Friends of mine are deeply involved in advocating particular theories about the end of time. They preach, write books, publish newsletters. A couple of different times I’ve ask them, If I believed everything you are teaching, what would I do differently? What do you want me to change in the way I live? Their answer: Nothing.
So why should I listen to their sermons or read their books and blogs? One of the most important questions to be asked in theological conversation is So what? What difference does it make? If the answer is “Nothing!” then at minimum we don’t need to excommunicate each for our differences. I'll push it even further, if a person's theology does not have a vital connection to their everyday life, their theology is a mere religious curiosity not really worthy of the label "theology."
Valuable theology does make a difference in our lives. No, it won’t fix my car. It won’t cure Alzheimer’s or wash the dishes. But then that’s not what it is for. Watercolor painting won’t fix my car either, or cure Alzheimer’s or clean the dishes. Still we treasure good painting. And good theology is at least as valuable as good painting. In fact, theology is a lot like art. Theology is someone’s attempt to paint a picture of reality using words.
Theologians tell us what they see, and they hope that in their telling they will enable us to also see. The eyes of our mind see differently after reading a theological work.
It is important to recognize that theology is not reality, just as a painting of a tree is not a tree. No matter how elegant, attractive or “true” the painting is, the painting is not the tree. The Bible is not God. Calvin’s “Institutes” does not contain God. Ellen White’s Conflict of the Ages series does not contain God. These great works point toward God. They evoke in our minds an understanding and appreciation of God. They help us understand the implications of our God theories for the practice of life. But they are not themselves God.
So why do theology?
1. We humans can’t help ourselves. We are incurable theologians. Even Dawkins has to theorize about God–God doesn’t exist;–he can’t help positing a theory of ultimate reality. When we do theology we are doing what all human cultures everywhere at all times have done. We are expressing and revealing our humanity.
2. Theology has implications for how we order our lives. The respect I give those who disagree with me. The limits I impose on people who use their freedom in ways that damage others. My willingness to cooperate with others in community (preserving and limiting personal autonomy). My behavior in support of personal and community health. All of these things interact with my theology.
3. Theology is the art form most suitable for talking about purpose and meaning. Our lives are immeasurably enriched when they are supported by a lively sense of purpose and meaning. If we did away with formal theology, we would immediately replace it with something that functioned in similar manner in our lives–superstition, philosophy, a different theology.
4. Good theology is beautiful and helps us see beauty. Our hunger for this “divine” beauty has inspired the writing and collecting of books for three thousand years at least. The connection between theology and beauty is so strong it justifies our theologizing even though we know theology can be used in wicked ways. (Of course, we are far better served when we use theology to create beauty than when we use it to crack skulls.)
Theology, even the very finest theology, won’t fix my car. It might help me respond righteously if my mechanic fails or my car is irreparable. It points to meaning and purpose that transcend the entire world of cars and mechanics. No matter how precious my car, theology opens a universe beyond it that invites exploration and worship.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Believing Less
Growing up as a precociously religious kid who was reasonably bright, I mastered a lot of information.
By the time I finished elementary school, I knew the names of the general-slaying woman with a hammer (Jael) and the first organist (Jubal). I knew the date of Creation and the right day to keep holy. I could tell you the meaning of the “Spirit of Prophecy” and “then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” I knew the identities of the “little horn,” the “great red dragon” and the “lamb-like beast.” I believed every detail. Fervently.
By the end of high school, I could chart the precise order of last day events–the loud cry, the little time of trouble, the national Sunday law, the close of probation, the great time of trouble, the death decree, etc.
In college and seminary, I added to my repertoire. I became an expert on justification, sanctification and glorification. I could explain legal, relational and psychological theories of the atonement. I could teach people how to “pray through the sanctuary.” I could explain “the covenants.” I could comfortably toss around words like soteriology, pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian, eschatology, hermeneutics, hamartology, ecclesiology, epistemology. When I began pastoring my first church–the Babylon Adventist Church on Long Island–I believed an enormous number of things and could explain why they were true.
