Evangelicalism’s Two-Faced God

I recently went to a talk with Science Mike (Mike McHargue) where he discussed his memoir Finding God in the Waves, which I’m looking forward to reading (more on that soon). It was a great talk, and I was struck by something Mike said about neurology. He described how neuroscientists have observed that people who contemplate a loving God see changes in their brains, building their prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for things like compassion and moral reflection) and lessening the influence of their amygdala (the part of your brain responsible for impulsive fear-based reactions, which are helpful when you have your hand on a hot stove or step on a snake, but not so great when you are trying to resolve conflict in a relationship).

I related to what he said, and can certainly attest to experiencing this in my own life. I talk about this a lot in fact, in terms of moral development and the brain. In one sense, it’s just common sense that people who focus on feeling loved (religious or not) would tend to become more loving people. However, I found myself wondering how it could be that evangelicals (well, I should clarify, American white evangelicals) can be so focused on experiencing the love of Jesus, and at the same time can overwhelmingly support war, torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment of children, and so on. How can they so enthusiastically support policies that completely lack compassion and care of the least?

So I asked Mike, if it is true that focusing on Jesus’ love makes your brain develop the prefrontal cortex, then why is it that white American evangelicals seem to be so amygdala-driven, that is, driven by fear leading to hurtful reactive responses, as characterized by their overwhelming support for the policies of our current President?

It’s something I am genuinely baffled by. Mike stressed that some conservatives are indeed compassionate which I do not doubt, and that liberals can equally lack compassion, which is certainly true. We all can be jerks, we all can let fear lead us to being hurtful, there is no ideological monopoly on immaturity. However, there does seem to be something about white American evangelicalism that seems especially toxic. There seems to be something about white American evangelicalism in particular that makes it ripe for being unreflected, angry, fear-driven, scapegoating, and an enthusiastic supporter of violence and punishment in the name of the good. What is it?

What I took away from Mike’s response was that he suggested that the problem was their belief in a very different god from the God revealed in Jesus – a god characterized by fear and anger, who threatens eternal punishment, and is characterized by wrath. I was reminded of what Brian Zahnd has described as the “monster god” of neo-Calvinism. In short, Mike proposed that the basic problem is that they have not experienced the love of Jesus, and instead know a god of fear and anger.

It’s important to understand that Mike’s story is one that is deeply shaped by his experience of God’s love in the midst of the pain and rejection he experienced in his youth, as well as his experience of that same life-transforming love as an adult atheist. It's really a classic born-again testimony. I have myself been deeply influenced by that same experience of the love of Jesus in my life as a teen. I was born again, but this was not simply a one time event. I was drawn to knowing God's love relationally, and in that "pursuit of God" (to borrow a phrase from A.W. Tozer) I experienced over and over again a love that completely transformed my life. I write about this in my first book Intimacy with God which I chose to make free because I wanted to share this love with everyone. I realize that for many the idea of a “personal relationship with God” may seem sappy or sentimental, but I cannot stress how profoundly experiencing that love first-hand in my life as changed me. For me it is not sappy at all. From hearing Mike speak of his life, I think the same could be said for him. Mike told stories with tears in his eyes of how experiencing the love of Jesus literally "saved" him from committing suicide in his youth. It was a beautiful testimony.

From that perspective, it makes sense to think “There is just no way a person could experience love like that and be so angry and hurtful. They must experience God as angry and hurtful.” So when Mike said essentially this, my first reaction was to agree. Then the more “science-y” part of me began to kick in. The fact is, people are very capable of compartmentalizing and showing great inconsistency in different parts of their lives. I’m sure there were many people in the 1800’s who were moved to tears at a revival meeting, and then came home and mercilessly beat their slaves – I can even see them thinking that doing so was good. I’m also pretty sure that many of the people who adamantly support things like war and torture today actually do experience the love of Jesus in their lives. It seems really counterintuitive, but we humans are complex creatures. I strongly suspect that if we were to survey white American evangelicals who support these angry and hurtful policies, we would find that a great many could tell moving stories of how they have experienced the love of Jesus in their lives.

Let me stress here that I don’t mean at all to be critical of Mike’s answer. He said it off the top of his head, and I think it was a great answer with a really important insight. My goal with this post is to help further develop the idea, after having the chance to reflect on it for a while.

There is something going on, and it does have to do with an angry God, but this picture of a God of anger and fear seems to co-exist alongside the experience of the love of Jesus. It’s an odd mix of the love of Jesus for those on the inside of the church, with a simultaneous focus on anger and hellfire for those on the outside – including you, if you “fall away.” The “monster god” is thus not a god who is only angry, but a god who is deeply loving to those on the inside and full of wrath towards those on the outside.

This “two-faced God” (to borrow a phrase from Michael Hardin) means you can go to church and sing songs about the love of Jesus, and then hear a sermon by a very angry white dude about how we should fear our nation being corrupted and destroyed by [insert name of scapegoated minority group here]. In short, we experience love and compassion on the inside, but are taught that those on the outside should be feared and hated. They get wrath. This reinforces people’s natural tendency to feel love for their own family, race, nation, and religion, and to demonize, criminalize, and dehumanize those outside the boundaries. That’s why evangelicals can experience love themselves, and yet lack compassion for others, being instead driven by fear and anger towards them.

