The medium is the message

During study of the Old Testament writing prophets, one of the things which has impressed me has been the embodiment of the Lord’s message in the lives of the prophets. They incarnated the word. It cut jagged edges into their lives—they groaned, ranted, cried. The task of proclaiming the word of the Lord was not confined to the prophets’ vocal cords, but affected their whole being. Their lives were a seamless garment: God’s message was their message, their message was God’s message, and they themselves were the message!

Just a few examples… The name of Isaiah’s son (quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil) had grave significance for Israel’s neighbor, Syria (8:1-4). Jeremiah was thrown into a pit (38:1-6) because of his unpopular message about Jerusalem’s downfall; he spent his money on a piece of property that was worthless at the time (32:1-44). Ezekiel ate a scroll (3:1-11); he shaved his head and beard, and burned the hair (5:1-4); his wife died and he did not mourn (24:15-17). Daniel embodied the wisdom of God in a strange land. Hosea married an adulterous woman and bought her back after she was unfaithful to him (3:1-5). Amos was accused of conspiracy against the king (7:10-16). Jonah preached on the streets of Nineveh. Malachi's very name means "my messenger".

Connie Befus has described the seamless nature of things in The Sacred Mundane. She says that in God’s economy everything is holy—washing dishes, changing diapers, cleaning toilets, filing income tax—the whole earth is full of his glory. In fact…

God was holy when he made polar bears, and ants and mountains; holy when he made dirt, fire—and cockroaches; holy when he made the leviathan and mealy bugs. He was holy when born of the virgin and when messing his diaper as a baby; holy healing the blind and holy drinking with the publicans. He was holy on the cross and holy washing muddy feet. He was, and is, always holy—and so can we be. So must we be. [The Sacred Mundane, Kindle edition]

The prophets understood this truth and lived it. But we compartmentalize. We become, in my pastor’s words, the “schizophrenics of Jesus.” As a result, we become largely irrelevant to the world.

What is the embodied message of the prophets? Dr. David Howard suggests that the prophets were traditionalists as much, or more, than they were radicals. They hitched their anchor to the heart of the Mosaic law: love for God and neighbor. It’s that simple (and that challenging).

Steve Jobs: Is death the best invention of life?

After his death last week, Steve Jobs is getting a lot of press here in Brazil, even though the devices he helped create are beyond the reach of most Brazilians. The phrase that keeps popping up most frequently in the Brazilian media is taken from Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford in June 2005: “…death is very likely the single best invention of life.” His statement begs the question: Who invented death?

Rather than tackle that question, Jobs used his perspective on death as a motivational factor for living: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition.” As one Christianity Today writer said, this is the gospel of a secular age.

While death can be a motivating factor for Christians, it is also a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong in the world—a fatal defect in the operating system of every human being on the planet. The Bible describes death as God’s idea. It is the inevitable consequence of the shared human desire to highjack the Creator’s plan for peaceful and productive community with himself and with others. The human quest for independence and freedom leads not just to physical death, but also to alienation from each other.

The Christian solution for the problem of death and decay does not spring from individual intuition, as Jobs’ worldview suggests. Rather, it is an initiative of the Lord of the universe, who took on human form in order to begin the restoration of all things. Jesus of Nazareth is a living, breathing illustration of what humanity could and should be.

Jesus showed us that being truly human is not summed up in creative thinking, but in humble submission to the Creator’s original blueprint. Jesus’ death says (among other things) that life results from loyalty and obedience to our Maker. His resurrection is the promise that, because life was invented before death, therefore death does not have the last word.

Someone might observe that the Christian gospel is all ethereal hope about what will happen after we die. But this is an incomplete understanding of the message of the Scriptures. The gospel lived out by Jesus is very much linked to the here and now. His model prayer, that the Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, points to the relevance of creation theology. Since we are all created in God’s image, the way we treat each other is a reflection of our respect for the Creator (or our lack of it). We are God’s representatives on earth, placed here in order to care for his good creation.

Rather than stifling human creativity, the gospel of Jesus frees us to become who God intended us to be today. We are still flawed, yes, but motivated by the hope that the revolution begun by Jesus two millennia ago is the prelude to a complete reboot of human existence, when he will wipe out all injustice, and reconcile all things to himself.

