The recent stories of Josh Harris and Marty Sampson, one the well-known author of I Kissed Dating Good-Bye and the other a Hillsong songwriter, have been scrutinized recently. Some had a bit of a databank of others to draw upon for their observations while others had some pastoral experience with folks leaving the faith. There is lots of speculation, so it seems to me, in what is being said.

Some years back I wrote a chapter in a book on this very topic: Finding Faith, Losing Faith. (One chapter in this book was written by Hauna Ondrey, now a professor at North Park Theological Seminary.) My conclusions were based on months of reading depressing stories of “de-conversion” or “apostasy.” It seems that work can be brought to be bear on what is now being said about these two recent departures from the faith. Much of what is being said of late is based on (overly, narrowly) scrutinizing only these two stories and filling in the blanks with some (too much) theoretical speculation.

My conclusion at the end of my study is that a person apostasizes or leaves the faith to find independence. This autonomy can be intellectual, psychological, or moral (or behavioral) or more than one or all of them. My study leads me to believe we should be looking through the statements of someone like Marty Sampson to what he wants to do, how he wants to behave, to whom he wants to answer. He’s looking for independence for something.

I’ve grabbed a few paragraphs from my chapter in what follows:

Theoretically speaking, all conversions are apostasies and all apostasies are therefore conversions. Everyone who converts leaves a former faith, even if that faith is ill-defined. Everyone who leaves the orthodox Christian faith converts to a different faith, even if that new faith is as ill-defined as a kind of agnosticism or personal theism or even gentler forms of atheism. Those who study conversions often observe that a conversion to something means a conversion from something else, but rarely does the observation work itself into the fabric of one’s study of conversions themselves. One rare exception is the fine study of John Barbour, who specializes in studying autobiographies.

In his study, Versions of Deconversion, Barbour observes that those who tell their own stories of conversion also reflect on their own past through four lenses:

they doubt or deny the truth of the previous system of beliefs;

they criticize the morality of the former life;

they express emotional upheaval upon leaving a former faith; and

they speak of being rejected by their former community.

Barbour studies some of the most important “autobiographers” in the history of the Church, including Augustine, John Bunyan, and John Henry Newman. These people not only had great skills in analyzing their own conscience, but their own stories have shaped how Christians have learned to tell an acceptable story of conversion. To study these tree figures is study how Christians have learned to tell a conversion story. And one element of this story is the need to explain the inadequacy of their former life and even anyone associated with it. This study will reverse the typical Christian story to study those who have left the faith, those who have committed what the historic faith calls “apostasy.”

There is no historic profile for someone who leaves orthodoxy or, to use a clinical and historical term, who commits apostasy by abandoning orthodoxy. Some of those we have studied were nurtured into the faith in committed Christian homes (like Christine Wicker) while others experienced dramatic conversions to the faith (like Templeton and Loftus). Each, for a variety of reasons, encountered issues and ideas and experiences that simply shook the faith beyond stability. In essence, those who leave the faith discover a profound, deep-seated, and existentially unnerving intellectual incoherence to the Christian faith. The faith that once held their life together, gave it meaning, and provided direction simply no longer makes sense. For such persons, the whole of life has to be reconstructed from the bottom up.

Not all who experience this intellectual incoherence abandon their faith permanently. Timothy Larsen, a professor at Wheaton College, has detailed the stories of seven intellectuals who not only endured a crisis of faith that shook their faith but who also, once on the other side of the fence, experienced another crisis of doubt that led them back to the orthodox faith. His book, Crisis of Doubt, remains an enduring reminder that walking away can be followed up eventually by returning home.

What were the issues and ideas and experiences that precipitated their “crisis,” their walking away, and their quest for a new and different kind of life, one no longer related to that original faith?

Scripture in tension with what one believes Scripture is/ought to be

Science and faith in a war with one another

Christian hypocrisy

Hell as taught: eternal conscious punishment/torture

The God of the Bible (Old Testament usually)

In my study, one and nearly always a combination of the above five major elements forms the core of a crisis in the viability of one’s orthodox Christian faith. Because humans are complex and because our decisions are made in the crucible of life with all its connections and because with nearly every person I have studied there is more involved than one issue, when a scholar like Bart Ehrman seems to reduce his crisis to the discovery that the text of the New Testament cannot be determined with certainty, someone who studies conversions is left wondering what else was involved in that decision. After discovering that Abiathar in Mark 2 was a mistake, Ehrman says this of his own mind: “Once I made that admission [that the Bible could be wrong], the floodgates opened.” From there Ehrman charts the devolution of his own orthodox faith. Such, indeed, was his crisis. The result of a crisis like this for those we have studied is a collapse of their own personal faith in Jesus Christ and all that entails, including ostracism from one’s faith community and the reconstruction of a new world of meaning.

Even if the stories of those who leave the faith do not emphasize the benefits one finds or the newly-found intellectual coherence on the other side, intellectual coherence is the immediate and most sought-after desire. Perhaps the best evidence for this is the animus one finds in the constant diatribes and arguments such persons express against Christianity. Many of us have seen this in Richard Dawkins, author of the fiery book The God Delusion. It is my contention that what drives a Charles Templeton to write out in white-hot prose his railing away against Christianity in his Farewell to God, or John Loftus to write an entire book detailing his credentials and arguments with his former faith, Why I Rejected Christianity, or Harry McCall to resort to caricature, or Dan Barker finding a need to tell that story in Losing Faith in Faith, is the same: the intellectual incoherence they discovered in Christianity led them especially to debunk Christianity and attempt, so far as they are possible, to construct intellectual coherence and personal meaning on the other side. Another way of putting this is to suggest that those who leave the faith feel like jilted lovers or even betrayed by the one they loved. There is a need for anti-rhetoric, a need to make their problems with the their past a matter of public record.

In the end, to circle back to Thomas Paine, the advocate for those who leave the faith is reason, autonomous, independent, freethinking reason. “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

Regardless of who the person is and where they came from, in the end those who have walked away from the faith have come to terms with an inner reality: they have to make up their own mind and live with the results.

By Mike Glenn

The joke among my Baptist friends is when another Baptist says, “I’m praying for you,” it simply means they’re leaving. It doesn’t mean anything else. They’re probably not going to pray. They’re not going to do anything. They’re just leaving.

