Should We Limit Love?

“When you're taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, then what value does that place on love?”—Marilyn Manson

I’m no Marilyn Manson fan. Though I do think he is both intelligent and articulate. Here, he is making a point. If we just throw love out to whoever, is it really valuable? If it’s valuable, shouldn’t we be more discriminating in who we love? I think his point makes some sense. What comes to mind is preachers who are very involved in their congregation, but neglect their families. St. Paul talks to us about that. If you can’t maintain your family, you have no business trying to run a church community. The needs of your immediate family need to be met. You can’t serve others at the expense of your family. To the responsibility of raising your children properly is a grave sin. Unfortunately, it is all too common. I think it is one of the reasons preacher’s kids have such a bad reputation, though there are other factors, of course.

My first reaction to this quote was to say that it is true if love is a limited commodity, but as I thought about it, it is limited, in a sense. By this I mean that we can only really invest in a limited amount of people because both our time and energy are limited. We have to choose wisely. However, we can love others without restriction in the broader sense of being concerned for their well being, and working to help improve it. We can give money to support charity (though this is limited by our available funds); we can volunteer at shelters; we can teach adults or children how to read; we can reconcile with those who are estranged from us; we can vote in ways that take the interests of the most people into account; we can use our time better so that we can do more to help others.

To teach children, or adults for that matter, to love everyone places the highest value on love. Love is not like money. If there is more of it, there is no inflation which causes it to have less value.

Love is so important because others are important, despite their stupidity, arrogance, and brokenness. Loving others is less concerned with love as an abstract thing, and more concerned with others as God’s children, and our brothers and sisters. We love because others are worth loving, despite themselves, despite ourselves.

The problem with the church and society is not that we are too free in our love, but that we are not free enough. How many people do you know that have broken past the insider/outsider binary? We tend to love those like us, and hate those who are different. Christians have not really been an exception to this, though Jesus called us to be. As he told his disciples, we must be better than the pagans, and love those who do not love us. Only when we do this will we be like God.

Such love is not a smug liberal self-serving love that assuages our guilt while remaining ultimately apathetic, nor is it a conservative love that is judgmental, loving in name only while secretly hateful. It works for the good of its object. As Christians, we must always work for the good of all creation, not just our own good. We must put aside hate, and look past difference. We must see with God’s eyes. We must be willing to put aside our negative feelings and selfish interests, and live compassionately. Every person is a son or daughter of some one. Every person is loved, if by no one else, then at least by God. And every person is broken and in need of kindness. We must be ready and willing to give them kindness, even when it hurts. We must not limit love.

Should Christians Be Vegans?

Being a vegan in church is probably like being a pacifist at an NRA meeting, or a Christian ACLU member. We’re just not that common. But why shouldn’t we be? There’s a lot that can be said about how the Church has conformed to a certain culturally conditioned means of understanding the world. It is anthropocentric and utilitarian in many ways. In other ways it is pessimistic and gnostic. These are all ways that it is unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus may or may not have eaten animals. I don’t know. In the gospel of John, he is depicted as cooking fish post-resurrection, but that’s the only story we have. Even then, some contend that the Greek says he ate some honeycomb, not fish. I’m not a Greek-reader so I can neither confirm nor deny this. Even if Jesus did eat meat, it would not have been often. Separated from food production as we are are, we rarely think about how what we eat is produced. Meat, for example, is very expensive to produce (about $35 a pound) and resource intensive (17 pounds of grain and 440 gallons of water for a single pound of cow flesh). It is the food of the rich. The 1st-century Jews would have eaten it on feast days, but that’s about it. The staples of their diet would have been bread, wine, olive oil, some dairy, and whatever garden vegetables and herbs they grew. From archeological discoveries we know they were prone to diseases like rickets and, overall, didn’t have very good nutrition. (This is why diet books flouting Jesus’ diet are absurd—though he probably was skinny, but from hunger!) 
Some do insist Jesus was a vegetarian (we have have an early gospel from the Ebionites insisting quite strongly on this point), others insist he was not, still others don’t care. Should we care? The scriptures say that “ a wise man has regard for the life/needs of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel” (Proverbs 10:12). Are we wise? Do we have regard for the lives of the animals with whom we share the planet? Or are we cruel in our wickedness? Modern animal husbandry is indeed cruel. Animals are confined so that they are unable to move; they are denied natural food and light, kept in constant states of pregnancy only to have their young taken from them. Cows, vegetarians by nature, are even fed the remains of other cows who have died. That's how mad cow disease started.
These are just a few practices. In reality, the entire process is cruel, inhumane, ungodly, and sinful. Jobs at a slaughterhouse have a 100% turnover rate,  and are very dangerous, with assembly lines that run so fast and so ineffectively that 25% of cows are dismembered while still conscious. This is wickedness.
Even if killing animals for food could be done in a way that did not cause suffering and was not resource intensive, I still would not participate. Why? Because my morality is shaped by my allegiance to God's goodness. For example, Genesis 1:29-31 reads,
“ Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.' And it was so.  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
Though I do not read the creation story as a literal/historical event, I still understand this as representing God's intention for creation. God desired a world without bloodshed, not just between humans, but between all creatures. This is not the case, but we can still do our part to contribute to God's vision of peace. God desires harmony, not just "back then," but now and always. Harmony precludes unnecessary violence.

But what of sin? Since humanity is sinful such initial prescriptions are put aside in favor of a “grace” that allows permission for such things, doesn't it? Isaiah thought otherwise. Isaiah 11:6-9 reads:
The wolf will live with the lamb,
       the leopard will lie down with the goat,
       the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
       and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
       their young will lie down together,
       and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
       and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
       on all my holy mountain,
       for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
       as the waters cover the sea.
Even in a state of rebellion, of sin, God still calls us to exercise peace at the level of inter-species relationships, and to take the lead, just as the child led them. Such harmony is even associated with having knowledge of God.If we truly have God's knowledge then we must cease to inflict needless harm on animals. If we refuse to do so, we do not know God. To paraphrase I John, how can we love God. whom we do not see, and not love our fellow creatures who we can see? If we cannot love them, then we cannot love God." Tough words. John applied them to humans, but there's no reason that they can't be applied to animals.

Jesus tells us that God cares for animals, and the OT is full of various laws to protect them. Perhaps those who think themselves wise or righteous should be more willing to consider the rights of animals, to consider that God loved the "world" (John 3:16), and not just humans. Perhaps they need to raise their consciousness a little bit, and begin to expand their sphere of compassion. Such a thing would be quite Christian. Jesus challenged his listeners to move beyond the Jew/Gentile binary, to include more than just Jews in their sphere of concern. It's time we moved beyond just humans as well.

