Acts of Sabotage

In Luke 7.11-17, Jesus raises a widow's son from death. Verse 13 uses the word "compassion" to describe Jesus' reaction to the situation. That word in Greek (esplagnisthe) has a different force than it does in English. The closest translation of the feeling would be something like, "gut wrenching", a reaction that would produce an involuntary cry and then motivate a person to action. This is the same word that Luke will use a little later in chapter 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan, to indicate the Samaritan's reaction when he found the Jew beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, and in Luke 15 (the story of the Prodigals) to indicate the father's reaction when he saw his son coming home.

It's interesting to me that the word is so often used to describe Jesus' reaction to the excluded, the marginalized and the alienated. See, legalism wasn't the big issue in first century Judaism. The average first century Jewish person understood perfectly well that it was God's grace which saved him/her, not strict adherence to Torah. The issue was the exclusionary use of Torah, the fact that it was widely viewed as the identity badge necessary to be recognized as a follower of YHWH, one who would be included in his kingdom when he ended the exile and established it on earth. Paul will spend his entire later career arguing against this very idea, that the Jewish Christians have some advantage over the Gentile Christians because the Jews were the recipients of Torah (see Romans 8-10). In other words, the problem wasn't legalism, it was exclusivity, which in God's eyes was an issue of injustice.

So, back to Luke. At first glance, it seems like Jesus just feels bad for a widow who's lost her only son. It's certainly not less than that, but it's much more. Left without any male relations, a woman would have been left without recourse in first century Jewish culture. She would have been pushed to the outside, left to die by her own people very much like the Jew in the story of the Good Samaritan. By raising her son, Jesus restores her as well. This healing is at the same time an act of inclusive justice.

The healing stories aren't just nice tales about what a great miracle-worker Jesus was. They aren't there simply to reinforce his divinity or prop up his Messiahship. That's part of it, but only part. They are violent attacks against systemic injustice and exclusivity that marginalizes those God came to rescue to begin with. They are acts of sabotage, designed to bring the ruler of this world to heel. They are the underground railroad, through which Jesus smuggles the left-out into his kingdom.

The intolerable are not simply tolerated; they are loved in transforming ways by the Messiah, Jesus.

The Radical Middle

In Mark 8.15 Jesus cautions his disciples to "beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod." This is one of those verses that's positively dense with meaning, but only if the reader understands the background.

On one hand you have the Pharisees, the radicalized religious elite, who advocated the violent overthrow of Rome (or any other foreign oppressor). They were zealots in the tradition of the Hasmonean rebels, who had driven the Selucids out of Israel a couple of centuries before. Much smaller in number than the Saducees, the Pharisees were in many ways the heroes of the Jewish people and so wielded political power disproportionate to their size. You can imagine their reaction to Jesus, who spoke against their policies of exclusion and zealous violence, who insisted that they were accomplishing precisely the opposite of the mission God had intended from the beginning for Israel: to be a light to the nations; to draw the Gentile (yes, even the oppressor) to worship of YHWH, the one true God. The Pharisees were shepherds who had lost their sheep.

On the other side we have Herod (or the Herodians, depending on your translation). Herod was a Jew (Hellenized to a fault, but still a Jew), supposedly descended from the discredited priesthood which had merged with the monarchy many generations before. That was bad enough, but he had also been installed by Rome as a harmless, controllable regent with a viable pedigree. Herod represented everything a good Jew (particularly a Pharisee) despised. He was a morally corrupt and religiously compromised political puppet of the Roman oppressors. Worse still, Herod seems to have considered himself something of a messianic figure, a fact which repelled the Pharisees still further. He even printed his own money, a coin emblazoned with the image of a reed (now does Matt 11.7 and its Lk 7.24 parallel make more sense?). So, we have radical zealotry on one hand and religio-political corruption on the other.

See how helpful the historical-cultural background is? If you understand what's going on, you'll understand that Jesus is teaching about something we talk about a lot in the Vineyard Church: the Radical Middle. He's telling them that neither of those options is acceptable, and that both movements, small as they may have been, would be rejected by God and come to a bad end. Instead, the true people of God were to reject those polarizing options and follow Jesus instead. They were to, "repent and believe the good news (gospel)" (Mk 1.15). So it is with us; we are called to reject both religious elitism and moral corruption. We are called to leave off with our agendas and take Jesus for his. We are to follow the way of love, compassion and inclusion. We are to share in his passion, walking the road of suffering, renewal and hope. We are called to walk a narrow road along the ridgeline, avoiding the chasms of radicalism falling off to either side.

The radical middle is the new counter-culture, an irony which should not be missed. Let anyone with ears to hear listen (Mk. 1.23).

One Obligation

Each of us has one obligation to God: to make the best of the life he gives as it is given. This assumes of course that we are pursuing his will and not simply indulging every whim. If self-centeredness is the rule, then our only obligation is to ourselves, to self-gratification and to making the best of what we find there. That, as C.S. Lewis puts it, is the best description of hell I can think of.

If we profess to live by God's will then we must trust that he has given us each what he intended that we should have today, and that is by definition his best for us. A monk has time, silence and brotherhoood. I have a marriage, a family and a church. There is no use turning aside those gifts and seeking what the monk has; I must find peace, joy and contentment where it lies: in my own circumstances and not another's.

The challenge? Can I find God in the workaday minutiae? Can I experience him in the utterly commonplace? In this my challenge is the same as the monastatic's: consecrate each activity as it comes, accept each gift with a thankful heart and live my vocation as a gift from his hand. It is to will one thing at a time.

Traitors and Porn Stars

In Mark 2.13 Jesus calls Levi to follow him. That wouldn't be particularly interesting but for the fact that Levi was a Jewish tax collector. Jesus was well-known for eating with sinners and tax collectors; it is well attested both biblically (found repeatedly in all three Synoptic Gospels) and in other, extra-biblical sources like Josephus. It's also fairly well-known that in so doing Jesus made the statement that they were his people, equal to him and accepted by him in every sense.

