Is That Biblical?

First, read this:

http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/god-of-the-thai

I live in Thailand working with The Charis Project. So I am part of some of the missionary discussions around this article and the parallel discussions about different evangelism strategies. There has been some profound backlash in some circles. Accusations of syncretism, departure from Biblical truth, etc. Here is one comment:

Very disappointing read!!!! The author's mindset would be comparable to saying the reason all the Ninevites repented is because Jonah crafted his message to fit the culture of Ninevah. Come on, I am all for contextualization but let's think a little more Biblically and Theo-centric.

Now there are many problems with this comment but I am not about to address them here. I cite it here because it is demonstrative of a particular method of assessment that I disagree with.

From the discussions I have seen, I believe that the commenter is saying that the evangelism method that the author of the article is advocating is not Bible-centered because it is not centered on the Bible as the ultimate truth to which all other cultures are opposed and so Christianity must be preached using only explicitly Bible words and images and cultural practices. Moreover, it seems that he does this entirely neglecting that the Bible is a highly encultured collection of books and that it was not written in English or to English idiom and that he has already reenculturated it from it's original context into a Protestant and western reading.

It seems to me that the Bible gives precedent for exactly the sort of evangelism the article speaks of. This is what Paul did in Athens. The difference appears to be that where Paul’s attempt failed the same style of evangelism is succeeding in Thailand. Moreover I believe that evangelism is about growing the body of Christ rather than forming people after he image of Western Christendom.

To me, a far more important point is the way we assess the method of evangelism advocated by the author of the article.

I advocate giving a priority to a reading of scripture whereby we learn from the methodologies recorded as spirit led. This means that we would look to scripture to get a grip on how those who it records as being led by the Spirit went about coming to the conclusions they came to and then treat it as a training manual for us to learn the same methodologies.

With this in mind we should look at the first council of Jerusalem recorded in Acts as a case study. Here we have in scripture a record of Spirit led assessment of mission. The issue at hand was fundamental to the young Church’s doctrine of salvation: could Gentiles be included in Jesus’ reconstitution of Israel in himself as Gentiles or did they have to become Jews in order to be included? Remember, at this time there were no Christians. The followers of Jesus were a Jewish sect and to them the following of Jesus and his whole reconstitution of Israel project was strictly a Jewish happening. And then Peter goes and preaches to Cornelius’ household. And the Spirit comes. On Gentiles. While they were still Gentiles. This presented a problem since to them this Jesus thing was Jewish. Thus the council. So what did they do? They listened to the testimony of a credible witness about the event. From this they concluded that since the Spirit came on Gentiles the same as the Spirit came on Jews God didn’t seem to hold the same doctrine that they did. Because of this they shifted their doctrine and recognized that Gentiles could very well be members of Jesus as Gentiles. Now this is very important. In technical terms they let experiential pneumatology take precedence over soteriology. The observation of the outbreaking of the Kingdom of God trumped their doctrine of salvation.

This scriptural case study seems to me to directly bear on the testimony of the author of this article. To be in keeping with apostolic methodology we should look at the testimony and be ready to have our preconceived doctrines of how God is supposed to work trumped by the outbreaking of the Kingdom. And, we in fact find exactly this outbreaking in the Thai communities the author speaks of. Our Biblical response then is to recognize the effectiveness of the method of evangelism as taking ground against the futility and chaos of this world and to accept these Thai people following Jesus in their Thai way as our brothers and sisters in Jesus.

An admittedly not so charitable question that comes up in my mind is whether those who oppose the evangelism witnessed to in the article have a sufficient working knowledge of the Spirit of the living God to be able to recognize him when he shows up where they did not expect to see him?

As a post script, I wonder how this apostolic methodology would work in the debate over the place of LGBT folks in the Kingdom? But, I will leave that question to those of you for whom this is already an active discussion.

(Side point on the article: in discussion with some of my Thai pastor friends it appears that the historical background that the author cites as the basis of the difficulty really isn't an issue as even though they are highly educated they knew nothing about that religious/political conflict. From their perspective that historical background is a non-issue.)

What Are We Going To Do Tonight, Brain?

In 1999 I met Jeff Hammond. My brother, Emmet, and I had traveled to Indonesia to “research ministry opportunities and help out however we could.” Some friends in Australia had introduced us to Jeff and encouraged us to connect when we got to Jakarta. So, some flights and busses and taxis and emails and phone calls later we sat in a restaurant in a “suburb” of Jakarta with Jeff and his wife Annette. After a few pleasantries “the question” came up as it always does when expats and missionaries and such meet overseas.

