Views of Annihilation

If I haven't already, I would like to make plain my view of annihilation that I've spoken to many times earlier in past articles so that we understand one another more clearly....

My view of annihilation does not have God actively destroying those souls rejecting Him but by experiencing their own choices of refusing God's redeeming spirit with the results that this refusal (or rejection of divine grace) brings with it its consequences upon body, soul, and relationships both human and divine (the "4 separations of death", if you will). It is not God actively condemning a graceless soul but the sad condition of a soul rejecting God's grace and thereby living out the consequences of a truly Godless, Spiritless world. In effect, it could be described as "hell" itself with the exception that this is not a place but a spiritual condition or soul-state being experienced to its last effects of purposelessness, meaninglessness, and more probably the torment that hatefulness brings. 

Nor is God's call to come, find grace, peace and salvation, ever withdrawn from any lost soul whether living or dead. Whether in hell, in purgatory, or in this active state of annihilation. Throughout the entirety of life (though I think especially in this life) God still calls out to the graceless soul to come, be healed, and find peace. At the last, when finally refusing and rejecting God's call it can then be no longer heard as this poor soul is finally liberated from its sinful conflicts into a final estate of nothingness effectively becoming a lost soul experiencing its own final death. How sad.

As such, I choose "Relentless Love" in the above photo illustration preferring to think of God as always loving rather than actively condemning humanity to the fires of perdition or to the eternal voids of nothingness. I would call this view then "Annihilation with a corrected view of God's role in the matter." I'm sure somebody will come up with a clever name for this but in the meantime my friend Thomas Jay Oord wishes to emphasize the nature of God at all times as being loving, and showing love in every way that He can because He is love.

The Puritan view of God came from a time of strict religiosity thinking this mindset was holy and favored by God. But by these beliefs and their resultant actions Protestants and Catholics across Europe brought cruelty, oppression, and death upon one another, and to the public at large. It showed a bankrupt Christian faith more cruel in its vindications for its faith than worthy of the the Spirit of God Himself.

However, unlike the Puritan view, our Creator Father God is not only holy, but propelled by love, is love, and at all times loves. To ask the question of whether God is more holy than loving, or more loving than holy, is foolish. He is both - but it is God's love which provides the atmosphere for His holiness and not the other way around. Why? Because when we think of God as being more holy than loving than we act towards one another in unloving, unjust ways. Jesus, as the Son of God - as the very God Himself - showed to us that love precedes all else. Without love we are nothing and can be nothing and will act as nothings. With love we can change the world into His image, defeat sin and horror, and instill in others a hope that this sin-marred creation is meant for more than what we see it to be in our present state of conflict, temptation, or rapacious unholy, unloving behaviors.

Thus the importance of teaching that God is not only good at all times but that He is loving at all times. That God supremely loves and it is His love which propels all His actions towards healing the human condition become sin bound, judgmental, hateful, and merciless. It is God who promises healing in His wings. Who brings comfort to the oppressed. Who stands up for the widow, the orphan, the unwanted, the alien and foreigner. It is He who grants favor to those attempting to love by reaching out to their neighbor and doing the right thing. The Bible describes God's love as right and just and undefiled. As such, we can do no less, and by His grace must always do more as humanly possible.

R.E. Slater
June 22, 2018

Malachi 4 (KJV)

The Great Day of the Lord

1 - For, behold, the day comes, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yes, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that comes shall burn them up, said the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 2 - But to you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. 3 - And you shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, said the LORD of hosts.

4 - Remember you the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5 - Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6 - And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

Two Great World Forces Breaking Both Nations and Churches Apart - Law v. Grace

I would have thought the difference to be obvious enough. Especially after speaking to the difference between theologies of Law versus theologies of Grace within Christian communities for so many years. And yet the Western church (and society) are split into two fundamental yearnings. Those who must have authority in their lives at all times and those who must have grace in their lives at all times. Consequentially each group has modified its position by the other. The Law people have added grace but always place it second behind Law; and the Grace people have added law but always place it second behind Grace.

As a psych guy what we believe usually is informed by our personal constitution or make up. "If a belief isn't fundamental to our core than it doesn't become a belief." As a Grace-guy I will always interpret everything in my life through God's grace. Its what drives everything else and cannot come after Law. But other people are Law-and-Order types. Law brings grace and is the reason grace is here. To me, its arcane thinking. But I get it when seeing people thumbing through Romans trying to figure out Paul's logic.