Likewise, it's fairly common knowledge that these were the worst people possible to a 1st century Jew. They were traitors in one case, porn stars on the other. In those two groups you have both a betrayal of the deepest nationalist and religious sensibilities (as if there were a difference at the time) and the lowest sort of moral degradation conceivable; and Jesus accepts them as equals. Certainly that's shocking enough, but in this case Jesus calls Levi to his inner circle, the disciples who would represent the new Israel, who would do by following Christ what Israel did not do under the Law. This is beyond shocking. This is Robert Hanssen, infamous FBI traitor, on the board of elders. This is Jenna Jameson (don't look that up) serving on staff as the Kids' Pastor.

Now with Levi, called to be one of the Twelve, we have someone who by necessity leaves behind his former vocation; he is not both disciple and tax collector at the same time. But then, Jesus called all of the Twelve to leave behind what they were and accept "disciple" as their primary identity. Tax collector or fisherman, traitor or porn star, all are accepted on an equal basis: they recognize Jesus for who he is and then re-organize their priorities around him. It doesn't matter who they are or what they've done.

Follow me. Leave your agenda and take me for mine. That's all Jesus ever asks of anyone.

Mustard Seed Messiah

Matthew 27 is the latter half of the passion narrative. Verses 39-44 tells the story of the way Jesus was derided by many who watched him die. They were Jews of course, who had very specific expectations for a person they would call "Messiah". Jesus didn't meet any of them, and his death by crucifixion verified all of their doubts (don't miss the irony: the crucifixion that they thought was their vindication turned out to be Jesus' vindication, his installment as Messiah).

For a messianic figure, crucifixion was always the end of the road. That's where they always ended up...Jesus wasn't the only one. He was one of many such figures who all ended the same way. In other words, Jesus' humiliating death and the hands of the Pagan oppressors was the indication that Israel would have to wait a little longer for their Messiah.

Of course, that's because their expectations were wrong. When you're looking for a mouse, you're going to ignore every elephant that walks by, no matter how interesting they may be. They expected all of Israel to endure ho peirasmos, "the time of trial", not just one man. They expected all of Israel to experience anastasis, "the resurrection", not just one man. Those were two of the the signs of the return of YHWH to liberate and exalt his faithful people. Israel had no framework for a crucified and resurrected Son of God who would inaugurate a Kingdom that is both now and not yet.

As Jesus warned by way of parable, the Kingdom came in a way that they didn't expect, like a mustard seed or a pinch of yeast. The Kingdom comes in small packages with tremendous potential...in us, to say it another way.

Or maybe in a little church with 60 people in it, in a small suburb in Coastal Georgia...

A Fair Wage

As most of you know already, I'm not a rigid predeterminist. In other words, I don't think that God has predetermined a certain number of people for eternity with him while creating all the rest for eternity in hell for his glory. I've yet to find a good biblical argument for that idea, one that uses the whole biblical witness in context, but the arguments keep coming anyhow. The passages I see pressed into service most often are parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20, and Romans 9.

Matthew 20.15

"Am I not allowed to do what what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

The assertion goes: "Ah ha! See! God is sovereign, choosing to do what he will no matter what our ideas of fairness."

In the parable in Matthew 20, the master goes out and hires multiple groups of laborers, each of which gets the same wage no matter when during the day the master hired him. If the laborer worked all day he got a day's wage. If he worked the last two hours he got a day's wage. People almost always miss a couple of critical details: first, at the end, the all-day laborers aren't asking that the master pay the two-hour laborers less than them; they're asking they the master pay them more than he agreed on for a day's labor. As if that weren't enough, what shocks them more is not the sense of exclusiveness that we draw from the passage, but his radical, unfair inclusiveness. The master doesn't explain his actions, and he doesn't have to. He gave the full-day workers exactly what he told them he would. It's his business if he chooses to do the same with everyone. The Jewish audience was offended at the inclusiveness of Jesus' message. They were the people of the covenant, those YHWH entrusted with Torah; why should anyone else get the same reward?

Romans 9.13

"Jacob I loved

but I have hated Esau."

Romans 9.15

"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,

and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

The assertion usually goes like this: "who are we to argue? If God seems unjust in electing one person over another, then we simply have to accept it. He's God. He can do what he wants."

The passage from Romans is part of a more extended argument by Paul wherein he covers several topics, one of which is Judaism's assumption that they have a special place in the Kingdom of God as God's covenant people, those to whom he entrusted Torah. Paul replies with a resounding "no", to which the response is predictable. They cry loudly and slowly, "that's not fair!" Romans 9 is the response to that. The inclusion of the Gentile on the same basis of faith is not an indication that anything was wrong; indeed it was the point from the beginning. Besides, as God arbitrarily elected Israel, so he has arbitrarily elected the Gentiles in addition now. This is the reality behind the scripture Paul quotes in vss. 13 and 15 (Mal 1.2-3 and Ex 33.19). Jacob was the younger brother. By right he had no claim to the birthright; he even came by it by foul means, but he was God's "elect" as it were. If you read through the rest of Romans 9, 10 and 11 you'll see that Paul maintains this assertion in a more extended way throughout. Yes, the Gentile is on a par with the Jew now, but fear not; God has not forgotten his covenant people.

Note this about both passages: while we want to use both to support exclusive predestination, using them to defend the justice of unconditional election and limited atonement, the actual argument each encounters is that God is unjust because he is more inclusive than the audience wanted him to be. It's the same point we find in Luke 15. The Pharisees are cast in the role of the elder brother, resentful of his father's inclusive, forgiving love. Also note that, while Paul brings the Gentiles into the mix, Jesus really doesn't. He's talking about "good" Jews versus "bad" Jews. He's telling the people who consider themselves "in" that they may very well be "last" while those on the "out" may very well be "first". The sinners and tax collectors are getting in before the really good Jews. Uh oh.

God's love is scandalous. It's unfair. In includes all the wrong people. It searches out and includes those who are most foreign to it. God is wasteful and extravagant (prodigal) in his love, giving it without scruple to the worst of us, saving and transforming every single person regardless of background as they kneel before the cross in faith and humility...and he cares nothing for how that makes the rest of us feel. We'll just have to trust him.

Don't Drink it...

As a pastor one of the things I walk through the most with people is the issue of forgiveness. It's a fact of our fallennes and evidence of the fallen world. We sin against each other all the time, subtly and obviously, consciously and unconsciously. We're always suffering in one way or another, and suffering people are rarely at their best.