“So, Jeff, what are you up to?”

“Taking over the world.”

No hyperbole, no humor, no arrogance, just completely serious. On the day-to-day Jeff was working throughout Indonesia building unity among the different denominations at the local level with a concentration on grace, prayer, and signs and wonders. But this was a stepping-stone toward the real goal of “taking over the world.”

Hearing this man say this set me free. Anything less than total global domination became too small of a strategic goal. This attitude integrated nicely with my developing kingdom theology and open, progressive, quasi-universalist eschatology along with my burgeoning rejection of the neo-platonic underpinnings of some of dominant Christianity’s beloved doctrines.

Let me tell you a story.

At the beginning God brought this world into being. He did this because he thought it would be worth doing. He formed and sculpted the world doing, by his standards, a good job of it all along the process. Till at one point he said, “Yah, that’s pretty good I reckon. I am about done with working on it from the outside. I will now get in there and finish the work.” So God made humans to be his own idol of himself, to be his very presence in the world and put his life and power into them so that he could finish what he started through them. To have them go out and subdue the earth, to finish forming the formless and filling the void.

A significant problem developed when the humans set up an abstract system of rules about fairness over against mere direct obedience to God. They obeyed the rules as if the rules were God. So, to protect the as yet unfinished world from accelerated damage, God removed his life and power from them and the “complete the world” project went on hold. The whole earth has been groaning for that life and power to return so that it could finally be completed and actually get started with its real story.

For thousands of years God worked to disabuse the humans of their infatuation with law and judgment and to retune them to grace and obedience. Finally he put his own image back in the world again to decisively and concretely enact his own obedience and grace in the history of the world. The result being that the presence and power came again into those humans who accepted that grace and obedience and finally the stalled completion of the world got back on track.

We now work in grace and obedience for the fullness of creation. Not bound by law and judgment but filled with the life and power of God to complete what God has begun.

Now, a consistent problem with all theology is that it is problematic. Every way of telling has it’s problem verses. What I like about this story is that it provides a robust explanatory matrix that significantly shifts perspective on a number of historically intractable problems ranging from the problem of evil to foundations for evangelism given the universal grace of God to the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in the movement from “Old” to “New” covenants. But what really gets me about this story is that it is truly and deeply beautiful. The other thing is that it provides an organic impetus (nearly as a categorical imperative) for “mission.” We all know that mission is important but we seem to be at pains to say why in a way that doesn’t continue to feel like it is tacked on rather than absolutely fundamental to our very existence. In this story salvation and mission and calling and existence are absolutely inextricable. We as humans exist to be the very presence of God in the world to complete the creation that is still “under construction” and in Jesus we have been reinstated as that presence to fulfill that calling and re-empowered to live the mission to all the world.

In this telling, evangelism and discipleship cannot separate. Rather, our fundamental human purpose dictates that all our life, including our human interactions drive toward the completion of creation. When It comes to other humans we work to empower more competent world builders. From this perspective evangelism and discipleship are exactly the same thing. So we go out and preach the gospel in all things because that is what Jesus commanded us to do and also because the gospel is the power of God, living and active, the salvation and freedom and empowerment to competently and consciously participate as wholly engaged and alive humans, integrated images of God, ushering in the New Heavens and New Earth, the completion of this world.

We have been given the honor and the responsibility of materially participating in and contributing to the completion of creation. I want to see what happens when the creation is complete and the real story gets rolling. I look forward to the resurrection so that I can get in on that story. I work now to invite and equip as many as I possibly can as well as I possibly can to be world creators, like our Father, together with me. I work now to hone my skill as a craftsman in the likeness of Jesus working by obedience and grace and cunning strategies as one called to participate in completing this world.

I work with a development organization. We work at the intersection of care for at-risk children and community development. We are not street corner witnessers, however we do not hide the one who we serve. We are working through trial and error and (hopefully) the inspiration of the Spirit to develop structures of human interaction that are self reinforcing and that produce ever increasing positive externalities. We are working on food security because there are no hungry people in the Kingdom of God. We are working on solving problems of abuse because there is no abuse and are no victims in the Kingdom of God. We are working primarily with children because it is more effective to shift a social structure by shifting those who are coming into it than to attempt to shift those who have a vested interest in the status quo, this is not a “burden” or “calling,” it is goal-oriented pragmatism.

