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So today was my monthly turn to teach Sunday school to the 2nd-4th grade class. I was supposed to talk about the book of Romans.

Despite my skepticism of using the “Roman’s Road” for cold-call evangelism, I think its actually a good teaching tool and decided to take them through it. I ended up talking for a while on Romans 6:23 (which is step 2/5).

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-Romans 6:23 (ESV)

The FREE gift of God. You got that? Did you do anything to deserve it? This is Sunday school of course, so they all nod their heads. Most of the kids are nine years old. They’ve heard this a hundred times already. Grace has really been buggin’ me lately though, so I decided to press the issue. I told them that from now until the day they grow old and die, at every turn, someone is going to come along and try to tack on extra requirements to receive God’s grace. On paper there may be no prerequisites, but you’ll find that practically, socially, there is always a stack. I used an example that seemed to get their attention:

What if a guy was an abortion doctor? It’s his job every day to kill babies. Seriously. Now, say he decides to follow Jesus and confesses that he is Lord. Great! Now what if then he goes back to work on Monday? What if he doesn’t quit his job? Is he still going to hell? Is God’s gift really FREE or not, eh? Are there still prereqs of our own good works to receive it?

(We stopped shortly after, had cookies and played hangman for the last 10 minutes)

Well yes, it would be a good thing if he quit his job. Yes, we think he probably will. He might not right away though. Does that make him any less a recipient of the grace of God? Did Jesus not die for him until he’s cleaned up his act to a “reasonable” level?

An abortion doctor is an easy target of course. What about a gossip? Do you have a bad habit of talking trash behind people’s backs? Say then you come to Jesus and declare him as Lord. Say you’re baptized. But then back at the office on Monday, there you are dishin’ the dirt on your rival down the hall. Are you not really a Christian? But of course you are. And so is the abortion doctor.

(And if the last part wasn’t uncomfortable, the next part probably will be.)

And so is the homosexual who comes to Jesus and STAYS GAY. Yes, it’s true. Yes, for whatever reason (the genetics of the fall, abuse, circumstances) he’s gay. Maybe following Jesus will “cure” him of his feelings. Great. Happens all the time. Maybe he is really hoping it would! Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe he gives up sexual promiscuity (assuming his life was characterized by it before) but never feels particularly “less gay” for the rest of his life. Anyone along this continuum, at what point are they receiving the grace of Jesus? THE WHOLE TIME.

Do some people really reject Jesus? Do some profess his name but continue to live in blatant disobedience, showing little or no tangible evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit? Yes. We all know them. We ARE them sometimes. I am not in a position to judge their eternal state. I admit, sometimes it looks grim. However, it is my place encourage their being conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ. Some people in their life may be granted a place of exhortation too.

Side note: I believe the idea that “all sin is equal” in the eyes of God is a fallacy. On a practical, physical level, the abortion doctor is causing destruction and evil on a much greater capacity than the gossip. The consequences of actions vary widely. Murder is worse in a hundred ways that shoplifting a candy bar isn’t. They are the same though in that they both equally disqualify us from perfection.

Someone living in homosexual promiscuity (for example a man who makes the rounds at the gay bar) is no more a sinner than the guy playing house with his girlfriend. The former may be more exposed to disease. He may (or may not) experience greater consequences for his actions eventually, but I think the two are essentially just different varieties of common sexual sin. The rub is that the gay man doesn’t dare step foot in most churches, and if he does he has to hide out. The other guy – our churches are filled with them right now. I sincerely hope they both grow. I hope I grow too. So I have a pretty wife and a nice looking family. That’s wonderful! At the same time, big freakin’ deal.

I will not, in my declaration of the gospel, declare one of them justified and the other not, or myself justified and them not. Jesus gave his life for all three of us, and more.

I think this IS the good news. Everything else is pretty much crappy news. I’m not coming to this from a position of theological liberalism. Quite the opposite in fact.

“If you are not regularly accused of being antinomian, you probably haven’t preached the gospel.

-Martin Lloyd Jones

Michael Spencer’s classic essay Our Problem with Grace (reposted today) is much more worth your time.

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Someone suggested checking chat and email logs to look for gems from the iMonk.