The thing is, there's this myth that's propagated in the Christian community. The myth starts at the parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt 18.23-35), which is interpreted to mean something like, "See! You *have* to forgive or God won't forgive you." This idea is typically asserted by either the one who has sinned as a way of convincing the sinned-against that he/she *has* to forgive no matter what the internal and external circumstances, or by well-meaning counselors who are ignorant of how people actually work and the whole context of the teaching on forgiveness.

Here's are some facts of life where forgiveness is concerned:

• Forgiveness is a transaction between two people, not a one-sided personal legal fiction.
• Forgiveness is a process culminating in redemption.
• Forgiveness is not for the one who sinned against us; it's God's gift to us, the sinned-against.

Here's how Matthew 18 actually works. It starts with the process in Matthew 18.15-17.

• Go and point out the injury in a clear way that respects the bond between you.
• If that doesn't resolve it, involve a couple more people in a sort of mediation relationship. Sometimes an offense between two people can make it hard to resolve the issue; bringing in another person or two who know and love you both can be critical in overcoming jadedness that keeps people apart.
• If that doesn't work, then more radical action is required. Obviously, in 2010 standing up in front of the entire church and airing dirty laundry isn't appropriate or helpful. That will probably drive you further apart. I think the passage assumes that the person has continued to sin against you, in which case we do what Paul recommends (with this teaching in mind I'm sure) in 1 Cor 6: take it before a spiritual authority, be that a pastor, home group leader or an elder. Importantly, the point is reconciliation, not humiliation or payback.
• If that doesn't work, then the person has clearly chosen a broken relationship with you. You cannot share a forgiveness transaction with a person who is unrepentant. Not even God can do that. Verses 18-20 provide the clue: they are eschatological in nature. The point is that there is a heavenly dimension to earthly actions; what we do here has eternal implications. The unrepentant person now stands liable for judgment by God since he/she has chosen broken relationship with the one he/she has sinned against.

So much for the process. If we assume that that's been done, THEN we proceed to verses 21-22, when Peter asks the question, "how many times should I follow this process?" Jesus answer, whether your bible reads "seventy times seven" or "seventy seven", means "a lot more than you probably want to". Here we come full circle, back to verses 23-35. The key here is the assumption that the process has been followed. You have to follow the logical development of the passage and not jump to conclusions by starting at the end. Jesus is not teaching anyone to forgive an unrepentant person, something that is not possible for any being anywhere.

The whole biblical witness with respect to forgiveness is simply that we should be people who default toward reconciliation and not resentment. When injured our first instinct should be to proceed humbly toward restored relationship, and not fall back into bitterness and grudge holding. We should be people who easily accept a sincere apology and meaningful repentance and not people who set the bar so high that no one will ever get over it, and for whom no bar is ever set so low that we won't trip over it.

After all, if we're expecting something more than a sincere apology and meaningful repentance, we will always be disappointed. We must beware lest in our acrimony we back others into corners from which the only escape is humiliating prostration. We must understand that that kind of behavior is at least as evil and aggressive as the original offense was. Repentance procured under those conditions is about as useful as information gathered by torture. Spiritually, even if you get what you want (an apology) YOU will be liable to God along with the offender. Practically speaking, it's simply ineffective; people backed into corners will say and do things they would normally never say and do because the issue is now not the original injury, but their honor.

New Cloaks and New Wineskins

In Matthew 11.14-17 Jesus answers a question about why his disciples aren't fasting when lots of others are. I know that his answer has to do with a re-working of traditional Jewish expectations about the Messiah and the end of the exile. Jesus is saying that fasting is for those who still consider themselves to be in exile. The further claim, of course, is that the exile is over for those who follow him, that there's a new way of being Israel. Fasting will still have a place, but not the place it used to have, as a commemoration that all was not well, that the exile was not over, that Israel awaited a hope yet to be fulfilled.

On the other hand, a related theme always seems to leap out of this passage at me. The question was about fasting; Jesus answer is about patches and old wine on old, damaged cloaks and old, weak wineskins. Note that in both cases we're talking about normal wear and tear. Nothing unusual here. Cloaks tear in the course of fulfilling their function. Wineskins erode because of the acid content of wine. The point is, this kind of wear and tear is a normal part of life in the kingdom of God and neither patches nor new wine are solutions to the problem. As a matter of fact, they just make the existing problem worse. This is a great example of something I say a lot at my church: Jesus doesn't stop at the symptoms, but goes deep, all the way to the real problem. What's needed is not a patch or new wine, but an entirely new cloak or a brand new wineskin. The old ones are no longer serviceable.

This is what fasting, or any spiritual discipline, is about: getting deeper than the God-eclipsing behavior that is the symptom of the real problem. Spiritual disciplines are all about rejecting patches and new wine, and instead placing ourselves before God to receive new cloaks and new wineskins. This is something God has to do from the inside out; this is not a matter of altering external behavior or simply changing a habit. God must change who we are; he must address the desires that motivate our behavior.

Spiritual disciplines are about solving problems and rejecting temporary fixes. To quote Thomas Merton:

"To desire a spiritual life is, thus, to desire discipline. Otherwise our desire is an illusion...if we are not strict with ourselves, our own flesh will soon deceive us. If we do not command ourselves to pray and do penance at certain definite times, and make up our minds to keep our resolutions in spite of notable inconvenience and difficulty, we will quickly be deluded by our own excuses and let ourselves be led away by weakness and caprice." (pg. 117, Asceticism and Sacrifice, No Man is an Island)

scylla and charybdis.

I'm always a little puzzled by Matthew 6. It's always an effort to see beyond the "teacher of timeless wisdom" aspect, which just isn't very credible given the setting the book is written from. It's hard to take off my 21st century American glasses and put on 1st century Palestinian ones, but here goes.

The message is subversive, that much is certain. He's telling his Jewish peasant audience not to be like the zealots who are leading them into a sure and disastrous confrontation with Rome, but he's doing this by addressing the way they lead their daily lives verses the way they see the zealots lead theirs. The zealots (the Pharisees, broadly conceived) are the hypocrites who stand in the synagogue (vss. 2, 5, and by extension, 16). They wear their religion as an exclusionary badge that reads "we hate the Romans", and do everything out in the open to drive the dagger deeper. It is intentional provocation that will bear bloody fruit just 40 years or so later. Neither are they to be like the pagans (Gentiles), adopting their practices like they did before the exile, as though God had given Israel no other way.

