The blood of Jesus Christ is precious. It is worth more than all the treasures of silver or gold that the world could offer! But Christ also calls us to live in a way worthy of his precious blood. Do you desire this way of life?
The text for this sermon is 1 Peter 1:17-23. I pray that these words will challenge you to seek after the precious blood of Christ.
Recently I was blessed to have an article I wrote published in the November/December issue of ‘Shout! Outdoor Lifestyle Magazine.’
They have a great publication covering all sorts of fun outdoor activities and how they fit in with Christianity. I would encourage everyone to check out the magazine and the wide range of well-written articles.
Here’s the link for my article on kayaking and Christianity. Feel free to explore the rest of the magazine as well!
You see, we’ve got this problem as Christians.
It’s a problem, where,
unlike the rest of the world,
we’re not allowed to demonize or villainize
Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman.
It’s a problem, where,
because we decided to follow Christ,
this guy who loved outcasts,
this guy who loved all humanity,
even to the point of dying for people who completely hated him,
and because we agreed to do our best
to live in Christ-like ways,
to have Christ-like attitudes,
we show love to both a person like
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman,
and want the best for them, too,
despite whatever initial reactions we may or may not have.
It’s a problem, where,
we not only have to show mercy, grace, and forgiveness,
but we also have to want to show mercy, grace, and forgiveness
to Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman,
who really are people just like you and me,
who make stupid mistakes day after day,
who deal with the consequences and tragedies that result,
no matter what actually happened,
and none of us were actually there
to say what actually happened.
It’s quite the dilemma
to have to want to show grace, mercy, and forgiveness
to anyone who the popular world has tried to turn into a monster.
It’s a problem, where,
because we belong to the Church,
this living body of Christ,
we have to be an extension of that Church,
a body that is required to open its doors
to anyone just like
Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman,
and welcome them with Christ’s love,
no matter what they did or didn’t do,
and show Christ’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness to them,
and look at them with Christ-like eyes,
eyes that seek to see the good in them,
eyes that seek to see the hope for both of them.
You see, this is quite a problem to follow Christ,
and not follow the world’s pressures and desires.
I suppose this is why the Church is not really that popular after all,
it’s why the Church will never ever be popular,
because it says to resist the world,
and do things that are unpopular,
like love both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman equally,
with the same Christ-like love,
and want the best for anyone
who the world in all of its emotionalism and reactionalism,
has deemed as evil.
Christ certainly sees the best in us
and is willing to forgive our mistakes;
following Christ means we’ve agreed to do the same.
This really is quite the problem,
but it really shouldn’t be a problem
for the person who has claimed Christianity,
but rather it is the problem
for the world in understanding Christianity.
“Saviour, cast a pitying eye,
Bid my sins and sorrows end;
Whither should a sinner fly
Art not thou the sinner’s friend.
Rest in thee I gasp to find,
Wretched I, and poor, and blind.
“Haste, O haste, to my relief!
From the iron furnace take;
Bid me of my sin and grief,
For thy love and mercy’s sake;
Set my heart at liberty,
Show forth all thy power in me.
“Me, the vilest of the race,
Most unholy, most unclean;
Me, the farthest from thy face,
Full of misery and sin;
Me with arms of love receive,
Me, of sinners chief, forgive!
“Jesus, on thine only name
For salvation I depend,
In thy gracious hands I am,
Save me, save me to the end;
Let the utmost grace be given,
Save me quite from hell to heaven.”
Mr. Charles Wesley, thank you for these beautiful, true, and poetic words. We humble ourselves, fallen creatures full of sin and selfishness, before God.
The life, death, and resurrection of Christ is our only hope and salvation, our only cure.
Because of Christ, we live empowered by the Spirit to be in the life of God.
C.S. Lewis is quite a good storyteller. Now, I know that statement is obvious to anyone who has read any of his fiction. Nonetheless, when we read fiction, we often have a tendency to say, “What a nice story,” and leave it at that. We forget that the metaphor speaks to something greater; there is a legitimate direction of truth in metaphor. It is why, in reading the gospels, one will often find Christ saying, “The kingdom of God is like….” He spoke in metaphors because a metaphor will illustrate the greater truth, reality, and concept behind the words themselves.
The main theme of The Great Divorce says that, often, there is some grain of good desire even at the heart of an act that appears evil; good, even the smallest amount, taken in a selfish direction will be misused and abused and turned into something horrible. But when taken in the right (‘right’ in and of itself is a word that needs to be unpacked in today’s post-modern world!) purpose, right defined here as being used for the purpose and intention of God’s design, that grain of good turns into something beautiful and amazing. Additionally, there are themes and metaphors of heaven, hell, and even purgatory (believe it or not – it is a doctrine that has its basis in some legitimacy!), as well as the examination of the depth of God’s love and victory. These are aspects of what is commonly called eschatology. It is looking at, well, the end. It is trying to understand the end of this age, bonded to death through sin, and the beginning of a new age, with freedom in God to love.
