In one sense we are always traveling,
and traveling as if we did not know where we were going.
In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life,
and that is why we are traveling and in darkness.
But we already possess Him by grace,
and therefore in that sense,
we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You
in Whom I have already arrived!

By: Thomas Merton

I am fascinated by our need to mark “significant” anniversaries. Tomorrow marks 10 years since September 11, 2001.

I think many people will be writing about what they were doing that day, or reposting journal entries or recalling phone conversations they had. Though I had been journalling regularly for a few years at that point, I didn’t actually write anything that day in my journal.

Instead of writing a long post about politics, theology and justice, I will simply be posting a prayer tomorrow. I hope you take the time to read it and spend some time of your own in prayer.

Though the perpetrators of the attacks either died that day or have long since been punished, we still live in a fallen world. We can try to reason ourselves into believing there is a political or military course of action which can provide absolute peace, protection and freedom. But this is sadly not the case.

Our ultimate hope for a better tomorrow can only come from outside of this world.

“When I look back on my own conversion, I cannot credit a gospel tract or an altar call or an exposition of John 3:16. I had encountered these things many times over in childhood and had learned to mistrust them because of the lies my church in the fundamentalist South had told me. Rather, nature, classical music, and romantic love formed the channel of grace that awakened my senses to perception of God. Through that channel I came to believe, first in a good world and then in a good God. It is a terrible thing to feel gratitude and have no one to thank, to feel awe and have no one to worship. Gradually, prompted by beauty and by art, I returned to the castoff faith of my childhood.”

-Philip Yancy

This is the most rough draft-ish of any of the sections I’ve posted so far but it’s complete enough that I’ll post it for now. If nothing else it at least proves I’m continuing to work on my thesis! I’ve got two sections which are currently partly written and a conclusion to polish and then I’ll be done with the heart of my thesis, so the end is definitely in sight! Very exciting times indeed! Anyway, on to the paper…

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In Luke 4 Jesus stands up in the temple in Nazareth and reads from a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (vs 18-19). With this proclamation of justice, the Son of God announces the start and purpose of his mission. Jesus stands as the ultimate proof of God’s love for creation and desire for restored relationships. Jesus’ ministry was at its heart about reconciliation, restoration and relationship. Time and again in both parables and actions Jesus redefines our understanding of justice and wholeness. Healing was not simply an act of physical restoration. Often emotional, spiritual and social restoration takes place at the same time; the woman at the well, the many lepers and physically disabled people he heals, and the parable of the good Samaritan are all examples.

One of the most profound examples of this redefinition of justice in the New Testament is the parable of the Prodigal Son. It stands out almost as if it is God’s love letter to humanity. In the story, the rich man’s son rejects his father and what he sees as a boring and sheltered life on the family farm so he can chase after a life of wealth and excess. After squandering his inheritance, the son shamefully and humbly crawls back to the father. Instead of being chastised and turned away for his foolishness, he is welcomed with open arms and rejoicing by his father. But there is an older brother who wants to see “justice” done. He wants his younger brother to face the consequences of his actions, complaining that his father is rewarding the young man’s foolishness. But the father redefines our understanding of justice. We often like to think of ourselves as the young, repentant son being welcomed back with open arms. But as often as not, we act more like the older son, proud of our obedience and loyalty to our father and bitter about the blessings he freely gives. There is a part of us that wants the story to end with the father relegating his foolish son to the role of field hand. We could then point to the story as a cautionary tale and praise the righteousness of obedience. But this is not the justice God wants for us. Justice is not about punishment or restitution. Justice is the restored relationship between father and son, between God the Father and His child creation. There is justice in God’s grace.

But if all the parables and actions of Jesus during his ministry serve as examples of what justice is like, his death on the cross was a radical statement of how grace restores righteousness. Christ was already modeling the new kingdom and covenant by forgiving sins and healing the sick on a case-by-case basis. The new kingdom would not fully be brought into reality however until a final sacrifice was made to satisfy God’s righteousness, something a mere human could never accomplish. Only the perfect Son of God could make that sacrifice. Jesus taking on the sin of the world and dying on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice is what finally allowed a broken world to freely receive the grace of God. The work of building the new kingdom that Jesus began in the synagogue in Luke 4 could now spread out into the world.

