I begin a new series on miracles, focusing on Luke Timothy Johnson’s new book  Miracles: God’s Presence and Power in Creation.

Yes or Almost No or No? That’s the theme of the first chapter.

Yes

Everything in Christianity hangs on the miraculous: no God, no act of God in reality, no resurrection, no miracles by Jesus — no faith left. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 15.

The heart of the Christian message was, in turn, the greatest sign and wonder of all, the resurrection of Jesus and his exaltation to the right hand of God.

Miracles in the Bible operate as acts and as prophetic words that are fulfilled.

Such assertions concerning the immediate and present experience of God’s power in the empirical realm—that is, among and within and through actual human bodies here and now—go together with a second bold claim: the messianic age proclaimed and celebrated by believers is in fulfillment of the prophecies contained in Scripture.

Claiming the fulfillment of prophecy was, in its own way, as much an appeal to the miraculous as were assertions concerning healings and exorcisms.

It didn’t stop with the death of the apostles.

By no means did believers consider the miraculous to be confined to the time of Jesus and the apostles. The power and presence of the living God continued to work in palpable fashion among the saints, those holy men and women who were understood in a mystical sense to be “other Christs.”

Despite the skepticism directed toward the miraculous by Enlightenment figures, as we shall see, a stout belief in the manifestations of God’s presence and power within creation continued among Christians less influenced by the rationalistic premises of critics.

In short, the majority of Christians have celebrated the presence and power of God in creation through signs and wonders, not only in the stories of the Old and New Testament, but also in their own fives.

Almost No

But not all Christians believed or continue to believe in miracles, and denial of miracles is deeply rooted in the Christian story itself. Many leaders of the church have not believed in miracles for their day and some even failed to mention Jesus’ own miraculous powers.

This tendency begins with the attitude of Christian apologists toward the miracles claimed for pagan cults.

The same sort of anxiety concerning the miraculous affects the apologists’ attitude toward miracles claimed by Christians. Thus, although Justin’s argument in his Dialogue with Trypho depends so heavily on the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, he pays little attention to the wonders performed by the ancient prophets and is suspicious of those claimed by recent prophets: Justin notes that “certain wonderful deeds” have been performed by false prophets to astonish people and “glorify the spirits and demons of error” (Dialogue 7).

In an argument from silence, which strikes me as at least something worthy of consideration, Johnson points to the absence of miracles at times.

In sharp contrast to those writings (apocryphal gospels and acts, martyrologies) that celebrate the continuing power of God at work, not only in Jesus but also through the risen Jesus in his apostles and other saints, the apologists of the second and third centuries are astonishingly reticent even concerning the wonders ascribed to Jesus in the canonical Gospels.

The second- and third-century apologists perfectly represent the … sort of religious disposition, found in the New Testament in the letters of Paul, James, and Hebrews. Right thinking and right acting is the point of religion and the proper expression of the divine power. Mature Christianity is not expressed so much by signs and wonders, as by the quiet moral change in humans and in the structures of human life.

The suspicion, if not the outright denial, of the miraculous continued among bishops and more philosophically inclined Christians through the following centuries.

Many today are cessationists and this taps into Augustine and the Reformers.

Protestant Christians, in turn, are shaped by the bias of the early Reformation against miracles, not least the extraordinary gifts of prophecy and glossolalia, and tend to follow the position of Augustine: miracles were a distinctive manifestation of God’s power during the period of the New Testament but are not to be credited today.

No

Skeptics have always disbelieved in miracles and some argue they are impossible both to define and achieve.

The systematic denial of the miraculous does not begin with modernity. … Epicurus sought to establish the same “freedom from disturbance” (ataraxia) among his followers by denying the reality of omens and portents and prophecies and by insisting that all phenomena can be explained by natural causes, rather than by appeal to divine powers.

Not until the European Enlightenment did a vigorous and principled denial of miracles again appear, now within a Christianity already shaped by the Reformation s rejection of all forms of catholic “superstition.”

What we know today is less Epicurus and more Deism and Hume and then Strauss and Bultmann:

But it was the British Deists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who, under the rubric of “superstition,” eliminated any trace of the supernatural from Christianity, including above all any claims to the miraculous.

This background of a Christianity already defined almost entirely in rational terms provides the setting for the pivotal work of David Hume (1711-76), a Scottish thinker apparently devoid of any strong passion and having at best an attitude of superior condescension toward traditional Christianity. … flumes approach is not ontological (“do miracles happen?”) but epistemological (“can we assent to the assertion that miracles happen?”).

Hume provides a definition of a miracle that he already turns, in the same sentence, to a denial of the miraculous: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined” (1.90).