I once emailed him about a particular church-related frustration. Part of his reply:

I try to think of it this way. Evangelicalism is like a crowded football stadium. I need to not worry about the drunks peeing out in the parking lot.

How do you get people to come to church that don’t really think they need to? Give away free cars? Maybe just free pizza. Have a kickin’ worship band? Photos of smiling eligible bachelorettes on your website? And what is the fellowship like once they get there? Warm? Contrived?

When people tell me that they find Mass boring, I want to say to them: it’s supposed to be boring, or at least seriously underwhelming. It’s a long-term education in becoming un-excited, since only that will enable us to dwell in a quiet bliss which doesn’t abstract from our present or our surroundings or our neighbor, but which increases our attention, our presence, and our appreciation for what is around us.

-James Alison, Worship in a Violent World, Undergoing God, p.?

Christopher Rudy further comments:

This rather monastic vision of liturgy challenges Pelagian conceptions that emphasize stimulation, performance, and orchestrated community. Neither God nor humanity needs to be manipulated or bribed. God is already present, and the sacrifice already complete in Christ, so true worship should lead believers into the deliberate peacefulness of the forgiving victim.

A good idea about how to fix this or that thing wrong with the world is not enough. Our motives and humbleness before God matters too.

Our choice is not that of being pure and whole at the mere cost of formulating a just and honest opinion. Mere commitment to a decent program of action does not life the curse. Our real choice is between being like Job, who KNEW he was stricken, and Job’s friends who did not know they were stricken too – though less obviously than he. (So they had answers!) To justify ourselves is to justify our sin and to call God a liar.

-Thomas Merton, Events and Pseudo-Events, p.?

Christian hope is not a casual hope for “your best life now”. It is not hope to get a parking spot or a better job. That is something else. I hope you get that better job. Really. We don’t hope that Jesus will save us from our sins either. He already did that. Our hope is in resurrection. Resurrection only follows death.

Be not affrighted! (Mark 16:6-8)

There is nothing pretty about Christian hope. Whatever Christian hope is, it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known.

James Alison, Raising Abel, p.161

Michael Spencer passed away today. This is a sad, sad moment for me, though it’s been stretched out for several months now. Everyone saw it coming.

Michael really was unique. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY had quite the mix of humility, bite, and street cred to help others constructively work through the mess that is American evangelical Christianity.

Lots of folks had bigger brains than Michael, but they also had too many dogs in the fight to be of much help to those of us lost in the wilderness.

Some folks are kind and humble too, but too much so. They are too forgettable, too meaningless.

Very, very few people can write as well.

There are some young folks with really good ideas, but they can’t bring all the wisdom and life experience to the table like the iMonk could.

I don’t feel like there is anyone that can fill the void he has left. He said his book (who knew it would be his last hurrah!) was about 80% new material. I’m glad. Come September we’ll see his ghost wander back on earth for a time. Lord knows I’ll see him again when it’s all over.

I haven’t had death touch me very close, ever really. I’ve only been to a couple funerals, and they were never for anyone that close. I never met Michael, though we corresponded by email several times. He lives on the other side of the world as far as I’m concerned. I can tell though, just in the emotions lurking now, that when someone really close to me DOES die, I am NOT going to take it very well, at least for a little well. I’m too damn rooted in this earth. Oh well. In some ways, that’s probably a good thing.

In furthering is thesis that violence does not come (directly at least) from God, he takes a look at a couple of Jesus’s parables.

Concerning the parable of the talents, notice how the master judges the wicked servant at the end:

Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, though wicked servant… (Luke19:22)

The wicked servant is cowering in the corner, asking to be smacked. And he is. Just as he said he would.

And that is exactly what happens. Once again it is the subject’s imagination of his master that is absolutely determinant of his behavior. One who imagines this master as free, audacious, generous, and so on, takes risks, and himself enters into a fruitfulness that is ever richer and more effervescently creative; while one whose imagination is bound by the supposed hardness of the master lives in function of that binding of the imagination, and remains tied, hand and foot, in a continuous, and maybe even an eternal, frustration.

