Promises

Letters to my Adult Children - On Being Anti Death - March 2020

I live my life as a rebel for love. I fight death. But not mere physical death. For physical death does not have to be the enemy of love. No, the death of which I speak -- who is my enemy, and who will one day be completely destroyed is called, “Shame.” Shame is death by another name. It is always accompanied by “self-serving,” and, can’t be fought through the politics of power and control. It can only be defeated by love and self-sacrifice. It can only be defeated by a gaze that communicates, “You are valuable. You are loved. That won't change.”

For many years I've labeled myself “pro-life” even though I don’t always vote a “pro-life agenda.” I am pretty outspoken in my condemnation of the "pro-choice" defenders. People wonder how I can be against abortion, call myself pro-life, and not push for abortions to be illegal; and, I answer that though I label myself pro-marriage and think adultery is evil; I don’t think adultery should be illegal. And, that though I am pro-sobriety, clear-headedness, and relational connectedness; I do not think that alcohol or illicit drugs of any kind should be illegal. So, it follows, given my invitational nature — I invite people to the good, rather than to try to force them to it — that I can hold abortion to be an abomination and not fight for it to be illegal. There are too many evils like this to name — things that destroy people and relationships that I have no desire to outlaw. I believe people need to have the freedom to choose good over evil, rather than be forced to it. I’ve written about this to you extensively and don’t think I need to repeat myself here once again.

Within the last year or so, Tony Kriz and I were talking about the “pro-life” debacle — people who stand against abortion politically; who try to make the choice to abort a child illegal and who are also war hawks, pro-gun, pro-death penalty folk. Tony told me that he’d adopted the label, “anti-death,” for himself. I took it as an invitation. Slowly, I began to refer to myself the same way. I now say, “I am anti-death.”

Tony’s and my conversation occurred in the context of Paula and I walking this horrific end of life road with her parents. As you know, Miggy — “007” — is a brilliant man and nuclear engineer who is now stuck inside his body and his mind. He cannot speak. He cannot toilet. He cannot feed nor dress himself. Neither can he walk. We need to thicken anything he drinks so that he does not asphyxiate. This is not a life he would want or chose. He has a DNR that is incredibly strict. Mike would prefer not to be alive at this point. If we were a tribal people, he wouldn’t be. And yet he is. We keep him alive against his will. The life we give him is actually death for him.

Dementia and Alzheimers were your Gramgee’s biggest fear. She wanted to be dead rather than to live with losing her mind; yet, that is how she left the planet. I am beyond grateful for a doctor who cared enough to not to prolong her life any longer than she cared to live because while I am convinced her last months and years were God's great gift to her, she was miserable in the end.

When we got toward the end of Dad’s life we had a choice on how to proceed with his cancer treatment. We chose to attack the tumor aggressively. Weekly I took him to his radiation appointments. And, while the radiation wasn’t fun, it allowed him to maintain his quality of life. He and I still played and took short trips together. We still went out and enjoyed Timbers games, etc. But, the radiation was not a cure. The doctors thought that taking the tumor out surgically was the best medical course, so we followed their counsel. I would not repeat it, nor do I want it for me. For while we may have prolonged Dad’s life a little, we destroyed his quality of life. His last 9 months were miserable. He practically lived at OHSU. His life was sucked out of him. I wish I could have a mulligan on Dad’s end of life. We’d play it completely differently than we did. The choices we made during those days are some of my biggest regrets.

People often think me morbid to say I want to exit the planet on the back of my bike, but I want to die as I lived. See, death doesn’t scare me in the slightest. I told Thomas last night on a FaceTime that I am ready to go whenever. though I have no death wish. There is a lot of life left to live, I am content to exit whenever it is time to go. I would be lying to say that the process of dying doesn’t scare me though. It petrifies me. I certainly don’t want to exit the way Gramgee did, nor the way Mike and Char are. Waking in glory is my hope, suffering along the way is my nightmare. If there is a redemptive feature to it, it eludes me.

All of that brings us to a discussion of this incredible time period we are all experiencing right now. I have not lived through anything like it. There have been times like it in history, but none that any living person has ever experienced. The pandemic of 1918 and the Black Death of the middle ages were similar in the annuals of human history. But this is completely unique and new. It is as if a giant “pause” button was being pushed. We are being forced to live a year of Jubilee (See the Old Testament commands around this) even though we’d never choose it for ourselves.

