The Shack and a God of Color

When God was portrayed in William P. Young’s bestselling novel The Shack as a black woman it got some white conservatives upset. The same thing happened again last month when the film adaptation was released starring Octavia Spencer (The Help, Hidden Figures) as God, or “Papa” as she is referred to in the Shack. Apparently when God is portrayed as a lion, that’s totally fine, but when God is portrayed as a black woman this gets some people quite offended. Color me unsurprised.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, and I’m a little bit afraid that it will be a bit too sappy and on the nose for my own personal taste. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of depicting God as a black woman, and I’m convinced there is something quite profound there, if we are willing to look past the “offense of the cross” to see it.

Of course historically, Jesus was unquestionably a person of color, despite the many depictions of him as a blond-haired blue-eyed white man. But there is something much deeper going on than skin color. Jesus explicitly chose to associate with those who were at the bottom of society, those who were considered the “least of these.” To proclaim Jesus as Lord is to say that the Caesar is not. It means the dethroning of the god of empire, dominance, force, wealth. As Jürgen Moltmann put it,

“For Christ's sake I am an atheist, an atheist in respect to the gods of the world and world history, the Caesars and the political demigods who follow them. Only a Christian can be a good atheist.” (The Crucified God, p. 195)

I own a great debt to what I have learned from white male theologians like Moltmann. But I feel compelled to go in a more radical direction. When I look at how white evangelicals in America have abandoned Jesus to follow empire, mammon, hatred, and state violence, I feel tempted to become an atheist, and I certainly do declare with Moltmann my categorical rejection of their false gospel. While in the past I could think that these “hyper-Calvinists” where perhaps a loud and angry minority, I cannot ignore that 80% of evangelicals voted for Trump. 

For decades I have, like many others, attempted to walk a middle ground, stressing that liberals and conservatives both have valid perspectives, and also both have some big blind spots. However, there has been a major shift within conservative Republicanism over the last several years culminating in the most recent political election.  This shift is characterized by a movement away from compassion towards an outright fostering of hatred and fear, seeing those from other races, other countries, other religions as the “enemy.” Really it is a move away from democracy towards something more akin to dictatorship. In light of this, I simply cannot in good conscience maintain a position of being “in the radical middle” politically and socially. I feel that I have a moral obligation to categorically name that movement as representing the polar opposite of Christ and his kingdom values, and openly opposing it in Jesus' name. I refuse to normalize this by acting as if voting for Trump was a legitimate choice for followers of Jesus to make. This is not politics as usual where there is room to be neutral. There is no place to watch from the sidelines, as if I were morally above it all. If I care for the least, as Jesus does, I must stand with them. With the incarnation Jesus shows that holiness does not remain separate, detached and above it all, rather purity requires getting dirty.

Because of this decline of conservative politics into moral bankruptcy, and the evangelical church's blindly following them into this seemingly bottomless pit, I find myself often exclaiming in disbelief, “What is wrong with the church?!” But as I ask this, I have to stop and wonder why it is that I assume that this is the church? As you may be aware, when national statistics refer to “evangelicals,” they exclusively mean white evangelicals. Black evangelicals are not counted. So when I exclaim, “What’s wrong with the church?” or “Why does the church not care about social justice?” there are plenty of people of color who could answer back “Excuse me? What church are you talking about?”

To put things in the starkest of terms, it’s clear that when slave owners worshiped God in their Christian churches, they saw a very different God, a very different Jesus, than their slaves did when they worshiped God in their churches. For those slaves, Jesus was the one who had come to set the captives free. Knowing what I do about the historical Jesus as well as the Jesus of the New Testament, I can say unequivocally that the slaves were much more in line with the real Jesus.

We don’t have institutional slavery anymore in America, and I used to think that racism was a thing of the past, too. Something that we fixed back in the 1960s. Or at least it was something you could only still find in the deep south. I was so very wrong. Michelle Alexander opened my eyes to see the extent of how profoundly broken our criminal justice system is, as well as how wide-spread systemic racism is within our nation’s police force. I’ve learned that nearly all black parents need to talk to their children about how not to get killed by police. As a parent myself that really hit me hard.

While I have just woken up to this disturbing reality, it’s something African Americans have been living with for... well, for my entire life. I see the angry white atheists, and believe me, I understand their righteous anger. But I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to convert to atheism, even in a Moltmannian “Christian atheist” way. I’m convinced that’s a very “white guy” thing to do. I want to do something more radical, and I hope more life-giving. I want to convert and become a black Christian. In fact, I’d like to become a black female Christian. Can I do that? Well, I’m just going to.

Of course I can’t change my skin color (I can’t even get a tan). But I do want to sit at the feet of people of color, and especially of women, and learn from their faith. I’ve done that already in an intellectual way over the years, having read lots of feminist and black liberation theology, and have found this to be tremendously rewarding to learn from this “theology from the margins.” But I want to take that to a deeper place. I feel honestly like my own faith depends on it. 

My faith in the “church” I have known as a white evangelical has been shattered. I no longer believe in that religion. But I see hope in another church. I want to learn how they can hold on to hope in the face of so much injustice. I want to learn to see through their eyes, to learn how to channel this anger and hurt and fear into action for good in the face of an empire that calls itself “Christian” when it is clearly not. I want to worship and trust in the God they have seen all along. 

I am not talking about theology here, about something I can do in my head and in isolation. I am talking about church, about community, about learning from the lived example of others who have been walking for a long time in the place where I have only begun to walk.

Learning to Listen: On Prejudice, Blind-spots, Humility and Repentance

This past week the conservative evangelical website The Gospel Coalition (TGC) published an article entitled "When God Sends Your White Daughter a Black Husband" which resulted in a virtual firestorm of responses, both in comments on TGC and on Twitter from people saying that they found the article deeply hurtful and offensive.

At the request of the author the article has been taken down from the TGC website and replaced by a discussion of the article in which three African American leaders—including one TGC editor—reflect on the article, the ensuing backlash, and lessons to be learned. Definitely worth a listen (the link is above).

What I wanted to draw attention to is the response of the author of the article, Gaye Clark. Gaye had written the article with the intent of celebrating God’s work in her and her family’s life surrounding issues of race and prejudice. She had shown the article to her daughter and son-in-law prior to its publication and they had told her they thought it was beautiful. She was consequently surprised and heartbroken over the negative response and indeed the hurt that it caused,

I have asked TGC to remove my article from their website. I am profoundly grieved over the hurt and harm it has caused. Would covet prayers.

— Gaye Clark (@ClarkGaye) August 10, 2016

When asked what she was planning to do now, how she would show fruits of repentance, she responded,

@BCapJe that is something I am praying through. I'm starting with listening to my brothers who have spoken loud and clear

— Gaye Clark (@ClarkGaye) August 10, 2016

Listening. That is so important. The internet has taught us all how to comment, often anonymously, but learning to listen is much more rare, and deeply needed. It is also rare to see someone respond publicly with humility, openness, and sincere repentance like Gaye has. It's so easy, when we feel attacked, to respond defensively. It takes maturity and empathy to be able to see past that, and instead respond with care for the hurt we have caused. 

To me this is not about pointing a finger at this author or even at The Gospel Coalition. I actually think they are both handling this admirably. What I hope to do instead is use the example of this woman's response as an opportunity to look into my own heart. I hope I can show that kind of maturity and empathy. I hope I can be self-reflected enough to see where I may have hidden prejudices in my heart. I hope I can listen to those of other races, genders, orientations, faiths, etc. -- in short those with different perspective and experiences than my own -- to hear and learn how they see things, to understand their struggles.

Doing that takes conversation and honesty. I feel bad that Gaye has had to have that happen for her in such a public way. She is not a hero or a villain, she is just a regular human like you and me. So what I hope this story can help us to do is look to ourselves and our own hearts. I hope we can take it as a positive example of how we can learn to listen with empathy and humility.

The reason I have moved from being a conservative to a progressive evangelical is not because I have been hurt by the conservative evangelical church. As a straight white male, I fit in pretty well. The shift came for me as a began to listen to others who were being hurt, and realized that the theology I had been advocating for and seeing as "normal" was in part responsible for the structures and belief system that was hurting them. This led me to see how much the theology I had inherited was influenced by those white male blinders. My bookshelves contained reams of books by white male theologians with very few written by women or people of color.

