A Kingdom Collective

Varied viewpoints on the Kingdom of God.

[akingdomcollective]

Towards a Theology of Singleness: Part II

About two years ago, I wrote Towards a Theology of Singleness, which is probably my most-read, most-shared pieces of writing ever. Well, it turns out I still think about the theology of singleness a lot, for much the same reasons: I’m still a single young man who thinks that it might be nice to be married some day.

That being said, something has changed, which is what leads me to write this follow-up to that past piece. Over the last six months or so I’ve experienced the first prolonged period in my adult life where I’m okay with being single. I mean, I’ve been able to talk a good theological talk about singleness since I read through the Bible the first time after coming to faith. But it’s always been something which, on some level, I’ve been trying to convince myself of. I’ve known that singleness is actually a good thing, but it sure as hell hasn’t felt like a good thing.

There’s primarily two things that have changed which have brought me to this place where being single actually feels like a good thing. My hope is that in sharing them, some of you might also find you feel more peace.

Before I get started, I want to address something. I think really following Jesus will often lead us to places where what we think simply doesn’t line up with the bedrock assumptions of our broader culture. This makes sense—Canada, the US, or any other country simply aren’t the Kingdom of God. So the more our beliefs and ways of interpreting the world come in line with the Kingdom, the more out of line they’ll be with our society. Moreover, the Christian subcultures in which we find ourselves aren’t the Kingdom of God. And so there will come a time when the truths Jesus is guiding us into will be out of line with the unquestioned assumptions of our Christian subculture. The more tightly these assumptions are held, the more people will be uncomfortable when we question or reject them.

I bring this up because I have become convinced that within my culture (and, I think most others) we have idolized (in the technical theological sense of the word) romance. In various Christian subcultures, this idol looks a bit different—it’s marriage which is worshipped, not romance, but that’s not (in this conversation, at least) an important difference.

When I say we idolize romance/marriage I mean nothing more or less than this: we sacrifice things upon its altar, in the expectation that it will do things for us which only God can do. This is, to put it mildly, a problem.

Now, hear me rightly: I don’t think marriage or romance are inherently bad, any more than money is (indeed, a good deal less so). But when we put them in the place of a god? Yeah, that’s bad. And this idolatry is so pervasive that it’s remarkably difficult to escape, even for those who are actively trying.

I’m not trying to condemn any given person. If you want to get married, I’m not saying that’s a bad desire! Just that it’s a bad god. If you’re married, and it’s good, awesome! If you’re married and it’s bad, I’m so sorry. I’m not trying to condemn any given person. Just...our entire society. And maybe every society ever.

So, here’s the first thing that’s changed in my life that’s led to me feeling okay about being single: The idea that Church is family has come to be true in my experience.

This theme is rampant across the New Testament: In John 1 we learn that whoever believes in the name of Jesus have the right to become children of God (and because of how families work brothers and sisters to one another). In Mark 3, we learn that Jesus considers whoever does the will of God to be his mother and brothers and sisters (and again, by extension, family to one another). In 1 Peter 2, the apostle writes that we who were not a people have been bound together into a people. In Ephesians 2, Paul tells us that God is building us together into the household (i.e. family) of God. In 1 Timothy 5, Paul tells timothy about how to lead a church—and he’s to do it as he would with a family. I could go on, but I think my point is made: at its core a church is a family, with God as the father and Jesus as the eldest brother.

I was raised by a single mother. She did a phenomenal job. Nonetheless, there’s some emotional baggage in my life as a function of not knowing my father. In the first year or so after coming to faith, I had a hard time referring to God as “Father.” After all, I like God; why would I use a word for Him which means “Unreliable, selfish, absent,” et cetera? The good news is I’m past that, having spent some serious time working through my fatherlessness issues, but in the past year or so, there’s been a pretty major breakthrough in my thinking about God as father. My Church have come to be brothers and sisters to me in a new way. This isn’t to say people in past Churches haven’t been wonderful to me (they really, really have), but the people at my Church love me in such a concrete, day-to-day way, and at the same time are committed to me. And if I know beyond a doubt that these are my brothers and sisters, the thing that must follow is that God, who is their father, is also mine. The idea that God has adopted us as His children is something that’s made concrete in my experience by the fact that my Church are my brothers and sisters.

This is made most clear in the case of one particular family. I’ve been friends with them for a long time, but these days we live just around the block from each other. Almost two years ago, they had their first child, and he is an absolute joy in my life. And they go out of their way to include me in their family—I can go to their place for dinner, they can ask me to watch the toddler while they run errands. I can help pick up a cake for a surprise party, they can drive me to the hospital.

There’s three things that make this relationship important in the context of me being a single person. The first is the concrete forms of care in the every day. Part of why we need family is for these simple day-to-day things. We need someone to pick us up from the airport, someone to check in on us when we’ve mentioned that we’re feeling pretty depressed, someone to help us move. The second is being valued. It’s important to the human psyche to know that you are precious to someone. The third is commitment. I know that these guys are going to be in my corner my whole life. I hope we’ll continue to live close to each other, but even if that changes, I know they’ve got me. I get to be part of the kid’s life as he grows up, I get to watch as he changes, and be part of him growing and learning.

When you live with your family, they’re the ones who care for you in the day-to-day, they love you deeply, and you know that (barring some tragedy) they’re committed to you for life. In our society, we’ve decided that the thing you do as you grow up is move away from your family. Is it any surprise then that people scramble desperately for a romantic partner? We need those small day-to-day experiences of care, we need someone to tell us that we matter to them, and we need committed relationships with people who we know will be there for us over the long haul. If we don’t have family, a partner or spouse is the logical place to look for that.

And that’s forgetting the other important things family offers—intergenerational relationships, for one. What’s been incredible in this season of my life is that I have that experience of family. I don’t need a romantic partner to meet those needs, I have the family of God.

Of course there are other desires that Church-as-family can’t meet (the obvious one being sex). But I cannot overstate the impact on my day-to-day emotional wellbeing that being part of a committed family makes.

The other big thing that’s changed is this: I’ve come to understand that marriage is costly. In his first letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul wrote:

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. 

(1 Corinthians 7:32-34, ESV)

In the past I have tended to read this passage in a judgemental tone. But a handful of things have happened in the last couple years. First: a lot of my friends have gotten married (this is, I think, just a function of being a Christian in his late twenties). Second, I moved back to Ottawa, and have been spending more time with my married friends.

In the past, when I’ve thought about the idea of marriage being costly, or I’ve talked to people or read about it, most of the reasons that get offered up for why singleness may be preferable have been...incredibly selfish. “You have more freedom,” “You don’t have someone checking up on you,” “Your life gets to be about what you want it to be.” Given the eccentricities of my personality, none of those are terribly motivating. More importantly, they aren’t the reasons Paul mentions. Instead, Paul talks about what people worry about—what their attention is on.

I find myself having some version of this conversation with my married friends pretty often: they’re telling me that their marriage is consuming a lot of their time, energy, and thought, and taking away from more explicit work of the Kingdom (working for stuff like evangelism, or discipleship, or justice). They feel guilty. I remind them that a healthy, loving family is a rare thing indeed. Growing up, I was pretty convinced that marriage was just bad. Most marriages I saw growing up either ended up in divorce or...should have. I saw spousal abuse happen around me. I saw loveless marriages. I saw divorce. I saw people who did not speak to their parents. This is the norm. And now that most of my friends are from middle class families, the only thing that’s changed is that people are better at hiding their familial brokenness (though I think this skill set serves them poorly). So I tell my friends, if you are able to love your spouse, if you are able to love you children, and if your family is a setting of mutual love, that is a frikkin’ miracle, and a powerful testimony to the love of God. It is good for those of you who are married to invest a lot of time and energy in your family.

And I mean every word of it.

That being said, maintaining a healthy marriage means you have less capacity and freedom to pursue the Kingdom of God in other ways. It’s a lot harder to suddenly move to another continent, especially if your spouse has a very different set of emotional and social needs than you. You need to make sure you spend good time with your spouse, which means less time to spend volunteering, or building meaningful relationships with people who don’t know Jesus. And this isn’t a small impact. Marriage will, for most people, mean the end of some of their Kingdom dreams.

Of course, marriage can also mean a beautiful partnership in the pursuit of God’s Kingdom. That’s what it’s supposed to mean, anyway. And that can be great! But the cost is real. And it’s not just a cost to your own selfish desires and preferences, it’s a cost to the Kingdom of God.

And let’s be real. I don’t know if I want to pay that cost. Maybe. It can be worth it. But...It’s a question.

So that’s what I’ve got. Church-as-family is real, and it’s great.

And marriage is costly, and I don’t actually know if I think it’s worth it.

These two realizations have done wonders for the peace I feel in my life as a single adult. I hope they might do the same for you.

[akingdomcollective]

Hope: I’m Just Not That Good at It

I’m not a particularly hopeful person.

The other two theological virtues, faith and love, they come comparatively easy for me, but hope is…hard.

If you know me, that may come as a surprise. After all, I’m definitely an optimist. Faced with crummy situations, I’m pretty good at finding the silver lining. I like to believe the best about people (at least individual people; I have a somewhat more dim view of “people” in the abstract).

But, it’s Advent, and I don’t feel like I have anything significant to say about peace, joy, or love. So let’s say something about hope.

So, here’s what I mean when I say I’m not good at hope: in any given situation, I tend to see the way God could do something wonderful. Sick? Opportunity for miraculous healing! Someone being a huge jerk? Heart waiting to be transformed! Unsure how I’m going to pay rent? Opportunity for miraculous provision!

And I can do this because I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen miracles. I’ve seen the flashy kind, and the subtle kind.

But it’s not even only my faith that leads me to be an optimist. It’s just how I’m wired. I grew up with enough pain and suffering just out of sight that I just…really want to believe the world is a good place. And I usually can.

“Okay,” you may be thinking, “That sounds a lot like someone who is good at hope.” So here’s what I mean when I say that I’m not very good at hope:

I think there’s a sort of a “feeling” of hope. A feeling. That’s the thing I’ve just described. But then there’s a virtue of hope. The virtue of hope is what allows that feeling of hope to persist when things start to look…bad.

You see, I can have hope that God will do anything. Until He doesn’t do it the first time. Then I’m on the first train to despair-town. I can have hope that anyone is a living saint, until they hurt someone I love. Then it seems likely that they’re a human monster.

Things look like they’re going to be pretty great. Until they don’t.

When I first was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis three-and-a-half years ago, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to get it into remission and live a normal life. Five different medications  and a hospitalization later, I despair of ever being better.

A few years ago, I learned that there’s a word for this: “Despondency.” As a sort of unbelief, it works like this: you have a hard time believing that the negative elements of the past could ever change. In all the negative ways, the future will resemble the past. There’s no room for God to surprise you.