Two women from Sidon

Here’s a connection I had not seen before. See what you think. I’m looking at the stories of Elijah and Ahab in 1 Kings. We are told that Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife, is from Sidon, a Gentile nation just north of Israel (16:31). Their marriage was likely part of a political alliance. The text seems to suggest that she influences Ahab to “serve Baal and worship him.” Elijah shows up, announces a drought, and God sends him to the Kerith Ravine for safe keeping. Later, when the brook dries up, God tells Elijah to go to—Sidon—where a widow is going to feed him. [Now, from a human standpoint, this is doubly insane. First, you don’t knock on a poor widow’s door if you want to get fed. Second, you don’t wander into Jezebel’s stomping grounds after you have informed her that the rain spigot for her kingdom has been turned off!] But the unnamed Sidonian woman is saved from starvation when she faithfully does what Elijah tells her to do. She later confesses, “Now I know…that the word of the Lord from your mouth is true” (17:24).

What is the author trying to say? Jezebel (and Ahab), Israel’s leaders, should have been leading the people toward God, but instead they were driving the people away from God. Hebrew readers might think, “Of course, Jezebel was an evil Sidonian (foreigner). She didn’t know any better. And if Ahab was so bad, it was obviously 90% the fault of pagan Jezebel!” So we are introduced to the unnamed Sidonian woman who placed her faith in Elijah and in his God. Israel was deaf and blind to God, but a non-Hebrew knows the truth when she sees it. A foreign widow becomes a model for faith. Jesus saw the irony in this picture and used it to condemn the unbelieving crowd in his hometown, Nazareth (Luke 4:36). We dare not draw conclusions about who is part of God’s family based on genealogy, address, culture or color of passport. Those who think they are in might be out. Those who appear to be out might be in.

Just so the readers are sure to get the point, the Old Testament narrator introduces Naaman, the Syrian army commander (2 Kings 5), as another example of a God-fearing foreigner. Jesus mentioned Naaman, too (Luke 4:37). 

God promised Abraham that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3). And God keeps his promises, even if his chosen people disown him.

Presumptuous planning

In my Introduction to Preaching class at Bethel Seminary, each student had to present a 20-minute sermon on a passage from the book of James.  My passage was James 4:13-17.  Here is a paragraph in my message in which I set up the first century presumptuous planners in a 21st century context:

James is eavesdropping on the boardroom discussion of these Fortune 500 CEOs as they are planning their next big expansion project: “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Notice all the proactive verbs here: go, spend, do business, make money.  These are people who know what they want, and they have figured out how to get there.  We want these go-getters managing our investment portfolios! In today’s world we would call them successful, assertive, forward looking self-starters, maybe even visionaries. Isn’t this what every parent wants for his children’s future?

Valuable dents

Some may think that the shiny Lightning McQueen is the hero of the Cars movies. But in my book, the rusty tow-truck Mater, with his unassuming backwoods drawl, is the real star.

In Cars 2, someone tells Mater that he should get all of his ugly dents fixed.  “You can’t touch my dents,” says Mater. “I got every one of them dents with my best buddy Lightning McQueen.”  McQueen, however, doesn't always treat Mater with the same respect.

As I reflected on Mater's valuable dents, my thoughts went to another improbable hero who chose to leave his dents as a reminder of some important relationships.  Accused of crimes he never committed, this man voluntarily suffered the ultimate consequences of his friends' wrongdoing.  Later, the scars of that difficult journey would serve as a transformational signpost for all to see.  His friends would say, "By his dents we have been healed."

Book review -- Finding the Will of God

One of my jobs as a board member of the Vida Nova publishing house is evaluating books for relevance and viability in Brazil.  Here is my most recent review.

Bruce Waltke, Finding the Will of God: A pagan notion? (Eerdmans, 2002), 194 pages.

Table of Contents

Part One: God’s Will: A Pagan Notion

Ch 1 Is finding God’s will a biblical idea?

Ch 2 How pagans divine the will of God

Ch 3 God’s will in the Old Testament

Part Two: God’s Program of Guidance

Ch 4 Read your Bible

Ch 5 Develop a heart for God

Ch 6 Seek wise counsel

Ch 7 Look for God’s providence

Ch 8 Does this make sense?