This is what came to mind as I watched the protests after the mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso. Several of the speakers and marchers spoke to this directly. The protests went something like this: “Don’t pray for us. Don’t send us your prayers. Do something”. The speakers and marchers are tired of people brushing off their pain by simply saying, “I’m praying for you,” but not committing to any action to make our communities safer.

These speakers are like most of us. When we hear someone say they are praying for us, we don’t expect anything to happen. We aren’t looking for them to do anything that will really help.

That’s sad. What’s sadder still is most of us don’t understand prayer. Prayer is never a substitute for action, but the needed first step to faithful and good action. Without prayer, our “help” ends up being misguided at best, and harmful at worst.

Scripture gives us a very different picture of prayer than most of us have. Most of the great events and miracles of the Bible came out of and through prayer. Go ahead. Make a quick list.

Here’s a list off the top of my head:
-Hannah’s prayer for Samuel
-Moses’ prayers for Israel
-Elijah’s prayer on Mt. Carmel
-Jesus’ prayer at the feeding of the 5,000
-Jesus in Gethsemane before the crucifixion
-Jesus praying before the raising of Lazarus
-The church before Pentecost

My list is in a random order and incomplete, but the point remains. Prayer isn’t an absence of action, but the necessary first step to true and helpful action. Without prayer, our actions are thoughtless, reactionary, and because we haven’t taken the time to think through the issue, our actions caused more harm than good.

Yes, prayer is indeed a conversation, but prayer is more than just talking. Prayer is the moment the pilot checks the flight plan before taking off. Prayer is the meeting of the generals to go over the battle plans before the battle is engaged. Mechanics check over the race car one last time before the race, and coaches talk about the game plan just before the game starts –that’s prayer.

Prayer is the long conversation where we make sure our hearts, desires, and thoughts are aligned with the heart, desire, and the mind of Christ. Then, and only then, are we prepared to act.

Prayer is the battle inside before the battle is fought on the outside.

Don’t misunderstand me. The battle still has to be fought. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, and as He humbled Himself under the call of the cross, He still had to endure the cross. Gethsemane was not a substitute for Calvary.

Praying for a friend doesn’t relieve us of the call to minister to that friend. After we pray, as we pray, we still visit our friends in their homes, or hospitals, or prisons. We still have to take them meals, read Scripture with and to them, and do all of the necessary things love requires.

I would be suspicious, even fearful, of any action that isn’t birthed and bathed in prayer. That would be like taking a trip without knowing the destination or cooking without reading the recipe. We know the disasters that have followed these well-intended, but misguided efforts.

We should absolutely pray for the communities involved in these mass shootings. We should lament our world has come to be a mess like this where lost and wounded young men think they can only deal with their pain by wounding someone. We should grieve that children going to the store with their parents to buy school supplies are shot – wounded and killed – by an angry young man they don’t even know.

We should weep with those who weep and then, we need to get up and do something. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know about “red flag” laws, or how much ammo any weapon should be able to fire without reloading. I don’t know the answer.

I know there is an answer. Somewhere in all of this discussion and in all of these recommendations, there’s something we can do to make our communities a little safer and our childhoods a little less violent.

Yes, pray. Then, get up and go do something. Find those young men, alienated and angry, love them and be their friend. Help them deal with their pain. Help them find their identity and move toward a more positive future.

Talk to gun groups, anti-gun groups, politicians and church leaders – find a common ground so we can find a safe and democratic future for all us.

I’m not anti-gun. I’m not pro-gun. I’m pro-freedom. I’m pro-life.

I’m praying about that. I’m working for that.

Love requires nothing less.

In John 18:36 Jesus responds to Pilate’s questioning “are you the king of the Jews?” saying “My kingdom is not from this world. … But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”(NRSV) Many English translations have of of this world, and some have both of this world and of here, leading the impression that Jesus is saying that his kingdom has little concern with worldly things. Not so, say Jonathan Moo and Robert White in the concluding chapter of Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis.

Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world, but it most assuredly is for this world. He came to seek and save the lost, to inaugurate the kingdom of God, to atone for the sins of the world on the cross, to redeem and reclaim a suffering creation and to prepare the way for the renewal of all things – of which his physical resurrection is the sure and certain sign. In this time between his resurrection and return, Jesus; followers have work to do. (p. 163)

Climate change is a divisive topic. Many are convinced that the danger is very real others express significant doubts. The form the arguments and disagreements take is probably the most significant part of the problem between scaremongers and head-in-the sand deniers it is hard to know where to turn. I’ll put my cards on the table – denial is a head-in-the-sand approach, of this I have no doubt. Whether the scaremongers are right, how fast things will change, … this isn’t clear. Our climate is complex and we don’t have all the parameters under control. Models for prediction of the future contain a fair number of estimates and approximations. But the world is finite and the activities of 7.7 billion people are making a difference.

So what is a “Christian” response to the question? This isn’t a question the Bible deals with directly in any fashion. Any response has to be gleaned from the whole sweep of scripture. We don’t have a Green Bible to turn to for guidance.

Moo and White make several points.

Pray and never give up. We should persist and persevere in bringing the kingdom of God to earth. It isn’t that our actions are necessary to bring God’s kingdom … but that we are called to live in the kingdom today. This requires that we reflect on our own actions and the influence that these have on the world and on the presence of justice in the world.

We have no excuses. We can’t plead ignorance and we can’t retreat between the smokescreen of caring for people first not the environment. Nor can we retreat behind the smokescreen of false humility, as though humans can’t actually have an effect on God’s world. Clearly God allows humans to mess things up royally. No Green Bible, but some clear guidance.

We suggest that Scripture provides us not with all of the answers in a simple list of dos and don’ts, but with a countercultural vision of radical discipleship, a godly wisdom and an ethos that fundamentally reorients us to the world. … We need to seek wisdom, discernment, and humility in all of our study and decision making. We must, however, be wary of our predilection to find answers that suit our own selfish desires, for we know in our hearts that we are always tempted to avoid the radical challenges of following in the path of Christ. (p. 165)

Love, Hope, and Joy. Biblical hope is no a promise of “pie in the sky by and by.” We are challenged to “faithful, righteous living that embodies God’s promises in the here and now.” (p. 167) God’s judgment is and will be real. Human suffering is real as creation groans today – as we live in a world marked by wounds of human origin … violence, injustice, greed, and indeed ecological damage. We need to respond to all of these with the outward directed ethic that Jesus taught. Moo and White refer to the story of the rich young ruler in Luke 18. Jesus told the man “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” It isn’t that we need to live in radical poverty, but that we need to be outwardly focused on the good of all God’s people and indeed of all of God’s creation.

