A few years ago I officiated at a funeral service for someone I had never known. I interviewed people who had known the deceased, and in the process I found out some dark and disturbing things.

What do you say at a funeral when you can’t find anyone who ever knew the person who has anything good to say about them? What can you say at a memorial service when surviving friends and relatives are having a difficult time forgiving God for allowing the deceased to have been the nasty, intolerant, self-centered person they apparently were?

Preparing for the funeral and preaching the service took me directly to God. The path I took to God on this occasion is a well traveled road in my life—I call it “Forgiveness Avenue.” As my life in Christ continues, I find myself walking down this road regularly, for it takes me in a Christ-centered direction. It’s my experience that thinking about and pondering forgiveness will almost always lead us in the right spiritual direction.

I want to discuss a little about that funeral as a way of introducing the subject of forgiveness. You may already know enough about forgiveness to know that it is certainly not a warm and fuzzy topic. I warn you that this message may make you uncomfortable…but then, the truth often does that, doesn’t it?

I was in my office, after talking to people who knew the deceased, preparing a sermon for this person I never knew. I paused and remembered that a funeral or a memorial service is not all about the person who is being buried or cremated. A funeral or a memorial service is all about Jesus.

After all, if what is said at a funeral or memorial service depends on the merits and demerits of the person being buried or cremated, well, yes, there would be some funerals that would be more uplifting and encouraging than others because some people do seem to live a better life than others. But here’s the bottom line of that thinking: if the merit and demerits of a human being are the basis of a funeral sermon, then we’re all out of luck!

I’m reminded of the story of two brothers—both of whom were rich, but they were rich because they were lying, corrupt, cheating businessmen. They made sure to attend the right church in town—the one that all the bankers and town leaders attended. Their pastor, however, could see right through the brothers’ deceptive ways.

One day one of the brothers died. The other brother went to see the pastor about the funeral. He said, “Pastor, I know you didn’t think much of my brother—or me for that matter. Here’s what I’m going to do. I will write you out a check, a donation to the church, for $50,000. I’ll write this check if, when you preach his funeral, you will say my brother was a saint.

The pastor agreed, deposited the check, and prepared his sermon for the funeral. The surviving brother assumed that the pastor had accepted the bribe and there would be no embarrassment at the funeral.

At the funeral, the brother of the deceased sat on the front row, along with all the rest of the family. The pastor was candid and truthful as he spoke about the deceased. “He was an evil man. He lied, he cheated, he was a drunk”—and continued, for some time, to list many of the sins of the deceased. But then, he concluded with the following, which ensured that the donation to the church would not be in danger—”But compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

Many years ago I learned that funeral sermons are not about the pastor or preacher trying to preach the deceased into heaven—or trying to preach them into hell.

I have learned that funeral sermons and memorial services are not a time when the preacher lists all of the good deeds of a person, and if they somehow outnumber the bad, then that person gets “preached into heaven.” I also have learned, in many years of ministry that memorial services and funerals are times when many friends and families are dealing not just with grief but with feelings of guilt because they still have not forgiven the person for the hurt they caused them.

As I prepared my funeral sermon, the more I pondered what God’s forgiveness is truly about, I thought back to many of the funerals I had officiated—and many others I have attended. I recall funerals when the deceased was a notorious scoundrel. I recall funerals when virtually everyone was convinced the deceased was a lying, cheating low-down crook.

I thought of those who went to their graves filled with hatred and bitterness. I thought of those to whom I had talked during their last days and hours, those who refused to forgive an unfaithful spouse and those who were filled with such bitterness that they refused to forgive a mother or father for a less than perfect home life. I thought of people who had died blaming God for all the suffering and heartache in their lives. I thought of those whom I had known who decided that the misery of their life was God’s fault, and further, they would not forgive him.

Preparing that message, knowing that it would be delivered to people who had real and profound issues with the deceased, helped me to appreciate my own relationship with God. It’s good for me to revisit the topic of forgiveness, for God has forgiven me much.

While God has enabled me, by his forgiveness, to forgive others, this funeral reminded me that I am just like all other humans. I am still hanging on to issues, issues with names and faces attached to them, people that by God’s grace I need to forgive.

Forgiveness is one of the most painful and difficult topics we can consider because it involves some of the darkest places in our lives and in our souls. Forgiveness involves a trip to the spiritual mirror, where we peer deeply into the innermost places of our hearts—the places in our souls where ugly, putrid and corrupt evil can lurk in the shadows.

But, on the other hand, true forgiveness is also one of the most liberating and joyful topics we can explore, because the act of working through what forgiveness in Christ is all about enables us to let go—and to extend the same forgiveness to others that has been lavished on us.

When we think of forgiveness, the first human reaction is to think of those who have hurt us, and how we need to forgive them… sad and pitiful sinners that they are. That, if you like, is the surface level of forgiveness, the forgiveness we need to extend to others. It is so much easier to see the sin and pain others cause us than to recognize the hurt and anguish we cause others.

If we keep thinking and praying about forgiveness, God’s grace will take us to another level. We’ll go beyond the pain and heartache others may have caused us and we’ll begin to think of how our own actions and behaviors have negatively impacted others. We will remember the pain and heartache our actions and behaviors have caused.
But again, when the word “forgiveness” comes to mind, that’s not the first place our hearts and minds take us. The first things we think about are those things that others have done to us.

I want to discuss two kinds of forgiveness:

1) forgiving ourselves,

2) forgiving God.

Let’s talk first of all about forgiving ourselves:

When you get several layers deep into the topic of forgiveness, you will eventually come to the issue of forgiving yourself. In my experience, this level of forgiveness transcends forgiving those who have hurt us, as well as the act of asking others whom we have offended for their forgiveness.

Many of us convict ourselves and sentence ourselves to harsh sentences, mostly in secret. We have a difficult time appreciating the liberating teaching in Romans 8:1—there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…. In some cases we may admit that God has forgiven us, but we can’t forgive ourselves because we live in a secret world of self-loathing and passive hatred.

The answer to the problem of failing to forgive ourselves lies in the nature and the level of intimacy we enjoy in our relationship with God. There is a point at which—in our knowledge of God and in our relationship with him—when we realize the fullness of freedom in Christ, and when we are released from self-hatred.

God’s grace liberates us from the tendency to torture ourselves in self-recrimination. There is a time in our relationship with God when we realize that our fleshly response to continue to incriminate and condemn ourselves is an enemy of the gospel of God’s grace. After all, God’s forgiveness covers us once and for all.

You may have heard of the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who survived a concentration camp in World War II. After the war she traveled in Holland, France and Germany preaching forgiveness.

After one service in Munich a man came forward, stuck out his hand, and said, “Fraulein Ten Boom. I am so glad Jesus forgives us of our sins—I agree with you.”

She first saw his outstretched hand, but then, looking at his face, Corrie recognized him as one of the guards in the Nazi concentration camp. Her own hand remained frozen at her side. She was shocked by her response. Here she was, having preached forgiveness to so many, but now confronted a man whom she could not forgive. She prayed, silently,

“Jesus, I can’t forgive this man. Forgive me!”

Having prayed that silent prayer, almost immediately she felt forgiven. Forgiven for not forgiving. Her hand reached out, she took the hand of her former tormentor, and shook it, humanly releasing him from his own guilt and in the process, perhaps not knowing it at the time, accepting a deeper freedom in Christ herself.

She realized that she had been forgiven by God, and that God had empowered and enabled her to free others. She also came to see that God also made it possible for her to forgive herself, for having not been forgiving. With God all things are possible.

Let’s turn to the topic of forgiving God:

Many of us blame God for things in our life that have gone wrong. Of course, I need to state the obvious from the outset—God doesn’t need to be forgiven. The Bible never even hints that we need to forgive him. The entire weight of evidence, biblically, is that God is holy, just and perfect, and therefore not in need of forgiveness.

Jesus often cast the act of forgiveness in monetary terms, his parables often speak of the forgiveness of a debt. When we sin against God, we incur a debt—we owe God. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death.

Jesus paid a debt he did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay. Colossians 2:13-14 speaks of Jesus’ nailing our certificate of debt to his Cross, in effect taking our indebtedness and writing, in his blood, “the debt is paid.”

So forgiveness is the canceling of a debt. Since, in God’s case, no debt is owed, then there is no need for forgiveness. God doesn’t need to be forgiven of anything, and he certainly doesn’t need us to forgive him.

So, when we speak of “forgiving God,” we might be speaking of forgiving others for what we see as God allowing them to do. We might also be talking about our need to forgive our own anger. So, again, the fundamental step is to completely accept the absolute forgiveness God extends to us.

Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote a play called The Trial of God. The play is inspired from a real event Wiesel experienced as a young boy in a Nazi concentration camp. As Jews tried to balance their belief in God with the horrific reality of the brutality of the Holocaust, many realized that they could not forgive God. Of course, as I said earlier, their real issue was “why was God allowing the Nazis to do what they were doing?”

According to Wiesel’s play, The Trial of God, rabbis, the most educated and religious men in the camp, arranged to put God on trial. They heard arguments prosecuting and defending God and then they retired to render a judgment. After long deliberation and testimony, the rabbis found God guilty of crimes against his own people, the Jews.

Ironically, Wiesel notes, just as they passed down the verdict that God was guilty, the rabbis quickly told the assembly that it was time for prayers—so they needed to adjourn. Time for prayers? To whom? The God they had just judged to be guilty?

Religion (and all of its traditions) is a powerful, habitual and addictive routine, where addicts simply go through motions (“religiously”) without really thinking.

When we talk about forgiving God, we’re talking about those tragedies and traumas in our lives we don’t understand. When we talk about needing to forgive God it’s often our way of saying we need to get our “head around” something God has obviously allowed—some accident, crime or catastrophe we have suffered.

At this point we return to the basic teaching in our passage today. One of the keys to this deep level of forgiveness which some may erroneously call “forgiving God” is understanding that God doesn’t need to explain himself. Academically, we know that God can never be wrong, but when we think of that for very long, it can actually make us more frustrated because we want to blame him—especially when we can’t make any sense of some horrible thing that has happened.

We have already mentioned the Holocaust as a prime example for our generation. Any war—with the senseless, inhumane torture and maiming that accompanies a war—is another example of something we can’t understand.

Perhaps you had a family member or friend who was a “good” person, who didn’t abuse their body with junk food, didn’t smoke, didn’t over-indulge in alcohol, yet at the age of 25 or 30 they contracted a fast-growing cancer and died. I have several close friends who had this very experience.

By contrast, perhaps you know a next door neighbor who is 85, who has smoked several packs of cigarettes a day for decades, who wakes up with a hangover virtually every morning, who wouldn’t know what a salad or a vegetable looked like if it hit him in the face, but he seems to be the proverbial picture of health.

Perhaps you have a friend who is a Christian, a wonderful parent, a loving person—but they are out of work, impoverished, unable to take care of their children. At the same time, you may know someone who is a crook—who lives in a 20-room house, drives expensive cars, sends his children to expensive private schools and takes long vacations all around the world. But from everything you can determine, that person is ruthless and could care less about any other human being.

Where is God and what is he doing?

Step one in “forgiving God” is realizing that God has not explained himself and his plan to us in all of its detail, and that he doesn’t have to. Even if he did explain his plan, we probably wouldn’t, given our limited comprehension, understand him. God is God and we are not.

Step two follows immediately on the heels of step one. We need to ground our faith in God. Our forgiveness of others, no matter how hideous and despicable their actions may have been, is based in and on Jesus Christ.

When we hurt, when we feel abandoned, God is right here with us. Jesus experienced it all, he knows, he has been here and he is still here, with you and me through it all. We may not, in fact we will not, understand the full nature of why God allows all that he does, not on this side of eternity.

But by God’s grace we can realize 1) that God is God and we are not—we cannot demand answers from God because we, in our physical state, are in no condition to understand all the things of God. We also need to realize 2) that we trust in Jesus, who will never forsake us, who has suffered just as we do, who has taken our pain and suffering on himself on his Cross, who has borne our sorrows and anguish, and who is always with us. We can trust him—we can trust his care, concern, wisdom and understanding more than our own.

Our article title is Have You Forgiven God? I will admit the question is a bit of a bait-and-switch, at least when we understand that God doesn’t need to be forgiven.

But it does focus on the issue, and it uses the language often used by so many who are struggling with their pain and heartache.

The real questions are these:

• 1) Have we accepted the fact that God does not owe us a complete explanation for everything that happens in this world?

• 2) Do we fully trust in the Lord Jesus Christ—do we know and believe that he has walked among us as one of us, and knows exactly what we face? Do we believe that though Jesus will not always deliver us from the storm that he will always stand with us in the midst of every storm? Do we trust in him—or will we trust in our own flesh, our own wisdom?

Question:

Under grace, are we still ‘sinners’? Is confessing sin a denial of grace? What about saying “the Lord’s Prayer,” which asks God to forgive our sins? Some grace teachers regard the Lord’s Prayer as Old Covenant since Jesus taught it before the Cross and at the Cross, all sins were already forgiven. What’s your take on this?

Responses:

These questions are loaded with a backstory, for sure. I can hear the wounds of shame in how the words “sin” and “sinner” were used as bludgeons on sensitive hearts. And believe me, I can relate. As long as these are still associated with the old pangs of religious shaming, it will be hard to use them at all. What the New Testament describes is not what they came to mean for so many of us. But let’s try to work it out together.

The Foundations of Grace

Before anything else, let’s get the foundations of grace and our theology of the Cross firmly beneath our feet:

1. The Incarnation of Christ established God’s union with humanity at the conception of Jesus Christ, from the moment the divine Word assumed human flesh. This means the redemption project began, not at the Cross, but in the womb of the Virgin.

2. The Ministry of Christ proclaimed that the New Covenant Jubilee had already arrived, not at the Cross, but from the moment the Lord announced that the kingdom of God had come in him and from the beginning, he said, “TODAY this is fulfilled in your midst.”

3. The Cross of Christ (which includes his death AND resurrection) was the apex of his Incarnation and Ministry, when his Incarnation and Ministry are made absolute and universal by “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and the power of death is defeated.

