For example, whenever non-violent Christians quote Jesus saying, “Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26: 52), there are pro-war Christians who will respond by saying, “(Jesus) said to them, ‘But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.’” (Luke 22:36)

In other words, some Christians believe that Jesus fully endorsed owning and using weapons for self-defense (or for use in war), and other Christians believe that Jesus categorically prohibited His followers from using violence. What’s the real story?

Well, those verses where Jesus forbid violence are numerous and they are not difficult to understand. In addition to the one quoted above, we also hear Jesus declare that we should love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, turn the other cheek, and forgive those who seek to harm us. These are not figurative passages and taken together they paint (in my mind at least) a pretty straightforward picture of Jesus’ expectation that his disciples would not do violence.

In addition to Jesus’ commands we also have His example of forgiving those who crucified him, healing the ear of the soldier who came to arrest him in the Garden, restraining the Legions of angel soldiers at his command, and telling Pontius Pilate that his Kingdom was not of this Earth, and if it was his disciples would fight, begging the question, “If His disciples do fight then are they not part of Christ’s Kingdom”? (see John 18:36)

But this one verse where Jesus tells his disciples to go out and buy a sword is right there in the Bible, isn’t it? What’s it there for? If Jesus didn’t intend for us to own or use swords then why did he say this? Especially if, later on, he was going to contradict himself and rebuke Peter for using the sword he told him to go out and buy?

Well, here’s what I think is going on. First of all we need to look closely at this passage in Luke. Notice that right after Jesus tells his disciples to buy a sword he goes on to say, “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.” (Luke 22:36-38 ESV)

Right away we can see that Jesus’ statement about the swords is directly related to prophecy (“…this Scripture must be fulfilled in me”) and what is the prophecy that must be fulfilled? The one in Isaiah that says, “And he was numbered with the transgressors”.

Was the statement about buying a sword about self-defense? Probably not. Why? Because first of all, two swords are not “enough” to defend 13 guys against a legion of Roman soldiers. Also, because when Peter uses his sword in self-defense (or to protect Jesus from the soldiers) he is harshly rebuked with the verse we’ve already looked at, “Put it away! Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”.

Clearly, Jesus is not a fan of self-defense here. At least, not according to the overall context in this passage. However, he does tell the disciples that he wants them to have those two swords with them so that the prophecy about the Messiah being numbered with the transgressors may be fulfilled in Him. That’s why two swords are “enough” for Jesus; to fulfill the scriptures, not to endorse war or physical violence.

Are we sure that Jesus only meant this in light of fulfilling the prophecies about Himself? Yes. How? Because after Peter cuts off the soldiers ear, listen to what Jesus has to say, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:53-54)

See? Jesus tells them to get a few swords so that the prophecy in Isaiah will be fulfilled. Then, once it’s fulfilled in the Garden he makes a point of saying that this is what he had in mind in the first place. So, it’s all about fulfilling the prophecies, not a statement from Jesus endorsing violence.

As sincere followers of Jesus we must take into account all the many other teachings of Jesus regarding turning the other cheek, loving our enemies, and not resisting an evil man. We must also be careful to interpret the Old Testament scriptures in light of Jesus, not the other way around (i.e. – trying to fit Jesus into the Old Testament context).

Jesus came to fulfill the Old Covenant, and He accomplished this in full. The Old Covenant is obsolete. (see Hebrews 8:13) We don’t need to refer back to it again when it comes to guiding our daily lives. We have Christ. We have the Living Word of God who has come to make His home in us. Jesus gave us a New Covenant and He lived a better example for us to follow.

“Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6.27-28)

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Keith Giles is the author of five books including “This Is My Body:Ekklessia as God Intended” which is available as a free e-book download for Nook, Kindle, or iPad at www.WeAreTheTemple.com. Follow his blog at www.KeithGiles.com.

Orthodoxy

For millions of professing believers getting this formula correct is paramount. After all, doesn’t it say—“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”? And of course this kind of believing isn’t a simple thing. As someone once responded to a man who affirmed his faith in Jesus, “Which Jesus, exactly?” Because there are some differences. There’s the American Jesus who is pro-economic expansion, highly capitalistic, a dyed in the wool individualist, pro capital punishment, anti-tree hugging (after all he did kill a fig tree didn’t he—this puts him in camp with loggers everywhere), etc… There’s historic Jesus—who, as one recent Jesus Seminar liberal scholar described him, was most probably short, balding, and pudgy; a skilled mental wrangler, and rabbi in the Jewish tradition with nothing exceptional except that he caught the attention of exceptional followers. There’s hippie Jesus—anti-American to the core. There’s Che Guevara Jesus, who simply lacks a machine gun to be relevant to the class struggles of South America. Well, you get the idea. There’s just a lot of versions of this Jesus fellow. It’s tricky, even agreeing that one needs to believe in Jesus, just knowing which one gets our belief.

Thankfully, two thousand years of intellectual wrangling has given us uncanny clarity as to what this really means. For one thing it means agreeing that Jesus is Co-equivalent with God the Father. He wasn’t just a nice young man who got killed for being a professional do-gooder…He was God in the flesh. It also means believing that God got into the flesh through a rather immaculate and improbable conception—The virgin birth. Of course all of belief is predicated on the assumption that every word in the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible is mostly literal—especially the creation account and the miracles of Jesus while on earth. It also means that Jesus literally died on a cross (as opposed to only appearing dead, but actually being in some kind of coma or trance), descended into Hell where he re-captured the keys of death from Satan, then was resurrected—supernaturally and bodily (meaning it really happened, he didn’t just come back as a ghost or something). And lastly after ascending to heaven (where he now sits at the right hand ), he waits for the appropriate moment when he will return to finish the work started in his first three years of ministry—though this time he will not leave any one confused if he was a hippie or not…he will be all business, so to speak (blood up to his horses bridle, sword drawn, etc…)

Clearly I’m being a little tongue and cheek. I don’t mean to be disrespectful—except to say that so much emphasis has been placed on these words, that they be literal and concrete and rigidly bought into or asserted as true and right. Each of these facts is seen as absolutely essential to the other—pluck one out, and as Rob Bell noted, the whole brick wall of fundamentalist faith, falls down. This is what it means to be orthodox—to have a right belief. It translates as having the proper mental structures that you hold onto, the correct categories to put your doctrines in.

