, then back to the house (and, as we will see, the Christian Bible is much like a musical composition). Almost any piece of music in the Western world begins with a note or chord called the “tonic.” This sets the “tone” for the piece of music; it tells us what “key” the music is being played in. The tonic is “home.”

The major movement of music is from the tonic to a note or chord called the “dominant,” then back home to the tonic: tonic to dominant and back to tonic. But just as the trip to the mailbox and back may involve a brief stop for the newspaper or to smell the rosebush, so the trip back from the tonic to the dominant usually involves a visit to the sub-dominant.

Thus, the basic pattern of music is the movement from tonic to sub-dominant, to dominant, and back to tonic. You leave home, take a trip, and come back home. This movement away from home adds interest to life, but the arrival back home brings us back to our comfortable world.

The Christian Bible, and the Christian religion are commonly understood as a simple movement of similar sort: from Creation to Sin to New Creation, or, Generation to De-generation to Re-generation. There is nothing wrong with this simple pattern. It is the movement of the biblical story just as surely as tonic, subdominant, dominant is the movement of a piece of music.

Sometimes we take longer trips, like downtown shopping. Several stores, a few visits, fill up with gasoline, but eventually “home, sweet home.”

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” follows the basic pattern. So does “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” But along the way, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while maintaining the basic pattern, adds some new and interesting elements. These move us from the sweet and somnolent tones of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” to an arousing, energizing, and heart-stirring call to pride and/or action.

Anyone can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” It is easy. The national anthem of the United States is a much more challenging and difficult piece to sing, but it stirs us more deeply than the little lullaby.

The New Testament book of Romans follows the pattern of generation, degeneration, and regeneration, but adds enough challenging, enriching, and thought-provoking elements that few of us find it easy reading. There is somehow more involved in the basic pattern than we had realized. The basic pattern is still there, but it no longer is simple.

Music becomes much richer, more complex, challenging, provocative, disturbing, and difficult (both to play and for the ear and mind to follow) when we move from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E Flat. This symphony is, in one sense, a movement from the tonic (E Flat), to the sub-dominant (A Flat), to the dominant (B Flat), and eventually back to the tonic (E Flat).

In Symphony No.3 in E Flat once the tonic chord sets the tone, the music quickly moves to chords that sound a different, improper sounding tone. To simplify the rest of the symphony, it changes its tonal center several times, always eventually coming back to the original tonic with its E Flat tonic and its subdominant and dominant. Much of the time, however, it sounds like it has departed completely from the original theme, perhaps having lost it, or changed its mind.

Complex music ordinarily requires several hearings before it begins to make sense, and can be seen as a unified whole. Those who take the trouble to hear it again and again find it a source of great wonder, joy, and satisfaction.

The Christian Bible is not a simple piece of literature; it is quite complex and diverse, often sounding seemingly contradictory notes and themes. Leviticus, Judges, the books of he Kings and Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and several of the Psalms, all exemplify these problematics. Of course, this only covers some of the problems.
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I propose that God’s love is the tonic note of the Bible. We might say that the sub-dominant is God’s kind of love that humans can share with each other, and the dominant is the human love of God. The final movement is back to the tonic: the love of God. The entire Bible and the entirety of a faithful Christian religion are written in the key of Love, not love as is ordinarily understood, but the Holy Love demonstrated and taught by Jesus.

I base this analysis on the following biblical statements: “God is love,” “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," “Love never fails,” “. . . faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love,” “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

Much of the Bible sounds as if it had little if nothing to do with love. Much seems clearly contradictory to love. Much sounds as if power, control, or harsh demands is the central theme.

The Bible is a difficult, complex book that, based on a single reading, can be as disturbing as it can be life-affirming. But those who read it repeatedly and thoughtfully, especially if once they have clearly heard the tonic, Holy Love, begin to see that it all makes sense, all fits together, and all reflects the sometimes joyous, sometimes quite demanding development of the highest, the infinite love. Everything ultimately stems from love and leads back to that home.

Read it enough and its love will become something to enjoy and will bring a satisfying peace.

The tonic is love; the subdominant is love; the dominant is love; the way back home is the way of from love to love.
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I don’t pretend to have God figured out. God is disturbing and awesome mystery; God is life and hope. If you were to go to asking me questions, there would be many I could ot answer. I know most of the answers that have been given to most of the questions, but I still am unable to answer some of them.

I am confident that all flows from the divine love, that love is all that is required, and that God’s holy love, revealed in Jesus, is the standard by which we will be judged.

2007-08-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

God is relative, but in what sense? In dictionary sense, in etymological sense, but not in the common sense that understands it to mean: “relative to an individual’s personal preference or taste,” nor any other of the connotations commonly associated with the word.

The Christian God is relative in the sense of: “not absolute, connected, in relation to, dependent upon,” and other such. God is relative to each individual person or thing in his creation; he is connected, in relation to all his creation and as such, all has some kind of connection with God. Whether it is a good relationship or not is another matter.

And as I have said repeatedly in these blogs, God is internally and eternally related, connected, in relation to, and in some sense dependent because the one God is trinitarian. Father is dependent on Son and Spirit, would not be Father without Son, Son would not be Son without Father, and I am sure there is much more that lies beyond me.

So much for this effort at clarification.
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When I write that God changes, what can I mean by that? A few years ago a student took several classes with me, but missed the course in Christian Doctrines where I explain what I mean. He did not take that class, but heard by the student grapevine that I believed God changes. I learned later that he took this to mean that God wasn’t necessarily what Christians believe and teach, and, therefore, perhaps could not be trusted.

In other blogs I’ve explained what I do mean by divine mutability, let me clarify what I do not mean.

A well-known Christian Hymn states it quite well:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not;
As Thou has been Thou forever wilt be.

God’s character does not change. His faithfulness changes not, nor his compassions, love, holiness, sovereignty, grace, mercy, loving kindness, righteousness/justice. This is who God is. As God has been, in these senses, he forever will be. God can be trusted to be faithful to his revealed character.

For the senses in which God does change, read the previous posts on this blog.

2007-08-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

I am wrong; God is not relative–unless . . . in the biblical story, God deals with every situation in the same way. But He doesn’t.

Examples:

Genesis, chapter 4.
When Adam and Eva disobeyed and ate forbidden fruit, God drove them out of Eden where they were condemned to sweat and toil for their livelihood. Then when their son, Cain, violently took his anger out on his brother, Abel, God condemned him to be a wandering fugitive, but “put a mark” on him, a mark that would protect him from the violence of others.

Genesis, chapter 6.
When, in the days of Noah, “the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” God responded with “behold, I will bring a flood of waters on the earth . . . [and] everything that is on the earth shall die.” (Except, that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord”).

We could continue in Genesis with the cases of Lot’s wife (a pillar of salt), and Jacob (limping with a wounded thigh). Skipping to Numbers, we could consider Miriam (leprosy), and Moses (forbidden entrance to the Promised Land).

On and on through the Bible we could go, but this has been enough to make the point. When God punished human sin, the punishment was different each time. They were not all driven from their home, drowned, turned to salt, stricken with leprosy, nor forbidden to taste the fruit of their life’s labor. On each occasion, God related differently, his response relative to the situation.

Turning to the New Testament, we observe only a few of the actions of Jesus. Simon’s mother-in-law was healed when Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up. A paralytic was merely told, “Take up your bed and walk,” and immediately was healed. Apparently, a Syrophoenician woman’s demon-possessed daughter was healed only after she argued about it with Jesus. None of Jesus’ healings followed a fixed pattern. Moreover, it seems certain, at least to me, that his differing treatments were not chosen arbitrarily. Each was relative to the occasion.

None but Nicodemus were told they needed to be “born again.” Only to the Samaritan woman was offered “living water.” Only the “rich young ruler” was told to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor.” Only the thief on the cross was told, “today you will be with me in Paradise.” We find no specific “plan of salvation.”

In Paul’s writings, some are “saved,” others “cleansed,” “redeemed,” “regenerated,” “reconciled,” “justified,” “received the Spirit,” “set free,” “made alive,” “delivered and transferred”–the language is always relative.
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In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments were not given as universal requirements; they were directed only to Israel, relative to God’s special purpose for this, his covenant nation. In the New Testament, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to the entirety of the human race, but only to his disciples, relative to God’s purpose for them. Both groups, the recipients of Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount, have meaning only relative to larger God’s concern for his entire broken creation.
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No, God does not operate by any predetermined, set method. One last example is found in the way God deals with Israel’s enemy nations. In the Old Testament, God almost always uses violent and militaristic means to save his people, Israel. God is a warrior. In the New Testament, with Israel–and then with his New Israel–under Roman oppression and persecution, God the Warrior does not come to the rescue. Rather, his chosen method of response–revealed, exemplified, and taught by Jesus–seems to be suffering, sacrificial, and loving service. This appears to be some kind of major shift in God’s modus operandi.

We may conclude that for us today, God deals with each of us according to our own need, personality, situation, and openness to his help. Accordingly, we should avoid limiting our presentation of God, our way of working with God to any set formula or pattern.

Everything considered and all action taken is always relative to God and to the unique occasion.

More to come.

2007-08-22T09:16:00.001-07:00

Prove that God is not relative. A couple of days ago I suggested several ways to do this. Today, I address the first three:

• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God.
• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly affirms that God is love.
• God is not relative unless the Bible asserts that all God wants of us is love.

Few readers would deny that the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God, clearly affirms that God is love, and asserts that all God wants of us is love. Some, however, would question how this demonstrates divine relativity. Therefore we will review each of these core Christian beliefs.

Love is a personal relationship. Love is the ideal way one person relates to another. Love relates persons. Love is relate-I’ve. Some have suggested that it would be better to say that love is relation-al. To say that love is relational is certainly true, but the word, relational,
breaks down to relate-ion-al. The relational is relative. (I hope you can relate to this.) Since God is love, God is relate-ive/relative in nature.

Christianity is not an ordinary monotheism. It, rather, is a trinitarian monotheism: one God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit, in eternal relation, eternally relating to each other in love. The heart of God is relate-ive/relative.

All of God’s laws, all God’s commandments, all of his requirements are subsumed under the greatest commandment: to love God and to love each other–to rightly relate to God and each other. Everyone is relative to God; God is relative to everyone and everything. Some of us relate rightly, some wrongly. God relates to some of us with blessing and to others he relates his disfavor.

The Trinitarian God is internally and eternally relative. Humanity was created relative to God, to each other, and to the rest of his creation. God is relative to all creation; all creation is relative to God.

In the great ecological web of life, everything is related, ultimately to everything, supremely to God. Relational disconnect is impossible in a world created by the trinitarian God who is love.

I realize that I am using “relative” in a special way, but it is a valid usage of language, and it is sound reasoning. In our next blog I will talk about a second usage of relative, one that echoes throughout the Bible.

I realize also that today’s blog is somewhat abstruse. I will try to avoid this kind of writing as much as possible.

I realize also that this has been repetitive and reiterative, but “repetition is the mother of learning.”

2007-08-20T07:53:00.001-07:00

If you have been reading this blog for some time, you know that it claims as The Gospel Truth that God is relative and that there are no absolutes. This claim flies in the face of the long-established history of Christian thinking. Thus, it is highly probable that this blog does not tell the truth.

Be aware, however, that what I write and my line of reasoning proceeds from development within the complex story that the Christian Bible narrates; I am not reasoning from the traditions that root in Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, nor any other tradition. If I am wrong, it is because I have not read the Bible with clear eyes.

Anyone who would prove that the idea of divine relativity is wrong-headed, all they would have to do is to prove that:

• The Bible does not clearly reveal a Trinitarian God
• The Bible does not clearly affirm that God is love
• The Bible does not plainly say that all God wants of is love
• God deals with every situation in the same way
• God micro-manages every actual occasion, totally controls every actual entity
• God is never disappointed
• God is impassive, apathetic
• God is never dependant on anything or anyone
• God’s course of action is never frustrated
• God ordained all the attitudes and actions of: Cain, Noah after the flood, Saul, David, Solomon (indeed, all the kings of Israel and Judah), the Herod family, Judas, Simon Peter, Saul of Tarsus, as well as the churches in Corinth, Galatia, and the Seven Churches of Asia
• The Bible speaks uniformly of faith
• The Bible sets forth one linguistic form of a “plan of salvation”
• The Bible speaks of salvation in any definitive language
• God never changes his mind or way
• God intends the failures of the Israel of the Old Covenant
• The human birth of Jesus, Immanuel, was not a new experience in the life of God
• Jesus’ cry of despair made no difference to God
• The Gethsemane prayer and Golgotha’s despair don’t mean what they say.
• The Bible explicitly claims that God is absolute
• Prayer makes no difference to God
• Human repentance makes no difference to God
• God is not up against any strong countervailing forces
• The Bible indicates any kind of ultimate sovereignty other than the Jesus kind
• Any of God’s commands, laws, demands are not rooted in love, aspects of, instances of, and guides or tutors to love.