Seminary helped me with this. My professors encouraged us to read those with different perspectives than our own. We read feminist, liberationist, and black theology. I also learned a lot from Sojourners and their focus on issues of social justice and human rights. The white male theology I had inherited from conservative evangelicalism had been primarily focused on personal conversion, as social justice issues are not really front and center concern for a suburban white church member. So the "seeker sensitive" sermons never touched on those issues. 

To see them I had to look beyond my horizon to see the struggles of others from different communities and different perspectives. For example, I had always had a positive view of the police, seeing them as someone who I could call on for protection and help. I was shocked to learn that for many people of color, dads and moms need to fear for the safety of their children, and that they may be killed by the police. As a dad I find that devastating. I read a story this week of how police and security officers assigned to public schools are tasering (mostly black) students, and I am shocked and grieved at how quickly we resort to violence as our first and only response we know, and how our children are suffering as a result. This is not something I had ever heard of happening to my white kids. If it did, I would pull them out of that school in a heartbeat, but that only underscores my point of having privilege (having a car and a flexible work schedule for instance so I would be able to deal with that process). My point here is that we don't have "justice for all," and that is not just an abstract concept, but affecting the safety and lives of people's kids. And that matters to me. Black lives matter, gay lives matter, just as much as my life matters.

I want to care about how people of color experience injustice and violence like it was happening to my own child. I want to care about how gays experience injustice and violence like it was happening to my own child. I want to care about how Muslims experience injustice and violence like it was happening to my own child. I believe Jesus and the gospel calls me to do this. That begins by accepting God's love in my heart, but then that love must grow to expressing itself in showing that same love to others. The character of that love is most revealed in how I treat those I regard as "least" and "enemy." I am my brother's (and sister's) keeper. I pray that I can learn to listen.

Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public

In part two of this series on violence and the New Testament I discussed the tendency we have to embrace parts of Scripture that fit into the values we already hold, and side-stepping those that do not. I proposed that instead of doing that, we should instead have our values shaped by the way of Jesus.

The difficulty is that the way of Jesus, expressed in his teaching on enemy love, is something that is seldom taught in church, and largely not understood. As I explained in my previous post, if we don't understand something, we won't do it and will find ways to side-step it in how we interpret Scripture.

We see this in how conservative Christians embrace Romans 13 as a God-ordained societal model, but reject Jesus' understanding of the kingdom as one. This has little to do with biblical exegesis, and a lot to do with projecting one's pre-existing values into Scripture--using the Bible to support what we think is good, rather than having the Bible shape what we think is good.

In the case of Romans 13 the reason conservatives take this one small part and uphold it as a God-ordained societal model is that they are taking their pre-existing values of empire and projecting these onto this text. In other words, they defend state violence, not because they read the whole New Testament and concluded that this was its message, but because as part of the privileged class in America, they deeply believe in state violence, and so they use whatever snippet of text they can find in the Bible to support that.

So why do they embrace state violence? The basic idea behind state violence is we give the state the right to use force, including lethal force, with the idea that this will reduce violence. If you can call the police when someone takes your stuff, you don't need to take the law into your own hands, and that means less violence overall. It's a version  of Paul's statement in Romans 12:19, except it replaces the state for God, saying effectively,

Do not take revenge, citizens, but leave that for the police take care of it, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the state.

The result is that we feel safe in our homes knowing that the police are there to "serve and protect" and part of that is that they are permitted to use force, including lethal force if needed, to do this. That's the idea behind state violence, and why it is seen as "good." When people defend state violence, they do so because they believe that it keeps them safe. I recognize this. I'm glad we have police. I feel much safer knowing that they are there.

However, as we have seen in protests across the country in response to police shootings of unarmed black men, women and boys, many people of color do not feel safe around police. They do not feel protected, they feel afraid, harassed, mistreated, and in danger.

The reason conservative Evangelicals support state violence is that, as part of the privileged majority class of American society (and I should note that when I say "conservative Evangelicals" here I really mean white conservative Evangelicals), the system works for them. That makes sense. It works for me, too as a white male.

This however is not the perspective of Paul or the New Testament. Paul is writing to a people who are a persecuted and oppressed minority in the Roman Empire, not to those who are the privileged in that empire. The situation at the time of Paul's letter was an impending revolt against abuses surrounding taxes. The church in Rome was considering taking part in that revolt, and Paul in Romans 12 & 13 is telling them not to resort to violence, telling them that this is not God's way in Jesus.

At the time, it was inconceivable that Christians could have political influence in Rome. So Paul is not saying in Romans 13 "here's how Christian government should operate." Romans 13 is not intended to be a model for what Christians should do if they have political influence (which was not the situation they were in), it's a model for how a persecuted minority should act under oppression (which was their situation). Most of all this is about rejecting the solution of violent revolution and revolt that had been their script for centuries. Paul, and the NT in general, want to change that script of violent revolt. Paul rejects the way of the Maccabees.

So if we read Romans 13 today, from the very different context of a people of privilege living in the world's biggest empire, rather than seeing this as an affirmation of the values of empire, what the gospel and the way of Jesus call us to do is look beyond ourselves and what works for us, and to look to how our system is hurting others--especially the disenfranchised. I truly do understand why white conservative evangelicals embrace state violence as good. As a white male myself, the system of state-sanctioned violence indeed works for me. But Jesus shows me I should not only care about my own welfare, but especially for those who are marginalized, oppressed, and condemned in our society. For those people the system does not work, and these are precisely the ones Jesus tells me I need to pay attention to. As I care for them, I care for Jesus. And as I disregard and dismiss them, I do the same to Jesus. "As you have not done it unto these, you have not done it unto me. Depart from me!" 

That's quite the wake-up call. As Brian Zahnd puts it in A Farewell to Mars, Jesus judges nations on how well they care for four kinds of people:

The Poor. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink … I was naked and you gave me clothing.” 
The Sick. “I was sick and you took care of me.” 
The Immigrant. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” 
The Prisoner. “I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matt. 25: 35– 36)

Jesus did not identify with power and privilege, but rather identified with the "least"--the poor, the sick, the immigrant--in short, he identified with those who were regarded as unworthy and even as enemies. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Over and over again in his parables, the good guys are those who are dismissed and despised and seen as "other" by those in power, and the bad guys are those with power and privilege who shut the door on them.

Romans 13 is not a model for what Christian political influence should look like. The fact is, the NT does not tell us what that would look like at all. This was beyond their horizon, just as the abolition of slavery was beyond their horizon at the time. So to move away from slavery, or to move towards lessening state violence, we need to go beyond where the New Testament writers were able to go. That's where a trajectory reading becomes so important.

Charting what that trajectory may look like is our task for today, and a place to start is to begin by seeing people as Jesus did, through the lens of compassion. The big problem with (white) conservative Christianity is that it is a theology that appeals to those in a position of privilege, to those for whom the system works. That's why the wealthy and powerful like and support it--because it does not call them out for their oppression, but upholds them as noble benefactors, focusing on private sins (usually sexual sins), and ignoring systemic sin. Both personal and systemic sin are important of course, but systemic sin is more important for the simple reason that it hurts more people. When conservative evangelicalism ignores the problems of systemic sin it misses a major aspect of the gospel. It is their persistent stubborn neglect of this major aspect of Jesus ministry and heart that led me to leave conservative Evangelicalism, as I found it incompatible with the way of Jesus and far too comfortable around Caesars and CEOs.

In regards to state violence, I'd say it is still beyond our horizon today to imagine how society would function without the use of state violence and force. However, there is a lot we can do to reform police brutality and abuse, to reform our profoundly unjust and broken prison system, and to reform the systemic abuses of our military from Guantanamo to the NSA. Just as it is a part of the gospel to care for the poor, it is equally a part of the gospel to care about justice, and to look for a better way of creating justice in our society today than simply mirroring Rome. In the words of Cornell West,

"Justice is what love looks like in public."

Ending Poverty in Our Time

(cross posted from Sojourners)

Hearing about the injustice and suffering in our world can be overwhelming. The problems seem so insurmountable. Is it really possible to make a difference?

Well, here's some good news. We already are making a big difference.

Consider these statistics cited by Dr. Scott Todd from Live58:

"We used to say that 40,000 children die each day from preventable causes. In the 1990s, that number dropped to 33,000 per day. By 2008, it dropped again to 24,000. Now it is down to 21,000. That means that in a generation we cut that number in half.

1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty today. That's a staggering amount, but let's put those numbers in perspective: In 1981 52% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today it's 26%. Again, that means we have cut the number in half, and we did it in one generation."

