It appears that neither Israel, Luke, or the Revelator got it right (John anticipating it happening in his lifetime). Now some 2,000 years since the Jesus movement began, can we say that the church got it right?
Steve Kindle, The Law’s Inevitable Tension between Ideal and Reality
Steve’s post is included in our discussion of the law in scripture. A directory is included there.
Steve Kindle has started a new ministry, Pastor2Pew, which provides resources for progressive pastors preaching from the lectionary. His interviews include a number of leading lights, including Walter Brueggemann, but more importantly (to me!) Energion author Bruce Epperly.
Here’s our discussion:
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by Steve Kindle
One of my “Pastoral Theology” professors remarked, “You can never underestimate the biblical illiteracy of a congregation.” This has proven true in all of the congregations I have served from Fundamentalist to Progressive. (Yes, I was once a Fundamentalist.) It is a continuing problem.
I just completed nearly a year leading a survey course of the Old Testament for the congregation I attend. We went from Genesis to Malachi, spending about one session on each book. The point was to familiarize the students with the overall content and meaning of each book, not to examine them in depth. In the Fall, we will do the same with the New Testament. The following represents some of the thoughts I took away from this.
In graduate school, I was exposed to the many attempts to organize the Old Testament around a unifying theme. For Walther Eichrodt the Sinai covenant was the lens through which to interpret the canon. For Gerhard von Rad it was what he called Heilsgeschichte, or “Salvation History.” Bernard Ramm saw in the Old Testament a “type/antitype” that connects it with the New Testament, and John Goldingay looks at the thread of grace that runs through the Testament. Walter Brueggemann, on the other hand, eschews any effort to organize the Testament by means of a unifying theme. For him, there is none, and in fact, the pluralism of the Testament is its greatest asset, allowing interpreters the freedom to imagine new possibilities in the text.
I think it is realistic to say that the search for a unifying theme is over. For Evangelicals unity of theme was based on the presumption of “one author,” that is, God. Therefore, it must have a single theme. However, the presence of different points of view, in fact, views that clash and jar against one another, make the notion of one author untenable. All one needs to confirm this is to look at how the Deuteronomic theology of “faithfulness to the covenant yields prosperity,” is undermined by Ecclesiastes and Job (among others). This lends credibility to the notion that the Old Testament is a compilation of attempts by Israel to make sense of their history, attempts that differ from one another in many respects.
The humanity of the contributors comes through in many places, especially when terrible things are attributed to God, such as the several genocides recorded as God’s command. The flip side of this are the texts which overturn Mosaic excesses. One such is his ban that Moabites are not allowed to worship with Israel “to the tenth generation,” meaning never. Along comes Ruth, a Moabite who is the great great grandmother of King David, who then gives Jesus the distinction of carrying Moabite blood. Another is Moses’ command that eunuchs would also be excluded from Israelite worship. Isaiah overturns this beautifully by prophesying that eunuchs will eventually be given something better than progeny, something that will never be “cut off,” a new name. Interestingly, the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity in the Book of Act was the Ethiopian eunuch!
If you are committed to the notion that everything in the Testament must conform to everything else, these not so subtle disagreements will escape you. Brueggemann’s pluralistic understanding of the texts opens up worlds of new possibilities of understanding if we have ears to hear.
One other insight is worth noting here. Some things taken literally actually hide a deeper and likely better meaning. When the discussion of Adam and Eve is taken literally, people want to know things like where was the Garden located, where did Cain get his wife, where did all those people come from to populate the first city, and how come we can’t find the angel guarding the Tree of Life. The Bible doesn’t seem interested in answering these questions, so we shouldn’t get too exercised about them, either. That’s because taking this story literally obscures the natural meaning of a story—to tell truths beyond the details. In this case, if you substitute “humanity” for Adam and Eve, you will read about yourself, not about two primordial characters.
I think the best thing about the time spent in this survey is getting acquainted with the flow of Israelite history. Once you get past 2 Kings, the rest of the Testament is hard to situate in a time-frame. Where do you locate Isaiah, for example, or Ruth? The Minor Prophets are jumbled among the pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic periods. It became clear that preaching from the Lectionary suffers because many people can’t put the text into a context, and sermons can’t take the time to do it, either. When we started, class members didn’t know the difference between primordial time and the Exile. They do now, and if anyone in addition to them is benefited, it will be the preacher.