And it begs us to ask questions; some might even call them dangerous questions. What do we believe will happen at the end of this age? And the even more threatening question – what do we believe will happen when we die?
Oftentimes, the quick, easy answer we receive in western, non-Roman Catholic theological traditions (sorry – I don’t like the term ‘Protestant’ very much; I’m not really protesting Rome anymore!) is that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell. And that’s the type of bottom line, hard and fast answer we receive. Simplistic and easy – but that is the exact problem with that answer. In truth, it’s neither a simplistic nor an easy answer! And it should not be treated as if it were a simplistic and easy answer!
There are all sorts of issues with this answer.
The first issue is that none of us has died and returned. That is, none of us except Jesus Christ. And apart from Christ’s death and resurrection, we do not exactly know what comes after death. Christ is our best guide to understanding life after death. What the resurrection points to, and in line with scripture, is a physical resurrection in a renewed body.
The second issue is the concept of a dualistic eternal soul and non-eternal body; it does not come from Christianity nor the Hebrew Bible. Remove Greek and Platonist influence and you have the unified psychosomatic concept of the person as a whole; body and mind are together. It is the way God designed us to be as people; he did not design us to have a partially separated non-physical ‘soul’ for all of eternity – the person would be incomplete! I encourage you to take a journey through both the Old and New Testaments and explore this on your own.
The third issue is that it does not take into account the physical resurrection of the person, and all people, at the end of this age; again, this is in line with scripture; again, I encourage you to explore the Old and New Testaments. Moreover, in saying that someone will immediately descend into hell upon death turns God into an unjust judge. Scripture is clear that there will be both a day of physical resurrection and a day of judgment; neither has happened yet. It will be at the end of this age. God is not going to condemn a person to eternal damnation before the day of judgment! C.S. Lewis makes a great point here in The Great Divorce – ultimately, it won’t be God’s rejection of the person; rather, it will be the person’s rejection of God and his beautiful love that brings despair.
It should be known that on that day of judgment in the future, it will be God, and God alone, who is truly able to judge the person’s heart. This is not a responsibility that we, as Christians, ignorant of a totality of information, should take on for ourselves; we cannot claim to be God. However, it should make all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, want to seriously examine the condition of our own hearts and our receptiveness towards God’s grace.
Finally, it downplays the significance and the beauty of a new creation! As I mentioned before, God created us as physical beings, originally designed for good, beauty, life, and love; however we have been corrupted by sin and its effects through death. God did not create us to be an eternal, non-physical soul, yearning to escape a physical realm; that is the heresy of gnosticism. But in living in a new and beautiful creation, it will be a remade, physical world! There will be eternal, physical life available, with freedom in love and freedom from evil. One will not have to worry about needs or wants; there will be no pain or tears of sadness.
That, my friends, sounds absolutely amazing. Imagine the beautiful, remade beings of The Great Divorce. That could be our remade body one day. Imagine the rivers and the mountains, the grass, the apples, and the leaves that Lewis described in his story. Consider, at the very least, the abounding love that conquers all.
Think of hiking through a beautiful mountain path, living in conjunction with God’s Spirit and praising the Father for his works, all the while thanking the Son for making your participation in it possible through his work in this present age. Think of sitting on the most beautiful beach that God has ever made, while enjoying loving fellowship with others. Think of an awe-inspiring sunset or sunrise. Think of entering through the gates of the incredible city of God that John describes in Revelation. Think of walking with Christ, our King but also our friend, and embracing the love that is his very existence.
It will one day be a physical and true reality. It will be God’s beloved world, remade.
Do you see how the answer of saying that one will go to heaven or hell after one dies and that’s the bottom line is not only simplistic and easy, but a bit misleading? This fall-back and default answer, especially when there is a much better, truthful, and scripturally accurate answer, can even be damaging!
This gives us a fairly good picture of the future and where God is taking the world; the incredibly beautiful thing is that God invites each of us to participate in this awesome story! If that is not an expression of love, I am not quite sure what is.
Nor is it the promotion of a selfish ticket to heaven, but an invitation for us and an opportunity to participate in and perpetuate God’s amazing, redemptive love to the world; we continue in the work of demonstrating this kingdom as we respond to God today!
Nonetheless, we still ask the question of what will immediately happen after one dies. The short answer, and probably the best and most honest answer, is we don’t know.
There are a few possibilities, but we can’t talk about it with nearly as much certainty and scriptural accuracy as we can of the new creation.
