A Case for Religious Possibilities: Jonah, a Whale of a Story

For some, the book of Jonah in the Hebrew Old Testament is reminiscent of a grand fishing story. Not only did the fish get away, but the tale seems larger than life. It makes a great children’s story, but is of little use in our modern lives. Even the theologians have reduced it to a metaphor of Jesus Christ death on the cross. However, Jonah, the city of Nineveh and the Hebrew God, Yahweh, have more to teach us then just a cute Sunday school story or a theologian’s confirmation of the Christ centric understanding of the Old Testament.

Like so many of the ancient Hebrew prophetic writings, the book of Jonah is meant to school us in faith and its relationship to culture, those habits of our heart and mind. And, in the case of Nineveh, a particularly nasty culture. The lessons are not easily fit into a box of convenient religious categories. The book ends with a question from God. It directs us to questions of religious judgments. How do we see and respond to people who seek God under the umbrella of their own religion and culture? In “Christian” North America, how do we see the plight of the Palestinian people, Islamic cultures or even the gay and lesbian communities? What about Buddhist, Hindu or secularist cultures? Can they know the Christian God and His mercy?

Nineveh is the other, a people who are outside of our traditional values and at worst a society of habits that have more in common with the brutal regimes of the past century, from Stalin to Pot Pol, from Hitler to Sadman Husain, not to mention the Assyrians brutality to the Jews of Jonah’s time. Jonah, the representative of Jewish orthodoxy, is a prophet, but a flawed prophet. He represents that close link between both vice and virtue, between what is both good but corrupted by ego and denies the religious possibilities of God himself. Not even the call of God himself can bring Jonah, a religious man, to commit to the service of a people he considers offensive.

Jonah is two faced. God calls, he accepts and then immediately proceeds to get as far away from both Nineveh and God. Ironically, he finds his escape on a ships passage among men who are anything but Jewish, sailors. In the heart of the sea’s storm, it is these men, while practicing their own faith, discovery the possibility of the God Yahweh. Not exactly the ideal conversion. What happened to theology and confession? More to the point, where’s the Jewish orthodoxy? What about the Nicine Creed?  The writer is noticeably silent on these points.

Jonah’s miraculous rescue on the sea continues to move him further away from God, but this time in the belly of the fish, a second irony. Yet, here, deep in the ocean, Jonah accepts God’s appeal. His acquiescence is tainted by his desire to finish the task and witness the rightful destruction of his enemies, as his later behavior betrays the intentions of his noble prayer. He can hardly be characterized as siding with God on moral grounds.

So he enters Nineveh, and gives one of the shortest prophetic messages in the Old Testament, a warning about the city to be overthrown. What’s astounding is the results. A city of over 100,000 people believes in God, Yahweh. For such a dramatic results, we are short on details, particularly religious details. What happen to their existing gods and practices of religion? What about the distinctive practices of Abraham’s chosen people and its law’s that distinguish them? The only insight we are given is by God himself at the end of the book. Nineveh learned the difference between their “right hand and left hand,” or between good and evil. Perhaps the Christian and Jewish call to faith is simpler then we think,  encompassing the possibilities of culture that make room for God, His mercy, and “the other” when emancipate from evil, the violence of man against man.

The book ends with a question to Jonah. “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” Jonah’s blind spot, as a man in the mainstream of his own narrative identity, as a people chosen by Yahweh, is his lack of openness to the possibilities of God’s will. Christian missions have a rich history of emancipating cultures from what is evil within the culture. The legacy of schools, hospitals, and social movements and its own internal reforms are its heritage in lifting people up from underneath the structures of power, including secularism.  The critic of Christian missions rightfully points to the role of imperialism and Christian missions, of the sword and the cross, and we are reminded that these are the perversions of faith and not the logical entailments.

Unlike Jonah, Christianity must guard itself from its own arrogance in a pluralistic world, a blind spot of its own virtue. The beauty of Christianity is its openness to the other and of God’s mercy, in spite of our preconceptions of culture. Judaism and Christianity’s own self critique in Jonah calls its own to be open to other races and cultures, rather than its inclinations to judge by internal standards of “self righteousness.” Most importantly, Joahn is a message about caring. Caring enough for the cities and neighborhoods that lack human rights and any sense of practice about the imago dei, the image of God in man.  This is the call of the book, to a distinctively Christain mission.

Evil: The Dark Night of the Soul

The problem of evil has many faces. Unfortunately, none of them are pretty, but all of them very real. Elie Wiesel book, Night, is one of those faces.

The believer’s tragedy is how a good God could allow such suffering and injustice. Is God good? Is God all powerful? Evil can’t be glossed over in theoretical arguments but it pain must be felt. Here is an excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s book Night when as a young teenager of faith, he experiences his first night in Auschwitz:

But I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it.

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories…”

His voice was choking.

“Father,” I said, “if that is so, I don’t want to wait here. I’m going to run to the electric wire. That would be better than slow agony in the flames.”

He did not answer. He was weeping. His body was shaken convulsively. Around us, everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead themselves.

Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His Name be blessed and magnified….” whispered my father.

For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?