I along with millions of others, are taking actions right now to ensure that you, in particular, Maggie — and the countless others like you who have health challenges — are not put into positions where you have to fight for lives not yet fully lived. For though I may be ready to enter glory at any time; and though, I may see the reality that Gigi and Miggy would prefer to stop breathing and exit this planet; I am not ready for you and/or TL to do the same. You both have lives to live. You are my greatest gifts to this world. And much h of the hope of life I hold is to leave you to the world when I exit the stage. There is no greater gift I can imagine giving the world than the two of you. No amount of money or profit; nothing I build or create can compare to the gift that you are to this planet.

I’m joyfully choosing to give up my ability to move around and enjoy my life the way I want in order to make sure others have a chance to continue breathing. Some don’t want to give up these freedoms. They are saying, “I want to live the way I choose to live. Don’t tell me how to live. It is my body, and my choice.” It is ironic how the catchphrase of the pro-choice movement is now being used to spread even more death.  And while one of my social media friends complained about that reality and attempted to deny any parallels to abortion saying this is a completely different thing; her arguments were inane, factually wrong, and harmful and hurtful.

For too long, the pro-choice movement has sounded the refrain, “My body, my choice.” Don’t tell me that I can’t live the way I chose even if it costs another human life. I shouldn’t have to have any consequences for my actions. Men, not wanting responsibility pushed abortion further. There was now another escape of responsibility; men became abortionists and began pushing a “pro-choice” agenda. There was an additional benefit to ridding the world of unwanted brown babies, now that machines and industry didn’t need their cheap or free labor — we truly could get to a place of survival of the fittest, the poor and the downtrodden could be controlled simply through population control, and a marketing genius made it all sound as if it was a woman’s choice.

Now the oligarchs have repurposed their slogan and are now arguing that “opening the economy” is more important that the health risks of 2% of the population (think of how many millions of lives that is!); that people need to be “free” to chose to live the lives they want rather than be held captive by a disease that threatens others’ lives. It is a similar refrain to the war hawks who are willing to kill thousands “over there” so Americans can have the kind of life we want to have “over here.” It is the kind of refrain that allows us to separate mothers from their children at the border, putting their kids in prison, so that we don’t have to worry about being overrun by brown-skinned people who may cost us a few dollars to feed and clothe. Why should we? They don’t even speak English.

The real issue, whether it is abortion, or war, or immigration policy is an insipid commitment to pursuing death rather than life. The death of which I speak is bigger than mere, “ending of breath.” Death is a commitment to self without regard for another. Death, as I am defining it here, is the denial of relationship. For there is no life without love. The mother who kills her unborn child by having an abortion must deny any relationship to that unborn child. The oligarch who pushes the politician to order a pilot to drop a bomb on the oligarch’s enemy; or a seaman to launch a missile to do the same, has to deny a relationship or connection to the families they kill when the bombs and missiles land, killing indiscriminately. The populist who says the parents of the kids at the border that we threw in prison, should never have brought their kids here in the first place, has to deny any kind of relationship to those brown-skinned children in order to throw them into those prisons. The Russian policeman who arrests the dissident to send them to the Gulag has to deny the horror to which they are sending them. We have to deny relationship to live the way we want. The tribesman who captures and enslaves one from a different tribe to sell him into slavery has to deny any kind of relationship to him. In order to perpetrate such evil, we have to first deny relationship and therefore humanity. In so doing, we create a culture of death. I will stand against that culture with all my being. It is why I stand as a rebel for Love.

 

Revisiting the Creation & Evolution Debate

I had a conversation with a pastor in Christmas Valley in May that I have not forgotten, Evolution is a more important issue than we place on it. Sometime circa 1990 I spent a week at Michigan Technological University. One of my favourite couples was on staff there – Chris and Barb Anible. When I got home after the week Chris mailed me a letter to the editor of the MTU paper. The title said, “Speaker knew nothing,” referring to me. I kept that letter for a long time. I only wish the author of the letter had stayed to hear my talk because he argued the same things I argued in my talk, we just ended at different places.

If I remember that talk correctly (Dan Allender informed us that all memory is fiction), I tried to provoke everyone. I had nothing good to say about any position on the creation/evolution spectrum. I pointed out each position’s strengths and weaknesses, and argued that every “scientific origins theory” was “post-dictive.” We can only know what we see in the present and formulate ideas about the past, which we even call “pre-historic” (before history). The creationists weren’t happy because I pointed out that Genesis 1 was not about “how God created,” The gap theorists weren’t happy because I argued philosophically against the idea of macro-evolution. The naturalists weren’t happy because I pointed out that their position simply makes no sense whatsoever.

