Haiti

As I'm sure it has been the case for you, I can't stop thinking about the situation in Haiti, the wreckage, the deaths, the slow progress in getting aid to mourning and poverty-stricken people. I can't stop thinking about how it takes a terrible tragedy such as this to get Americans to think its time to start sending significant aid to Haiti that will finally enable the country to create an infrastructure, how it takes a terrible tragedy such as this to jolt me out of my narcissistic, soulless slumber.

I am struck by mindless comments made by people like Pat Robertson, who seem to think they have a direct line to God, who think tragedies like earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people, have simplistic reasons for their occurrence. And while there have been many quality responses to the "Christian" spokesperson--I was particularly compelled by Don Miller's as well as the bloggers at Sojourners (here and here -- although the cracks by Keith Olbermann are going a tad too far)--I still can't get around wondering why he still has a job, why people still listen to him (no wonder my parents didn't allow me to watch the 700 Club growing up!), how he could fail to realize that most of the people affected by the quake are (or at least claim to be) Christians--missionaries, relief workers, and followers of Jesus living in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Theodicy (our attempts to give a reasoned response for why God allows evil in the world) simply fail. Auschwitz, the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and even Haiti all point to Emmanuel Levinas's claim that we have reached the "End of Theodicy." There is no adequate answer. To try to give an answer--especially to someone who is hurting so deeply--is not only inadequate, it is grossly violent. Could some of those individuals who have endured the suffering be able to find meaning amidst the pain, terror, suffering, and evil? Yes. But it is not our job to offer it to them. Our only adequate response is an intellectual kenosis (Phil. 2:7), a self-emptying of our position of authority and having-all-the-answers and a bending down to help, serve, give, and sy/empathize.

Those who are there are requesting our prayers -- but who wants prayers from a condescending American who pompously "knows" Haiti's condition and what it needs (that is not a critique of Pat Robertson but all of us who think those "poor Haitians" just need America's money, America's democracy, America's hope, and America's direction)? They are requesting essentials like food and water and medical aid -- but even with our ships and helicopters and airplanes we are having trouble getting them there and we cannot successfully do so unless we parakaleo (come along side/help/comfort; John 15:26) them, work with them, and let them lead. They are requesting we help them rebuild their infrastructure, help them build housing for hundreds of thousands of people roaming the streets, and even temporarily set up a martial law to protect from large-scale vandalism and thieving -- but we must not offer these things from the position of the "Great White Hope," of power, of doing it our way, but by offering a humble strength, we can help Haiti become a better place that is still theirs. We can give money, we can act politically and ask the President to grant "Temporary Protective Status" to Haitians (just go to the link-its not that difficult!), and we can pray. We can leave them a "corner" of our possessions as the Israelites were commanded to leave the poor, the orphan, and the immigrant the edge of their field (Lev. 19:9) [You have to see Rob Bell's video on this topic]. But amidst it all, we must do so with a sense of gratitude, humility, and a healthy regard for the Other--knowing they have just as much to grace us with as we do them.

Let us give up our self-guilted sense of being obligated to provide a reasoned answer and act for Haiti--and for so many other widows and orphans and strangers--with a reckless grace: a grace that offers the poor a helping hand without expecting something in return, but a grace that begins with ourselves, that liberates ourselves from measuring up to some unknown requirement of having all the answers, of being right.

The Shack and Universalism (Part 2), [or why Brock could never get a job at a Baptist church]

In my previous post, I critiqued some of the arguments made to show that The Shack presents universalism. If it is not universalism, what position then, does it offer? [If this explanation is too long, sorry. I had material for more than double what I've placed here!]

Allow me to begin with an excerpt from The Shack:

“Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian… Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved” (182).

There are at least three ways this passage can be read, but for the sake of the attention of my readers, I will focus on one: There are religiously practicing Buddhists, Mormons, Muslims, and even non-religious folk who are just as much followers of Jesus as Christians. Or we might say, some practitioners of other religious groups look a whole lot more like Jesus and live a life of agape love far better than some life-long members of Christianity.

On this reading, let’s pose the question: “Can a Buddhist/Mormon/Muslim go to heaven?” Well, for starters, since Buddhism can be conceived as a way of informing one’s life to connect with ultimate reality, rather than the worship of a particular deity, it’s certainly possible that one could engage in some of the life practices of Buddhism while maintain faith in Jesus Christ. As for Mormonism and Islam, if one views these religions as heresies of Christianity rather than entirely different religions, it’s possible to conceive there are some within these ranks that have managed to connect with the real Jesus. Indeed, there is testimony of Muslims, based solely on reading the excerpts about Jesus in the Koran who have believed in Jesus, and “if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him” (1 Jn. 4:15).

