Reflecting on the Hollywood Movie "Heaven is for Real"

Allen Fraser/Sony Pictures - Todd (Greg Kinnear) shows Colton
(Connor Corum) a picture of his grandfather in TriStar

What Hollywood gets wrong about heaven

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/21/heaven-is-scary-for-real/?sr=fb042314heavenscary5pStoryGallLink

Opinion by Drew Dyck, special to CNN

April 21, 2014

(CNN) - The 4-year-old boy sees angels floating toward him. They start out as stars, then slowly become more visible, wings flapping behind orbs of white light.

As they approach, they sing a melodious song. The boy cocks his head, squints into the sky, and makes a strange request. “Can you sing ‘We Will Rock You’?”

The angels giggle.

So do people in the theater.

The scene is from “Heaven is for Real,” the latest in a string of religious movies soaring at the box office. Based on the best-selling book of the same name, the film tells the real-life story of Colton Burpo, a 4-year-old boy who awakens from surgery with eye-popping tales of the great beyond. The film took in an estimated $21.5 million in opening on Easter weekend.

Even Colton’s religious parents (his dad, Todd, is a pastor) struggle to accept the celestial encounters their son describes: seeing Jesus and his rainbow-colored horse, meeting his sister who died in utero, and talking to his deceased great-grandfather, “Pop,” who, Colton exclaims, has “huge wings.”

The book and film are part of a larger trend. Depictions of journeys to heaven have never been more numerous or more popular. There’s “90 Minutes in Heaven,” “To Heaven and Back,” “Proof of Heaven,” and “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” just to name a few.

What Does the Bible Tell Us About Angels?

So what should we make of such accounts? And what does their popularity say about us?

Some may be surprised that the Bible contains not one story of a person going to heaven and coming back. In fact Jesus’ own words seem to preclude the possibility: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man” (John 3:13).

Scripture does contain several visions of heaven or encounters with celestial beings, but they’re a far cry from the feel-good fare of the to-heaven-and-back genre.

In Scripture, when mortals catch a premature glimpse of God’s glory, they react in remarkably similar ways. They tremble. They cower. They go mute. The ones who can manage speech express despair (or “woe” to use the King James English) and become convinced they are about to die. Fainters abound.

Take the prophet Daniel, for instance. He could stare down lions, but when the heavens opened before him, he swooned. Ezekiel, too, was overwhelmed by his vision of God. After witnessing Yahweh’s throne chariot fly into the air with the sound of a jet engine, he fell face-first to the ground.

Perhaps the most harrowing vision belongs to Isaiah. He sees the Almighty “high and exalted,” surrounded by angels who use their wings to shield their faces and feet from the glory of God. Faced with this awesome spectacle, Isaiah loses it. “Woe to me!” he cries, “I am ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5)

Angels in the New Testament

New Testament figures fare no better.

John’s famous revelations of heaven left him lying on the ground “as though dead” (Revelation 1:17). The disciples dropped when they saw Jesus transfigured. Even the intrepid Saul marching to Damascus collapsed before the open heavens – and walked away blind.

How different from our popular depictions. And it isn’t just “Heaven is for Real.” In most movies angels are warm, approachable – teddy bears with wings. God is Morgan Freeman or some other avuncular presence.

Scripture, however, knows nothing of such portrayals. Heavenly encounters are terrifying, leaving even the most stout and spiritual vibrating with fear – or lying facedown, unconscious.

Yes, the Bible teaches that heaven is a place of ultimate comfort, with “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

But it is also a place where the reality of God’s unbridled majesty reigns supreme –and that’s scary.

Can the Story Be True?

Did a 4-year-old boy from Nebraska really visit heaven? I don’t know. My hunch is that the popularity of such stories tells us more about our view of God than the place in which he dwells.

Ultimately I believe we flock to gauzy, feel-good depictions of heaven and tiptoe around the biblical passages mentioned above because we’ve lost sight of God’s holiness.

I fear we’ve sentimentalized heaven and by extension its primary occupant. I worry the modern understanding of God owes more to Colton Burpo than the prophet Isaiah. And I think this one-sided portrayal diminishes our experience of God.

We can’t truly appreciate God’s grace until we glimpse his greatness. We won’t be lifted by his love until we’re humbled by his holiness.

