This is another excerpt from my final Apologetics paper.
I'm proposing that the Trinity itself offers us an intriguing starting point for discussions. Christianity says that God is not a "monolithic piece of granite in the sky" but a dynamic, ongoing relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And all that we see around us is a relationship: what I call "me" is the product of my social relationships as well as the product of the relationships between my brain, heart, lungs and kidneys. And each one of those organs is itself an "organ in relationship"--made of cells, for example, which also exist by virtue of being in relationship...
The Scriptures teach us that all of creation acts in some way as a pointer or sign to who God is. This is one of the ways that creation does that. The creation mirrors God’s innately relational character by being a creation that is always in relationship. If and when those relationships begin to break down, the creation ceases to exist.
God exists as a relationship. And so he creates a cosmos that is a cosmos in relationship—it is a relationship that exists in and of itself but it is a created thing, a derived thing, and it was intended to exist in relationship with its Creator.
Since our relational nature is borrowed from a larger “life source” in the nature of the Trinity if we were ever to be cut off from that life source, life as we know it would begin to disintegrate. This is what has happened as a result of sin. Sin is broken relationship. We have broken relationship with the God-in-Relationship who created us to exist as derived creatures—creatures who were meant to exist as beings-in-relationship with God.
And so, as the second law of thermodynamics tells us, all things tend towards decay. We die. Our lives are marred by death and broken relationships everywhere—wars, unjust legislation, exploitation, genocide, divorce, lying, manipulation, greed, selfish ambition.
The system of related-ness has broken down. And if nothing is done from the Triune Life Source that stands outside of the system of brokenness then it will simply continue to spiral into decay.
But something has been done to reconcile people to their original relational life-source. God himself has come and entered into our broken relational world and he has offered us a way out. He has come to offer us a life of connected-ness back to the Sustaining Relationship we were intended to feed off of, to live on.
We live on a relationship between the food that we eat and our stomachs that then break down those foods into nutrients and energy that our body needs to survive. Our souls were made to relate to the Triune God in the same way. We were intended to draw life from the Relational Life of the Trinity that then animates our spirits, our imaginations, our minds, our emotions, our wills, our relationships.
And that happens, of course, through the work of Jesus Christ.
[Ed's note: I'm not posting these clips because I think that my paper is so brilliant that everyone should read it. I simply can't think more than one deep thought on any given day]
Showing posts with label Classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classes. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Spirit of Activism and Justice
This is an excerpt from my final paper for my Apologetics class. I'm pointing to the spirit of activism on UNC's campus as a prime entry-point for the gospel:
I believe that this passion for justice is a critical bridge between the gospel and the culture that needs to be developed and explored. The spirit of activism that will not rest until things are made right is familiar to Christians. We know that Spirit. It is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is his name, and he also will not rest until all things are made right.
The Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ is similar and different to the spirit of activism that is on campus. It is similar in its’ discontent with things as they are. But it is different in some very significant ways.
Primarily, the Spirit of Christ knows exactly what “justice” means. In our pluralistic culture everyone’s moral decisions are a private matter. Many argue that no one has any right to pass judgment on any one else’s decisions. So how are we to know what justice really is? To scream out that injustice has taken place is to call someone to account for an action that we intuitively know to be wrong. But if it is an action being knowingly perpetrated by someone, then either they do not think it wrong (and to disagree is to impose your morality on them) or they are ignorant (and your attempt at “informing” them is simply another form of cultural imperialism).
Thus, eventually we see that secular, agnostic pluralism must ultimately implode on itself. If all that truly exists is individual choice then, as Nietzsche said, all that’s left is the will to power. If there is no such thing as justice, only localized or personal definitions or constructs of it, then there is no place for any rule of law in any sense of the word. The result can only be anarchy. And in anarchy the strongest survive while the weak are crushed.
There is no place for the concept of “justice” apart from being committed to a search for something that is true and real. We believe as Christians that we know the One who is Justice. We believe we know the Spirit of Activism, the One who is making all things right. Not that Christians already know all the answers or that we always make just decisions. But simply that we are on the way of Justice, we are following in the steps of the One who is moving all of history in the direction of all things being made right.
I believe that this passion for justice is a critical bridge between the gospel and the culture that needs to be developed and explored. The spirit of activism that will not rest until things are made right is familiar to Christians. We know that Spirit. It is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is his name, and he also will not rest until all things are made right.
The Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ is similar and different to the spirit of activism that is on campus. It is similar in its’ discontent with things as they are. But it is different in some very significant ways.
Primarily, the Spirit of Christ knows exactly what “justice” means. In our pluralistic culture everyone’s moral decisions are a private matter. Many argue that no one has any right to pass judgment on any one else’s decisions. So how are we to know what justice really is? To scream out that injustice has taken place is to call someone to account for an action that we intuitively know to be wrong. But if it is an action being knowingly perpetrated by someone, then either they do not think it wrong (and to disagree is to impose your morality on them) or they are ignorant (and your attempt at “informing” them is simply another form of cultural imperialism).