-James Alison, Raising Abel, p.154

Also, in the parable about the vineyard and the wicked owners who finally kill the owner’s son: Notice that it is the CROWD (not Jesus) who answers that at the end the owner will come back and kick the wicked servants out of the vineyard. We assume they are right because that’s what WE would do. But Jesus doesn’t say that. What, in fact, does the owner do? The son says “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” as they are murdering him. Does the owner (God) come back in the next chapter and kick the servants (us) out? No! The Son rises from the dead and redeems us – reconciling us to God despite our wickedness.

People project the image of their earthly father onto God all the time. In some ways it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The thing is, God is not defined by who we imagine him to be. We cannot project our own violence and rivalry on to him. Yet imagining him properly plays a big part in how we live our own lives.

Contrasting the language of the future (and end times) in the later apostolic writings, Alison notes an evolution in the language used to describe how we should live until Jesus comes back. In 1 Corinthians, we see faith, hope and love. Elsewhere we see lots of hope. Later, we see less “hope” and more “patience”.

What we perceive in the apostolic witness is something a little different. As there develops the way in which the apocalyptic imagination is subverted from within, we see ever less insistence on hope and ever more on patience, so that in the letter to Titus we read the following:

Tell the elders to be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. (Tit. 2:2)

That is to say, where Paul had spoken to the Corinthians in terms of faith, hope, and charity, now patience replaces hope.

-James Alison, Raising Abel, p.163

Alison suggests that the apostles own understanding of the future naturally changed as Jesus didn’t come back right away, then Jerusalem fell in AD 70, then the church grew abroad, etc. The writings in the new testament may be inspired scripture, but they were still written by human beings that didn’t know everything that was going on and who changed their minds about things. They were most certain of the resurrection. Today, we are still changing our ideas. Dispensationalism (that inspires all the Left Behind-esque fiction) is, I think highly influenced by advanced in technology in the past 100 years. Can you really imagine any of the scenarios being pushed lately if we didn’t have:

1. Instant worldwide communication
2. Nuclear weapons
3. “mark of the beast” style digital ID tags

neither could the apostles. Depending on your context, you can do about 100 different things with John’s visions in Revelation.

If we really are in it for the long haul though, perhaps our language will eventually again back away from short-term “hope” and return to long-term “patience”.

This reading scripture (Matthew 10) at it’s best, in light of Girard (emphasis mine):

Then we have those passages where Jesus recognizes that what he has come to bring will not produce peace and social harmony, but rather the reverse: it will divide families. He knew very well that from the moment when the paradigm of the innocent victim is installed, which is what he comes to do, the normal human mechanism for creating peace is over, that is, the all-against-one of sacralized victimization, apparently blessed by god, has broken down. And those who live this out will be considered impious and traitors; and they will be, because that person will be betraying the order of this world.

Because of this, the person who perceives someone as unjustly persecuted, the one who gives a cup of water to someone held by others to be a traitor, a vile threat, an element of contamination, that person will have a prophet’s reward, because they will in fact have acted as a prophet by perceiving that the one considered evil is hated without a cause.

-James Alison, Raising Abel, p.87

Alison’s commentary on this passage from John 8 is particularly keen.

What do you get when you take God (Yahweh) and make him out to be demanding sacrifice, always pushing burden of the law down upon us (like an accuser). Yep, you’ve just flipped God into Satan.

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.  Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

-John 8:39-47 (ESV)

Alison’s comments:

“These notions of paternity are radically and incompatibly different: one notion is that of a father who, however unblemished his pedigree seems to be, in practice leads his children to lying and killing. Jesus links this father to the murder of Abel by Cain (John 8:44). We might call him the father of the founding murder; traditionally he is known as the devil, and the devil understood not as a mythical figure, red, with horns like the Greek god Pan, with a trident in his hand “all the better to roast you with,” but that much more worrying figure, a satanized god, someone who seems to be God but is in fact an obstacle, an accusation, the whisperer behind the lynch.

Jesus is saying, in reality, to his interlocutors: the God who has been reveaing himself to Israel during all this time IS NOT the one who you say; your interpretation and use of God turn him into Satan; only my interpretation of him is faithful to who God truly is.”

-James Alison, Raising Abel, p.64