Faith

Wherein My Dog Teaches Me About Judging Others

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My Welsh Corgi, Berwyn, has separation anxiety. He whines when I put my shoes on, barks ferociously at the door when I’m leaving, and pouts when either me or K isn’t around.

We adopted our little Bear (as we often call him) when we’d been married about five years. That was the time we’d originally said we’d start having children, but Kate had recently been diagnosed with the illness that eventually pushed us toward adoption and I was still in the middle of law school.

When we got him, it was clear he’d been neglected (I’m very thankful that his owner realized this and gave him to us). He lived outside, away from his owner family, and the brief experience I had with the family’s kids led me to believe that they really didn’t understand how to interact with a dog. He was a worm-eaten, flea-bitten little mongrel, so for the first several months we had him, we had to put him through heartworm treatment, neutering and flea treatment. It also took him a while to get used to living in the house but going potty outside—especially because our duplex at the time had this brown shag carpet that was very confusing to an animal used to doing his business in the Waco dirt.

He settled in nicely and quickly became an inseparable part of our family.

To let you know how attached to my dog I am, I once (purely out of thoughtless reaction) jumped into the road full-body in front of a fast-moving car because Berwyn had wondered into the street in front of it. No one was hurt and that was the last time that Berwyn got to hang out with us in the front yard without being on a leash, but it was nevertheless an eye-opener for me.

So, since Berwyn’s separation anxiety appears to be getting worse—this may be a result of the children being in the house for several months and then never coming back—it pulls on my heartstrings every time I go to leave. More than once, I’ve seriously considered not leaving at all after hearing his plaintive cries.

As a quick aside, my proposed solution was to talk to K about getting a second dog. I figured the companionship (even though there aren’t many dogs Berwyn actually likes, though he’s great with people) would do him some good. Most experts say that a second dog is usually not helpful for separation anxiety—and can even make it worse if the two dogs neurotically feed off of each other’s panic. Since Berywn’s our little emperor of pets and seems to like it that way, I’ve gone back to the drawing board.

Before getting the sound advice of experts, though, I spent some time looking at local dogs for adoption. The stories of these animals broke my heart repeatedly and I had to pull myself away almost forcibly.

The whole experience has made me think about my relationships with people and with animals. I’m much more patient with animals—and, if you ask K (and I’ll admit she’s right), I’m an absolute sucker when it comes to the Bear. People, though, I have much less tolerance for.

I started to wonder why, to wonder why a picture of a homeless dog on the internet tugs at my emotions deeper than a homeless man standing right in front of me.

The hard truth is sin. Not the homeless man’s, but my own. It’s easier for me to see people as more responsible, more culpable for their sin. That’s reasonable in one sense, as I know that Berwyn, as clever as he often is, really doesn’t understand what sin is—he just knows it’s funny to poop on the floor in the living room to protest something we’ve done that he doesn’t like. But on the other hand, the way I feel about dogs and the way I feel about people shows me just how flawed I am, how mired in the sinfulness of judging others and treating them accordingly.

Focusing on the culpability of others allows us to distance ourselves from them, to justify our decisions to ignore them, castigate them or actively not help them. This is how we rationalize holding others as our enemies or as those we have no obligation to support.

Thank God that divine vision is not so narrow! That, as best as I can understand it, God sees us like I see my dog—even as God acknowledges that we have done wrong his love for us never falters. The closest I come is when I walk into the living room, see Berwyn’s anger-poop and laugh. Yes, I’m the one who will clean it up (this time, K’s up next), but what reason is there to be upset about it?

To be clear, these thoughts are limited to an analysis of the way I think about others, not about sin in general. I do not mean to say that sin should simply be ignored—despite our salvation and the forgiveness that God graciously gives to us, we ought to each be convicted to renounce our sin and become more like our perfect Father in heaven.

But as we relate to one another, this analogy stands well. We are told not to judge one another, but to be compassionate and helpful to our fellow man. I knew this, but I didn’t understand it until my dog taught me why. If I can leave behind my judgments of other people, I can see them as God’s children and be pulled by my heartstrings to help and to serve them. If I fail in this, I see myself as superior to others, and the first shall be last.