Hume could, in fact, have defined a miracle in more neutral terms without altering his basic position. He could have spoken of an event that is the exception to ordinary human experience, or one that transcends ordinary human expectations … .

Hume’s conclusion is that traditional Christianity is simply incompatible with the rationality celebrated by his peers of the late eighteenth century: “So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one” (2.101, emphasis original), by which, he means, that faith is itself a kind of miracle, contrary to reason.

The deists lead to Strauss and Bultmann — both of whom denied the miraculous and clothed such stories with mythical interpretation.

The crisis of the present age is that the culturally most influential forms of Christianity have capitulated to a worldview that effectively eliminates the miraculous from serious consideration.

The formation of future ministers in such academic settings, in short, has become complicit in producing preachers of the good news who are embarrassed by talk of signs and wonders, and who (along with Hume) tend to regard claims to the miraculous as the sign of an ignorant and perhaps stupid population, a population that turns out to be, more often than not, the very people to whom ministers are called to preach. Symptomatic is the way the writings of the Episcopal bishop John Spong are taken by many “thoughtful Christians” as the only alternative to a dreaded “fundamentalism,” even though his work is both derivative and puerile (Spong 1992, 1994).

By Dorothy Greco

Dorothy Littell Greco writes about marriage, parenting, leadership, and the intersection of faith and contemporary culture for Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, Start Marriage Right, and many other publications. She is a member of Redbud Writers Guild. Dorothy has also worked as a professional photographer for more than thirty years. She and her husband Christopher are passionate about helping men and women find health, wholeness, and joy through the pursuit of Christ. Dorothy loves kayaking, traveling, and concocting gluten free desserts.

In part 1 of this series, we established that sin, group think, evil spiritual forces, misuse of power, and an inadequate understanding of Scripture have led to misogyny and broken expressions of sexuality. Now that the origin and manifestations of misogyny are clearer, we can explore how the gospel offers the solution.

A Biblical Hermeneutic of Gender and Sexuality

Before we can experience whole and healthy relationships characterized by mutual respect and honor, we need to grasp God’s creative intent for humanity. Genesis 1 reads,

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us.” …

So God created human beings in his own image.

    In the image of God he created them;

    male and female he created them.

Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” (Gen. 1:26-31 NLT)

These passages reveal that men and women are created as different but equal image bearers and are given the exact same mandate from God to be fruitful (not only through procreation but also via all other forms of creating) and to care for the earth and the earth’s inhabitants.

In Genesis 2, the creation story gets more specific. “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” (Gen. 2: 18 NLT) The Hebrew word for helper is ezer which essentially means warrior sidekick—not subordinate or servant.

Per God’s design, “a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” (Gen. 2:24) This is a breath-taking directive—one that elevates the purpose and the practicality of marriage beyond the ancient Middle East norms that mandated women leaving their own families to become the property of their husband’s clan.

Jumping ahead to the New Testament, Jesus’ interactions with women reveal a powerful alternative to the world’s—and some churches’—understanding of male-female relationships. When he spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well, he did not take advantage of or demean her but instead engaged with her theologically and personally.

Later, when “a sinful woman” poured perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair—a scandalously sensual act—he did not shame her or accuse her of trying to tempt him, but instead commended her before the men who were present (Luke 36:50). Again and again, he honored women and overturned oppressive gender hierarchies.

A New Way Forward

Given our legacy of broken relationships and deeply entrenched misogynistic practices, how can we follow Jesus’ example and create a culture where the full flourishing of both men and women is normative? In Jesus Feminist, author Sarah Bessey writes, “Sometimes we turn over tables in the temple, and other times, we invite conversations and start with an apology.” In this situation, we need both tactics.

#MeToo turned the tables over on the men both inside and outside the church who assumed they could continue to mistreat women without repercussion. However, just because women have decided that they’re no longer going to keep silent when they’re abused or mistreated does not change the reality that men still have more power—both in terms of physical strength and corporate structure.

For the misogyny-fueled mistreatment of women to end, men will need to both acknowledge how vulnerable they are to the invisible pull of power and, as a way of resisting that vortex, choose to give it away rather than hoard it.

Relinquishing power never comes easy. Men can move in this direction by choosing to relate to power as Jesus did. Though he had the capacity to call down legions of angels to smite the soldiers who pounded nails through his flesh, he surrendered that same power in order to free us from sin and death. His remarkable, universe-altering choice opens up the possibility for us to use whatever power we have for redemptive, life-giving purposes.

