Victory begins on our knees (or "Five Iron Frenzy and the Walls of Jericho")

I've written before of Christian music, both worship and popular. I've grown up with it: I've listened to music that shaped my theology, and I've listened to music that made me want to bash my head against the pew. And one day, several years ago, I listened to Five Iron Frenzy and everything changed. 

In a few short weeks, it will be my enormous pleasure to review their first new CD in ten years, Engine of  a Million Plots. And as I've never written a music review before, I figured I should probably take some time here to hash out my feelings for FiF as a whole, before attempting to talk about one album in particular.

Because it's actually kinda hard to explain why I love FiF so much. The first album I ever listened to was the last one they ever produced (until EoaMP), and from the first song on the CD, I could tell that here, here was something strange and wonderful indeed.

There was a quality that struck me immediately, though it was hard to define. It was brash and bold, daring and defiant. Just the other day I realized that there is one word that perfectly defines it. Five Iron Frenzy is brazen, in every sense of the word, with the shameless and unmuted defiance of brass.

And this brazenness struck a chord that has never ceased reverberating. My head was already full of Chesterton at that point, and the songs of FiF have always embodied a certain passage from Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

"To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam."

From the theology of Cannonball and A New Hope, to the social justice of Fahrenheit, The Day We Killed, and American Kryptonite, almost every song rings with the glory and bravado of the horns that marked the end of Jericho: When horns were blown and voices raised as the ancient stronghold inexplicably crumbled. Every song is a rebellion and a revolution: Every song is fighting for a perfection that, though lost, can be found again. But undercutting the brazen tone is the acknowledgement that while victory is assured, it must begin with the victory of the cross, which often looks (and feels) an awfully lot like defeat.

And the key to the album lies in the simple fact that this victory does not come to the strong, to the wise, to those who have it all together. As On Distant Shores proclaims, "Mercy falls on the broken and the poor." Is is this mercy, this undeserved and unmerited mercy, that is the foundation and substance of Christian victory. The bridge, in particular, is haunting. You can find the song itself (complete with lyrics) here: But here's the bridge:

And off of the blocks,
I was headstrong and proud,
at the front of the line for the card-carrying highbrowed,
With both eyes fastened tight,
yet unscarred from the fight,
Running at full tilt, my sword pulled from its hilt...
It's funny how these things can slip away,
our frail deeds, the last will wave good-bye.
It's funny how the hope will bleed away,
the citadels we build and fortify. Good-Bye.

Night came and I broke my stride,
I swallowed hard, but never cried.
When grace was easy to forget,
I'd denounce the hypocrites,
casting first stones, killing my own.
You would unscale my blind eyes,
and I stood battered, but more wise,
fighting to accelerate,
shaking free from crippling weight.
With resilience unsurpassed,
I clawed my way to You at last.
And on my knees, I wept at Your feet,
I finally believed, that You still loved me.

 The victory of the Christian is not found in our own deeds (thank God!). It is not found in blind battle, in who cast the most stones: It is not found even in standing under our own power! 

That is what makes Five Iron Frenzy truly amazing. Their music illustrates the simple, foundational truth that the victory of the Christian is found on our knees, in the desperate acceptance of the mercy of God. The bold defiance of FiF and the victory of the Christian, the brazen horns and the fall of Jericho, begins and ends with an acknowledgment of insufficiency. It begins and ends with falling to the ground and asking, "What does my Lord say to his servant?"

In closing, Five Iron Frenzy is awesome. Seriously, they're the best. Go buy The End is Here, and when Engine of a Million Plots comes out, buy that too. And to sweeten the deal, I'll give you my own personal guarantee: If you don't like it...well, I'm not gonna pay for it or anything, but I will ridicule you for having such poor taste in music.


FULL REVIEW OF ALBUM FROM EO:

It’s finally here: Five Iron Frenzy’s first album in ten long years. And it’s…different than what I was expecting. But still awesome.

I am a long-time (life-time?) fan of Christian music, and I well remember that glorious moment, the summer in between my sophomore and junior year of college, when I realized that Five Iron Frenzy was a thing–indeed, not only a thing, but the thing, that glorious fusion of horns, guitar, and lyrics that seemed to waver, moment by moment, between exuberant victory and white-knuckled defiance. I (unknowingly) bought their last CD first, and to me every song sounded like a last stand, a Chestertonian revolution, brazen and unmuted.

Imagine my sadness when I realized that the album was, in fact, a last stand–a stand made years ago and long since over.

