Archive - August, 2010

The Gospel We Don’t Know

August 3, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

In May, I was in New York listening to a bunch of folks at Redeemer Presbyterian Church talk through the intersection of their faith, their “secular” work, and theological education. At one point in the discussion, a person suggested that maybe what self-sacrificial love looks like in this transient world of ours is committing oneself to a place. I think there was something profound in that answer.

Such a perspective on commitment to community is reiterated in by Ajith Fernando in a fantastic, spot-on, drop-dead-perfect article in this month’s Christianity Today entitled, “To Serve Is to Suffer.”

His thesis is deceptively simple: not only is “suffering” something we should be made “aware of” as “that which happens over there and far away,” but the very character of “vocational fulfillment” in the kingdom of God is tied to service–often, suffering service as we carry forward the mission of the Suffering Servant.

Fernando speaks of the challenges incumbent on ministry, and claims that our post-industrial infatuation with efficiency and measurable results too often draws people away from seeing through callings to hard, pioneering work where tangible, measurable outcomes may reside 10 to 15 years in the future.

But more than this, living out our faith in the developed world that brokers no discomfort, we too often see suffering, discomfort, and pain as indicators that it is time to move on rather than indications that we are finally entering a stage in our relationships where the true transforming power of the gospel might begin to make itself known.

Because we leave when things get difficult, Fernando claims, “The sad result is that Christians do not have the security of a community that will stay by them no matter what happens.” He goes on:

Sticking with people is frustrating. Taking hours to listen to an angry or hurt person seems inefficient. Why should we waste time on that when professionals could do it? So people have counselors to do what friends should be doing.

Inefficiency is not the stuff of rousing report cards sent back to the denomination, but it is the stuff of family. Working through hurt and pain is not the stuff of growth charts, but it is the stuff of the community that brings to bear on its world the gospel movement from death to new life.

About a year ago our house church was going through some difficult relational issues. People would ask us how things were going. The response I developed was this: “We’re having some really hard conflict right now. Which means that we’re healthier than almost any church I’ve ever been in–because we’re actually having the conflict.” I think there’s something to that.

Death for Good? Thoughts on Donnie Darko

August 2, 2010 in Culture, Media with 6 Comments

This weekend we watched the cult classic, Donnie Darko.

The film is disturbing, challenging, and at least a little bit confusing.

The plot involves Donnie, a teenager with emotional problems and apparent hallucinations, in a series of acts guided by a mysterious, disturbing looking 6-foot-tall rabbit. (Harvey, anyone?)

As Donnie is led by the rabbit to go back and change the past, I was left to ponder the extent to which his changing of the story was a good thing. He was able to act selflessly to transform his own story into one of redemption, to save a couple of lives along the way, also.

But the rabbit had led Donnie to do a couple of things that would now be left undone. One chain of events initiated by the rabbit put Donnie in the right place to keep a girl from being harassed by the school bullies. One action the rabbit led Donnie to perform led to the discovery of a secret child pornography studio and/or distribution center.

It seems that the scary rabbit led Donnie to create a better world–right up the end where Donnie returns to undo what had been done.

Have you seen the movie? Do you think the undoing of the past at the end is ultimately a good thing or a bad thing?

How Physical Is the Future? (3 of 3)

August 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 6 Comments

Over the weekend, I posted the first two parts of a reply I made to someone who wrote to me with this query: “what would be some good new testament verses that I can use to explain how physical our eternal lives would be?  How about on the subject of our culture continuing?” (part 1, focusing on 1 Corinthians 15; part 2, focusing on Romans 8). Here’s part 3:

I think that the last part of your question is the most difficult. What can we say about “culture”? Here, the hints are more faint but I think we have some trajectories set in the NT that we can follow. In general, I think we can anticipate that the beneficial aspects of culture will carry over into the age to come because the picture we get of new creation is not an obliteration of the old to make way for an entirely new one. Instead, it’s a picture of God redeeming and renewing the creation he has already given us.

Perhaps this is an aside, perhaps not, but either way: it seems to me that if God had to entirely wipe out the old creation in order to give us an eternal dwelling place that this would be an ultimate victory for Satan–that the powers of darkness could so take hold of God’s world that God would be incapable of freeing that same world and bringing it into conformity with its original, God-given intentions.

Building on what we’ve already talked about, I think it’s important that in Romans 8 not only do we groan while we await our resurrection-redemption (verse 23), and not only does the Spirit groan on our behalf, asking for things we don’t even know how to ask for (verse 26), but the creation itself groans, awaiting its redemption which will come when we are raised from the dead (verse 22). The created order is not waiting around to be abolished in favor of a better creation, it’s waiting to be redeemed. This says to me that there will be carry-over even of some aspects of creation that seem to us to be physical and/or transient.