In order for this paradigm shift to happen, men and women will need to engage in honest conversations about broken relational dynamics and courageously confront any of the ways that cultural narratives have superseded Scriptural narratives.

For example, did God design men to have insatiable sex drives, which is how it’s often spun—even from the pulpit? Or, is this a direct result of the fall, compounded by the entertainment industry and unrelenting advertising campaigns that mock men’s integrity, objectify women’s bodies, and use sex to sell everything from internet hosting to M&Ms? If we want a culture where both women and men can fully thrive without the threat of abuse or rape, we have to boldly confront and reject any unbiblical ideologies.

As a woman, one of the most powerful aspects of the #MeToo movement was when men began to listen and understand how their misogynistic beliefs and behaviors deeply wounded us. The week #MeToo swept across the internet, pastor Brad Wong of The River Church in San Jose, CA, led the men in his congregation to kneel during the Sunday morning service and audibly confess any of the ways that they had dishonored or disrespected women. I wept in gratitude upon hearing this.

Acknowledging mistreatment and abuse through confession is an integral step in repairing broken male-female relationships. Confession should include overt sins as well as stealthy sins of the heart such as apathy and cowardice. Much like systemic racism, sexualized violence and mistreatment of women will not end until enough men interrupt their brothers’ behavior. And if confession does not lead to repentance, it’s meaningless.

Honest confession and true repentance not only break the deadening silence that so often accompanies sexual abuse, they also pave the way for forgiveness. Rachel Denhollander, a lawyer who brought charges against sexual abuser Larry Nassar—and one of his victims—made this statement to her perpetrator during his trial:

Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet. Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. … I pray you experience the soul crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me, though I extend that to you as well.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing. As I write in Making Marriage Beautiful, “When we drop the charges against those who have sinned against us, we are not excusing their actions, minimizing the damages, or opening ourselves up to further mistreatment. We are simply agreeing that Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross is sufficient.”

Victims get to determine the timeline for offering forgiveness. The church tends to rush victims to forgive, but victims must have agency to process their trauma and respond to the perpetrator when they are ready. Otherwise, they may be re-traumatized. Further, it’s crucial to note that forgiveness does not necessitate reconciliation with an abuser.

By asking perpetrators to confess and repent and victims to forgive, Jesus is inviting us to follow him to the cross and the tomb, so that ultimately, we can share in his resurrection power and bring his kingdom to the earth. In the process, we learn how to love, honor, and respect each other.

When these heart issues have been addressed, there will not be a need for rigid boundaries (e.g. Billy Graham’s rule of not meeting one-on-one with any woman other than his wife). Graham’s practice might be appropriate in some cultures and for some men, but it’s a culturally bound concession, not a biblical mandate. According to author Carolyn Custis James, “If men diagnose the danger as outside of themselves, they’ve misdiagnosed their problem. Jesus nails it by pointing out that lust is about a man’s eyes and his heart, not the women. Christian men should be the safest [men] for women to be around.”

Custis James continues, “The notion that things work better and human beings become their best selves when men and women work together is found on page one of the Bible. When God was launching the most ambitious enterprise the world has ever known, the team He put together to do the job was male and female.” And according to Scripture, that team was very good.

It’s undeniable that the #MeToo movement successfully empowered women to no longer live as silent victims. Time will tell if it also helps to reduce misogynistic practices such as rape and sexual harassment. One thing is certain: the church has the potential to lead this relational revolution—provided that men honor women as equal co-heirs and use their power to ensure that every human being has the opportunity to fully flourish.

By Mike Glenn

According to those people who stay up late at night and wonder about these things, our culture is suffering an epidemic of anxiety caused by FOMO, or, the Fear of Missing Out. According to this theory, we have become so connected and intertwined with the world around us through our digital gadgets and social media that we no longer can be separated from our devices – even to sleep – fearing we’ll miss someone’s tweet, or blog, or video from a random star, musician, politician or social media personality.

We’re afraid someone will walk up to us and ask, “Did you see that?” and we won’t have seen it and we’ll miss out. That, of course will make us look bad, like we’re not with it or not cool or not engaged in what’s happening in our world. And looking bad will make us feel bad. Because we don’t want to feel bad, we never turn our phones off. Some of us even sleep with our phones in case something happens while we’re asleep.

As you can imagine, FOMO is causing all kinds of problems. Namely, there’s stuff happening all of the time. Not only do we not have the band width to capture all of this data, we don’t have the “brain width” to process the incoming information fast enough to make sense of it all. We simply aren’t created to download thousands of bits of data every second. We’re going to miss something.