We continued our march. We were gradually drawing closer to the ditch, from which an infernal heat was rising. Still twenty steps to go. If I wanted to bring about my own death, this was the moment. Our line had now only fifteen paces to cover. I bit my lips so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten steps still. Eight. Seven. We marched slowly on, as though following a hearse at our own funeral. Four steps more. Three steps. There it was now, right in front of us, the pit and its flames. I gathered all that was left of my strength, so that I could break from the ranks and throw myself upon the barbed wire. In the depths of my heart, I bade farewell to my father, to the whole universe; and, in spite of myself, the words formed themselves and issued in a whisper from my lips: Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His name be blessed and magnified…. My heart was bursting. The moment had come. I was face to face with the Angel of Death….

No. Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into a barracks.

I pressed my father’s hand. He said:

“Do you remember Madame Schächter, in the train?”

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

For more on Elie Wiesel, see http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/wiesel/index.shtml

The Use of “I AM” in John 8:24

The following is an excerpt of an email conversation on John 8:24 from a message delivered by Andy in July of 2006 

Andy,

I thought your message last Sunday morning was excellent. It’s not often you hear a message on Deity of Jesus, let alone Trinitarian theology. And, I appreciated your candid “So what?” question. It was the better question. In fact, it was such a good question that I wish you could have spent more time developing it. It’s the “punch line” to Deity of Christ that I’m still discovering the importance of.

This is a long email, so I apologize in advance. I wanted a sounding board to your message to help flush out my thoughts. I hope you’ll find it beneficial and engaging as well. Let me develop this and I’d appreciate your comments.

The problem I want to explore is our historical amnesia in the interpretation of the verse in John 8:24 “Unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins…” This verse is commonly quoted to confirm Christ’s claim to deity, but also to support the view that acceptance of the deity of Christ is a necessary component of one’s Christian salvation. It is commonly used by Evangelical Christians to emphasis why one must relinquish any other notion of who Christ is, and adopt the tightly defined post Nicene view of Christ and the Godhead. And, as a Christian and an education one, I accept this in the historical traditions of our faith as correct and consistent with the proper treatment of the NT. However, we may have picked the wrong verse to support our understanding. When Jesus spoke these words, he was not speaking to a religious sect or those outside of his faith. He was speaking as a Rabbi, prior to the cross, to other members of the most monotheistic institution in history, Judaism, regarding another issue, the acceptance and forgiveness of sinners. At the time, his audience was the Pharisees who were anything but polytheistic, pantheistic or atheistic. So what was Jesus’ point? What message was he driving home to his listeners in this historical context?

What strike’s me as obvious with the gospel writers is that these words were meant to confront the ruling Jewish establishment (Judaism) and their consequential practices to people outside their righteous community. It was his ultimatum for them to accept his authority to forgive sins and to embrace the social ethic in His Gospel preaching, including his involvement with the fringe of society (i.e. Samaritans, the sick, etc), militant movements (rebels), and authoritative cultures (the Romans). His was a message of acceptance, forgiveness and service to people in and outside their immediate comfort zones (i.e. family, social status, race, and nationality). In this verse, He establishes His right to set an ethical precedent for both culture and economic practices that reaches into one’s personal and private life. In the following pages, I’ll develop and support this perspective from this verse. As such, the choice of songs that Sunday morning were a great fit before and after your message – Amazing Grace (recall Newton’s “career” as a slave trader and his acceptance of God’s forgiveness and the role it played out in his life) and How Great Is Our God (indeed, as Christ has broken the barriers between race, culture, economics, through the gospel – our ability individually, corporately and in our national governance to extend the foundation and practice acceptance, forgiveness, service). So let me frame the discussion starting with some of the symptoms of our challenge to understand Jn 8:24.

In the midst of our multicultural societies, the preaching and message of the cross and the deity of Christ is controversial. In fact, in western secularist societies, it’s seen as narrow and ignorant of other religious cultures. In our pluralistic society, it’s viewed as lacking tolerance for other peoples of race, religion, and culture (i.e. the popular perception of the missionary moment). Christians are viewed as wanting to convert everyone. Popular Western culture often rejects Christ and Christianity on these grounds, and adopts a more soften view of our faith, Christ as a moral teacher or prophet, the golden rule, the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, and so on. The implication that one religion could be right and thereby make all other religions wrong does not sit well with us.

In contrast to the rise and dominance of our secularist world views over the past 100 plus years, the first war of the 21st century turned out to be a religious war. In the east/west conflict over terrorism, we see the hard lines of the Muslim faith and its call to Jihad, the defeat of the great Satan, and a world governed by the Koran. Such radical views played out on the world stage only affirm that radical or hard line religion is something to be avoided.

So where does that leave us on the issue of the God/man and Jn 8:24? There is no question that Jesus claimed that He was God. The testimony and accounts of the various writers of the New Testament confirm this so as to leave no doubt about Christ’s claim. But what purpose did this serve? Unless you believe that He is God, you will die in your sins. Is this the message? Is this the universal principle of salvation for all men that draws a line between Christianity and all other religions? Is this a necessary element for the salvation of all men? Was the point of our Lord’s words in this verse to be reduced to this literal understanding? Where is the historical context? Is there more to it? Or is our literal view more of a post Nicene perception rather then pre Nicene? Does the historical context give us an implication here that we need to account for? Are we suffering from a moment of historical amnesia that, if recalled, feeds a broader meaning into this statement?