Here’s where I’d like to take a right hand turn.

The Challenge of Terry

My friend Terry is medically labeled as profoundly retarded. His IQ is somewhere squarely located around 40. His memory is progressively degenerating. He, at times, fails to remember the names of people he’s known his entire life, let alone facts that you or I might take for granted. Now here’s the interesting thing. Terry is also a believing Christian. This is something he feels very strongly about. His faith, his belief, is very important to him. But if you ask him what this means he will be absolutely incapable of formulating anything close to the set of dogma’s I’ve described above. Even if I were to describe in great detail, or walk him through all of these core, foundational affirmations he would still not grasp them. It makes him frustrated to even begin talking about these kind of things. But, his answer to what faith means to him is revealing. His response is to touch his heart, soften his eyes and make a kind of swooning motion with his shoulders. For Terry Christianity means that at the center of his experience he connects to a sense of love. For him, this is God. This is, to him, what it means to be a Christian. These days I find myself asking if there is really anything orthodox, or more “correct” than this.

Because if there is–if all the formulations and right words and nuanced concepts that demand absolute belief, are necessary—then Terry doesn’t stand a chance. And if I’m really being honest, I’m right there along with him. Most times I fail to get the formula. Right beliefs, appearing from the stable base of historic Christianity, have never come easy for me. I don’t get them, don’t agree with many of them. Often I just don’t see it. Even when I do, my thoughts are finite at best.

Persons with profound cognitive disabilities tend to teach us that the truly significant thing, the main thing, is located at the ineffable core of our being—where we are left stammering for words, any words, just to express our experience of being loved by an indescribably Love that seems to pass all understanding.

For Terry, for others who share his challenges, and maybe for the rest of us too, what makes a Christian isn’t so much what we believe, rather it is that we are beloved.

Orthopraxis

Every so often the system of “sloppy grace” gets challenged. Some young, brilliant, reformer will stand up and say, “Yes, of course we are the recipients of God’s conditional love—but, doesn’t this change us? Shouldn’t we be effected by this?” In fact this camp often poses a real challenge to the folks entrenched in “orthodoxy” circles. It can’t all boil down to right belief, they push back. Didn’t Jesus say that “Those who hear my words and practice them are my disciples?” So it’s less about what you think about Jesus and his accompanying doctrines and more about your active response to the life and teachings of Jesus. It’s about what you do! How have you been living out the message of Jesus?

There’s a delightful story which articulates this position well:

A town was situated near a mighty river which every seventy years or so overflowed its boundaries, putting the buildings and people in danger. During such a season the town elders went to the local holy man and begged him to beseech God on their behalf in order to save the village. The old man immediately went to the secret place and spoke the sacred work to God, and the town was saved.

A generation passed and once again the river flooded. The elders came to the new holy man who had been an apprentice of the last. They begged him to speak to God on their behalf. And so he went out into the forest but he could not find the secret place where his mentor had always met with God. Finally he stopped searching and simply knelt where he was, praying: “Oh God you are not caged by a secret place, or chained to a special bit of dirt—the whole earth is filled with your glory!” Then he uttered the sacred words and God spared the village.

Once more a new generation came and as the great flood came the elders went to meet yet another holy man. He went out, as his predecessors had, but could find neither the secret place nor recall the sacred words. He came before God and said, “Oh Lord you are neither contained to a place, nor are you held in a certain set of words—for all belong to you—and we must use every word we know to adequately begin to express your greatness. Now I beg you, take pity on this town and save it from the flood.” And so God moved, the village was saved.

Time passed and yet another generation of elders came before a holy man in order to plead for the town. The holy man was quite unlike his spiritual ancestors. He did not know the secret place, nor did he recall the sacred words—but truth be told he did not even believe in God’s presence, at least not in such simple words.

When the elders begged him, he became exasperated, knowing very well the history of the village and flooding. He whipped about and grabbed his walking stick, then leaped out of the door and towards the town. The elders were perplexed, “What are you doing?”

He looked back and said, “Saving the village! Now go home, grab your shovels, we are going to move the town to higher ground.”

After every one had left the holy man’s hut a shadowy figure stepped out from the corner. It was God. He whispered to a nearby angel, “Now, of all the holy men who served me, this one is the holiest and the closest to my own heart.”

“I don’t understand” said the angel.

“Because he and I are the only ones willing to physically stop the waters. All the others only trusted in words and rituals.”

Of course this exaggerates the point. We need not be atheists in order to join God’s work. But the conclusion is valuable. Orthopraxy argues that we join with God in working his will on the earth. Don’t simply worship Jesus—do as He did.

Angela and actions

But what of my friend Angela? She has cerebral palsy—physically incapable of even the most basic range of motion, she is confined to her chair and the services of others transporting her. She is also profoundly impaired at a cognitive level. She can neither understand the depths of orthodoxy nor can she inact the breadth of orthopraxy. How is she to carry out the mission of God? How does she join in his great work? What is her role in fulfilling God’s eternal purpose?

In other words, if the essence of Christianity is action—then what of those Angela’s who will simply never “perform.”

I repeat what I said earlier: there is so little we can know of God, there is little we may actually do. But we can be loved. Both right belief and right action place their value is a strength based proposition, rightness. But neither of those come close to touching the wounded center of Christianity—a crucified God, foolishness to those who are wise, and a stumbling block to the religious.

Christianity conceals a rather startling concept—that neither our behaving nor our believing is the essential value of humanity—rather, it is our belovedness. This is the gift that those with severe disabilities bring to us. They remind us of the point.