People in that environment are therefore not meditating on an angry “monster God” alone. The picture of God they have somehow simultaneously consists of the experience of the love of Jesus (which I do not doubt is genuine) mixed together with week after week of cultivating anger and fear to those perceived as enemies from the pulpit. Sitting in that atmosphere week after week, year after year, shapes your brain. It essentially stunts a person’s moral development. The course of moral development is supposed to go from being loved, leading one to extend that same love towards others, developing socially. This toxic theology however keeps people inwardly focused in a sense of fear-based reactionary self-protection. The neuroscience phenomenon Mike mentioned of building the social and compassionate part of our brain thus does not happen, because this preaching of fear and anger towards outsiders strengthens the reactionary fear-based part of our brain, the amygdala. To put this in more theological terms, while they experience the love of Jesus, they do not follow the teaching of Jesus. Jesus had hard words for people like that, 

I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:23)

Jesus links faithfulness to how we treat others, and this is most seen in how we treat those who we regard the least. John echos this when he writes,

"Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person."

These are hard sayings, and I hope we are able to hear them. What is being expressed, in the strongest of terms, is that our experience of God's love is not worth much if it does not translate into showing compassion to others. It's like a flower that is planted, but does not grow out of the dirt.

This understanding of evangelicalism’s two-faced God is especially important for the “nicer” evangelical churches to recognize. Here I do not mean the churches where the pastor wears skinny jeans and a soul patch, but underneath still preaches the two-faced God. I mean the genuinely nice churches who only talk about grace and love, the churches that you and I would want to go to. Because evangelicalism is so fluid, those nice churches are filled with people who come from churches that preached the two-faced God. Almost never is it acknowledged in those nice churches that there are people in the congregation who are still carrying wounds from that past church experience. When it is acknowledged, it is almost always in the context of the person having misunderstood. You must have gotten the wrong impression of who God is. It’s always your personal problem, as opposed to us recognizing that this two-faced God of love and hate is very widespread within white evangelicalism, and addressing that. 

In other words, the problem is not simply that the person has gotten an angry picture of God, and now simply needs to hear of the love and grace of Jesus. They have experienced a God who is both loving and hateful, and as a consequence they have been damaged by that. To the extent that they have preached this non-gospel of “God hates you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” they have hurt others. Perhaps a father severed his relationship with his gay son because his pastor told him that was tough love. Whatever the specifics, many live with the fallout of relationships that they have severed because of this toxic theology when it is lived out.

Simply preaching God’s love is not an antidote to this, because they have been taught that there is no contradiction in God being both loving and hateful, nor is there a problem with their being both loving (to insiders) and hateful (to outsiders) themselves. Instead of their experience of God’s love leading them to follow the teaching of Jesus and caring for the least, this two-faced God theology has taught them to ignore the love they experience, and instead be driven by fear and anger which is pounded into people’s psyches by what they hear Sunday after Sunday, not to mention their diet of angry pundits and media that they consume 24-7.

I know that it is hard to face this, which is perhaps why these nice evangelical churches so often avoid it. But I really hope that the grace-focused evangelical churches can find the courage and humility to address this toxic theology head-on, and help people kick-start their hardened hearts, and move towards growing in compassion. Sometimes to find healing, to find what is good and beautiful, we need to first face the ugliness in ourselves and in our communities.

You Found Me, Just a Little Late

Lost and insecure, 

You found me, You found me.
Lying on the floor, 

Surrounded, surrounded.
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late,
You found me, you found me.

-The Fray

That song captures the complex mix of closeness and nearness, of intimacy and pain, that we all know from our experience of God in this world. We hear the same kind of thing in the Psalms, oscillating from passionate cries of abandonment, "Why have you forsaken me?" "How long Lord?" to expressions of tenderness "Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely." Music, including the Psalms, and including this song by the Fray is often able to capture these kinds of contradictions of life that we all know and live with much better than our theologies or philosophies can.

In part, this is due to the motivation behind what we write. Often when I write theology I am trying to say something helpful, trying to build trust, encourage growth, and so on. That's a good place to come from, I'm trying to help and to do good. But I will never forget the time that a person said to me, "When you speak of a relationship with with God, it sounds so close and intimate. It sounds so simple and easy. But in my experience there is a lot of struggle and doubt. I often feel that God is far away." Now, that was actually my experience too. Sometimes I felt God's nearness, and it felt like home. Those experiences have forever changed me. But I also know the experience of utter darkness, feeling that I am alone in the universe, feeling that the whole thing is just wishful thinking. Yet I had apparently given the false impression that I don't.

An artist writes from a different place. Art is at its best when it does not try to have a message (even a noble and good message), but simply speaks vulnerably and honestly. When it does this, it touches something in us that recognizes the same experiences and feelings, touching and moving us. That's why it so important that we let art and music and story impact our theology. Because when we do that we are letting our theology connect with the reality of our experience.

