The Evil It
As a child It was called "little elf"
But Its father was Satan himself.
It has tasted the goodness of Light
And yet dove into darkness inspite.
Ever hard'ning Its heart It has been:
Now It is given over to sin.
But before Its damnation's assured
Into wickedness It will be lured.
It will hate and be hated in turn
And the way of despair It will learn,
Every dream It has had will be crushed,
Its attempts to cry out will be hushed,
Very soon It will breathe its last breath
For Its heart is the wellspring of death.
Vysotsky
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
A Theologyless Presentation Of Christ?
Last night I was at the little weekly meeting at the Slays' house (which was actually quite a bit more crowded than I remember it being in the past... Paul had picked up quite a few folks over year I guess) which had just started again for the Spring. It was quite a collection of believers from various nations... there were folks from Iraq, South Korea, Ethiopia, Russia... and I can't remember where Godswill and Ruby were from exactly :p. One of the African nations. We all have had wildly different backgrounds. There were teachers, engineers, an ex-pastor, and an ex-politician. A couple were actually under political asylum. As far as histories go, there were a few heavies last night.
Paul had mentioned to me a couple of times during our conversations that he was interested in dialoging about different cultures and thinking on how the gospel might be best presented in the cultures that internationals return to. Last night he gave us an article by Herbert Hoefer (an former missionary to India; you can find the article here) to read that presented what was to me maybe one of the most important ideas that had come to my attention in a long time, namely, the presentation of Christ as it appears repeatedly in the new testament to new believers in those ancient accounts - minus a lot of theology.
What am I talking about? The article really says it best, so go read it. I'll summarize very briefly: often times in the new testament, the death, resurrection, and ultimate lordship of Christ is clearly proclaimed, but the details aren't. "'Repent, believe, recieve' is the gospel proclamation" is how Hoefer puts it, and very often in the new testament accounts that's pretty much what a lot of people who recieve the gospel get to hear. Hoefer asks what if that is all that is proclaimed initially, and we let the cultures we're speaking to meditate on that and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to the rest?
Of course questions may (and probably will) come soon after the proclamation... stuff along the lines of "What does that mean?". The point I think though is at least the listener gets a chance to frame it within his or her own worldview first. Then having attempted to make sense of it, they can really repsond with what they think of the gospel, instead of trying to make sense of, in addition to the gospel, the various intepretations or theologies we may be tempted to heap onto those basic facts.
I'm not knocking theology. I love it, and I like a little structure to my beliefs. Scripture itself tells us to watch our doctrine closely. We should all be trying to make sense of what the gospel says and internalizing it, making it a part of our hearts and minds. But the primary worth I see in any school of Christian theology, be it Calvinist, Arminian, or what-have-you, is that people are caring enough about getting it right to try to make a system of thought. Ultimately though, and I think this was one thing that Paul Slay is trying to get at, a system of thought is simply a religious form. The substance of faith is exactly what's in scripture and nothing more.
For the moment, I'm enjoying thinking about the new ways to talk about the gospel with people. I do think I've come across as being pretty heavy-handed when talking about Christ in the past. There's been this mental leash, a sad insistence that I get the internal logic right within myself before I open my mouth, when really, it is the Spirit that works, and it is the Spirit that convinces the heart of the listener. I forget that at the first moment I met my God, I didn't know all the details. I only knew he loved me more than I could imagine, and that Christ on the cross had something to do with that.
That day, my heart truly broke for the first time, I truly wept for the first time, and I knew I was never going to be the same again.
Last night I was at the little weekly meeting at the Slays' house (which was actually quite a bit more crowded than I remember it being in the past... Paul had picked up quite a few folks over year I guess) which had just started again for the Spring. It was quite a collection of believers from various nations... there were folks from Iraq, South Korea, Ethiopia, Russia... and I can't remember where Godswill and Ruby were from exactly :p. One of the African nations. We all have had wildly different backgrounds. There were teachers, engineers, an ex-pastor, and an ex-politician. A couple were actually under political asylum. As far as histories go, there were a few heavies last night.