Second, too many spend too much time watching other people live their lives and we never live our own. We worry about the dating relationships of the stars, but neglect our own marriages and dating relationships. We watch the cute video of the child prodigy dancing, reciting poetry, playing drums or guitar and we neglect our own children. We forward cat videos to friends, but we rarely talk to our friends to find out how their doing.

Sadly, our fear of missing out causes us to miss out on those things that really matter, that make life worth living in the first place.

In the last years of her life, my mom suffered from Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. My mom always had a sense of humor and the freedom of the illness gave her permission to say whatever she wanted to say. She came up with some doozies.

But in the fog of the illness, she would find some gems of life focusing truth. Once, when I was telling her why she was having to live in an assisted living facility, I told her that her memory was failing. She couldn’t remember things that made it possible for living on her own. She would turn on the stove and forget she was cooking. She’d get out of the car and leave it running. She would start driving and not only forget where she was going. She would forget where she was to begin with.

Her response? “There’s nothing wrong with my memory. I’m fine. There’s just a lot of things I don’t want to remember any more. Have you ever thought there may be things I just want to forget?”

Yes, Mom, I understand. There are things I want to forget and there are things I don’t want to know in the first place.

I’ve self-diagnosed myself with a new social anxiety. I’m calling it the Fear of Not Wanting to Know in the First Place.

According to our culture, I should know all of the Kardashian children and whoever their dating in this episode. I don’t and I’m fine with that.

I don’t know the latest in men’s fashion. I’m good with a good pair of jeans and a comfortable pair of shoes. I’m too old to wear uncomfortable shoes. Are my shoes out of style? I don’t know. I’m good with that.

I don’t know what Trump tweeted today. I’m good with that.

I don’t know what those people who hate Trump tweeted today. I’m good with that.

Urban legend says Einstein didn’t know his own phone number. He said it was written down and he didn’t have to remember it.

I’m with Einstein. There are a lot of things that one, I don’t have to remember and two, I don’t want to remember.

Here’s what I’m learning on my journey: the space in my brain is very expensive real estate and I don’t want to junk it up with a bunch of cultural nonsense. I what to protect my mind for pictures of my granddaughters when they’re going to sleep.

I want to remember way my wife’s eyes sparkle when I hold her face in my hands.

I want to remember the way my friends make me laugh until my side hurts. I want to remember how excited and scared I am when one of my friends says, “Hey, you remember the time…” and I have no idea which story they’re going to tell.

I want to remember how my church sounds when they sing an old hymn that all of them knows. More than that, each of them has lived this hymn and are filling the room with their own stories.

I want to remember the time when I was so scared, and Christ came to me. I’m going to be scared again. I’ll need to remember that one over and over again.

I want to remember how proud I was of my sons when I saw then hold their own children and realized these guys are really good dads.

Paul writes to the Philippians, “Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things”.

So, I’m with Paul, too. There are only so many things you can think about during the day. Only so many moments you can engage in…

The rest you’ll just have to miss out on…be OK with that.

By Michelle Van Loon

www.michellevanloon.com
www.ThePerennialGen.com

The newest wave of reaction to megachurches was sure to come in the wake of a string of moral failures of both charismatic leaders and the “yes man” approach of the elders/board members responsible for governing the organization. A number of pundits have noted that the megachurch built on a business model is a faulty structure not unlike a McMansion built on a foundation of sand. There is a renewed hue and cry to get back to small, local churches in order to prevent the kinds of failures we’ve witnessed among super-sized congregations in recent days.

While I have great sympathies for those sentiments – and am sympathetic to them – I also hear in some of these expressions two troubling motivations: nostalgia and pragmatism. I’d like to see both confronted in this moment before they take root among us, because neither will lead us in a healthy direction.

The first, nostalgia, is a wistful, filtered view of the past. Journalist Doug Larson said, “Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” Every time Scripture exhorts us to remember, it is a clear-eyed, present-tense participatory engagement with God, not a call to a sanitized, comforting yearning for the “better” ol’ days.

Though I’m not much of a fiction reader, I have enjoyed author Jan Karon’s Mitford series. They trace the story of middle-aged, diabetic Episcopal priest, Father Tim, as he seeks to minister to those in his small-town (and, occasionally, to assist other churches). The books are set in the present, and tackle contemporary problems including addiction, abuse, abandonment, and various incarnations of the seven deadly sins among those in Father Tim’s care – and in Father Tim himself. They are lovely books, and create an accessible picture of a man continuing to grow in his faith. But even with a heaping helping of modern-day problems, Father Tim’s world is at its heart a deeply nostalgic portrait of a small-town church and community – a place where everyone knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.

