Open Mike

He who is, enters the contingent.

Here is a post-Christmas wonderful reflection on the birth of Christ -the Incarnation- from my current reading of the Early Church Fathers. This gem is from Gregory Nazianzen, an important Christian theologian and philosopher in the 300's (in Cappadocia of modern Turkey, Angie and I stayed in a cave hotel in his town once). Here's his reflection:  "He who is, enters the contingent. The Uncreated One, the Unbounded, is introduced into the world...he occupies the middle ground between subtlety of God and the density of the flesh. His richness wears the face of my poverty...that I may be enriched by his divinity...What is this mystery concerning my condition? I received the image of God and did not know how to keep it. God  put on my flesh to save this image and to make the flesh immortal. He offers us a new covenant much more wonderful than the first." - Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration 45, For Easter, 9 (PG 36, 851-2).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taking, As Jesus Did, This Sinful World As It Is

"The Serenity Prayer is the most clear and succinct example of Christian maturity that exists." - Statement from Dr. Jim Martin, one of our lecturers in Israel.

How true.  After teaching the doctrine of The Fall from Genesis 3 last Sunday, I was reminded of this gem of a prayer.  Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups have long treasured it as both a prayer and a definition of true sanity.  All human beings are in recovery from The Fall.  Or in denial they are fallen. That's why the insights of AA are thoroughly human and spiritual, and apply to every one of us.

Except most of us only know the first stanza.  The second stanza paints a picture of a Christian realist, accepting the Bigger Story as I was born into it, striving for a realistic 'reasonable happiness,' and trusting Jesus' Word that he will make 'all things right' unto supreme happiness in the future.  My part? According to the prayer, its to accept some things, change some things, and in all things surrender to God's will.

The Serenity Prayer  by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)Complete, Unabridged, Original Version.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

Predestination or Free Will: Found Myself in the Reformation

Does God or wo/man determine a person's destiny?  Predestination or human free will?  Does one option devalue God, does the other devalue human choice and dignity?  Which came first, the chicken or the egg, and by the way WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD and what the fat was the actual explanation of everything in the final episode of LOST? Because I have no idea even though I invested years into that tv show.

Through my years of talking with so many people about their faith, the Bible, their doubts and questions (at William & Mary, Greensboro, L.A., Pasadena, Memphis, Charlotte and various travels) I've pondered and encountered this fundamental dichotomy over and over.  The most memorable discussion I ever had about it was with a lapsed Roman Catholic Costa Rican olympian marathoner running 20 miles in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia as I mountain biked beside him (one of a few adventures I shared with friend and deceased ministry mentor Max Helton).

One of my summer reading projects has to do with refreshing my engagement with Reformed Theology as my own chosen Christian stream or tradition.  Today I ran across a 17th century Enlightenment Reformed Orthodox theologian named Benedict Pictet (1655-1724), whose views on this question confirm and more eloquently expand my own. Perhaps his words will be helpful to you as well when it comes to this question that is a stumbling block to those who would like to believe, and oftentimes a theological roadblock to those who already know Jesus by faith:

These two things are certain: 1. That nothing happens that God has not decreed to do or to permit; for this truth cannot be denied except if one were to question that God knows everything from eternity and is capable of everything...2. It is no less certain that we act freely, and that this suffices for us.

After listing attempts by both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians to "reconcile God's decrees (i.e. predestination) with human freedom," Pictet concludes his argument by remarking that he places himself:

...in the company of those who take pride in their ignorance and believe these two things--God's decrees and human freedom--without worrying about how to reconcile the two.  This is the safest solution, and the one we follow, because all other views leave great difficulties (as quoted in Van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, p. 188).

I think this is not just the 'safest solution,' and the one with the least amount of 'great difficulties.'  I find it to be the most faithful to God's revelation to us in the Bible.  God elects, wo/man chooses.  Both/and.

I look forward to reconvening this discussion in a Parisian salon in the Kingdom of God one day after Christ returns, judges, and makes all things new.  I would like to be sitting between Jean Calvin and Jacobus Arminius as the LORD breaks down how this was going down during human history.  See you there, friends.

Bono: Who is Jesus? Did he rise from the dead?

 

The Origin of Evil: An Evangelical Answer (& what the heck is an evangelical anyway?)

Here is the lecture I delivered last night at Temple Beth El, a Reform Jewish congregation in Charlotte. It was an attentive, respectful, sharp-questioning crowd.  I also enjoyed joking around and seriously discussing what an evangelical Christian is and is not. The 45 minute question and answer period later was lively.  I hope this is helpful to some of you.

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