Wrestling with God and Man: Reflections on Jacob at Peniel

June 18th, 2010

One of the advantages of not ‘growing up’ in a Vineyard context lies in approaching any discussion of its core values largely free of presuppositions. ‘Re-imagining’ Vineyard values (the reflective series within which this was originally posted) is therefore perhaps something of an overstatement. A corresponding disadvantage, though, lies in having only a second-hand understanding – and that a limited one – of the significance of those values in their original context, of how and why each one came into being, and what they meant to those who authored and inculcated them within the early Vineyard movement. The opportunity to be an original thinker therefore sits alongside the threat of being wrong. The strength of objectivity is undermined by the weakness of ignorance. This gives rise to a particular risk when one is ‘leading the conversation’ by posting a blog. My hope is that those with a more historically informed perspective will be both liberal in correcting the shortcomings in this posting, and generous in recognising that my aim is to add value to Vineyard values, in conversation with the community, not to devalue or reject those values in criticism of the community.

‘Leaders who limp’ is a clear reference to the experience of Jacob, recited in Genesis 32. What we read here is an extraordinary story, that seems to just drop into the narrative from nowhere, of Jacob wrestling with a man. They wrestle all night. Morning comes, and finding himself unable to overpower Jacob (we are not told why), the man touches Jacob’s hip and injures him, causing him to walk with a limp the next day (and perhaps permanently, though the text does not tell us this). However, Jacob will still not let the man go, “unless you bless me.” The man tells Jacob he is hereafter to be named Israel, “because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” Jacob asks the name of the man but is not told. He calls the place Peniel, “because I saw God face to face and yet my life was spared.”

What are we to make of this story? Abstracted from its narrative context, it has commonly been uses as an exhortation to fervency in seeking God. It is analogised, for example, to praying through the night, until we get what we are asking God for: “I won’t let you go until you bless me, Lord.” Or as an authenticating mark of the Christian leader, that they have similarly ‘wrestled with God’ in prayer, when facing challenges and opposition, such that they bear the beneficial hallmarks of those close, personal experiences of God in their life and ministry.

But is this the message from the text? Is this what’s going on in the story? Or are these simply convenient uses of the text as Christian allegory? We might start with some reflection on this man Jacob.

When Yahweh identifies himself to Moses (in answer to the question “which God are you?”) as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, we could be forgiven for wondering how Jacob made the list! It is no surprise, on all the evidence in Jacob’s story up to Genesis 32, that in his first theophany Yahweh describes himself only as “the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac” (Gen 28:10-22). In Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac, the Covenant Story – which is the key theme in Genesis and indeed, I would argue, through the whole of the Christian scriptures – was facing a crisis. And the crisis was one of character. Esau had such scant regard for his birthright that he was willing to sell it for a good meal. Jacob, meanwhile, was scheming, lying and devious, someone who would be willing to deceive even his own aged father to get what he wanted, for his personal benefit.

Up to this point in the story, Genesis 28, everything we read about Jacob is negative. We see no evidence of any relationship to God, no personal recognition of his destiny in relation to the covenant, and no reason to think of him as a godly person or an example in the faith. Nevertheless, we see two striking things in this chapter: one (in vv.1-5) is Isaac’s blessing of Jacob, despite everything that has happened, as mantle bearer of the covenant promise. However, this reflects only a wish expressed, not a foregone conclusion or statement of fact; it is for God to determine and to verify to Jacob. And this God does, in a dream (vv.12-15).

At first glance, Genesis 28 might be seen as a turning point in Jacob’s life, but really it isn’t. The commitment he appears to make to Yahweh in vv.20-22 doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. Jacob’s ‘deal’ is most naturally read as “if you do this for me, God, then I’ll do that for you.” It’s Jacob in charge, Jacob in control, and Jacob’s agenda. Jacob’s offer is conditional. Even his promise to tithe appears to say more about his designs on the other 90%. And yet, as John Walton observes (NIV Application Commentary) “we also see Jacob as a work in process – another of God’s reclamation projects. Jacob has done nothing to deserve God’s attention, yet God reaches out to him at a time when he is probably feeling nothing but despair and vulnerability.” It is ironic that during his subsequent twenty years in Haran, Jacob himself becomes the victim of the very deception and cheating that he had himself earlier used to his advantage with Esau and Isaac. We may detect some slowly growing recognition of the hand of God on his life (e.g. 31:3-5), but deception and scheming continues to be his default approach (e.g. 31:20). Character is still the big issue in his life. Which brings us to chapter 32.

Twenty years after running away in fear of his life, Jacob is returning to the land, as God has told him to do (31:13), where he will face Esau again. As Jacob nears where he will encounter Esau, we see evidence of both the ‘old’ Jacob working every clever scheme and plan he can think of to survive (vv.7-8; 13-21), in great fear and distress (v.7) – his fear being exacerbated by the news that Esau has 400 men in his ‘welcoming party’ – and also, of an emerging ‘new’ Jacob, throwing himself on God’s mercy and promises (vv.9-12). The culmination of Jacob’s personal transformation, his real turning point, comes in the encounter with the man at Peniel. Jacob, alone and afraid, is at the end of himself and his own self-sufficiency. He has lived off his cunning, wits and scheming (and suffered as the victim of it too, although scarcely eliciting our sympathy in the process), but now he is at his wits’ end. He can no longer handle the situation. He can’t fulfil his calling in the Covenant Story through the way he has been, up until now. In fact he can’t even face tomorrow.

The story tells us that the man (identified by Jacob as an angel, in v.30 – the word means a supernatural being; see also Hosea 12:4) cannot overcome Jacob. But if taken as a literal statement of physical prowess, this is absurd, for Jacob is now 97 years-old, and no match for an angel, as is evident from the ease with which the angel wounds Jacob when he determines to do so (v.25). No, this is speaking about (what we would today call) a ‘spiritual’ wrestling, and the reason ‘God’ cannot overcome Jacob is because the battle is to do with character. The question, for which the battle rages all night, is whether Jacob will surrender to God. It is not a question of strength but of will.

This is not a battle that God can win by imposing victory on us: we must surrender willingly, by choice. It takes all night not for the angel to reach a point of overcoming Jacob, but for Jacob to get to a point of overcoming himself. To gain our life, we must lose it.