But like a trumpeting phoenix, they have risen from the ashes. And two weeks ago, having been forced into a  strange and unnatural sleep cycle, I awoke at 5:30 and began downloading my Kickstarter Early Access album.

My first impression (after the initial bout of excited giggling) was of an unexpectedly cold, dark world. In the weeks and days leading up to the release, FiF hinted that they “explored darker themes,” and that is certainly the case.  Winter comes, the fire dies, and frost envelopes everything. That is the world of EOMP. It opens with “Against a Sea of Troubles,” in which the singer is “adrift and lost” in a frozen world, and the fire is growing cold. Although I noted a few bright points (“So Far” is the only song that contains an unadulterated sense of Christian victory), the rest of the album seemed to confirm this condition. We work in a cold and cruel city that chokes the sky, we huddle around a dying fire, we suffer through a frost with no thaw…what if this winter lasts forever?

[Aside: There are, of course, a couple FiF constants that stand apart from this theme: Silly songs, and social commentary. “Battle Dancing Unicorns with Glitter” is, unfortunately, nothing more and nothing less than an obligatory silly song: It’s catchy enough, but it lacks the charm of “You Can’t Handle This” or “That’s How the Story Ends.” . But in the area of social commentary, FiF comes out swinging.   In “Zen and the Art of Xenophobia“, FiF lampoons the type of American Evangelical who gets ready to “lock and load, just like Jesus did,” while proudly proclaiming that “Jesus was American”. And in “Someone Else’s Problem”, Five Iron delivers a biting critique of our willingness to tolerate abuses and ruined lives just because we’ll never have to look at the faces of the abused. I am always tempted to skip over these songs, because they aren’t fun, they aren’t uplifting, the make me uncomfortable… and that’s the point.

For Five Iron Frenzy, there can be no disconnect between the joyful doctrine of Christian victory and the difficult doctrine of Christian duty and service. Any attempt to separate one from the other results in an incomplete faith. It is not for nothing that their hardest-hitting social commentaries come on the heels of their most joyful and upbeat reflections on the victory of Christ-in-us, making it difficult indeed to partake of one and avoid the other.

Now, back to the rest of the review.]

That first impression of cold and cruelty was correct,  so far as it went. But the more I listened to it, the more I heard the hope and defiance inherent in every single song, from the very beginning of the album. There is a hope that the singer clings to even as he longs “to only end the heartache, to shed this mortal coil”: The hope that “You cannot not be real.” 

Yes, despite the mixed faith of the band (two of the core members are now atheists), this album expresses a faith that, though beaten and battered, is undeniably Christian (in fact, one might argue that the Christian faith was meant to be beaten and battered). This faith is explored throughout the rest of the album, from “So Far”, a superhero themed meditation on Christian victory, all the way to “Blizzards and Bygones,” where winter threatens to last forever.

In “We Own the Skies,” the singer walks the cold and cruel concrete by day, having traded “my kingdom for a steady paycheck.” But by night, they huddle around the fire, “wish upon the fading light” and proclaim “Tonight, we own the skies,” with the characteristic brazenness of trumpets and voice lending the whole song an incredible sense of defiance and courage. And in his dedication of the album, Reese puts a biblical spin on it, referencing Ephesians 2 & 6:12.

“I’ve Seen the Sun” takes that sense of defiance and courage to another level, and again it is firmly rooted in a Christian worldview. The night is dark and cold, the water is rising, the singer is fighting what feels like a doomed battle…but he has seen the Sun come down, and he holds to its return. And we should expect nothing less from the world: after all, “the Savior says don’t be surprised / Everything’s gonna be alright.”

It feels like the last song, a fitting way to end an album that has revolved around the difficulties of staying afloat in the world.

And then comes “Blizzards and Bygones,” which does its level best to eradicate every last memory of the Sun. The cold is in your bones, the fire is faint, and and all that’s left is “a flicker of desire and a memory of youth.” There is no thaw, only a winter that will not end. It ends with a simple unanswered question: “Can you stand the weather if winter lasts forever?”

That is the question the entire album ends with. What do you do when even the memory of light fades, when the fire has died and the ice is thick? What do you do when the winter seems to go on forever?

If your only hope is that God cannot not be real, is that enough to soldier on, to light the fire again and again, to keep it burning and to keep the darkness at bay? Is “Blizzards” only an episode, only a stage of life? Does it fit into the reality described in “Against a Sea of Troubles”, “We Own the Skies”, or “I’ve Seen the Sun”? Or is this unending winter the true reality, the final death of all hope?