Instead, they are to leave off with those polar agendas and take Jesus for his. they are to be Israel, but a NEW Israel, the Israel that God had intended all along. They were modfy their behavior to reflect a new heart (Jer 31.31-34). They were to trust YHWH to provide for them as he promised to in the covenant (vss. 25-34) rather than trusting in revolution on one hand or on capitulation to paganism on the other. However, they were also not to participate in a wholesale abandonment of the covenant in favor of paganism. That was just another variety of "wrong".

So, we have a biblical scylla and charybdis: the religious elite who have misunderstood and misapplied the covenant, and who are following the powerful Jewish narrative of zealotry (the Macabees and the Hasmoneans of 100 years prior) as the solution to the "problem" of Rome (which was in turn connected with the exile...the Messiah would overturn the Gentile oppressors as one of the signs of the end of the exile), OR the way of paganism. Paganism amounted to a throughgoing abandonment of covenant, and by extension, of YHWH himself. This, of course, is what Israel believes landed her in exile to begin with, so she was understandably loathe to take up that agenda again. Both options came with lengthy and powerful supporting narratives and both involved some of the most dominant symbols in 1st century Judaism (Torah, Temple, covenant and exile). There would have been strong incentives and aversions. The effusive reaction of the Jews on both sides becomes understandable in that context.

In the end, the message from Jesus is as it always: "Repent and believe in me". When Josephus uses that same phrase in Greek, right at the same time that the first gospel was being circulated (AD65 or so), it meant "Abandon your agenda and take me for mine." That is the core of the gospel message, around which the rest is organized.

Resistance.

The word “resistance” in the bible is so much more forceful than it is in English. This is interesting when Jesus uses it the gospels (“do not ‘resist’ an evil person…” Matt 5:38; is Jesus warning Israel not to resist Rome?), but it is particularly interesting in the context of our responsibility to resist sin. The fact is, the verb “to resist” (antistenai, antistenai) is almost a technical term for resistance of a military sort (N.T. Wright). When Josephus uses it (just 30 years after the life of Christ) he means “violent struggle” 15 out of 17 times (Wars of the Jews). So, at the very least the word implies a violent struggle rather than passive resistance. Consider James 4.7-10:

Submit yourselves then, to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded

I could write another entire article on the beautiful, essential Jewishness of this short passage, about the way James references the Psalms, Wisdom literature and the prophets all in the space of these few lines. These three verses are positively pregnant with meaning. The verb “resist” in vs. 7 is a conjugate of antistenai; James envisions the people he’s writing to as being engaged in a violent struggle with sin, which is actually comforting considering the mild chewing out he’s just given them in the first three chapters.

This is not supposed to be easy. Struggling with sin, violently resisting it, is not an indication that anything is wrong. On the contrary, the opposite is true: if you’re not struggling, it’s not because you’re better than those who are; it’s likely that you’ve given up.

In the Old Testament, Jacob wrestles with an angel, refusing to let go until the angel gives him a new name, which is another way of asking for a brand new start. Jacob needed that. We usually miss half the point of the story. Jacob walks away with a new name…and a limp. John Wimber, one of the founding Pastors of the Vineyard Family of Churches was thinking of this when he said, “Never trust a leader without a limp.”

Hell

For some reason or other I’ve had a lot of conversations about hell lately. I don’t know why. It seems to be one of those topics that spring up unexpectedly, like little conversational weeds growing out of the sidewalk. It’s one of those subjects that pastors dread, innocently positing as genuine curiosity what is really a Trojan horse of litmus test of orthodoxy. Worse yet, much of what is so confidently asserted from pulpits or axiomatically lobbed out in TV sound bites has only a passing relationship to what scripture has to say (which is admittedly very little) or what can be inferred rationally by reading between the lines.

Scripture is largely silent on the topic of hell, which seems strange from the standpoint of Christianity’s near-obsession with it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Christianity presented as little more than a much better alternative to eternal suffering. Love, justice, mercy, grace and free pardon all take a back seat to the necessity of avoiding damnation, which must be done no matter what else you do. When scripture talks about the concept we know as “hell”, it typically uses one of two words as a description:

Gehenna (Josh 15.8, 18.6, 2 Chron 28.3, Is 30.33 [by inference, “the burning place”], 66.24 [cited by Jesus in Mark], Matt 5.22, 5.29, 5.30, 10.28, 18.9, 23.15, 23.33, Mark 9.43, 9.45, 9.47, Luke 12.5, James 3.6) can be used to describe one of several things. As a physical location it refers the Valley of Hinnom (the literal meaning of the Hebrew Ge Hinom) south of Jerusalem, which was reputedly the place where pagans sacrificed their children to Moloch (or whatever other Canaanite god was in vogue at the time). Later the Valley of Hinnom purportedly became a gigantic, smoldering garbage heap. In addition to the ordinary refuse that would have been part and parcel of a 1^st century garbage dump, supposedly the unclean dead, those who didn’t warrant life in the “bosom of Abraham” were disposed of here. This would include those unfortunate Jews who died of certain diseases (especially those that resulted in skin disorders or obvious bleeding), execution for serious Torah violation or, heaven forbid, crucifixion by the Romans. You can imagine the horror of a place like this; the stench alone would make the area uninhabitable for miles around. Now imagine that you’re a Jew during that time period. It’s hard enough to maintain an adequate level of ritual purity under ordinary conditions; a Jew would not be permitted to touch even the dead who died pure. Gehenna would be the worst place you could possibly think of. The level of uncleanness would mean eternal separation from God, who could never have been imagined to inhabit a place like Gehenna. Those whose bodies were thrown onto the trash heap were an awful, visible reminder of the stakes of Torah observance. In other words, a person who was careless in terms of Torah might very well have been asked the question, “you don’t want to wind up in Gehenna do you?”

Sheol (Dt 32.22, Ps 86.13, Gen 37.35, 42.38, 44.29, 44.31, 1 Sam 2.6, 1 Kg 2.6) is a place of separation from YHWH. It is cold and distant, like the surface of the moon from which extraction is impossible. It is “outer darkness”. This word can also be translated “death” or “the grave”, roughly the equivalent of the Greek concept of Tartarus. No matter what way you translate the word, the strong inference is that Sheol is a place that was never meant for human beings to begin with. It’s a place for the dead, not for YHWH’s vindicated covenant people.