Toward a Fuller Reading of the Scriptures

Calvin told us that Scripture is the Word of God when it points to Christ. Such an idea is a proper hermeneutic in that it rightly places Jesus at the center of the narrative, using Jesus as the interpretive matrix through which to read the Scriptures. This helps us to determine God’s self-revelation from human distortions of God, attempts to make God ours, rather than recognizing that we belong to God. But this is not all that is necessary to understand the Bible. Reading the Bible, we can plainly see that there exist multiple genres of the written word. Paul writes in prose; Acts, the Gospels, and much of the OT are written in narrative form; the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes are wisdom sayings and poems. We also have apocalyptic writings which are shrouded in symbolism and mystery, which is appropriate and necessary given their subversive nature. And even these are not clear cut, as the Gospels contain poems and parables, and so on. Additionally, we have the difference of context to consider. Ancient biographies were not structured as contemporary biographies are. They were not the empty recital of fact, but contained what we would call myths or legends as ways of communicating truth. Such a means was necessary given that, like the apocalyptic, the Gospels contained much that was subversive to the dominant religious and political climate. In a certain sense, the Gospels needed to be hard to understand in order to help secure the safety of the original communities from enemies.¹

In that some parts of the Bible were written in “coded” language, the community’s knowledge was imperative for rightly reading the Scriptures. Such knowledge is now lost to us. There are many points where we might have strayed. Perhaps it was when Constantine incorporated Christianity into the Empire, perhaps it was when the Church became more gentile than Jew, perhaps it was even when Jesus died, leaving the disciples to muddle his message. However, contemporary means of reconstructing the past have helped us immensely to gather a clearer picture of the early church community and its life. With all that is known it seems still that much knowledge has been lost when it comes to rightly reading the Bible.

Regardless, how we read the Scriptures contemporarily does not represent the only way or even the best way to do so. To say that each person is his own interpreter and the text is clear is simply untrue. If the text was that clear we wouldn’t have so many different interpretations. There is probably not a single interpretation that can exhaust the meaning of the text. If we confess the Bible to be inspired, despite its failings, we believe it to express who God is and contain God’s self-revelation. This means that the text is as full as God is, virtually inexhaustible. This is seen in the early readings of the Church. Historically, the Church understood the text as having multiple senses. It had an allegorical or symbolic sense, a literal or historical sense, and a tropological or moral sense, for example. In such readings, dating back to Origen in the 2^nd century, the literal sense was always the least important. This is important because it demonstrates that symbolic readings find a deep affinity with the historical Church, even though our readings will be different. For example, I would argue that significant parts of the OT are to be understood as symbolic stories meant to communicate certain truths. The issue is not whether something is symbolic or true, but whether the truth communicated takes the form of history or allegory.

Such readings do not endanger the Scriptures, for even in a historical reading, the meaning is found in and derived from the symbols. An allegorical readings simply asserts that the symbols were meant to be understood as symbols, rather than history, and that it is in the Church’s best interests—for the sake of its credibility, and its intellectual and spiritual life—to affirm rather than deny such readings. The discipline comes in determining which parts of the overall narrative are to be understood as parabolic rather than having actually occurred. This is where the sciences of history, textual criticism, and archeology, among others, come into play. Such tools can help us determine how to read the Scriptures. However, the traditions of the Church and its readings are the primary means of determining how the Bible is to be read. This does not mean that we can never disagree with those from the past, simply that we heed their input as wise voices from the Church’s life. We ought to give their voices a say in the life of the Church, which is, as G.K. Chesterton described it, a “democracy of the dead.”

1 Early churches had “gatekeepers” at the entrances of house church meetings who functioned as bouncers in order to guarantee the safety of believers who risked their lives to gather.

The Soul and the Resurrection

While doing some research on the relationship between science and religion, I came across John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican Priest. Like me, he does not believe in a disembodied soul or a resurrection of one’s actual body, in terms of the same cells or matter that currently constitute us. I came to this conclusion quite some time ago, but this is my first attempt to articulate it in written form.

First of all, the soul and a bodily resurrection are two separate and contradictory systems, two different views of the afterlife. The first, is a more Greek derived system that saw matter is more prison-like, unreal, or to be transcended. Such dualism still influences many Christians today. The latter affirmed the the necessary materiality of life. Good or bad, this is what we are. It didn’t depend on lofty views of ideals or forms. We live, we die, and God will faithfully restore our lives and communities in a time of redemption that includes, but is not limited to, political freedom. Being a believer in the resurrection of Christ, I naturally gravitated toward the resurrection, but if the resurrection is true, why bother with a soul that survives death and floats around in some temporary place while it waits for the body to be restored? I suppose purgatory might suffice as an explanation, but purgatory strikes me as a rather inane idea. It is too guilt-ridden and ecclesio-centric.

I would propose that if we are indeed bodies, and are so essentially, we do not need souls that inhabit our bodies (what would said souls do anyway?), nor that survive death. If God grants us new bodily life, why bother with souls? I simply see no reason for both a soul that survives death and the resurrection as well.

So, if we stick with the resurrection, is it the same bones, flesh, and everything else that is given life again? No, I don’t think so. Why not? Think of it this way: we never lose water. The water we are drinking now could be the water Jesus was baptized in. Water never disappears, it just changes locations, and sometimes forms, but it is never lost. Matter is the same (yes, I know, water is matter too). It can’t be created or destroyed (not by us at least, perhaps by God). Our cells are created using matter from a mother and father, which is supplemented by nutrients, which are also matter. We then grow by ingesting more matter, and then, eventually, we die. Our bodies decompose and give nutrients to the earth, feeding plants, which are eaten by animals, whether human or deer or whatever. There is an overlapping of matter. to say that the exact matter, the same cells I am now will be resurrected is naive, even if my example of the cycle of life is in need of some fine tuning.

So if we are not resurrected cell for cell, then what happens?  Like Polkinghorne, I believe in reconstitution. We will be made again. But wouldn’t that just be a copy since it isn’t the same cells? We replace our cells constantly. In fact, those of us who are adults remembering things when we were children should note that we do not share a single cell in common with ourselves at the time of our memory. They’ve all been replaced. And yet here we are. Despite having all new cells, we remember. It was still our experience. How does this work? How do we retain memories if we’ve been completely replaced? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely that we would ever be able to know such a thing, though I am clearly no scientist. Nonetheless, our selfhood does not depend on cellular continuity. What does it depend on? That’s a good question.

Virtuous Pagans

Gandhi was a good man. He certainly may have had his flaws, but he provided an example of what a life lived openly for the benefit of others looks like. He, of course, is not the only example, but he is an example nonetheless. Yet, despite his deep love and the goodness he brought about, many Christians would condemn him to hell. They need not. Though contemporary Christians practice rigid exclusivism, it was not always so. Justin Martyr, for example, writing in the second century, even called the ancient Greek Philosophers Christians because they lived reasonable lives. While we should not necessarily call them Christians, Justin's general line of thinking is both accessible and applicable.

If God is the Source of all Goodness through which all kinds of goodness originate, then nothing good either is or occurs apart from God. This is something I believe all Christians can agree on. How this can be applied is much more controversial. This means that there is no virtue apart from God, and that, therefore, the virtuous, whether pagan, atheist, or agnostic, participate in God through living virtuously, as Paul says in Romans 2. This does not mean that virtue causes one to participate in God, but because one cannot be separated from God by the nature of their very existence--since we exist in God, and God through us--virtue is what occurs when we either consciously or unconsciously assent to the Goodness that God is. When we seek Goodness, we find God, even if we don't acknowledge God as such.

