Spirituality

I have been contemplating spirituality in the Christian faith and the reflection of it in our present world.  We see reflections of spirituality all around us in symbols, activities and conversation.  In my own experience, I have mostly been exposed to a spirituality that manifests itself in the form of accomplishments.  Spiritual people do things and do them consistently.  In my world, for example, spiritual people always read their Bible, went church (all services), abstained from “worldly practices” (undefined or succinctly defined depending on what served the interest of the power).  While all these may be activities that should remain in the Christ follower (depending on how you define the latter activity), they do not provide an adequate picture of spirituality.  Further, in our present world setting, many people claim to be spiritual, but in a way apart from the Christian faith. Yet in their own way, they express adherence to spirituality in ways that bear results similar to Christ followers.  For example, their ability to see a spiritual connectivity to nature demands that they treat the earth in a responsible way.  Similarly, their ability to see a spiritual connectivity to all other humans demands that they treat them with respect and dignity.  However, both the secular and Christ follower are seeing their spirituality centered on them.  Their tasks reflect their spirituality.  Therefore it becomes about the individual and not about anything outside of their ability to show self restraint or consistency.  The late Robert Webber identifies three types of spiritualies situated on self: Spiritual legalism, Intellectual Spirituality, and Experiential Spirituality.  The three forms of spirituality outlined by Webber grow from one another.  Many times a quest end as defeated Christ follower becomes resigned to choosing the one that made him feel most spiritual. Spiritual legalism is about tasks, what you do and don’t do.  Webber fitly critiques this view by suggesting that it “goes beyond biblical faith and practice to require adherence to systems of behavior and belief that go beyond the story of God and the freedom to live in the new life modeled by Jesus” (83).  Intellectual spirituality seeks to “know God,” and is rooted in the enlightenment emphasis of reason and science.  Intellectual spirituality finds similar results as spiritual legalism in that it many times results in pride or unwarranted separation from other Christ followers.  Webber again proposes that, “while knowledge is an important aspect of the Christian faith, it is not to be confused with the spirituality of our mystical union with God.  Often the lust to embrace higher knowledge forms within us attitudes that are the opposite of Christian spirituality” (86).  Experiential spirituality is found many times in revivalism and Pentecostal/holiness/Charismatic movements.  Experiential spirituality reacting against intellectual spirituality, seeks to know God, but through experience instead of intellectual knowledge.  Therefore, for Experiential spirituality, knowing God is squarely rooted in an event.  For example, the revivalist may experience the “personal relationship with Jesus” that began at an altar call.  The emphasis centers on the date of the event instead of the process.  This category bases their spirituality many times on their feeling about God’s view of them or his action toward them.  Webber concludes that, “to suggest that ‘I am a spiritual person because I felt the forgiveness of God in a particular experience’ places confidence in my own experience rather than in God’s embrace of me on the hard wood of the cross” (89).  So if these three views provide an insufficient concept of Christian spirituality, what is the answer?  I have been ensnared in all of these three ideas of spirituality and found all of them fruitless and frustrating.  Webber suggests a solution that I am trying understand, but have yet to exhaust its ramifications.  He proposes,

historic spirituality situates spirituality in the story of the Triune God, who creates, became incarnate, took my humanity up to his, entered the suffering of the cross, and rose from the grave.  God drew me unto himself and did for me what I could not do – He himself restored my union with himself.  Now having been baptized into this great mystery, I contemplate God’s work for me and the whole world and I participate in God’s purposes for the world revealed in Jesus Christ.  Spirituality is a gift.  The spiritual life is the surrendered life. (90)

Who is the working poor?

In reading Responsive Labor: A Theology of Work (Jenson, 2006) [a full coming review soon], I am reminded of how we Christians [particularly in the west] see our work as meaning in life.  The result of this thinking many times allows us to classify those without work as less meaningful in this world.  Jenson, in discussing the working poor in the U.S., places the notion of work=meaning in the context of the Lord’s Supper.  He States,

At the Lord’s Supper, there are no working poor: all are poor standing in need of God’s grace, and all are fed abundantly when the bread is broken and the wine is poured in Christ’s name. Our work, in the end, renders us worthy of none of this abundance.

This reminded me, in the context of our current economic downturn when it is easy to look out only for ourselves, that our sufficency is in Christ and our meaning in this world is found in his graceful act of salvation which brought restoration with the Father.  Apart from this act of grace, we are all destitute and without purpose.  God sees us as his image bearers some employed, some unemployed, some wealthy, some working poor.

Rearranging Chairs….