It takes a lot of courage to sing/pray "You found me... just a little late." It's an expression of grateful devotion coupled with an accusation born from pain. It would be a lot easier to just express one or the other, either tenderness or complaint. To express both at the same time leaves us wide open and vulnerable.

Jesus described God as a loving father. If we ask for good things, our good heavenly Father will surely give them to us. "Knock and the door will be opened" Jesus tells us (Lk 11:9). But the story Jesus tells us right before that verse is of a person in need, banging on a locked door in the middle of the night (Lk 11:5-8). Jesus tells a similar story of how prayer is like knocking on the door of a unjust judge who doesn't care (Lk 18:108). Sometimes prayer feels like falling into the arms of our daddy, and other times it feels more like we're pounding our fist on a locked door of a judge who doesn't care.

In the end I think we find the answer to the question of theodicy -- the question of how God can be love when there is so much pain and wrong in the world -- not in finding an explanation, but in learning to walk in the tension of our experience of good and bad, intimacy and abandonment, love and darkness. I don't even want to say that this vacillating experience is how it needs to be, that is healthy and good, but simply that it is how we experience life and God. It's not just you. If we have the courage to be honest, we find that it's what we all experience.

Most of the time I feel like an atheist, and then there are the days when I'm born again, like the heavens have opened up. I long for those days. My heart is wide open to you, Jesus. Lying on the floor, surrounded, you found me.

A Personal Relationship with God?

(originally published in the Huffington Post)

"A personal relationship with God." It's a phrase you've probably heard before if you've spent any time around church folks. Many would say it captures the very heart of what it means to be a Christian, and I agree. There are a lot of Christians, however, who have a problem with the idea -- people I have a lot of respect for. Rob Bell, for example, correctly points out that the phrase is not found in the Bible. But then again, neither is the word "Trinity."

The real question is whether the concept itself is biblical, and Jesus says the very heart of the law is to "love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself." Those sound like relationships to me. So what's the problem?

For Brian McLaren, the problem is the stress on "personal" relationship and "personal" salvation. The original intent of stressing the personal was to distinguish it from an impersonal relationship (like the orbital relationship of the moon to the earth), and stress that faith is not something we are born into by default, but involves us personally. It needs to be lived. The problem, as McLaren points out, is that the idea of something being "personal" also has an individualistic self-focus to it: personal computer, personal trainer, personal space. As a result, faith becomes focused on us as individuals -- a focus on personal morality, personal prayer, personal Bible study.

The idea of a personal relationship with God should not be taken to mean a privatized faith. If we really took the idea of relationship seriously, we would recognize that faith understood as relationship needs to be both personal and social. A relational faith, by its very definition, is inherently social. As the epistle of John so powerfully says, "if we say we love God, but do not love our brother, then we are deceiving ourselves." We simply cannot say we love God if we do not love those around us.

While salvation begins personally and intimately, it cannot end in a myopic self-focused faith. Genuine personal relationship with God must flow over into all of our relationships -- caring for the least, loving our enemies, and showing the fruit of that genuine personal connection. How could it not? If we really are in a living relationship with Jesus, then won't we come to see people the way he does, and care about the things he cares about?

I'll say it again: If we really took the idea of relationship with God seriously, we would also love others. So rather than focusing on relationship less, I think we should focus more on it. Relationships are at the core of who we are as humans. Nearly every artistic expression is about relationship, from Shakespearian dramas to the current top 10 music charts: songs of love lost and found, tales of our deepest longings and greatest tragedies. Relationships reflect our deepest human struggles. They are the source of our most profound joy and pain -- what we long for most, what keeps us up at night.

It is in relationship that we find out who we are as humans, and what matters most in life. We as humans are made for relationship, and outside of relationship cannot be truly ourselves. We have a relational identity, a social self. As babies we begin life as self-focused and gradually learn to see ourselves as beings in relationship as we learn to love and be loved. That relational love from our parents shapes our self-image, who we are. Our very identity as humans is found in relationship.

This all goes to say that relationship is central to understanding who we are and what life is about. That's why I think that speaking of having a "personal relationship with God" has the potential to revolutionize and deepen theological reflection, so long as we move beyond cheap slogans and sound bites. Again, the problem is not with speaking in terms of a "relationship with God," but that we do not take it seriously enough.

So what might it look like if we did? I've written about this in a lot more detail elsewhere, but here are a few of the consequences of what understanding faith through the lens of relationship would entail:

It would mean a focus on a loving relationship with God and others, and not a focus on abstract rules or doctrine. It would mean an experienced faith now, and not just one that looks to a book from the past. Or more precisely, it would look to Scripture not as a set of rules, but as a witness to what the disciples had experienced of God in Christ in order to get a hold of what they had gotten a hold of.

A focus on relationship would recognize that believing in God is not simply to affirm a fact, but to engage in a trust relationship. Faith means trust. It would see that sin is not primarily about a legal transgression, but more deeply it is a relational breach -- cutting us off from God, others and ourselves. A relational faith would remember that "knowing" in a biblical context is not about intellectual surety, but relational knowing. To know truth does not mean we possess independent absolute knowledge, but rather is a statement of trust and intimate surety that we are known by God.