If you would disprove the idea that God is relative and that there are no absolutes, I am open to consider the possibility that I’ve taken a wrong direction, but I am open only to challenges that are spelled out in terms of the above options. I do not accept the authority of any theologian, tradition, philosopher, or creed, although I freely admit that some of them, inescapably, have been significant elements in the formation of the way my mind works.

I know this much: I know it is possible that I have misunderstood the Bible, because I know that I have neither God nor the Bible figured out. They remain beyond my comprehension.
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It remains for me to revisit many of the line items listed above and explain what I mean and what some of the implications are.

2007-08-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

God’s Administration Concised

[This is a supplement to the previous blog, which should be read in preparation to best understand this one. Today I am using the traditional--and appropriate–term, The Kingdom of God.]

Jesus’ theme was “The Kingdom of God”; the Kingdom is thus the core of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but nowhere does the New Testament define the meaning of the Kingdom. Dozens, if not hundreds, of books and lectures have done this for us, but in ways that continue to controvert each other.

Debate about this meaning has raged for more than a century. Few of these touch on more than just one part of the meaning. What follows is a concise definition, one that fits each biblical occurrence of the term.

The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God is King.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God rules.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever things are done the way God wants them done.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God’s will is done.

The Kingdom of God, on the scene of human history, is: Wherever God is allowed to rule.
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Some would claim that God is King everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever God rules. Again, many would claim that God rules everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever things are done the way God wants them done (which, paraphrased, means: wherever God’s will is done).

Most thinking people would agree that many things are done in this world that are not done the way God would have them. In the biblical story, God repeatedly says so. This invalidates the claims that God is King everywhere, and that God rules everywhere. In an ideal kingdom, things are done as the king desires (dictates). God’s dictates are not always done.

Wherever (“wherever,” not meant geographically, but, wherever it is the case that) God is found in control, there is the kingdom of God. Wherever there is a church, a family, an individual, or anything that operates like God wants it to operate, there is the Kingdom of God.

Thus, it is possible for someone to be, “not far” from the Kingdom, in other words, nearly ready for God to rule. The Kingdom is “within,” or “among” you; that is where God rules when he does. Jesus says that we should pray: “Thy kingdom come, they will be done (the same idea reiterated), on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven things are done God’s way. We are to pray to God that his rule might come on earth as it already is in heaven. Jesus told Nicodemus that without a fundamental change in who we are, God cannot rule in our lives.
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Moving now from the core definition to actual human history, God rules only where he is allowed to. Again, I can almost hear the objections coming: God can rule wherever he wants to. He is not dependent on human co-operation. He is the sovereign (later we’ll devote a day to the idea of sovereignty).

No, God does not impose his will on us. He does not coerce. He is not a tyrant. Read the Bible carefully and you will find that, after the creation of the human and until the end of human history, God works in this world only where there is co-operative human trust and obedience.

Note that in Mark 6:5-6, the Bible says that, in his hometown, “[Jesus] could not do any miracles there,” because of their unbelief. It does not read that he did not do any miracles, or that he would not do them. Rather it says that he could not do them, not because he lacked either the power or the desire, but because of their unbelief.

Here where we live, within the time of human history, God works in relation to us. He works relative to our cooperation. We can disrupt God’s work, God’s rule, by failure to trust and therefore to obey him. God will not force his way on us. God is not a dictatorial tyrant.

Remember, however, that the New Testament makes it clear that a time is coming, beyond human history, when God will rule completely, whether or not anyone believes. God’s rule will, one of these days, be total. It might be a good idea to get on good, cooperative terms with him before that unpredictable day arrives.

2007-08-03T09:46:00.001-07:00

The President of the United States, George W. Bush is in trouble. At a rate that is increasingly disturbing to the president, the American people are losing confidence in his administration. Most particularly they are reacting against his administration of the four-year-old war with Iraq. They are much more opposed to the way he has administered the war than they are opposed either to the president or to the war.

On the other hand, the war would have never come about were it not for the detestable way that Saddam Hussein, for more than two decades, administered the internal affairs of Iraq.

Governmental administrations are judged in a variety of ways: the personality of the chief governmental officer, the accomplishments of their administration, or as in the two widely different administrations above, by the manner in which they conducted their administration, the way they led or ruled.
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In the 21st Century, many of us live in nations that have no king, want no king, and are turned off by the very idea of having a supreme ruler with the power to single-handedly rule according to his own dictates. Thus, the idea of the Kingdom of God does not resonate with many of us.

When we are told that, in the Kingdom of God, we are to obey, submit, trust, and surrender our own wishes to the “will” of God, we do not hear this as tidings of “comfort and joy,” as a word of “good news.” We are not about to surrender our all, the all of our “only-one-time, only-one-chance” life, to anyone. It is our life. We find the very idea of submission repugnant.

So when Jesus comes saying, “repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God,” these words have little appeal to the heart or mind of 21st Century people. For most of us, there is nothing new about this; we have heard these words and the accompanying story for most of our lives. It is not new, and we see nothing good about “entering” any this or any other kingdom.
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So, what if I make a change in the language, a change that is completely consistent with the language of the New Testament. Drawing on the immediately previous blog for an understanding of “repent” and “believe,” I suggest we take Jesus to be saying: “Change the way you think about, the way you understand everything. Reorient your focus. Change your mind about life.”

“Why,” we ask, “should I give up what I believe to be true and go some other direction?” The answer: “Because God’s way of governing is near, is available. God’s way of ruling is more appealing and attractive than anything we know about. God’s way of ruling–God’s administration, (kingdom)--is good.”

And what is so good about it? For one thing, it takes most of the ways our world is run and turns them on their ear. Someone has called it the “upside-down kingdom”; others say that it is, rather, the “right side up” way of control.

Yes, governance is always about control; it is about the power to control. The Bible claims that the time is coming when Jesus Christ will be made “king of kings and lord of lords, and he shall reign forever and ever.” The time is coming when he shall be put in complete control of all things.

That–exactly that–is the good news. This Jesus, whose story and words we find in the New Testament, will have all things put under his feet. He will be made the supreme administrator and given the power to do what he wants. Why makes this a good word? How can this be good news?

Read, or reread about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (I suggest, for reading purposes, that you change the traditional order, and read Mark, Luke, Matthew, and then John–just a suggestion). Try as you read to set aside everything you have ever heard or read about Jesus. Try–although none of us can completely do it–to read all this again as if it were the first time you had read it, as if you had never heard anything about it. Then try to imagine a world where this one, Jesus of Nazareth, was in charge of everything. Then you will know why this government, this way of administering human affairs is called, “good.”
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Part of what we are called on to “repent” of--in the 21st Century as it was in the 1st Century–is the old understandings of God’s ways, understandings passed on to us by our society, (and that includes our Christian society). This Jesus Way is not new; it began long ago. On the other hand, it is new, because it has been distorted, perverted, misunderstood, modified, and misrepresented until nowadays it is almost unknown and unrecognizable.

The Jesus Way was born in what we have come to call the “Greco-Roman” world. Judea and Galilee were occupied and ruled by the Romans. The entire Roman Empire, at that time, was, in its language and thought, a Greek world. But the Jesus Way was born a part of that world that was innately Hebraic, formed and filled with the stories and ways of the Hebrew Bible.

The Jesus Movement sprang from this cultural mix. It was relatively pure and simple as it entered the 2nd Century, but then this spring of “living water” began dividing into two different channels–one Greek philosophical, the other the Jesus Way of life--that have commingled, separated, coalesced and divided until by our time they seem to have become inextricable.

This blog is a continuing effort to extricate, as much as possible, the Jesus Way--the kingdom or administration or governance of God--from the theological traditions that have allowed the waters of this spring to become polluted. In the days ahead, we have much more of this to consider.

2007-07-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

In this blog, “God Is Relative,” I am quarreling with the church, and with its historical self-understanding and development. But realize, please, that this is a lover’s quarrel. In spite of my anger and disappointment, I am not going to abandon the church; I’ve never considered that

My feelings about the church are ambivalent. It is one of the places I am most comfortable; it is one of the places I feel most uncomfortable. I feel at home in church. I am part of this family. I am part of this very dysfunctional family. I am staying, but I understand quite well why many others choose to leave, or having visited, choose not to return.

I intend two things in this blog: First, to speak to those who grew up in church, but left and have no intention of returning, those who grew up in church but miss it and wish it were different, and those who have stayed in the church but are uncomfortable about it. I am also writing for those who have no church background, except enough to bore or anger them, but who know that something is missing from their life, something neither science nor “stuff” can satisfy.

My second intention is to call on the church to reconsider what they believe and teach about God. The church routinely misrepresents God, thereby furnishing many with a good reason to abandon and/or ignore church and church people. This dysfunctional “family of God” needs family counseling, needs it badly. I am attempting to make some small contribution to get church folk to consider seeking such counsel. It is available.
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Someone recently told me that I am, in fact, writing more to folks who are an active part of the church, rather than to that large population that has no active relationship to the church and is not interested. If so, I am failing in what I set out to do. I am an active member of both groups, and am attempting to address both.

I am attempting, in this series of blogs, to present an alternative understanding of the Christian God, and of the changes this might bring about. I am writing nothing original. Many others, addressing different elements of this need, are speaking, writing, and leading toward a different future for Christian understanding and action.
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I was surprised when, recently I realized that what I am attempting is frighteningly close to the same thing that Jesus was doing. An uneasy place to be. A place that possibly could be arrogant or naive. Near the beginning of the story of Jesus we are told that he “came saying: ‘repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God.’” Who am I, I asked myself, to be attempting the same thing? Nonetheless, I think it fits.

Please stay with me as I get a bit academic about words and ideas. I promise not to stay there long.

Let’s take that one word at a time, beginning with “repent,” a word that is commonly misunderstood. Shuv is the major word in the Hebrew Old Testament translated as, “repent,” This word has the very simple literal meaning, “turn.” This includes left turn, right turn, turn around, turn back, turn aside, or any other usage of the word. It refers to a change of direction, whether literal or figurative, physical or mental, intentional or emotional. That is all.

Metanoeo is the major word in the Greek New Testament translated as, “repent,” This word is derived from the Greek preposition, meta, and the noun, nous.

“Meta,” depending on its context, can be translated as: among, with, after, afterward, behind. “Nous” is the Greek word for the mind, reason, thought. It comes from the verb, ginosko. Note the “no” shared by the verb and the noun. Note also, in English, that “knowledge,” and “know,” share the same “no.”

When combined as meta-noeo (repent), and used in the New Testament, it takes from nous the idea of how we think, what we think, the way we understand reality. From meta, it takes on the common time-related sense of “after.”

To repent is to change the direction of our thought–shuv–from the way we previously have understood reality, from the previous major premise of our reasoning, and now, after thinking one way for perhaps most of our life, to adopt a new mind. In a major way, to have a “second thought,” an “afterthought.” To repent is to rethink reality, and adopt–and therefore live by--the new understanding.

Thus, when, on several occasions in the Old Testament, God is,said to repent, it is telling us that God had taken some action or had spoken some intention, but then turned, changed his mind, had second thoughts. As a result, he changed either his actions or his attitude. Both reflect change--of some sort–taking place within God. They indicate both that God is affected by human conduct and that God has affections, an emotional life.

This repentance on God’s part challenges the traditional ideas that God is incapable of, cannot, does not,change. More particularly, it challenges the idea that God is unaffected emotionally by anything. Stated more positively, it indicates that the biblical God is indeed a “living” God, an involved God, and a God who cares.

Paul Tillich believed that everyone believed in God, that whatever our “ultimate concern” is is our God. One fellow, in resonse to Tillich’s definition, said, “My ultimate concern is whether “The Ultimate” is concerned with me.” The divine repentance is one indication of God’s involvement and concern.

The traditional Christian understanding of God sees him as absolute, all-powerful, unchangeable, unaffected by anything, and all-knowing. (Although they would, and will, cry out in horror, the fact is that the common understanding of the Christian God makes it hard to distinguish God from a tyrant). This blog is an argument that this way of thinking about God needs to change.

We need to repent, to rethink, to reconsider the entire biblical story and its stories, and to see what God is and does.

“Repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God.” Belief is not a religious word. It is a word that shapes all aspects of human life. We live by what we believe to be true. We act on the basis of what we believe, what we are convinced of, what we are convicted of. We all put our faith in something. We all trust something, some things, principles, persons.

To repent means that on the basis of a new mind, a new understanding, we change the focus of our belief, our faith, our trust, and thus, the basis and direction of all our thought and action. Repentance and faith are two sides of one coin.

On one occasion when Alexander the Great was quite sick, his doctor–and good friend--brought a potion for him to drink. However, Alexander received a note from one of his advisors, saying that the doctor had poisoned his medicine. Acting contrary to conventional wisdom, Alexander--believing, trusting, having faith in his friend–unhesitatingly drank the medicine, thanked the doctor, and got well.

We never repent if we still believe the old way is the one to be trusted. We repent only if somehow we come to believe the old is wrong, and/or that another is the better way.

[My next post will continue this rephrased and expanded statement of what I am about in these writings. Thus far, I’ve spoken only of “repent and believe,” and must deal also with “the good news of the kingdom of God.]