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By Steve Kindle
It’s almost impossible for a congregation to spiritually thrive in America. The American ethos is constructed to oppose it at almost every turn. According to the apostle Paul and the witness of the Book Acts, New Testament churches were egalitarian societies—societies whose chief concern was the well-being of the community. Everyone looked out for the other, and suffered and rejoiced together. Power was conceived as service, and wealth was God’s blessing for the community. Quoting Exodus, Paul declared, As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.’ In a later time he might have said, “All for one and one for all!”
[ene_ptp]But here in the West, we acknowledge the individual as the highest form of human achievement. The ego rules, self-esteem is our pursuit, self-aggrandizement is our religion, and “It’s all about me.” When we think about others, it’s always after we’ve satisfied ourselves. We’ve elevated John Wayne to national sainthood largely due to his personal motto that “I ask nothing of anyone, and give nothing.” No wonder Robert Ringer’s book, Looking Out for #1, became a New York Times #1 best seller. (His first book, also a best seller, was Winning Through Intimidation.) Independence is our goal and anything short of it spells failure—in our own eyes and others.
Capitalism has the status of a godsend where we are taught that competition achieves the best results. We honor, even glorify winners. We look down on, if not denigrate, losers. “May the best man win,” is not restricted to boxing matches; it’s a way of life. Gordon Gecko said it all when he declared, “Greed is good.” One’s value is measured in dollars, not in worthwhileness.
Now, plunk average Americans down in a pew and what do you get? To be realistic, their main concern is for themselves and their families. The extent of their involvement is limited to how it impacts their lives and the lives of their loved ones. And why not? This is how we are expected to behave; anything else would be un-American!
Certainly it is true that our congregations are filled with people who understand the gospel and lovingly serve their neighbors, who sacrifice their time and resources for the betterment of others. But we burn these wonderful people out because they are largely left to do the meaningful work of the church by themselves. Too many others are willing to be served while sitting on the sidelines, observing, appreciative, but idle.
What needs to happen for a congregation to truly deserve the name Christian is transformation. The ethos of the West needs to be exchanged for the ethos of the servant gospel. The fact that transformation so seldom happens—congregation-wide—is a testimony to its difficulty if not its impossibility.
What you are about to read will appear to be outrageously off the mark by some and blasphemous to others. The degree of hostility will be in direct proportion to how committed to a certain form of idolatry one is.
I was raised in a pro-family home. I heard over and over again from my parents, “The only people you can truly count on are family.” Over the years I have learned that families are as untrustworthy as even the highly touted biblical families. Our biblical heroes’ families were full of intrigue (Jacob and Rachael), unfaithfulness (David), fratricide (Cain), betrayal (Aaron), and treachery (Laban), just to mention a few. There is nothing inherently superior of family over any other institution. All human institutions are flawed to one degree or another.
Of course, the church is also a human institution; yet, it is also divine. Instituted by Jesus as the principle vehicle of the Kingdom, it is ruled over by him and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Members of the church of God have a “leg up” over any of its rivals, including family. Choosing family over church is selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. It is to commit idolatry.
But, can’t we have both? Some of Jesus’ statements are true on their face, especially this one: “You cannot serve two masters.” Making a successful life is, in part, prioritizing properly. Something must come first and all else subordinated to it. What we select as our first priority will determine how well our life goes, or not.
What, exactly, is this idolatry?
It is the placing of our family over every other commitment in our lives, especially the church.
We often hear people say, “My family comes first,” or “My priorities are God, family, church, nation, society,” or some other order after family. A high commitment to our families is honorable and certainly necessary. Nothing I write here should be in any way taken to denigrate the importance of family. But the family is only well-served when it is prioritized after the church.
How is it that the family becomes an idol?
One way to answer this is when the needs of the family conflict with the needs of the church—the family wins.
In each of these examples, the interests of the family take priority over the needs of the church. What are we teaching our children here? We are teaching them that the family is more important than the community of saints that cares for our bodies and souls.
“But,” you say, “my church is hardly the place I’d commit my well-being to.” Yes, poorly serving congregations are a fact. But why are they so? I believe it’s because we don’t teach and/or expect anything more from our families than what we get. After a few efforts to increase involvement, we fail and fall back on our ready-to-burn-out servants. This has to change. And it will only change when we recognize the problem. The status quo is killing congregations.