But this answer only speaks to the possibility of people with other religious labels to also be connected with the real Jesus through some level of [untraditional] connection to the historical Jesus. But is it possible to be rightly related to God without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? This is the question posed by Christian Inclusivism (CI), a position held in some way or another by Justin Martyr, Origen, Karl Rahner, C.S. Lewis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Dallas Willard, and even Billy Graham in recent days. CI preaches the orthodox message of the Good News of Jesus, but leaves open God’s grace and mercy to extend beyond the walls of Christianity. To state it otherwise, CI teaches that Christ is “the way” (Jn. 14:6), but he may even be “the way” for people who have never heard of Jesus or been exposed to Christianity.

Let me backtrack to help make this clearer. Some Christians hold that knowledge of the historical person, known as Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again as a 1st century Jew is necessary for salvation. This view holds that there is some salvific power in the name spelled “J-E-S-U-S” and knowledge of the historical person who bore that name is necessary. But if knowledge of the historical Jesus is absolutely necessary, then Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and every Old Testament saint do not qualify. Sure, the OT figures placed faith by looking forward to a future hope of a promised Messiah (as described in Gen 3:15; 12:3; 2 Sam. 7), but what they envisioned hardly amounts to Paul’s summary of the gospel message (1 Cor 15:3-4).

In other words, even the most fundamentalist, exclusivist Christians hold to some level of inclusivism. They must hold to some view of God’s mercy that extends beyond knowledge of the death and resurrection of Christ if OT figures are to be saved—as well as infants who die or the mentally incapable, a position held by many Christians.

In his latest book, Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard points out that belief in the “historical” Jesus was not even what his closest disciples needed to believe in. In John 14, “his closest disciples still did not know him (14:7-9), though they knew Jesus of Nazareth. It was not the historical Jesus that Philip did not know (v. 9). Who he was clearly amounted to much more than a carpenter of Nazareth… He was and is the eternal Word” (185). Thus, Willard distinguishes between the historical Christ and the “Cosmic Christ,” the eternal God and Savior.

Let’s put this conclusion into a question: Is it possible to be connected to Jesus, the Logos who was at the beginning with God (Jn. 1:1) without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? To this question, scholars throughout church history have answered, “Yes.” Justin Martyr, one of the first Christian theologians, suggested Plato, Socrates, and the Greek philosophers were Christians without realizing it by their commitment to the Logos (Reason) and their love for Wisdom/Truth.

Romans 2:14-16 suggests there will be Gentiles who stand before God on the day of judgment whose consciences will defend them even though they “do not have the law.” These individuals will be saved on account of God’s promise that “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (2:7). Those who seek the Good (God) through faith will find him (cf. Heb. 11:6), even if this search amounts to an extremely limited blind groping for an “unknown God” (Acts 17: 27, cf. v. 23). God has “overlooked” ignorant and imperfect worship of him in times past (Acts 17:30) and pursues and finds even those who were not looking for him (Rom. 10:20; Isa. 65:1)! Indeed, he accepts imperfect worship from all of us!

What would be the content of such a person’s faith if they had never heard of the man known as Jesus of Nazareth? Paul’s message in Acts 17 provides clues where he neither mentions Jesus’ name nor even alludes to any atonement theory (instead, he quotes from two sources of pagan literature!). We get the most cryptic allusion to Jesus, namely that God is going to judge the world via a “man” he has raised from the dead. This was the content of those who believed Paul’s message. Sure, Paul would have encouraged the believers to increase their level of knowledge about God; but if such scant information is all that is necessary to “reach out for [God] and find him” (v. 27), clearly we can posit the possibility of people who have never heard of Jesus, contemplating a belief in a Supreme Judge, being convicted of a need to be put in right relationship with him, and concluding that God somehow has taken care of it.

Keeping the Acts 17 account in our minds, we might look at this issue from a literary perspective. Jesus, as a redemptive image, is an archetype and parallels of his story and message can be seen both in the Old Testament and in the surrounding religious and mythical stories of his time. In the Old Testament, the redemptive acts in the stories of Joseph, Moses, Joshua (which is the Hebrew name for the Greek, Iesou, or Jesus), and David all foreshadow Jesus as Messianic figures). And Rob Bell notes, (in his Nooma video entitled “You”) that at the time of the 1st century, one of the most popular gods of the Roman Empire was Mithra, a god believed to be born of a virgin, was a mediator between God and man, and had ascended to heaven. And Caesar Augustus believed himself to be the son of God, sent down from heaven to inaugurate an unprecedented reign of peace (in fact the disciples, in Acts 4:12, borrow from Augustus’ most famous catch phrase, “there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved but Caesar”). Many similar parallels have been made between Jesus and gods from other religious traditions, such as the ancient Egyptian sun-god, Horus.

So if Jesus is the ultimate redemptive archetype that all of these messianic stories point to, if all of these other redemptive stories ultimately culminate and are fulfilled in Jesus, what is to prevent one from becoming rightly related to God through other “redemptive analogies” (to quote Don Richardson from the “Peace Child”)? Consider this: what if there exists a person who has read The Chronicles of Narnia but has never read the Bible (which is quite possible), who believes in Aslan, hoping his message is true, and whose life is changed by the truths of Narnia? Are they in right relation to God? Lewis himself suggests something similar at the end of The Last Battle when Emeth, a Calormene and follower of Tash winds up in “heaven” standing before Aslan, the real God he took for a myth. When Emeth sees Aslan, he recognizes him as the “Glorious One” and despairs that he had worshiped in ignorance all of his life. But Aslan explains to Emeth, who was a sincere seeker of the truth, that all the good deeds he did in the name of Tash (who does not really exist) must have been for Aslan, the author of all things good.