There are now two crucial things to note in the text. The first is when the angel proposes to leave without giving Jacob any assurance of God’s help (i.e. ‘his blessing’). This would mean Jacob is back where he has always been in the past – operating on his own, off his wits and resources, usually resorting to scheming and devious tactics. But these have run out. He knows they are not enough, and they have no place in fulfilling the Covenant Story. This time, Jacob is a changed man. He is at the end of himself. He has begun to walk in the ways of obedience to Yahweh, and he realises that the weapons of the fight are not those he has been used to relying on. He won’t let go of the angel until he is assured that God will be with him; this is what matters. Jacob’s refusal to let the angel leave, without first receiving that assurance, reflects his final complete surrender to God. As Walton puts it, “As always with God, one has to lose in order to win.”

The second crucial thing is God’s renaming of Jacob, as Israel. In the ancient world, naming was seen as significant to who a person was (see e.g. Abram to Abraham), and the assignment of the new name affirmed authority over the one renamed. Similarly, therefore, Jacob’s acceptance of this new name reflects both his surrender to God and his changed character. So who are ‘leaders who walk with a limp’ today, and why is it a critical Vineyard value? Is it all-night prayer warriors? Perhaps, in part. Is it leaders who are desperate for God’s blessing, and willing to grasp hold of him until he delivers? Maybe, to some extent (although not in the ‘deal or no deal?’ terms Jacob originally proposed in 28:20-22). Or is it leaders whose character has been changed, who have utterly surrendered to God, letting go of self-reliance as their primary resource, and repenting of all scheming and manipulation in the work of the Kingdom? I think so. And particularly so where that character development, that battle of the will, has been a long and painful process in someone’s life, like wrestling all night, such that the scars of the fight are evident. I submit that this is what it means to “have struggled with God and with men and [to] have overcome.”

It might be said that overall, scripture has far more to say about people’s character than their gifting. In the wilderness temptations of Jesus, one might say that the issues and choices he faced were to do with character (this would be unsurprising, given his humanity, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the story appears at the outset of his ministry). This, then, is the message of Jacob and his wrestling with the angel of God, and it is a wrestling that each of us must go through, if we wish to contribute to God’s mission in God’s ways. The battleground is personal character. It is not a fight that God can win, though, not a victory he can impose on us, however long the fight goes on; it can only happen through our willing surrender.

If this is what John Wimber meant by ‘never trust a man without a limp’ then I couldn’t endorse it more.

Originally posted at http://deepchurch.org.uk/

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O Ye of Little Faith

January 26th, 2010

Faith clearly lies at the heart of Christianity.  The Bible commends those with faith (e.g. Jas 1:6) and indicates a connection between faith and answers to prayer.  Some scriptures suggest that there is a proportionality between the quantity of our faith and the scale of the prayers we can expect to be answered (e.g. Matt 17:20).  Clearly, then, having faith is important. 

So what constitutes faith?  How does it affect our relationship with God?  And what should we expect from faith, in terms of his responses to our prayers? 

Some Christians, in light of verses such as Matt 17:20, have concluded that there is a formulaic relationship between ‘faith’ and ‘results’ in prayer, even attributing to faith a kind of universal principle that believers can ‘tap into’ and get results.  This is the teaching of the so-called Word-Faith movement, sometimes called ‘name it and claim it.’     

The problem with such thinking is that it is mechanistic, and pits God as some kind of prayer-answering machine that simply needs to be programmed right to perform.  It is one thing to view God as consistent, reliable and true to his word (though even then, we should need carefully to define what precisely is that ‘word’, to which we are crediting him with being ‘true’) but quite another thing to treat him like a genie in a lamp.  The nature of God and the heart of the gospel is relationship, after all, not formula.  It also unhealthily focuses Christians on trying to eliminate any vestige of mental ‘unbelief’ and avoiding saying anything potentially ‘negative’ concerning how God will respond, since these are said to be a ‘lack of faith’ that is the root cause of unanswered prayers.  In extreme cases, it can lead Christians to feel they have to deny the obvious, with potentially dangerous consequences.  

Other Christians, meanwhile, avoid the worst pitfalls of such a cause-and-effect mechanistic theory, yet still want to teach that prayers would be answered, or revival would come, if only the people praying had ‘enough’ faith.  Here, the emphasis is on a sufficiency of faith (which often seems to lie somewhere just beyond where our faith is at right now!).  Answered prayer is – or would be – available, if only we had just a touch more faith, runs the argument. 

For anyone who wants to teach that signs and wonders are for today, but needs to explain it when they don’t happen, this is, of course, a terribly convenient way of having one’s cake and eating it.  The thinking runs as follows: miracles do happen today, but are subject to us having enough faith.  Since miracles do happen, then obviously they would happen, if only we had had enough faith.  If they don’t happen, it cannot be down to God (who wants them to happen), so it can only be because we didn’t have enough faith, which God has made a pre-condition.  Scripture is true, and God always performs if we have enough faith, so any failure to get the answer must be entirely down to us and our inadequate faith.    

This teaching is problematic because it provides a ready-made ‘get out of jail’ card for unanswered prayer, at the cost of heaping the blame on the pray-er.  It also does not speak well of the nature and character of a God who supposedly loves us enough to give his Son for us, but will withhold answers to our heartfelt prayers like some pedantic schoolteacher, unless we achieve a minimum qualifying standard of ‘faith’ each time (and who does so without making it clear to us what that level is, and how we achieve it).  So, God dangles answers to prayer just in front of our noses, like a carrot on a stick.  

This theory provides a rational explanation as to why we don’t seem to get the answers that certain biblical ‘promises’ would suggest we should be getting (i.e. it purports to offer a plausible alternative to doubting the trustworthiness of the scripture taken at face value), but it does so at the expense of the nature and character of God, who comes across as marking our school card, for the subject of ‘Faith’, as ‘Must try harder.’   