Most of all, focusing on relationship means caring more about treating others right, than about "being right." As the Apostle Paul says, if we have all the correct doctrines in the world, but have not love, it means nothing. So many Christians use truth like a weapon, and don't seem to care who they hurt with it. But one cannot separate truth from love any more than one can separate the head from the heart. Truth without love is not truth at all.

Love Wins - rethinking the gospel

I'm reading through Rob Bell's new book Love Wins and am loving it so far. He begins the book in the preface by saying its good to ask hard questions, that God wants us to ask them, and then proceeds in the first chapter to ask a bunch of hard questions about the "good news" of the gospel that can sound like bad news:

God loves us.
God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part.
Unless you do not respond in the right way. Then God will torture you forever.
In Hell.
Huh?

Is God really going to torture people you love forever in hell because they didn't accept his love? Is that how love acts? is that what grace looks like? Is that what justice looks like? Is that what holiness looks like?

Hell no.

Isn't God the one who teaches us to forgive and love our enemies? So if that's true, then why would God act the opposite? I'm sure you've heard people say it is because he takes sin so seriously, but really doesn't that in fact trivialize sin? Doesn't it make God look petty and unjust? That is one of the biggest reasons people leave the faith, that and all the suffering and injustice in the world. In short, the major reason people leave Christianity is because of moral outrage, because sin--real sin, the kind that deeply wounds people, the kind that destroys lives--is not being taken seriously enough.

What about rape? What about abuse? What about all the violence and oppression in our world? That's the kind of thing that I think God cares about, and he cares because these things are killing us, and he loves us. God is not concerned with his "glory" because God is not egotistical. God is love, and that means that what God really wants, what it truly means to love him, is to love each other. That's a point you will find being made over and over in the NT.

The heart of the gospel is that God does not come to judge us (even though he hates these horrible things we do to each other), he comes to save, he has come to pull us out of that world of hurting and being hurt. That's what real justice is about, making things right, and that is what Jesus was all about.

That way of making things right--the gospel--begins with God entering into our hearts and lives and showing us what it means to be loved. I'm taking here about being born again, about having a personal relationship with God where you come to know God's loving grace first hand, where God just pours his love out on you until it completely changes who you are.

One place I disagree with Rob is when he says that the phrase "relationship with God" is not in the Bible. Of course it is not there verbatim, but then a lot of things are not which are still truly biblical. Like the Trinity for example. The question is whether the concept is there, and I think it clearly is (both the Trinity and relationship with God). Loving God, Jesus says, is the "greatest commandment." But as I said, it can't stop there. If we really love God, if we really know grace, know what it means to be loved unconditionally, then this can't help but spill out into all of our life. We will feel compelled to live out that grace with others, to love like Jesus did.

That is the urgency that Jesus preaches: stop hurting each other, stop with your stupid wars and killing in God's name, stop with all the condemnation and hatred! Learn the way of the cross, the way of overcoming evil with good, the way of enemy love. That is a way that is not just some trivial religious concern which seems so tangential to life, it is about real stuff, life and death stuff, quite literally.

Living in that is the gospel. The gospel is absolutely inseparable from love of enemies. In other words, the gospel is about radically loving everyone. That means that we have to care about poverty and starvation (Jesus certainly did!), we have to care about human trafficking and war and corporate abuse and a host of other social causes because belonging to Jesus means we care about people.

That's the gospel: being loved by God so that we can know love and walk in the way of love--knowing grace firsthand so we can show that grace in a world that desperately needs it.

Why I'm still not Orthodox (pt 2: mysticism)

If you missed the first installment, you can check it out here. This time I'd like to take up where I left off by sharing some of the things I've been learning about personal relationship with God from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.

One thing that can be quite confusing in a dialog between Orthodox and Protestant believers is the two ways that the term "salvation" is used. In Protestant usage it commonly refers to justification, and thus it is stressed that "salvation is by grace, not works." What this specifically means is that justification or redemption is by grace not works. Of course just about everyone would agree that we need to respond in faith to this. So is that a "work"? No, because works are about earning and merit, and even if we accept a gift (the response of faith) we are still not meriting it. So far so good. On the Orthodox end "salvation" commonly refers to sanctification and so the emphasis is on our participation, our praxis, what we do. Again, just about everyone would agree that we do need to participate in our sanctification, through a life of obedience to God, devotional life, repentance, and so on. We do not do this to earn God's favor, we do this in God's favor, as a response to grace.

Both of these uses of the term "salvation" are legitimate, the Protestant "getting saved" type and the Orthodox "work out your salvation" (Phil 2:12) variety. But since one side is speaking about justification/regeneration (the inception) and the other about sanctification/deification (the continuation/fulfillment) using the same word it can get pretty confusing and lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Put in relational terms, we need to enter into a relationship with God (regeneration), and we then need to grow in that relationship (sanctification).