Paul had mentioned to me a couple of times during our conversations that he was interested in dialoging about different cultures and thinking on how the gospel might be best presented in the cultures that internationals return to. Last night he gave us an article by Herbert Hoefer (an former missionary to India; you can find the article here) to read that presented what was to me maybe one of the most important ideas that had come to my attention in a long time, namely, the presentation of Christ as it appears repeatedly in the new testament to new believers in those ancient accounts - minus a lot of theology.
What am I talking about? The article really says it best, so go read it. I'll summarize very briefly: often times in the new testament, the death, resurrection, and ultimate lordship of Christ is clearly proclaimed, but the details aren't. "'Repent, believe, recieve' is the gospel proclamation" is how Hoefer puts it, and very often in the new testament accounts that's pretty much what a lot of people who recieve the gospel get to hear. Hoefer asks what if that is all that is proclaimed initially, and we let the cultures we're speaking to meditate on that and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to the rest?
Of course questions may (and probably will) come soon after the proclamation... stuff along the lines of "What does that mean?". The point I think though is at least the listener gets a chance to frame it within his or her own worldview first. Then having attempted to make sense of it, they can really repsond with what they think of the gospel, instead of trying to make sense of, in addition to the gospel, the various intepretations or theologies we may be tempted to heap onto those basic facts.
I'm not knocking theology. I love it, and I like a little structure to my beliefs. Scripture itself tells us to watch our doctrine closely. We should all be trying to make sense of what the gospel says and internalizing it, making it a part of our hearts and minds. But the primary worth I see in any school of Christian theology, be it Calvinist, Arminian, or what-have-you, is that people are caring enough about getting it right to try to make a system of thought. Ultimately though, and I think this was one thing that Paul Slay is trying to get at, a system of thought is simply a religious form. The substance of faith is exactly what's in scripture and nothing more.
For the moment, I'm enjoying thinking about the new ways to talk about the gospel with people. I do think I've come across as being pretty heavy-handed when talking about Christ in the past. There's been this mental leash, a sad insistence that I get the internal logic right within myself before I open my mouth, when really, it is the Spirit that works, and it is the Spirit that convinces the heart of the listener. I forget that at the first moment I met my God, I didn't know all the details. I only knew he loved me more than I could imagine, and that Christ on the cross had something to do with that.
That day, my heart truly broke for the first time, I truly wept for the first time, and I knew I was never going to be the same again.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Croatians Rock
For two reasons:
1. Croteam has created a beautiful 3D Engine in the Serious Engine 2. Yeah the humor in Serious Sam 2 gets pretty lame towards the end, which only means someone needs to license this engine and slap a better game onto it.
2. Jan Fiala has created what has to be the most useful piece of freeware I've ever come across: PSPad, a freeware HTML, PHP, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, Perl, yada-yada editor. I haven't started using it extensively yet and it's already impressed me thoroughly just looking through its features. Also, it's gotten nothing but kudos on the web so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. That something like this can come free without spyware is frikkin' amazing to me. Ijust might give Jan a donation after I've gotten some mileage out it.
If you code, go check it out. You might like it too :).
For two reasons:
1. Croteam has created a beautiful 3D Engine in the Serious Engine 2. Yeah the humor in Serious Sam 2 gets pretty lame towards the end, which only means someone needs to license this engine and slap a better game onto it.
2. Jan Fiala has created what has to be the most useful piece of freeware I've ever come across: PSPad, a freeware HTML, PHP, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, Perl, yada-yada editor. I haven't started using it extensively yet and it's already impressed me thoroughly just looking through its features. Also, it's gotten nothing but kudos on the web so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. That something like this can come free without spyware is frikkin' amazing to me. Ijust might give Jan a donation after I've gotten some mileage out it.