Both of these teachings, or ways of seeing the subject, are in thrall to a scientific and mathematical way of looking at our world and how it works – a hallmark of the era we call Modernity – and subject scripture (and indeed, God himself) to its overriding assumptions.  For example, they reflect Modernity’s inclination to measure things in a linear fashion, according to a line or scale.  So, at one end, sits ‘perfect faith’ (100%).  At the other, no faith (0%).  A certain ‘score’ on this faith scale, a certain ‘measure’ of faith, apparently causes the Spirit of God to ‘kick in’ and perform.  Quite where ‘faith as small as a mustard seed’ sits along that scale we really don’t know, although it often seems to be ‘a bit more than I’ve got at the moment’, based on the infrequency of mountains moved.        

But what if faith is actually relational, rather than mathematical?  What if faith constitutes the soil in which God is enabled to sow answers to prayers, as he chooses?  What if that soil is either ‘good soil’ or ‘bad soil’, rather than soil measured on a linear scale? 

What if the idea of only needing ‘faith as small as a mustard seed’ was intended as an encouragement: “you only need the merest, tiniest bit, because it isn’t actually down to you beyond that teensy weensy bit” – rather than as a discouragement: “you’re a disbelieving failure, who hasn’t even got the merest, tiniest bit of faith”? 

It certainly seems that an environment of ‘unbelief’ limited Jesus doing miracles in his hometown (Mk 6) – although the text does add: “except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (which hardly seems evidence of a God who is pernickety about people achieving certain faith ‘scores’ before answering their prayers). 

On another occasion, Jesus asked the father of a deaf and mute boy if he believed (Mk 9).  The man’s response – “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” – suggests that demonstrating a certain faith ‘score’, measured on a linear scale, is not what Jesus was seeking.  The apparent presence of some ‘unbelief’ alongside ‘belief’ doesn’t seem to have been a problem. 

On this understanding, then, faith would be seen as to do with the ‘enabling conditions’ or ‘atmosphere’ in which God can sovereignly move, an environment that inculcates divine possibilities; rather than how we achieve results using some divinely-mandated scientific formula that guarantees prayer success.  It shifts the focus from reading the biblical material as an operator’s manual (how to get prayers answered) to reading it as a love letter (how God loves us and wants us to relate to him). 

It also makes sense of the ‘faith as small as a grain of mustard seed’ saying (Matt 17) – might this actually be the same story as Mk 9? – in  which God’s expectations of our faith are benignly set so low as to allow really small faith levels to create these ‘enabling conditions’, an environment in which he can respond to us, in relationship, through the intimacy of prayer (not through predictable cosmic equations). 

The father in the deaf mute story was honest enough to admit to being a mix of some belief and some unbelief, suggesting he was on a journey of faith, like most of us.  He believed, but also asked Jesus to help him with his unbelief – and there is no suggestion in the passage that Jesus rejected that idea or found it a problem.  As Jesus might have said, the father had passed God’s easy-peasy test of a mustard seed’s worth of faith: “See how little faith is needed, for God to respond to you?”  The Pharisaic burden that blames people, or their lack of faith, obedience or spirituality, for not experiencing God’s favour, is lifted – the kingdom of heaven is, after all, for the poor in spirit.  Jesus’ ‘yoke’ and ‘burden’ – his expectations of people – are easy and light, unlike those of the religious leaders who heaped the blame for all Israel’s problems, and the reason Yahweh had not intervened on its behalf, on the ordinary people. 

A relational ‘lens’ makes clear that faith is not some inanimate substance, some impersonal ‘thing’ that one has to ‘get.’  Faith is in a Person, and it works itself out in and through relationship, not scientific formula. 

Even the smallest conceivable amount of ‘faith’ or ‘belief’, then, creates the enabling conditions, the environment, in which God in his love, mercy and compassion can move.  It enables divine possibilities.  We trust in his character and his fatherly love, not in some formula we have plucked from verses in the Bible and imposed back on God. 

And we permit his divine sovereignty to determine what happens, rather than boxing him in to deliver results at our bidding.

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“Seen on a bumper sticker: ‘Jesus is the answer’. Remind me again – what was the question?”

December 21st, 2009

I just came across this on Twitter: “Seen on a bumper sticker: ‘Jesus is the answer’.  Remind me again – what was the question?”

It made me think about how Christianity traditionally articulates the ‘question’ and explains the way in which Jesus is the ‘answer’.

The Christian good news – or ‘gospel’ – has often been told in criminal justice terms.  In this telling of the story, God is the authority of the universe (‘King’ or ‘Lord’) who has set the rules for humanity’s behaviour, which people have rebelliously rejected and broken (what’s called ‘sin’).  Because of this, God as divine Judge has passed sentence on humanity; in particular, the sentence of death (if not also, according to some tellings, the sentence of torture in ‘hell’).  This he had to do, because of the demands of justice, under which he cannot just pardon offences.  But, God loved us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to bear that sentence in our place, so that (provided we respond, in gratitude, and in wanting to be a reformed person) we escape the sentence and receive the benefits of his grace, including eternal life.

So – is that in fact the question, to which Jesus is the answer?

In the pyramidic authority-hierarchy of the world, pre-Modernity (i.e.  before the last 300 or so years), it was certainly easier to conceive divine realities in these terms, because that way of telling the story mirrored contemporary society.  Authority was vested in individuals, as was the ‘law’ and ‘justice’ (although these terms were understood and applied very differently, compared to our world today).

There are numerous problems in this presentation today.  Firstly, where do we find the ‘rules’ that humanity has broken?  The Christian answer would say ‘the Bible’, but given that the last sections were completed nearly 2,000 years ago, and there has been no divine update since then, the ‘rules’ (if they are there to be found) require a great deal of interpretation for today’s world.  The Jewish faith, which has the original Old Testament set of Levitical laws (or, Torah) at its foundation, has for centuries recognised the need for updates and interpretations, provided through its rabbis and scholars.  Just a short while spent browsing the subject shows how complicated this has become.

Whose interpretations govern the Christian understanding?  Whilst ‘do not kill’ (an example of external misbehaviour) and ‘do not covet your neighbour’s possessions’ (an example of internal misbehaviour) are perhaps self-evident in The 10 Commandments, the rules that apply to other situations are not.  Can it be left to conscience?  No, because that would make it subjective, whereas the Christian story tells us that the rules are objective, set by God, against which he judges us.