Now, I believe less.
I have not been persuaded by the various efforts to “disprove” Adventism. The evangelical critique of Adventism has a patina of scholarship. However, it appears to me to merely replace slavish Adventist dependence on Ellen White as the primary interpreter of the Bible with a slavish dependence on Paul as the ultimate voice of truth. Not a great leap forward in epistemology, exegesis or human well-being. The unrestrained confidence in the “assured results of scholarship” characteristic of classic liberal theology seems naive to me. History has not been kind to “assured results.”
My believing less arises not from the attraction of another truer (or more sophisticated or more exegetically-precise or more venerable) system. Rather it arises out of thirty years of listening to God’s people–professional theologians and mothers and students and scientists and the home-bound disabled and addicts and care-givers and doctors and truck drivers.
All those prophetic details? The theologians argue endlessly. Some of their arguments are interesting. However, a correct interpretation of Daniel 8 and Revelation 13 offers no help for people who have spent thirty years trying to quit smoking or people who are interacting with adult children who are schizophrenics. Should I really claim to believe something that makes no difference for mothering, bill-paying, physical health or the navigation of old age?
To push it even further, people who REALLY do believe we are at the end of time drop out of school, move to the country and “evangelize” in confrontational, obnoxious ways. In other words their lives are deranged.
The same holds for “justification, sanctification, glorification.” The debates about soteriology (how a person is saved) fill endless volumes. The debate is interesting and irrelevant. In my limited experience there is a strong correlation between having highly developed soteriological schemas and being tragically ineffective in significant relationships. Knowing the precise relation between justification and sanctification appears to offer little help for troubled marriages or dealing with addictions or managing money wisely.
So I believe less.
I believe in God.
I believe in people. God made them. God died for them. I figure salvation (whatever that means) is the default state of things. If God, with classical omniscience and omnipotence, created humanity with the full knowledge that 95 percent of them (cf. Ellen White’s statements about “not one in twenty”) would be incinerated, that would raise ethical questions at least as large as those created by theistic evolution.
I believe “God desires mercy and not sacrifice.” That is, relationships are more important than religious rectitude.
I believe doing good is more important that believing right. (Though, of course, ideas matter. Some ideas have consequences.)
I believe making beauty is better than making ugly.
(Some readers, at this point, might ask, then what do I make of the highly elaborated theology of Adventism? Do I think we should get rid of it? Do I think it is wrong? I’ll address this in a future post under the title, “If theology can’t fix my car, what good is it?” Hint: water coloring painting won’t fix my car either.)
By the time I finished elementary school, I knew the names of the general-slaying woman with a hammer (Jael) and the first organist (Jubal). I knew the date of Creation and the right day to keep holy. I could tell you the meaning of the “Spirit of Prophecy” and “then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” I knew the identities of the “little horn,” the “great red dragon” and the “lamb-like beast.” I believed every detail. Fervently.
By the end of high school, I could chart the precise order of last day events–the loud cry, the little time of trouble, the national Sunday law, the close of probation, the great time of trouble, the death decree, etc.
In college and seminary, I added to my repertoire. I became an expert on justification, sanctification and glorification. I could explain legal, relational and psychological theories of the atonement. I could teach people how to “pray through the sanctuary.” I could explain “the covenants.” I could comfortably toss around words like soteriology, pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian, eschatology, hermeneutics, hamartology, ecclesiology, epistemology. When I began pastoring my first church–the Babylon Adventist Church on Long Island–I believed an enormous number of things and could explain why they were true.
Now, I believe less.
I have not been persuaded by the various efforts to “disprove” Adventism. The evangelical critique of Adventism has a patina of scholarship. However, it appears to me to merely replace slavish Adventist dependence on Ellen White as the primary interpreter of the Bible with a slavish dependence on Paul as the ultimate voice of truth. Not a great leap forward in epistemology, exegesis or human well-being. The unrestrained confidence in the “assured results of scholarship” characteristic of classic liberal theology seems naive to me. History has not been kind to “assured results.”