The affection of a cosmic buddy is one thing. But the love of the Lord of heaven and earth, the one who Isaiah says “dwells in unapproachable light,” means something else entirely.

Of course it means nothing if you think it’s all hokum. If for you the material reality is all the reality there is, any talk of God is white noise. But if you’re like me, and you think heaven is for real, well, it makes all the difference in the world.

Drew Dyck is managing editor of Leadership Journal and author of “Yawning at Tigers: You Can’t Tame God, So Stop Trying.” The views expressed in this column belong to Dyck.

Heaven Is For Real Trailer 2014 Movie - Official [HD]

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A Theologian’s Reflections on the Movie “Heaven Is for Real”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/04/a-theologians-reflections-on-the-movie-heaven-is-for-real/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rogereolson_042214UTC040427_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=45678704&spUserID=Nzg4MDU4NjI4MjkS1&spJobID=422632338&spReportId=NDIyNjMyMzM4S0

by Roger E. Olson

April 20, 2014

Comments

Either serendipitously or providentially, this coming week my Christian Theology class is studying personal, individual life after death—”heaven” and “hell.” After that they/we will study corporate, cosmic eschatology—the future of creation. So, seeing that this week, before class, the movie version of the best-selling book Heaven Is for Real was being released, I asked my students to see it, if possible, and told them we will devote some class time to discussion of the movie.

I read the book soon after it was published—about four years ago (2011). I don’t remember enough details to compare everything in the movie with the book. I just remember that it’s the purportedly true story of a four year old boy, son of a Wesleyan pastor in Nebraska, who visited heaven while undergoing surgery. According to the boy, he saw Jesus, heard and saw angels, and met his great-grandfather (who died before he was born) and his sister whom he didn’t even know ever existed (because she died in the womb two months before she was to be born and his parents never mentioned her to him).

Naturally, as an evangelical Christian, I’m inclined to believe in some “near death” experiences (which are sometimes actual death experiences but in Colton Burpo’s [the boy's] case he did not actually die). Others I’m not so sure about. I probably was - and am inclined to - take this one more seriously just because the boy seems not to have been coached (unless his parents are simply lying) and his parents are Wesleyan Church pastors. I like the Wesleyan Church. (If I wasn’t a Baptist and lived near a Wesleyan Church I’d probably attend it. Or if there wasn’t a “good” Baptist church I’d probably attend the Wesleyan Church. But I digress.)

First let me say I went to the movie with a healthy mood of combined openness and skepticism. I rarely see evangelical Christianity portrayed in movies fairly. Usually, everything is going along okay until, suddenly, the movie makers put a huge crucifix on the church wall behind the pulpit—or some other gross anomaly. Or they have the allegedly evangelical Protestant congregation singing “Ave Maria” or something. It’s a pet peeve of mine. But I tend also to be skeptical, not unwilling to believe, of personal experiences of God and Jesus. So many I’ve encountered are grossly unbiblical, silly, ridiculous—by any standard.

Second, I will say the movie was not at all bad. I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part, evangelical Christianity was treated sympathetically or at least realistically. (I actually convinced myself that the Hollywood movie makers would not allow the church to be “Wesleyan” but would make it generically Protestant. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sign outside the church say “Wesleyan.” Maybe some people will actually go home and look that up and read about it!) I found the pastor’s (Todd Burpo played by Greg Kinnear) skepticism about his son’s experience a little surprising; I would think your typical Wesleyan pastor would be more open than that. Same with the church leaders. And the culminating sermon left something to be desired; it was a little vague and could be interpreted as saying it doesn’t matter whether heaven is a literal place or not.

I was glad the movie didn’t try to depict God the Father or heaven in too much vivid detail or for very long. Even Jesus was depicted with a soft focus lens. At the end of the movie, of course, a girl’s painting of Jesus is declared to be just what Jesus looks like. That’s a bit startling as he has green-blue eyes! Jesus was and is Jewish and not many Jews of Palestine in the first century would have green-blue eyes.

My wife says I’m overly nit-picky. I realize that. But that’s the side effect of being a theologian and really caring about theology.