Another problem is the severity of the divine sentence.  In the pre-Modern world, right up until the penal reforms of the late 18th – early 19th centuries, judicial sentencing was frequently characterised by great brutality, including the inflicting of severe physical punishment for what we would classify minor offences.  In those days, the passing of a sentence of death (and/or extended physical bodily torture) for almost any offence was not uncommon.  It is not hard to see how, in such a world, the idea of God sentencing people to death for offences against his divine majesty, however relatively small, if not also the idea of eternal conscious torture in hell (torture being an established and lawfully-legitimate means both of obtaining evidence pre-trial and of punishment post-verdict) would have seemed both understandable and reasonable.  After all, this merely mirrored what it was like in human society; God, being God, had even more right to govern in that way.

Different societies, of course, also have different ideas of what constitutes ‘crime’, and, these change over time.  In the press currently is the case of a serial burglar who was attacked by his victim.  The victim has been sentenced to jail, whilst the burglar has not.  Clearly, it is more complex than my simple summary suggests, but the event has prompted a political debate as to whether the law should remain that a householder can use only ‘reasonable force’ if they are to avoid breaking the law themselves while defending their person and property, or whether the standard should allow any force that is not ‘grossly disproportionate’.  In any event, these terms – and whether or not a particular person has broken the law in a particular situation – will still need in practice to be defined by legal authorities.  Reasonable people could disagree.  A defence barrister will speak for the accused and a jury of peers will decide guilt (neither of which, incidentally, were provided for in pre-Modern justice processes).

These are not the only difficulties; there are many more.

For example, are the demands of true justice really fulfilled, if the sentence is borne by another person (even if they are willing)?

And is the Christian claim that every person, however decent and good they may be, deserves God’s sentence of death and hell a reasonable one (particularly when society has long since adopted the idea that the sentence should be proportionate to the crime)?

Does it help when the Christian argument is backed-up by assertions that the reason everyone today has ‘sinned’ is because of Adam and Eve’s original crime in the Garden of Eden, which has ‘doomed’ everyone since that day to be a ‘sinner’ themselves?  Is that a fair basis on which to condemn a person today?   

But, all that said, is a criminal justice-orientated view of the question – and the answer – either necessary or appropriate?  For if it is, we can’t avoid it, even if it is inconvenient.

Actually, no.  The Bible offers a ‘kaleidoscope’ of ways of understanding both the question and the answer.  It explains “Why did Jesus come?” (and the related question, “Why did Jesus die?”) in many ways, mostly with explanations drawing from a variety of imagery or metaphors.  It is a shame that in the telling of the Christian story, people have so often settled for just the one, judicial image, particularly given its many difficulties in today’s world.

Orthodox Christianity, in fact, has never insisted on just one, controlling way of telling the biblical story of what we call ‘atonement’, a word that simply means how, in Christ, we can become ‘at one’ again with God.  How, in other words, he has made possible ‘at-one-ment’ between humans and God.

And in the meaning of the word ‘atonement’ is perhaps found the best answer to the question.  In Christ, the broken relationship has been repaired, the separated parties reconciled.  Through the incarnation (i.e. God becoming human in Jesus’ life) and through the cross, in ways that we can’t fully fathom, God has made us able to be ‘at one’ with him if we choose.  He has cleared the barriers, removed the hurdles, done away with everything that naturally separates us from God (which includes our own messy lives and failings, but does not see them exclusively in judicial terms).  We no longer need to be alienated from God, but we can enter and experience a new, restored, personal relationship with him, thanks to Jesus.

Yes, we can continue see the problem and the solution in juridical terms if we want to, but it isn’t compulsory.

Indeed, no single explanation (from the variety that the Bible offers) is compulsory for orthodox Christianity.

As CS Lewis wrote, a person can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: ‘The thing itself is infinitely more important than any explanation that theologians have produced.’

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Separating the ’spiritual’ from the ’secular’

November 17th, 2009

A recurring flaw of charismatic Christian thinking is its tendency to divide between ’spiritual’ and ’secular’.   Many have been taught, either directly or by inference,  that there are two realms of existence – the earthly realm and the spiritual realm.  That  ‘earthly’ matters and the physical realm ‘below’  are human and fundamentally ‘unspiritual’, whereas ‘heavenly’ matters and the spiritual realm ‘above’ are of God.  That we should be shunning the former and seeking to live in the latter. 

In theological terms, this is called ‘dualism’, where reality is seen as consisting in ‘dual’ (two) realms.  One good, or better, ‘heavenly realm’, in which – as ’spiritual’ people – we should aspire as live as much as possible.  And the other bad, or inferior, ‘earthly realm’, in which ordinary, unspiritual humanity lives.  Much inspirational Christian literature furthers this line of thinking.  It is assumed that by seeking to live in the spiritual realm, rather than immersed in the ‘things of earth’, we are somehow closer to Jesus and to the kind of life we will one day live in Heaven.  One long, out-of-body, spiritual experience, for which we are already practicing. 

All well and good, maybe.  But is it biblical?  No, actually, it isn’t.  It’s inherited from Greek philosophy.  In the biblical world of the Hebrews, life is one.  Indivisibly joined.  We live spiritually in the real, physical world.  God is equally, and indivisibly, in both ‘realms’ (actually, this language is itself flawed, since there are not two realms, only one).  In Hebrew thought, life is not divided.  God is as present here as he is in Heaven.  Spirituality is not measured by how ‘otherworldly’ it is. 

In  Jewish thinking, things are not categorised in two lists, one of spiritual things (prayer, Bible study, meetings) and the other unspiritual things (cinema, sport, sex).  No, everything is in one realm, on one list.  The only thing that matters is whether or not something is aligned with the will of God.   

Christianity magazine has an article in its December 2009 issue by Steve Chalke, developing exactly this theme.  I commend it to you, and recommend subscribing to the magazine.   The Great Divide.

This kind of thinking affects how we see our relationships to one another (earthly, unimportant, purely functional in serving the Lord, and certainly not for enjoyment because that’s just pandering to our worldly likes)  versus our relationship with God (the only thing that matters, an ever-deepening individual, personal love-in with Jesus).  The biblical writers and their audience would be astounded that we could even think to separate the two ideas.  As Jesus explained, on more than one occasion, the concepts of loving  God and loving each other are interrelated, not to be separated into important and unimportant.  How we love people, who we can see, is connected to how we  love God, whom we can’t see.   We should not de-personalise our relationships with one another in favour of ‘finding all we need in Jesus’.  At least, not if we want to be aligned to a biblical view of ourselves as the community of God and what true biblical spirituality is all about.  Not an ethereal detachment from the real world and nitty gritty of life, but all wrapped up together into one integrated, physical-and-spiritual whole.