I would suggest that there is a broader meaning and that the meaning is significant enough to change our understanding. Jesus spoke his words in a very similar and pluralistic religious situation to us today. Even a light reading of the Bible reveals that the entire accounts of the Old and New Testament were written to address pluralistic cultures and their implications. This context feeds wisdom into Jesus words and our world today. The historical situation and the contextual framework painted by the NT and OT writers and especially our modern understanding of the Roman Empire should be allowed to speak and set the meaning for our Lord’s statement.

When I teach (not frequently), I often use this illustration to make the point. The newspaper headline “The Braves Scalped The Indians” can have several meanings. The literal interpretation of these words depends on when you lived. During the early 19th century, it refers to two Indian tribes at war. Only one hundred years later in the 21st century, it could be a baseball headline. Technically then, literal translations are impossible without the historical context. This is true for our verse in question.

However, the breakdown to connect the literal and the historical in Biblical interpretation has done some damage to Christianity over our history. We can all think of examples of “radical” sects that have taken verses out of context and used arguments of reduction to justify the most horrific of actions (i.e. from the Crusades to Jim Jones, and so on). But for us in the Protestant main stream, the failure to apply this connection is more subtle but still significant in its impact. Most notably, it is really a victory for the enemy of man, Satan himself as the embodiment of all that is evil. Anything that dilutes the gospel, especially if it is subtle enough not to be notice, can render Christianity fruitless. It is mission accomplished on the part of evil. I would suggest that this was the problem with Judaism post 500 BC to the time of Christ. A system and definition of righteousness so well developed that it forgot the heart of it message.

For many training preachers and career messengers of the Cross, creeds and credos, Greek and Hebrew, cultural and political studies are the boring and unpractical sides of their training. These areas are left to the more eccentric of students and teachers in general. Rather, most enthusiastic workers want to get to the “meat” of the matter, saving souls as fishers of men. And here is a breakdown in our training institution that is replicated down into the pastoral and lay ministry. The historical and literal context of the OT and NT is the core, foundation point, for any Christian task, weather lay or professional, personal or public. Without the historical background, the gospel in part is neutered. I believe this to be the case with our common understanding of Jn 8:24. And, this neutering has left us outside of the debate on multiculturalism and especially economic practice that has surrender itself to Milton Freeman’s Darwinian view of free markets ethics. I would suggest that the gospel has more to say on multiculturalism and economics then any other world view, and by implication, this verse. Jesus said more about the principles and values of economics (i.e. how to live in community) then most other topics in the gospels. It’s tragic that we have boxed ourselves outside the common debate.

I have stressed this historical point because it is the rub of the matter. The connection between history and the gospel can help put the gospel back into a place of social credibility. Credibility is not acceptance, but it’s easier to accept what is credible. As great a man as the reformation leader Luther was, his contribution to reform (Protestantism and the modern evangelical) was the reduction of the gospel. It fit his own personal need (a personal encounter with God) and addressed the social failings of the Catholic Church at that time. However, the protestant movement has not been prolific at communicating the gospel as both a personal and public reform, AND linking the two closely together (i.e. as James, the brother of Jesus does). Yes, there have been excellent and extremely valuable movements in this direction (i.e. Martin Luther King, World Vision, Mother Teresa, and many others including the efforts at Liberation Theology), but the common understanding of the gospel today is associated with irrelevance in the Western world (mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism) or limited to those individual whose lives are so bankrupt, they require a “Salvation Army” like experience.

These are sweeping statements and generalizations. And, they are probably not fair to those that are making contributions to the gospel and our Lord’s church well beyond what I will ever do. However, in the business of marketing, there is a saying about inside the bottle and outside the bottle. Inside the bottle is the corporation. Here, everything is going well. Plans are being executed, costs are being contained and financial goals met. Things are comfortable here. Outside the bottle are the customers. Here, things are not going so well. Products are in short supply, and fail often. Customer support is hard to find and problem resolution rare. Today, successful companies have to take an outside the bottle approach to marketing. All analogies fall short, but I would suggest that the approach Jesus took that embodies the gospel is an outside the bottle view of the world.

What I’m outline is nothing new. They are the conventional understandings from mainstream protestant theology. What may be new, but I doubt it, will be the insight on how the pieces fit together for Jn 8:24. This fitting, I hope, will give fresh discussion into these words of our Lord. If we correctly understand Christ words in this context, it may be a step to renew our proclamation of the gospel in a multicultural society and global economy. It is a proclamation that can bring healing to personal, economic, political, and international chaos that we see today. Unfortunately, not all will accept it. It is, after all, a narrow path, but not an ignorant one. Rather it is a contributing and viable voice to the discussions of culture and nations. As a voice on culture, we stand in a great tradition, starting with Moses.

Here are some contextual points for my understanding of this passage, Jn 8:24.

