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.

Meditation By Rock

Original Post from EO:

At my very first summer camp, I heard DC Talk’s Jesus Freak playing from the loudspeakers before chapel. I didn’t know what it was, I’d never heard anything like it before, and as soon as I got back I asked my mom to find out. Fast forward to Christmas morning of that year: I awoke to find a few unexpected things sitting on top of the expected books and t-shirts I had received from Santa. There were, first of all, two small, thin objects, wrapped in paper; on top of them was an object of unfamiliar shape.

It was a CD player. My first CD player. And below it was DC Talk’sIntermission: The Greatest Hits and the O. C. Supertone’s Loud and Clear. I ate breakfast that day with my headphones wrapped around my ears (pretty sure there’s video testifying to that). Although that was years and years ago, I have no doubt that to this day, they remain among my most-listened-to CDs.

I grew up listening to Christian music. I grew up on DC Talk, O.C. Supertones, Relient K, Switchfoot, Toby Mac, and many, many others.  I grew up listening to them. I drove to school with Jesus Freak ringing in my ears (as well as the ears of anyone unfortunate enough be within earshot of my car), and I sang along to I Am Understood while doing chores. And to this day, every time I listen to Wilderness, I remember that it was on my very first CD.

Of course, I didn’t understand many of the songs when I first listened to them. I didn’t understand that DC Talk made a decision to emphasize the action, commitment, and vitality of love in an age that glorified (and continues to glorify) lust. I didn’t fully understand the wonder of the Incarnation and it’s impact on the problem of evil when I first heard it sung about by the Supertones.

But I understood enough, and I grew in my understanding. Christian music has its detractors, especially in the more intellectual of Christian circles. But ever since that first Christmas, I’ve grown up listening to music that challenged me, that caused me to ask questions, to think, to wonder, to grow. I’ve listened to theology for my entire life, and who I am is owed, in large part,  to the music I was blessed with.

I will give you just one example, although I feel as though I have dozens. I have written quite a bit on Job and Chesterton’s  The Man who was Thursday, and all of that started with the very first time I read Thursday. The book had an incredible impact on me, an impact that persists to this day. Whenever I think of suffering or theodicy, I do so through the lens of Chesterton. And that is, in large part, because of my music.

I read Thursday a couple of years into my time at college. And then I read, for the first time, the Anarchist complaint against God, where the Anarchist proclaims, “I do not curse you for being cruel… I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them… Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I–“. I knew what this complaint meant. It was not new to me. It was not unexpected, or unprecedented, or unheard of. Indeed, I had been thinking about it literally for years, ever since I’d gotten my first CD, where I listened to the Supertones ask “God, do you really understand what it’s like to be a man? Have you ever felt the weight of loving all the things you hate? Have you struggled, have you worried, how can you sympathize?”

And when the greatest of the accused defends himself with a simple question, with a “commonplace text,” that too was not unprecedented: It was merely the maturation and growth of the Supertone’s realization that “the wilderness” is an actual wilderness that God himself has endured.

There are a dozen more examples, of Christology and Atonement and Theodicy and Apologetics, where my studies built upon the foundation of years of meditation-by-rock (or ska). These are only seeds… but they were planted early, and they were watered often. Every time I thought, really about what I was listening to (and often singing along to), I was meditating on some aspect of Christianity. Is it a viable substitute for actual learning, for meditation and prayer and Bible reading? Of course not. But as seeds, as reminders, as thought-provokers? Christian music is valuable indeed.

Follow-up post written here:

Yes, it's a reboot of an older post of mine, but it has a few new things to say.

I've heard a lot of the critiques of Christian music--from my good friend and archnemesis Alishia Lawman asking if the music had accepted Jesus into its heart, to the more serious accusation from many people at Biola of generally crappy quality compared to secular music. Bad Catholic's "Five Reasons to Kill Christian Music" is possibly the only post of his that I can absolutely disagree with on all counts.

Because at bottom, most critiques of "Christian Music" are actually critiques of bad Christian Music. They critique the faulty theology of particular songs, or the inferior musical or lyrical quality of certain songs. They critique the act of calling it "Christian Music," or they say that by labeling it as such, it makes certain implications about music that doesn't qualify itself as "Christian."

These critiques are all fairly easy to counter. Many songs espouse completely orthodox theology, and many songs actually go deeper into that theology than you might hear on a Sunday morning. Many songs are objectively good musical compositions. And the fact of the matter is, labels are nothing more than shorthand, for better and for worse, so the last accusation falls flat on its face (except for the somewhat silly Christians who object to music not on the grounds of lewdness or coarseness, but merely on the grounds of it not being Christian... I'll give you guys that one).

So what kind of Christian Music am I talking about in the above post? What is the label short for? Here it is: "Music containing lyrics that attempt to explicitly express specifically Christian theology without compromising the musical quality of the song as a whole."

I gave just one example in the above post at EO (here it is again).  I'll give you one more:

Anna and I read a book, called The Fault in our Stars, by John Green (one of Anna's Youtubers that she watches regularly). Green's novels are notorious (to me) for taking place in a twisted, hopeless world, where the protagonists eventually arrive at a Christian hope without first passing through Christianity, an impressive feat indeed. The Fault in our Stars follows two teenagers, both diagnosed with terminal cancer, as they fall in love, and it ends (spoiler alert) with one of them dying. The theme, throughout the whole book, is that of an explicitly uncaring universe, rivaling that of Farewell to Arms. The universe catches people up in its gears, grinds them up, and spits them out, all without caring one little bit.