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Being Like Jesus

November 11th, 2009

For many Christians, the goal of the transformative work they understand God wants to do in their lives is to be increasingly like Jesus.  This worthy ambition is not, however, without its challenges.  In particular, it requires us to apply ‘hermeneutics’ (the principles and practice of interpretation) to the biblical materials, for we have a chasm to cross in how to apply what we learn (or think we learn) about Jesus from the biblical text to our present day situation.  For one thing, Jesus was God,[1] and we are not – how does this affect our reading, and our aspiration?  For another, we in our modern world and culture are separated from the ancient world and its culture by some 2,000 years of human history.  The world we inhabit is not that of the biblical writers.  How they saw “the way things are and are meant to be” is not necessarily how we would see them today.[2] So, statements, ideas and perspectives on life that they would take as ‘obvious’, and would be shared without question by their community, may be far from obvious to us and our community.  And vice versa.  So, in reading the Bible we must be careful that we are not reading into it meanings that would not have been considered by the original authors.  No writing can be timeless, either in terms of the words used to express ideas (for the meaning of words changes) or in terms of the ideas themselves.  What a certain concept, or phrase, or story, meant to the writer – or the way it would have been heard and understood by its original audience – may well not be what we would think, reading it today through the lenses of the 21st century Western world and in light of our own experiences.

This is not to suggest that the Bible is inaccessible, or that only theologians can read it and tell us ‘what it means.’  But it should caution us to hold lightly ‘what we think it means’ and to try to be conscious of the influences on how we read something.  In particular, to beware developing grand interpretive schemes on isolated individual texts or collections of texts that appear at face value to support a theme; our goal is exegesis (reading what’s in the Bible out of it) not eisegesis (reading what’s in our thinking into it).  Preachers, of course, are especially prone to this danger.

Getting this right is not altogether easy,[3] but one rule of thumb is that, to the extent we are reading the Bible devotionally, to inspire ourselves, we are more likely to be on safe ground.  Where, though, we are reading the Bible directively, to teach or instruct others, we need to be more cautious.   In other words, I am distinguishing between what I find meaningful in this passage for me and what this passage means, for others.  In both cases, the bigger or grander the theological schema we are seeking to build from the materials, the more cautious we should be that we are interpreting it rightly, and the more lightly and provisionally we should hold what we think we are finding.

Anyway, back to the base question: what it means for us today to ‘be like Jesus’, in ways that reflect the biblical portrait.  I want to focus on just two aspects, which seem to me to be timeless, and transferrable across the cultural and temporal divide.  One is the way Jesus related to those who were inside the church and the other how he related to those outside the church.[4]

Firstly, in contrast to the approach sometimes adopted by Christian Ministers today, Jesus did not shy away from friendship.  He thought of those in his church as friends and treated them as friends, not just as ‘flock’.  He was willing to take the risk of being close.  He was vulnerable with them, and ‘was himself’, rather than keeping his distance as part of his ‘office.’  Although he ‘set an example’ (indeed, our supreme example) this was not through artificial patterns of behaviour, it was in and through ‘being himself.’

He did not think of those in his church as simply co-workers, having individual personal relationships with God, yet solely functional working arrangements with him and with one other.[5] There is no evidence that he felt he needed to treat everyone the same, or to shy away from being real friends with people in the church.[6] We read, for example, of the disciple whom Jesus loved (the ‘one’), the inner circle of Peter, James and John (the ‘three’) and of course, the Apostles (the ‘twelve’).  Furthermore, there were close personal relationships with the many women who were part of his immediate friendship group, as well as a wider group who knew him well (e.g. the ‘72’, the ‘120’, and so on).

If we are seeking to model God and his ways, as revealed to us in Jesus how can we – whether ordinary church members or Christian Ministers – shy away from engaging whole-heartedly in real, enjoyable, genuine, life-sharing, mutually-vulnerable friendship?  Should Ministers not relate to people in their church as an everyday, just-like-you, person, rather than as a ministry?  Or do we want our ‘priests’ to keep a healthy distance away from (one might say, above) the ordinary world that ordinary people inhabit?

Secondly, Jesus had active involvement – which he seemed genuinely to relish – with those who were outside the church.  What was the nature of that involvement?  We find two things, in particular, said about him in the Gospels.  One, that he was a friend of sinners.  Two, that he was a drunkard and a glutton.  Neither was intended as a compliment!  Where did these criticisms come from?  Not from thin air.  The evidence of what he did could certainly lead to that conclusion, if that was the way you looked at it.  Avoiding both those criticisms is a major preoccupation with many Christians today, and, particularly, with Ministers.  But, might it be that ‘risking’ such criticism is a necessary part of ‘being like Jesus’?  Jesus encouraged us to be ‘in’ the world, at the same time as not being ‘of’ it, but does fear of the latter sometimes overwhelm achieving the former?  Should we perhaps ‘lighten up’ and realise that just as the Gospel’s good news is all about relationship, so too is the route to people receiving that good news?  Or has ‘working on my Sunday morning message’ taken priority over ‘having dinner with un-churched people’ in the priorities of Christian ministry?  Has ‘come to my church and listen to my wonderful preaching’ – which of course it might be – replaced Jesus’ way of ‘let’s chat over dinner and a few glasses of wine’, in bringing people closer to the kingdom?  How is it that we have allowed the presentational to take over from the relational in our so-called evangelism?  NB – it seems unlikely that Jesus would have been widely criticised for being a ‘drunkard’ (widely enough for the story to be passed down and recorded in the written Gospels) if he had abstained from wine in the company of the un-churched.  Clearly, being seen to be ‘setting an example’ in front of the un-churched – i.e. a ginger beer publicly, but a bottle of wine privately – was not part of his strategy.[7] Nor do we get the impression that he treated such meals as another ‘meeting’ (the Wednesday night Bible Study, the Thursday night Meal for the Unsaved).  No … it was natural, not stilted, it was organic, not institutionalised, and he thoroughly enjoyed it – it wasn’t part of the job.

