Soverign Control or Fatalism

I have become increasingly aware recently of the pervasiveness of the reformed theological view of soverign control in our American society. I hear it frequently when people are trying to deal with challenging circumstances. I read it in books and articles attempting to encourage readers to "just trust in God." I believe in most or all of these circumstances the speaker/writer has pure motives. I wonder though if we don't cross the line into fatalism. When does "trusting in God's soverignty" become the cover for throwing-up our hands over the inexplicable and overwhelming forces that control the world?

Certainly I dealt with this frequently in West Africa where virtually everyone believed that various spirits (ancestors, dieties, demons, etc.) exercised varying levels of control over over various areans of life. This worldview leads to a low-level hopelessness, a kind of victim mentality and an urgency to get what you want immediately because the spirits may change their minds tomorrow.

I am struck by how descriptive this is of contemporary American life. Is our belief in God's soverign control a veil for fatalism?

Before you begin considering whether the rack or the stake is a more fitting punishment for my heretical view, let me state without equivocation that I believe the Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth is King, of Kings and Lord of Lords and with a Word speaks into existence whatever He chooses. Likewise, I believe that with a Word He can destroy, intervene, change, heal, reveal whatever, however and why-ever He chooses.

I hold a very high view of God's soverignty. However, taking the step from a theological understanding about the pervasive nature of God's power to the conclusion that His power is actualized in controlling virtually all the circumstances of the world is problematic. While theologians and philosphers may have worked out this rub, most people have not.

In a recent article about dealing with the circumstances one faces, the opening paragraph starts, "God is in total control of your circumstances; he can change them at any time in any way." The distinction that is not drawn is between what God can do and what God does. Affirming that all things are possible with God is not the same thing as concluding that all the circumstances in one's life are the product of God's doing. I believe the failure to draws this distinction leads to our American brand of fatalism.

In a society that rewards those who can effectivley blame others for virtually any problem, a fatalistic worldview reinforces the idea that the circumstances of one's life are someone else's fault, in this case, God's. By adopting this perspective on His soverignty and ignoring other forces at work (Satan, self, other people), God becomes the sole will at work in the universe resulting in the disappearence of belief that evil spiritual forces are at work, that evil people are at work, that one's self makes evil, wrong, selfish choices all against God's soverign will.

Scripture seems clear that God's soverignty does not detract from personal responsibility to make good choices nor does it detract from the real presence of evil spiritual forces.

It is with renewed energy that I return to this blog. The events of the past year and the utter exhaustion that followed have kept me from devoting myself to the discipline of writing. But, it's always time to start again...

In a recent set of audio CD's I purchased about the practice of preaching, Calvin Miller (preaching prof. at Beeson Divinity School, Samford Univ. in Birmingham, AL) told this story:

A fan of greyhound racing was hanging around the track one day when he met one of the dogs. They struck up a conversation. The fan asked him why he had not seen him recently. The greyhound replied, "Oh, I'm not running anymore." This struck the fan odd since the greyhound seemed to be in good shape. The fan replied, "Is it because you got too old?" "No," answered the greyhound. "I am not really all that old." "Is it because you stopped winning?" asked the fan. "No," answered the dog, "I generally won most of my races." The fan was puzzled. "Then why did you stop running?" They greyhound answered, "I discovered the rabbit is mechanical."

How we hunger for authentic purpose. So often "church" has become the mechanical rabbit afterwhich we run. It is tragic when Christians discover that the church isn't what they hungered for after all. It is tragic when the church doesn't connect Christians with the authentic purposes of the Kingdom.

This morning on Good Morning America they showed today's USA Today newspaper, the cover of which has an article declaring that volunteers are up in almost every segment of American society, from the Peace Corps to religious organizations. They report that college students are volunteering in greater numbers than ever.

I wonder if they too are searching for the real rabbit. I am amazed that for so few Christians the Missio Dei provides that purpose. It seems that "proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom" doesn't offer satisfaction to most of us. I wonder if that hunger for purpose is being anesthetized by flashy worship services & consumer services.

O, Lord Jesus, help me to find my purpose and satisfaction in simply being your follower and proclaiming Your Kingdom. Help me live the rest of my days drilling deeper into that purpose and help me resist the temptation to search for any other.

Trendy Versus Incarnational Ministry

Appearing in the March 2005 issue of Christianity Today is an interview with Eugene Peterson entitled "Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons." It would be hard to overstate the valuable contribution Peterson has made to American Christianity in the last twenty years. Certainly his paraphrase of the New Testament (and soon the completed OT) "The Message" has been very well received across the denominational spectrum. Furthermore, his works on ministry and spirituality have become required reading in many seminary courses as well as among contemporary ministry professionals. This interview in Christianity Today fits well withing his honest style and incisive critique of contemporary American Christianity.

Among several notable comments Peterson makes is, "I think the besetting sin of pastors, maybe especially evangelical pastors, is impatience." Peterson makes this assertion referring to our tendency to expect and demand immediate quantifiable growth in churches. He observes that in our market-driven culture, churches succumb to the same expectations as corporations and often embrace the same methods. He says later in the interview, "This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we're using a non-biblical, non-Jewish way to do what Jesus did. That's why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today." Later he adds, "...something backfires when you're impatient. How do we meet the need? Do we do it in Jesus' way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way?...Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it's about means. It's about how you do this."