My believing less arises not from the attraction of another truer (or more sophisticated or more exegetically-precise or more venerable) system. Rather it arises out of thirty years of listening to God’s people–professional theologians and mothers and students and scientists and the home-bound disabled and addicts and care-givers and doctors and truck drivers.
All those prophetic details? The theologians argue endlessly. Some of their arguments are interesting. However, a correct interpretation of Daniel 8 and Revelation 13 offers no help for people who have spent thirty years trying to quit smoking or people who are interacting with adult children who are schizophrenics. Should I really claim to believe something that makes no difference for mothering, bill-paying, physical health or the navigation of old age?
To push it even further, people who REALLY do believe we are at the end of time drop out of school, move to the country and “evangelize” in confrontational, obnoxious ways. In other words their lives are deranged.
The same holds for “justification, sanctification, glorification.” The debates about soteriology (how a person is saved) fill endless volumes. The debate is interesting and irrelevant. In my limited experience there is a strong correlation between having highly developed soteriological schemas and being tragically ineffective in significant relationships. Knowing the precise relation between justification and sanctification appears to offer little help for troubled marriages or dealing with addictions or managing money wisely.
So I believe less.
I believe in God.
I believe in people. God made them. God died for them. I figure salvation (whatever that means) is the default state of things. If God, with classical omniscience and omnipotence, created humanity with the full knowledge that 95 percent of them (cf. Ellen White’s statements about “not one in twenty”) would be incinerated, that would raise ethical questions at least as large as those created by theistic evolution.
I believe “God desires mercy and not sacrifice.” That is, relationships are more important than religious rectitude.
I believe doing good is more important that believing right. (Though, of course, ideas matter. Some ideas have consequences.)
I believe making beauty is better than making ugly.
(Some readers, at this point, might ask, then what do I make of the highly elaborated theology of Adventism? Do I think we should get rid of it? Do I think it is wrong? I’ll address this in a future post under the title, “If theology can’t fix my car, what good is it?” Hint: water coloring painting won’t fix my car either.)
Friday, September 4, 2009
Finding God in our Stories
Sermon for North Hill, September 6, 2009
Text: Luke 16:1-15
On the face of it, Jesus’ story about a crooked manager is outrageous. The manager rips off the rancher he works for. The owner congratulates the crook for his cunning. In Jesus’ telling of the story the crook does not apologize or make amends, instead Jesus simply segues from the owner’s congratulation to a spiritual point the story is supposed to illustrate.
More than one church member has insisted I offer some intelligible reason for Jesus’ use of this story. So here is my take on “The Unrighteous Steward.”
First the story as Jesus told it:
Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and confronted him, 'What’s this I hear? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg. I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
He called in each of his master's debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe?”
“Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,” he replied.
The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.”
He asked the second, “How much do you owe?”
"A thousand bushels of wheat,” he replied.
He told him, “Take your bill and make it eight hundred.”
The master commended the dishonest manager on his cunning. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Jesus is quite explicit in stating “the moral of the story:” use money to bless people because this kind of money management brings eternal benefits. We might puzzle over exactly how to implement this teaching, but the basic exhortation is clear.
I explored this idea in last week’s sermon. “Spiritual things” like the Bible, prayer and going to church are not the only tools for building a vital spiritual life. Secular things, worldly things–like money–are no less useful as tools for crafting spiritual life. You want to get ready for heaven? Don’t limit yourself to prayer, Bible study and going to church. Understand that money is a spiritual tool. What we do with our money affects others. It makes an eternal difference. The way we manage money expresses and shapes the very core of our being.
This spiritual lesson from the story does not address the question posed to me on the way out of church last week: why Jesus would tell such a story in the first place? Surely he could have come up with a story with more noble protagonists. Why use a story of scandalous money management to make his point about the wise use of money?