2007-07-12T08:50:00.001-07:00

The End Does Justify the Means

Few days pass between the times I hear someone disparagingly say, “Yes, they believe the end justifies the means.” They don’t know what they are talking about. They have not thought about what they are saying.

The end does justify the means. It is always what justifies the mean, we just don’t realize it. We commonly misunderstand what our disturbance is really about. Were we to attain conceptual clarity, we would realize the problem lies in a disagreement about the appropriate ends.

If the end, if the goal, is to convict the accused in a court of law, any means is justified if it leads to conviction. If the end--goal, purpose--is to achieve a just society, we may use only those means that will lead to that end. Once again though we may use any means that will in truth produce a just society. Our real issue is always one of ends.

Adolf Hitler was justified in the death camps since his goal was to develop a pure Aryan race of people in Germany or Europe. Our problem with Hitler is our disagreement that this is an appropriate end. If Hitler’s actual goal was to restore stability, a lasting stability to the economic and social life of Germany, he used the wrong means. They only seemed, for a short time, to justify the means he used. It remains true that his chosen means could not achieve a civil society as its end.

The idea that the end justifies the means is often identified with pragmatism, simplistically understood as, “whatever works is right,” or “whatever works is the truth.” Again, I affirm the validity of the pragmatic understanding of life. The real issue at stake here is tied up in two concerns: how do we understand works, and, the question of time?

Are we talking about what seems to work in the immediate situation, or are thinking of what works in the long run? The difference is enormous. The American pragmatist philosophers, Peirce, James, and Dewey, were considering what works “in the long haul.” This is quite different from what seems to work in the instant.

Here we see the nature of pragmatism and the ends/means question converge. If for a student, the end is simply to make an “A” in the class, and if cheating works--accomplishes an “A”--then cheating is justified by the grade received. It was the “right” thing to do.

Few would concede that making an “A” in school is the end of human being and doing. If, on the other hand, the end is to become an educated, trained, and skilled person, cheating will not work. That means cannot accomplish that end. It is wrong. If the end is to become a person of character and integrity, productive and responsible in private, business, and civil life, cheating on a test won’t work. That means prevents us from attaining the desired end.

Means and ends always exist in relation to each other. As Hegel indicates, the means are aufgeheben (caught up and remain) in the end, thus some ends cannot be achieved by some means. Means enter into the ends they are instrumental in reaching. They continue to participate in the end itself.

If your goal is an angel food cake, you may use any list of ingredients and any method of preparation, if it produces a genuine angel food cake. But not just any means will fit your purpose. Two tablespoons of cayenne pepper, or baking at 150 degrees for twelve hours will never produce a satisfactory dessert. On the other hand, there are many variant recipes for angel food cake and many of them produce a delicious treat. Especially with strawberries drizzled over the top.

Because Christians are in the forefront of condemning those who act as if they believe that the end justifies the means, I add one more example to illustrate the fallacy of their condemnation. If the kingdom of God is the ultimate end of human life, indeed of human history, then anything may be done that leads to that result.

We are free to act, believe, or lead others in any fashion imaginable, if and only if, it leads to the rule of God–the Kingdom of God--in our world. On the other hand, no act, belief, or leadership, however trivial, is justified if it contributes nothing at all to making this world more of what God desires and intends.

Pragmatism is not the only view that understands what is here at issue. Situation ethics agrees completely, in fact, it includes pragmatism as one of its basic premises. Actually many ethical theories begin with a consideration of the Summum Bonum, the greatest good. They start with the question, “What is the end/goal/purpose of human life?

If ethics is to tell us what we must do if we are to be good, it must first define the nature of the supreme good. However it construes “good,” it then sets out a system on how we may attain that end. The ethical system that develops is valid only if it serves as a means to the formation of good people who perform good deeds and are capable of making judgments about the deeds and character of others.

As I said, situation ethics is a special instance of this kind of teleological approach to morality. People condemn situation ethics because they have come to see certain rules and principles as ends in themselves rather than as means to the Summum Bonum.

Situation ethics--like its kindred idea, relativism--is a term used quite loosely. Certainly many use it as an excuse to justify behavior that is highly questionable. But if we recognize that the term came into popular usage in the 1960s after the publication of Joseph Fletcher’s controversial, Situation Ethics, we are obligated to understand the idea as he first developed .

Few have taken the time to give the book a thoughtful reading. I admit that the style of the book is a major hindrance to understanding what Fletcher argues. Apparently in an effort to make it the best-selling book it was, Fletcher filled it with illustrations of its application in sexual morality. He seemed to justify a variety of sexual situations in a way that disturbs many readers who want to be fair with his thought.

The fact is that Fletcher’s generous use of example situations to illustrate his point accomplish the exact opposite. They obscure the ideas that are the heart of the book.

One of Fletcher’s dominant ideas is that we can’t pre-scribe what action is right until we are in an actual situation. Verbal examples, such as he mistakenly included in his book, are not actual life situations, no matter how completely they are described. If Fletcher were consistent with his guiding principles, his examples would have been excluded or, at least, greatly qualified. As it is, they confuse. But, of course, they do maintain interest and did help sell the book. Most of the controversy was occasioned by the misleading “illustrations.”
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In the entire biblical narrative, we see God in action and hear God speaking, always, in relation to a specific situation, an actual occasion. What is right or wrong depends on God’s judgment in this particular situation.

The end desired by God never changes. God’s goal, purpose, end, is that his way–self-giving love--should rule, control his entire creation, producing in the end a universal community of peace and joy. Again, if we carefully examine all God does and says in the scriptural story, we find that he uses any means that will, in the long haul work–and some of these make us wonder about him–to accomplish his intention.

2007-06-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

Michael Card, writing on Incarnation, said: “While we struggle with our many ‘clumsy words,’ God needs only one Word to perfectly communicate the depth and mystery, the passion and the overwhelming grace of who He is.” If this is true, and most Christians believe it is, then the gospel accounts of Jesus validate the claim that God is relative.

If Jesus is God’s full and final word that God has to speak to us, we learn who God is by keeping an eye on Jesus as we follow him through the gospel stories. What does he do and say, and in what manner? Let’s follow him through The Gospel according to Mark, where the elemental narrative is traced, and see what we find.
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When we first meet him, he is coming into Galilee, “preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.” Those who first saw him in action, knowing nothing about any subsequent understandings of Jesus, would have identified him as an itinerant preacher.

Almost immediately he begins gathering about him a select group of followers (disciples/those who follow because they are drawn to someone, with learning as their intent). These will comprise the group that later will be known as The Twelve disciples. He is not only a preacher, he can now be seen as a leader.

He saw two fishermen, Simon and Andrew, and told them to follow him and he would “make them fishers of men.” If we note this, we will find that--apparently--he never spoke of making fishers of men to anyone else. Next, he summons another pair of brothers, James and John who also are fishermen. It would be fair to assume he told them he would make them “fishers of men,” but the text doesn’t mention it. It would only be an assumption on our part.

The next selection we read of is a tax man named Levi; Jesus did not tell him that he would make him a collector of God’s taxes. It is not long before many other disciples join Jesus. They elect to follow him. Out of this group, Jesus will choose only a few. We are not far into the narrative before we learn who they are. For the present purpose, I mention only one, another Simon. He, we are told, is a member of the paramilitary group called the Zealots. Jesus says nothing to him about making him a gospel soldier.

We know none of the specifics of Jesus’ calling of any of the twelve, except the five noted above. From those, however, we see that the words of his calling varied from person to person.

We also note that he could be identified as a preacher, a not unusual type in the world of Judaism. He might be known to others as a leader, the leader of a small group that he may have been organizing for some special purpose. We might watch to see if he might be recognized as an organizer. Preacher, leader, organizer–all might be appropriate titles by which he could be known.

Shortly after the choosing of the four fishermen, Jesus appears in a Jewish meeting house on the Sabbath and astonished the congregation with the authority of his teaching. From this point in the story, we will see teaching as one of the two or three of his most prominent activities. We can add teacher to our list of possible titles that might be used to identify him.

After leaving the synagogue, he went directly to the home of Simon and Andrew, where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick. When they told Jesus about her, he took her by the hand. Immediately she was healed. No mention is made of a request for healing, no mention of the faith of Simon, his mother-in-law, or anyone else. The significance of faith, relative to the work of Jesus, is not as clear as later generations have made it.

If you are reading this with a copy of Mark open before you, you may find interesting to watch for the place of faith in Jesus’ healing ministry. As in this case, it is not always mentioned at all. We will see faith often given great prominence, leaving us to wonder about those occasions when it is not mentioned in Mark’s story.

Healing by Jesus follows no set procedure. Watch to see if it does not vary from one individual to another; see if he deals with each occasion in its own singularity, seemingly dependent on the situation.

I mentioned that teaching would prove to be one of the two or three activities that dominate the story of Jesus’ activities. Healing will emerge as one of the others.

The story has yet to lead us out of Mark’s first chapter, and already we can notice that he deals differently with each situation. Whether some of us are prepared to talk about situation ethics, we do begin to observe in Jesus a situational approach to life. What he does is done relative to the situation. He takes whatever the appropriate action to bring the Kingdom of God, the power of the Gospel to bear on the needs of the occasion.

If, as Michael Card has suggested, God needs only one Word to make himself and his ways known to us, and if Jesus is the Word of God, then, among other things, we see that God’s action is apparently relative to human need. God relates to us where we are, wherever that might be---each of us in each of our specific situations. In God’s eyes we are individuals, and every situation is different. We cannot discern any simple formula by which God always performs his work.

Moreover, we have at least a hint that Jesus might be legitimately known by titles other than Savior, Lord, or Messiah. Even these titles are relative. To those in trouble, he is their Savior; to those who commit their lives into his trust, he is their Lord, their Master; to the Jew, he is their hoped for and anticipated Messiah, the one anointed by God to redeem them. We will find that Jesus is given many titles, and that each is understood relatively. No one of them is absolute.
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Since we are still in the first chapter of Mark’s story, told with God’s one Word, we will follow the story for at least another day or two–probably no more than that unless you ask for more. The major point I want to make will have been well-established by that time.

2007-06-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

If I believe God is relative, how did I come up with the idea, and what makes me so sure of it that I am publicing it as a definitive truth?

The idea never occurred to me before I was fifty-years-old, but it came about as a result of fifty years of church attendance and thirty-some years of Bible reading. It gradually emerged from nearly thirty years of formal study of theology. No teacher or preacher ever suggested the idea, neither intentionally nor directly. It came to me full-blown, plain and clear out of my entire experience with the things of God.
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I am such a logical thinker that most friends and acquaintances assume that logic is my primary mode of thought. I am a logician, but have not always been. I am not by nature a logical person. It is a method of thinking that I learned only in my late thirties. I have since, taught logic in universities for more than thirty years. It is now so imbedded in my mind that it is second nature for me to think logically.

My primary thought, however, comes from my sense of the whole. I am by nature a gestalt thinker. I somehow sense meaning before I understand or can explain. It might seem to be intuitive knowledge, but it comes not from intuition but from observation of the “big picture.”

Ordinarily my perception of the gestalt of a thing is somewhat vague or fuzzy; it is definite without sharp definitions. That first impression generally proves to be correct, but not always. I am keenly aware that I could be wrong, so usually I turn to logic to check it out.

Gestalt: A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts. From Middle High German: “form, configuration, appearance.”

After half a century of living with God and the things of God, I saw divine relativity as the gestalt of the Bible, not seen in its parts but in the whole. I came to see it first neither in the details of any particular verses of scripture nor in any specific part of the Bible. Rather, it arose in my consciousness as the dominant biblical theme. All else found its meaning only as it contributed to this overall picture.

All of this is, I realize, somewhat vague and subjective. Neither evidence nor proof has been offered. Thus, as is my habit, I turned to logic to see if the idea of a relative God stood up under the careful scrutiny of reason.

In psychology, rationalization is the process of constructing a logical justification for something that was decided on the ground of some mental process other than logic. Ordinarily, rationalization is seen as a logical coverup for flawed beliefs.

In what follows, I have carefully avoided any improper use of reason to rationalize my theological position. I leave it to you to decide whether I am reasoning or rationalizing.

One of the more useful logical forms is called the Reduction ad Absurdum, “a mode of argumentation that seeks to establish a contention by deriving an absurdity from its denial, thus arguing that a thesis must be accepted because its rejection would be untenable.”

In the following, I present numerous theological reductios, to prove that it is absurd to deny the notion that God is relative. The blog is long, so if you get the point early on, you might want to just skip down and see how it is ended.
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If God is immutable, then he cannot change (by definition).
God does change (as I will establish in the next paragraph).
Therefore, God is not immutable.

In 1 Samuel 8, the story is told of Israel’s plea to Samuel to provide them a king, like other nations. When Samuel speaks to God about this, the Lord tells him to listen to the people, but to warn them of what life under a human king would be like. He lets Samuel off the hook, telling him that the people have rejected God as their king, not Samuel as their respected leader.