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Brittian Bullock is an author, speaker/storyteller, and artist who lives in the Portland, OR area with his two sons Ransom and Judah. He has spent the last decade founding, consulting, or living within multiple intentional communities. He writes for various publications, and has penned two books (and counting) exploring urban mysticism–a fancy way of talking about the intersections of faith and culture. Follow him on Twitter or his blog.

As I rode through Kandahar City the other day I saw a naked dust covered kid playing along the road. That was not a strange thing, we see that a lot here. It was when he picked up a large rock and hurled it at the truck that I wondered aloud, “WTF! Who lets their kid run around naked throwing rocks? What kind of place is this?”

As I heard the impact of the rock, a verse came into my head, But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Could this child be one of those who will show me the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this the child Jesus saw when he said let the children come to me?

Years of war and violence have produced a perversely unique system where hurling rocks at US Soldiers is a legitimate sport. It is easy to become cynical, even contemptuous of those kids who throw rocks. That said, being in combat has taught me I must not allow our anger numb my compassion. In a place like this compassion for a dirty rock-throwing kid is all that keeps us human.

Imagine if your entire world, from your first breaths, were a closely circumscribed existence defined by poverty, war, death, dirt and dust. How would you perceive the world around you? How different would you be? Maybe rock throwing would not seem so strange.

My son has in an Army Brat. Much of his life has been spent on military bases. He has grown up seeing men in uniform as “the good guys” not a threat. He has never been exposed to the violence of war where men in uniform must to unthinkable things to save their own lives and the lives of their comrades. When his bunny rabbit died he cried for a day and buried it in the back yard. That is as close to death as he has ever been. He takes a hot bath every night. He has ice-cold water, juice, and soda for the taking. His world is secure, reliable, and good. I miss him terribly, but I go to sleep each night with the knowledge that he is happy, safe, and loved

That kid with the rock has never known the world my son takes for granted. His world is not secure, reliable, and good. It is dangerous, uncertain and rough. His father cannot sleep knowing his son will be safe overnight. Explosions and gunfire ring out across the city every night. Still, that kid knows how to throw rocks. It is one certain thing in an uncertain world. So that is what he does. Understanding this my response is – must be – compassion; compassion for a child who seeks to hurt me; compassion for a child who is no less a child of God than my own son.

I cannot change his world, but I can, – I must – try to understand it. Otherwise, a kid with a rock is just one more kind of enemy instead of the person he really is: a kid who, like my own son, only wants to be happy, safe, and loved.
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Chaplain (CPT) George Tyger is a Unitarian Universalist minister and US Army Chaplain currently serving in Kandahar Afghanistan. Prior to becoming a Chaplain, he served civilian churches since 1993. You can reach him at george.tyger@us.army.mil.

But the relationship has, at times, been strained by hardship.

“I know everything happens for a reason,” she said, “but sometimes I just can’t imagine what the reason is. I know I shouldn’t but I just get so mad at God from time to time.” I reassured her that any God worth believing in can likely handle a little bit of human anger. I reminded her of the scene in the movie, “The Apostle,” when Robert Duval rages against God up in his room

“I love you, God,” Duval hollers, “but I’m mad at you!”

The woman smiled and thanked me for assuring her that simply being mad wasn’t cause for eternal damnation. What I didn’t tell her was that I disagree with her belief that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes, the universe is a chaotic, violent and unreasonable place. To suggest there’s a greater reason for it all seems to limit the Divine to the confines of human nature and logic.

This mentality about everything happening for a reason comes mainly from the constructs we build up around who we believe God is. As Jean Jacques Rousseau said, “God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”

There’s a fear that, if we don’t construct an image of God we can identify with, we will lose our connection. If we take the more anthropomorphic descriptions of God in scripture metaphorically, we then have to wrestle with what is left. For some, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Thomas J. J. Altizer, it leads them to proclaim, “God is dead.”

It’s understandable why this might feel terrifying for those still struggling to articulate what they believe. But there are those, like John Caputo, who approach Christianity from a deconstructionist point of view and show that Christian faith can be pretty exciting for those willing to wade into unfamiliar waters. Here, deconstruction doesn’t negate the role of faith but keeps it open so that it might be expressed in fresh ways that aren’t limited to our all-too-human images of God.

Following is an excerpt from a description of Caputo’s book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?”

“Deconstruction is not destruction but rather a breaking down of the object in question so as to open it up to its own future and make it more loyal to itself. This is because in deconstructing, the undeconstructible is revealed, in this case, the eternal truth of God revealed in the gospel.”

The title of this article comes from a frequently used paraphrase of a Buddhist koan (a poem used to provoke thought) attributed to Zen Master Linji, founder of the Buddhist Rinzai sect. The saying is, “If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him.” Though this sounds a little bit shocking, its intent is to shake the reader out of their spiritual or intellectual slumber to consider the deeper truth of the koan.

On the website, Daily Buddhism, Brian Schell explains the heart of this particular koan as follows:

“Whatever your conception is of the Buddha, it’s wrong! Now kill that image and keep practicing. This all has to do with the idea that reality is an impermanent illusion. If you believe that you have a correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, then you need to throw out (kill) that image and keep meditating.”

For some like Nietzsche, the deconstruction process led them to believe that there was nothing left at all. No God, period. For Caputo and fellow postmodern theologians, the deconstruction process actually is a liberation of God from the preconceptions we have built up about who or what God is.

It’s easy to assume that such theological perspective is a product of twenty-first-century philosophy. In fact, this way of thinking has been centuries in the making.

St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” He lived from 354-430 CE.

Thomas Aquinas said, “The highest human knowledge of God is to know that one doesn’t know God.” His work, though more than seven centuries old, still influences our way of thinking about faith today.

Meister Eckhart, a 13^th-14^th century philosopher, prayed that God would rid him of God. He challenged the notion of the other-ness of God by saying:

“The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.”