• The context of Jn 8:24 is a debate about Jesus’ authority to forgive the adulterous woman’s sin and set her free from her accusers. It begs the question, so rightly asked, about “who are you?” It asks by what authority he is acting on. They already know that He is Rabbi. This is a similar situation repeated as in the case healing of the paraplegic at Peter’s house. The stage is then set for the discussion that follows on what authority does Jesus forgive as a Rabbi, and rescues the woman from certain death. Jesus states that his purpose and actions are in line with the Fathers, and climaxes his argument around his claim to be I AM. His position as God (ultimate authority – the one who spoke to Moses at the burning bush) gives Him the right to forgive those that have failed and trumps Jewish law that shows no mercy. This is His argument and one that he clearly understands the implications of.
• The context of Jn 8:24 is pre Nicene and pre cross, so the primary meaning must be interpreted in its original context, NOT as post resurrection statement pertaining to atonement as done in the following popular statement: “Jesus is saying that forgiveness of your sins, the very work he did on the cross cannot be applied unless you understand who died for you. So believing Jesus is the savior in a general sense is not enough. Believing Jesus is the Son of God in a general sense without actually understanding it is a claim to deity is not enough.” http://www.letusreason.org/Trin19.htm (No. 1 position in Google search string “unless you believe that I AM you will die in your sins”). Simple put, this is poor biblical exegesis (historical, grammatical, and literal interpretation).
• The post context is the continuation of the argument about Jesus authority for his position to forgive the sin of the adulterous women. The presupposition that Jesus and his Jewish adversaries are working under is that only God has the rightful authority to forgive sins, so how can Jesus forgive sins. Jesus continues to make the argument that his works of forgiveness for the “unrighteous” (bridging the gap between race and social status through the example of service) are not only the works of the Father, but ultimately grounded in His claim to be God.

The broader context of the Gospel and thrust for the “forgiveness of sins”:

• Jesus’ mission in Lk 4:18 was not a general statement about making the world’s wrongs right, but a specific call to the liberation of people wrongful burdened by a social status and misguided notions under Judaism. It was in part an appeal to the Jewish practice of Jubilee, although Judaism had developed many technical means to practice yet avoid the transfer of wealth (loans, land, and labor). His mission statement in Lk 4:18 also embraced his teaching covering the rich and poor, men and women, finance and economics, law and freedom, war and peace, race and culture, empire and occupation. His magna carta is outline in the Sermon on the Mount, illustrations (parables), and summarized by the Lord’s prayer. The controversy of his works were his miracles that were intentionally done to upset the governing religious, social and political establishment (i.e. the blind beggar at the temple). This was the “buzz” or controversy focused on by the gospel writers over his ability to accept, forgive and service people regardless of their ethnic, social, or religious background. Jesus was breaking new grounds in multiculturalism, and was very much a pioneer.
• Forgiveness in the Lord’s prayer carries not only the definition of the Kingdom of God (“thy Kingdom come”), but a similar warning to Jn 8:24 in the terrible partition of the prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” The word sin can be better translated as debt, financial debt. One cannot miss the meaning here in light of his proclamation of Jubilee. This is first full warning against not exercising forgiveness in perhaps it’s most difficult form, financial debt. Augustine called it the terrible petition for good reason.
• This motif continues at Peter’s house with Christ’s pertinent question to the Pharisees before he heals of the paraplegic, “which is it easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Rise up and walk?’” Here, his question breaks the old paradigm that sickness and its outcast status is not the fault and punishment of one sins or their parent’s shortcomings. Sin’s can only be forgiven by God, so it impossible for man, especially a Rabbi to make this statement. Equally, to heal the man is by implication to grant that his past has been forgiven. The restoration of health means God’s judgment has been removed. It’s a trick question that dissolves if Jesus does not heal the man. In this case, the healing means his sins are forgiven and that he is to be resorted to full social status. Here, as in so many of the other miracles, Jesus is bridging one of many oppressive societal gaps. His legal authority as a Jewish Rabbi for his actions is his claim to be God. His actions are in line with the works of His Father.
• Jesus practice to forgive the unforgivable is deliberately giving his Jewish counterparts quite a shock. First, by departing from the pure monotheistic principles of Judaism. His controversial forgiveness and acceptance of sinners was linked to His claim to be God. One may wonder if this was necessary. Why not just stick to a reform message? But as in our time as in Jesus era, a reform message is not enough, it has to be grounded in a higher reality and authority for it to have universal application and motivation. The 20th century was one of the bloodiest on record and proof positive that man cannot live without God. We have developed other concepts, such a “crimes against humanity” but they are weak and tend to be applied at random. The higher reality is in the One God as sole creator. As creator, we are not only in His image, but personably accountable for our behavior to one another at all levels. Jesus’ repeated demonstrations of forgiveness as God and from God is a frightful reminder of our social responsibility to really care for those who fall outside the norms of any convention, especially religious. Second, Jesus shifts from the letter of the religion (law) to the heart of religion (law). He brings back into Judaism the original teaching of Moses. God as creator who endows all men with His image and holds men accountable for their actions to one another. This standard is call righteousness. It is a standard of social acceptance, forgiveness, and service that breaks the social barriers of race, culture, norms, and softens the common standards of justice and one’s rights (i.e. Sermon on the Mount). It’s a very powerful multicultural message. These are the pregnant concepts Christ call us to live by that lie behind His claim to be God. One cannot read the gospels and not see the simple logic of his claim. If Jesus as God can forgive the unforgivable (the brutality of the Romans and the ensuing social debt from Roman taxes), accept the unacceptable (the half breed Samaritans and their other temple), and service those of lesser status (the sick and poor perceived to be under a Jewish form of “karma” - the judgment of God), then I and we are expected to behave in a similar manner. At a very minimum, our heart must be in the right place when I look at my neighbor, my brother, my enemy, or those in need or who owe me money (i.e. divorce situations). Saying that it is “too bad for this person or that person” is not enough. It’s a call to action that Jubilee was. Unfortunately, for Judaism as it developed after Solomon, in it zeal for the Kingdom of God, it shifts the teachings of Moses to become an oppressor of men and women outside of its tightly held religious standards. Oddly enough, these religious standard’s were to expected to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. And ironically, it’s unfortunate that both the Catholic and Protestant faiths have both strayed tragically from these founding principles at some time in their respective histories.
• Jubilee – The acceptable year of our Lord – this whole concept, emphasis in Jesus teaching is riddled with forgiveness and economic codes of conduct. What’s probably noteworthy to mention here is that Jubilee was not a communistic or socialist practice for the distribution of wealth. It was true free market system, that prevent the consolidation of wealth (particularly land) that restored individuals and families back to a means whereby they could care for themselves and not be subject to the exploits of financial power. The 48th year was like a game of monopoly where the game started over again. The forgiveness of debt and the restoration of family land played in the 48th year was the tipping point in the renewed economic cycle.
• The Exodus – Moses as the writer of the Pentateuch, watches the genocide of some of the most helpless and dependant persons, those under two years old and witness the increasing brutal oppression of a slave nation. These acts were justified under the polytheistic religion of Egypt and the Pharaoh. It was the impetuous for God coming to Moses and for Moses to write the first five books. It starts with Moses anger against Pharaoh’s treatment of the Israelites and his subsequent killing of an Egyptian guard. It starts with God when Moses is old and humble. Here YHWH not only demonstrates His superiority against empire and the polytheist world that produced the ethics of genocide against a slave nation and their young. These actions by YHWH and the opening chapters of Genesis speak directly for the dignity of all men, regardless of ethnicity or culture. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is one of the most concise question asked. Its answer, in the context, is obvious. These values are at the heart of the law, as alluded to by Jesus in such famous illustration about “Who is my neighbor?”