What does this mean? God does not belong to the Church alone. Though I would maintain that the Christian faith is unique in that it is founded upon the teachings and life of the One we believe is God come to us (Emanuel), this same God that became Jesus was not devoid of work elsewhere. Both the Psalms and the New Testament witness to the idea of God's revelation in nature—a nature common to us all no matter which part of earth we may reside in. This makes sense if Christ truly is the Logos/Sophia, the wisdom of God, the reason or rationale behind the universe, and the ordering principle of creation. If God is the Source of reason and wisdom (both of which are forms of goodness), then no reason or wisdom is spoken or thought apart from God. Searching the scriptures of other religious traditions, this should become clear. There is much overlap, such as the Golden rule. This is not to say that all revelation is equal. It certainly is not. But to say that certain theological ideas are mistaken, unclear, or even distorted is different than saying that a religious tradition is devoid of God or even founded by demons. While there may in fact be demonically inspired rituals, any ideals that contribute to love, peace, and justice should be attributed to God and God's Spirit working through people to make God''s kingdom a reality. This doesn't mean that the Spirit's words aren't misunderstood at times. They certainly are. The Church's life, unfortunately, is full of such mistakes.

So what does this ultimately mean for the Christian concept of soteriology? It means that God is more gracious than we are. Though spiritual healing and eternal life are only available through Christ, Christ is present in more than Jesus. And though Jesus is the highest form of the revelation of God, there are still things to be learned from other faith traditions, and even non-traditions as we encounter people who do not hold to an overarching system of spirituality or morality, and yet still maintain the highest moral standards. Where there is love, God's purposes and plans are coming to fruition. Where there is love God is at work, and people are responding to God's call, even if they are unaware that such a call is being made.

Moving Beyond Penal Models of Atonement

Nearly all fundamentalists and Evangelicals believe in a model of atonement whereby Jesus made an exchange with God for us. The exchange looks something like this. God has to punish us because retributive justice is God’s nature, but God also wants to forgive us because God loves us. in order to satisfy the conditions of God’s love and of God’s justice, God orchestrates the death of Jesus—the one for the many. God pours his wrath upon Jesus, who acts as a guilt offering. When we become Christians, then, are sins are forgiven because they have already been punished God’s punishment of Jesus.

This should raise many concerns. First of all, God is divided amidst God’s self. Does God want to forgive or punish? It can’t be both ways. If we forgive, we don’t punish. If a transgression is punished it is not forgiven. If we do adopt this model, we can’t say that God forgives sin. What we say instead is that Jesus made satisfaction for the sins of humanity. But how can we say that God is love if this is the case. Certainly love entails forgiveness, the scriptures state this clearly. but if penal models of atonement are true, then God does not forgive sin.

There are also ontological problems with the model. It leads to an unforgiving Father God demanding “justice” and a forgiving son pleading for mercy for his friends. How does that work with the Trinity? God is of one will, not a divided will. Either father and Son both want forgiveness or they both want punishment. You can’t have it both ways; the result is nonsense.

The problem is that an obscure passage from Leviticus is read into the passion story. It states that there is no forgiveness apart from the shedding of blood. However, Jesus explicitly forgave twp people in the NT apart from the shedding of blood! John the Baptist also baptized with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? Wait, what’s that? repentance is the condition of forgiveness? But that undercuts all the metaphysical nonsense that makes the Incarnation necessary. A God/man had to die to forgive sins! No. In fact no one had to die, God simply had to proclaim forgiveness. That’s it. Of course, we have to do what’s right and make amends with those we’ve wronged. But there are no ontological magic tricks that make us “in” and others “out.”

Jesus didn’t die to make it possible for God to forgive sins. Such logic is a farce. Jesus died because he challenged the religious and political structures of his day. This made him dangerous. He knew that. He knew the people would revolt and make him king if he let them, and then the Romans would crush the revolt, as they did in 70 CE and again in 135 CE. Jesus dies because he proclaimed a radical and liberating kingdom that exists independent of institutions or borders or earthly kings. This certainly would have angered the earthly kings enough to have him done away with. God did not orchestrate Jesus death, but gave Jesus the courage to pursue his mission, to proclaim God’s kingdom. It is in this sense, and this sense only, that God desired that Jesus die. The mission required it. Not because of ontology, but because of the risks of peacefully challenging violent enemies.

When we understand Jesus’ life within a framework of non-violence, it takes on new depth. True love requires non-violence. If we love neighbors and enemies, there is no one to hate. And if there is no one to hate, there is no one to kill. The embodiment of such love is at-one-ment. When we seek to love all, just as God loves all, then we are at one with God. Otherwise, we are liars. For whoever does not love his brothers and sisters, whom we can see, cannot love God, whom we cannot see.

Post-Partisan Faith

Christians seem to be extremely partisan, more so than other religious groups. I recently saw a report on Fox News where the commentators expressed their concern about Obama’s supporters elevating him to the status of savior. I find this a bit ironic since many of Bush’s supporters claim that he was placed their by God. Bush was God’s chosen vessel in their eyes. That should be much more concerning. I’ve never claimed that God chose Obama, nor do I know anyone else who has. I do think he is a genuinely good guy who is trying to do what is right, rather than just playing the God card. It seems the former president did just that. He and his constituents used Christians in order to increase their power. It didn’t turn out so well. We ended up with two ongoing wars (Did God tell Bush to start those two? If so, God hasn’t read the sermon on the Mount.), and a ruined economy.
The solution to the alliance of the North American Protestant Church with the right cannot be fixed by younger generations of Christians allying ourselves with the left. We can work with all people and groups with common goals. This means we may work with both parties on different issues. Christians should join liberals and radicals in the streets to protest war. We should join libertarians when the government oversteps it’s boundaries. We should join conservatives in protecting the unborn. In other ways, we should join with feminists in asserting the equal rights of both sexes. We should join with labor unions, and even socialists and communists if need be, in asserting workers’ rights. We should join with hippies and deep ecologists to protect the environment. We rarely do such things, however. Instead, we focus internally and embrace a gospel of selfishness, wealth, and apathy. We shut out the “evil” world and pray for God’s judgment. How stupid we are!
Where is love if we shut the world out? How can we proclaim the victory of God in Christ if we know no one outside our church? How can we claim anything that can be legitimately called salvation if it’s all about us? Jesus never taught selfishness. We certainly didn’t tell us to shut ourselves off from the world. He enjoyed the company of whores, traitors, bastards, outcasts, and lepers. The church has become no better than those who opposed Jesus’ message. We have sold out. WE have become the enemies of God in our arrogance and hatred. For as I John tells us if we cannot love our neighbors, how can we love God?

What the Church Can Learn from the Justice League

In the amazingly well done cartoon “Justice League Unlimited,” there is an episode where the Justice League saves several small towns from an alien weapon. Ultimately undoing it from the inside, they attempt to buy some time by using a large laser cannon to create a barrier between the expanding alien weapon and the towns in danger. After defeating the alien technology, the United States army keeps the weapon, in case they ever need to use it against the Justice League. Why because the Justice League is a loose cannon. True, they only do good, but they do not hold a strict allegiance to the United States government. This makes them dangerous.
The Church would do good to remember its roots. It was originally a small persecuted movement within the Roman Empire, only doing good as it spread among women and slaves, but a threat to the Pax Romana, a peace dependent upon predatory violence and exploitation. How legitimate is the peace that America is trying to secure? Is the means by which it does so contrary to God’s kingdom? What kind of allegiance, if any, can Christians have to a government that demands unquestioning obedience to its arbitrary mission. Doesn’t the Church’s ecumenical and universal nature transcend national allegiances? The Church should take a lesson from the Justice League. We work for God’s good, which means the good of the world, not the petty interests and power plays of nation-states. Christians must remain independent of such claims. We must be, in a sense, anarchists.