Despondency isn’t depression. I mean, I need to be careful about that, too; depression tends to move along family lines, and I’ve dealt with situational depression in the past. To quote the late great Leonard Cohen “I caught the darkness,” and it’s often lingering on the edge of my consciousness.

But despondency is much more insidious. Where depression is irrational (not that that helps you defeat it in the moment), despondency actually makes a lot of sense: You were hopeful for the thing; you were disappointed. It makes more sense not to hold out hope. After all, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” right? (Proverbs 13:12)

And if you don’t believe in God, or you believe in a God who’s kind of a jerk, I don’t know what to tell you. Yeah, cynicism is probably the way to go. Or maybe read some existentialist philosophy and decide to bravely craft meaning out of an uncaring, absurd world. Hold someone you love in your arms. Whatever keeps you moving from day to day.

The thing is, I believe in a God who is most assuredly not a jerk. And scripture seems to think pretty highly of hope. So despondency seems like a problem.

What is it about despondency that’s problematic? I mean, aside from the fact that it feels pretty shitty.

Well the thing I described gives the authority to experience. To the world as it has been. And, while it’s true that in the normal order of the world, the way things has been is by-and-large the way things will continue to be (things will continue to fall downwards, water will continue to be wet, Firefly will continue to be the greatest television show ever), it is also true that with God, things don’t need to obey the normal order of the world. Right? When we talk about miracles, we mean that the normal laws of nature or society were put on hold, because God intervened.

Hope in the face of repeated disappointment is a theological virtue because it’s pretty much impossible on our own, but also because it is grounded in who God is. Yeah, it seems like the world is spinning out of control—war, slavery, and hate are up, and don’t even get me started about politics. And yeah, my personal world seems to be spinning out of control—I continue to get sicker, my schoolwork is languishing, and my senses of purpose and belovedness are very low. The part of me that is good at reason looks at that and says “Buckle up!” But God is God. God is in control. God know’s what He’s doing. And God is good.

And you know what, God can surprise me. He can break the pattern. He can do a new thing.

After all, I never would have guessed that He’d come as a poopy, screaming baby son of poor unwed parents, born amongst an oppressed people under a genocidal king. That was new.

And that seems as good a reason as any—and a better reason than most—to be hopeful.

So that’s what I’ve got. It’s not a full-blown theology of hope. It’s more like…the first tentative steps a toddler takes when learning to walk. Fortunately, we’ve got good Father ready to catch us when we fall and bonk our heads.

[akingdomcollective]

“Just” Friends?

Recently, a Facebook friend of mine shared a blog post addressing that age-old question: Can men and women be “just friends”? When Harry Met Sally was referenced. Insecurity in relationships was brought up. The answer, as is common with these things, was found to be “no.”

I found myself leaving a long, rambly response in the comment thread on my friend’s Facebook post. I remembered a conversation I had not that long ago when a friend asked me “What are your thoughts about men and women living together?” I realized that I’m deeply convinced of, and passionate about, a particular response to this question. I’m convinced of and passionate about this response for primarily theological reasons.

Then I remembered that I’m part of a collective who maintain a theology blog that hasn’t been updating very often in about six months, and I thought “I should write about this.”

So: Do I think men and women can be “just friends”? Absolutely. Not only do I think it’s possible, I think it’s important to maintain healthy non-romantic relationships with the opposite sex. Maybe even morally obligatory.

Ironically, if you Google image search “just friends,” you mostly get black & white pictures of partially undressed people having sex.

A couple preliminaries are in order:

First: I definitely have a horse in this race. Ever since my second year of university, I’ve lived with other people, and the majority of the time those households have had both men and women. Moreover, the majority of my close friends are women. With the exception of an incredibly awkward phase in high school, this has always been true. There are a number of reasons for this: as a fatherless man, it’s easier for me to trust women than men; many of my best characteristics are ones our society considers feminine; etc. Nonetheless, this forms the foundation of my conviction than men and women can, in fact, be friends: if that isn’t possible than I must be delusional. And so must the not-insignificant number of women who consider themselves my friends.

Second: For the sake of this conversation—for the very premise to even make sense—we have to make one huge assumption. This assumption is always made in this conversation, but I’d like to make it explicit: We’re assuming everyone is straight. Which, obviously, not true. But the question “can men and women every be just friends” relies on this assumption. It’s interesting that I’ve never come across someone asking “can lesbians ever be just friends with other women” or anything like that. But that might just be because of the circles I move in. Anyway, for this entire thing, feel free to mentally add “straight” before every instance of the words “men” and “women.”

Third: “Friend” is a weird word in the English language, because we use it to refer to a number of different kinds of relationships, from “that person on Facebook,” or “that person I play pool with once a month,” all the way up to “the person who I go to when I am sad or angry or confused, who knows me better than anyone else.” Throughout this, I’m talking about “friends” in the meanings near the later end of the spectrum: close, intimate friendships. I don’t think anyone doubts that men and women can be friendly, or be buddies. It’s close friendships that are at issue here.

Fourth: I actually hate the phrase “just friends.” You know why? Because friendship is awesome. Plato thought friendship was the highest form of love, and on a human level I think he might be right (granted, Plato also thought sex between older men and young boys was an important part of philosophical mentorship, so maybe he didn’t know too much about the issue). The phrase “just friends” implies that friendship is less than romance, and I think that that’s both false and harmful. Some of the friendships in my life—with both men and women—are among the most important relationships in my life, and I don’t foresee that changing if and when I am dating or married. Friendship is so important, and yet the closest our culture seems to get to acknowledging this is the dudebro motto of “bros before hos,” and that saddens me immensely.

Source: http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=723

With that out of the way: Why do I think men and women can be friends?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think it because my experience shows me it’s true. On top of that, I think it because I think being a decent human being means not buying the reasoning that says it’s not possible. What do I mean by that?

The argument that men and women can’t be friends hinges on this: you’ll always be, first-and-foremost, possible partners. If you’re close, emotionally intimate, but not sleeping together, you’re just acting as romantic partners. You’ll both be perpetually aware of the possibility of something changing, and that will dominate how you relate. Furthermore, if either of you ever ends up in a romantic relationship with someone else, either you’ll need to terminate this friendship (or become way less close), or else you’ll be undermining your romantic relationship. Men and women can’t really be friends because they’ll always be possible partners first. The friendship will only ever be a cover for this. If you think you’re friends with someone of the opposite sex, they’re probably just using you. Or you’re fooling yourself. Or both.

My problem with this argument is this: it relies on seeing everyone of the opposite gender you meet as a potential bedmate. Before being a person, with skills, a personality, gifts, et cetera, they’re someone you might have sex with. If you approach the world this way, then yes, I think it is impossible to be friends with members of the opposite sex. But also, I think that if you approach the world this way, you’re a bad person. This is objectification of the highest order, and it can occur without any inappropriate ogling. But if you approach people as people—to be loved and known as individuals, who can enrich your life in a myriad of ways—then this problem disappears. You don’t need to be a Christian—you don’t need to care about theology—for this to be true. Stop treating people as potential bedmates, and this problem goes away.

But there’s more.

Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that that God made humanity in his own image—male and female. Something about what God was doing in the creation of humanity required the making of two different kinds of human. And then, in Genesis 2:18, we get God saying that “It is not good that the man should be alone.” God sees the man, and knows that he needs the other kind of human in his life.

I don’t feel qualified to talk about what exactly the created, non-physical differences between men and women are, but it seems hard to deny that they’re there. And it seems clear that God thinks we need to be in relationship with one another.

“Surely,” you might insist, “this is what marriage is for? In marriage, man and woman are united, and the full image of God shines forth. We receive love and support from one another. Done.” And you’d be forgiven for thinking this if all we had to go on was the first two chapters of Genesis. But it’s not.

I’ve talked about this before, but it seems to me indisputable that the New Testament upholds singleness as not only not-bad, but actively good (see: Matthew 19:10-12; 1 Corinthians 7). But if God has made men and women different from one another (beyond just the physical), and made us so that we deeply need one another, and said that singleness is a good thing, then it must be the case that romantic relationships aren’t the only (or even necessarily the best) way that that happens. So yeah, I think cross-gender friendships are actually key to living as God intends, and encountering the image of God.

But there’s even more.

In practice, living out the Gospel is fundamentally about reconciliation. Sin severs relationship. In Genesis 3, we see the original sin severing relationship between the two humans, between them and creation, between them and God, and between them and themselves. And to the extent that the Gospel is about undoing the effects of sin (this is definitely part of what the Gospel is about), then the Gospel is about repairing relationships that are broken by sin. Paul describes his ministry as “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). In Galatians, he gives a roadmap for how God is about the business of interpersonal reconciliation: He’s binding everyone together into one big family, so that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) So these are good axes to pursue reconciliation along: ethnic, economic, and gendered axes. And I would suggest that in our society, these are all axes of massively broken relationship.

So yeah, we need healthy relationships with members of the opposite sex if we want to claim to be doing this whole “Gospel” thing.

“Sure,” you may be thinking, “that’s all well and good. I accept that it is important to have friends of the opposite gender, but how do I do it? Isn’t it going to get awkward?”

You betcha!

The close, emotionally intimate friendships I have with women in my life have been the source of more awkward, uncomfortable conversations than anything else in my life, by far. I’ve had the “Wait, we’re not attracted to each other, are we?” conversation a lot of times—it’s always uncomfortable. I remember calling a female friend of mine a couple months before she got married in tears, because I was afraid of losing our friendship. I’m happy to report that we’re still very close friends. Did things change? Sure, but things always change.

The “secret” to preserving these friendships when things get weird or hard? As far as I can tell, it’s this: to value your friends, and your friendships, really very highly. Have them be so important to you that you’ll have uncomfortable conversations, put yourself in awkward situations, and do the work it takes to preserve your friendship.

“But Kaleb,” people might exclaim, “If people have friends of the opposite gender, they’ll end up being attracted to their friends!” I hear. Furthermore, I think this is probably mostly right. More than once, I’ve ended up attracted to a close friend. And you know what I have to say about that?

So what?!

Why do we act like this is the end of the world? People are attracted to each other! Sometimes that attraction is requited, sometimes not. Again, so what? Part of growing up is learning to deal with it when you find yourself attracted to someone. Sometimes it’s not appropriate to act on those feelings. So don’t! Maybe it means you’ll have to have an awkward conversation with your friend. Probably it means you’ll have to have several. But I assure you, there are options when someone is attracted to their friend other than “sleep with them instantly,” or “immediately cut them out of your life.” As long as everyone involved is willing to be a grown adult, and not run away just because things are uncomfortable, finding yourself attracted to someone you’re friends with just isn’t that big a deal (although in the moment it will likely feel like the biggest of all the deals that ever there were, and that’s probably fine). If you both value and prioritize the friendship highly enough, you can remain friends. I’ve done it; it is possible.