4. “It is finished” means “it is accomplished.” Was there more to do? Of course! Christ still had to plunder Hades, rise from the dead, ascend to the right hand of the Father, pour out his Spirit and continue rescuing lost sheep. “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” is the ongoing ministry that flows from the Cross.

Our New Identity in Christ / the Truth of our Being

With due credit to C. Baxter Kruger, the “truth of our being” (our ‘ontology,’ a fancy word for ‘being’) is “in Christ.” By faith, I identify myself as a beloved child of our Abba. That was established, not at my conversion, but already on the Cross, when I was yet “powerless,” still a “sinner” and his “enemy” (Romans 5:6, 8, 10). Already at the Cross, Paul says Christ died for us, forgave us and reconciled us to God (Romans 5:9-11). Forgiven, justified and reconciled-a child of God-that is the truth of my being, my new identity.

That said, the indwelling grace of Father, Son and Spirit in us is at work in me, transforming me so that the truth of my being becomes “the way of my being“ (my real-life existence). The truth of my being in Christ (my identity) will impact the way of my being (my life) by the Grace of God. Our role is not through self-will and religious performance but by surrender to God’s Grace (2 Cor. 3:18).

Our New Life in Christ / the Way of our Being

God’s transforming Grace (the Holy Spirit) empowers our “new life in Christ.” They aren’t to be divorced. In an email exchange with Wm. Paul Young, we co-wrote the following:

• Our true identity in Christ emerges from within our real humanity, rooted in encounter, union and community. At its heart, the truth it knows, experiences and lives is that you are not alone.

• There is another version of “our identity in Christ” that is a disembodied, dissociated, abstracted ideal, usually imagined in a separated “heavenly realm” (a kingdom elsewhere, not truly ‘in you’ and therefore, not truly ‘in Christ’). This idealized identity is a two-dimensional avatar that the self-deceived self assumes, and ultimately another delusion as disconnected from reality as Adam in his turning.

What we’re getting at is that identity (the truth of our being) doesn’t ignore or negate reality (the way of our being). It transforms it. And that includes the real struggles of our lives. And that struggle, we sometimes call “sin.”

The Reality of Sin

Imagine my disappointment. I had given my life to Christ in a standard Baptist “sinners prayer” at a young age. I had welcomed Christ into my heart. I remember the sincerity of that moment vividly and I recall the assurance it gave me that I was indeed a child of God. That inner knowing has never left. It was real.

Why disappointment, then? Three days later, I remember coming to the realization that I had sinned, even after my heartfelt prayer. It was jarring. I thought that conversion would make me sinless. That the struggle would be over. That I would no longer be a “sinner.” Even at that young age, I saw the disparity between the truth of my being and the way of my being. My identity in Christ had not yet completely transformed my life in Christ. Through Christ, I was a son. Existentially, I still struggled to think and act like one. I came to discover that is the journey, not some salvation drive-thru.

Am I still a “Sinner”?

If “son” is my identity, am I still a “sinner”? Well, “sinner” no longer identifies the truth of my being. “Sinner” is not my identity in Christ. “Sinner” is not my ontology. The truth of who I am is enfolded into my union with Christ, not in some ethereal spiritual courtroom, but in the deepest part of my being. I believe this.

What I don’t believe is that the way of my being, my real existence, is without struggle or free from sinful behavior. Have we really become so perfect in daily practice? That would be a strange kind of denial-and specifically, a denial of Grace!

Some go so far as to claim they no longer sin, or even that there is no such thing as sin! Really? “Am I a completed work? I mean, in real life? In my relationships? Have I arrived?” Hmm, do you mind if I ask your spouse or children or colleagues or closest friends? Never mind, I’ll just ask John the Beloved. Hang on ... ah yes, I thought so. He said,

• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10).

I know the typical ways to skirt this passage. Here’s my summary response: don’t skirt the passage. Rather, try reading it without a shame lens for a moment. Try hearing it without the old wounds of oppressive religiosity that loaded the word “sin” and “sinner” with self-loathing. Here’s what I mean:

Description, not Identity

Admitting “sin” is simply acknowledging that I’m not always loving. Paul sees “sinning” as common to the human condition. He’s not freaked out by it. Let me paraphrase Rom. 3:23-24 so you can hear the tone:

• “Hey,” Paul says, “everybody sins! That’s no newsflash. We all struggle, right? Any demon or religious moralist could tell you that. Your conscience accuses you of your failure to love well all the time. And they’re not wrong. But what’s important is God’s response: he doesn’t accuse. He redeems. So, just as everyone sins, everyone is being justified freely by his grace.”

This means that while “sinner” is no longer our identity-no longer the truth of my being, no longer my ontology-it IS a description of my ongoing struggle to love and my regular failure to do so. I have not escaped the reality of the human condition. Paul would even confess that he is (not was) the chief of sinners. Has he lost the plot? No, look at how he sandwiches that description with the corresponding gospel truth:

• And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all long-suffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life (1 Timothy 1:14-16).

He describes himself (not identifies) as someone who qualifies for God’s superabundant grace, someone who regularly experiences God’s mercy and long-suffering, and most importantly, as one through whom Christ shows his patience and mercy. SHOWS! Aha! The Truth of his being is SHOWING through the Way of his being that sin is overcome, not by perfectionism nor by denial, but by the transforming Grace of God.

Thus, I am completely comfortable and no longer triggered by the term “sinner.” It is not my identity. It is simply Paul and John’s description of the reality of our struggle and our growth, the facts of the human condition, but NEVER apart from the Grace of my all-merciful Christ.

Is Confession a Denial of Grace?

There’s this old adage, “Confession is good for the soul.” Is it? Many would deny it because they’ve been burnt by it. They’ve been stung by the way Christianity attached self-loathing and groveling to confession. They had married confession to a false identity in which the truth of our being is that we’re nothing but depraved. No wonder those who discover Grace go to such lengths to leave behind confession. They’re rejecting something toxic within confession.

But there was a terrible cost. It involved creating an entire theological system that reduced the New Testament teachings concerning confession (in Matthew, Luke, James and 1 John) to either old covenant or evangelistic—indeed, some rejected the Lord’s Prayer itself (and with it, ALL Christ’s teachings) because it included the line, “forgive us our debts.” The reasoning was that if on the Cross, all is forgiven, then asking for forgiveness is a denial of the Cross.

To be direct, it doesn’t work that way. And it’s a very serious collapse of Christianity when we say we’ll no longer follow the Way of Jesus because he laid it out prior to his crucifixion. Rather than debating the bizarre, I’ll explain the why and how of confessing already-forgiven sins:

The Way and How of Confession

1. We confess (admit) sins, not to get forgiven, but to confess our belief in the finished work of the Cross.

2. We confess (admit) sins, not as a denial of Grace, but to appropriate the Grace of the Holy Spirit’s transforming presence.

3. We confess (admit) sins, not to identity with worm theology, but to admit our current struggle to see the Truth of our being become the Way of our being.

4. We confess (admit) sins, to acknowledge the problem of shame through an accusing conscience, and our tendency to self-alienation.

5. We confess (admit) sins, to hear God’s reassurance that we have already been forgiven, our guilt removed and our reconciliation complete.

6. We confess (admit) sins, to embrace our need to turn to love, make amends to those we’ve hurt and forgive others who’ve hurt us.

The confession dynamic in real life:

I turn from love or fail to love someone as I ought. I do real harm. My conscience accuses me of falling short of the royal law of love. My instinct is to shame and alienation. Like Adam, I want to hide from God behind the fig leaves of denial and distraction or some other false comfort. Instead, Christ beckons me and asks, “What’s troubling you?”

I confess what I’ve done. “I’ve stumbled. I’ve not loved as I should.”

“Ah,” Christ says, “of course. Everybody sins. That’s why I came. Remember the Cross? You’ve been forgiven. You’ve already been reconciled to God.”

“If I’ve already been forgiven, why do I need to confess?”

“Because you need to be reconciled, not to me, but to your accusing conscience. Your conscience needs to hear the good news. You need to be cleansed of the shame and condemnation of accusation. You need to hear again (because you’re human) that you belong, just as you are—that alienation is unnecessary.”

“But if I already know that…”

“Confession showers your soul and conscience in my mercy, rather than asserting you have no need for it. Confession opens your heart to welcome Grace to transform the Way of your being. Confession reminds you that sin is a failure of love, and I’m calling you back to love. It opens your ears to hear me call you to back to the Father’s house. It calls you, also, to forgive others and to seek their forgiveness. Confession, in short, is a discussion with Grace and a surrender to divine Love. We have this conversation often, not because your heart is rotten, but because the plaque of sin obscures your truest self. It wants removal so that you shine brightly in this world.”

Question:

I am a third-year medical student writing from India. I have heard it said that the truth of the Bible is absolute – true for all people at all times at all places regardless of culture, ethnicity or nationality.

But the Gospels and the Epistles were written to a specific group of people in a specific context addressing specific situations. How does that apply to me, an Indian, separated by 2,000 years from biblical events, by thousands of miles from biblical geography, and most of all by a vast cultural separation from those people to whom it was written?

Response:

According to the Bible, God has revealed his plan to us through general revelation – the creation itself – and through special revelation – the Bible. The Bible is not a book that was written in heaven and then parachuted down to earth via an angelic flyover. God could have, of course, given us the Bible in such a way, but he did not. He determined to use humans in the authorship, translation, preservation, printing and promulgation of the Bible.

The Bible itself is a record of God’s dealings with humanity. God’s methodology in giving us the Bible required God speaking to and inspiring specific people at specific times. That does not mean that the teaching or relevance of the specific event was completely limited to the original audience and recipients, for if that were the case, why have a Bible? They didn’t need a Bible; they already received the message.

It is true that the Old Testament is specifically about one people group, one national entity – the Hebrews, the nation of Israel, or as they are also called, the Jews. But this exclusive relationship ended with the coming of Jesus Christ. When Jesus came as God in the flesh he came in time, in history (to the land we know as Palestine and/or Israel) with a gender (male) and race (Jewish). He came to a culture in which the Jews still regarded themselves as the exclusive people of God and all others as Gentiles. But Jesus came to this earth inclusively, not exclusively. Perhaps no passage in the New Testament better expresses Jesus’ mission in this regard than Ephesians 2:11-22.

If the Bible does not apply to you, an Indian, living 2,000 years from the time of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection – then it does not apply to me, as a German American living during this same time – or to the Chinese, the French, the Nigerians, etc. And, for that matter, if what you imply is true, the Bible has not been relevant to anyone other than the original recipients, anyone who lived at any time, for the past 2,000 years.

But the claims of the Bible, particularly of the New Covenant, given to all humanity, because of the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, are for all of us, whenever we might live, whatever our background, race, creed, gender or color. God gave us his Son because he loved the world (John 3:16), not because he loved one racial group more than others.

“Can’t everyone respond to God, even if it’s in the next life?”

QUESTION:

Why can’t everyone come to know God’s grace and mercy, even if it means doing that in the next life? God is much more powerful, loving, understanding and his ways of making that happen are past our finding out.

RESPONSE:

I do share your hope that, in view of God’s infinite power and love, Christ might also ultimately redeem everyone, including those the world judges as irredeemable. As my friend Robin Parry has said, “God can save everyone (because he’s all-powerful) and God wants to save everyone (because he’s all-loving)—so he will!” And while we both use the word “hope” to describe our perspective, others should not mistake our hope for presumption, NOR reduce our hope to wishful thinking or double-minded doubt. Rather, our hope twins with our faith and our love (1 Corinthians 13:13), since we put our hope and our faith in the person, the love and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Paul directly refers to Christ as “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). As the old hymn says, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness ... On Christ the solid rock I stand…” That’s a very firm foundation!

Some would call such confidence “universalism.” I can’t identify with that term because in its popular use, universalism too often imagines everyone as already “saved” (okay, but) without any reference to the problem of sin, the need for a Redeemer, the importance of the Cross and Resurrection, the necessity of a willing faith response or the reality of a forthcoming judgment. My own conviction is that all these facts are essential to the gospel AND, happily, the very means of humanity’s redemption. Sadly, most pop-universalists today have moved beyond faith in Christ and imagine his gospel to be automatic, optional or obsolete. That’s why I’ve found it necessary to disavow the “universalist” label.

On the other, I do love the term “ultimate redemption.” Ultimate redemption first acknowledges the tragedy of the human condition and embraces God’s provision of our Redeemer—the Lamb slain and risen—who said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).

In that single statement, Christ doesn’t seem to doubt the need for, the purpose of, or the success of his mission. He locates redemption in his Incarnation, his Passion and his Resurrection. He foresees his ascension and ultimately, his glorious return as the All-Merciful Judge and Savior of all. This opens the door to a host of further questions:

Must we exercise faith in Christ? Does a free-will response matter? Or is God’s grace irresistible? When we finally encounter the love of Christ face-to-face, we might experience his beauty as irresistible, but not as coercive. Rather, the sight of his face will rejuvenate our dysfunctional hearts so that when every eye shall see him (Revelation 1:7), then every knee will [willingly] bow and every tongue [gratefully] confess, in heaven and on earth and [even] under that earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11), just as Paul did on the Damascus Road. Without coercion, he somehow “saw the light” and responded. So, I believe that salvation will forever be contingent on a willing YES to love and to Christ. Otherwise, we would be automatons with no choice. But the New Testament boldly foretells this forthcoming, glorious YES, and does so repeatedly.

Is a faith response to Christ possible beyond the grave? Or does death forever bar the door into the kingdom of God? The resurrection of Christ marks Christ’s complete conquest of death. Christ now holds the keys of death and Hades and his life—eternal life—reigns (Revelation 1:18). As author Wm. Paul Young often says, “God does not take away our freedom to say YES after death. If the event of death could take away our ability to say YES to God, why didn’t God take away our ability to say NO before death—from the beginning—and save all the damage and harm that we call human history? Not doing so would make him a monster.”

Apparently, our freedom to say YES or NO is of crucial importance to the image of God in each of us, because without it, love (the nature of God and humanity) would be impossible.

Will all finally respond? If we forever have the freedom to say YES or NO to God’s invitation, will ALL say YES, or will some exercise a “forever NO”? How about the wicked? Might some never emerge from judgment? Because of God’s commitment to human freedom, in principle, we might imagine someone resisting God for all eternity. But the New Testament does not. The New Testament foresees past its dire warnings of penultimate [second to last] judgment in “the age to come,” to promise an ultimate [truly lasting] redemption at “the end of the ages,” his glorious “restoration of everything” (Acts 3:21).