I’m revisiting this issue in 2014 some 25 years later because the pastor in Christmas Valley pointed out that nearly all the other debates we are having in the political spectrum stem back to how we view this one issue. I had not considered that. There is a lot of truth in what he says. If one holds an evolutionary view of the world, one believes that our view of everything from the Constitution of the USA to our view of sexuality is improving and, hence, we need to do away with our old way of thinking. This is a dangerous position to cling to, and, I believe is incorrect.

I end up a seven day creationist. There, I said it. I am not sure what it means to say it, and I don’t hold it tightly or theologically but rather philosophically (and that includes my epistomology) by faith because I see no other helpful or possibly true (small ‘t”) options.

Like I did so many years ago while I spoke at Michigan Technological Univeristy, I hold that evolution paved the way for Nietzsche and then subsequently Hitler and Stalin.  Once we accept it, either as a Theist or a Naturalist, our epistemology goes sideways. The theist becomes a Deist or a Baptist (whichever comes first) not allowing God to work in his world; its trajectory is set. The naturalist becomes tribalistic and a fundamentalist of his own secular theology. Some of my friends land here, and are unable to see their own naturalistic fundamentalism.

I don’t know how it all went down. I wasn’t there. I do know though, that if God made Adam, he did not make a freshly minted fetus. No, he made a full grown human. If God made a human who looked old, it follows that he would make the earth the same you’re Science’s carbon dating is not convincing to me. Neither is their study of rocks and fossils. If God created the way that creationists say he did. Creation would fool our science by taking on the appearance of age.  To my theistic (or even biblical) evolutionary friends, if there wasn’t a historical Adam, then we have a bunch of theological issues we have to address, because Paul’s ideas about Jesus being the new Adam can’t be correct. Some of us are already trying to do away with the idea of Trinity or gender roles because we want to disregard the text and read it with our new lenses. In so doing we are creating a greater harm long term. I can’t buy in. And I will love you, and break bread with you anyway. We don’t have to agree from my perspective.

I am a creationist. I don’t know how old the earth is. I’d venture a guess that you don’t either. I do know that if we think that everything is evolving we are in trouble. I am not interested in “Creation science” or scientific debates. I think nearly all of that from both sides is bullshit. See my thoughts above.

Lots of people smarter than me will disagree. And I could be wrong. As I said I don’t hold my position tightly. I voice it, because it does seem as if this one issue affects may others: war, sexuality, human freedom, human privacy, care for the poor and the outcast, stewardship of creation, justice issues, and the list goes on. So I stand where I stand. What about you?

Letter 5: How Do I Live in LIght of Evil?

In my last post to you, I posed the question that throws me for a loop more than any other. Theologians and philosophers call it the question of “theodicy”. I think that origins of that word are a combination of “theology” and “idiocy,” but I am not sure. I told you that I would tell you how I live with it in this post, because how we live in this broken world is what really matters.

The one word that I have to start with is “TRUST.” I acknowledged that I don’t have an answer to the question. I have answers to other questions though and they are that: God is Good. God is Love. God is Truth. God is Light.

Since God is all of these things (and many more!) though I don’t have the answer to the bigger question of evil in this world, I can trust Him in the midst of that mystery. This is hard to do when other people let me down. It is even harder when I realize how much I let the people I love down. Trusting in the midst of feeling betrayed isn’t nearly as difficult as being the betrayer. I think we’ll talk more about this later as well, because when we come to know  forgiveness; when we’re given grace for all the things we do wrong; we tend to offer it to those that wrong us. That is a story for a later post though.

Let’s go back to the garden. Do you remember the story?  Adam and Eve were out and about in the garden near the tree whose fruit God had asked them not to eat. The serpent told Eve that eating that particular fruit would make her like God. He told her that what God had told her wasn’t true, and she choose to believe the lie and ate.

Now they don’t point this out in Sunday school very often, but Adam was with her, and he didn’t believe the serpent and he ate anyway. We know Adam wasn’t deceived because Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Rome (Romans) that he wasn’t. And yet, he still ate.

