Where do women belong? Are the Mommy Wars really over? Is raising children women’s highest and most important calling? Today, Katelyn Beaty and I are conversing about all of this through her groundbreaking new book, A Woman’s Place : A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home and the World (Howard Books). Beaty is the former managing editor of Christianity Today and the co-founder of the award-winning Her.maneutics blog, a website covering cultural trends and theology from a Christian women’s perspective.

 Would you give your elevator pitch for A Woman’ Place? What’s the core message of your book?

My elevator pitch takes less than 30 seconds: Women are human beings, all human beings are created to work; therefore, women are created to work.

On one level this sounds obvious. Of course women are human, and of course all women work in some capacity.

On another level, many women I’ve met—especially women in the church—face a lot of churning around their work. In some circles, there are questions about whether work done outside the home is as valuable or as eternally meaningful as work done inside of it. In other circles, there are questions about whether unpaid work is as “world-changing” as paid, professional work. There are competing messages and confusion surrounding the topic, so my book aims to give readers a strong theological and cultural foundation for wading through the tensions.

Thank you. I hate asking that question, just as I hate being asked it myself. I always want to say, “Read the book!”  Because every book takes you 20,000 leagues under the sea. When you just flash a thesis, straight to the depths, people are missing out on the incredible journey that moves you to this wondrous new destination! So I want to make it clear to everyone that this is a fabulous book, full of fresh research, insights, theology, cultural analysis. And, for all of this, it’s entertaining and highly readable. So! Before we go any further, KNOW that these questions don’t replace the book in any way. I hope you’ll pick it up or buy it for your book club or small group. It will be incredibly fruitful, I promise you. Okay! Next! 

Some have claimed that Hillary Clinton lost primarily because she was a woman and the nation wasn’t ready yet for a female president. What’s your take on that perspective? 

It’s hard to know how many Americans who voted against Clinton opposed her presidency because of her ideas and policies, or because of her gender. The truth almost certainly lies in the middle. On the one hand, there are plenty of female political leaders who those with more traditional views on gender have supported; Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, and Nikki Haley are three who come to mind. That suggests that there’s openness to female political leaders with more conservative policies. On the other hand, I believe that most of us are biased to vote for people whom we like as people. It’s hard to completely separate policy from personality. On this front, many Americans found Clinton “unlikeable” or unapproachable, and part of why they found her unlikeable, I would venture, is because she does not fit traditional notions of femaleness. In many ways, she leads in stereotypically masculine ways. I believe this made a lot of Americans uncomfortable on a visceral level, and thus unlikely to support her on Election Day.

As you’ve traveled, spoken, done interviews for the book and now after its release, do you find many women identifying themselves clearly and as  “egalitarian” or”complementarian,” coming from a theological perspective first, or do the various positions toward work appear to be more pragmatically based?

This is a really interesting question, because I wrote the book so that both egalitarians and complementarians could affirm the core message. I believe readers of various convictions on women’s leadership in the home and the church can nonetheless affirm the value of women’s work in professional settings. Beyond this, our views on women, and what Scripture teaches about women’s and men’s roles, don’t always neatly work themselves out in the ways we live day to day. A complementarian marriage can look very egalitarian in the daily churn. An egalitarian church, without a vision of empowering women for leadership, can look rather complementarian on Sunday morning. At some point, these labels go back to differences in scriptural interpretation, not lived experience.

That said, what we think of women’s work ultimately is rooted in what we think about women. If one believes that women are uniquely qualified or called to raise children and manage the home—or, related, that men are uniquely qualified or called to provide economically for their families—then it follows that women’s work outside the home will be valued inasmuch as it doesn’t conflict with more central work done inside the home. The Gospel Coalition gave a positive review of the book but noted that it had egalitarian underpinnings. Their reviewer, who did a wonderful, gracious job, wasn’t wrong in that interpretation.

As a single woman without children, do you find yourself readily accepted among women with children? Describe the experience of being a single woman in our family-oriented churches. 

I’ve been blessed over the past several years with friendships with lots of women who have children, and I love being a part of their and their children’s lives. (Being an auntie is truly the highest vocation.) I’ve never sensed from them that not having children puts me in a different category, or means we can’t be in each other’s lives.

What happens in many local churches is more complicated and can be painful for single and/or childless women. I share a story in the book of finding myself in a circle of women after church one Sunday two years ago, and of the seven women, three were pregnant. Naturally the conversation went to having children and pregnancy, and unfortunately there was no attempt made to find a topic that all of us could talk about. What happened that morning, I think, is emblematic of what happens for many single women in the local church, especially in suburban settings. It’s not that anyone explicitly intends to exclude women without children. It’s that the programming and messages for women so often revolve around parenting, so that women who are investing a majority of their lives in professional work, often through no choice of their own, wonder where they fit. This is compounded when faith-and-work resources are tied to the men’s ministry—it communicates that women aren’t working outside the home or that professional work is uniquely a man’s thing. Raising children is a beautiful and crucial kind of work. Work is a topic that all Christians can engage, and it’s a topic that extends naturally to those without spouses or children.

In my myths of parenting book, I challenged some of the notions about parenting that are still prevalent, that women’s primary contribution to the kingdom of God is through raising godly children. When the kids “turn out” well, your life’s work has been a success. Of course, if your kids turn aside in any way, you’ve failed in your primary mission. This perspective is in step, of course, with our whole  outcomes-based educational system. But you’ve got some really terrific news for mothers laboring under this impossible weight. Would you speak to that?

Any wisdom I’ve gleaned on this topic has come from conversations with women raising children. One thing I’ve observed among them is that whether or not a mother works outside the home is not a predictor of how a child will “turn out.” I think of adult friends whose fathers had passed away and whose mothers had to work to make ends meet. Or friends whose moms were simply invested in their careers and who were away from home during the day while the children were growing up. There’s no sign that these friends turned out much differently from friends whose moms were full-time at home. What matters is love, nurture, affection, attention, education, and spiritual investment.

I’ve also been struck by women who have told me that they are more engaged, happier and more present when they have some professional or creative outlet outside the home, even if it’s 10-15 hours a week. Common wisdom would say that a mother has to be at home all the time for “maximum impact” on a young child’s life, but that’s not necessarily true.