For Grace people, God's very nature/Being is first Love from which all His acts proceed. Not truth or justice, but LOVE. Love is what gives truth and justice meaning. Without LOVE we would have a miserable world indeed. But then again, I'm a Grace-person. Most likely I grew up with this idea through my parental upbringing and personal interactions with the world. It gave me the opportunities I needed to grasp God in the way that I do. When I tried the Law-path to life and theology it never made sense. It created more problems than it solved. Hence my rejection of Calvinism which leads out with a God of Law premeditating wrath and judgment on creation. Instead, I must ride on the "freedom train," the one where God declares "I Love you" and in my love have given you freedom to love me back. Thus the Wesleyan doctrine of Arminiamism (no, not Armenianism! haha. That's a country!).

At Relevancy22 there are a hundred articles and more on why Grace is superior to Law. I make no apologies for wishing to see life through the eyes of Love rather than through the eyes of Law. The very Jewish, and very Law-abiding Apostle Paul, had great difficult getting his head-and-heart around God's Grace which he observed through Messiah Jesus' "tour de force" and the Church of Christ he was persecuting. He describes a period of blindness in his life that so conflicted him that he couldn't make sense of life anymore. But when Grace won the battle over Law the scales on his eyes fell immediately off his soul when the Spirit of God touched his spiritual malady and raised him up unto the great gift of God's Love through Jesus. It righted all his curmudgeonly beliefs and theologies to a true north. Love made sense of the Law he believed in, was taught from a young child, and followed as a spiritual practice devoutly. Love destroyed it all and brought a peace beyond his years of understanding.

And so, as much as I detest binary thinking, in Western culture it is what makes our societies what it is. And if we must use binary thinking to discuss great ideas than this idea between 1) authoritarianism-and-fear and 2) love-and-freedom is significant. Between their interplay comes all of Western civilization's will to create, to be, to discover, to hope. It is what drives Western Society. These two powerful forces can divide us as much as they can heal us. And it can become a very present and real force as demonstrated by America's politics and national policies in these recent years of deep societal and theological conflict.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

February 6, 2017

* * * * * * * * *

President Donald Trump at the Bully Pulpit

The mystery of Christians’ support

for Donald Trump is solved

http://www.kentucky.com/living/religion/paul-prather/article57553638.html

by Paul Prather

January 30, 2017

"IN A WORLD OVERRUN BY BRIGANDS AND TERRORISTS, AUTHORITARIAN CHRISTIANS PREFER A BAN-BAR-AND-BOMB PRESIDENT, EVEN IF HE’S A SELF-PROMOTING HEATHEN."

I’ve expressed before my puzzlement that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could win so many disciples among the Christians who make up a hefty portion of the Republican base.

Trump is an insulting, profane, thrice-married, megalomaniacal billionaire from New York City who can’t even pronounce 2 Corinthians correctly. Indeed, he seems to proudly stand for everything the Christian faith supposedly opposes.

And yet a great throng of Christians love the guy.

If you, too, have been scratching your head in wonder at this conundrum, allow me to say this mystery has been solved.

The answer made great sense, too. It even led me to contemplate an ancient divide within Christianity itself.

It came from a poll by Matthew MacWilliams, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He wrote a brief essay for Politico.com about his research.

MacWilliams sampled 1,800 registered U.S. voters from across the political spectrum in an attempt to understand Trump’s popularity.

“I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate,” he said. “Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.”

Authoritarians, a group studied by social scientists for decades, inclined sharply toward Trump.

MacWilliams summarized what it means to be authoritarian:

"Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.”

Statistically, MacWilliams found, among those likely to vote in the Republican primary, 49 percent ranked high on the authoritarian scale. That’s more than twice as many as among Democratic voters.

And Trump sings these folks’ love song:

“From pledging to ‘make America great again’ by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States,” MacWilliams wrote, “Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.”

Reading this, I experienced an “aha!” moment.

Not all of Trump’s Republican supporters are Christians, I know, but many are. And while religiosity was not the key factor in predicting support for Trump, many self-described Christians, be they devout disciples or only sporadic churchgoers, definitely incline toward authoritarianism.

---

You see, there’s historically been an emotionally charged split within our faith between disciples who focus on authority and those who focus on freedom, between those driven and riven by fear, and those propelled by hope and joy.

In the Christian vernacular, it’s a spiritual contest between “the Law” (capital L) and “Grace” (capital G).

Christians who lean toward the Law are all about God’s authority, the Bible’s authority, church leaders’ authority, men’s authority, civil authority. They’re the church’s cops and prosecuting attorneys.

They serve a stern God who lectures dryly from above, brooks no dissent and expects them to flog the daylights out of the dense and disobedient.