Recently there has been much discussion about the musings of an invited guest at the regional FBFI meeting.  This speaker, Pastor Sweatt, challenged young fundamentalists [YF] believers with a Calvinistic view using the usual straw man, frayed arguments found in a freshman college theology class.  His point, apparently, was to connect the belief of Calvinism to the Conservative Evangelical [CE] (Piper, MacArthur, e.t al) and thereby provide a foundation for why the YFs are exiting the Fundamental movement.  Sweatt reminisces about the giants [my word] of Fundamentalism past throughout the message; he speaks of men such as Jack Hyles, John R. Rice, Bob Jones, Jr., Lester Roloff, and Bob Gray. He calls his listeners stop listening to the misrepresentation of these past giants of our movement, for we did not live in their time.  Sweatt’s message received a swift reply from Kevin Bauder, another Fundamentalist, accusing him of deflecting the criticisms of the YF and engaging in an astonishing diatribe against Calvinism.

I certainly echo Kevin’s comments to Sweatt, but I believe he missed the main issue at hand.  Jason Janz’s comment bears at least part of the heart of the issue:

Any movement or organization carefully thinks about the message it is portraying to their constituency/desired constituency. Usually, no more important venue exists than the national conference to establish and communicate your message.

From the sidelines, from what has been heard at the last two national conferences, one can only assume that Phelps/Sweatt rhetoric and philosophy is allowable in key addresses at the national conference and obviously applauded by some. This would mean there is a philosophical difference between the FBF and the majority of young guys.

If it is a mistake and an oversight, then the problem is a crisis of leadership, not of philosophy. This speaks to David’s point. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is indicative of the whole. When you hear it from the horse’s mouth (national conference addresses), the toleration of it is at least indicative of the whole.

Either way, it should not take rocket science then to figure out why the FBF has not and probably will not garner a serious following in the 20 and 30-somethings generation.

Posted by: Jason Janz at May 14, 2009 03:45 PM [Read the postHere]

Most YFs know that Fundamentalism as a movement is dead.  They have moved on mainly becasue they know the power structure and philsophical foundations of the current movement are too much to overcome. Why would they want to take up that fight when they are energized to start churches, inner city work, and foreign missions? They make decisions about college, seminary, church attendance, and theolocial reading based on content and philosophy/focus of ministry, not historical battlelines.  They now understand Fundamentalism as an idea. An idea that is found in much that Piper, Mohler, Dever, MacArthur, e.t. al are saying.  The idea of Fundamentalism is alive and well, we should rejoice that the YFs are taking the truths of the movement without the baggage of a movement.

Book Review: The God I Don’t Understand

Christopher J. H. Wright, The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008.  224 pp.  Hardback, $19.99.  ISBN 978-0-310-27546-6.
I came across Christopher Wright’s newest book at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Providence R.I. and his newest work excited me for several reasons.  First, I have read many of Wright’s other works such as, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (InterVarsity, 2006) and his three-volume work, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (InterVarsity, 1995), Knowing Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament (InterVarsity, 2006), Knowing God Through the Old Testament (InterVarsity, 2007).  Each of these prior works pushed me to a new understanding of their individual topics, while at the same time helping me understand God’s work in his creation in a fresh way.  Second, I have used all of the above prior works at some point in my college classroom.  I looked forward to seeing if this work would find its way into some course also.  Third, the topic of this work, understanding evil and suffering, frequents the top of the list of hallway conversations at my institution.  Therefore, I hoped that this book by Wright would be yet another resource to which my college community could consult for comfort and perspective.
Wright divides his book into four sections.  Each section seeks to answer a question that is intrinsically connected to the problem of suffering and evil in God’s creation.  The first section inquires, “What about evil and suffering,” (25-72) while the remaining three sections provide biblical historical illustrations of the problem of evil and suffering.  These three sections ask, “What about the Canaanites?” (73-110), “What about the cross?” (111-157), “What about the end of the world?” (159-216).
In the first section, Wright defines moral and natural evil.  He explains moral evil as “the suffering and pain that we find in the world standing in some relation to the wickedness of human beings” (30).  As for natural evil, Wright suggests, it “appears to be part of life on earth for all nature…by the events in the natural world that seem {in a general way) to be unrelated to any human moral cause…so called natural disasters” (30).  From these two definitions, Wright describes God’s relation to his image bearers and the rest of his creation.  He rightly understands that the blame for suffering and evil in this world belongs on the human race and that “we cannot draw simple equations between what one person suffers and their own personal sinfulness” (35).  Wright reminds his readers that evil has no proper place in God’s creation (42) and “therefore must not be into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality” (42).  He concludes the first section by introducing the reader to Blocher’s model that addresses evil in relation to the cross (57).  Blocher’s model has three components: utter evilness of evil, the utter goodness of God, and the utter sovereignty of God.  Wright comments that “each of them is clear and comprehensible when considered on its own, but our main challenge is in holding them together in our minds and in our faith” when our struggles contradict one of them (57).  All three of these truths converge at the cross.  Wright notes that “the cross exposed the utter depths of human and satanic-evil,” “the cross happened in accordance with God’s sovereign will from eternity”, “the cross also expressed the utter goodness of God, pouring out his mercy and grace in self-giving love” (63).
With this understanding of the problem of suffering and evil and its relation to the cross, Wright applies his model to three historical references in the scriptures.  First he seeks to answer, “what about the Canaanites?”  In this story of the Israelites extermination of the Canaanites, God is sometimes portrayed as judgmental angry God who poured out his wrath on innocent recipients ignorant of God’s laws.  Wright dispels that notion and contrasts the recipients of God’s judgment with recipients of God’s grace.  He states, “at the conquest, God poured out his judgment on a wicked society who deserved it, at the cross, God bore on himself the judgment of God on human wickedness, through the person of his own sinless Son” (107).  Next, he seeks to dispel the notion that God, in sacrificing his son, is no better than an abusive father allowing evil and suffering to attack his son (154).  With this assertion in hand, he explains the penal substitution theory and contends “God has identified himself with our suffering and knows what it is to bear the pain of human injustice and violence” (153). The lastly, Wright dispels the notion that evil and suffering has no end.  He concludes that the eschaton is both an ending and a beginning: first with the return of Christ then the new creation.  He defines the first activity as an event and the second activity as an ongoing state of affairs (171).  Wright describes all the events that come about at the second advent of Christ (Ch 10).  He then puts these in proximity to the new beginning, which is the eternal state with Christ as King ruling and reigning righteously.  It is in this biblical hope that the problem of suffering and evil in our present world finds its place.  This brings Wright to two consequences in his conclusion for our lives today: “All our work now contributes to the content of the new creation” (219) and “all our behavior now must be governed by the standards of the new creation” (220).  Wright concludes, “We are to live, then, as people who not only have a future, but who know the future we have and who go out and live in light of that future” (220).
Wright’s work addresses a very complex topic in a very manageable way.  This work would be a great read for anyone from a college student to a church layperson.  It is well laid out and provides many scripture references to ponder as one works through the issue.  Most importantly, as in Wright’s other works, he points us to the cross, where we find forgiveness of our injustices and comfort when injustice finds us in this broken world.  Wright also reminds us, once again, that the cross opened the possibility of creation restoration and renewal of relationship with our Creator God – our blessed hope.