If you code, go check it out. You might like it too :).
Saturday, March 04, 2006
The Problem Of Suffering And The Loving God (Part 3)
I was invited to go have dinner and watch a movie at Brian Todd's house last night. He lives pretty close to Brent so finding it wasn't a problem. He's also invited a few international students over, and the dinner was a pot-luck kind of deal. The movie was Hotel Rwanda. I won't go into too much detail about what the movie is about (here's a rotten tomatoes link if you want to read reviews, and the official synopsis), but here's a short summary: In 1994, Hutu extremists begin a genocide campaign against Tutsis in Rwanda after the assassination of the nation's (Hutu) president. Paul Rusesabagina, assistant manager of the posh Belgian-owned Hotel Mille des Collines, is a Hutu who takes it upon himself to run a secret refugee camp for Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the hotel after all the whites (and his manager) are evacuated out of the country. The Tutsi people are without hope: the international community refuses to intervene, deeming the genocide as just another incident in Africa.
The movie was intense, and unless you're stone-cold dead, it'd be hard to go through the whole movie without wondering once how something like that could happen on God's green earth. And yet it did happen. It still does. In places like Sudan and the Congo the same story replays itself over and over. Guys like me see it on tv, and then (to paraphrase Joaquin Phoenix's reporter in Hotel Rwanda) say "That's awful" and go to eat dinner.
We talked about the movie after it was over. One question Brian asked was "So what does that have to do with us?". That was a tough question. Many folks in the room doubted they wielded enough influence to make a difference. But Brian did a neat thing. Apparently all the international students in that room were involved with tutoring kids from lower-income families (it was something Brian was involved with, which is how he got to know them I guess), and he reminded them that that is making a difference, reaching out to help folks whom you have little or no reason to help.
That may sound like syrupy, airy-fairy, what-EVAH logic, but let me frame it like this. To different degrees, the same brand of ethnic enmity we saw in that movie also causes persecution and death (either physical, social, or spiritual) throughout the entire world. "The entire world" includes individuals, believe it or not. It doesn't have to mean whole racial groups. I can be a complete jerk all by myself without my people telling me to. The question is, if I'm really so concerned about evil being perpetrated thousands of miles away on people I've never met, how concerned am I about the evils that happen within me and around me?
Genocide doesn't just happen. People need reasons to hate, just like they need reasons to love. My point is there are always reasons. Hutu hatred for the Tutsis might have started because during the Belgian occupation, the Tutsis were made into something of a ruling elite... collaborators with the occupying force, if you will. The Hutu extremists had reasons to hate. The Hutus also wanted what was, in their minds, justice. The Hutu extremist mind made sense to the Hutu extremist.
What's missing from that logic? I think it's the same thing that's usually missing everywhere else: grace. *That* is how the Hutu problem is also my problem. They lacked a sense of grace, of forgiveness, and leaving judgement to the one holy God. They didn't want to rebuild burned bridges. Why should they? In their minds, they were wronged first. They only wanted justice.
We all have the same problem. We don't want to forgive, and we don't want to rebuild bridges that (in our minds) someone else burned. When we act and speak in that manner, and we pass it on to our firends or our family, and we approve that same behavior every step of the way, what kind of seed are we planting? Exactly how are we different from the Hutu extremist? We might say to ourselves, "Well I'm not killing anyone". Oh, but we could be. I could be murdering a person's spirit with the very words I use. I may be teaching a child to commit physical murder later in life, not directly, but indirectly, simply by saying "these things you must not forgive". The same lack of grace in the Hutu is the same lack of grace in me, and may not manifest the exact same results, but death happens every time, one way or another.