As a side note, indicating differences even within the postmodern camp: John Caputo would challenge Eckhart on this point because for him God is “wholly other.” Deconstruction opens us to the other by emphasizing Kierkegaard’s ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between god and ourselves. Caputo isn’t referring to God as a presence “out there” on the plane of being, but rather on the hope and dream of a different future that disrupts what is.

Even the Jews of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, never dared to utter God’s true name, because to do so was to try in vain to pin down God. In Exodus 3:13-15, God orders Moses to lead the Israelites, to which Moses responds, “If I now come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they are going to ask me, ‘What’s this God’s name?’ What am I supposed to say to them?”

God’s response: “I Am Who I Am. So say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

A literal interpretation of such a text might argue that this passage supports an anthropomorphic God image: a God who speaks directly to humanity in an actual, audible voice. Taken in cultural and historical context, however, many scholars understand that the Jewish narrative was told generally in parable form, much like the stories Jesus himself told his followers.

Although such stories are not considered to be factual (the emphasis of literal, historical fact came along centuries later as a more Western way of thinking), they each contain an important truth that the reader or listener has to reveal for themselves, much like the Buddhist koan. The central message of this passage as it relates to the nature of God:

God is.

One can imagine Moses following up with something like, “You are what, God?” longing for more clarity. But instead he gets the message that God simply is what God is.

There’s a long-standing debate about theodicy, which questions how God could be both all-powerful and entirely good while such pervasive evil exists. It’s easy to get tied up in knots over this, especially if you conceive of a human-like God, with something resembling human consciousness and will. With this come all the questions about why a loving God would cause horrible things to happen, or would at least allow them to happen.

But all of this presumes an awful lot about the nature of a God we know really very little about. By killing all preconceptions we have about who or what God is, we do indeed free God simply to be, as stated in Exodus and by great theologians and philosophers ever since. Arguments about theodicy dissolve, claims that God punishes certain people selectively for whatever reason we deem valid lose their teeth.

In the preface of his book, “The Weakness of God,” John Caputo responds to the tendency of many pastors to try and explain away the devastation caused by the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean:

“Many religious leaders have been rushing to the nearest microphone or camera to explain that, while these are all innocent victims, we cannot hope to explain the mystery of God’s ways–implying that this natural disaster is something God foresaw but chose not to forestall. Others are telling us that God has taken this terrible occasion to remind us that we are all sinners and to dish out some much-needed and justifiable punishment to the human race…Those are blasphemous images of God for me, clear examples of the bankruptcy of thinking of God as a strong force with the power to intervene upon natural processes…the decision depending upon what suits the divine plan.”

In letting go of these proscribed human constructs, we actually free ourselves from a great deal of suffering, some of which we tend to blame on God. God is. We are. Let that be enough.

(Special thanks to Phil Snider, who contributed to this article.)
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Christian Piatt is the creator and editor of “Banned Questions About The Bible” and “Banned Questions About Jesus.” He has a memoir on faith, family and parenting being published in early 2012 called “PREGMANCY: A Dad, a Little Dude and a Due Date.” For more information about Christian, visit http://www.christianpiatt.com, or find him on Twitter or Facebook.

The next day, while watching a group of American Christians pray for their breakfast before beginning their day of touring the Holy Lands, Milad asked me, “How can Christians pray for their breakfast, while completely ignoring the oppression of their brothers and sisters just minutes away on the other side of the Separation Wall?” Milad’s story is the embodiment of the tragic theological and socio-political consequences of Christian Zionism. Worst of all, I quickly realized my complicity with Christian Zionism enabled the cycle of violence and oppression directed towards my friend and Christian brother to continue.

In today’s religious and political circles, the term “Christian Zionism” is being used on a daily basis. For some, this term represents a normative and biblically accurate theology of the Middle East. Others condemn Christian Zionism as fueling unjust possession of land and violent oppression of innocent people. But what really is Christian Zionism and where did it come from? In order to pave a way forward, we must first examine the road behind.

Christian Zionism has become the normative theology of the Middle East in American and much of the West. Many of us have read the fictional Left Behind series and we are constantly surrounded by “prophetic” announcements that tie the State of Israel with “end time” events (known as the eschaton). It would be easy to assume that not only is this theology unquestionably accurate, but that it has been around for much of church history. American Christians have the responsibility to question both assumptions. If not for the sake of their own theological understanding, then for the massive number of people who are victims of the immoral and unjust actions that daily take place in as a result of Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism put simply, is the belief that all Jews must return to the biblical land of Israel in order for the end time events – which culminate in Jesus’ return – to unfold. For this group, the modern State of Israel is viewed as synonymous with Israel of the Bible and Christians are to support such a return at any cost.

In light of 2000 years of church history, this theology is extremely new as it found it’s most prominent development in the mid 19th century under the English dispensationalist, John Darby. He ended up spending 40% of his life in the United States and his theology – which argues that God’s plan for humanity is divided into multiple “dispensations” or chapters in which Israel and the Church are separate and fulfill God’s purposes in different dispensations – was adopted by D.L. Moody, Dallas Theological Seminary and was canonized in the writing of the Scofield Reference Bible. Scofield’s commentary was embraced as second only to the Biblical text and by the 1950’s 50% of protestant seminarians in America studied with the Scofield Reference Bible.

From here, Christian Zionist theology entered and fueled much of Western policy in the Middle East, interpreting support of the modern State of Israel as assurance of national blessing come judgment day. In short, a relatively new theology has captured the majority of Western Christians and fueled politics that offer unbending support of a State that has displaced and oppressed millions of innocent people. Such a reality has done extensive harm to historic biblical theology and the redemptive work found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Further, it has reduced humans made in the image of God to “obstacles” in the way of establishment of the State of Israel and cast a pervasive and inaccurate prejudice over the Arab world.