The Bible doesn’t suggest anyone gets to skip the reality of judgment. And for some, even a restorative judgment or remedial trial might feel like an eternity of facing the meaning of their life and the crisis of being freed from our attachments (whether we cling to our self-righteousness or our shame). Who hasn’t already experienced struggles that seemed to “last forever?” But the early Christians did not see God as the cause of this torment, but rather, the accusing judgments of our own stricken conscience. But, says James, ultimately, the way of God’s mercy is to triumph over judgment (James 2:13) when, Paul says, all evil will be eradicated so that “God will be all in all.” 1 Corinthians 15:22-28 says:

²² For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive. ²³ But each in turn: Christ, the first-fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. ²⁴ Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷ For he “has put everything under his feet … ²⁸ When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

That, finally, is the nature of God’s eternal love revealed in Jesus Christ.

Eternal conscious torment in hell is an unbiblical, fabricated teaching of Christ-less religion designed to effectively keep its followers in line. “Believers” in such teaching perceive hell as having positive results because 1) the fear of being consigned to the fiery coals of hell keeps the followers of Christ-less religion in tow, as they “toe-the-line,” and 2) it gives those who are religiously devout “hope” that God will see to it those who do not seem to faithfully “toe-the-line” as they do will get what they deserve.

This “hope” of seeing others “get what’s coming to them” is not only reserved for the more traditional and conservative denominations of Christendom – many deeply religious Muslims have a similar “hope.” Pleasure experienced by seeing and knowing of the suffering of other people is best described by the German word Schadenfreude. Schaden means damage and Freude describes joy.

The emotion of enjoying the suffering of others is a common, normal human response. Why are there times when we take delight in bad things happening to other people? As we discuss this topic I warn you – things are going to get ugly and uncomfortable, so fasten your seat belt and make sure your tray table is in its upright and locked position – we’re headed for emotional and theological turbulence!

The discussion we undertake is a walk on the dark side – if you keep reading you are going to face the disgusting reality that there are times when you derive satisfaction when you see others get what you consider to be their “comeuppance.”

Gloat is probably the closest English word to Schadenfreude – gloat is about gratification and delight one experiences when another party experiences misfortune. Gloating describes the delight that people experience when a rich or famous or powerful person is publicly humiliated – when such a person is arrested, or when their marriage flames out or when they check into a rehab facility – many avidly watch their televisions and devour the tabloids that cater to their desire to gloat and revel about the misfortune of the rich, famous and powerful. Schadenfreude.

But Schadenfreude goes deeper than mere gloating. Schadenfreude is malicious and sadistic because its pleasure is derived from pain and suffering experienced by another, rather than merely being delighted and gratified about the misfortune or embarrassment or failure of another. Schadenfreude is a lethal cocktail combining pride, envy, anger and malice.

Remember – I warned you to fasten your seat belt because this conversation is getting ugly – it is extremely embarrassing and disconcerting to admit that our nature can take perverse pleasure in the suffering of others. BUT IT GETS WORSE!

Christ-less religion ramps up the normal human response of Schadenfreude, pandering to this malicious emotion for its own diabolical motives. Christ-less religion plays upon this natural human emotion that causes us to delight in the sufferings of others and elevates it to a spiritual art form. Christ-less religion baptizes and legitimizes the coarse human emotions of envy, hatred, anger and animosity defining the word Schadenfreude by convincing religious followers when they delight in the suffering of those they deem to be wicked that they are displaying “righteous indignation.”

We saw religious Schadenfreude when candy was exchanged in the streets of some Islamic countries when news of the savagery of 9-11 became widely known.

Religious Schadenfreude is the gratification many anticipate, when what they call the “Rapture” happens (a time/event when they believe they will be whisked away to safety while a great tribulation such as the world has never seen envelops the whole earth in horrific anguish and suffering). Christ-less religion teaches those who are raptured will derive enjoyment seeing others “get what was coming” to them!

Religious Schadenfreude is the belief that many have about the joy they are told they will experience in the afterlife as they observe sinners – even their own family members – tortured, forever and ever, in the hot coals of fire.

Religious Schadenfreude was the reaction of many in a frenzied crowd, fueled by religious antagonisms as they demanded of Pilate, “Crucify him.”

Schadenfreude is one of the most base and lowest places human nature can take us, but here’s what’s really sick and demented: Christ-less religion insists this wretched aspect of human nature (which takes pleasure in the sufferings of others) is actually one of the characteristics of God!

Christ-less religion characterizes God himself as satisfying his own wrath when sinners are eternally tortured in the fires of hell. Christ-less religion twists and perverts a loving God into a god it creates in its own image, a god who is filled with and fueled by Schadenfreude.

Christ-less religion portrays and proclaims God as righteously exacting revenge so that he can see justice done (ironically, the human definition of justice is one and the same, according to Christ-less religion, as divine justice). The Schadenfreude of Christ-less religion diabolically describes God as being satisfied as he hears shrieks of pain and suffering resound from hell, forever and ever.

The stubborn insistence of the Christ-less perspective of Christendom at large about the appalling fabrication of eternal torture in hell as a just punishment for sinners is one of the most evil, reprehensible and diabolical of all dogmas and teachings – all in the name of God!

What is a Christ-centered response to Schadenfreude? Rather than taking delight in the downfall of enemies, Jesus empowers us to love our enemies and pray for them.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed in the Old Testament in the book of Jonah, where we learn that Jonah’s hatred for the Assyrians was so intense that he was disgusted by God’s decision to have mercy on the city of Nineveh. Jonah was angry with God because God denied Jonah the pleasure – the Schadenfreude – that he would have had if the inhabitants of Nineveh had received the destruction Jonah felt they so richly deserved. The book of Jonah is a parable about the grace of God overcoming Schadenfreude.

How does Jesus lead us through the darkness of this oh-so natural, yet so very diabolical and un-Christ-like emotional reaction of Schadenfreude? As we yield to him, Christ in us empowers us, when we are tempted to taste of what might seem to be the sweet waters of Schadenfreude, to realize that those waters are filled with bitterness and poison. As we grow in his grace and knowledge, we mature in love and reject revenge and retribution.

Christ in us fills us with hope – not just hope for ourselves, but hope for the entire world.

Conversely, Schadenfreude gives followers of Christ-less religion twisted and perverted “hope” that others, who are not part of their religion and who do not practice the same faith and who do not believe in the same dogmas, will one day be tormented and consciously tortured for all eternity.

As Christ-followers, our hopeful faith is that God is now (and that he will, in the future, in his way and in his time), in his compassion and out of his lavish love and grace, making a way for ALL to know and love God – rejecting revenge, retaliation and retribution. May God speed that day and time!

TENET: a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true.

TENANT: one who rents or leases a dwelling (such as a house) from a landlord.

TENNANT: David Tennant - the actor who played the tenth Doctor in TV’s Dr. Who.

I feel a little embarrassed for people who accidentally swap words, knowing it is a projection of my personal slips of the tongue. One that I hear frequently is the use of tenant (renter) when someone actually means tenet (principle). As a low-level editor, I know how easily these mistakes occur, so I don’t let it become a pet-peeve (usually).

Still, when I heard the tenet-tenant error twice this week, it caught my attention as worthy of exploring playfully this question:

What happens when our tenets become tenants?

Tenets

To make sense of that question, I’ll be more specific. In this case, I’m thinking especially about “tenets of the faith,” which is to say our doctrinal and ethical beliefs. And in the case of “tenants,” I have in mind Jesus’ parable. Let’s start with the “tenets.”

Every one of us is a believer in something. When it comes to God, we have convictions about who or what God is or is not. And when it comes to our ways of being in the world, again, we all have opinions about what is right and wrong, healthy or unhealthy, better or worse. We may even live by them!

While our beliefs in God are valid expressions of our ideas and experiences of God, virtually every faith tradition agrees that our notions of God should not be confused with God as such. God greatly exceeds everything we imagine God to be and if we become rigid in our opinions of God, we can end up creating an idol from our tiny box of beliefs.

So too with our moral convictions. If we become too rigid in our personal rules, we may end up at “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” setting aside “the Tree of Life” and imposing them on others as if our self-made standards are “universal absolutes.”

When that happens—when our doctrinal and ethical beliefs displace a life of faith in the Living God—our tenants have become tenants.

Tenants

Denethor II

Just as man-made or even revealed tenets can displace the living God, so too religious leaders, spiritual gurus, and ideological influencers can enthrone themselves in seats of authority that as if they are kings or queens who reign rather than faithful stewards who serve.

Lord of the Rings fans will recognize the scenario in which Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, had deceived himself into acting as king, refusing to acknowledge that Aragorn was the rightful heir. Tolkien was no doubt referencing the way in which Jerusalem’s religious leaders (elders and priests) saw themselves as the Temple rulers while defying their Messiah and plotting his murder.

This was the point of Jesus’ parable of the tenants. The stewards of God’s tenets replaced living faith with religious observance, and as tenants, now played the part of corrupt masters. Tenets and tenants. Here is Mark’s version of the parable (chapter 9):

Mark’s Version - “The Wicked Tenants”

Parable of the Wicked Tenants

Mark 12 Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the winepress, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went away. ² When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. ³ But they seized him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. ⁵ Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. ⁶ He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ⁷ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸ So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹ What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Have you not read this scripture:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
¹¹ this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”

¹² When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.

One surprise in this parable is that after the stewards had beaten and murdered the owner’s slaves, he seems to imagine that “They will respect my son.”

Is Jesus truly implying that in sending him to this world, God did not foresee his rejection and death? Probably not. It’s a story, a parable, an analogy—but not with precise one-for-one equivalents between the vineyard owner and God. Perhaps Jesus’ meaning is simply that the tenants should have received the son, just as God’s stewards should have received Jesus. But he also cites Psalm 118:22-23, where the rejection of God’s Messiah is anticipated as a forthcoming fact.

Before turning to Matthew’s version, it’s worth reviewing Isaiah’s hymn (from chapter 5), a probable inspiration for Jesus.

Isaiah’s Hymn

Isaiah 5 I will sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
² He dug it and cleared it of stones
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded rotten grapes.

³ And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
⁴ What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield rotten grapes?

⁵ And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
⁶ I will make it a wasteland;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.

⁷ For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his cherished garden;
he expected justice
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness
but heard a cry!

Jesus’ opponents knew he was directing his parable against them. I wonder if they also remembered Isaiah’s hymn. Their response hints at it.

Matthew’s - A Revision

I need not repeat Matthew’s entire account of the same instance, but one apparent revision makes a key difference.

In Mark’s version, verse 9 says, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.” The translators treat this verse as a question Jesus himself answered it. We don’t need to read Mark that way, and maybe he meant it that way, but the English formatting chooses to portray it that way as do Red Letter editions of the Gospels (e.g. NASB).

So is Jesus saying that if they reject and kill God’s Son, God will exact vengeance? One might read the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 that way. But Matthew (who expands on Mark at times), repeats the story this way with two all-important extra words:

⁴⁰ “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

⁴¹ “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

Matthew (who I still regard as an eyewitness) puts the response to Jesus’ question in the mouths of his audience. In that instance, vengeance is in the mind of Jesus’ enemies. They are already planning their own violence and I don’t doubt that was their retributive image of God.

But is that the image of God revealed in Christ? Remember: the punchline to all of Jesus’ parables is not AD 70 but rather, the power of the Cross and the Resurrection, which is scandalous grace and radical forgiveness.

So… back to Matthew’s account:

Jesus question: What will the owner of the vineyard do?

Audience response: Wrath! Destruction! Vengeance.

Jesus retort: “Have you not read this scripture” [because their answer is wrong! Not vengeance, not violence, but rather…] “He will make the rejected One the capstone of a new temple!”

So in the end, while tenets became tenants, and the tenants kill the son, God turns the tables: the rejected stone becomes the capstone, and the crucified Son is enthroned as the cruciform and risen King.

Question:

Why does it seem the Bible says Satan the devil is set free after 1,000 years — it seems he is restrained for that period of time and then he is freed from his “prison” — why do that? And then the Bible seems to say that Satan is destroyed in the lake of fire. Is that possible?

Response:

Of course both of these questions arise from what we read in the book of Revelation. Suffice it to say, this book is the most misunderstood and most difficult of all biblical books for many students of the Bible to understand, as I explain in my book “Revelation Revolution — The Overlooked Message of the Apocalypse.”

The book of Revelation is written in an apocalyptic style (a literary term and form that is not one and the same as the way in which the word “apocalyptic” is used today). That is, today the general definition of the word “apocalypse” as it is used today conveys dramatic end of the world, doomsday events. Both secular and religious usages of the word favor such a definition.

However, the apocalyptic form or genre of literature which Revelation is an example, while focused on future events (to that of the author — not necessarily only people who live in the 21st century) and in that regard, still concerned with what is popularly spoken of as “end times” today, it does so in an apocalyptic literary style — that is, an unveiling.

Apocalyptic literature, as used in the Bible, most notably in the books of Revelation and Daniel, is filled with features with which modern day readers are unfamiliar.

A “literal” interpretation of most of the book can lead to incorrect conclusions, or at least less than complete understandings of what the message of which the book speaks. When the book speaks of any specific number, one is well advised to avoid a literal length of time or of a literal measurement. The literal number may or may not be true, but it is safe to say that a literal number can lead to vastly erroneous conclusions. Apocalyptic literature, such as that we find in the book of Revelation, is filled with poetic imagery, metaphors and figurative symbols.

When the book speaks of a human being it is a mistake to assume that the identity of that individual is only contemporary or future to our 21^st century. Such a person/individual could have lived and died in history, or perhaps several such individuals have... and perhaps others to come in “our” future. But literalizing and specifying in such cases is a mistake, in my opinion.

Visions are another feature of the apocalyptic genre, and in those visions we often read of nightmarish beasts unknown to our world, who are not on display in a local zoo. Some animals in Revelation are known to us, others (beasts) unknown.

The symbols, figures, numbers and colors of Revelation are not intended to be understood literally, the meaning is deeper — far more spiritual than physical.

