If you are looking to meet up with God, you might keep your eyes open at work.
From Genesis to Revelation
In Genesis One two commands are given to people: “Be fruitful . . . Rule over all living things.” In other words, have sex and work. The grand finale of Chapter One again directs our attention to sex and work. Sabbath honors work by limiting its demands, freeing us to think about its meaning and purpose. Sabbath reminds us we are not merely producers; we are partners with the Creator. Sabbath honors sex by setting aside protected time when we experience sex primarily as a feast of intimacy rather than mere hormonal satisfaction or baby-making.
I’ve explored sexuality and spirituality elsewhere. Here, I’ll focus on work.
In Genesis One work is seen as essential to the human experience. In Chapter Three, after sin, work is still seen as essential to the human experience. Fast forward to the end. Past Abraham and David, Isaiah and Daniel, past the crucifixion and resurrection, past the Second Coming to the very end, to the bliss of eternity. How does Revelation describe human life then?
Work. With God.
Revelation 22:5 pictures the saints on the throne with God reigning, a mirror of Genesis 1:26-28 that pictures humans created in the image of God and ruling, or, in other words, working.
Jesus and Work
Christian tradition is full of accounts of people whose zealous pursuit of intimacy with God led them into solitude. They imagined the most likely path to the richest possible intimacy with God would be to escape the distractions of regular life–business, politics, marriage, parenting, earning a living–and give themselves wholely to prayer and meditation. This ideal which stands behind monastic and eremitic traditions grows out of a misunderstanding of God. The Bible does not picture God as a still spirit residing in perfect eternal repose. Rather God is pictured as a worker. He is busy. And we are called to be busy with him.
Jesus, the Son of God, spent ninety percent of his years fully engaged in the routines of life–routines that would have included lots of regular work. During the last ten percent of his years, his “religious life,” he spent only one period of forty days on retreat and a few entire nights in prayer. Most of the time, even as a preacher, he spent most of his time engaged in public work. Once when questioned about his Sabbath healings, he replied, "My Father is always working and so am I" (John 5:17).
If we are going to follow the pattern of Jesus, we’ll spend most of our time in work.
Spiritual disciplines
Most of us need help in discerning God's presence and purpose in our job. We need greater sensitivity and awareness. What can we do about that? Spiritual disciplines like Sabbath-keeping, Bible reading, prayer, meditation and fasting are designed to increase our sensitivity to God’s presence and approval in our work.
In the Genesis story, even before sin had clouded humanity’s spiritual sensibilities, work was interrupted every seven days by the Sabbath. By ceasing their drive to produce, conquer, change or just to survive, by taking time–a whole day, not just a hour at worship–to reflect, they were more likely to discern where God was in their work. They were more likely to remember that in working they were partnering with God. We need the Sabbath every bit as much. And for the same reasons.
The nearly universal testimony of believers is that they need regular helps to keep them aware of God’s presence and favor. Some kind of daily practice–Bible reading, prayer, meditation, singing, contemplation–is essential for the cultivation of intimacy with God.
Spiritual work
So where is God at work? If you are a teacher, God is with you in your disappointment over students who have no interest in learning. God is with you in your anger at parents who sabotage their child’s learning. And God is with you in those moments when you know your teaching has touched a life. God is in the joy, however, rare it is, that comes from knowing that you have made a difference in a life.
If you are a boat builder, God is keeping you company in creation, even if sometimes it's messy, hot and smelly.
If you’re an accountant, God must laugh with satisfied delight when you make the dance of numbers come out just right. Why did God make a universe that seems designed by a mathematician if he doesn’t get the romance of numbers?
If you’re in health care, God is with you in your joy at recovery, your grief at loss and in your anger when you care for hostile or uncooperative patients. God, too, dreams of healing that could happen but won’t because of people’s failure to cooperate. God, too, delights in recovery.