We also can’t neglect the crucial role of fathers in this equation. I’m encouraged that men of my generation seem interested and highly engaged in the work of parenting and home management. Women’s work outside the home necessarily affects and shapes men’s work, and I think we are culturally moving to a 50-50 model of marriage rather than a roles-based model of marriage.

As a professional woman, I’ve often felt much more comfortable in the workplace and mainstream culture than I have in churches where men, particularly older men who may not be used to working with women, didn’t quite know what to do with me. They were accustomed to women who worked at home and who were less interested in theology. I think this is changing, as more and more women attend seminary and pursue degrees in ministry and theology. But I also know there’s a lot of frustration among qualified, educated women with a heart to serve and lead, who are not given those opportunities. Could you speak to that? 

We can’t be surprised that women with leadership, intellectual, and educational aspirations are turning to workplaces to find channels to express those aspirations, and to work alongside men who see them primarily as colleagues and comrades rather than as oddities or temptations. Whether or not a church or denomination ordains women to pastoral roles, what all churches can do is intentionally tap into the gifts and experiences of the women in the church for full and effective gospel witness. There are so many unseen resources and insights among half the members of any church; if church leaders can’t or won’t see those resources and insights, women will take them elsewhere. This is a great opportunity for the local church, but without the vision and intentionality among church leadership, it could easily be a missed opportunity.

How does a biblical view of feminine equality and strength differ from our mainstream cultural view?

First, I’ll say it’s hard to name one biblical view of feminine equality and strength, because there are so many models of femininity reflected in the whole of Scripture. We have the life-giving power of Eve, the shrewdness of Esther, the faithfulness of Ruth, the wisdom of Deborah, the industry of the woman of Proverbs 31, the hope of Anna, the obedience of Mary—and many more. While there are specific descriptions of women’s roles in sections of the Bible, there’s no one way to be a faithful woman of God. I find this wonderfully life-giving as a woman of God.

Having said that, feminine equality and strength in the Christian account comes ultimately from being created, known, and loved by God, not from self-will and self-determination. So ultimately we root our identity in our belovedness in God, not in whatever we can accomplish or carve out for ourselves. That’s not to say that ambition or accomplishments are bad—I devote a chapter of the book to giving women permission to pursue their ambitions. But even our ambitions find their proper source and aim in the Lord and his call upon our lives, not simply in trying to keep up with men amid their own ambitions and accomplishments.

Without a comprehensive vision of women and men flourishing alongside each other, mainstream feminism can sometimes operate on the ground as if there’s only space in the world for one sex or the other. There are only so many opportunities and invitations and opened doors, and women and men have to duke it out in order for one to get ahead. The problem that mainstream feminism is rightly addressing is that women have systemically been denied opportunity and advancement because of their sex, for a very long time. A Christian response to this reality is that sexism is sinful, plain and simple, and that workplaces and schools need to pursue more equitable cultures in which women’s gifts and talents are sought and celebrated.

That said, I believe men and women are meant to share the world, not to compete for their share of the world. Power is meant to be spent in order to empower others, not to lord it over others. Christianity provides a vision of women and men flourishing alongside each other in mutual dependence and trust. Feminist movements name a real problem on the ground; a Christian vision of reality can provide the solution.

How “Thank You For Your Service” May Fall Short At Church, By Michelle Van Loon and www.MomentsAndDays.org and www.MichelleVanLoon.com

Popular speaker and author Jen Hatmaker’s recent interview with Jonathan Merritt affirming same-sex relationships led Lifeway to stop carrying her books. The uproar surrounding both this interview and Lifeway’s decision kicked off a helpful conversation in the blogosphere about, among other things, the way in which conference events have served to outsource women’s ministry from the local church.

Jesus Creed-reading women, I’d love to hear from you. Have your congregational leaders recognized and affirmed your gifts – or simply thanked you for your help with the church to-do list?

Women’s ministries in many local churches often tilt toward social events with an inspirational tagline: Christmas teas, Mother’s Day brunches, spa-themed retreats. There well may be a women’s Bible study or two serving as a backbone for these ministries, but often, these studies serve up pre-packaged materials from recognized brand-name speakers like Beth Moore, Lysa Terkurst, or Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It is telling that the women I’ve met who are leading parachurch, community-based study groups like Bible Study Fellowship or Community Bible Study migrate to these groups because they’ve found there isn’t a ready place for them to teach, lead, or study in greater depth in their local churches.

Aimee Byrd tackled the topic in this thoughtful post. And Sharon Hodde Miller offered some practical suggestions about how local church leaders might reclaim some of what they’ve ceded to conferences, video-led pre-packaged Bible studies, and parachurch ministries.

Miller’s first point toward strengthening ministry to and by women in the local church seems obvious: Leaders should affirm the gifts of women. Yet in most of the congregations I’ve attended over the last four decades, I’ve learned most leaders tended to affirm women who served in nursery, ran VBS, or taught third-graders, whether these women were actually gifted to do so or not. My leaders rarely noticed the gifts God gave me to offer to my brothers and sisters in Christ, but they did praise my willingness to get in the trenches and do the nitty-gritty of wiping up spills in the nursery or cutting out 100 lion silhouettes for a craft at our church’s VBS. While service is both a spiritual gift and a command each of us has been given by our Savior to offer ourselves sacrificially to one another, it has been extremely rare in my experience to have a leader look past the church programming to-do list and actually notice what God might be doing in my life.

As a younger believer, I got pretty good at serving. Maybe I hoped somehow that my service might make a place for me to offer the communication/teaching gifts I believed God had given me. At the time, I believed service was the only thing the church seemed to want from me, so I cut out lion silhouettes without complaint. Perhaps, I thought, I may have the spiritual gift of crafts.

One day during this period, a retired Methodist minister attending the same non-denominational congregation as my family and I did sought me out after services to offer me an unexpected word of encouragement. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “I see in you a student’s heart and a teacher’s gifting. If you were one of my congregants, I would have found a way to send you to seminary.”

I didn’t really believe I could exercise any other gift in my local church beyond nursery duty and craft projects. Teach? Lead? Those things weren’t on my radar screen at the time, and they certainly weren’t on the radar screen of my own church leaders. When I did find my way into a seminary classroom more than a decade later, this Methodist minister was one of the first people I contacted to thank him for seeing how God was at work in my life. His words to me back then have shaped the way I hope I’ve mentored others here and now: “I’ve been watching you. I see how God has been at work in you, and what you have to offer others.”