What now? Moo and White may overemphasize a biblical mandate for “creation care,” but their approach is generally helpful and clearly debunks the notion that this world is to be viewed as a temporary consumable. Many others go much further with a biblical call for “creation care”, but this really isn’t warranted. I don’t think it is an issue that the Bible speaks to directly in any fashion. It simply wasn’t on the radar screen of the authors and God didn’t insert these 21st century concerns into their minds and thoughts. But the fundamental message of scripture certainly applies. Repent of sin (aware of how ingrained our ability for self deception is), love God, follow Christ, love others.

This finishes our recap of the book by Moo and White. This isn’t the end of the story – either scientifically or theologically. We will turn next to a newer book by Douglas Moo and Jonathan Moo  Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World.

What should be the Christian response to climate concerns?

Where should our concerns and actions be focused?

If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

2 Peter 3 is a  well known passage concerning the Day of the Lord. A vision of the judgment to come and the effect this judgment will have on creation. Scoffers doubt that the end will come, and focus on their own evil desires. 2 Peter warns the reader…

But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

…

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. (3: 5-7, 10-13, NIV)

On the surface this passage is hard to reconcile the vision of Paul, that all creation is waiting in eager expectation for the day when it will be liberated and brought into freedom and glory.

Jonathan Moo and Robert White, Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis, dig into this passage. Why should creation rejoice given the end portrayed by Peter?

First we need to consider the form and context of the text. Like Paul, the author of 2 Peter is borrowing from the Old Testament, from the Prophets, and especially from the apocalyptic passages (think Daniel and Ezekiel as well as other passages scattered throughout the prophets) that “employ dramatic imagery to portray the salvation and judgment of God.” This isn’t a prediction that we should read like a historical narrative.

Like much of biblical prophecy 2 Peter 3 describes events that transcend ordinary human experience, and only metaphor, poetry, and the language of apocalypse are adequate for the task. … Peter simply is not concerned with instructing us about the physical structure of the universe; his dramatic portrayal of the coming of God to his creation is meant instead to transform the way we live and act in the world today. (p. 119)

Certainly 2 Peter intends to depict a real future judgment, but the language is the language of apocalypse. Moo offers two slightly different approaches to this passage, possibilities arising from the ambiguity of the language, but both with the same end result.

The heavens will disappear with a roar. Verse 12 talks about the destruction of the heavens by fire. However, this doesn’t refer to the disappearance of the universe as we know it, the stars, planetary systems, and galaxies revealed by telescopes with sensitive cameras studied by astronomers and astrophysicists. Neither the author nor his audience knew anything of this. Rather, the picture in their minds was of the heavens as the realm of God and his angels.

Given that God is envisioned as enthroned in his transcendent “heaven” above (2 Pet 1:18; 1 Pet 3:22), this burning away of the earthly “heavens” suggests that the symbolic separation between God and his creation is being done away with; the earth is about to be visited by its Creator, Judge, and Redeemer. (p. 120)

The elements will be destroyed by fire. Verse 12 echoes this with the elements melting in the heat. The elements here (Gk. stoicheia) may refer to the elements of the cosmos as the Greeks and Romans understood them: water, air, earth, and fire. But they don’t refer to the atoms we study, describe, and manipulate as chemists. This, in turn could refer to the burning up of the entire world. However Moo points out that the NIV translation “since everything will be destroyed in this way” misses a word and the NRSV is more accurate “since all these things are to be dissolved in this way,” a wording followed as well by the ESV “since all these things are thus to be dissolved.” The phrase “these things” may have a more limited referent than implied by the NIV’s use of “everything.”

In any case, it is important to note that the “destruction” of the elements or “all (these) things” would not have meant for the ancient readers the dissolution of the world into nonexistence. The language of “destruction” is used in the Bible to describe something that has been rendered unfit for its purpose … The idea is of something wrecked, ruined, broken apart or put beyond human use, not of something having been obliterated into nothingness. (p. 120-121)

But there is another possibility as well. The elements may not refer to the material earth at all. The elements may refer to heavenly bodies; stars, sun, moon, possibly even evil “heavenly” spiritual forces.

A number of scholars have thus argued that Peter is describing here, not the melting of the earth but the destruction of heavenly “elements” prior to God’s judgment of the earth. The idea expressed in 2 Peter 3:10 would in this case echo Isaiah 34:4 where an ancient Greek translation describes God’s judgment as a time when “all the powers of heaven will melt.” (p. 121)

2 Peter may be describing a progression:

(1) the outer heavens are torn away, (2) the intermediary heavenly bodies are dissolved with fire, and then (3) the earth itself and all the things done in it are laid bare before God, being “found” before him. There is no longer anything left to separate or hide human beings from the testing fire of God’s judgment.

Peter is using vivid cosmic imagery in this passage to convey the common biblical idea that on the last day there will be nowhere for anyone or anything to hide from God’s judgment. (p. 122)

Everything done in it will be laid bare. The focus of 2 Peter isn’t on the earth or creation, but on human evil and the judgment of the ungodly. God’s judgment is sure and certain.

Peter’s “positive vision of the future” is “a new heaven and a new earth” (2 Pet 2:13). But Peter is keenly aware that it is only through the unmasking of human injustice and its judgment by God himself that this place “where righteousness dwells” can ever be realized. (p. 123)

The image of cosmic apocalypse is intended to drive home this point. There is nowhere to run, no place to hide. The fire will test everything – as Paul puts it “the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.” (1 Cor. 3:13)

What kind of people ought we to be? We should avoid the way of the scoffers and live in the light of God’s coming judgment. We should resist the temptation to live for ourselves alone, satisfying our appetites and desires. Making every effort “to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” v.14 Peter suggests that we may even be able to speed the day of the Lord’s coming through such living. We should live today with the virtues of the new creation, that place where righteousness makes its home.

Coming back around to the topic of their book – ecological crisis – Moo and White suggest that this means genuine self-control.