The Irony of My Universalism

My journey toward universalism is a bit ironic, I think. I first began to flirt with the idea in grad school while studying Paul. Reading E.P. Sanders and N.T. Wright gave me a wholly different understanding of covenant. Reading Paul, especially Romans gave me an understanding of God’s grace that was, in fact, gracious. At that point, I rejected the idea of hell all together. God’s faithfulness to us was greater than humanity’s unfaithfulness.
Later on, as I struggled with the idea of evil, I rejected universalism in favor of annhilitionism. I took a more material view of it. Some understand it to mean that the unrepentant suffer in hell for a while and are finally destroyed. I took it to mean that they just die, but the those who commit themselves to God’s ways are raised up in the resurrection.
After the death of my brother, I began to see that God’s love is greater than our baggage. My brother was a sinner, he was steeped in it. Despite that, despite choices for which some might label him “wicked,” my family and I still loved him. Despite the fact that he took his own life, we still deeply cared for him and would have done anything to bring him back to us. I began to see that if we cared about my “wicked” brother, if we did not reject him, if we loved him without condition, how much more did God love him? How much more was God’s love for him unconditional. And so I was a universalist again. Though it was not purposeful (my parents are not universalists) this is the greatest lesson they have taught me.
At this point, I still rejected hell and so discarded the parts of the Bible that mentioned it, while emphasizing the parts of the Bible that talked about God’s love. I didn’t think I could reconcile the two. However, when I began reading some books about the subject I discovered that many Christian Universalists do believe in hell. They just believe that it is temporary and purgatorial in nature. Furthermore, they made a strong biblical case for their belief. The irony of the position I now find myself in is that as a universalist I am now more orthodox and more biblical than I was when I wasn’t a universalist. My universalism is a matter of being more conservative, not more liberal. And I find myself in good company. Origen, Clement, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, Hans Urs Von Balthasaar, Karl Barth, and many more throughout the Church’s history have been universalists. Into the 5th century it was actually pretty common. Strange now how it’s considered heresy while the idea of a loving God condemning billions of people to hell, most on a technicality, is considered true and good. What perverse morality. Thank God it isn’t true.

God’s Irresistable Love and Human Freedom

God’s Love and Human freedom, even the nearly absolute freedom we enjoy (in respect to our relationship with God, not necessarily with others), are not in contradiction. Most would not probably see a contradiction, except, perhaps in the case of universal reconciliation. Some believe this doctrine to contradict the idea of human freedom. We know humans have freedom to reject God. Therefore, God must not be able to reconcile us. In this model, hell is something we choose. I use to think like this. I remember having a conversation with a friend in Santa Cruz who was anything but a Christian. I said something to the effect that non-Christians, when confronted with the reality of God essentially spit in God’s face (I was more naive then and saw things in a more black and white nature. Now I understand that things aren’t so clear cut, even if we would like them to be). He responded, sort of shocked, that he would do nothing of the kind, that he thought it would be a more awe-inspiring experience. Though my friend rejected God, he did not do it out of a hatred of God, but out of either disbelief or misunderstanding. He did not understand why God interacts with the world the way God does, or would make the rules the way God did, therefore, we chose to reject the theistic model. There were blockades that stopped my friend from becoming a Christian, but if they were removed, if he was directly confronted with the power and love of God, my friend would repent and respond to God’s love in kind.
So is our understanding of freedom accurate? I don’t think so. Much of contemporary theology is radically conservative, which means it fails to recognize the influences and limitations of both our genetic predispositions and our environmental factors. I do not want to go to far the other way and say that we are not responsible for our actions, but I don’t want to say that genetics and environment influence and thus limit our ability to make certain choices in certain situations.

So what is freedom? In the following propositions I hope to come to a clearer understanding of it, as well as its obstacles.

1. Freedom is the ability to choose to act on our desires without being restricted from doing so by another and without restricting another’s ability to do the same.
2. We only desire what is actually good or is seemingly good, goodness being a matter of pleasantness or usefulness—something beneficial.
3. Anything that hinders our ability to understand what is pleasant, useful, or beneficial compromises our ability to know what is good, and thus restricts our freedom.
4. Removing  or overcoming that which distorts our vision of the good increases our freedom.
5. Therefore, God’s act of purging or correcting our understanding of goodness is not a violation of our freedom.
6. This correction will result in our freely choosing God and our welcome into heaven, even after death.

We already believe all these things. Think of those who are brainwashed, either in cults, or as children in terrorist groups like the LRA. Their ability to understand what is good has been compromised. We also say things like “If he only knew!” when some one we care about is making or has made a bad decision. We understand that such a person’s understanding of what is good is distorted. They are not acting with their best interest in mind, and are, therefore, acting irrationally. But irrationality and freedom are not compatible, which is why we punish those with lower brain capacity less for the same crimes as those of us with full capacity. We also understand that mistakes do not warrant full culpability, some culpability, but not full. And this is where those of us who reject God fall: we reject God and God’s way because we do not understand it (though many who accept it do not understand it either), but our lack of understanding is a mistake. Something blocks us from choosing properly, whether predisposition, environmental factors, or misinformation. In any case, these can all be cleared up. We can be healed, retaught, and told the truth. Wouldn’t we do the same for our children? God desires that all be saved and God desires that we freely choose to be saved. If we cannot freely choose, then God will give us the freedom we need to make the right choice and dwell in love for eternity.

The Logic of Christian Universalism

Most Christians are not universalists. In fact, most believe that God eternally tortures non-Christians. Some hold to a more inclusivist model where the faithful in all traditions are accepted by God because they are doing the best they can given their context. For example, if a person is born in Saudi Arabia and raised a strict Muslim, never really hearing the Gospel, is it fair that god damn that person? Inclusivists say it's not fair. While I believe the inclusivist position is the better of the two, it still has its problems. As I will show, and I'm indebted to Thomas Talbott for this, the logic of who God is leads to the conclusion that God will save all people.

Profesor Talbott suggests a simple exercise in logic, an exercise which distinguishes three different groups of Christians based on their denial of one of the three proposed points, which I have taken some liberties with here, but which lead to the same conclusion. They are as follows:

1. God loves all people and desires their salvation.

2. God is ultimately able to accomplish what God desires.

3. Most people will be separated from God and tortured in hell forever.

The third premise does not seem to follow the first two. The third only makes sense, in fact, if we deny one or both of the other two points. Calvinists escape this logical conundrum by denying that God loves all people and desires their salvation. According to Calvin, God only desires the salvation of some--the elect. Arminians, though they faithfully confess that God is love, deny the second proposition by positing that human freedom stops God from accomplishing God's will, even in the afterlife. Christian universalists, such as myself, affirm the first two propositions and so deny the third. Because we believe that God is love and desires the salvation of all, and because we believe that God can bring God's will about ultimately, we deny that the unrepentant will be eternally lost. They may experience a time of punishment in hell, but not for eternity.