Now, if you are anything like me then your reaction to poverty is a mixture of compassion and helplessness. If you're reading the Sojourners blog, then I assume that you already care about the least like I do, and that you know how big the problems are. I often find myself asking: What can I do? What can anyone do? We've heard the bleak statistics before. It's not news that there is a problem. The news is that there is actually hope for real change.

Jesus said "you will always have the poor among you." He was quoting from the Torah, "You will always have the poor among you. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land" (Deut 15:11). It's true that there will always be people in need around us, and the clear point of Jesus is that we need to therefore live in generosity and compassion. However, there are many definitions of what poverty means. Specifically here the above statistics deal with what is known as extreme poverty which the World Bank defined as living on less that $1.50 a day (this assumes you are paying US prices for those goods). In other words, it means that you can barely afford to get water and maybe some rice to eat, and is therefore associated with a host of other problems including malnutrition and disease. It means that the most vulnerable among us--little kids--die of hunger and sickness.

That is a huge and devastating problem that experts say we can actually eliminate in the near future. So while we will probably always have people who are struggling around us (whom we should of course care for), this does not mean that we always need to have children dying of preventable diseases. That we can stop. In fact, as the above statistics show, we are already moving in that direction. As Scott Todd explains, there are many reasons for this unprecedented progress,

"Over 600 million people gained access to safe drinking water since 1990. This, along with an increased awareness of the nutrition in breast milk and the use of oral rehydration therapy, explain why water-borne diseases are no longer the leading cause of death for children under five. We are simply executing the practical strategies that work.

Vaccinations are another example of a practical, life-saving strategy. 733,000 children died of measles in 2000; but, that number dropped by 2008 to 164,000–a 78% reduction in only eight years. Simply using the vaccines that we’ve had for decades is saving hundreds of thousands of children every year."

As you would expect, lots of folks are joining in. 189 Heads of State and governments have committed to the UN Millennium Declaration. This is deeply significant because it means the involvement of governments, and the folks who hold the world's purse strings, including the World Bank, the IMF, and increasingly, the membership of the WTO. The One Campaign is another prominent example, involving some of the biggest humanitarian organizations in the world including Bread for the World, CARE, Oxfam, and World Vision. A more recent group is Live58, also comprised of several big players like Compassion International, International Justice Mission (IJM), and others. The specific aim of Live58 is to help mobilize folks like you and me to get involved, to live out the "true fast" of compassion described in Isaiah 58.

We have an amazing opportunity before us. What was at one time unimaginable is now within reach. It is possible, but it will only happen if we all get involved. If we use our intelligence, our money and our influence to make a difference. It will only happen if we are willing to make some sacrifices in the name of compassion. So check out the video below, and then head over to Live 58 to see some ways you can get involved.

God's restorative justice

In my last post, I addressed the first part of my answer to some questions Peter's Gurry asked in the comments to another blog post. Here I'd like to deal with the second part:

"I struggle to see how your definition of God's righteousness/justice will hold in Rom 3:21-26, especially vv. 25-26. When God passed over previously committed sins, does that mean he never healed people of their brokenness? And if so, how does healing that brokenness now through the cross show that God is, in fact, restoratively just when he restores those who have faith in Christ (3:26)? In other words, I still don't see the need for a blood-stained cross in your system.

I think Paul's logic in this section of Romans makes much more sense if the question he's addressing is not "When will God restore broken, fractured lives" (important as that question is) but rather, "How can God possibly forgive punishment-deserving rebels in a way that doesn't make a mockery of the very retribution they deserve?" In other words, How can God be both just and the justifier? Remember, the question that sets this section going is a question of God's wrath against rebellious humans (1:18-3:20). It's not a question about our fractured human lives. We are victims to be sure, but far more serious is the fact that we are perpetrators and that all our sin is finally directed Godward."

As Peter notes, my definition of "God's righteousness/justice" (Greek: diakaiosyne theo) is restorative justice, as opposed to retributive justice. Peter asks about how that understanding of justice as "making things right" fits with Romans 3:25-26:

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

So let's back up to the beginning of Romans and follow Paul's argument up to here. Paul opens Romans with a discussion of the wrath God (beginning at Ro 1:18). Wrath here can be understood as retributive justice: it is the just punitive consequence for our sinful actions. We do bad stuff, and bad things happen to us. It is the law of sewing and reaping, quid pro quo, or if you like "karma." Paul is addressing his fellow Jews, and begins by speaking about pagan depravity. At this point his audience is thinking "yeah, those pagans sure are rotten! God's gonna get them!" It is here that Paul turns the tables and says that we have no right to judge others when we are just as bad. He then goes on to argue (Ro 2:1-3:20) that we are all under sin, and therefore when we hope for God to judge, we are in fact calling down wrath on ourselves.

This is something that Paul knew from practical experience. He had himself, before his conversion, not only wished for God's wrath, but had seen himself as an instrument of it, acting to persecute, harm, and even kill Christians based on his belief that he was doing this all in the name of God. Paul's major sin was that of religious zeal leading to acts of violence in God's name. This motivation to religious violence was common in his time, has continued to be among the church throughout its history (the crusades, the inquisitions, etc) and frankly still is today among many Christians.

While Paul begins by saying that we are all guilty of sins in general (chapter 2), he then moves on in chapter 3 to address the specific sins of religious people. Notice that the specific sins he lists here have to do with hateful speech (“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness”) and violence (“Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”) What Paul is describing here is the sins of religious zeal that results in hateful judgment and acts of violence done in God's name. Since Paul would of course include himself in his indictment, we could read this as Paul's own confession of the shape of his religious life before his conversion:

“My throats was an open grave; my tongue practiced deceit. The poison of vipers was on my lips. My mouth was full of cursing and bitterness.
My feet were swift to shed blood; ruin and misery marked my ways, and the way of peace I did not know. There is no fear of God before my eyes.”

Paul did not know the way of peace, and there was no fear of God before his eyes. So Paul's aim in this first part of his argument is to put the fear of God before our eyes: if we continue on this way of judgment and retribution, it will lead to our own destruction. This is also a common theme of Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus warns of God's wrath unless we embrace the radical way of forgiveness.

At this point in Romans, Paul introduces a new concept: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify" (Ro 3:21). The law here represents the system of retributive justice, of blessings and curses, that Paul has been discussing up to now. If we obey the law we receive blessing, and if we break it we find wrath. Paul contrasts this way of retribution with "the righteousness/justice of God." This is God's action, motivated by unmerited love of enemies, to make things right. It is restorative justice. So what Paul is proposing is that God's restorative justice breaks into the cycle of violence inherit in retributive justice. God overcomes the cycle of our hurting and being hurt by acting to restore and reconcile us.

With all that in mind, let's return to 3:25-26: Paul writes that God made things right through Jesus in order to "demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished." In other words, God leaving sins unpunished was seen as wrong by Paul's audience who wanted to see God's wrath poured out on bad people. They felt it was unfair that bad people got away with it, and wanted God to punish them. Paul has been arguing that the bigger problem is that we are all bad, and so in wanting this we are really just hoping to add to the hatred and pain, we are pulling ourselves into the destructive cycle of retribution. In order for God to show that he was not unjust in leaving past sins unpunished, in not wiping us all out (and it would be unjust to simply do nothing in the face of evil), God now acts to make things right through Jesus. "God did this to demonstrate his restorative justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (v 26, my translation). We could also translate this verse as "God did this to demonstrate his goodness at the present time, so as to be good and the one who makes-good those who have faith in Jesus."

So I think Peter is absolutely right in saying that Paul is not addressing the question "When will God restore broken, fractured lives" (important as that question is) but rather, "How can God possibly forgive punishment-deserving rebels in a way that doesn't make a mockery of the very retribution they deserve?" More specifically, the question is how can God just ignore sin, and not punish it? Paul's answer is that God cannot simply ignore sin and be just, but God can act to heal sin (and sinners) and make things right, and in doing so God demonstrates true justice which is God's restorative justice that comes through Jesus.

Now how exactly God's action in Jesus (in the incarnation, cross, and resurrection) acts to restore us, Paul does not detail here (he does elsewhere, but that will need to be the subject of another post). He simply claims here that what God is doing now in Jesus apart from law (that is, in contrast to the system of retribution) is about God's act to restore ("the justice of God" diakaiosyne theo) as an answer to the problem of retributive justice (wrath).

