Life on Earth: Comedy or Tragedy?

Posted on June 12, 2021 by salooper57

We owe the words “comedy” and “tragedy” to the ancient Greeks, whose stage plays in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. gave rise to the terms. A hundred years of films and about 80 years of commercial television have left us thinking that comedies are comic and tragedies are sad. The Greeks were more nuanced.

Tragedy may contain humorous moments and funny characters, but what makes a tragedy tragic is that it ends badly. The hero fails, the aspiration goes unfulfilled, night falls. Comedies, though they may have intensely unhappy moments and deeply disturbing characters, end well. The loser wins, the impossible goal is achieved, and a better day dawns.

Shakespeare followed the Greeks in writing both tragedies and comedies. Some of his tragedies contain comic scenes. The drunken porter’s soliloquy in “Macbeth” comes to mind. The comedies, on the other hand, sometimes include distressing scenes. Think of the “Merchant of Venice.” Act 5 ends with the young lovers together, but two men’s lives have been ruined in the process.

The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is not that one is funny and the other is sad, but that one comes out right in the end and the other does not. So, what kind of story are we in? Is life on earth a comedy or a tragedy? It all depends on how it ends.

For secularists, life on earth is, and can only be, a tragedy. Even if humanity is someday capable of removing all diseases and can stop the planet’s residents from destroying it, the story always ends the same way: the sun dies, the galaxy goes dark, the universe implodes, night falls. It may be an exceedingly long story with many happy moments, but it is inescapably tragic.

(It should be said that many secularists are working hard to make the story a happy one for as many people as possible and for as long as possible. This is commendable and should be acknowledged. God bless them.)

For secularists, life is a tragedy. For Christians, it is a comedy. They believe that God’s story ends well. Or rather, that it goes on well forever. The end is not a dark galaxy and an imploding universe but, in St. Paul’s language, the liberation of creation “into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

All great comedies – and God’s is by far the greatest – are composed of shorter stories. Whether it is Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” or Wendell Berry’s “Jayber Crow,”great stories are filled with characters whose individual stories intertwine and combine to move the plot forward. These internal stories can be funny or sad, pleasant or painful. They can even conclude badly.

Unlike human authors who generate their characters’ every thought and action, God literally gives his characters a life of their own. He allows them to live that life – to write their own story – as they see fit. If they refuse to collaborate with the creator, their story will be a tragedy. Yet God will edit, compile, and fit it into his own glorious comedy, which is guaranteed to end well. Just read the final two chapters of the Bible.

People who believe they are living in a tragedy are bound to feel and act differently from those who believe they are in a comedy. If the end is personal, planetary, and universal extinction, then present pleasure and comfort become all-important. Selfish people crave these temporal goods for themselves. Altruistic people seek them for others, even for humanity itself. But whether for self or others, such goods remain temporal, even short-lived.

Perhaps this explains why St. Paul writes that those who are “alienated from God … have given themselves over to sensuality…” Sensuality provides the shortest route to pleasure and comfort. Sensuality cannot lead to meaning but it does provide distraction and, if life is a tragedy, people need all the distraction they can get.

In the end, it is not what happens to us but how we respond – and who we trust – that makes our little stories comedies or tragedies, Macbeth’s “tale told by an idiot,” or a tale told by an infinitely wise and loving creator.

(First published by Gannet.)

Posted in Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

What Does the Author of Hebrews Mean by “Made Perfect”?

Posted on June 10, 2021 by salooper57

I was reading Scot McKnight’s book, Embracing Grace, and was surprised to see how he correlates the author of Hebrews use of the term “made perfect” (τελειωθεὶς) with the resurrection. In Hebrews 5:8-9, we read that the Son “learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

There is a lot to explore in that verse but I want to focus on McKnight’s correlation between being “made perfect” and resurrection. In Hebrews, does “made perfect” stand for “resurrected” through metonymy?

There are five uses of “made perfect” in Hebrews. If the author consistently uses the term to stand for resurrection, it should be possible to substitute the term “resurrected” each time and it should make good sense. So let’s try it.

The first use is in the passage mentioned above (5:9). If we substitute “resurrected” through metonymy, the sentence does make sense: the Son “learned obedience from what he suffered and, once resurrected, became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

The next use is in 7:28, where we find: “For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.” It is questionable whether “the Son, who has been resurrected forever,” quite fits the bill in this instance. What would it mean to be resurrected temporally rather than forever? Does that even make sense?