So here comes my main critique of the book and movie. I believe in the “intermediate state”—the technical theological term for conscious life after death before resurrection. But I fear the book and movie will reinforce the popular idea that the intermediate state is actually the fullness of heaven (and therefore not an intermediate state!). It isn’t. In fact, we are told very little about it in Scripture. Jesus called it (for the saved) “Paradise.” Paul referred to it as the “third heaven.” But Jesus told his disciples he would go away and prepare a place for them, then return and take them there—to his “Father’s house” with many rooms. So the fullness of heaven is after Christ returns. The “blessed hope” of believers in Christ has always been not the intermediate state, a bodiless existence of being with Christ, but the resurrection [with new bodies] and the new heaven and new earth—liberated from bondage to decay (Romans 8).

The book and movie force us to think about this issue. Do we have to choose between the Bible’s revelation of personal eschatology (intermediate state then resurrection and heaven) and personal experiences of life after death?

As fascinating, inspiring and emotionally titillating as Colton Burpo’s experience was, we must not allow it or any other such testimony to become the basis of Christian belief. Our belief is based on Christ and his resurrection and on the Scriptural witness to him and to God’s plan for us. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, “We should not want to know too much about the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell.” The key is “too much.” We can only “know” (believe) what Scripture says about life after death before the resurrection and that’s not much.

Peter Enns - Paul's Letter from Rome to the Christian Churches

This 4th century New Testament papyrus contains the first seven verses of Paul's Letter to the Romans.

Beneath the scripture a different author has scribbled in random 

phrases. It has been suggested that this

papyrus may have been a writing exercise. 

New research has identified the owner of this document - a

man named Aurelius Leonides - who was a flax merchant from Eqypt. (article link here)

a long lost letter back to Paul from the Jewish Christians at Rome (that I totally made up)

uphttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/04/a-long-lost-letter-back-to-paul-from-the-jewish-christians-at-rome-that-i-totally-made-up/

by Peter Enns
April 21, 2014
Comments

If I could go back in time, I’d love to be a fly on the wall to hear how the Jewish believers in the church at Rome heard Paul’s words in his letter to them. (Actually, if I really could go back in time I’d first make a pit stop along the way so I could win the Power Ball Jackpot, but I digress.)

Here we have Paul writing a letter to a church he had neither founded nor even visited and that had a significant Jewish population. And he says things like the following:

• Gentiles (a.k.a. Greeks) may be sinners, but Jews are no better off in God’s eyes, since they are the ones who have God’s gift of Torah but don’t do what it says.

• Jews and Gentiles are in the same boat as far as God is concerned because both are enslaved to the power of sin, both equally fall short of God’s glory, and both equally need Jesus, not Torah, to defeat that power.

• This decentering of Torah to allow Gentiles to become equal partners with Jews in Israel’s story, though appearing to be an unexpected move, has actually been God’s plan all along, beginning with Abraham.

• Neither circumcision nor maintaining food laws, both of which are commandments to Israel, remain necessary for God’s people–either Jews or Gentiles–in view of Christ’s death and resurrection.

• Those whose conscience tells them that they need to maintain food laws may continue to do so, but rather than being praised as obeying Scripture, these believers are “weak” in their faith as opposed to those who are “strong,” i.e., those who understand that no foods are unclean.

• Neither the weak nor the strong are to judge each other, for love and unity among the people of God take priority over whether Israel’s ancient practices continue to be maintained.

- Paul the Apostle

---

[In response,] I hope one day we find a long lost letter written back to Paul by these Jewish believers. It might go something like this:

Dear Paul,

We read your letter with great interest, and it sparked no little amount of commotion among your fellow Jews.

Have you lost your mind?

We believe in Jesus as you do, and like you we are still scratching our heads a bit about why our Messiah came in humility and weakness, even dying a criminal’s death, and then was raised. You’ve actually helped us quite a bit on those things, especially early on in your letter, and we much appreciate it.

But Paul, you’re Jewish. You’re one of us. Do you really think that the God of our fathers would simply reverse course and expect us to figure out that Jesus the Galilean brought an end to our ancient traditions–especially given how (according to the stories we heard) Jesus himself never said any of what you’re saying here?

We’ve never met though your reputation precedes you. We believe that you are an apostle, but do you really think we should just take your word for it that all that we’ve known is now, at best, an add-on and at worst a hindrance to true faith in the God of our fathers?