Characters and events, and the intended meaning and messages of Revelation are “real” but not literally real in the sense that we can measure them, they are experiences we have had or can have... the meanings are spiritual and far deeper than any literal interpretation offers.

You speak of “1,000 years” (from Revelation 20) — the imagery and intended meaning is of a long period of time, longer than any human can experience — not of a precise period of time the way humans measure time.

There are several theories about Satan’s destruction in a “lake of fire” — I think the best explanation is 1) no specific explanation is known, as to the ultimate end of Lucifer, Satan, the serpent, the dragon, etc..., but 2) the overarching explanation for anything we ask having to do with God and possibility is that God can do whatever he wishes... he is not bound or constrained, which is part of what it means to be God, and 3) as the book of Revelation ends in it’s last few chapters any work or devices of evil that Satan once produced and for which he was responsible is not a part of the new heavens and new earth. Where is he? The book does not specifically say, but it’s clear that he is not any part of the new heavens and new earth.

Question:

The word “sin” seems so loaded today, yet it’s hard to avoid using the word when talking to children or people new to Christian faith because it’s there in our Bibles. It’s even become a trigger word for many who might otherwise be open to Jesus. How would you address it?

Response:

You’re right—the English word “sin” has become a problem for several reasons. First, “sin” has been narrowed down and shallowed out to behaviors (though it does include that). And “sin” has accumulated an accusing-condemning tone in modern English that overreaches what the New Testament is doing, often feeding UN-Christlike religiosity and even driving people away from grace, rather than toward it.

Sin is also a complex word. We’ll get back to children in a minute, but first:

• Sin as such is the spiritual disease of alienation that generates sinful behaviors. The behaviors are ‘sinful’ because of their roots in ‘sin.’

• At one level, sin can be described “making bad choices and doing bad things,” but that description begs two questions: Why are these choices and actions bad? (I.e., what makes sin sin). And why do we make them? (We make them because of sin).

• In that sense, moralism (and even right choices) doesn’t get to the root of sin or ultimately produce authentic repentance.

• Paul says that kindness (Romans 2) and grace (Titus 2) are the solution (not the result) of our re-Turn to God.

For children or newcomers, then, it is perilous to use an archaic word like “sin” when it has been misused by moralists to condemn, beat down, or exclude the Other.

BUT… children (or grandchildren) will no doubt encounter the word “sin” in their churches, in their Bibles, and elsewhere. What to do? Here is how I would personally talk about “sin” when other language won’t do:

I. WHAT SIN ISN’T

Children, maybe you have heard the word “sin” before?

Can anyone tell me what you think that word means? [I would let them answer].

Do you see that there are a lot of ideas about sin? I think it will be best if we start with what “sin” does NOT mean.

Sin does not mean God doesn’t love you.

God always loves you, no matter what.

Sometimes if we hear that word, we get wrong ideas about God.

Always remember, God is love and God loves you.

Sin does not mean you are a bad person.

No. You are God’s child and God loves you very much.

Sometimes if we hear that word, we get wrong ideas about ourselves and others.

Always remember, you are loved, a very special child of God.

II. WHAT SIN DOES

Children, the word sin often describes the wrong choices and wrong actions we make.

But what makes a choice or action wrong? [let them answer]

Do you see that there are a lot of ideas about why “sin” is wrong?

I think we could say that choices and actions are wrong:

• when we turn away from love—turning away from God’s love and turning away from loving others.

• when we harm someone else with our choices or actions. That’s not love. That’s why “sin” is wrong.

But we don’t want to only ask what is wrong.

We want to ask what is right.

And Jesus tells us what is right in two ways.

• Love God and love others as you love yourself—we call that “the great commandment.”

• Do for others what you wish they would do for you—we call that “the golden rule.”

III. WHY DO WE SIN?

Some people say that “sin” is not only our wrong choices and wrong actions.

So, “sin” is also WHY we make those wrong choices and do those wrong actions.

Sin is not just breaking a law and God is not just a policeman or judge.

Sin is like a disease that needs a doctor.

And our sinful actions are like the symptoms of the disease.

Imagine there’s a virus in you that makes you smell bad or throw up or get grumpy.

It’s not enough to put on perfume, stop throwing up, or trying to be more cheerful.

We have to deal with the disease. We have to be healed.

So what is the germ of sin?

[Here I want to get at the root of sin—“alienation”... but how do we explain that to a kid?]

I think the sin virus is when we don’t feel loved by God or by others or by ourselves.

Whenever we feel alone and think no one can love us, we don’t need to be punished. That doesn’t help. We need to be loved.

When we don’t feel loved, when we don’t feel close and connected, we have a choice: we can turn toward love or turn away from love.

So often, people who feel unloved and turn away from love and make bad choices or do bad things. They act selfishly and even cause other people or themselves harm.

But Jesus says, “re-Turn” (in older English, we said “repent” but that is the same thing). Jesus says, “Come home to God’s house and God’s love and to the people who show God’s love.”

[Here is a good place to share the Parable of the Prodigal Son].

And sometimes, people who turn away from love get very lost, like a sheep that falls into a ditch and gets tangled in blackberry thorns. Re-Turning is not so easy. But what would you do if you were tangled like that?

[Let them answer. Hopefully someone suggests, “Call for help.” Then share the parable of the Lost Sheep].

When we’re so tangled that we can only call for help, Jesus says he will come find us and take us on his shoulders all the way home.

If the big problem with “sin” is turning away from love, let’s take time now to turn to God and to each other.

Exercise:

Let’s hold open our hands to release our frustrating or alone feelings to God.

Let’s let him take our bad choices and bad actions and send them far away.

Let’s keep our hands open and received God’s love.

Now let’s hold that love in our hands up to our heart.

Let’s imagine God holding them and speaking kindly to us.

Let’s let God heal us of our sin.

Now let’s turn to one another and love each other with words or hugs that heal their hearts.

Having thought about how we might speak of “sin” to children or others who don’t understand that word, can we all see where parts of our own heart need to be retrained, especially where toxic religion has used “sin” as a bludgeon rather than a first step to grace? Let’s all hear the love of God with the hearts of children, knowing that God’s first and last word to us is love.

Lending institutions place a cap or limit on the total amount of purchases you can charge to their card. They will only let you go so far before your credit runs out. How far can we go with God before he says to us “That’s it—my grace has its limits!” Is it possible to use so much of God’s love that our account will be “maxed out”?

Of course God’s mercy, grace and love are endless. As and when we request forgiveness, God will always forgive us. That’s one of the attributes that makes him God. But, is it possible to take advantage of God’s good graces? Surely he isn’t like an indulgent grandparent who just sits on his throne, watching us willfully lying, cheating and stealing without ever coming to a point when he won’t extend any more grace!

Isn’t it possible for us to come to a place when God says to us, “You’ve gone beyond the limits of my compassion. You have too many sins on your sin debit card now—I can’t extend any more grace to you.”

Let’s think about the cross of Christ—and how far God, in Christ, went, to demonstrate his love to us.

• As the Lamb of God, he willingly allowed himself to be slaughtered, for us.

• He made himself vulnerable to death on the cross—he surrendered to it.

• He allowed the soldiers to beat him and nail him to the cross.

• He made himself vulnerable to his disciples, allowing Judas to betray him, then later watching all the rest abandon him.

• He made himself vulnerable to the religious leaders who were plotting his death.

In coming to be one of us, to live among us as one of us, without participating in our sins, Jesus knew ahead of time exactly what was in store. He knew that he would be rejected, misunderstood, despised and ultimately killed in the most painful, degrading and shameful way humans could devise, at that time—but he came to us anyway. That’s how far he went to demonstrate his love.

If you knew that you would be tortured and beaten and killed if you showed up at a particular place at a particular time, you wouldn’t go, would you? I wouldn’t either. But God, in Christ, did just that. He knew exactly what would happen to him and how he would be treated here on this earth, but he came anyway. That’s how far he went to demonstrate his love.

We are, as humans, supremely unlovable—with no redeeming qualities—yet God loves us anyway, and will never stop doing so. God is willing to be judged as naïve and foolish by humans in particular and by religion at large—he offers us his grace with no strings attached—knowing beforehand that we will take advantage of his good graces.

Vulnerability is a cornerstone of our relationship with God. In the person of Jesus, he laid himself bare before us. We can trust him implicitly because of his complete vulnerability to us—we know him because of the love he will always demonstrate to us. And we’re able to love him because, as 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”

Because of his love for us, God will go as far as to:

• be ridiculed and shamed, as Jesus was.

• search for us in the most embarrassing and shameful places.

• humble himself to find us.

• become vulnerable to our self-centered lusts and greed.

He will allow us to reject him and betray him and abandon him—but he will never, ever abandon us.

Jesus, God in the flesh, became so vulnerable to us that he allowed us to kill him. Yet, in spite of our track record, God is not a pain-inflicting God who is angry and upset with us, insisting that his honor be redeemed. He will climb the highest mountain and dive into the deepest sea to find us. He will never, ever give up on us. He will always keep coming after us.

That’s how far God will go.

The Laugh of Freedom:

First, I heard her laugh and it sounded like freedom.

Let me back up. I was a first-year—make that first week—very single college student from a small town now plunked in a cafeteria of over 900 students, half of them young women. The imagined prospects were overwhelming, and I caught myself gazing at someone a few tables over. Her hairspray, eyeshadow, and lipstick gave off an 80s Barbie-doll vibe. As I scanned to see how obvious my ogling had been, I noticed at least two other guys gawking at the same girl. My gut reaction was, “Ew… creepy.” Please remember that I was an 18-year-old.

And that’s when I heard Eden’s arresting laughter. “I turned around to see the voice” (Rev. 1:12) and saw her in a simple bob, no makeup, sweatshirt, and jeans. Naturally pretty—so naturally that she was even pouring herself a glass of milk. I looked up from her big smile to notice, for what seemed like the first time in my life, a brunette with blue eyes.

My very first thought was, “Now that’s probably more like the woman I’ll marry.” Seriously. But now was not the time to meet her.

Our Fake Engagement:

A few weeks later, all the students received a package of coupons from various businesses in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (15 minutes away), hoping to lure new customers from the incoming student body. I noticed an invitation to a free photo session and 8x10-inch portrait. I was not at all photogenic and very insecure about getting my picture taken. But it also seemed like a good value, so I cooked up a prank. I would get fake engagement photos taken and send them to my parents, as if I had met a girl, fallen in love, and spontaneously planned to get married less than a month after leaving home. Again, please remember that I was an 18-year-old.

But I needed an accomplice. So, without even knowing her name, I stalked Eden to her seat in the dining hall, knelt beside her, and said, “Hi. My name is Brad and… this may sound strange, but I’m wondering if you could help me. You seem like a fun person, and I want to play a trick on my parents…” I laid out the plan and asked if she’d do the sitting with me.

She may not have agreed but her best friend, sitting next to her, had already noticed me with some interest and said, “That’s the guy, that’s the guy.” She nudged Eden into the plot and with my own roommate, the four of us headed into town.

At the studio, while climbing a set of stairs, Eden asked, “So what is your last name anyway?”

“Jersak,” I said.

A puzzled look.

“Jersak,” I repeated.

You see, Eden is of Mennonite extraction, and a Czech name is not on the approved list with Wiebe, Rempel, Friesen, Thiessen, etc.

“And what are we going to tell the photographer?”

Now, I could have easily just said, “We are getting fake engagement photos for a prank on my parents,” but weirdly, that didn’t occur to me. Instead, I told her to follow my lead as I weaved a yarn about how and where we met, and our plans to be married.

A little advice: when interested in romantic connection (and I was), outing oneself as a brazen liar is not a great first impression. But that’s how it went. The photographer was enthusiastic enough about our dreamy tale to put us through over a dozen cuddly poses. I was thrilled and began praying he would suggest a kiss (I dared not myself). Later, I discovered Eden had the same thoughts but was praying he would NOT suggest a kiss. Her prayers have always been stronger.

“The Girl in the Photo”

When the photos (and a stack of free proofs) were developed, I delivered the framed portrait to my parents with the good news. I was impressed and disappointed that they didn’t fall for it at all. And worse, that the girl in the photo started dating someone else.

The story of how a long friendship finally morphed into real engagement photos in our senior year is too long to share, but I found it comical that through all those years, that portrait sat proudly on my parents’ living room stereo cabinet. When I would take other girls home to meet them, they would always ask, “What is she doing there?” and my mother would always furtively ask, “When are you bringing her home?”

Eventually I did. And we were married on August 1, 1986—on a hot Friday night, forty years ago—almost four years after our first “engagement.”

“What’s Your Secret?”

People never really ask us that. But I will tell you anyway.

I don’t want to give away everything, but here are three nuggets:

1. Eden turned my failures into grace. I’m not the only one to notice that I married a saint. But Eden wasn’t born that way. My contributions to her saintliness have been significant—namely, my fiascos and humiliations. She’s an alchemist of grace who made my cockups her opportunity to shine—the scars she bears notwithstanding.

2. I wake up every day. This is a miracle or dumb luck. Here is my trick: morning after morning, I simply wake up with the pillow under my head rather than over my face.

3. Eden leaves the big decisions to me. Gerry Gouldthorpe taught me this. He was the dad of that kind friend who convinced Eden to risk that first portrait with me. He urged me to delegate all the little decisions to Eden: she decides where we live, where we work, when to move, what house to buy, when and how many children to have… the little things. And she trusts me with all the big decisions: what books should be considered canonical, should Canada join the EU, whether there’s enough ice on the moon for a space station… the big things. The division of labor has worked well.

That’s all for today. I’ve been posting anniversary stuff since June, so many people have already wished us well. At our age, landmarks are celebrated over weeks and months, not just one day.

P.S. Oh, here is our prophetic portrait! September 1982:

Question:

What do you make of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 and King Herod in Acts 12? Both seem to imply that even in the New Covenant era, God is striking down people in a way that seems inconsistent with Jesus and his gospel!

Response:

First, regarding Ananias and Sapphira, I’ll simply direct you to my previous blog with Richard Murray titled “CSI Jerusalem: Who Killed Ananias & Sapphira” (click the title for the CWR Blog).