The people ignore God’s warning about the nature of a kingship, and in chapter 10 the story is told of Saul as God’s choice for their king. See in particular, 10:24.

A reading of the first ten chapters of 1 Samuel makes it apparent that God is their king and has no desire to be replaced. However, in response to the insistence of his covenant people, God has Samuel anoint Saul king over Israel. God changed his plan of action, in response to his people.

Later, in 1 Samuel 13:13-14, the text indicates that Saul and his descendants would have ruled over Israel forever if Saul had been obedient. Since, however, he had not, God rejected whom earlier he had chosen. In chapter 16:12-14, God explicitly takes his Spirit from Saul, his chosen, and an evil spirit now enters Saul.

In this passage, God’s Spirit now comes upon David, God’s new choice. God’s earlier choice failed, so he makes a new choice. In doing so, God has changed his course of action, not his purpose, not his character, only the means of accomplishing that purpose. Nonetheless, in some sense, he changed.

We could have adverted to the story of Noah, Moses, or later, to Solomon, Jonah, or a multitude of other instances. If God is immutable--and this is a cardinal feature of traditional Christian doctrine--then, by definition, he cannot change. He does, in certain definable senses, often change in the course of the biblical story, therefore God is not immutable. Thus, the cardinal doctrine of divine immutability misrepresents the God revealed in the Christian scriptures, and therefore must be rejected.

An interesting question about the supposed divine immutability can be seen in a particular contrast between the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God is found regularly warring against and defeating the enemies of his people, Israel. In the New Testament, Rome has invaded and now occupies and rules over Israel, but there is no indication that God is going to war against and defeat this Roman enemy (except, perhaps, depending on how you interpret the book of Revelation, he may intend to do this in some future–a future distant from the present).

In the past he has defeated the Egyptian, the Amalekite, the Canaanite, the Midianite, the Philistine, . . . the Syrian, and numerous other enemies of his people. In the present, New Testament, situation, God takes no military initiative against the Roman. In fact, when God-with-Us (Immanuel), Jesus is arrested by the Romans and Peter draws his sword against them, Jesus not only attempts no self-defense, he denounces the use of the sword.

It would appear that in the New Testament, God has changed his modus operandus from using violence as a common way of dealing with his opponents to the use of suffering as a means of transformation.
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If God is omniscient and omnipotent, he knows how to make his people obey.
In Hosea 6:4, God says he doesn’t know what to do.
Therefore, God is not omniscient.

God has richly blessed Israel, he has punished/disciplined them, he has sent prophets to warn them, he has pleaded with them--all efforts to persuade them to obey and thus live out God’s purpose for them. But in Hosea’s time, after much pleading, a frustrated God finally says: “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?”

Nothing God has done has worked. He has done all he knows how to do to correct them, to bring about an attitude adjustment, but Israel, for the most part, has ignored him. Now God, seemingly at his wit’s end, doesn’t know what to do.

Many of us have heard such words from our frustrated parents, or perhaps as frustrated parents, spoken them to our children. After teaching them the right, correcting them, punishing them, praising them, taking them into our arms and pleading with them, they have still rebelled. Finally the day came, seems always to come, when the parents throw up their hands and ask, “What is it going to take? Your father and I have done everything we know how.” In desperation the parent often adds, “You tell us. You tell us what it is going to take.”

The supposedly omniscient (all-knowing) God here appears not to know how to change his people. So, later, in Jeremiah and ultimately in Jesus, God lays aside his Plan A and sets forth Plan B, a New Covenant (New Testament).

If God knows everything (and if he has all power, can do anything he wants to do), why doesn’t he know how to make his special people do right?

The fact remains that if God is omniscient, he knows how to induce obedience. Hosea 6:4 documents at least one instance in which God confesses that he does not know how to do this. Therefore, God is not omniscient, at least not in some so-called absolute or comprehensive sense.

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If God is impassible, he will neither grieve, be pleased, nor be angry.
He is on occasion grieved, pleased, and angry.
Therefore, God is not impassible.

For at least seven centuries, the divine impassibility has been a common feature of Christian theology. Impassibility refers to the inability to experience emotion, especially suffering.

In very early Christian discussions of God as Father, Son, Spirit–Trinity–Jesus, the Son of God, was seen as so distinct from God the Father, that while it was affirmed that Jesus suffered on the cross, God did not suffer because God the Father (pater) was impassible. Those who differed were called patripassionists, and patripassionism was declared a heresy.

So, let’s suppose that God cannot experience emotion, and then examine God’s written story as inspired by the Spirit of God. I’ll not devote space to detail the references, but repeatedly the Bible speaks of God as: being well-pleased, being not-pleased, angry, loving, having compassion, hating, patient, long-suffering, frustrated, indeed having a rich emotional life.

Whatever this might mean upon further investigation, it does show that God experiences emotion. And it demonstrates that what we do or don’t do affects how God feels. God has affections, and God’s emotions are somewhat dependant on us.

If God is impassive, he has no feelings. But the written record gives irrefutable evidence of God’s feelings. So, it cannot be true that God is impassive.
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If God’s actions are not relative, then he will give no case-specific commands.
Most, if not all, of God’s commands are case-specific.
Therefore, God ‘s actions are relative.

God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, not to Finland, Brazil, Zambia, and not to any other nation or people. God commanded the Israelites to march around Jericho for seven days. He did not tell them to use this maneuver against any other city. Jesus’ commands/teachings in the Sermon on the Mount were not addressed to the world, but to his followers.

Jesus told only one person, a rich man, to sell all he had, then follow him. He told only one woman to go call her husband. He did not tell everyone to wipe the dust from off their feet. He gave this order only to his apostles. Examples could be multiplied. You can check the book for yourself.

Another way of making the same point is to note that almost everything God says, almost everything that God Incarnate says, is directed to a specific person or group on a specific occasion.

It all depends on the situation. Just an example or two will suffice. Each prophet was addressing a particular historical occasion in Israel’s history. They were not standing on some high hill speaking God’s universal word for the entire world to heed. Jesus told only one person he needed to be born again, he offered living water only to one, he healed some because of their faith, others because of the faith of the faith of someone else. It all depended in the need of the situation; it was all occasion appropriate. God does not operate by some single inflexible plan.

If God’s actions are not relative, he will use the same approach in every situation, but he does not use just a single method. We may conclude then, that God’s actions are relative.
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If God is not relative, then Father/Spirit/Son do not relate.
Father/Spirit/Son do relate.
Therefore, God is relative.

This blog has gotten far too long today, so I will abbreviate some things that are obvious. The Father affirms his love of the Son; the Son prays to the Father; The Spirit validates the Son.

God is love. Love is not some kind of substance or principle. It is a relation between persons. God is love. God is trinitarian eternally. God is one God: Spirit Father, Son, in eternal relation, a singular community of love. Christians are not mere monotheists, they are trinitarian monotheists.

If God is not relative, there is no relation between the Son, the Spirit, and the Father. However, God is an eternal center of loving relation. God is relative.
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Many more reductios are possible. It is absurd to question the divine relativity. It is understandable historically that it is questioned, but in the light of the written and the living Word of God, it is an absurd question or challenge.

God is love. That is the eternal fundamental. All else we know of God is a partial of that love.

2007-06-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

Church Good and Bad

I’ve been in church since I was about two-years-old, and it has tormented my mind most of those years. The rest of the story is that almost everything good in my life has come through the church. But unlike me, many of my childhood friends with church-tormented minds didn’t stay. With a variety of emotions they left the church and went off in every direction.

Some who have been long gone don’t seem to miss anything about their church experience: hymns, sermons, Sunday School, Bible, Jesus, they’ve shed it all. Others continue searching incessantly for alternatives. They’ve tried other churches, different denominations, Zen, Buddha, Transcendental Meditation, Shirley Maclaine, and anything else that offers any hint of sustenance to the human spirit. Another large group, although they have completely rejected the religious establishments, continues, in some sense to believe in Jesus, pray, and live an approximation of a Christian ethic. Often they dismiss the Bible along with the church. They may accept and appreciate parts of it, but they owe it no authority. I understand them, know how they feel, what they think, and am their near kinsman.

Unlike them, some of us uncomfortably have stayed with the church because even with all of its perversions we still believe that deep within its shell we can hear the heartbeat of life, truth, and hope. We are waiting for, and some of us are working at the restoration of this frail, limping institution that too often mocks any idea of the “body of Christ,” God’s agent of hope for his broken world. We remain more or less marginal members of an eccentric, disturbed, and stagnant social institution. To our friends we look like fools, and within the church we seem rather powerless, losers all the way around.

Where does God, relative or absolute, fit into this picture? Ultimately the whole thing is a God issue. Although those who left have many reasons, and likewise those who remain are variously motivated, at heart it has all developed out of our understanding of who God is. This is the great divide: who is God, and what is God about?

Christians live with contradictory answers to the God question, and for at least sixteen centuries they have made their uneasy peace with the resultant tensions. They have lived with the contradictions for so long that these mental and emotional conflicts are submerged in the unconscious. Thus Christians rarely realize the contradictions that keep them from attaining integrity. Two different ways of talking about God, each working counter to the other, repeatedly lead to the disintegration Christian efforts to bring God’s healing the a world that sees only too clearly the lack of integrity.

Both ways of understanding God are rooted in the Bible. One is nourished by the Spirit who is the source of life; the other grows out of and is maintained by the human quest for certainty and security. The contrast between them matured in the fourth century, and continues vigorously. Two different readings of the Bible, two different ideas of God, lead to two contrasting but often intertwined ways of life: one destroys, the other heals and enhances; one closes, the other opens. One gives power the primacy in the heart of God with love being at best secondary, and often only one of many attributes that are under the control of God’s power. The other knows that in God the primacy goes to love, with the divine power in the service of the divine love. One typically deals in abstract statements about God, the other deals in concrete relationships with God.

Look at the Christian churches in your own community or anywhere around the world and you will see the contrast. Listen to Christians speak and read what they write; you will hear two different ways struggling for attention. Read Christian history and discover the ongoing demonstration of the dissonance. But if you hear only one, either one, of these voices it can seem so clear and convincing that the other way is completely blocked out. If one of them is dominant, it often leads to immediate rebellion, atheism, or secularism. If the other is dominant, it often brings faith, hope, and love to those who hear it.

2007-05-18T16:33:00.001-07:00

God Is My “Next of Kin”

Christians often say they have a personal relationship with God--and that is essential--but the good news is that the obverse is true: God has a personal relationship with us.

God is my next-of-kin, my nearest relative. He is my Father, my Creator and Sustainer. No one, not even my wife, relates to me as well as God does. All his dealings with me are fitted to my unique personality and my immediate need at any given time; they are relative to me. In this sense of the word, at least, God is relative. His interaction with you is unique; it is relative to you.

Everything God says is relative: all commandments, warnings, perhaps even all promises. The Ten Commandments are not universal in their import. They were given to his covenant community, Israel, as part of their very formation and identity. They were not addressed to the Apache, the Yoruba, the Finn, nor the Indonesian. They were relative to God’s purpose of establishing a people through whom salvation would come to the Apache, Yoruba, Finn, Indonesian, and even the Anglo-Saxon–indeed, to his entire fallen human creation.

On the other hand, the Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to God’s entire covenant people, the Jews. It was specifically addressed to his disciples: “Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them.”

He told neither Zachaeus nor the “rich young ruler” that they must be born again; only Nicodemus heard these words from Jesus. Zack and the sorrowful young man were addressed relative to their personal situation. Even the Great Commission, with its accompanying promise, is given to the Apostles, relative to the imminent departure of their Lord.

Jesus is our relative, if we have chosen to relate positively to him; he is our brother:

For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. . . .
. . . .
Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, ...
--Hebrews 2:11 & 17

Everything he did and said is relative. Each healing, each parable, each question/answer is relative to the particular situation and person. If there is an ethic involved in the Jesus Way, it is a situational ethic (whether it can be identified with Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, is another matter).

The book that tells his story is relative. Each of its parts relates to a particular actual occasion in the history of God’s covenant relation to the descendants of Abraham–both the biological and the spiritual descendants. The Bible is relative, its sixty-six component books are relative, and it is about a relative God–our nearest relative.

2007-05-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Some of us might think that being God might just be good work, if we could get the job, or so it would seem. We could be in control of everything, have all power at our disposal, know everything, and thus make the world and everything in it exactly as we like, or think we would like.

But it doesn’t seem to work out that way for God, at least not for the God of the Bible. Being God doesn’t sound easy, as the Bible tells his story, in fact sometimes it is quite frustrating. Too often things don’t go as he planned: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, just for starters. He doesn’t always get his way, and sometimes no matter what he does, he winds up disappointed. Again, just one case in point: He must send his hope-of-the-world people into a brutal exile because no matter what he has done for and to them, they insist on "doing it their way” rather than God’s.

God doesn’t always know exactly what is going to happen–“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” These people–like us–easily, lightly, and often abuse their God-given freedom of choice to frustrate the divine intention. God promises to hear and forgive and heal, but it is a maybe so promise: “If” they turn from and seek. But whether they will turn in time, or turn at all, he has to wait and see. God’s continuing problem is these humans he has created—in his own image, no less. It is not easy being God, certainly not an easy emotional life.