I’m experiencing something like this right now. Ever know beyond any shadow of a doubt that taking a certain action is wrong (or would be wrong) but you do it (or really want to do it) anyway? I know that getting back with Michelle would be a huge mistake unless she made huge changes in her life, and though she has indicated no desire to get back together or make those changes to make getting back together possible, I still long for something that I know would hurt me – a relationship that hurt you and me seems better than being alone. Too often I make choices based on this fear of being alone; not being accepted; being left out; feeling less than – just like Adam did.  When I make those choices I walk further into darkness, even though it has the illusion of being light.

I think there are two kinds of mistakes made in the story. The first is a mistake made by Eve, who believed a lie. This is the time you do something not realizing that it is wrong (or how wrong it is). And then there is a mistake like Adam where you give God the finger and say, “Fuck you. I want
what I want. And right now, what I want is more important to me than you are.” I do both these things.  Both are deadly. Both have cost me and you dearly. I watch you guys do the same thing.

What intrigues me though is God’s response. He knows what they have done. He knows that they have given Him the finger, after all He is God. And when He walks through the garden, knowing this, he simply asks, “Where are you?”  It is a positional rather than accusatorial question. God wants them to know where they are in relationship to Him. His question hasn’t changed. It is the same one He asks us every day, “Where are you?” (A total aside: We need to be more like this in our relationships to
one another. The questions we ask need to be less accusatorial, and more positional. That is a simple observation that may help you in your relationship to one another.)

When we reach a similar point we have a couple of options. We can keep trying to hide, just like Adam and Eve did in the story, or we can come out of hiding and let Him find us. In so doing we tell the truth about ourselves and we move closer to Him. And remember, he made us to be close to
Him.

It is going to sound like I am changing the subject on you being the ADD Dad that I am, but I am really not. Brian May is the lead guitarist for Queen. He also has a PhD in astrophysics. I heard him on NPR one day talking about his doctoral work. In it, he traced the movement of space dust. He explained that it is all moving away from the center. We, he said, are physically moving toward increasing isolation and loneliness.  

I believe that the physical universe mirrors the spiritual one. When we hide, we move away from God, who very much wants to be our center. The further we move away from Him the worse things get. It is not because He is out to get us, but simply that we have moved farther away from the good, which
is God. Getting back to the physical world; could it be that the further it gets away from its Creative center the worse things get too?

So, the other day, Thomas said to me, “You’ve had a rough couple of years.” He is right, and if I place myself in the story above I realize that I created much of my own drama. How can I complain about the stuff that I’ve caused by hiding and creating shadows rather than light?

In the midst of that, I’ve also realized that no matter how bad things are “out there,” they don’t have to be bad inside. They aren’t as bad if I am walking toward Him. They can be downright crazy around me and I can be totally cool.

Do you remember the story of Peter walking on the water? The twelve disciples are in their boat crossing the Sea of Galilee and a storm comes up. They think they are going to drown, then Jesus who had stayed behind to pray and hang out with God, came walking across the water to them, freaking
them out even more. Peter, being who he was, said, “If it is really you, Lord, command me to come to you.” And Jesus did and so Peter got out of the boat and began walking toward Jesus. But guys, I think this was kind of like ice skating on moving ocean surf. It freaked Peter out. He stopped walking to Jesus and panicked. In so doing he began to sink, wishing he’d paid more attention during his swim
lessons as a kid. Jesus grabbed him, calmed the storm and got Peter back in the boat.

If I look at Jesus – if I trust Him, then the storm around me can be kind of like, “Hey look, surf’s up! Life becomes an adventure to be lived at full throttle.” This is how I want to live when I am in a good
spiritual head space. I lose that head space too often and, like Peter, I freak a bit, and start to sink. That is why I am grateful for the friends around me that help remind me of what is real. That is why we are made for community. 

We’ll keep going next time….

 

So if God is all those things, why evil?

There is a question that I have no good answer to. I need to acknowledge that fact here. I’m stymied by it. Some of the best classroom and roundtable discussions in my college and seminary career adressed it. And no one has satisfactorily answered it for me, and partially because of it, I’ve stopped trying to argue that my theological position is the right one. I believe it is, but I don’t know it is. I live as if it is. But this question throws a monkey wrench into the works and it doesn’t make sense.

It is the question of evil. There are many different ways to ask the question. For me, the way I need to ask it is: “If God is all that was, and God is good, and nothing is that wasn’t created by him, where did selfishness and sin come from?”

