God and Dog

This is really beautifully simple, fun and profound.  thanks to David McLeod-Jones in the NZ Baptist Magazine for pointing this out.

Brick-a-brack 30/12/10

• Tim Bulkeley fires a shot across the bow of the established paradigms of theological education
• Roger Olsen suggests we do theology with pre-biblical presumptions, whoever we are, and his top two are whether God can do anything and our approach to the "primitive" church
• Marc Cortez gives a roundup of his top tips for theological research, you'd be a fool to ignore them
• The ruthless monk starts an interesting series on Christian stereotypes and how to deconstruct/disembowel them
• Doug Chaplin reflects on the slaughter in Matt 2:16-18
• Jason Goroncy lists why we shouldn't write off John Howard Yoder even though people often look for any excuse to do so [because they are wimps]

Happy Father's Day

This is for you dads out there.  Might have to do a Kiwi version for next year, (not sure about these yanks and their ornamental turtles).



Thanks to these urchins for making my life richer, crazier and funner! :-)

And thanks to God,
εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν.
(Eph 4:6)

God Came From Nowhere

A recreation of a S.M. Lockridge sermon by an actor, which starts with a genius meditation on creation ex nihilo (out from nothing).  Poetry, theology and preaching, a beautiful combination.

Why is church so boring?

thanks to ASBO Jesus for the pic

Honestly, how do we manage to turn the good news about God reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ into such a yawn fest?  And no, the answer is not more screens and louder bands and more wax in the pastor's hair.  The answer is to stop the "show."   Church is not about music, or a great preacher, or presentation, or the service.  Church is the people of God worshipping God in Spirit and in truth, as opposed to the people of God watching some dude on a stage. 

Lev 24:10-23, Blasphemy, the Lex Talionis and the Imago Dei

So there I am, minding my own business, reading through Leviticus with my lady wife one evening, when suddenly I realise, with great anger, that the person responsible for paragraphing my Bible (in this instance an ESV) has started a new paragraph complete with section heading in the middle of a narrative unit.  What a wally.  But then again, you could understand why someone might think v17 starts a new subject on account of the fact it moves from the topic of blasphemy to lex talionis (the law of retaliation).  The section starts in verse 10 with the introduction of a new character:

 pic from here

That is him in the middle, the offspring of a Danite woman and an Egyptian man.  It seems like he was visiting his mum (maybe he had had a row with dad?) and then, perhaps because someone made an unkind remark about his parentage, and then got into a fight and whilst he was fighting blasphemed (v11).  So the Israelites, who until that point had been enjoying watching a good fight, put him in custody until Moses could tell them what God wanted them to do (v12).  So far so good, the Lord then speaks to Moses explaining the method for dealing with blasphemers and also pointing out that the same rule applied to both aliens and citizens, one rule for all (v13-17).  But then God seems to go off on a tangent,

'If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbour, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.'  Lev 24:17-22

Which you might think started a new subject, except for the fact it cannot, because the story that started with the introduction of the half-Israelite half-Eygyptian blasphemer is yet to finish, and does in fact finish in the next verse, where his story ends with his violent death (v23).  So what is the connection between blasphemy and the lex talionis, so that the author would place the two together like that?  (if indeed they needed to "placed" together in the first place)

What occurred to me as I pondered this was whether or not this might relate to Gen 9:6, where we have another lex talionis (kind of), that "whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind." (NRSV)  Isn't the justification for this lex talionis that murder equates in someway to blasphemy against the image of God in one's fellow human?  In which case the link between blasphemy and murder has already been made.  In Lev 24:10-23, that link is simply made in another direction, possibly predicated on Gen 9:6.  The punishment for blasphemy is death, and murder is itself a form of blasphemy, so it is simple move to go from talking about blasphemy (of the name) to murder (of the image bearer).  However the law is careful to differentiate between the life of an animal and the life of a human, because the animal does not bear the image (v18, 21; animal rights activists take note!).  On the other hand it is equally careful to remove differentiation between citizen and alien in this matter, all human life is equally sacred, it is not dependent on nationality (v16, 22). 