The first is that one simply dies and then is raised again at the resurrection. At first this might come as a shock and the question is inevitably asked, “What? No heaven?” Well, if you’re really honest with yourself, it’s not that big of a deal. You’ll be dead; and the good thing about being dead is that you won’t know you’re dead! So the time between death and resurrection will fly by in the blink of an eye. It could be a possible reason why, in Luke 23, Jesus told the man next to him on the cross that, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
Or, if one absolutely insists on keeping the Platonic idea of an eternal soul not subject to death, then upon death, a soul could go to a type of Hades or Sheol to await the day of reunification with a physical body at the resurrection, when God will examine the person’s heart to bring them into eternal life in the new creation or damnation and eternal death (by the way, this opens a whole new can of worms as to what exactly damnation and eternal death means, which I won’t go into in this article). I explore this idea in one of my stories out of my new book, An Intertwined Reality: Short Stories for the Already but Not Yet. This is perhaps a more accurate understanding of an idea similar to purgatory. The grey town in The Great Divorce could be an illustration of this concept. At any rate, this idea could potentially explain a phenomenon of ghosts; still, supernatural forces that do not come from God are not to be trifled (there’s a good word!) with.
The last possibility is that by Jesus saying, “Today, you will be with me in paradise,” he means that the person’s soul who is in relationship with God will indeed wait in heaven for the day of reunification with a physical body to live in the new creation. Nonetheless, living in the redeemed physical body in the new creation is still the goal! In going with this idea, it does not mean that one who is not in relationship with God will go to hell; the day of judgment has not yet happened! They may either simply die or their soul waits in a type of Hades or Sheol.
Nonetheless, these are not known certainties. They are only ideas and theories. Like I said before, we don’t know! Moreover, we have such a lack of understanding between the concepts of time and space in eternity as opposed to the concepts of space and time as constructs that God has given us in his creation. We only know what we know through Christ, the physically resurrected Savior, a sign of the general resurrection and renewal yet to come!
But does it really matter what may or not happen immediately upon death? Again, if you’re really honest with yourself – no! Because ultimately we have the promise that there will be life again in the paradise of a new creation with God!
Moreover, I pray that we as the Church do not rely on simplistic, easy, or misleading theology. We should faithfully be ready to wrestle and struggle with our challenges, our questions, and even our doubts.
And sometimes, a good story can help offer a better explanation than one might initially think.
Eschatology – it can at first be an intimidating theological word, but it is a word we should be ready to explore. C.S. Lewis, in his imagination, helps us do that in his storytelling. His works of fiction are not simply stories to say, “What a nice story,” and leave it that, but stories to open our imagination to metaphors and illustrations of truth we find in scripture. The Great Divorce is one of those excellent works of fiction.
*A lot of what I discussed in this article can be found in N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope. He goes into all of the issues I summarized on a much deeper level. Check out the book!
The theological tenets of Protestantism as a movement within Christianity are, for the most part, fairly orthodox. And while there is much room for debate, that is not my aim in writing this article. Nonetheless, there is something much more dangerous going on in this ‘Protestant’ movement. It is the danger of a forced division within an institution meant to be unified in love. The Church, from the very first centuries, was called ‘catholic’ for a reason. Ignatius of Antioch, in 107 A.D., first used the word in a letter he wrote to Christians in Smyrna on the way to his martyrdom. Catholicity: it is a sign of love for Christ and a sign of purpose in adversity. It is a unification which produces strength in contrast to the division that produces weakness.
We’ve replaced the word today, in the Protestant movement, with universal; it is a replacement brought forth by a reaction stemming from a 500 year old disagreement between Martin Luther and the Church.
But catholic means much more than universal. It means to be unified. While there is truth to the universality of the Church, it does not adequately do justice to what the Church is meant to be. It ignores the unification of Christians all over the world into one body with Christ as our leader. It subtly says that division is okay.
Division is not okay. Disagreements are okay. Conversation is okay. An argument is even okay every now and then. A willingness to listen to various theological ideas and respectfully, intelligently, and lovingly discuss them is okay. This would have been ideal for Martin Luther and the Reformers; they had legitimate concerns over the practices of their beloved Church. Nonetheless it is not what happened; division resulted. And division has been perpetuated. As a result, people are influenced to react against the word catholic in an association against Roman Catholicism.
They were called protesters. And the protesters embraced it. It was not what they were for that defined them; rather, in claiming the identity of Protestant, it was what they were against that defined them. It was a motivation of division.
Love, specifically the love of Christ, conquers division. Isn’t it time that we allowed our love to overcome an argument from half a millennium ago? Perhaps, on our path to seeking holiness, we can embrace our fellow Christians from around the world, and even those brothers and sisters who might think just a little bit differently theologically, in a true unified fashion. Maybe we can quit our ‘protesting’; by hanging on to this word – protestant – that is, in essence, what we are doing. We are clinging to a separation, a label with motivations that come out of objections, complaints, dissent, strife, disapproval, and even hate. We are embracing the negative over the positive. We are clutching onto a fear of perceived threats instead of welcoming a healing love.