When Jesus ascends after his resurrection and leaves the disciples with the Great Commission, he charges them to carry on his message of restoration and hope. We see right away in the early chapters of Acts that one of the first concerns of the early church was care for the widows and other needy members of the community. The church looked far more like a charity organization working among the poor, the sick and the oppressed than an institution of great social and political influence. It was only after legalization under Constantine when Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire that the church began to move from solidarity with the poor to wrapping itself with the vestiges of nobility and taking comfort in the halls of power.

The Kingdom-oriented life Jesus modeled redefined justice not as retribution as it had been under the old covenant, but now as restoration under the new covenant. Andy Couch writes of this new vision, “The kingdom of God would touch every sphere and every scale of culture. It would reshape marriage and mealtimes, resistance to the Roman occupiers and prayer in the temple, the social standing of prostitutes and the piety of Pharisees, the meaning of cleanliness and the interpretation of illness, integrity in business and honesty in prayer” (Crouch, 2008). Justice in the Kingdom of God is people living in right relationship with each other and with God. In the light of this justice-centered kingdom we as artists create art for our community, calling people into the narrative of relationship, restoration and justice.

Robin M. Jensen writes on page 3 of her book The Substance of Things Seen,

“…times have changed, and even the most staid churches are starting to incorporate art into their worship… but I worry that too often art is perceived as a kind of ‘extra’ offering, meant for those of us who can appreciate it or want to be involved, rather than something essential to the shaping of faith and religious experience.

“…When we consciously attend to an object, especially an art object, we will have some kind of reaction to it. The response may be subtle or it may be strong. It may be positive or negative. We may be turned off, aroused, repulsed, delighted, or disappointed. We may be moved to tears, frightened, bored, or baffled. Our responses may be different from those of the person next to us. But no matter how we respond, we are slightly or significantly different for having had the viewing, or the hearing—for having paid attention. Maybe only a single atom of our consciousness has shifted; maybe a landslide has taken place in our souls. Indelible memories may be fixed or recovered. We may not be aware of much impact, or or we may recognize that this was a significant moment. Still, something happens. The experience and our response often resist explanation in words, reminding us that we can know or learn things without the benefit of language. Our memories, even our ideas, are essentially constructed out of images and colors, spatial relationships, smells, sensations, and sounds, more than they are made of words ordered into sentences—even when we record and transmit them this way.”

“The final cause of the decline of story runs very deep. Values, the positive/negative charges of life, are at the soul of our art. The writer shapes story around a perception of what’s worth living for and what’s worth dying for, what is foolish to pursue, the meaning of justice, truth-the essential values. …ours has become an age of moral and ethical cynicism, relativism, and subjectivism–a great confusion of values. As the family disintegrates and sexual antagonisms rise, who, for example, feels he understands the nature of love? And how, if you do have a conviction, do you express it to an ever-more skeptical audience? This erosion of values has brought with it a corresponding erosion of story.” -Robert McKee

Lest anyone get the impression I have been slacking off and not working on my thesis, here is another big chunk of it. This is the first half – two thirds of the section on the connection between faith and justice. As always, thoughts and comments are welcome!

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The central narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the relationship between God and His creation. In the Garden, God and humanity lived in perfect communion with each other. Life as it was meant to be. However, in the Fall the relationship was severed. God desires a relationship with his creation and is moving through time to the eventual restoration of that relationship in the completion of His Kingdom. The nature of the Kingdom of God is justice—the restoration of relationships; between people and God and between people and each other.