It’s hard to maintain close, healthy non-romantic relationships. But, of course, almost nothing worth doing was ever easy.

[akingdomcollective]

On Taking Offense

One summer day, I was sitting in a field, praying.

My prayers, as they often do, consisted mostly in me whining to Jesus. When I do this, I find Jesus tends to respond in one of two ways: He either listens with patient indulgence, or He tells me to get over myself.

This is the story of one of those latter times.

I was sitting and praying because I was in a great deal of emotional distress (This in and of itself is not terribly interesting. My emotions tend to come only in “large” and “extra-large”). A very close friend of mine was behaving in a way that both confused and hurt me. It was clear enough that the behaviour I was seeing was not in my head; mutual friends confirmed both that it was real and that it sucked.*

So I prayed. Jesus, this sucks. It hurts. I feel so…offended. I don’t deserve to be treated this way.

As soon as I started telling the Lord of all Creation about what I do and don’t deserve, He responded.

Hold up, I felt like He was saying, let me stop you right there. You’re offended, because you feel like you deserve not to be treated this way?! Buddy. Kaleb. You don’t deserve anything. You’re not the kind of thing that deserves. Now, me? I’m the kind of thing that deserves. I’m God. But you? You’re just…matter. Matter doesn’t deserve anything.

One of the many significant take-aways we can get from Genesis chapter two is that we humans amount to little, animate, dirt-balls in the service of God. “…then the Lord God formed the adam (man) from the face of the adamah (ground).” We are dirt-monsters. Groundlings, if you will.

Hearing this from God rocked me. It makes sense, though. God is such that all things are for Him, to His glory. That’s what the world is about: glorifying God. God has entitlements: He is entitled to everything. We, on the other hand, are categorically not entitled to anything. When we think we are—be it a certain sort of treatment from others, or a certain object, or anything, really—we make a category mistake. We put ourselves, in some small way, in the place of God. Yet from God’s perspective, we can no more deserve something than can a rock. This isn’t a moral point. It’s a logical point.

Does this look like the sort of thing that has rights? I didn’t think so.

If you’re not a Canadian, it’s hard to understand what a big deal this is. Being offended is actually a bedrock element of our cultural beliefs and practices. We have a way easier time understanding “offensive” than “evil.” In order for this whole “multiculturalism” project which has formed the bedrock of how we understand ourselves as a nation to work, we need to make “being offensive” the highest sin. I’m pretty sure “being offended on behalf of someone else who I don’t even know” is the single most Canadian experience.

And it’s nonsense. Ugh.

Interestingly, the Bible speaks of rights exactly once: In the first chapter of his account of the Gospel, John says “…to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” That’s it. No other rights, anywhere in the Bible. If we cannot deserve, then it makes no sense to talk of rights, because what does it mean to say that I have a right to something other than that I deserve that thing?

But if we cannot have rights, does that mean anything goes? Does it mean we can treat each other however we want? Does it mean it was not wrong for my friend to treat me poorly? Of course not. That someone else doesn’t have rights doesn’t mean we don’t have obligations towards them. It is still wrong to be a jerk.

To understand how we can have obligations to other people, it is worth thinking about what we owe to God. We have a whole suite of obligations towards God. But why? Many writers have pointed to the fact that God made us—this is theme comes up again and again in the Psalms. Because of this, many think that we are like God’s property. We owe Him obedience because we belong to Him. But I think this isn’t quite it. The only place scripture seems to allude to our “belonging to” God is in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, and here it’s the crucifixion, not creation which is the reason for this. But leaving the scriptural argument aside, I just don’t think God demands obedience in the way of possessions. If that were God’s desire, He could compel obedience from us all (He is, after all, omnipotent). There would be no need for us freely to choose obedience to Him. If we were simply possessions, there would be no need for free will.

Instead, I think God wants us to obey Him out of love. I cannot fathom why this is, except to suggest that, as John writes, God is love. And love exists as a relation between entities.

Simone Weil, whose work I study, wrote a piece called “Forms of the Implicit Love of God.” Her idea there is that we actually can’t love God, because we cannot comprehend God. God is infinite and perfect. We are finite, and screwed up. But we can love various other things (particularly our neighbours) in a certain sort of way, which is in turn how we love God. We love the goodness and the hints of perfection in them. We love them not because they’ve earned it, but because we know they are part of God’s good creation. We love them freely, without compulsion, even when they are unlovable. In doing this, we not only love them, but we actually love God.

Pretty much everything this woman wrote blows my mind.

The thing that this does, is it changes what’s in the centre of the picture. When I’m offended, when I claim I have a right to better treatment? I make it about me. To assert for oneself a right always centres the moral picture on the self. But when I love others because I have an infinite duty to love God? I fade out of the picture almost entirely. My love becomes like the sacrificial love of God, and it is oriented towards God.

Now this sounds hard (because it is). And it sounds saintly (because it is). And it sounds like something way above and beyond the ordinary call of ethical duty. But the idea is, it’s not. We have a real obligation to love God, and that means loving our neighbours.

Now, we’re not entitled to this love from others, but we are obligated to give it. Why are we not entitled to it? Because it has nothing to do with us—it is between them and God.

But if we all lived this way? Well, it seems like, in the process of God loving God through my neighbours, I’d wind up with a whole lot of love on the way. And that’s a world I want to live in.

* For the record, this conflict has since been resolved, and all is forgiven.

[akingdomcollective]

The First Time

In light of the recent mass-murder in Orlando, Florida—when a man walked into a gay nightclub on latin night and opened fire, killing 50 people and wounding another 50—our LGBTQ friends are terrified. And I get it. There are people out there—with guns—who want you dead. Who wouldn’t be terrified?!

One of my friends has asked me to put this up here—anonymously. I hope you’ll read it.

The first time I came out       It was to you. I want to say I remember it without pain But all I could hear was you      Putting disclaimer on your love     “But you can’t be in a relationship with someone of the same-sex” And me, desperate, acquiescing.

The first time I came out to you      I had to qualify my delightful experience in being single      and my commitment to not even looking at women             because though you don’t ask It’s what everyone thinks      and I say it so we can breathe a deep sigh of relief      move on, and never talk about it again. Or that time you tell me you understand     Because you’re single, and want to be single But you don’t really –     ‘cause you can get married to someone you like              If you so choose But I can’t      Because for the life of me I’ve tried liking men And failed. And failed again.  

The first time I was out to you      And you said, “I’ll always let you around my kids” My response was, thank you     But what about me is deemed unsafe to be around kids           My gay-ness? That most people can’t even see? And so glad you think that I can be allowed around your kids          But why say anything to begin with          because the shame I didn’t know I needed to have                Didn’t need to have to consider                       Is suddenly heaped on like a ton of bricks                               and I know all you want is to build a safe space but when you hand me bricks all I can see you doing is building walls.

The first time I came out     I crawled as fast as I could back in     Because whether you recognize it or not     It’s not actually safe to be out Not when fifty people are dead    Another fifty injured Not when I’m not even allowed to be gay    But told I have use the language of same-sex attraction          (Do you even know where that comes from?          Conversion therapy and being told holiness comes from being straight) Not when my mom tells me after I tell her I’ve been raped    “It’s OK to still like guys”    And I want to say to her, “it’s too late, mom, I’ve liked girls since I was eight” Not when parents come up to me, convinced kids will be corrupted by those gays    And I hide a flinch hoping you don’t notice – but I’m gay too    I sit next to you in the pews    I teach your kids Sunday School    I’m well-liked, looked up to, respected But I know it’s qualified –     None of these apply If only you knew I was gay, too.

I want to say I love the Church    But when the Church doesn’t love me    It’s hard to remember Jesus loves me And so yeah I don’t believe in same-sex marriage    But I’d rather go to a church that does Than put up with people who qualify who’s in and who’s out   Who draws lines in the sand   Who tells me that gays are less than         and in so doing tells me that I’m less than And so if only you knew    I’d lose my job         I’d lose my home              I’d lose my family Everything.

So tell me again you’re not a homophobe      But only that you hate the sin and not the sinner But guess what, you ranking sin and defining me by my temptations      Doesn’t tell me that you hate the sin           Only that you’re too self-righteous to know the plank in your eye           While you pick at mine. Tell me again that you love me      And ask me why I choose to stay with a group of people who only build walls          While my self-esteem is whittled to nothing          Where my voice is stripped away        And I’m told I’m loved but not shown. Tell me again that I don’t have to tiptoe      That I can bring my whole self in       Rather than be told to leave some of me behind I don’t want to be in a church of white-washed sepulchres       I don’t want to live in death But to you – full life for me is too inconvenient,       too messy to contemplate

So here we are.  Stuck in the dark.

[akingdomcollective]

Hope: A Meditation

They say the world is getting better. Women have the vote now; Slavery’s illegal now. Never mind that women are raped every day on our campuses, That more people are in slavery than ever before. Never mind that the world sure seems to be getting worse.

When I look around, the world sure seems to be getting worse. Plowshares are being beaten into swords, And pruning hooks into spears. Our wars are hot now, Our hearts are dark now. We hate, we fear, we lust, and we must possess.

The world’s a mess, and we’re no better, And I see no signs it’s getting better. It seems like hope can only be delusion, How can you be hopeful, unless you’re simply ignorant? And yet. And yet, A light has dawned.

“The light shines in the darkness,” You say, And hope has come. Something impossible has happened, So maybe we can hope for the impossible again. “God with us,” that was the promise, and it defied good sense. So maybe once again what cannot happen will come to be.

This world of ours offers little hope, but we’ve been promised more. What cannot be has come to be, And I for one will hold out hope, That He’ll come to be once more. Amen.

[akingdomcollective]

A Reflective Response to Racism

This a response to Alan's "What is Home...?", posted earlier, and a response to what is currently happening in Mizzou. 

(University of Missouri, New York Times)

I was particularly struck by Alan's reframing of home as the Kingdom of God, and the tension of being in the wilderness, the stuck-in-between place of not being quite in bondage, but not yet in the Promised Land.

The tension of the Kingdom as it came in Jesus' time, is here, and is to come: the understanding that we live in the hope of what is home, even as we seek to welcome others home in a place that is decidedly not-perfect and entirely messed up.

The Kingdom is here. And yet, it is not. Not quite yet.

I saw this when I was overseas: sex trafficking, the abuse of power at every level, commodification of human lives, rampant poverty, rampant misery, agony, and death.

But I saw the Kingdom as the Body lived out of its call: in my friends, as they went to befriend sex workers and visited the poorest of the poor; in churches as they rallied around to care for the least of these.