Traditional theology teaches (and quite honestly I have not done much in depth study of these things) that before God created the universe and all that is in it, He created the angels. At some point Lucifer, an arch angel,  decided he wanted to be God and he and those he could rally behind him were beaten by God and cast out of heaven. They are who people traditionally refer to as “Satan” and the demons. The biblical story has him being the one who tempts Adam and Eve to rebel against God.

With that framework, we understand that we were made with freewill and God used Satan to tempt us so that ultimately we would choose Him rather than our selfish desires which are defined as being evil. This is further complicated by the biblical testimony of Isaiah who writes, “I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.” (Is 45:7) The King James Bible translates it this way: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].”

Those are some pretty heavy words. One of my high school teachers first pointed them out to me and I have not been able to get away from them since. So I will return the favour and give them to you.

Given the ultimate question is without answer let's look at some of the present day issues: When there is a disease like AID’s that is primarily – but not wholly – caused by choices we make that run counter to the way God created us to behave, it is no wonder that things go wrong. Let me ask a simple question: “If all people chose to be completely monogamous, having only one sexual partner for all of their lives, what would happen to this most deadly of diseases? And how sexy is that? No one but your spouse ever sees you naked and no one but you ever sees your spouse naked. That has to be pretty extremely sexy. (But that is another topic altogether)

My left wing friends don’t like that statement of fact but it is absolutely true. Let’s talk about heart disease. If we stopped being gluttonous and eating the crap we do, how would it affect the heart disease rates? Let’s talk about diabetes. What would happen if w became more active and less lethargic as a nation, eating better and moving away from our sloth. Do you think it might have an
effect on diabetes as a disease. We can go down a whole list of diseases and see that if we simply lived more in line with how God asked us to live we wouldn't face many of the diseases we do to the extent that we do.

While these changes wouldn’t eradicate disease, it would sure put a dent in them. So there is a partial explanation for a partial problem. We haven’t gotten to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis and the like. Natural disasters occur all the time. They are becoming more frequent. Some environmentalists add many weather related disasters to the list above and talk about how our choices to burn fossil fuels are fueling the drastic weather patterns and severe weather we are experiencing. They may be partially right but even those changes don’t explain the earthquakes and the tsunamis that are the result of them. Calamity seems to strike without warning. People die daily from natural disasters that seem wholly unnatural. Where does this evil come from? Why does God allow it? Why did God create it?

Those are the macro-disasters -- the katrina's and Sandy's --What do you say to your friend that has just been beaten up by their parents, or raped by their boyfriend, or their boyfriend’s friends? What do you say to the class reject that can’t go through a day without being taunted for any number of things that may or may not be in their control? What do you say to the imigrant who feels friendless and completely lost, not understanding the culture or the language of their new home? WHat do you say to the wife whose husband betrays her. Or the husband who watches the woman he loves fall into a hole of addiction and pain?

The immediate answer is: I don’t know. Many blame free will. Some blame god’s judgment, though you will see I didn’t even capitalize “god” in this instance, because those people cannot be worshipping the Christian God of the New Testament, who  no longer sees our sin because of the cross. (See my last post.) They must be worshipping some other god.

You see the problems here. I wish I had answers to give you. I only can tell you what I have experienced and what has worked for me as I live in this broken, messed up world. It may or may not be true. But I need to live as if it is to make sense of things.

That will be my next post…

The Letter Continued

In my last post to you I started telling you about starting preaching in Genesis and Revelation when
I start at a new congregation. Genesis is a confusingly cool read. Lots of people read it like it is a history book. They may be right to read it that way. There are many reasons to do so. And there are also other ways to read it. We need to read at least part of it like a poem. Because Genesis 1 is a poem,Chapter two however doesn't seem to be. I wonder if it has to be a history tbook or science text hough. Could it be a fable or a myth? I don't really know. Evolutionists and Creationists spend lots of time arguing over these chapters. I think they are both foolish. The reason prehistoric times are "pre-historic" is exactly that. They existed before history began. No one really knows what happened before history started.

So this is what I think about the whole thing. First, the evolutionists are silly because if the story is accurate, just like God created a man, not a baby, he would have created the earth to look old, just like the man did. Anyone that wants to argue this is simply arrogantly foolish -- No one can
really know. Every theory is what scientists call "post-dictive". 