Much of God's will is not accomplished on earth because God has given creation freedom. We can do as we wish without God intervening to stop us. In this sense, we do many things that thwart God's will. Where God desires peace, we make war; where God desires love, we hate; where God desires compassion, we are selfish. However, there is no reason why this logically carries over to the next life. I do not mean that there are not consequences for sin in this life or the next, only that our ability to thwart God's will on earth does not mean that we will be able to do so in the afterlife. While freedom is important, it is not the end all. God is the end all, and all things will be subjected to him, according to St. Paul. Every will will be in alignment with God, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord. This is not because God will lobotomize unbelievers so that they do what God says. God is not a "sky bully." Rather, the reality that God is Love in essence, and wants us to be supremely happy--wants what is in our best interest and will provide us with lasting joy--should persuade us toward God. Do we reject a loving parent, a parent that not only wants what is best for us, but brings it about? Any rejection of those who love us, requires valid reasons, but if there are no valid reasons for rejecting God, why would we do so? (I'm assuming here that our various philosophical objections to theism or the problem of evil will be asnwered in an adequate manner). A rejection of God in the afterlife, once the truth has been made known to us, would require such irrationality that we could say that such a person is not actually free, but still clinging to old wounds or stubbornness. The removal of such afflictions does not require a breach of one's freedom any more than a removal of cancer does.

The Cross as a Symbol of Non-Violence

St. Paul wrote that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8),”the ungodly” (5:6) who had made ourselves enemies of God according to our sin (5:10) that we might come to repentance (2:4).

Empowered by the love of God in him, Christ allowed himself to be killed because he desired his persecutors to repent and be reconciled to God, which is why he forgave them with his last breath. Christ could have called down legions of angels to defend him, but faced his death without threats of violence, without responding to violence with counter-violence. Instead, through active peacemaking, he proved his innocence and exposed his killers for the villains they were. Thus the cross should be seen as a non-violent act by which God attempts to bring us to repentance by exposing our guilt in the death of the innocent. This is Christian non-violence, and we see it rooted in the very ideas of the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus. So why aren't more Christians practitioners of non-violence?

Better an Atheist than a Calvinist

Wesley said that, and he was right. Calvinism is evil. Really, really evil. It's also rooted in a bad reading of scripture, a very, very bad reading. I used to be more tolerant (blame society's liberal influence for that), but I'm becoming more “conservative,” which requires me to reject ideas that I find morally repugnant, like Calvin's thought. For those who don't know Calvin maintained that God, from eternity, determines before a person is born that they will be condemned to hell (This is different from knowing. The second is passive, while Calvin's damning is active) or "saved" to heaven. You would think that this would conflict with the confession that God is Love, wouldn't you? And isn't this is the central Christian confession? God forgives; God opens up the way of salvation to us. Why? Because God is Love. This is exactly what the famous John 3:16 tells us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Pretty clear, unless you're a Calvinist.

J.I. Packer, a reformed theologian, and thus in inconsistent one, tells us that the confession “God is Love” is not the whole truth about God. This is true in that there are other things we can say about God. We can also say that "God is triune" is not the whole truth about God, but it names somethign about God's essence. It tells us something. However, this is a roundabout way of explaining that God isn't really love. I've heard many times that God is “Holy” Love”, which is another way of saying that God isn't love at all. If we cannot draw any parallels between love as we know it as humans and God's love, then there is no point in saying that God is Love. This is, in fact, just what the Calvinists do. Thank God they are wrong.

Of course, we have I Corinthians 13 to tell us what love is. We also know that Christian ethics are rooted in God's very person. We are to be perfect, just as God is (Matthew 5:48), merciful just as God is (Luke 6:36). But if God predetermines who goes to hell, and a person is judged according to the things he or she has done (Ezekiel 24:14, Revelation 20:12), then God must cause sin. This is what Calvinists must say, and have said. “Neither rape, nor adultery, nor theft, nor murder happens apart from the will of God.” If Calvin believed this, no wonder he did the things he did. Calvin was personally responsible for at least one death, that of Miguel Servantes, some one who dared to disagree with Calvin. Servantes sent Calvin a copy of his book, a letter outlining Calvin's mistakes, and a copy of Calvin's work “Institutions,” where the mistakes were pointed out. This outraged Calvin so much, that from that point on, he desired the death of Servantes. (We know this from Calvin's correspondences) Apparently, Calvin forgot to love his enemies, but I guess you don't have to do that when you don't believe that God is Love, but arbitrary power. Calvin's God is formed in the image of kings and emperors, who apply their will without reference to goodness, love, or justice. They do as they please. Calvin reasoned that God must be the same, forgetting to root his theology in the love of God. In fact, he easily brushes off God's love in his theological work. Why? It doesn't fit within his theological framework.

So, in this schema, God's not really love, and determines beforehand who will go to hell and who is lucky enough to go to heaven. Faced with a religion like this, atheism is the right response. Better no god, than a monstrous one. Fortunately, this is not our choice. Calvinism simply isn't Christian. It has nothing to do with Judaism, then or now, Jesus' own teaching on the matter, or Paul's. It's nonsense, and nothing more. God is not the author of evil, for the Bible bears witness to God working against evil, but if God wills evil, then God works against God's self. And as Jesus said in Matthew 12:25 that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Abe Lincoln said that too, but he was quoting Jesus.) Paul also tells us that love does not delight in evil (I Corinthians 13:6), but if God wills evil, he must desire evil because God only wills what God desires. And if God desire evil, he must see some good in it because no one desires that which they don't think good. This would mean that God delights in evil since surely, we delight in that which we find good, right? Rather, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). Even the unrighteous are loved by God, for God loves those who do not love God, the very basis for our call to love our enemies. If we must love our enemies, how much more does God love them? And if God loves them, Calvinism is nonsense that must be purged from the Church. Jesus was a martyr who forgave, but Calvin was a murderer who had a man brutally killed for disagreeing with him.

The Best of All Possible Worlds?

Enlightment era philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz (1646 - 1716) believed that this is the best of all possible worlds. He was rightly ridiculed by Voltaire, for this is certainly not the best of all possible worlds, but a world of unfulfilled potential, a world of suffering.

We suffer because we are finite creatures in a world where certain interactions cause decay, injury, and death. While finitude is a necessity of being a created being—since only God is without limitations-- and suffering arises out of our finitude, this does not mean that suffering is a necessity. There could, theoretically, exist a reality where beings are both finite and without suffering. This reality, we hope, is heaven. But what about here and now? Why would God create a world full of death? Some attempt to say that God did not create the world this way, but that the world was corrupted as a result of the fall. However, acceptance of evolutionary theory precludes a literal reading of the creation story, nor was the story ever intended by its author(s) to be read as such. So if God did not create a perfect world that then became corrupted by human sin, how did the world become what it is?

Though I am neither a creationist, nor a follower of intelligent design theory, it seems to me that evolution could not happen without the (loosely) guiding hand of God. If adaptation of a species occurred in order to aid that species' survival, it seems that a greater intelligence, or perhaps at least an empowering force, would be necessary to cause that change. Stated differently, perhaps God's Spirit, which guides all life forms and encourages their lives, gives creatures the ability to evolve. However, perhaps this adaptation is still in some way a matter of freedom for the creature itself, whatever that may mean. Rather than God unilaterally imposing God's own design scheme onto the created order, God allows the created order to co-create with God. Thus the creation account depicts God as saying “Let the earth bring forth . . .” God's covenantal nature is such that God empowers creation to participate in the creative process, even allowing it to make mistakes, accounting for the “waste” that scientists generally say accompanies evolution. This would make the evolutionary process both guided and random at the same time, and would account for both the waste and the complexity, the violence and the beauty.

