God Isn’t Fair.

As a father, one of the recurring complaints I hear from my children is that something isn’t “fair.” “What?? Why does he get to go to the store and I have to stay home?”, or “What?? Why does he get to stay home and I have to go to the store?” I’m most amused when one child furiously insists on the administering of justice, of the issuing of punishment, when, ironically, they too are in the middle of “breaking the law.” “MOOOM! He’s not in his bed!”, the child screams from the hallway…which is not his bed.

I hear the refrain echoed elsewhere. “Healthcare is a right.” I’m not here to discuss policy; I’m only pointing out that this language infers that the world is intended to be fair, but that something is lacking in order for it to be so. Something belongs to someone, but they do not yet possess it. The goal for our society, then, is to make it right.

I even hear this language in the church/in response to the church. “How is it fair that God allows children to starve to death in Africa, while children in America are overfed?” Again, I’m not calling into question the logic of this specific statement; I’m only calling attention to the assumption that “fairness” is the goal.

I’ve wrestled with that question often. I’m not going to be able to answer that here, or probably ever. I do want to suggest the following: God does not care about fair.

In Matthew 20, Jesus tells a parable to his disciples. The parable puts the kingdom of heaven alongside a story about a landowner hiring workers for his vineyard. The landowner goes out early in the morning, perhaps before the sun has risen, and hires workers. They agree to a denarion for pay, which was a typical day’s wage. These workers are probably strong, able-bodied workers. They were ready early, and they were scooped up by the landowner quickly.

Around nine in the morning, the landowner goes back out into the marketplace. This time, he finds people standing around. They were apparently not picked up by anyone early, so perhaps they were not prime workers. He invites them to come work anyway, and he says that he will pay them fairly. The come, too.

Around noon and then again at three in the afternoon, he does the same thing. By this time in the day, he’s surely not finding the most desirable workers. These are probably the older people who walk the mall in the middle of the day. They’re at the food court, enjoying a quiet coffee. No one wanted them to work in their vineyards. But the landowner scoops them up.

At the end of the day, the landowner prepares to pay everyone. The logic of it, if the matter were fair, would be that those who came early in the morning, who worked in the hot sun all day, would receive more than the others. As the parable goes, the landowner begins by paying those who came last. The payment they receive was what had been promised to the early workers — a denarion, a typical day’s wage. So they worked like two or three hours, and they receive a full day’s wage.

At this point, the early workers begin salivating. “If he’s paying them what was promised us, and we’ve worked like four or five times as long as they have, then imagine what we are going to get paid!”, they think. When the landowner gets to the early workers, he pays them…one denarion. Their response: “This isn’t fair!”

And it’s not.

Listen to how the landowner responds:

“Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?” (verses 13–15, CEB; italics added)

Fairness would dictate that all would be paid according to what they “deserve.” But the landowner makes no claims to fairness. He claims to be generous.

What God does in and through Jesus is not about God’s fairness; it’s about God’s generosity. In Jesus’ life, this shows up primarily when those who thought themselves worthy see Jesus spend his time with those whom they deem “unworthy.” “That’s not fair that you’re hanging out with sinners, Jesus!” Jesus’ actions suggest that his response is: “I know. I don’t care about fair.”

The storyline of Scripture is that while humanity was set against God, God still loved and still pursued them. God wasn’t interested in giving what they deserved; God was interested in being merciful and gracious. God gives not according to humanity’s desolation, but according to God’s abundance.

God isn’t fair. God is generous.

 

 

Amazing Grace

God loves you. This statement is at the foundation of Christianity. God loves you. Period.

God loves you so much that even when you turn your back on God, God pursues you. The Bible as a whole points in that direction. Humans, having received the goodness of God, turn away from God, but God continues to move toward humans. Nothing humans do can change this fact. It’s not influenced by any action that you perform, whether “good” or “bad.”

Because God loves you, God must do something about the reality of sin. In my opinion, the Bible is less clear on the origin of sin than I have often assumed previously. It speaks on the topic from different angles. But the one thing the various voices of Scripture hold in common is the reality of sin. Human living is marked by sinfulness.

What God must do about sin depends on what sin is. For some Christians, sin is primarily about humans having performed evil acts that deserve punishment. What God must do, then, is enact justice. Justice, in this situation, might be about handing out the punishment required. What God does in Jesus then becomes God taking the punishment humans deserve into himself. In this context, Christians will often talk about God’s grace as a way of describing this act of God taking the punishment owed us for sin. It’s as if we were sitting in a courtroom, guilty of a crime. After the judge has issued the verdict, someone else stands up and offers to take our place.

