Should we agree to disagree?

No doubt there will be much discussion and debate of sexual morality at the General Conference over the next few days.  Four years ago, some called for the church to simply adopt no official position at all, but "agree to disagree" on sexual issues.  At first glance this seems an aftractive option to many.  Here is a commentary from Good News Magazine that examines the merits and problems of "agreeing to disagree."

Random thoughts on Prayer...

Have you ever wondered if God is pleased with the Church's prayers?

During my study and sermon prep time, I was recently reading the comments of the Early Church Fathers on the First Epistle of John, chapter 3 (using the Ancient Christian Commentary on the Scripture).  In his comment on verse 22, "the venerable" St. Bede of England quotes Proverbs 28:9, which reads:

When one will not listen to the Law, even one's prayers are an abomination. (NRSV)

The Book of Proverbs doesn't occur too much in the Revised Common Lectionary that many Methodist pastors preach from, so as a group we may not read them often, which would be a shame.

Upon reading this, my first thought was, "Well, that is harsh and scary."  But as I began to contemplate the passage, several things struck me.  One who does not listen to God's law, God's word, yet presumes to pray is expecting God to listen to him, though he is in fact unwilling to listen to God.  I immediately began thinking of a couple of people I know that are simply impossible to have a conversation with because they only talk and never listen.  Each thing they say reminds them of something else they want to say, and they rarely if ever allow anyone else to speak.  At some point, I find myself trying to avoid these people altogether.  If you aren't willing to listen to me, why should I want to listen to you?  This seems to be part of what the Spirit says through the Proverb.

The really deplorable thing, the likely reason that the word "abomination" is used, is that to refuse to listen to God's law while also expecting God to attend and answer one's prayers makes God into our slave, or even our vending machine.  It is a way of approaching God as something less than God.  Rather than the all-holy and transcendent One who is worthy of all our worship, adoration, devotion and trust, God becomes simply a commodity, a means of fulfilling our perceived spiritual (or material) "needs" and desires.

Which brings me back to my question.  I have a hunch (though I've not done any polling) that in the American Church most individuals are far more likely to pray - particularly to ask for things in prayer - than we are to listen to God's Law by reading and meditating upon the Sacred Text.  Now I realize that prayer is something that is more immediately accessible in every situation (for example, while driving), and I am not advocating some strict seperation of the Spiritual disciplines (since prayer pervades them all).  What I am really wondering is: Where is our heart?  What is the basic desire and movement of our spirit: is it toward interaction and conversation with the Living God or is it using God as a commodity, presenting God with a wish list?

This actually reminds me of the 4-movement pattern described by St. Bernard of Clairvaux of how people come to desire and grow in our love of God:

We begin, he says, in the natural or fallen state, loving self for self's sake.  At some point we become aware of our needs - perhaps for spiritual strength or our need of forgiveness and eternal life, and we begin to try to love God...but for self's sake.  We serve, worship, and pursue God in hopes of "getting something out of it" - heaven, happiness, an escape from death and hell, social acceptability, etc.
The third movement is this: as we try to draw near to God for selfish reasons, we may begin to discover that God is beautiful, holy, and Good.  That God is supremely valuable and worthy of our trust and adoration.  We begin, says Bernard, to love God for God's sake - not for anything we hope to attain from him, but simply for who he is.  Once this deeper love of God has taken root in us, we can look with new eyes upon his Creation, and even upon ourselves as part of his Creation, and so we can begin to love ourselves for God's sake - to love what we are because we are created by and precious to God.

Most of us, myself included, no doubt have a long way to go in that journey.  I suppose it is good to remember, as this selection from Proverbs has reminded me, that our truest need and deepest blessing is not anything that God can give us, but simply God himself.  

Evangelical Evolutionists met in NYC

This is a couple of weeks old now, but may still be of interest to many:

"The most sobering moment for attendees of the Biologos "Theology of Celebration" Conference in New York City, March 20–22, came when David Kinnaman of Barna Research presented findings on what U.S. Protestant pastors believe about creation. More than half profess a 6-day, 24-hour creation of life. Fewer than one in five, on the other hand, follow Biologos in affirming an evolutionary process as God's method of creation.

Knowing that they are in a minority among Protestants did not limit the gathering's enthusiasm...Attending were such luminaries as N. T. Wright, Alister McGrath, John Ortberg, Tim Keller, Scot McKnight, Os Guinness, Joel Hunter, and Andy Crouch. Prominent scientists included Ian Hutchinson of MIT and Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. Forty-one pastors and parachurch leaders participated..."

The above is taken from the full article at Christianity Today.