But why change at all? Why not just a creation of single celled organisms? God was not lonely and in need of humans to fill a need in God. Rather, Christian theology asserts that creation exists to participate in the love that God is. It is good that other beings take part in and enjoy God. Perhaps, then God was guiding creation to this point, to the point when it could actively acknowledge and participate in God's love. Perhaps there will be some form beyond us that can manage the task more adequately than we have. Perhaps, as Teilhard de Chardin believed, the resurrection itself is that next form of evolution, though it is most assuredly a different form.

To conclude, creation by nature is finite, and suffering and death arise out of the order that our particular created order has come to be. It seems, however, that there could exist an energy source (like the sun) that feeds, but does not destroy and an interaction of various living creatures that does not require death, but exists in a life giving reciprocity. I cannot speculate what that world would look like practically, just that the suffering of the present age does not nullify the possibility of an age to come where we remain finite, but where suffering is absent. It is possible that the world could be without death. This is good news. Death is not inevitable. However, death still plagues us. We are subject to its inescapable grasp, but it can be minimized and avoided. We can make “earth as it is in heaven” to a degree. Just as the universe's imbalance (a term I am using to describe to the evolution of death) came to be through freedom, even at the simplest level, so we can now choose to do things differently. We can share food with the hungry, clothes with the naked, and water with the thirsty. We can use technology that is sustainable. We can have less children in order to accommodate the “dominion” of humanity to the earth's finite capabilities. All of this we do, not just to preserve life, which is good in itself, but as a way of looking forward toward the promises of God. As we hope for these promises, so we live empowered to alter humanity's course for the benefit of all creatures with whom we share the earth.

Is Homosexual Sex a Sin?

Driving around you may notice a host of Christian bumper stickers, from Jesus fish to "Know Jesus, know Jesus. No Jesus, no peace," etc. One particularly fun one states "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Putting aside the interpretation of Genesis as a literal/historical event, why make the fuss? I have yet to see any anti-divorce stickers, or anti-adultery ones. They may be out there, but they are far less common. This begs the questions: is being gay more wrong than other sins? In our current more tolerant cultural, we may even ask: is being gay wrong at all? If so why? Why is it really any different than being straight? Yes, there are some obvious physiological differences, but how does that translate into a moral difference? Of course, the matter is not so much about "being" as it is "doing." Sin is not an ontological state, but an action. We enter enter the category of sinner through the doing of sin, a category that St Paul clearly states that we ALL fall into. Yet homosexuality seems to be an obsession for many in the evangelical community, so much so that laws are being passed to give Christians an opt out for dealing with gay couples. Not only is this just bad PR, and hurtful to the people who are being mistreated, but when we understand righteousness as love, and sin as unlove, the rational for putting gay folks in the "out" category disappears. Looking at the nature of sin through the teachings of Jesus, and supplementing them with the work of John Wesley, as well as the more classical privation theory will lead us to the conclusion that gay marriage is a viable option for Christians.

Throughout the life of the Church, Christians have thought about moral theory, evil, and sanctification in several ways. Currently, at least in North American Protestantism, a common, though overly simplified, way of thinking about such things is the command theory. God says it, therefore, do it. This way seeks to remove any rational motivation behind the command. The command is simply a matter of God's arbitrary will. Who are we to question God? This view is popular with those who strongly emphasize the sovereignty of God, such as Calvinists. Serious biblical scholars and theologians have always rejected this way of thinking. It is poorly thought through and shows an unwillingness to think critically. Rather than God's arbitrary will, Trinitarian Christians have confessed that God acts out of love. We are created to participate in the Triune love of God, and all that God does is for our benefit, that we might find greater joy and wholeness in who we are and what we do. God's will is never arbitrary, but extends from God's nature as Love.

In the Gospels, we are given two great commands that provide an abstract for the whole of the Jewish law, love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:28-29). We do this in imitation of God. Because God loves, we love also, and in love we are perfected (Matthew 5:43-48). I John 2:9-11 tells us that we live in the light—we are faithful—when we love others. When we do not love others, we are in darkness. Putting these verses together, we understand faithfulness as loving others is a matter of imitating God. Unfaithfulness is hating—or simply not loving—others. Righteouness/Justice (the same word in Greek) is then a matter of loving others, while sin is constituted by those actions which are not loving others. But what does it mean to love others? Well, the New Testament tells us that it involves caring for orphans, widows, and strangers, that it involves feeding, providing, water, and clothes for those in need, tending to the sick, visiting the imprisoned, praying for our enemies, and giving money to the poor. All of these acts are other-centered. Loving some one means doing what is in their interest, to consider the interests of the other as equal with one's own interests. Why else would Jesus say to love your neighbor as yourself? You must show as much love to the other as you do for yourself. Loving others in a way that takes their emotional, physical, and spiritual well being seriously is what we are called to through faithful Christian living. It is only when we neglect these things, when we do things that compromise the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of others that we sin, that we miss the mark.

John Wesley, the 18th-century evangelist who founded the Methodist church, was a man ahead of his time in many ways. He jogged regularly; he didn't drink because he thought it a waste of grain that could otherwise feed people, and he was a vegetarian. He was also the founder of an idea that came to be called “Christian Perfection.” This was and still is a controversial idea. He simply believed that through a life of devotion one could completely put off sin, arriving at a place where one no longer sinned. This may seem strange at first—and may even summon ideas of fundamentalists who shun movies, zippers, and dancing—but the idea is quite simple. Wesley said that Christian perfection was reached by perfectly loving others. For Wesley, sanctification, what we often call holiness, is to love others fully and completely. What a beautiful idea, an idea that, unfortunately, seems rather uncommon in the Church. In complete agreement with our previous finding, we see that there is mainstream support for the idea of love as faithfulness, but not just faithfulness, but sanctification. We must be perfect as God is perfect (Matthew 5:48), but such perfection is a perfected love, a transcending of selfishness. To his credit, I believe Wesley did this quite well. He was highly involved in and influential in the abolitionist movement in England, and though he had received great wealth through the sale of his many writings, he gave the money away as quickly as he received it. An English gentleman, he was known to go door to door on Christmas eve and beg for money for the poor, something completely unheard of for some one of his status. We would do well to look to him as a fairly contemporary example of Christian living.