But what if that’s not the only or best way to think about sin? One thread of discussion that has run throughout the church’s history considers sin not mainly in terms of individual acts that are wrong or harmful. Rather, it looks at sin as a disease. Sin is like a malignant tumor on the brain. Sure, the symptoms are readily available — changed mood, erratic behavior, pain — but those symptoms are not mainly the problem. Instead, the problem is the tumor.

How would this view of sin change the conversation about what God must do in response to sin? What would “grace” mean in this situation?

Barbara Lipska, a neuroscientist, went for a run a few years ago. She was an avid runner, so this activity was not surprising. What was surprising, however, was that she squirted hair dye on her hair and covered it with a plastic bag before taking off. Further, she didn’t wear typical running clothes; instead, she wore quite revealing clothes. She ran around her neighborhood for two hours. She didn’t see anything wrong with her behavior. Doctors discovered twenty tumors on her brain.

Literal tumors on the brain, such as this woman experienced, can drastically alter behavior, leading the person suffering from the tumors to perform actions that might even be called unacceptable or wrong. But the solution with someone like Barbara Lipska is not simply to call her actions wrong and then to punish her for them. What good, for instance, would a fine from the police for indecent exposure have done for Barbara? How would that be justice? No, Barbara didn’t need a police officer or a judge; she needed a doctor.

Sin, then, is a cancer that needs to be removed.

How might this affect talk about God’s grace? Grace shows up in the willingness of someone to embrace us, despite our behavior. It exists in this person’s insistence that something is not right with our actions, and that we need medical assistance. It then is realized in the doctor’s actions in diagnosing and treating the cancer.

So what might this mean for talk about God? No matter what we do — good or bad — good looks on us favorably, as God’s beloved children. Even when we spurn God, God pursues us. God doesn’t end the matter by simply looking on us with favor or pity, though. God desires our healing. God wants to pull us into the operating room and remove the tumor. God removes the cancer so that we can live fully human lives, as God intended.

 

The Great Liberal Elite Irony

I grew up in a part of the country that was heavily influenced by the Left Behind series. For many, this replaced the Bible (albeit unintentionally) in shaping their understanding of things related to the “end of the world.”

But even before that series, a fascination with matters apocalyptic spread. For instance, a man named Edgar C. Whisenant wrote a book entitled, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen. Whisenant saw an opportunity. So he wrote a sequel: The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989. But he wasn’t done! He added another in 1993 and a final one in 1994. I guess he eventually proved to be less than trustworthy, in the prediction department.

All of this is to say: I tend to be turned off by end-of-the-world hysteria.

However, I’ve found myself growing weary lately. In particular, I’m concerned about liberal elites in the West. Note: I didn’t say “liberals.” I’m speaking about a certain branch of liberals. To state the matter simply: liberal elites — who can be found in nearly every field in our society — have become obsessed with identifying “wrongs” or “injustices” in our society, and have ironically sworn themselves in as the justice-police. Of the many reasons why this is problematic, I wish to attack one: they aren’t self-critical enough to recognize that they are operating with a definition of “justice” that they have come up with, and that they assume to be universal and obvious to all people in all places. And they only can do those because they actually belong to the elite class. The ironic result: they will obliterate other people when other people don’t fall in line.

One of the latest examples I’ve witnessed came in response to an article about my former professor, Joel B. Green. The article was his response to the question, “What makes a good scholar of the Bible?” Unfortunately, the article failed to include the fuller question to which he responded, “What makes a good scholar of the Bible understood as the church’s Scripture?” (italics added). This is unfortunate, because his answer was clearly speaking to the nature of good scholarship in service of the church, and without that clarification, the article implied that he was speaking down upon all scholarship that is not in service of the church.

Now, I know Joel well enough to recognize immediately that this is unfortunate because he is one of the most rigorous, scholarly people you would ever meet, and yet he never would speak demeaningly of anyone who disagrees with him. But I’ll assume that most people reading the article do not know him in this way. I’ll even assume, then, that they could fairly become upset at seeing the article.

The people who seem to be most offended by his article are liberal elites who think he’s being unfairly biased in stating openly that he does scholarship as a Christian. In their minds, the best scholarship is done “objectively.” And they — the justice police — are tasked with ensuring that all “unbiased” scholarship is attacked and belittled as not real scholarship.