Ok, so here are some questions:
1) How come all the conservative Christians that want the death penalty for murder don't campaign equally vigorously for the death penalty for blasphemy?
2) Those of you who don't support the death penalty for murder, what does that say about your valuing of the human life that was taken?
3) Matt 5:38-42 anyone?

Deut 23:18, Rentboy or Dog?, Abuse of Nature or Insult to God?

[Warning: what follows is a little esoteric, but maybe useful as NT background?]

I know many of you have been staying up at night reading Deut 23:18 (v.19 LXX) and the footnote in your NRSV, NIV, or NLT, and wondering whether it is the wages of a dog or a male prostitute which you are disallowed from bringing into the house of God.  Well while I cannot answer for Moses, a slightly less ancient Jew gives an unequivocal interpretation:

Josephus, Antiquities, 4.8.9/§206: 

You are not to offer sacrifices out of the hire of a woman who is a harlot, for the Deity is not pleased with anything that arises from such abuses of nature; of which sort none can be worse than this prostitution of the body. In like manner no one may take the price of the covering of a bitch, either of one that is used in hunting, or in keeping of sheep, and thence sacrifice to God. (Trans. Whiston)

Ἐκ μισθοῦ γυναικὸς ἡταιρημένης θυσίας μὴ τελεῖν• ἥδεσθαι γὰρ μηδενὶ τῶν ἀφ’ ὕβρεως τὸ θεῖον, χείρων δ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴη τῆς ἐπὶ τοῖς σώμασιν αἰσχύνης• ὁμοίως μηδ’ ἂν ἐπ’ ὀχεύσει κυνὸς ἤτοι θηρευτικοῦ ἢ ποιμνίων φύλακος λάβῃ τις μισθόν, ἐκ τούτου θύειν τῷ θεῷ.

Pic of Canaan Dog from here

The wages of a prostitute are compared to the price given for the servicing of a bitch, and both are deemed unsuitable for offering sacrifices to God.  The profits from selling sexual intercourse, whether human or canine, are tainted with the shame of that intercourse.

Whiston’s translation does, however, mislead a little.  His translation, “abuses of nature,” suggests that Josephus is referring here to the idea of things being according to or against nature (φύσις), a common enough way of arguing (cf. Rom 1:26; 1 Cor 11:14; Atemidorus, Oneirocritica, 1.78, 60; etc).  The text, ἥδεσθαι γὰρ μηδενὶ τῶν ἀφ’ ὕβρεως τὸ θεῖον, might be bettered rendered “for the Deity is not pleased with anything that arises from such an insult [to the Deity].”  The idea is not that nature (φύσις) is being contravened but that God is insulted by anything bought with income from such a source.  This insult stems from the fact that prostitution involves the shaming of the body (τοῖς σώμασιν αἰσχύνης).  Apart from the significant (to my study) use of σῶμα in this context, it is interesting that Josephus does not condemn the owning or use of prostitutes or dogs, only the use of profits from their sexual activities for sacrifices.  The uncleanness of the sex act somehow attaches itself to the money made through it.  In the case of the dogs, the shame does not spread to the sheep they keep or the game they catch.  In the same way, Josephus gives no indication that the shame of prostitution affects those who own or use prostitutes.

For Theologians Everywhere (and everyone else)

 This Socratic moment comes to you from The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch

And if you liked that you should also read this by Michael Jinkins.

What if God was one of us?

I am one of those people who always likes to read the prefaces and ackowledgements of a book just to get a bit of insight into the personality of the author.  Correspondingly, I also like the "about" pages on peoples blogs, although those are often dissapointing lists of abstract interests rather than any real self revelation as such.  Clayboy, AKA Doug Chaplin has a great "about" page, which reads pretty much as a short and pithy manifesto for theology.  (My own blog manifesto is here)  I've actually found Doug's worth returning to just for its own sake.  One phrase has been giving me thought recently:

as the Scriptures suggest, if you’re going to anthropomorphise the eternal reality who dwells in unapproachable light you might as well do it outrageously.

Which nicely pins down the absurdity of the revelation of God in the Bible, of our attempts to talk about such a being, and most of all of the absurdity of the incarnation itself.   We have permission to to anthropomorphise God, the one who is so supremely other, because God does so in God's own self revelation.