While there is need for an extensive reorienting of Western theology and eschatology – or simply a return to historic Christianity – around the unifying work of the cross and the reality of God’s kingdom as was inaugurated in Jesus, my goal here is to briefly outline the history and modern manifestations of Christian Zionism. In our reorientation I pray that we will repent from an eschatology that doesn’t allow us to take seriously the two greatest biblical commands to love God and love neighbor. There must be peace and equality for both inhabitants of Israel and of Palestine. The God of the Bible as was revealed in Jesus will not make justice through injustice, nor will he make peace through violence. Dr. Salim Munayer, professor at Bethlehem Bible College, once said, “Any theology that promotes the oppression of neighbor or enemy isn’t Biblical.”
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Jon Huckins is a veteran youth pastor and public school teacher who is now on staff with NieuCommunities, a collective of missional church communities who foster leadership and community development. After much international travel and study in the Middle East, Jon focuses much of his writing and graduate studies at Fuller Seminary on ethics and social advocacy. He writes for numerous publications including Red Letter Christians and Burnside Writer’s Collective and his book Teaching Through the Art of Storytelling.  He lives in San Diego with his wife Jan, daughter Ruby and three legged dog named Harry. Jon blogs at www.jonhuckins.net.  You can also follow Jon on Twitter and Facebook. For a more in depth look at Christian Zionism and its implications in the Israel/Palestine, check out Red Letter Christians where Jon will be posting a three part series on the topic.

Here are some frequently asked questions about the non-toxic gospel. The thoughts and opinions are expressly my own, but I also speak for a resonating truth that is rising up across many different groups of thinkers and believers.

Q. What is the gospel?
A. The word “gospel” means good news, and the “gospels” refers to the 4 books of the Bible that describe the life of Christ, the one who is (and brought) the good news. The good news is that a savior has come who is God himself. His kingdom has come, and he has left us with the ongoing help of the Holy Spirit as God living within us.

The good news as described in these books does not mean the judgment of God, a new law to keep, or a test of faith, works or goodness. So, we should not expect Jesus or Saint Peter to be at the “pearly gates” stopping inadequate followers from coming to God after their life is over on Earth. That would hardly be good news for the unaccepted.

Q. Why do so many people think the gospel means the judgment of mankind?
A.The toxic tradition of the gospel arises from a carry-over religious mind-set that was held by the overly-religious Pharisees in the time of Jesus. Jesus used many of his teachings to explain to these religious leaders that they were not doing God any favors by trying to please him with religious acts, and that in fact they were committing injustice to everyday people by creating a system of elitism. Jesus directly opposed elitism and the division of people into “good” and “bad” lots. When people judge each other because they are trying to sort out who is good enough to be accepted by God, they are the ones going against God. Jesus said to “judge not, if you don’t want to be judged yourself!”

Q. But isn’t God still our judge, deciding if we have pleased him at the end of life?
A. Yes to the first part, and No to the second part. When Jesus taught that no man or religious system had authority over mankind, Jesus instead taught that God alone had authority to judge, and that he himself was God and also had this authority. With this authority, Jesus claimed all the Earth as his “kingdom of God”. He replaced all previous systems of pleasing God with his own authority. So, yes, we are subject to the judgment of God, and the authority over the spiritual realm that only he possesses.

But what does God require? Since Jesus came to reverse all the previous systems of pleasing God through religious acts, there is no longer any test to pass. Jesus did not set up a new test, like a standard of faith, a minimum set of beliefs, a requirement to adhere to certain ideals, or a magic ticket that is claimed by reciting a certain prayer. Jesus came to destroy that stuff, not to create more of it!

So, No, God does not judge whether we pleased him at the end of our life, as an evaluation of whether or not we can spend eternity with him. In his authority, he chose to set things up a different way.

Q. What’s replaces the system of judgment? Doesn’t God’s acceptance of us still come with strings attached?
A. Jesus came to introduce an era of Grace. Grace is not clearly defined, but broadly means a loving gift, or a gift-giving nature driven by love. The word gift is used when defining Grace, because a true gift means something of value that is NOT earned but is freely given. In other words, no strings attached. There’s no such thing as conditional grace. Grace points to the unconditional love of God towards his children. There’s no such thing as judgmental unconditional love! God elected to come to Earth and bring this gift that we certainly did not deserve, but in HIS authority (described above) he chose to set us into right relationship with himself.

A more pointed question is this: does the gift (Grace) some with a curse? For those that do not accept the gift, is a curse implied for that person? In other words, the gift is free and unearned, but if we DON’T take it, then are we doomed, condemned? No, there is no such thing as unconditional love that much be accepted under compulsion. Such a gift would be no gift at all, but rather like a threat wrapped in a bow. An offer to choose between slavery and death, packaged as sacrificial love and outstretched arms! If God offered such a deal to us, we would be compelled into whatever he demanded out of fear of refusing him. How can we degrade his sacrificial love by appending to it a threat of doom if we don’t accept it?

Q. What is the kingdom of God?
A. When Jesus came, he brought a new era of God himself invading the space of mankind. We also call this invasion the “incarnation”. Jesus became man. Then he gave us the Holy Spirit which continues to work in people’s lives today. This is what Jesus referred to numerous times as the “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven.” The intersection between God and mankind, established on Earth. If you don’t believe me, look around at how faith in God is so pervasive in the world. If you include Muslims and Jews, and other religions who seek God, faith in the God that created the universe is extensively held. Indeed the kingdom has come, and continues to come as more people relate to God.

Q. Does God love me? Or more to the point, why does God love me?
A. Our nature is such that God loves us. He loves humans. There is a special light in us that he recognizes as his own, because we were created in his image, and with such admirable potential and capacity (even if we often fail). Remember, God became human, and why would he become something he despises? As a human Jesus loved people of all types of faith, religious backgrounds, and ethnicities; a few outstanding examples are the Samaritan woman at the well, the Roman centurion, the turn-coat Jewish tax-collector, the harlot, and Nicodemus the Jewish religious leader. Whether they were of high or low status, whether their flaws were by choice or birth, Jesus loved them. He taught people to love using surprising lessons of loving neighbors, loving enemies, loving the little children that surrounded him, loving the outcasts and those that invited him to dinner. Why does God love you? Because you’re one of his children, just like everyone else.
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Dr. Bradley Duncan is an aerospace engineer living in Boston. He blogs at http://GraceEmerges.blogspot.com and started the “Open Church Initiative” Facebook page.