First, Jesus’ use of this story highlights the importance of what he was trying to get across. Jesus used a shocking story to introduce his point because he wanted to make sure no one missed it. He wanted to make sure he had EVERYONE’s attention. He wanted to make sure they would not forget it.
They didn’t.
We’re still talking about it.
Second, Jesus’ use of this story offers fantastic hope to all of us. No matter how inglorious our story, God can still use it. In fact, God needs our story to finish telling his story.
The story of Bob Pierce is full of inspiration. In 1947 he traveled to China as a missionary with Youth for Christ. He was fiery evangelist . . . and a highly effective one. Thousands of people crowded his meetings and were baptized.
One morning he was confronted by Miss Tena Hoelkedoer, a local missionary who was the principal of a mission school. It was easy for him to preach about Jesus, she said, but what was he going to do about White Jade? White Jade was a young student who had attended Pierce’s meetings. The night before she had been so inspired she went home and told her father that she was going to become a Christian. Her father beat her severely and threw her out of the house with threats of severe harm if she ever returned. White Jade dragged herself to the mission. The principal was already housing six orphans in her home she could not afford to feed another.
Pierce gave Miss Hoelkedoer, his last five dollars and promised to send her more money every month. It was the first spark of a personal vision that would eventually encompass the world.
After that preaching tour in China, Bob Pierce went to Korea. Starvation was everywhere. Children without fathers. Wives without husbands. Bob bought a movie camera and filmed the desperate need of the people, then came back to the US and toured the country showing his pictures in churches and pleading with American Christians to help those who were less fortunate.
Bob’s solidarity with the hurting of the world was irresistible. When he talked, you felt the pain of the world. That empathy, that deep connection with the hungry and orphaned and widowed, became the foundation of World Vision. From its birth in 1950, World Vision has grown into an international aid agency helping people in over 100 countries with over 30,000 staff. They assist 100 million people a year.
It’s a fantastic story. But to keep it fully inspirational, you have to edit carefully. If you tell all of Bob Pierce’s story, it sounds a lot like the story of the Unrighteous Steward.
Bob, the man with deep empathy for the world’s needy, was possessed by a fierce temper. He got into frequent angry confrontations with his board. He neglected his family, spending as much as ten months at a time away from home traveling. He justified this neglect saying, "I've made an agreement with God that I'll take care of his helpless little lambs overseas if he'll take care of mine at home." It didn’t quite work that way. He was alienated from his daughters. One of his daughters committed suicide after futilely begging him to come home from an extended trip in Asia. He and wife eventually separated.
He reconciled with his family four days before his death. A nice touch. But given his raging temper, his willfulness, and his deeply entrenched pattern of deliberately neglecting his family, I can’t help wondering how long the reconciliation would have lasted if he had stayed alive.
To put it simply, on a global stage Bob Pierce was a grand, larger-than-life humanitarian. On the smaller stages of home and office, he was a jerk.
World Vision would not exist if Bob had not been such a fanatically driven evangelist. His daughter may not have committed suicide if her father had been more appropriately attentive to his family. Bob Pierce’s story is full of glory and venality, nobility and pettiness. Contradictions.
Like your story.
Maybe that’s why Jesus told this story.
He could have used a story with more noble characters in it. He could have explicitly stated his disapproval of the crook’s business methods. Instead, Jesus took the story as it was–the record of a crooked business manager–and made it an integral part of his teaching ministry.
If Jesus could use that crooks’ story, he can use your story.
Here in our congregation, we have experienced failure. Our stories are not neat records of uninterrupted growth in grace.
Some of us have failed in our marriages. Many of us are divorced. Many of us have participated in conflict and estrangement in marriages that have not outwardly disintegrated. Still God includes our stories in his grand story.
Some of us have experienced failure in our relationships with our parents or our children. At times those failures may tempt us to consider ourselves useless for God’s service. Not so. God is still writing in your story. Invite him to use even your failures to accomplish something good.