But there is a danger in this. It may be done outrageously, but it must also be done critically and rigourously.  I recently formatted the proofs for a forthcoming book on evangelical views on God and gender (review to follow once it actually gets published).  As well as the fare I expected, regarding gender equality in home and church (or lack of it), I was surprised by the number of chapters that used the topic to actually talk about God.  (perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was.)  I realised that in the last few years God had been getting increasingly distant and abstract for me, mainly as a resuly of the particular areas I was studying in.  That book reminded me that God reveals himself to us anthopomorphised, sometimes as male and sometimes female.  God, he/she/it, is someone we can relate to.  The danger comes when we take this extraordinary gift of God and confuse which direction the morphing actually operates in.  God may anthropomorphise God's self in revelation, we may need to use anthropomorphic analogy to describe God (e.g. God is "love"), but we absolutely must not reverse this and deify or theomorphise our own selves, especially not our gender. 

So the answer to Joan's question, posed so well in the song above, is that God was one of us, God is one of us, and yet just because I am a slob, doesn't mean God is. :-)

Contradictions in the Bible

I find it very amusing when people think they have somehow achieved something when they find contradictions in the narratives of the Bible. E.g. that somehow the fact that the gospel writers cannot agree on the number of angels present at the resurrection tomb somehow proves it couldn't have happened. Almost as (tragically) amusing as the literalistic Christians who try and create "harmonized" versions to "reconcile" the different narratives. Well, I am sure God appreciates your efforts to correct his mistakes! But that is not what I am posting about here.

The real contradictions in the Bible are the source of its most beautiful theology. When you contradict something your speak (dict) against (contra) it. In Deuteronomy 10:14-19 we have two wonderful examples of Biblical contradictions that result in meaningful practical theology.

14. To the Lord you God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.

So here we have a clear statement that God is in sole possession of the whole universe both seen and unseen. This is a clear affirmation of God's universality (i.e. he is no provincial deity belonging to a local people group) and of his transcendence (i.e. otherness and difference from the concerns and world of humanity).

15 Yet the Lord set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today.

Yet in the very next verse this picture of a universal transcendent almighty God is contradicted by the statement that God had chosen Israel (i.e. was behaving not universally but particularly) and loved them (was allowing himself to be concerned and affected by their actions and well being). And so the Israelites are being presented with a tension that this contradiction has created. They believe both statements even though there appears to be an incompatibility between them. This tension creates an energy that pushes Israel to respond in a certain way.

16. Circumcise your hearts therefore, and do not be stiff necked any longer.

Because the universal God has chosen to be God to Israel in particular they must do two things: maintain a purity and holiness of "heart" (i.e. the inner person), and must be humble and teachable (because they will be the ones to teach the rest of the world about God).

The pattern is then repeated in 17-19:

17. For the lord you God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.

Once again God's transcendence is asserted and this time also his great power. Of course, God accepts no bribes, not only because he already owns everything (vs 14), but because of his totally incorruptible character.

18. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien [foreigner], giving him food and clothing.

Wait a minute, if God is impartial, how can he take sides and defend the cause of these? Wait a minute, if God is powerful why does he have any interest in the powerless of society? Once again this contradiction creates a tension that requires action of those who know God.

19 And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens [foreigners] in Egypt.

And so the people of Israel are not to behave like some super race, feeling superior that God has chosen them. Instead they are to love (!!!) those who are different and vulnerable in their society reflecting the fact that their God contradicts his universality and unlimited power with a particular concern for the powerless.

Now some of you will be thinking that those contradictions are nothing of the sort. But that is only because you are used to thinking about God from the end of 2000 years of Christianity, 2000 years after God was revealed in and through Jesus Christ. From the point of view of the ancient near east when these text were given to Israel, many centuries before Christ, these contradictions are both blatant and highly surprising.

Let me know what you think :-)

[Thanks to Chris Wright, The Mission of God, p79, for this structural analysis of Deut 10:14-19!]