This album reminds me of Psalm 22, and of the book of Job, minus the vindication at the end. Ultimately, I think Five Iron Frenzy is emphasizing that there are no easy answers. As Christians, we anticipate the vindication of our faith, the fulfillment of our hopes… but in the meantime, we must endure a winter that doesn’t seem to end. We must fight to keep the fire lit, and we must light it again and again.

Although “Blizzards and Bygones” comes last, I think it would be absolutely wrong to name it as the final reality. FiF has already answered the questions “Blizzards” raises, as much as they can be answered. When the cold closes in, when the fire flickers, “We burn the wintry frost of night / Tonight, we wish upon the fading light / Tonight, our burning hearts will rise / Tonight we own the skies.” In short, we continue the fight and wait for better things. It is not always easy: For every celebration of “so far, there’s nothing that you and I can’t do,” there’s another instance of unending winter, of cold that enters into your bones and refuses to leave. But the fight is still worth fighting, and the sun will return.

If you like ska, you should buy this album. If you don’t like ska, then you have no musical taste and you should still buy this album: It will probably help.

God "Is": And We "Are" Only In Relation To God

Of God

"God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”  Exodus 3:14

I've always loved this passage, because it demonstrates one amazing thing about the universe: There is no frame of reference that can define God.

When we describe things, we do so by placing them in a larger frame of reference, by relating them to something already known. We say, "The sun is a big yellow ball in the sky," because we are speaking to people who already understand what "big," "yellow", "ball," etc. already mean. We describe things in relation to something else.

But that method falls flat when it comes to describing or defining God. Moses asks God who he is, and God replies by merely saying "I am ME." Because there is no "larger frame of reference" that we can use to really define God as he is. There is nothing that God exists under, no larger category of things, that we can use to make sense of him.

And since we know that this God is also the creator of everything, we can arrive at another awesome truth: God Himself is the definition by which everything else is defined.

Of Creation and Humanity

Everything is ultimately defined by its relationship to God. The easiest example is the word we use to describe the universe, a word so integral to our idea of the universe that it was inescapable even by Darwin himself: "Creation." The core essence of the universe and everything in it is defined by that one word: Its relationship to its creator is not merely one of many attributes, but the core identity of the thing itself.

Of course, this extends to humanity itself. We are, at bottom, created beings. And we are defined by our relationship to our Creator. Karl Barth says it in a particularly awesome way:

"The being, life and act of man is always quite simply his history in relation to the being, life and act of his Creator."

Everything about us is defined in relation to our Creator and our God. We cannot be defined apart from him; We do not act apart from him; We do not even exist apart from him. We are not "Creations of God, and etc." Everything that I am, I am in relation to God.

Of Knowledge and Love

This means, of course, that accurate knowledge of humanity must, by necessity, be grounded in accurate knowledge of God. Human existence is derived from God and God only, and any claim to knowledge of humanity without a corresponding knowledge of God will be faulty and incomplete.

And, also by necessity, any attempt to bring about the good of humanity requires a true and accurate knowledge of humanity. Which means that any attempt to bring about the good of humanity, or of any one person in particular, requires a knowledge of God.

Which means that any attempt to simply "love" humans, to do away with "confining, divisive theology" and simply get on with the business of "love", is a non-starter. 

To love someone is to desire their good. And this isn't just desiring good feelings, but real, actual, capital "G" GOOD. Loving someone is to desire for them to fulfill their identity, to be who they were created to be, to do what they were created to do.

It has to do with ultimate Good, and that means that it has to do with God. For how can you know what is "Good" for someone until you know what they are, and what they are for? And how can you know what they are until you know who created them, and what they are for until you know what they were created for?

It always comes back to God and our knowledge of him. It always comes back to the dogmatic letters of Paul and his dogged claim to faith and truth, to the hard, unyielding truths that Jesus proclaimed over and over again, though it drove his followers away.

And we would do well to remember that while God is, indeed, Love, that does not mean that everything that we call "love" is God.

NOTE/EDIT:

James (see below) makes the valid point that non-Christians can (and do) show true, real love every day. And, of course, people attempt to show love every single day (and often succeed).

However: When push comes to shove, we have to affirm that "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick." And when we try to love well, to work for the Good of our beloved, the ultimate guide for that has to be our knowledge of God. If we try to work backwards from our own love and our own heart and use that as a portrait for God, we're going to end up with a lie, and a desperately sick one at that. We have to work from our knowledge of God, and use that to effect love.

Sifted Like Wheat (follow-up)

Original post from Evangelical Outpost.

