Monday, February 27, 2012

The Heirarchy of Importance

I remember hearing someplace along the line that the challenge of Christianity is keeping the main thing the main thing. It can't be all that easy to accomplish, given the history of Christianity (nor, for that matter, the present). Sadly, I'd have to admit even my present. Clarity and constancy seem ever elusive.

So what is the main thing anyhow?

The easy and obvious answer is Jesus. That's a true enough answer; indeed, the likelihood is that in the end he will pull all our chestnuts out of the fire--redeeming a flock that was often lost and roaming frequently, that rarely saw the forest for the trees, and that made a shamble of just about everything he entrusted to them. Though Christians may be in a truly sad state, Christians' joy is in their good shepherd who cannot fail. Jesus is the main thing.

In a heirarchy of importance from there, what would come next? I say it is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what makes the things of God known to us, what convicts and draws us. The Holy Spirit is what births us in Christ. The Holy Spirit is he who guides us and leads us since Christ ascended. The Holy Spirit is our means of walking with God and truly doing his bidding. Apart from the Spirit we're aimless sinners.

After Christ and the Holy Spirit I would say the Bible comes next. Though we are people of the Book, Christianity is not primarily about facts and figures, equations and hypotheses, structures and forms. Christianity, at its heart, is experiential--about a living fellowship with God through his indwelling and empowering Spirit. Confessions, theology and theologians, generally, only cloud the issue. The Bible in and of itself is all that is doctrinally dependable, and that not so much in that it gives us the necessary body of knowledge to know, but in that it objectively tells us how to live in the Spirit by faith.

After these nothing else is really important of itself, for the first three encompass anything else that could be of import.

Monday, February 13, 2012

The Insufficiency of the Word

I knew cessationist, who, in the name of the sufficiency of scripture, promoted a practice of Christianity that doesn't really resemble what is described in those pages at all. The Word to him is like a book of charts, which by careful use of a trained intellect and skill, can be used to navigate the course of one's life into the will of God. Never does he have a conviction, an inspiration, never a check, a nudge, and certainly never a revelation--he has his mind, the determination of his belief, and a map.

In light of his deterministic outlook, I suppose it doesn't make sense to worry about this, but I cannot see how the concept of regeneration he holds Calvinistically can be consistent with such a view. Regeneration, according to his view (and mine as well for that matter), is necessary, foundational and completely, solely the purview of the Holy Spirit. One would think that something established on the basis of the Holy Spirit communicating something into the human soul would be open to other things being communicated as well, building, as it were, upon the foundation of experience the Holy Spirit laid in regeneration.

But no, apparently something started by the Spirit can be carried on by foreseen and manipulated human effort, at least that is what it appears like to me. Let God stay in the heavens, we have the Scriptures and they are sufficient! But those same scriptures describe the Holy Spirit interactively making what is described in them possible for us to experience. It seems to me that is their point, for instance, note the following passages: Matthew 13:9-171 Corinthians 2John 15:26-16:15, Galatians 5:13-251 Corinthians 12:13-31.

The Word truly is our all-sufficient rule for faith and practice. But, whereas the Word is sufficient to describe the kind of things Christians can and should do and believe, the Word can never substitute for the experience of the things it describes. It's not enough to talk about spiritual matters, we need to experience the life of the Spirit. In saying that, I am not suggesting that the Word is not important, I merely am saying that we need to understand its importance rightly.

It is not the hearers of the Word that are blessed, but its doers! That is those who experience what it talks about. The Word is there to tell us what we will and can experience in Christ if we believe. We need to act on what we read, AND we need the Holy Spirit communicating his goodness, desire and power into our being so we can. With the scriptures' encouragement, may we, with freedom and boldness, endeavor to do the things described in the book and to do them as led by the Spirit.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Does Hell Have Anything to Do With Justice?

Eternal damnation in fire seems anything but just. The punishment is more than disproportional to the crime, really to any crime imaginable. Besides, there are folk, which by just about any measure, seem to be of a good sort, but whom the Bible offers little hope because they do not believe Jesus is the Christ. With this in mind, I ask, "Can hell have anything at all to do with justice?"

My answer is no (and yes).

Ultimately, the purpose and need for hell is not justice, it is peace--God's peace. Due to his omni characteristics, opposition from other beings to what he knows is right and best puts him, in effect, at odds with himself. Opposition to God (sin) cultivates chaos into the order he has established and leads in an unswerving path to greater and greater divergence and disorder. Where can he go to not see it, to not hear it, to not have to swallow it wretching at the taste of it (wrath)? For one perfect in every respect, things have got to go his way or no way. Any other way would make him other than what he singularly is.

Christian theologians have traditionally cast the terrors of hell as justified on the basis of egregious offenses by sinners against a righteously indignant God. By and large, however, the offenses envisioned were nothing more, really, than being human (for instance, eating a set aside apple). This misses the point entirely--God doesn't hate people (sinners) just for being people, but it is necessary for them to come into agreement with him, for there is life and love in nothing else. Rather than casting God as the ultimate, cosmic Gloria Allred throwing an eternal hissy fit over being offended, we would do well to help sinners understand the need of reconciliation with God.

Only secondarily is hell about justice, or the retribution for wrongs done. This gets the most attention, even scripturally, which makes some sense. Retributive justice is of the most practical concern for humans, but it is only derivatively divinely purposeful. God gets no pleasure from the death of the wicked, not the physical which comes first nor the eternal which will follow. There is no delectable glory attachable to hell. It is necessary rather than desirable.

To be clear, God does love justice. If death (and hell) were about justice, God would love the death of the wicked and glory in it. He'd spit on their carcasses and dance on their graves. Would Jesus have wept over Jerusalem if he loved justice in that way? God is just, of that there can be no doubt, but I do not see that hell is primarily about justice. Hell does serve the cause of justice eternally, but the nature of hell, its unending continuity, are not in place to serve justice, but peace and order as God sees it.