moving to Wordpress, probably

Nate's comment on the Shack piece

I'm having trouble now with the comment facility in the blog. Nate wrote in and contributed this. Thanks Nate. 

I also read the Shack and had a fundamental discomfort with the story because it seemed too easy, too neat. You say God hasn't shown up in your shack--God didn't show up at Mack's shack, either. God takes Mack out of the shack, into a dreamworld paradise where he gets to talk to his daughter, hang out with the Trinity, ask and receive answers. The Incarnate Jesus, in contrast, doesn't yank us out of our decaying world, but enters into it with us.

Now this is minor quibble, but I don't really think Mack is placed as the judge of God--there is a specific chapter in which Wisdom confronts that very idea with Mack. Mack has to concede that he should not be the judge of God. Moreover, God is not only the God who is distant. We don't merely love God in spite of hardship, we also do love God because, as John tells us, He first loved us. Maybe God doesn't show up and disclose himself for our endorsement, but I do believe God shows up. That God shows up, empties himself, and becomes obedient to death is for me the ONLY answer to the theodicy of Job.

But back to where I agree with you about the book: even the incarnate Jesus doesn't answer the questions people pose to him. The God of the Shack does. Mack's redemption is found in getting the answers to all his burning questions. If that's what the rest of us have to get in order to find redemption, then this book is not cause for hope. Nate

What's wrong with "The Shack"

Certainly a broadly discussed book. Here's a snippet of a discussion about it, from my part anyway.

 Perhaps, in the Shack, God and Mack's salvation are short changed by the setup. Mack imagines his salvation is somehow arrived at by some knowledge, peeking behind the curtain, understanding what God is doing and therefore in a way approving of it. God's inscrutable wisdom is held up for our judgment and approval. Mack begins the narrative as the judge and ends it as judge. God is justified by Mack.

The gospel is opposite. Mack is justified by God. Mack is in no position either to understand, much less be the judge of what God is doing.

The theodicy of Job is our ability to love despite cruel circumstance. Do we love only because God comes to us and discloses himself for our endorsement? Do we love because God makes our circumstance pleasant?

Brueggeman says that "Pain is the matrix for the deepest praise of God." Why are 1/3rd of the Psalms laments?

God has not shown up in my shack. He has not show up and disclosed himself to be judged by me, and given what I've seen and heard of many who have lost far more than I he won't. Will I love him still? On what basis?

pvk

Of Study Bibles

A member of the church who has experienced a renaissance of private Bible study read the Time magazine piece on the New Calvinists and saw reference to the ESV Study Bible. He’s in tight budget but was thinking of plunking down the 30 quid or so for it. I know he won’t like it a whole lot. He’s pretty eclectic in his tastes but I offered to get it myself and lend it to him.

It’s got a fairly significant theological/doctrinal guide in the back. Conservative Reformed by a brief perusal. What was interesting was that titling of two of the areas: “Biblical Doctrine” and “Biblical Ethics”. I wonder if they would have a different taste to me if they were in a separate book? It almost seems that adding all of this material within the volume of the Bible almost has the sense of a “signing statement” for those who don’t know “the industry”. In a way even the translations struggle has that sense to it.

We criticize the JWs for their translation of the Bible (and there are legitimate criticisms), but I wonder if we’re losing something by the more overt “branding” of the Bible suited to different traditional proclivities. Do we run the risk of appropriating the Bible in some illegitimate ways and therefore in a way diminishing it? Every translation of course has biases, strengths, weaknesses and blindspots. Even lower criticism and the history of manuscript families has this inherent difficulty. One of the benefits of fewer translations (like the KJV) was that in a sense the Bible itself was a public space in the English speaking world where the different parties could meet and debate their perspectives. Are study Bibles a way of fencing the Christian common?

Publishing houses like Study Bibles because they get to sell more Bibles that way. They couldn’t do it, however, without the help of pastors and scholars, and once one group has theirs the rest of us jump into the fray to protect our piece of the pie and our section of the herd. But what has it cost us?

somegreybloke

Someone gave me this link from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2bpc7LSRZc It's masterful in illustrating Western culture's puzzlement at our articulation of the gospel.

 This morning I listened to Keller's sermon from last Sunday http://tinyurl.com/d2vokw . I thought a lot of the greybloke and his "Jesus loves me" confusion. It took Keller about 43 minutes to work it through. Keller does it better than anyone I know, but it still took time.

What also strikes me is that for most of human history most cultures assumed the antagonism of the gods. The meso-american human sacrifice cultures assumed that only massive numbers of human sacrifices could forestall divine judgment and the destruction of their cultures. Even that failed them in the end.

Our cultural situation is different in that:
1. It is assumed God can be ignored. ("The fool says in his heart there is no God")
2. To the degree that he's paying attention I (seeing myself as an individual) can do no wrong in his eyes. He hates whale killers and Nazis, but me he loves me just because I've got such good intentions.

It's hard to feel gratitude unless I can see the value of the gift.

Augustine, Wisdom, Cultural assumptions of the efficacy of Christ

I'm still mulling over the Andrew Sullivan piece. That piece reveals a serious slippage in terms of a cultural understanding of what "the gospel" is for. Dr. Wilson will plead with Dr. House to leave the superstitious woman alone in her foolishness if her superstition helps her cope with the difficulties of life (religion or gospel as private therapeutic aid, understood and accepted on those terms).

Much evangelicalism has long tried selling the gospel as after-death hell-avoidance insurance. Culturally that "felt need" has long receded. The broad assumption of "a better place" for all but genocidal dictators seems to have most firmly in its grip.

I'm reading Peter Brown's biography of Augustine of Hippo. He notes that Augustines first adult conversion was to "Wisdom" via Cicero.

Sullivan's version of Evangelical Collapse

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article5907453.ece

 A piece worth reading.

Twitter

A deeper antithesis

This is a cut and paste job from something I wrote on a listserve but I wanted to keep it. 

Also within our tradition is the understanding of the two ages. I call them the age of decay and the age to come. These two ages are marked by an antithesis, but not quite in the way expressed by our cousins who are obsessed by what they call "the antithesis". The antithesis that divides the two ages flows out of kind of a magnetic alignment between the poles of myself and the other. In the age of decay the ethos of empire reigns supreme: "my wellbeing at you expense". In the age to come, life on earth as it is in heaven, the magnetic field runs in the other direction: "your wellbeing at my expense." The emblematic expression of this is of course the cross and its vindication and first fruits undoing of the age of decay is the resurrection.

This antithesis must be born witness to in the midst of the age of decay by the antithetical display in the areas of money, sex and power. When money, sex and power flow in the magnetic direction consistent with empire (my wellbeing at your expense) there is no witness to the age to come.

How can such a thing be sustained in the midst of the age of decay? Kingdom antithetical directional living will yield a cruciform lifestyle in this age. There is little pragmatic payoff for living out "your wellbeing at my expense". Such living gets you exactly what Jesus got, abused, stripped, killed. However, it also gets you resurrection, which is the power that draws you through the costly present amidst the age of decay and into the renewed future.

Our tradition has talked a lot about transformation but I think we have tried to get there on the cheap, which means by circumventing the cross and it can't be done. Instead of pursing resurrection through the cross we have settled for a surface upgrade via Max Factor.

I-Monk posts some attention getting stuff

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

This piece caused quite a stir on the net.