What I appreciate about Orthodox theology is that it is very much focused on the experience of a lived relationship with God. As Vladimir Lossky has said, "all theology is mystical theology". What that means is that all theology needs to be connected to our living it, to our being in a real transforming relationship. Theology always needs to be joined to praxis. In the end, the real meaning of "orthodox" is not "right doctrine" but "right worship" (as in doxology). Now of course we also find in the Orthodox tradition its share of head-theology entrenched in lots of metaphysics and formulas. One common categorization scholars make is between two schools in Orthodox thought - one of the "head" and one of the "heart". We find this same tug of war in the evangelical church as well of course, and what we need is a balance. We need to be smart about stuff, we need to use our brains, but we need to also have our feet on the ground and have our theology be practical. This sense of "pietism" (I see that as a good word) is very present in orthodoxy. We can see it in ancient writers like the author of the Macarian Homilies, or Symeon the New Theologian, and we can see it in contemporary theologians like Kallistos Ware. Bishop Ware writes that, "All genuine theology must be mystical theology – something based upon a personal experience of God granted in prayer, upon a conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit."

What I find absent in all of this, as I mentioned in my previous post, is a lack of focus on being born again in the Orthodox church, or in other words, a lack of the initial expereince of regeneration. Not just as an assurance of forgivness for a guilty conscience, not simply as a judicial requirement, or as an end in itself, but as a way of entering into new life and lived relationship with God as a way to begin living in grace, in the Spirit. The Orthodox understanding of salvation lacks this experiential beginning, this initial experience of God's indwelling presence and love to begin our participation of growing in God and through God. This expereince of "assurance", of God's indwelling presence and love, (which clearly is the end goal of ascetic praxis and mysticism in the Orthodox faith) was what turned the world upside down for Luther and Wesley (and for me), and I just don't find it in Orthodox writing. That is, I do find them speaking of our pursuit of union with God as the end of ascetic struggle, of experiencing this intimacy with God after struggle and seeking. I think that is all good. But what is missing is how we begin that pursuit of God with God. How we, as Augustine said, at the same time taste of God, and yet hunger for more, how God allows us to experience his love and nearness, and that this embrace makes us long for more. A pursuit we do not embark on on our own, but with God and through God. "I tasted, and now hunger and thirst. Thou touched me, and I longed for Thy peace."

Now I certainly think we can learn a lot from the emphasis of the Orthodox on sanctification. But I also think it goes both ways, and that there needs to be a discovery of the relational transformative expereince of a born again conversion experience in Orthodoxy. New birth in conversion is often rejected by Orthodox Christians who associate it with a legal end, rather than as a relational beginning (Ware for example takes this position). But from the shared relational perspective of our two traditions, this initial experience of the indwelling of the Spirit calling out within us “Abba, Father” is vital, not only because of the transforming assurance of knowing who and whose we are, but because union with God is something that begins and ends in the Spirit, lived together with God, through God, and in God. Despite the emphasis on experience in Orthodox theology, that personal experience of the indwelling of the Spirit previous to, and thus as the cause and means of ascetic struggle, is missing in Orthodoxy.

Why I'm still not Orthodox (besides the silly hats)

Pretty much all of my theology is very much in line with the Eastern Orthodox church. For example I have an understanding of sin as bondage and sickness rather than as transgression. As a result, I have an Orthodox 'transformative' understanding of salvation rather than a Western 'judicial' one, meaning that the real object of salvation is God effecting an inner change in us. Again, the model of atonement I have is an Orthodox one of recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In other words, the need for the atonement was not to satisfy a need God had for punishment, but rather to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost, and to free us from the bondage of sin. I also share with the Orthodox church the focus on theosis - our participation in the divine life which changes us into the likeness of Christ. In that sense I see salvation not as a one time act, but as a growing relationship with God. I also think the Orthodox church is right in their understanding of original sin, not as inherited guilt, but as our inheriting the consequences of living in a sinful world.

So if I agree with the Orthodox church on original sin, recapitulation, theosis, and the relational transformative focus of salvation, why am I not Eastern Orthodox? Besides my not liking silly hats, tacky bling-bling, and zz-top beards of course (see the above picture). There are a few reasons. the biggest one is that I feel my roots are deeply in the Evangelical church. That same focus on transformation and theosis can be found in Wesley, and it can be found in Luther too. Luther writes that God pours Christ into us so that "he is entirely humanized (vermenschet) and we are entirely divinized (vergottet)". A clear expression of theosis. As a result Luther says in his Commentary on Galatians, salvation entails a real change in us, not just a legal one, "These changes are, so to speak, not verbal; they are real. They produce a new mind, a new will, new senses, and even new actions by the flesh." As I've argued before, I also believe that Luther represents one of the most clear and lucid expression of the Orthodox understanding of Christus Victor out there. So everything that the Orthodox church says, I also see as being completely compatible with Evangelicalism, particularly the central thrust of Evangelicalism rooted in Lutheran Pietism, revivalist Methodism, and the relational-transformative focus of Pentecostalism. That 'Pentecostal-flavored' branch of Evangelicalism is without a doubt (ie statistically) the largest and fastest growing part of Evangelicalism world-wide. What it is at odds with (as am I) is a certain brand of Calvinism. But that's a big can of worms I don't want to open right here. What I want to focus on is Orthodoxy.