The grace that forgives wrongdoing is kind of passive in that it simply allows wrongs to go unpunished. In other words, it's the kind of grace that says "You won't get what you deserve". There's another kind of grace that's usually missing that I think is even more important, and inseparable in practice from passive grace. This is active grace, which is a grace that says "You will recieve what you've done nothing to deserve". This is the same grace Brian was telling these students they were practicing by using their time to tutor poor kids. Let me clarify a little: these aren't the most self-motivated kids you'll ever know. A lot of them probably don't even want to be there. They have the opportunity that many kids in impoverished parts of the world could only dream of, which is to recieve an education for free. All they have to do is try. But a lot of times, I wouldn't be surprised if all they do is complain.
Active grace says, lets give them a chance anyway. Some of them will make something of it, and some of them won't, but all of them will be given that chance. Why do I think that passive grace is inseparable from active grace? Passive grace only allows for the opportunity for bridges to be built, by virtue of the fact that it causes us to quit burning anything that may begin to get built. Active grace actually does the building. I dare say that without active grace, people are prone to get bored, and revert to bridge-burning behavior in very short time. That's just how we are. Passive grace only holds off the enemy for a while, but people are such that we can't just sit around and do nothing, and if we aren't doing something good, we're most assuredly reverting to doing something bad.
What does this have to do with "the problem of suffering and the loving God"? Well I kinda went about it in a roundabout way, and I realize I haven't exactly been transitioning well between paragraphs here, but I'm about to get to the point. A lack of grace caused unspeakable suffering in Rwanda. People who were with sin were not being forgiven by people who were ALSO with sin. I haven't touched on why God would allow such suffering yet, but what I want to do here is contrast what the Hutus did with what God did. He who was wronged, who was without sin, and who had no cause to suffer, came to join us in our suffering. We burned every bridge to God, and he came down to build one that would never burn. We insisted on suffering and making others suffer, and so he suffered. We provoked him to his face and ran away from him, and he came looking to bring us home while we were lost in the wilderness.
That's one thing I believe about suffering and the loving God. He saw us suffer, and chose to suffer with and for us. The contrast between that kind of grace and what we're so prone to doing has amazed me and countless Christians for generations, and it causes us to despise ourselves and fall before him in humble adoration.
I was invited to go have dinner and watch a movie at Brian Todd's house last night. He lives pretty close to Brent so finding it wasn't a problem. He's also invited a few international students over, and the dinner was a pot-luck kind of deal. The movie was Hotel Rwanda. I won't go into too much detail about what the movie is about (here's a rotten tomatoes link if you want to read reviews, and the official synopsis), but here's a short summary: In 1994, Hutu extremists begin a genocide campaign against Tutsis in Rwanda after the assassination of the nation's (Hutu) president. Paul Rusesabagina, assistant manager of the posh Belgian-owned Hotel Mille des Collines, is a Hutu who takes it upon himself to run a secret refugee camp for Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the hotel after all the whites (and his manager) are evacuated out of the country. The Tutsi people are without hope: the international community refuses to intervene, deeming the genocide as just another incident in Africa.
The movie was intense, and unless you're stone-cold dead, it'd be hard to go through the whole movie without wondering once how something like that could happen on God's green earth. And yet it did happen. It still does. In places like Sudan and the Congo the same story replays itself over and over. Guys like me see it on tv, and then (to paraphrase Joaquin Phoenix's reporter in Hotel Rwanda) say "That's awful" and go to eat dinner.
We talked about the movie after it was over. One question Brian asked was "So what does that have to do with us?". That was a tough question. Many folks in the room doubted they wielded enough influence to make a difference. But Brian did a neat thing. Apparently all the international students in that room were involved with tutoring kids from lower-income families (it was something Brian was involved with, which is how he got to know them I guess), and he reminded them that that is making a difference, reaching out to help folks whom you have little or no reason to help.