The Beautiful Truth about Evangelism

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When I was in college at Texas A&M, once a semester a certain Tom Short would visit campus. Mr. Short travels from university campus to campus, attempting to evangelize.

A close friend and I would skip class to watch –and argue with–him. You see, he offended me. Not because he’s an evangelist, but because he spread a message too filled with fear, shame and condemnation to represent the Gospel. Once, after standing amongst the gathered crowd and going back and forth with Mr. Short for several minutes about what I perceived to be problems with his idea of God, a fellow student approached me and handed me a flyer for an atheist and agnostic student club. When I told the guy that I was a Christian, but that I didn’t believe that the visiting evangelist was doing a good job of representing what Christianity is about, he looked at me, confused. That’s what this kind of evangelism accomplishes for Christ–it turns people away by giving them an inaccurate image of our God and our faith.

A bit older and wiser, I realize now that my public protest about evangelism in the style of Mr. Short was more about self-expression and formation of personal identity than any real attempt to prevent the preacher from accomplishing his goals. There never was any need for me to speak against him, as his entire production was–as I’ll argue below–doomed by divine design. That seems a very harsh thing to say, and it is, so I hope you’ll bear with some explanation.

I don’t know whether Short’s preaching (or polemic, as was most often the case) ever caused anyone to say that he confessed Jesus Christ as his savior, but I doubt the authenticity of any such declaration (while admitting that only God knows such things). I’m not sure that fire and brimstone, accusatory evangelism has ever made a follower of Christ. Someone who confesses to be a Christian, probably, but not someone who has fallen in love with our Creator.

There’s something anemic about a theology that pressures people to make choices only to avoid hell. It reeks of predation on man’s cowardice, a use fear to coerce an admission of belief. The whole scheme is anologous to torture–give me what I want or suffer the consequences. Like torture (according to recent studies), the practice at best goads people to say anything to avoid suffering–in this case, eternally, we are told. Even secular values would condemn the person who confesses a certain belief (or who abandons a previously-confessed ideology) just to avoid punishment. So why does anyone think that threats are a viable way to share the Gospel truth?

This post isn’t about man, though. It’s about God. It’s about a God so gracious that such condemnatory evangelical practices are doomed to failure. You see, a relationship with God through Jesus Christ can only be entered into voluntarily–no amount of threat or shaming can cause a person to make a choice in his heart. Again, coercion might make someone say they’ve voluntarily chosen something, but it won’t change a person’s true desires.

Here we find a poetic justice. If God is love, and God’s ultimate desire for us is to have a deep and meaningful relationship with God, then it should follow that God wants nothing to do with coercion in the establishment of the relationship. That a person may only willingly enter into that relationship demonstrates a humility on God’s part in God’s willingness to preserve our free will in the hope of a genuine relationship, one that we may never choose to pursue.

The scriptures tell us that a person comes to believe in Jesus Christ’s divinity only through the action of the Holy Spirit and not through the actions of humans. Thank God for that! I don’t want to delve too deeply into pneumatology in this post, but I’d like to summarily comment that it seems to me that the Holy Spirit makes a way for us (call it preveneient grace if you like; we Methodists do) to choose to enter into a relationship with God based on our love for God’s character and creation.

Likewise, scholars of religion and mystical experience often describe a profound spiritual experience as one that changes one’s life but is by its very nature ineffable to others. That no one can “prove” God to us safeguards the opportunity to seek God out for ourselves, makes room for belief. After all, faith is a choice to believe in things that we cannot rationally prove or disprove.

So what does that mean for true evangelism, a sharing of the Gospel that is (I think) more in line with God’s intent for us? All we can do is try to reveal the person of Jesus Christ to others: through our own actions, through our words, through our sharing of the Gospel. It is not for us to make believers–God has ensured that a believer can only make himself. To be clear, this post is not a condemnation of evangelism–far from it–but only a stand against evangelism based in anything but love for fellow man and a desire to share the great joy of knowing Christ.