Some who are calling for a return to small churches have a longing for a Mitford-like oasis in our coarse, often-inhospitable culture. Truthfully, I share that desire, and I suspect many of you reading these words do, too. A smaller church can be an amazing extended family. But it can also be a place of loneliness or deep dysfunction that is simply a scaled-down version containing the very same problems we see in the megachurch world. I’ve been a witness to sexual sin coverup and abuse of power in several small churches. Size alone is no guarantor of a healthy community. Nor will trying to recreate an idealized vision of a past that never really existed.

The other temptation I see in this moment may at first glance seem an odd bedfellow with nostalgia. However, pragmatism fuels Evangelicalism and, to a lesser degree, many other streams of church in the West. We love what “works”, and nowhere has this been more evident than in the business of church growth books, conferences, and coaching that has shaped the way in which we think about our congregations and denominations for a generation.

Sadly, I hear a new pragmatism in some of those calling for smaller churches now. I live less than 15 minutes from 3 different megachurches, including Willow Creek. I grew up in this area, and remember 40 years ago there were many, many small and mid-sized churches here. That number has shrunk dramatically, in direct proportion to the rise of the megachurches that have been built in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. We may rightly lament the notion of transfer growth fueling the rise of the megas and multi-site churches, but it is worth noting that at least some of these smaller local congregations weren’t all that healthy in the first place.

As megachurches shrink from problems from within as well as perhaps reflecting a societal trend away from church attendance and membership. it is inevitable that new expressions of smaller, local churches will arise. However, trying to capitalize on the failures of this church or that one is a reaction, not a calling, and is at the heart fueled by pragmatism.

There are many wounded sheep milling around right now in the body of Christ – those who’ve been hurt by leadership failures and abuse, in large and small churches alike. Neither nostalgia nor pragmatism offer a cure. I long to hear of more current and would-be leaders asking the question of how to provide care, rest, and healing for those wounded ones. It is a question I’m not hearing asked nearly often enough right now, and it might well be the most urgent question we face as we move forward from here.

Yet another new book for our consideration.

Denis Alexander, molecular biologist, former chair of the Molecular Immunology Programme at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge and emeritus director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, has recently published Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. This should be interesting…

Purpose is one of those words that covers several different categories or concepts. Is life purposeful or purposeless? On one level there is, of course, purpose in biology. Stomachs are for the purpose of digesting food. The peacock’s plume and the beaver’s dam serve a purpose. The bright and beautiful colors of the Monarch Butterfly serve the purpose of warning potential predators that this insect is best left alone. It is distasteful and potentially poisonous thanks to the milkweed on which it feeds as a caterpillar and an adult.  The pictures of Monarchs in this post were taken on my vacation in northern Minnesota last week.  The Monarchs are beautiful and fascinating creatures – four generations a year, three short-lived (adults live two to five weeks) preparing for a long-lived fourth migratory generation surviving up to nine months to start the cycle again the next spring.

When we ask about purpose in biology this type of purpose, designated small p purpose by Denis, is not the kind we mean. Small p purpose is uncontroversial although fascinating. Capital P Purpose is a metaphysical concept. Some have argued (or simply stated with certainty) that evolutionary biology demonstrates that Purpose is a meaningless concept in biology. Peter Atkins, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have stated that there is no purpose in biology. As Denis puts it “Evolutionary biology itself, so the argument goes, renders it impossible that evolutionary history, taken overall, could have any rhyme or reason. Chance rules. Our own existence if a lucky accident. Things could have turned out very differently. Biology is necessarily Purposeless.” (pp. 14-15)

Denis Alexander challenges the idea that biology is necessarily Purposelessness. He does not claim that Purpose can be inferred from biology. Rather, he will argue that the assertion that it is necessarily Purposeless is a metaphysical assumption divorced from the biological science.  Purpose is consistent with evolutionary biology; at least as consistent as the absence of Purpose. While random and contingent events may point to Purposelessness, the physical constraints that shape biology and life suggest that Purpose is also a reasonable hypothesis. The tools of science are simply not designed to address the question of Purpose. Science, Denis writes, “can render certain metaphysical inferences less plausible, but trying to establish metaphysical worldviews based on science quickly leads to problems.” (p. 14)

In Is There Purpose in Biology? Denis Alexander will consider the history of thought on purpose in biology, some examples from biology that might point to Purpose, and the role that probability and random chance play in evolutionary history. It should make for interesting reading, good posts, and interesting discussion. Certainly the presence or absence of purpose has been a question often raised in response to posts on this blog. Denis is a good writer. His book, Creation or Evolution:Do We Have to Choose? has been a favorite with many. Read along as we go if you are interested.