So, right off the bat I think we’re on firm ground both biblically and rationally to say the following:

1. Hell is a place of total separation from God, from each other and from God’s creation from which there is no escape. C.S. Lewis was right to say, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked from the inside” (The Problem of Pain, my italics and emphasis).
2. Hell was never made for human beings to begin with. An individual who winds up there no longer reflects the image of God in any meaningful way.

The view of hell that is authoritatively asserted, that of a physical locale wherein the damned are tortured in flames, bears little resemblance to scripture’s image. The closest it comes is Gehenna, but one must realize that the point is not rigid literalism; the point is that Gehenna is the worst thing Jesus (or anyone else in 1^st Century Judaism) could imagine. If one could pick a place not to spend eternity, that would be it. One might press into service the lake of fire from Revelation 20.15, but that would force the literal interpretation of that one image from the midst what is, by all accounts, a highly figurative (and highly subversive) writing. Consequently the reader would be forced for the sake of consistency to adopt a similarly rigid literalism for the rest of Revelation, which lands you in all sorts of exegetical hot water. No – it’s quite simply the case that the bible doesn’t intend for us to understand hell that way.

The hell that most of us imagine is almost entirely a figment of the medieval cultural imagination, which was itself an outgrowth of the horrors of the Dark Ages, followed closely by the death of much of Europe by plague. Some of the oldest images of hell envision something like a torture chamber in middle of a beautiful castle, where the torments of the damned served as part of the reward for the redeemed. The first detailed literary picture of hell came from The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, written between 1308 and 1321AD. However, The Inferno was not then, and is not now, meant to be understood primarily as a detailed description of what hell might be like; The Inferno is a political diatribe, a polemical argument that took aim at the Italian monarchy, the corrupt church government and the legal system of the 14^th century. In terms of its take on punishment, the work is entirely a product of the medieval world-view, wherein when one insulted the honor of the king the consequences did not involve prison terms or community service. They involved horrific torture, then a slow, agonizing death by mutilation or burning in most cases. Furthermore, torture was not then what it is now. No one was tortured or mutilated in order to obtain information (though it was useful in obtaining confessions), nor was torture primarily used as a deterrent to other would-be brigands, rebels or what have you. Torture was a deeply symbolic activity in which the body of the victim was destroyed methodically as a means of robbing them of honor, which was symbolically then restored to the king. The body became so unrecognizable that it was no longer human; that is to say, no longer an object of compassion, and possibly not recognizable in the after life. To put it another way, one received on earth what one could expect in the hereafter. This is the image of hell that was overwhelmingly accepted at the time of the Reformation in 1517AD, and which was consequently received as doctrinal truth from that time forward. The important thing to note is that it is more a function of the culture of that day and age than it is an accurate description of the relevant scriptural and extra-biblical data.

If we take the scriptural data as a whole I think the most accurate description is the one N.T. Wright takes up in Surprised by Hope:

God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of the resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necessarily involve the elimination of all that distorts God’s good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures.

(SbH, N.T. Wright, pg. 179)

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings to so continue down this road…that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God’s good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber in the palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite in themselves or others the nature sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal.

(SbH, N.T. Wright, pg. 183)

I think that description does justice to the texts and preserves intact for all a strong understanding of God’s goodness, his justice and his mercy. In The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis presents hell as an expression of God’s justice, which is in turn an expression of his love, but when confronted with the idea that God casts his sinful creatures into hell, Lewis reacts strongly. God doesn’t send anyone to hell. We do that all by ourselves, by worshiping what is not him and subsequently becoming like what we worship. In The Great Divorce Lewis says:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

(The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis)

Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell.

(The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis)

There is one last thing that, as a Pastor, bothers me more than anything else where this subject is concerned. Disturbingly, though the idea of hell should arouse horror in the heart of every Christian, who should desire most ardently of all people that hell were empty, I often notice in them a rather nasty sense of perverse glee when the topic comes up. The evil people, the ones who’ve always caused so much trouble and consternation, will receive their comeuppance. Finally, like schoolyard children we will witness the punishment of the bullies, reveling in their tears while our Father dries ours. The suffering of the damned will be the vindication of the blessed, to say it another way. One must be careful traveling down this road I think, as it is not properly Christian thought at all, but indulgent vindictiveness. If we find ourselves in this state, we must realize that it is not divine justice we seek, but vulgar, self-righteous vengeance. Our Lord impresses upon us the importance of forgiveness for this very reason: that we should not become as evil as those we condemn and so share in their fate, now or in the end.

The longer I'm a pastor, the more clearly I see that the Reformation is not over yet. The deep divisions between the One Holy Church and her rebellious offspring have never completely healed, and like all pain that is deferred it has become simmering resentment that is the black background to current doctrinal and theological debates, no one of which would normally cause such lingering vitriol. It's just like a bad marriage where every argument accesses a deep well of hot resentment, and subsequently escalates into World War III. Every hill worthy to die on; no issue is too small that there isn't space to plant a new flag.

So it is with the Church, and books of the bible like James show this more plainly than others. James is by all accounts a very challenging book; it leaves aside complex theology and engages the difficulties of Christian ethics, which formed very early in the history of God's people (within 15 years of the life of Christ). It brings up a topic which has been hotly contended since the Reformation: how does what we do figure into this thing? Before the Reformation works played prominently not just in our growth but in the fact of salvation itself. Certainly that latter theological/doctrinal move was not appropriate given the scriptural data we have available, but experience, tradition and reason seemed to deem it necessary. However, the Reformers' answer was to banish works to the barren wilderness of total irrelevance, resulting in doctrines which are a distortion of that same scriptural data (eternal security, for example).

Certainly that was, and is, an over reaction, a fact which the book of James makes very clear. What we do matters a great deal, not in terms of securing grace or even maintaining it (necessarily), but it terms of becoming the new human beings that God has intended since the Fall. God's grace is mediated to us by his love alone as an internal work, but the Kingdom of God is mediated to the world by virtue of what that grace impels us to do. In other words, though our eternal lives may not depend on what we do, the eternal lives of others certainly may.