They thrive on order. They insist on doing things, whatever those things might be, the way they’ve always been done, whether or not that happens to make sense anymore, just because that’s the way they’ve always done them.

They operate largely from their own fear: fear of God’s wrath, fear of being wrong, fear of outsiders, fear of the public’s jeers.

Compared with them, Grace people, of whom I am happily one, are practically God’s do-gooder public defenders — or God’s loosey-goosey flower-children. (Although I tend toward khakis and a button-down myself.)

Grace people serve a God who is unimaginably merciful, infinitely liberating and surprisingly understanding of every kind of birdbrain.

They believe their job, being his children, is to love all colors and nationalities and faiths and political views and theological quirks. They’re about forgiving their enemies and making peace and and welcoming strangers and helping the poor, no questions asked.

Grace folks drive the authoritarians mad.

And vice versa. We Gracies giggle when we picture them showing up in heaven, only to discover, to their purple-faced dismay, that the Lord let us in as well.

Probably neither side has a lock on the whole truth.

Grace people need a little authoritarianism to keep us from levitating away on shimmering clouds, and Law people need a big dose of Grace to keep them from getting swallowed whole into their profoundly constricted sphincters.

Everything in the Christian faith, as in life generally, works best when held in balance.

---

Ah, but I digress.

The point is, when I read MacWilliams’ piece, I finally knew how so many Christians could support The Donald, even though he probably wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he saw him walking across the thawed Hudson River on snowshoes.

In a world overrun by brigands and terrorists, authoritarian Christians prefer a ban-bar-and-bomb president, even if he’s a self-promoting heathen, over some milquetoast pseudo-Christian who embraces strangers and prefers negotiation to warfare.

Trump will wall out border-jumpers and slap down smart-aleck reporters and keep things the way they used to be back in the good old — well, the way they used to be sometime, somewhere, in somebody’s version of the good old — days.

To these Law folks, he stands for authority. He’s large and in charge and vindictive and brazenly unapologetic. He’s as good an approximation of their God as they’re likely to find in such a gone-to-blazes world.

Lessons from the Book of Joel

Lessons from the Book of Joel

by R.E. Slater

June 30, 2016

Introduction

Over the past month or more I have been introducing myself and my readers to the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha through external abstracts and Phillip Long's commentaries. Throughout the entirety of Long's review of 1 Enoch has come the realization of how closely (but not without exaggeration) this book follows the apocalyptic literature within the Old Testament (sic, Genesis, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, perhaps Joel, etc). So if the supposition is true that the writer of 1 Enoch wrote after the establishment of the OT apocalyptic literature (sometime during, or after, the Maccabbean war in the Intertestamental period) than it may also be true that there is a remarkable similarity between 1 Enoch's summary writings (of creation, of mankind's (and the angel's) spiritual history, and of the end times to come) to the apocalyptic books later to be written and included by the church into the NT (parts of the Synoptics, Paul, Peter, Revelation, for example). As such, the storytelling author of 1 Enoch borrowed liberally from the OT literature even as the NT writers borrowed liberally both from the OT literature and outside sources such as the book of 1 Enoch.

But why?

Because not only was 1 Enoch a very popular book during the pre-NT era but its imagery was vivid enough to be encapsulated and moved forward by the perceptive NT writers who were part of a growing new movement known as the first century church. More simply, popular cultural ideas were synthesized and then utilized to explain the Jesus-event within a time of turbulent societal evolution. In essence, though 1 Enoch was not a canonized OT book it related the main presumptions of the Jewish people so very well in its mythologized and very creative storytelling as to provide fertile imagery for Jesus and His apostles to tell of God's salvation to man and the coming judgment upon all those who would refuse obedience and submission to the rule of God.

Now I have been spending not a little bit of time over the past several years in examining the kind of judgment God will execute upon a sinful world. Some of this has been mentioned before when dealing with the several topics of hell, salvation, or God's character. Nevertheless, the bible itself, along with much of the literature written by mankind since time immemorial has dealt with the consequences of living in sin, the retribution that comes with causing willful oppression upon others, or ignoring the wisdoms and moralities of common life observances by a society. As such, the burden of public opinion leans in the direction that if there is a judgment for sin it will always be executed - if not in this life than in the life to come. For myself, I would prefer this judgment to be as a result of living in sin and ignoring the commands of God to live a godly, righteous life. This, as opposed to accusing God of purposely casting sinners into a tortuous hell to pay restitution for an innumerable eternity. It seems more natural to place the burden upon the willfully sinful person than upon a holy, righteous God who warns us out of love that He is incapable to spare us from sin's experience/power/seal/death should we ignore His solution of salvation through His Son and the fellowship of His holy community found in His people.