Some Christians worry that if they engage too closely with the un-churched, their ‘sinfulness’ will rub off on them, or their own distinctiveness as Christians will be compromised.[8] Jesus might well have responded to this worry by pointing out that such things come from the inside of a person, not from the outside.  Jesus seemed to think that who he was would rub off on them, rather than the other way around.  There are, of course, ways in which Christians should be distinct, and ways in which we should not.  What falls within each category should be the subject of reflection and conversation amongst us.  Genuine enjoyment of the company of ‘sinners’, building real and genuine relationships (and not solely with the short-term goal – dare we call this a hidden agenda? – of converting them, within a timescale of our choosing) and listening as well as telling, all seem to have been integral to Jesus’ praxis.

How often have we reflected on the significance of Jesus’ habitual table fellowship with the un-churched?  Do we read Jesus’ sayings as if they were always delivered as monologue sermons, in meetings, or read out from a heavenly auto-cue?  Might some of them have been shared over the meal table in the homes of those outside the church?  Maybe some of it came out of conversations.  Perhaps Jesus shared similarly, on some of his favourite themes, quite often, and shaped and sharpened his thoughts through dialogue and questioning from his hosts and fellow guests.

Where do we get the idea that the principal and best means of reaching people who are ‘outside’ the faith with the truth is by getting them to come and listen to our Sunday sermons?  I am tempted to wonder if it is only preachers who think that - bless! - but their congregations are too polite to tell them so!  How much do we allow what Jesus did to influence our church plans and priorities?

Being like Jesus may not be quite what we have thought it is.  If we look more closely at how he lived, how he related to people and how he went about introducing people to God the Father, we may find that ‘being like Jesus’ amounts to something more than privately modelling our inner character on his and drawing lessons from his sayings to inform our personal ethics.

And certainly amounts to more than organising church services – on our terms – and expecting people to show up to them and make life-changing decisions through listening to a didactic, one-way lecture.  However much the Minister enjoys it!

[1] Even what we mean by this phrase requires some interpretation, for Jesus was both God and man.  Christians often struggle to balance these aspects of the biblical portrait.  This in turn is complicated by the Bible being both the ‘word of God’ and the work of the human writers.  In both cases, humanity was not bypassed or marginalised by divinity, but seamlessly integrated – “fully God, and fully man”, indivisibly.  How we understand this subject is a very significant feature of how we approach the Bible ‘hermeneutically’ and what we find in it about Jesus.

[2] This is not a case of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, biblical view versus secular view, but simply how people see “the way things are”, their reference points in the understanding of life and society that they inhabit.

[3] The sheer volume of biblical materials makes it easy to find in it virtually whatever we want to (and many do exactly that).

[4] Clearly, use of the term ‘church’ in this context is somewhat anachronistic.  By it, I mean the contemporary community of believers.  Starkly put, those who were ‘in’, contrasted with those who were ‘out’, although the edges of these categories are always far fuzzier than we tend to suppose (and hence the reason I much prefer a centred-set approach to a bounded-set approach).  An open question for another time is whether there was really that much difference in the way Jesus treated those in each category, with the sole exception of when he encountered – in those who claimed to represent God – rank hypocrisy, oppression of the poor, or distortion of the nature and character of the Father.  The reason for choosing to use the word ‘church’ of Jesus’ situation is to assist us in seeing the applicability of what he did to what we do.

[5] The church is not just a factory for producing individual Christians, where the pastor operates the machine.

[6] It appears both these ideas originate in pastoral-training seminaries, but they simply add to the impression that – however much they may protest that it’s a ‘calling’, not a ‘job’ – pastoral ministers are performing a role, adopting a professional posture, rather than just living life alongside fellow believers.  In contrast, the biblical picture suggests that Jesus’ strategy deliberately included developing closer personal relationships with a limited number and, through what he taught and ‘modelled’ to them, through relationships and friendship rather than just meetings, reaching the wider community.

[7] I am not suggesting the accusation was correct as such, nor that it should be true of us!  Rather, that his enthusiastic participation in table fellowship with the un-churched, engaging them in their homes over meals and conversation he thoroughly enjoyed, meant there was some underlying ‘grain of truth’ in it, for critics who sought to (mis)characterise it that way.  It was a risk he was entirely happy to run.

[8] We should reflect, with some concern, that this was precisely the understanding of the Pharisees.

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“God Told Me” – Really?

October 22nd, 2009

In the October edition of Christianity Magazine (to which I have just subscribed and, on the evidence so far, I would recommend to others) there is an excellent article by the venerable RT Kendall (formerly minister of Westminster Chapel) entitled “God Told Me” – Really? 

It’s aimed at the charismatic tendency to use (if not massively over-use) on a day-to-day basis, “The Lord told me …” terminology.  Do we really need to ‘name drop’ like this, RT asks?  Whose credibility are we trying to enhance – the Lord’s, or ours?

As you might imagine, I am firmly in the RT camp on this subject. 

Can we really point to a biblically-based expectation that the average Christian should get more “words from the Lord” in a week than Billy Graham has had in his entire lifetime?  Would someone like to present a biblical case for it? 

I won’t say too much about RT’s article – here’s a link (I hope the publishers won’t mind me advertising their excellent magazine in this way, at no cost to them …).

 http://www.faithandstuff.org/web_documents/christianity_article.pdf  

This isn’t a criticism of ordinary believers simply seeking to enjoy a personal, intimate and interactive two-way relationship with God.  Not at all, so please don’t take it that way.  The fault lies with pastors and preachers, who are probably the most prone to such language misues themselves, and who ’set the tone’ for their congregations. 

Furthermore, pastors often seem pathologically disinclined to ‘correct’ their  flock in this area, presumably to avoid discouraging people in their fledgling “experiential faith.”   The idea seems to be that less harm is done by a bit of ‘over-claiming’, than would be the case if someone is corrected and as a result put off trying to ‘hear from God’ in their personal life.  But this is a poor excuse.  Don’t we have a responsibility to train people?  And are we sure that less harm is done? 

What is ‘wrong’ here is not “experiential faith”, not at all.  At the very heart of the gospel is restored relationship.     