One would have to be a deaf, dumb & blind man not to observe the rise in "pop-churches"; that is churches trying to catch the pop-culture wave & ride it until another cultural wave captures their attention. It seems virtually incontrivertible to suggest that shaping the character, worship & ministry of a church around a transient pop-culture fad is at best silly and at worst utterly contrary to the transcendent Gospel. While Peterson similarly suggest how unwise this method is, his comments go a step further, beyond what seems obvious.

When asked, "What if we were to frame this not in terms of need but relevance?" Peterson replies, "When you start tailoring the gospel to the culture, whether it's a youth culture, a generation culture or any other kind of culture, you have taken the guts out of the gospel." Here Peterson seems to narrowly define "relevance" & igone the various scriptural examples of incarnating the message into the prevailing culture.

The apostle Paul confesses in 1 Corinthians 9:22, " I have become all things to all men..." In this he is explaining his previous comment about becoming a Jew to the Jews, a Gentile to the Gentiles. For Paul, "Jew" and "Gentile" are both cultural as well as theological categories. When addressing the Greeks in the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17:16ff), Paul makes it clear that he is capable of dialoguing with Greek culture by quoting a Greek poet. Paul's commitment to identifying with the prevailing culture, presumably to increase the credibility of the evangelist, goes so far as to circumcise Timothy "because of the Jews who lived in that area (Acts 16:3)."

While Peterson rightly observes with dismay the contemporty phenomena of trend-driven churches, he goes too far by stating, "I think relevance is a crock." While trendy Christianity may desecrate the holiness and transcendence of God, incarnating the message of Jesus into cultural and subcultural forms does not. The body of Christianity must be clothed. It matters not whether those clothes are Medieval Italian, 16th C. German, 18th C. English, 19th C. frontier American or 21st C. postmodern. Desecration occurs when the transcendence of God is lost in the "bling, bling".

Rather than distancing ourselves from the multiplicity of cultural forms or trying to develop a generic Christian culture, we should be looking for fresh ways to incarnate this timeless message. Peterson's work, "The Message" is a clear example of giving fresh language to the ancitent Word; language that makes more sense in our contemporary American culture. It seems that perhaps Peterson briefly adopted too narrow a definition of "relevance" while the bulk of his work demonstrates an incarnational philosophy.

"God bless us, everyone!"

Yesterday I was walking through a parkinglot and saw a very inconspicuous bumpersticker. It said very simply, "God bless the whole world, everyone!" I suppose this is to be read in contrast with the proliferation of the "God bless the USA" and the "God bless our troops" bumperstickers, window-stickers, magnets and yard signs that have sprouted like flowering crabgrass. On the one hand, they surface some warm sentiments yet they are also visual pollutants.

While virtually all Christians would surely wish God's blessings on our country and military, Indies (independant thinking Christians) recognize how unlike God it is to invoke His blessings upon the United States as if our country is His personal terrestrial agent. That is hardly the case. Rather, we must invoke His blessings upon the whole world. Even upon those who have wronged us, at least as we see it.

The simple, innocent invocation of Tiny Tim in "A Christmas Carol" should be our guiding sentiment. After abuse at the hands of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim is able to plead for God's blessings upon Scrooge in spite of the harms he had inflicted.

We might contend that at least Scrooge had come to some sense of repentence and changed his ways. We might further contend that his repentence warrents Tiny Tim's invocation of blessing. While this might be true, it may also blind us to our own moral crimes. It may lead us to conclude that of all nations in the world, we possess the moral highground. It doesn't take Indies too long to realize how ludicrous that is.

Rather,we American Christians would do better to embrace our role as conduits of God's world mission of redemption. God is redeeming the whole of creation back to Himself; creation in Peoria, Paris, Pakistan and Phnom Penn. We are vehicles of His redemption, and not just His redeeming mission between Portland & Portland .

Where did we get the idea that the cross was draped with Old Glory? Where did we get the idea that the clearest move of God in this world was happening through the US military?

Shame on us for allowing our US citizenship (of which I am very proud) to co-opt our citizenship in God's eternal Kingdom.

"God bless the whole world, everyone!"

May this be our prayer.

A Not-So-Hostile Take-Over of the Morality Market

This morning, like every morning, I was watching the morning news while I dressed. During a commercial break one of those Wal-Mart testimonial commercials came on. I was barely paying any attention to it until the message struck me.

The commercial was a supposed "real-life" example of how Wal-Mart cares about people. A family was driving somewhere when a deer ran in front of their car and they hit it full-speed doing severe damage to the car resulting in a fire. Moments after the accident a Wal-Mart employee was passing the scene and stopped to help. He helped pull the people from the wrecked car, took care of them, let them stay in his house and took them out to eat. Near the end of the commercial the Wal-Mart employee said something like, "Wal-Mart teaches us to care about people."