Again, this is a personal opinion. I am not denying a judgment-to-come but what I am refusing to accept is placing the cause of this judgment solely upon God alone. Yes, in some sense God is seen as Judge and Ruler of this world and His creation. We have investigated what these subjects might mean under the topics of divine sovereignty: whether God's sovereignty is beneficial (vs. harming); partnering (vs. controlling); at all times loving and good (vs. a wrathful love and duplicious goodness); and so forth. These topics would fall under the headings of Arminianism vs. Calvinism which I'll mention in my next article in a short review of Roger Olson's book, Against Calvinism.

Now back to our conversation. What does this all mean? Why this long introduction to the book of Joel? Well, let's continue on....

The Book of Joel as Apocalyptic Literature of a Future Eschaton

How then do we interpret the Book of Joel? Does it predict a divine future full of wrath and judgement? Or does it depict a Jewish congregation's (if not the suffering world's) hope for divine retribution? If it is prophetic, than the work of God in this world has lost - all God's efforts have failed to redeem, to bring shalom into His creation, except by divine force. If prescriptive (sic, dogmatic/creedal), than Israel (or Judah, or its remaining exilic remnants) had given up in witnessing to their neighbors of their glorious God and are found waiting for the coming judgment of the "Day of the Lord" to consume mankind in a great flood of apocalyptic revenge. This position would likewise make of God's divine rule one that was ineffectual, incompetent, or both, so that again, God has lost His battle with evil and must end its reign by force rather than by the Cross. And if not by the Cross, then in essence, the Cross is made weak and loses too.

How then are these two approaches to the book of Joel any different in today's churches which wait for divine judgment while praying for its imminence? When Jesus and the Apostles used the book of Joel they likewise spoke of an end time apocalyptic as remarkable for its fearful warnings as for its pleas to repent. More significantly, in their pleas for repentance each servant of the Lord - whether Jesus or the apostles - became consumed with a missional fire which unleashed God's Holy Spirit power of redemption upon a sin-torn world. They were not found sitting around commiserating on the woes of the world and praying for God's imminent return. No. They were busy praying for God's mighty work of salvation to be declared amongst the habitations of mankind and that He would delay His return just long enough until every last sinner had escaped into the ark of atonement which Jesus had provided through His death and resurrection.

So then, let us ask again, "How are we to interpret the Book of Joel?" If whether prophetically or descriptively of God's people who are scattered across this wicked world as his surviving remnant then two things must stand out:

One, the church must repent of its wickedness and do what its founders did... take up a missional fire which preaches God's word and become active in humanitarian enterprise dispensing grace, hope and healing. And secondly, to not isolate itself from the world so that the church loses its saltiness. But rather, to become deeply involved in the world in ways that will redeem the world and bring to it God's peace and love, care and nurture. The question then is not whether God is coming again, whether He judges of not, or whether sin will have its day upon the rails of God's throne. Nay. The question is whether we as believers and followers of Christ have given up and are simply waiting for God's judgment to fall upon sinful mankind to prove us right and everyone else wrong.

But hadn't this attitude of exasperation and failure been demonstrated before?

If so, then by whom?

Remember the story of Jonah and the whale? Yup, you got it. Jonah was sent by God to the wicked Ninevehites (Assyria) with a message of fearful repentance. Though he was glad to announce God's coming destruction upon their heads he actually first ran away from God's call to duty by shipping in the opposite direction across the Mediterranean Sea. At the last, upon being belched up upon the shore Jonah resigned himself to God's call and attended to his duty which was fearfully received by the Ninevehites when beholding the bleached white oracle of God spitefully pronouncing judgment throughout the plush and luxurious city walls. The people, in response, repented immediately and fell for a time under God's sparing grace. But the story doesn't end there because the last half of Jonah's tale tells of his sulking petulance over having not witnessed God's ruinous judgment fall upon the detested Assyrians. So there he sat upon an unshaded hill for a long time as God ministered to his hard heart even to the point of providing an unwanted plant for shade so angry was Jonah with God's lack of judgment. And I'm afraid today's church is no less kind to this sinful world when despairing of God's rule and falling into a stupor of rage and anger when praying for God's coming wrath.