Peter Gurry writes that "We are victims to be sure, but far more serious is the fact that we are perpetrators and that all our sin is finally directed Godward." As we have seen, Paul was a perpetrator. That sin was indeed directed Godward. Jesus confronts Paul on the road to Damascus with the words "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5). Because God identifies with the victim, when we hurt others, even when we do this as Paul did in God's name, (or perhaps especially when we do) as do it unto them, the least, the vulnerable, we do it unto God. But what Paul the violent perpetrator encountered was grace and forgiveness instead of wrath, and that unmerited enemy love turned him around so that he renounced his former commitment to the way of retribution, and instead embraced the way of grace and restorative justice in Jesus. Paul's brokenness was precisely his hurtful understanding of religion that lead him to hatred and violence, and it is this wrong understanding of justice that Jesus undoes in Paul, replacing that with a new understanding of God's justice typified by restorative enemy love.

Following Jesus means following in that way of love of enemies, of forsaking judgment and instead embracing healing restoring forgiveness. To claim that the atonement is one rooted in the fulfillment of a retributive demand (that God punishes Jesus to fulfill the demands of retributive justice) is to utterly miss the entire point of the New Testament--that God's way is the way of radical restorative grace. That is what God's justice means. The cross is a demonstration of that restorative justice acting to overcome the way of retribution by making things good again, rather than adding hurt to hurt.

Christian Politics

In my last blog post I addressed the question of how we can know whether a President (or any political official) is a Christian, and suggested that the real question we need to ask (one that should affect our vote) is not about their personal faith, but about how they will govern, what they value, who they will represent, how they will conduct themselves... In this post I would like to explore that more concretely: What does it mean to govern in a Christ-like way?

In America when that question is evoked one immediately thinks of the Christian Right. I would like to propose however that the way the right - in other words, they way my church - has gone about this has been in a way that reflects the opposite values of the kingdom of God. Let me interject that I in many ways agree with the positions themselves, but what I object to, and see a profoundly un-Christ-like is how we go about pursuing those goals. For example I am pro-life, but I seriously question whether the pro-life movement has a reputation of grace and Christ-like love.

So what I would like to unpack is what the values of the kingdom of God are, and how they can be applied to political life. One way that Jesus defines the kingdom of God is in contrast to the "kingdom of Satan," or in John's terminology, in contrast to the "world". By 'world' here John means 'worldliness'. In other words, a system of values which Walter Wink calls the "domination system". This world system is run though force and dominance. The strong rise to the top, the weak lose. It's law of justice is the rule of quid pro quo - you get what you have coming to you. In stark contrast to this Jesus says that his kingdom is "not from this world" system. If it were a world-values-based kingdom Jesus continues - he would have used military might (a legion of angels) to attack the Romans. But the kingdom of God does not come to us by force, but comes in weakness and humility. The 'first' are made last, and the last first. The poor are blessed. Its law of justice is a redeeming justice that seeks to heal and mend. The true leader "will be the servant of all."

Throughout history many people have tried to adopt a "two kingdoms" approach to this, saying that while they acknowledge that the kingdom of God is the right way to go, it is unrealistic. In the "real world" things work differently, and if you want to move in the real political world you need to use manipulation, power, wealth, and force to survive and win in that world. Others have seen this world of dog-eat-dog dominance as so evil that they have concluded that it is simply not possible for a Christian to be involved in politics at all. I would like to propose here a third option - that we should be involved in every part of our society, that we should have a role in how our country and society is shaped and not simply abandon it, reducing faith to a private affair. But to do so we will need to find a way of being in politics that can be "in the world, but not of it". One of the models for this comes from the Anabaptist response to our prison system which involved introducing restorative justice. That's a practical example of how a completely new, deeply Christian paradigm can engage and reform the existing system. I've blogged a bit about this HERE.

For example a Christian would have to reject the dirty political campaigning that seeks to manipulate voters through fear, and instead appeal to the good in us, to serve, to engage, to believe and hope and work to make our country a more just place. It would need to be one that does not polarize people into 'us versus them', but seeks to reconcile both our divisions at home, and our divisions abroad. It would have to be a politics that has its focus on compassion, rather than on law. It would need to be a politics that is accountable, transparent, and honest with its citizens. It would need to be a politics that acknowledges our human penchant towards sin and pride and which is therefore open to hearing from the other side, rather than one that seeks to have absolute control, trumping the Constitution, the Congress, and the courts. It would have to be one that can see its errors and learn, rather than one that insists that it is beyond error. As if learning and adapting were a sign of weakness.

The issue here is not about specific policies. We might disagree on the best way to address poverty for example. But I think where we can agree is that the way that (neo) conservative politics has conducted itself, both in its governing and its campaigning, has been in a way that is diametrically opposed to the values of Christ and his kingdom. And what's more, the conservative church has uncritically aligned themselves with this new Constantinianism. So much so that for me to critique it virtually disqualifies me from being a conservative, even though many of the positions I hold are conservative both morally and theologically.

I think the church's tunnel vision here stems from a deeper issue. We cannot recognize this worldly behavior in a politician because we can't even recognize it in a pastor. I've gone to churches where the pastor was extremely arrogant, prideful, and judgmental. Even though there is, biblically speaking, no sin that is confronted more harshly by both Jesus and Paul than religious pride and judgmentalism, this pastor was not seen as someone with a profound sin problem, but as a "powerful preacher". Until we truly value Christ-like servant leadership in church, we will not as a church be able to instill those kingdom values in those people in our congregation who will go into politics, nor for that matter will we be able to disciple those who will become the future CEO's of our world in what it looks like to do that as Jesus would, and on and on. The values of the kingdom are not simply about being for or against something, it is a way of being in the world which is characterized by grace.

Chicago Declaration

Here are some excerpts from the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern which launched Evangelicals for Social Action. Sojourners tells of how their vision was detailed in the 80's by the Moral Majority making Evangelicalism synonymous with right wing politics. So they got together again two decades later to issue Chicago Declaration II: A Call for Evangelical Renewal. The following excerpts are from the 1973 declaration written in the form of a prayer of repentance.

I see so many ways that my own life simply mirrors the values of the culture around me, and long deeply to exhibit the counter-cultural radical grace of the Gospel in my life and community. It is easy to sit back and criticize the failures of the church from my high horse of trendy postmodernism, but it is my church, and so I want to do all I can to let the change begin with me. So I join them in their confession and commit my life to making changes to promote a total life of being the Gospel. Come Lord Jesus.

On Racism
"We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system."

On Materialism and Poverty
"As a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote a more just acquisition and distribution of the world's resources."

On Nationalism and War
"We must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might - a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty."

On Sexism
"We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship."

Evangelicals and Social Action

I've been doing a lot of thinking about why we Evangelicals are so behind on issues of social justice. In "American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving" sociologist Christian Smith conducted a nationwide survey and hundreds of detailed interviews with Evangelicals and found that the problem was not that we Evangelicals don't care about social justice or the poor - we overwhelmingly do. The problem had to do with how we view social change from within the lens of personal conversion. Over and over Smith found Evangelicals expressing the idea that real change needed to come "from the inside out", meaning that rather than reforming things on an institutional level, we believe that change should happen one person at a time, and as that person - say the CEO of a company, or a politician - has Christ in their life that this will lead them to acts of voluntary benevolence. This is not only a popular opinion, it has been expressed by many prominent thinkers and theologians with Evangelicalism for decades.

One contemporary example of this is Greg Boyd in his recent "Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church", Boyd takes on the current marriage between Evangelicalism and Conservative power-politics arguing that because all politics operate through the principle of coercion and control, they are opposed to the kingdom of God which operates individually “from the inside out”. Boyd advocates using “power under” to serve and support rather than “power over” to force and dominate without achieving any inner reform. There is much to admire in Boyd's stand - his advocacy of social welfare and care for the needy, his compassionate stance to those others judge, his rejection of violence, his critique of Conservative power politics co-opting the Gospel - but in the end what is lacking in Boyd's perspective is a guiding ethic that would offer a kingdom of God prescription for structural and institutional change that goes beyond mere individual transformation leading to voluntary benevolence.