And we appreciate how fervently and creatively you cite scripture to support your point, but don’t you think you took your creative readings of scripture a bit too far? Was obedience to Torah really never central to the Lord’s overall plan? We’ve read our scripture cover to cover many times and we can’t find where God even hints at that idea.

Your reading of the story of our father Abraham to marginalize Torah-keeping is way over the top, and your handling of the Psalms and the Prophets to show how the Lord has always “elected” Gentiles is…well…you might as well say that there is really no advantage at all to being a Jew–like we’re one big mistake.

You try to get out of that implication a couple of times in your letter. You sense the dilemma, but frankly you don’t do a very good job of talking your way out of it.

And then toward the end of your letter, when you talk about clean and unclean foods (which seems to be the real point of your letter), you call “weak” those who have the courage and faithfulness amid our pagan culture to maintain God’s holy laws, given by him to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and you call others “strong” for not doing so.

So, what’s up with that?

Paul, we cannot stress this enough: you can’t just pick and choose what parts of scripture you think are worth holding on to.

After all, if everyone did that, there’d be chaos. And where does it end, Paul? Once you start denying one part of scripture, there is no logical reason not to deny anything else. And then what happens to the authority of scripture?

You can’t do this sort of thing with God’s word and you can’t claim that God is telling you to deny what God had told us from ancient days up to know.

We respect you as our brother, Paul, but when you finally pay us a visit, which we do hope will happen in the not-too-distant future, we would like to sit down with you and hear from you more clearly your reasoning process in all of this–exactly how Jesus’s death and resurrection, which we firmly believe, leads you to draw the conclusion that God is turning his back on the very traditions he commanded.

So, those are our main concerns. If in the meantime you decide to write back, could you please work on writing shorter sentences, and maybe not breaking off in mid-sentence to follow another train of thought? That would help us a lot.

We would also appreciate it you used certain key words a bit more consistently–like faith, righteousness, and law. We see some ambiguity here and it’s already caused us no end of debate.

Most sincerely,

Your brothers and sisters in the faith,

fellow children of our father Abraham, according to the flesh

- Your brothers and sisters in Christ

---

Jewish Teachings in the Bible Series

continue to -

A Jewish Perspective by Elie Wiesel - The Story of Seth

A Jewish Perspective by Elie Wiesel - The Story of Jethro

A Jewish Perspective by Elie Wiesel - The Story of Aaron

A Jewish Perspective by Elie Wiesel - The Story of Joshua

Peter Enns - Paul's Letter from Rome to the Christian Churches

Introduction to Emil Brunner, Part 2 (+ book links)

[My] Favorite Theologian Revisited: Emil Brunner
(Review of Alister McGrath’s Book: Part Two)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/04/a-favorite-theologian-revisted-emil-brunner-review-of-alister-mcgraths-book-part-two/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rogereolson_042014UTC010415_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=45670627&spUserID=Nzg4MDU4NjI4MjkS1&spJobID=422432262&spReportId=NDIyNDMyMjYyS0

by Roger Olson

April 19, 2014

Comments

Continued of article from:

"Introduction to Emil Brunner, Part 1 ( + Famous Sayings by Brunner)"

This is a continuation of a recent blog post about theologian Emil Brunner under the guise of being a review of Alister McGrath’s recently published Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). I mean that tongue-in-cheek because I’m aware, as you may be, that my interest in McGrath’s book arises from my interest in and love for Emil Brunner’s theology, and I’m more interested in promoting that than McGrath’s book! However, if you’re a fan of Brunner, like I am, you may want to spend $83 for this approximately 200 pages book. I did.

Barth Debates Brunner's Natural Theology

I’m reading the book slowly because I want to absorb it, reflect on it, think critically about it and let it renew and refresh my interest in and knowledge of Brunner’s theology. This second installment focuses on one crucial chapter of the book which deals with one crucial episode in Brunner’s theological career—his famous (or infamous) 1934 debate with Karl Barth about “natural theology.” This is Chapter 4: “Natural Theology? The Barth—Brunner Debate of 1934″ (pp. 90-133).

For those who are not aware of this debate, I’ll review it briefly. During the 1920s Barth and Brunner were fairly friendly and working together, with Eduard Thurneysen and Friedrich Gogarten, on what came to be called “dialectical theology.” McGrath rightly notes that Barth was a little jealous that Brunner was better known in Britain and America and Brunner was a little concerned that Barth might be the stronger personality and thinker of the group. Barth went to Germany to teach; Brunner taught at the University of Zurich but lectured in many places. The two Swiss theologians knew each other well and carried on a lively correspondence. They also met many times for theological conversations—often with Thurneysen who seemed to be the one of the group who tried to hold it together. These were all big personalities with relatively large egos.