In 10:14, we have something similar: “because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Substituting “resurrected” here is awkward: “because by one sacrifice he has resurrected forever those who are being made holy.” It is hard to see how the one sacrifice resurrected those who are being made holy. At the same time, awkwardness is not conclusive. Translation from one language to another is always awkward.

Metonymy in Hebrews 11:40 might be possible: “God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” “…that only together with us would they be resurrected.”

12:23 is also ambiguous: “to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect.” Could the spirits of righteous men be “resurrected”? Yes, but the Bible does not really speak of resurrected “spirits” but rather resurrected people, especially resurrected bodies (see Isa. 26:19).

So the question of whether “made perfect” in Hebrews might stand for “resurrected” remains undecided. I think the weight of the evidence works against the hypothesis that “made perfect” can be used as a metonym for “resurrected.” This, however, does not mean that it can never stand for “resurrected” through metonymy. McKnight may be correct in making the connection in 5:9, but it remains – for me, at least – uncertain.

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The Convergence

Posted on June 7, 2021 by salooper57

We’re just started a series in the Books of Samuel titled, Into the Look Glass. This first sermon explores how our pains and sorrows can become the intersection where God’s love and the world’s need meet. (Listening time: approximately 25 minutes.

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Learning Theology at the County Fair

Posted on June 5, 2021 by salooper57

I went to my first county fair during the summer between sixth and seventh grade. My friend’s parents took us, and we boys headed immediately to the midway to scope out the rides. The first one we tried was “The Rotor,”a large cylinder that spun like a top. The spinning created a centrifugal effect which “pinned” riders against the wall.

Moments after the ride ended, I was throwing up in a trash barrel. Should I ever be elected to Congress, the first bill I introduce will state: “Whereas, it is a matter of public health; and whereas, it is in the interest of the general welfare; and whereas, national security could be threatened, all centrifugal force rides shall be banned within these United States.”

Half the Congress would line up to co-sponsor the bill.

The centrifugal effect pushes objects away from the center. This is the opposite of centripetal force which pulls objects toward the center. In fact, the centrifugal effect only exists when centripetal force is in play.

In theology, there is a spiritual dynamic that is roughly analogous to centrifugal force. Theologians have traditionally spoken of it as the fall of humanity or the fall of Adam, but I suggest that the concept of a centrifugal spiritual force might offer fresh insights into this classic doctrine.

When theologians speak of the fall, they usually picture it as something that happened long ago, when the representative human chose to disobey God. To speak of his “fall” is to evoke the image of a tragic incident that occurred in the deep past and is now completed. The “fall” itself is over, but humanity was broken in the landing.

This image, I think, conveys the important truth that humanity’s movement away from God began at a particular point in time but it fails to adequately bring out the idea that our distance from God continues to increase. The Bible doesn’t suggest that humanity has fallen and can’t get up. It suggests that humanity hasn’t yet landed and is still moving away from God.

When I rode “The Rotor” all those years ago, I felt stuck to the wall. Try as I might, I was unable to move toward the center. Neither could anyone else. No one was strong enough to overcome that centrifugal (“center fleeing”) force. Apart from outside intervention – say, cutting off the power – we were all stuck.

Sin – rebellion against God – not only caused humanity to fall; it caused us to get stuck. “Still in your sins,” was how St. Paul put it. None of us is capable of freeing ourselves and moving to the Center – toward God. Theologians employ the concept of depravity to express this human inability. But sin’s effects go further still, for its centrifugal force is still in play.

The theological term “depravity” helps us understand the damage sin causes within individuals, but it falls short of picturing the way sin distances the individual from God and from others.

A thought experiment may help us here. Imagine a “Rotor” ride in which the floor not only drops away, but the walls continually – eternally – expand and recede. This would simultaneously increase people’s distance from the center and from each other.

This image helps us grasp what is happening in society. As people move away from God they also move away from each other. C. S. Lewis captured this dynamic in “The Great Divorce” by picturing hell as a place where people are forever increasing the distance between themselves and others.

Because we’ve always lived under these conditions, we don’t see it as strange. People distrusting and even hating each other feels normal. People doubting God’s goodness – even his existence – is “just the way it is.” But, as Cornelius Plantinga put it, it is “not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Apart from outside intervention, a re-union with God and real communion with people is impossible. The forces in play are just too strong. But Christians believe that intervention has already happened and that those forces have been disrupted by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God is unsticking people from “The Rotor”of sin and bringing them to himself.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Nothing Fails Like Success

Posted on June 4, 2021 by salooper57

Elijah was arguably the chief of the Old Testament prophets. At one point in his life, Elijah’s courage failed him and he fell into such despair that he wished himself dead. But failure did not get the last word. Elijah recovered and finished well, useful both to God and to his people.

