Barth

Love

may be recognised by the fact that it is determined, and indeed determined upon the life-partnership of marriage. Love does not question; it gives an answer. Love does not think; it knows. Love does not hesitate; it acts. Love does not fall into raptures; it is ready to undertake responsibilities. Love puts behind it all the Ifs and Buts, all the conditions, reservations, obscurities and uncertainties that may arise between a man and a woman. Love is not only affinity and attraction; it is union. Love makes these two persons indispensable to each other. - (CD III.4, 221)

The Forest for the Trees

I’ve found myself using this phrase “Don’t miss the forest for the trees” very often in conversation lately. I wrote it in my paper for the conference I am going to next weekend. I said it last night when I talked to my good friend Lauren about where to start about theology. And I think it is exactly what David is talking about here.

Please understand: he doesn’t know the language of faith, the proprieties of religion, the ethos of Christianity…As he was rambling on, carrying me through a series of emotions from laughter to rage, I was struck by the deep spiritual qualities of my black-sheep brother. I couldn’t help but feel, in spite of his roughness, toughness, lack of the right knowledge, absence from all things religious, and wild and dangerous lifestyle, that he was precious to God. Throughout the week, he exemplified, for me, the spirit of Jesus… without the name, the forms, the customs, the baggage, and the symbols… but the spirit of Jesus just the same. I was humiliated by my arrogant exclusive stupidity the church is reluctant to challenge.

Our life here is about continuing the story of Jesus. Following that story sometimes means we will follow all the social conventions that are commonly associated with Christianity. Other times we will be very far from it. Don’t lose the sight of the forest (faithfully living Jesus’ Gospel story) for the trees (what has become culturally normative for a Christian). Sometimes you have to forget the trees to see the forest.

On Fighting

I have really been enjoying the contributions on Duke Divinity’s faith and leadership blog. They always have thoughtful, current, and relevant topics for living in the world today, like “The Secular is not the Enemy”

Karl Barth once wrote, “We do not have the Word of God otherwise than in the mystery of its secularity.” Whenever we draw the line too sharply between God and secularity, between the church and the world, or between faith and public life, we inadvertently reinforce the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. That is, by morally and spiritually separating God, the eternal and immortal, from the world of substance and stuff.

C. S. Lewis, wrote: “People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.” When we write-off whole tracts of humanity as secular we may be missing the wisdom of the God who cannot be contained in any creed or ideology. It is fitting and prudent, humble and sane, to be ready to hear what God may wish to say to us from unexpected corners of the larger world.

For some strange reason we in the Church sometimes get the idea that everyone else is the problem, or should be avoided. I can’t put my finger on why, but I know that I have felt that way in the past. No where is this clearer than the contempt of friends in church when you start having a social life outside the church. This fight between the Church and the world is exactly what should not be happening. Of course there shouldn’t be fighting within the Church either – but we see that as well, we’re not perfect. At least we consider one another family, and fighting within the family precludes leaving the family (one would hope at least).

The world is not the enemy, Jesus plainly showed us that the accuser, the power behind the institutions and high places that de-humanizes is the enemy. He fought that enemy through his ministry and personally. The fighting that the world does with the Church is de-humanizing at times. The Church should be responding in kind. We need to treat the world humanly with love and compassion, showing them who they are and what they are doing. We are not to respond with in kind with fighting.

Both factionalism and schism seem to forget that, according to the gospels at least, we are not recognized as children of God (literally as children of our heavenly Father) by the correctness of our views, but by the quality of our mercy.

Bonhoeffer on Love

They’re talking about love at Inhabitatio Dei, from Bonhoeffer. I have a great of respect for Bonhoeffer, living as he did, through dark times, admitting that darkness was there and offering a faithful alternative to overcoming it through Christ. I admit that I have not spent a lot of time in more purely theological or philosophical pursuits. I mostly deal with historical and biblical questions. But this I could not pass up, I found it extremely moving and relevant in my own life and relationships.

In the self-centered community there exists a profound, elemental emotional desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls, just as in the flesh there is a yearning from immediate union with other flesh. This desire of the human soul seeks the complete intimate fusion of I and You, whether this occurs in the union of love or — what from this self-centered perspective is after all the same thing — in forcing the other into one’s own sphere of power and influence. Bonhoeffer

I find that in relationships I can falter into this way of thinking. Being with someone is having a certain degree of power over them. For them to fulfill me. Of course this is not at all in line with the attitude and life of Christ, it rather exemplifies our fallen nature.

Because Christ stands between me and an other, I must not long for unmediated community with that person. As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone. However, this means that I must release others from all my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love. In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those from whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life. Bonhoeffer

If Christ is the one who comes to those who are lost, the true head of the Church, the one behind the Spirit working in the world – then today Christ is the one who shows people the way, however much of a servant you or I might be in the situation. Since it is God’s sovereign rule that will bring in the Kingdom, it is his job to put together whatever good works you and I might do. But our good works do not include controlling people through our relationships with them. We are focused here on the specifics of a romantic relationship – but it applies just as well to relationships within the Church. There is no way that we can dominate one another and glorify God and Christ. That would be the anti-Gospel.

The longing to be completed through immediate contact with another is the reigning mythos of romance in our age. It is the object of voracious, often violent pursuit at all costs, and as Bonhoeffer points out, “Emotional, self-centered love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a community that has become false, even for the sake of genuine community.” The hallmark of the love of our age is that we cannot bear to see it fail (or rather, not succeed in the way we want). ’Love conquers all’ has become a sentimental maxim that really just means no one should ever break up with me. The kind of love that animates our romantic imaginations today, as Bonhoeffer says, “is by its very nature desire, desire for self-centered community. As long as it can possibly satisfy this desire, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine love for others.” This describes how I have gone after romance in my life if anything does. And I suspect that I’m not alone in this.