Certainly some leaders have difficulty affirming the gifts of the women (and men!) co-laboring with them in ministry because of their own insecurity or immaturity. A few others may find their strict, unhealthy application of complementarian theology tells them they shouldn’t do much to encourage the women in their congregations who may be demonstrating leadership or teaching gifts. But in most cases, it seems that church leaders find themselves so busy with the tasks and problems of ministry that there isn’t always space for to cultivate and celebrate the gifts God has placed in their midst. But this neglect has left many women with leadership and teaching gifts searching outside of their local congregations for spaces in which these gifts can be exercised.

SAVING THE BIBLE FROM OURSELVES

Glenn Paauw is a founding Director at the Institute for Bible Reading. Historian Mark Noll and Old Testament (or as Glenn likes to say First Testament) scholar, Walter Brueggemann, offer praise for Paauw’s book.

David George Moore conducted this interview with Paauw. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org and his videos can be found at www.mooreengaging.com.

Moore: Give us a bit of the backstory that motivated you to write Saving the Bible from Ourselves.

Paauw: I learned from the Bible itself that it’s better to be honest about what’s wrong in a situation than to persist in pretending. With all the Bibles that are sold, all the verses that are quoted, and all the sermons that are preached, it’s easy to pretend that all is well in Bible Land. But in fact it is not well. There are two big problems. First, more and more people have flat out given up on the Bible and are simply ignoring it. Secondly, even those who are engaging with the Bible are not actually doing that well with it. I realized that my own longtime work in ministry and publishing was not actually helping people make a deep connection with the Bible.

It got me thinking about some fundamental questions: What is the Bible? and What are we supposed to do with it? As I reflected on this and researched the history of the Bible, it became clear that in the modern era we developed new and misleading answers to these questions. We’ve been misdirecting people on what to do with the Bible for several centuries now. My book advocates the recovery of an older, more authentic form of the Bible, and adopting new practices that follow from that form.

Moore: You have some fascinating insight on how we have cut our Bibles into bits and pieces. If you were king of the Bible publishing business, how would our Bibles be designed, or I should say, redesigned?

Paauw: Ah, feel the power! I would begin by requiring all Bible publishers to take the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Our published editions and formats should not massacre what was originally a collection of songs, proverbs, stories, letters, and more. For too long we’ve been satisfied with the misleading presentation of the Bible in a reference book format—a convenient handbook of sliced, columned, and numbered spiritual statements. We’ve underestimated the power of good design. We can bring readers substantial help with design that is attentive to readability and literary form.

Next, I would impose firm regulations on the kind of notes and helps we constantly surround the Bible text with. Do our add-ons invite good, in-depth, at-length contextual reading? Or do they propose shortcuts that isolate our favorite words and cherry-pick them without having to consider the Bible’s first audience and how they would have heard them? The Bible is certainly for us, but it was not written to us.

Moore: Years ago, William F. Buckley reminded his good friend, George Gilder, about the limits of technology. Buckley said fancy computer programs were not going to take away from the hard work of learning German. In the same way, is it saying too much that a redesigned Bible make people better readers and more obedient to Scripture?

Paauw: Good design is not everything, but it is a highly significant first and foundational step to better Bible engagement. The over-complicated modern Bible is perfect for snacking on Scripture McNuggets (as Philip Yancey calls them). The recent appearance of elegant new single-column, additives-free editions will go a long way toward inviting us to feast on the Bible instead.

Newly-designed formats will set the table well. But the good, hard work of reading and living the Bible well still remains. We must also relearn ancient ways of engaging the Scriptures. Rather than simply using the Bible for our own agendas, we must learn to lose ourselves in it through extended reading. As much as we are able, we must put ourselves into the cultures and mindsets of ancient peoples. We must regain the skill of reading the books together as a grand narrative of restorative justice and new life. We must lose our excessive individualism and rediscover practices of reading the Bible together, so we can honor the Bible’s goal of community formation. In short, we basically need a new paradigm for reading the Bible.

Moore: The Bible contains much poetry, but no mathematical formulas. How can we help others appreciate this in reflecting on Scripture?

Paauw: When the Bible’s authors and editors chose to use particular literary genres, they were in effect offering covenants to readers. Readers can accept those covenants by acknowledging those genres and then following the conventions that go with them. It dishonors the Bible not to read poetry as poetry, parables as parables, or apocalyptic visions as apocalyptic. A flat literalism does not do justice to the Bible God actually gave us. Once again, formatting can help with some of this. But as C. S. Lewis once said, the reader of any kind of literature has an obligation to first of all receive what the author intended. Our mindset has to shift from thinking How can I use this material for my own needs? to How can I enter into the original thought-world of this material? Reading back our own cultural assumptions and personal questions into the Bible is a constant temptation. The Bible is loaded with gifts for us, but we can only properly receive them if we will read the Bible on its own terms.

Moore: Are you advocating Bibles never have verse or chapter divisions? If so, do you see that hampering those who teach because they would not be able to cite the address?

Paauw: Chapter and verse numbers have one benefit: they help you find little pieces of the text more quickly. But the cost of this gain in efficiency has been enormous. The research is very clear: people are not reading or understanding this reference book. We need elegant new readers’ editions, and these are what we should think of as “regular” Bibles. Chapters and verses were both added in the interest of creating reference helps: commentaries (chapters) and concordances (verses). The numbers should never have invaded regular Bibles for regular readers. Of course, now that the reference edition already has such a long history, we likely can’t do away with it completely. But we should relegate it to occasional specialty use.

As for finding things in an additives-free edition, we could do what everyone before the 16^th century had to do: learn to reference the Bible by content and context. Do we really need to list the finely-detailed chapter-and-verse address every time we use the Bible? Why? What’s wrong with simply saying things like, “Early in Luke’s Gospel, after his temptation by the devil, Jesus goes to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth . . .”? This way, people would be picking up crucial surrounding context when we reference a Bible passage.

Moore: What are a few of the biggest takeaways you would hope for your readers?

Paauw: We’re due for a Bible revolution. Science historian Thomas Kuhn has shown us how paradigm shifts happen. When a certain way of seeing the world is recognized by enough people as having some core deficiency, then people are willing to rethink their basic assumptions. My dream is that more and more people would literally see the Bible differently, and having experienced a different kind of Bible, they would fundamentally change the way they read and understand and live the Bible. Then we will be in a position to receive all that the Bible has for us.