I think by biggest beef with the Orthodox church (beside those hats which I just can't seem to get over) is their lack of focus on being born again. Luther (and Wesley) stress both our need for justification, and our need for sanctification (which is the same as theosis). That means that while we do need to enter into a life-long transformative relationship with God (sanctification), we need to enter into that relationship. Leaving that out is like talking about the importance of married life, but never mentioning the need to get married. And even bigger than that, it is absolutely essential that we know that the whole point of theosis - and I mean here an Orthodox understanding of theosis - is that it is not done through our works, but through grace. We need to be sanctified through God living and working in us. That is not something that we work our way into. The whole point of getting "saved" from this transformative model is that God enters into our lives and embraces us unconditionally (that's what grace means). We need to enter into that relationship with the God who is there, active, communicative, and real.

Yes, the focus needs to be on relationship, instead of on a legal transaction. Yes, this means an ongoing transforming relationship, and not a one time experience. Yes there are many experiences in that deepening relationship with God beyond conversion. Yes, yes, yes. But if may speak personally, I was not raised to know God, and I did not know that you can really know God's love first hand in a living relationship. When I encountered Christ it turned my world upside-down. So I'm really big on conversion. Not on making people feel guilty or bad, (that's where I think Luther and Wesley get it wrong), but on letting people know that they can really know God personally, that they don't need to work and strive to get there, but that God can enter into their lives and change everything, because being loved does that to you. God loves us in all of our brokenness and ugliness and lostness, and that experience of being loved by the God of the universe changes everything, it changes you.

Now while that relational-ontological experience of conversion is so much in line with the Orthodox big picture of salvation, that experience is something I just never hear the Orthodox church speak about. I don't ever hear it preached, I don't encounter it in any of their theology. If anything I hear it being de-emphasized, denied, and rejected, usually in the form of rejecting a cartoon caricature of the worst and most trivial form Evangelical conversion. But the very fact that their understanding of conversion is only in this negative cliche form does reveal a lack of a deep first-hand understanding of that experience.

Now I don't want to say that this silence means that this experience is not a reality for the Orthodox. But I do want to break the silence. It really does not make any sense. It's absence is completely at odds with the whole thrust of their own theology. And it is a non-negotiable deal-breaker. There are other things that bug me too - their lack of healthy self-criticism (this is changing), that women are excluded from leadership (this is not), and yes, those goofy hats. But above all I see the biggest lack in their silence about justification - about our need to enter into a relationship with God through being born again.

check out part 2

Is Obama a Christian?

There are basically two ways for an Evangelical to answer that question. One if focused on affirming a certain set of doctrinal statements, the other is focused on a conversion experience. I would maintain that the doctrinal definition is one that is often upheld by Evangelical leaders and academics (i.e. those with a voice in the public square), while the second relational definition is held by the masses.

For example in "American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving" sociologist Christian Smith views Evangelicalism in context of its doctrinal positions in contrast to Liberal Christianity. However in interview after interview the actual Evangelicals in Smith's sociological study continually define their own faith not in terms of orthodox doctrine per se, but as a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. What we see here a discrepancy between how Evangelicalism is understood as doctrinally focused by its leaders, and relationally focused by its laity.

Along these lines, former Moral Majority VP Cal Thomas bases his definition of an Evangelical on a set of doctrinal issues, and concludes that "Barack Obama is not a Christian". But if we instead ask whether Obama is a Christian based on the relational criteria that most Evangelicals actually hold to, we get a very different answer. Obama can speak very naturally about his relationship with Jesus Christ. For example addressing a church he tells the story of alter call experience when he was introduced to,

"someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith... kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works." (full text HERE)

It is interesting to note that in the interview from the Chicago Sun-Times which Cal Thomas references as the sole source for his conclusion of Obama's non-Christian status, Obama is quoted there as well as describing himself as having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ". Thomas omits that part, and only focuses on his doctrinal disagreements.

But let me throw a wrench into all of this. I would propose that whether a politician is a Christian (using either of the two definitions) is actually pretty irrelevant. What we need to know is how the Christian faith plays out in how he does politics. A politician's personal faith is something that I have no connection with since I do not know them personally, where we interact is on a political level, and so what I need to know is how they conduct their public and political life and the values and policies they have. Are those vales influenced by the character and values and way of Jesus? Are their actions and values reflecting Jesus and his kingdom? That is what matters to us.

We Evangelicals have in the past paid way too much attention to politician's personal faith, and way too little (if we paid attention at all) to what it would mean to govern in a Christ-like way, or what Jesus would do if he were them. As a result it has been enough for a politician to simply say they were "one of us" and we simply assumed that this must automatically translate into them making all the right choices, with relatively zero reflection on what those choices might be, or what Christian leadership on a political level might look like. This kind of naivete has lead to us evangelicals being easy targets for politicians to take advantage of. Former White House Aide David Kuo tells an eye opening insider story of this which you can check out online HERE.