The term “social justice” itself has come to take on many different meanings. Tragically these are often highly politicized. Even devoid of its “social” qualifier, justice is still a term up for interpretation. Is justice punishment for crimes, or restoration for the community? But referring to some justice as social and inferring that other justice is not is a misnomer. Justice is inherently social. Whether referring to re-distribution of wealth, free health care and high taxes, or to tough immigration law, retribution for criminal activity and free enterprise, all justice is social. Where we often get caught up is in the argument behind what kind of justice is good versus what is bad. This argument often misses the point. The idea of justice as a political or economic concept capable of being enacted into law is known as “right order” and is not what God calls us to as Christians, nor is it what he called the Israelites to either. God’s justice, even in the Old Testament is not about rule following. It is not about having the right laws, but rather living in right relationship with God and creation.

The idea behind the “right order” society is that by finding the proper way of doing government, of doing society, and then codifying it in our laws we will achieve the ideal utopian society. When you see or hear politicians using religious language to argue for or against a new law, often they are arguing for a right order. Unfortunately this has lead to a reality in which religion, politics and social will are often at odds. The irony of this is God gave us a model for what a rightly ordered society looks like. Ancient Israel after being lead up out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land was to live as a people set apart to be an example to the rest of the world of an entire nation living in relationship with God. God was to be the King over Israel and would protect them and provide for them in return for their devotion. God gave the Ten Commandments and the Deuteronomic code as instructions for how to live in a just society and be that example He called them to be. Deuteronomy 4:5-7 reads,

“See, I [Moses] have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. ⁶ Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ ⁷ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”

The problem with this model is our efforts to enforce it, that is not really the point of the rules. It is not the law itself which prospers Israel, it is the relationship with God adherence to the law allows which is what allows God to prosper and protect Israel. As long as this relationship was in right order, as long as Israel worshiped God alone and followed the law, prosperity flowed freely from Heaven. But when Israel turned away from God and broke the law, the relationship was severed and God removed his prosperity and protection until Israel turned back to Him. Andy Crouch says, “Just as Babel was the cultural embodiment of independence from God, so Israel will be the embodiment of dependence on God. … In the midst of the nations, Israel will be a sign that it is possible to be a nation whose key characteristic is the trust in the world’s invisible Maker—to use the biblical word, a culture defined by faith” (Crouch, 2008).

The book of Judges records the back and forth of Israel from adherence to the law, worship of God alone and their prosperity as a result, to Israel turning from God to worship idols and their suffering as a result. Finally, the people of Israel grew tired of this cycle and decided they had a solution. They looked around at other nations and petitioned God for a king. God desired Israel to be an example of a people in relationship with their one true King. But after prosperity under Samuel, they saw the wickedness and injustice of his sons and decided they had enough. Instead of trusting in their relationship with God, they looked at the earthly power and spoils of the human kings of their enemies and chose that path instead. And so in choosing Saul as king they began a path away from relationship and toward destruction.

In 1 Samuel 8:10-17 God says what the cost of having a King will be for the people of Israel. The king will demand the best of their crops, will conscript their sons into his army and their daughters into his courts, distribute the wealth of the nation as he sees fit and claim 10 percent of all they own as his. And then God says in verse 18 of the suffering this will cause for the people, “When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.” God grants them their king, but no longer will he send judges to rescue them and restore justice when they cry out. The people have rejected their King and as a result God tells them of the consequences.

As long as the king of Israel and the people followed the law, God continued to prosper them. However as time passed it became more and more difficult for the people and their king to follow God’s commandments. Kings changed, the nation was split in two, Israel was lead away in captivity, returned to the Promised Land, then again lead away only to return once more. Yet even at this point, God continued to champion Israel. As long as they were living according to the law he protected them. God never stopped desiring a relationship with his chosen people. In fact, God would go so far as to completely scrap the old covenant and in the ultimate act of justice sacrifice His Son so the entirety of creation might be restored to relationship with Him.

I just picked up the book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals and have been flipping through it. The following is from the March 24th evening prayer, but I don’t think Oscar Romero will mind us sharing his words in December…

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the Master Builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.”

“The Gospel is everything. The Gospel is not enough.”

After our art and coffee discussion this morning this idea kept running through my head. It seems to me there is this paradox when talking about art and theology. We want to make art that is evangelical without being “Christian”. We want to make art that is Christian and still relevant. We want to make art that is real and grounded and true, but we don’t want to make art that is so heavy on message that the art itself is misunderstood.