An example of the kind of Bible Glenn Paauw would like to see all Christians reading is here: NIV Books of the Bible

Many of you will be familiar with Jason Micheli, whose sermons — slightly irreverent at times, always insightful, full of narrative art and at times colorful language — sometimes appear on this blog. I have spoken in Jason’s church in Virginia a couple times, he’s a friend, and he’s got cancer — and he’s too young — and the book he’s written is everything I’ve expected of Jason and even better than that.

Pastor Keeps the Faith, and Keeps It Funny, in Face of Stage-Serious Cancer (A Press Release of Jason Micheli’s new book.)

It’s universally acknowledged that cancer sucks. Mantle cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive type, is especially sucky. It almost always affects only men in their old age—not 37 year olds like Jason Micheli, a pastor, husband, and father. “I like to think I’m unique in all things, and it turns out I am, in the case of diseases,” he says. But here’s what Micheli wants you to know if you or someone you love has cancer: “Cancer is funny, too. No, wait, it really is. Any ailment that results in pubic hair wigs being actual products in the marketplace simply is funny.”

This type of bone cancer is so deadly that his doctors didn’t classify it with the normal four stages, they call it “stage-serious.” As he struggled with despair and faced his mortality, he resolved that cancer would not kill his spirit, faith, or sense of humor. Bracing, irreverent humor animates his new book, Cancer Is Funny: Keeping Faith in Stage-Serious Chemo (Fortress Press, $24.99 hardcover, December 1, 2016), “a no-bullshit take on what it’s like to journey through stage-serious cancer and struggle with the God who may or may not be doing this to you,” Micheli says. “I hope this book will help you or someone you love laugh through the crucible of cancer.” “After eight cycles of nine chemo drugs, I believe laughter is still the best medicine,” he says. “Laughter is the surest sign you’re not alone, because joy is the most unmistakable indication of God’s presence.”

A sense of humor—Micheli’s is dark, ironic, and leavened with a charming silliness—is especially helpful during chemo treatments, he found: “Being deadly serious here of all places is the surest way to feel seriously dead already.” The laughter that Micheli encourages is not to be confused with happiness. “I have stage serious cancer, I’d be crop circles crazy if I were happy about it. Instead it’s laughter that feels like joy, that traces the line between disaster and the farce that we call life, feeling free—genuinely free— to be myself with others and before God.”

Micheli is used to people assuming that clergy are “officious and tight-sphinctered”; he notes that “the populace considers Christians to be uniformly unfunny.” But then it’s not so difficult to make them laugh. Except, of course, for the people who give him blank looks, not sure if he’s joking.

A pastor and theologian, Micheli’s reflections are not trite. He writes about being stricken with lethal cancer in the midst of a promising career and raising two young children. He struggles with what he believes. Figuring this out for himself—not to mention explaining it to his congregation and his sons—makes theology now a matter of life and death.

By turns laugh-out-loud funny and heart-wrenching, Micheli’s story shows how to stay human in dehumanizing situations—how to keep living in the face of death. He reflects on:

• The absurdity of chemo: “The only way for doctors to save your life, just as Jesus warned, is to bring you as close as possible to losing your life without actually killing you —though I doubt that poison derived from mustard gas was what he had in mind.” He notes the warning label on one chemo drug: “May Cause Leukemia.”

• Questioning faith: “Do you believe any of this? That those who trust in Jesus even though they die yet shall they live? The question had never even occurred to me until my own death became something less than what my trade calls ‘speculative theology.’”

• Indignities of cancer and chemo: From the “tumor baby” he carries, a 10 x10 inch tumor he dubs “Larry” that is “about the size of a Stephen King novel” to “needing help to pee into the plastic jug because you don’t have the ab muscles to do even that for yourself.”

• God and “our” cancer: “I didn’t need a God who shared my pain, because it was our cancer—my wife Ali’s and mine. I desperately wanted a God whose own life can show me a way to live in and through it.”

• The Christian fear of fear: “Other Christians treat fear like it’s more cancerous than cancer. I was afraid because I loved. I feared what cancer would do to my sons, to their happiness and joy and innocence and faith.”

• Being a pastor with cancer: “I feared what cancer would do to my congregation’s faith when they saw one of their pastors handed a huge crap-flavored lollipop.”

• When cancer comes in handy: “Cancer is not without its uses. It’s like having an ace in the hole you can play whenever it suits you without ever leaving the card on the table.”

• Suffering: “Only now that I was suffering more than I ever had in my life did I learn how Christians do not have an answer for suffering or evil.”

• Battle metaphors: “The language of fighting doesn’t really work for cancer. The ‘it’ in ‘Fight it, Jason’ was Jason. The ‘it’ was me —indelibly me. The cancerous cells were mine, only doing something differently and far more efficiently than my healthy ones.” “Cancer doesn’t make you wonder, ‘Why me, God?’ Only a dick would get caught up with that kind of question,” Micheli says. “No, cancer throws you in the scrum and makes you ask, ‘Why them, God? Why us, God? Why this world?’” Still, by the sixth round of chemo, he had to keep reminding himself that it was not God doing this to him.

After eight excruciating rounds of chemo, Micheli’s tumors were gone. Doctors don’t talk about remission with mantel cell lymphoma—he could still have mantle cell percolating in his bone marrow—but it’s as good news as he could have hoped for. “I don’t know what the future will bring. I don’t know if this story is over,” he writes. “In whatever life my family and I have left are more marvels than we can count.”

Jason Micheli is executive pastor at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria, VA, and writes the popular Tamed Cynic blog. He lives in the Washington, DC area with his wife, Ali, and their two sons.

The term “identity” is overused today and for conservative pundits “identity” is pejoratively used in “identity” politics while the progressives use it affirmatively as in “it’s about my and her and his identity.”  I’m concerned with neither the conservatives or progressives in this post, but instead with the claim of Larry Hurtado, in Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, that the earliest Christians formed a new religious identity as Christians that sustained them through suffering, formed their fellowship, buoyed up their worship, and forged their behaviors.

How do Christians have a new identity? a new religious identity?