In the days since Kant, many have viewed evil as being radical, as having substance, or being a positive force. Such thinking allows us to say people are evil, for example, a way of thinking that may have evolved out of the Reformed tradition and Calvin's notion of total depravity, that humans are wholly without goodness apart from God's grace, an idea that ultimately makes no sense, but that's another discussion. Prior to the rise of this theory, the church held to the notion that evil is nothing, a lack of good, which is the norm since creation, though fallen, is good, the handy work of a good God. The logic of this argument is simple, every act, everything we do, is motivated by some sort of good end that we seek, whether real or seeming. Desire alone proves this. We do not desire what is not good, though, again, the particular good of a particular action may simply appear good and may actually be bad. In this way, we do not directly will evil, but evil occurs—as something we do, not something we are--when we emphasize a lesser good over a greater good. For example, when we steal we are seeking something good, whether an item that will increase pleasure or money that can be used to buy things that increase pleasure or just help us survive. However, when we emphasize our desire for these things, the good of the pleasure we experience from this object, at the expense of another's good, their own pleasure from an item that they have earned or may need, then the good is deprived and evil occurs. So here, we again arrive at the conclusion that we sin when we fail to consider the interests of others. Let's do another example, if we take a life we are clearly depriving another of his or her good. This doesn't mean we aren't seeking some good in the process. We may be seeking power, wealth, release of anger, or to right a wrong. None of these are inherently bad; however, when we emphasize any of these goods against the good of a person's right to live (by which we are saying that it is right that they live), we do evil. We sin. The same arguments apply to all traditional ways of thinking about sin . . . well, almost all.

All of the preceding discussion has been to lead us to the point where we can say that faithfulness is a matter of considering the interests of others as equal with our own, and that sin is a matter of neglecting the interests of others, harming them either directly or indirectly. The Bible's teachings, as understood through Jesus' paradigm of love, Wesley's extraction of the principle of love applied to sanctification, and privation theory, held by many theologians today, and by nearly all prior to the Reformation all direct us to this conclusion. So what's the point? There is one traditional moral position that does not fit these arguments. When we look at murder, rape, adultery, incest, most theft, lying, and so on, we see that the result is the occurrence of evil and harm of the other. Their may be times though that we steal from those who have more than enough to provide basic survival needs for ourselves or others, or that we lie to protect others from injustice or persecution. There is a sense in which the right thing to do is determined by the context. This is called situational ethics. Though we may at first be offended by the idea that morality is not rigorously absolute, we already believe this. For example, many people who oppose abortion support the death penalty (I do not, however, and think a great argument against it is that Jesus himself was unjustly sentenced to death by the government). The rightness of taking a life for them is determined by the context. It is not okay to kill a baby, but it is okay to kill a murderer. So, given that traditional ethics are supported by the theory we have been developing, why bring it up at all if it changes nothing? Because it changes something important for a specific group of people. You see, homosexual sex does not fit in here. Homosexual sex is no more harmful than heterosexual sex. It does not harm others or neglect their good. When we engage in loving sex within the committed context of marriage (another example of contextual ethics) we are doing something wonderful and pleasurable, something that expresses physically the way two people feel emotionally. And in the union of two, sometimes a new life is made, an expression of love created to be loved. It is very trinitarian. Far from alienating homosexuals, the Church needs to embrace them, even performing illegal weddings, blessed by the Church, but not the state, though we should work for justice in the legal system as well.

The gay community has suffered a lot, probably much of it at the hands of Christians, but it is the Christians, not the homosexual community that has been in the wrong. While I think logic forces us to admit that homosexual behavior constitutes a psychological or biological abnormality (whether people choose or are born, which seems to be some of each), that doesn't mean that it is morally wrong. Of course, gay sex can be exploitative and selfish, but so can straight sex. If sex between a man and woman is not inherently sinful (hint: it's not), then neither is sex between two men or two women. Many will object to this and may call me all sorts of names, but I believe that I proved my point by looking at the Church's own texts, traditions, and leaders. May we seek justice, putting aside prejudice, and embracing the gay community with the love of God in Christ.

On Capitalism and Evolution

I recently watched a youtube video featuring Alex Jones, a radio talkshow host, calling Obama a wicked, wicked devil and then screaming in anger into his microphone. It was ridiculous. No wonder liberals think conservatives are idiots. Like I often do when I witness the aburdity of conservative strategy and protest, I just sighed and shook my head. I'm not sure exactly how Obama is a wicked devil, (he's a muslim socialist, right?), but the incident reminded me of Christian (over)reactions to darwinism/evolutionary theory, and the misguided commitment to capitalism.

The church has an unhealthy affinity for capitalism, probably because most Christians haven't read the Bible, for if they did they would see that biblical economics are much closer to socialism than capitalism. That is to say, any system based on greed and acquisition, which capitalism admittedly is, is oppossed to the gospel of Christ. Calling someone a socialist is not an insult. Socialism is not demonic and one does not have to be an atheist to be a socialist. This doesn't mean that Christians necessarily should be socialists, or that socialism even works on a large scale, but there is no moral or theological reason why it should not be as highly regarded as capitalism, if not more so. The Christian opposition to such systems says more about the Church's cultural captivity than it does about socialism in itself. In many ways, capitalism has had disatrous consequences, especially for laborors and the environment.

John D. Rockefeller, the railroad tycoon, was a Christian. He even taught Sunday school. But he ran his business without any regard for the well being of others. He acted in a way that is anything but ethical. The culturally captive church says that religion is for church and home, but has no place in society. It is merely civil religion, created to support the status quo. We shouldn't publically live out values that may oppose society's political mantra. That would create dusharmony, which is bad for progress/portfolios. By such standards, we can't be good Christians and good businessmen because in order to succeed in the business world, we need to disregard the well being of others, somethin no good Chrisitian would do.We've seen how self-defeating a system of limitless greed and acquisition is. It can't be sustained. Really, there is no reason why spiritual discipline can't enter the realm of econimics. There is no private gospel. The gospel is to be lived, which means we are to love others, even, or perhaps especially, through the way we handle our money and run our businesses. Justice is a christian value. The rich sharing reasources with the poor is Christian behavior.

The second issue I thought of was evolution. It is absurd to me that Christians are still fighting evolution tooth and nail. Let me be very clear. Acceptance of evolutionary theory does not preclude belief in God. God doesn't work through magic. To say that creation evolved over billions of years does not mean that God was uninvolved in the creative process. The Genesis text even states that God says "Let the earth bring forth." This means that God gave creation some creative freedom. Perhaps evolution can be viewed in this light. It is the freedom that the created order exercises over itself. It allows itself to be, which means changing, adapting, growing, and sometimes dying. Evolution being true does not disprove the existence of God anymore than evolution being untrue somehow proves the existence of God. These are silly arguments. God is not part of the created order and thus cannot be proven to exist through empirical means.

All in all, we shouldn't call be devils because we don't agree with them. Most of the time they are not trying to do evil. A little empathy and some dialogue goes a long way

Jesus wants you to steal.

I have to confess that I never understood Jesus' parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-12). It was only recently, while reading Richard Horsley's book "Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs," that it finally made sense to me. I've read several of Horsley's books but for some reason it finally made sense to me now.

I've heard sermons on the parable and read things on it, but they always spiritualize the text or assume a social context similar to our own, by which I mean an industrial (though perhaps we're post-industrial) economy with a middle class. That's not the case. The steward was not skimming money off the top, and his master was not a legitimate business man, but a wealthy landlord operating with the blessing of Rome who was probably given a vast estate that already belonged to others. What was owed him was part of a vicious cycle of economic exploitation where the poor were robbed of even the little that they had. (Some estimates put total taxation at 2/3 of crops.) Eventually, through Roman taxation, local taxation, and the temple taxes (what we call "tithe"), peasant farmers, surviving on subsistence farming and dependent on good weather, would often lose their land and end up as day laborers working for an absentee landlord for meager wages. Such conditions resulted in increased banditry, among other things. The New Testament shows evidence of this in Jesus' trial. Barabas, who was release instead of Jesus-- was an insurrectionist, one of many. Likewise, the two crucified next to Jesus were bandits, not mere theives. They robbed Roman caravans, and often shared the wealth with local villages, who offerred the bandits protection from local authorities. History is full of such examples, the most famous being Robin Hood.