This scene raises the question, going back to Romans 2:7, what would it look like for someone without knowledge of Christ to persist in doing good and seek glory, etc? Certainly it would involve more than what it means to “be a good person” in our common understanding today, and it would have to involve faith over some belief that I can attain God’s pleasure through my own deeds alone. In this vein, Dallas Willard (180) recalls 1 John 4:7 - “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” In other words, it is impossible to practice agape love without real connection with God. James reminds us, “Every good and perfect good is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17). We might translate, all the goodness we see in the world, even the good actions of people, is evidence of God’s goodness in the world.

Who then determines if one passes such a test? I’m not running for that position and choose to leave it up to God. But CI leaves the door open for God’s mercy to extend as far as possible while providing an adequate interpretation of New Testament faith.

"Fireproof" : A Review

If you haven't heard of Fireproof, it's the latest made-for-Christian-audience movie that amazed critics by turning a stellar profit – beginning with a $500,000 budget and grossing over $33 million in theatres (but let's not get too excited quite yet). Indeed, the movie has taken on a life of its own, spawning the publishing of two books which have made the New York Times Bestseller list and have generated “Fireproof your marriage” conferences in church all throughout the country.

Fireproof, made by a church ministry that also filmed Facing the Giants, is the story of Caleb Holt (aka Kirk Cameron), a firefighter who's marriage is on the rocks as he struggles with internet porn, has an incontrollable temper, and saves his earnings for a boat while his wife's mother struggles to recover from a stroke. [spoiler alert] The basic plot of the story can be summarized quite simply: Caleb and his wife, Catherine, decide to get a divorce; Caleb's dad gives him a journal of things to do for his wife over the course of 40 days (like buy her flowers, clean the house, don't respond to her with sarcastic remarks, etc) as an attempt to save the marriage; Caleb's Christian co-worker, Michael, continues to challenge him to keep at the activities in the journal even when they go awry; Catherine is pursued by Dr. Keller at her job at the hospital; Caleb performs a number of heroics as a firefighter; Caleb receives divorce papers from his wife; Caleb finds Jesus; Caleb wins Catherine back when she finds out he donated the $24,000 he had saved for his boat to medical supplies for her mom. And they live happily ever after.

I wanted to like this movie. In fact, there were even three scenes when I got choked up a bit – which happened to be the same three scenes Kirk Cameron was capable of convincing me with his acting abilities. It wasn't the poor acting that bothered me so much (I was expecting that), nor the poor script with zero artistic presentation. What bothered me was the kind of Christianity portrayed in the movie and the myriad of stereotypes and caricatures that were utilized throughout it. The basic message of the movie is: its impossible to love your spouse unless you're a Christian – a message that is both untrue and offensive. Every single character in the movie who has a positive relationship is a Christian, and their marriages only got solid when they gave their lives to Jesus. Caleb's simplistic conversion experience in the movie adds to this naïve picture, as everything in his life comes together with relative ease after Jesus takes control.

Furthermore, the roles of each character play to general stereotypes that make the movie all the more distasteful: The steady portrayal of women in the movie is that they are weak-willed and over-emotional and not as responsible for the solidity of a marriage as the husband (although there is one highlight at the very end that is noteworthy). The gossips in the hospital where Catherine works are led by a heavy-set black woman. All of Catherine's “unchristian” friends continually tell her to ditch her husband. All of Caleb's co-workers (with the exception of Michael the Christian, of course) are egotistical and immature men. All the Christians are pure saints and the unChristians are either villains or only their for a dose of humor in the movie. And Caleb solves his addiction to porn by smashing his computer with a baseball bat (as if that really got to his heart).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure this movie and the subsequent books and conferences that have come from it have helped people (although my guess is, for the most part, it has only been seen by conservative Christians who watched it because it was what they wanted to hear). They may have even saved some marriages. The advice given to Caleb in the journal and some of the truths talked about in the movie regarding the difficulties of love and marriage are indeed helpful. And I wholeheartedly believe Christianity has something to say about marriage. But rather than creating another Christian entertainment fad that we sell to death so conservative Christians have something to spend their money on without feeling guilty (e.g., Prayer of Jabez, Passion of the Christ, Left Behind, etc), why can't we just make quality art, honest art, and tell stories about the mystery and messyness of life and stop acting like life and faith are so simple, as if we unquestioningly have all the answers (how many of these Christian marriages will need re-saving just in time for the next fad to come around?)? If we are going to communicate a message of hope to our world it can't be so compartmentalized, simplistic, naïve, and lack reflection about the not-so-black-and-white world we live in.