Thus, eventually we see that secular, agnostic pluralism must ultimately implode on itself. If all that truly exists is individual choice then, as Nietzsche said, all that’s left is the will to power. If there is no such thing as justice, only localized or personal definitions or constructs of it, then there is no place for any rule of law in any sense of the word. The result can only be anarchy. And in anarchy the strongest survive while the weak are crushed.
There is no place for the concept of “justice” apart from being committed to a search for something that is true and real. We believe as Christians that we know the One who is Justice. We believe we know the Spirit of Activism, the One who is making all things right. Not that Christians already know all the answers or that we always make just decisions. But simply that we are on the way of Justice, we are following in the steps of the One who is moving all of history in the direction of all things being made right.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Post-Class Grab-Bag
So I wrapped up my Apologetics and Evangelistic Speaking class last Wednesday. Now all I have to do is write a 15-page paper (autographed copies will be available) and video tape myself giving an evangelistic talk to an empty room that's hypothetically filled with people who are interested in Jesus but not currently following him. I plan on a 100% response rate.
A couple random and floating quotes and thoughts from my class that are still with me several days later. And if you don't care about these but have seen the movie "The Prestige," stick with me to the end because I've got a question about the movie and maybe you can help me.
*What is the gospel? It is the good news of God's victory over everything wrong in the world and in us through the life, death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus Christ.
*A great moral code is not the power or uniqueness of Christianity. All religions have moral codes and even those who claim no religious affiliation have constructed a moral code for themselves. What makes Christianity unique is that it is the only religious system that deals decisively with the hard reality that absolutely no one lives up to any moral code--not even the ones that we invent for ourselves. What makes Christianity glorious is that the final decisive act is not ours to perform but has been done for us by God Himself, at great cost to Himself.
*95% of human beings hear words as pictures. The human mind is craving to create images to grasp what is being said. Story-telling, therefore, is critical for the preacher because stories turn ears into eyes. "We seek to reach a generation that hears with their eyes and thinks with their heart," Ravi Zacharias.
*This from Walt Whitman:
After all the seas are crossed (as they seem already cross'd)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, the ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy of that name
The true son of God shall come singing his songs
*I've added two new links over to the right. The first is a new blog from one of my teachers last week, John Armstrong. I commend him/his blog highly to you (as I do all the bloggers that I've got listed over there) as someone who is both wise and articulate and engaged with matters of faith, culture and everyday life. The second is a link that students who read my blog should check out: Student Soul. It's InterVarsity's e-magazine dealing with issues of campus life, leadership, and following Christ.
*Okay, so The Prestige. Rented it this weekend, great rental, thought things tied up pretty clearly at the end (don't read the rest if you haven't seen it and plan on doing so): the one dude had a twin, they lived one life between the two of them, all good. But the very last little voice-over at the end has Michael Caine telling me that I think I know that truth but I really don't. Am I missing something?
A couple random and floating quotes and thoughts from my class that are still with me several days later. And if you don't care about these but have seen the movie "The Prestige," stick with me to the end because I've got a question about the movie and maybe you can help me.
*What is the gospel? It is the good news of God's victory over everything wrong in the world and in us through the life, death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus Christ.
*A great moral code is not the power or uniqueness of Christianity. All religions have moral codes and even those who claim no religious affiliation have constructed a moral code for themselves. What makes Christianity unique is that it is the only religious system that deals decisively with the hard reality that absolutely no one lives up to any moral code--not even the ones that we invent for ourselves. What makes Christianity glorious is that the final decisive act is not ours to perform but has been done for us by God Himself, at great cost to Himself.
*95% of human beings hear words as pictures. The human mind is craving to create images to grasp what is being said. Story-telling, therefore, is critical for the preacher because stories turn ears into eyes. "We seek to reach a generation that hears with their eyes and thinks with their heart," Ravi Zacharias.
*This from Walt Whitman:
After all the seas are crossed (as they seem already cross'd)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, the ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy of that name
The true son of God shall come singing his songs
*I've added two new links over to the right. The first is a new blog from one of my teachers last week, John Armstrong. I commend him/his blog highly to you (as I do all the bloggers that I've got listed over there) as someone who is both wise and articulate and engaged with matters of faith, culture and everyday life. The second is a link that students who read my blog should check out: Student Soul. It's InterVarsity's e-magazine dealing with issues of campus life, leadership, and following Christ.
*Okay, so The Prestige. Rented it this weekend, great rental, thought things tied up pretty clearly at the end (don't read the rest if you haven't seen it and plan on doing so): the one dude had a twin, they lived one life between the two of them, all good. But the very last little voice-over at the end has Michael Caine telling me that I think I know that truth but I really don't. Am I missing something?