Likewise, I see that the Kingdom is yet to come, here, as well. Most pressing on my heart these days is the suffering of my black brothers and sisters in North America.

We, as a society, are colour-blind. We, as a society, take pride in this. We should not.

I know in my own experience that racism exists here. Racial slurs have been flung at me. My parents have been condescended at. My friends, passed for promotions at work.

And I am part of the model minority. Left unsaid are the questions of how much worse it must be for those who are seen as "undesirable" minorities...

My ethnic group bears some responsibility in the racism perpetuated. It is not just white people who discriminate against people of darker skin.

It's a running gag among the second generation community of who we can date, for example: Chinese people first, white people second, and so on. Bottom of that list are Japanese and black people.

Don't bring a hak gwai [black person, or more crudely, black devil] home, my friends and I hear. Stay away from the hak gwai. They're dangerous. They're crazy.

Or maybe the other narrative: they need to be helped, so we should turn them into projects.

These are the places where the Kingdom has yet to come.

As a Christian, I am a part of the process of restoration that God desires for this world, to pronounce the Kingdom here in faith and in hope; to be a light in the darkness.

And so, as I step into spaces where these conversations are occuring, I want to - no, need to - apologise. My black brothers and sisters, forgive me. Forgive me for the sins I have committed against you, in my thoughts and actions, for my prejudice and the assumptions I have had. Forgive me of speaking over you, of disbelief, of not listening to your experience and what you have to say.

As we enter into relationship, may I listen. Please call us out when we get too caught up in our own narrative, our own self-importance.

Let us hear your stories, the ones our Church has turned a blind eye to for far too long. Would you teach us to stand for shalom as Jesus calls us to, as you bring to the table what the Father has uniquely gifted you.

Would we walk as one, bringing Home to the world together, undivided. May we have courage to confront the deepest and darkest places, bringing the Light forward. 

My friend shared this benediction her pastor prayed over their congregation. I thought it was worth a share:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God  bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God, who creates, redeems and sanctifies, be upon you and all you love and pray for this day and forevermore.

Amen.

[akingdomcollective]

Luke 5:1-11 and How Jesus Changed My Life

This is a sharing I did at my church recently - the story of how Jesus met me those many years ago, and why I follow Him. 

This passage – Luke 5:1-11 – is one of my favourite passages in the gospels. Partly because I teach it quite a bit, but also because every time I hear or read this story I resonate with Simon’s experience of meeting Jesus. If you know me, you’ll know that I really like asking questions, and tonight, I’ll be asking a lot of questions, and bringing you along into both Simon’s story, and mine as well.

So, here’s the first question. What does Simon think of Jesus? You know, this was probably not Simon’s first encounter with Jesus. From the text, we can see that Jesus has been preaching along the lake, so we know that Simon knew Jesus as a teacher, and we know that Jesus borrowed his boat to speak from, and probably not for the first time. Simon‘s Jewish upbringing would have taught him to respect teachers.

What did Simon think of himself? Simon was a fisherman, and he would have been close to the bottom of society. He had likely fished for a living all of his life, and fishing was most likely a family business. So, he probably knew the craft inside and out.

And so, picture yourself as Simon. You’ve seen this guy come and preach along the lake where you spend much of the day mending the nets so you can go out at night. You respect Him, maybe even like the words He’s saying. “But He’s a teacher; I’m a lowly fisherman. Other than using my boat, would he even give me the time of day?”

And the truth is, most rabbis wouldn’t; becoming a disciple, even getting a rabbi’s attention was something really competitive. A fisherman, poorly educated, perhaps even illiterate, definitely crude and crass, would never get any attention from a rabbi.

 I imagine that Simon’s getting ready to bring the boat back ashore when Jesus tells him to go out even farther and put down their nets. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” And Simon would’ve known that there would be little fish to be caught in the daytime, and if they had not caught anything at night – when all the fish were out and about – then little chance they would be able to catch anything during the day. But because he respects Jesus and looks up to Him, he is willing to go along with what Jesus has asked of him; to humour him, most like.

I don’t think Simon expected anything. Maybe one or two fish at the very most. But instead, there was so much fish their nets were full to breaking, and they had to call the other boat to come and help… and they were both so full, both boats began to sink.

This. This was the catch of a lifetime. In a time and place where there should have been no fish. Where there shouldn’t have been a miracle.

Frankly, I was an embarrassment as a child. I struggled in high school, and by the time I graduated from high school, I was ready to call it quits on Christianity. I had a hard time at church, and the questions I had about faith went unanswered as I kept them buried because I didn’t want to be labelled a troublemaker. I was a coward. In a lot of ways, I was like Simon; I saw Jesus from a distance, but I didn’t know Him.

In university, I was on the badminton team in my first year – and if you know anything about the sports crowd, it’s that we drink and party a lot. I would tell my parents every time they called – Yes, I’m going to church, yes, I’m part of a fellowship – but the reality was pretty far from that lie. There was a church I attended off and on, and only because it assuaged my guilt. And every time I went, something ping’d: it would make me feel things that I didn’t really want to think about. Bible studies too, were the worst; I’d show up, and like it was when I was growing up, I wouldn’t contribute or say anything in the study, even though, for the first time, my questions – still unasked – were being answered.

I was content, for the most part, to live this way. I turned off my emotions almost entirely. And then Jesus abruptly ripped into my life through a community that I had been a part of on and off the previous year. I saw Him heal me of a physical wound – a spider had bitten my left arm, and my hand was paralyzed – in a room full of people who had been praying over me.

Healings didn’t happen. Miracles don’t happen. Those words ran over and over in my head, as I sat, stunned in disbelief, flexing my hand – the muscles back and not atrophied, as if I had never been paralyzed to begin with.

Simon’s response to Jesus is to fall down on His knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” In Simon’s eyes, in the world’s eyes, he was wholly unqualified to be in front of this rabbi, let alone talk to Him, let alone witness a miracle done for Simon.

And Jesus responds, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Why does Jesus respond this way? While Simon struggles with his inability, his frailty, his uselessness, Jesus sees Simon just as he is… and deems Simon perfect for the job Jesus is offering him. Jesus gives him this job offer in terms that Simon will understand – Simon is uniquely qualified in ways that trained followers of rabbinic schools weren’t – and shows Simon that he is being called into something greater than he is, to a vision of catching people for Jesus, the Master Fisherman.

I wish my immediate response had been to fall on my knees. It took a couple of months – when I finally hit rock bottom – for me to fall on my knees, and to tell Jesus that I was unworthy of Him. And His response was no less gracious to me than He had been with Simon: He promised not only healing from the emotional wounds I bore, but that one day He would use my story for His glory.

This was four years ago. At the time, I could barely see the light at the end of the tunnel. And at my worst, Jesus called me out of the depths of the darkness with a vision greater than I am, offered me a future and a promise. I had no idea at the time what that would be, or what would happen. All I knew in that instance was that I had seen Jesus perform a miracle, and that I wanted to continue to see Him and to know Him.

We are told that as soon as they had brought the boats ashore, they left everything and followed Jesus. This meant leaving their livelihoods, their families, any security that they had… to follow who was essentially a homeless itinerant preacher-Man. They were gambling everything they had on Jesus – without any safety net. And all because this Man – Jesus – looked at and recognised them, gave them dignity and a purpose.

For me, that has been the literal truth. Jesus rooted my identity in Him, and told me that He loved me, told me that I would be known by Him. That He had a purpose for my life. And it’s true, I have been leading a risky life since coming to know Jesus – not just emotionally, but physically, giving things up time and time again. I’ve followed Jesus to Asia and back, and now I’m headed away to Vancouver come the end of August, for the sake of the Kingdom.

But I also know that for many of you, this isn’t what Jesus has for you. The invitation to a risky life remains, but it won’t quite look like my story or Simon’s story. And I don’t know what Jesus is inviting you to, but I can tell you, should you say yes to Jesus... it will be the greatest adventure you will ever know, and you will be so dearly loved and known by Him, the One who created you.

And so, I’m going to leave you a couple of questions. 

What do you believe about Jesus? What do you believe about yourself? What does Jesus have to say about you?

What is Jesus offering you? What is holding you back (fear, self-protection, pride, anger, jealousy, material goods, etc.)? How are you going to choose to answer His invitation?

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5: 8-11)

[akingdomcollective]

Hey Kaleb! really liked your post on the towards a theology of singleness. I just had a question about your reading of 1 Corinthians 7. I'll be honest, when I first read it I got the same conclusion that you wrote of: ‘If you can’t keep it in your pants, get married?'. I'd really like to hear how you read it now, and if your opinion of what Paul is saying has changed. Or if others from AKC have any ideas it'd be great to hear your opinions!

Hey! Thanks for asking. 

I hate to admit it, but I still can’t see any other way to read it. But here are some thoughts about context that make it seem less crazy?

I try to imagine who it is Paul’s writing to. His audience is the church in Corinth, this bustling metropolis. And I imagine the people he’s writing to are likely to purchase the services of prostitutes—my understanding was that prostitution was plentiful at that time and place.

But even leaving the whole “prostitution” thing aside for a moment, while what Paul is saying seems crazy, is it really?

I mean, a marriage based solely on sexual desire would be a bad thing, but maybe Paul’s saying it would be a less bad thing than sleeping around because you can’t control yourself (I’m aware there are other options in life than these, but these are the ones Paul seems to be considering in this particular text).

So…that’s what I think is going on there. Paul’s not saying “Being really horny is a good reason to get married,” so much as “Getting married because you’re really horny is less bad than sleeping around because you’re really horny.”

That’s the best I’ve got. It’s still an indisputably tricky text, not the lest because what Paul is advocating runs counter to our natural intuitions. I won’t pretend I feel like I’ve got it all figured out.

[akingdomcollective]

Pale Reflections

Or, How superheroes led me to Jesus. Thanks goes to Alan for his major contributions. Spoilers for Batman storylines. 

I’ve loved superheroes since I was a little girl. As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library, and the graphic novels on the shelf caught my attention. What little time I was allowed to watch television was spent desperately trying to catch up with Justice League and all things DC. The last couple of years, then, have been a dream come true, as our screens have been saturated with superheroes come to life.

Oh, and it’s finally cool to be a nerd.

But what is it about superheroes that appeal to us? In all their unearthliness, pomp and swagger, what captivates us?

If you ask my elementary school teachers, they will tell you that even at a very young age I had a very strong sense of what was fair and unfair, just and unjust (my only detention came about because I, err, had the guts (read: was extremely foolish enough) to start a fight with bullies picking on my younger cousins). For much of my childhood, I was picked on, too. And as much as I had a saving-people obsession, I knew that I myself needed saving, because no matter what I did, things just weren’t right.