Here’s how to avoid the idolatry of family. Prioritize this way: Church, family, (the rest is up to you).
If God is indeed one’s highest priority, worshiping and serving God is how we live this out. For most Christians, this means we do so in the context of a congregation. Whereas many today think the church should be at the service of the family, in actuality, the family should be in the service of the church. The former is idolatry; the latter is discipleship. In this way we teach our children and order our own lives in such a way that seeking first the Kingdom is our highest priority.
The answer—form true community
Churches are, in part, human institutions, and suffer from human foibles. All the imperfections found in our biblical families are alive and well in the church. This can lead to the false assumption that putting the church as our first priority is misguided. I would argue that this is true because the church is not the first priority of its members. Because our commitments are to other things, we allow the church to wither. The answer is to create true community in a congregation where each member lives for the well-being of the others. This is how “the last shall become first and the first, last.” By serving one another, we are all served well.
How does your church measure up? Better still—how do you and your family measure up?
[i] This is a particularly difficult example. In this case the decision to move may very well be the right decision, but it too often is made without any consideration for the needs of the congregation. It is just assumed to be correct on its face.
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by Steve Kindle
[ncsoc_items product_list=”1631990093″ width=”150″ height=”250″ type=’h’]Many of you read the post and comments in opposition to and in favor of same-sex marriage. What did it bring to light? I know some of you are thinking–Nothing! Most of us are probably set in our considered opinions on the subject of gays and gay marriage. What more can be said than has been said over the past fifty-five years that the church has struggled with this issue? Surely, nothing new surfaced in terms of new arguments. We were exposed to more of the same, including what I had to say on the subject. This is not to say that the pros and cons are irrelevant anymore, just repetitive. Of course, not everything that could be said would occur in our discussions, and possibly something of value may yet come forth. But our discussion ended in an impasse–a draw, if you will, where it seems no minds were changed.
But changing minds might not be the most important reason for the discussion. After all, if all we want to do is change another’s mind, in my view (and Martin Buber’s, too), we treat each other as objects to be defeated, not equals to learn from. In the process, we deny the other the status of human being, equal to our self.
Full disclosure: I am a stanch advocate for gay equality in the church and society. I am the executive director of an organization that works with churches and individuals to encourage gay inclusion. I have given seminars literally from coast to coast including Hawaii, and published two books on the subject. I have stood with LGBTQs in public protests when we were driven off the sidewalks by angry truck drivers. I’ve had stones throne at me during vigils, I know the stories of countless gays whose parents disowned them, churches ex-communicated them, and society discriminated against them and finally shunned them.
Yet, this is not the end of the story. One thing changed all this. Over the last couple of decades, gays “came out” by the thousands, even hundreds of thousands. We discovered that they are our brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, pastors, doctors, even our parents. Our minds changed from thinking all gays are like the demonstrators in the pride parades to seeing they are just like us, for they are us. So now America is solidly behind full equality, including same-sex marriage.
I bring this up because minds do change. They change, not because they have been argued into a new position, but because they have a personal relationship with someone gay they know well. Most people I have encountered over the years who were pro or anti gay were so out of a disposition, not out of a well-reasoned proposition. The anti-gay folk just found it “unnatural,” and the pro-gay folk disliked discrimination of any kind. In Christian circles, “My Bible says…” was met with “No it doesn’t.” Yet, the anti-gay folk changed their minds in droves, and the pro-gay folk learned personally why they hated discrimination.
So, what did I learn from our discussion on EDN? Mostly that we are talking past one another. Each side begins from such a different place that communication is almost impossible. Our views of how to understand the Bible turn that document into a jumble of interpretations that make no sense if you don’t hold the same view. Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 didn’t come up, but for many, this is all one needs to know that gay sex is an abomination. Those with an inclusive view can’t understand how a Bible verse can carry such import as to condemn a whole people; we prefer theology to proof-texting.
I wanted to make clear my total commitment to my position in order to make a larger point. I prefer having a relationship with those who disagree with me over winning the argument. My chief antagonists, Elgin and Nancy (see comments), are model Christians whose lives I admire, and who I hope hold me in the same regard. I can say this, because over the years I have burned a few bridges and wish I had not valued my own position over our friendship. So, in the future, I hope we can continue to raise controversial issues and maintain the priority of people over opinion. Being the liberal I am, I believe God prefers it this way.