I'd say based on this that this biblical illiteracy of what it means to be a Christian politician - or better how to be a politician in a "what-would-Jesus-do way" is of major importance. What I would like to do over the next few blog posts is to outline what I see as a biblical criteria for Jesus-style politics, leadership, power, and public life. But that will have to wait for the next post...

Mysticism, Evangelism, and the Emergent Church

Mysticism is defined primarily as the experience of intimacy with God, and the life practices used to cultivate that relationship. Understood on these relational terms it is at the very heart of Christian faith and life. Mysticism in the form of the monastic tradition has always been the life blood, as well as a key renewal movement with Catholicism. Likewise, within Protestantism's major movements towards reform and vitality found in Pietism and revivalism have been strongly rooted in a mystical experiential connection with God. Indeed Evangelicalism's focus on the centrality of the new birth and the proclamation of the Gospel are at heart relational and mystical concerns. Liberal faith with its roots in Schleiermacher is at heart as well a faith rooted in mystical experience. Finally, Orthodoxy has always maintained that mysticism and theology must go hand in hand. In short, every major branch of Christianity – whether liberal or evangelical, from Catholic to Protestant to Orthodox – is deeply rooted in mystical relational experience of intimacy with God.

The question is where does the emergent church stand in relation to this mystical relational faith? There has been some emphasis on "praying the hours" and other contemplative exercises, but at the same time as Scot McKnight has charged, there is a hostility towards evangelism (the sharing of relationship) and a re-definition of the Gospel in terms of "following Jesus" and his kingdom as a "way" rather than being in an intimate relationship with Christ effecting all of life. The later emphasis on the "kingdom now" at the expense of the eternal is something people like Andrew Jones have criticized in the writings of Brian McClaren. So this is definitely a (critical) conversation that is taking place within the emergent ranks among those who love it rather than simply an outside critique. The meergent church deconstructing itself. That's a good.

Some of the questions that arise are these: Does the emergent church tend towards an understanding of mystical experience that is self-focused with its new found focus on mystic rituals? Does it have an understanding of the gospel as "kingdom way" that is ultimately impersonal and detached from a relational encounter with a transforming God? How can we care about social justice without falling into the trap of secularized liberal church? How can we develop a rich and compassionate understanding of evangelism without falling into the dogmatism of fundamentalism. I'm afraid much of the emergent movement tends towards completely jettisoning the idea of evangelism all together, and is thus in danger of becoming spiritually infertile? Coming from a Pentecostal background as I do, I like the idea evangelism being about a relational encounter with power rather than a rational proposition, and think we would so well to remember our roots in the Great Awakenings that focused on both personal and social transformation through the Spirit working in people's lives and world.

Learning from our past, contextualizing here in our present post modern situation, and looking forwards towards an emerging future, what should be our approach towards mystical relational faith be, both personally and socially?

penal substitution and being born again

While Penal substitution has been the predominant theory of the atonement among Evangelicals such as my self, it in fact does not coincide with an Evangelical understanding of the new birth which has to do not only with justification: a legal change in our relationship, but far more with regeneration: the renewal of our very being - God's act of giving us new life, a new birth. John Wesley writes,

“Justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God in justifying us does something for us; in begetting us again, he does the work in us. The former changes our outward relation to God, so that of enemies we become children; by the latter our inmost souls are changed, so that of sinners we become saints. The one restores us to the favor, the other to the image, of God.”

What Wesley here is addressing is the contrast between the doctrine of justification that had been developed under Lutheran orthodoxy post-Luther which focused on a mere legal change, justification understood as acquittal. In contrast, beginning with German Pietism, and then through both Methodist and Reform channels we have the flowering of Evangelicalism which returned the focus to the need to be born again leading to waves of revivals in the First and Second Great Awakening. Simply put, this idea of justification going together with regeneration was and is at the very core of Evangelical faith then and now.

Luther himself underwrites this interpretation of the Gospel in his Preface to the Book of Romans. Luther decries an understanding of faith with “no betterment of life or works that follow it” as merely a detached theoretical human faith “that never reaches the depths of the heart” and contrasts this with genuine faith which he describes as “a divine work of God in us” that “changes us and makes us to be born anew of God (Jn 1:3)". This faith, Luther says, “kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men of us in heart and spirit. Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith, and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly.”

Simply put: At the very heart of Evangelical faith is the idea of being born again. Regeneration and justification together constitute a proper Evangelical understanding of salvation. Therefore an Evangelical understanding of the Atonement needs to address both the issue of justification and regeneration. Any theory that addresses only part, is an incomplete theory that does not present the full Gospel.

Penal substitution on its own only addresses justification, but not regeneration. It speaks of what God does not do to us (he does not punish), but it says nothing of what he does do in us to make us a new creation. So even if we accept that one of the things that happened on the cross is that Christ took the penalty on our behalf, the atonement means much much more. Penal substitution on its own is at best a half-Gospel. Simply being aquitted is not enough if we are “dead in our sins” as Paul says. We need to be made alive, to be born again. So the question that remains unaddressed by penal substitution is: “how does God work that new life in us through the atonement?” At the very least one would need to combine penal substitution with other theories which can account for how regeneration is achieved in the atonement. Solely on its own penal substitution only explains what God does externally for us in the cross, but not what he does in us.