The point? Let not God's church do this wicked thing. But let His people relent of their posture of doom-and-gloom and disinvolvent in the world but seek to reconcile the world with God in every possible way. But not simply through gospel preaching but also through humanitarian ministries giving shape and meaning to the words of Jesus vouchsafing redemptive reconciliation. Why? Because as any good parent, coach, teacher, or director will tell you - you can preach to the troops all you want but until-and-unless you become personally involved with the lives of those you wish to affect words have very little power. Preach? Yes. But not to the exclusion of working. And if  wishing to preaching then first work. Let your good works preach a better sermon for you than mere words can. And what about our broken hearts yearning for God's rule and reign? Do you not suppose that in working with those we detest, or think of as sinful, or even as our enemy, we will discover how wrong we have been in our judgments? Relational ministries will do a world of good in re-righting the discriminating, or hateful, impulses of our own sinful hearts. The result? If Jesus Christ is in our ministries than the work of God through His Holy Spirit will bespeak release from sin's bondage for both parties; a greater freedom to live pleasingly for Christ; and the tasty fruits of hope, healing, and a new fellowship of community with those the church once considered condemnable. This is the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.

Thus the book of Joel is to be a motivator to Christian action regardless of its prophetic content or its dialectical meaning for a congregation stuck on the perpetual wheel of waiting for divine revenge. An action that cannot come unless God's people become active in this world by sharing God's love which offers hope and healing to all who seek Him. If we believe in the power of God, and in the Cross, and in the power of the Holy Spirit which accompanies God's stunning atonement than let us not weaken it by giving up. Or praying its early end. Or by isolating ourselves by discriminating dogmas and confessions. Or by resorting to heavy-handed force to "make" disbelievers submit. We must be a people who must love and accept and help all whom we might normally not love, accept, or help. Let us not do the work of the devil but learn to do the work of God. This is true revival meted upon judgment, repentance, and restoration.

Peace, 

R.E. Slater

NT Notes to the Book of Joel

The Book of Joel is referred or alluded to numerous times in the New Testament. A few notable (but not exhaustive) examples:

*The Apostle Peter quotes “the prophet Joel” directly in Acts 2:16-21.

*The Lord Jesus refers to Joel 2:10, “the sun and the moon [will] grow dark and the starts lose their brightness” before the Day of the Lord, when He describes the signs of the last days in Matthew 24:29.

*The Apostle Paul cites Joel 2:32, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved,” in Romans 10:13.

*The Apostle John alludes to Joel 2:10 when he describes events of the Tribulation in Revelation 8:12

The Apostle John alludes to the Book of Joel and language of the locust invasion in Revelation chapter 9.

A Christian Apocalypse and End-Time Judgment of Care and Love For One's Fellow Human

Lately the Christian message of xenophobia, Islamaphobia, and "marching to war" has dominated the headlines and is the answer to all things different from and unlike the "westernized American version" of church civilization. This dire message is in the news media, preached on the political dias, and can be found throughout social media networks.

As a bystander observing the crazies of my Christian faith and the rashness of America's governmental leaders I might suggest that the Jesus of the Bible is one of "victim, and sufferer, and minister" to all the wrongs of society. And because of Jesus' apocalyptic vision of love and peace He was unjustly scapegoated and horribly crucified for his religious views and acts of ministry (sic, Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory of Scapegoating and Victimization).

Might I also suggest that this same Jesus is the one whose beloved disciple John looks forward to in the book of Revelation as the world is shown blowing itself up in the rage and turmoils of its economic, ecologic, and societal wars. That John envisions this "helpless God" once crucified as the "Lamb of God" to return as the "Lion of Judah" to end sin's judgment of evil behavior and acts of injustice. That in His coming Jesus will resurrect what He had begun before dying at the hands of His "religious" countrymen and secular governments.

And lastly, might I also suggest that rather than purposely hastening the "Coming of the Day of the Lord" through prayerful glee and unholy vindictiveness we might step back and consider the spiritual importance of the church's role as God's peacemaker, mediator, and arbitrator of sanity, to an insane world locked in its many apocalyptic versions of end-time religious battles, economic/ecologic woe, and civilization's collapse?

That perhaps the biblical future we tell ourselves, or imagine, is not the one we think we read  and rant about. That those popular imaginings might be an incorrect view playing out our own hatred, fears, and racisms. That the conquering "Jesus of War" we envision striding through the bloody fields of our slain enemies might actually be a Jesus marching through the aftermath of what we have done to ourselves. A Jesus terribly angry, whose wroth would smite any refusing to relent of their hatred and anger to one another.

Now that would be a Jesus I think many of us may not wish to welcome. A Jesus who comes to judge all mankind and not just the ones we think He should judge. And isn't it written that Jesus will judge both the sheep and the goats? That He will open up "the books of deeds and of life" to find all those who acted - or didn't act - according to His Holy Will? And if so, then this is a truer picture of an end-time apocalypse than the one I hear so popularly preached defending our actions of economic usary, enslavement, greed, inhospitality, and callousness to the suffering and oppression of other society members, cultures, genders, and races. This is the kind of stuff we find in the books of James and 2 Peter judging our words and behavior with eternal consequences.