And then, just a couple days after we read the book, we were driving somewhere listening (as we always do in my car) to my Christian Music. Today, it was Supertones day, and as were listening to Like No One Else, Anna suddenly leaned forward and said, "This answers it... this is the answer to The Fault in our Stars." It was the bridge, which says,
"Every time I shed a tear, it matters, it matters,
Every time I'm cold with fear, it matters, it matters,
When I got a broken heart, it matters, it matters,
Every time I fall apart, it matters, it matters,
When I think I'm all alone, on the road or when at home,
Every time I have to sneeze, every single breath I breathe,
When I'm in a dentist's chair, it matters, it matters,
Anywhere and everywhere, it matters, it matters."

Anna was right. This is the answer to The Fault in our Stars. This is the faith that defies the nihilism of the honestly atheist world. This is the faith that defies and comforts those who insist that nobody cares, that nobody understands. This is Christian theology, put to song, and if you think it shouldn't have been, then I want to fight you.

What to Me and to You? Jesus Surprises the Demons

Alternate Title: That Wacky Jesus is At It Again!

Original Post from EO:

When Jesus encounters demons in his travels throughout Israel, there are a couple reactions that we would expect from demons. Fear. Shuddering. Apprehension.

But there’s one reaction we see multiple times that, on first thought, wouldn’t be expected: Surprise.

In Mark 1:24, Jesus encounters a demon-possessed man–probably the first of his public career. In my NET Bible (viewable here), the demon’s first words are translated as “Leave us alone, Jesus of Nazareth!” The translators note, however, that the literal translation is actually, “What to us and to you?” It’s an idiom, effectively meaning, “We have nothing to do with one another: Why are you bothering us?” The demon seems more surprised than anything else.

We see this again in Matthew 8, with the famed demoniacs of the tombs. Again, their initial response to the coming of Jesus is surprise and puzzlement: “What to us and to you? Have you come to destroy us before the time?”

Now, there’s one more example of this phrase in the New Testament, but it has nothing to do with demons: Instead, we see it in John 2, when Mary tells Jesus that the wedding has run out of wine. She implies that he should somehow intervene, and his response? “What to me and to you?”

In all cases, the translators note that this idiom can carry two different tones: Defensive hostility, or indifference and disengagement. The indifference and disengagement is obvious when Jesus is speaking to his mother, just as the defensive hostility is obvious in the case of the demons. One thing that remains the same, though, is the surprise at being involved in the first place.

“What to me and to you?” Why are you involving me? What do you have to do with me? What did I do to you, that you are doing this to me? That’s all wrapped up in it. Jesus was surprised at being involved with the wedding, as it had nothing to do with him or his mission. The demons, too, are surprised, but not that Jesus noticed them in the first place (after all, they couldn’t hope to hide from the Son of God). They’re surprised that he cared what they were doing.

“What to me and to you?” What are you doing here, Jesus? I am doing nothing to you: Why do you care?

This is because the demons fundamentally misunderstand Jesus’ motivation, his goals and desires. They fail to understand Love.

In his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters, Lewis hits this theme again and again. His demons are constantly trying to get at God’s true motivations: “Love,” to the demons, is just a meaningless word, a nonsensical idea that must serve to mask God’s true intentions. This misunderstanding, this incomprehension of love, is what we see in the demon’s plaintive cry to Jesus.

It is obvious to us, because we understand that Jesus loves his people. We understand that his purpose in coming here was not to conquer, but to serve: Not to hurt, but to heal. When Jesus sees a man (or a woman or child) possessed by a demon, he loves that person and wants to help them. The demons, however, lack this understanding:  they see no reason at all for Jesus to seek them out. The demons of the Gadarenes are a  prime example of this: Why would Jesus come to them “before the time”? What are they doing to Jesus, that he would find them and punish them when his eventual victory is already on its way?

What does he gain from it? That is what the demons struggle with, because the answer–nothing at all–is incomprehensible to them. Jesus gains neither wordly nor celestial power by casting demons out of people; He merely hastens a process which is already unfolding. He gains fickle followers and earns the wrath of the ruling class, and that’s just about it.

And that’s actually something we could all stand to remember, I think. Because the demons aren’t wrong. They do know our inherent value. From a standpoint of objective worth, in and of ourselves, our bodies and spirits are broken and twisted, no use to anyone but as a plaything, something to exercise control and power over, soon to be discarded and destroyed. There is no objective value, no worth. We are not useful to God.

And therein lies the wonder of his love for us. Humanity is valuable because of God’s love, and it doesn’t stand apart from that.  We are valueless to the demons, worthless on any scale that has to do with merit or usefulness: But to him, we are precious.

Follow-up post written here:

This post, unlike a lot of other posts I've written, very nearly wrote itself. From the initial idea, to right about 1 1/2 paragraphs towards the end, it all flowed really smoothly. Demons failing to understand love, Jesus gaining nothing, etc.

Then things took a strange turn, and I realized that the demons were right. The post sat there, unfinished, for a day or so as I thought about how to finish it.

The demons are right in their assessment of our objective value, of our worth and usefulness. They are correct to be surprised when the Holy One of God intervenes. Why the hell would the gloriously powerful Son of God take the time to make one individual person--a broken, rebellious soul and a broken, corrupted body-- more comfortable? What in hell, heaven, and earth could possibly be in it for him?

Humanity brings nothing to the table. Humanity is worthless, valueless. In a world without God, humanity is nothing special: A collection of atoms and molecules, set in motion by certain electrical impulses in the brain. Nothing.

Even in the Christian world, we can often come to believe that we are, in and of ourselves, important. Not so: We are important in that God chose to involve himself with us, and only in that regard. We are important because God created us, because he chose to care for his creation, because he chose to offer himself to created beings that could offer him nothing in return.

He first loved us, not just when we were still his enemies, but when there was never even the slightest possibility that we could be valuable outside of the value he chooses to give us. And by this we know love.