Cue Batman.

As much as I wanted to be Batman, more often than not I resonated more with the experience of Jim Gordon, the police commissioner who watches his beloved city – that he has sworn to protect – descend into chaos, as he himself is powerless in the face of corruption and evil. And every time I flipped the pages to see Gordon turn on the Bat-signal, my heart would skip a beat, because I knew what that meant: Batman would see it and things would be all right in Gotham again. Or at least, a little more right.

We want to believe that the evils and injustices in the world – that we see, that we experience, that we know – can be overcome. We want to believe that the world can be set to right, that justice may be served, and have peace and freedom reigning in our lives so that we might be able to live life to the fullest, whatever that means.

And, we want to believe that there is a Batman to our Jim Gordon, one who comes without fail when we call for help.

But for all his altruism, Batman is deeply flawed. His origin story is steeped in tragedy, and he wrestles with his identity: is he the playboy-multimillionaire, Bruce Wayne, or is he the vigilante, Batman, who will stop at nothing to rid the streets of evil? His relationships are broken: relationships with multiple women who are often enemies (or at least, frenemies), his children who are taught his trade but seldom experience his love, and his father figure being someone who cares for him deeply but whom he often dismisses… because his father figure is the butler. His walls are so high he lets no one in and those he trusts you could probably count on one hand.

He is mortal.

I wonder too, if he enjoys what he does. Surely he doesn’t – his determination arises from witnessing the murder of his parents as a child, and swearing revenge on criminals as a result. His strict adherence to his moral code comes from his resolve to not be like his enemies. Even so, for all his posturing and non-killing, Batman operates under the same rules as his enemies, the difference being he never takes it quite as far as them, or reigns in the consequences. As the Joker has stated previously, he needs Batman around – both are freaks and outcasts, two sides of the same coin, perhaps, and Batman too has been villainized in the past.

And for all his work, Gotham is never really entirely free, and neither is he: Batman himself needs a saviour.

The longing for a hero to emulate resides deep within us, and I think it’s why the concept of superheroes – beings who set all things to right – resonate so deeply with us. As it stands though, these are heroes derived by humans out of human experience, operating according to the rules of our broken universe and arise from within. This is why they cannot truly save – Batman may defeat the Joker, but others run rampant and rise to fill the vacuum. He may be able to bandage the wound, but the root causes he can never eliminate. We long for a story that has resolution, where the hero comes into the broken places and brings a final and lasting peace. One who delivers – not because they are stronger or mightier in the ways of this world –  but because they don’t operate by the rules of this world at all: One who goes straight to the heart of the matter, the root cause of evil.

Some consider Superman to be the ultimate hero, because he is noble, aloof, and utterly alien to this world. His story rings true to us – as his popularity indicates – because there is something about one who comes from the outside being the only one who can save that feels right. Because who amongst our mess – influenced, shaped, and nurtured by the mess – could save? Yet still, we can identify with him: alien in one sense, but intimately relatable in another. Since he is in human form, we, as humans, can and will trust him to save us. But even Superman too, is a pale reflection, an echo, if you will, of a larger and greater story.

By now, you may have already connected the dots (truthfully, it was never meant to be a surprise). The larger and greater story that we have tried over and over to replace is that of Jesus, who not only fits all the attributes required, but is also worthy of us modelling after. In His lifetime, many claimed to be the Messiah (the ultimate Hero who would bring about the restoration of Israel, or so they thought) and all were trampled under Rome’s heel as they fought violence with violence. The Israelites were too focused their immediate oppressor; God had a bigger plan, to conquer the source of evil for once and for all, and not with violence, but with Love. And just as we can relate to Superman, God came to us in human form, became one of us, lived amongst us, and served us, yet retaining his divinity. Rather than bruised knuckles, His heart broke for us, and his back bled open, his hands and feet nailed to a cross, his side stabbed with a spear. The enemy had no understanding; why would anyone – let alone a Supreme Being – give Himself up for a world that knew not who He is?

The monopoly of violence is power, the world says, and its goal is self-glorification. But that single act on the Cross and His resurrection was neither about the world’s comprehension of power, nor self-glorification. Jesus refused to operate by the world’s rules, and thus subverted them – by taking on the debt that we had incurred, the evils we had committed, and He who is perfect bridged the gap the enemy had so badly wanted to retain between us and the love of the Father. It was power as it was meant to be, power made whole in perfection, and wholly self-giving, wholly conquering. Death is no more: the war is over and Jesus has won, bringing Restoration and Life to what was once dead.

I still enjoy superheroes, and I find them vastly entertaining. As we enjoy their stories, may we be reminded again and again of the greater Hero, the One of whom these mighty saviours are but a faint echo. When you watch the Avengers save the earth yet again, think anew on the One who forsook violence and vengeance and chose Love instead – and in doing so, saved the Cosmos, for once and for all. Fix your eyes on Him; He alone holds power, and with it, Life to its very fullest.

[akingdomcollective]

Towards a Theology of Singleness

Earlier this year, I read Lauren Winner’s Real Sex. The truth is, I’m pretty sure the New Testament offers a distinct perspective on sex and romantic relationships, and as a young, hormonal, single person, I care a great deal about what that perspective is. So I try and read whatever I can on the subject. And most of what I read is pretty bad.

Coming to faith in my twenties, I managed to avoid most of the so-called “purity culture” that I’ve read and heard dominated North American evangelical Christianity in the nineties (some day I should get around to reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye, just so I know what so many of you were taught growing up).

In Real Sex, Winner sets out to work out a robust theology of celibacy (and thus singleness, because she sees these as co-extensive). And, in a brilliant move, she recognizes that in order to give a coherent understanding of God’s “no” to sex outside of marriage, she needs to outline the nature of God’s emphatic “yes” to sex within marriage. This is brilliant because it allows her to endorse celibacy as incredibly important outside of marriage without getting down on sex. Great.

The downside is that she gets all caught up in outlining the nature of that “yes”, and ends up not really providing a good treatment of celibacy. It ends up being that celibacy is just “not that”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an excellent book. It just doesn’t provide a good theology of singleness. And nothing I’ve read does.

Today, I’m going to try to provide a few tentative steps in that direction. I’m not going to solve it—I don’t have it figured out myself. But maybe I can move us in that direction.

I was going to put a picture here like I usually do, but if you Google Image search “Single”, everything you find is bitter and cynical.

So, why do I think a theology of singleness is something that needs to be worked out? Well, let’s consider a few things. Firstly, the vast majority of us want romantic relationships. Not all of us, but most of us. Second, most of us have sex drives. Our hormones make us want to have sex. Third, those two things are part of how God has designed us; presumably He did this on purpose. Fourth, In at least two places, the New Testament makes it clear that singleness is actually pretty great. Fifth, these were written in a  very, very different cultural context. Sixth, there’s a lot of history since these were written that may affect how we read them. 

That’s a lot of things. If you want to join me on the adventure of trying to make sense of all this, let’s start by looking at the Biblical texts in question. This first is almost a side-note to Jesus’ exchange with some Pharisees in Matthew.

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife [that divorce is unacceptable except in cases of sexual immorality], it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matthew 19:10-12)

The second is the entire seventh chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I’ve excerpted it below.

…because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. …Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. …Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. …Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. …I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better…(1 Corinthians 7)

Both of these are tricky passages to make sense of; I’d encourage you to go read them in full and in context.

I’ve read both of these passages often. Paul’s instructions in particular caught my attention right from when I first read them. “Is Paul really saying ‘If you can’t keep it in your pants, get married’?” was a question I took to my friends the first time I ever read this passage. The answer always involves a “yes” at some point amidst the context and justification. And this kind of bothers me. Along with most people who grew up in contemporary liberal society, I’m inclined to think “I really want to have sex with her” is a bad reason to get married. If one of my friends told me they were getting engaged because if they didn’t get married soon they’d just end up having sex with their partner, I would probably have a good long talk with them about how there are other options than sex or marriage. I would probably tell them that carnal desire is a pretty bad foundation for a life-long relationship. But darned if it doesn’t look like they’d have scripture on their side.

What’cha gonna do?

Sidebar: In the Church (and, for that matter, in our culture at large), we tend to think of singleness as a stage—a phase, or something to be passed through on the way to marriage (or, outside of Christian circles, just “a relationship). There’s this view that “in a relationship” is our default status, and singleness is an aberration that may occur from time to time. 

This perspective is perhaps best encapsulated by the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”, which I watched for most of my teens and early twenties. Our main character (Ted Mosby) is perpetually in-and-out of relationships, but is never just single—he’s always single-and-actively-looking. And that’s not necessarily a problem. It’s just striking to me that this isn’t presented as one of the (many) quirks of his personality—it’s just the default. It’s normal. Because being in a relationship is normal. Being single is something to be moved through.

The thing is…that idea? That singleness is this temporary, aberrant state? It’s unmitigated bullshit. Let’s start with some facts: Everybody is born single. I…don’t really feel like I need to spell that out. It’s obvious. Also, everybody dies alone. Even if you die surrounded by your loved ones, in the end you face God alone. Moreover, in the resurrection, we spend eternity single (see Matthew 22:23-32).

So…if anything, it’s marriage which is a passing phase. 

I say this not because I’m anti-marriage. I’m not! Good marriages are great! Also, bad marriages are bad. I just think our perspective is…kind of screwy.

So, here’s a tricky thing. Like most people, I have a pretty strong desire for romantic relationship. Yet here, Scripture seems to be telling me that singleness is a better option for those who can choose it (I know, believe me I know, singleness isn’t always a choice).

So of course, in my desire to be faithful, I think “Welp, I should just choose to be single forever, because that’s the better thing, and I want to do the thing that is better”. The problem is, try as I might, I can’t make myself want to be single for the rest of my life. And I think that that’s probably the level at which singleness as a calling or a gift or whatever happens at—the level of what you want. 

So here’s the thing. The part of me that wants to “be good at following Jesus” (whatever that even means) wants to “be called to singleness” (whatever that means). But if you’re not “able to receive” that—the faithful thing actually isn’t to try for it. Both the passages quoted earlier urge those who can receive the call to singleness to do so—and those can’t not to. If Paul and Jesus both elevate singleness, I think it’s because in their culture—as in ours—it wasn’t even considered an option. It’s something the human heart recoils at. But it can be really good, if you can manage it.

Being single long-term is hard. But if scripture urges it, it seems to me that we as the Church have a responsibility to make it not only possible, but good. What do I mean by that? Well…loneliness is bad. Even the most introverted among us have a drive for companionship, and I think that’s something God hardwired into us on purpose. “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

When we operate on our own…we get dumb. We stray from following Him. It’s just something about the sort of creature we are. Romantic relationships are one really good way we have of making sure that doesn’t happen. We give our lives into another’s keeping, we live together, we structure our lives around another person, putting them first in a way that helps us internalize the truth that we are not the centre of the world. We maybe have children—it’s pretty great.