Some of us have wasted far too many years in addictions. We are positive our stories are worthless. Unbroken records of failure after failure after failure. That’s not the way God sees it.
A friend of mine used to do meth. For years. At one time he filmed part of his life in addiction, thinking maybe the footage could be used in a documentary to help persuade young people not to follow him into the horrific nightmare his life had become.
Some of us have failed in our work. We’ve been fired or downsized.
Some of us have lost our faith.
Some of us have lost our minds.
Some of us cannot seem to escape the pit of self-pity. We know we should be overflowing with gratitude and joy for the privileges that are ours. Instead we whine and moan over the people and circumstances that annoy us as though we had a right to live in a world perfectly aligned with our desires.
Our stories are useless. At least that’s what we’re tempted to think.
The truth is your story is indispensable to Jesus. He cannot say everything he wants to say without telling your story.
Jesus redeems our stories. Even our failures, blunders, acts of rebellion are somehow rewoven into the grand design of God so that they take on a dignity utterly indiscernible when we first wrote them by our decisions and habits. We are crooks, jerks, clumsy blunders. And we are the protagonists, the exemplars, the heroes in the grand story of God.
Text: Luke 16:1-15
On the face of it, Jesus’ story about a crooked manager is outrageous. The manager rips off the rancher he works for. The owner congratulates the crook for his cunning. In Jesus’ telling of the story the crook does not apologize or make amends, instead Jesus simply segues from the owner’s congratulation to a spiritual point the story is supposed to illustrate.
More than one church member has insisted I offer some intelligible reason for Jesus’ use of this story. So here is my take on “The Unrighteous Steward.”
First the story as Jesus told it:
Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and confronted him, 'What’s this I hear? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg. I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
He called in each of his master's debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe?”
“Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,” he replied.
The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.”
He asked the second, “How much do you owe?”
"A thousand bushels of wheat,” he replied.
He told him, “Take your bill and make it eight hundred.”
The master commended the dishonest manager on his cunning. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Jesus is quite explicit in stating “the moral of the story:” use money to bless people because this kind of money management brings eternal benefits. We might puzzle over exactly how to implement this teaching, but the basic exhortation is clear.
I explored this idea in last week’s sermon. “Spiritual things” like the Bible, prayer and going to church are not the only tools for building a vital spiritual life. Secular things, worldly things–like money–are no less useful as tools for crafting spiritual life. You want to get ready for heaven? Don’t limit yourself to prayer, Bible study and going to church. Understand that money is a spiritual tool. What we do with our money affects others. It makes an eternal difference. The way we manage money expresses and shapes the very core of our being.
This spiritual lesson from the story does not address the question posed to me on the way out of church last week: why Jesus would tell such a story in the first place? Surely he could have come up with a story with more noble protagonists. Why use a story of scandalous money management to make his point about the wise use of money?
First, Jesus’ use of this story highlights the importance of what he was trying to get across. Jesus used a shocking story to introduce his point because he wanted to make sure no one missed it. He wanted to make sure he had EVERYONE’s attention. He wanted to make sure they would not forget it.
They didn’t.
We’re still talking about it.
Second, Jesus’ use of this story offers fantastic hope to all of us. No matter how inglorious our story, God can still use it. In fact, God needs our story to finish telling his story.
The story of Bob Pierce is full of inspiration. In 1947 he traveled to China as a missionary with Youth for Christ. He was fiery evangelist . . . and a highly effective one. Thousands of people crowded his meetings and were baptized.
One morning he was confronted by Miss Tena Hoelkedoer, a local missionary who was the principal of a mission school. It was easy for him to preach about Jesus, she said, but what was he going to do about White Jade? White Jade was a young student who had attended Pierce’s meetings. The night before she had been so inspired she went home and told her father that she was going to become a Christian. Her father beat her severely and threw her out of the house with threats of severe harm if she ever returned. White Jade dragged herself to the mission. The principal was already housing six orphans in her home she could not afford to feed another.