Whether you are touching people directly as a massage therapist or touching things directly as a builder or mechanic or are working with something as ethereal as actuarial theories, God is keeping you company in your job. To be maximally aware of God’s presence in your place of employment, you’ll want to engage regularly in one or two spiritual practices. They will open your eyes.
Then, if you’re looking to meet up with God, just keep your eyes open at work.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Finding God at Home
My favorite Adventist church building is the Eagle Rock Church in Los Angeles. The play of natural light, the geometry of the dark beams and with plaster, the shape of the space all conspire to evoke tranquility and gentle wonder. A perfect place to encounter God.
Where do you most readily encounter God? In a worship concert? In the out-of-doors? In a retreat center? In a “perfect” church service?
Christian spirituality has been distorted by the dominance of an individualism rooted in Paul’s singleness. He wrote, “An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife . . . [and it is similar for a woman.] I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord. Unfortunately, this immature fascination with “pure spirituality” has dominated Christian spiritual writing for 2000 years. Nearly all of the “Great Classics” of Christian spiritual writing were authored by single people who imagined that ultimate spirituality was cultivated in an escape from earthly distractions into a single-minded focus on God.
However the creation stories of Genesis One and Two point to marital union as the “image of God” and the goal of creation. The nature of God is seen most clearly in marriage. Jesus affirmed classic Jewish theology in his statements about the Great Commandments: Love God and love your neighbor.
In Matthew, the Great Commandment of Chapter 22 is followed by the story of the sheep and goats in Chapter 25. In Luke 10, the Great Commandment is followed by the story of the Good Samaritan. In each passage loving God is honored as the greatest commandment. And in each passage, the ultimate test one’s love for God is love for humans, especially those close by. And who is closer than our spouses, children and parents?
Real spiritual life is found in the glorious ecstasy of sexual union and in the sometimes difficult and painful dance of blending the diverse needs, desires, languages, families and convictions of a husband and wife. “Loving God” in a religious sense is laughingly easy compared to loving the enemy you sleep with, the man or woman who communicates (or not) in ways that drive you crazy. Adoring God in prayer and music is mere child’s play compared with loving God in the person of a rebellious teenager or in the person of a sadistic parent. Authentic spirituality is not found in escape from human distraction into religious or spiritual bliss. Authentic spirituality is experienced in loving human beings—above all our spouses.
Looking to encounter God? Do you want to develop your spirituality to the very highest degree possible? Go home.
Where do you most readily encounter God? In a worship concert? In the out-of-doors? In a retreat center? In a “perfect” church service?
Christian spirituality has been distorted by the dominance of an individualism rooted in Paul’s singleness. He wrote, “An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife . . . [and it is similar for a woman.] I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord. Unfortunately, this immature fascination with “pure spirituality” has dominated Christian spiritual writing for 2000 years. Nearly all of the “Great Classics” of Christian spiritual writing were authored by single people who imagined that ultimate spirituality was cultivated in an escape from earthly distractions into a single-minded focus on God.
However the creation stories of Genesis One and Two point to marital union as the “image of God” and the goal of creation. The nature of God is seen most clearly in marriage. Jesus affirmed classic Jewish theology in his statements about the Great Commandments: Love God and love your neighbor.
In Matthew, the Great Commandment of Chapter 22 is followed by the story of the sheep and goats in Chapter 25. In Luke 10, the Great Commandment is followed by the story of the Good Samaritan. In each passage loving God is honored as the greatest commandment. And in each passage, the ultimate test one’s love for God is love for humans, especially those close by. And who is closer than our spouses, children and parents?
Real spiritual life is found in the glorious ecstasy of sexual union and in the sometimes difficult and painful dance of blending the diverse needs, desires, languages, families and convictions of a husband and wife. “Loving God” in a religious sense is laughingly easy compared to loving the enemy you sleep with, the man or woman who communicates (or not) in ways that drive you crazy. Adoring God in prayer and music is mere child’s play compared with loving God in the person of a rebellious teenager or in the person of a sadistic parent. Authentic spirituality is not found in escape from human distraction into religious or spiritual bliss. Authentic spirituality is experienced in loving human beings—above all our spouses.