Second, as for the death of Herod Agrippa, I might start with:

• From a wrathful perspective, the family had it coming: in Acts 12, we have Herod Agrippa 1, nephew of Herod Antipas (who beheaded John the Baptizer and interrogated Jesus), and grandson of Herod the Great (who slaughtered the infants in Jerusalem to try to kill Baby Jesus). Agrippa had also already beheaded James and imprisoned Peter. From the biblical perspective, these are not good guys.

• From a Jesus-follower’s perspective, we wouldn’t and shouldn’t ever wish that wormy death on our worst enemies. But let’s look at what the text says:

²⁰ Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. ²¹ On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. ²² And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” ²³ Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

In his book Antiquities, Josephus describes the same event a little differently:

On the second day of a festival, Herod Agrippa appeared in the theater with a robe made of silver. When it sparkled in the sun, the people cried out flatteries and declared him to be a god. The king, carried away by the flattery, saw an owl (an omen of death) sitting on a nearby rope, and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. He was carried off to his house and died five days later.

In either case, ouch! I hate when that happens. It’s a lousy way to die. And a difficult dilemma from a New Testament perspective. My response will come from some convictions about the God revealed in Jesus and what we notice in the text:

Luke’s Description

The author of Acts (Luke) sees a cause and effect scenario between Herod’s sin and Herod’s death by worms, then connects the dots to infer that the agent of Herod’s death is the act of “an angel of the Lord.”

For now, we’ll put a pin in our doctrine of inspiration, but I promise to come back to it. Before we go there, can we see that apart from direct revelation, Luke is making a logical leap with biblical precedent. Here’s the math:

• Herod dies of worms. Why?

• Herod’s death coincides with the people’s blasphemous response to his wonderful oration. The suddenness of his death seems to indicate supernatural intervention.

• Herod must have died by complicity with their blasphemy, robbing God of glory by accepting their adoration as worship.

• Therefore, since the death involved blasphemy leading to death by supernatural intervention, who was the agent? The text says “a messenger of the Lord struck him down” via a parasitic attack.

If this is what Luke is doing, can we pause to notice where Luke’s storytelling seems congruent with some Old Testament accounts (that inform his writing) but also seem inconsistent with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ?

Old Testament Parallels

• 1 Samuel 16 — After the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul: “Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” — 1 Samuel 16:14 See also 1 Samuel 16:15; 18:10; 19:9, all of which refer to “an evil spirit from the Lord” whose role is to torment.

• Judges 9 — Abimelech and Shechem, after violence and betrayal: “God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem…”
  — Judges 9:23 Here the “evil spirit” seems to refer to hostility, discord, or destructive animosity.

• 1 Kings 22 — Lying spirit in the prophets, according to the prophet Micaiah: “The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets.”
  — 1 Kings 22:23 Difficult, because the spirit God allegedly sends is involved in deception.

• Isaiah 45:7 — More generally, God is named as the creator of calamity. “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity…” The Hebrew word translated “calamity” here is often rendered “evil.”

These texts come from an era when the ancient Near Eastern worldview assigned God’s sovereignty to all events, even troubling ones. Later Jewish and Christian thought would try to distinguish between:

• God directly causing evil,

• God permitting destructive forces,

• or God withdrawing protection so that chaos overtakes someone.

So, depending on one’s hermeneutical tradition, we might interpret these passages very differently:

• some read these texts literally,

• some read them symbolically or psychologically,

• some see them reflecting an early stage in Israel’s theological development.

In any case, whatever Luke’s actual worldview, his literary approach aligns with the theological descriptions of the Hebrew textual tradition.

The Wrath and Destroyer Overcome

Even in the Old Testament, certain authors began to question whether “the destroyer” (sometimes translated “destroying angel”) is actually “from the Lord” at all. Where the OT sometimes names God as the death-dealer, then tries to wash God’s hands of guilt by simply “sending the destroyer” (a cosmic assassin), eventually, “the wrath” or “the destroyer” are regarded as enemies of God to be overcome by the Messiah.

The key text is Wisdom of Solomon 18:20–25, where Aaron prefigures the Messianic deliverer by “staying the plague”:

For a blameless man was quick to act as their champion;
he brought forward the shield of his ministry,
prayer and propitiation by incense;
he withstood the wrath and put an end to the disaster,
showing that he was your servant.

He conquered the anger [wrath] not by strength of body,
nor by force of arms,
but by his word he subdued the punisher [destroyer],
appealing to the oaths and covenants given to the ancestors.”
— Wisdom 18:21-22

The passage culminates with the image of the destroyer halted, not by violent force but by intercession:

“For when the dead had already fallen on one another in heaps,
he intervened and held back the wrath,
and cut off its way to the living.”
— Wisdom 18:23

That passage is referring back to this passage in Numbers 16 with Messianic anticipation:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put fire on it from the altar, and lay incense on it, and carry it quickly to the congregation, and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone out from the Lord; the plague has begun.”
So Aaron took it as Moses had ordered, and ran into the middle of the assembly, where the plague had already begun among the people. He put on the incense and made atonement for the people.
He stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stopped.
— Numbers 16:46–48 (NRSV)

New Testament Sin, Death, and the Lord

• In the New Testament, SIN kills you, God does not. The direct “wages of sin is death” is dramatically different than saying “the wages of sin is divine punishment that kills you.”

• And if we imagine that the consequences include a supernatural aspect, is the destroyer an angel or a demon? In Acts, the Greek word is a ‘messenger’ (literally) ... but the problem is that it is supposedly “from the Lord.” If Luke is simply echoing earlier texts for effect, or worse, actually believes this spirit truly comes “from the Lord,” it is all the more problematic because in the New Testament, “the Lord” is none other than Jesus Christ. So are we meant to believe that Jesus ever sends supernatural messengers of death to kill blasphemers through natural (albeit instant) means (worms)?

• Jesus himself denies this. Eventually we come to John’s gospel, written decades after Luke-Acts, when the beloved disciple has had time to work out the implications of Jesus’ revelation of the God “who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

• The Jesus of John settles the question in John 10:10: “Who steals, kills, and destroys? The thief. Always the thief. But I [the very image of God] am not a death-dealer. I AM an abundant life-giver.” In Jesus’ model, the Christlike God is not the author of death, nor does God send angels to kill to keep his own hands clean.

The Inspiration of Scripture

The Doctrine of Inspiration takes many forms. I address this in some depth in A More Christlike Word but for now, I can say that my doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture includes:

• belief that Acts has been received into the Christian Scriptures as canonical,

• belief that divine inspiration is a work of the Spirit that does not require literalist interpretations of the text (indeed, even the literal sense of any text precludes literal-ISM).

• belief that divine inspiration is a work of the Spirit that involves the authors’ or narrators’ still-unfolding understanding of God, the gospel, and its implications—a growth-curve evident in their language.

• belief that divine inspiration is a work of the Spirit in the reader, who must treat the text honestly and without alarm wherever the narrator’s language appears incongruent with the revelation of God in Christ. Here, we as readers are dependent on the Spirit’s guidance in reading spiritual words spiritually (1 Corinthians 2) and recognizing how even the New Testament must be read through Gospel and Holy Spirit lenses.

In other words, my way of reading Acts 12 is that, as with the OT, so too the authors of Scripture in the apostolic era are still in a developing conversation about how the consequences of sin relate to the providence of God, culminating in the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, which then tempers the interpretive inferences of Luke in Acts.

Rather than reducing it to a zero-sum, right-wrong contradiction, we see these disciples faithfully enroute down the Emmaus Way, making their way towards the fullness we see in our canonized Scriptures, and recognizing how our own reading is developing so that your question arose in the first place. Well done.

The discussion of eternal torment and the fate of the “unsaved” is often framed, by the law and order crowd, as a matter of God’s love or his justice. Those who are intent on relegating those who, to their knowledge and satisfaction, have never heard or accepted their version of Christianity to eternal torture, often characterize those, like myself, who primarily look for answers based on God’s love and grace, as soft-headed, soft-hearted and weak.

So which is it—love or justice? Is God primarily a God of love or a God of justice? Here’s what I see as the fundamental flaw in real, he-man, tough-as-nails Christianity:

• Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of God’s love—he is God’s love personified. When I study his life and teachings I am overwhelmed by his compassion and mercy, and find few examples when he models a heavenly hanging judge who makes tough, by-the-book decisions in favor of religious perceptions and definitions of justice.

• The Bible reveals that God is love. The Bible defines the very heart and core of God as love. Love is what God is, rather than one of his attributes. God has many attributes, with justice being among them. But all of God’s attributes flow out of his love—his attributes do not flow out of his justice. God is merciful, sovereign, holy, just, perfect, good, righteous, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient—and all of these attributes are summarized in his divine love.

• Most of the arguments attempting to place God’s justice and wrath as his defining characteristics go something like this: Yes, the death of Jesus Christ was the ultimate expression of divine love. But, it was the ultimate expression because God cannot, by his very perfection, pass over sin. To vindicate his justice God did the unthinkable—in the person of Jesus he died for us. So at the center of the cross is the glorification of God’s perfect justice.

Such ideas then lead to the insistence on an ever burning hell fire for the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, and, by comparison, an exclusive and small kingdom of heaven occupied primarily by paid-in-full, dues-paying slaves of Christ-less religion.

I absolutely reject a characterization of God as a primitive god of wrath on the grounds of the person of Jesus Christ and the fullness of his gospel. God the Father did not insist that God the Son die so that God the Father could be vindicated. In seeking a humanly satisfactory motive for the cross of Christ, this outrageous idea diminishes the love of God and perverts his very nature.

We must beware of defining God by human standards. Human ideas of retributive justice, or vengeance, often masquerade as a divine manifesto. God never said we would, in this lifetime, completely fathom his love—by his grace we are saved from theological attempts that try to do just that!

• Those who argue for eternal punishment of those who fall short of humanly imposed religious standards are not only violating the fundamental definition of God as love, they are, in pitting the wrath of the Father against of the compassion of the Son, violating the revelation of the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. According to some theological presuppositions, in order to place justice on the divine throne, justice must be presumed to trump God’s love in the end. That is, God may desire to forgive those who in some way are deemed to have fallen short, but he can’t—his justice compels him to send such poor souls to eternal torture. This belief and teaching bifurcates the very nature of God, separating his very essence.

In order to advance their own sense of retribution and satisfaction, theological lynch mobs have to place God’s love and justice in tension. They must set God against himself! But the Bible insists that the matter is not love or justice—it is not either/or, but both/and. And the Bible insists that love triumphs over all! The gospel is good news because God’s love is unalloyed, infinite and relentless.

Recently in beautiful Canmore, Alberta, I got into a conversation with my friend Mark Maxwell. He’s a wise man who thinks and feels deeply—a person whose words I often hang on. The following content represents our conversation… though credit goes to him for patiently guiding me through the issue of long-haul prayer.

Luke 11

And [Jesus] said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Why Persistence Matters

In the above Jesus’ teaching on prayer, he speaks about the importance of persistence. Somehow it matters. And yet at the same time, his illustration includes a contrast where God is most assuredly not like the sleepy friend or the good father but far less reluctant and far more generous. But at the same time, Jesus seems to be speaking to a reality we experience—even in the benevolence of God, some prayers take a long time to see answered. And in those cases, persistence matters.

One reason persistence matters when we set ourselves to prayer (say, over the course of years) is that the waiting itself is a grace that forms us. For example, imagine imploring God for a specific outcome over the course of three years. And let’s assume we’ve grown to a point where we’re convinced God is not hard of hearing or reluctant to bless. Then why the delay? And let’s assume further that I’m seeking something truly good, with right motives, and am quite sure God has made it clear that the request is within God’s will. Yet still the delay. What’s up? Perhaps over time, we have even let go of the outcome and surrendered our desires to God’s loving care. Were those prayers fruitless? I don’t think so.

Outcomes Versus Fruit

Here, I’m suggesting a distinction between “answered prayers” as expected outcomes and the “good fruit” of our deepening spiritual formation and/or the ripening required for the best outcome. In the former case, rather than serving my desires as an over-responsive helicopter parent, God may be working something in my heart (e.g., the discipline of patient endurance or deepening trust or stable character) that requires focused time in prayer regardless of the outcome). In the latter case, God may be responding to my need but the moving parts and other partners involve a complexity that takes time and human participation, even if things are set in motion immediately. By the time it all comes together, the formation in me and the fruit of the answered prayer may be far more beautiful than by quick trip through the prayer drive-thru could manage in the short term I wished it was.

What if not one second is wasted as every moment in prayer is relational proximity to divine grace and bears the transforming effects of conscious time spent with God’s Living Presence? And what if all those invocations and desires and the long hours of seeking lead to the promised outcome: the good gifts our hearts are yearning for beyond altering external consequences (however good we believe them to be).

Soggy Root Balls

Mark offered two examples of how my impatience in prayer misunderstands the importance of spiritually healthy patience.

First, his mother reported the death of another tree in their yard. They wanted to get to the bottom of what had destroyed an otherwise healthy plant. Wisely, they dug up the root ball and took it to a local horticulturalist. He looked at it in shock… the thing was a ball of mush. What on earth was wrong? Apparently, someone had thought to surround the trunk with a soaker hose and grossly over-watered it, drowning a tree that knew perfectly well how to dig deep into the soil for all the moisture and nutrients it would ever need. It struck me as comical to listen to the story as I gazed out on a mountainside forest with nary a soaker hose on the horizon.

Water-Stressed Vines

The second example was similar. Mark had visited a vineyard where, to his eyes, the vines appeared to be suffering under the scorching sun. “These vines need to be watered!” he said. His brother replied, “Not so. Yes, vines need water, but if they are over-irrigated, it dilutes the flavor and produce vigorous foliage at the expense of fruit quality. ‘Water stress’ encourages the roots to grow deeper in search of moisture, penetrating the rock, and that struggle produces smaller, more concentrated fruit. The vines still need water, but without that struggle they won’t produce the sweetest grapes.”

The Scent of Water

Another analogy comes from Job 14:7-9, transposed from its context:

“For there is hope for a tree,
if it is cut down, that it will sprout again
and that its shoots will not cease.
Though its root grows old in the earth
and its stump dies in the ground,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth branches like a young plant.”