Another hint we get of a continuity in the area of culture is in Revelation 21:26 (a passage that Rich Mouw discusses so well in When the Kings Come Marching In). There, we read of the glory of the nations being brought into the New Jerusalem as gifts that God receives to himself. This raises the question in my mind of what could possibly be brought into the city of God from those surrounding pagan environs–places and peoples that the rest of Revelation might lead us to think had been obliterated in the final judgment!

I string this together with a couple of Old Testament passages that, to me, point us in the direction of recognizing that God’s glory is not merely about the things God himself does, but is strongly tied to the things his image-bearers do as they fulfill their primordial calling to rule over and to fill the earth. In Isaiah 6, the angelic beasts sing to each other “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” An alternative translation is, “… the fullness of all the earth is His glory.”

This latter reading makes me wonder if the reason that the nations can bring their glory to God at The End is because this is their contribution to the earth’s fulness, their manifestation of a deep-seated primordial calling to fill the earth and cultivate it as God’s stewards.

With questions of culture, and with music in particular, I see a possible eternal destiny because the New Creation is in some continuity with the Old (even though it is purified through “judgment fires”) and because we get these hints that human activity even outside the bounds of what is done by the people of God has some purchase in the full expression of the glory of God.

What is “the glory of the nations”? This will always remain speculative, but it seems that facets of cultural development such as art, music, science, etc. might qualify. I don’t think there is an easy verse to point to so as to say, “culture continues,” but there is a theological trajectory that might lead in such a direction.

O.k. I’ve gone on far too long!

If you’d like a little more, here’s something I wrote up for Christianity Today this spring: “A Resurrection that Matters.“

And if you want a lot more, there’s always Unlocking Romans. :)

Grace & Peace,
Daniel

No Paper Required

August 1, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Book Reviews, Kindle Reading with 2 Comments

At long last, Unlocking Romans is available on Kindle. You may go download it now.

I should point out to all my friends with iPads, Macs, iPhones, Blackberries,and Androids, that one can get a free Kindle reader and use said devices to read this wonderful treasure and myriad other books.

How Physical Is the Future? (2 of 3)

August 1, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 4 Comments

Yesterday I posted part 1 of an e-mail I wrote in response to one I received asking about the physicality of the future: ““what would be some good new testament verses that I can use to explain how physical our eternal lives would be?  How about on the subject of our culture continuing?”

Here’s the second part of my reply:

Romans 8 is a great place to go to see how all these things hold together. As in 1 Corinthians 15, in Romans 8 our identity as God’s people derives from our union with the resurrected Jesus. We have the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, that’s the Spirit that cries out Abba, Father within us and enables us live new lives here and now (Romans 8:9-11).

But even while this Spirit allows us to know that we’re God’s children (Romans 8:14-17), it also creates a deep longing for us to know fully what it is to be God’s child–we wait for our adoption, the redemption of our body (i.e., our resurrection) (Romans 8:23).

Interestingly, if you follow the line of argument from “We are God’s children” in verses 14-17, through “We await the time when we’ll be fully adopted into God’s family” in verse 23, you have to go through a passage that speaks of creation itself groaning, longing for redemption and deliverance from decay.

For Paul, the fact that there is a new human, who creates a new humanity, means that the entire creation has a new representative before God. As the first Adam’s disobedience had ramifications not only for humans’ relationship with God but also for the entire created order, so too Christ’s obedience as the last Adam has ramifications for the whole created order. A new creation has dawned with Jesus’ resurrection.

The idea that our souls only are saved is too small an idea for God’s work of salvation. Not only are our bodies included, but the whole created order is made new. This is why Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 5: “If anyone is in Christ–New Creation! The old things have passed away! Behold! New things have come!” It’s not simply that we are made new creatures, but that our personal newness is one piece of a cosmic puzzle that God is putting together.

Paul gives us some of the clearest indications of this, but I don’t want to pin it all on him. The final scene in the Bible is the arrival of the Kingdom of God upon the earth. The cosmic geography of the last couple of scenes in Revelation is important: it is not a scene of people flying up into heaven to be with God, but of the holy city descending from heaven to the earth so that God now makes his dwelling place among us. New Creation.

There are also hints in the Gospels, such as when Jesus at the last supper says that he will not drink fruit of the vine again until he drinks it new in the Kingdom of God (Mark 14:25). Apparently, the future to which Jesus looks is one in which there will be eating and drinking–even in our transformed bodies.

Tune in tomorrow, same storied time, same storied station, for the rousing conclusion!

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