Why the Jews survived as a people when no one else did

Further to the last post, I was watching a lecture by Yale Professor Christine Hayes, and she makes the point that the reason the Jews have such an extraordinary long history when so many larger and more advanced civilisations dissapeared off the map, is their robust monotheism. Which meant that when the ultimate national disaster happened (being wholesale exile and enslavement) rather than accepting that their god had been defeated by the enemy's god they interpreted the event as an act of their soveriegn God. This interpretive act effectively stopped them from being assimilated by the conquering culture and allowed them to maintain a unique identity. Now this is an entirely secular argument, not one that needs God to be real for it to work. (Although if God is real then obviously God might have a hand in the survival of God's chosen people as well.) But I think this same point applies to the contemporary Christian's ability to maintain a Christian identity even through the most traumatic and harrowing circumstances. If you are able to interpret the event as being within the will of a soveriegn God then you will be able to survive it with your commitment to God intact. But if the event is interpreted as having happened in spite of the best efforts of a limited god your willingness to identify with that god will be compromised. After all, it makes no sense to give all your loyalty to a deity than isn't always in control.

If God is good, what is God good for?

I recently heard a Christian defend God from the 'problem of evil' by suggesting that God has voluntarily self limited Godself in God's knowledge of the future (and possibly power) and so when bad things happen to good people it is just because God has chosen to be weak. This is not helpful. Believing that God didn't stop the bad thing because God either didn't see it coming or couldn't help even if God did, may stop you blaming God for the bad thing, but it also suggests that if God is so blind and feeble he is no God at all, but just a fellow sufferer who might occasionally provide some comfort but really isn't good for much else. There really is no way around the Bible's affirmation that God is both in control and fully aware of what is going on in the world (whether or not God has the future mapped out in minutia - but that is another discussion) so the fact that bad things happen (and yes I am talking about really bad things) must be understood in a way that does not diminish God's power or knowledge.

The biggest misunderstanding in Christendom is this: that God's power and knowledge are entirely bent on not letting bad things happen to those who believe in him, so that when bad things do happen some sort of explanation must be sought. This misunderstanding is based only on our belief that God is interested in the same things we are: our security, comfort and pride. That is, that God is like us. Of course only a quick skim through the Bible is guaranteed to show you a God rather contemptuous of our security, comfort and pride. In fact if you value those things the very last thing you should ever do is get to know Jesus. Jesus, the author and perfecter of Christian faith, showed us what true living was when his naked and damaged flesh was hung up for ridicule and slow death one Friday. In fact the better question is: how come so many people who claim to be good don't have more bad things happen to them? How come so many of these good people have so much security, comfort and pride and God does nothing to relieve them of it? Does God really love them at all?

Religion, relationship, or something else?

One of the classic evangelical catch phrases is, "It's not a religion, it's a relationship." The point of which being to differentiate Christianity from a set of rules and instructions to get you favour with God and assert that Christianity is about knowing God personally. This is often an eye opening phrase for those who have a legalistic conception of Christianity. It is however quite misleading.

Firstly, Christianity most certainly is a religion, in that it is framework for making sense of life, or a world view. All world views are religious, even atheistic world views, and even the most undecided of agnostics will have a religious framework for making sense of their life. It is just human nature. But I guess strictly, while it contains a world-view Christianity claims to be something more than just a way of understanding life, the universe and everything.

Secondly, the word relationship is particularly unhelpful. In general we only use this term regarding personal relationships for boy-girl relationships that are somewhat fuzzy and undefined. "I'm in a relationship" generally means that one is romantically involved but not to the extent of being fully committed. Sadly this half committed, emotionally variable, type of relationship characterises many western Christians' relationship with God. They understand that they have a relationship with God but they are not quite sure where they stand. They sing love songs to God on Sunday, but during the week are never quite sure who or what they are really committed to. And when God seems to not be around as much, or to let them down, they wonder about calling the whole thing off.

In the Bible the relationship between God and God's people is not fuzzy and undefined. It is correctly understood as covenant relationship, that is a relationship clearly defined by a contract between both parties to which both parties are fully committed. It is the relationship of:

creature to creator
helpless to saviour
servant to lord
sinner to forgiver
slave to master
disciple to teacher
redeemed to redeemer
child to parent
wounded to healer

This list is hardly exhaustive, but I think it is a representative sample of appropriate biblical analogies. So does anyone know how we can work that into a catchy tag-line??