What is absent from the Evangelical imagination, both in its leaders and laity, is any concept of a social or political ethic to guide these converted politicians, public officials, or CEO's in their work towards addressing the structures and systems that perpetuate societal injustice and suffering. Because Evangelicals view sin in the terms of individual failings, they are largely unaware of the systemic and institutional aspects of the social world. For example, a person caught in a cycle of poverty will not be able to escape it simply because they have been born again. Their conversion may effect them inwardly and personally, which can have a profound impact on the debilitating effects of poverty to a person's self-worth, which can lead to a host of self-destructive behaviours. However as important as these personal factors are, they do not change the external social structures that keep a person trapped in poverty. Similarly, if a CEO of a company is converted, this may lead to them refraining from dishonest or unethical business practices, but it will not effect the larger competitive world in which their business operates. So if that economy operates - as ours has in the past - on slave and child labor, an individual business owner who abstains from these practices is placed in a significant economic disadvantage in that market unless those social evils are addressed.

In "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Globaal Economy" Kevin Bales says that in fact child and slave labor is a part of today's global economy, and asks what we can do about it. The solution as you might have guessed needs to involve both us personally, as well as address the issue on a structural level. These slave companies in developing countries operate outside the bounds of law, and are not afraid to use ruthless violence to protect their profits. Companies who do business with them - say retail chains in the US like Nike or The Gap - opperating on the logic of economic profit say that they need to buy the cheapest product to stay completive. So they turn a blind eye to where the product came from, as long as the price is right. But public pressure can make a difference. When the public became aware that major retailers like Nike and The Gap were using slave labor in sweatshops, these companies were forced to change their practices because of consumer pressure.

One example Bales gives is Rugmark. If you own an oriental rug, there is a good chance it was made with child slave labor. Rugmark works with retailers to guarantee that rugs are made without slave or child labor. In order to get a "rugmark" label, the retailers had to agree to not use slave labor, and strict independent monitoring is set up by Rugmark to ensure compliance. Additionally, the retailers agreed to give 1% of the profit towards development projects. With that money, Rugmark set up schools for the children who were either former slaves or vulnerable to slavery. This way rather than simply shifting the slave market to another product, they worked to change the societal conditions that make children potential victims in the first place. Major retailers in the USA and Europe signed on, including Otto Versand Group, the largest mail order retailer in the world.

It is a complex issue that involves both our personal involvement and addressing the social structures that perpetuate the problem. That's the reality of evil in our world, and we as Evangelicals need to learn to think about applying the Gospel to the problem of evil on that kind of large scale as well. We need to move beyond a message that only addresses people as isolated individuals and think through what it would mean for Jesus to be Lord in all of life.

Problems with the Penal System

I'm becoming increasingly aware of how ill equipped our criminal justice system is to deal with many of the problems in our world. One poignant example is the mentally ill. In the 1980's the mental health institutions that had housed people with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia were shut down, and these people were left to fend for themselves. Large numbers of them now make up the homeless. Because prison is the "institution that can't say no" many of these people end up in jail. Not for commiting crimes, but for basically acting crazy. If you have not seen it yet, there is an excellent Frontline documentary detailing this that you can watch online. They tell the story for example of a man with paranoid schizophrenia who goes into a 7/11 and is arrested for "disturbing the peace", being paranoid he freaks out when the police come and resists arrest. In jail he is uncooperative and "acts up" so in the jail system he is punished by being put in solitary confinement. This of course makes his condition worsen. This escalates until eventually he is is transfered into a maximum security prison all for an original petty crime. Not only is the prison system that is focused on punishing people the wrong place for someone with a mental illness, it is also completely unfair to the people who work there who are not trained to deal with such cases. Imagine how you would feel if someone hurled their own feces at you in a psychotic fit.

I've been reading about other examples of the inadequacy of our penal system as well in "Not for Sale". For example, girls who are kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery are often arrested for solicitation instead of being treated as victims of abuse and rape. Likewise, runaways are commonly put into juvenile detention. Because of this setup when a child sexual slavery ring was discovered, the abused and abducted girls were going to be put into detention cells. Luckily several members of a local church volunteered their homes for the girls to stay in. With this same kind of thinking, people who were trafficked as slaves into the USA are deported, often right back into the hands of those who sold them. The problem is not with the individual people in the criminal justice system. The problem is systemic: the way the institution is set up, it treats these victims as if they were criminals, and does not look for the signs of human trafficking.

The good news is that many people are working to change the system, to offer shelter, mental health services, safe houses, re-integration, rehabilitation programs, vocational training, restorative justice, drug rehab... as well as working for reform in our legal system, training of police to notice signs of modern slavery, and so on. In short, our penal system focused on punishment is slowly moving towards real justice that makes things right.

Part of that does need to involve laws and penalties that will protect children from these predators. Once you start opening your eyes to the hurt in our world, you also find that we humans are capable of profound evil. I don't want to minimize that. But Jesus died for sinners like that, and prayed for those who had just whipped and beaten him bloody and nailed him to a cross "forgive them Father, they know not what they do". Those words become all the more shocking when we really confront the profound evil in our world. We want to hurt back those who hurt others. As a father, I know I do. A parental rage boils within me when I hear such horrific stories of what people do to children. Jesus seems to have had similar feelings. Yet as Paul says in Romans, that part of us the seeks to accuse the evil in others comes back to accuse us as well. We have all been hurt, and we all have hurt others, sometimes profoundly. We need a way to deal with the brokenness and evil in our world and in ourselves that works towards restoration of the broken, including protecting the vulnerable.

Calling Pt 2

I'm reading through Not For Sale by David Batstone. Here's a quote on calling that stood out to me:

"How do you find your vocation? You locate where your passion meets the needs of the world. The first part of that equation is to engage yourself in those activities that you feel you are put on this earth to do. The second part of that equation is to carry out those activities so as the benefit others. The world is filled with unhappy people who are doing work that they do not care about, all for the sake of making more money or because they are trying to fulfill someone else's dreams."

I'm still chewing on that.

Calling

In studying the Atonement I've had to dig down deep into our own human brokenness, why we are hurt and hurt each other so much, what separates of from God and life. As I have done this I have encountered story after story like the one of Kelsey in my last blog entry, and I have found myself drawn towards the huge problem of evil and suffering in our world.

I don't know about you, but a real roadblock I encounter in trying to address these problems of abuse, starvation, modern slavery, abortion, AIDS, genocide, and homelessness is that it all seems to overwhelming. What can I as one person do, especially if we are to understand these problems as not only individual but structural and work towards change on both a personal and institutional level? So I've been reading stories of what individuals are doing to try and get my head out of the rut of helplessness and to open my imagination. Right now I reading stories of modern day abolitionists in the book "Not For Sale" who are working to free people from the Hell of human traffickings. Each person found a way in their own circumstances and their own ability to make a radical difference. But it also involved real risk and sacrifice and courage to respond to the call of justice i their lives. So I'm asking myself, "what is God calling me to do? How can I find my place to invest my life and fight for love and justice with the gifts I have?".

Here I am Lord. Send me.

God's justice

Last blog I talked about Romans 3 and the pivotal verse of Romans 3:25. This time I want to look at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosunē) which is translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosunē is the same word the LXX uses to translate the Hebrew צדקה(t'sedeka) in the Old Testament which likewise can be translated either as righteousness or justice. Because the LXX was the official translation the New Testament authors used to quote from the Old Testament, it follows that Paul was thinking of t'sedeka justice in Romans when he used the word dikaiosunē . There are many words for justice in Hebrew, and among them t'sedeka justice refers specifically to setting things right. T'sedeka justice/righteousness is associated with acts of charity, and today Jewish charities are often named t'sedeka which has become synonemous with charity.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else he had been reading the Bible in Latin which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitio which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin iustitio refers to a quid-pro-quo payback justice, so Luther (as many people today) had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. But in the original Greek, and especially considering Paul's own Jewish roots, this was not at all the sense of t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice. Take a look at the passage, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosunē as restorative making-things-right justice.

"But now a dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are dikaioō (set right) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration) at the present time, so as to be dikaios(righteously loving) and the one who dikaioō (lovingly sets right) those who have faith in Jesus.

We can see that if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and Aquinas and so many others in the latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitio retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Which is why Luther's discovery was so earth shaking. It completely revolutionized his understanding of what grace was about: t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice.

God's Justice

In the OT justice is primarily focused on Israel who is oppressed under pagan captivity calling out for justice. We can see this is the Psalms which speak of being "saved" from those who pursue and attack David, to the Prophets who speak of the poor being lifted up from under their burden. Jesus quotes several of these prophesies that speak of good news to the poor, and it is from this understandable that the Jews at the time expected the Messiah to be one who would destroy the evil pagans and restore Israel to its former glory.