What will it mean for us to exercise genuine self-control, not only in our sexual lives (so often the exclusive focus of our teaching) but also in our economic lives, in how we do business, in what we consume and in what we choose not to consume? What will we decide is “enough” if we truly accept that God has given us all we need and that he desires us to reflect his generosity in how we live among our fellow creatures? (p. 128)

And two powerful challenges:

If we miss the the power of these texts to destabilize our comfortable lives and to reshape us into Christlike people who are prepared to follow in the way of the cross, to enter into self-sacrificial work on behalf of our neighbors around the world and of an entire groaning creation, we have truly become “ineffective and unproductive” in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Pet 1:8). (p. 128)

This isn’t about waiting for the destruction of the present world, consuming it as we go … looking to some disembodied existence or a to a brand new universe.

The challenge to 2 Peter’s readers is to live now, in the present, as members of that community of peace, as those who have entered already into God’s shalom even as we await the coming of our Lord and the fullness of the new creation that will accompany his coming. (p. 129)

2 Peter 3 challenges us to be aware of the coming judgment, to live accordingly. There will be a radical setting to right of the world and everything in it. This is not a pass to consume a world set for destruction anyway, but a call for faithful transformation to be the people of God.

Which is the better interpretation of 2 Peter 3? Cosmic catastrophe or a prophetic warning of the judgment to come when all will be laid bare before God?

How does this passage make sense in the context of the rest of the New Testament?

If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

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Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity

Brian Rosner is principal of Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of several books including the Pillar commentary on 1 Corinthians (with Roy Ciampa), and Paul and the Law and Greed as Idolatry. His book, Known by God https://www.amazon.com/Known-God-Biblical-Theology-Personal/dp/0310499828 frames this interview.

The interview was conducted by David George Moore. Some of Dave’s teaching and interviews can be found at www.mooreengaging.com.

Moore: You’ve written several other books, but this one includes some disclosure about your own personal life. Would you share the motivation behind writing Known by God?

Rosner: It’s a bit hard to write about personal identity impersonally – or so my friends and editors insisted. Most of my scholarship has been old school – pretending dispassionate neutrality, let’s say. But on this occasion, it was deeply personal. Back in the mid 1990s my life came off the rails in a big way and I was left asking the most basic of questions concerning my own personal identity: who am I really? Being a Christian I turned to the Bible for answers and looked to my relationship with God to steady the course. However, on this score, knowing God, which had always been such a big driver in my life, didn’t cut it. Instead, I found being known intimately and personally by God was a source of great comfort and reassurance.

The more I looked, the more I found the theme of being known by God to be widespread in the Scriptures and connected profoundly with other central biblical themes, including being remembered and seen by God, having your name known to God, and the doctrine of divine adoption (God knows believers as a parent knows their child). Most surprisingly for me, Jesus Christ himself had his identity as the Son of God confirmed by being known by God his Father at his baptism, transfiguration and resurrection.

My other motivation for writing the book was that in the last twenty years I’ve found that I am far from alone in feeling at sea with regard to my personal identity. Over the years I’ve had countless conversations with people of all ages in a myriad of circumstances who are wondering who they really are: people who’ve been made redundant; people whose parents have died; people whose identity online leaves them feeling like a phony; people who feel deflated by their aspirations for life not coming to fruition; people who feel diminished by consuming responsibilities for children or parents; people who feel at sea in our rapidly changing world. There are in fact good reasons to think that “identity angst,” to coin a phrase, is on the rise in the twenty-first century.

Moore: The modern notion is that we find our identity by looking within. Modern notions also include the idea that our identities can keep changing if that is what we desire. How is the biblical understanding different and better?

Rosner: It is true that in our post-modern pluralistic world we take for granted the obligation to find and define, or even invent, ourselves for ourselves. The frequently-heard advice in many contexts is: “be true to yourself,” “follow your heart,” “be yourself,” and the most recent and hippest version, “you do you.” Self-definition is the self-evident route to identity formation in our day. It is often labelled expressive individualism. Ours is a do-it-yourself self.

The problem is that this approach to identity formation is failing and faulty. It seems to produce a fragile and unstable self that cultivates unrealistic expectations for life, is ill-equipped to cope with setbacks and serious disappointments, is easily given to self-centredness, and is prone to pride and envy. Expressive individualism is faulty because we actually come to know ourselves not just by looking inwards but by being known by other people, those who are closest to us and reflect back to us who we really are. The same goes for believers and being known by God. God gifts us our identity as his precious children and that identity is confirmed by him knowing us intimately and personally.

In terms of personal identity, we are also our stories. But it is a mistake to think that our life stories are simply our own making and played out in isolation from others. The big story, or metanarrative, in which each of us lives, is often a shared story, a combination of defining moments and goals and expectations of life related to stories handed to us by our families and related to the stories of our nations, ethnicities, social classes and religious faiths. For Christians, this life-story is mapped onto the life-story of Jesus Christ – for the defining moment of our lives is dying with him, and his revelation as God’s Son on the last day will also be our defining destiny as we are revealed to be God’s children (see for e.g., Colossians 3:3-4). The choice for all of us is between striving for a starring role in our own short story, the genre of which could be a farce or a tragedy, or having a bit part in the grand story of God and the redemption of the world.

The life-story of Jesus Christ offers a stable and satisfying sense of self as a child of God united to Christ. The shared memory of dying with Christ gives meaning to our suffering and instils in us a measure of comfort and hope. We have good grounds to be humble and consider others to be more important than ourselves, in imitation of Christ, who humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. In identifying with Christ in his death we die to pure self-interest and are raised to live lives of sacrificial love.

Moore: I recently spoke to a large group of elderly people. My talk was about trusting God with suffering, but I made a quick comment about developing a “theology of aging.” People told me that night that they would like to hear much more on that topic. How does a biblical understanding of identity help us as we age?

Rosner: Aging is certainly a challenge to personal identity, especially if you invested heavily in your career and are now retired. Another problem for older people is that many of those who know them best are dying. And then there’s the challenge of dementia for some, when your own memories of yourself may be failing. For many old people it can certainly seem that their lives are diminished, and they might be tempted to think that their lives lack value and significance. A biblical theology of personal identity reminds us that our identity does not depend on our capacity, circumstances or achievements. Instead, our true self is hidden and kept safe with Christ in God and he knows us intimately as his child. If our memory is failing, and those who know us well are missing, we can rest assured that our true identities are kept safe in the memory of God.