But back to the human, me and you. Our individual lives are bad enough, but when we begin to interact with each other we can form a well-dug-in line of defense against God, or mount a powerful offensive against God. To his own displeasure he has to deal with a creation that refuses to stay on the track created for their freedom and peace.

It has not been easy for me to say that being God is not easy. But, there is “the rest of the story.”

Being God is a good life. God is love, eternally God is love, and love is satisfying, thrilling exciting, and enjoyable. In fact, it so good being God that the God nature must be shared. This is why God created humans “in his own image”: looking enough like him, being enough like him that God can common-icate with them and share the thrill, let them in on the satisfaction, excitement and joy of a love that must be expressed and made open and available to his supreme, god-like creature.

So, all in all, it is easy to announce the good news: God is relative–re-lative, relational, akin, positively connected and interactive. Genuine relationship is the source of life’s greatest pain, the root from which springs all peace and joy.

2007-04-24T04:16:00.000-07:00

What does God most want of us: our love or our compliance, our trust or our subservience? Jesus chose love as the answer he gave. Theoretically, evangelical Christians–“born-again” drives them–choose “trust.” The old hymn, “Trust and Obey” claims that “there is no other way.” Trust and obey, love and therefore comply, why ask that we choose between them? God wants it all: love, compliance, trust, subservience, obedience. These are not separable. Why then ask what God wants most?

I raise the question because, having been in church since before I was two-years-old, I’ve seen the unloving demand for compliance dominate the attitude of many churches. I’ve watched many leave, rejected by the church, because they would not comply with the church’s interpretation of God’s expectations. If anyone stepped out of the bounds–or refused to live inside the boundaries set by the church–they were easily dismissed. Hardhearted churches. Members becoming meaner year after year. That is what I have seen; that is why I renew the question of the “greatest commandment.”

I’ve listened, especially in recent years, to the supreme emphasis being given to God’s supremacy and thus, our compliance. The sovereignty of God rules. Again, I’ve witnessed the hardheartedness of these “sovereignty” people. That is why I ask which God “most” wants.

God wants our love. That is, as Jesus clearly stated, what God wants. All else flows from the love of God. “We love because he first loved us.” All else is wrapped up in love. “If you love me, keep my commandments,” as the natural re-sponse to our love for him, the depth and breadth of that love will all love involves. “The fruit of the Spirit is love . . ..” Love leads the list of the fruits of the Spirit. The other fruits–joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control–all grow out of the interactivity of God loving us, us loving of God. And neighbor. And enemy. When loving, we find we are filled with joy, know and produce peace. “Love is patient.” Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control–these all are components of love.

As Covey has so pointedly stated: "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." Love is the main thing, a loving love, a divine kind of loving, a Jesus kind of loving.

If we love God, we will love each other, and compliance will follow. If we love God, we will, with no sense of pressure or threat, be subservient to his sovereignty.

God is sovereign, but his is the sovereignty of love, not of sheer power or coercive will. It is easy to be subservient to the sovereignty of love.

When out of love we serve the God of love and bow before him and ask, “Lord what would you have me do?” others will be attracted to the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control they see demonstrated. Unthreatened, uncoerced, they will want to know how and why we live like that. At that point they will be willing, they will be ready to hear the word of God.

2007-03-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time I was in the church house on a Sunday morning, listening to the minister, listening especially closely as he spoke of some fundamental questions Christians ask about God: "What is God about?" The question is vague, therefore open to several possibilities, most of it hinging on what we understand by "about."

The minister, however, followed his question immediately with his answer: "He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith."

A bit later in the sermon, again he made a vague statement that, "Faith is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith." Still later, he said, "Jesus, plus whatever you bring, is more than enough."

I found these claims intriguing, so I recorded them in a pocket notebook that I habitually carry. This sermon was preached, and these notes taken, quite some time ago, and since I recorded neither the sermon text nor the context, now they are stand-alone statements. I abstracted them from their setting in a living sermon, and reduced them to words on paper and thus can reread and consider them all I want to.

I took note of them because, it seemed to me, that they called for further consideration. What I am now writing is something of a considered response.

"What is God about?" "Bringing us to a point of faith." Yes, that is something of what God is about. Perhaps it is what God penultimately is about, but certainly not what God is ultimately about. What is the point? Of what use, of what value is faith? Faith, by its very nature can neither be our goal, nor a resting place.

"God is love," and love is what God is about. "God is love," and the greatest, most comprehensive expectation is not about faith, but about love. True, we can love like God loves, like God expects us to live, only if we have faith in, trust, believe in him. Faith leads us to love. Faith is a necessary, but not a sufficient response to what God is about. "Now abideth faith, hope, and love, but the greatest. . . ."

God is about love, but even love is not what God is what God is simply about, at least not as his final purpose. The divine love, living and active in our hearts and minds, finds its culmination in joy and peace–the joy and peace that is the life of eternity.

Joy. God enjoys being God, though he is often grieved. God is love, and nothing is quite as enjoyable as love. "It pleased God to . . . " do a variety of things in creation and redemption, in gifts and callings. God wants us to know the joy of love.

Peace. Biblical peace is not merely the cessation or absence of conflict. Rather, peace is the full experience of the amazing graces and riches that God offers.

What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.

2007-01-31T01:25:00.000-08:00

God adapts, cuts slack, gives space, keeps his options open, can be changed, but in the big picture he never loses control. Sometimes he shares it to a degree, but he is the executive, the superior, the one who ultimately decides.

2007-01-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

I readily concede at least the following:

For 2,000 years Christians have known that God is absolute: The Absolute. This has been axiomatic for the finest Christians the church has produced. This is the judgment of all the great doctrinal statements of Christian history. As I challenge this historical and traditional understanding of God, I understand that these are not the bad guys; they are the epitome of the Christian religion.

Clearly, at least in our ordinary usage of the word, the biblical God appears to be absolute. This is the strong consensus all across Christian history. Obverse, in the way we ordinarily use the word, we have a hard time believing that the biblical God is relative.

Good people, great people, truly devout and highly intelligent people have thought, felt, proclaimed, and defended the absolute, unchanging, all-knowing, totally sovereign and transcendent character of God. Yes, it is easy, perhaps natural, to read the Bible and see it a God who is absolute, in total control, and who changes not. On the other hand, it is natural and easy to see that God is love, is trinitarian, and holds us responsible for out decisions and subsequent actions.

I am "absolutely" certain that there are no absolutes, but I cannot say "absolutely" that everything is relative. But of this I am sure: everyone, everything that I know and have known, seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched was related to other things. Likewise, every emotion, hope, fear, love, ambition–never isolated, always related to. Everything is always connected to something else, and that something else is always connected to something else, ad infinitum.

Nothing happens always; nothing is everywhere. All happens somewhen; all happens somewhere. You say, all except God, and truth, and right and wrong, and maybe more.

"Common sense" knows intuitively that there is no way everything, God included, is relative. Something has to be absolute if for no other reason, to supply the relativities something thing to be relative to.

Relativity is relative. Everyone has their own idea of what the word means, just as everyone knows that God–if there is a god–is absolute. That is what "God" is understood to mean: absolute, authority, power, control.

Relativity is relative? Yes. There is no fixed, standard definition of the word; it depends on who is using it. Einstein’s general theory of relativity is an idea that differs widely from moral relativity, or the relativity of color, or of truth, or of cousins, grandchildren, and all the rest of our kinfolk–our relatives. In what sense is God relative? Is he our relative?

I assume that if God is not absolute, there are no other contenders for absolutism; everything would be relative if God is not absolute. But, someone might say, is not that claim absolute? No. It is total, conclusive, all in all: everything is related, directly or indirectly, to everything else, and all is relative to God, just as God is relative–related–to all.

What is more, and foundational to all the rest, God is relative to God. God the Father relates to God the Spirit, who is relative to God the Son, the Son relative to the Father and the Spirit, always, eternally the Christian trinitarian God, who is the one God, is relating internally. Since God is relative, everything else follows suit.

God is love.

We’ll have to revisit this from other directions because most if not all, of what is told in the biblical story is relative one way or another.

2007-01-13T17:11:00.001-08:00

I had intended to delete the previous post on this verse, but since there was response from Norwood, I will leave it in place despite the need of some editing. I like what Norwood has to say, and take no real exception to it. Well, one exception. A better term might be "essentially relative," but certainly not "relatively essential."

My intention in this blog is to show that divine relativity is the essence of God, as best a human can comprehend the divine mystery.

This post contains the revision of the earlier post, and a followup on it.
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"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
AV (KJV)

I memorized this verse more than sixty years ago, and have never forgotten it. In my memory it lives in the phrasing of the King James Version. And in the words of that version, it has disturbed me for a couple of decades. So, finally, I have devoted time to deliberately scrutinize the verse.

I have learned, through the process described in this blog, that part of my frustration lies in the King James language. But that doesn’t cover it all. I intend to bring this quandary, and this post, to a relatively satisfying conclusion.

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." NASB

2 Corinthians 5:17 is one of the most widely quoted verses in the New Testament. On a first reading, it no problem to understand.

If anyone has given their life to Christ (is a Christian, a believer in Christ), God fashions them into a completely new person (born anew, re-generated). The person they were no longer exists. See (examine with your own eyes, observe, it is obvious), a new person has appeared.

But this poses a logical dilemma:

Either 2 Corinthians 5:17 speaks of total conversion, or it is not literally true.
If it refers to total conversion, then it is a false statement
If not literally true, it could be relatively true
Therefore, 2 Corinthians 5:17 either is a false statement, or it could be relatively true

This verse is in the form of a conditional (if, then) statement. Logically, when the if part of the statement is true, the then part of the statement must be true. To state it a different way, when the then part of the statement not true, the if part of the statement cannot be true.

If an individual is completely converted, their old life is completely gone
The old life is not completely gone; elements of the old life remain
Therefore, they are not completely converted.

To restate:
If an individual is "in Christ," then it is a certainty that their old attitudes, values, and way of life have disappeared. If we find that the life of a person who claims to be "in Christ" retains any of the same old attitudes, values, and ways of life, then we must conclude they are not truly "in Christ."

Long-term observation indicates that some old attitudes, values, and ways of life continue in the lives of all professing Christians. If this is true (and I think it can be demonstrated), then no professing Christian is "in Christ." In fact, there are none "in Christ." Can one be a Christian, but not "in Christ?" If so, then what does "in Christ" mean?

On the other hand, if we understand this verse to be relatively true, then it is possible that an individual might have a definitely positive relation to Christ--relatively in Christ--but not completely. They could be a relatively new creation with their old life relatively gone. The new is in the formative process, and the old in the process of being eradicated.

Of course, this raises a question about the nature of the entire Bible.
If the Bible is absolutely true, then 2 Corinthians 5:17 must be absolutely true

2 Corinthians is not absolutely true (so it seems from the preceding)
So, the Bible cannot be absolutely true
If 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true, then the Bible is relatively true
2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true (so it seems from the preceding)
Thus, the Bible must be relatively true.

This necessitates a complete re-viewing of the Bible, a re-vision of our understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Now, it must be looked at from a new perspective, a perspective that differs from the consensus of Christian tradition.
________________
The above is a revision of the post,
I have not only revised, but have written a followup of the above.
The following is the followup
________________
Several Translations

"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
AV (KJV)

This seems to speak to the individual who is "in Christ," therefore , since "he is a new creature" for whom "all things are become new," the implication is that all the "old things are passed away."
The entire conditional statement indicates a complete change, conversion, of the person. Nothing of the pre-Christian life remains.

Obviously, the color of a person’s eyes, their fingerprint, and such, will not have changed. If those changes are excepted, where can we draw the line between those things that don’t change, and those that do. "All things?" What does "things" comprise?

For me, this translation indicates that when one becomes a Christian, all of the spiritual--moral and religious–life is transformed, made new. Thus, if all is not new, if some of the old remains, the person is not "in Christ." I’ve not known anyone where this total transformation has already come into being. If not, either the passage is not a true statement, or there are no Christians to be found.

Neither of these conclusions is acceptable, so we look to other translations to see if they might clear this dilemma for us.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."
NKJV

The New King James did not clarify, rather it turned the word "creature" into the more ambiguous, "creation."

"When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new being; the old has gone, the new has come."
TEV

Here, the word, "therefore," is omitted. It is no longer presented as a logical conclusion of what precedes the verse.
For me, "joined to" Christ has a clearer and more distinctive sound than "in."
"Being," rather than "creature, creation," moves from the language of God’s creation to the abstraction of philosophical terminology.
(We may begin to wonder what the Greek text says, in order that we may better evaluate these variants among the translators.)

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
NIV

I have arbitrarily chosen the NIV rather than the KJV, as the base translation to compare others to.
This, like the NKJV, prefers, "creature." The only help with the dilemma is the deletion of the word, "all." This legitimate deletion–it does not occur in the Greek text--allows a relative conversion rather than an total, or so-called absolute conversion.

"Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come!"
NASB

Nothing much different.

"And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone; and now the new one is here."
JB

"Therefore" omitted, losing this as a conclusion from the preceding.
"Creation," is ambiguous in this context. It could mean the Genesis creation, and that creation renewed.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come!"
RSV

I like the "passed away," our common euphemism for "died."

"Anyone who belongs to Christ, is a new person, The past is forgotten and everything is new."
CEV

A wide departure from the Greek text.

"There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ; he is a new creation; what is old is gone, the new has come."
Moffatt
The sentence is changed from a conditional to a categorical, declarative.

"So if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new being; the old state of things has passed away there is a new state of things."
NEB

The state of what things? This language is more philosophical than biblical.

"For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation; the old order has gone; a new order has already begun."
REB

The verse seems to speak of individuals, but the REB seems, with the word, "order," to be speaking more universally.

"Accordingly, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone. Look! The new has come!"
Verkuyl

A quite good translation. Therefore, accordingly, so, hence, function as synonyms.

"So, if anybody is in union with Christ, he is the work of a new creation; the old condition has passed away, a new condition has come!"
Williams Translation

Nothing significantly different.

"Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ, the Messiah, he is (a new creature altogether,) a new creation; the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away, Behold the fresh and new has come."
Amplified Bible

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"
NLT

"This means that," functions synonymously with "Therefore."
The NLT seems true to the meaning of the Greek text, but departs freely from a literal translation.
__________

The following is my concise and literal translation:
"Therefore, if anyone in Christ, new creation. The old has passed away. Look, has been made fresh."
Roark translation of the Greek New Testament, British and Foreign Bible Society,1958

Optional terms that may be legitimately substituted, are shown in what follows:
"Therefore [so, accordingly, thus, hence, we may conclude that], if anyone in Christ, new creation; the old has passed away [gone, no longer here], look [Behold] become [come to pass, been made, made, come, become, is, done, created, happening] new [fresh]."

Expanded, but still true to literal Greek: "Therefore, if anyone (in Greek, ‘is’ is implied) is in Christ, the old has passed away. Look, has already begun afresh."

So, what follows is Roark’s preferred variant, but still a literal translation into ordinary English:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the old has passed away. Look a fresh beginning has been set in motion."
_______________________
What does "in Christ" mean: united to, joined to, in union with, belongs to, or something else?

The old what is gone?

Has passed away? Dead, gone, no longer here? Other options?
How dead? None of it remaining, all gone?

A new, or fresh beginning? What is new, how fresh?

Has begun, or, on the other hand, has become, or come to pass?

Is it a process that has begun, or is it an accomplished deed?

My last translation indicates that I take this verse to be understood relatively. However, it remains ambiguous.

One thing rings true: We need to carefully scrutinize both our relation to Christ, and the conduct of our actions.

2007-01-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

2 Corinthians 5:17: a Dilemma

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." NASB

2 Corinthians 5:17 is one of the most widely quoted verses in the New Testament. On a first reading, it no problem to understand.
If anyone has given their life to Christ (is a Christian, a believer in Christ), God fashions them into a completely new person (born anew, re-generated). The person they were no longer exists. See (examine with your own eyes, observe, it is obvious), a new person has appeared.
---------------
But this understanding poses a logical dilemma:

Either this is absolute literal truth or it is relative truth

If absolute literal truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways of life are no longer a part of them; the life they are now living is a new way of life, different from the old.

If relative truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways are relatively gone; the life they now live is relatively new.

Therefore, either they are complete converted, or they are not completely converted.

-------------------------
This verse is in the form of a conditional (if, then) statement. Logically, when the if part of the statement is true, the then part of the statement must be true. To state it a different way, when the then part of the statement not true, the if part of the statement cannot be true.
If an individual is completely converted, their old life is completely gone
The old life is not completely gone; elements of the old life remain
Therefore, they are not completely converted.

To restate:

If an individual is "in Christ," then it is a certainty that their old attitudes, values, and way of life have disappeared. If we find that the life of a person who claims to be "in Christ" retains any of the same old attitudes, values, and ways of life, then we must conclude they are not truly "in Christ."

Long-term observation indicates that some old attitudes, values, and ways of life continue in the lives of all professing Christians. If this is true (and I think it can be demonstrated), then no professing Christian is "in Christ." In fact, there are none "in Christ." Can one be a Christian, but not "in Christ?" If so, then what does "in Christ" mean?

-----------
On the other hand, if we understand this verse to be relatively true, then it is possible that an individual might have a definitely positive relation to Christ--relatively in Christ--but not completely. They could be a relatively new creation with their old life relatively gone. The new is in the formative process, and the old in the process of being eradicated.

-------------
Of course, this raises a question about the nature of the entire Bible.

If the Bible is absolutely true, then 2 Corinthians 5:17 must be absolutely true

2 Corinthians is not absolutely true (so it seems from the preceding)

So, the Bible cannot be absolutely true

---------------
If 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true, then the Bible is relatively true

2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true (so it seems from the preceding)

Thus, the Bible must be relatively true.

_____________
This necessitates a complete re-viewing of the Bible, a re-vision of our understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Now, it must be looked at from a new perspective, a perspective that differs from the consensus of Christian tradition.

2007-01-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

It’s little wonder that people don’t like God. He has been misrepresented. When we listen to the diverse testimony of the Bible, it is easy to see how we might get off track and miss the main line. Which of these many witnesses are we to believe? Can their divergent testimony be harmonized?

No simple resolution of the tensions will work, mainly because God is not simple. He is complex, and so is the story the Bible tells–it has to be if it is to faithfully represent God. The Bible and its God are complex, difficult to comprehend, and always relative. The guitar, an apparently simple instrument, turns out to have unimaginably rich possibilities beyond strumming three chords. Life is not simple, nor is love, nor truth, nor the Bible, nor the gospel, nor God, nor the guitar. Add to that:, nor am I, nor are you. Michael Levine observed that "Some people involve themselves in religion as an opportunity to approach mystery, and other people go into religion to escape mystery."

God has been misrepresented because of naivete, obscurantism, and self-interest. It is just as naive to reduce God to "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," as it is to think that God’s main concern is getting us into his heaven. It is just as obscurantist to believe that Augustine and John Calvin are the final authorities on God as it is to believe that John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas can tell us all we need to know. It is just as selfish to identify God with Americanism, capitalism, or the Republican party as it is to believe that God will produce abundant health and wealth to all who faithfully obey him. God can be reduced to neither John 3:16 nor the prayer of Jabez.

You may not agree. You may be one of those who believe that God reveals himself clearly, that any sixth grader can understand the Bible, or that all we need to know about God is how to "get saved" so we can avoid hell when we die (a concern to an ever decreasing number, at least in Europe, the Americas, and Australia). If you find this way of thinking satisfactory, then you haven’t read the whole Bible, paying attention to what it tells about God, and what God himself says. Or, you have read, selected the conventional, and ignored the rest.

I suggest that the Bible is more akin to a complexly plotted novel or a rich orchestral symphony than to a blog of children’s literature or a three-chord popular song. It is more akin to a kaleidoscopic view of God than it is to a how-to blog, a blog of rules, or a blog of doctrines. It is more akin to poetry with its metaphor, simile, and suggestiveness than it is to an encyclopedic reference blog filled with objectively validated facts.

"In the beginning God." That’s where you have to begin, otherwise you begin, and end, with nothing. You come to life’s end with nothing. That’s no way to live, and certainly not what you want to realize your life has come to at its close.. So many deaths are sad, are failures, are empty, a waste. On the one hand many in the 21st Century are convinced that the only honest beginning for thought and life is to realize there is nothing: no truth, no meaning, no purpose, no goal. Nothing. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"

And on the other hand, if it is true that the only place to begin is with God; if the only place to begin to make sense of life, to give meaning to our own actual, personal, precious life is to start with God, then the question becomes, "Which God? What do you mean by the term, the concept? What God are you proposing?" In this blog we are dealing explicitly with the God to whom the Christian scriptures, in their complex and simple, clear and obscure way, bear witness.

Don’t be too sure you already know all about him, have him all figured out, and have lost interest. The fact remains that everything we think or do, everything we treasure or hate, is rooted in our response to the God question: is there a God or not, and if so, what is he/she/it like? Paul Tillich claimed that everyone has a god, that whatever is your ultimate concern, that is your God. One versified response to Tillich got directly to the point: "My ultimate concern is whether the ultimate is concerned with me." A philosopher once was asked, "What is the most important of all questions?: He answered, "Is the universe on our side?" And yes, the ultimate is concerned with us, the Creator of the universe is on our side.

What I’m proposing in this blog is a Copernican revolution of our understanding of the Christian God. Remember. Copernicus didn’t deny the existence of the sun, the earth, or any other phenomena of astronomy. He simply changed the perspective with which we considered them, and that changed everything. It opened the way for all kinds of new understandings, many of which led to new courses of action, making possible, among other things, all our space exploration. When the Copernican cosmology was first presented and explained it was not at all clear what it might illuminate and change. Nonetheless, in time, it constituted an amazingly productive revolution.

Remember also that Copernicus was strongly opposed in the beginning, but now is accepted almost universally. I hope to convince you that we have been presented with major misunderstandings of who God is, what he is like, what he wants, and how he goes about what he does. I intend to present a better perspective from which to understand and respond to God.

I intend to be as faithful to the biblical materials, even to the mainstream of Christian belief, as Copernicus was to the facts of our solar system. Nothing new will appear on these pages, rather there will be a shift of center. It is all to be found in the Bible, always has been, but sometimes it is hard to see what we what is right in front of us. Whether this is so, you will have to examine and decide.

Now if you believe there is no such thing as transcendence, no mystery, nothing that can’t be stated precisely, you might as well click onto some other site. Your blinders will prevent you from seeing. If you believe all can be reduced to scientific explanation and technological solution, don’t expect a blog written in your language. On the other hand, if you expect a defense of liberal or conservative, evangelical or mainline views of God, you will not be hearing the insider language of your chosen habitat.

I have lived on the border between the church and the world, know both languages, both ways of thinking, and cross the border often. My citizenship is on the church side. On that side we can discern two perceptibly different ways of sensing, understanding, and responding to God. They are not inherently incompatible, in essence they are harmonious, but too often in practice they have gone their separate and destructive ways. Most of the criticism of Christianity, some quite valid, stems from this division.

2006-12-28T18:17:00.000-08:00

The Christian Century, a highly-respected theological journal formed at the beginning of the 20th Century, took its name from the belief that that was going to be the Christian century. It didn’t happen. God was on trial in the twentieth-century. He had an excellent team of advocates for the defense, and a multitude of character witness were called to give their testimony–testimony sworn on the Bible. Most of those character witnesses did not serve him very well. We often found ourselves doubting the credibility of those who served as God’s character witnesses. Their tone of voice and melodramatic character didn’t ring true, so it was easy to dismiss the testimony they gave in defense of God”s character. No, the 20th Century didn’t turn out to be the Christian century.

The Christian church and its God were on trial, a lengthy trial that did not reach a clear verdict. Apologists for the trinitarian Father, Son, Spirit were razor-sharp, hard-hitting and indefatigable, but for all the “evidence” they amassed, conviction was rare. Between the counsel for the defense, the extreme rationalism of their arguments, their lack of evidence compelling to heart and soul, and the dubious character of their character witnesses, the most generous verdict is that the century ended with a hung jury. A mistrial should be declared.

Once upon a time a photographer impressed Pablo Picasso so well that the controversial painter broke his rule about photographers and allowed the fellow to bring his camera into the studio and told him he was free to shoot pictures of anything he wanted to. In fact he allowed him to move in and live there six weeks, knowing the photographer intended to publish the pictures The most informative page in the book showed photographs–taken at intervals throughout the day–of the painter’s way of developing a painting.

Picasso approached a steer standing in a nearby pasture and did a painting of it, right on the spot. The photographer took a picture of the steer itself, and then of the painting at that time. The painting and the photo looked almost identical. (Many people don’t realize that Pablo could paint realistic representation with the best of them, and did until he was fourteen-years-old.) The next several shots show the progress (some would say regress) across the day as the painter modified first this color and then that shape until when he was finished it looked like what we have come to expect from Picasso. It bore little resemblance to what we all know steers look like.

Picasso, one of the most articulate painters of history, explained, saying something to this effect: “I distort and modify until I can present that which the eye of habit does not see.”

That idea, “that which the eye of habit cannot see,” sheds light on much of the mental darkness that obscures the way we see reality. We live mostly by habit. We see mostly by habit. We think mostly by habit. Our thinking follows the conventional wisdom and the political and social correctness of our fellows; this wisdom and correctness come directly from the habits of societies. Once Picasso focused our attention of some element we had never really paid attention to, we look at cattle in a new way, seeing clearly that which had there all along, but now we see there is more to the steer than we had realized.