Where might we find Purpose in biology?

Is biology, and thus life, Purposeless?

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.

Is the Book of Job a parable? What is the message of Job? Does Job believe in life everlasting or prolongation of days  in one’s descendants?

Matt Levering, in his new book called Dying and the Virtues. examines the Book of Job and intersects it with the longing for life everlasting because of love. If God loves us, then God can’t annihilate us. That’s a major theme for Levering for the Book of Job.

Life everlasting and love. They are not tied together enough, but for the one who truly loves another facing death is facing not loving, and that’s where fear and terror and doubts occur. It is missing the other, it is being alone. The questions “What about me? Will I live eternally?” are not as important, and can be signs of narcissism, as the question “Will the one I love, will the Divine Lover, be there on the other side? Will those I have loved be on the other side?”

Hence, Levering opens up on the right note.

Joseph Ratzinger has argued that “man’s longing for survival” arises from “the experience of love,” in which “love wills eternity for the beloved and therefore for itself.” Love makes us yearn for everlasting communion with the beloved. But as we are dying, can we be sure of God’s enduring love for us? Across the chasm of death, does love lead to everlasting divine-human ‘networks of relationship and love,” or is love something that we experience now, but that God will take away from us forever, so that human love is ultimately destroyed by death?

Jon Levenson stands for many: Israelites did not long for eternal life but for a name carried on by way of descendants.

Levenson admits that the evidence of the Psalms shows that individual Israelites did indeed experience existential terror in the face of death, but he contends that in Genesis and throughout the Hebrew Bible, “the great enemy” is “death in the twin forms of barrenness and loss of children,” not the death of the individual person (120). I recognize that the book of Job ends on a happy note by having Job die in old age with a prosperous family surrounding him. Nonetheless, I think that the book of Job actually confronts head-on, with real terror and agony, the problem of personal death understood as annihilation. My contention is that Job challenges God precisely on the grounds that it would be unloving and unjust for God to annihilate (or to permit to be annihilated) a human being such as Job, who obeys God and who yearns for an ongoing relationship with God. At stake in the book of Job is whether God truly loves Job, and whether Job’s love for God (and neighbor) ultimately means anything at all. [my emphases here and throughout]

Thus I do not think that Job’s main concern is either the sudden death of his “seven sons and three daughters” (Job 1:2), leaving him temporarily without heirs, or even simply the fact that he suffers terribly. It is mortal suffering and its seeming consequence—annihilation—that most bother Job.

[Sketching the wrestling of Jacob and God, he says] Likewise, Job wrestles with God until God makes clear that God can be trusted not to abandon Job everlastingly.

Job contends God would be unloving and unjust to toss humans under the bus and move on to other lovers.

Job is right that if God only loved his human lovers for a short time and then obliterated them, then God’s goodness and real love for us would be radically thrown into question, and the basis of our love for God would be undermined. In the book of Job, then, we find the deepest problem that confronts dying persons: in the midst of the terror and darkness of mortal suffering, can and should we love our Creator God.

Thus, his argument: if God loves, and if we love God, then annihilation is unloving.

Levering states his view that Job is a parable, not least from “One there was a man from Uz” and the exaggerated numbers and stereotyped disasters and God and Satan arguing… his view is typical of many scholars today. Job is a parable, almost like a staged play — a very serious one, that’s for sure.

Some in the Augustinian tradition contend Job is self-righteous and unmasked by the God of the book. Levering contends in this parable that Job is good and that goodness is needed for the Book of Job to stand on its own.

Is Job proud? What is the fundamental basis of his lament? Since God eventually intervenes and condemns Job’s friends, I think that we can take Job’s innocence for granted, as the story’s way of bracketing the fact that suffering and death are a punishment of human sin. Having removed this justification for suffering and death, the book of Job can probe the deeper issue, namely whether annihilation is fitting or just for a rational creature who loves God and who has been made by and for divine love.

He sketches the whole book adequately and comes to these conclusions:

Why, however, does Job conclude that God has made a sufficient answer to the charge of unjustly annihilating humans? I have suggested above that God’s response to Job indicates that God, as the all-powerful Giver of life, can be counted upon to order things in such a way that brings forth the joy of those who love him. Proclaiming his power to create and sustain all things, God implies that he should be trusted to sustain Job’s life after death rather than annihilating Job; but Job will have to take this on trust or faith. This amount of hope seems to be enough for Job, especially since God has personally responded to his entreaties. God does not unveil the mystery of human death, but God gives Job enough hope to reassure him that death does not negate love.

Back to the unloving unjust theme of annihilation.