High pitched and nerve tingling, Costello’s classic cry for help has delighted audiences for decades. Costello was always in some type of trouble, and his cry brought his dear and loyal friend Abbott to his aid.

Hey Abbot!

High pitched and nerve tingling, Christianity’s contemporary cry echoes that of Costello. In trouble and calling for help, Christian Churches are not sure which way to turn. Declining attendance, pastoral pickles, dogmatic declarations, shaky finances, and a stunning lack of well loved and well known denominational leaders all coalesce in a high pitched – nerve tingling “Hey Abbot!”

Except this Abbot is not a tried and true straight man but a tried and true ancient church leader who throughout the ages has brought the wisdom of the scriptures, steady spiritual leadership, and an eye to the “sensus fidelium,” the “sense of the faithful” that is a scriptural guide for churches facing deep paradigm shifts.

Hey Abbot! These words resonate deeply in all of us over 50, card carrying AARP members that still attend churches. What’s happening we wonder. Everywhere we turn in the church, from the narthex to the sanctuary, from the kitchen to the parking lot, there are changes and conflicts. Temple College’s 2008 Religious Identification Survey finds that the greatest growth is in non-belief! Add to that the recent publication of the “Lost Gospels” and the Dawkins-Harris–Hitchens-Dennett atheistic bestselling books and what’s a Christian to do? Multiple gospels and best-sellers that challenge the canonical gospels view and also doubt God’s existence? Well, bet our God has his doubts about them too! Or is it her doubts? Oh…. all these things to think about! Not to mention the Jesus Seminar or the homosexuality stuff! Hey Abbot!

Who’s on first? What’s on second? I don’t know is playing shortstop!

Both Abbot(t)’s carry wisdom for our post-modern church experiencing deep turbulence. One with humor, there’s nothing like a belly laugh to reduce stress and alter bodily functions like heart rate and blood pressure. Indeed, this Abbott’s wisdom is deeply therapeutic and enables us to get some healthy distance and perspective on life’s challenges. The ancient Church Abbot, a lay person chosen by the community, brings to us the sensus fidelium, that foundational teaching of the Christian community where the sense of the faithful or what the people accept, reject, or change serves as a corrective to theologians and church leaders. A deeply democratic teaching, the sense of the faithful is a welcome reminder for Christian leaders today of the movement of the Spirit in the deep turbulence of the 21st century.

Two short stories from a rural congregation out on the ridge in Southwest Wisconsin points to the wisdom of sensus fidelium as a guide to Christian living:

One Sunday morning, a man who had not been to church in quite a while returned to worship. Everyone knew of his struggle with alcohol but few spoke about it. When it was time for communion, two church basement ladies realized that there was only wine that was served. Immediately after the service, they pulled the pastor aside and shared their concerns. Hmmm, what shall we do about this? The very next Communion Sunday, the wine was replaced by grape juice. Serving both wine and grape juice in a small congregation where everyone was on a first name basis would bring it’s own tensions they thought. The decision was never voted on, taken to Church Council, discussed in public, it just happened. No one has ever said anything….. sensus fidelium, sense of the faithful. The ancient Abbess, the wise leaders of the early church, the church basement ladies, had responded. One of the ladies involved was the Council President’s wife. When queried, married some 35 years, simply smiled.

The second story comes from the night of June 15, 2008, when some 20 inches of rain flooded a small rural Wisconsin River village named Avoca. The residents evacuated as the waters rushed into the village. St. John’s Lutheran Church was flooded out, loosing furnaces, kitchens, and all kinds of water damage with estimates for repair at $80,000. Area churches joined in a flood relief drive raising all of the funds needed for repair and new furnaces were in before the first frost of September. The event was kicked off with a joint pie auction that raised the first $2500 and each church then added to the pie. The regional Church Basement ladies contributed over 100 homemade pies to the effort.The auctioneer quipped, “wow, all these pies, this is more fun than a sexuality discussion at church.” Sensus fidelium, sense of the faithful….

Who’s on first?

God’s people. Let’s trust them!
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Larry Engel pastors Five Points Lutheran Church in Blue River, Wisconsin. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Marquette University and has worked as a professor, missionary, and farm labor organizer.

God had no reason to teach the ancient Israelites the intricacies of nuclear biology or quantum physics, which they wouldn’t have been able to grasp, so He explained His creation of the world (through the Biblical authors) by using much more accessible stories they were already familiar with.

I learned this way of talking about Genesis from reading Peter Enns’ Incarnation and Inspiration, a book which has helped many evangelical pastors like me to reject the false wedge between science and the Bible that fundamentalists use as part of their ecclesiopolitical power play. It was also a book that cost Dr. Enns his job at Westminster Seminary. Incidentally Enns has a new book to be released in January 2012 called the Evolution of Adam, that you should definitely check out.

The controversy over whether or not the primordial stories of Genesis are historical or allegorical reveals a basic fault-line in American evangelicalism between fundamentalists who need for the gospel to be hard for others to swallow (perhaps because they’re trying to “earn” their salvation through anti-intellectualism) and true evangelicals whose genuine interest in sharing the gospel makes them yearn for a way of explaining the Bible that will not get laughed out of the room by herpetologists and others whose life vocations make it impossible for them to treat a divinely-inspired ancient Hebrew poem like a biology textbook. In any case, the latest controversy in this sad waste of God’s time called the evolution/creationism debate is that some conservative evangelical biologists are “coming out” as legitimate scientists and ruling out the possibility of a single original homo sapien couple named Adam and Eve based on their genomic research.