In this blog I am attempting to present an unfamiliar way of seeing God, a way has always been there, that the mind of habit sees but neither notices nor acknowledges, all the while remaining unaware of what it means. What you will find in this blog is like what the writer of I John says: “I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning . . . On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you.” We will be giving careful attention to something that has been part of the Christian religion from the beginning, but that much too often has been marginalized.

God is hard to figure out. The Bible gives a good many stories of God in action, God’s declarations, assertions others make about him. The problem is that it doesn’t all fit together very well. I read somewhere in one of Giardina’s books, [I've tried repeatedly to find the reference again, and still must do it] where the fellow said to the woman who had helped him several times, “Hit was you talked me into learning to read. I wanted to do so’s I could read the Bible. I ain’t so sure now hit’s a blessing. They’s hard sayings in there.” Besides, the Bible–-which for Christians is the only objective testimony to God they will accept–is itself hard to figure out. The Bible, the blog that is supposed to tell God’s story, is complex, much like the God it tells of. But there is no shortage of simplistic ways offered to resolve its difficulties.

That is one of the two major weaknesses of the Christian world: the proverbial plenitude of simplistic answers to complex problems. The other weakness is that it is hard to find a Christian who actually follows Jesus, who, according to the Bible, is God’s personal representative.

In this blog, we are concerned with the first weakness: simplistic descriptions of a complex God, as well as very complicated explanations of God that moves his very essence toward the edge of their attention. We will not accept simplistic views of God’s complex book, nor simplistic presentations of a rich, multilayered, polydimensional gospel. We will find that the mainstream of Christians has always accepted–although unconsciously–the relativity of God and of his expectations. Christian doctrine often acknowledges, without realizing it, that God is relative, but it treats the idea (which it fails to see clearly) as only one among the many things that need to be said about God.

If we are to know God primarily through the biblical story, we have to recognize that, like a complexly plotted novel, it is made up of many smaller stories. Let’s think of the Bible as a courtroom scene, with God on trial before the human race, as in fact he is (whether the scene will be one day reversed is a different consideration). The writers of the Bible serve in the courtroom as character witnesses. They claim to know about God, some even claiming to know him. They give their testimonies, some of which are hard to follow. Some are just plain hard to understand. After a bit, the stories they testify to begin to converge, but testimony from other witnesses diverges from the emerging consensus. Some diverge widely. Some of their stories have internal contradictions. The time comes when we begin to wonder about questioning the character of the character witnesses themselves. Do we have good reason to trust them?

So as our exploration sets out we are well aware of the well-known difficulties of understanding God and his word . Some of us have resolved the problem by withdrawing from the field and abandoning religion, at least the Christian religion. At the other extreme are those who, as already suggested, offer us naive or obscurantist and oversimplified harmonizations.

Most of us find neither of these options satisfactory

2006-12-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

We were talking about the Threeness of God on the last post.

The Trinity is a mind-boggling mystery. What we seem to have is a complicated divine society: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all plicated together in eternal common unity, eternally related and interactive with each other .

In spite of what theologians have maintained for centuries, God is not simple. God is singular, but not simple. Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, is commonly called one of the great monotheistic religions of the world, and it is. But it is not a simple monotheism. Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism. Without that modifier we cannot come to see God clearly. I am aware that talk about the Trinity has always been avoided as dull, abstruse, and irrelevant, but as you will see a bit later, it opens the way to a new perspective on God: a relative God.

Not only is God not singular, neither is he remote. God did not form a world, set its laws in motion, breath life into it, and then sit back to see how it all worked out. He stayed in touch. Still does. In Walter Mosely’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Socrates Fortlow’s bitter aunt Bellandra Beaufort, used to tell him, "God ain’t nowhere near here, child, . . . He’s a million miles away; out in the middle’a the ocean somewhere. An’ he ain’t white like they say he is neither."
"God’s black?" little Socrates asked the tall, skinny woman."
"Naw, baby," she said sadly. "He ain’t black. If he was there wouldn’t be all this mess down here wit’ us. Naw. God’s blue."
"Blue?"
"Uh-huh. Blue like the ocean. Blue. Sad and cold and far away like the sky is far and blue. You got to go a long long way to get to God. And even if you get there he might not say a thing. Not a damn thing."
Aunt Bellandra’s God is not concerned with her; is not on her side. Life experience has left countless bitter people with a sense that God is neither interested nor available. If he is, he doesn’t care.

Not so with this biblical God. From the start he has been intimately involved with his handiwork. From walking with Adam in the cool of the day, to speaking to Moses from a bush, to his coming as Mary’s child, Jesus, who is called Emmanuel–God with Us–to "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," he has been engaged and interactive with his special creation, his created image, homo sapiens, as we call ourselves. To acknowledge that God is interactive opens the way to a radical adjustment of how we look at God.
When God created the world, especially us humans, he entered the scene as a participant, interacting directly with his creation, even while allowing us humans the exercise of freedom. From the beginning God stays in touch. He mentors these inexperienced and vulnerable human beginners. God cares about them and cares for them; he attends to the needs of this special in-his-own-image-and-likeness creation. He creates them with potential, with an open future, and provides them with all the essentials necessary for the development of a rich and satisfying life. He gives both tender loving care, and the discipline that is needed if they are to reach their full potential.

If God cares about us, that means that we make a difference to God. God is moved by what we do or neglect to do. We affect God’s feelings. Our conduct has some bearing on the decisions God makes. In some sense he depends on us, another idea that runs contrary to the conventional picture of a God who needs neither help nor anything else from us. If God depends on us, at least for some things–for anything–he is to that degree vulnerable for we just might fail him (and often do). We and God share response-ability and mutual vulnerability. We re-spond reciprocally; we both can be wounded.

Moreover this means that human history, and each of us individually, has an open future. It is not an already settled, done deal. Erin O’Shaughnessy opens her novel, Pasaquina, postulating that "No Latino villager ever hurries, for, after all, where is there to go? They are either going to heaven or to hell, and that has already been decided. Only the Anglos hurry, and Father Herrera says that is because they are trying to live like hell on earth while at the same time planning how to cheat God into going to heaven at the last minute."

Whether O’Shaughnessy’s view reiterates a worn-out prejudiced stereotype or not, she makes it clear that many Christians of whatever ethnicity or nationality see Christianity primarily in terms of heaven and hell. Later, we’ll have to give some time to that misconception. Our immediate point, however, is the assumption that it really makes little difference what we do with our lives because God has already determined the future in its entirety. If God in any sense depends on our assistance–and as we shall see, he does--much of the future remains yet to be worked out. It means that a great deal of what happens is up to us.

To say we make a difference, that we affect, and that God is dependent implies that God can be changed. No idea is more firmly fixed in Christian thought than that God never changes. To even suppose that God might change threatens the whole picture. If God can change, is anything secure? And yet all through its pages, the Bible manages to affirm both that God changes, and that he can be trusted.

It isn’t just playing with words to suggest that if we affect God, that means he has affections, another idea contrary to conventional Christian teaching. Psychologists use the word "affect" differently from most of us. For them, a person’s "affect" refers to their "feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language." If we affect God, if God has affections (feelings, emotions), does God have an "affect?" Over and over the Christian Scriptures reveal a very affectionate God.

The proposal of a genuinely interactive God raises all kinds of questions. It may well make us uneasy but it also suggests adventure, excitement, and openness to refreshing, brand-new possibilities. It means we count for something; we are needed; our lives can take on new meaning and value. We make a difference to God, and to human history.

2006-12-26T17:09:00.000-08:00

So mine has been a long-standing quarrel with the Christian religion, both as I have experienced it and as I have studied it. I am well aware that I’m not alone. Many of you can identify. So did Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. Both Jeremiah and Jesus expressed strong displeasure with the religion of their time. I suspect you sense a resonance within yourself as you read these words. Your issues with the church may not be the same as mine, but you and I, we understand and respect each other because we both recognize that Christianity is somewhat less than completely convincing, at least the Christianity we’ve seen and heard preached. Whatever connection we might have had with the church in the past, there’s not much about it now that interests us.

We’ve differed in the ways we’ve reacted to our dissatisfaction with the church and its God. Some of us have challenged the truth and validity of the Christian faith. Some left, gave up on the whole thing, walked away and never looked back. Others left and have been trying out other ways to satisfy their spiritual needs; they took leave with regret; they’re still longing for something they left behind, but they’re not about to go back looking for it. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but sometimes when they hear someone singing a bit of some Christian song or they walk past a church on Sunday morning, they sense that something of who they are is missing. Usually they dismiss the feeling as the nostalgia that it probably is. Still, they know that something is missing.

And me? I’ve stayed. A lot of us have stayed. We’ve stayed because we’ve found no other place to go. We’ve stayed because, somehow, we still believe that the real thing is here hiding somewhere in the status quo. A bunch of us who are still in the church feel almost just like you do, but uncomfortable as it is, we’ve stuck around. We’ve hung on because we couldn’t see any real option. We are still part of the church because we continue believing that no matter how bad the kitchen smells, it’s the only room that can provide us with nourishment. We stay on and keep looking for ways to change the way the church thinks and operates.
We know that, most often, the church stinks. Like Denise Giardina says, there’s a lot of mean Christians that "don’t love nobody but Jesus." Churches are overloaded with mean Christians who more often than not talk about a mean God, a God who is all in favor of war and capital punishment and beating the devil out of their children. Nevada Barr refers to the sort of Christians who use the Bible Belt to beat the fear of God into their children. And sometimes their wives. Beat the devil out of them and the fear of God into them.

They make it sound like God is all about power and control, thus they become like the God pictured in their minds. Christendom–the world of people who call themselves Christians and organize unions of power structures they call churches–smells, literally, to high heaven. But some of us endure and fight as covert insurgents, change agents, for the revolution that we believe must come. We live by faith, with hope–and hopefully, with love. Our quarrel with Christianity is an insider’s quarrel with our Christian heritage, a lover’s quarrel with the church and its doctrinal heritage.

You may find here things you’ve always either thought or suspected, but that preachers and Sunday School teachers denied. You will find ambiguity, vagueness, even contradiction, but some of us have learned that if we are to be true to the "real world," truth is shot through with ambiguity, vagueness, contradiction, and impenetrable mystery. The Bible and its portrayal of God is true to the world as it really is. Thus there is no clear, simple way for it to tell what is involved in any honest effort to follow the way of Jesus. Some of us have learned to live by faith rather than by precise absolutes and micro-managing rules. We have overcome the neurotic need for absolutes, precision, predictability, certainty, accuracy, simplicity, and literalness. Surprisingly we have found that everything comes into sharper focus when we look at it in its naked reality.

Whatever it is that disturbs us about Christianity, I suspect that if we analyzed our feelings and thoughts, we would find our dissatisfactions are rooted in a dislike for the God that Christians tell us we must either believe in or else go to hell. Most of the time that seems to be all they care about–getting everyone into heaven. This blog quarrels with the conventional picture of God. In its place, it offers, for your consideration, a quite different perspective. Any time we shift our perspective on anything, we see it differently. We need to see God from a new perspective.

Most of our problems began because we had been around people who knew everything about God and wanted us to hear and accept their take on God. We have been unimpressed. These folks have been offensive, often obnoxious. We couldn’t believe that with their ugliness of spirit they had the nerve to claim they were messengers of good news. Little wonder we supposed their God was just as offensive. When Harry Emerson Fosdick was pastor of the Riverside Baptist Church in New York City, somebody occasionally would come to tell him they didn’t believe in God. He always asked them to tell him about this God they didn’t believe in. After they described their objections to God, Fosdick would respond, "I don’t believe in that God either."

If it is possible to talk about a believable and attractive God, what can be known about him? What would he look like? Actually, we can know quite a bit. lf we stick close to the story the Bible tells, we can know much about God, even though we are still dealing with a subject admittedly too heavy for us to ever quite get a handle on. This biblical God clearly can’t be handled or fully comprehended, but we can learn a lot about him. Some of it will surprise us. All of it may cause us to have second thoughts.

When it comes to the God question, the Bible doesn’t give us a clear and simple answer, but that has never kept folks from claiming to have found one. The solutions offered by religious people commonly misrepresent and oversimplify the God that emerges when we do that rare thing–with clear eyes, read the entire book, paying attention to what it actually says. God, as the Bible tells its story–which comprises a whole series of short stories–is complex. He doesn’t always behave the same way. Sometimes he resembles a terrorist, a freedom fighter, a force to establish justice, an artist, a loving father, mother, nurse, protector, a shepherd who keeps his eye on the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the flock. God is complicated.

Although people claim that Christianity is a monotheistic religion–belief in only one God-it is hard to find that idea validated on the pages of the Bible. Here is God the Creator, later to be known as God the Father Almighty. Then, here is God the Son, sent from the Father. We watch what this Son does, hear what is said about him, and realize the Bible believes that he is God. And then we find the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who descends on Jesus from the Father, and whom Jesus will one day send to teach all about himself. Again, when we listen to the witness of these documents, this Holy Spirit is God. Yet when we’ve read this exceedingly long, composite account that tells us something of God’s history, it clearly testifies to a single and supreme God. A person could get lost in the complexity of it all.