I'm just glad to make everyone aware of the Biologos perspective and that there is such a thing as an 'Evangelical Evolutionist.' In fact, there are many of us who hold a very high view of Biblical authority and who also believe that God has used evolutionary processes to create life over a long period of time. The Bible itself allows for interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis beyond that favored by "Young Earth Creationists:" a period of 6 "24-hour/one rotation of the earth relative to the sun" literal days for Creation. Taking that view must necessarily bring one into conflict with current scientific theories, and contributes to an anti-intellectualism in the church that repulses thoughtful people from the Bible's gospel message.

But just start looking at passages like 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4 and begin to ask what a "day" means from God's point of view (and the 'days' in Genesis 1 must almost certainly be called such from God's point of view since neither the Sun nor the human race existed for some of these days). We could, if we were very brave, also bring into the discussion the notions of quantam phycisists about the elastic nature of time itself.

We certainly need discussions like that of the Biologos Conference because there is still out in our culture a strong "Science versus Faith" narrative that says one cannot believe in the Bible and in science because they are said to be enemies. The corrolary of this is that one must presumably be a theological liberal who does not "really" believe in the Bible if one believes in evolution. Both fundamentalists and liberals themselves put forward this narrative in different ways. Yet look at someone like C.S. Lewis, who was certainly a traditionalist yet in The Problem of Pain put forward an alternative narrative whereby one could imagine God creating an "Adam" through evolutionary processes.

Resurrection Day!

Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!
-Charles Wesley

Almighty God, through your only Son you overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life. Grant that we who celebrate our Lord's resurrection, by the renewing of your Spirit, arise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(The United Methodist Book of Worship, 393 - from a 5th century Gelasian Sacramentary)

Enjoy this video from Bishop and professor N.T., who is one of the great proclaimers of the Resurrection for our contemporary world.

Today you will be with me in Paradise...

Tomorrow is Good Friday, when Jesus died and was put in the tomb, where he also "rested from all his labors" on Holy Saturday before rising on the First Day of the new week - Resurrection Sunday.

Thanks to N.T. Wright and other Bible teachers, many Christians are re-discovering the Bible's complicated teachings on what happened to Jesus and the thief on the cross after they died and this gives us insight into what happens to us after we die as well. We follow where Jesus went before us: a period of restful waiting and then a glorious resurrection.

While many people simply think of going immediately to Heaven or Hell forever (maybe with Purgatory thrown in there for some), the Bible promises us bodily Resurrection to eternal life (or eternal condemnation) after a period of 'disembodied' waiting in Paradise.

Here are some of the relevant passages:

The thieves on the crosses next to Jesus.
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." - Luke 23:39-43

Paradise is a word used to describe beautiful gardens in the ancient world; Jesus' promise suggests a return to an Eden-like place. In my mind this evokes a recent experience: my wife and I laying on a blanket in the grass, watching sunlight pour through the Spanish moss and great Oak trees above us. Peace, rest, but not quite "sleep."

In speaking of Christ's death and then Resurrection, Peter quotes Scripture naming the "place" where Christ went after death as "Hades" (or "Sheol") in Acts 2:24-27:
But God raised him [Jesus] up, having freed him from death because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says concerning him, "I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. For you will not abondon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption..."

However as you can see when reading this passage, "Hades/Sheol" might simply be a poetic way to say "death/the grave" - that is Jesus was 'under' the power of death, in it's grip. So Hades may not necessarily be (as it is in Greek mythology, and in the parable of Luke 16) a 'place' where souls are consiously present and capable of interacting. Certainly, though, some level of spiritual interaction within the abode of the dead (Hades) seems to be implied in the next passage:

For Christ also suffered for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you... - 1 Peter 3:18-21



Wright's approach seems to me to be the simplest one: the followers of Jesus will go where he went before us - first through death and a state of "resting" in Paradise in his presence, before final Resurrection and the New Creation that God promises in Revelation 19-21, when he shall wipe away our tears and make all things new.

Interestingly St. Paul also equates "Paradise" with "the third heaven" when speaking of his own mystical experience in 2 Corinthians 12. For the Christian then, when we die we go to be "at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8; perhaps also John 14) in Paradise, which we might (as N.T. Wright says) also refer to as "Heaven" (supported by 2 Cor. 12), so long as we don't forget that this is a temporary state, where we await the New Creation and the final Resurrection to Life eternal (as pictured in Rev. 21 & 22 - which is the eternal "heavenly" Kingdom for which we are waiting).

This is the way I attempt to preach the Christian Hope (especially at funerals), because I believe it is deeply Biblical and avoids reinforcing the "resurrection-less" popular image of going straight to a disembodied heaven/hell upon death. How do you tend to talk or think about these things?