Why this is scary is that they seem to be working unknowingly with an assumption that their idea of “good scholarship,” which is supposedly unbiased, is the obvious best. In turn, they apparently do not think that they need to engage someone like Joel carefully and critically; rather, they simply dismiss him out of hand since he doesn’t agree with them.

In reading some responses to the article, critics demonstrate (a) that they obviously didn’t take the time to dig further into what he said or his track record as a generous, critical scholar, and (b) that they sense that they can belittle him because he isn’t just like them.

For instance, one response, on Twitter (paraphrased): “I had him as a professor, and to be fair, he was a rigorous scholar. But since he’s chosen to be at Fuller seminary, he’s chosen to be devotional/anti-LGBT over being a scholar, so f*** him.” Seriously. That’s a real response from a guy who purports to be a “scholar.”

Let me pick this apart. He’s made it clear that he respected Joel in his actual classroom experience of him. But then, he dismisses Joel because of his belonging to Fuller Seminary, because he assumes a dichotomy between being “devotional” (whatever the heck that means) and being a “scholar.” He’s not critiquing anything Joel has actually said. Just dismissing him.

Further, he reveals his cards more clearly: he labels Joel and everyone who’s ever belonged to Fuller “anti-LGBT.” He’s politicized the moment. He hasn’t shown anything from Joel to support this accusation, but he knows that he can be appreciated by his other liberal elite friends by dropping that card. And of course, all “respectable” scholars (who, it turns out, are all white, liberal elites) are “pro-LGBT” (whatever that means), so they can now safely dismiss Joel because someone who doesn’t even have a Ph.D. has labled him “anti-LGBT.” The cherry on top: “so f*** him.”

This posture is extremely harmful. It will seek to root out anyone who doesn’t agree with the white, liberal elite view of the world. It doesn’t take the step of actually engaging in any capacity, let alone an “objective” one.

I saw this on display also when I watched liberal elites dismiss the perspectives of African Christians in The United Methodist Church because they aren’t as “educated” or “enlightened” as are liberal Americans.

This isn’t rigorous thinking. It’s dishonest, bigoted thinking. It begins with an assumption that “my” way is best, and all who disagree are terrible.

This way of thinking is permeating all levels of society. If someone disagrees with the great liberal elite hope, then that person will quickly be sacrificed on the altar of progress.

A more honest approach would be to recognize that we all have biases, and that our biases must be identified in order to see how they might help us think, but also how they might become obstacles to our thinking. To assume that “I” am just thinking “objectively” will only end with me either forcing others into my corner or destroying them.

I just hope these sorts of people don’t get any real power. If they do, then watch out. Guard your thoughts. Because they are coming for you.

Salvation by Faith?

No matter what type of Christian you are, at the heart of your religious faith is the concept of “trusting/believing in” Jesus. But what does that mean? In my interactions with various Christians, I have determined that it usually means something like, “Believe in Jesus in my mind.” The assumption is that the word faith is about having the right mental thoughts. And what are we to believe? For some, it’s that “Jesus loves me.” These are important matters to consider.

I recently read a wonderful book by Matthew Bates, entitled, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. In this book, he challenges core assumptions that many — perhaps most — Christians make. He begins by considering how people use the word faith. As I said above, faith is often about having the right mental thoughts. But more than that, he suggests, faith is often assumed to be contrary to evidence, a leap into the dark. Pushing further, it’s supposedly the opposite of “works” (whatever “works” might mean). For some people, it’s found in the idea that everything is going to be fine.

What Bates proposes is that we need to reconsider the Greek word that underlies our English faith. The goal is to recognize that the word faith points to something more robust, something more demanding than what we might have assumed. According to the author, the Greek word often translated faith, pistis, is “not an irrational launching into the void but a reasonable, action-oriented response grounded in the conviction that God’s invisible underlying realities are more certain than any apparent realities” (20).

As the title of the book indicates, Bates will go on to suggest an alternative English word for translating this Greek word, pistis — the word allegiance. Think about that for a second. What’s the difference between “trusting/having faith in” and “swearing allegiance to”?

One doesn’t have to look far into the Bible to find examples. The characters in the Bible are rarely praised for merely having “thought the right thoughts.” Rather, they are presented as those who, in response to God’s gracious initiative, follow and listen.

I’ll discuss more from this book in upcoming posts.

A Parable: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Just then, someone stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The man answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “What does ‘love’ mean?”