2006-12-23T19:39:00.000-08:00

I am an angry Christian. I am angry at God’s misrepresentatives, and their misrepresentations of the Christian religion. From these misrepresentatives, the majority of listeners and readers gain a misleading understanding of who God is and what God is like.
If you are offended by this opening paragraph, let me make a beginning of explaining where I am coming from.

I’ve often gotten trouble because I can be so stubborn, but I have a reputation as someone who doesn’t seem to get angry; anger is not how I live, not who I am. But I have a right to what anger I express in this blog (you may relax; anger is not going to be the dominant word or tone of the blog).

From the pulpit I once heard a preacher say, "Nothing can be done in anger that couldn’t be done better without anger." Maybe Jesus could have cleansed the temple more efficiently if he had not acted in anger? Read or reread Galatians; Paul, while dictating this little book, was angry almost to the point of rage. Look at how often the scriptures inform us of God’s anger. Could God have accomplished more, would the world operate more harmoniously if God never acted in anger? I don’t think so.
True, it is dangerous when anger rules action, but when anger motivates and drives needed action, it is an important energizer.I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented the one we love dearest. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways. Yet this is the vision of God vast numbers have picked up in their childhood church experiences.

Read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century and observe how regularly this view of God and his representatives on earth is the picture of God that has haunted them across the years since they escaped the regular reminders of his wrath. I am angry because of all those who have been run off without ever seeing God as he is revealed in the biblical story. A re-vision of the biblical God is needed. We are going to take another look at the Bible. This blog furnishes a sketch that is more faithful, that emerges from a re-view of the story

The portrayal of God’s character that I will sketch is not dependent on certain specific biblical texts, although there are many that paint the same picture explicitly. The fabric of most Christian sermons, Sunday School lessons, doctrinal statements, and defenses of the faith have been woven with the threads of many single, specific Bible verses, often disconnected from any context or setting. That method will not be used here. Rather, we will view the Bible as a whole and see what God looks like in the big picture. We are going to back off and look again, re-view at the central character in the story, then trace some of the defining features that emerge from the resultant revision of the way we view the divine character.

Small wonder that people criticize, mock, or just plain ignore Christianity. God himself repeatedly warned that if his people didn’t do right, they would make God’s name to become a joke and a mockery to the outsiders. When the times came that their actions made others turn God’s name into a byword, God told his spokesmen such as Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel of his anger with them. In his fury, he allowed God’s own main team, his covenant community, to be mocked and treated like dirt.

There are things up with which God will not put; his anger is most commonly directed at the people who claim that they are God’s people. When they misrepresent him, he rejects them as his representatives. Just remember who it was that often received the fierce anger of Jesus. I am irritated with preachers, particularly evangelicals–I am one--Sunday School teachers, professional theologians–I am one--in other words, with the majority of those who across the centuries, have taught and spoken for Christianity.

Keeping my temper fairly well in check, I have been an active member of the church for most of my life. I remain so. I love God. The church is an essential part of my habitat. Some of my favorite people are professional theologians. I know some first-rate, for real, churches and individual Christians, but on the other hand I know more of the other kind.
In childhood it was mere confusion; through adolescence and early adulthood it became more of a recurrent uneasiness with what I heard at church.

Then in the process of acquiring three advanced degrees from a theological seminary, the anger emerged and came into focus. I still preach often, am active in my local church, and have recently retired after more than thirty years as a happy and respected teacher of Christian Studies in a small Baptist university.

Now that you are aware of what drives the writing of this blog, keep your critical mind alert. You may well wonder where someone got the audacity to write such a blog. I have tried carefully to be fair to Christians; I readily acknowledge that much of what this blog says does not accurately describe many Christians and churches. I am quite aware that I could be wrong in my basic criticisms and in the new perspective I propose. But I don’t think so.

Judge for yourself, using your own experience, good reasoning, the Bible, and common sense as criteria for making your judgment.

To help you decide whether to continue following this blog, I offer a clue. When in months to come, the blog has covered all I intend, it can be summed up in two sentences:
God is love, and
all his commandments are contained in the law of love, and
love is a relationship.
All else is support, clarification, detail, form.

2006-12-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

In a dictionary, "absolute" and "relative" are defined, appropriately, in several conventional ways. In a good dictionary, you will find the basic definitions that I stipulate. From a close study of the previous etymological post, you should realize that my definitions are completely in keep with the original meanings and usages of these words. Please don’t try to read the words in my posts with you own, or the commonly accepted meaning. They are not wrong, nor is mine remote from them.

Here is how I use the words:

"Absolute," by definition: Completely removed from any connection, relation, link, or dependency on anything else, thus, completely (not absolutely) separate from everything.

There are no absolutes, except as a construct in the human mind. Nothing is related to nothing; every entity is related to other entities. Even God, the Christian God, the trinitarian God, is not absolute. The Father relates to and is dependent on the Son; the Father relates to and depends on the Spirit. The Son relates to and is dependent on the Father; the Son relates to and is dependent on the Spirit. The Spirit relates to and is dependent on the Son; the Spirit relates to and is dependent on the Father. Christianity is incorrectly categorized as one of the great monotheistic religions of the world. It is in a category of its own: trinitarian monotheism. God is, within God, relative: Father, Son, Spirit in eternal relation. God is, by his revealed character, relate-I’ve, relational (Love). The one God is the Divine Society.
The God of eternal love–Son, Spirit, Father in eternal relation–cannot be absolute. To affirm the absoluteness of God is to commit, perhaps, the greatest heresy of all time.

Whether you agree with me or not, please let me know if you misunderstand me.

[The goal of good writing is not that one should write such that readers would understand them; rather, they should write such that they cannot be misunderstood. Again, please help me by responding if what I write is not clear to you.]

"Relative," by definition: related to, involved with, linked to, connected of one entity with some entity other than itself. Relative also means, because in some way connected, thus in some way dependent on: situation in time, space, character, responses, and actions of others, immediate context, the kind and extent of the linkage. At least some of these, perhaps all, and probably much, much more.

We have much more to explore, as we have time, interest, and energy to do so. I’m going to keep on at it as long as I can. I see no prospect of running out of aspects of life that have not already been thoroughly explored.

2006-12-18T12:47:00.001-08:00

Link to my post on Rick Davis' blog
http://aintsobad.typepad.com/ikant/

2006-12-16T19:02:00.000-08:00

You might want to think on the word studies of "Absolute" and "Relative" that follow below. I hope tomorrow to justify and clarify the way I understand these words, and how I will use them in this blog.

c.1374, from M.Fr. absolut, from L. absolutus, pp. of absolvere "to set free, make separate" (see absolve). Most of the current senses were in L. Sense evolution is from "detached, disengaged," thus "perfect, pure." Meaning "despotic" (1612) is from notion of "absolute in position;" hence absolutism, 1753 in theology, 1830 in politics, first used by Gen. Perronet Thompson. Absolutely as an Amer.Eng. colloquial emphatic is first recorded 1892.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic: absolute knowledge.
characterizing the phonological form of a word or phrase occurring by itself, not influenced by surrounding forms, as not in is not (as opposed to isn't), or will in they will (as opposed to they'll). Compare sandhi.
Mathematics. (of an inequality) indicating that the expression is true for all values of the variable, as x2 + 1 > 0 for all real numbers x; unconditional. Compare conditional
something that is independent of some or all relations.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME <>solve http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solve http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solve
c.1440, "to disperse, dissipate, loosen," from L. solvere "to loosen, dissolve, untie," from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *swe- + base *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart" (cf. Gk. lyein "to loosen, release, untie," O.E. -leosan "to lose," leas "loose;" see lose).
abstract http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abstract http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abstract
1387, from L. abstractus "drawn away," pp. of abstrahere, from ab(s)- "away" + trahere "draw" (see tract (1)). Meaning "withdrawn or separated from material objects or practical matters" is from 1557;
abnormal http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abnormal http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abnormal
1835, replaced older anormal and abnormous (1742) under infl. of L. abnormis "deviating from a rule," from ab- "off, away from" + norma "rule" (see norm). The older forms were via O.Fr. anormal (13c.), from M.L. anormalos, from Gk. anomalos, from an- "not" + homalos, from homos "same." The Gk. word influenced in L. by association with norma.
aberration http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aberration http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aberration
1594, "a wandering, straying," from L. aberrationem, from aberrare "go astray," from ab- "away" + errare "to wander" (see err). Meaning "deviation from the normal type" first attested 1846.
abdicate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abdicate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abdicate
1541, "to disown, disinherit (children)," from L. abdicatus, pp. of abdicare "disown, disinherit" (specifically abdicare magistratu "renounce office"), from ab- "away" + dicare "proclaim," from stem of dicere "to speak, to say" (see diction). Meaning "divest oneself of office" first recorded 1618.
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relative (n.) http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relative http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relative
1388, "a relative pronoun," from O.Fr. relatif (13c.), from L.L. relativus "having reference or relation," from L. relatus, pp. of referre "to refer." Meaning "person in the same family" first recorded 1657; the adj. is attested from 1530. Relatively "in relation to something else" is recorded from 1561. Relativism in philosophy first recorded 1865 (relativist is from 1863).
relate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relate
1530, "to recount, tell," from L. relatus, used as pp. of referre (see refer), from re- "back, again" + latus (see oblate (n.)). Meaning "to establish a relation between" is from 1771. Sense of "to feel connected or sympathetic to" is attested from 1950, originally in psychology jargon. Related in the sense of "connected by blood or marriage" is from 1702.

2006-12-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

God Changes His Mind

The Holy Father told Jonah to inform Ninevah of God’s word: "Yet forty days and Ninevah shall perish." Yet forty days passed, forty-one, then more, and Ninevah did not perish. God changed his mind or else he had Jonah deliver a message that was not factually accurate. God changed his mind because Ninevah repented.

Often, what God does depends on what we do, how we respond to him. Surely it is obvious in I Samuel 8 that God does not want Israel to have any king but him. But the people repeatedly cried for a king, so God told Samuel to anoint Saul, the son of Kish, king. God appears to listen responsively to his people. God and Israel–his covenant community–participate in some kind of interactive relationship.

We’ll look into this much more fully on down the road, but for now consider the logic of the previous paragraph. If God changes his mind, then in some very real sense, God changes. If at times God acts in response to his people, then what God does, depends to a degree, on what they do. If we don’t read into the Bible our traditional–Greek philosophy influenced–belief that God is immutable, the text tells us over and again that the living God can and does change. No fickleness, but change; change, but always trustworthy.

If there are times when God’s actions depend on whether we obey or reject, then God sometimes depends on us, is dependent on us. Here is no philosophical "unmoved mover. Rather, like with a good parent, God’s love expresses itself according to the continually changing need. Much depends on us, yet God remains the Creator and we the creature; God the master, we the servant.

If God has a plan, it clearly is subject to revision. If it had been part of his plan that Adam and Eve would yield to the serpent’s temptation, he would not have punished them because it would have been part of his plan. In the days of Noah, things were not working out the way God wanted them to go, so he initiated a new plan for Noah. Later, God planned for a covenant people, governed by God, to bring blessing to the whole earth. But the people wanted to be governed by a king, so God revised his plan and named Saul their king. Saul didn’t work out; revision again became necessary. David was God’s choice. Then Solomon was God’s choice to succeed David. Solomon didn’t work out. Revision time again.

Repeatedly God’s covenant people undermined, subverted, and sabotaged God’s plan, so God revised his original covenant and promised a new and different kind of covenant, one accomplished through Jesus Christ. God keeps his eye on things, is amazingly adaptable, and is prepared at any time to make any necessary revisions to accomplish his purpose. The way is not a straight line, cannot be foreseen in its entirety, but God’s purpose will be realized, accomplished, completed.

If Jesus had such a thing as an agenda for any particular day, that plan often was revised as he saw the crowds and had compassion on them. Once he crossed the lake, intending a time of needed retreat. However, the throng quickly marched to the other side and swarmed him when he came ashore, so he spent the day teaching them. Often it was individual need that turned Jesus from his planned activity to act compassionately. Once again, in an attempt at retreat from the crowds, he left the Jewish world for the Canaanite, Syro-Phoenician region where he was accosted by a foreign woman who persistently begged for his time, attention, love, and healing power. Jesus seemed reluctant to change his plans, but her unrelenting appeal of faith brought about a revised course of action–and perhaps even a revision of attitude (attitude adjustment?) on Jesus’ part.
God’s way can be barricaded, detours set up, but whatever the obstacle, God cannot be blocked. He has infinite ways of going around, under over, or sometimes even right through the obstructions. God cannot be defeated; he cannot fail; he will prevail. He can be trusted, depended on. Whatever adjustments must be made, God can be counted on to succeed in accomplishing his purpose.

2006-09-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

God is relative, and everything is relative to God. But not only is God relative to us, and we relative to him, God is also relative from before the foundation of the whole creation.

Christianity has ordinarily been understood as one of the monotheistic religions, but monotheism is not adequate term for the God of the Christian religion. This "category" that we "place" God in is too broad a term. Christianity is more particularly a "trinitarian monotheism."