The injustice of flowering into consciousness and communion only to face everlasting death and nothingness stretching out endlessly consists in the fact that humans, while mortal, are created for a communion of love with the infinite God. The book of Job suggests that God ensures that annihilation is not what happens to his human creatures.

Job’s experience is ours in the face of death.

Humans face death in such a way that it feels like an annihilation, like standing on the brink of oblivion and then stepping into everlasting darkness and nothingness from which there will never be an escape.

Death urges us to love deeply.

In the encounter with God that is mortal suffering, therefore, we must love ever more urgently, and—in the space of silence before eternity that dying opens up—seek to receive what God has willed from creation to give us: his divine love. As he does to Job, the all-loving God will respond.

Beautiful post by Nancy Beach:

As I woke up very early this morning, my mind and heart once again ruminated on all the chaos and carnage connected to the Willow Creek story. So much loss and pain and broken relationships as a consequence of sin. It would be quite natural and easy to go to a place of despair. To conclude that maybe this whole idea of church is a disaster and it would be best for smart people to run far, far away.

And yet…….what more powerful two words can there be?  AND YET……I still have hope. Though my soul is weary and exhausted, though the storm is raging on the eve of the Leadership Summit, I still hold on to hope. Here’s just a few reasons:

• I have hope simply because I know the God of Hope. I learned the astonishing good news at the age of 7 that Jesus loves me in spite of my sin. That I can be forgiven and transformed over time. That one day I will stand before Him, and only because of His extraordinary grace, He will say, “She is mine.”
• I have hope because throughout Scripture we read that our God responds to the prayers of broken, humble people. That when even the smallest remnant of his followers lament their sin and seek the truth, He will usher in healing.
• …
• I have hope because 5 years ago now, God gave an assignment to Leanne Mellado to steward some heavy secrets, and she has been faithful ever since to call out for truth and justice. She was joined by her husband, Jimmy, and by WCA Board member Nancy Ortberg who courageously called the Board to do the right thing. Since then God has raised up other voices and unearthed other secrets and women have bravely told their stories. This brings me great hope because I believe truth and love and grace will prevail.

Brief, but deadly accurate:

It can be a tough pill to swallow. If we want to be brutally honest, however, we need to acknowledge that religion is about something besides religion. New survey data confirm our hunch that a religious identity isn’t necessarily about religion itself, but about something more complicated.

In my recent book about evangelical higher education, I argued that we can only understand fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism if we abandon our tendency to define these things theologically. After all, there wasn’t really an orthodoxy involved in fundamentalism. There couldn’t be. Although fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism were certainly religious movements, their institutions were not driven solely by theological considerations. Instead, as with every human endeavor, evangelical colleges jumbled together religion, culture, politics, and other factors to come up with a mish-mash of beliefs, beliefs that “felt right” to students, professors, alumni, and parents.

Seth Dowland recently made a convincing case along these lines. As Professor Dowland argued,

what most distinguishes white American evangelicals from other Christians, other religious groups, and nonbelievers is not theology but politics.

Surveys have shown that a majority of evangelical Protestants don’t actually hold traditional evangelical core beliefs. They might call themselves “evangelical” or “born again,” but only a minority of them agree with all four of these notions:

• The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
• It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
• Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

Being an “evangelical,” then, is not a theological position. It might INCLUDE theological tendencies, but it is something more than a religious identity. And, of course, it’s different for different people. Plenty of evangelicals ARE defined by their theological beliefs. Just not a majority.

Today we see more survey evidence that evangelicals and other Protestants don’t restrict their beliefs to evangelical or Protestant theology. A large majority think that God wants them to prosper financially. Among evangelicals, a solid 75% majority think so.

We might think that these prosperty-gospellers simply don’t know because they don’t really go to church. But prosperity beliefs are STRONGER among those who attend church more frequently.

What’s the takeaway? Like all of us, evangelical Protestants are complicated. For those of us trying to understand evangelical history, the vital message is clear: “Evangelical” identity is about much more than simple theology.

I was at a conference several years ago where the speaker, a well known pastor, reflected on science, evolution, and Christian faith. Human beings are story-telling animals. We use stories to understand who we are and why we are. The traditional Christian narrative provides a powerful story of who and why we are, or so it seems. In contrast evolution presents a rather poor and purposeless story.  Several years ago I reflected on the story we tell – in a post  worth another look (somewhat edited below).

Is evolution a lousy story?

What makes the traditional Christian creation narrative better?