Jesus replied, “A man attended his church after his recent visit to the doctor, during which he was informed he had a cancerous growth on his arm. He asked one person, a member at his church, what he should do. ‘I don’t want to pretend to tell you what you should do. It’s none of my business.’ The man replied, ‘Please, can you help me think this through?’ The woman reiterated, ‘It’s none of my business. I’ll pray for you, though.’

“The man approached his pastor with the same inquiry. The pastor responded, ‘We all have ailments. In fact, I would hate to even call this an ailment. Many people experience cancer during their lifetimes. In many ways, it can be a beautiful reminder of our frailty.’ The man asked, ‘Am I going to be O.K.?’ The pastor said, ‘Of course. Well, in the sense that you are a human with joys and struggles, then sure. You need to embrace this as part of your personal journey. God will be with you.’

“After church, the man went to get lunch. While waiting, he was processing the morning. A woman seated in the restaurant peered at him. This woman could tell something was weighing this guy down. ‘Are you O.K.?’, the woman inquired. ‘Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I just found out from the doctor that this spot here on my arm is cancer, and…’ But before he could finish, the woman interjected, ‘You need to get that removed, quickly!’ The man, caught off guard, replied, ‘Well, wait a sec. let me tell you the story…’ Again, she interrupted, ‘Sorry, but it doesn’t matter. Get that off.’ The man felt offended. ‘But my pastor told me…’ She sternly declared, ‘I don’t care what your pastor said. You have cancer. And you need to get it removed. Here. Here’s my phone number. I’ll go with you to the doctor.’

“The man was offended at her brashness. But that night, he decided to call her. ‘Would you be willing to go with me this week?’ ‘Of course,’ she said.

“She went with him to the doctor. They scheduled the removal. She returned with him for that, as well. She continued to check in during the weeks ahead. In fact, the two became close friends after. And the man lived a full life after getting the cancer removed.

“Which of these three, do you think, loved this man?”, Jesus asked. “The woman who was willing to tell the truth.”

Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Falling Dominoes; or, If You Trust Jesus, Then You Should Affirm the Trinity (Part 1)

Not that I assume any of you “keep up” with what I’m writing on here or on social media, but if you happen to be one who does, then you have seen in recent days (a) that I’m incredibly frustrated with a pastor named Richard Lowell Bryant and his article, “There Is No Such Thing as the Trinity,” and (b) that I think the Trinity is important.

[Side note: anything I say on these matters that is truthful or right is not original to me. Rather, it is much more ancient. If I say anything that is original, then it’s likely untrue. I’m more than willing to admit that I might misconstrue some of this. Feel free to correct/challenge me, if so.]

When I was younger (O.K., I’ll admit it: even now that I’m older), I loved stacking up dominoes and tapping one over and watching the whole row fall. Since the advent of YouTube, my experiments have been shown to be amateur. Go to YouTube and search “dominoes,” and you’ll see some highly creative, expanded versions of what I did as a child. Ah-mazing. Far more complicated, but those projects are built on the same logic: if you knock over one domino, you set in motion the collapse of all the dominoes. They inevitably lead in a certain direction.

As a way of responding to both of the matters I mentioned above, I want to suggest that trusting Jesus is such a domino, and by tapping that first domino, the path leads to what Christians have called Trinity. This is important because for many Christians, the Trinity seems like an extra, take-it-or-leave-it matter. Even for those who wish to think about it, they might find themselves confused or unable to see why it’s relevant. Understandably, they think the focus should move elsewhere.

But this is not the case. As I said recently, the Trinity changes everything.

I said above that trusting Jesus is the first domino. Let me explain that. I have known many people who look, more or less, to Jesus as a positive figure. Some declare him God and Savior, others applaud him as a kind and loving man who led a revolution. Let’s say you’re one of these people, that you come to place a certain level of trust in Jesus — or at least in the “Jesus” you come up with in your mind, wherever that Jesus might come from. If you’re being honest and generous at that point, then you’ll have to inquire, “Who is this Jesus?” If you wish not to be honest and generous, then you very well might, at this point, decide that Jesus will be whoever you want him to be. He can be a communist, he can be a capitalist, he can be your grandma giving you cookies and soda, he can be the angry guy with fire in his eyes, ready to smite. Doesn’t matter. You get to pick.