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Jesus the Healer
So I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to gather up some of the highlights of all that's gone on these last couple days. So much information, so much consideration of culture, so many ways that we've been thinking about the good news of Jesus coming to be human, living his life, his death and his resurrection and his ultimate return.
One question we tackled yesterday: how do we talk about what Christ has done in the cross, the resurrection and his promised return? There are many faithful biblical images, but one angle in particular was captivating to us as a class: the work of "Healing."
"By His stripes we are healed," declares Peter. And it is so. To a world that is slow to admit personal responsibility in sin but is quick to understand themselves and the world around us as broken, this is good news, indeed.
As I continue to grow and see my own "cracks," this image of healing is good news. To paraphrase a pastor I once heard, there are few places in my own life where I am more self-deceived than in my own estimation of my own goodness. God is good to pull back the curtain with great but gentle regularity to expose me for who I really am.
"Behold, I am making all things new!" This is the promised end of the work of Christ at the very, very end. Revelation pictures a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. There is also the glorious promise of every tear being wiped from every eye.
And so I trust in the Christ who died on the cross to make all things new...and I lean into that promise as the rabbit-hole of my own brokenness and neediness continues to be revealed as deeper than I ever imagined.
One question we tackled yesterday: how do we talk about what Christ has done in the cross, the resurrection and his promised return? There are many faithful biblical images, but one angle in particular was captivating to us as a class: the work of "Healing."
"By His stripes we are healed," declares Peter. And it is so. To a world that is slow to admit personal responsibility in sin but is quick to understand themselves and the world around us as broken, this is good news, indeed.
As I continue to grow and see my own "cracks," this image of healing is good news. To paraphrase a pastor I once heard, there are few places in my own life where I am more self-deceived than in my own estimation of my own goodness. God is good to pull back the curtain with great but gentle regularity to expose me for who I really am.
"Behold, I am making all things new!" This is the promised end of the work of Christ at the very, very end. Revelation pictures a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. There is also the glorious promise of every tear being wiped from every eye.
And so I trust in the Christ who died on the cross to make all things new...and I lean into that promise as the rabbit-hole of my own brokenness and neediness continues to be revealed as deeper than I ever imagined.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
The Problem of "Evil"
Friday in my class we got into a fantastic conversation regarding the problem of evil. The problem wasn't that we didn't have (what we considered to be) good responses to the problem of evil. The problem is, no one is willing to call anything evil any more.
One staff from Minnesota told this story: they set up booths for students on campus to interact with spiritual and personal issues. The first day's question: "how has evil invaded your space?" They thought there would be all kinds of responses: my parents screwed me up, abuse/neglect, concern about the environment, racism or other bad experiences. They got nothing. No one was willing to call anything evil.
The next day they asked a more personal question: "what would you change about your heart?" They expected people to be more hesitant to engage, but just the opposite was true. They couldn't keep up with the numbers of people coming to the table.
I think that there's several reasons why people are hesitant to engage with "evil:"
1. It's been used as a power-grab politically and sociologically/religiously, so people are distrustful that it has any appropriate use.
2. Pluralism convinces us that our perspective is entirely socially conditioned. What we might have historically called evil was just a matter of our viewpoint. If we were Nazi's in Germany, we wouldn't have thought of Nazi Germany as evil. Christopher Columbus was a hero in Western history but certainly "evil" for native peoples. So better not to "label" anything evil at all, because we might just be operating out of social conditioning/our limited historical-cultural context.
3. No one and no thing is ever considered to be entirely evil. All people have circumstances and issues and all situations have nuances that, when seen from a different point of view, might help us to have much more sympathy for the bad thing that has occurred that we might be tempted to call "evil." The Virginia Tech shootings this past spring are a great example of something that certainly wasn't "good" but was complicated by the fact that this kid certainly had psychological and other issues going on in his life. So he wasn't "evil" and neither was this shooting. They're all victims to varying degrees.
I think that this shift from the problem of evil as being the central issue in religious conversation to not being on the table at all is interesting. And certainly post-modern culture has other words that serve as replacements: injustice, oppression and brokenness--these words also function in place of the word "sin" in our culture.
I wonder if these more sociological/psychological approaches are valid in and of themselves or if they can only serve as a starting point for the conversation? In other words, is it necessary to convince someone of the necessity of the existence of evil (and sin instead of just brokenness, for that matter) before we can have a reasonable conversation about the Christian faith?
Oh, and by the way, this is post number 365. Happy Birthday, Piebald Life!
One staff from Minnesota told this story: they set up booths for students on campus to interact with spiritual and personal issues. The first day's question: "how has evil invaded your space?" They thought there would be all kinds of responses: my parents screwed me up, abuse/neglect, concern about the environment, racism or other bad experiences. They got nothing. No one was willing to call anything evil.