Moore: How does appreciating that we are known by God give stability and spiritual sanity to our everyday lives?

Rosner: Speaking personally, knowing that I am known by God as his child doused a destructive pessimism that threatened to engulf me and instilled in me a sense of value when I felt worthless. Twenty years on, it continues to supply me with a stable and satisfying sense of self, along with the blessings of significance, comfort, humility and direction for living. Feedback on the book indicates that the same nourishing biblical teaching is of benefit to a wide range of people in all sorts of different circumstances.

Moore: Please share how friendships helped you gain your own sense of identity.

Rosner: There is something reassuring and beautiful about someone really knowing you. When I was going through my own difficulties, old friends, like Frank and Martin, were especially helpful. I had known them most of my life and we had kept in contact while I had lived overseas for the previous sixteen years. Martin likes to tell the story of asking me to dice an onion on our first bushwalk as teenagers. Not knowing that you had to peel it first left a lasting impression it seems. Frank was a flatmate in my early twenties and happily recalls my early attempts at cooking, which included serving up a relatively raw Chili con Carne. Back living in Sydney Frank called me every Sunday night and I went on regular overnight bushwalks with Martin. If I was having trouble remembering who I was, being known by Frank and Martin was a great reminder. It was also at this point that I found being known by God to be of great assistance. If knowing God had given my life purpose from my youth, being known by God proved to be a great comfort in a time of confusion and difficulty.

Moore: What are a few things you hope your readers gain by reading Known by God?

Rosner: My hope is that people will find the book helpful in considering questions of personal identity both in society and more personally. There are questions for reflection at the end of each chapter that work well individually and in small groups. And I’ve been encouraged to hear of the book being used to good effect in a variety of settings, including with young adults, seminary students, retirees and psychology majors, and in coaching and mentoring contexts.

Jonathan Moo and Robert White in Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis turn from the evidence for environmental crisis and global warming to a Christian response. There are plenty of secular people who think that the Christian response (at least the evangelical response) is to put our heads in the sand assuming that God will prevent any real damage of his good creation. As Moo and White point out, there is plenty evidence that some views of creation and the future taught by Christians fall into this categories.

A well known pastor, respected by many, has a sermon readily available on the internet (YouTube and other places – 10 years old now, over a hundred thousand views) that gives the view that the earth is 6000 years old and everything here is for our use as we subdue the earth, that the future is entirely in God’s hands. This pastor is consistent in his view, but the “science” he uses to dismiss global warming and ecological crisis is appalling – it isn’t fair to the science at all, but is simply a collection of rhetorical tricks. We have a black-eye in the view of many because of valid dismay at some of the things that Christians have, in the name of Christ and his church, said. (I don’t care nearly as much what they say in their own name and understanding.)

Start with the Gospel. The place to start, according to Moo and White, is with the gospel of Jesus Christ, with a robust view of God’s work in his creation throughout scripture culminating in incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

The presentation of the gospel begins with Luke 4 citing Isaiah 61.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read,and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

This is the good news, the gospel fleshed out in the life of Jesus.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, the Anointed One, the Messiah, brings in the era foretold by Isaiah when God would act to save his people, when his kingdom would begin to be realized on earth. This rule is marked by physical and spiritual healing, by rescue from oppression, by restoration and (if we read right to the end of Isaiah) by new creation.

The rest of Luke’s Gospel displays the signs of this already in Jesus’ ministry. … As Isaiah foresaw, God intends in Christ to address the physical, social, spiritual, and cosmic consequences of humankind’s brokenness and alienation from God. (p. 88)

As we see in the response that Jesus gives to John’s disciples (Lk 7) God’s kingdom is breaking through in the life Jesus lives.

And now to Paul. Moo and White then turn to Paul in 1 Cor. 15. The good news is the story of Jesus, the Messiah; his life, death, and resurrection. “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”(1 Co 15:3-4) Whenever Paul refers to the gospel he also refers back to the Scripture – i.e. the Old Testament.

For Paul, the story of Jesus is the gospel, and yet this good news cannot be fully understood apart from the wider story of which it is a part – a story that began way back in Genesis. If we are to understand the significance of Jesus and the gospel, then, we need to know something about this wider context, the bigger story. … As we share our faith with others, we need to learn how to tell the story of Jesus – to proclaim this gospel – as a part of the whole story of God’s purposes in creation and redemption. (p. 90-91)

They continue on through Paul’s approach in the sermons recorded in Acts and through the rest of the letters in the New Testament including the anonymous letter to the Hebrews.

[The gospel] is nothing less than the good news that in Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah of Israel, God has defeated the powers of sin and death and has inaugurated his restored rule over all of his creation. (p. 93)

The gospel challenges the competing claims of our societies today as it did for the Jews and Gentiles in the first century. For those of us in the West or “developed world” it challenges our worship of wealth and individualism. Individual freedom is “a freedom that so often is borrowed at the expense of others.” (p. 94) In the context of this book, global warming and the ecological crisis is a consequence of this freedom borrowed at the expense of others – or at least the continued inaction is to preserve a freedom borrowed at the expense of others.

There are two opposite dangers to avoid. Moo and White see two ways Christians can err on environmental issues.

1. Biblical hope is individual and future – a “pie in the sky” variety. This is linked to a view of the gospel as “all about me” that “answers only to my individual plight as a sinner before a holy God.“

2. To give up on biblical hope and presume that we can solve the fundamental problems of the world by ourselves.

The biblical perspective is far bleaker with regard to our human nature, far more honest about our sinfulness and our brokenness. But it is also far more radical in its promise of transformation and renewal, a transformation that begins now. (p. 95)

I mentioned above a sermon available online where a well known pastor dismisses global warming and presents earth as for our use. The irony of this sermon is that it extols the ingenuity of mankind in creativity and ability to overcome potential pitfalls of human activity. The myth of human progress (and western superiority) played as large a role in this sermon as it does in some secular humanist worldviews. This is, it seems to me, a distorted view of the biblical story. We must be far more honest about our brokenness and the potential for great destruction and self-delusion this brokenness has had in the past … and has yet in the future. If there is one sure lesson from Scripture it is that God will give us, as he gave Israel, the freedom to walk close to the edge and to cause great harm and hurt. God is merciful and gracious – but that doesn’t stop individuals or the land from the damage caused by our self-centered actions.