On top of that, evolution lends itself to all sorts of philosophical problems (Problems with how we look at life). Survival of the fittest seems to be the way that natural selection occurs, but we don't want to practice that anymore. Instead we quite rightly look after the poorest, the weakest, the sick and the mentally challenged. We try to save the drug addicts and the alcoholics. We try to rehabilitate the criminal, and care for the homeless. If we really believed in natural selection, we'd fall more in line with Hitler. As a matter of fact, Hitler would never have done what he did, had it not been for the evolutionary theory of Darwin a generation before he tried to wipe out all those he found to be weak and a threat to the gene pool: Jews, homosexuals, drug addicts, etc...

In the same way, the creationists are silly to argue that the words in Genesis have to be taken literally; like we'd read a history or science book, because  clearly a lot of the Bible isn’t written that way and forcing the first part into the category of science book makes no sense. It is clear to anyone with eyes to see that Genesis 1 is not a description how God created.

Trying to make a scientific theory out of a biblical text didn’t work when the Church tried to silence Copernicus and Galileo, so why we try to make it a science text now is beyond me.

So Daddy, if those chapters in Genesis are not a science text, what are they? I can hear the question coming now… Kiddo’s, they are so much more. They point to the pre-eminence of God: “In the beginning God…” We try to begin with anything but God. And that is a big mistake. Leading to all sorts of problems.

In the church I grew up in they try to begin with the Bible. But it is not, “In the beginning was the Bible.” No, it is “In the beginning God.” I’m going to come back to this later because it is really important. For now, though, let’s simply say that the point is that everything starts with God. Later, we’ll discover it concludes with Him too but that is also another post. So the first thing that Genesis teaches is that it begins with God. He is the font of everything.

Then we come to these words:

“Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will
reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the
wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the
ground." 

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male
and female he created them.” Gen 1.26-27

Notice God said, “Let us…” Remember I said that this is a poem? So let me act like an English teacher. Why do you think the writer of Genesis would phrase it this way? “God” singular says, “Let us…” Then on top of it, he says let us make people “Plural” in “our image…male and female he created them…”

When I grew up I was taught that this meant that I, me… singular am made in the image of God. Then I was taught all sorts of gobble-de-gook about how this shows us that we are made up of Body, soul, and spirit. Now I do think that each of us is made in the image of God, we are not informed of that fact until Genesis 9 – feel free to look it up. No, Genesis 1 tells us that together we are made in the image of God.

Guys, this is what everything I believe is built upon. Every person on this planet is part of the image of God. Together, we are supposed to be an image or reflection of who God is. Can you see how that has ramifications for how we are to live our lives together?

Next post We’ll begin talking about who God is so that we can know who we are supposed to be… I’ve
given you enough to think about for now.

Our Mission Should We Choose to Accept It...

John Franke Writes in, The Character of Theology: 

(T)he mission and purpose of God is that of bringing into being a people who reflect the divine  character as the imago Dei. At the eschaton, God will bring to completion the divine intention, and humanity will reflect fully the divine image as God's representatives after the pattern of the Triune God revealed in Christ.

This dynamic conception of the image of God may be combined with the social nature of the Triune God, biblical exegesis, and the postmodern turn to relationality to establish that the divine image is a shared communal reality. It leads to the conclusion that the image of God is fully present only in community... God is inherently relational in that throughout all eternity God is a triune community of love. In turn, God's goal for humanity is that we represent God by reflecting the divine nature, which is our destiny in Christ. In this context, the church is viewed the church is viewed as the foretaste of of the new humanity. Hence the divine design for Christ's community is that we be a people who, because we share the Holy Spirit and thereby participate in the eternal love of God, represent God in the midst of a fallen world through lives that reflect God's own loving character. Only through relationships and in community can we truly show what God is like, for God is the community of love, the eternal relational dynamic enjoyed by the three persons of the Trinity. (Baker Academic; Grand Rapids, MI., 2005.pps 122-123)

 

For many of us, this is not a new thought. W know that our lives together are the measure of our holiness because our lives together is the revealer of the Trinity. It is upon this simple truth that communities such as Church of the Servant King, Sojourners San Francisco, and Refuge of Christ (to name but three) choose to to live their lives. 

Paragraphs earlier, however, Franke caught me off guard. He makes a connection from Adam to us. It is here that Franke makes a necessary connection for me that NT Wright has been trying to make for me for years. For while I had always been able to make the connection between Israel and the Church. After all, we are grafted in according to Paul. I had failed to make a sufficient connection between Adam and Israel. His tasks for Adam remain our tasks today. 