God, Worship, and Love: thoughts on 1 John 4:7-12

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:7-12)

I must confess, I am becoming more and more frustrated with the songs we sing in church and the songs I hear on Christian radio. Far too many of them focus on our love for God. There is nothing wrong with telling God we love God, or expressing our feelings of gratitude, or even expressing how we want to feel towards God (despite the reality of our cold hearts). But it is depressing all the same. My love for God is pathetic, of mixed motives, and constantly wavering. God's love for me is unlimited, pure, and never failing. Which would you rather focus on? Instead of singing to God "I love you" it is much more amazing to sing "you love me!"

This God of love is manifested as we love each other. Another confession, I would feel awkward to sing songs of love to the rest of my church family. But that is no reason not to do it. This passage of scripture asks us to respond to God's love, not with an introverted spiritual activity where we experience an intimate and loving moment with God "I love you, you love me", but by loving each other "you (God) love me, so I love your people". It is this outward loving (towards each other) rather than the 'upward' love (towards God only) that actually sees the transcendent God living among us completely. We love God as we live through Christ by loving each other. Experiences of Spiritual intimacy are not wrong, in fact they can be wonderful, but neither are they complete experiences of God's love.

Anyone know any songs that combine "God loves me" with "we love each other"?

God Doesn't Need Your Help: 1 Samuel 4:1-6:18

So, back in the day, when Israel was still a new kid on the block, a loose alliance of tribes with the same religion and ancestors, the Philistines, a rather more sophsticated group, go out to war to ensure the Israelites know their place (4:9). On the first day of fighting the Israelites get wooped (4:2) so they decide to bring in the artilery, i.e. God. The Israelites are confused, they think God lives in a box, so they get this (very special box called the Ark of the Covenant) and take it with them to the battle the next day. The Philistines hear about this and are terrified, but decide to man-up and try their luck anyway. The Israelites get wooped (again) and the Philistines get the box (4:10-11) and take it home as a souvenir and put in in the temple of their god Dagon. So much for the Israelites having God on their side.

Now God doesn't live in the box, but it represents the covenant God has with the Israelites, so, if you like, it's a bit like a wedding ring represents a marriage between two folks. So God feels pretty strongly about this box and the way people treat it, because God feels strongly about God's relationship to Israel. The next day the Philistines get out of bed, go to the temple of Dagon and find the statue of Dagon on his face before the box (5:3). Now this can't be right because they beat the Israelites, so their god must be stronger. So they pick Dagon up and go about their business. The next morning Dagon is eating dust again, but this time his head and hands have fallen off (5:4). As if to prove the point there is then an outbreak of tumors in the town and surrounding area. The locals are pretty fed up with this so pass the 'victory spoils' on to the next town, who are similarly aflicted (5:8-9). So it goes on (5:10). Eventually they realise that, although they wooped Israel, Israel's God has got them wooped. They are going to have to give the box back (5:11). So they do, complete with a special 'sorry' note in the form of 5 golden tumors and 5 golden mice (representing the rulers of the Philistines, 6:2-6).

Now I love this story because it is very funny. But also because it is loaded with theological content. First, the Israelites try to use God's ark like a magic charm to force God to help them when their own relationship with God is in tatters. They treat God like a slot machine: 'if we carry the Ark, we will win.' God doesn't turn up to help because to do so would only compound the problem. The Israelites think their great need is to win in battle, God thinks their great need is to sort out their relationship with God. Remember this, God is not to be manipulated by religious formulas, God demands a real relationship from God's people. Sort that out first and then let God worry about your circumstances.

Second, the Philistines think that because they have defeated Israel they have defeated God. But God and God's people are not the same thing. The Israelites are defeated, not because God is weak, but because they were being unfaithful to God. God shows God's-self to be so overwhelmingly great that even the statues of the Philistine god has to bow down to the Ark of the Covenant. Remember this, a crappy church, or crappy Christians do not mean a crappy god. Even when God's people are way off course God is still great, and God is still good. Don't use the behaviour of others to justify your unbelief, look at God to make that decision, not people.

Third, it is the pagan Philistines who are the first to start behaving respectfully towards the box. They soon realise that God was not wooped along with his people, and presumably also that if God had been on the Israelite's side they would never have won (see 7:10). After the box is returned to Israel it takes decades for God's own people to learn the same lesson (see 2 Sam 6). Remember this, those who are outside of the church are often showing those of us in it the way to go when it comes to justice and righteousness and honouring God. Don't refuse to learn lessons from people just because they have a different creed to you (or no creed at all).