In Germany, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Barth experienced the chaos of the Weimar Republic and the beginnings of National Socialism as a political force. Eventually, of course, to make a long story short, he spoke out against the “Nazification” of the German churches and helped form the “Confessing Church” that stood against Fascism. Barth saw what was happening in Germany as the inevitable result of German liberal religious thought—openness to new revelations of God in culture. He tended to equate this with natural theology.

Back in Switzerland, Brunner was not personally touched by happenings in Germany, at least not to the extent Barth was. Barth was involved in the controversy and eventually was expelled from Germany for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler. Brunner did not see the events unfolding in Germany as directly related to liberal theology or natural theology.

During the 1920s, as McGrath helpfully explains, Brunner was developing his idea of a “second task of theology” and calling it “eristics.” This was the task of a kind of Christian apologetics—setting the Christian world view over against alternatives such as naturalism and idealism and showing its superiority. Barth was opposed to this because it seemed to him to presuppose a universal rationality above revelation, the Word of God.

The Onset of the Debate

Barth began to criticize Brunner’s eristics (as expressed for example in The Mediator—Brunner’s first major monograph published in 1929) and he began rather stridently to criticize all natural theology as inherently idolatrous.

In The Mediator Brunner had argued for a twofold view of the imago dei - i) humanity’s “formal image of God” which is not lost or even damaged by the fall and, ii) humanity’s “material image of God” which is lost by the fall. The former is simply capacity for hearing and responding to the Word of God. The latter is actually responding to the Word of God resulting in having a relationship with God. Brunner made clear that the latter, the material image, could only be restored by grace.

Barth attacked Brunner’s distinction in some lectures that were published. Brunner was stung by the harshness of the criticisms and believed Barth was either misunderstanding him or misrepresenting his view.

In 1934 Brunner published Nature and Grace in which he responded to Barth’s criticisms and defended a kind of natural theology. However, as McGrath very helpfully explains, what Brunner called “natural theology” in this work (and before and after) was not what most people mean by the concept. He meant general revelation and the formal image of God as a “point of contact” for the gospel in natural man. He feared that Barth was throwing the baby of general revelation out with the bathwater of natural knowledge of God.

Barth responded to Brunner’s book with Nein! (“No!) The subtitle was “A Reply to Emil Brunner” and the reply was extremely harsh. McGrath is right to say that 1) Barth made some good points against natural theology in light of what was happening in Germany, but 2) misrepresented Brunner’s view. Brunner’s view was not very different, if at all, from Calvin’s in the Institutes and was grounded in Romans 1. Brunner went out of his way to explain that he was not defending a “natural knowledge of God” with any salvific potential. He was only defending the “point of contact” for the gospel in natural, fallen humans. But Barth represented Brunner as if he were attempting to return to the “fleshpots of Egypt”—meaning to Catholic and liberal Protestant notions of a natural knowledge of God that could potentially serve as a prison for revelation and/or a foundation for idolatry.

I was much relieved by McGrath’s chapter. I have always thought that Barth’s response was wrong and that Brunner was more right than Barth—with regard to the point of contact. Barth was over reacting to the Nazification of the German churches and simply could not see Brunner’s proposal for what it was. However, Barth fans like to think Barth won the debate. If he did, it was by cheating. (For example, as McGrath shows, Barth attributed sayings to Brunner nowhere to be found in Brunner’s work.)

Barth Misrepresented Brunner's Argument

I can’t help but compare Barth’s Nein! with Luther’s The Bondage of the Will—Luther's response to Erasmus’ defense of free will. Erasmus had clearly defended what I call “freed will”—the will freed by prevenient grace to accept or reject saving grace. Luther simply ignored that and criticized a straw man—his perception (misrepresentation) of Erasmus’ view as humanistic belief in humanity’s ability to save itself.

So Barth’s Nein! attacked a straw man and not Brunner’s actual position which he later clarified in Man in Revolt and Dogmatics. But it shouldn’t have needed such clarification (even though McGrath thinks it helped).