But might we charismatics not learn to be a little more humble, a little more communal (and less individualistic) about our ideas of ‘God speaking to us’  and a little less grandiose in our claims?

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Re-imagining the Spirit – #3 of 3

October 16th, 2009

This will be the last of my posts exploring an emerging theology of the Spirit in a ‘post-charismatic’ world.

Let me first be clear that by ‘post-charismatic’ world, I do not mean a world devoid of the Spirit’s personal presence and tangible activity.  I am committed to the belief that the Spirit is present in this world as God experienced, an incarnational role, in which the Spirit’s actions are in full continuity with the incarnate Son who came to be God with us.

The early charismatics were right, then, to have a deep desire for authentic engagement with the Spirit, and so too, are those of us who continue to hold this desire.  Unfortunately, many of us, while still clinging to these beliefs and desire, have ceased to be convinced by popular charismatology.

My proposal in the recent series of posts has been that more than anything we need to reimagine our core theology of the Spirit and allow this renewed understanding to inform our interpretive lens concerning our experience of the Spirit.

It seems to me that we are generally lacking a sufficiently well developed framework of the Spirit – of who he really is, what he’s really like, and what he sees his mission is all about.  Because we lack this ‘big story’ of the Spirit, we are without clear and informative points of reference against which to ‘test’ either expectations or experiences, and the debate too easily slips into the narrow exegesis (or eisegesis) of a handful of NT proof-texts.

We post-charismatics are therefore frozen to the spot, theologically-speaking, in being unsure what to expect of the Spirit.

We are also somewhat reluctant to appear, by questioning popular charismatic assumptions and practices, to be ‘speaking against the Spirit’, which I suggest is due to (1) awareness of the scriptural injunction, and (2) our deep desire to find authentic, contemporary experience of God, beyond the confines of intellect and reason, which impels us to ‘want to believe’ experiences of the Spirit are authentic.

What, then, might a reimagined core theology look like and how practically might it inform us as people open to becoming ‘new charismatics’?

Here are my own thoughts – I am sure there are more.  I see these not as a hierarchy, or a closed list.  Rather, they are like different viewing angles on a fascinating historical building – from north, south, east and west, and perhaps also from above – where all the views show part of its beauty, and no single view is more important, or tells more about the building.  The views are not in competition, they are complementary.  Only in absorbing all the viewpoints does one get to know the building intimately.  And any number of additional views, most of which we can expect to be able to locate in relation to the principal or ‘bigger picture’ views, can potentially add to the richness of the overall picture.

1.  Spirit cannot and should not be separated from Trinity.  Before he is anything else he is an intrinsic part of the Godhead.  The Spirit has no independent agenda for action.  His purposes are God’s purposes.  It is unhelpful and misleading to detach certain verses that speak of the Spirit or his work and place them in a separate, independent category.  Whatever is the authentic work of the Spirit will always be advancing, enhancing and empowering God’s revealed purposes for humanity and creation.

No work or action properly credited to the Spirit, then, will ever fail to be entirely in harmony with what we know to be God’s present purposes.  He will never appear to be pursuing different priorities.  He will never detract, or distract, from those purposes.  Nothing he does will be irrelevant. Read the rest of this entry »

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Re-imagining the Spirit – #2 of 3

October 14th, 2009

Inherent in the title of this series of blogs is our ‘imagining’ of the Holy Spirit, since we cannot ‘re-imagine’ except in relation to how we currently imagine.  We need therefore to ask ourselves: “How do we presently imagine the Spirit?” and to identify the influences reflected in it.

It is useful at the outset to remind ourselves that all our imagining should be both grounded in Scripture and, at the same time, sensitive to the context in which we are imagining, which is the contemporary culture (people will need to find the fruit of what grows out of it to be satisfying and nourishing).

In this post, I want to focus on what I see as some key foundational aspects to the Spirit’s person and work, which I think should inform our understanding of his identity, mission and purposes in and amongst us, and consequently have much to say about our experience and discernment of him in both Church and world. 

Since the Spirit is, fundamentally, ‘God, experienced’ – in continuity with the Son’s ‘God with us’ - we are right to have a deep desire for authentic engagement with the Spirit, understood in terms of the promise of Acts 1:8.  However, we are also cautioned by the biblical injunction to correctly discern his moving (1 John 4:1).   To fulfil both the desire and the constraint requires that we are informed by the overarching biblical narrative of the Spirit.  In other words, we will be ill-equipped to judge the authenticity of any experience unless we have an understanding of what he is about.   Without a clear view of his mission and purpose, we won’t know what answered prayer for the Spirit’s moving will look like, or what it means to cooperate with the Spirit (rather than hinder, or even quench).

Quenching the Spirit has usually been seen in terms of questioning or de-emphasising “exotic manifestations” – but what if it’s a great deal more than that?   Might it be that any failure to correspond our mission and praxis to the Spirit’s mission and praxis represents a quenching?  

To be ‘informed by the overarching biblical narrative of the Spirit’ is more than doing a Bible word-search.  It is also more than a systematic theology of the Spirit (i.e. a re-sorting of the biblical data in the ‘correct’ order, so that we know what to believe about the Spirit).

Read the rest of this entry »

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Re-imagining the Holy Spirit – #1 of 3

October 14th, 2009

I was recently invited to contribute a short series of guest blogs on Jason Clark’s Deep Church website www.deepchurch.org.uk   and thought it may be of interest to post them here also.  To engage with the comments, do visit Jason’s site.  The blogs here have been adapted slightly, for ease of reading in a different context. 

My first blog in this series of three began with some reflections on comments made by Jason Clark, when he initiated this series.  

Firstly, he observed “how little there is within emerging church resources about the Holy Spirit.”

Secondly, how Jason’s own church plant within Vineyard has “tried to explore our emerging identity and remain within our charismatic tradition” (my italics).

Thirdly, that many of his longstanding emerging church friends are “post-charismatic.”

These suggest two related tensions at work.  One, a loss of confidence in the ‘received wisdom’ about the Spirit bequeathed to us by the 20th Century charismatic movement and Pentecostalism.  The other, a discomforting awareness that while we may no longer feel able to embrace 20th Century charismatic understandings, a fresh pneumatology with which we are comfortable has yet to emerge.