We can’t ignore the present and projected problems or assume that the solutions will come by human effort alone. Jesus, Paul, and John all emphasize the importance of love as the fundamental virtue of Christian life. Jesus taught his disciples to pray “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is hard to believe that God’s will on earth involves knowingly and in selfish interest creating lasting hardships for others, either around the world or in future generations. The next five chapters of the book will dig into this more deeply.

How does the gospel influence actions we might take on issues of global warming and ecological crisis?

What shape does biblical hope take as we continue to live in the world?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

By Mike Glenn

Speaking the Truth in Love Means We Don’t Give Up

On any given Sunday, I might mention to the congregation to be gracious to each other because we never know the heart ache that might be seated on the pew with us. Everyone who walks into a church on any given Sunday typically walks in with a load of care.

There’s a couple who is trying to think about how to tell their children they’re getting a divorce.

There’s the man who just found out he didn’t get the promotion he was counting on.

There are the parents whose daughter just told them she thinks she’s gay.

There’s the single mom who can’t afford to give her son everything his friends have.

There’s the young man who just got the diagnosis.

And the older man who just found out his treatments were no longer working.

There are the parents of the young Marine who was just deployed…again.

An old preacher told me, “Mike, be easy on your people. Most of them use all their faith just to get there. All week long, life beats them down, but on Sunday morning, they put on their shoes, come to church and say, ‘Today, I won’t give up.’”

Church members always want me to be more prophetic. You know, call sin a sin. When I hear this, I wince because I know the people who will be wounded more deeply by this message. I’ve also noticed people always want to me confront a sin they don’t deal with. It’s always white men who want me to preach against abortion and obese Baptists who want to condemn drinking alcohol.

Sorry, but it’s just not that easy. It’s not easy to be prophetic when you know too much and it’s not enough to simply tell the truth. Paul admonishes us to speak the truth in love. Most of us can get the first part right. We can speak the truth, but we fail at the second part. We don’t speak the truth in love.

The person we confront feels judged, condemned, and cast out. The conversation ends. Jesus had a remarkable ability to tell someone the truth and keep the conversation going. Look at His conversation with woman at the well. Read it again (it’s in John 4) and see how masterfully Jesus handled that conversation so that woman felt loved, redeemed – rescued.

How long would the conversation have lasted if I had been talking her? I would have been right. She shouldn’t have been living with a man who wasn’t her husband. I would have told her that and that’s where the conversation would have ended.

She would have known the truth. She wouldn’t have known the love of Christ. And that’s not good enough.

I have to see these people next week. I want to see these people next week. After 27 years of doing life with the bunch of believers, I grown to love them. I know the hard realities they are dealing with and I want them to succeed in every area of their lives.

They don’t. I know that. But I’m not leaving. I’m here with them for the long haul, however long it might be. Sure, I’ll tell them the truth, but I’m not going anywhere. We’ll stick together until they get it right. I pray they’ll stick with me until I get it right as well.

I’ve grown to understand if you really love someone, you tell them the truth. Whistling while you skirt by tough issues isn’t love, it’s cowardice. And yet, telling someone the truth in a way that does more harm than good, isn’t love either.

According to Paul, love never gives up. Social media has created too many “drive by shoutings.” That is, people who shout out judgement and condemnation to people they have never met and certainly don’t know. Truth can rarely be contained in 140 characters and certainly can’t be understood in that short of space. Most of us need time to soak in the truth, to let it saturate our lives before we truly are able to live it.

This is a key difference. While it is true that Jesus tells us the truth, he never leaves us alone with the truth. He tells us the truth and then, walks with us regardless of the decision we make. If we make a bad decision He stays with us and walks us back home. If we make good decision, He keeps walking with us until reach the next level of commitment.

He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t leave us. This is what speaking the truth in love means. We tell the people we love the truth, no matter how painful it might be, and then, we stay with them. We don’t abandon them if they make bad decisions. We celebrate with them when they make good decisions.

Either way, we don’t leave them.

Anymore than Jesus would leave us. Love seeks the truth. Love rejoices in the truth, but love doesn’t leave because truth didn’t happen.

Love never gives up. Love knows truth will win and we hang in there until it does.

When I started this series on creation care I received an e-mail questioning the wisdom of diving into the topic. For many creation care is synonymous with climate change or global warming. This is a political hot potato. Unlike evolution, where we evaluate evidence in existence and consider physical models to interpret the data, the concern with climate change rests substantially on extrapolation into the future. Our models are improving, but far from perfect. This makes extrapolation somewhat risky. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should ignore the issue or regard it as an illusion. Frankly, the potential consequences are far too great. It does mean that a modicum of intellectual humility is appropriate.  It isn’t all extrapolation, however. There is very real evidence for our concern.

Jonathan Moo and Robert White in Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis. are unequivocal about this: human activity is changing the global climate, period. They find the evidence to be undeniable and inescapable. They are also quite clear that they view this to be a serious problem that will harm humans, especially the weak and the poor. They are less certain about other aspects – whether we have or have not crossed a tipping point, how big the effects will be, and what specific measures should be taken. They present a number of lines of evidence for their view – one of which is the declining arctic sea ice extent in September when it is at a minimum each year. The overall decrease between 1979 and 2017 is approximately 30%. There is a decline for every month of the year, but the effect is largest in the heat of summer. There was a rebound after a record low in 2013, but it doesn’t appear that the general downward trend has changed. The image here is from globalchange.gov.

Moo and White also include a plot of three different global average temperature records created independently. The NASA average (one of their three but updated through this year) is plotted to the right – image from wikipedia. The other two follow the same trend.

It is important, of course, to ask if these changes are “natural” or the result of human activity. There are, after all, natural fluctuations in the earth’s temperature resulting in periodic ice ages and periods of warming. In fact, it has been warmer at times in the past than it is today. The recent changes, however, are far too persistent and the turn-on was too sharp to be accounted for by known natural mechanisms unrelated to human activity. “But when the greenhouse gases produced by humans are added, the agreement between the models and the observed temperature record is much closer. … This is a potent indication that humans are responsible for the rapid temperature increase since preindustrial times.” (p. 66-67)

Why is there so much skepticism? Moo and White point to six contributing factors. The first is that climate is a long-term average phenomenon, yet we experience weather on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis. It is hard for the average person to grasp the changes or the potential consequences. The media also plays a role by giving equal time to opposite sides of the debate. Open discussion is good, and should happen in the media, but because the format tends to feature one supporter and one skeptic the audience comes away with the impression that there is a great deal of disagreement in the scientific community in general and among climate scientists in particular. The pie chart illustrates the public impression (data from The Yale Project on Climate Change). In reality there is a strong consensus among climate scientists on the issue, but not unanimity.