In the Roman world religious identity (nuanced by Hurtado in several directions) was inherited:

So, for example, if you were a Roman, in addition to your own particular family/household divinities (lares), there was the traditional Roman pantheon: Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus, and the rest. If you were Greek, there was a corresponding pantheon: Zeus, Hera, Athena, and others. If you were Egyptian, there were the gods of Egypt. And the same went for Syrians, Phrygians, rauls, and all the other various peoples of the Roman world. 78

It was as much political and cultural to participate in Roman cult worship as it was religious:

So, Roman deities could be included among the deities reverenced by people other than Romans. But this was a result of Roman political and cultural influence; the reverencing of Roman deities was simply what ancients judged to be a natural way to acknowledge and respond positively to that influence. If that seems to us not quite a “pure” religious motive, however, that is, again, because our notions of “religion” do not map directly onto the concepts and practices of the ancient world. 80

In addition to such inherited religion, some chose other gods to worship. These gods — Isis, Mithras — did not demand exclusive worship but instead expanded one’s pantheon of gods. Read the 1st Century (?) Greek novel called Ephesiaca to see this.

So, thereby, participation in these cults exhibited an expression of religiousness distinguishable from, or at least additional to, the more traditional forms that were conferred by birth. Consequently, in this voluntary feature, these “mystery cults” may give us something of a partial analogy for the way that early Christianity, whether in its earliest “Jesus-movement” form or later, likewise made an appeal to individuals transethnically and translocally. 83

So, to reiterate the point, in that feature it was partially analogous to the sort of voluntary religiousness involved in becoming a participant in Christian circles. But the analogy breaks down precisely in the demand placed upon all Christians that they must make their Christian commitment the exclusive basis of their religious identity. In short, early Christianity was the only new religious movement of the Roman era that demanded this exclusive loyalty to one deity, thereby defining all other cults of the time as rivals. 86

With Judaism Christianity shared an exclusive God; but Christianity clearly varies in that this God is far more a translocal and transethnic God.

To put it in more prosaic terms, early Christians took up a new kind of religious identity that, uniquely, was both exclusive and not related to their ethnicity. 93

They called themselves Christians and they met as “churches”.

… it is likely that the early Christian usage of the term typically connoted a special religious significance ascribed to the groups designated by it. In early Christian usage, their “assembly’ was not simply a casual social gathering of people, or some sort of club. Instead, by their use of this term, early Christians were claiming a high meaning to their gatherings and their fellowship. 98

Instead, what the text depicts is effectively a radical widening of the circumference of God’s people, Gentile believers now jointly inheriting with Jewish believers a status as God’s favored children. 100

 

One of the more interesting books that has ever come my way is Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization, a book edited by C. Mathewes and C. McKnight Nichols (no relation). If the title doesn’t interest you, perhaps this line will: “In American history, prophesies of godlessness are as American as American godliness itself” (6). Paradoxically, alongside this worrisome fear that the country was about to fall into apocalyptic doom is the liberal vision that America was about to reach its real vision of losing its religion. This book fascinates me.

What do you think of preaching that warns of imminent or national doom? Or, of imminent or national good days to come?


So, we’ve got two groups in this country: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Walter Lippmann, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, John Dewey, John Judis, and Ruy Teixera — the first group. The second group: Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Edwards Amasa Park, William Jennings Bryan, Hal Lindsey, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Falwell, Christopher Lasch, Robert Putnam and Ann Coulter. Each thought the end was imminent; each thought their prophesies — either of the goal of a liberal country denuded of its religion or the demise of godliness by growing secularization or modernity — were about to come to pass.

These two themes are as American as apple pie. The book has eleven studies of these themes, and the approach is to take snapshots of these themes through specific people.

The study makes one wonder if apocalyptic warnings or the dream of a liberal (secularized) culture might not be “verbal games” people play to persuade others to join them in their own vision. The study makes one wonder if biblical apocalyptic and prophecy deserves renewed consideration in light of such cultural scripts. Why say this? America, according to many historians, is no less religious now than it was during the Puritan era. Anyway, the prophesies have not really come true — either way.

I grew up in a world haunted by these two visions. Sundays could be like experiencing Revelation first hand. Every autumn our church staged a prophecy conference. The potent warnings were vivid and scary — I remember one preacher telling us with near certainty that the Lord would return before 1971 or 1973 since the “fig tree” and the “one generation” predictions would be fulfilled by then. I suppose one can grow numb to preaching like this, but when you’re about 10 or 12 years old it can be fierce and fearsome stuff. It was a good time to get saved so you can be on the right side of that awful demise we were about to face. The cynical distance of these words are borne of experience: the preachers were all wrong, but they were as American as godlessness and godliness.

In 1620 John Winthrop, leader of Massachusetts Bay, transported the covenant God made with Israel to the covenant God was making with the New World. En route to Massachusetts, Winthrop preached a now-famous sermon: “A Model of Christian Charity.” He is our first illustration of how Americans have prophesied godlessness and the judgment of God or apocalyptic doom if they do not repent.

The warning that the country will fall apart if Americans don’t repent and turn to God is an old “script” in American history … and this chp, by Wilson Brissett, examines how a particular form — the “jeremiad” — was used and re-used in American religious and political sermons.

Let’s begin with this: there is a problem here with the “little boy who cried wolf.” Some use the jeremiad for anything and everything. What prompts you to use or to respond to a jeremiad?

The calling — the covenant — God made with those who were setting up life in the New World was that they might become a “city upon a hill.” If they live up to what God has said, blessing; if they do not, God’s wrath. Winthrop, however, was no pietistic or quietist. Instead, he envisioned the covenant’s obligations for the new community to be loving God and loving others, and inherent to this love of others was economic justice.

The “form” these folks used to remind the Puritans of their calling/covenant was the jeremiad, the sermon that evoked the style of Jeremiah: remind them of the covenant, list their sins, warn them of God’s judgment, promise them blessing if they repent, and remind them that God’s wrath can burn against them if they neglect their covenant obligations.

Then Jonathan Edwards expanded this style of declaring doom by urging his contemporaries to embrace the surprising work of God in the Great Awakening or they would be rejecting the work of God and incur God’s wrath. So here the jeremiad was expanded from simple obedience to a specific act of God in the country — the revivals.

A study of Edwards: Samuel Hopkins took the Puritan jeremiad and applied it to the country for slavery and to masters who had slaves. His words: “Can we wonder that Religion is done to decay in our Land, that vice and profaneness have overspread the whole Land, when the Ever glorious God has been blasphemed openly in the practice of Slavery among us for So long a time?” (30-31).