This is not a Christ-like, holy love that encompasses healthy disagreements, fellowship within the body, and grace and forgiveness. It is a reaction. It is a word that states most clearly exactly what it is – a backlash and a division in the holy body of Christ.
Thankfully, the tradition of Christianity that I belong to, the Church of the Nazarene, recognizes that we are a part of the worldwide body of believers. I am grateful for that. We do not need to deny our Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Syriac, Anglican, Lutheran, or, yes, even Calvinist, family in Christ. We do not need to push away Pope Francis or Patriarch Bartholomew or Archbishop Welby; they too are our Christian leaders.
Yet we still bind ourselves, slavishly, to that word, as if we are still in some sort of protest! Perhaps it is better to define ourselves first as Christian, then as Reformed, or Calvinist, or Wesleyan, or Arminian, or Baptist; that would be a step forward. Maybe we can finally embrace love for one another, and as a sign of that love, remove our protesting root as an identifier, this word that promotes the dangers of division and adds, as one of my seminary professors put it, “scar tissue” to the body of Christ. Division is not orthodox; it is not a characteristic of the kingdom of love that we are supposed to proclaim.
In true medieval fashion, and indicative of practices from the period of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, I may be burned at the stake for this article by some of my fellow protesters whom I still love. I will most likely be put on some sort of list as someone to be careful of. But these are chances I am willing to take. The healing of scar tissue is too important. The message of God’s love in a unified, worldwide, universal, catholic body of Christ is just too critical to be rendered ineffective by a heresy of division and protest.
by Ben Cremer
I have been mulling over several of Walter Bruggemann’s essays as of late. His exposition on our contemporary culture brings forward several needed elements that are essential for an authentic dialogue over the topic of human sexuality. In our mainstream culture, a cloud of ambiguity surrounds this topic; and the culture as a whole seems bent on keeping it that way.
We live in a culture that endlessly advocates and calls for freedom; specifically in this case, sexual freedom. What causes me to be apprehensive is that, as many people are demanding freedom in our mainstream culture, not many seem to explicitly contemplate over the ‘kind’ of freedom being demanded, or more importantly, in what is our mainstream culture’s understanding of freedom rooted? When I bring up the topic of philosophy in a conversation with acquaintances, it is generally met with a look of fatigue, disregard, or even an eye-roll. This seems to be the norm of how philosophy is perceived in mainstream culture – philosophy just doesn’t bear authority over how we understand reality. I think this general disdain towards philosophy is in defense of a deeply ingrained belief: the belief that we as individuals determine our own reality. Brueggemann helps us by showing how this belief and our culture’s understanding of freedom were shaped through a particular… philosophy!
Brueggemann rightly portrays our mainstream notion of freedom as comprised of several strong philosophical ideas. In summation: Descartes’s establishment of the human doubter as the norm of truth, Locke’s presentation of the human person as a rational, free decider, and Kant’s framing of the human as the autonomous actor and the one who shapes functional reality. He then writes, “This Enlightenment ideology has received its popular form in a Freudian theory of repression in which human maturation is the process of emancipation from communal authority that is extrinsic to the individual person and therefore fundamentally alien to mature humanness. Thus the human goal is movement beyond any restraints that come under the category of repression.”
Naturally, in our culture of freedom, we despise anything that calls for unquestioned and thoughtless allegiance. Yet, as good children of the Enlightenment, we have given our unquestioned allegiance to this fantasy of unfettered freedom – that we should be held accountable to no one. This idea shows itself in how our mainstream culture regards and expresses the nature of human desire. All that seems to be presented in mainstream culture is that humans have desires, individuals have a right to express those desires as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others, and anything that hampers this right of expression should not be tolerated. Consequently, this unquestioned allegiance to the Enlightenment’s fantasy of unfettered freedom presupposes our unquestioned allegiance to the whims of our individual desires.
This talk of human desire is necessary because of how much it plays into our mainstream culture’s understanding of sexuality. Much of how we define sexuality is framed within the context of feeling or desire. Much of what is determined about one’s sexual orientation begins, at least basely, at how a person feels towards the opposite, same, or both sexes. In mainstream culture, no serious questions are being asked on where our desires come from, how they are formed, of what are they comprised, how do they manifest themselves, how are they to be managed or, heaven forbid, can we be deceived by them? No, our conversation begins and ends with the individual’s right to determine and maintain a sexual identity. People will cheer the exercise of this ‘right’ as a sexual freedom not seeing it for what it really is, isolation. Sexuality at its core is an interactive expression – a way of communicating the self to and with the outside world. So, when we leave the deciphering of sexual identity completely up to individual desire through the lens of the individual experience, all that can really be accomplished is eloquent terms of sexual preference. Because the fantasy of the Enlightenment relegates individuals solely to silent experimentation within society by denying ambiguous thoughts and questions and a robust sexuality demands robust and open communication.