The thing is, those are universal needs, not married-people-only needs. Are the single among us living alone? Do they only see Church friends at Church, or the occasional dinner-party?

It seems like those who forgo romantic relationships will be those with both the most capacity for, and need for, deep non-romantic relationships. But have we made space for those? Do we take our non-romantic relationships seriously? Are we committed to those relationships? Are the married among us involving the single among us in their families (and not merely as cheap babysitting)? If we as the church think that singleness is a real call (and if your theology is such that not being attracted to the opposite sex necessitates celibacy, then you better think that singleness is a real call), then we have a duty to make singleness a real, live option for people in our communities. We simply can’t afford to treat singles as second-class citizens—whether explicitly, or implicitly.

So that’s what I’ve got. Not a lot of answers. A few problems. A fair bit of confusion about how to live my own life. And a challenge: let’s live like the family of God that scripture tells us we are.

[akingdomcollective]

Why Resurrection Matters...

Often, at least in the churches I’ve experienced, there’s been a sense of not quite knowing what to do with Resurrection. Some have a Eucharist on Easter Sunday, others have a couple Easter-ish songs, but then make sure we focus on the Cross. We’re a singularly confused group of people, and there is a dissonance between us and the early church. We know we should celebrate Easter, because, well, it’s the thing to do. But we don’t make as much fuss about it as we do Christmas. 

Now, I like Christmas – celebrating incarnation is a great thing. Without Incarnation, nothing else happens. But without Easter, nothing matters – and yet we give it, at best, one day, sometimes with a jaded shout of celebration. Christmas has its twelve days, and Resurrection… not so much. Perhaps this stems from an over saturation at Christmas, and in the swing of the Western seasonal calendar, when Easter comes, we’re exhausted and want a break. Perhaps it’s that we understand why the birth of a child is awesome, and if this is a royal child, so much the better. We’ve got experience of that – all Christmas talks a couple years ago in England were so very grateful to Will and Kate for sorting the link into popular culture.

We also understand the concept of death – and the proper grieving process for the loss of someone dear to us. It’s a hard and painful thing, and is constantly with us.

However, someone… coming out of death? Someone who wasn’t simply reanimated into their old body, but burst the shackles of the grave with a physicality and life so far above our comprehension that it seemed to inhabit dimensions beyond our understanding?

Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t fit into our ways of looking at the world, and so because we can’t wrap our heads around how to celebrate it, we give a perfunctory whoop, and slide back into our routines, wearied and trudging our way through the world. If we, as followers of Jesus, properly began to grasp the smallest part of the magnitude of the victory proclaimed by Resurrection, we would not be able to contain our joy and celebration. We’d probably party/vision/dream until Ascension day, which would be another reason to celebrate and party (and then Pentecost would hit, which might well tide us until Christmas. But that’s another story).

This was brought home rather starkly in a Bible study a while ago, which was following a study guide. We were looking at the story of Lazarus, and the main point we were supposed to take was… how to talk to our grieving friends. Now, I think that can be gained from the story of Lazarus, but at best, that’s a tertiary point. Primary and secondary points have to be something about the full on insanity that Jesus says “Lazarus! Come Forth!  (I’m reliably informed by someone expert in New Testament Greek that the Greek used doesn’t have a verb – “Lazarus! Here! Outside!” is purported to be a valid translation). This is an incredibly powerful and authoritative thing to say – it’d be mind blowing if only that had been said. But it isn’t – there’s the fun bit where Jesus says “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” – this feels like something that should make us generally go a bit crazy. Jesus hasn’t just said he is the source of Resurrection and Life – He is both of those things, implying that death already has a fight on its hands. Truly, anyone who trusts in Jesus (the Greek, I’m told has the sense of a soldier trusting and believing in their general) has conquered death – but only because Jesus is Resurrection and Life. Yet it is possible to read the story and focus on the death because that’s all that we can see, or all that makes sense to us.

One way out of this is to move with Jesus (and the rest of scripture) in treating death as an enemy who was powerful, but has been conquered. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul quotes Isaiah 25 and Hosea 13 when he proclaims:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

That is a powerful statement, perhaps shocking. For so many people, death is this scary unknown, a malignant force to be avoided at all costs. It is a finality, an ending. It seemed like it had ended Jesus, but death could not stop Jesus rising from the grave in victory. Indeed, we who follow Jesus, frail and broken though we are, can mock it as well. John Donne is wonderfully helpful as an example in this:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. (John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10)

However, merely stating these truths, awesome and powerful though they are, cannot stir up change in our hearts. We can’t imagine something so wonderful rich with physicality and Life, because our perishable and frail bodies cannot compute what is going on – so we return to the familiar and known.  The only solution (which is beautifully fitting) is desperately to pray for Life to fill us to overflowing and bursting. Then we will begin to be able to celebrate Resurrection, as it energizes and flows through us. We will pray ever more fervently for God’s Kingdom to come and fill earth with His Life and Love, anticipating the final radical healing of SpaceTime. We will give ourselves wholly and fully to being in this world, because the physical stuff of this world will be refashioned and remade into the imperishable – and the wondrous Life which came out of the future to meet us in the present will continue to guide us into deeper and greater Resurrection service.

The Anglican liturgy has a beautiful call and response for Easter:

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Let that be the glad shout from our lips this Resurrection month. See you on the Feast of the Ascension…

[akingdomcollective]

Lover of My Soul: On Fideism, The Song of Solomon, and Evangelism

First off, on behalf of all of us here at AKC, I want to apologize for the fact that we’ve gone almost three months without updates. When we started this little experiment, we had thought that since we all write occasionally, there would regularly be something to post. We hadn’t considered the possibility that we would have inspiration and burnout more-or-less in synch. Whoops!

But enough of that. Today I want to offer some reflections on how God sees us, and what that means for the practice of evangelism. These reflections stem from a combination my academic work, a few conversations I’ve had in my life, and well as certain other life events. I just hope it’s comprehensible, and maybe even edifying. And besides, where else are you going to find these three things mashed up into one piece of writing?

My first time reading though the Bible was an odd experience. I had many close friends who had grown up in the Church, and who also really loved the Bible, and I really appreciated that I could ask them questions and (it seemed to me) they would pull from their nigh-infinite awareness of Scripture to help me make sense of things. And given how complex and inter-connected this anthology we call “The Bible” is, I was grateful. I wanted to read it all, and it know it myself.

Fortunately, I love to read. So I took the Personal Size Reference Bible a friend had bought me, and devoured it. The format certainly helped (If you didn’t click on that link, it’s formatted as a single column)—it looked like a book meant to be read, and read it I did (this, however, is a rant for a future time). Another feature that really helped (one which I prefer to eschew today, but I’m glad I had at the time) was that it had little introductions at the start of each book of the Bible. They would tell you who’s traditionally thought to be the author, what type of book it is (prose vs. poetry, et cetera), when it’s traditionally thought to have been written, and one or two sentences addressing what that book is about. For someone who didn’t have any idea what was in the Bible beyond the most basic (there’s an old testament and a new one, the Gospels are about Jesus, Genesis starts with “in the beginning”, et cetera), These were incredibly helpful. I’d flip around, skimming the introductions, use them to pick a book, read it start-to-finish, then pick another one. One night, I read the introduction to one of the books in the Old Testament, and it told me that this book was a poem about Christ’s love for the Church, communicated through an allegory that had something to do with Solomon (I ended up giving this particular Bible away, otherwise I’d look up the specifics). This seemed helpful, or relevant, or interesting, so I read it. And I was shocked.

(Shocked! I say.)

Now, if you know either me, or the Bible well (or you’re good at reading blog post titles), you might be able to guess what I had just discovered exists, right in the middle of the Bible: The Song of Solomon (aka the Song of Songs).

You see, the Song of Solomon is an erotic poem. A roughly 2500-word-long erotic poem. For goodness sake, there’s an allegorical depiction of fellatio right in the middle (that’s not a joke. It’s there). The first time I read through the Bible, I was ready to have so many feelings aroused. I was expecting to feel fear, joy, anxiety, hope—I was not ready to feel aroused. And it’s funny how many people don’t know that it’s in there. They insist on reading it as being solely about Jesus and the Church. And there’s certainly a sense in which it’s about that…but there’s also a very important sense in which it isn’t. Jesus doesn’t have sex with His followers. And if you’ve any experience reading literature, the Song of Solomon is definitely about sex. You can’t miss it! This shocked me at first. I wasn’t ready for it. I mean, I knew the Bible wasn’t PG—I’d read quite a bit of it at this point, but this seemed to come out of left field. What’s interesting, though, is that the Song has actually shaped my theology quite a bit. What can I say, I like the weird bits of Scripture. Ask me about Ecclesiastes some time.

A few months ago, I had the chance to preach at my church here in Halifax. It was a pretty fantastic experience. But I’m not talking about what I said then, today. Instead, I want to highlight a conversation I had afterwards. A gentleman in my church called me over and asked me something to the effect of “What do you think somebody who doesn’t believe in God would have made of what you said?” I was lucky, because I had actually thought about this. I knew there were people who possibly don’t believe in God—and certainly don’t believe in Jesus—who had heard the sermon both in person that morning, and who were planning to listen to the podcast later on. “Well,” I responded “The truth is, I don’t think I’m going to convince anybody to follow Jesus through rational argumentation. Maybe it’s possible, but it seems incredibly unlikely to succeed. But I do believe that God’s Kingdom, and life therein is really, really good. My hope is that by presenting it, I might provide the chance for God to reveal Himself, in all his inexpressible goodness to someone who doesn’t know Him, that they might choose what He has on offer”. I probably wasn’t actually that articulate when I said this.

In my philosophical work lately, I’ve been becoming more and more convinced of a position called “fideism”. Fideism is a position in the philosophy of religion that holds that broadly, it is sometimes appropriate to believe in order to understand (Those of you with a philosophical background may feel like this is maddeningly vague. That’s because I’m giving a thumbnail sketch of a broad set of philosophical positions. This is a description, not a definition). There’s all kinds of different reasons this may be true—it might be because of some fact about language (a position which is mistakenly called “Wittgensteinian Fideism”), or because of the role religion plays in how we make sense of the world, or something about God’s utter transcendence—the way God is so completely unlike the sorts of things we know about without faith. 

What fideists have in common is the notion that religious faith is a necessary precondition for certain important sorts of religious understanding. At it’s most basic, a Christian fideist probably thinks thinks that being a Christian is necessary in order to understand certain things about God. That’s definitely what I think.