The latest fundamentalist to weigh in on this topic is Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Seminary. Mohler writes that without a historical Adam and Eve, “we will have to come up with an entirely new understanding of the Gospel metanarrative and the Bible’s storyline.” I agree. It’s time to jettison forever from Christian doctrine the abominably stupid idea that God blames people today for the actions of some random historical figure named Adam. There is a more Biblically accurate and compelling way of explaining original sin.

First of all, adam (???) should always be written lower-case, since it is just the Hebrew word for man. (I have often wondered if fundamentalists don’t learn Hebrew in seminary because they think the Bible was written in King James English.) If we were reading Genesis 3 in Hebrew, we wouldn’t call it the story of Adam and Eve, but the story of “the man” (????, h’adam) and “the woman” (????, h’ishah). The woman doesn’t get named ??? (chivah, or the Anglicized Eve) until Genesis 3:20 after they are kicked out of the garden. If h’adam had just been translated into English as “the man” every time it appears instead of falsely transliterating it into the proper noun Adam, so much idiocy would have been avoided in the last couple of centuries.

In any case, I think a more robust doctrine of original sin emerges if we read the story of the man and the woman as an allegory which can represent two moments that together explain the problem of original sin: 1) the primordial moment when our hominid ancestor(s) first gained the self-awareness, represented by the “fruit of knowledge,” without which creatures are not capable of deliberate behavior that could be called sin, and 2) the personal moment in every human’s life when we first express our independence by refusing to do what we are told.

As human beings, we are all born into a world in which somebody will inevitably hurt us partly because they have been hurt by someone else.

We will then hurt other people partly because of the hurt we have received. We cannot avoid the endless chain of sin which we didn’t start but nonetheless get swept into. This chain extends backwards to our primordial ancestors. Who started this chain of sin? The Hebrew Biblical writers didn’t try to name the original culprits since all humans throughout history share the responsibility collectively, so they called the actors simply “the man” and “the woman.”

All of us together as man and woman have participated in eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has left us with the curse of self-awareness that means we are no longer part of an un-individualized immortality in which animals’ bodies cycle through birth and death within a species that lives on forever according to the Earth’s natural equilibrium. We are under the curse of mortality and sin because we have been individualized and are no longer just part of a collective herd. It makes sense for the beginning of sin to be associated with the moment that “the eyes of [the man and woman] were opened, and they realized they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). Sin can only exist in the context of self-awareness. Once we gain self-awareness as a species, then we become self-centered people who quarrel with one another, squander the resources of creation God has given us, and generate an enormous residue of pain and guilt that no human being can avoid being tainted by. It is a curse for which we did not ask, but it does no good to blame God, since humanity has entered into this curse through our combined actions as a species.

Alongside the primordial history of humanity’s self-awareness, each of us has a personal history of self-awareness in which we not only “discover our nakedness,” but make a decision at some point to assert our autonomy and rebel against what we are told, like the man and woman did to God in Genesis 3. The decision to trust ourselves over our parents is an inevitable step in every child’s development. To some degree, it shouldn’t really be called a decision, but nonetheless it results in a spiritually fatal predicament from which we must be rescued, because it begins the phenomenon that Augustine called homo curvatus in se (humanity curved in on itself).

In order to trust ourselves and have any kind of epistemic stability, we need for our actions to make sense.

Inevitably, we arrive at moments when we have to face our mistakes, which puts us in an epistemic crisis we too often resolve by falsely justifying our behavior, twisting up our interpretation of reality to fit a self-narrative in which we made the right choice. Hundreds of self-justifying thoughts in response to mistakes we make, conflicts with other people, and situations in which we feel inadequate cause us to have an irreparably warped, or curvatus, impression of reality. We become slaves to our self-justification who are unable to admit our mistakes or resolve social impasses with other people because of our need to be right at all times. We require something from outside ourselves to deliver us from the prison of self-justification, which could be called our original sin on a personal level since the self-justifying impulse is what keeps dragging us into deeper sins.

In any case, I think it is high time we abandoned the claim that God blames us for the mistake of an ancient figure who only exists and has a name because of mistranslation.

Original sin is such a more compelling doctrine once the stumbling block of historicity is kicked out of the way. We should instead understand “the man” and “the woman” to be allegorical figures representing how our species has collectively produced a reservoir of original sin that corrupts every single one of us even if we cannot assign its culpability with any clarity. Every human being lives in a default state of sin from which we must be rescued by God. This does not contradict the fact that God’s purpose in our creation is for us to participate harmonically in His created order as man and woman did before our fall into self-awareness and sin.

Though our default state is to be trapped by original sin, our most natural state is to live according to God’s purpose in His order of shalom. We start off being a shadow of who we really are, just like the first version of humanity, adam 1.0, was a shadow of Jesus, who was adam 2.0 (Romans 5:15-17). To be a human means being a creature who needs God’s deliverance from original sin. To assume the full nature for which humans have been created, we need the “son of man” (ben adam) to live in our hearts.

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Morgan A. Guyton is the Associate Pastor at Burke UMC, and he is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Duke Divinity School. He has experience leading cross-cultural youth groups, teaching high school English, and serving in the non-profit sector. Morgan focuses his ministry at Burke on leading contemporary worship, providing pastoral care, developing young adult ministries, and using his fluent Spanish. He lives in Burke with his wife Cheryl, a Duke Divinity graduate interested in pastoral care, and their young sons Matthew and Isaiah. Morgan loves organic gardening, cooking, reading, and enjoying his family. Follow him at http://morganguyton.wordpress.com.

Jesus, of course, defined his mission and ministry with particular focus on the most vulnerable. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to bring good news to the poor . . . to let the oppressed go free.” (Luke 4:18–19)

I suspect that a number of Christians must have voted for them to get them elected. So my question is: What sort of Christianity supports an agenda that neglects the disadvantaged?

My feeling is that many Christians have no real sense of what Jesus’ mission and ministry was actually about. Jesus’ focus was on the kingdom of God (God’s new world of peace, equality, and reconciliation) coming into this world (“May your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”). The agenda of many Christians is focused on the afterlife, correct doctrinal beliefs, personal success, or civil religion.