Secondly, there have always been those religious people who carry all of the right identity markers; outwardly they clothe themselves lavishly in all the right values and when tested can articulate them all with ornate Christian vernacular. Outwardly they are pious and devout; inwardly they are a study in conflict, contradiction and competition that poison the headwaters of love and render useless whatever correct theology or doctrine they might engage.

These are the critical issues of the book of James, which challenges any attempt to detach belief from activity or vice verse. As our Lord makes clear in Matthew 22:37-40, each is evidence of the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

Enough.

There's been a lot of discussion about what's happening with the proposed mosque near ground zero in New York City. Actually, the word "discussion" is really a rather obvious euphemism for the low quality of discourse that's prevailed over the last several weeks, culminating in a proposed Koran burning in reprisal. This seemed like a good time, on the day before the 9th anniversary of 9/11, to write about this. First, a quick word about the invective, the vitriol and the thinly veiled bigotry I hear just about every day now:

ENOUGH.

Many of the people I hear engaging in this kind of nasty rhetoric are the same ones who would be first in line to chastise a fellow Christian for cursing by pressing into service Paul's injunction to the Ephesians: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths." (Eph 4:29). You know what's really ironic? Paul wrote this letter to the church in Ephesus to address the problem of the widening racial/social gap between the Jewish Christians and the newer Gentile converts or those who were headed in that direction. The letter is all about erasing (or at least blurring) the ethnic lines that were dividing them because God's love is for EVERYONE who will avail him/herself of it. He says the same things in Galatians 3:28 and in Romans 10:12. In other words, it's not about swearing; it's about not doing exactly what many people are now doing: filling their speech and their interactions with what amounts to nothing more than racial or ethnic bigotry. The only thing the vast majority of Muslims in the world have in common with the attackers on 9/11 is their religious beliefs and ethnicity.

STOP.

First and foremost, as Christians, we are called to love without judgment. That includes the very men who flew the plans on 9/11. I realize that's a tall order for most people, including me, but we can start somewhere easier. How about our Muslim friends, neighbors, co-workers or acquaintances? Furthermore, as Christians we should know that we have an Enemy and it's not Islam. Our Enemy would like nothing better than to distract us from engaging others with God's love, splitting us up so as to make us easier targets. We are called to BE Jesus to Islam, not to judge it, find it wanting and pour out our hatred on it. The Christians who are doing that are committing an act that's at least as hostile as the men who planned and executed the attacks. If we fly the black flag of hatred over our lives then the Enemy has won. He's achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve. Don't be fooled; if you can hate this entire ethnic group, you can hate any of them. There will always be a reason because of the pervasively degenerative effects of sin. Besides, isn't Christianity supposed to be attractional? Isn't it God's kindness that leads to repentance? If God, who could do it any way he wanted, does it that way, do you think it's a good idea for us to behave differently? If the bible is clear on one aspect of Christian behavior it is that it should be characterized by love and by mercy, which are the fruit of the Tree of Life.

Even putting Christianity entirely aside, as a former soldier, I can tell you this with great assurance: burning Korans and spewing hate-speech is not going to help the men and women who are currently serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. You're not being a patriot. You're making their jobs harder and more dangerous. You're deepening the nationalist resentment and prolonging and intensifying the violence. This is bad enough...please don't make it worse by intentionally escalating the tension. Also remember that the very liberty that guarantees Christian freedom also guarantees Muslim freedom. If we start digging away at the ground underneath Islam, we will certainly find that we have eroded the ground underneath Christianity. I know this is hard for some to hear, but this is not a Christian nation. This is a nation where religious pluralism is the rule and the law. That is the way the Founding Fathers set things up. The reasons were many and varied, but a quick survey of the last several thousand years of history will make this abundantly clear: you don't want a state-sponsored religion. In every nation where that has been the case the result has been persecution of one minority or another at best, and genocide at worst.

I was serving in the military on Tuesday, the 11th of September 2001. I served for two years after that, though my term of service should have ended in March of 2002. I know the idea of a mosque so close to ground zero seems like it's in poor taste because of the specific nature of the attacks. I understand the visceral reaction. However, the foundational tenet of Christian ethics is the idea that no feeling has a right to be indulged simply because it exists. We examine everything in the light of Jesus' finished work and the kingdom to come, and then choose our behavior accordingly. Jesus has called us to do lots of things that seem unnatural; loving those who seem to hate us is just one of them. The acquisition of any new habit or behavior takes an inordinate amount of energy and concentration. It will be difficult, but why not start here? We have to start somewhere.

"How can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." - Matthew 12:34

"As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man." - Proverbs 27:19

"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear." - Ephesians 4:29

Like us in every way...

"...but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."

- Hebrews 4:15

It's funny what we do with that word "tested". It comes from the Greek word periasmos (in the perfect tense in this particular case, pepeirasmenon), which can indeed mean "tested", but I think more properly means "tempted" in these kinds of contexts. So, a re-reading would be:

"...but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

The word "sin" at the end is held in tension with the word "tempted", which makes much more sense than the word "tested". Jesus was tempted just like we are, but he didn't sin. That's exactly the point of the difficultly I think. We just can't quite bring ourselves to confess that Jesus was tempted in exactly the same way that we are because we can't get through it without sin. We can't imagine Jesus doing it either because that creates two more problems: on one hand, we want him to be exactly like us in essence, which creates skepticism about his sinlessness. On the other hand we want him to be more than we are (divine), which means that he's not really human. It's a knife that cuts both ways.

It's a false dilemma though. We do, in fact, confess that Jesus was "like us in every way except for sin" (Fourth Eucharistic Prayer), and that he was fully man and fully God "without confusion, without change, without division (and) without separation " (the Chalcedonian Creed). Theologically all we're really saying is that Jesus was perfect; in practical terms that simply means that he had a perfect will that could choose perfect obedience, even if that meant death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-11).

The important thing for us to realize is this: he was the first of a new humanity. Some day we will all be able to obey God perfectly because we will all be like Jesus, who was the firstborn of a new family (Romans 8:29). More to the point, the context of Hebrews 4 has to do with Jesus the new High Priest of an order older than that connected with the Exodus and the Law. He is our stand-in, the One who intercedes on our behalf precisely because he knows what we have to work with. He knows our temptation and so can sympathize, but his perfection allows his to do something about it. He is the man with one foot on the bank of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity; his sinlessness is what makes him useful to us, and in his humanity he assumes every part of us so that he can atone for it.