The upshot of all this is that I find McGrath’s treatment of this sorry episode in 20th century theology very helpful. He mostly sides with Brunner—as he should. But very many theologians under the spell of Barth’s influence cannot bring themselves to admit that, at least in this case, Barth was wrong—if not about natural theology itself at least about Brunner’s view. Simply put, Barth threw the baby of general revelation out with the bathwater of natural knowledge of God. Brunner’s only error was in calling his view “natural theology.”

I believe, with Brunner, that there is a natural point of contact in the sinner that I would describe as “life’s ultimate questions” and their unanswerability by anything other than God’s Word. And I agree with Brunner that this, by itself, does no one any good with regard to salvation unless, and until, God’s special, prevenient grace liberates his or her mind and will to “see” that God’s Word answers. [As Brunner would say,] the point of contact can incline a person under pressure to be open to prevenient grace.

Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal

by Alistair McGrath

Natural Theology: Comprising Nature and Grace

by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the reply No! by Dr. Karl Barth,

by Emil Brunner

By Westminister Press:

Emil Brunner's Dogmatics Series, I-III

The Christian doctrine of the church, faith, and the consummation (Dogmatics, Volume I) 

The Christian doctrine of the church, faith, and the consummation (Dogmatics, Volume II) 

The Christian doctrine of the church, faith, and the consummation (Dogmatics, Volume III) 

    

Index - Easter and Lent

Index to Easter and Lent

Easter and Lent

Lutheran Hour Ministries - Advent & Lenten Devotionals

Tony Jones - Five Reasons You Probably Shouldn’t Attend a Christian Seder

Biologos - Three Resurrection Themes for Easter (NT Wright, The Resurrection)

The Ukrainian Traditions of Lent and Easter

Bo Sanders - Do We Worship a Bloody Easter or a Christ Who Ended It All?

BAS - Jesus' Last Days and Final Messianic Meal

ASOR - Passover as Jesus Knew It

Lent: A Season of Deprivation or a Period of Readiness?

Giving Up Guns for Lent



The History of Easter

5 Things You Didn't Know About Easter



Easter Readings and Poems

Geroge Herbert, "Easter Wings" (poem)

A New Passover, a New Lamb, a New Exodus

A Prayer

Expressing Love



Easter Songs

The Bible: Jesus Son of God Tour 2014 Songs & Videos

Buddy Greene, "Mary, Did You Know?" with Lyrics

Jesus Christ Superstar. A Rock Opera

Easter Passion Resurrection Videos

Resurrection Music for an Easter Sunday (Rock's "All Time Greatest Heavy Metal Guitar Solos")



Easter and Theology

"Blessed are the Poor": Striving for Spiritual Non-Possession of Biblical Interpretation

Hebrews 10

English Standard Version (ESV)

Christ's Sacrifice Once for All

10 For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Consequently, when Christ[a] came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,

but a body have you prepared for me;6 

in burnt offerings and sin offerings

you have taken no pleasure.7 

Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,

as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws on their hearts,

and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

The Full Assurance of Faith

19 Therefore, brothers,[c] since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you seethe Day drawing near.

26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profanedthe blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings,33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you mayreceive what is promised. 37 For,

“Yet a little while,

and the coming one will come and will not delay;

38 but my righteous one shall live by faith,

and if he shrinks back,

my soul has no pleasure in him.”

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Footnotes:

Hebrews 10:5 Greek, he

Hebrews 10:12 Greek, this one

Hebrews 10:19 Or, brothers and sisters

Bo Sanders - Do We Worship a Bloody Easter or a Christ Who Ended It All?

Blood: Easter and That Damn Liberal Quote

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2014/04/05/blood-easter-and-that-damn-liberal-quote/

April 5, 2014 by Bo Sanders Comments

It is almost Easter – my most conflicted time of year as a pastor.

I am smitten with the empty grave. In fact, I am almost as excited about the Easter imagery as I am horrified by North American protestant’s fascination with the cross.

I have written and talked about this disturbing trend in the past so I won’t take the time to elaborate on it here.

This whole subject has been intensified for me this year. I have been leading a discussion at my church through Lent about historic atonement theories. The hope in doing so has been twofold.

We wanted to look at how the churches’ understand of the cross has changed over time.