Ch 9 Divine intervention

Afterword

Review

As I read this book I thought about an interview I had many years ago, with the pastor of my home church*.  I was a teenager, close to high school graduation, and wondering about God’s will for my future.  Now, almost 40 years later, I still remember the pastor’s wise counsel—a simple three-part strategy: open heart, open book, open door.  The open heart represents seeking after God; the open book stands for the timeless wisdom of the Scriptures; the open door symbolizes God’s daily providence.  In Finding the Will of God, Bruce Waltke follows a similar, although more detailed, path.

Waltke argues that a great part of God’s will is not hidden from us, as many Christians mistakenly believe, but that God is “holding back nothing from the children he loves”.  The correct understanding of “finding God’s will,” says Waltke, is found in the context of a relationship with God, and not in a desire to receive special signs from him. In fact, Waltke proposes that we eliminate altogether talk of “finding God’s will” and replace it with “following the guidance of God.”  This will push us towards development of Christian character and help us to avoid the lazy and unholy path of divination.  Waltke shows that special revelation for guidance is not the normative experience in the biblical narrative; thus, by analogy, it should neither be the case for Christians today.

Waltke’s area of expertise is the Old Testament, and he shines when he is mining the Hebrew Bible for positive and negative examples of seeking after God’s will.  He shows how some Christian practices in this area are closer to ancient pagan rituals than to life in the wisdom of the Spirit.  But Waltke does not ignore the New Testament.  He skillfully analyzes the implications of the incarnation for finding God’s will.  For example, from chapter 3, “One of the lessons from the life of Jesus is that people will not turn to God simply because they see a miracle.” Waltke also weaves into his text a wide range of helpful background material from anthropology, sociology, archaeology, church history, and his own experience as pastor and professor.

While the first part of the book is reserved mostly for negative examples of finding God’s will, the second part points the way for positive strategies.  In the latter, Waltke’s tone becomes even more pastoral. Yet, he covers the principles of open heart, open book, open door with scriptural firmness.  Here he also reveals his story-telling abilities, something that resonates well in most cultural contexts.  His down-to-earth stories show that Waltke is a compassionate pastor as well as an academic scholar.

Waltke’s final chapter is worth the price of the entire book. It could well be an apology for what Vida Nova [WorldVenture's publishing ministry in Brazil] has been working to do for the last 50 years. In this section Waltke steps back and looks at the intersection of theology and life, and shows why the two are inseparable.

This is not an academic book, but certainly one which often bridges the gap between the academy and daily experience.  It speaks directly to Christians who might wonder about Gideon’s fleece, or about the validity of prophetic utterances and miraculous signs. At 194 pages, it is a quick read.  I recommend it.  The Kindle edition is available for $9.99.

*Dr. Curtis Akenson, First Baptist Church, Minneapolis

The death of the wicked

Ezekiel 18:23 Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

In light of festive American reaction to the deadly success of yesterday’s military operation, several friends have posted the above verse as a counterpoint on blogs and social media networks.  They want to say that, instead of celebrating the death of an enemy, we should be lamenting the demise of a “wicked” person who is the object of God’s love and who had the potential for repentance and life.

Certainly God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth.  But our understanding of Scripture’s big picture is limited if we immediately identify “the wicked” with our enemies, or even with those who do not conform to our ethical standards.  Ezekiel’s words were directed to “the house of Israel,” God’s chosen people who had chosen to ignore God’s law.  Israel was involved in idolatry, adultery, discrimination against the poor, lack of compassion for the poor, usury, robbery and unfair economic practices (Ezekiel 18:5-17).  Not only that, the people of Israel accused God of being unjust when Babylon invaded their land and carried away their leadership and wealth (18:25).  In other words, they felt that, as God’s people, they should have a free pass to health, wealth and prosperity.

“The wicked” whose death God laments in Ezekiel are not the “evil” Babylonians. They are the “house of Israel,” those called by God to bless and transform the world.  Jesus was asked, “Why do you [hang out and party] with…sinners?” He answered, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”  The gospel message blurs human categories of who is “in” and who is “out.”  Instead, Jesus shows us that the line between the wicked and the righteous cuts right through the heart of every human being.  And, in every case, true repentance always leads to life.