Looking to encounter God? Do you want to develop your spirituality to the very highest degree possible? Go home.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Textual Adventism: Cutting the Higher Critical Knot
This morning I discarded some "truth-filled" literature. The booklet included warnings that neglecting the truth it contained "places the soul in greater jeopardy than does any other sin of indifference and neglect."
The booklet from the "Universal Publishing Assn." was filled with closely reasoned allegorical interpretation of the Bible. (Origin of Alexandria would have been proud.) If I accepted a few of its starting premises regarding the typological meaning of nearly everything in the Bible, the conclusions were not all that outlandish. But if you stepped back from the particular points being made on each page, you could see that it was flimsy house of cards. As a pastor I have learned that people who engage in this approach to the Bible seldom have sweet, harmonious relationships with their spouses or children. Their spiritual life is characterized nearly always by fear and anxiety and usually by a miserable judgmentalism.
So I tossed the booklet "At the Eleventh Hour" into the recycling bin. Sometimes you have to just cut through the foolish. There is no benefit in trying to analyze silliness point by point. (This applies to equally to evangelical dispensationalism and to Adventist endtime chart making.)
Fundamentalist apocalyptic allegorizing is not the only approach to "Bible interpretation" that is best tossed in the recycling bin. The same applies to much of "source criticsm." If you read the Old Testament analytically, it's obvious there are different sources behind the text as we have it today. Genesis One and Two are not a smooth integrated whole. They are two different stories. The books of Samuel have places where it's obvious the author has brought together information or stories from different sources without smoothing out all the differences that were in the earlier versions.
HOWEVER . . .
When you read the attempts by source critics to be ever more precise in their assignment of this sentence or phrase (or even single word) to a particular "pre-biblical" source you realize they are building a house of cards no more worthy of respect than the apocalyptic speculations of endtime enthusiasts.
The reality is we do not have ANY of the putative sources that lie behind the actual biblical text. The notion that the text as we have it was assembled by committees or communities is laughable. That is not how great literature is written. The various Bible books as we have them were produced by authors. Those authors were not idiots. When Moses--or whoever it was that wrote Genesis--included Genesis One and Genesis Two in his book, he was not unaware of the differences between the two stories. He deliberately included both stories with their differences. He intended his readers to get the message that came from including both stories in his book. We get no closer to some "original" meaning by over emphasizing the differences than we do by pretending there are no differences. The writer intended for us to get the meaning that comes from the interaction of the two different tellings of the creation story.
While some critical commentators try to get at the "real meaning" of the Bible by exploring a never-ending regression of bits of "source material," a much wiser approach is to simply take the text as we have it and read this "text in our hand" for its meaning as a whole.
The same holds true for the New Testament. The Jesus Seminar's theatrical pronouncements about the authenticity of various passages in the gospels is just that--theater. There is not a shred of documentary evidence behind their speculations. "Q" does not exist. Of course, there is good evidence that the stories and teachings of Jesus as we have them in the New Testament were affected by the passage of time and the experience of the church between the days of Jesus and the date of its writing? But ALL conclusions about the precise relationship of that history to the words of the New Testament is mere speculation, the assured results of scholarship notwithstanding.
As with the OT so with the NT, often the best way to deal with "source criticism" is to toss it in the recycling bin and just read the text as we have it.
This is much easier to do if we are not saddled with "Bible and Bible Only" or "Bible Inerrancy" theories. Instead of getting stuck on the insurmountable difficulties created by outlandish claims regarding inerrancy, inspiration and infallibility, we simply use the Bible for its intended purpose--the cultivation of intimacy with God, moral purpose and spiritual and ethical insight.
Veneration of the Bible is not the great purpose of Christian life. We do not practice bibliolatry.
Scholarly respectability is illegitimate as a goal for a preacher or spiritual teacher. Our goal must be helping people connect with God and lead moral, healthy lives (understood in the broadest sense of social, spiritual, physical, mental life).