So, in a nutshell, what does Jn 8:24 mean? I think Jesus in his typical Rabbinic fashion, is making a play on words to drive home a very serious point. As God, YHWH, he has the authority to forgive her sin. And it’s the same authority by which he meets with sinners (ie tax collectors), helped a Roman centurion that probably oversaw the execution of his Jewish bother (rebels), accepted the Samaritans, and associate with the poor, the sick and their needs. These are only a few of his actions. In each case, he looked into their heart and except them to practice the same level of forgiveness, acceptance, and service as he showed. Believing on Him to be saved meant not only God’s forgiveness, but also to accept his social teaching on ethnic acceptance (Samaritans and sinners) and practice of forgiveness (Romans, the sick) and extend it to the highest level, serve to our enemies. For His Jewish listeners in Jn 8:24, who could not accept this practice and belief in Him, he condemns them to the very sin that will separate them from God. Jesus is almost being poetic. The very thing that separates the Jewish elite from others, sin, is what they will be accused of and separates them from God. If you don’t forgive others, you will die in your sins – this is the message and import of Jesus claim to be God.

To bring this full circle, I think this verse would best use in a message on “extreme” forgiveness and multicultural acceptance. This adulterous women who lives outside the bounds of cultural Judaism in the worst way is who Jesus reaches out to forgive, accept and server. It’s how He behaved as the Prince of Peace. To read this verse as supporting the point that one must believe Jesus to be God in order to receive the forgiven of sins is a distortion of the words and historical context. Rather, the verse calls for, even demands acceptance, forgiveness and service because Jesus, as our example and authority, is God. The former understanding sees the language through a filter of post Nicene and Luther where meaning is read back into it. In the historical/literal interpretation, where the text speaks for itself, the meaning is focused on our acceptance to forgive others grounded in Christ authority as God to do the same. The consequences of not practicing forgiveness are dire. It is tackles the heart of the matter on divisive social issues (the adulterous woman) and speaks his broader practice of cultural acceptance, forgiveness and service. Acceptance, doesn’t mean the we endorse cultural practices that are outside the law of love. It does mean that we accept the people unconditionally and leaves room for cultural diversity that fits under the paradigm and ethics of the one God. In this way, Jn 8:24 have little to do with the atonement and justification of Paul’s Roman’s, and more to do with James 1:24 and the Lord’s Prayer. It begins to integrate a cultural society of segregation and hate between Jews and their own, Samaritans, Romans, and in this case, an adulterous woman. The Gospel, as embellished on the Sermon on the Mount was a personal and political manifesto of acceptance, forgiveness, and service to be practiced as community.