But Robin Hood stole. Does that mean that what he did was wrong? Not according to Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argues that since all things belong to God, when a poor person takes what he needs as a matter of survival from a rich person, he is not stealing. I think Jesus would agree.

The "dishonest steward" was not giving up his commission in writing down the debts of farmers (certainly the beneficiaries of his action, rather than merchants). Rather, he was breaking the stranglehold of economic exploitation that follows imperialism. He was giving the farmers a fighting chance. In a society where patronage was the norm, this would have indebted the farmes to him. They would not owe him goods, but hospitality. He was creating space for himself among the villagers as a sort of hero, as some one who dared to take on the system, even if his motives were not entirely charitable. And since the peasants would have viewed the Roman occupation is illegitimate, and collaborators as heretics, then it was a hero's welcome he would have.

So what do Jesus' comments on the story mean? "Use worldly wealth to gain friends for youreself so that when it is gone, you may be welcome into eternal dwellings." A typical interpreation would not be able to make sense of this. But if we read it within the upside down matrix of the kingdom, it makes sense. Jesus wants us to use the mechanisms available to us to do good. (Think Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello having a Harvard education.) We need to be as shrewd as we can in order to help others secure their well being, specifically the poor, for whom God has a "preferential option." Sometimes what we're called to do may not be legal, but history has shone that was is legal and what is right are not always the same thing. In the kingdom we sometimes defy the world's code of ethics in order to serve a greater good, and when we do this we are faithful.

Note: This is not the same as doing evil to bring about good. That is strictly forbidden. What this means is that we do good, even if such good defied cultural norms, sensitivities, or laws.

An Orthodoxy that Never Was

Like the last several years, I currently find myself a minority. I'm a white middle-class male, but I am a minority nonetheless, and not just in society, but in the church, perhaps especially in the church. I struggle with this. Frankly, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of having to defend myself from people who are clueless, but think they know because they've read the Bible once or prayed about it and have a "feeling." I'm tired of being on the outside. I don't really have a space in the church, at least locally. Conservatives think I'm too liberal and liberals think I'm too Orthodox, and I'm certainly not polite enough to be either and join them in their captivity to various cultural and political forces. My lack of space, and thus supportive community, sometimes makes me a bit cranky in "discussions," which often doesn't help my case.

I do resonate a lot with what's going on in the Emergent Church movement, less so because I'm influenced by them and more because I think we read the same people. I like what's going on there, most of it anyway. It's not totally united, and in some forms it seems to be just a repackaged evangelicalism. Same junk food in a shiny wrapper. No thanks. I don't want a new box. I want to ditch the refined sugars and have something hearty--organic, whole, and healthy spirituality.

Some of the irony of evangelicalism is that it's basically 80 years old, a reaction against the liberalism of the 19th-century. Though captive to modernity, it is awash in illogic. It's doctrines can't be reconciled, as it's critics often point out. My older brother is one such critic. He raises various objections, I explain them away using the skills I've acquired in my theological studies and he accuses me of remaking Christianity in my own image. Interesting. I don't. I have my methodologies. They're sound. But they lead to radically different conclusions than those drawn by evangelicalism. This doesn't make me unorthodox. In fact, I am quite orthodox. I really enjoy patristic and medieval theology, especially the early trinitarian stuff. The problem is that evengelicals don't read anything before the Jesus Movement. They don't know who the Cappadocian fathers are. They know Augustine by name, but that's it. Ironically, though sometimes accussed of not upholding Christian doctrine, I am much more orthodox in my christology and trinitarianism than most evangelicals. They dont' study, they read the Bible and know what it says. (They dont' intrepret because interpretation is the "traditions of man," failing to realize that their reading is itself an interpretation.)

This doesn't mean that I always agree with everything the Church catholic has professed. I'm a universalist ultimately (There is, however, a strong universalist tradition in pre-Constantine Christianity. In fact, it was not decided that eternal damnation was part of Chrsitian Orhtodoxy util 543, and then by a murderous Emperor, not theologians.). Why? Because God is love (I John 4:8), because Love keeps no record of wrongs (I Corinthians 13), and because our unfaithfulness will not nullify God's faithfulness (Romans 3:3). God will be our God and we will be God's people. God will love us without condition because that's what fathers do. My brother's death helped me see this more clearly. Even though he did drugs, drank, slept around and made choices that we weren't happy about, this doesn't mean that we didn't love him. We did, more than he realized. If we loved him, how much more so did God, who sees our pain and dysfunction and knows the roots behind the poor choices we make and the evil we do? God loved him through all his unfaithfulness. And even though my brother said he didnt' care what God thought, now he's with God. His pain is God; his dysfucntion is healed, and his tears are wiped away because that's who God is. God is Love.

Even in this I'm not alone. Origen of Lyons, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs Von Balthasaar are all Orthodox thinkers (though Origen was pre-orthodox) and are all univerasalists, though each may have different reasons. I understand objections. There are evil deeds done in our world. But instead of fighting and hating, what if we viewed the person who did these things as if they were our child or brother? Would we hate them? Not if we seek God. God's justice is reconcilation. As Paul tells us, we are agents of reconciliation so reconciliation is what we do. That doesn't mean that there is no hell, just that hell is "for a time" and will ultimately lead to purification and reconciliation. Such is the will of God.

On Death and Faith

As I was walking to my office this past week I saw an SUV with the birth and death dates of the owners' son. He was 18. That sucks, I thought. How do you explain that God is loving or just to some one who lost their 18-year-old son? I know the traditional arguments. They're not very good, or at least leave me unsatisfied.

I then thought of my brother, Philip, and I felt a sting of pain as I always do when I think of him. I stopped for a second and took a slow deep breath. My brother committed suicide about a year and a half ago and though this hasn't shaken my belief in God, it has made me more anxious about the after life. The idea that I won't see my brother again seems so overhwhelming to me. I understand disbelief, but I don't accept it. Nevertheless, as I walked toward my office I thought, "How can we love God or even believe in God when God allows children to suffer?"

Then I remembered that it isn't just our children or brothers who suffer. God lost Jesus, just as that couple lost their son, just as I lost my brother. God does care. As some one committed to justice and aware of the vast amount of suffering in the world, sometimes I struggle with coming to terms with why God allows it. I don't believe the ridiculousness that is Calvinism, so I don't think God wills the evil that occurs, but we can't ignore the fact that God allows everything to occur that does occur. But we aren't on our own. In Jesus, God experienced everything (more or less) that we do, including suffering and death, not to mention torture and execution. God also experienced the loss of a Son in a real way.

We don't suffer or experiencepain or loss alone. For me, this helps make it a little easier. And just as with Jesus, we can take solace in the promise that death is not the end, that another life awaits where wrongs are made right and pain is no more.