I like instant answers to prayer. And I’d like to believe God loves to respond quickly when that brings about the best outcome. But if prayer is about more than getting the good things we want or need, the grace of persisting and even insisting may form us as deeper and healthier plants that produce sweeter fruit that cannot come about at the snap of praying fingers.

One of the most common objections to God’s grace goes something like: “Sure, we have been saved by grace, BUT…” That phrase is used so often within legalistic religion that it seems like it should be spelled as one word – gracebut with no comma. When used as a G-rated term for the hindquarters of an animal or human, the word is spelled b-u-t-t. It is wise to keep not only our BUTS (objections or opinions) out of God’s grace, but our BUTTS as well.

BUT, with all due respect and political correctness, we must admit that though BUTTS can become large, the BUT used to diminish, devalue and destroy God’s grace is far bigger and of far greater concern than any BUTT. The word BUT is a preposition or conjunctive, often used to modify a previous statement or introduce an exception. There are many ways BUT is used – here are three common ones:

1. BUT is often used to negate what has just been said or written, and thus it creates a contrast – some call the word “BUT” a contrastive conjunction. The gracebut objections go something like this: “Oh sure, we have been saved by grace, BUT we still have to keep God’s laws and his ten commandments.”

2. BUT is used after expressions like “Excuse me” or “I’m sorry” to introduce a question or request or even introduce a seemingly polite statement that takes exception with an opinion previously expressed or accepted. The gracebut brigade announces: “I know how important you seem to think grace is, BUT I’m sorry, there is much more to pleasing God than mush and platitudes.”

3. BUT is used to directly challenge and contradict a rule or standard or commonly accepted truth. The fraternal order of gracebut says something like this: “Your constant harping about grace might make you feel better, BUT all you are doing is giving yourself permission to break laws. You are permissive and making a mockery of God’s law! Shame on you!”

I wasn’t addicted to crack; I was addicted to religion in a vain attempt to get God to like me, bless me, or at least spare me from hell when it was all over. It’s funny how one can talk a good grace game, but for all practical purposes live by the law. I’ve learned that the ‘grace but…’ mentality is as lethal as anything you can sniff, toke, or shoot up. If it’s grace, there are no conditions and no exceptions. Anything else is only masquerading as grace. Don’t take it – it will kill you. – Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (And the Unlikely People Who Help You).

Chances are you have suffered through the singing of a friend or relative who is tone deaf. A tone-deaf person often has little, if any idea, of the painful sound they are making. Some tone-deaf people, in a vain attempt to make up for their lack of melody, harmony and grace notes increase the volume of the sound they make, somehow thinking that decibels alone will help their singing.

Some preachers and the messages they proclaim remind me of tone-deaf-Johnny-one-notes. They yell and fulminate about the law. Their message is defined more by what they are against than the love they embrace. They are alarmed about virtually everything, screaming about consequences facing those who fail to measure up to religious standards. The message blaring incessantly from one-note preachers is presented somewhat like a test of compliance to religious duties – those that pass and get “good enough” grades will go to heaven, while those who fall short will be condemned to eternal torture in hell.

Their single-minded extreme devotion to obeying laws (and punishing those who break them) makes it seem as if they, and their followers, lie awake at night worried that someone, somewhere, is getting away with something. Which is why such rhetoric is often called “hell-fire-and-brimstone preaching.”

The toxic demands of legalism cause people to become tone deaf – unable to appreciate the rich, symphonic fullness and harmony of God’s amazing grace. Gracebut religious authorities are convinced that God’s grace will be extinguished by fiery screaming and shouting about law – they seem to believe that the more condemning and judgmental the message, the more it becomes true, real and authentic. Gracebut preaching is a spiritually deafening one-note message delivered by tone-deaf preachers to congregations who “hardly hear with their ears” (Matthew 13:15) and who, over time, become spiritually hard-of-hearing due to the deafening decibels of condemnation that pass for the gospel.

When God’s grace activates spiritual taste buds, a transformed child of God tastes the fine wine of the new covenant for the first time. When God’s grace opens ears and eyes that have been dulled and diminished by the battering and beating inflicted by Christ-less and grace-less preaching, it’s as if eyes that have previously only seen the wilderness of a dry, arid spiritual desert now take in all the grandeur and splendor of Niagara Falls for the first time. When God’s grace opens ears and eyes, the sweet sounds and sights of God’s love and mercy are like a healing salve and ointment for wounded souls.

God’s grace is amazing, free, incredible, overflowing, extravagant, mysterious and inexhaustible. No human effort or production can take you higher than God’s grace. Grace doesn’t promise a momentary escape through chemical addiction – instead grace slowly and inexorably, like the waves of the ocean, changes you and me from the inside out. We grow by and into grace – we mature into it – it is no quick-fix, drive through spiritual junk-food meal.

There are times when it is necessary to use the word BUT, BUT there is never any correct or appropriate time to qualify, diminish or restrict the boundless nature of God’s grace. Nothing in the world can negate, challenge or contradict God’s amazing grace. There is no law that is stronger, no path that is superior and no reality that transcends God’s amazing grace. No buts about it.

We are created to think and react and make our way in the world according to cause and effect, bargaining, bartering, reciprocal give-and-take rewards and punishments. God’s grace is foreign to our thinking and alien to our experience. Grace is an out-of-this-world, higher, transcendent spiritual path. God’s grace is a universal axiom/verity/truth that surpasses the way we are hard-wired to think and react. Grace is, dare I say it, a greater law than any other law! Grace is the greatest reality of all realities. God’s grace announces the end of “try harder and run faster and do more” religion.

Grace means that God is not mad or angry! Grace means that the god of wrath is the god of religion, not the one true God. Grace flows out of the love of God, expressed most fully for us in the life and teachings of Jesus, in and on his cross and through his resurrection and the consequent new life he lives in you and me now!

Grace is the difference between living and working in a religious salt mine and being free from such oppressive demands and burdens. Grace releases you and me from paralyzing fear. Grace will hold our hand when we cross a dangerous street and it will make sure we get home before dark. The Road of Grace gets you and me from where we are to where we need to go. God sets up a table laden with the Bread of Life. Jesus is our meal, and grace picks up the tab.

My wife Karen loves to cook. Her passion for cooking has increased over the years to the point where she is, in what may be my slightly biased opinion, a gourmet cook. When she cooks and bakes, she prefers that I stay out of her kitchen. What she makes and how she does so is up to her. My role is enjoying the delicious end-product.

For me, God’s grace is a lot like Karen’s kitchen and her cooking. God’s kitchen is his kitchen. Jesus is the chef, and for that matter, he himself is the foundational ingredient to all of the recipes he produces for us. Ours is not to invade the kitchen, ours is but to choose to enjoy and embrace the final product. I may not know that much about the art of cuisine, but I do know a little about consuming the end product. One of the major rules: when one is served an exquisitely prepared meal, one does not immediately doctor it by emptying the saltshaker (or the bottle of ketchup!).

God’s grace is served to us “as is” – when the gracebut brigade insists on dumping a religious salt shaker or emptying a ketchup bottle all over what God serves to us, it is perverting the masterpiece God freely invites us to receive. I’ve known people who seemingly had to nearly empty a bottle of ketchup all over whatever was put in front of them before even tasting the meal. Of course, in the process of baptizing their meal in a tsunami of ketchup, these individuals horrified and offended the cook.

Gracebut is somewhat like a “ketchup bottle of law” – it adulterates and modifies grace so that it actually changes and obliterates its significance. When gracebut is on the menu or being served, don’t call the meal grace – call it what it is – law.

Q1. How would you define surrender? Who or what is one surrendering to, in your opinion? God, Universe, Self, Soul, present moment...?

Surrender has been a key word in my spiritual vocabulary for decades and as a result, has become layered. My definition is drawn from my experiences in prayer, from the influence of Simone Weil in my life, my interactions in spiritual direction, and from the twelve-step recovery movement.

I typically define surrender as “letting go,” which applies to how I try to let go of control (self-will), of agendas, of “my will be done.” In recovery language, I make a decision to surrender my life and will to the care (not the control) of a loving God. In Weil’s terms, I consent to the divine will as Christ did in Gethsemane. In prayer, I actually picture standing or kneeling before Christ and offering him whatever he asks for—releasing attitudes, emotions, intentions, worries, resentments, regrets, etc., over to him. Most of all, I surrender people. Those I’ve harmed, those who’ve harmed me, those I love most, worry about most, obsess over most. I picture delivering them into the hands or arms of God. I picture him taking responsibility for their care or correction or healing because it’s too much for me. I am no one’s savior.

This is how I process my anxieties when I lay awake thinking about my children or grandchildren. It’s how I process forgiveness for those who my resentments chain me to. It’s how I deal with my own self-pity, self-loathing, and self-centeredness.

But I also think about surrender in terms of acceptance. Dr. Walter Thiessen calls this “compassionate consent to reality.” Surrender here is connected to the distinction in the Serenity Prayer between accepting what I cannot change versus the courage to change what I can (including my reorientation back toward love and life).

An elderly sage once said to me, “Your biggest struggle is that you struggle,” or in the kind rebuke of one massage therapist, “Stop fighting me!” My wife tells me that in her contractions through labor, she learned how even in pushing, she could surf the pain rather than fighting against it. All these analogies are a kind of surrender, so we might also say “rolling with” along with “letting go.” That is, we learn to take life on life’s terms.

Q2. Is there a practice to surrender that does not cause more suffering?

I’ve already suggested one method in terms of a visual exercise of handing over. Along those lines, I also use other pictures when I need to be most gentle with myself. Sometimes, I simply enter a state where I lay my head on Jesus’ lap and gaze into a small campfire in front of us. Silent surrender. At other times, when there’s a lot of grief, I kneel beside him in Gethsemane. This helps me because I sync up with Jesus’ own experience and notice that he doesn’t get stuck. His surrender leads mine from grief to comfort to hope.

But when I’m on the verge of a panic attack, I resort to pre-established prayers that begin on their own in my heart… the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”) or the Serenity Prayer—either of which I use in conjunction with deep breathing, where the surrender is expressed as an exhale or a sigh.

I also do surrender work in the presence of non-judgmental listening with a spiritual director, a sponsor, or my godfather. I confess all that causes me anxiety (not just my sins) in a kind of surrender where I unpack and offload my most authentic feelings with a safe person who is not inclined to fix or rescue, but can sit with me as a peace-centered companion.

Q3. What happens when you surrender?

Any range of outcomes can happen when I surrender, but I’ve learned not to attach myself to outcomes—which is itself another important layer of surrender. Let’s not overlook that!

When I surrender, I may feel a great burden lift from my shoulders, or the easing of my queasy stomach, or a blessed stillness settles in. These can be quite visceral since body and soul are so connected. I may feel the well-being of realizing it will be okay or I will be okay, no matter what. I can then resist the demands of the ego to take over (control) or take back (what I let go)—to cling or to grasp.

I think about these practices and their results a lot precisely because I need to. Today, I need to let go again. Another disappointment, another burden… I’m a chronic worrier and I’ve even had to surrender the delusion that I’ll overcome that. I regress. I relapse. But I see a path, and for this moment, open my hands once again.

Q4. What is the ego or mind? What’s holding on?

“Ego” is a tricky term because it gets defined in a variety of ways. It’s literally just the Greek word for “I.” At one time, I spoke in terms of “the death of the ego.” But I was corrected by those who reminded me that ego is essential for a sense of self (or even is our sense of self). As tiny children, we gradually begin to differentiate from others and form our own sense of “me” as object, then “I” as subject.

Further, therapists tell me that many of their clients need their ego to be strengthened, especially in order to escape the demoralizing imprisonment of domestic abuse. So we should never tell a battered partner to crucify their ego!

However, when we use the word ego negatively, what we typically mean is egoism—the enthronement of the ego in self-will, self-centredness, self-importance. When ego is king, I don’t surrender. I don’t follow the wisdom of my higher power. I don’t live in the Jesus Way of self-giving, others-centered love. “I” becomes Lord. It may even develop an insidious, bullying voice increasingly devoid of conscience.

In a previous post, I mentioned pesky voices that, for me, include self-pity, self-loathing, and self-centeredness. In some models, these self-voices are all variations of the ego that, when disordered, share an incorrigible resistance to surrender—to letting go.

But when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” we might paraphrase that, “Blessed are those who’ve learned to say no to the demands of the ego” or “Blessed are those who’ve bankrupted the ego” [Ron S. Dart]. In that sense, ego can be shorthand for willfulness and surrender is willingness. But again, beware of how you process this with those who’ve been belittled. If they have internalized the voice of an oppressor, the “surrender” message may be a form of gaslighting. Someone more qualified than me can help distinguish whether the ego-voice is reinforcing the bully’s control or helping us resist it.

Q5. Is there a practice/methodology you follow that would create surrender?

For me, it’s more of a recognition that self-will has not worked. “I admitted that I was powerless [in my own strength] over my addiction/circumstances/crazy thoughts/self-destructive and others-harming behaviors, and that my life had become unmanageable.”

“Bottoming out” does not mean you go as low as you can go. It describes any point at which (1) you admit that self-will is not working , (2) you come to believe only Someone greater than yourself is able to restore your sanity, and (3) you decide to surrender to the care of that Someone. “Bottoming out” is a grace—a spiritual awakening that leads to a daily reprieve.

But I didn’t wake myself up. I needed God to wake me up. I didn’t create surrender… I suppose life did that, or grace, or both.

There are also times when advising someone to “let go” can be harmful. A friend of mine had a stillbirth child seven months through her pregnancy. To feel the child stop moving but carry it through to delivery was traumatic. Worse, she discovered that the medical staff had discarded the tiny body rather than allowing a burial. My friend retreated for recovery outside the city and connected with some caring Buddhist women for comfort. But when they began saying, “It’s okay. Just let go. The baby’s soul has left and will find its way to a new reincarnation,” she tells me that she erupted in rage. “Let go” was not the message she needed. Better to sit in silent pain with her until she discovered for herself what she needed... Instead of “letting go” of the pain, she says she needed to face it head on, enter it, and she there she discovered she could create something beautiful with it.