This is the call of God to love his creation as stewards, not simply use it for our own ends. It is enough of a biblical demand to make this Libertarian Oregonian pretty environmentally friendly. By any standards (outside of my own state) I am considered a raving environmental whacko. One cannot be an Oregonian without being something of an environmentalist. But here is the reason behind it. We are to love the earth -- the land -- the planet. We are to take care of it, and as we do so, it will provide for us its fruit and bounty. We are to love this world -- not simply the people who inhabit it -- the way that God loves it. And he made it and is pretty proud of it. He is jealous of it too, and when we mess with it, we are messing with Him. 

Do you have a prize possession. Mine is my motor bike. Because you like it so much, you care for it, You take care of it. You keep it from harm. Well this planet and the people that live on it, are like that to God. When we do stuff that breaks it, it kinda pisses Him off. It is bound to. 

There is so much more to draw form this one truth that Franke expounds. It is more than living together in community, though that is often a necessary step. It is more than getting on Greenpeace's mailing list. It is together loving everything, the way our Creator loves us. It is offering grace when it should not be offered; forgiving when none is expected; telling the truth when a lie is acceptable; giving up our possessions (which aren't really our own) when asked; giving up profit when profit will destroy part of this planet that God loves. 

This is not an easy truth. This is not an easy path. It is however, a good path. It is my path, and may of my friend's paths. We claim no ideological position because we claim no earthly Kingdom, pledging our allegiance to only one resurrected King who, in turn promises us a similar resurrection.

 

A biblical exegesis of step 9

Step 9:  Made Direct Amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.

          Though I shouldn’t have been, I was quite surprised when I began looking at the Biblical directives to make amends – “confess”. My mind went immediately to a well known passage in James, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (chapter 1 v 6. Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. ) This passage has long been important to me because it plays a significant part in my Mum’s story of asking the elders at church to pray over her for healing and having the cancerous tumor in her abdomen disappear literally, overnight.

            The passage has drastic connotations. Normally when we “go to church,” we put our game faces on. People sitting next to us in the pews know very little of what is really going on in our lives. The idea of a “shared life” is as foreign as living in the Falkland Islands (unless of course you’ve lived there or currently live there.)

            It is a shame that we have lost the reality that what unites us is not our strength and shared “victory in Jesus,” but rather our brokenness and need of His power in our life every day to simply live the way that He designed us and asks us to. Instead of sharing the reality of a marriage in crisis and kids in rebellion we feel the need to manage our image and pretend that we’re leading our perfect middle class family through the rough seas of a broken planet. We want others to think of us as better than we are because when we look at others, they seem so much more “put together” than we feel. The James passage is in direct contrast to this and gives us a way to live in real relationship that is so counter-intuitive to our natural way of thinking.

            Now, while all of this is true, it does not quite get at the specific directive of the 9^th step. “Confession,” in this instance, is not about “making amends.” It is about being honest and being real which are bigger principles we need to grapple with before we ever get to the action of making amends. This is not to say that God has nothing to say on the subject, but like His disciple Martin Luther, he has a way of saying things all over the place so we hear them all over the place, if we will but listen.

Below are a few more of His words on the subject.

"Or suppose you make a foolish vow of any kind, whether its purpose is for good or for bad. When you realize its foolishness, you must admit your guilt.5 "When you become aware of your guilt in any of these ways, you must confess your sin. -- Lev 5:4-6 (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )

Here is the scene, The children of Israel have left Egypt and are in route to the Promised Land. God is giving them direction on how they are to live life together. Very early on in his list of instructions (kind of like a list you leave for your teenagers when you are leaving them at home for the first time for a weekend) of how to live together. Here is my paraphrase, “When you are stupid, admit it and make it right.”

We all do stupid things. Many of us do them again and again. When we fall into this pattern we lose trust with people around us. When we make promises and don’t follow through. When we continually do same irritating thing that bothers or wrongs our co-workers or family members. When we keep making mistakes that cost our teammate’s games or trophies, it has become too easy to merely say, “I’m sorry.” It loses its meaning. Words evaporate in the air and all that is left is disappointment and a building vow never to trust that person again.

The writer of Leviticus says, “Confess your sin.” Now to a 21^st century reader those three words are loaded because the word, “sin” is loaded, and “confession” is misunderstood. “Sin” here is simply missing the mark. And confession has in implied, “it won’t happen again” attached to it.