It is fortunate–oh, so fortunate–that it was not Job, that paragon of patience and faith, that Jesus claimed he would build his church on.

And that’s not the non-sequitur it first appears to be, because Job and Peter actually have quite a lot in common.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,  but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Luke 22:31-32

Some context: For weeks now, even months, Jesus has prophesied that he will find his doom in Jerusalem. Now, on the heels of the strangest Passover dinner ever, Jesus sets his affairs in order, giving his disciples what is clearly meant to be his last few words with them. And in the middle of it, sensing Peter’s denial and fear, he drops this bombshell: Satan has personally petitioned the Father for particular access to the persons of Simon and the rest of the disciples (the first “you” is plural). Jesus then singles out Simon again by addressing him with the singular “you”, saying he will pray for Simon in particular, and that Simon in particular will turn away regardless.

Satan’s purpose in gaining access to the disciples is to “sift them like wheat.” This is a much more graphic and threatening image than first appears, because to sift wheat, you first beat it to separate it into its component parts, then you toss the resulting mess into the air (likely with a winnowing fork) to separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is stored and treasured, and the chaff? Thrown into the fire to be burned.

Satan has asked for explicit permission to sift the disciples: to beat them into pieces, to reduce them to their very essence, and toss them up into the air to see what among them was wheat and what among them was chaff, fit only to be blown away by the wind and burned. It is unfortunate that Peter was too busy denying Jesus’ prediction of failure to give any thought to what preceded it. If he had considered Jesus’ initial remark, it is probable that he would have had one thought in his mind: “Son of a camel, I’m being Job’ed...”

And indeed, the situation Jesus hastily sketches out in the Upper Room of Jerusalem bears an eerie similarity to the situation fleshed out in one of the oldest of OT scriptures. Satan takes a personal interest in a particular servant of God, and he makes it his mission to utterly destroy that servant. He personally petitions God for the authority to do so. And, having obtained permission to test the servant of the Most High, Satan goes to town on him.

Why Peter? For the same reason Satan chose Job: both had been singled out as God’s servants. God implicitly challenged Satan, boasting of Job’s uprightness and righteous fear of the Lord, highlighting Satan’s failure to dent said righteousness. And Satan can’t have been ignorant of Christ’s proclamation concerning Peter, especially considering that Jesus again made it personal by specifying that the Church built on Peterwould tear down the very Gates of Hell.

Of course, it doesn’t seem as though any of this entered Peter’s mind. He was too frightened and confused, and too obsessed with looking like he wasn’t frightened and confused, for him to really consider Jesus’ words. There is at this point only the immediate gut reaction, the ill-considered boast that Peter would die before turning away from Christ.

With Peter, even more so than with Job, we see highlighted in vibrant color the frail humanity of the tools God chooses to use. The steadfastness of Job is legendary, just this side of super-human: Peter snaps like a twig. The tension of the last several weeks, and the last several days in particular, comes to head in a night that begins with an upsetting of the ceremony that, for all intents and purposes, founded the Jewish people, and ends in Roman soldiers and temple police arresting the man Peter had devoted his life to.  He breaks, and he breaks hard. He is sifted, and (for the moment, at least) he is found to be mostly chaff.

And this is the rock that Christ builds his church on? This quivering mess of a man, who cannot stay awake while watching over his master, who speaks before thinking, who denies so much as knowing the man who had brought him out of darkness… this man, in fact, who breaks in exactly the same way as Christians throughout the world do on any day of the week?

Yes. 

And that is why it is fortunate that Jesus’ Church is built on Peter, and not on Job. We may remember Job during our greatest trials, but it is Peter who we unwittingly emulate in our day-to-day lives. It is Peter’s faithlessness that causes us to sink, and Peter’s cowardice and foolishness that brings us to shame… and it is Peter’s genuine love and passion for Jesus that brings us to our feet again.

Now: on to the follow-up!

The post received a comment soon after the blog went live, expressing appreciation for the points contained within, but also disagreeing with the (fairly important) claim that Christ built his Church on Peter. The commenter claimed, instead, that the "rock" Jesus is building his church on isn't referring to Peter at all; rather, it is referring to the profession of faith that Peter had just... professed. The belief that "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" is supposed to be the rock.

I've heard this belief expressed before, particularly by a freaking awesome commentator named RCH Lenski. His love of treating the Gospels as actual histories, and his consequent focus on reconciling and harmonizing seemingly-discordant texts, made him invaluable in writing my book on Peter (currently trying to publish that, by the way, so if you know anyone...). However, his skill and brilliance elsewhere makes his lapse in Matthew 16 particularly unfortunate, especially since it it forces him to make the outlandish claim that Jesus' two usages of the word "rock"--Once to rename Simon Peter, and once to identify that which he would build his church on--bear only an accidental relationship.