Fourth, despite the unfaithfulness of Israel, God still cares about the covenant God has with them, and shows it, not by disguising the fact that the relationship is dysfunctional but by demonstrating the supreme holiness (special-to-God-ness) of the box that represented that relationship. Israel is unfaithful, but God remains faithful and works to bring Israel back into right relationship with God. Remember this, when you fail or fall away, God is not defeated, when you make mistakes or are stymied, God is still greater. The answer is not to question whether you followed the right formula or not but to seek to show (in grateful response) the same faithfulness towards God that God continues to show to you.

Piper on God's God-centredness

A nice concise 7 point argument, by John Piper, on:

Why God is not a megalomaniac in demanding to be worshipped

Let me know what you think :)

Mercy and Justice in Islam and Christianity

David Neff writes in December's Christianity Today (p42):

"One insight from the "Loving God and Neighbor [sic] Together" dialogue between Muslims and Christians held this July at Yale University was the difference between our understandings of love, compassion, and mercy.
"The Christian participants had been taught by Jesus that love should be indiscriminate - just as the mercy shown by the Good Samaritan was conditioned on nothing but the wounded mans need. That may not be the way we generally behave, but... it is the standard against which we measure ourselves.
"The Muslim participants startled us Christians by talking about the limits their religion brought to their compassion. Orphans, widows, and others in need through no fault of their own deserve compassion, they said. But in Islamic ethics, there was no obligation to help the person whose drunkenness or gambling or otherwise unwise behavior [sic] put them in difficulty.
"Reflecting on what I heard those Muslim leaders say, the tension was not between a generous God and a stingy God... but between mercy that was defined and conditioned by justice (the Muslim view) and justice that was conditioned and defined by mercy (the Christian view)."

Now, pardon the long quote, but isn't that seriously interesting? Our view of God radically affects the way we view ourselves and treat other people. Some questions for discussion:

1. What advantages does the Muslim view hold?
2. If you were/are a Muslim how would you differentiate between those who were deserving of mercy and those who were not (e.g. an alchoholic orphan)?
3. If you (Mulsim/Christian/other) have ever received compassion what was it about you that brought compassion from others?
4. On what grounds do we (anybody) expect God to have compassion on us?
5. If you are a Christian how do you ensure that you love indiscriminately, like your God?

Let me know what you think :)

Potters, Parents and Idolatry: Isaiah 45:9-11

Woe to you who strive with your maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, 'what are you making'? or 'your work has no handles'?
Woe to anyone who says to their father, 'what are you begetting?' or to their mother, 'with what are you in labour?'
Thus says the Lord, the holy one of Israel and its maker:
Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?
(Isaiah 45:9-11)

The image of a pot speaking to the potter as he turns it on the wheel is hilarious. Apart from the the misshapen clay actually talking in the first place, there is also the audacity of the clay to be saying 'excuse me, but you've missed a bit!' A kindly potter might say 'I'm not quite finished yet and please hold still while I work.' Even worse is the picture of a child challenging their parents over the event of their conception or birth. My two year old daughter frequently questions my judgement when it comes to biscuit distribution, sun block, or bed time. But to question your parents at the point at which you enter existence or begin to breathe seems absurd in the extreme. In its context in Isaiah this passage is a rebuke to the people of God who are unwillingly to accept God's plan to rescue them with Cyrus, a Persian (and very pagan) king. The idea that God would use an outsider does not fit in with their theology. The irony is that their complaint against Cyrus is presumably that he is a pagan idolator and yet, by insisting that God is unable or unwilling to do something that God is in fact doing, they themselves have committed idolatry. When the clay questions the potter, or the baby her parents, they place themselves above the ones to whom they owe their existence and identity. The ones who are engaged in the very act of forming them. The people of God were not just refusing to let God shape them, they were telling God how to be God.