This reality reminds us of God’s deep love for us.God intends a personal relationship with each of us–a relationship so unique to each of us that we can’t even even reasonably communicate it to one another. We can only bask in the awesomeness of it side by side.

Here’s the beautiful truth about evangelism: the God of love has created the universe so that only by love may God be approached by the believer. This is not a comment about sin or salvation, not a theodicy or an aspersion against the unbeliever, only a realization of the beauty of a God who will not let us be successful is using ways other than God’s to bring people into faith.

So, the next time you hear a preacher full of fire asking you where you’ll go if you die today, don’t get angry, but remember the beauty of a God who has by the very nature of existence decreed that such an ungodly approach to the Gospel will never succeed.

New Mysticism

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When I tell people that I’m an amateur theologian, they often ask what kind of theology I write about. That’s a tough question. In the past, I’ve responded by saying “existential Christian theology” or loftily explaining that I’d like to describe Christian theology in a way that makes it understandable, relevant and attractive to the millennial generation, on the verge of which I sit myself. To what extent that’s a reconsideration of current theologies or just a new marketing scheme, I don’t know. Neither does that matter so much, as the only really-persuasive, heart-changing thing about Christianity is the person of Jesus Christ.

All of that aside, as I’ve developed and organized my theological precepts in writing for this blog, I’ve come to realize the importance of mysticism in my own understanding (however limited it may be) of the divine. Were I to undertake the arduous task of writing a systematic theology, I think now that I might title the school of thought “New Mysticism.”

Dictionary.com (in the second entry) defines mysticism as “a doctrine of an immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend ordinary understanding, or of a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or ecstasy.”

We live in a postmodern age, skeptical of any answers this world could provide us. On the one hand, we see extremists telling us that there is no possible argument about the truth, that it is painted in harsh tones of black and weight, never mixing, never graded. On the other there are those who tell us that there is no such thing as Truth, that everything is a matter of perspective, or society or culture, that everything is relative.

Every day, science continues to astound us with the complexity, strangeness and splendor of the natural universe, all the while failing to answer life’s most important questions. Neuroscience shows us the many ways in which the brain might be tricked into misperceiving; we must become skeptical of our own ability to know and understand the universe around us. But there are more things in heaven and earth, dear Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The myth of progress has failed us; we have more ways to entertain ourselves, more things to do with our time, ways to communicate and travel faster than ever before, and yet the worst of our problems remain to plague us. We are disconnected and disaffected; disparity in power, wealth and opportunity yawns wide between societies and individuals; we still exploit one another, play games of “us” and “them,” fear and hate one another.

The myth of a bygone Golden Age is a bad joke. Those who tell us we can “make America great again” want to do so by reliving the darkest parts of our history—oppression, suppression and regression. Human nature has always been what it is; our past reflects this.

Should we not look toward what we might make of ourselves rather than what has been? Should we rely on revolutions in science and technology that might cover over the darker parts of our selves rather than healing one another’s souls and becoming something better?

Why do we look to the world for our answers? Nothing satisfies. We have been gifted the power to craft and create purpose and meaning and we have ignored it. Look at the wonder of the stories we craft—and then look upon the fallenness of the world we have wrought.

When logic fails us in answering the great existential questions, what are we to do? We look elsewhere. We look to hope. We look to faith. We look to love. None of these is logical, yet they answer more meaningful questions than all of our intellectual works.

We look beyond the world we see, to the invisible we sense only by other means, means at once inexplicable and undeniable. We look to the God who moves beyond all things, reaching for us if only we will let ourselves be grasped, whispering to us if only we will open our ears to hear.

In the relationship God seeks with us, there only is to be found Truth, there only is the source of all meaning worth making, there only are the answers we cannot find through our own faculties, great though they may be. The answers are found in relationship, not in understanding.

I know no other word for that than mysticism. I have never experienced the unio mystica, never spoken in tongues, never had an ecstatic experience of the divine. I do not mean that we should attempt to seek God through asceticism, nor do I mean to advocate for any particular “mystical experience.”