The combined result is an ‘unfilled space’, precisely where a vibrant theology and praxis of the Spirit ought to be located.

It’s like an empty lot, that we drive past each day, on our journeys to and fro other places, with no reason to stop by.

It’s time to rebuild, but many of us find ourselves in reaction:

  • For some of us, a virtual wholesale rejection of that tradition, having witnessed such embarrassments, errors and abuses under the banner of ‘charismatic spirituality’ that we feel nothing good can come out of it.   Commenting on another blog at Deep Church, Mike McNichols spoke of “an understandable reaction to groups that have caricatured the Holy Spirit into the facilitator of exotic manifestations.”

In this view, 20th Century charismatic and Pentecostal pneumatologies are simply irredeemable, in anything like the form they are currently practiced at the popular level – we simply have to close that chapter and open a new one.  The extent to which this is a reaction against the pneumatology or against the ecclesiology, theology and culture of its practitioners is another question.

  • Some of us, meanwhile, are still clinging precariously to a certain element of our inherited ‘charismatic tradition’, on the basis that it (or something quite like it) simply must have a place in our experience of a deeply relational God who tangibly engages with us in Christian life.

In other words, since we (rightly) see personal, experiential relationship with God as central to both gospel and ecclesiology, and believe in God’s personal activity in the world, we are loathe to ditch ‘the charismatic’ entirely, despite some considerable discomfort with it as widely practiced. So, with no clear way forward, as an interim measure we scale back, but without abandoning all charismatic praxis (because, like Fox Mulder in the X-Files, it is still the case that “I Want To Believe”).

  • Others, though,  find themselves simply fearful of engaging with the Spirit at all, or afraid of trying and getting it wrong,  and so withdraw into what feels like safer (but is also emptier) territory.

All of these positions, and no doubt others, might be dubbed ‘post-charismatic.’   But as we know from postmodernity, the prefix ‘post-’ simply indicates a moving beyond.   It does not tell us anything about what might replace it.   It’s an in-between state, primarily defined by its negative critique of what came before.

One or more of these positions, then, may be where we currently find ourselves,  in our own relationship with the Spirit.

Our position is not helped , on the one hand, by the elusiveness of the Spirit, as part of his very nature, and on the other, by the scantiness of biblical instruction on the Spirit.

Not only is pneumatology somewhat underdeveloped in Scripture, it is notable that the Creeds offer us relatively little.  The Apostles Creed, for example, is content simply to state “I believe in the Holy Spirit”, without further elaboration.   Creedal references to the Spirit are, as Clark Pinnock notes, “brief and occasional, at times sounding almost perfunctory” (Flame of Love, Downers Grove: IVP, 1996, p.10).

If, then, we are earnestly seeking to re-imagine the Spirit in our emerging context, but we find the inherited legacy of 20th century charismatic and Pentecostal teachings and praxis an unsatisfactory place to start, how might we develop an orthopraxy of the Spirit that:

  • is faithful to canonical Scripture,
  • respects tradition, especially creedal affirmations, and
  • wholly engages with ‘who we are’ in our contemporary culture?

In another blog at Deep Church, Steven Hamilton suggests we explore some impulses from our deep church history, such that our forebears’ understanding and praxis might inform our own experience of God through the Spirit.   Since the Holy Spirit “epitomizes the nearness of the power and presence of God” (ibid. p.9), this seems an entirely valid starting point, for the Spirit is, fundamentally, God experienced.

It was the Early Church’s reflections on their own experiences of the Spirit that led them to a fully-Trinitarian theology.*   Just as their experiences of Jesus inevitable led them to certain conclusions as to his Person, so also did their subsequent experiences of the Spirit’s work – it is clear in Luke’s narrative that he sees the Spirit continuing to do what Jesus began to do and to teach (Acts 1:1).

Fundamental to our conception of this ‘doing’ and ‘teaching’ is his ‘being with us’ (Matt 1:23; Jn 14:9), which ‘the Spirit of Jesus’ continues (Jn 14:16; Acts 16:7).   To ‘experience’ the Spirit, then, whatever else it may be, is – first and foremost – to engage in a relationship with a Person, who has come to be with us.

Following Steven, I would strongly encourage our exploration of the mystic impulse, particularly within an environment of sacred space; for whatever our emerging doctrine of the Spirit looks like, it is to be experienced, not just framed and hung on the wall.

At the same time, we shall need to ‘deconstruct’ all our assumptions about the Spirit inherited from the charismatic traditions.  The Spirit is not simply some amorphous ‘mode of operating’ of God.   He is not a set of gifts, or a power we call down, or an extra-sensory spiritual encounter.   Neither is he here to perform ‘magic tricks’ to order, to endorse or validate human ministries or callings.

We shall also need to unpick the threads of the Gnostic and dualistic characteristics that are so deeply woven into the fabric of much Christian understanding of charismatic ‘spirituality’.

* Against the backdrop of a religious paradigm in which monotheism was the overarching and ‘non-negotiable’ tenet, a Trinitarian conclusion was remarkable, and speaks to the deep authenticity of those Spirit-experiences.

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“It’s Church, Jim, but not as we know it …”

September 26th, 2009

I recently came across the website of a new church, taking shape in North County San Diego.  The ‘about us’ section had a summary of what the vision is all about, and included this:

“What’s different?

  • We have no expensive religious facilities. Our time and money go toward caring for each other, serving the poor, and transforming our cities.
  • We have no professional clergy. Everyone is equal.  Our leaders prove themselves trustworthy by humble service.
  • We don’t use hype or emotional manipulation. We don’t put on a show to attract people or make them give money.
  • We have no spectators. Everyone has needs, and everyone has something to give.
  • We lower the bar for church. The only thing we need for church is 2 or 3 people gathered for the purpose of learning to follow Christ.  That is the ecclesia.  Nothing more is required.
  • We raise the bar for discipleship. In other words, we take Jesus seriously.  He said we must be willing to take up our cross to follow him, meaning only those who are willing to surrender their lives fully to Christ are able to follow.  We’re trying to learn how to do that together.

What’s the same?

  • Orthodox Christian belief, based on the historic creeds.
  • A love of scripture and dedication to learn from it.
  • The frequent practice of the sacraments of Christ.”

I could go on to say – “What’s not to like in that?”

What do you think?

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