So then, my plea is that the church learns to hate war; seeks to make stronger efforts at waging peace with her enemies; and immediately forsake all sinful idols of self-righteousness and unholy anger. That we be in our own selves God's worthy lambs and emissaries speaking His words and acts of peace, love, mercy, and forgiveness. For without these holy jewels we are all the more impoverished and destined to self-destruction, perhaps eternally. And if this happens, then yes, all has been lost... even the eternal life which "the Prince of Life" had promised.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

November 18, 2015

Tony Campolo - Religious Alternatives: Choosing Love Over Power

Tony Campolo - "Red Lettered Christians"

Link to RedLetterChristians.org

The Biblical Story of Inclusion of Who Belongs As God's People

Gay Christians: Should Relationships Matter?

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2015/06/09/gay-christians-should-relationships-matter/

by Daniel Kirk

June 9, 2015

Certain kinds of people simply cannot be part of the people of God.

Making such a judgment is not based on bigotry. It is simply based on the story of God in which the people of God are defined in particular ways. These definitions demand that some are out while others are in.

Canaanite Transformation

Take the Canaanites.

This is a blanket term for the people living in the land that God gave to the people of Israel through the wars of Joshua. They are excluded from participation in the people of God.

One way they were so excluded is in multiple warnings not to allow daughters and sons to intermarry with these indigenous peoples. Such liaisons might lead the Israelites astray to worship gods other than Yahweh (YHWH).

But there is only one way to make sure that no such commingling occurs: kill them all:

“You must devote them to complete destruction,” says

Deuteronomy 7:2. Make no covenant. Show no mercy.

So when a Canaanite woman from the hill country comes up to Jesus, a woman evocative of the remnant of the Canaanites that Israel couldn’t quite seem to root out–he rightly rejects her.

Jesus rejects her not because of bigotry, but because the Word of God has assigned her a place in the story. She cannot belong.

She wants an exorcism: “Lord! Son of David! My daughter is badly demon possessed!”

Jesus rebuffs her: “I was only sent to the sheep. To the House of Israel.”

She continues, “Lord, help me!”

Jesus rebuffs her again, “Look, dog. It is not right take bread from the children and throw it to such as you.”

Ouch. Jesus knows her place. And so, it would seem, does she.

"Yes Lord. And, even the dogs eat from the crumbs that fall from the tables of their masters.”

And then, finally, he relents. Finally he is willing to extend transgressive grace. Finally he is willing to allow that this woman who by all biblical rights should be excluded and even killed, might be embraced in the onslaught of the kingdom of which Jesus, Son of David, is king.

“Oh woman! Great is your faith! Let it be as you wish.” And her daughter was healed.

You see, the strangest things happen when we actually know real people. We start to discover that those whom we thought were beyond the pale of God’s grace and mercy might actually be entrusting themselves to it at that very moment. And that relationship has the power to change us.

Yes, I would say it had the power to change Jesus. As Jesus was in the midst of inaugurating the reign of God, and discovering in the process who would and who would not be a part, he found rather against his will that the grace of God could not be cordoned off from even the Canaanites.

Jesus was changed, not because he had been a bigot, but because a relationship showed him that the kingdom of God was not contained as he had previously imagined.

The story had changed.

The Embrace of the Gentiles

Of course, if Jesus can be at the center of this kind of transformation, his followers certainly can as well.

When God made covenant with Abraham, God was quite clear: the only way, at all, ever, to be part of the people of God is to be circumcised.

If anyone remains uncircumcised?

He “will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.”

— God

But this was only for a time, right?

“My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.”

Forever.

You don’t get to eat the defining meal of the people, Passover, without being circumcised.

So Jewish people might be excused for thinking that their exclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles is not a matter of bigotry. It’s a matter of principled adherence to the Word of God.

But then… the kingdom of God bursts beyond the bounds of the circumcised.

Peter has a vision, yes. But it is when he musters the courage to go, to relate to a Gentile, and then observes that God has accepted them through the gift of the Spirit that Peter is finally converted.

In that personal interaction, Peter sees that God has worked. And he no longer can hold to his own position. Not because he was a bigot, but because a new moment has arrived in the story.

Paul will say a similar thing in Galatians. “You received the Spirit. God worked miracles among you.” Their experience tells them that they don’t have to be circumcised, don’t have to keep food laws, to be part of the people of God.