The idea was not to get rid of the grief—she couldn’t—but she was able to use everything at her disposal to weave something beautiful. Even there, I would caution against co-opting her words as new platitudes but instead, learn how to companion people through affliction until they emerge on the beautiful side of grief.

Question:

How does a person reconcile the God of love and grace with the one described in the Old Testament as filled with rage, violence and wrath? I must admit that this is why I do not like to read the OT as I can’t picture such an angry God. It is just confusing to me is all. I am trying to read the Bible but the Old Testament just doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t know if I have made any sense here, but after years of feeling that God was disappointed and angry with me for what I had done and that I was condemned to hell because of it, I sometimes wonder if the OT writers are writing the truth about how God really is. How can He be vengeful in the Old and a loving and forgiving God in the New?

Response:

You raise several excellent questions here, excellent in the sense that they are dilemmas that challenge, perhaps even confound so many people as they struggle with wrong-headed notions about God. These are critically important questions.

Any idea, image or perception of God that is not absolutely grounded in the New Testament revelation that God is love is off kilter at best, at worst completely erroneous and flawed. The revelation that God is love was given to humanity in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh, who came in his incarnation as one of us, and revealed the primary truth and reality of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) – God is love. Thus, anything that God is said to do, or seen or understood to endorse or require, that is not true to this central and core revelation is suspect.

Why was this not known or understood in the Old Testament (old covenant)? Put another way, was God being less in the old covenant than honest by not revealing the totality of who he was and is? That of course is a presumptuous charge toward God coming from a created human, who can only perceive eternity from the limitations of time and space, from the limitations of mortality – but it is still a question audaciously asked by humans. And given what humans have been taught by some religious professionals, it is a perfectly understandable question.

First – when we read the Bible there are several assumptions that lead us astray, so let us address them briefly:

• 1. Since the God spoken of in the pages of the Bible, the God in the Old Testament and the God in the New Testament, differ from each other and seem to contradict one another a great deal, then for some reason there must be two Gods. Wrong. God is one – a fundamental assertion made in both old and new covenants.

• 2. If God is one, yet three (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) as revealed in the New Testament, then the Father and Son must be different. Wrong. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one, harmoniously so in a way that no human harmony or unity can mirror, define or be experienced.

• 3. Then why is God in the Old Testament violent and filled with wrath while God in the New Testament is love? This is the central tenet of your query. In the old covenant it seems God required that his people wipe out entire people groups, even the animals, while in the new covenant God kills no one, but rather dies for all. In the new covenant he says turn the other cheek, do not respond to violence with violence and pray for your enemies – love your neighbor (which is anyone and everyone, not just people one likes to spend time with) as yourself. Why?

Second – now we must briefly, for it is a huge topic, address the nature of the Bible. Here is where many people err, including many religious professionals and leadership of denominations, etc. Many believe the Word of God is a book, and that the book called the Bible is without error, it is perfect and never contradicts itself. Wrong. The Word of God, says the first chapter of John, is God himself, in the incarnation of Jesus, who is eternal, perfect, without flaw. The Bible is a book – it is a book of words, some more central to the gospel than others. It is a book written in a wide variety of literary genres – styles of writing. Much of it is poetry, which of course features symbol and metaphor incapable of being “boiled down” to literal facts – just as God himself is transcendentally superior, immeasurably beautiful and “beyond” any way we humans have of measuring, absolutely defining, capturing or putting him in a box. He is bigger than all that we can comprehend… including the pages of the Bible.

Third – the Bible is not inerrant and infallible – the Word of God alone, Jesus, is inerrant and infallible. God never intended for the Bible to be holy, without human errors and flaws. Had he intended the Bible to be perfect in every way then he would have written the Bible “in heaven” – that is, somewhere where perfection exists, as opposed to earth, where imperfection reigns supreme. Further, after writing a perfect book (not involving any humans for as soon as God involves humans in anything then the product will not be absolutely perfect, holy, inerrant or infallible) then God would have translated it himself (again, not involving imperfect human translators) into every human language, then he would have printed it in heaven, and then mailed it via angelic messengers/postmen and postwomen if you like, so that every human on earth would receive a perfect, infallible, inerrant book. But that is not the nature of the book we call the Bible.

Four – God used humans as authors and editors and translators. These humans did their work within their culture and historical era, understanding as much as they could within that culture and historical era, but of course their ideas and perceptions, including those of God, were limited by their culture and historical era. In the old covenant God initially worked with only one people group in the writing, editing, translating and preserving of the Bible. Anytime one people group is involved in anything, they will be captives of their racial and nationalistic and religious assumptions, and some of those biases and prejudices will be a part of their perceptions, teachings and what they produce. That was the case with the Bible.

Five – God thus never promised that the Bible would be perfect, he never intended that the Bible would be perfect. God did not prevent human errors, human bias, human perceptions from being a part of the Bible. When humans perceive the Bible as perfect they are bound to misunderstand God. In the old covenant the Messiah, the Savior, the Cross of Christ was in the future, and it was at best veiled by even the most perceptive prophets and authors. Today, on the other side of the Cross of Christ we look back and we can, or at least we should see, the limitation of those before the Cross of Christ. Thus, the new covenant interprets the old covenant, it uncovers it, it makes greater sense, it sheds Light on the shadows in which the people of the old covenant lived (as God intended – see Colossians 2:17 – and the greater context beginning in Colossians 2:6-17).

Six – when God revealed himself to humanity in the old covenant, it was primarily, and with a few exceptions, almost exclusively to the Hebrew people. He did not reveal all of his nature and attributes – only as much as he deemed necessary for that era. He reveled himself in the old covenant through Moses, the patriarchs and the prophets. But when he revealed himself more fully in the new covenant he came himself – he revealed himself in person, in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus God progressively reveals himself in the Bible – indeed, it seems he does so in the relationship he offers to individual humans – progressively, as Peter says, as God’s children we grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. And again, we thus read the Old Testament through the eyes, the revelation, the Light of the New Testament.

• 4. Thus, and again this is but a brief discussion, when we read of God ordering the armies of Israel to commit genocide in the Old Testament, from what he know progressively in the revelation of God in the flesh, from his cross, empty tomb and resurrection, we must ask whether human beings were ascribing their perceptions of God, saying that God wanted them to do what they had already done or what they wanted to do. For again, God is one – he was the same in the past, he is the same now, and he will always be the same in the future – see Hebrews 13:8 and Revelation 1:8.

For a more detailed discussion of the important topics you raise, I have written a long article titled “When Did God Become a Christian?” – it is available on our website in our Free Resources under the topic of “Christianity”.

Question:

I’ve been spinning my wheels around the idea of what it means to trust God, and how we even get there. Trust God with what? We are not guaranteed safety in body, relationships, or really anything (from my experience). Is it simply God’s presence in all things, that God will never leave us? In all honesty, that feels like an empty answer—what good does presence do?

Response:

I get it. I clearly remember the day when I sat with my spiritual director and asked virtually the same question. I framed it as “I am told to trust that God cares. But for me, it is not enough to say that God sits on the divine throne and has caring feelings for me while doing nothing about these circumstances that I’m just supposed to accept… I’m falling apart, my church is falling apart, and my marriage is falling apart—and I realize it’s largely my fault. And yet God cares? So what? When I think of a caregiver, I think of the caregivers who work at Communitas and Bethesda. They are dressing, feeding, assisting adults in diapers in every aspect of their lives 24-7. That’s “care.” But I’m having trouble seeing God as a caregiver.”

Steve, my spiritual director, knows that his role is almost never to give answers. In over a dozen years of one-on-one meetings, he almost exclusively stuck to asking penetrating questions that led to self-discovery. But on that day, he made an exception because he could see I was drowning. He still framed his words as questions, but they were leading questions that pointed to the ways God’s care shows:

Questions: Do you ever…?

· Do you ever face a powerful temptation but have a moment of clarity, warning you about the consequences and reorienting you back to the way of love?

· Do you ever face a baffling situation but have a moment of insight, granting wisdom to a dilemma that has seemed to be an impasse?

· Do you ever feel like you’ve got not inner strength left in you but then somehow find a source of patient endurance to go on?

· Do you ever recognize that you are at the end of your own resources but discover friends who are willing to help you in the most practical ways?

· Do you ever feel alone and overwhelmed but find a nonjudgmental listener who is willing to offer companionship and even grieve with you and comfort you when you didn’t expect it?

· Do you have a community of friends with whom you feel a sense of belonging and fellowship?

· Have you ever thought of taking your life? What stopped you?

I don’t remember everything I wrote down that day in some long-lost journal but the above gives you the gist of it. On other days, I might have had more soul-strength to argue that all these questions can be refuted with (1) that’s not God, that’s my own soul or conscience or mind, (2) that’s not God, those are just caring individuals who came along at the right time, or (3) that’s not God, those are just groups I hang out with… and assigning those forms of care to God is a cop-out. If there were not God, they would happen anyway.

Thoughts: God is never separate…

But on that occasion, I had used up the last of my defiance in my initial question and Steve was speaking into the vacuum of my despair. And the first thought I had was that he was breaking his own rules of spiritual direction because he cared, and his care in this moment was indivisible from God’s care, because if God is love, how else should I expect his care to look right now? God’s care was not separate from or less than Steve’s care. And they never are.

My second thought was that if God cares, it is always indivisible from my mind and heart or from my friends and family or from my hiking club or twelve-step group or from the birds I listen to on my patio or from the sun and wind and rain and trees and rivers. It is there in the farmer who grows my food, the truck driver who delivers it to my store, the teen at the cash register who sells it to me, and the many people who make my income to buy it possible. God isn’t separate from that. God isn’t separate from me. In God’s care, I live and move and have my being.

That’s life. And God’s care is not separate from my life. Even when the sun scorches the crops, the wind becomes a tornado that shreds a trailer park (or church), the neighbors break into my house, or the Christians aren’t being Christian. He doesn’t magic it away, but in those moments, the Living Presence is most important and maybe even closest to us because that same presence suffered what I suffered to the nth degree to reveal some stuff that I can trust. And IF I’m given the capacity to trust that I could not find in myself, that does change how I live in transforming ways.

God’s care

Specifically, how would I live if I could trust that when life happens…

· God’s care is available via God’s indwelling presence as a real resource to our conscience, to our wisdom, to our resources of patience and endurance… when we ask for these, we can expect them as our hearts are open to it.

· God’s care is in the people and communities who care for us in emotional and practical ways, including their prayers, which God hears and answers—not often through changing circumstances, but through open eyes and arms and manifestations of mercy.

· God’s care means that God did not send the problems, and those problems are therefore not punishment, and in fact, grace is available that does not require me to expect or attach myself to a particular outcome.

· God’s care means that God’s compassionate companionship in us has a transforming impact on us, where even awful trials or terrible people are woven into something better and for our good.

· God’s care means that whatever I’m facing, this is not the end, it does not get the final word. Life gets the final word, and I am going to be okay.

Two Truths: The Treasury of Good Gifts and David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”

I’m reminded to lean into two truths. First truth, the words of the Trisagion Prayer:

O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth,

Who is everywhere present and fills all things,

Treasury of good gifts and Giver of Life,

Come dwell with us,

cleanse us from every stain,

and save our souls, O Good One.

I don’t always know how that is true, but I trust that somehow it is true and I am watchful and grateful for every manifestation of goodness in my life and anything that gives my life meaning. For my family, my home, my work, and the re-enchantment of childhood wonder as I pay attention to ladybugs, squirrels, flowers, the baby in the stroller, and chance meetings with fascinating people (all people are fascinating when we listen well). When I see the presence of Christ in all people, I rejoice whenever I see real transformation in those I care about, and I attribute it to grace.

Second truth, the grace of God is the unnoticed waters in which I swim. From David Foster Wallace’s This is Water:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

In my case, water is the grace-given existence in which Christ is in us and we are in Christ, without separation and without absorption, as every breath I take is a gift and waking up this morning is precious because it was not guaranteed … and if I hadn’t, my rebirth into the next life would also be a gift.

I don’t know what you have to be thankful for, but I hope you can take my response as a gift from Elsewhere.

“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you” (1 John 2:27).

QUESTION / COMMENT:

Greg, hope you are doing well. Thank you for the many fine articles we are receiving and reading in the monthly magazines and the monthly letter — not to mention so many other resources on the blog and posted on www.ptm.org. I have been thinking about 1 John 2:27 lately. I am wondering how much the Lord teaches us personally. If you have time I would appreciate your thoughts on this topic. Thank again for you and all your staff for serving us Greg. Wishing that the Lord Christ Jesus continues giving you the strength and maintains the wisdom He has given you through your lifetime.

Your brother in Christ Jesus.

RESPONSE:

The sense I receive from this passage is one of the permanence of a gracious gift. God gives us of himself. God, by his grace, transforms us from the inside out, so that while we are still mortal and in this corruptible body, we are also God’s children, heirs of his kingdom. By his grace, we remain what we are —born of flesh, creatures of time and space, and children of God, born of God, So then we have something of eternity dwelling in us by the grace of God. It seems to me John is telling us not to let anyone persuade us (or teach us) that we do not belong to God by his grace. We are his children.

1 John 2:27 - read in isolation, this verse does not translate well — that is, it is not an “easy” read, particularly outside of its greater context.

Why does John insist that we have no need of anyone teaching us? Something of the divine is within us which cannot be removed.

— the Authorized King James and the NIV say “the anointing you received...”

— the New English says “the initiation you have received from him”

— The Message Bible speaks of “what is embedded deeply within you...”

— The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips says “the touch of his Spirit never leaves you...”

— The Amplified Bible, which attempts to offer synonyms to vague or obtuse words, says “...as for you, (the sacred appointment, the unction) the anointing which you have received...”

I get the idea that John is trying to assure his “dear children” (a phase he uses of his readers several times throughout this book, not a relationship he presumes to be equal with the divine Father of course but one that he uses to communicate his love and care for his readers) that they, if they remain as he recorded Jesus saying, in the 15th chapter of his Gospel, remain attached to the vine, which is Jesus, then they need not fear being theologically seduced and led astray.

In fact, with that word “remain” in mind we read the last three words of 1 John 2:27: “remain in him.”