If, however, you wish to keep following the dominoes, then you’ll have several important steps to take. You’ll have to ask, “Who is even telling me about Jesus?” This is important because who is telling you will influence why they are telling you — and how trustworthy their purposes are. If you’re talking to a Roman soldier from, like, the year 35 C.E. (or A.D., whichever you prefer), then you might hear, “Jesus? No idea.” Or you might hear, “Apparently he was one of the many guys we crucified on a cross, but his crazy followers made up a story about him becoming alive again.” If you trust in this Jesus, then he’s not necessarily a positive or influential figure for you. I don’t know what you’re actually trusting in, at that point.

In all likelihood, most people who even know about Jesus today do so because of the Christian church. The church — through its Bible, through its worship, through its stories — tells you who Jesus is, from their perspective. And if you trust in a positive version of Jesus, then you’re depending on their perspective, as they  have tried to convince you he’s a positive figure worthy of trust.

Here’s one of the reasons why that’s important. Let’s say you’ve read some story from one of the Gospels, and you’re like, “Wow, Jesus is amazing! I like that guy!” But then, you see something else you do not like — maybe elsewhere in the Bible, maybe in the church. You think, “Now that I do not like.” At this point, you might think that you can simply pick the part you like and be on your way. But here’s the thing: the part of Jesus you like belongs to the book that says something you do not like that was put together by the church that is doing things that you don’t like. So on what grounds can you pick only part of what you hear? Why trust any of it? If you trust part, then you must be open to trusting the whole. If you reject part, then you should be willing to reject the whole, since it’s all tainted by this group.

Let me try to give an analogy. Let’s say you go to the doctor. You have a sore throat. The doctor checks your throat out, and then he declares, “O.K., it appears that you have a broken foot.” You think, “What sort of crazy person are you?” You might demand that he explain; you might just check out, thinking that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. After that, though, let’s imagine he proceeds to share other “medical” advice with you, all based on the fact that you have a broken foot. It no longer matters how sound the rest of the advice he shares might seem, you are inclined to distrust him, because he’s convinced you that he’s not trustworthy. You would need further reason to gain that trust back before you believed him, and even then you would need some explanation for why he blamed your sore throat on your broken foot. Maybe those things can happen. But until they do, you are inclined not to trust any of what he says because you have distrusted part of what he says.

If you distrust part of the Bible or the church itself, for whatever reason, then logical consistency would demand that you distrust anything that the church tells you. If you wish to trust in an alternative Jesus, then you will need an alternative ground to stand on. If you wish to trust parts of Jesus as revealed by this group, then you will need to be open to trusting all of what this group has presented to you.

I am convinced that any attempt — “conservative” or “liberal” — to pick and choose regarding Jesus is harmful and wrong. But I am most surprised at the irony of the way in which certain folk, like the pastor I cited above, find a social-justice, communist, let’s-just-love-everybody Jesus and reject something like the Trinity. They can only get to this Jesus by first making him into their own image, while completely disregarding important dimensions of who Jesus is.

More later.

The Trinity Changes Everything; or, Why I’m Frustrated with Some People in The United Methodist Church

I’ve touched before on the topic of the Trinity. I argued that, contrary to many Western Christians’ assumptions, doctrine, rather than being irrelevant, should undergird and support the “practices” of Christians. When I speak of doctrine there, I mainly have the Trinity in mind. I have definitely made it a discussion topic in classes taught at church. In those contexts, I have argued that it is essential and foundational to Christian thinking, living, and reading of Scripture. This expression goes against the grain of liberal and fundamentalist thinking. And I’m O.K. with that.

Over the last few days, I’ve felt like I’m going to burst as I’ve watched The United Methodist Church (UMC) move toward a schism that probably should have happened decades ago. There are major, irreconcilable differences among groups within that denomination. In case you aren’t aware, here’s what’s going on: the official legislative body for the denomination just wrapped up a meeting that was designed to address how the denomination will view and handle matters of human sexuality, going forward. In particular, the topic was the cultural hot-button issue — homosexuality.

In my assessment, the real issue isn’t what’s being debated, though. A much more fundamental issue in that denomination is determining how they go about speaking truthfully and faithfully about God. I remember my surprise and exasperation when I would find myself in a room of United Methodist clergy and discover that a good number of them didn’t affirm the literal resurrection, Christ’s divinity, or the Trinity. What the…? If they did speak about the Trinity, they might use it as a metaphor for speaking about an unknowable God.