He is our final High Priest. He is our peace with God.

Suffer Well

"Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." - Hebrews 4:16

"...faith knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good." - Thomas Merton, "The Word of the Cross"

As a Pastor, I'm often the one a person calls when he/she needs to come to terms with pain. My experience has been that almost everyone can countenance the idea of suffering that has a clear goal; pain experienced while recovering from surgery, for instance. It's the body's way of healing itself; it is not an indication that anything is wrong. It's purposeless, random suffering that creates the most actual pain which leads to the theological dilemmas. Though we can talk about all the reasons why such suffering can and should exists while God is still omnipotent and good, that's not usually very helpful. There are many more times than not that there is no help for it. It's really going to hurt and probably for a while because pain is not a part of the problem; it is part of the solution.

It's at this point, that one reaches a fork in the road. Not all suffering is holy; as a matter of fact, nothing becomes unholy so easily as suffering. Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Edurance alone, as though Christianity were a cult of suffering, is no consecration. Suffering is consecrated by faith, not in suffering itself, but in God; in the end what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our pain but ourselves.

This is not to minimize the reality of evil or diminish the pain any one of us experiences in some patronizing way, as if "it's not really so bad" is God's answer to us when we cry out for relief. That is never the case. Suffering in and of itself is a product of the Fall and is of its own nature evil. God's desire is to ultimately end all suffering. Furthermore, there is no use in comparing our pain to another's pain, as though there were some formula with which it was possible all the suffering in the world to arrive at a "sum of all suffering" useful for the purpose of comparison. There is no "sum of all suffering" because there is no one who suffers it. Like the infinite, it is an idea, not a pragmatic reality.

This is the end-point I've reached after many years of wrestling with the hardest questions as a Pastor and as a fellow sufferer. It is not a pat answer, a fact that will be clear if you try to live as though you believe this. Ultimately, anything that causes us to seek God, and thus to find him (because he is found in the very act of seeking) is by definition "good". Suffering, then, becomes the good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are.

Simple Intention

The simple intention wills one thing, releasing the results of its labor completely to God, resting in him as each moment passes. It understands that there is no "perfect" and "permissable" will, for that is to say that God wills everything but only one of those things is "perfect". The simple intention understands that all of God's will is perfect, but that it has a choice to seek it or not. The simple intention knows that God may will several things all at the same time, all of them different but equal in perfection. This has no impact on divine sovereignty; it does not make us the arbiters of our own destinies as though we were our own gods. It is in fact the sovereignty of God that makes the choice possible at all. Our freedom is itself a proclamation of sovereignty. A simple intention holds itself open to hear the voice of God from many avenues, not just the inner voice. God speaks clearly through the most obvious means first, which usually consists of scripture, the church, our friends and our families. The Christian who fears missing the voice of God because it's too quiet to hear has missed something important: it is God's will for you to hear his voice. It is not intentionally hidden or unclear.

When we speak of the things God causes, permits or allows, we often employ the word "providence". Providence is a philosophical word. It is an abstraction. God is not abstract; he is our Father who loves us. His will is always an expression of his love. Our simple intention is an expression of obedience born of experience and trust. This is what St. Paul means when he says that God works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. We can trust that God's will can be perfect for everyone while remaining perfect for each of us.

Don't Pollute the Headwaters...

I've had a few questions on something I said during the message yesterday. I understand where the question is coming from, but I think it misunderstands a thing or two that I couldn't explain fully yesterday in the interest of brevity. Let me try to add some detail here.

First, a summary of what I said: if we get love wrong by attempting to "balance" God's ultimate revelation in Christ with other supposed revelations, divine characteristics or things that seem to compete with it (wrath, judgment and so on), then the gospel will become an evaluative tool, a framework for critical evaluation, a line of demarcation, a moral code or a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”. The gospel will become a line separating the “ins” from the “outs”. The glorious gift will become an impossible standard for self-evaluation, a sadistic means by which we assess whether we’re doing it right or doing it wrong, and we’ll judge everyone else by the same criteria. I said that, as you Pastor, if that's what you're getting out of your bible, then I'm taking your bible away from you because you're missing the point of it, and actually doing more harm than good.

The point of confusion was, since I'd also used passages FROM THE BIBLE in support of my assertion that Jesus is the face of God, the place where all the fullness of deity dwells, the divine Word of God and the revelation that supercedes all previous revelations, how would the person who's missing the point know to think anything differently? It's a good point. I caught myself in a rhetorical catch-22. So, for the sake of clarity, I'd never actually demand that you turn in your bible. What I'm saying is, you might be missing the point of it. Here's why:

Consider the Nile River. Though we usually think about it as an Egyptian body of water, it actually winds its way through nine countries, covering about 4,200 miles from its headwaters at Lake Victoria. The Nile has been one of the centers of civilization since the dawn of recorded history, the life-source of literally billions and billions of people and animals over the last 16,000 years or so. Now, let's say you take a billion tons of arsenic and dump it into Lake Victoria. It stands to reason that absolutely everything downriver, all the way to the Nile Delta in the Mediterranean Sea will probably die. In other words, if you poison the headwaters, everything else is screwed up.

I'm not saying that God is a fluffy marshmallow of love, who cares nothing for us except that we be "happy", whatever that means. I'm not saying that God's reaction to anything and everything we do is approval and joyous acceptance. That would not be love in any meaningful sense of the word; it would be the opposite, actually: apathy. God cannot be said to "love" us while caring nothing for our character or well-being. Conversely we cannot claim to love him while at the same time taking not the slightest notice of anything he says. Please...let's not get stuck on extremes here.

What I am saying is that we musn't follow rules and think that it's the same as loving God. It absolutely isn't. One can follow every single rule in the bible and never actually know or love God for a second (Matthew 25). On the other hand, we musn't engage in a lebertarian free-for-all while calling it "freedom" either. They are not the same thing at all. Don't unecessarily polarize the issue. Don't make it about "heaven" or "hell". Make it about God and what he has actually done in the finished work of the cross. When divinity wants to solve the issue of rebellion it looks like love. When God, who could do anything any way he wanted, wants to address the problem of sin it looks like forgiveness. When there is an infinit price to pay, our God, who has all the resources available in the universe, pays it on our behalf.