That may sound like syrupy, airy-fairy, what-EVAH logic, but let me frame it like this. To different degrees, the same brand of ethnic enmity we saw in that movie also causes persecution and death (either physical, social, or spiritual) throughout the entire world. "The entire world" includes individuals, believe it or not. It doesn't have to mean whole racial groups. I can be a complete jerk all by myself without my people telling me to. The question is, if I'm really so concerned about evil being perpetrated thousands of miles away on people I've never met, how concerned am I about the evils that happen within me and around me?
Genocide doesn't just happen. People need reasons to hate, just like they need reasons to love. My point is there are always reasons. Hutu hatred for the Tutsis might have started because during the Belgian occupation, the Tutsis were made into something of a ruling elite... collaborators with the occupying force, if you will. The Hutu extremists had reasons to hate. The Hutus also wanted what was, in their minds, justice. The Hutu extremist mind made sense to the Hutu extremist.
What's missing from that logic? I think it's the same thing that's usually missing everywhere else: grace. *That* is how the Hutu problem is also my problem. They lacked a sense of grace, of forgiveness, and leaving judgement to the one holy God. They didn't want to rebuild burned bridges. Why should they? In their minds, they were wronged first. They only wanted justice.
We all have the same problem. We don't want to forgive, and we don't want to rebuild bridges that (in our minds) someone else burned. When we act and speak in that manner, and we pass it on to our firends or our family, and we approve that same behavior every step of the way, what kind of seed are we planting? Exactly how are we different from the Hutu extremist? We might say to ourselves, "Well I'm not killing anyone". Oh, but we could be. I could be murdering a person's spirit with the very words I use. I may be teaching a child to commit physical murder later in life, not directly, but indirectly, simply by saying "these things you must not forgive". The same lack of grace in the Hutu is the same lack of grace in me, and may not manifest the exact same results, but death happens every time, one way or another.
The grace that forgives wrongdoing is kind of passive in that it simply allows wrongs to go unpunished. In other words, it's the kind of grace that says "You won't get what you deserve". There's another kind of grace that's usually missing that I think is even more important, and inseparable in practice from passive grace. This is active grace, which is a grace that says "You will recieve what you've done nothing to deserve". This is the same grace Brian was telling these students they were practicing by using their time to tutor poor kids. Let me clarify a little: these aren't the most self-motivated kids you'll ever know. A lot of them probably don't even want to be there. They have the opportunity that many kids in impoverished parts of the world could only dream of, which is to recieve an education for free. All they have to do is try. But a lot of times, I wouldn't be surprised if all they do is complain.
Active grace says, lets give them a chance anyway. Some of them will make something of it, and some of them won't, but all of them will be given that chance. Why do I think that passive grace is inseparable from active grace? Passive grace only allows for the opportunity for bridges to be built, by virtue of the fact that it causes us to quit burning anything that may begin to get built. Active grace actually does the building. I dare say that without active grace, people are prone to get bored, and revert to bridge-burning behavior in very short time. That's just how we are. Passive grace only holds off the enemy for a while, but people are such that we can't just sit around and do nothing, and if we aren't doing something good, we're most assuredly reverting to doing something bad.
What does this have to do with "the problem of suffering and the loving God"? Well I kinda went about it in a roundabout way, and I realize I haven't exactly been transitioning well between paragraphs here, but I'm about to get to the point. A lack of grace caused unspeakable suffering in Rwanda. People who were with sin were not being forgiven by people who were ALSO with sin. I haven't touched on why God would allow such suffering yet, but what I want to do here is contrast what the Hutus did with what God did. He who was wronged, who was without sin, and who had no cause to suffer, came to join us in our suffering. We burned every bridge to God, and he came down to build one that would never burn. We insisted on suffering and making others suffer, and so he suffered. We provoked him to his face and ran away from him, and he came looking to bring us home while we were lost in the wilderness.
That's one thing I believe about suffering and the loving God. He saw us suffer, and chose to suffer with and for us. The contrast between that kind of grace and what we're so prone to doing has amazed me and countless Christians for generations, and it causes us to despise ourselves and fall before him in humble adoration.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)