Such a claim makes absolutely no sense within the passage itself. Jesus clearly goes to lengths specifically to establish this word-play. He appears to name Simon "Rock" for the sole purpose of making it a pun. Lenski's claim makes his renaming of Simon into nothing more than a nonsensical and confusing non-sequitor.

There is also the small matter of John 21 establishing Peter as a primary figure of the church, as well as Ephesians 2 establishing "the apostles and prophets" as a foundation for the church. All in all, there are really no grounds for making that claim....unless, of course, you really dislike Catholics and see it as a specifically Catholic doctrine.

Was Peter the first Pope? I don't think so. But he was, quite obviously, a huge chunk of the foundation of the Church and, therefore, is almost certainly the Rock that Christ claimed to have built his Church on.

Which is amazing news for us.

Because it means that God can use even the most human of us to build his eternal Church.

It means that God's strength is made perfect not just in "weakness" as an abstraction, but in our own weakness.

And it means that although we all start out as Simons, God can turn us into Peters: The unnatural product of sin and decay can become the supernatural product of grace.

Just a little afterthought:

Simon means "to hear" or "he has heard." It is doubtlessly significant that he receives his new name by hearing what the Father is telling him (Matthew 16), in a very real sense receiving his new name as he fulfills his old one.

With this in mind, there is a fascinating linkage between this passage and one in Revelation 2, where we are told that the saints who "hear what the Spirit says to the churches" will be given a new name, written on a white stone. In that sense Simon Peter becomes the symbol for all believers, and potentially for all of humanity. Listen to the Holy Spirit and receive a new name, a secret name, that describes who we really are--that is, who God created us as individuals to be.

Interested in Peter? Check out my book, Simon, Who Is Called Peter! It combines the readability of First-Person narration with biblical accountability in the form of copious footnotes, allowing you to see the world of the New Testament through the eyes of Jesus' most notorious disciple. 

Like and Unlike

"Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh." Matthew 19:4-6

I recently attended the absolutely awesome wedding of a good friend and fellow Platonite. While there, I had a brief discussion with another friend on the concept of "Unity Sand" as a symbol of marriage. The Unity Sand begins in two separate vials, representing the two separate people getting married. During the ceremony, the two vials are poured together and mixed, symbolizing the biblical "one flesh."

 I'm not so sure that's right.

Because the miracle of marriage, the source of its wonderment, is that while the two do indeed become one flesh, they do so without any sense of homogenization or blending (much like the orthodox understanding of the dual divine and human natures of Christ, in fact). He who created us from the beginning made us male and female, and we remain male and female even in becoming one flesh in marriage.

The two do not mix together. They do not form a new and different substance, as Nesquick and milk combine every morning in my apartment to become chocolate milk. The two do not become some sort of dual-sexual or dual-gendered being, two human forms melded together, possessing all the physical characteristics of both male and female in one body. Neither do they become a single asexual being, wherein the two genders cancel each other out.

Even as one flesh, they remain distinctly themselves. They remain distinctly "they": And what's more, they remain distinctly distinct.

In marriage, the man does not become more womanly, nor does the woman become more manly. In the case of my own marriage, I am not in the process of daily becoming more like Anna, nor (thank God, in his infinite wisdom and grace) is Anna becoming more like me! The masculinity of the one and the femininity of the other do not creep together, but remain distinctly themselves.*

This is the miracle of marriage. The "oneness" is indeed only possible because the members of the marriage remain themselves. The "one flesh" consists of two unlike people becoming one--but not becoming like.

In this way, then, marriage is much like the Church--at least, the Church as Chesterton envisioned it. As he says in Orthodoxy:

 "[The Church keeps opposing passions] side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. ... All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk."

Marriage, like the Church, does not involve a compromise of persons and temperaments and ideals. It admits no mixture: No, it will not blend. Marriage is not the point at which a man and a women cease to be a man and a woman and become something other. Marriage is not the point where male and female, masculinity and femininity, are extinguished.

Rather, marriage is the meeting of the fully masculine and fully feminine, and the two are not lessened but increased in the meeting. And even so, "the man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." Pretty profound stuff.



...But anyway, in the end Josh and I agreed that Unity Sand was, on the whole, better than the alternatives that we could think of, since the individual grains of sand, at least, retain their individuality. Have a happy marriage, Kyle and Karyn Keene!