This isolationism is one of the reasons we have the puzzling argument in mainstream culture over being “born this way” and the idea that it is by “individual choice” that one’s sexual identity is formed. As if the two can really be separated and set against each other! Everything about who we are regarding how we relate to and identify ourselves within the outside world from the moment of birth is a conglomeration of genetics, brain chemistry, culture, physicality, biology, point in history, and choice. Individual choice has no say over the aforementioned human building blocks. Simultaneously however, one cannot live without making a choice somewhere along the way to participate or not to participate in a particular way of being in the world. Thus, attempting to make a distinction between choice and birth is reductionistic and harmful. The former denies free will while the latter denies the nature of growth. The irony of this fantasy of unfettered individual freedom is that enacting within it causes a legalistic relationship between our true self and our desires. For to make our unique, irreducible, unrepeatable identity known, we force our selves to pigeon-hole, reduce, and endlessly repeat a declaration of self to the outside world to maintain integrity and a place within it that isn’t subjugated to an authority. How often must we relearn Icarus’ lesson? That the freedom given to us through the wax wings of individualism, however intense, powerful, and passionate the flight may be, will always melt away in the heat of reality, leaving us in a shocking freefall alone. Our lives were brought forth through community, and for us to decipherer an authentic identity of self, including our sexuality, must be through an honest engagement within a loving and challenging community.
Our mainstream culture is made up of many separations of our own making. We have scripture separated from history and thus from the Church; the Church separated from Christ; spirituality separated from religion; information technology has helped us separate labor from learning; and we have the identity of the individual separate from community. These separations are neither loving nor challenging but deceitful; for they all detach the object from its context. Freud understood that sexuality is a sphere of endless inscrutability, the arena of our true selves and the place in our life for deepest deception and pathology. If we continue to operate under the assumption that the Enlightenment’s fantasy of unfettered freedom is the best atmosphere for the individual, endlessly praising the burden and isolation of self-determination, then we will continue to not ask hard questions of ourselves and others regarding sexuality. If we continue to deny that human desires can be self-deceptive we will continue choking on the idea that authentic sexuality is based on the ‘theory’ that unfettered human desire manifests pure truth. This illusion will only ever leave us with lifeless sexual ethics. We will continue to have raging disputes between equality and condemnation among individuals who think they are debating over sexual identity but are actually only debating over their differing understanding of how the unfettered human desire should be interpreted and expressed. Our culture is bent on producing autonomous individuals rather than fostering authentic persons.
If this continues, it will not matter how many governmental legislations are passed or not passed. Individuals will still be left secluded and alone left to forge out the ambiguity of sexuality on their own. This recipe will not only suppress an authentic understanding and expression of sexuality based on examined desires but will maintain coercive behavior that crushes and often misdirects true desire and cuts people off from authentic community. Many so-called religious folk have done great work in carrying out this coercive behavior under the banner of their fidelity to God. But Brueggemann tempers this condemning behavior with this corrective of enacting an authentic fidelity to God regarding sexuality. He writes, “such a perspective requires much more than embracing traditional mores, because fidelity means something quite different from “abstaining” or “staying married” or “being straight”. It means rather being in a relation that is genuinely life-giving and life-receiving, where the work of neighbor regard is practiced. And covenantal freedom means finding modes of fidelity congruent with one’s true self and the capacity to be emancipated from “legal” relationships that are in fact destructive and hopelessly demeaning.”
A word to we Christians: Humanity is made in the image of God: three holy persons, not Enlightenment individuals. No person of the Trinity is exploited, reduced, or oppressed by another person of the Trinity. But rather each person of the Trinity pours themselves out for the other—an authentic community. We, as human beings, were hardwired to reflect an image. If we choose our own way apart from God, we won’t stop reflecting an image; we’ll simply begin reflecting something else. Just as Adam and Eve found out in the garden, this type of “freedom from authority” will always lead to oppression and exploitation of others as well as ourselves. Apart from God, we do not know what nature to reflect and grow in to. Thus, ambiguity will then be our nature and ambiguity is what we’ll grow in to. We cannot be free to express or know our true self, including our sexuality, unless we are “dead to Christ” (emphases on WE). The unfettered freedom of the Enlightenment keeps us shackled to the haphazard whims of our human desires, even giving us ‘rights’ to do so, offering only a dismal cycle of perpetual ambiguity leading to oppression for ourselves and from ourselves to others. We must no longer accept these lifeless ethics of sex but make space available through humble service for us all to express our true self, no matter how we understand our self to be at the given point when it engages authentic community. Our mainstream culture’s unfettered freedom does not offer hope because it does not offer authentic change but rather smothers it. We have hope in Christ, because we are changed by Christ. In the midst of the authentic love of Christ in his body the Church, through humble body-to-body service of neighbor, we as both servant and neighbor are able to, as Keirkegaard wrote, “face the facts of being what we are, for that is what changes what we are.”