I guess this is a post actually more about questions than answers. This is something I’m just starting to explore. I’d love to hear other opinions on how Christian artists are making art that is true and powerful without being heavy handed and overly religious. What are your thoughts on this?

“The Gospel is everything. The Gospel is not enough.”

As I’ve said–or at least hinted at–before I’m increasingly taking a relational view of justice, that when God calls us to do justice He is really calling us to live in relationship with others. So with that in mind I read through 1 Samuel 8 while reading for my thesis. Up to this point, God has been Israel’s true King, only appointing judges to lead Israel directly in times of crisis when they cried out to Him. But now seeing the sons of the current judge, Samuel, were wicked and corrupt, the people of Israel decided they no longer wanted to live under this system.

The whole of the Ten Commandments and the law that follows in Deuteronomy stands as Gods instructions for how to live in relationship with each other and with him. They are a guide for how the people of Israel were  to be an example to the rest of the world. By living in right relationship with God they would be a light to the world. Granted, this was hard and in opposition to their human nature. So there were times when they fell away from God and stopped upholding the law, but in the depth of their suffering, God never failed to send a judge to rescue them and restore justice. And then comes 1 Samuel 8.

Seeing the wickedness of his sons, the people of Israel come to Samuel and demand he appoint a king to rule them. After the people say this Samuel brings their request to God. I imagine from God’s response Samuel must have felt personally hurt and/or offended by their request. Maybe he was offended that the people rejected his sons, or maybe he was simply hurt by the realization that his sons had turned their backs on God and Samuel himself was no longer able to lead Israel as their judge. Either way God responds to Samuel by saying, “it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.” God acknowledges what the people are doing maybe before they even do. He tells Samuel he will grant their request but presents a long list of consequences they will suffer as a result. The people think by following a human ruler instead of their divine King they can gain power and standing among the nations. God doesn’t say they won’t have these things, but he lays out the cost in what their new king will demand of them–the best of their fields, the best of their sons and daughters, and 10% of all they own will belong to the king. And God says when the people suffer as a result and cry out to him, he will no longer hear their cries. Where God has always been a provider of the best things, their new earthly king will now take those things for himself. If they chose an earthly king, they are rejecting God’s kingship over their lives.

Hearing all of this the people respond to Samuel, “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations”.

Why do we not read this passage and feel heart broken?! When presented with a choice between an intimate relationship with their Creator God or a life of hardship and toil serving a king who claims 10% of everything they have, the people of Israel choose the later and reject God.

I think part of why we read this and don’t heed the warning is that we are still choosing our earthly kings today. We still look to law and government to give us moral guidance and justice when in reality those earthly powers will always fail us. Certainly there are forms of government that are more just than others and the same is true for economic systems. However, when we place our faith and trust in systems and people rather than God we are making the same mistake Israel made thousands of years ago–we are choosing ourselves over God. Doing it once was disappointing to God and Samuel. But that we do it over, and over, and over again, this is the heart-wrenching tragedy.

I was tempted to post something about the elections earlier this month, a reminder of the dangers of placing our future hope in one political party or the other. I’m obviously a little late for that, but this is pretty much what I would have said. The “right order” fallacy of anyone from any faith saying that by adhering to this code or that, to what one ruler or another says, to what one judge says over another, to what radio host says what over another, that by doing these things we can achieve greatness and godliness detracts from what God really wants–us. Jesus says in Mark 12 to give Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s. We need roads and schools and police and laws and taxes. But we can try to make all those things fit God, or we can simply focus on him and let those things fall into place. We often draw lines in the sand over school curricula. We celebrate TV hosts who sling accusations like stones at our public officials. We even let our church leaders sometimes tempt us into believing if we vote for the right candidate, the right king, God will smile upon us. We so often forget our calling to lose our lives in pursuit of the One who first called us. God desires us in a relationship, not with law, not with politics, not with economics, but with Him.