This position raises a puzzle, though. It makes religious conversion deeply mysterious. Because if religion is just a set of beliefs you need to have—a series of assertions you need to assent to—then religious conversion is simple. You think your way to religiosity. You work through the puzzles, and if the religion is true, you figure that out, and Voila! 

But if fideism is true, that can’t happen. You can’t think your way to the truth, because the truth is only accessible to someone who already has it. Instead of starting with premises you accept, and reasoning to a conclusion, you need to already accept the conclusion in order to make sense of the premises which lead to the conclusion. It’s throughly backwards. On this sort of account, religious conversion is completely rationally impossible without divine intervention. Someone becoming a Christian is literally a miracle.

(This is what turns up when I Google Image Search “Miracle”)

There’s a story I learned back before I became a Christian that I still really like. A Sufi mystic is at the airport, on his way home from a major conference where he had been speaking and teaching, when two Jehovah’s Witnesses come up to him. “Have you found Jesus?” The older of them asks him. The mystic looks at them, cocks his head to one side, and considers. Then, full of compassion, he responds “Why? Have you lost Him?”

I am not an evangelist. When you look at stuff around spiritual gifting, it becomes clear that mine isn’t evangelism. Even just in terms of abilities and attitudes—I don’t like meeting new people. It’s just not my thing! When Christians hear that I study philosophy, they often assume I must be into apologetics, but my inclination towards fideism comes with an inclination away from apologetics. It’s just kind of a non-starter for me. In spite of this, I find myself thinking and talking about evangelism quite a bit. Heck, I’ve even found myself teaching about it more often than I can really make sense of. But the thing I’ve ended up teaching about is wildly different that what the Jehovah’s Witnesses in my little story do. In fact, what I’m about to describe may not even sound like “evangelism” to most of you. Thank goodness that doesn’t bother me.

(Offered without comment)

When people ask me why I’m a Christian, I usually make reference to a spiritual experience I had on May 4th, 2011. If they ask for a fuller story, and if it makes sense in context, I’ll tell a longer story of wonderful people inviting me into a way of life which seemed much better than any alternative, and caring for me though what I hope will forever remain the worst time of my life ever. I distinctly remember telling my friends “This whole ‘Jesus’ thing seems really great, but I just don’t think it’s true”. And I’m inclined to think that if I hadn’t been in that place–where I had glimpsed the Kingdom of God and its goodness—then when I had the mystical encounter with Jesus, I wouldn’t have responded the way I did. Or else I wouldn’t have been able to have the mystical encounter in question.

You see, God had been wooing me. Seducing, even. Through people, through events. Because that’s what He does. The sexual nature of the Song of Solomon is on purpose. God is a deeply appealing person, and He wants us to want Him. And so He pursues, He chases. He speaks to our deepest needs and desires, and offers us Himself. He whispers, He flirts. He stands just outside of our reach until we cry out with desire for Him—and then He rushes in.

(Note: I am fully aware that the metaphor of God as seducer may carry some awful, creepy, sketchy, and even traumatic connotations for some. Unfortunately, this is true of any human metaphor for God. It is, in this way, very similar to the metaphor of God as Father.)

Jesus is the lover of our souls. I think that this metaphor is very deep, and holds the key to understanding how Jesus views those who do not yet know Him. And if we believe this, it is going to shape how we “do” evangelism. It’s not going to be an activity we carry out, or a conversation we strive to have. If people come to know Jesus by being wooed by Him, then we don’t make it happen. All we can do is provide opportunities for people to notice. We can live lives that make His goodness apparent, and we can be clear about how that goodness is, in fact, His. We live lives marked and shaped by Jesus, lives which are so much better than they would otherwise be. We live weird lives. And we live them around, and enmeshed with those who need to see them.

Basically, we’re to be Jesus’ wingmen and wingwomen. And we let the greatest Lover do His thing.

[akingdomcollective]

...and a little child shall lead them...

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what rescue looks like, connected, of course, to the celebration of Jesus coming.  Kaleb's brilliant posts on  Advent bring home the point that we desperately need a saviour. We're all messed up and broken. So how do we normally think of rescue? Typically, we’d probably describe it like a well known pop song:

…Where’s the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed? … He’s gotta be strong and he’s gotta be fast and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight…. he’s gotta be sure and it’s gotta be soon and he’s gotta be larger than life… [Holding Out for a Hero – Bonnie Tyler]

To be honest, that’s what I think about when I think of rescue. A mighty hero, sternly striding into battle, with rugged features, and decent weaponry to boot. Essentially, a realistic version of a superhero. Because that’s what I’ve come to see as representing power and authority to rescue and save. Perhaps slightly looking like this:

I'm not suggesting that Aragorn is Jesus, but there is the sense of someone who can fight, who is steely-eyed, determined, and powerful. To be fair, Middle Earth as described in Lord of the Rings does need rescuing - of course it does.  But true, lasting rescue doesn't come through Aragorn - at best, at the end of all things, all the military might brought to bear is but a small distraction.

The situation described in the opening verses of Isaiah 9 definitely warrants a strong and mighty rescue. It’s full of hope, of deliverance, and shows that even the smallest things used in war and oppression will be destroyed.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

Brilliant. That’s destroying the enemies of God, and mighty and powerful rescue is surely coming. You can sense and feel it.  The whole nation leans forward in eager expectation, excited to hear about the mighty conqueror that God will send to deliver them.  Then we get the next verse:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Cue confusion. Bewilderment. To destroy war and oppression… a child is born? A son is given? What on earth is going on? When is the real rescuer coming? Why would God send a child to rescue us? They’re weak, helpless, vulnerable… completely dependent on their parents. How can this baby do anything?

But this is where God shows his ultimate power and wisdom. Of course, God is mighty enough with a single word to destroy all the enemies. One blow from his mighty outstretched hand, and the forces arrayed against him have no chance [For an example of this, read Revelation 19. God shows up…  and the enemy forces are defeated and captured. No contest -  no battle]. To deliver his people from war, arrogance, oppression and force, God chooses not to be more warlike, more arrogant, more oppressive and more forceful… but instead a child is at the heart of deliverance. One who is weak, vulnerable, transparent, humble and trusting. This is the only way to turn enmity into friendship, hatred to love, outcasts into family.

The titles given to this child-deliverer show what he will be like. Wonderful Counsellor – finally, someone who is able to understand us, to come alongside… and give the wisdom and help we need. Their wisdom – God’s wisdom, sees that there is strength in weakness, victory in surrender, and life through death (shown in detail throughout the servant songs in Isaiah). Mighty God – make no mistake, although a child, and vulnerable, this is the God of creation, come to save. Not just to deliver Israel from captivity, but to deliver all of humanity from slavery to sin. If this child were not God incarnate, he could not take all that evil will throw against him, until evil has nothing left to do. Everlasting Father – a true father, who protects, guides and loves His people.  This father will never leave his people alone, but will sacrifice himself to save them – and rise victorious from the grave. Prince of Peace – a royal child, but one who champions peace. Not just the ephemeral state of “Not-War”, but the deep holistic Shalom that only God can bring. He will reconcile God and humanity, so humanity can be reconciled with each other.

I’m still blown away by the simplicity and humility of God in coming as a child. He has all authority and power, yet chooses to come as vulnerable and helpless.  He came not in power and might, but in secrecy, dropping into a world held in thrall by evil. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” The crazy thing is that everything depends on a baby. As I worshipped in church tonight, singing great carols of rejoicing, praise and adoration to Jesus... I was stood next to two good friends, who have recently had a child. She's a lovely little girl, and yet that brought home to me how... wondrous it is that at Christmas, we are all bowing down before a baby. A baby who cries for his mum, who needs protecting, holding, comforting, feeding. The one that angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim fall down in worship before - mighty, mighty beings who open every conversation with "Do not be afraid...", and yet they are rightfully abasing themselves before a helpless baby.

Yet in Jesus are met the hopes and fears of every person who longs for rescue and deliverance – it’s all in his name. Matthew says “You shall call his name Jesus, for  he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus – YHWH [the personal name of God] saves. A vulnerable child, yet the only one who has the power and authority to save us. Jesus, born that mankind no more may die. Born to raise the sons and daughters of this earth, born to give us second birth.

A final song to end with – not a pop song, but an old celebration of Jesus.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth Our full homage to demand. King of kings, yet born of Mary, As of old on earth He stood, Lord of lords, in human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food. Rank on rank the host of heaven Spreads its vanguard on the way, As the Light of light descendeth From the realms of endless day, That the powers of hell may vanish As the darkness clears away. At His feet the six winged seraph, Cherubim with sleepless eye, Veil their faces to the presence, As with ceaseless voice they cry: Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia, Lord Most High!

[akingdomcollective]

Advent III: Set Your Church on Fire

Every week throughout Advent this year, I’m reflecting here on our yearning for Jesus’ return. This week I’m writing about our need for Him to return for the sake of the Church. As with the last two weeks, I have a song I’d like you to listen to while you read this, as we journey into the Church’s greatest yearning.

*   *   *

I love the Church when she is at her best. I really do. The Church is the only context I know of which unites rich and poor, men and women, young and old, which unites people across ethnic and cultural barriers. When the Church is at her best, she provides us with a myriad of brothers and sisters, with people to bear our burdens (as we bear theirs), with a context to flourish. When the Church is at her best, she is the very hands and feet and mouth of Jesus, and the primary way that God offers Himself to a hurting world.

In Anglican liturgy, when one is given the bread for Communion, the person serving you will say “Body of Christ, given for you”, and indeed, the Church is the body of Christ, given for the world—for us who need Jesus so badly.

Almost nothing makes me as angry as the Church at her worst. At her worst, the Church tells people that if they don’t conform to a narrow picture of morality, they are not loved by God or people. At her worst, the Church teaches people with mental illnesses that they are sick because they lack faith; heck, she teaches people with physical illnesses the same thing. At her worst, the church is petty, spiteful, violent, bigoted, hateful, and exclusionary. Simone Weil, twentieth-century philosopher and mystic, wrote that “the Church is catholic by right, but not in fact”. She presents herself as one more club, with all that that implies—but worse, because she can (and does) claim divine sanction for her ills.

The Church is a mess.

(Yet people still come…)

*   *   *

Yet, even in all her messiness, the Church is the Body of Christ, inhabited by the Spirit of God. This is why it’s such a big deal when she’s at her worst—no matter what, she is the very hands and feet and mouth of Jesus, and she determines how people see him. When she insists on not being herself, the world is left without the representation of God it so dearly needs.