The Bible is a peerless tool for the pursuit of that goal. When that goal is obscured by fundamentalist or academic speculation, use the recycling bin.
The booklet from the "Universal Publishing Assn." was filled with closely reasoned allegorical interpretation of the Bible. (Origin of Alexandria would have been proud.) If I accepted a few of its starting premises regarding the typological meaning of nearly everything in the Bible, the conclusions were not all that outlandish. But if you stepped back from the particular points being made on each page, you could see that it was flimsy house of cards. As a pastor I have learned that people who engage in this approach to the Bible seldom have sweet, harmonious relationships with their spouses or children. Their spiritual life is characterized nearly always by fear and anxiety and usually by a miserable judgmentalism.
So I tossed the booklet "At the Eleventh Hour" into the recycling bin. Sometimes you have to just cut through the foolish. There is no benefit in trying to analyze silliness point by point. (This applies to equally to evangelical dispensationalism and to Adventist endtime chart making.)
Fundamentalist apocalyptic allegorizing is not the only approach to "Bible interpretation" that is best tossed in the recycling bin. The same applies to much of "source criticsm." If you read the Old Testament analytically, it's obvious there are different sources behind the text as we have it today. Genesis One and Two are not a smooth integrated whole. They are two different stories. The books of Samuel have places where it's obvious the author has brought together information or stories from different sources without smoothing out all the differences that were in the earlier versions.
HOWEVER . . .
When you read the attempts by source critics to be ever more precise in their assignment of this sentence or phrase (or even single word) to a particular "pre-biblical" source you realize they are building a house of cards no more worthy of respect than the apocalyptic speculations of endtime enthusiasts.
The reality is we do not have ANY of the putative sources that lie behind the actual biblical text. The notion that the text as we have it was assembled by committees or communities is laughable. That is not how great literature is written. The various Bible books as we have them were produced by authors. Those authors were not idiots. When Moses--or whoever it was that wrote Genesis--included Genesis One and Genesis Two in his book, he was not unaware of the differences between the two stories. He deliberately included both stories with their differences. He intended his readers to get the message that came from including both stories in his book. We get no closer to some "original" meaning by over emphasizing the differences than we do by pretending there are no differences. The writer intended for us to get the meaning that comes from the interaction of the two different tellings of the creation story.
While some critical commentators try to get at the "real meaning" of the Bible by exploring a never-ending regression of bits of "source material," a much wiser approach is to simply take the text as we have it and read this "text in our hand" for its meaning as a whole.
The same holds true for the New Testament. The Jesus Seminar's theatrical pronouncements about the authenticity of various passages in the gospels is just that--theater. There is not a shred of documentary evidence behind their speculations. "Q" does not exist. Of course, there is good evidence that the stories and teachings of Jesus as we have them in the New Testament were affected by the passage of time and the experience of the church between the days of Jesus and the date of its writing? But ALL conclusions about the precise relationship of that history to the words of the New Testament is mere speculation, the assured results of scholarship notwithstanding.
As with the OT so with the NT, often the best way to deal with "source criticism" is to toss it in the recycling bin and just read the text as we have it.
This is much easier to do if we are not saddled with "Bible and Bible Only" or "Bible Inerrancy" theories. Instead of getting stuck on the insurmountable difficulties created by outlandish claims regarding inerrancy, inspiration and infallibility, we simply use the Bible for its intended purpose--the cultivation of intimacy with God, moral purpose and spiritual and ethical insight.
Veneration of the Bible is not the great purpose of Christian life. We do not practice bibliolatry.
Scholarly respectability is illegitimate as a goal for a preacher or spiritual teacher. Our goal must be helping people connect with God and lead moral, healthy lives (understood in the broadest sense of social, spiritual, physical, mental life).
The Bible is a peerless tool for the pursuit of that goal. When that goal is obscured by fundamentalist or academic speculation, use the recycling bin.
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