May we all realize how this has impacted us in our lives.

You Can’t Figure Out the System

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.Peter Rollins

From Raffi again about where you can put your systematic theology. The only system is a story. And a good story is fuzzy, vague where it has to be, specific where it has to be. It has feeling and a soul, real character. It doesn’t have propositions, it cannot be reduced to syllogisms. If you aren’t living that story, or aren’t a part of that story it doesn’t matter what you have in your head

Remember, this is coming from the guy who is going to study NT Theology in the fall. I’ll be the first one to admit the lack of religious education both within and outside the Church. I find it incredibly helpful to study it. Why? Because it informs my life. Not because I’m a librarian, or a book worm (even though I am a book worm).

The Theology Behind “Why I’m not a Fundamentalist”

While I certainly don’t have the experience, eloquence, or presence of mind yet to write what Chris Tilling has written on the tensions of Scripture. Essentially coming down to a doctrine of Scripture.

He highlights the incredibly wooden deduction and literalism used by those brought up in fundamentalist-type traditions, and how they do not serve you well. As I’ve said before, the Scriptures are not propositional truth. It is contextual, cultural, counter-cultural, political, spiritual, theological, subversive, obedient, and relational truth. And we don’t have all of it.

‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (13:12). Notice who wrote these words, including himself in this ‘we know only in part’: the Apostle Paul, the author of much of the New Testament! The text of the New Testament, while inspired by God, partakes in the partial nature of human knowing as we await the full and future disclosure of truth. Perhaps if we could grasp this more profoundly we would be unleashed to develop our doctrinal thinking with more boldness, freshness and truthfulness, in a way that is more accustomed to walking on the water, less disturbed by the waves and wind of a world still yearning for its eschatological reality to materialise. And recognising this, maybe we would also judge our own theological statements (whether Calvinistic, Arminian, Reformed, Open Theistic or whatever) with more humility, as always penultimate truth, prior to God’s glorious advent.

So don’t act like you have it all. Open yourself up to what you don’t have. And let go of what you do have, and see if it helps someone else. Act like you want to save as many people as possible, not define who is saved.

Erasing “The Other” as a Category

I’ve talked here before about the category of “the other” and how Jesus and the theology of the NT changes approaching people that you find to be very different from yourself. Here Raffi talks some about too.

Human beings curved in on themselves.


That’s how Martin Luther defined “sin.” That picture, of a human being in it for himself/herself, is still the most widely used caricature of sin in use today. One is sinful primarily when one considers his/her own good. It’s a very individualistic, atomized picture.


It’s a straw man.

I would not go as far to call that a straw man as a whole. But if that is your only definition of sin – then your definition is certainly a straw man. As Raffi suggests many people would easily consider themselves sin-free. And most people are not entirely individualistic in nature. Many people of faith or no-faith freeing give money and time for various causes.

If we love and are willing to sacrifice for our families, to the exclusion and at the expense of all other families, we are in the clutches of sin.


If we love and are willing to sacrifice for our communities, to the exclusion and at the expense of all other communities, we are in the clutches of sin.


If we love and are willing to sacrifice for our nation, to the exclusion and at the expense of all other nations, we are in the clutches of sin. And perhaps more firmly in those clutches, since we often fail to realize it, given what we’ve been sold about sin.


It’s just a question of where you draw the circle, of where the arc starts curving in on itself.

The point of “the other” is make sure they don’t exist. We are conditioned to treat others outside our circle in in-human ways; to denigrate, marginalize, and ignore. That is sin. That is anti-Gospel, and anti-Kingdom.

Fiscal Responsibility

Reading this article gave me the same response

As I read about these companies I feel a sense of shame as a Christian.

The Muslim banks are able to make profit their second order of business, where their first is observance to Islamic law. And Islamic law is set up to ensure the continued existence of the communities and the faith.

But surely we Christians should have something to say to the lending crisis. Perhaps my rural parishioners’ restraint and discipline is a start. What do we say next?

I think that the Christian alternative to the American Dream is the answer. I’m not yet sure what that dream looks like. Perhaps that will be my next thesis.

Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves

A clever post by Raffi about being both innocent as doves and wise as serpents. It is fairly easy to be either of these extremes. I used to be a high-handed theological serpent when it came to people. I saw everything starkly and in black and white, except myself of course. I have definitely swung around like a pendulum to the the other side. I certainly did the “serpent” act wrong most of the time. Maybe I’m doing the “dove” act wrong most of the time as well. But that is why life is here. Live and learn, rinse and repeat. We have more than once chance. We are not the sum of our successes or failures. Though each of our successes and failures have consequences that we have to live with – for better and worse.

On Music

Often times I’ve heard Christians lament when one of their favorite bands “tone down” their overtly “Christian” message. From that point of view the explicit mention of “biblical” words in a song determines whether or not it is “Christian”. And for whatever reason that was the only observable metric that really made sense, even to me. Everything else is wishy-washy. Yesterday I was talking with a singer-songwriter friend of mine, after he finished playing a show, about one of his songs which I thought was “Christian”. And he gave me an interesting way to think about it. He didn’t think it was any more particularly “Christian” that any of the songs he wrote. Since he wrote them, and that is always an influence in his life, it is in the song as well. He makes a different distinction: Sacred and non-sacred. I found that very helpful in thinking about this. There are plenty of “Christian” songs, that I give that designation despite their artist or the public’s thinking on it, because of the effect they have on me. I wouldn’t call any of those Sacred however.