Now, 15 years after I met Jeff, I am working with an organization whose marketing talks about “sustainability through entrepreneurism,” “deinstitutionalization of orphan care,” and “deployable models of effective development.” Bullshit NGO/UN terms that I hate but that are helpful to both indicate and obfuscate that what we are really about is executing a legit plan to achieve total global domination. Like Jeff, we are not kidding. Like Jeff, we are not overstating our goals. Like Jeff, we are not boasting. This is a weight and a responsibility that is only achievable at the intersection of the full grace of God and the intense and sustained effort of people. Our true success is measured by our participation in manifesting the fullness of the Kingdom of God, by how well we participate in God’s work to complete the creation.

You can do much worse with your life than to try to tell a beautiful story.

On My Father's Shoulders

I grew up saturated in the belief that the ultimate source of the universe is actively loving and that our highest notions of love reflect that ultimate source*. That is to say that God really loves us perfectly and his love is recognizable to us through our experience of it's reflection. Even more simply: God loves us completely in a way that makes sense to us.

My father did not grow up in this. Rather, he has had to fight for it. This fight has been most clear in his longstanding and often controversial teaching on the grace of God, speaking in defense of it for thousands of hours, all his writings, outworkings of defending the grace of God. The grace of God needs defending because it is and has been for much of history under attack.

To be more accurate, the grace of God does not need defense. It is quite secure in itself. Rather people are in need of being released from bondage to false notions of God that see him as vindictive, judgmental, irritable, distant, etc.

My father has worked at this for most of his life, pulling and pulling  because he needed the truth he knew to train his own heart. He has needed release from the same bondage he fought for for others. This understanding of God is something he has defended. This understanding of God is where I start. I grew up in this environment, starting with a radical notion of the grace of God, early saturation deeply setting the way I think and feel about the world and my life and my place in both. This deeply rooted understanding that reality has such a bright truth at its core grounds freedom and joy at the foundation of my life and work, but at the same time, not having to work for it, impedes my ability to articulate that very grace to people who do not yet truly know it.

The grace of God is not an "issue" for me. That God really loves us and this world he has created is where I start. The difficulty that arises from this is if other people do not start from the this same place, especially on such a fundamentally vital point, what I say can be very horribly misunderstood. Especially since I talk a lot about our responsibilities and the work we have to do in the world. One could very easily think that I am teaching that we in some way earn, by these works, our position with God. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nothing I say has anything to do with securing a better position with God. Everything I say is predicated on the foundation that we are all already completely secure in the love and acceptance of God.

We are all fully loved and accepted by God, right now exactly as we are. That is bombproof. That is true whether we feel like it or not. That is just as true for the person across the street and across the ocean as it is for you and me. Jesus has already taken up all of humanity into the embrace of the Trinity. The Spirit is always already present in every place and person, ready to be honored and embraced. The Father has, from the very beginning, chosen each and all of us to be adopted as his true children.

That is my foundation. There is nothing I need to do to "get right with God." There are no hoops I need to jump through, no manual I need to read, no cross I need to nail myself to. All is grace. It is by  the grace of God that I do right and by the grace of God that I sin. My very existence is a gift. I have nothing and yet by the adoption of the Most High everything is mine.

Given the radical depth and power of the grace of God and his complete acceptance of us all the only thing that is left to us is to get down to work. There is nothing for us to earn so we might as well work at life and that more fully. That is where I go. Given the total love and acceptance of our Father lets get to work. We have been given a creation to complete.

I also talk about my father here.

*For a good primer on what I grew up with see: The Gospel Uncensored

On Being the Body

This is a guest post from my brother Wayland. This is the same Wayland from the "On A Mission From God" post. I like his theology the most when he is ranting. I have posted this here with minor edits and his implicit permission.

You are a functioning member of the Body of Christ by wanting to be a member and acting on it. Thoughts without action are a disease and faith without works is dead. 

This has nothing to do with being saved, or not being saved. No one has enough faith to be saved because no one can do anything to be saved. I would submit that it is pointless to try and quantify such a thing. To admit anything into the discussion along the lines of something we should do to be saved is to lose sight of grace.

What I am talking about is the process of actually being the Body, which, unlike salvation, requires something on our part. Specifically, up to and including sacrificing everything to accomplish the work set before us, just like Jesus sacrificed everything to save the world. This is all to say that, in my view, salvation and being the Body are two different things.