*   *   *

It seems to be an odd truth of history that revival always seems bring with it schism. The Protestant Reformation, the Great Awakenings, the Global Anglican Realignment—all were and are sources of people rediscovering the Gospel, following Jesus faithfully, and all brought and are bringing a great many people to faith—and all represent divisions in the Body of Christ. It seems we don’t know how to rediscover Jesus without fragmenting His body.

Revival seems like it’s always a good thing. And schism seems like it’s always a bad thing. Why, oh God, are we incapable of the one without the other? Why do we seem incapable of loving You without hating one another? This can’t be right.

*   *   *

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’” (Revelation 3:14-22)

*   *   *

These words, originally written to the late-first-century church in Laodicea, seem like they apply just as much to the Church today. So much (but by no means all) of the Church is lukewarm. People claim to follow Jesus—they call themselves “Christian”—yet are content to live their lives in pettiness and fractiousness, more concerned with being right and appearing upright than with entering into the mess on their own lives, or the mess of the world, or the mess of the lives of those around them. The mess where Jesus made and make His home.

So many of us—including, more often than I care to admit, myself—are content to have our lives take on the general form of religiosity, without the content. Jesus seems distant, and so we are content to let ourselves be distant, too. And we end up lukewarm. We do not walk away, or renounce the title of “Christian”—that would be too much, and we are not cold. It would be better for us—for the Church—to not claim to be following Jesus when we're not. Yet we also are not hot, we do not pursue Jesus everywhere that He is, at the cost of everything.

Jesus seems distant, and so we are content to be distant, too.

*   *   *

If we are to pursue follow Jesus, as a body, as the Church, we need Him to come and lead us in person. Until then, we are like children, fumbling in the dark. He has given us His Spirit to guide His body, but we are bad at following the Spirit’s call. We are like a ship with no-one who knows how to operate the rudder.

(Tipping, but never capsizing)

*   *   *

One of the metaphors scripture uses again and again is that of God’s people as His bride. In the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has pledged Himself to us. We are His, and He is ours. But He returned home for a while—indeed, a while longer than most of us were expecting—and now we’re waiting for His return. 

The truth is, we still haven’t really figured out what it means to be His bride—and of course we haven’t! You can’t very well figure out how to be married to someone while they’re out of town—no matter how much they’ve left you in the meantime to help with the process. And of course we yearn for His return! This should hardly be surprising.

*   *   *

Lord, set Your Church on fire. Lead us in flesh once again. Join our bodies to Your body more perfectly.

*   *   *

Join me, if you will, in praying the Book of Common Prayer’s Collect for the third Sunday in Advent:

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judger the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

*   *   *

Next week, if the Lord be not come, I’m going to write about our yearning for Jesus’ return for our own sake. In the meantime, may you, and the community of believers you find yourself in, live as the body, bearing one another’s burdens, and straining towards the One who was, and is, and is to come.

[akingdomcollective]

Advent II: Make All Things New

This Advent, I’m posting a weekly reflection on the yearning for Christ’s return. This week, the focus is on the need for His return for the sake of the world. And, much like last week, I have a song I’d like you to listen to in the background while you read this.

*   *   *

In Joss Whedon’s supervillain musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (which, if you haven’t seen, you really should. It’s brilliant), the main character opines on his blog “The world’s a mess, and I just need to rule it”. The line is, of course, played for laughs—Dr. Horrible is after all a super villain. And yet what makes his character compelling—aside from an excellent dramatic turn by Neil Patrick Harris—is that he makes so much sense. The world is a mess. Moreover, it does need someone to rule it. This is the truth that we know, deep down.

*   *   *

You would need to be either an idiot, or else eminently unaware to deny that our world is a mess. We have in some parts of the world an obesity epidemic and in others starvation. In Hong Kong, democracy protests seem unlikely to bear any fruit. In the United States, a white police officer can shoot an unarmed, innocent black child, and the justice system decides he shouldn’t even face a trial for it. A virulent disease is sweeping much of Africa. A so-called “Islamic state” is murdering people left, right, and centre. The Israel-Palestine conflict shows no sign of drawing towards a close. Aboriginal peoples around the world being neglected to a staggering degree. Our political leaders seem to be charismatically incompetent at best, and downright evil at worst.

The worst part? I could have written more or less that exact paragraph at any point in my lifetime, and it would have been true. Bad news is unsurprising. The world’s a mess, and we all know it.

*   *   *

Some apologists (including C.S. Lewis) Have used the universal recognizability of the worlds fucked-up-ness as an argument that this world cannot be all there is. The argument runs more or less that just in the same way that a fish cannot tell that it’s wet if it’s never been outside of the water, we could never tell that the world was screwed up if we didn’t have some connection or perception, in some way, of what a non-screwed-up world would be. This non-screwed-up world is the Kingdom of God.

*   *   *

Some people are given to have a clearer look at the Kingdom of God, and they cannot but see the ways the world around them doesn’t measure up. These men and women have existed…probably almost as long as the human race, and they’re still around today. When they see this gap, they experience a range of emotions. Sometimes—often—they’re angry. Or sad. Sometimes they’re outraged. They’re always hopeful, though, because their recognition of how wrong the world is is grounded in a vision of the world as it’s supposed to be—with no king but God. They know it's possible, because they have seen it.

We have a name for these people—we call them prophets.

Seeing an elite who failed to care for the needy, all while claiming piety, a poor farmer shouted 

I hate, I despise your feasts,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them;

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

    I will not look upon them.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters,

    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24)

Overwhelmed by the sack of Jerusalem, a religious man despairs

He has made my teeth grind on gravel,

    and made me cower in ashes;

my soul is bereft of peace;

    I have forgotten what happiness is;

so I say, “My endurance has perished;

    so has my hope from the Lord.”

Remember my affliction and my wanderings,

    the wormwood and the gall!

My soul continually remembers it

    and is bowed down within me.

But this I call to mind,

    and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

    his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in him.”

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

    to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly

    for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:16-26)

And in expectant hope, Malachi declared

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. (Malachi 4:1-2)

Angrily, hopefully, prophetically, a much later man declared “I have a dream…”

(This is the paradigm case of what a prophet looks like)

*   *   *

I look at what’s happened in Ferguson, and I think “The King won’t allow this sort of hatred and injustice when he returns”. I hear of the reign of terror being perpetuated by ISIL, and I think “The King will overthrow all these tyrants when he returns”. I think about the wall Israel has erected around itself which is ruining lives, and I know that the King will tear down not only the physical wall, but the dividing wall of hostility which separates Israeli from Palestinian. I trust that He shall rule Hong Kong and mainland China both with justice and with love. That every illness will be eliminated. That all shall be fed. Everyone will be loved, valued, and respected. I wait with expectation for the day we shall have no king but God. 

Because the world’s a mess, and God just needs to rule it.

*   *   *

In the meantime, may we cultivate prophetic eyes, which see God’s kingdom, see our world, and see how the two don’t line up. And may we cultivate prophetic mouths, which cry out at injustice, immorality, and evil, and which demand change. May we cultivate prophetic imaginations, which can see ways for the world to change even when change seems impossible. And may we cultivate prophetic hands, which work to effect that change in the world around us, that in any way we can, we might hasten the Lord’s return.

*   *   *

Father, heal your world. Make all things new.

*   *   *

Join me now, if you will, in praying the Book of Common Prayer’s collect for the Ember Days in Advent (it’s topical):

Almighty Lord, and everlasting Father, who wouldest have the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of thy Son Jesus Christ: Bestow thy blessing, we beseech thee, upon all who labour for peace and righteousness among the nations, that the day may be hastened when war shall be no more, and thou shalt take the nations for thine inheritance; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

*   *   *

Over the next two weeks, if the Lord be not come, I’ll write about the yearning for Jesus to return for the sake of the church, and the individual. May this time of yearning be a season in which you glimpse a slightly fuller picture of His reign.

[akingdomcollective]

Advent I: Towards His Return

First thing’s first: I want you to click this link, and play that song in the background while you read this.

This is the first in a four-part series on Advent. Today, I’m going to write about what advent is, and why I love it. 

When I wrote about why I love the Church calendar, I emphasized the way I believe it helps us live in the story of what God has done in and through Christ. One way that works is that each season of the Church calendar is associated with a different doctrine. With Christmas, of course, we celebrate the Incarnation. With Easter, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. At Pentecost, we celebrate the baptism in the Holy Spirit. During Epiphany, we celebrate the universal scope of the Gospel—that now God’s chosen people includes all nations, tribes, and tongues. And at Advent, we remember that Christ shall return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Because of our culture’s obsession with Christmas, we all too often end up seeing Advent just as the weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent becomes the “holiday shopping season”.

(This is what Advent all too readily ends up becoming)

And surely, looking forward to Christmas is part of what it’s about. We extend our memories backwards in time, trying to imagine what it would have been like to be a Jew in the first century BC, living under Roman (and before that Greek, Persian, Assyrian, Babylonian…) oppression, and yearning for the coming of God’s Messiah to save you and your family and your friends and your people from the hand of the enemy, and year after year…He doesn’t come. Waking up each morning to cry, in the words the prophet Jeremiah “Why do you forget us forever, why do you forsake us for so many days?” (Lamentations 5:20)

So in Advent, we identify with ancient Israel. 

*  *  *

But we also look forward—a deliverer did come, and He has departed, and He shall come again.

The word “Advent” comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival”, or “coming”. This, in turn, is a translation of the Greek parousia, which is the Greek word used in the New Testament to refer to Christ’s return. Comparing it to other texts contemporary with the New Testament, its conventional usage was to refer to a king or emperor arriving in a place over which he governed.

And so in the season of Advent we look forward, with longing, for our King’s royal appearance in a place over which He rules, but in which His rule is not often made manifest. In Advent we recognize that our world, our Church, and our very selves are all too often in rebellion against their King, and we yearn for the day He returns to set things to rights.

And yet, if this is to mean anything, we can’t be sitting around waiting, twiddling our thumbs. The King is gone, but He might return at any minute! If this season of yearning is to serve any purpose, it must spur us to action! We should clean His house, so that at His return, everything is in order (cf. Matthew 24:45-51). We should stock up on lamp oil, that we may see Him as He comes (cf. Matthew 25:1-13). And above all, we must be about His business, in readiness for His return (cf. Matthew 25:14-30).

*  *  *

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and dwell with us once more.

*  *  *

Join me, if you will, in praying the Book of Common Prayer’s collect for the first Sunday in Advent:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; though Him Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

*  *  *

Over the next three Sundays, if the Lord be not come, I will be posting a short reflection on yearning for Jesus’ return, and our need for it, decreasing in scale each week. Next Sunday, I will ponder the need for Christ’s return for the sake of the world. The week after, the Church’s need for His return, and the last Sunday before Christmas, I will reflect on the individual’s yearning for Christ’s return.

In the meantime, may you be ready for His return.