*Ben Cremer is the College Ministries Pastor at Kansas City First Church of the Nazarene and blogs at Constant Investigations. Ben is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University where he earned a B.A. in Christian Ministries and a M.A. in Spiritual Formation. He is also a graduate of Nazarene Theological Seminary where he earned a M.A.T.S. with an emphasis on Church History and Christian Thought.
A large number of people label themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” I can understand this viewpoint; for some it is because of bad experiences with a major world religion, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. For others, it is not necessarily because of a previous experience, but just that they are skeptical of the idea of “organized religion.” Still, some may want to explore different religions before jumping into one; it is dipping one’s feet into the water before fully diving in. In any case, and no matter what category a person falls under, the individuals who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” recognize that there is something more to life than simply going after common and vain pursuits such as money and power.
However, the label “spiritual but not religious” is misleading; it implies that there is also a group of people who are “not spiritual and not religious.” To be honest, I do not think it is even possible to be “not spiritual.” The idea that one could not have a spiritual self at all, or that one could completely destroy or kill one’s spiritual self, does not make any sense.
The spirit is a characteristic of the physical body. It’s like saying one is one; it simply is. If you’ve read my previous post, “He’s living on the inside, roaring like a lion,” you’ll get a better idea of where I am coming from in stating this. God created us; God breathed life into us, giving us a spirit. In this life, the body and the spirit are inseparable. They are intertwined into one existence – the human being. What happens to the spirit after death, we do not know exactly (check out N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope); we have many ideas though. Although, as a minister in Christianity, I believe that at the end of this sinful age there will be a resurrection of the dead and our spirit will return to our body through God’s power; we will live as one existence of the intertwined and inseparable physical and spiritual human being – the way God designed us to be – in a new eternal creation free from the bondage of death. This is what is supported by Christian scripture and thousands of years of tradition.
There is no one who is “not spiritual.” It is impossible. We are all spiritual beings. Granted, different people may deny or accept the reality of their spirituality on different levels, in effect, respectively, either suffocating or cultivating who they are. But we are all spiritual on some level. And as we become more in tune with ourselves, we realize that there is much more to life than simply the pursuit of vain items and materialism. We begin to realize the importance of the connections that exist within this world.
Jesus summarized it as he echoed the Jewish Shema of Deuteronomy 6: “Jesus answered, ‘The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these'” (Mark 12:29-31).
A few weeks ago in one of my classes at the U.S. Army Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course, one of my Chaplain instructors gave us his thoughts on a definition of spirituality: it is a person connecting with the four c’s – the creator, the community, the conscience, and the creation. Even if it is at a very basic level, we are all making these connections; we are becoming more in tune to the bigger picture of life. And as a Christian, I believe God made each one of us to have a role in this bigger picture; God created us to be people who are not selfish individuals, but selfless people who are always recognizing the connections we have.
Religion is a vital tool in developing this spirituality. Through religion, we cultivate and grow these connections and relationships. And perhaps most importantly, we learn to first develop our connection with God so that we can better develop our connections with the community, the conscience, and the creation. On our own, it is impossible to cultivate these connections. But through a connection with God, and with God working in us and changing our hearts, our other connections will grow into something we never believed was possible.
Christianity is based on the person of Jesus Christ; this religion is centered on Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Through Christ, we can experience the amazing love of God in his grace, forgiveness, and mercy, despite all that we have done wrong in life. Through Christ, we can become connected with God. And through that connection with God, we can learn to truly love one another. We can begin to understand ourselves, how we fit into the bigger picture of life, and be free from vain pursuits.
During this Easter season, I pray that no matter where we are on our spiritual journeys, whether we are struggling to take the very first step or have already been traveling for a thousand miles, we will begin to see the ultimate form of spirituality as a relationship with Christ. I pray that we will use the tools that thousands of years of the Christian tradition have given us to develop our connections with the creator, the community, the conscience, and the creation. I pray that we will explore and reflect on different aspects of what it means to be a Christian in whatever context we find ourselves in today. I pray that we will begin to learn how to worship God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I pray that we learn to love our neighbors in the same way that we love ourselves.
This week is Holy Week in western Christianity. Soon our brothers and sisters in eastern Christiany will also be celebrating these Holy days of the Christian calendar. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday – this week is the pinnacle event of Christianity. The significance of these days for our lives is the culmination of what it means to know ourselves and recognize our spirituality. The life, death, and resurrection of the Christ and the Messiah is the sum of what our connections to the creator, the community, the conscience, and the creation mean in each of our lives.
Happy Easter. Christ has risen. Let us celebrate.