This chp of Brissett, then shifts at the end to show that the jeremiad was re-used by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau and Abraham Lincoln — with much less covenantal basis and for political liberalism, Romantic individualism, and the plea for national unity. Inherent is the warning of what might happen if Americans do not live up to their calling.

America’s history with prophetic pronouncements includes not only apocalyptic doom. Think Thomas Jefferson. Two of my favorite places in the DC area are the Jefferson Memorial, which perhaps could be called the temple of liberal, enlightened reason, and Monticello, Jefferson’s home. Whenever we are in DC, if we get the chance, I stand in the Memorial and read the great lines of Jefferson — and yet I come away thinking this man represents a vision completely contrary to generous orthodoxy. In Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization we find a chp on Jefferson’s vision … and it begins with this unfulfilled wish dream:
 Where is our hope? Do we hope in progress? Do we hope in an apocalyptic act of God to render the world, suddenly and finally, put to right? Do we put hope in our efforts? in God? in God who empowers us to work for justice and peace now? Or, like Jefferson, is our hope in reason? (This chp has given me a reason to be intentional about discerning how our politicians and leaders envision the future etc.)

In 1822 Jefferson wrote: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian” (35). He dreamed of the day when religion would be a religion of reason instead of one based on faith. And, at the heart of Jefferson’s radically consistent liberal vision was a theory of historical progress that included the discovery — by the Enlightenment — of the folly of superstition and the goodness of humans. But humans had to protect freedom and work for the separation of church and State (author’s terms). In contrast to others, Jefferson did not believe in the universal, innate, inexorable laws of progress but instead in the need for humans to work at freedom and reason for that progress to occur.

In the USA, the historical Jesus begins with Jefferson who considered himself a true follower of the real Jesus — the human, excellent Jesus. (By the way, the author of this chp — Johann Neem — confuses “Immaculate Conception” [something about Mary’s own conception] and the “virginal conception” [something about Jesus’ conception].) Jefferson believed in the pure morals of Jesus and reason would lead to the elimination of superstitious doctrines. The key was the “wall of separation” (41). His fear: the rising surge of American evangelicals.
Key, too, was empowerment of the people instead of empowering clerics and politicians. Education would empower the people. But it must be a secular university: so the founding of the University of Virginia. It would promote a religion of peace, reason and morality.
”I have sworn on the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” (41).

But Jefferson was wrong: what followed was the Second Great Awakening and the rise in Boston, at Park Street Church, of Lyman Beecher. His aim: to dismantle Unitarianism. He was a prophet of godlessness. He, too, believed in empowering people and his form of doing so was voluntary (evangelical) action groups.

Thomas Jefferson anchored the entire good of Christianity in the morals of Jesus. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ever striving for the universal to be found in nature, anchored it all in “moral sentiment.” Both Jefferson and Emerson, though, thought the days of Christianity were numbered and soon to expire — so the next chp in Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization.

How Emersonian is the Christian vision today? Where are you seeing the Emersonian vision in the Church today?
Emerson’s problems were Church institutions, creeds, forms, churches, and buildings. Emerson saw their imminent demise in the anarchy of choices running rampant in his day, and he thought that what would remain would be a religion that was moral science and reasonable, but fashioned in the soul and spirit of each person. The religious work of churches, he thought, was being replaced by the social work of philanthropy.
Here’s a potent statement: “How many people are there in Boston? Two hundred thousand. Then there are so many sects. I go for churches of one.”
Emerson, who was a Unitarian minister for a few years but who became convinced Christian rituals, esp the Lord’s Supper, were things that no longer spoke, was caught between Calvinism and Unitarianism. And his vision of transcendantalism was an “attempt to reenchant Unitarianism while still accepting many of its basic critiques of Christian orthodoxy.”
Emerson distinguished spirituality (good) from religion (church); and he thought sermons were good if they converted life into truth (not truth into life). His contemporaries were Whitman and Thoreau.

I’ve got a big question today, but first let me sketch two items quickly. First, think about it, we’ve seen the following as prophets of doom: the puritans with their weekly jeremiads, Thomas Jefferson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Add someone else to this list: Abraham Lincoln, about whom Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh says: “For better or worse, there has been no more messianic a figure in American history than Abraham Lincoln” (Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization, 75).

Big question: Is apocalyptic rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that declares that if we don’t change society and culture will collapse, simply a rhetorical package that is designed to get people to wake up and change? (If folks change, mission accomplished.) Or is it a rhetorical package that also predicts what will happen? You may know where I’m going: are biblical apocalyptic warnings more the first than the second? In other words, is it a way to get folks to change? Or is it a way to get folks to change because of what will surely happen? Is it prediction or it is simply religiously-charged rhetoric?

Nothing brings out the jeremiad and apocalyptic rhetoric like war, so this chp’s focus on the Civil War and the beliefs of Lincoln and Sherman are excellent examples, but their examples resonate with anyone who pays attention to how our nation has talked about war in the last decade.

Back to Lincoln and what the author of this chp calls his “ironic absorption into his age’s American religious culture” (because Lincoln was hardly an evangelical but his obsession with discerning God’s will was noteworthy). In contrast, William Tecumseh Sherman repudiated republican, evangelical and Enlightenment Christianity. Mark Noll observed that despite all the jeremiads tossed into the public by both the North and the South, the beliefs of both sides largely continued on after the Civil War.

The jeremiads unleashed permitted the South to see their defeat as a temporal, providential chastisement and the North to see God purging the nation from sin. Belief in God’s working in history held out hope for redemption, and this powerful jeremiad form was more potent than the rational notion of progress that many adhered to … including Lincoln.

Lincoln was a skeptic as a young man and lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. His own view of the “doctrine of necessity” was not the same as the evangelical belief in Providence. That is, he held to a “gradual, orderly, rational, and … secular conception of progress” (79). Hsieh explains how Lincoln’s view of Providence became more personal and it led him to make a covenant with God, a kind of Gideon’s fleece, that if the North won a particular battle he would take it as a sign and he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The Second Inaugural, however, reveals Lincoln’s conviction of the inscrutable providence of God. Lincoln illustrates how difficult it is for many to discern the plan of God. If the jeremiad is found in Lincoln, there is a humility about it that demonstrates his belief that God’s plans are inscrutable.