I wanted to suggest a way to move past those previous and limited views.

We have been working through this in conversation with several resources: Saved From Sacrifice, The Non-Violent Atonement and the work of Michael Hardin.

It has been a powerful excersise and I have learned a great deal in the process. It is the week before Palm Sunday and I have two things in the back of my mind:

1 - It bothers me that our most well attended services with the most visitors are our bloodiest (in imagery).

2 - That damn H. Richard Niehbuhr quote.

His famous jab at ‘liberal’ christianity:

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without

judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

This quote gets under my skin so much. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) It is so true. I suspected it when I migrated out West and it is has only been confirmed as I have emerged from an charismatic/evangelical context to a more mainline one. I can not tell you how many people would be covered by Niehbuhr’s concern.

2) We live in a sanitized and sterilized culture (to paraphrase Cornell West) where most people have no connection to the meat on their table. They pick it up at the grocery store in plastic wrapped styrofoam containers. I say this as an avid hunter descended from farmers.

We live in a horrifically violent culture (both domestic and military) but so few of us are familiar with blood. We outsource our violence.

This is why a penal substitutionary view of the cross is so attractive /acceptable for so many. The vicarious nature of god pouring out ‘his’ wrath on Jesus results in a pornographic delight that can be seen in depictions like that famous scene in [Mel Gibson's] The Passion and in many of our contemporary worship songs.

3) That Niehbuhr quote is thrown around too easily whenever someone wants to reexamine or revisit underlying assumptions about what happened (or how we understand) Easter.

Let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying:

• I am not saying that there was no cross and that there was no blood. I get both, I accept both and I proclaim both.
• I am saying that something perverse has seeped into our understanding and our imagery.
• What happened on that cross was real.
• What happened on that cross mattered.
• What happened on that cross was unjust.
• What happened on that cross changed humanity’s relationship to God.

My concern is that we have misunderstood both how it changed and why it changed.

Let me end the critique there and wrap up with a constructive proposal.

When Jesus takes the bread and cup and forever changes their meaning he is saying “what they will do to me – don’t you, as my followers, do to anyone else”.

When Jesus says “forgive them, they know not what they do”, he is saying that they think they know what (and why) they are doing, but they are wrong.

When Jesus says “it is finished”, he is proclaiming the end of this type of scapegoating and violence by those who think they are doing it on God’s behalf.

2 Corinthians 5:18, "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 [The one] who had no sin [was made] to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."*

We are to be about peace. We are to be a people of reconciliation. In Christ, God absorbed the hatred and violence of the world. The one who knew no sin – an innocent man – was proclaimed guilty and God responds by proclaiming that we who are guilty of doing that are now innocent and our sins are forgiven.

This is the good news of gospel! This is the hope for human-kind. No one needs to be sacrificed any more. No one needs to die because God is angry – Christ’s unjust death is to be the last. In the empty grave we see the vindication of the victim. God took humanity’s wrong judgement of Jesus and now judges us right with God. We who are guilty are proclaimed innocent because the innocent one was found guilty.

Easter is the great reversal and the vindication of the victimized. It is finished. We can’t afford to keep missing this and repeating the mistake. We who follow Jesus must be about peace and reconciliation. Too many have been scapegoated, placed on crosses and victimized by violence … in Jesus’ name.

God forgive us – we know not what we are doing.

Let it be finished.

In Jesus’ name.

- Bo

* If that final verse reads a little different than you are used to hearing it, you should listen to the podcast with Michael Hardin.

Reported here @ Relevancy22 - 

Peter Enns - "How Jesus Read His Bible," by Michael Hardin (Parts 1-4)

+ Videos: A Non-Violent Atonement

* * * * * * * * * * *

Concerns About ‘The’ Cross

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2014/04/09/concerns-about-the-cross/

April 9, 2014 by Bo Sanders Comments

I want to thank all of you who shared, commented and emailed about this past weekend’s post on Blood: Easter, the Cross and that quote about Liberals. I have received lots of feedback via email, FaceBook and text.

It seems that most people get the main thrust of the article but have one doubt/hesitation they can’t shake/make sense of. I was asked to write a response at a non-grad school level (which I love to do).

I have two requests:

1- If you are looking for something more academic please read Heim’s Saved From Sacrifice. It is wonderful.