Do not worry! There are no spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises in this post. And while the most recent Christopher Nolan Batman movies are just that – movies (still with plenty of violence, although thankfully not as gratuitous as other movies) – perhaps Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego Batman are a better example of a Christian attitude toward violence than we may first realize. I am not claiming he is the best example, but he may be a more suited (ha…get it?) example than we might initially give him credit for. In the United States, we live in a culture and society that is seeking more entertainment through violence (perhaps that violence has flowed over into our attitudes, where it seems that most cannot even hold a respectful conversation anymore). Wondering if this is true? Look at how well the first movie of The Hunger Games did in theaters. The ironic thing is that I am not so sure most people understood one of the points of that story was that having an actual “Hunger Games” is not a good thing.
Concerning physical violence in our entertainment, it is a dangerous and slippery road. Do we have long before people within the United States try to sanction games similar to that of the “Hunger Games” or of Rome and the Coliseum, where gladiators fought to the death, and people were slaughtered for the entertainment of the citizens? These were not fictional people that died; actual human beings died, killed without mercy. Life disappeared from the earth and was destroyed for the amusement of the masses. One may say, “We recognize the sanctity of life, no matter who it is, so surely it wouldn’t happen.” But then the lines get blurred all too quickly when someday a producer, in the pursuit of making money after people have been desensitized to the fictional violence that is portrayed in the movies, comes up with the idea to have a “Survivor”-like game where convicted criminals must fight to their death. Will you then still say, “We recognize the sanctity of life, no matter who it is?” With the speed society is moving today, I am afraid that the day we return to the gladiatorial death games of the Roman Coliseum may be sooner than we think. I hope I am wrong in that assumption; I hope that day never returns.
In Batman Begins, when the criminal is presented to face his death at the hands of Bruce Wayne in the training center of the “League of Shadows,” which was perhaps, in the perspective of the world’s eye-for-an-eye lex talionis version of justice, rightly deserved, Bruce Wayne refused to kill the man. His words were, “I’m no executioner.” In The Dark Knight, not even Batman let the Joker fall to his death. In The Dark Knight Rises, not even Batman…. (That’s right, I said no spoilers.)
As representatives of the Church, we must learn to be sincere in saying, “We do not need to tolerate a culture of violence anymore, no matter where it is or what it looks like or whom the violence is directed towards. Instead we, as the Church, will take seriously Christ’s commandment to show love to all.”
The true test of love is whether we can have an attitude of love toward those we disagree with, do not like, or even those who are considered enemies. Yes, I just wrote the word enemies. In American culture, it is incredibly difficult to show Godly, life-giving and life-upholding love towards enemies; having an attitude of Christian love does not mean the destruction of their lives. Enough blood has been shed in this world through people’s selfish manipulations of truth. Life anywhere in the world is a gift of God, and one would think that a Christian would learn to respect that. Stanley Hauerwas, the Christian ethicist, said a statement along the lines of “There is nothing worth killing for, but there are things worth dying for.”
Christians are not called to represent the world’s justice of lex talionis, but we are called to represent the kingdom of God through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Primarily we are called to love our neighbors and enemies; that love includes demonstrating peace. However, that peace and love for an enemy may come at a price, and that price may be our own lives. It is a difficult call Christ has given us; this is perhaps the most singularly difficult and challenging aspect of the gospel – to be ready to give one’s life, even for an enemy, in the pursuit of demonstrating God’s love. We are called to show love, and even when death may be the imminent cost of that love, we are nevertheless still called to be faithful to God’s message. Selflessness, not selfishness, regarding our own lives, is something we must be prepared for. There is no room for unrepentant selfishness in the kingdom of God; let that be a gut-check for us all.
The good news is that even death is not the end nor in vain when it happens in love, but that there is a resurrection that will come in a newly restored creation; ultimately love will conquer evil, even though we may not see it today.
Many times it may appear that evil does conquer love; remember, God calls us to be faithful to the message of love for all, no matter what the circumstances are. I urge you – do not give up hope. However, I do want to share one instance where we have seen the results of love conquering evil, although that love came at the cost of death. Many of you may already be familiar with this true story; I highly recommend reading Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot and End of the Spear by Steve Saint.
In 1955, five missionaries sought to bring the word of God to a notoriously violent indigenous tribe in the Amazon. In fact, according to the accounts of many of the indigenous people themselves, this group was on the verge of killing themselves into extinction. Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Jim Elliot finally made contact with this group; in January 1956, all five of these men were killed by the people they sought to demonstrate love to. But even with a rifle in the missionaries’ airplane to use for food, it was never used for self-defense. These men had one goal – to demonstrate Christ’s love. They had no desire to kill anyone; the cost was their lives. Their act was selfless; they were faithful to God’s message of love to the very end.