Here’s an example. It’s an arrogant, pedantic article entitled, “There Is No Such Thing as the Trinity: It’s a Human Idea That Tries to Control God,” written by a pastor named Richard Lowell Bryant. In this ridiculous article, he spouts off some of the thoughts that first-year theology students encounter. Much like someone who watches the latest documentary on Netflix on which diet is “right” and is now an unofficial expert on matters of health, he proudly comes back to shatter hopes and dreams by telling people they have it all wrong and he has the answer. The problem is, he has entirely misconstrued every single detail. Then, the cherry on top, is that he ends by calling “love” — whatever he might mean by that — a doctrine, and insinuates that it is a holier doctrine, one that Jesus held. The only person who held the doctrine of love was John Lennon.

Refreshingly, I read today an article by Fred Sanders, entitled, “How the Trinity Changes Everything.” You can access it for free here. In this article, he considers how the Trinity is not a riddle to be solved, but rather itself the revelation of God and the understanding of salvation. The Trinity is, in both the Bible and throughout the history of the church, the framework for understanding life and salvation. There are other ways to reflect on life, but this is the Christian way. The goal is not to try to speak exclusively, as if Christians have all the answers. Rather, it is to speak knowingly and truthfully, from a Christian perspective. It’s a simple doctrine, even though it’s not always easy.

This brings me back to Richard Lowell Bryant and his ilk. What’s really happened in segments of the UMC is that they have exchanged the Trinity for something more culturally palatable — some squishy, vague notion of “love,” perhaps. In so doing, they have cut off their own legs, so to speak. This vision of Christianity is utterly incompatible with one that upholds the traditional understanding of who God is. In fact, this alternative isn’t Christianity at all; it’s either Gnosticism or agnosticism.

I would argue that if the denomination wishes to have a healthy future as a Christian denomination, then the real issue would be to educate its clergy on the dynamics of true, faithful Christian theology.

Where Are You Going? Geography in Fantasy Worlds and the Bible

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I would not consider myself a true fantasy geek. I didn’t read much when I was younger, so I never got into fantasy until later in life. But since I’ve been an adult, most of the reading I do when I have spare time is in the fantasy genre. For me, fantasy often speaks truth better than any non-fiction.

I was thrilled to stumble onto an article entitled, “Here at the End of All Things: On Losing Oneself in the Geography of Fantasy Worlds, from Middle Earth to Westeros.” This article (be warned: it’s not short!), written by a fantasy “insider,” considers the importance of maps and geography for fantasy worlds. He looks at several key examples — from Middle Earth to Westeros, as the subtitle proclaims — to show how geography is about much more than geography, for fantasy writers. Places and regions bear significance for the story. The East is often the place of destination for overcoming enemies; the West, the place of the “sea,” the place that goes beyond the end of what is known. Geography defines character — being from the Shire defines one’s character in ways that cannot ever be changed. Journeying from one place to another is about more than simply moving physically across a map; it involves character formation.

Narratives within the Bible, and the whole Bible itself, make use of this aspect of geography and travel. Though biblical narrative is not fantasy literature, it certainly values the multivalent meaning of journeying.

For example, as New Testament scholar Joel B. Green points out regularly in his commentary on Luke, Jesus and the disciples are “on the way to Jerusalem” for most of the Gospel. Yet, this journey could have been covered in a much shorter space. And it could have been covered more directly; often in Luke, the traveling crew wanders in and out, up and down, rather than heading straight from Galilee to Jerusalem. Green indicates that this is because the journey was about more than geography. Rather, it was a journey of formation. The disciples were on a theological journey. They were being formed in their view of who God is, and what it means to follow God.

I embraced a long time ago the value of considering discipleship as a journey. When I became a follower of Jesus, I recognized that I entered onto a path. Sure, there are defining moments along the way. And there might be a Point A and a Point B. But more often than not, the focus will not be on the destination, but on the journey itself. I become like Christ as I walk daily in ways that reflect his own character. I am being shaped.

Perhaps stated better: the destination requires of me a certain type of journey.

Does God Choose Favorites?

When I was a child, my mom got the attention of my brother one day. In speaking about another brother, he asked, “Why does he get everything?” My mom replied, “Well, he’s my favorite.” My brother’s jaw dropped. My mom was joking (sort of). But my brother’s response showed how he took for granted that it would be wrong for a parent to have a true favorite.