Jesus descended into death to atone for the sins of the world, which to my understanding means everyone.

Being the Body on the other hand seems to include a lot more than salvation, especially when you consider that there is no suffering and no death and no poverty and no corruption and no prostitution and no exploitation and no murder and no war and no homeless people and no drug addiction and no financial collapse and no global heroin trade and no HIV and no manic depression and no religious violence and no orphans and no child soldiers, etc, etc, etc, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Now when we take into account that, as the Body, we are the representation of the Kingdom of Heaven, it follows that there is a lot of work to be done.

Thinking about these things and not doing anything about them is a disease. Having faith that they will change and not actually working to change them is dead.

If you have faith the size of a grain of sand, you can move mountains. Again though, I say that faith is not something that should be quantified. I would actually liken it to salvation. Something you step into. You know what is right and what the leading of the Spirit is and....... you act on it. This is what I mean by faith. This is what the Body does. This is what being a member of it constitutes.

Go Forth And Conquer

The majority of humanity operates at the level of reptilian stimulus-response, this includes Christians. "There might be danger so we should hide." There is pain in the box so we take our hand out. But this is death.

We stand blinded behind our walls of protection. Walls that we have constructed to give us a sense of security in the open world that we find ourselves in. We build walls so that we can see that we are "in," so that we can touch and handle our "assurance of salvation." Like a medieval city that acts like it were under siege, we get sick and diseased as if the siege were real and we invite any passing army to fill the void around our walls.

Our only assurance of salvation is God's promise of victory. If Jesus is for real and the incarnation true then to participate in Christ is is to participate in the way God wins the victory. The actual redemption of this world involves radical pouring out, aggressive identification, and ultimate commitment. Our survival depends on this

The chaotic evil that pervades this world is not a conceptual problem to be understood but a practical problem to be annihilated. We are engaged in a war of conquest for our inheritance. Our success depends on us constantly engaging. Attack, attack, attack! Shine the light, Shine the light until there is no darkness. Go out and fuck shit up because when we hide in apparent safety we lose.

This is the movement of the Spirit: to bring the Kingdom of God on earth, and those who are of the Spirit live by the movement of the Spirit.

The Father has given the inheritance, the Son has empowered the inheritors to take possession, and by the Spirit we go forth and multiply and subdue the earth, bringing the creation and redemption to completion. And we look like Jesus as we do it.

Thank you DLM for writing this post. You have helped to re-catalyze my understanding of why we do what we do.

A Rabbi, An Imam And A Pastor Walk Onto A Stage....: Part 2

Here is Part 1

In a strict sense Christians don't worship the same God. From an epistemological viewpoint what we worship is our idea or understanding of God and there are as many of those as there are people. All that a human has access to as far as worshiping God is a participation in worship empowered by the Holy Spirit. Now since this is a general human condition there is no self-evident reason to limit or segregate this by sociological boundaries. If there are boundaries they would be set by the selective empowering of the Holy Spirit to worship. And the only legitimate way to assess any possible boundaries is to assess the empowering of the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that we do not have access to this data, at least with respect to worship.

We could, however, look for Holy Spirit empowerment in other more possibly verifiable contexts and postulate that Holy Spirit empowerment in these areas implies empowerment in the area of worship (though I believe a case for this could be made I will suffice to observe here that such a case is assumed to apply within the sociological bounds of Christianity.) This leads us to establishing criteria for assessing the empowerment of the Holy Spirit; in itself a tricky task. As with establishing any criteria we want to include everything that is pertinent without including anything that would give a false result.*

For the sake of argument I will propose that the fundamental work of the Holy Spirit is most simply to enact the "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" of the Lord's prayer and that the multiple descriptions of the action of the Holy Spirit in scripture are examples of this fundamental work. From this I posit that an act that makes the earth more like heaven is empowered by the Holy Spirit. What follows is that if a Muslim acts in such a way that the earth becomes more like heaven then they are doing so by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and that it is then reasonable to assume that they may very well, by the same empowerment, participate in true worship of God.

All we need then is a single example of this empowerment in more than one of the religions represented to falsify the distinctions upon which the interfaith discussion was based. We lose our beloved us/them beliefs. We are stuck with all just being people.

The obvious criticism of this line of reasoning is, "What about doctrine (a.k.a. believing the right stuff)?" To which I would respond, "What about doctrine?"