Go in peace, dear ones. God loves us all.
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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]
by Steve Kindle
As with most of the controversial questions in this series, they must be qualified in certain ways due to the wide range of possible approaches. Even then, we can only scratch the surface. This is especially true of this question. So my effort will not be to convince as much as it is to open possibilities for reevaluation.
Just what is the human condition? The Bible’s answer, albeit here in condensed form, is that human beings are separated from God by personal and corporate sin. As long as this condition obtains, humans are destined for an eternity apart from God. In order to take away this guilt and remove this separation so that God and humans can be at one again, a penalty must be paid. It was Jesus “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” (Romans 3:25) Through faith in this self-sacrificial act, humans can appropriate salvation, or at-one-ment (atonement), with God.
Beginning with the New Testament and down to our day, people have struggled to understand how the sacrifice of Jesus accomplished atonement. This struggle has produced several theories, none of which has become the only orthodox explanation. This is partly due to the fact that the New Testament, itself, puts forth competing answers, and that no one theory has captured the imagination of the church. These were doctrinally formative years where disciples were trying to figure out the meaning of Jesus for the community. We are still engaged in that endeavor.
Generally, the atonement theories have this in common: they each assume that human beings are sinners who deserve eternal punishment (hell), and that the death of Jesus is the only means of relief from the wrath of God. The human condition, then, is to either live a life under the curse of death, or by faith in Jesus, appropriate salvation.
What kind of a world presumes such a curse and cure?
Atonement theories originated when the world was young, at least in the minds of their originators. For Augustine, it was a mere 4500 years old when he first conceived of an original Adam passing on to humanity (through sex) the inescapable human condition of depravity, known as Original Sin, which could only be alleviated by the sacrifice of Christ. All one had to do was trace the biblical genealogies and one could arrive at the first parents. This was essentially the view until the rise of modern geology in the 18th century. We now know our world, the planet Earth, to be 1,000,000 times older than Augustine imagined (4.5 billion years old). The literalness of the Genesis primordial accounts were quite plausible in those days, but only biblical literalists continue to believe them today.
Also complicating the picture is the emergence of Charles Darwin and his biological theory of evolution1. This leads to the conclusion that there were no such people as the historical first parents, Adam and Eve2; that, in fact, humanity’s rise took millions of years and many iterations before homo sapiens emerged about 200,000 years ago. Ergo, no “original” Adam, no “original” sin. This suggests that all doctrines adduced from a literal Adam need to be reevaluated, including those of the apostle Paul. A savior who saves us from a primordial “fall” that never happened is credulous in a pre-Darwinian age and impossible to imagine in ours.
Reevaluations remind me of the adage, “having your cake and eating it, too.” Most are efforts to keep evolution and a literal Adam. One suggestion is that God chose a “first couple” out of the pool of existing humanoid creatures and invested them with souls. It was this couple who rebelled against God and ushered in sin. Unfortunately, missing in this construction are the rib from which Eve came, the Garden of Eden, and the assertion that “there was no one to till the ground,” until God formed ha ’adam from the ground.
In those Christian traditions that reject Original Sin as a doctrine, they, nevertheless, hold to a sense of universal sin that no human can escape from. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” So whether one comes corrupted into the world through Original Sin, or sins by nature of a corrupted mind, all humans are in need of redemption.
None of this has addressed the presumed answer to the dilemma of fallen humanity: sacrifice. During the time the Bible addresses, sacrifice was the order of the day. By sacrificing crops or animals, and, yes, humans, the petitioner believed that God or the gods were temporarily assuaged.
All but one or two atonement theories have, at their base, the conviction that humanity needs to be redeemed, is incapable of redeeming itself, and that a supernatural imposition in history is required to affect a cure. But is this truly the human condition?
G. K. Chesterton once averred that, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,” He saw original sin as the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable and validated by 3500 years of recorded human history.
Evolutionary theory has another answer to humanity’s seemingly irresistible proneness to violence. It’s called the “selfish gene,” and (regardless if it’s a gene or a syndrome) its purpose is to protect the survival of the individual through any threats to its demise. Rather than our propensity to sin, we have a propensity to survive as a way to insure the perpetuation of the species. If this is true, no atonement theory can spare us of it.