The next day they asked a more personal question: "what would you change about your heart?" They expected people to be more hesitant to engage, but just the opposite was true. They couldn't keep up with the numbers of people coming to the table.
I think that there's several reasons why people are hesitant to engage with "evil:"
1. It's been used as a power-grab politically and sociologically/religiously, so people are distrustful that it has any appropriate use.
2. Pluralism convinces us that our perspective is entirely socially conditioned. What we might have historically called evil was just a matter of our viewpoint. If we were Nazi's in Germany, we wouldn't have thought of Nazi Germany as evil. Christopher Columbus was a hero in Western history but certainly "evil" for native peoples. So better not to "label" anything evil at all, because we might just be operating out of social conditioning/our limited historical-cultural context.
3. No one and no thing is ever considered to be entirely evil. All people have circumstances and issues and all situations have nuances that, when seen from a different point of view, might help us to have much more sympathy for the bad thing that has occurred that we might be tempted to call "evil." The Virginia Tech shootings this past spring are a great example of something that certainly wasn't "good" but was complicated by the fact that this kid certainly had psychological and other issues going on in his life. So he wasn't "evil" and neither was this shooting. They're all victims to varying degrees.
I think that this shift from the problem of evil as being the central issue in religious conversation to not being on the table at all is interesting. And certainly post-modern culture has other words that serve as replacements: injustice, oppression and brokenness--these words also function in place of the word "sin" in our culture.
I wonder if these more sociological/psychological approaches are valid in and of themselves or if they can only serve as a starting point for the conversation? In other words, is it necessary to convince someone of the necessity of the existence of evil (and sin instead of just brokenness, for that matter) before we can have a reasonable conversation about the Christian faith?
Oh, and by the way, this is post number 365. Happy Birthday, Piebald Life!
Friday, June 29, 2007
Dizzying Apologetics
So apologetics is the disciplines of offering an explanation of the Christian faith both to those who already believe and those who do not believe at all. It is not offering an "apology" in the way that we think of it today so much as engaging in thoughtful dialogue about issues of faith.
Cultural apologetics seeks to engage the issues of the time and the culture and discuss how Christian faith might speak to those issues. Today in a round-table type discussion, we engaged in a tour de force of cultural apologetics. What does the Christian story have to say about globalization, economics, the war in Iraq, China, global warming, human trafficking and current issues of Biblical criticism (by the way, Timothy Paul Jones responded to Royale's comments on Bart Ehrman on last Friday's post today if you want to check out some of his thoughts on Ehrman's approach to Biblical criticism)?
What do we do with a world that is asking those questions when so many of our churches are convinced that those things don't matter? What do I do with a Bible-belt culture that is so deeply committed to a "Christian right" political stance that they're often unwilling to seriously consider any other option?
And how in the world can I possibly know enough about all of these things to actually "hold my own" when at any point on any given day on campus I could get asked questions ranging from evolution to Paris Hilton?
Two things that were comforting in this respect: 1. the freedom (indeed, the obligation) to say "I don't know." and 2. The role and necessity of the Christian community, the body, working together to present the comprehensive apologetic. I don't know everything that there is to know about any of these subjects. So I need folks who do. And they're out there: in my church, working in local businesses, teaching on my campus.
It's cool that I am invited to think deeply and engage authentically with my faith in all these various ways. And it's really good to know that I've got a big posse that's got my back.
Cultural apologetics seeks to engage the issues of the time and the culture and discuss how Christian faith might speak to those issues. Today in a round-table type discussion, we engaged in a tour de force of cultural apologetics. What does the Christian story have to say about globalization, economics, the war in Iraq, China, global warming, human trafficking and current issues of Biblical criticism (by the way, Timothy Paul Jones responded to Royale's comments on Bart Ehrman on last Friday's post today if you want to check out some of his thoughts on Ehrman's approach to Biblical criticism)?
What do we do with a world that is asking those questions when so many of our churches are convinced that those things don't matter? What do I do with a Bible-belt culture that is so deeply committed to a "Christian right" political stance that they're often unwilling to seriously consider any other option?
And how in the world can I possibly know enough about all of these things to actually "hold my own" when at any point on any given day on campus I could get asked questions ranging from evolution to Paris Hilton?
Two things that were comforting in this respect: 1. the freedom (indeed, the obligation) to say "I don't know." and 2. The role and necessity of the Christian community, the body, working together to present the comprehensive apologetic. I don't know everything that there is to know about any of these subjects. So I need folks who do. And they're out there: in my church, working in local businesses, teaching on my campus.
It's cool that I am invited to think deeply and engage authentically with my faith in all these various ways. And it's really good to know that I've got a big posse that's got my back.
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