I seek a mystical way of living, one that follows the example of Christ by placing importance on the things that cannot be seen and grasped but that are more powerful than anything we find in this world—relationships, meaning, love. It is my belief that, to do that, we must free ourselves from the notion that we have the ability to understand, much less control, all things, we must be open to receiving the transcendent touch of a God who graciously condescends to be present with us. Most of all, we must live in light of the change that such experience brings to us—and we must endeavor to share that change with a world desperately in need of it.

That I think, is a mysticism of its own kind, a mystical view of existence that does not sharply differentiate between the mundane and the spiritual, but holds them together in tension. In this way, I think that it is fair to call it “new,” though I may be falling prey to the myth of progress myself.

The Word of God for the People of God, Part I

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It is a phrase we Methodists hear every Sunday after the scripture lesson: “The word of God for the people of God.” This phrasing is not used just by Protestants; its origin is probably in the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the Catholic Church’s liturgical document governing the celebration of mass, where the reader of scripture ends by saying, “Verbum Domini,” and the congregants respond, “Deo gratias.”[1]

The phrase troubles me somewhat, not in and of itself, but in the implications it seems to intimate, particularly for American evangelicals predisposed to literalist and infallibilist positions regarding the Bible.

The Bible itself makes no claim to be “the word of God.” In fact, the Gospel of John opens by identifying Jesus Christ as the Word. Now, Paul does tell us that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16. I do not mean to call that statement a falsehood (I don’t think it is one), but let’s pull at the strings a little.

The apostle Paul was likely most active from 30 A.D. to 50 A.D., with his death likely sometime around 67 A.D. Scholars do not have a hard understanding of the time of writing and sequence of the Gospels, but they do have enough circumstantial evidence to build strong theories about the same. The Gospel of Mark was probably the first of the canonical Gospels to be written, appearing sometime between 65 A.D. and 70 A.D.[2]

Looking at those dates, we see that Paul had no access to the canonical Gospels during the time he wrote his epistles (which, since he was writing them, were also not part of any recognizable canon). The oral traditions upon which the written Gospels were probably based were undoubtedly in circulation, being preached by Paul himself, others whose names we have in the Book of Acts and certainly many unnamed missionaries as well, but when Paul wrote the words of 2 Timothy, there were no New Testament scriptures to be included in that statement. Really, what Paul is getting at here is that the Jewish scriptures—the Torah, the chronicles and the stories of the prophets—remain relevant to the Christian and should not be abandoned because of the Incarnation.

Let’s also think about the meaning of “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Human cultures have always (at least as long as they’ve recorded their thoughts) used both positive and negative examples to model behavior for others. We tell stories of heroes persevering and triumphing over adversity to demonstrate those qualities we think best in a human being. Conversely, we tell stories about people meeting unfortunate ends to warn away listeners from behavior we have deemed harmful or anti-social.

Several genres are strongly based in using negative examples to persuade the audience to avoid or adhere to certain behaviors. The Greek tragedies, based as they are upon the hubris of their victim-protagonists, provide one sample. As a more modern (and specific) example, consider Friday the 13th, where teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake are murdered, typically after some carnal encounter with their fellows. The obvious moral: premarital sex will get you killed; don’t do it.

You can find plenty of additional positive and negative examples for instructing in behavior in your favorite literary medium. Without putting too fine a point on it, I mean to say that not all examples useful for instruction are ones we’re meant to follow. Paul isn’t saying, “do exactly what the scriptures say without question;” he’s saying, “when properly considered, all scripture has something worth learning.” I think that we can all agree with that, but it is not an argument for a literal interpretation as it is often used.

The New Testament did not become an official canon until centuries after Christ. Marcion of Sinope (declared a heretic for his dualistic belief that the God of the New Testament could not be the same as the God of the Old Testament—ironically based on a somewhat literal reading of texts that failed to make any attempt at reconciliation or synthesis) gave us the first list of “authoritative” (according to him) scriptures around 140 A.D. More lists, closer to the eventual official canon, existed by the beginning of the 3rd century and became relatively close in selection by the middle of the century. Still, the first appearance of the exact list that would become the canonized New Testament (and described as canonized) did not appear until a letter of Athanasius of Alexandria in 367 A.D.