Many people reading the Bible have wondered the same thing about the way God is depicted. If God is Father, then how much more offensive would it be if God loved one child more than another, or especially if God loved one child exclusively? Yet we see in the Bible that God “chose” certain people, culminating especially in the people group of Israel. In Genesis, this choosing shows up directly at a few points, always in connection to actual brothers—God receives the sacrifice of Abel, but not of Cain; God chooses Isaac, not Ishmael, as the descendant through whom Abraham’s lineage will be traced; God declares that Jacob will rule over his brother Esau. Why the choosing?

The deeper theological problem people have, I imagine, is the potential flip-side: if God chooses one, does God reject the other?

My reading from Genesis this morning was ch. 21. I think that this chapter offers a different way of understanding the issue. In this chapter, readers see the long-awaited fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham: he and Sarah give birth to Isaac. Then, in the course of the celebration, Sarah sends Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, away, proclaiming that they “won’t share in the inheritance of my son Isaac” (v. 10, CEB). Abraham is troubled by this, but God speaks to him to let him know that God will care for Ishmael and, in fact, bless him, give him a big family, and provide for him.

After leaving, Hagar and Ishmael wander in the desert, and find themselves on the brink of death. In fact, she puts the boy near a shrub and walks away, because she can’t stand to watch him die. But then the text says, “God heard the boy’s cries” (v. 17). God informs Hagar of what he had also said to Abraham: “I will make him a great nation.” Then God miraculously provided a well for them.

So here is a story that deals with one of the “rejected” children of Genesis. Ishmael is not the “child of promise,” the one through whom Abraham’s descendants will be traced. Yet God is moved by the cries of the boy, and God commits to bless him.

We could have a whole discussion about what chosen does, in fact, mean. But I would suggest that whatever it means, it certainly does not mean that God has rejected all others and does not care about anyone else. In Genesis, and throughout the Bible, God is intimately concerned with and involved in the lives of all people.

Please, Church, Don’t Accept Me as I Am

Anyone who is even remotely conscious knows that one of the major issues threatening to divide groups within the church is the topic of human sexuality. Even as I type this, my former denomination, The United Methodist Church, seems headed inevitably toward some sort of split that is (on the surface) about this very issue.

This is a big, complex topic. Unfortunately, as is often the case, most conversations tend to pull all the important subtopics and issues behind this one topic into one conversation. The main result of this is that they try to accomplish too much at once. For example, the issue in The United Methodist Church isn’t really about sexuality. It’s about issues of truth and authority. From where does truth come?

I don’t wish to pretend (a) that I’m skilled enough to address the topic of human sexuality authoritatively or (b) that I can “solve the problems” in something like a blog. Sadly, I sense that the people who chime in the loudest on topics such as these are often those who know the least. People on both sides have been guilty of not listening to the other.

One line of argumentation that I’ve seen repeated by those who are on what’s called the “affirming” side of the discussion around homosexuality — that is, they wish to include and affirm homosexual practice in the life of the church — is that the church should be more like Jesus, more loving, etc., etc., which will obviously be demonstrated by their more inclusive acceptance of alternative lifestyles. We should “accept people as they are.”

Let’s be honest, though: people on the so-called “non-affirming” side have been just as prone to accept people as they are, in action if not in word. They have tolerated — in their own lives, in their churches, in their societies — what they themselves would call sinful activities.

The idea of “accepting me as I am” demonstrates some erroneous, and anti-gospel, logic, from my perspective. First, it harmfully opens up a path of removing all limitations on appropriate human behavior. Let’s be honest: people who tout themselves as being inclusive aren’t really fully inclusive. There are certain forms of sexual behavior that they would not tolerate. Either they have a limited view of “inclusive,” or they actually wish to affirm certain practices that the majority of people would not accept. Heck, anyone who’s a parent knows how terrible it would be to accept kids as they are!

Second, it devastatingly assumes that Jesus, the gospel, etc., is concerned with accepting me as I am. This is odd, especially considering that, for instance, Jesus’ opening words in the Gospel according to Mark are, “Change . . . , for the kingdom of God is here.” The gospel message is all about challenging me as I am with a vision of what God desires me to be. So to assume that we should start by accepting people as they are, and never hoping to see them changed, is immediately to pull the rug out from under our own feet.

These two points are not intended to belittle anyone or any position on any issue, per se. Rather, I think they apply to all people who seek to reflect deeply and meaningfully on important issues.

Please, church, don’t accept me as I am. Challenge me to escape the limited and selfish view I have of myself to embrace the view God has of who I am and, more importantly, who I can be.