But Sherman, who is not emphasized in this chp, came at the issues from a different angle. We find in him a warrior-ized vision: God is nearly equated with Union and the Confederacy becomes a rebellion against God.

Where are we today? Do we opt for the inscrutability of God’s providence? to warrior-izing the plan of God? to a confidence that God is on our side?

The Rules for Leading from the 2^nd Chair by Ben Pickett

With the end of the year just around the corner, I’m all set for the New Year’s lists. You know, those compilation stories that give us a list of what’s best about the previous year – always in a particular order – that invites debate and additional clicks. The lists I really like to read are the those “10 Best” collections: like the ten best books of 2015, or the five best movies of the year. These lists capture our attention because we recognize an element of truth even in a context were subjectivity is very much in play.

As I close this series, I’d like to offer my short list of rules for 2^nd chair ministers. In some ways, they are like a “Top 4 Best” collection. But a better way to think about them is that, at least in my view, they are essential for 2^nd chair ministry success. [A quick disclaimer: These rules presuppose the minister has a healthy spirituality and demonstrates a life full of prayer and one that is largely free of destructive behaviors. Nothing derails a minister quicker than spiritually empty moral failure or laziness.]

Four Rules for 2^nd Chair Ministers

1. The minister doesn’t deserve the role.

Nothing gets a minister in trouble quicker than a big ego. This is true of all ministers, of course, and not just those in the 2^nd chair. As an orthodox priest friend of mine once said: “Pride in the minister is one of the biggest barriers to ministry.” When a minister’s ego gets in the way, there is a loss of perspective and opens the door to all kinds of problems. The minister is an initiator and caretaker, but any increase, or what we might call success, is the work of God. (I Cor. 3) The ministry belongs to God, not the minister. For me, this rule keeps me humble. I serve by God’s grace. It’s all a gift. When I run into ministers with massive egos – the ones who have little time for others, or talk down to volunteers, or who are unflinching and argumentative on just about everything – it isn’t all that surprising how those who behave that way tend to have short tenures.

2. Do not expect volunteers to be more committed than you!

About ten years ago, a study came out reporting the average Christian family had 3-5 hours of volunteer time available to them for church life – and this included worship gatherings! In other words, whatever amount of time your volunteers can give is a blessing and, most likely for some, given at considerable sacrifice of other things. There is just no room for the minister to complain about lack of volunteer hours. Instead there should be a posture of appreciation for the time the volunteer can give. A real pitfall for 2^nd chair ministers is that they feel like they can’t accomplish what they want to because of a lack of volunteers. Instead of being bitter, work with what you have. All time from volunteers is a gift.

The other dynamic I see on occasion (related to this rule) is one where the minister is strangely absent from the ministry efforts of their team. The church views their ministers as spiritual leaders and the concrete commitments of the minister send a message to volunteers. The minister supporting Adult Education should be teaching. The minister supporting small groups should be in a small group. Sounds simple enough, but sometimes the minister confuses their role with that of a bishop or presbyter. Ministers have a God-given responsibility to nurture and support their tasks and, at least on some level, 2^nd Chair ministers must engage in the ministries they support or they should expect a difficult time finding and encouraging their church to serve. If the minister isn’t bought into what is being asked of volunteers, then I wonder about the commitment level of the minister.

3. The minister is a practicing theologian.

Miroslav Volf and others have written extensively on practical theology and how the minister possesses, in powerful ways, the capacity to be a practicing theologian. They talk about how the minister helps interpret, in spiritual language and perspective, the activity of the volunteers. This is so important! Volunteers know when they serve they are serving God, but I’ve found that when I talk with volunteers (while they are serving!) about what is going on from a spiritual perspective, folks make a connection to God they might not otherwise make. Just as we see in the spirit of Matthew 25, when volunteers are caring for the poor, they care for Christ himself. When they welcome the stranger, they welcome Christ. The minister offers a valuable service simply by giving voice to the spiritual realities in which they serve. Without this perspective, people tend to think in terms of altruism. That’s not a bad thing, but altruism is a poor motivator. Volunteers serving in the Kingdom are blessed when a minister shares with them, in concrete terms, the spiritual significance of their ministry.

4. The minister gets their “strokes” from God.

I want to conclude with this last rule because I’m convinced this is an essential principle every minister needs to understand. We all need encouragement. There are times when things just don’t go well. When ministries fail. When people let us down. When life happens and ministry takes a back seat for other more important things like family and self-care. Also, ministers in a 2^nd chair role rarely minister to the church during assemblies. They necessarily work behind the scenes and with lots of meetings and communications. 2^nd chair ministers carry the same spiritual weight as the minister in a pulpit or other more visible roles. They desire to see people grow and make decisions for God but, as I mentioned last week, their church may not see their role as important. So, it is critical that the 2^nd chair minister know just how much they matter to God as a person and for the work they do.

We need reminders of what’s important and, to me, I’ve found that the 2^nd chair role can be a bit lonely at times. But if I look to God for affirmation and resist the need to find it elsewhere, God blesses me with love, affirmation, and purpose. If you are in a 2^nd chair, please know your work matters. It matters to God, and, even if your church doesn’t say it, your work matters to them.

I love working at Northern Seminary because we are serving God’s Kingdom every day.  We prepare students to become future pastors and positively impact their communities with the same effect of a rock being dropped into a mirrored lake…the impact forms rings which continue to grow and expand outward.  That’s exactly what our graduates do in sharing God’s word!

One of our current students, Tash, felt God’s leading to attend Northern seminary but she was in need of financial support to fulfil what God put on her heart to do.  God provided!  Tash was awarded a scholarship, and she is very excited about moving forward to answer God’s call to serve the Kingdom!  It couldn’t have been made possible without partners and friends like you.

This Tuesday is a special day for charities worldwide called:  “Giving Tuesday.”   You may receive a lot of requests to support many worthy projects and I realize you can’t support them all.  Instead of a mass mailing campaign, we are taking a more personal approach.  I was simply asked to send this email to 10 of my friends/family members who love the Lord and enjoy helping others.  As I stated in the subject line, “You are one of my ten!”

Our goal is to raise $200,000 with the funds to be used to train students for ministry by attending Northern Seminary.  Please join me and Make an online gift today!  Click on this secured link and then DONATE NOW to give your tax deductible gift.  Any amount is greatly appreciated!   (Please feel free to share this email with ten of your closest friends and family!)