In the unfolding narrative of God and [of] who belongs to God’s people, the move from exclusion to [becoming] embraced has been marked by the inclusion of those who had previously been excluded due to the theology, principles, and narrative of scripture.

[What About] Homosexuality?

In his review of two books that argue for full inclusion of gays and lesbians into the people of God, Tim Keller asserts that if a person’s position on inclusion is influenced by relationships then their opposition was based on bigotry.

And when I see people discarding their older beliefs that homosexuality is sinful after engaging with loving, wise, gay people, I’m inclined to agree that those earlier views were likely defective. In fact, they must have been essentially a form of bigotry. They could not have been based on theological or ethical principles, or on an understanding of historical biblical teaching. They must have been grounded instead on a stereotype of gay people as worse sinners than others (which is itself a shallow theology of sin.)

This is simply untrue.

The history of God’s people is one in which we have cultivated deep and rich theological positions based on the principles and teachings of scripture, only to have God demonstrate that those principles have to be abandoned because it is a new moment in the story.

Opposition to inclusion of Canaanites and the uncircumcised isn’t based on bigotry, theologically–God underscores that Israel is no better than the rest, but God chose them anyway.

And yet these theological and ethical principles were overcome by the grace of God and the surprising eruption of the Kingdom of God.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Experience Matters (i.e. The Wesleyans are Right)

We should never imagine that the fact that relationships change our theology indicates a weakness in our theology or ethics.

On the contrary, we should question any theology or ethics that does not change in the face of relationships. This is what it means to be both human in general and a part of the body of Christ in particular.

It is easy to hold forth unwavering strength as the sign of integrity and correctness, but such strength has sometimes been the strong pillar around which the unstoppable flow of the kingdom has poured forth.

Keller makes five or so arguments against the books he is reviewing. I will probably touch on his review a bit more, because it’s getting some good traffic, makes a couple of good points, and makes a couple of points that perhaps enable people to too quickly find relief in their cherished position being upheld.

The argument against experience falls into this latter category. It is precisely the experience of gay Christians, loving, faithful, and full of the Spirit, that should make us wonder if we have been wrongly continuing to draw lines of demarcation that God has begun to take down. Experience alone cannot answer this question (here, too, the Wesleyans are right!).

But we cannot allow a pious-sounding appeal to a theology or ethics that lies, allegedly, outside of experience to keep us from exploring the significance of what we have learned in relationship with those who, alongside us, address Jesus as the promised son of David and Lord of heaven and earth.

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Select Comments

Don Bromley says:

June 9, 2015 at 10:21 am

I’ve seen this argument offered before, by Ken Wilson and others, that they are following the way of Wesley in valuing Experience along with Tradition, Scripture, and Reason. But John Wesley was always absolutely clear that the foundation of his religious discernment resided in Scripture. John Wesley wrote:

“This is a lantern unto a Christian’s feet, and a light in all his paths. This alone he receives as his rule of right or wrong, of whatever is really good or evil. He esteems nothing good, but what is here enjoined, either directly or by plain consequence, he accounts nothing evil but what is here forbidden, either in terms, or by undeniable inference. Whatever the Scripture neither forbids nor conjoins, either directly or by plain consequence, he believes to be of an indifferent nature; to be in itself neither good nor evil; this being the whole and sole outward rule whereby his conscience is to be directed in all things.”

— From the Sermon #12 “The Witness of Our Own Spirit.”

Reply

J. R. Daniel Kirk says:

June 9, 2015 at 10:25 am

No doubt. That’s why the first 2/3 of the post are scriptural exegesis! But it is quite easy for folks committed to scripture to be dismissive of narratives that begin with a person’s experience of gay Christians, and it’s important for those of us who hold scripture in such high esteem to recognize the place that experience always has in our theologizing, and has always held in the church’s assessments of right and wrong.

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Don Bromley says:

June 9, 2015 at 10:30 am

N. T. Wright wrote an excellent essay that relates very much to this discussion: http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Communion_Koinonia.htm

He specifically addresses the comparison of the gay/straight distinction to the Gentile/Jew distinction:

“We need to make a clear distinction between the aspects of a culture which Paul regards as morally neutral and those which he regards as morally, or immorally, loaded. And we need to note carefully what Paul’s reaction is when someone disagrees at either side of his balance. When Peter and the others tried to insist on keeping their Jewish distinctives, i.e. only eating with other circumcised people, in Antioch, Paul resisted him to his face. The word ‘tolerance’ runs out of steam at this point. What mattered was the gospel, the message of the cross, the doctrine of justification by faith, the promises to Abraham, the single family God intended to create in the Spirit. Like a great chess player, Paul saw all those pieces on the board threatened by this one move of Peter’s to insist on maintaining Jewish boundary-markers, and he moved at once to head it off. And when someone disagreed with Paul’s clear rules on immorality or angry disputes, the matters he deals with in Colossians 3.5-10, he is equally firm, as we see dramatically in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6. There is no place in the Christian fellowship for such practices and for such a person. Not for one minute does he contemplate saying, ‘some of us believe in maintaining traditional taboos on sexual relations within prescribed family limits, others think these are now irrelevant in Christ, so both sides must respect the other.’ He says, ‘throw him out’.”

