The Payoff of Doctrine

Last Tuesday we started the context track of e4 at church. e4 is a program we've developed and designed to lay deep foundations of Christian faith and practice. It's intense and challenging, a bit like drinking from a fire hose, but we've seen great results and this year's group is really excited about the program.

The context track deals with theology, church history, and culture. The first session is on the Trinity, and even though it was the same night the Buckeyes' played in the Sugar Bowl, we had a full house and some great conversation. The Trinity is a difficult subject to tackle because it defies explanation; it presses the boundaries of human intellect and language. We don't have any good metaphors to help us understand. The doctrine of the Trinity strips your intellect naked, revealing in what you finally trust--human reason or the character of God. Personally, I couldn't believe in a God I can fully explain and understand. The doctrine of the Trinity helps me to have faith and is, in a strange sense, a satisfactory proof (for me) of God's existence: If God exists, he must in some way be beyond our comprehension. The doctrine of the Trinity is beyond our comprehension. Therefore, the God known as the Trinity must exist.

But that's not the real payoff of learning the doctrine of the Trinity. Tom, one of our most faithful e4 participants (I call them e4eigners), asked about the internal dynamics: "Is there a hierarchy within the Trinity?" What a great question! I thought it about for a bit, running through the Scriptures in my mind, and answered that there was not. The Son submits to the Father; the Father glorifies the Son; the Father and Son honor the Spirit; the Spirit speaks only what he hears from the Father and Son.

What we find at the heart of the Trinity is not hierarchy, but humility. Each member defers to the others. Each member glorifies the others. The very nature of God--that he is three-in-one--is held together by total humility manifesting itself in agape love. This is why John can say, plainly, "God is love". There is no striving for position or selfish ambition within the Trinity; there is only complete and total humility and selflessness. The payoff of the doctrine of the Trinity is the invitation to possess in part what he possesses in full: humility. The nature of the Trinity teaches us to be humble enough to be unified with our brothers and sisters in Christ in this life. Pride and arrogance make unity impossible, but humility makes it inevitable.

Be humble, then, as God is humble. Defer to your brothers and sisters. Praise them publicly. Speak exceedingly well of them behind their backs. Listen well. Take correction without becoming defensive. The doctrine of the Trinity compels us to pursue utmost humility and manifest it in agape love.

The Story of God

I run a program at church called e4. It's sort of like a seminary-meets-local-church program designed to take people deep into the heart of Christianity. It's divided into three tracks, each ten weeks long, and the first track, the one we're in now, is all about the Bible.

One of the things that I hope God will do in these ten weeks is help each of us to find our story in his story. By that I mean that we will find how our story fits into the larger story that God is telling in history, and specifically in the Bible. The Bible is, after all, a story. It's the story of God creating, then redeeming, now renewing the world. And our stories are both a small part of that larger story (the meta-narrative) and miniature versions of it.

We can't know our stories if we don't know God's story, and we can't know God's story if we don't know the Bible. Most of us engage with the text of Scripture in a fragmented way. That is, we read it until something jumps off the page at us. By doing this, however, we're ignoring 99% of the Bible, and when we ignore that much of God's Word we can't possibly know God's story. A fragmented reading of Scripture leads to a fragmented life. How can you know your own story and how you fit into what God is doing in history if you only read the Bible devotionally? e4 brings you present to the other 99%.

God's story is remarkable. It's full of pain and redemption, death and resurrection, darkness and light, ignorance and wisdom. It's the story of broken eikons of God (that's you and me!) becoming whole, finding healing, love, friendship, wholeness, courage, compassion. It's the story of which all other great stories are but a seed or a shadow. And it's your story. It's the story that makes sense of your life, who you are and where you're going. You really should read it. All of it.

Jesus & Culture: A LOST Class

As a Sunday School teacher (for lack of a better term), I've wanted to teach two classes for quite some time now. First, I've wanted to teach a class on Culture, particularly how Christians ought to engage with Culture. Second, I've wanted to do something with LOST, because there are all kinds of spiritual themes in the show that would be interesting to flesh out in the light of our faith. Well, last Sunday we began the convergence of these two desires of mine in a class called LOST, Spirituality and Culture. We're taking a look at the spiritual themes of LOST and how Christians should engage with Culture, using LOST as the primary lens.

The first session went really well, I thought. There was a lot of discussion about the show (of course!) and how we, as both Christians and fans of the show, interact with it on a faith-level. The question of Jesus & Culture is an extremely important one, and it gets defined in various ways by various groups of Christians. (See also H. Richard Niebuhr's classic book Christ & Culture.) At one extreme you have Christians who take the stance that Jesus is against everything in Culture, which means no TV, no film, and no music. (Or at least, no secular versions of all this.) On the other end of the spectrum you have Postmoderns who think that Jesus (and the Bible) are just another voice at the table, a mere product of Culture.

My hope is that we can find a middle ground where Jesus is redeeming Culture, where we can find spiritual value in the art, film, music, etc. of the unbelieving world. This is a place where we are not afraid of the media of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but where we can view it critically and redemptively--where we come to a show like LOST not expecting a full gospel presentation, but rather an artful glimpse of the image of the gospel. If we can manage this perspective, not only will we no longer be so exasperating to a cynical and unbelieving world, but we'll find doors of connection and evangelism opening for us that never would have opened before. Who knows but that God would want to use a silly TV show like LOST to bring some people into his kingdom.