2 - If you are a big fan of a penal substitution theory of atonement, understand that I am not. I’m willing to talk about it – just understand that it would be unhelpful for you to simply repeat that view as a defense of that view.

So let’s get started!

You said that we focus too much on the cross, but I love the cross and think we don’t focus on it enough! Jesus said to take up our crosses – we are a resurrection people and resurrection only happens after crucifixion.

There are several problems here.

First, there was more than one cross. There were three just in our Easter story (but not in most of our pictures – like the one above). So you can’t say ‘the’ cross. You can say ‘that’ cross. It is vital to get just how many crosses there were. Roman use of crosses was systemic. Jesus’ cross was not an exception in that way.

Second, you are using ‘the cross’ as a shorthand for the whole story. The incarnation, crucifixion, empty grave and pentecost provide a much better snapshot. To try and sum them up in ‘the cross’ is too limited.

Third, we are people of the resurrection. That does not mean that ‘the cross’ is a good thing. What happened there was unjust. That God redeemed it and brought something good out of it … does not change that it was tragic.

How do we engage the cross still as people who follow Jesus?

It seems like most of the things that we say about the cross are the first half of what should be a longer sentence.

“We preach the cross and Christ crucified” … yes but what do we preach about the cross? That is was unjust? That ‘it is finished’ (the sacrificial system)?

“Jesus died our sins” … yes but also because of our sin? And to what end? To move us away from the scapegoating impulse? To expose and unmask our unjust propensity toward violence?

Here is the problem: if we are not careful, we miss the radical reversal that Jesus’ cross is supposed to provide and we end up simply absorbing it into the system that it was meant to expose.

This is a tragedy that ends up normalizing the violence Jesus unmasks and continues the cycle of victimization Jesus was trying to break.

Because of the way we talk about the cross in half-sentences and short-hand phrases, we end up siding with the Romans’ use of power and violence and miss the fact that on Good Friday, God was not on the side of the Romans but that God was with Jesus on that cross.

What do we do with the sacrificial lamb imagery? 

I will withhold my real answer (that it was contextual and historically located) and will instead present what I think is a more helpful response!

We see a trajectory in our canon. God moves Abraham from human sacrifice to animal & grain … later God moves on from that system ( you see this in passages like Psalm 40:6 “sacrifice and offering you did not desire” and Hosea 6:6 “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice”)

People will often quote Hebrews 9:22 “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”. The half they leave out is that it actually says “under the law …”

You see what has happened? By not saying the first half (under the law) and only saying the second half, we actually miss the entire point of Jesus’ sacrifice and end up reinforcing the system Jesus came to move us on from! We live and think as if we are still under the law!

The way talk and think about the cross of Christ actually undoes the very thing that Jesus came to do.

The rest of Hebrews 9 says that Jesus died once of all. So we don’t need to kill ‘them’ – they are ‘us’. We are all them – the all. Jesus died once for all so that we could stop this us-them thinking and stop victimizing and scapegoating. We miss this and then absorb ‘the cross of Christ‘ into the very system of power and violence that Jesus came to destroy.

I thought that the blood shed on the cross provides the forgiveness of sin?

Jesus forgave sins before the crucifixion. Part of the problem with saying ‘the cross’ as a form of shorthand for the whole story is that we skip both the life and teaching of Jesus. Jesus got in trouble for forgiving sins. How could he do that if what you are saying is true?

See? God forgives sin. How can God do that? Well if the debt that is owed is to God … then God can forgive them. The problem with they way we have been taught to think and talk about ‘the cross’ is that God is not free to forgive. God has to play by some external rules and ‘with out the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness’. But remember that the law is that way. God is not. Jesus, and this true whether you think Jesus was a messenger of God or God incarnate, forgave sins before the shedding of blood. How did he do that if they way were taught is true?

God forgives sins. Thank God! And we need to repent. We have made God into something Jesus was meant to destroy. We have placed God on the side of the powers and violence that God was trying to combat. We have returned to the very thing God was attempting to redeem us from and release us from. We have absorbed Jesus’ cross into the very system Jesus was attempting to unmask and expose. We have missed the very lesson that Easter is supposed to teach us.

I will contend that God was with Jesus on that cross and that the empty grave is the vindication of the victim so that we might be freed from the cycle of violence and victimization … once for all.