The Essenes and Jesus

The Essenes of NT era had many good qualities. First, they had a strong sense of community. Their writing, The rule of community, describe the transferring of property from new members to the community. They broke bread together as a community daily. Second, they took the observance of God’s word seriously. Again, their writings, The Damascus Document and the Rule of the Congregation explain the rituals to be followed by the community in light of Torah teaching. Third, they separated from apostates. The Damascus Document seems to prohibit participation in the temple because of the corrupt priestly system. They did not intermingle with those who stood against their core beliefs.

However, many of the Essenes teachings are absent of the compassion for those without an ombudsman. Jesus stands with neither the establishment of Jewish society/religion nor the separatist Essenes because both in their own way had rejected those in their country who needed help the most. Rather he chose to relate to those society rejected.

James Charlesworth provides a succinct comparison between the beliefs of the Essenes and Jesus.

more about “James Charlesworth – Brightcove“, posted with vodpod

The Creeds

I spent most of my life in a church tradition that had little if any appreciation for the creeds of Christendom.  I really have never sought an explanation for this and perhaps there isn’t one aside from “all we need is the Bible.”  If this is the explanation to be presented, presently I find it woefully unsatisfying.  For recently, one of my favorite and most emotional times in our worship on Sundays is the recitation of a creed.  I am not completely certain why, but I am deeply impacted by the realization that others have died reciting these words.  The bond of the church transcends time through many means.  The creeds are just one way that we are reassured that we are one body in Christ.  So as I recite the Apostle’s Creed standing next to my wife and children in our community of faith, we are joined through the words to those before us who too affirmed their faith by reciting the same.  The creeds, for me, serve to affirm the unity of the church throughout history centered on one faith, one Christ.

Blog Naming

We, my wife and I, are expecting our third child. Names for our children are unique but not of the nature that would get them a black eye on the playground or cost me therapy fees. I usually pride myself in being somewhat creative, but in naming this blog I came up empty, nothing, blocked. I initially thought, being a student of the Hebrew Scriptures, of playing on the phonetics of my name (pronounced the same as “able”) in relation to the first recorded murder in the Bible. However, where do you go with that? Abel of the Bible (Gen. 4) was a short-lived character and I didn’t want that reputation plaguing my blog.

Abell2Live reflects the truth found in the Scriptures which states, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,” – Col. 2:13. Only through Christ, the incarnate God, the living Word, are we made alive and enabled to live right choices that please our Creator.