There is some distrust of the experts. The 2009 hacked “climategate” emails didn’t help matters in this regard. Nor does the tendency to hubris among too many scientists and the expectation that the general public should simply shut up and believe the experts. Scientists can also be rather poor at explaining their results in a way that the lay public can understand.

Both of these things must change [hubris and lack of clear explanation], because the public needs to own the results and to be carried along with the scientists if they are being asked to sign up to hard and perhaps costly changes. (p. 76)

Moo and White also point to deliberate misinformation by large corporations with much to lose in the short term. This can be compared to the long effort by tobacco companies to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking.

Finally – it is easier to do nothing than something; especially when there is no owned sense of urgency. Loud, pessimistic pronouncements by activists and climate scientists do much harm here. Even if the alarmists are right, they won’t move the mountain of opinion and get the necessary action this way. The public has to own and buy into the need, it can’t be imposed upon them.

What next? Moo and White argue (and this will be the focus of the rest of the book) that appropriate Christian response is deliberate action. We can’t just sit on our hands and do nothing.

If we are truly to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus commanded us to do, then those of us in the high-income countries that historically have caused global climate change through our emissions of greenhouse gases have to take account of the effect of our actions on our neighbors and on all life on earth. Those neighbors may be invisible to us, either because they live in faraway places such as southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, or because they are not yet born. Yet, given what we now know about the consequences of our actions, our responsibility toward them remains. We enjoy a high standard of living largely because of our burning of fossil fuels both today and over the past century or more. So we have a responsibility to help those affected by this to adapt to their changing circumstances and to do what we can – individually, communally, politically – to stop wreaking such damage, to try to prevent the worst-case scenarios climate scientists warn us about. (p. 79)

I expect that there will be some discussion about appropriate actions, but the primary focus of the remainder of the book will be the development of a biblical and theological case for action. The irony is that we, as Christians, should be at the forefront of a movement to care for others and to act responsibly; yet we tend to be among the most skeptical and least concerned to engage in the issues.

Are you convinced that humans are causing a change in the global climate?

What would convince you?

If we are changing the global climate, what should we do about it?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

This is the next question addressed in Rebecca McLaughlin’s new book Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion. The question is reminiscent of the subtitle of Christopher Hitchen’s 2009 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. There are many problems with the premise. The first and most important is that it groups all religions together under the same banner. The ills of one apply to all. This is like claiming that philosophy hinders morality without distinguishing the pros and cons of different positions; as though Marxism, Libertarianism, Rationalism, Nihilism, Relativism, and so forth, are all the same.

The more significant question is much narrower. Doesn’t Christianity hinder morality?

Here we would have to answer no. Now this isn’t to deny the fact that some people have used Christianity as an excuse for immoral acts. The history of the church is full of missteps and grievous wrongs as well as positive acts and developments.

Why is the answer no? First and foremost because of the grounding value of human life and human flourishing. According to Scripture humans are created in the image of God, a little lower than the angels with intrinsic value and a vocation to care for each other and the world. The greatest commandment after love of God is love for neighbor broadly defined. The command to love your neighbor as yourself runs through the New Testament and derives from the Old. A while back I wrote a post How Can You Be a Christian? working through many of the New Testament verses and have revisited the theme in a number of later posts as well. Few of us would view the themes here as immoral or destructive influences on society.

For many people in the Western world secular humanism is a foundational value. According to one website “humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.” Humans have a unique place in the world and a unique responsibility to face up to the consequences of human decisions. In conversation with N.T. Wright, philosopher Heidi Maibom provides the view that our ethics should be shaped by the desire to reduce suffering, human suffering and indeed the suffering of all creatures (you can find the conversation here). The reduction of suffering, especially human suffering, determines the ‘greater good’ toward which humans are to aspire.

Rebecca McLaughlin argues that atheism in unable to support the goal of humanism on any foundational rational ground. Human reason simply isn’t enough to get us to any declaration of human rights.

British political scientist Stephen Hopwood expresses pessimism about the future of human rights in today’s climate: “The world in which global rules were assumed to be secular, universal, and non-negotiable,” he argues, “rested on the presumption of a deep world-wide consensus about human rights – but this consensus is illusory.” Hopwood asserts, “The ground of human rights is crumbling beneath us,” and he predicts that as American global influence wanes and China emerges as the most powerful country in the world, concern for human rights will decline. (p. 64)

In World War II we witnessed (well before my time – but not my parent’s) atrocities on a massive scale, but this was not really unique. Anti-semitism, racism, imperialism, slavery, genocide, and conquest have deep roots in all human cultures. Inalienable human rights, accompanied by a definition of ‘human’ that encompasses all races and religions is a rather new idea. The ground is crumbling and secular humanism is not the answer to shore up the foundation.

Rebecca argues that for all the failures in the past (and these are not to be ignored) Christian faith does provide a foundation for universal human rights. It provides “a reason to dare to believe that ultimate justice is more than a delusionary longing in the illusionary mind of the collection of atoms you mistakenly call “me.”” (p. 74)

This is not an argument for the truth of Christianity – although some will find it a convincing line of thought, others will not. Just because we long for a foundation does not mean there is one. Wishful thinking is not a sure foundation. Others (and she cites Steven Pinker) hold out hope for a thoroughly secular grounding for universal human rights.

It is, however, a refutation of the claim that religion necessarily hinders morality. Many of the values we hold dear are, in fact, consistent with Christian faith and may have even originated from this cognitive environment because of, not despite, Christian teachings about human identity.

On what do we ground our ideas of morality?

How does religion hinder or promote morality?