Doctrine is a network of logical propositions to which we may or may not give mental assent. If we set this mental assent to logical propositions as prior in importance to the work of the Holy Spirit then my reasoning falls down. However, buyer beware. With this we run into some at least equally severe problems. What doctrine is right doctrine? How right does it need to be? How much is enough? Who gets to make these determinations as to what is actually right and enough? What constitutes mental assent? Moreover, how could we possibly know with surety that we had the right answers to these questions; and, what difference would it really make other than enabling us to observe for ourselves who is in and who is out?

I do not see a really good reason for setting the priority this way. First, I don't see a good reason from the scriptural data since it appears that doctrine is derived from the Spirit rather than the other way around. And second, in the application, I just don't see anything of value gained and quite a bit of otherwise unfounded problems introduced.

This whole analysis leads to some very difficult implications. First, in a very important sense it places Christianity on a par with all other religions because it cuts the "in/out" pie on lines that show no intrinsic regard for religious commitments. From this a whole host of other Christianity-specific problems arise such as: why be Christian, why evangelize, what about the uniqueness of Christianity, isn't believing the truth important? These are all good questions to ask. So, let us ask them. If my reasoning holds,` then why be Christian, why evangelize, what about uniqueness and the importance of truth?

*This establishment of Holy Spirit empowerment criteria is something that I would be very interested in hearing from readers on.

God Gets Everyone

I was planning on doing this as a 9-11 post but didn't have the time to finish it off yesterday. So here it is today.

Yesterday in particular there were many Christian people talking about being open and accepting to Muslims. Mainly the admonitions come across as classic liberal ideals and I am left wondering if there is any manner of theological basis beyond, "Jesus wants us to be nice."

In a sermon I heard yesterday we learned that Muslims are not so different, actually they are just like us, very few of them are truly dangerous and we ought to show them the love of Jesus. Not only that, but we were reminded to let go of anger against Muslims for 9-11 because "Jesus tells us to forgive our enemies." (how many problems can you find in this? Hint: more than 2)

So, what is the foundation of our relations with people of this world? "Be nice" just doesn't cut it for me and though I like the classic liberal ideals they just seem to be missing something......like a foundation.

First, really, Muslim/Christian it makes no difference. Granted, there are variations in style, but religion is religion and to put it bluntly, I am no longer able to convince myself that God is a gnostic, kicking the shit out of us unless we discover and give mental assent to a specific and precise set of truth claims. Religion is about how we make good with God. That is the point and thrust of all religion. Everyone is playing the same game with the same basic rules but with some slight variation in their playing style. They are all on the same field.

Second, this Jesus thing is about participating with the empowerment of the Spirit of the Living God in his plan for redeeming this world. This participation looks like Jesus on the cross.

Third, in the end God gets everyone. I have lost the ability to insist that God lacks the love or cleverness to get what he wants in the end. (Or was Jesus a liar, or Yahweh a foolish weakling?)

So, yes, forgive evil doers because that is participation in the Spirit of Christ (if in fact that Spirit is in you.) Yes, be open and accepting to Muslims because their religion has just as little to do with the actual gracious structure of redemption as yours does. Yes, find the value in other cultures because the more colors, the more better. Yes, love your neighbor because God loves all his children.

God is not on our side. God is on his own side, doing his own thing, making and executing his own plan. The question is, are we on God's side? That is a question we do not get the answer to till it is too late. So, show some humility, do some good, pray that God would fill you with his Spirit to give you life and the power to participate in his plans.

Light in the Skeletons

Salvation comes to us when we believe? We are saved two millennia ago in the work of Jesus? I tell you the truth, the heart of salvation for all humanity is the same fiery core that that threw this universe into being.

That divine fiery core pursues humanity with the fierce love of a parent bent on rescuing a broken-minded, willful, lost child bent on suicide.

So many of us see God as a pissed off stepfather or a disappointed crusty old grandfather. Our existence in this fractured world thrusts this view deep into our collective psyche. When I reflect on the stupidity and futility of existence in this world it looks like we are children lost in a house of horrors where we run to escape or cover our faces to try not to see. In this darkness filled with things we know should not be The Ancient of Days, our loving Father, chases us, follows us, tries to take hold of us. However, terror-striken as we are, we mistake Him for yet another specter and run down another dark hallway. He would embrace us, take our hand, point out the peeling rubber on the mannequins, walk us through the house, show us how to turn on the lights and make the place a joyful place to live.


The joyful, loving light of the universe is loose in the house of horrors and he is out to get you.