Failure sometimes follows close on the heels of success. The person who gets the dream job (success) allows that job to take the place of their spouse (failure). He or she gets promotions but ends up with a divorce.

The child of an alcoholic vows never to be like his dad. He doesn’t drink (success). But the resentment he carries around with him damages his own kids (failure), and they choose to get back at their dad by – what else? – drinking.

The kid who never had enough food and had to wear hand-me-down clothes works hard, makes a lot of money, and provides her kid with the best of everything (success). The only thing missing is a relationship (failure).

G. K. Chesterton said, “There is nothing that fails like success.” That was true in the case of Elijah. He had just come from a spectacular victory, seven years in the making, but completed in a single day. He was the hero. He had – it seemed – singlehandedly turned the tide of history.

Yet, within days, he was running for his life, convinced that he was a colossal failure. Following his victory – and it was a major victory, one of the biggest in biblical history – Elijah naturally had expectations. After seven years of isolation from friends and family, he could finally come out of hiding. After constant uncertainty, life would normalize. No more loneliness. No more danger. His success would continue and expand and everything would be great.

But success will always be relative until Christ returns and makes it absolute. If we confuse a relative success for an ultimate victory, we will later on find ourselves discounting that success or even regarding it as failure. That seems to have happened to Elijah.

It wasn’t long before Elijah’s real (albeit relative) success turned into a real (albeit relative) failure: He ran away. He then further complicated matters by isolating himself (that is verse 3), which is what people do when they think of themselves as failures. Solitude can be spiritually helpful, but when our thinking is muddled it can be harmful.

Unfortunately, most people enter solitude at the wrong time and for the wrong reason. Instead of entering it when they are spiritually strong (as Jesus did), they enter it when they are weak (as Elijah did). Instead of doing it to encounter God, they do it to avoid people, which just makes things worse.

When we’ve failed – when we are certain that we are failures – is there hope for recovery? Is success relative while failure is absolute? Consider the story of “Wrong Way Riegels.” Playing for UCLA in the Rose Bowl, Roy Riegels recovered a Georgia Tech fumble, ran as hard as he could, and was tackled just short of the goal line – by his teammate.  He was running to the wrong end zone. Tech converted his blunder into points on the scoreboard. Riegels was humiliated. Broken. A colossal failure.

In the locker room at half time, the coach tried to reignite the team, but Riegels just sat there with a blanket over his shoulders and his face buried in his hands. Just before they went back on the field, Coach said: “Men, the same team that played the first half will start the second.”

The players got up and started out, but Riegels stayed where he was. The coach looked back and called to him. He didn’t move. Failure had him and wouldn’t let go. Coach Price went over to where he sat and said, “Roy, didn’t you hear me? The same team that played the first half will start the second.”

Riegels started crying. He said, “Coach, I can’t do it. I’ve ruined you. I’ve ruined the university’s reputation. I’ve ruined myself. I can’t face that crowd out there.”

Coach Price put his hand on Riegel’s shoulder and said, “Roy, get up and go on back. The game is only half over.” Roy did, he played hard, and performed well.

Telling your story can make a difference. After Elijah told his story to God, do you know what God said to him? “Elijah, get up and go on back. The game is only half over.” And he did.

You’ve blundered. You’ve run in the wrong direction. We all have. We’ve hurt ourselves and others. But the game is only half over. Or rather, it is only just beginning.

When we confess your sin and failure, God restores us. He gives us a role to play. He sends us back into the game. It is true that success is relative, but so is failure. It only becomes absolute when we choose to stay in it rather than go to God.

(Excerpted from Failure: Not the Last Word. To view the sermon, click here.)

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Failure: Not the Last Word (1 Kings 19)

Posted on June 2, 2021 by salooper57

Everyone fails but not everyone rebounds from failure. What – or who – makes the difference?

Listening Time: 24:00 (approx.)
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Share Your Favorite Books (Just for fun Sunday)

Posted on May 30, 2021 by salooper57

When I am in an airport, sitting in the blue vinyl chairs (why are they always blue?), and one person out of the 200 surrounding me is reading a book, I am immediately curious about that person – and their book. I try to get a peak at the cover. I walk by just to get a closer look.

I have been borrowing library books ever since I was an elementary school student, when I would walk a mile downtown just to get to the library! Books have played a major role in my life. They have delighted me, instructed me, corrected me, angered me, and haunted me.