The broader meaning of this verse may mean that we’ll see Mormons, Muslims, Jews, and peoples of other religious practice in heaven. The thief on the cross, the Roman Centurion, the Samaritan all had varying theology and beliefs, from strict monotheism to polytheism. We don’t know if these people “converted” in our modern Protestant or Catholic sense, but we do know that they believed He had authority to forgive as eyewitness of His miracles. But, we do know that they understood what His practice meant for their lives as He invited them into His Kingdom. As such, the Gospel and its multicultural values, has direct world wide practical application for the Hindu when karma reveals her victims (i.e. the Untouchables), for Buddhism when it show’s an aversion for dealing with evil in this world, for the Muslims and Jews by calling them to acceptance, forgiveness, and to restoration for one another (land and dignity) and not to retribution based on race and religion. For western culture, it underpins the dignity of man as more then just a random metric of “crimes against humanity,” or other altruistic sound bites. More importantly, it places a “metaphysical imperative” behind the motivation for the forgiveness of economic debt (private, corporate, international), the shadow lurking near many of our social crimes and issues both locally and internationally. For the Christian believer, it carries the terrible warning that “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” In our personal lives, it speaks to our behavior in family relationships, and to our situations in marriage, especially divorce. It informs our actions to both our neighbors and enemies. Christ’s practice points the way to break down divisive social barriers and heal our communities, locally and internationally. In doing so, he teases out something beyond Judaism’s practice of law to bring about the Kingdom of God. This something was the law of love, a religion of the heart measure by our acceptance, forgiveness and service, and in doing so to bring the Kingdom of God here and now. This is the importance or force of John 8:24.

The Second Coming: Teasing Out A Personal Perspective

The following is excerts of an email converstation from the message on Christ’s second coming given in November 2007

Hi Bruce,

I enjoyed your talk on Sunday night, especially your approach on such a difficult topic as the second coming. Of course, it also was the topic of discussion at growth group this week. It’s been awhile since I’ve thought about His second coming, but my discussion group teased out some personal thoughts I wish to share. No, this not my opinion of when or how Christ come, but something deeper and much more intellectually satisfying, at least for me. And, I thought I take the time to write it out and share it with you as food for thought. I wonder if you see the same thing and in doing so, perhaps the challenges created by sectors of the Church in its propagation of the subject. I say this will all sensitivity to those with good intentions, but may have been misguided.

Perhaps the only way I can begin is with an analogy to the 20th century. At the turn of the previous century, Marx wrote that religion was the opium of the people. In doing so, he unleashed social orders that were the most brutal in all recorded history. The hard core secularism of the last century, a belief that man was no longer accountable to God but to himself, was the bloodiest century by order of magnitude. Hundreds of millions of people were killed by their own kind in a single century, significantly more than the entire history of all recorded religious wars! In hind sight, the past century taught us that the opium of people is that man can do whatever he wants in this life without consequences in the life to come. This belief was much more destructive then even Marx could have imagined religion or capitalism could have been. When the Imago Dei (image of God) lost its proper anchoring point at the beginning of the last century, all hell broke loose (Hitler, Mau, and Stalin to name a few).

So what has this to do with the second coming? The brutality of last century was not unlike the brutality in the time in which Christ lived. The underbelly of the Pax Romana (the peace of Rome or Roman globalization of the time) was the cross. Probably, when Jesus was in his early teens, he may have witnessed what Josephus describes as the crackdown on Jewish Zealots when, in a single day, the Romans nailed a 1000 of his Jewish brothers to crosses outside the wall of Jerusalem. Even the Nazi Germans would have been pleased with the Roman efficiency. Certainly, there was not a Jewish family in the region who was not touch by this atrocity, including Christ. But atrocities were not exclusively Roman. Even the Jewish leaders and their prevailing law, Judaism, were oppressive to not only those at the fringe of their society (ie Samaritans, half breeds who didn’t recognize their temple), but to their own evoking a type of Hindu law of karma where the good are bless and the bad, cursed by God (i.e. sinners, the sick, etc). Jesus, in his message of the time, the gospel, brings the Imago Dei back to its proper anchoring point. Simply put, for the Jews, it was to love the Romans, their mortal enemies (i.e. sermon on the mount, healing of the centurion’s son …) which required them to forgive the unforgivable. In addition, it was to recognize the atrocities committed by their own law that marginalized their own people (“which is it easier to say, your sins are forgiven or rise up and walk”). The gospel attracted and confuse so many because it asked a simple question, “if I, made in the image of God, can be forgiven by God without condition, what does that mean about my responsibility to other people of all races and circumstances?” In the “terrible petition” that Augustine describes the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is contingent on forgiveness. Grace for grace, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those indebted to us.” Unconditional forgiveness is the gospel, in the widest sense, and what liberates man from himself and God, but man to man, especially at the bottom of social structures. As James, the brother of Jesus who was close to him and could say that the measure of, “pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphan and the widowed in their affliction…”

I would suggest that it is against the backdrop of the underbelly of the Pax Romana, its atrocities committed under Roman imperialism as well as the Jewish state’s treatment of race and social status that we understand the primary message of the 2nd coming. The gospel is countermeasures or counterculture to the conventional wisdom of the time and especially today. However, the “teeth” of the gospel is the second coming. That all men will account to Christ and be measured against the standard of the gospel is the tipping point of our commitment to faith and the gospel. The call of the gospel for all nations to accept, forgive and serve all men made in the image of God carries with it the warning of accountability. For the persecuted Christians in the 1st century, this would bring comfort and hope, that what they endured is not in vain, but serves a just purpose. The image and metaphor of the NT would have been highly relevant to any believer condemned under Stalin’s Gulag as it would have been under Nero after the great fire in Rome. Stalin and Nero will be accountable. Hitler will be accountable, and the many monsters of history whether at the commanding heights of the world stage or in their own cities and homes. The gospel trumps the brutally of imperialism and the evil that temps all of us.