*I do not here propose to define masculinity or femininity. If "male and female" means something and not nothing, and something and not anything (and the Bible seems clear that it does), that is sufficient.

Judge Not (because critical thinking is just too dang hard!)

Earlier today, a good friend of mine posted this article on facebook. In it, the author explains exactly why he felt that Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen, both fairly prominent pastors/speakers, were false teachers. He brings up some absolutely wacky Christology on the part of Joyce Meyer, and of course no discussion of Joel Osteen would be complete without bringing up the Prosperity "Gospel": Or, as I like to call it, "Suck it, Job and all you poor, persecuted Christians out there!"

I'd really encourage you to read the article itself, especially if you find yourself wondering what's so bad about a little Prosperity theology here and there. And in fact, I've gone more into what's wrong with Meyer's Christology, and why it's so Church-shatteringly important, at the end of this post. But for now, I want to talk about that wretched hive of scum and villainy known as "the comments section."

Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment. But every time I see a blog post like this, I just know there are going to be some responses that are going to make me incredibly upset... so, of course, I immediately try to find them.

They did not disappoint. (Yes, those are all individual quotes). I could drag in more, but it'd only make me more upset. Suffice to say that in all my searching, I only found one comment that even attempted something approaching an actual defense of Osteen/Meyer. Every other comment disagreeing with the original article began and ended with their insistence that "Christians shouldn't judge."

They didn't even attempt to demonstrate why the disputed teachings were orthodox. They didn't challenge the author's interpretations. They merely hid behind their ill-understood notion of what Christians ought to do (although one might even say they "cowered" behind it, were one sufficiently upset by their failure to grasp basic biblical concepts).

And I thought... doesn't that just say it all? When you don't dispute the falsity of the doctrine, but merely the right of the person to call it such in public? When instead of defending the correctness of the doctrine, you merely defend their right to lead others astray, because who knows who's right anyhow? Doesn't that just say a whole hell of a lot about the state of certain (growing) sections of modern Protestantism?

Awful. Just... awful. To finish up, I'm just going to cover my least favorite sub-section of this kind of argument:

"This kind of thinking is why the Church is so fractured!" 

No it's not. Granted, sometimes we American Evangelicals can be amazingly petty about which issues we choose to split over; But do you want to know the real reason the Church is so fractured? Freaking heresy is why the Church is so fractured! When you take your child to the doctor, do you accuse him of attacking your son when he diagnoses a broken arm? No? Good! Then you're not a crazy person. Now if only people could apply this to bad theology, especially something so mindbogglingly damaging as believing that the holier you are, the richer you are (and, consequently, the richer you are, the holier you must be).

So... I'm done. Ranty, but I don't believe there's much, if any, hyperbole in this. I wish there was.



Addendum: Here's why Meyer's Christology is so amazingly crap-tastic (and why it matters to the health of the Church):

"“He could have helped himself up until the point where he said I commend my spirit into your hands, at that point he couldn’t do nothing for himself anymore. He had become sin, he was no longer the Son of God. He was sin.” Joyce Meyer.

In case you missed it, let me run through the important part again. "[Jesus] was no longer the Son of God."

Now, to me, that sounds really problematic. It's almost as if she's saying there was a point at which Jesus was not the Son of God. Jesus, the Word who was God and was with God in the beginning, the Word who became flesh, which was from the beginning and which the disciples touched with their hands. That Jesus.

So there was a point at which Jesus was not the Son of God. Does... does divinity work like that? Can it really be switched off? And if so, is it really divinity? Is Jesus really fully God, if there was a time when he wasn't God?

It goes deeper: Jesus then descended into hell, suffered there for 3 days, and when he was resurrected, "Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again." Holy crap. So Jesus isn't really the Savior at that moment... he's just another dude who needed saving.

If Jesus wasn't the Son of God when he died for our sins... then who the heck was he? The obvious answer--not the Son of God--means we really don't need to go any further down this... whatever it is. Christianity is built, quite literally, on who Christ is (seriously, it's in the name). Mess with that, and the whole thing is worthless.

I'm gonna let Karl Barth play me out:

"The Word was made flesh" is not to be thought of as describing an event which overtook Him, and therefore overtook God Himself... The statement cannot be reversed as though it indicated an appropriation and overpowering of the eternal Word by the flesh. God is always God even in His humiliation. The divine being does not suffer any change, any admixture with something else, let alone cessation. The deity of Christ is the one unaltered because unalterable deity of God. Any subtraction or weakening of it would at once throw doubt upon the atonement made in Him. He humbled himself, but he did not do it by ceasing to be who He is. He went into a strange land, but even there, and especially there, He never became a stranger to Himself." 