What is the book you most enjoyed reading? For me, it was The Lord of the Rings, which I read in my early 20s, then read again a few years later, then read to my sons a decade after that. I’ve now lost track of how many times I have read LOTR.

What is the book (besides the Bible!) that has helped you most spiritually? This is a hard one. I would like to mention a dozen, at least, but I will limit myself to one: Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart.

What is the book that bored you most but that you finished nonetheless? For me, it was Moby Dick. A hundred pages of details about whales teeth and the shapes of their heads was just too much for me. (Okay. Maybe it was only twenty pages, but if seemed like a hundred.)

What is your favorite children’s book? For me, it was Winnie the Pooh. I read the stories so often to my children – and laughed out loud while reading – that I had most of them memorized. (Note: I do not count C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia here, for it is hard for me to regard them as children’s books. Rather, they are beautiful books that can be read profitably by children and adults alike. I do not include Wind in the Willows, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, etc. for the same reason.)

What book was recommended to you that you would never recommend to anyone else? There have been so many such books – pastors are constantly being given books – that is it hard to choose just one. Besides that, I usually forget those books the moment I close them. One that comes to mind, though, is Johnathon Cahn’s, The Harbinger. The friend who gave it to me loved it. I did not. I’ll leave it at that.

So, here are the categories: Most Enjoyable; Most Helpful Spiritually; Most Boring; Favorite Children’s Book. Tell us yours (from any or all of the categories) in the comment section below. Then we can enjoy – or avoid – them too.

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How to Stay Christian After Graduation

Posted on May 29, 2021 by salooper57

The National Center for Education Statistics expects nearly three-and-a-half million high school students to graduate over the next few weeks. Commencement will launch these students into the world in a new way. They will start jobs, follow career paths, and earn college degrees.

Graduation initiates a transition into a new phase of life. It sets in motion a complex series of events that can be difficult to understand and navigate. We could use an Isaac Newton, who gave us the laws of motion, to formulate the laws of motion that govern graduation.

Had he done so, the first might have been: “Students in procrastination tend to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to them.” Parents and teachers are such an external force.

A second such law might go like this: “For every action towards graduation, there is an equal and opposite distraction from graduation.” In this year of COVID, distractions have been many but, compelled by internal and external forces, more students are expected to graduate than any previous year in U.S. history.

At commencement, speakers advise students on how to go courageously and wisely into adulthood. I would like to offer a different kind of counsel: How to stay courageously and wisely Christian in adulthood. This kind of counsel seems necessary, given current statistics: in their first year out of high school, half of self-identified Christian college students do not attend a single church service.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that students will read this advice in a newspaper. Even their parents don’t read newspapers these days. If any of this finds its way to a graduating senior, I expect it will be through yet another of those external forces in a student’s life: a grandparent.

I once asked a group of young Christians to share with graduates their advice on how to stay Christian after high school. Most were in college. All had completed at least their first year after graduation. One of them urged grads to “take responsibility for your own spiritual life.” The others agreed. It had become clear to them that no one else would.

Someone said: “Don’t allow yourself to adopt other people’s attitudes and standards.” That was good counsel. In a study of peer influence, psychologists displayed three charts, each with three lines of different lengths, to groups of ten teens. The teens were asked to raise their hands when the teacher pointed to the longest line on each chart. The teens in each group, minus one, had been secretly instructed to raise their hands when the teacher pointed to the second longest line. 75 percent of the time, the lone teen, wanting to blend in, joined the others in casting a wrong vote. Blending in can be deadly to the spiritual life.

Another student advised: “You have to become your own mom.” Mom, she explained, wants what’s best for you. She tells you to do things that you know you should do but don’t feel like doing, like studying, going to church, and taking time each day to read the Bible and pray. One could almost say that the definition of being an adult is becoming one’s own mom.

Leaving home need not mean falling away from God. However, for faith to thrive, students will need to establish their own relationship with God. Their parents’ or youth pastor’s will not suffice. Such a relationship is grounded in faith and expressed in a free-hearted admiration, respect, and commitment to God.

People whose spiritual lives suffer when they get out from under their parent’s authority are frequently those who did not establish such a relationship. They thought church was enough. It is not. Only God is enough.

That is because God has made us for himself and, as St. Augustine said, our hearts cannot rest until they rest in him. This is something that graduating seniors – and all the rest of us – need to understand. Family, career, success—they are all good things. But good things are not a replacement for the best thing. They can please but cannot satisfy. Only God can do that.

(First published by Gannet.)

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Envisioning a Changed Life

Posted on May 24, 2021 by salooper57

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus helps us envision a change life.

In chapter 5, verses 21-26, Jesus presents this life as free from the terrible burden of anger. And anger is a terrible burden to bear. It is like carrying a heavy wire basket full of knives, with points sticking out on top, bottom, and all four sides. You try to hold it away from your body, but whenever you get tired and let down your guard, you get poked. You try to shift the weight, but it happens again and again. And it’s not just you: the people close to you keep getting hurt.

Can you imagine yourself free from anger and the contempt that accompanies it? No more outbursts, never again feeling like your head is going to explode. No sleepless nights spent fuming, no relationships alienated by it. Instead, honesty, openness, and reconciliation. That is what life as God’s person in God’s kingdom with God’s people looks like. It’s the life Jesus pictured for us.

Next, it is a life that is free from out-of-control sexual desire. Jesus pictures this for us in the sermon from 5:27-33. Can you imagine what our nation would be like if we were all free from anger and out-of-control sexual desire? The divorce rate would plummet. The #MeToo movement could happily return to other things. Marriages would thrive. Girls would be safe.

Compare that to what we have now: people who sell fuel for igniting sexual desire and then hypocritically deny responsibility for the blaze. Relationships ripped apart by lust, and a divorce rate for Christians that matches that of non-Christians—about 50 percent.

But Jesus showed us a life where women don’t have to be afraid and will not be used to satisfy selfish desires. A world governed by mutual respect, where marriages are models of faithfulness and contentment. That is what life as God’s person in God’s kingdom with God’s people is like.

Next Jesus pictures a life that is free of deceit and manipulation, which is possible once uncontrolled anger and sexual desire are removed. (This is Matthew 5:33-37.) In the life Jesus pictured, people do what’s right rather than talk as if they did. They refuse to use words to manage what people think of them or to manipulate people into giving them what they want. They don’t stretch the truth or promise what they don’t intend to give. They’re not constantly spinning everything – they don’t need to. The life Jesus pictured is one in which family and friends trust a person completely, because his or her word is gold. Does that sound good to you?

It is a life (this is 5:38-42) that is free of resentment. How many lives are poisoned by the bitter fruit of resentment: siblings who haven’t spoken in decades; former employees who burn with rage; children who don’t go a day without remembering the betrayal they suffered from their parents, even though they died years ago. To simply be free of the bitter taste of resentment—Jesus pictured a life in which that is possible; in which it is normal.

To put it briefly (which Jesus does in 5:43-48), it is a life where love – love for God and for people – washes out anger and uncontrolled sexual desire and deceit and manipulation and resentment. Imagine a barrel filled with toxic chemicals, with insects and worms and snakes and algae and filth. Now imagine that someone starts pouring clean water into that barrel – hundreds of gallons of it, then thousands. The filth and the algae and the snakes and worms and bugs and toxic chemicals start to overflow the barrel. It takes time, but if the water keeps pouring, sooner or later all the ugly, dangerous stuff will be washed out. That is what love does in the life of God’s people. The life as God’s person in God’s kingdom with God’s people is, more than anything else, a life of love. And just as contempt accompanies anger, joy accompanies love. This life gets better and better.

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Cover Up: What Is Your All-Time Favorite Cover

Posted on May 23, 2021 by salooper57

A “cover” is a previously recorded song that has been “covered” by another artist. Think Joe Cocker redoing The Boxtops’ The Letter. (“Give me a ticket for an aeroplane. Ain’t got time to take a fast train. Lonely days are gone. I’m a comin’ home. My baby just wrote me a letter.”) Or take the spate of covers for Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

In your opinion, what is the best cover of all time? Here’s a short list just to get the juices flowing: Jimi Hendrix doing Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower; Aretha Franklin covering Otis Redding’s RESPECT; Cocker covering the Beatles’ With a Little Help From My Friends; the Beatles themselves remaking the Marvelettes’ Please, Mr. Postman; or possibly Janis Joplin’s cover of Kris Kristopherson’s, Me and Bobby McGee.

You’ll have your favorite. I think mine is by the Beatles – not a song they wrote but one they covered: The Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout (which, by the way, was itself a cover of The Top Notes’ version, written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns).

I’d love to hear (actually listen to) your favorite covers. Go to the bottom of the page, just below the Facebook and Twitter sharing icons, and click “Leave a Comment.” Share with us your all-time favorite cover. Then listen to others just for the fun of it. Happy listening.

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