But the message of the NT and Jesus instead says that evil is not just "them" over there, it is "us". We are all sinners, and if we only seek to destroy the bad guys to bring about justice, we will find ourselves at the end of that sword. To put this in the language of Paul, we have all sinned, we are all guilty, and we are all subject to wrath. So the good news of wrath - that the bad guys are gonna get it - is really bad news because we are all guilty of oppressing and hurting others.

At the same time though we are also victims of sin. Both sin done to us by others, and also by our own sins that imprison us in hurtful self -destructive behavior. So while we need to be saved from wrath, that can't be all. There needs to be a different way for justice to come about, not by destroying our enemies (which will just come back to get us since we are all guilty of hurting others), but of a way to lift ourselves out of the bondage of hurting, and to stop the cycle of blame and revenge. So here we go from the idea of retributive justice (and also of the idea of acquittal from retributive justice) to the idea of restorative justice, of a justice focused on setting things right, mending what was broken. Because while we now see in the light of the NT that we are the oppressor, we are at the same time the victim too. The victim of others hurtfulness, but also the victim of our own hurtfulness, and merely not getting punished does not actually take us out of that bondage to hurt we are stuck in. It does not bring about justice in us to simply get clemency. We need to go beyond a punitive model to a restorative model that heals what has been broken in us and our world, one that redeems and makes all things new, that gives us new life. Going from the way of and eye for an eye to the way of overcoming evil with good through love of enemies and unmerited grace that God demonstrates by loving us first while we were his enemies because of our hurtfulness. That is the good news to the poor.

A devotional reading of Julian of Norwich

I've been reading Julian of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love". Julian was a mystic who lived ca. 1342-1413 and in deathly sickness dictated several visions she had of Christ's love and suffering. Her writings are so rich on so many levels, I am sure I will come back to them again and again. This was my favorite reading since the Didache (which I think should be canonized). I immediately connected with Julian's heart, and recognized in her my own experiences with God. I find it pretty amazing that although centuries separate us, I can see in her my own experiences and longings. Since Julian's writings are of a very intimate and personal nature, I wanted to respond to them here both personally and devotionally.

The text begins with her longing for God, and pursuit of intimacy. Echoing Augustine's "Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee," she writes, "No soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made" (Ch 5). Reading this made me recall a vision I had several years ago:

I stood on a vast expanse and heard God declare,
"This is the foundation your life is built on."
Suddenly the ground split at my feet and I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff staring into the abyss.
"That was the part of your life based on your own religion and philosophy."
the voice thundered. The ground split again hurdling another portion of the ground into the nothingness
"This was built on your friends and family."
Blow by blow, my foundation was demolished until I found myself teetering on a narrow beam,
"This is the part of your life your have built on me."

This vision of my foundation "coming to naught" launched me into what I later found was called "the dark night of the soul" where God seems utterly absent and by facing ones own darkness, you come into a deeper intimacy with God. I think in her sickness and visions of Christ's sufferings Julian was on a similar journey. She recognizes that our suffering is not always the consequence of us doing something wrong, but can even come from doing something right.

"God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself; although sin is not always the cause" (Ch 40).

God does not leave us in our darkness. I was always taught to fear missing God's will. But like Julian I have learned that I cannot escape God's love. It will find me in my darkness, it will search me out in Hell. This understanding of God's sovereign unrelenting love gives me an incredible freedom to risk. That's a rocky journey at times, and Julian describes the back and forth of this pursuit "I saw Him, and sought Him; and I had Him, I wanted Him" (Ch 10). again echoing Augustine's “ I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace”. Yet even as we thirst for God, God also thirsts for us; as we pursue, we are at the same time pursued,

"The same desire and thirst that He had upon the Cross.. the same hath He yet... For as verily as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so verily there is a property in God of thirst and longing" (Ch 31).

As she grows closer to Jesus, she next begins to share in his pain "How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer?" (Ch 17), and out of that com-passion that she begins to care for the things that Jesus does, taking on his heart for the lost. Julian thus begins to ask questions of suffering and injustice. Why do people suffer? What of those who in their grief are torn from faith, and are crushed in hope?

"There be deeds evil done in our sight, and so great harms taken, that it seemeth to us that it were impossible that ever it should come to good end. And upon this we look, sorrowing and mourning therefor, so that we cannot resign us unto the blissful beholding of God as we should do" (Ch 32).

She next turns to ask how there can ever be justice when people are suffering in Hell?

"One point of our Faith is that many creatures shall be... condemned to hell without end, as Holy Church teacheth me to believe. And all this standing, methought it was impossible that all manner of things should be well" (Ch 32).

I found myself in my pursuit of God led to these same questions of suffering, injustice and Hell. On one occasion I told Jesus that I did not want to be in heaven when people I love were suffering in Hell. I saw myself marching defiantly out of heaven and down into Hades, but to my surprise when I got there I saw Christ on his knees, ministering to those in chains. He turned to me and said "I was wondering when you were going to get here." I realized then that in even in my protest, God had not so much followed me into my sufferings, as I followed him into his. Julian writes,

"Every man’s sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed for Kindness and love...For as long as He was passible He suffered for us and sorrowed for us; and now He is uprisen and no more passible, yet He suffereth with us" (Ch 20).

The answer she receives from God to these questions of suffering is a theme repeated throughout the revelations

"All shall be made well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well". (Chapters 27, 31, 32, 34, 63, 63, and 68).

She cannot explain how, and even says that it seems impossible, God simply tells her to trust, because He can do the impossible. What she does know is that we are to join Christ in his passion here which manifests itself in com-passion.

"Thus was our Lord Jesus made-naught for us; and all we stand in this manner made-naught with Him" (Ch18).

This is not a glorification of suffering, but the cost of love. Julia describes the beautiful way that Christ expresses his love for us in his cross. Jesus says to Julian that he would have suffered for her again and again if it had been needful, so great is his love for us.

"It is a joy and bliss and endless pleasing to me that ever I suffered Passion for thee. And this is the bliss of Christ’s works, and thus he signifieth where He saith in that same Shewing: we be His bliss, we be His meed, we be His worship, we be His crown" (Ch 31).

We are not called to a holiness of separation, but a holiness of entering into the ugliness and brokenness of the world,

"When we give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean..." (Ch 40).

This is how we are sanctified, through the cross. Jesus shows us a way to combat evil, through the way of overcoming it with good. The law of mercy triumphs over the law of sin and death, the law of an eye for an eye.

"...For Christ Himself is the ground of all the laws of Christian men, and He taught us to do good against ill..." (Ch 40).

This is not the command of a distant God in heaven, but the call of the one who came to serve and gave his life, and bids us to come and join him in his compassion, to take up our cross and follow.

"...Here may we see that He is Himself this charity, and doeth to us as He teacheth us to do. For He willeth that we be like Him in wholeness of endless love to ourself and to our even-Christians" (Ch 40).

The end goal of this is not suffering, but to end suffering. All will be made well, and all matter of things will be made well.

Christus Victor questions

Josh sent me an email with some really great questions in it, so I thought it would be good to answer them here (also it saves lazy me from having to think of a new post :)

1) In the beginning of your article you state "True justice can only come through mercy." Can you expand on that a little more? It is a powerful statement, and I think it could be even stronger if you unpack it more.

This comes from understanding the two paradigms for justice. In the human legal paradigm of punitive justice, justice is about "quid pro quo", balancing the scales, usually through inflicting punishment to match pain of the harm done. In this paradigm (which the entire Western legal system is built on) mercy is an inaction, mercy means "leniency" and is in conflict with justice which here means "punishment". So mercy (leniency) is in conflict with justice (punishment).

A more biblical view, both in the OT and NT, is justice as a way of "making things right", what we might call restorative justice, or what Paul calls "justification". This entails both the restoration of those sinned against, as well as the redemption of sinners. In this paradigm, rather than inflicting more pain, justice tries to act to right the pain done by sin. The means that justice uses to restore the wounded and justify sinners, are acts of mercy (note that mercy is not passive here but active). Jesus demonstrates this by his acts of healing, exorcism, caring for the least, and forgiveness of sinners. Thus setting right the stain of sin on every level: physical (healing), mental(exorcism), social (the poor), and moral(forgiveness). So mercy and justice are not in conflict (leniency and punishment) but rather justice (making things right) comes through mercy (acts of making things right).