Karl Barth, The Way of the Son of God into the Far Country.

Avoiding the Plans of God

(Important: I show quite a bit more of my work on this subject here, here, and here. If, as you're reading this, you're tempted to think that I'm just vastly oversimplifying the whole thing, check out those posts. Then, if you still think that I'm oversimplifying the whole thing, let me know).

Can we avoid the plan God has for our lives?

Now, before we get into this, we need to clear one thing up: There are a lot of people (mostly 5-Point Calvinists) who divide God's plan (or "will") into two areas: Prescriptive Will, and Decretive Will. I've heard different names for those two types (Moral vs. Sovereign Will, Permissive vs. Efficient), but they all ultimately boil down to the same thing: God can "plan" or "will" or "desire" for you to do one thing, but he can "decree" that you do another thing.

Which, in itself, boils down to people wanting to say that God can "want" something without really wanting something.... in fact, that he can really, genuinely desire something while actively causing the opposite to come to pass.

Which is pretty much bullcrap, if you ask me.

This disconnect exists because certain theologies envision a God who decrees (irrevocably) each movement of every individual atom and every individual soul. The history of all of creation, down to each individual typo in this blog post, is decreed by God.

And at the same time, God "desires" that all should be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4), and "wishes" that none should perish (2 Peter 3:9).

To be fair, Calvinists genuinely want to treat these passages with the weight they deserve (although I don't think they succeed). So from these passages, and others, they derive a second type of will: Sort of a "It'd be nice if..." will.

There's a pretty big problem with this, as I see it: How can God be so conflicted as to genuinely desire one thing while actively (and irresistibly) bringing the exact opposite to pass?

Is it Good for all men to be saved? God desiring for all men to be saved would seem to indicate that. But then, how can God decree for all men not to be saved? Can the opposite of Good still be Good?

Conversely, is it good for some men to be damned? God decreeing for some men to be damned would seem to indicate that. But then, how can God desire for all men to be saved? Can the opposite of Good be Good?

This theology does indeed proclaim a God who is sovereign over creation: It also seems to proclaim a God who irresistibly decrees a Universe that is less than totally Good, since he's constantly wishing for it to be otherwise. 

But what is the alternative? God must be sovereign, or else he is not God: Is this division of the will of God into "Basically Meaningless" and "Completely Irresistible" our only way out?

Here, as in so many places, C. S. Lewis (the patron saint of evangelical badassery) comes to our rescue with an explanation that is at once elegant, biblical, and freaking awesome. Let's go to Perelandra, as Ransom debates whether the results of the Fall make the Fall itself a "good" thing.

‘I will tell you what I say,’ answered Ransom, jumping to his feet. ‘Of course good came of it. Is [God] a beast that we can stop His path, or a leaf that we can twist His shape? Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed Him. That is lost for ever. The first King and first Mother of our world did the forbidden thing; and He brought good of it in the end. But what they did was not good; and what they lost we have not seen. And there were some to whom no good came nor ever will come.’

BOOM. Drop the mic and walk away, Jack. Did that not just blow your freaking mind? Isn't that incredible?

God's got a plan alright. He has a plan, and we know it: His law is written on the hearts of everyone (Romans 2:15). And God has a plan for when we mess it up, too. He works all things to the good of those who love him, but that doesn't mean he causes "all things" to be (as in the Calvinist system).

God is just as sovereign in this theology as he is in the Calvinist theology. He is just as omnipotent, just as omniscient. But there is a key difference: God freely chooses to allow free agency to those made in his image: I go over the possible mechanics of such a universe in another blog post (It's a bit too long to include here).

God has a plan for us, but that plan changes as a result of our actions. So: Back to the original question:

Can we avoid the plan God has for our lives?

I think yes. I think we avoid it every time we sin, every time we turn away from the good God wants us to do. And I think that every person who goes to Hell has managed to successfully evade--forever--God's plan for their life.

They're Just Going to Use That Rain to Buy Drugs (OR "Thank God that He gives to those who don't deserve it")

“Now, you shouldn’t give money straight to the homeless. Studies have proven that 95% of the time, they’re going to use it self-destructively. Don’t let mercy make you dumb.”

That’s what our pastor said several Sundays ago, just as an aside to the main point of his sermon. A few minutes later, he told us how God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Then he told us that we need to be more like God.

And all I could think was... "But God, they're just going to use that rain to buy drugs!"