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.  It would be great to hear from you!

Thanks in advance for your consideration!

P.S.  – To learn more about our Northern Seminary #GivingTuesday please visit our website atwww.seminary.edu/givingtuesday.

The book of Job, as John Walton and Tremper Longman II point out in their recent book How to Read Job, “contains more extensive discussion of the cosmos and God’s role in it than any other book in the Bible with the possible exception of Psalms.” (p. 120)  Today we will look specifically at the discussion of the cosmos in the book of Job.

The view of the cosmos presented in Job represents an ancient cosmic geography familiar to the original audience of the book.

From the ancient reader’s perspective the discussions of cosmic geography and the operations of the cosmos do not differ from the opinions affirmed in the rest of the Bible. Furthermore, what we find in Job is basically in line with the thinking of the time throughout the ancient Near East, except with regard to the identity of the controlling deity. (p. 120)

The major distinction between the book of Job and the thinking of the general ancient Near Eastern  culture is the role of God’s justice and wisdom in the operations of the cosmos. There is no modern science hidden within the text – although metaphors are used at times “we cannot maintain that those metaphors conceal a view of the cosmos that was actually much like ours.” (p. 121) Walton and Longman go on to make an important point:

We all recognize that scientific understanding changes constantly. If God’s revelation were embedded in a particular scientific view, there would be no room for further investigation. Statements about the operation of the world cannot easily be so general as to fit the current knowledge and understanding of any generation. … After all, science is not simply a compilation of fact; it expresses society’s consensual understanding of how the world works. (p. 121)

I had not thought about the issue in quite this way before, but it is worth considering. I would put a few things a little differently. For example, scientific understanding grows constantly, building on what came before, rather than “changes.” Using the word “changes” often conveys the wrong meaning, as though the changes were random and could go in any direction. Scientific understanding changes, but these changes are not arbitrary or disconnected. Our collective understanding of what we call the natural world is moving in a well-defined direction, with occasional meanders. However, Walton and Longman make a great point. God created a world with a purpose and humans with a mission to be the image of God and to rule and subdue the earth. There is an expectation of growth and change. A once-and-for-all scientific revelation would circumvent an important part of the growth process – and was not necessary for God to reveal himself and his mission to his people.

Walton and Longman go on to suggest that an approach to Scripture that sees modern science in the ancient text “can undermine biblical authority because it vests the imagination of the modern reader with the right to provide new meanings.” (p. 122)

When we embrace biblical authority or even inerrancy, however, we are adopting a view that pertains to those things that the Bible affirms or, to put it another way, to those things the Bible intends to teach. That is, we are attaching authority to that which is the focus of revelation. For the sake of clear communication, God uses incidentals that are believed by his target audience in order to reveal the truths that he wants to convey. Scriptural authority resides in God’s revelatory message, not in the incidentals he uses to convey that message. Inerrancy describes the nature of revelation and our confidence that it is true. God is who he says he is. He has done what he says he has done. His motives and purposes are what the Bible proclaims them to be. (p. 123)

There are numerous examples of ancient cosmic geography in Job, pillars of the heavens (26:11) and of earth (9:6), storehouses of snow and hail (38:22), the chamber of the tempest (37:9) and so forth. No such reference impacts the message of the book. The purpose of the book of Job is not to describe how the cosmos works, but how God works in the cosmos. Is God just? Does the ordering of the cosmos reflect God’s justice? Does his justice shape its operation?

The description of the cosmos in Job, especially God’s speech in chapters 38-39, does teach us a good deal about the world God has created and the world in which we live. There is order, non-order and disorder in creation. “In his wisdom God has decided to bring order gradually. He can impose his will at any time and in any way, but he has set up a realm where non-order remains and disorder is allowed to intrude.” (p. 127) Some of what we consider “natural evil” would be better described as non-order. There is a paragraph here worth considering in more detail:

Many of the phenomena that we term “natural disasters” on the cosmic level (e.g. hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts and famines, plagues and epidemics), all the way down to the devastating experiences at the biological level (e.g. mutations), can be identified as aspects of non-order in the world. They can have a severely negative impact, and God could potentially use them as punishment, but they are not intrinsically evil in any moral sense. They are not impervious to God’s control, but neither can they be considered instruments wielded in judgment. They are not independent of him, but we should not picture him with a remote-control device. These forces are subject to his bidding just as humans are, though we are not robots. (p. 127)

What this means is that the operations of this world are not always just. “God can use disasters or disease as acts of judgment, but we would never know whether he is doing so unless we had a prophetic voice to that effect. Those who lose their lives in a hurricane are no more wicked than those who are spared, but through these events we should all be warned (Lk 13:1-5).” (p. 128) Rather than focusing on justice we should see grace and wisdom in the operation of the world.  “When we affirm his wisdom we assert that none of us could do a better job of running the world. Job though he could, and God called his bluff (Job 40:10-14). (p. 128)

As we do not wonder why a person breaks a leg from a fall under the influence of gravity, so we should not wonder why cancer or diabetes affects this person but not that person. “God’s wisdom is founded in the world that he chose to create, not in each expression of gravity or cell division.” (p. 130)   Walton and Longman conclude the chapter:

Why did God devise the system the way that he did? This is not a question that we can answer, but we can say that he did not do it for the sake of justice. Justice is not the linchpin of the cosmos. The forces that God built into the world are not discerning, volitional or moral, and God does not micromanage. There is more to the world than justice, and we should be glad of it, because if justice were at the core of everything, we would not exist. In his wisdom God ordered the cosmos to work the way it does. He is able to interfere or even micromanage, but that is not typical. In its fallen state the world can only operate by his wisdom, not by his justice. (p. 130)

While it is clear that humanity is fallen and that this has an impact on the world introducing disorder, I don’t find it useful to put too much emphasis on the fallen state here. God created a world where, in his wisdom, there was non-order and perhaps even disorder before there was any human rebellion. The snake in the garden represents non-order at best, disorder if this is Satan. The Bible does not portray an image of perfection prior to human sin. The message of Job is that we must trust in God’s wisdom.

What does the book of Job teach us about the ordering of the cosmos?

Is the distinction between God’s wisdom and God’s justice useful in understanding the cosmos? What is the role of grace?

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

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