In another post on EDN, Allan Bevere quotes John Polkinghorne:
A creation allowed to make itself can be held to be a great good, but it has a necessary cost not only in the blind alleys and extinctions that are the inescapable dark side of the evolutionary process, but also in the very character of the processes of a world in which evolution takes place. The engine driving biological evolution is genetic mutation and it is inevitable in a universe that is reliable and not capriciously magical, that the same biochemical processes which enable germ cells to produce new forms of life will also allow somatic cells to mutate and become malignant That there is cancer in creation is not something that a more competent and compassionate Creator could easily have eliminated, but is the necessary cost of a creation allowed to make itself.
God acts within the open grain of nature and not against it. God interacts with creatures but does not overrule them, for they are allowed to be themselves and to make themselves. It follows from this that not everything that happens will be in accordance with God’s direct will. The divine sharing of the causality of the world with creatures will permit the act of a murderer or the incidence of cancer, though both events run counter to God’s desires.3
Certainly if you lived in the pre-scientific eras up to the modern age, the notions of sin and sacrifice could inform your life. It would have been as close to you as the air you breathed. The death of Jesus as somehow the answer to your life’s predicament would make sense. Today, we live in a totally different world. “New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.”
It is important to bear in mind that not only has the Christian church never camped on one particular atonement theory, it put forward through the centuries a variety of theories. This should make us pause and reflect on how elusive the notion of the work of Christ is in its exactness and detail, even the literalist interpretation of Paul, notwithstanding. Add to this that the Gospels provide different meanings to the death of Jesus. One is entitled to ask, ‘Are these options the only ones possible, and must we be restricted to choosing only among these?’
In premodern times, “man’s inhumanity to man,” was described as sin and its antidote was atonement. There was very little else that could serve as an option We have to take into consideration that human beings have only been at this civilization game for about 10,000 years. For most of that time, we have not needed anything more than our tribe for our survival, whether that be an actual tribe, clan, village, city, or nation. The idea that all of humanity can now be wiped from the face of the Earth is very recent. We have not begun to face up to that reality. Problems are no longer limited to here or there, or them or us. Where once the various disputations had no bearing beyond the disputants, now no one is immune from serious harm inflicted anywhere. All problems may be local but they have worldwide consequences. This means that it now takes the cooperation of the entire world to solve its failures. We are just now realizing that an “us versus them” world needs to be reconsidered. To revise Chesterton, “This new world has not been tried and found wanting, it has not been tried.” The “selfish gene” just may become our best ally as we learn to work together for our own good. For we will either survive or perish together.
The “new physics” helps us place humanity in proper perspective. It provides us a context into which we can place not only ourselves but also all of creation—we are all connected. Moreover, not just humans, but every particle of the universe from the furthest star to the minutest sub-atomic particle are part of the same Oneness. This is true “at-One-ment”: we are all one. There is no dividing us between those who are in and those who are out. We can have no enemies, as this would make us enemies of ourselves.
“Sin” needs to be recharacterized, or better still, broadened. Since all things are connected, or One, any act that is against the well-being of any part of creation is sin. What is sin? Anything that places distance between any part of creation. Another way of putting this is sin is anything that serves to disrupt the Oneness that is by working against its well-being. The Golden Rule becomes the rule for the cosmos, not just for humans.
Forgiveness between humans can serve as a model for transcending the “human condition.” No atonement (as blood/life sacrifice) is necessary. Forgiveness is the act of the offended one foregoing retribution and willing the well-being of the offender. I find this works well with at least one atonement theory, Moral Influence. It sees the whole life of Jesus, including his teachings, gathering of disciples, death and resurrection, as a model for how the world can be saved from itself. Not by blood sacrifice (penal substitution, etc.), but by a servant model that encourages followers to live for the well-being of all, even if it means losing your life in the process. This was Luke’s view and it is now mine. In this way, Jesus is my savior. He taught me how to live properly before God in an “us against them” world. Doing so, I am “at one” with God and God’s world.
NOTES
1Bear in mind that evolution is scientific fact; natural selection as its mechanism remains a theory.
2The so-called “Mitochondrial Eve” is often mistaken as representing the first human woman. She is, rather, the mother of all humans now living as descending from her in an unbroken line. However, she had parents, siblings, cousins, etc., but their descendants, also humans, are no longer represented in the human genome.
3Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, p. 72.