In contrast, the first ecumenical council, the First Council of Nicaea, occurred in 325 A.D. Prior to that many smaller councils had occurred as early as 50 A.D. (the “Council of Jerusalem” described in Acts; the next known council was the Council of Rome in 155 A.D.) to 314 A.D. Each of these councils answered doctrinal and theological questions, though the pre-ecumenical councils were not dispositive as they led to different regions ascribing to different theologies, something the Council of Nicaea sought to rectify.

The First Council of Nicaea brought us the Nicene Creed (though it was amended in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). These creeds, perhaps with minor differences in translation or stylistic variances, are still used in worship today. Admittedly, certain of the doctrines codified in these creeds—particularly Trinitarian doctrine and homoousios—came from disciplined close readings of available scriptural documents, but it is nevertheless important to note that the doctrines were adopted before the official canon, and that it is thus likely (based on human nature) that the official canon selected those books that supported already-adopted doctrine over those that provided arguments against such doctrines.

Did God have a hand in these debates, councils and thinkers who gave us both the doctrine and the canonized New Testament? I have no doubt. Did God fully ordain and control the development of doctrine and the canon? God could have, but that doesn’t match my own experience of how God moves in the world. Of course, I’ve been wrong before…

The point of all of this information is not to discredit the value of scripture in the Christian walk, nor to attempt to answer the ultimate questions of interpretation or theological position of the Bible. Nor do I suggest that we should stop using the “word of God for the people of God” phraseology in our liturgy. God does speak to us through scriptures, although this phenomenon I think is more complex than the reading of the words themselves. It should also be noted that the lack of capitalization of the word “word” in the liturgical phrase “word of God” is purposeful; careful Methodist theology is not trying to conflate the Bible with Jesus Christ. This, however, gets lost somewhat in the hearing of the liturgy.

My goal in this post has been to provide some complicating factors based on history and logic surrounding the creation of scripture to nuance our understanding of the meaning of the words “the word of God” when referencing the Bible as compared to “the Word of God” when speaking of Christ.

This discussion cannot end here, because it does not fully answer questions about the Word of God and the use of scriptures. While I will continue to examine this topic, I’m going to hopefully avoid some pedantry and redundancy by referring you to my early post, “Ambiguity in Scripture, Part IV” for a discussion of the Barthian approach to the Word of God as Jesus Christ, a point I’ll pick up on in the post that follows.

For the next post in this series, click here.

[1] An interesting footnote to this historical point, particularly in the context of this post, is that “Verbum Domini” used to be rendered in English as “This is the Word of the Lord” from 1969 until 1991, when the translation became “The word of the Lord.”

[2] It is possible that the theorized Q source predates Mark and was already in some circulation at the time the Mark was written, but this remains debatable.

Ambiguity in Scripture, Part IV

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For the previous post in this series, click here.

Last time, we talked about how ambiguity in the Bible prevents us from absolute certainty about theological concepts, and how this leaves us all on level ground when it comes to really following after God. I concluded by mentioning that this does not mean that we should not seek to come to what we firmly believe is the closest approximation of God’s Truth of which we are capable.

In this post, I want to talk about the method of weighing competing theological positions when we find potential evidence for both positions within scripture—or when the same passages could be interpreted in different ways. Things will be clearer, I think, if we do this by looking at really tough and large-scale “problems” in scriptural interpretation.

Let’s start by way of example. In Exodus 22:20, God says, “Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.” Later, in Deuteronomy 2:34, we read, “And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women and children. We left no survivors.” In Deuteronomy 3:6: “And we devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon.”

In these passages (and many that surround them in the early story of the Israelites and their conquest of Canaan), we’re told that God has commanded the Israelites to murder the women and children—the non-combatant, civilian targets—of their enemies. That in and of itself is not ambiguous, but it becomes very much so when we compare it to the commands of Jesus to love our neighbor and to turn the other cheek.

What does God want from us? Is it simply that the words given to the Israelites were meant for them alone and the words of Jesus are meant for us? In other words, was this behavior okay then but not now? That answer may provide some moral guidance for us, but it leaves unresolved some very troubling questions about the nature of God.