One version of American Christianity equates the values of American democracy or American capitalism (it all gets thrown into the mix) with being a Christian, so that allegiance to God means allegiance to country (and vice-versa).
Similar to the above approach are those who endorse an American gospel of success, personal fulfillment, and prosperity. In this system the poor are not only neglected, they are pronounced as cursed for their lack of faith or capacity to make money. Jesus’ way of the cross is either ignored or convoluted somehow into the way of personal advancement and riches.

For Christians whose faith is oriented around a heaven-and-hell framework, Christian faith is all about believing the right things or doing the right things in order to go to heaven. This is often (though not always) connected to a very rigid set of doctrinal propositions that one has to believe, such as biblical inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, etc.

In a recent meeting, messengers (delegates) from the largest Christian denomination in the country (the Southern Baptist Convention), made it a point to affirm their belief in an eternal hell where unbelievers will dwell in conscious torment forever. They see their mission as one of rescuing unbelievers from hell by getting them to believe their version of Christian faith.

It seems to me that a far more beneficial and transformational mission would be to challenge Christians to actually take seriously Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and vindication by becoming his disciples.

I, myself, am a struggling disciple of Jesus. I fall short of embodying his life and living out his teachings in many ways. I know that I am complicit in the huge disparity between the rich and the poor that Jesus firmly judges. I often fail to love unconditionally, to give sacrificially, to serve compassionately, and to minister to others without any thought of personal reward.

But this I do know: The Gospels that proclaim the life, teachings, and mission of Jesus make some things about the life of discipleship to Jesus quite clear: Love God with the totality of your being, love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemies, live humbly, not arrogantly, etc. I know the kind of person Jesus calls me to be, even though I often fail to be that kind of person.

The major problem with American Christianity today is that many Christians do not know what kind of persons and communities the living Christ expects us to be. We need a New Reformation.
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Chuck Queen is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky. He loves to read, write, and challenge Christians and religious seekers to think deeply about their faith. Follow him at http://afreshperspective-chuck.blogspot.com.

Adam and Eve are just the distraction from the real issue.

The NPR article, rightly calling this a Galileo moment, cites professor Karl Giberson: “When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face… The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it.”

The article goes on: “Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: ‘That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.’”

Evolution isn’t the issue. Adam and Eve are not the issue. The science on origins is only becoming more solid- although there is an interestingly powerful myth that circulates in Christian subculture that there are tons of credible scientists that dispute the issue. Biblical scholarship isn’t the issue either- very few (any?) well-respected Biblical scholars take Genesis 1 and 2 as history (you can find creationists among biblical scholars at plenty of schools- but they have virtually no contribution to the field and trade credibility for tenure… it’s all about the money). The issue isn’t inerrancy or infallibility. Evolution is so contentious that most of my professors at seminary hesitate to admit to the class that they, along with pretty much everyone in the field of academic theology, believe in evolution (and it creates a firestorm when they occasionally do!). You won’t hear that in the pulpit either- because the study of the text is not the issue either. You also don’t generally hear that Genesis 1 and 2 are two different stories, written several hundred years apart in different parts of the world. You don’t hear that, even if you desperately want to take Genesis 1 and 2 literally, you cannot because of internal contradictions. That’s just a matter of reading the text, and when pointing that out is considered controversial and gets professors nervous about job security, we are reminded that the study of the text isn’t actually the issue.
I’ll consider taking creationism seriously when a creationist can tell me whether they descend from A) the man in Genesis 1 who is created after all the plants and animals, or B) Adam in Genesis 2 who is created before the plants and animals. But again that’s not the issue; that’s not why this subject gets people upset. It’s not the reason I receive emails with angry undertones one posts like this.

So what is the issue?

Fazale Rana, vice president of apologetics group Reason to Believe, opines: “From my viewpoint, a historical Adam and Eve is absolutely central to the truth claims of the Christian faith…But if the parts of Scripture that you are claiming to be false, in effect, are responsible for creating the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, then you’ve got a problem,”

Exactly. She gets credit for honesty. What undergirds this controversy is not a disagreement about the text or science; instead, it’s the belief that faith crumbles once you admit that the text has an error, isn’t historically accurate, or else it says correctly exactly what it means to say and you’ve simply misunderstood it all this time.

Philosophers Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn described this phenomenon as epistemological webs and paradigm shifts. Lakatos described all our knowledge as interconnecting in a web, with more important, reinforced ideas consisting an epistemic core. Experiences hit the boundary of this web and force you to decide whether to incorporate new data or reject it. The knowledge within the web need not all cohere- it is only most important that the core ideas cohere well. When the web’s integrity breaks down due to dissonant data points, it becomes more parsimonious to think with a different core set of beliefs. This results in what Kuhn calls a paradigm shift in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The text of scripture is very, very rarely the issue in theological debates.

The real issue is that we’ve decided to believe something and are desperately grasping for any way we can use the text to backward-engineer justification for our beliefs. This isn’t controversial. It’s just how we are wired…by evolution.

Debates over Adam and Eve are not won through facts of science and the text. They are mutated by paradigm shifts. When someone tells me they don’t believe in evolution, I hear, “I can’t believe what you believe, because I will lose everything I believe.” That is what this is about- the epistemic homeostasis of a particular paradigm. It may be a discussion over who believes in reality and who rejects reality, but it’s a mistake to think of this as “smart people vs. stupid people.” The same part of your brain that controls the “fight or flight” mechanism also lights up when you hear something you disagree with- meaning your biological reaction to new, differing information is to run from it or kill someone. The body does everything it can to maintain homeostasis- the mind does the same thing. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. We all do this. But it will keep you back from admitting key facts about the world around you. And I would argue that, for the believer, it will hold you back from a more mature faith- because faith doesn’t always have room for epistemic stasis.
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Tad DeLay is a student of theology and philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary. His writing, art, and music can be found at www.taddelay.com.