2) In your "Paradigm of Penance" chart your reject the idea of Jesus being a perfect offering, implying it is not Biblical. But what about verses like Hebrews 10:14 (among others)?

That's a very good point. Yes I think the idea of Jesus being the "perfect offering" is arguably a biblical one. Although I don't think that what he modeled is the "perfect law keeper" since in the eyes of the religious authorities he was seen as scandalous, rebellious, blasphemous. Jesus because of his association with sinners had a reputation as a drunk, a glutton, and a "friend of sinners" (which back then was like calling some one a "friend of terrorists" today). Jesus in being sinless actually needed to appear to be unclean (touching the unclean to heal them by the law meant that you were unclean too). So he does model a perfect sinless life, but that sinlessness actually exposed the corruption of the law and the religious authorities.

So, I think you are right, but we would need to take the understanding of the idea of Jesus as the "unblemished sacrifice" and fit that in with both the Gospel writers presentation of Jesus as "the perfect lawbreaker" and of Hebrews understanding of the sacrifices, which are not about appeasement, but cleansing in order to make holy (which is related to my definition of justice as "making things right" above)

3) I would recommend the book "Evil and the Justice of God" by N.T. Wright. He addresses the idea of Christus Victor. He makes the case that CV should be the primary, foundational way in which we view the cross, and that other views (ones with a more legal approach) find there place as additions to that base.

Thanks, I'll give that a read. And from your explanation, I think bishop Wright is correct that CV be understood as the larger framework which substitutionary atonement (and moral example theory) fits into.

4) Closely tied to the previous comment, it would seem like you make the case the CV is the only way we should view the cross. However, it would seem to me that many of the different theories of the atonement have at least some support in the Bible. Perhaps the cross is just too rich, too deeply nuanced to be reduced to one particular analogy or theory? I do, however, agree with you that CV is the most Biblically-supported and most easily applicable to today's world.

Yes, I think that may be an overemphasis in the essay. What I would say instead is that
A) all theories need to be understood in the context of dramatic narrative (the dramatic and passionate story of God entering into our lives to save us), and of relationship (meaning the point is always that God loves us and "the things we do for love" rather than a legal transaction or some other kind of formalistic approach. It is not just penal substitution that looks bad when understood in a legal context rather than a dramatic/relational one. CV when it is presented as a legal transaction is equally horrid. And BOTH when understood dramatically and relationally can be beautiful.

B) As I said above, CV should be the overall framework for all other atonement theories. Not in the narrow sense of a ransom or victory motif, but in the broad sense of CV saying that the Atonement entails a cosmic victory over us, over sin, over Hell, over our systems, over the law...everything is put under the Lord Jesus. And the redemption is also not only for us, redeeming us both from our sin and the damage of sin done to us, but also a redemption of all of creation, the whole "kingdom of God" picture. This "big picture" version of CV can thus be the general framework of understanding that allows all sorts of other metaphors and views of the Atonement to weave together into a huge colorful tapestry.

Stem Cell Ethics Breakthrough

A study published in the Jan. 7 online edition on the journal Nature Biotechnology says that stem cells derived from human amniotic fluid (the fluid that surrounds the developing fetus) appear to offer many of the benefits of embryonic stem cells -- including the ability to grow into brain, muscle, bone and other tissues. The difference is that these stem cells are derived from the amniotic fluid in the womb, and unlike with embryonic stem cells, the embryo is unharmed. This means that we can potentially have the full benefits of stem cells without the ethical problem of taking a potential life to potentially save a life. Amniotic stem cells can be easily obtained though amniocentesis which is a safe procedure regularly done in older pregnant women to screen for birth defects by inserting a needle into the womb and drawing out the fluid.

Researchers from the Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Children's Hospital Boston found that amniotic cells in the laboratory can grow into all of the major types of cells, dividing at the rate of once every 36 hours. Researchers coaxed amniotic fluid stem cells to develop into brain cells and injected them into the skulls of mice with diseased brains. The stem cells replaced the diseased areas and appeared to create new connections with surrounding healthy neurons. Researchers also coaxed amniotic fluid stem cells to become bone cells and implanted them in a mouse. The study found the stem cells calcified and turned into dense, healthy bone. The researchers also coaxed amniotic fluid stem cells to develop into muscle, fat, blood vessel and liver cells. (source: Kaiser Network Daily Reports Jan 7)

In the past, adult stems cells, were put forward as a way to generate stem cells without harming life, but they had limitations: adult stem cells can only grow into the part that they were derived from while embryonic stem cells can grow into any part. Because amniotic stems cells are "somewhere between" embryonic stems cells and adult stem cells, it appears they have the advantages of both: Like embryonic stem cells they are versatile and can grow into all major groups, and like adult stem cells they are stable and easier to maintain in laboratory dishes and can be kept for years without developing tumors. (source: Newsweek)

Because the cells are a genetic match to the developing fetus, tissues grown from them in the laboratory will not be rejected if they are used to treat birth defects in that newborn, which is of course not possible with embryonic stem cells which would mean the destruction of that embryo. Dario Fauza, a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital in Boston is seeking permission from the FDA to try the method in children diagnosed with birth defects while in the womb. He hopes to grow replacement tissues from their own amniotic cells and use those tissues to repair their defects after birth. Additionally, because amniotic stem cells remain stable for years, the cells could be frozen, providing a personalized tissue bank for use later in life. (source: The Washington Post)

an angry God?

Craig on Infinite Spaces said something that made me think

"I am repulsed by a God that will not judge the world, that looks at terrible sin but cannot say "That is evil". I would find such a God deeply revolting."

This statement gives a lot of insight into why some people are attracted to the idea of a God of wrath. They are attracted because they see that "angry" God as a God who is angry at evil just like they are, a God who will fight for them in an evil world.

Back when I was a painting major in college I did a painting I entitled "I don't like dogs". It was a picture of a combination rottweiler-German Sheppard, its fangs menacingly barred and blood spraying off its mouth. What was interesting was people's reactions to the painting. Lots of people reacted like I did, they found the painting intimidating and threatening. But several people saw it and said they thought it looked "sweet". Turns out that these people all had big dogs and saw in that painting of bloody fangs a picture of a dog who would protect them. (To interpret this analogy just take the word "dog" and reverse the letters).

I can relate to Craig's desire to have a God who fights evil. Indeed this is the central theme of Christus Victor. The problem I see in it is that from a Christian perspective we all are subject to God's wrath. That wrath is not just going to be unleashed on the "bad guys" over there but on us too because as Paul says in Romans says "we have all sinned". So we should not desire God's wrath or judgment because that same wrath will come back upon us. Instead we need to realize that we all are in need of mercy, and need to treat others with the same mercy we so desperately need ourselves.

This is all really basic "Christianity 101" stuff. So why is it that so many conservative Christians are advocates of judgment instead of mercy? I think again the answer can be found in something Craig says in the same blog entry:

"You are very concerned about God acting justly, but I wonder if your God is just. Say I see a teenage boy beat up a little girl and I do nothing to protect her. Is my inaction "just"? Is it righteous?

In your scheme, God cannot be judge. How do you have justice without judgment? I cannot understand that. Your God is deeply saddened by the world, but never angered by it. Your God looks at Auschwitz and the most He can say is "That is very sad." He cannot say "Those people did something wrong. They deserve to be punished."

Here we can see that mercy is being associated with inaction. a merciful God is sad and inactive, doing nothing in the face of evil. This comes from viewing both justice and mercy in the terms of the western legal system. In that paradigm, justice (punishing) is active while mercy is inactive. Mercy here means to be "lenient" and not act to punish. So in this scenario we have only two responses to evil and sin: either we demonstrate "justice" by punishing, or we show mercy by doing nothing. This however is not at all a biblical picture of mercy. Mercy in Scripture is active. Grace is an active transforming force. It is through grace that we are brought to repentance. Anyone who has experienced God's grace in their lives knows how experiencing the forgiveness of God, being loved when you don't deserve it, turns your whole world upsidedown.

As Christians who have been saved by grace, we are also called to grace. We need to trust in God that His way of grace is an active powerful force that will bring about justice and overcome evil. If you look around the internet you will see lots of anger. I think that anger is to a large degree a reaction to the evil we see in the world around us in our post 9/11 world and is understandable. Understandable yes, but self-defeating. As James says "Man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires" (James 1:20). Anger leads to more anger. Hatred breeds hatred. When we feel dehumanized by the awful things people do we in turn dehumanize them, making them into monsters and justifying our retaliating with more awful things. The way out is grace. Grace is how we can really fight evil in our world, how we can really transform situations and hearts.