However, the travesty today of the modern evangelical Christian and the relevance of our gospel to the world, especially to the secular world, is that we’ve lost this early understanding and confuse the NT allegory, metaphor and use of apocryphal literature to describing the second coming. Instead, we’ve trumped up themes of rapture, pre, mid and post tribulation as fear mongering (i.e. Hal Lindsey) to promote men to “convert” to Christ, or what Reinhold Niebuhr calls, half the gospel. And, as well meaning as we are, our common conversations are unable to go much deeper and lack a real world appeal outside of our own circles. The 2nd coming points to the gospel, the call to accept, forgive and serve because God first forgives without merit. The gospel’s call to forgive takes us further in our understanding of society with its mooring point in transcendent value that all men are created in the image of God and, what is done to the least of men, is done to God himself. It points to what James describes as pure religion at the lowest levels of society. I wish this was the focal point of the today’s evangelical discussion of eschatology, a moving away from the fusion of early Greek philosophical thought (i.e. at Constantinople in the 4 century), and current Biblical literalism with early Christian/Jewish metaphor and analogy. Instead, I hope we can return to historical literalism (i.e. Walter Kaiser) – what it meant by the text at that time in its context. In this way, I find the discussion much more satisfying and appealing to the wider audience, especially given the performance of secularism in the last century.

I like the story told of Congressman Dave Crockett in his opposition to Manifest Destiny and the removal of the Cherokee Indians in the 1830’s. Speaking to his fellow congressman, he warns them, “Your history, your treaties, and you statutes will confront you. The human heart will be consulted – the moral sense of all mankind will speak out fearlessly and you will stand condemned by the law of God … You many not live to hear it, but there will be no refuge for you in the grave.” Dave Crockett understood the meaning of the second coming. Unfortunately, it cost him his reelection.

Murray.

Framing the Problem of Evil

The following is based on the book UNSPEAKABLE: “Facing up to evil in an age of genocide and terror.” By Os Guinness

A five week study of seven questions raised by evil in our world.

For the next five Sundays, I’ll lead us in a discussion on the Christian’s understanding and response to evil (head, heart, and action). We’ll do this through the eyes of the writer, Os Guinness and his book, and wrestle with evil as Job did. Understand evil will take into how other faiths deal with evil (or simple don’t) and a realization of why the Christian faith has the strongest reaction to evil. And, I believe it will lead to a place of strength in our walk with Christ.

There are no easy answers to the problem of evil. No “one liners” to explain it. In fact, when confronted with raw evil, we are often left speechless, lost for words and explanations. The title of this book describes that response. Like Job’s friends, who thought they knew the answers, their responses were often cruel. When we look into evil, we stare into a mystery that none of us will be able to answer this side of heaven. But our response can be one of realism and compassion.

Job 2:13 – What was the first thing that happens when Job’s friends came to visit him after Job’s tragic events?
• They sat down with him for seven days and didn’t say a word
• They saw how great his pain was.

What are evil’s potential effects on faith? (Loose or strengthen faith in God)

(Not qualified to speak, never been overseas to Africa, and too young to have lived through WW2. Radio/ TV = evil events everywhere, in our church, homes, lives)

About Os Guinness
• Grandparents were Medical Missionaries in China in late 1800s.
• They witness 50 years of grinding cruelty, rape, random murders, false accusations, unjust trials and executions, brutal repression and religious prosecution.
• Os was Born in China.
• Lived under the Mao Tse-tung regime.
• His two brothers were killed in China (one from famine) and he and his parents were almost killed several times.
• Lived in China when the Japanese killed 20 million people during the policy of three: loot all, kill all, burn all.
• Lived in Nanking, China when 300,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese (it even applied the Nazis who were present). Called the Raping of Nanking
• He grew up first hand with terror.
• Today, he has a global view on terror having lived in three continents, Asia, Europe, and America.
• This book is in response to a weaken view on evil in the world in the post modern, 20st century. As in William Golding book, Lord of the Flies, after the boys have survived the nuclear holocaust and they take flight to an island for themselves, they become aware of a deep and sinister force inside themselves. They become afraid of themselves. For OS Gusiness, we are not nearly afraid enough.

What is Secular Humanism?
(= world getting better = illusion of the 20th century. It’s not, and the spread of evil rapid then ever been.)

Experience of W. H. Auden, English Poet (p 213)
• Not a religious believer prior to 1939.
• Before 1939, religion was “nothing but a vague uplift, as flat as an old bottle of soda water.”
• He was secular humanist, following Freud and Marx – a belief in the natural goodness of humankind – finding solutions to human problems (political, education, economic) would lead to the happiness of humanity.
• Eagar to follow the events of WW2, in 1939 he watch at a theater a documentary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, “Sieg im Poland.” When Poles appeared on the screen, members of the audience cried out, “Kill them! Kill them!” Auden was horrified.
• As he watched the SS savagery onscreen and heard the audience’s brutal response, Auden lost his belief in the goodness of man. He knew that he was encountering evil and that it had to be condemned categorically. That is, without any moral or theoretical doubt.
• This was his first realization. His second realization is what hit him the hardest. There had to be some reason why Hitler was utterly wrong. The problem was not only to account for the evil, but how to justify the absolute condemnation of it.
• In Humanism, there are no absolutes. To judge anything absolutely wrong is naïve and impossible. Judgments are only relative to the culture. The English intellectuals have no Heaven to cry out to against Hitler.
• Auden’s conclusion is that faith in the Absolute is the remedy.