There are a number of key points worth considering here. The first one is that evolution isn’t a story – it isn’t a story of who we are, how we got here, or where we are going. There is no protagonist, villain, or plot … any more than there is a plot to gravity or the role of electrostatics in the crystallization of salt. Evolution is a mechanism that plays a role in a larger story. But we have to ask what that larger story is.

While admitting that human existence is bursting with plot and story, the grand scheme of scientific naturalism is plotless, or perhaps better the plot is anchored in futility. We exist as sentient beings constrained by the laws of physics and in some 7 or 8 billion years the earth will die as the sun dies. More than this, the expansion of the universe will eventually reach a point where life anywhere will be completely impossible. Not only will each individual die along the way, but life itself will simply vanish – no more sentient beings to wonder about the plot.

But this isn’t evolution – it is a narrative wrapped around the empirical observations. It may be true or not – but it contains implicit metaphysical assumptions about the nature of all reality.

But is the “traditional” Christian narrative a better story? In Ch. 3 of Half the Church Carolyn Custis James brings up a point that has occurred to me in the past – but she tells it much better than I.

God’s story is thick with plot. You can’t get through three chapters before the deadliest conflict breaks out. Like an enormous wrecking ball, conflict blasts through everything God has put in place. From Genesis 3 on, conflict rains down (literally in some places) – throughout the Bible and straight into out lives. And we are left in the smoldering ruins of that once-beautiful and perfect world to figure out how to make our way forward without drowning in the conflict.

MISSING PLOT?

To be honest, I’ve never thought of Eden as a particularly riveting part of God’s Story. A necessary introduction, yes, but not exactly spellbinding. Thoughts of Eden conjure up mental images of Adam and Eve strolling leisurely through the garden hand-in-hand – picking flowers, popping grapes, working without sweat. No weeds, insects, or plant disease to interfere with their gardening projects. No battle of the sexes or angry words spoken in haste and regretted later. Sex and nudity notwithstanding, the story seems a bit dull – at least until the serpent shows up and all hell breaks loose. Judging by what literary experts are saying about conflict, before the fall Ada, and Eve are living in a plotless story.

Which made me wonder, is God is the master storyteller – the creator of story – and if conflict makes the story, is there conflict before Genesis 3? Was God’s original vision for us and for the world a plotless story? If humanity had never fallen into sin, would we be living in a plotless story now? For that matter, will heaven be plotless? Is conflict only and always destructive and the result of fallenness? Or is there a healthy, necessary, constructive variety of conflict that creates a gripping plot and is designed to make God’s image bearers flourish and grow? (p. 67)

James goes on to think about the mission of humanity given in Genesis 1:28: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This isn’t a plotless existence. I am not sure what James thinks of creation, evolution, and the historicity of Adam and Eve. Her focus in the chapter is to explore what this mission before the fall might mean for the relationship of God’s image bearers, male and female. Her book, after all, is about Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women.

Plotless or purposeful? The traditional Christian narrative is, it appears, a plotless beginning, a fall brought about by human sin, redemption through the cross, a holding pattern present that captures all our attention, and anticipation of a plotless future. I don’t think that, as a story, this is much better than the naturalist’s story of purposeless evolution and ultimate total extinction. I also don’t think that it is the story of scripture. It is a story that arises, I believe, from a misinterpretation of Genesis 1-3 and a misunderstanding of the gospel.

God’s original creation had a plot and a trajectory. The first humans were told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue the earth, and to rule over all life on the earth. Evolution as a mechanism for bringing about this creation is compatible with the plot of the story and with the mission given to humanity as God’s image bearers. There is a plot before the Fall. But the Fall is an essential part of the overall plot, anticipated by God from the beginning. God’s image bearers turned from his ways and listened to, as the story is told in Genesis 3, the smooth talk of the serpent. They didn’t fall spontaneously in a perfect world, the serpent was already present. Of course it was anticipated, and part of the plan for reasons we don’t really understand. Otherwise aren’t we claiming that humans can thwart God’s plan and force him to an option B?

The story as revealed in scripture doesn’t envision modern ideas of evolutionary biology. It was written in an ancient context for an ancient audience – modern geology, physics, and biology would have made no sense to them. But evolutionary creation is not at odds with the plot of the story. God’s creation grows and unfolds – not in a purposeless and random fashion, but in accord with God’s plan and purpose. There is a plot in the unfolding of creation from big bang, to the formation of earth, through the development of life, to the appearance of the first humans. The natural explanations alone, whether accurate or not, will always be incomplete because they leave out the author of it all.

Evolution alone is a lousy story, but evolution as God’s method of creation makes a fine start to the story.

Is there a plot in creation before Genesis 3? If so what?

What problems do you see with evolution as a part of this plot?

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

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