Now, this isn't about what my pastor said: he’s a great pastor, and to reduce his views on the homeless to these couple sentences would be extremely unfair. But this isn't the first time I've heard this from various people in the Church; rather, it comes as merely one more of a long chain of Christian thoughts on the homeless. They’re going to use it to buy drugs, they’re going to use it to buy alcohol, they could get a job so easily, they’re just lazy… they’re not worth your time, and they’re certainly not worth your money.

Has no one told God? Does he not know, has he not heard, that giving good things to the wicked is merely enabling their self-destructive behavior? He sends life-giving rain to the unrighteous… but they’re just going to use it to buy drugs.

I'm not here to dispute the statistics. My pastor used a specific number—95%—and even though that seems ludicrously inflated, I'm not going to try and disprove it. After all, I've heard it before, and I’m sure lots of people have. Let's say that it's true, just for the sake of argument. Let's say that every time you give $5 to a man on a street-corner, or to a couple pushing their cart, or to a woman standing outside the local grocery store, that's going straight to alcohol or some other self-destructive behavior.

And this is why we aren't supposed to give them money. But have we considered that maybe, just maybe, they’re just tired? Maybe they're tired of living in an ostensibly Christian nation that can't stand to look at them, that purposely avoids their gaze when stuck at a red light, that walks the long way around so they won't have to speak to a  homeless person. Actions speak louder than words, especially when we can't bring ourselves to speak any words to the homeless, except for a hurried, mumbled, "No, sorry…” And our actions often tell them that they are less than human. Maybe they’re tired of being less than human, of just being “the homeless.” And maybe the only way to make the day a little less unbearable is to be a little less sober.

Obviously, this doesn't excuse self-destructive behavior, but it also means that we absolutely cannot allow that to keep us from offering help. Rather, it means that we must be more spirited and more purposeful in our interactions with them. It means that we have to show them that we know they are more than the homeless.

Because speaking of them as "the homeless" at all can be a cop-out. I've met a lot of people on the street-corners of Fresno, but I've never met "the homeless." I met William and his wife Lory at Dominoes, and rather than settle for five bucks and a promise of prayer, they asked me to pray right then and there; I knelt down and prayed as their dogs licked my face. I met Abel at Little Caesars, asking if he could wash my car, and after I'd given to him he told me that God would pay me back many times over. I met Christopher on my way to Costco, and he asked me to buy him Raisin Bran, his favorite cereal. I met Alex on my way to youth group, and he showed me his scars, apologized for being scruffy, and told me that nobody could judge us except our Creator.  I met Robin outside of a Save-Mart, and when I didn't have any cash, I asked her what she wanted from the store. She asked me to get cat-food, tuna, and mayonnaise, because she already had bread for sandwiches.

They, like us, are individual, unique, beloved images of the invisible God. Not "the homeless" or "the poor." Not some faceless, nameless mass that we can explain away with statistics, that we can try and sentence in absentia as drunkards and addicts and wickedly lazy parasites. People. People with names, people with stories, people that had jobs but lost them, people who are disabled, or confused, or lost... people that are known and precious to God. 

Those are the people standing on street-corners, and no amount of statistics can capture them. Yes, some of them will probably use money for self-destructive behaviors. But the thing about gifts is that they always come with a choice, and they can always be misused. Take life, for example: I misuse mine on an almost daily basis. The Gospel itself is a gift that has been misused ever since we were given it. Grace, hope, intelligence, athleticism, money... all of these are gifts from God, which are often misused on earth. Can you imagine if God subscribed to the theory that we shouldn't give when our gifts might be misused?

That's probably why in all of the Gospels we never have an account of Jesus turning someone away. Try as hard as we might, we will never find the Bible story of the blind man who was refused sight because he'd only use it to lust, or the crippled man who remained crippled because he'd only use his limbs for stealing. Jesus never turned someone away who came to him for help: the healing of the ten lepers comes to mind, when only one out of the ten bothered to return to Jesus and thank him. Did Jesus revoke the healing on the other nine? Did Jesus make a vow to only heal those who were “worthy” from that point on? Of course not!

Giving to someone—whether it's supernatural healing in a village near Samaria, or a five dollar bill or even just a few minutes of your time on a street-corner in Fresno—means a lot of things. It means giving them the choice; it means giving them the opportunity to be righteous. It means being like God, and giving to those who may misuse your gifts. But most of all, it means treating that person who happens to be wearing raggedy clothes, who happens to be standing on the street-corner, as the individual, unique, immensely valuable image of God that he or she is.