“Either we serve the Unconditional
Or some Hitlerian monster will supply
An iron convention to do evil by.”

CS Lewis, in A Pain Observed, call evil God’s megaphone to get our attention. What is CS Lewis saying? That evil, in a strange way is telling us something or better yet arousing something in us. Once our emotions and anger have settled down, we can ask, “What does evil tell us?” Better yet, “What questions does evil raise?”
• Why is this happen?
• Is God responsible?
• Why doesn’t He stop it?
• Where is man?
What were some of the questions Job asked?
• Why me? Why? Why? Why? Why?

In summary, it really begs two questions:
• How can humanity be so inhuman (inhumanity of humanity)?
• Where is God in all this (God’s responsibility)?

And these questions raise other questions, and these ones we will focus on:
• Where on earth does evil come from?
• What’s so right about a world so wrong?
• Are we really worse of just modern?
• Do the differences make a difference? and Isn’t there something we can do?
• Why can’t I know what I need to know? and Isn’t there any good in all this bad?

Do we live in a time when our response to evil is weaker?

Here are some current facts on evil in the 20th century:

Scale of Evil:
• 20th century has been the bloodiest in all of recorded history
• 100 million killed in wars, and another 100 million killed in genocide.
• 20th century framed by genocide in the begin and end: 1.5 m killed in Ottoman massacre of Armenians in WW1 and Rwandan and Sudanses massacres in 1990s of almost 3 m.
• 20th century has been most murderous including Ukraine terror famine, Auschwitz, the rape of Nanking, the Burma railway, the Soviet Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian killing field, and the massacres in Bangladesh and Yogoslavia
• The paradox is that today, we save more and kill more!
• The Rwandan bloodbath was one of the fastest massacres in history – 800,000 Tutis in three months, 3x the speed of Hitler’s exterminations, or equivalent to more than two World Trade Center slaughters every day for 100 days.

The Weakening Response to Evil
• Today, it possible to know when atrocities are happening
• Even thought we know as they happen, we still respond slowly. Often we are bystanders.
• In 1994, when the Tutsis cried for help, not a single country went to their rescue.
• This is the response of the generation that coined the word genocide, trumpeted human rights, and built Holocaust Museums so that we might never forget.
• “Never again” should be more like “you never know.”

Our Declining Definition of Evil:
• To speak of evil is seen as simplistic and old fashion, a view of life shaped more by fairy tales then by science.
• Evil is not a moral term of absolutes and using it in public life (i.e politics) would lead to self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and the politics of fear.
• The 9/11 response was to call it an act of terror, an evil attack, which it was. However, as the casualties among Iraqi civilians topped the number of New Yorkers killed, moral indignation was replaced with moral equivalence. Saddam Hussein’s brutalities were evil, America’s were expedient.
• The abuses at Abu Ghraib prision were dismissed as “fraternity antics” and “emotional release.”
• Today, America is confused about evil even though it has the strongest view of evil at its core embedded in the separation of powers in the Constitution. The example above illustrates that current view of evil are weak, hesitant, contradictory, and not shared by all.
• Evil, instead of being defined under God as sin, has softened to evil defined before the law as crime and among some professions has degraded to a low self esteem.
• Evil has been replaced by Utopian view of human goodness.
• Represents a loss of moral certainties of the mind to understand and judge evil.

Other Disturbing Realities
• The worst modern atrocities were perpetrated by secularist humanist regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, and in the name of secularist beliefs.
• Monetheism is not the Axis of Evil. Rather it is the single most influential and constructive belief in human history.
• More people in the 20th century were killed by secularist regimes then in all the religious persecutions in Western history.

DQ One: “Where on earth does evil come from?”

• Bodies – Death is the ultimate insult – Does our fragility make the human life futile or worthless? What is our reaction to human frailty? Do we exploit it? (ie Hutus calling the Tuties “cockroaches;” the military calling death collateral damage; a culture of beauty that denies our vulnerability)
• Nature – Henan famine of 1942 to 43 killed 5 million – it was sudden, people were helpless and it was chaotic. Does nature make human life worthless? Are we at “home” in this universe? It nature just a stay of our execution?
• Other human beings. The journalist Stump comments on the Bosnian war where a young Muslim mother was raped in front of her husband and father with her baby screaming on the floor. When the tormentors were finished, she begged to nurse the child. In response, one of the rapists swiftly decapitated the baby and threw the head in the mothers lap. This is a taste of real wickedness. It’s shocking. These are our fellow human beings. However, the lesson we avoid is that when we talk of them or the other, we are talking about ourselves. They are part of our species, man. It’s a terrible comment on man. It’s the dark side of who we all are.

Why is the question important?

• Realism
• Compassion

What was God’s response to Job?

• Job 38; 40:1-7; 42:1-6