In AA members are taught a simple formula, “I was wrong. I hope you will forgive me. How can I make it right?” Those outside of twelve-step fellowships could learn from this.

Feeling badly about what you did (I’m sorry) means very little, really. You can feel badly for a whole gamut of reasons: people think less of you, you feel less of yourself, you hurt someone, etc… Why you are sorry is anyone’s guess. Acknowledging wrong however lets people know that you know you are not perfect, and that you screwed up. Asking how you can make it right lets them know you want to make up for what you did to the best of your ability. God has more to say on this a little later.

 In Num 5:6-8 (still more or less the same section of Scripture as Leviticus) God has this to say: "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: If any of the people—men or women—betray the Lord by doing wrong to another person, they are guilty. 7 They must confess their sin and make full restitution for what they have done, adding an additional 20 percent and returning it to the person who was wronged. 8 But if the person who was wronged is dead, and there are no near relatives to whom restitution can be made, the payment belongs to the Lord and must be given to the priest. Those who are guilty must also bring a ram as a sacrifice, and they will be purified and made right with the Lord.* (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 Here God is a little more specific: Confess your sin and then make restitution to those you wronged – 120% of the cost of the wrongdoing. And if the person and / or his family is no longer alive give the 120% to God.

 Someone may ask why God has this in his list of instructions and God answers in the Psalm 32:3-5: When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. 4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.Interlude  5 Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, "I will confess my rebellion to the Lord." And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )

 This was a lesson that I learned too late in life: I confess because it is good for me. I do not confess for the good of the other person. I confess in order to maintain my own connection to my Creator. I do not have the power to break the connection of the person I wronged or re-connect it. I only have the power to keep my connection in place. I do not make amends for the other person. I make amends for me and in so doing restore my connection to my Creator and allow for the possibility of ongoing relation to the other person. Our ongoing relationship ultimately relies on their relationship with their Creator. The only way any of us have any relationships at all are if God is in the middle either intentionally or completely unrecognised – but that is another post in and of itself.

 We will end with 1 John 1:8-10: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 Part of being human in a fallen world is a demand to be god. We live in a universe that is running away from its centre. Scientists tell us that there was a big explosion and since that moment in time each piece of the universe is moving at extraordinary speed toward complete isolation, away from all other created objects, away from that awful explosion that sent us careening out of control away from our Creator. (Well the scientists don’t say that last bit.)

 We are but microcosms of the macro picture. We too in our natural state are moving away from the centre, which is our Creator, and in so doing we can’t help but move away from our fellows. It is simply the trajectory that by our nature we were created on. The only way to find true union is to change trajectories, turn around and move back toward the centre, toward union with God and our fellows. That requires the death of our natural self which wants to be self-sufficient and is grandiose and fragile.

 Our natural trajectory is way off the mark. In and of itself it is leading us toward a world of aloneness and pain. God’s word for it in John’s letter is “sin”. I find that the word is unhelpful though because it is so loaded. Word’s have pictures and “sin’s” word picture for me and many like me simply doesn’t work.

 To get a better picture of what God is saying that does work, I’ll accept: sick, going the wrong direction, got on the wrong freeway, self-centred, ego-centric, etc… because all those words paint a picture that I can accept. John may say, “If we say we have not sinned…” I will say, “If you think everyone is not ego-centric and self centred…”

 Come on, we all have, we all do… the 9^th step is simply about admitting how broken and foolish we are. We can laugh on the back side of things… “You know what an idiot I was… I remember when…” everyone laughs because we’ve all been there. That is confession.

 

That is the 9^th step. I need to add one note here. The end of the 9^th step states: “Except when to do so would injure them or others.” Above I stated that the reason we make amends is for ourselves. Now while this is true, it is true within the confines of love.

 It is wrong form me to unload my dump truck of guilt on your head so that I can feel better about myself knowing that in so doing I am turning your world on its head and destroying any foundation you may have.

There are Christian counsellors here in my city that argue that a complete “dump” has to be made for restoration to occur. I could not disagree more. I love you first, and in loving you I tell you the truth, and commit to being completely truthful with you, but I do not dump on you. Perhaps that should also be explored further in another post.

What is important is that we recognize that Bill Wilson figured some things out when he wrote these steps down that allowed alcoholics and addicts that wanted recovery to find a way to connect with God and find life free from drugs and alcohol. Those same steps can work for anyone that wants to connect with Jesus.