Nerd Stuff: Textual Criticism

I wrote the following article on my church's blog and thought it was so nerdy I'd repost it here.

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How do we get our English Bibles? What are the documents that the Bible translators work from? Haven't all of the original documents been lost or destroyed? Is it true that all we have now are copies of copies and that they are full of errors?

The questions of Bible translation are difficult and complex. Some scholars would have you believe that we are in an impossible position because we don't have any original documents and all we're left with is a bunch of error-ridden copies of copies [of copies of copies...]. Like in the game "Telephone" where a message is passed from person to person and is inevitably changed at the end, the message of Scripture has been passed on so many times that we can't possibly discover the original. Bart Ehrman even says that there are more errors in our New Testament documents than there are words!

And technically speaking, he's right. There are more errors than the words. And we don't have any of the original documents. All we have are copies of copies and all of them are at least slightly different from each other. <sarcasm>What a hopeless state we're in! We can't possibly trust the Bible! My whole system of faith is falling apart!</sarcasm> 

While it would certainly be easier if we had all of the original manuscripts of the Bible, we are not without hope. We can identify, with as much assurance as possible, the original readings of Scripture. As the man says, "There's an app for that." Our app is called textual criticism, and it is a proven scientific method for determining the original reading of ancient texts. Let's do a contemporary English example.

Imagine that you've got five pieces of paper that are all supposed to say the same thing, but they're all different. Your task is to reconstruct the original message of which these five are copies. Let's look at them:

1. Thee Bucki's will win the national champion ship this year.
2. The Buckees wil wind the nashunal championship this year.
3. The Buckeyes will win the Big Ten Championship this year.
4. The Wolverines will win the National Championship this year.
5. The Buckeyes will win the National Championship this decade.

Now let's examine each one in turn. #1 was clearly written by someone unfamiliar with college football, but you can still discern a coherent message if you know what they probably meant to say. #2 was written by an awful speller. #3 was written by someone who lacked faith. #4 was written by a heretic. #5 was written by a revisionist historian.

With these five texts in front of you, you can begin to piece together the original message. The first word is obviously The, with the only variant being a misspelling. The second word is interesting, not because of the misspellings, but because of #4's insertion of "Wolverines". In this instance, you would likely conclude that the original reading is Buckeyes, but you may also add a footnote that says something like, "one obviously heretical document substitutes Wolverines". The third, fourth, and fifth words are easily discernible: will win the. The sixth word is interesting because you have another substitution. But which one is it? By all appearances it should be National, but if document #3 is unusually credible and strong, it could be Big Ten. In this case, it's wisest to go with National, but to also include a footnote for Big Ten. The seventh and eighth words are clearly Championship this. The final word seems obvious, but we have another example of a single pesky variant. Here again, we'll choose year but have a footnote for decade.

So our final text would read: The Buckeyes¹ will win the National² Championship this year³.

And we can be quite certain that this is, indeed, the word of the Lord.

Spiritual Disciplines

This weekend I start teaching a class called Spiritual Disciplines. In preparation for it, I have been reading "The Spirit of the Disciplines" by Dallas Willard. It's a classic and, along with "Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster, is the gold standard on the subject.

The subject of the disciplines has always been difficult for me because I have so often failed at maintaining them. I am by no means a shining example of a Christian fully engaged with the disciplines, and the thought of teaching on this subject gives me a bit of a stomach ache. Really, who am I to say word one here?

But I have sensed that God did not want me to delegate this class because I have more to learn than anyone. (In general, the teacher learns more than the students as he prepares a class.) And I have indeed learned a great deal. The book has both challenged and comforted me.

I am challenged because I see my need for the disciplines. I see now that, in order to continue to grow spiritually, I have to engage in these slow, inefficient practices. I am encouraged because I have come to understand that, though I am inconsistent in regards to prayer and devotional reading, my life is not void of the practice of the disciplines. In other words, I'm not nearly as bad a Christian as I thought I was.

If you're in Columbus, come and learn with me and a few others what it means to be formed by the disciplines of the Spirit. Sunday at 9.

The Prophets

Tonight I taught probably my favorite e4 session--the one that covers the prophetical books. There's so much material in the prophets that we don't actually get into the content of the books. Instead, using the introduction of Abraham Heschel's brilliant book The Prophets, we work through the prophetic pathos and what it must have been like to be one of these people that stood between God and his people.

One of my favorite quotes from Heschel is this one:

The ultimate object and theme of his consciousness is God, of whom the prophet knows that above his judgment and above his anger stands his mercy.

In other words, yes God gets angry. Yes, he judges. But greater than that, standing behind and above it, is his mercy and lovingkindness. In the prophets, judgment and hope are two sides of the same coin. When God threatens destruction, he inevitably comes around to the promise of restoration.

He utters judgment not in the cold manner of a jurist reading a sentence, but rather in the heart-broken tones of one who has been made a cuckold of again and again. We hear him say, not "5 to 10 hard labor", but "I've loved you from the beginning! Why do you turn away from me? Don't you know those other gods are no gods at all?!"

The prophets reveal not a God of wrath but a God of love (who has a very good reason to be angry). We see not the cold, abusive father, but the jilted husband, the one who trusted over and over, only to be made sport of by his adulterous bride. What's most remarkable about the prophets is not that God judged his people and sent them away into exile, but that he sent them thousands of messengers and gave them hundreds of years to turn back to him.

And you thought this "God is love" stuff started in the New Testament...