Reply

J. R. Daniel Kirk says:

June 9, 2015 at 10:35 am

Yes, I do think Wright onto something. But it is also important to note that the inclusion of Gentiles meant a redefinition of what it meant to be a “sinner”: “We are Jews by nature, not sinners from among the Gentiles.” Inclusion in the people of God changed how you knew a sinner when you saw one. In this case, paradoxically, it meant upholding Torah.

As I’ve written about in the past, I do think that upholding sexual standards is a huge component of Christian ethics / morality. And I do think that inclusion of homosexuals in the church has, at times, come with the abandonment of all but the most pedestrian of sexual mores. That’s a problem.

Standing with the Oppressed When It's the Right Thing To Do

What if I said, "Not all gays are homosexual?" Could this be true, not true, false, or not false? If so, in what sense?

Or, what if I said, "Not all heterosexuals are lustful?" Again, could this be true, not true, false, or not false? And if so, in what sense?

When we make blanket statements from de facto positions of self-assurance we end up getting into all kinds of trouble with our theology. I don't think theology is meant to be led out with de facto statements because if it were then it wouldn't be theology any longer. No, it would be a kind of doctrine that was limited to a church group's surmise of what they think theology is when in fact it is popular statements of dogma that would be either "more or less true" or  "more or less false."

In the Bible, dogmas are not good things. They become folk religions or popular cultural assessments informing bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and discrimination which lead to all kinds of oppression from gut-wrenching demurring statements spoken from self-serving calloused lips to the nasty kind of harmful evil that any Christian can be motivated to commit when forgetting God's grace through Jesus' example of humility, service, and mercy.

If you notice in the pictures below you'll observe happy, sun-filled scenes of smiling people filled with a bountiful fulfilling sense of being right and content and satisfied about themselves and their beliefs. What those pictures don't show is the red-mask of the devil hiding within those smiling faces fashioned with horns of wickedness and forked tails of evilness hiding all those happy smiles of contentedness and bliss in the sunny lands of self-serving theology.

In the hearts of the oppress these are the kinds of pictures they see when "good-intentioned" people step forward to speak of their faith and beliefs behind a bible (little "b") that is laced with popularly-spoken limitations and graceless boundaries of God's judgemental wrath. And when it's politicized more is it to be feared for the wickedness that it will bring.

No, for the oppressed, the demeaned, the hated, the outcast, the unwanted, these pictures are hell itself forewarning the evil to come spun in webs of self-righteousness and self-centeredness propelling prideful lusts believing one to be right and not wrong. For if one is wrong then one must repent. And a self-righteous person is all about pride and legalism. Of proving themselves worthy of God by fighting God's battles for Him in the rage of hate-filled hearts.

Let us be clear as the beloved of God that the Bible speaks closely of these kinds of people throughout its holy script. Of a people who are not God's people who have deceived and lied to themselves about their spiritually-centered truths fashioned so vilely and hatefully. Let us understand that to be a people of God we must lead out not with vile judgments but with God-filled love and truth. There is as deep a difference in this saying as there is in the opening two statements we began with in this article.

The church will always struggle with the evils of pride and prideful judgment. It would be naive to think that it won't. So too will popular pastors and Christian speakers struggle with the same as they are moved by the fearing intent of their congregants and followers. Rather than leading in courage and boldness they slink into cowardly positions of prejudice and hate.

However, to be a people of God is to do the unpopular thing as Jesus did who stood with the despised outcasts of His society to bring healing and God's grace to the parched and thirsty souls of the unwanted. He ministered to those believed unloved and condemned by God by the "church crowd" when at the last, it was the very souls of God's undiscerning (and misled) people who laid upon the lime pits of their wretched faith.

Let us then think on Jesus and not on our graceless doctrines and the untruthful lies flying about our heads and from our unchastened lips. God's people are a right and just people who must seek out injustice wherever it is to bring peace and justice, hope and healing, to a fractured world filled with rage and hate. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater

June 29, 2015

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Fav Talking Points & Christian Stereotypes
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