Pierce gave Miss Hoelkedoer, his last five dollars and promised to send her more money every month. It was the first spark of a personal vision that would eventually encompass the world.
After that preaching tour in China, Bob Pierce went to Korea. Starvation was everywhere. Children without fathers. Wives without husbands. Bob bought a movie camera and filmed the desperate need of the people, then came back to the US and toured the country showing his pictures in churches and pleading with American Christians to help those who were less fortunate.
Bob’s solidarity with the hurting of the world was irresistible. When he talked, you felt the pain of the world. That empathy, that deep connection with the hungry and orphaned and widowed, became the foundation of World Vision. From its birth in 1950, World Vision has grown into an international aid agency helping people in over 100 countries with over 30,000 staff. They assist 100 million people a year.
It’s a fantastic story. But to keep it fully inspirational, you have to edit carefully. If you tell all of Bob Pierce’s story, it sounds a lot like the story of the Unrighteous Steward.
Bob, the man with deep empathy for the world’s needy, was possessed by a fierce temper. He got into frequent angry confrontations with his board. He neglected his family, spending as much as ten months at a time away from home traveling. He justified this neglect saying, "I've made an agreement with God that I'll take care of his helpless little lambs overseas if he'll take care of mine at home." It didn’t quite work that way. He was alienated from his daughters. One of his daughters committed suicide after futilely begging him to come home from an extended trip in Asia. He and wife eventually separated.
He reconciled with his family four days before his death. A nice touch. But given his raging temper, his willfulness, and his deeply entrenched pattern of deliberately neglecting his family, I can’t help wondering how long the reconciliation would have lasted if he had stayed alive.
To put it simply, on a global stage Bob Pierce was a grand, larger-than-life humanitarian. On the smaller stages of home and office, he was a jerk.
World Vision would not exist if Bob had not been such a fanatically driven evangelist. His daughter may not have committed suicide if her father had been more appropriately attentive to his family. Bob Pierce’s story is full of glory and venality, nobility and pettiness. Contradictions.
Like your story.
Maybe that’s why Jesus told this story.
He could have used a story with more noble characters in it. He could have explicitly stated his disapproval of the crook’s business methods. Instead, Jesus took the story as it was–the record of a crooked business manager–and made it an integral part of his teaching ministry.
If Jesus could use that crooks’ story, he can use your story.
Here in our congregation, we have experienced failure. Our stories are not neat records of uninterrupted growth in grace.
Some of us have failed in our marriages. Many of us are divorced. Many of us have participated in conflict and estrangement in marriages that have not outwardly disintegrated. Still God includes our stories in his grand story.
Some of us have experienced failure in our relationships with our parents or our children. At times those failures may tempt us to consider ourselves useless for God’s service. Not so. God is still writing in your story. Invite him to use even your failures to accomplish something good.
Some of us have wasted far too many years in addictions. We are positive our stories are worthless. Unbroken records of failure after failure after failure. That’s not the way God sees it.
A friend of mine used to do meth. For years. At one time he filmed part of his life in addiction, thinking maybe the footage could be used in a documentary to help persuade young people not to follow him into the horrific nightmare his life had become.
Some of us have failed in our work. We’ve been fired or downsized.
Some of us have lost our faith.
Some of us have lost our minds.
Some of us cannot seem to escape the pit of self-pity. We know we should be overflowing with gratitude and joy for the privileges that are ours. Instead we whine and moan over the people and circumstances that annoy us as though we had a right to live in a world perfectly aligned with our desires.
Our stories are useless. At least that’s what we’re tempted to think.
The truth is your story is indispensable to Jesus. He cannot say everything he wants to say without telling your story.
Jesus redeems our stories. Even our failures, blunders, acts of rebellion are somehow rewoven into the grand design of God so that they take on a dignity utterly indiscernible when we first wrote them by our decisions and habits. We are crooks, jerks, clumsy blunders. And we are the protagonists, the exemplars, the heroes in the grand story of God.
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