This is why this blog is not about expanding 'my theology' or 'a theology'. Any theology that looks like a system or complete method for understanding/knowing God is idolatry. It is making God with our own hands/minds instead of letting God be God. That's why I prefer to talk about 'doing theology'. Theology should not be static, a problem solved, a puzzle completed, instead it should be fluid and dynamic, a response to God's reality as it is encountered day by day in personal experience, the community of faith, and in the Bible. This is why it is necessary to read the Bible as a stranger, not assuming that you know what you will find there, because only then can we be allowing the potter's words to shape the clay of our lives. If we read the Bible as a book that we already know what it says and means then all we do is shape the potter into our own idea of what they should look like. I dont want to worship a God I have made. I want to worship the God of transcendant reality, not a figment of my imagination.

Such an approach also breeds humility. Like the half formed clay or the child being born, God hasn't finished with me yet. Of course I dont understand everything about God, or what God is doing with me or the world, but that is OK, because we're a work in progress. Aren't you looking forward to seeing what the master potter and father of the universe has in store?

Transcendence, Poverty and Loneliness: Psalm 113

Who is like the Lord our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust,
and lifts up the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home,
Making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 113:5-9)

One of the connections often missing in our theology is the link between worship and social justice, a link that is strongly made throughout the Bible (e.g. Isaiah 58; James 1:27). At first reading I thought that was what was going on here in Psalm 113. But then I realised this psalm isn't directly addressing human justice but God's. God's transcendant otherness is described analogically here as being 'on high,' above both the 'heavens and the earth.' This might suggest that God is not concerned with such earthly and material issues as poverty and social exclusion.* But that is not the case. Instead, from God's transcendant perspective ('who looks far down') that which is important is the poor and needy and those without the structures of support that enable human living. God's agenda is to elevate the lowly and to place the lonely in loving families.

There is a tendency among the religious that the more otherworldly, 'spiritual,' and 'holy,' our beliefs are, the less concerned we are with the material and human. Psalm 113 shows how far this misses the mark. Who is like the Lord our God? Those who are most like God are the ones whose transcendant perspective (Spirituality) causes them to love and serve the poor, needy and excluded. And this is what the God we worship is like. Praise the Lord!

* In the historical context of this psalm childlessness implied both social stigma and economic insecurity.

Doing theology like it matters

In the modern western world Christianity is declining fast. Although some churches are growing they are not growing fast enough to offset all the shrinking that is going on. What is the point of doing theology? How can theology matter when most our world believes belief is a private and personal matter, 'up to the individual,' isn't theology just a matter of trying to enforce your opinions on others?

Someone, who wasn't a Christian, once asked me what I was studying. When I told him 'theology,' he was impressed. I was surprised, I expected it to be a conversation stopper. But he was interested, he told me 'everything comes back to theology in the end, who we are, what we do, good and bad, the meaning of life, I would love to study theology... but I have to make a living.' I thought, 'wow, and this guy isn't even a believer and yet he understands why theology matters better than most Christians I know.'

You see, whever we make statement about something that we consider to be true, or good, or beautiful, we are really making a theological statement. We are refering to something which is outside of the physical material world, some quality that is transcendent (beyond).

Whenever we choose to accept a fact (scientific or otherwise) as reality we are making an assumption about reality and our own ability to accurately perceive it. This is a theological assumption because only by their being some objective truth beyond the material universe (i.e God) and us being somehow related to this truth (e.g. 'made in God's image,' see Genesis 1:27) can we expect our perception of the material world to actually connect us to reality in any meaningful way. The same goes for statements of good and evil, whenever we (rightly) state that child abuse, or genocide, or rape, are evil and wrong we are comparing them to an objective good which cannot be measured by the natural sciences, but which none of us doubt exists, because we all intuitively know somethings are just plain wrong (evil) and some are just plain right (good). Likewise, when we find beauty in a face, or sunset, or work of art, or event, we are recognising in that coincidence of physical properties and happenstance that there is a resonance in this beautiful thing with something other, with something that is capable of bringing purpose, meaning, wholeness, and peace to the world which otherwise appears to be random, meaningless, incomplete, and disrupted.

So my point is this: we all do theology all the time. The problem is we often dont know we are doing it and we end up doing it badly. Theology isn't about me imposing my opinions on you, but about us all learning how to do theology better; to do theology as best we can, because it really matters.