Adam Hamilton does an excellent job of looking at this issue (and a great number of others) in his book Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.

I favor the approach of German theologian Karl Barth. His systematic theology is daunting even to the most educated theologian (which is not me), but I’ll try to summarize the salient points for your use.

For Barth, we should not confuse the Bible and the Word of God. As the Book of John tells us, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, not the text of scripture. Though he takes a while to say it, when Barth uses the term “Word of God,” he means a personal encounter with the Christ. This sometimes occurs through the reading of the Bible (and perhaps the ability to bring one to a personal encounter with God is the greatest power of scripture) but the two are not synonymous. I have to admit that it took me a short while to wrap my brain around that (especially given Barth’s rather circumlocutious writing).

In short, what Barth is saying that its Christianity—our goal is to encounter, know and follow the living Christ, not simply to read about him. Reading scripture helps us open our hearts and minds to Jesus, but the reading is a means to an end more than an end in itself.

I’m reminded of a Magritte painting called (in English) “The Treachery of Images”. It’s a painting of a smoking pipe, under which is written “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (“This is not a pipe.”). And it’s not a pipe; it’s a painting of a smoking pipe. You can’t smoke with it. It tells the observer something about pipes, but it’s no substitute for the knowledge gained by the experience of the real thing. Latinate languages capture this distinction well, using separate words to denote the cold intellectual knowledge of something (saber in Spanish, savoir in French) from the more intimate knowledge of familiarity (conocer in Spanish, connaître in French). That, I think, is what Barth is telling us about the Word of God.

With Barth’s conception comes a shrewd warning that we be careful not to make an idol out of the Bible. Shocking and perhaps offensive at first, the point that we worship God and not words about God remains a powerful one.[1]

Our understanding of Jesus, as the incarnation of the living God, ought then to be a lens through which we view the rest of scripture. When we see things like the murdering of innocents in Exodus and Deuteronomy, I think it’s fair to say that that behavior does not comport with the words and life of Jesus Christ. Those passages might better be understood as words put by the writers of those books in God’s mouth that represent their own understanding of the nature and person of God rather than the objective truth.

This brings us around in a complete circle to the kind of poetic truth that speaks to our hearts. Ambiguity in scriptures requires us to lean on Jesus to understand them—to put our faith in our savior to resolve discrepancies and inconsistencies in the text of the Bible. It’s not simply that ambiguity requires us to have faith; ambiguity shows us that faith in God—as we understand God through Jesus—works and moves.

Point Four: Ambiguity in scripture leads us to rely on the person of Jesus to interpret and harmonize differing passages within the Bible and to resolve difficulties.

 

P.S. – Since we’re talking about ambiguity, I’d like to throw just one more wrench into the works. Above, I’ve argued that ambiguity in scripture pushes us to seek the Christ to resolve ambiguity, but there’s another layer to all of this. Revelation and personal relationship with Jesus—understandings which cannot be proved to anyone else—aside, the scriptures themselves provide our best view of Jesus through his words and life. God-breathed though they are, the gospels were written by human hands and likely compiled decades after the events they describe, so we ought to be cautious in thinking about them as providing a prefect picture of Jesus.

There are many resources to investigate what scholars know and believe about the origins of the gospels. Having conducted my own exploration of the issue, I’m pretty comfortable in holding the gospels as generally reliable, but I still see plenty of room for reasonable disagreement in the interpretations of the scriptures about Jesus.

So, there is perhaps this inescapable level of ambiguity that lies below all the other things we’ve discussed, ambiguity that might beg the question, “How well do we know Jesus?” For an incarnation of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and infinite God, our answer can never be “completely.” But we might always try to know him better, and that journey itself bears fruit.

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[1] Interestingly, Islam has had a similar debate for much of its history about the nature of the Quran. Is it revelation about Allah or is it part of Allah? The answer is an important one and a key part of conservative and liberal theologies in Islam. Reza Aslan gives an excellent primer on the subject (and much more about Islam) in his book, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam.