The Role of Desire in the Religious Life

Posted on September 5, 2020 by salooper57

Desire plays an important role in life. If it were not for desire, the human race would not propagate. God made humans in such a way that they need, and are capable of experiencing, desire.

Desire is also important in the religious life, though its role is seen in vastly different ways, depending on the religion espoused. In Buddhism, if I understand it correctly, desire (or longing) is regarded as the principal cause of suffering. Desire is the fetter that binds people and keeps them from reaching enlightenment.

The Christian view on desire is nuanced. The King James word for it is “lust,” which frequently refers to inappropriate and destructive desires (like the desire to have another person’s spouse), but occasionally refers to appropriate and healthy desires. Jesus, for example, “eagerly desired” – the word regularly translated as “lusted” – “to eat the Passover” meal with his disciples.

Buddhism approaches desire or longing as something to renounce and eventually eliminate by following the eight-fold path. There are many points of contact for Christians and Buddhists along the eight-fold path, though their underlying assumptions will be at odds and will inevitably lead them in different directions.

Christians are never asked to make a universal renunciation of desire. Such a renunciation would be counterproductive. Instead, they are told to “put to death evil desires” while cultivating healthy ones. While they know that desire can fetter a person to a life of lovelessness and suffering, they also believe that desire can be a springboard into a life full of love and contentment. They don’t want to get rid of their desires, they want to transform them.

If it were possible to take an X-ray of all our desires – to see them the way a radiologist sees fractures and growths – we could pretty accurately diagnose our spiritual health and prognosticate our spiritual futures, apart from intervention. Fortunately, intervention by the one Christians call the Great Physician is always possible.

This intervention occurs at a level we cannot reach, rather as gene therapy operates on a level we cannot reach. Christians believe that God is able and willing to work at the origination point of desire, actually giving and shaping the desires of their hearts. The Christian then cooperates with these deep-level operations in practices that cultivate and bring to fruition these new desires.

These practices are sometimes referred to as spiritual disciplines. They fall into two principal categories: those that put to death “evil desires” and those that cultivate God-given desires. It is common to talk about these as the disciplines of “abstinence” and of “engagement.” Both are important.

Among the disciplines of abstinence, which help people “put to death evil desires,” are solitude, silence, secrecy (that is, not broadcasting our good or religious deeds in order to win admiration), and fasting. These practices enable a person to discern unhealthy desires. On a more fundamental level, they enable people to understand that they are more than their desires, something that is urgently needed in contemporary culture.

The disciplines of engagement, which aid in the cultivation of God-given desires, include worship, Bible reading, prayer, acts of humble service, and fellowship (or “soul friendship,” as it has been called). The value of these disciplines resides, in part, in the way they increase the intensity and staying power of God-given desires.

But none of these spiritual practices, however performed, can create a desire. That is outside their scope and beyond our ability. For that to happen, people are dependent on outside intervention. They are dependent upon God.

When we understand the importance of desire and the role God’s intervention plays in it, we are ready to appreciate the insight of the psalmist who wrote, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The psalmist is not thinking of God giving us the new car we’ve been dreaming about. He is thinking of God giving us new desires, the kind that can be fulfilled without doing harm, the kind that can lead a person to deeper love and richer contentment. The role desires play in the spiritual life, and our part in curtailing or cultivating them, is absolutely critical.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Exaggerthinking: How to Counter It

Posted on September 3, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Yogi Purnama on Unsplash

St. Paul says (Romans 12:3) to “every person” (not just to the proud): “Do not exaggerthink.” But how do we avoid it? Some of us, because of the way we were raised – and I’m not thinking of kids whose parents were always bragging on them – are predisposed to exaggerthinking. How do we stay out of the trap?

First, a look at the text where Paul raises the issue (Romans 12:3). In spite of the way dozens of translations render verse 3, Paul does not say we are to think about ourselves. What he says is: “Don’t exaggerthink but think in a way that leads to realistic thinking” (my translation). Realistic thinking can’t happen if you are only thinking about yourself. To think realistically, we must include God and others in our thoughts.

Specifically, the first way to think realistically is to think in the light of the role God has entrusted to you (verse 3). The end of verse 3 is famously difficult for translators. It’s not that the words are difficult; it’s that Paul’s meaning has been hard to uncover. What is meant by “in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you”?

Nowhere else does Paul or any other biblical writer speak of God distributing faith to people in different measures. Because of that, most commentators think that faith here must refer to “the faith, once delivered.” They say the faith is the measure (or yardstick, that’s the idea) by which we are to think of ourselves. But then it’s hard to make sense of the idea of distributing or (more precisely) apportioning the faith once delivered.

There is a third way to take it, which seems to me most likely, though linguistic support for it is slim. Occasionally, contemporaries of Paul would use the word here translated as “faith” to describe a “trust” that has been given to a person – a stewardship. Paul himself uses the word in its verb form in this way in Titus 1:2, when he writes about “the preaching entrusted to me” – that is, given to me as a trust. God has given every member of the body of Christ a trust, a role to play, a faith to keep.

I am less likely to exaggerthink if I am playing that role, honoring that trust. I have not been given every role to play – that’s not my job; I am not smart enough for that, strong enough, or skilled enough – but neither have I been given no role to play. I have been given a trust. I must keep faith with God. Awareness of that keeps me from exaggerthinking.

A second way to avoid exaggerthink is to recognize the oneness of those who belong to Christ. (This is from Romans 12:4-5.) We belong to one another. I am yours. You are mine, but not in the way a tool in mine. I am not free to use you. You are not even mine the way a treasure is mine – a cherished book or a jewel or a work of art. You are mine the way an eye or hand is mine. As Paul puts it in verse 5, we are “members of one another.”

That means if I hurt you, I hurt myself. Taking a jab at you – including a verbal one – is like poking my own eye. If I look down on you, I look down on myself – worse, I look down on Christ. We belong together. As that truth becomes settled in my mind, as it dawns on me that I am part of something bigger, I am on my way to realistic thinking and am better equipped to recognize exaggerthink.

Third, when we are using our gifts, we will naturally think more realistically. God graced each of us with a gift (verses 6-8) that will help us keep faith with him as we perform the role entrusted to us. Actually doing the work is the fastest way to get rid of exaggerthink.  

When I’m sitting on the couch watching a football game, I am prone to give advice to the quarterback and the coaches. “You’ve had that slant route all day long. The middle linebacker is dropping too far back in the zone. Can’t you see that? Why aren’t you taking advantage of it?” Then I get up for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

But if I were behind center – even if I were 30 years old again – and there were four three-hundred-pound brutes on the other side of the line itching to beat me to a pulp, I would forget all about the slant route. I’d forget the count. I’d forget my own name. Getting out and actually doing the work, whether on the field or in the church, has a wonderful way of checking exaggerthink.

These words of S. D. Gordon are worthy of consideration. “We have nothing to do with how much ability we’ve got, or how little, but with what we do with what we have. The man with great talent is apt to be puffed up” (that’s exaggerthinking) “and the man with little [talent] to belittle the little.” (More exaggerating.) But “… much or little, ‘Our part is to be faithful,’ doing the level best with every bit and scrap.”

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Exaggerthinking

Posted on August 29, 2020 by salooper57

St. Paul told the Roman Church, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…” (Romans 12:3, NIV). The NIV supplies the words “of yourself” – they are not in the Greek text – which is something like “do not overthink.”

It does not seem to me that Paul is saying, “Don’t be conceited,” although that is what most people take him to mean. If that is what he meant to say, Greek offered him the vocabulary to say it, a vocabulary he makes frequent use of elsewhere. But here he uses a different word, one he may have coined himself, since it appears nowhere else in the Bible.

To translate the word Paul coined, I had to coin one myself. So here is the Looper translation: “For through the grace given to me I tell every one of you not to exaggerthink…”This doesn’t necessarily refer to thinking you are more important than other people. A person who exaggerthinks may be quite humble but her mind inflates what she can do, what she is called to do, and makes her responsible for how everything turns out.

People who exaggerthink often take on more than they should, robbing other people of service opportunities and wearing themselves out in the process. That is exaggerthinking.

The exaggerthinker is liable to assume that the truth he sees is the whole truth, which makes it difficult for him to listen to other people. But only God sees the whole truth. He has 360-degree vision. We don’t.

But we do see parts, and when we stop exaggerthinking, we realize that other people see parts too. In giving us the body of Christ, God has broadened our vision. The body of Christ sees more than any one person can see. As such, the whole body of Christ (and not just the individual) is needed to discern the whole will of God. It is only “together with all the saints” that we “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…” (Ephesians 3:18).

One of the biggest problems with exaggerthinking is that it leaves us believing that it all depends on me. When I exaggerthink, even though I am fully aware of my sins and weaknesses, even though I don’t mean to do so and would scoff at the very idea, I cast myself in the role of savior. It would be comical if it were not so painful.

The exaggerthinker believes it’s up to him to save the church, save the business, save the relationship, save the family, save the truth. No one else will do it. Perhaps no one else can do it. Unless I do it, it won’t get done.

People who think like this end up like Elijah: depressed, anxious, shame-bearing, and alone. Remember what was going over and over in his mind? “It’s all up to me and I’m not up to the task. My best is not enough. I’m a failure. I just want to die.” To which God said (in effect), “Elijah, you and I need to have a talk. But just so you know, I have plenty of people who are ready to help. You’re not the only one. It doesn’t all depend on you.”

Listen: we already have a savior. We don’t need to be one. It is not all up to you or me and it never has been. God has resources we know nothing about.

All of us exaggerthink at times, in one way or another. I say that as one who has often engaged in it. You may say, “I don’t do that. I know I’m a nobody.” But that is exaggerthinking in a negative direction—just the kind of thing Elijah was doing, and it was ruining his life. It will ruin yours too. It will rob you of joy. It will make it impossible for you to trust God. And it will separate you from others.

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Falwell and Evangelicalism’s Theological Confusion

Posted on August 27, 2020 by salooper57

Evangelicalism has a problem: Evangelicals.

It is not a new problem. Evangelicals have been giving evangelicalism a bad name for years. The disconnect between the gospel proclaimed by prominent evangelicals and the lifestyle exhibited by them sometimes is impossible to ignore.

The scandals associated with such names as Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, Jim and Tammy Bakker and many others follow the familiar road of greed, sex, and power. It’s not like these people didn’t know better. These are issues Jesus and his apostles addressed.

These moral failures point to an underlying problem that is not merely ethical but theological. The latest scandal involving Jerry Falwell, Jr., is a case in point.

Falwell, Jr. was, until recently, the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his famous televangelist father. During Falwell, Jr.’s tenure, Liberty saw student enrollment increase phenomenally, making it the largest school in the country. Falwell’s name recognition has also increased in recent years, in large part because of his political activism. Falwell has become one of the most familiar names in evangelicalism.

When candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign sought the highly prized support of evangelicals, the first place they turned was Liberty University. Ted Cruz launched his campaign there. Falwell allowed him to announce his candidacy from the Liberty Campus arena and even required the student body to attend.

It looked as if Cruz had the inside lane on evangelical support but then, in an unexpected move, Falwell endorsed Donald Trump. Interviews followed. Speaking engagements. Falwell called candidate Trump “a man who … can lead our country to greatness again.” Photo ops with the candidate followed. At one point, according to Falwell, Mr. Trump discussed with him the possibility of serving as the United States Secretary of Education.

All I knew about Jerry Falwell, Jr. prior to his highly publicized endorsement of Donald Trump, was that Liberty University had grown wildly in just a few years under his leadership. With regard to the academic health of the university, this seemed reckless to me. Then began the trickle of reports of questionable behavior, which grew into a stream, and then a cataract.

Mr. Falwell insists that he has been targeted by the Left because of his support of President Trump. I don’t doubt that he is right. He painted the target on his own back when he threw his support to Mr. Trump in 2016. But he has no call to complain. He is the one who gave his opponents their ammunition.

I sensed there was a problem when Falwell defended himself against accusations of hypocrisy by saying, “I have never been a pastor.” He seemed to suggest that only pastors are expected to live by biblical standards of holiness. He has repeated this kind of thing a number of times, most recently around the time of his resignation.

Falwell’s misunderstanding exposes a theological fault that runs through evangelicalism: the false idea, as Christopher Wright puts it, that “there can be a belief of faith separate from the life of faith; that people can be saved by something that goes on in their heads without worrying too much about what happens in their lives.”

This belief persists in evangelicalism despite the abundance of biblical teaching against it, in both Old and New Testaments. St. Paul himself, who never budged from his insistence that people are saved by grace through faith, absolutely refused to divide faith from life. He characterized his life work as bringing about “the obedience of faith .. among all the nations.”

The divide between faith and life – whether in Jerry Falwell, Jr. or in any of us – is one reason so many people find it hard to take seriously the claims of Jesus Christ. As Wright said, “the moral state of those who claim to be God’s people … is a major hindrance to the mission we claim to have on [Christ’s] behalf.”

“The obedience of faith” in not a matter for pastors only, as Mr. Falwell implied, but for everyone who claims to belong to Christ. The world will not judge the church on the basis of its statement of faith, but on the quality of its life.

(First published by Gatehouse Media.)

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Spiritual Gifts and the Church

Posted on August 25, 2020 by salooper57

(from the Sermon: Body of Christ -pt. 1, 1 Cor. 12. Starts at 24:34 – 50:00.)

When it comes to the use of spiritual gifts, we often think in terms of serving the church. We talk about serving the church by teaching Sunday School or becoming a trustee, which promotes the idea that God gives us gifts so we can serve the church.

Well, yes; that’s true. But we mustn’t miss the more important reason God gave us gifts: to serve the Lord Jesus. The gifts are not, first of all, so that individuals can serve the church but so that the church can serve the savior. The purpose of the gifts, as we will see in the coming weeks, is to make possible through us the actions of the Son by the Spirit to fulfill the intentions of the Father.

When people think solely in terms of serving the church, they often feel their part is small and not especially important. Or they think that their part goes unnoticed and start feeling they are being taken for granted. Either way, that kind of thing is hard to avoid when we think that what we are doing is all for the church.

It is better (and more in line with Scripture) not to think we are doing something for the church but that we are the church doing something for the Lord. We are not functioning for the body, as if we were not a part of it. We are the body.

Third, notice the wording of verse 7: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” Paul does not say that each gift – whether prophecy or tongues or service or teaching – is given for the common good, but the “manifestation of the Spirit” is given for the common good. What blesses a church, transforms an individual, makes a Sunday School class life-changing, encourages the discouraged and upholds the floundering is not the gift but the God who gives it. The gift is given so that the manifestation of the Spirit can occur; that is, so that God can show up among us. That’s why our focus shouldn’t be on the gift but on the Giver.

Finally, this passage (and the sum of the teaching on the Body of Christ) makes it abundantly clear that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. It is not all up to you or to me. But by design at least one thing is up to you and up to me. We can’t do everything. We needn’t do everything. We shouldn’t do everything. But we can do something, need to do something, and ought to do something. Verse 11 teaches that the Spirit has given a gift to each of us. Each of us. And each gift is given for a purpose. Each gift counts. Each has a place in Jesus’s operation through the church.

On a July night in 1969, our family was finishing out a vacation. I came in from a motel pool just in time to watch – can you guess (July 1969)? – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out of the lunar module and walk – and jump – across the surface of the moon.

The pilot for that historic flight was Michael Collins. He said, “All this is possible only through the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of people… All you see are the three of us, but underneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others.” It’s been estimated that there were about 400,000 people who helped in some way on the Apollo 11 mission.

There were radio telescope operators and parachute designers. There were 17,000 engineers. There were mechanics, soldiers, and contractors who set up the missile for launch. There were guys in Houston monitoring how much fuel the lunar module was using during descent. There was a 24-year-old “computer whiz kid” who worked through software glitches in real time. There were programmers who wrote the code. Approximately 500 people worked on the space suits, including a seamstress who said, “We didn’t worry too much until the guys on the moon started jumping up and down.”

All those people. No wonder Neil Armstrong said that when he stepped onto the moon he thought about the thousands of people who made that step possible.

None of us can do it all, any more than Neil Armstrong could fly to the moon on his own. But we do need to do our part, just like that seamstress. (Imagine if she hadn’t done her part!) When we do our part, something amazing happens, which Paul calls “the manifestation of the Spirit.” God shows up. And when he does, good things happen.

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Is Your Soul Healthy? Take the Test

Posted on August 24, 2020 by salooper57

Jesus was constantly saying things that undermined society’s norms and made people uncomfortable. This was never truer than when he spoke of money.  

Jesus once said: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” We’ve been taught to see money as power. Jesus saw it as a test of character.

When people suddenly come into money, whether a half-a-billion dollars or a few thousand, it is like they have walked into the hospital for a battery of tests: X-rays, CT Scans, MRIs, blood work. Only this is a soul hospital. Money tests the health of the soul.

When Jesus spoke about trusting someone with “very little,” the little thing he was talking about was money. He considered it a trifle. Money, in his mind, is just a little thing – but it’s a little thing like taking an X-ray or getting a C.T. scan is a little thing. When exposed to it, the state of a person’s soul is revealed.

The translation, “Whoever can be trusted” is misleading. Jesus was not speaking about future possibilities but about present realities. The verse should be rendered: “Whoever is trustworthy with very little is trustworthy with much and whoever is unrighteous with very little is unrighteous with much.” In each case, present tense verbs are used.

I’ve heard people say, “If I won the lottery, I’d give it all away.” I wonder. Would they really? Or would they stop taking calls from friends and family and start spending every spare minute with lawyers and accountants? Would they tell themselves that God had given them the money for a reason, so they must be wise about it and not make any quick decisions?

Who knows what we would do were we to win the lottery? But what we do with our take-home pay is also a test, and there is nothing hypothetical about that. It is a matter of record. For followers of Jesus (like myself), the use of money ought to reflect God’s in-breaking kingdom and the outworking of our salvation. If it doesn’t, we’ve failed the test. Our soul is sick. We’ve got the disease.

According to Jesus, the money test has consequences. If we fail, we will not be entrusted with true riches. But how do we pass the test? It’s simple: by using the money in our possession as a trust and not as discretionary funds. Like every other resource, money belongs to God. We have been entrusted with its use as his representatives.

That doesn’t mean we must account for every nickel in our expense accounts. It doesn’t mean we are OCD about our budget. It does mean that we think about and pray about how to use the money entrusted to us in a God-honoring way.

The almost breathtaking possibility here is that if we are trustworthy in this little thing – money – God will give us (literally, entrust us with) the true thing. Money amounts to training wheels for tots. Money is a preliminary, get-your-feet-wet trial run. If we do well with it, we are in a position to receive the real thing.

The real thing, as compared to the “very little thing,” is influence with the God of heaven. Authority in his kingdom. Only a fool would choose money over that.

Once a person has proved trustworthy with the money entrusted to him, he will be given “property of his own.” God trusts such a person with resources and authority in a measure equal to his faithfulness.

Augustine had this kind of thing in mind when he said, “Love God and do what you will.” When someone is loving God, they will do what is good and God will trust them. But no one can love money and love God at the same time., They are mutually exclusive.

Money-love is a spiritual illness, and it is progressive. It spreads through a person’s life and affects all their relationships, including the relationship with God. But God-love is also progressive. It too spreads through a person’s life and affects and enhances all their relationships.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Going to Church: Entering Foreign Territory?

Posted on August 22, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by ev on Unsplash

Stepping into a church can seem like entering a foreign country. The natives, for example, speak their own language: “Stop by the welcome table in the narthex.” What’s a narthex?

Newcomers do not know what is expected of them. Where is the entrance? Where do they sit? Is everyone intended to stand? Is participation in Holy Communion expected? Is it even allowed?

I experienced this sense of being in a foreign place when I attended a conference on worship. It was being held in a large church with a campus that looked like a shopping mall. I found my way to an already crowded room and took an aisle seat.

People all around the room were chatting amiably, just as they do before any conference. As the band and choir took the stage, the flow of conversation continued unabated. Then the worship leader came to the mic, spoke a few words and everything changed. The room was electrified. People were on their feet.

The band struck the first chords. Shouts and applause accompanied them. A woman stepped into the aisle next to me and used it as a dance floor. I had registered for a Pentecostal worship conference without knowing it. I think back on it as a good conference, but I experienced it as a stranger in a foreign land.

My wife and I worship with other churches when we are on vacation. One year, we were trying to get to a particular church, but road work blocked us at every turn. We were running out of time and had still not discovered a way through the construction maze, so we made the decision to return to a large church we had passed on the highway. We rushed in, minutes before the service began.

I was carrying an NIV Worship Bible. It was a very “charismatic” looking Bible, with a picture of two hands stretched toward the sky on the cover. As we entered, I realized that people were staring at my Bible. It soon occurred to me that I was the only man in the building without a tie, and one of only two men with a beard.

I felt like I we had stumbled into another country. People were nice enough – some even engaged us in conversation after the service. But when they asked where we were from and what I did for a living, I noticed their surprise (or did I just imagine it?) when I told them I was a pastor. I believe they had no category for a tieless, bearded pastor—unless it was “heretic.”

Then there was the time we were visiting relatives. My wife’s sister, who had begun attending a local church, invited us to a Sunday service. We gladly accepted.

When we arrived, we found that the church was quite small. Sunday School was still in session, so we slipped in and sat in the back. When class ended, we moved nearer the front and sat in the second row. There were five in our immediate family, which constituted about 20 percent of the worshipers present that morning. I am fairly certain we were the only visitors.

The pastor stepped into the pulpit. He took a long look around the room and his eyes settled on us. In a rich, Southern accent, he welcomed all. Then, still looking at us, he stated that the church used the King James Version of the Holy Bible and said: “If anyone” (here his eyes met mine) “happens to have any other kind of Bible, you can just leave it on the pew when you go, and we’ll know what to do with it.”

Making people feel welcome, and avoiding the things that make them feel unwelcome, can be tricky. In an effort to do so, churches install welcome centers and design welcome strategies, which are helpful and good. But more is needed. Jesus was remarkable for making everyone feel welcome. When he invited people to come to him, they knew he meant it. They felt included. They felt loved. There is no substitute for that. A welcome strategy can break down in a dozen ways, but a church that makes people feel loved will always be a welcoming place.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Reader’s Question: What About Unbelieving Friends and Family?

Posted on August 20, 2020 by salooper57

Helen D. asked the question in the title in response to a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago (A Biblical Look into the Future). It is a familiar question. I initially responded in the comment section but we continued the conversation by email. Excerpts are included below. (Thanks, Helen!)

Helen: Pastor, I too enjoy your columns in the paper and just read the “New Earth” perspective using the train analogy. I’m curious where you see our unbelieving friends and relatives.

Shayne: I think there is clear biblical support for the idea presented in the newspaper column (A Biblical Look into the Future), some of which I outlined and much of which I did not have space to include. There is also other biblical data which must be taken seriously: the abundant support for the idea of judgment and loss for those who (variously) “do not know God,” “do not glorify God,” who “do not believe [in Jesus]”, are “unrighteous,” etc.

How these two sets of biblical data relate is the question. My understanding is that those who do not want God to be God, who reject him in his self-giving in Jesus Christ, will not enter the life of the new age. In my word picture from the column, they will deboard the one train but not board the other. For such people, the terminal at the end of the line is terminal. In the words of the Scripture, they experience “death” and do not have “eternal life” or (literally) “the life of the age.” One of the reasons I write is to help such people see the hope and beauty of the gospel of Christ.

Helen: The [church] where I went when I had my conversion experience at age 42, teaches that all souls live forever, but believers will live with God and nonbelievers will live without God, which seems terrifying to me since He is Light and Love, and who wants to live that way?!  You believe their lives just end without further consequence?

Shayne: No, not without further consequence, though I hardly understand what those consequences might seem to the person experiencing them. Read C. S. Lewis on this (the chapter on Hell in The Problem of Pain). It seems to me that the Bible teaches that a person – though “person” may cease to be accurate terminology for the damned – continues to exist. There are, however, some good men and great scholars (John Stott, for example) who believe that judgment will result in a final punishment that will bring such a person to an end rather than to ongoing torment.

The problem in talking about such things (or so it seems to me) is that we cannot imagine what damnation entails, just as we cannot imagine what glorification (its biblical opposite) entails. In both cases, I think, the person will be transformed. In the one, to something greater, wiser, and more beautiful (in which the redeemed senses of the enlarged self experience realities we cannot now know); in the other, to something less, something duller (with a diminution of self and – perhaps – of the corresponding senses). This is a horrible end. Those who insist on the keeping themselves inevitably lose themselves, just as Jesus said.

What we can be sure of is that God remains God; that is, he remains loving. He will give us the best we can receive and, sadly, for some people that seems to be damnation. But as Dallas Willard says, “Hell is not an oops!” People who experience damnation will be those who determinedly have chosen “not God.”

All that said, it is best we stay away from medieval images of punishment and stick to biblical texts.

(Have comments? Join the conversation!)

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A (Biblical) Look into the Future

Posted on August 8, 2020 by salooper57

When the biblical writers looked into the future, they saw “a new heaven and a new earth.” Many of us, schooled in a Platonized version of Christianity, find this confusing. We are comfortable with the heaven part but don’t know what to do with a new earth. It is hard to see any need for it.

We’ve been taught that we are destined for a heaven that is, in Spenser’s line, “unmoving, uncorrupt, and spotless bright.” What living in such a place might entail is quite beyond anything our imaginations can conjure up. Frankly, it sounds rather boring. Still, if heaven is open to us, why will we need earth?

Besides, doesn’t the Bible teach that earth will be destroyed by fire? St. Peter wrote, “…the earth and everything in it will be laid bare,” and “everything will be destroyed.” If everything will be destroyed and we will head off to heaven, what is the point of having a new earth?

But we need to go carefully here. When St. Peter writes that everything will be “destroyed,” he is using the same word he used a few sentences earlier when he wrote that the ancient world was “deluged and destroyed.” Though he says it was “destroyed,” he clearly did not mean the Great Flood had ended the planet, only that it ended human wickedness (for a time).

Likewise, the promised final “destruction” will not annihilate creation – the planet will not be obliterated. Rather, it will remove from it all evil and everything that opposes the Creator. The future will include an earth that is purified of every evil and made right.

The biblical writers say the same kind of thing about people. They do not simply go off unchanged to an ethereal heaven but are themselves transformed. Like the planet itself, they are purified of every evil and made right. The biblical term for this is “glorification” and the biblical picture is of a people and a planet that have been glorified.

The good things that fill the earth now will not disappear. The prophet, for example, speaks of “the wealth of the nations” being brought into the future kingdom. This can only be true if nations and their wealth exist. Indeed, the seer of the Revelation speaks of the “healing of the nations” that will then occur. This is a far cry from the Platonized version of the story, in which believers finally escape the defeat and drudgery of earth.

The situation may roughly (and inadequately) be pictured this way. There are two train tracks, running in indescribably long lines, one coming to an end alongside the place where the other begins, with a little overlap. The trains that run on the tracks are unimaginably long. The first train represents humanity’s history and prehistory, and its cars are filled with treasures.

These treasures include business, technology, art, music, science, literature, sports, and more – all the good things a society (whether ancient or modern) has ever produced. But these treasures are like raw ore that is filled with impurities.

Mixed with these good things, even embedded in them, are toxins, injustices, greed, hatred, bigotry, and inequality. The sheer volume of these evils may even outweigh the good things they permeate.

As the first train reaches its terminal point, it is unloaded and all its treasures are preserved – art, science, music, technologies, games, and more – and purified of their contaminants. The ugliness that has defaced earth’s beauties, the toxins that have poisoned them, the hatred that has scarred humanity’s best efforts, will be removed and incinerated. This is called “The Judgment.” What is left – and there is a great deal left – is loaded on the second train.

These are the stuffs of the new earth. The age to come will not start with a blank sheet. “The wealth of nations” will be brought into it. Earth’s natural beauties and every good work will be preserved by the God who never wastes anything – least of all people. St. Paul makes just this point when he says that God “gave himself for us to redeem us … and to purify for himself a people.”

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The New Humanity (excerpt)

Posted on August 5, 2020 by salooper57

…see the sheer enormity of God’s plan. It begins with two people groups who do not get along with each other and yet are the media in which the Divine Artist is working. To accomplish his purpose, to make his masterpiece, these two people groups, who have been at odds for millennia, must be reconciled. But reconciliation requires sacrifice.

Who will be sacrificed? The Jews? The Gentiles? No! The artist sacrifices himself. Verse 14: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

That last phrase requires some explanation. Paul was writing this letter from prison and his readers knew why he was there. He had been arrested on the charge of bringing a Gentile past the barrier and into a part of the temple that was forbidden to non-Jews. Had the emperor himself come to the temple and stood before that barrier, he would have been told he could go no further.

Paul had in fact done no such thing. But he had been accused of it and the accusation was so serious – the enmity between Jew and Gentile so great – that a person could be put to death if found guilty of helping a Gentile cross the barrier.

(By the way: in Old Testament times there was no such barrier. That barrier was not God’s idea. It was not a sign that God didn’t want Gentiles but that Jews didn’t want Gentiles.)

Paul’s readers knew he had been accused of helping a Gentile cross the uncrossable barrier. That barrier was a tangible symbol of the hostility and alienation that existed between Jew and Gentile. But Paul says (verse 14) that Christ has torn down the barrier and made Jew and Gentile one.

Jew and Gentile are one? Really? Where are they one? You certainly don’t see it in Israel or on the West Bank. No. The only place you see it is in Christ.

That’s the same place where Indian and Pakistani are one. The same place where Japanese and Korean are one. The same place where black and white are one. They are one in the magnificent church of Jesus Christ, where there “is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11).

Among those for whom Christ is all and in all, racial barriers fall. Among those for whom Christ is just much of more, or a little of something, they remain standing.

This oneness in Christ is something that racists can never prevent and that progressives can never provide. It cannot be compelled by law but it has been propelled by love – the love of Christ. I’m not saying we needn’t bother making laws. Laws may restrain hate (which is a good thing) but they cannot produce love (which is a better thing).

(For more, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwEBKu7IWA)

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