So why is it that despite the clear teaching within Evangelicalism for the need to be born again, we have adopted an understanding of the Atonement that does not reflect this? It is interesting that Wesley while he re-thought what salvation was about, adding the idea of regeneration to justification did not do the same with the Atonement. Instead he simply adopted the traditional penal view of his church. Like Luther, he was a practiical theologian rather than a systematic one. As a result he did not follow things to their logical conclusions, but simply focused on his one core message. It is the task of those who follow to continue along that path, and to ask how the idea of substitution may be understood in terms of how the Christ-event makes it possible for us to be born again.

All Theology is Mystical

Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky in his The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church writes that

"The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience... and the dogma affirmed by the church... we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth".

This lived faith, he says, involves a "profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically." While there has traditionally been conflict between the theological side of the church and its mystical side, one seeking to preserve orthodoxy and the other focused on renewing a vital relationship with God leading to inner and outer transformation, Lossky insists that the two in fact are inseparable. Theology needs to be focused on fostering a transformed church, on leading us into relationship with God.

Too often this has not been the focus of theology. Instead the focus has been on systematizing the mechanics of the universe, one deciphering out exact workings of the Trinity like a math problem, or precisely defining doctrinal statements that seem distant from life. Stanley Grenz criticizes just this tendency for theology to become focused on extracting propositional truth out of the narrative of Scripture and organizing it in systematic form like detached entries in a encyclopedia, because it becomes then removed from relationship. Reading through the history of theology one can get the impression that this has been the focus of theologians for centuries. Take for example Augustine. Augustine is credited with the doctrine of original sin and predestination, but taken out of his narrative context these can seem like detached and impersonal doctrines and one misses the vital relational faith that they spring from. Predestination becomes a question of determination, as if it were a kind of natural force rather than a relational concept of God's desire and intent to be in relationship with us, having purposed (pre-destined) us to be loved by him, chosing us the way a lover chooses their beloved. Original sin likewise is relationally motivated because it speaks of our deep need to be in relationship with God and how outside of that connection we cannot be our true selves. One gets this relational context reading Augustine directly because his writings ooze with the beautiful aching prose of the lover seeking God. Augustine's theology is written in the form of a prayer, a love letter to God.

"You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed, shined, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath, and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst for You. You touched me and I burned for your peace."

In “Silent Fire,” Walter Capps and Wendy Wright describe Augustine as “the father of the mystical tradition” They illustrate that Augustine's understanding of salvation was deeply relational, rooted in his idea of humilitas which expressed the soul's deep need and yearning for God. Humilitas is “the disposition of the human heart, bestowed and formed by the divine presence. Through it the image of God is reconstituted, and the presence of God is brought to interior consciousness.” (p 17) This experience of a relationship with God indwelling and transforming us, Augustine says, must be “born within the soul” in the same way Christ was born in humility in the manger. In other words: ye must be born again. We have here at the heart of Augustine's understanding of salvation, rooted in his own conversion experience, an expression of the new birth that could not be more clear – inner transformation by the indwelling Spirit experienced in a loving intimate relationship with God found in surrendering oneself to Christ as Lord and savior.

Here we have in Augustine, the father of the mystical tradition (meaning an experienced relational born again faith), who is at the same time, the father of western orthodoxy. Yet reading many surveys of theology focusing on the later, you would never guess that Augustine (and so many others) have this intimate relational faith. Instead one is left with the impression that their faith was focused on cold doctrinal formulations. But to miss this intimate experiential focus is to miss the very heart of theology, sucking out its life. In reaction to this, many people see Paul as opposed to Jesus – Paul being the poster boy for cold doctrinal formulations, and Jesus being loving and relational. But to read Paul this way, as with Augustine, is to completely misunderstand him. Paul is the “father” of the churches in Corthinth, Ephasus, Galatia, and so on, precisely because of his focus on mystical faith, because he encountered them with a transforming relationship with God. With the “power of God” rather than with intellectual arguments or doctrine. All the doctrines that are derived from Paul spring from this relational, experiential, mystical root of a vital lived encounter with God in Christ transforming his life from the inside out. As with Augustine, Paul who writes the bulk of biblical doctrine is at the same time profoundly mystical. One could say the same of John whose Gospel is the most theological and the again most mystical. There is no conflict between theology and mysticism, between religion and spirituality, between experience and revelation, between Biblical and experiential faith.

The root of this is not in experience but in God's self-disclosing personal revelation in Christ as witnessed in Scripture. We need theology to help us connect to that root. But the connection is one of experiencing that reality in our own lives, in entering into a relationship with God. Theology's job is in lead us to that loving transforming relationship. A history of theology that is not a history of vital relationship with God is a dead history that paints a false picture of the church. Theology is not primarily an academic intellectual exercise, but one that needs to be done on our knees.