These Infinite Spaces

My article " Understanding the Cross: Penal Substitution vs Christus Victor is generating some lively dialog over on the Blog These Infinate Spaces. I've included some of my responses here for you. You can check out the whole thing in context here. Just so you know, the text below "CV" stands for Christus Victor and "PS" for Penal Subsitution.

Craig writes: "What Anselm rejected in the Ransom theory was the idea that God had to make a bargain with the devil, and that He essentially tricked the devil into releasing human souls"

This criticism was not a new idea with Anselm. The Church Fathers had argued extensively about the best way to formulate this, and had made similar criticisms themselves. What is of monumental significance is that with Anselm, a major shift occurred where salvation was no longer understood in the deep terms of humanity being enslaved to sin and our need to be liberated from that bondage, but instead viewed sin in the legal terms of transgression, understanding salvation as paying a penalty to “satisfy” the demands of law. When the central understanding of atonement shifted from ransom from slavery to satisfaction of justice, the paradigm for sin shifted with it from the relational idea of bondage (who we belong to) to the legal idea of transgression (what we do).

With that, the deep reaching impact of the Christus Victor soterology was last and "Christus Victor" became in the minds of many Evangelicals today an insignificant appendix (for example with both John Stott and Derek Tidball). It is this "tacking on" of Christus Victor that I find problematic. I think it actually has some really profound implications that need to be explored. Two people who have pioneered this in different areas are Jürgen Moltmann and Walter Wink.

David writes:
"As Craig rightly asserts, CV doesn't really have a vigorous understanding of a personified Satan"

This statement surprised me. I would disagree and say that CV is in fact rooted in a deep understanding of the devil, and that PS is lacking in it. One can completely leave the devil out of the formulation of Penal Substitution. Christus Victor on the other hand is rooted in the idea of Christ overcoming "sin, death, and the devil". It expands the idea of sin beyond "transgression" to "bondage" showing the deep reaching consequences of evil in the human heart. CV is essentially about a change of identity from bondage to adoption, the theme of "redemption from slavery". The devil is crucial to this understanding.

What Gustav Aulen has removed from the ransom theory is not the devil, but its heavy legal focus and replaced it with a dramatic focus. Quite a number of major Evangelical theologians including JI Packer and James Denney have sharply criticized the legal focus in PS as well, and Packer has suggested that PS should also be seen (following Aulen) with a dramatic rather than legal focus (which he Packer sharply criticizes).

So what is so bad about a legal focus? I am not really arguing that it is "cold". I think one can me emotional and cold as well. In fact as an aside, I find Jonathan Edwards a pretty bad example of positive emotion since he was pretty nasty. I would instead suggest Spurgeon who was a PS advocating Calvinist with a huge heart for the lost. He is an excellent example of "positive emotion". The problem I have with a legal theory of the cross is twofold (there are other reasons, but I will limit myself for brevity sake):

1) A legal focus does not express the focus of Scripture which is clearly on the supremacy of love (Love is the "greatest commandment", the "sum of the law and the profits", if I "have not love I am nothing", "God is love", etc) over the law which the NT (both Jesus and Paul) are quite critical of. Biblically focus of the Atonement needs to be relational not legal. It was an expression of God's amazing love for us.

2) A legal focus trivializes sin. Sin is not simply an infraction, it is a cancer. It is bondage. It is about identity (who we belong to and who we are). It is a deep rooted problem that needs to be deeply addressed. Punishment does not heal the wounds of the sinner nor those who have been sinned against. It is superficial. What people need is a profound inner transformation, a change in identity, healing for their cancer. These are all aspects of God's work that a legal theory simply cannot capture.

So why don't we then have, as Packer suggests, a dramatic relational understanding of PS? Good idea. This is I think how most Evangelicals understand the cross: they see the great cost, they are humbled that this was "for them", they are moved by dramatic depictions like the movie "The Passion". The problem here is that while we can and should have a dramatic understanding of substitutionary atonement and vicarious sacrifice (as Luther did) there is a fundamental flaw specifically in PS's explanation of that vicarious sacrifice:

The idea of "satisfaction" does not mean "to gratify" as it does in English today but "to make restitution". With Anselm the idea of satisfaction/restitution was a way to avoid punishment. We make restitution and thus avoid punishment (pay the fine avoid a whipping). Specifically with the cross, Jesus make restitution by restoring God's honor (by giving his life so nobly for us Jesus gave God extra honor beyond what was due God in the sinless life of Jesus making up for the honor God had lost because of our dishonoring sin). Since restitution/satisfaction had been made there was no reason for the punishment. Now of course this whole system of honor is an artificial man-made concept of feudal times, but within Anselm's framework it does all make sense. I think there is in fact (if we could pull it out of its feudal legal framework a bit) some deep things about Anselm's theory. PT Forsyth does a good job of exploring this.

With Thomas Aquinas the idea of satisfaction/restitution changed. Unlike Anselm who said one made restitution to avoid punishment (pay the fine or go to jail) Aquinas said that it was the punishment that made the restitution (By seeing someone hurt you felt better). On a carnal level we can see how making someone hurt who hurt us would be "satisfying" (that is, gratifying). Its the basic desire for revenge, for payback. Whether it "makes things right" (restitution) is debatable. But there's another level here: What if instead of whipping and executing the guilty man we instead take someone who is innocent and good and beat and execute them instead and then let the guilty one go free? Does that sound like a fulfillment of justice? No, it sounds terrible. This is the elephant in the room of PS, it is as a (legal) theory profoundly unjust.

Compare that with the idea of someone giving their life for another, a firefighter who dies rescuing others from the flames, a body guard who takes a bullet for someone. this is heroic and deeply moving. We often see in movies the hero say to the terrorists who are going to kill someone (usually female) "No take me!". I think anyone with kids who are sick and suffering can relate to the wish that we could suffer instead of them. "I'd give anything to take their place" we say. But what is the theme here? It is Christus Victor. The bullet, the burning building, the ravaging disease, the terrorists, are not pictures of "justice being satisfied" they are bad things. Pictures of the Accuser, of Satan.

In short the vicarious sacrifice "in our place" is a moving and dramatic idea that is all over the NT. But explaining it in legal terms gives completely the wrong impression because in a legal sense it would be profoundly unjust. Understood in a relational sense however, as a ransom, as a redemption, it makes perfect sense.

Craig writes:
"Derek, I don't understand how you can reject the category of law, but still wish to uphold the concept of justice. Law is justice implemented and applied."

I would differentiate between human laws which are an outwardly imposed artificial human construct, and God's moral law which is simply the way the universe works. Sin is not punished by some extra action of God, sin "leads to death" just like hitting the ground is the consequence of gravity. God "gives us over to wrath" Paul says. God's moral laws are written into the fabric of who we are. Their consequences are inevitable flowing from the nature of how life works, again like gravity. Biblically this is not "justice", it is wrath, the curse, death. "Justice" biblically speaking is about "making things right". This was Luther's major discovery. Justice was not about consequence for sin as the Scholastics taught, it was about God making thing right.

Michael writes,
"The problem I can see with Derek's Christus Victor scheme is dualism... which is to say: God is not in any sense here the agent of our judgment/punishment."

I don't see this to be the case. I wonder if you have read the entire article on my website rather than merely the posts here? Biblically we have all three expressions:
1)God being the one who brings judgment,
2) judgment coming as a process ("the wrath" and "the curse" in Paul) and
3) judgment being executed by the devil.

So there is a pretty complex picture in Scripture. In Christus Victor the image is of the devil as the "accuser" (which is what "Satan" means) but it is also understood that he has "rights" because we have indeed sinned. This picture is not of God and Satan as co-equal (dualism) but of Satan as a fallen angel.

That means that the law for example is made to be good, made to point to God (not to be equal with God) but can through sin become something that instead leads to death (fallen). So God who desires life seeks a way to redeem both fallen humanity as well as to redeem the fallen law through grace. It is a more complex view than PS to incorporate the idea of fallenness and the devil, but I think it is also truer to both the complexity of the Biblical witness and to life. I go into all this in more detail in part 4 of my essay.

You are correct that ultimately God is the author of wrath (and of gravity). Gustav Aulen calls this the "double-sidedness" of the Atonement: God saves us from his own wrath. The Divine Love overcomes the Divine Wrath.