Wow! When did Wal-Mart capture the market on compassion? I accept that they have the market on diapers, paint, cheap clothing, plastic storage containers and white bread. But when did they become the national supplier of morality? I am angered that Wal-Mart has coopted the ethics of the Cross in service to corporate image building. Does this mean there is an ethics vacuum in our world that is an open market for the first and slickest advertising exec. to maximize? Apparently.

If anyone questions whethere we are in a post-Christian society, Wal-Mart just cleared it up for us. You know, the Wal-Mart from Bentonville, Ark. Your hometown store. Not the eurotrash, fashionista, Madison Avenue, from the coast stores but your middle of middle America store. This Wal-Mart has just proven to me decisively that Christianity is no longer assumed to be the dispenser of high morals & ethics.

Rather than an aggressive take-over of the morality marked, Wal-Mart may just be filling a void left by Christians who are preoccupied with church-governance and issuing doctrinal statements than with living the Cruciformed life of Christ. This was no hostile take-over. We gave up the high-ground for a beach condo, minivan and Gap-wear. I don't want to return to the age of civil religion. Rather, I believe we followers-of-the-Crucified are called to live radically ethical lives that draw a clear distinction between the branding of morality (e.g. Wal-Mart) and a morality that nurtures redemption & reconcilliation.

The Dilemma of Rejoicing in the Midst of Devastation

We have recently endured hurricane Ivan. The moral/ethical questions a disaster raises will leave you chasing your tail like a dog. Here in the New Orleans area a huge number of the population evacuated. I was told yesterday that the city of New Orleans had ordered 10,000 body bags. I don't know if that is true or not. But, surely, if New Orleans had taken a direct hit from Ivan the devastation would have been tremendous. The number of poor people trapped would have been in the 10's of thousands. New Orleans is like a bowl, 9 feet below sea level. Even where I live on the northshore of the lake could have experienced great devastation.

I am so glad Ivan didn't make landfall in Louisiana. I give thanks to God.

But, there it is. The moral dilemma. It seemed inevitable that Ivan would land somewhere. Gulf Shores, Alabama was it. Pensacola got severely damaged, as did so many small coastal communities from Mississippi across the Florida panhandle. I find it increasingly difficult to rejoice in the fact that we were spared when others were so devastated.

While it seems natural to be thankful that Ivan didn't devastate our community, my conscience will not allow me to have any real joy in that fact. Rather, I am finding that I am sensitized to the damage Ivan created elsewhere.

I don't mean to be presumptuous, but, is that how Jesus was? Did Jesus enjoy his own security while wading through all the difficulties experienced by others around Him? How did Jesus not get swept up by sadness?

I don't really have answers to those questions but I do experience joy in the midst of difficulty. I experience relief even while others are suffering. I have praised God even while struggling deeply.

Perhaps this is one of the mysteries of God. That He can remain so glorious even when His creation is in such turmoil. Perhaps that is one of the greatest blessings He offers us, that we can experience a deep inner joy even while facing devastation.

About 15 years ago, while still in graduate school, I had one of my categories obliterated. I was told that maps printed in Australia show Australia in the upper center of the map and all other continents and countries layed out accordingly. My immediate reaction was a deep, visceral rejection of such a ludicrous idea. At least in my small corner of the world, north was clearly north and because it was north it was at the top of the map. Furthermore, because the US was the richest, best, most admired, envied and imitated country in the world, it stood to reason that the US should be at the center of the map with (at the time) the Soviet Union and all of those other countries that end in "stan" being divided by the left and right edges of the map. Or, in my more magninimous moments, the US could be placed slightly off-center to the left so as to include all of Europe and most of the Soviet Union with the left and right edges of the map dividing the Bering Strait and whatever little banana republics are out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The information about Australian maps was like a C2 explosion to my categories. "You mean other intelligent people see the world in a completely different way?" "You mean that what I have always assumed is 'up' is not necessarily 'up'?" "You mean that my fundemental categories of 'up' and 'down' may not be 'right'?" Wow! What a brain-stopper!

It seemed obvious to me that with such a fundemental catagory blown to smithereens I had better look for other vulnerable categories. Eventually, I found some. God. Faith. Jesus. Worship.

When looking at maps, I discovered that "my world" was too small. I discovered that my security was trapped in assumptions that were no more solid than the narrow expanse of my experience. By having my assumptions blasted I was given an opportunity dig deeper for something more solid and more real on which to anchor my assumptions.

My experience with God was similar. I had come to view God the way I had come to view the world. Basically, it was handed to me as a foregone conclusion. And I accepted it as fact, the same way I accepted that north was alway to be at the top of a map.

When I took a map, turned it 'upside down' and backed off, I began to see the world very differently. So much differntly, it didn't seem like the same world. I looked at it with all the words upside down and it just didn't look right. Yet, it was the same world.

I had a similar experience with God. I needed to turn my view of Him 'upside down' and back off. When I did, I got a wholly different view. In fact, He didn't look like the same God. I saw so much more of Him than my small categories had allowed. This new view created a crisis for me. My expanded view of God created both awe and terror.

He is so much greater and marvelous than I had ever imagined. Also, He is so much more powerful and demanding than I had imagined. My new, larger view gave me so much more to worship.

Sometimes we need our categories obliterated.