Yet despite the evil that took place, love overcame. Because of their family’s strong love, a love which was faithful to Christ’s call to love even an enemy, their families were able to forgive the people who had killed these five men. They ended up fulfilling Nate’s, Roger’s, Ed’s, Pete’s, and Jim’s call to minister to this group, living with the Auca tribe, and changing their attitudes from hate, violence, and vengeance, to Godly love. Lives were changed and evil was overcome by holy love. There was no eye-for-an-eye lex talionis justice here, only mercy, forgiveness, and love. Love prevailed; and in the face of evil and violence, the only thing that will ever overcome these horrors and change lives is love.
Christ died for those who sinned against God; Christ even died for his enemies, the people sinning against him. To love someone, even an enemy, to the point of death – is that not the same love that Christ asks of us in John 15:12: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you? Forget Bruce Wayne and Batman for a moment, let us look to Christ as our model! So I ask us, as Christians in the United States, what has happened to that most basic call to love one another, to love our enemies and the people we disagree with? Please prove me wrong that it has not entirely disappeared.
Perhaps it is not physical violence, but maybe it is an attitude of violence and a language of hate that is present in our lives. In response to the recent comments made by the head of Chick-Fil-A, there has been ugly hate speech spewed out by both sides, whether one agrees or disagrees with what the man said regarding marriage. Where is, at a minimum, the attitude of loving conversation in our society? Whether we agree or disagree with someone, does not the least person simply deserve to be treated with love, whether in your eyes that person happens to be the head of Chick-Fil-A or the openly gay man or woman down the street?
Attitudes of anger, hate, and violence are horribly rampant in Congress and politics today; where is the attitude of loving conversation? Have we forgotten how to show a simple love and respect to someone, whether we agree with someone’s politics or not?
Violence, whether it is in our actions, our words, or our attitudes, is not the way of Christ; love is the way of Christ. Destruction of life and violent attitudes are not things we should simply accept; if our on-screen, fictional hero of Batman did not even want to kill people, why are we so quick to condone the destruction of life, whether in entertainment or in reality, and even if that violence may simply be the hate and anger that seems to be running so unbridled through society today?
Instead, be the Church of love that God has called us to be.
These days people are labeling anything and everything as an “adventure.” I know some people who would term a trip to the local grocery store, coffee shop, or city park as an “adventure.” Quite honestly, it’s pathetic. One might be able to get away with calling trips like these adventures only after the fact, and only if something unexplained, unexpected, and totally awe-inspiring occurred somewhere in the timeline of the trip.
In a fast-paced and over-stimulated world, where nearly every minute of our days are planned and there is not much room for error, we have lost much of any sense of adventure. Moreover, we make contingency plans for every possibility. Finally, with the rapid advancement and proliferation of technology, there seems to be less that can go wrong each day. Perhaps this is the reason we have an over-zealous thirst for labeling mundane everyday activities as adventurous.
I recently watched Stephen Auerbach’s documentary “Bicycle Dreams” about the 2005 Race Across America, one of the most difficult races in the world. One of the cyclists, Chris MacDonald, discusses how people describe a sense of something missing in their lives, yet they do not know what it is that is missing. An element of the unknown is a critical component of adventure. This may be one reason why people enter events like the Race Across America. Whether I realize it or not, it is probably one of the reasons I enter endurance paddling races such as the Missouri River 340. We are searching for the opportunity and courage to face an unknown that has been replaced by the comfort, stability, and safety of a posh American lifestyle.
As a result of our safe and stable lives, it is increasingly hard to find an endeavor that is definitively an adventure. As Scott and Shackleton planned their Antarctic expeditions over a century ago, there was certainly a greater possibility and fear of the unknown than there might be on similar expeditions today. While anyone going on any type of trip has an obligation to do their best to mitigate the risks, there are some endeavors where a great unknown is an unavoidable fact hovering above them, as in the case of a soldier deploying to a foreign country. When we have the courage to leave the safety and comfort of our personal worlds behind, it is at that point when we can truly begin to call something an adventure.
Perhaps the greatest adventure any of us can go on, in the truest sense of the word, is to completely devote our lives to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Old and New Testaments are filled with people who have ventured out from the safety of their personal worlds out of obedience to God. Through courage and faith in God, David not only conquered the fear of physical danger but also the fear of the unknown. In the New Testament, in addition to being shipwrecked and being bitten by a venomous snake, Paul faced persecution continuously for his belief in Christ. When we make a commitment to following God, the unexplained, unexpected, and totally awe-inspiring are guaranteed to happen.
There is certainly an element of the unknown when we devote our lives to Christ. We may not exactly know the direction of our lives all of the time. We may be sent as missionaries to foreign lands. We may even face the physical peril of persecution and poverty. But despite everything that may challenge our commitment to Christ, God does give at least one comfort in the adventure of a true Christian life: we can take refuge in the faith and knowledge of God. We have the knowledge that in the end, the unknown of this adventure will not be for nothing, but rather it will be for the hope, love, and salvation of Christ. Until then, it is our responsibility to live as an example of Christ to a world that is searching and struggling through their own elements of the unknown.
The Kayaking Church 