What overcomes a multitude of sins? LOVE. (1 Peter 4:8).

What casts out fear of judgment? PERFECT LOVE (1 John 4:18).

Why do have a hope that will never disappoint? Because God has poured LOVE into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

What does it mean to be "prefect" as God is perfect? LOVING COMPREHENSIVELY like he does (Matthew 5:43-48).

What triumphs over judgment? MERCY (James 2:13).

What are we to be rooted and established in? LOVE (Ephesians 3:17b).

What did God do when we were his enemies? He LOVED us in Christ (Romans 5:8).

How do we know that we've passed from life to death? We LOVE one another (1 John 4:14).

Why would God suffer for us? Because he LOVES everything he's created (John 3:16).

What is the ONE ingredient that makes spiritual gifts worth anything? LOVE (1 Corinthians 13).

What is Jesus commandment to us, equated with loving God? LOVING ONE ANOTHER (John 15:17, Matthew 22:37-39).

Love is the headwater from which flows everything else. Wrath, judgment, mercy and justice are all rivers fed by love. We pollute the headwater of love by trying to "balance" it with those other things (as though those things were anything other than expressions of love). Mercy without love becomes and arrogant and condescending "reaching down" instead of "reaching out". Justice is self-serving sectarianism without love. Wrath and judgment divorced from love are evil in the extreme. Trying to follow God without being rooted and established in love, which is the revelation of Christ in our hearts, is an exercise of empty rule-keeping and cruel, critical evaluation of self and others. It's as far removed from the point of the gospel as could possibly be.

I'll retract part of what I said yesterday. Don't put your bibles down...yet. Think about what you're doing with them though. Don't for a moment think that the enemy can't get at you from the pages of your bible. If when you read your bible you come away feeling like you're doing everything wrong, STOP. You don't have the LOVE part right yet. You don't understand yet the way God loves you, that everything he has done, is doing now and will do is motivated by love that can never stop while God remains God. Reconciliation, repentance, regeneration and restoration are all the result of drowning yourself in the headwaters of LOVE.

My job as your Pastor may be to hold your head under the water a little longer.

Contract vs. Covenant

God never works in contracts with us. He always works by covenant. Contracts are kept by continual evaluation and re-evaluation of the terms. We're always scrutinizing ourselves, others and even God to make sure everyone is living up to their end of the deal. If they're not, then we have to either tweak the contract or even tear it up and walk away because it's no good anymore if you're not getting what you want out of it. There is no love in a contract, though there might be some friendly formality that approximates it. There is only living up to the agreed terms.

Though there are stipulations in a covenant, they are not there to be lived up to; they are there to establish a relationship of love in a way that would not normally occur otherwise. No one scrutinizes the stipulations of the covenant to see if everybody is doing his/her part. The stipulations are supposed to be written on our hearts, not on paper. No one is faithful to a spouse because we're being obedient to the vow we made on our wedding day; we're faithful because we love our spouses. No one posts a list of the vows we made on our wedding day so we can check them off to see if we're doing all the right things or if our spouse is keeping them all. They point is that they be kept instinctively in love, not by obligation.

In the same way God is faithful because he loves us. Our faithfulness to God is supposed to be the same, not born out of obligation or worse yet, out of fear. This is not a contract. This is a love covenant written on warm, pliable flesh with our God who is determined to love us no matter what it costs him.

Tear up the contract and accept the covenant.

God as he is

Love is not a verb that God does; it is a noun that he is. God, who is all-powerful, can not cease to be love without ceasing to be God. It is *the* essential element of his nature.

I can anticipate the objection, "yes, God is love, BUT...what about holiness (or justice or mercy or wrath or forgiveness, etc.)?" The problem with this question is that it pits one divine characteristic against another, as though they were separate, discreet things, but they are not. Holiness, mercy, wrath and forgiveness proceed from God's love. This is how we end up with the schizophrenic god who loves with one hand and smites with the other, who takes our sin away on a cross but holds us to account for every misstep after that, who gives us freedom so that we can love him meaningfully but withholds that freedom at the same time, who tells us that he is just and good, but that he has destined millions and millions of people for hell for doing *exactly what he created them to do*. These are not apparent contradictions, they are in fact contradictory notions, which means that you can't rationally hold both of them at the same time. It's at this point that we retreat into "the mystery of God", as though it were a rug under which we sweep all our bad philosophy. We must not believe these things under the rubric of faith, accepting self-contradictory notions because "God can do anything". They are self-contradictory because they are not true.

If we get the love part wrong, everything else downstream of it gets screwed up. We end up living a quid pro quo life with God, whereby we give him our loyalty and obedience and he keeps us from going to hell and (hopefully) gives us a home in heaven when we die in return. This is the "contract" worldview. When we have this worldview then everything becomes a process of self-evaluation. How am I doing? Am I doing it right? Am I doing enough? What am I getting in return? Is it feeding me? Everything is a deal. Love is filtered through the lens of how it will benefit me. I become an expert evaluator of people (based on what the do, of course).

God works through covenant, not contract. The covenant worldview is other-centered. It's based on love, the central characteristic of which is knowing, intentional self-sacrifice. It is an act of the will which is aware of the probably cost. Covenant does not love because of something the beloved has or doesn't have or because of some character trait the beloved possesses; it loves because the beloved *is*, and so it is not conditioned by its environment, is not lessened by time or reduced by circumstances. There is no self-evaluation in the same way that we do not look at our eyes with our own eyeballs. They are not an apparatus for evaluating that; it is not what they do. So it is with covenant love. It is not an apparatus for self-evaluation. It is not what it does.

God tore up the contract on the cross. He entered into a unilateral covenant with us just like he did with Abraham. God is pouring all of his love into me right now as though I were the only person on the earth and he had only this second to do it, so dump the contradictions. Shred the contract. When God exercises all the power he has, it looks like love. When God, who has all the resources and power available to any being, wants to respond to sin it looks like free pardon. When God, from whom all wisdom comes, responds to suffering it looks like rescue. To God, omnipotence looks like free relationship.

As if that were not enough, it's not just that God *will* not stop loving me; it's that he *cannot* stop while remaining what he is. That's the kind of love I need a supernatural revelation from God to believe. That's the love found in the gospel.