Ironically, or more than that, most important, the admonition John records as among the last words spoken to the disciples by Jesus the night before he was crucified, is about remaining attached to him — that is, Jesus is the core and the crux and the center of faith. He moves and lives within us, and we in him, by virtue of the grace of God. If we are attached to the vine, we will not wither up and die and be blown here and there, as Paul says in Ephesians 4:14, by every wind of teaching.

The larger context of the passage in question — 1 John 2:27 — is all about teachings that deny the Son of God — those who deny Jesus is the Christ, the teaching of anti-Christ, but you, John assures them and us, “have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth” (vs 20).

Jesus told Thomas, in response to a question, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). I see John in 1 John 2 telling us that if we, by the grace of God, have Jesus — and if he has us — if we abide in the Vine, who is Jesus — if we remain attached — then we have been planted, we are anointed, we are protected, we are secure, in him, because we are in him and he is in us. He is the Truth, and by the grace of God we have the Truth. We have no need of any other teacher — we have Jesus — who IS the way and the truth and the life. We have no need of any other spiritual Father — we have God the Father. We have the Holy Spirit - “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17).

Question:

How do we comprehend the Son and Spirit without demoting them to less than the Father while having full reverence to 3 and 1?

Response:

Re: the Trinity -- The good news is that you don’t have to figure it all out from scratch. Historically, that took Christianity’s best minds 300 years and even then, “it’s a mystery” was one of their major conclusions. But mystery means more than “we don’t know.” It included, we couldn’t know by reason but learned it by revelation” (i.e. the Scriptures).

What we can do is start with some really basic confessions, which require faith in the revelation and some critical analysis thereafter. We can’t rationalize there with finite arguments. But here is a basic set of faith statements, known by revelation, which also has some semblance of reason because it’s paradox rather than simply contradiction:

1. We worship one God. We always start with the One. We don’t have three gods. That’s tritheism. How many Gods? One. One nature. One essence. Once substance. One being. One. And that divine essence is 100% love. There can be no inferiority in that Oneness. Indeed, it’s more than the Oneness of unity, like you and I could enjoy. It is the Oneness of Invisible Union, where all the operations of the One God (Father, Son and Spirit) are without division.

2. That One God has revealed Godself as eternal love, subsisting of 3 co-eternal persons (not parts) in a community of perichoretic, self-giving love. The One God is said to be triune and tri-personal. If God were a monad (one solitary person), he could not be love because he could only love himself, which isn’t really love. God is love because Father, Son and Spirit are self-giving, co-eternal, infinite love, forever sharing One divine nature.

It is extremely difficult for us to imagine One divine Being who is beyond Being as also a Divine Community of Persons, but so the Scriptures and the Church (by the Spirit) have revealed. One God, One Love, revealed as the indivisible Father, Son and Spirit, co-equal and co-eternal.

We attempt poor analogies by speaking of the complexity of human nature, which subsists of spirit, soul and body, or of mind, emotions and will. But even when these are at war within us and we subordinate one to the other, we recognize we normally still live as one, indivisible human nature, however conflicted. Such analogies can help us conceive of oneness in diversity but to be truthful, they also usually just lead to new heresies.

3. Where did the Arian heresy arise? That is, where did some Christians stumble into Subordinationism (inferiority) of the Son or Spirit? Well, they couldn’t have so long as they remembered God is One nature and Christ is One person. But the moment they compromised or waffled on those revealed truths, they could stumble on two possible points.

a. They might think that the Father sending the Son or the Son sending the Spirit implies subordination and inferiority. Similarly, they might think the Son’s begottenness of the Father or the Spirit’s procession from the Father implies inferiority.

But why should it? Even in our human relationships, if my wife sends me to the store for groceries and I consent to go, have I conceded inferiority? My submission to her wishes is based on mutual love among equals, not subservience as a lesser human. And even less so if she actually goes with me (as the Son does nothing apart from the Father). Sadly, not all men/husbands have understood this.

Also, my wife and I also begat three sons, does this make my sons inferior persons to me? And even less so as they are adults who have become my co-equal brothers in Christ. No, neither sending nor begetting need imply subordination. And this was the point in that line of the Creed that says Christ is “Light from Light, True God from True God.” The analogy is that sunlight proceeds from the light of the sun, but both are indivisible light. Our sun shines and the sun and the sunshine share one essence: the light. Photons are photons. This too is a limited analogy, but it at least highlights how Light = Light even as the sun sends sunshine. And what do you know? This is exactly what Hebrews says: “Christ is the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of his being.” The being and the image are one. “To see me is to see the Father.”

b. Alternatively, the Arians might also think the Son’s human birth and submission to the Father implies inferiority. This is slightly more difficult, because Jesus said, “If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28).

As the early church puzzled over this, they remembered again that we must start with the principle of One. Father and Son are One. One God. One Divine Nature. And the Son IS the Image of the Father. So too, the Son is, first of all, one indivisible Person. That one Person is both fully God and fully human, indivisible and not to be thought of in parts. If we accept that, we’re fine. Then we can move forward: so the One God-man shares one divine nature with his Father, Christ also related to his Father as a human, as humanity, imaging God to the humanity and vicariously submitting to God the Father for humanity. Creator and creation unite in the one Person, divine nature and human nature subsist in the one Person, AND [here’s the paradox] the human nature submits to the divine both in Christ and in Trinitarian relationship.

So, we believe that Jesus said that “the Father was greater than I,” not because Jesus is less than fully God or a lesser god, but because Jesus was also a man, and as a man, he recognized God as greater than man.

Like I said, it’s a mystery above our pay-grade, but we came to believe this because all the alternatives either compromised Christ’s humanity or deity, making him less than fully human or less than fully divine. If the goal is to get our heads around it, we’ll be frustrated because it truly is beyond us. But if we make it a matter of theological conviction, our guiding principle is the unity of the Trinity and the unity of the Person. The rest falls into place after that if you make the other truths subordinate to those two premises. And as faith statements, they really are premises.

For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.—Philippians 3: 18-21

From the time I entered the mysterious world of adolescence, watching the 1960 political conventions on television, politics has always mysteriously attracted me. Politics has been one of my personal fascinations that I liken to that of the death wish of bugs on a hot summer night as they do their death dance, flirting with those electrified bug zappers.

Every time we have an election I find this fatal attraction sucking me into the black hole of partisan rhetoric again. I don’t mean to infer that it’s wrong for a Christian to be politically involved. Some Christians believe that they should not only vote but be politically active. I recognize that perspective and respect those who hold it, but I still have reservations about jumping into bed with the bug zapper.

What does it mean to be a citizen of heaven?

As you probably know, it’s still difficult to convince some American Christians that it’s okay to vote for anyone or any cause that is not Republican. For many Christians God is a Republican (or do some actually think, I wonder, that the Republican party is God?!).

Our passage today informs us that one-sided partisanship for any one political party, no-matter-what, is out of character with our citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20).

I believe that blind allegiance to any political interest can be a fatal attraction that leads us away from Jesus into the clutches of the state.

I don’t want any political interest thinking that I will pay them the allegiance which I owe to God alone, for first and foremost I am a citizen of heaven.

Neither a political candidate nor a political party can replace the kingdom of God. There is no New Testament teaching that requires Christians to attempt to influence or change political institutions.

I am thankful that I live in a country where a separation between church and state exists. After all, the church needs to be protected from the state. Some Christians will hear me say that and nod their approval. But then, if they let me keep talking, I almost always add that this safeguard goes both ways.

It is also a blessing to live in a country where the civil government is protected from the church. History records what happens when such checks and balances do not exist.

In fact, the situation in our world today with religious fundamentalism and extremism presents an even more contemporary, compelling and chilling illustration of what happens when religion runs wild. I believe the church, the body of Christ, best functions in its culture as a believing minority, rather than a moral majority.

We are described within the pages of the New Testament as pilgrims, strangers, resident aliens and ambassadors, rather than wheeling and dealing political power brokers.

Even though we have, here in the United States, constitutional amendments separating church and state, we still have significant cross-over. Many churches today fly American flags and sing patriotic songs. Presidents, and other politicians, often conclude important speeches with the words, “God bless America.”

This idea, in terms of Christianity, started almost 1,700 years ago, with a Roman emperor named Constantine. Constantine made the Christian faith the official state religion. When you realize the horrible persecution, torture and deaths that Christians had suffered at the hands of Rome until that time, you might think this was a great victory.

But there are always two sides to any coin. All Constantine did was to unite his kingdom through religion. Christians at that time were weary and tired of persecution, and all too willing to be given protection and peace under the authority of the empire.

So Constantine started a Christian kingdom on earth, a church-state union with civil and religious rulers and leaders who made decisions for everyone in the empire. Christians no longer had to ponder, pray and consider God’s will, they simply did what the state and the official state church said to do, after all, everyone was Christian. Or were they?

Over time Christians started to ask—”If a Christian nation and empire really followed Jesus in every way, then would it go to war?”

They asked, “How do Christians become Christian—is it a right of birth into a Christian church-state nation or empire?”

Some Christians asked, “Are we, as Christians, primarily citizens of an earthly kingdom, while our heavenly citizenship is secondary, or subservient to our loyalty to an earthly kingdom?”

These are questions all Christians must answer, whatever era of history in which they may live, whatever culture in which they may find themselves.

During the past 1,700 years Christians have grappled with the issue of their involvement in civil governments, their involvement with warfare, their involvement with either running for political office, or voting for those who do.

I believe our passage today forces us to carefully consider how we live as citizens of heaven here on earth.

Here are some conclusions I have come to as a Christian:

Just as I believe that Christians attend different churches, and that Christians often don’t even attend any institutionalized, geographically-located church at all, I believe Christians may be brothers and sisters in Christ and cast their ballots in completely different ways.

Beyond that I believe that Christians may determine for perfectly valid reasons not to vote at all.

As a Christian, I believe I have no duty to force the culture in which I reside to live as a Christian society.

When any humans, Christians or otherwise, get the idea that their main identity comes from the rightness of their behavior, sooner or later they will begin to believe that they have a right, a duty, perhaps even a divine calling, to force others who do not see things the way they do to behave as they do.

When people become convinced that their idea of right and wrong and of truth is the only way, they will form party lines and establish boundaries. They will draw lines in theological and philosophical sand, they will legislate moral principles and require religious “guidelines” as they do their best to turn other people into the same judgmental, self-righteous individuals as they are.

As followers of Christ, we live Christ-centered and grace-based lives in such a way that his love for all mankind is known in and through our lives. This is in marked contrast to the reality present within some of Christendom, where abrasiveness and in-your-face political dogmatism is seen as a litmus test of membership in some churches. You see, my liberty in Christ means that I afford liberty to others when their political opinions and convictions conflict with mine.

For me, my freedom in Christ allows me the choice to refuse membership in a political party. I don’t suggest that my decision is better than yours, it’s just a decision to which I have come. I am an independent voter. When I vote, I vote for the cause or the person, not the party with which they are affiliated. If I vote, I vote for issues and individuals in spite of their connection with a political organization.

How would Jesus vote? I don’t know. Would Jesus vote at all? I don’t know for sure.

I believe that we, as Christians, are citizens of heaven. We are strangers here on this earth, pilgrims and resident aliens. As Christians we don’t see any human government as the perfect embodiment of God’s kingdom—instead, we are called out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). We don’t believe that God is a respecter of persons. We don’t believe God has national or racial favorites.

Our citizenship is in heaven. What does that mean?

Citizenship is one of the most important parts of your identity. In the case of heaven, our citizenship is granted by God’s grace. Our passport is issued when we are transformed from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of God.

As Christians we are citizens of a different kind of kingdom. There are many practical implications of being a Christian on earth today. If we are truly Christ-followers, if we read the New Testament carefully and we are truly united with Christ, then:

• We will want as many as possible to be a part of God’s heavenly kingdom. We will not attempt to keep people out of his kingdom—we will rather welcome them in.
• We will pray for our enemies.
• We will not automatically line up to go to war, but we will sorrow over injustice. We are defined more as peacemakers than we are as political and military soldiers. Our warfare is with those who oppose our king, King Jesus, and our warfare is primarily fought on spiritual battlefields, as Paul tells us in Ephesians, not on physical killing fields.
• We will take up the cause of the poor, the disenfranchised, and the diseased. We will share with those in need.

As citizens of God’s kingdom we believe in giving to those in need, giving so that the cause of Christ may be better known, and we do so in the midst of a world founded on get. We believe in proclaiming his gospel of grace to a world based on personal gain at the expense of others, a world in wild pursuit of personal gratification and material wealth.

As citizens of heaven, we have but one Lord and one Savior. If Jesus can’t be Lord of all, everything in our lives, then he can’t be Lord at all. We worship him and him alone. Faith alone, grace alone, and Christ alone.

This means that we don’t see our faith as a compartment of our lives, it isn’t something we do only on a Sunday morning. Our faith, our citizenship, is something we are at all times—at work, at play, at prayer, with friends and family.

We are citizens of heaven at all times, we don’t turn on and turn off Jesus as we do our laptop computer. We don’t carry Jesus around with us like we do our cell phone or our iPod. Jesus lives in us and we live in him. We are citizens, resident aliens on earth, citizens of heaven. Being Citizens of God’s Kingdom of heaven is what we are, all the time.

Sometimes our Christian values are in conflict with those of our city, our state, our province and our nation. Sometimes there are difficult choices we as Christians must make.

As you live out your life here on earth, as you live in this physical here-and-now world as a resident alien, remember your primary citizenship is in heaven.

Give thanks for the physical blessings and freedoms you enjoy. As Paul said to Timothy, pray for kings and all those in authority (1 Timothy 2:2). Respect those who rule in high political and civil offices.

If you vote, vote as a Christ-follower. If you don’t vote, don’t consider yourself spiritually superior to those who do.

If you favor a particular candidate or cause, realize that other Christians are also free in Christ to disagree with you.

If you favor a particular candidate or cause, realize that God does not ask you to attempt to turn your little physical corner of the world into his kingdom. That’s what Jesus does, and will do.

Treasure your freedom to vote, and your right to think for yourself. Avoid those who would manipulate you (even from pulpits). Think for yourself. Give others, even and especially within the body of Christ, respect as a fellow child of God when they differ with you.

Jesus is our Savior, not any political party. As Christians we have but one Lord, and his name is Jesus.