Is there any absolute foundation for ideas of good and evil?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Walter Moberly, The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith, explains why he finds the Bible and the Christian faith both plausible and convincing. Although the Bible is important, it doesn’t work in a vacuum. In chapter 3 he “suggested that people are most likely to take seriously the Christian privileging of the Bible and Jesus if they encounter the lives of Christians as plausibility structures that moves them towards the Christian way of life and thought, with a possible view towards making it their own.” (p. 130) This is developed further in Chapter 4. The church isn’t simply another social club providing a context for pleasant life together.  Moberly continues “more needs to be said about what the persuasive force of Christian witness in the world requires if a person is to become, not just in name, but in reality, someone who believes the biblical witness, and supremely its witness to Jesus – and why such belief should be a good thing.” (pp. 130-131)

What does the Bible teach and why should such a belief be a good thing?

Throughout his book Moberly has used passages from Aeneid 1 and Daniel 7 as case studies to discuss the privileging of the Bible. In the Aeneid, Jupiter bestows on Rome unending dominion over the world, “On them I set no limits, space or time: I have granted them power, empire without end” and establishes a descendant of Aeneas to rule the Roman empire and establish peace.

Daniel 7 describes a vision where one like a “son of man” comes before the Ancient of Days and is given dominion and glory and kingship – an everlasting dominion that shall never be destroyed. The Ancient of Days is understood to be Israel’s God. On the surface Aenied 1 and Daniel 7 are similar accounts.

Moberly asks: “If the Bible is not to go the same way as Virgil, and is to be more than interesting religious thought and/or a collection of memorable stories from the past, then on what basis is the case for it to be made?” (p. 144)

To make his case for Daniel as Scripture rather than an interesting, but merely human, ancient text, Moberly turns to Matthew 28:18-20.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This passage has clear echoes of Daniel 7, “this resurrection appearance of Jesus is appropriately read in relation to – indeed, as a realization of – the Daniel vision.” (p. 145) Of course, the mere reference to Daniel 7 in the Gospel of Matthew isn’t enough to make it Scripture. To make such a claim we would have to begin with the assertion of Matthew as Scripture – a claim as fraught with uncertainty in the modern disenchanted age as any similar claim about Daniel. Matthew 28, however, does indicate the significance of Daniel 7 in the early (Jewish) church. Jesus is not merely a contemporary teacher and example, but the very one who stood before the Ancient of Days (and also the promised Davidic King).

So now we ask, what is the nature and content of Jesus’ authority?

In Matthew 4 we read the well known story of the temptation of Jesus. The devil offers Jesus dominion if he will only worship him and Jesus replies  “Away with you, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’.” Power and authority is not given by Satan or for the good of the one to whom it is given. We see this again on the cross and in the events leading up to it. Moberly highlights two passages. Matthew 16 where Peter recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, but then rebukes Jesus for saying that he, as God’s Messiah, must suffer. Peter’s response is very human “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turns to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”  But he has a word for the disciples (and us) from this interchange: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.“

Later, on the cross Jesus declines to rescue himself in the face of taunts and mocking.

“You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” … “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matthew 27:40-43)

This gives us insight into the authority of Jesus – its purpose and content. Authority is not given for self-preservation and aggrandizement. It is not for the one to whom it is given at all.

It is the Jesus who lives and dies thus – who consistently refuses to use his divine power to make things easier for himself or to save himself – who is raised from the tomb and appears to his disciples saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That which he refused to take is given to him. … The fact that Jesus does not use his sonship to his own advantage but rather is willing to undergo suffering and death while being mocked and misunderstood, and yet is then raised from death to receive sovereign and universal authority, gives meaning to this authority. (p. 151)

As Paul makes clear in his letter to the Philippians ch. 2, it is this shape of authority that the disciples and all Christians (especially leaders) are called to follow. A Christian reading of Daniel 7 cannot be considered separate from Matthew 28 and Philippians 2 in the context of the entire New Testament.

Persistence and Community. While the continued reception of texts in the people of God – Israel and Church – is not a sufficient reason for privileging the Bible as Scripture, it is a necessary condition.

We assume and expect, because countless others have assumed and expected before us and found these assumptions and expectations to be fruitful. Thus, questions about privileging the portrayal of the deity and the human-like figure in Daniel 7 are inseparable from the evaluation of those continuing patterns of life and thought that are a constituent part of that privileging: who, for people today, are the significant others whose perspectives are considered desirable? (p. 157)

How does the “supernatural” become “natural” in our world today?  That is, how does it become believable and relevant? The answer isn’t signs and wonders, but in the lives of God’s people.

The answer is surely when human lives are so receptive to, so graced by, God that they display God’s own qualities. As a famous passage in Jeremiah says:

Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jer. 9:23-25 [Hebrew 9:22-23])

When human lives display steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, they display what matters more than things that people customarily value (intelligence, strength, money) for they display God’s own qualities. (p. 161)

There is much more in Moberly’s chapter worth considering, but this post is already long. This is a very thought provoking book – both in points of agreement and points of disagreement. Perhaps the best place to end the post is with Moberly’s conclusion to the chapter.

In short, the purpose of privileging the Bible for faith in God is not to say, “Here is truth and elsewhere is error.” Rather, it is a matter of being willing to learn, in light of the sovereignty of the crucified and risen Christ, ways of recognizing and responding to what is and is not of true value in God’s world, wherever one may encounter it. (p. 166)

God is not the answer to that which cannot be otherwise explained – some kind of physical mechanism active in the world. We will not find proof of God in a scientific sense. Moberly considers Bertrand Russel and Richard Dawkins among those who err by expecting God to be an empirical “scientific” explanation for features we observe in the world. This is a flawed approach. Nor is the Bible some kind of self-evidently “magic” book through which we find propositions ruling our lives as God followers. Rather it is a book that leads to wisdom. Certainly we look to the age to come. Resurrection is a foundational Christian hope. But we also look to live as the people of God today.

Frankly, and this is my point, not explicitly Moberly’s, the biggest issue in our disenchanted age is not the defense of the Bible as a privileged book, but the regular failure of Christians to live up to the vision of God we find in the Bible and especially revealed in Jesus and the New Testament. Sexual harassment and abuse, power mongering, focus on the accumulation of wealth, preservation of institutions rather than discipleship and shepherding of God’s people, greed and self-centeredness rather than generosity and servanthood … we could go on.

There are plenty of devout and dedicated Christians – they don’t make the news very often. But we need to make the case for Christian faith and the value of the Bible as Scripture first and foremost through the way we live. Receptiveness to the gospel begins with the work of the Spirit in and through the church.

The authority given to, assumed and modeled by Jesus has the power to transform the ways of the world.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.