The Loss of Sacred Words

324 × 499Images may be subject to copyright. Learn More

"A person who speaks to this hour's need will skirt the edge of heresy for it is only by risking heresies that one can gain the truth" -  Helmut Thielicke

I started reading an interesting book by Jonathan Merritt called "Learning to Speak God from Scratch." There has not only been a loss and confusion of the sacred speech but words are continually changing in their meanings to different generations. Here are a few trends that Merritt mentions:

1. The politicization of sacred words
2. The exploitation of sacred words
3. The polarization of sacred words

Here is what many people hear when they hear certain sacred words:
1. "God" - a sadistic monster who likes killing people and sends people to Hell
2.  "Faith" - fire insurance policy where you say a prayer or get baptized and get a free out of Hell card.
3.  "Conversion" A decision manipulated by fear and guilt.
4. "Gospel" Supposed to be good news but it sure sounds like bad news like I am a terrible sinner and I am on my way to eternal Hell.
5.  "Jesus Sacrifice" The angry God kills his son and took your place in a brutal execution.

Grace and mystery are words usually not understood or a part of the equation. Merritt says, "preserving a decaying language is like preserving a decomposing corpse" (p.54). Many people, especially church people do not feel the need to regularly attend a church anymore. this certainly impacts how much talk of the sacred happens much less frequently than it used to.

One of our modern problems today is we often approach language like we do chemistry or algebra rather than poetry or music. "Jewish thinkers treated language not as a corpse but as a living being which we are invited to dance" (p.78). Maybe we need a new vocabulary of faith or a new lexicon of sacred words? Maybe we have to go back to the beginning again when it comes to unpacking our suitcases of what words today means to people who have lost the sacredness of words. Or to put it as Merritt does, maybe we have to learn to speak to God from scratch?

Speaking Truth to LIES WE BELIEVE ABOUT GOD

William Paul Young is the author of the bestselling book The Shack and has tried for the first time in writing a non-fiction Christian book called Lies We Believe About God.  I read Young's book at the same time I read Richard Rohr's beautifully written book The Divine Dance and a little later, Brian Zahnd's book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.  Zahnd's book especially was trying to free people's conceptions of God being viewed as an angry abusing deity towards a more loving heavenly Father.

Here comes Paul Young whose life has been filled with both abuse and toxic Christianity on what he experienced on the mission field.  It's a miracle that Young is even a Christian today by his past history.  I for one could not find one charitable or positive book review of Paul Young's new book on the internet. The negative assaults on Paul young's theology and person are so loud and deafening that I have felt compelled to offer a more positive and constructive review amid so many outraged Christians.

William Paul Young deals with twenty eight lies to challenge Christians to think more accurately and deeply about God.  Maybe some of the pushback would not have been so heavy if Paul would have taken us deeper into the journey he's been on that I believe not only connects with the early church fathers but also many of the ancient and medieval Christian mystics throughout the history of the church.  What people think as theologically innovative or new or simply out of step with the traditional church shows how our own modern conceptions of God and church today are so out of step with what earlier Christians have thought in earlier times.  Our historical amnesia blinds us from the truths that many Christians have believed throughout the whole history of the Christian faith.

Many Christians would probably not have many problems with his chapters on God loves us, but doesn't like us, God is a magician, God blesses my politics, God doesn't care what I'm passionate about, God is not good, that was just coincidence, God is a prude, God is a divine Santa Clause, death is more powerful than God, you will never find God in a box, and God is one alone.

Where Young gets into trouble with many modern Christians is his challenges to salvation and the universal hope for all people, atonement theologies that relate to hell, judgment, and sin, as well as his vision of God.  He challenges people who think of God who does not submit, is in total control, wants to be a priority, and not everyone is a child of God.

What I find brilliant and beautiful about Young's theology is his focus is not on the utter depravity of man we get from Augustine's theology but on the goodness and blessing of man being made in the image of God.  The younger generation today is rightfully tired of hearing about the doctrine of original sin and how bad they are but they desperately want to hear about original blessing and how they can be more fully human as they read about Jesus in the four gospels.

As far as God in control (of evil), Young wants to argue against some of the hard line Calvinism that shows God as only loving some people and that God is not some kind of deterministic dominating being but whose nature is one of self-giving love.  This is possibly the one area where Young almost has a dualistic view of good and evil where he struggles with the classical doctrine of God's omnipotence.  I believe one can still hold onto this doctrine without falling into the problem that Young is trying to avoid of setting evil at God's feet.

Young tries to give a fuller vision of God in the fullness of the doctrine of the Trinity's dance of mutual submission.  Does God makes himself vulnerable, self-sacrificial or does he desire rules and religion to save us?  For William Paul Young, we are not saved by right beliefs or correct precise doctrines or even by the Christian religion.  We are simply saved by the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ.

God is about adventure, trust, and surrender and not about performance, control and a priority list according to Young.  Maybe his words about faith as a gift from God we already posses and simply need to recognize rather than jumping through some kind of list of rituals and right responses is what will irritate most of his Christian readers who have been following faithfully the tenets of what it means to be a "good Christian" rather than the God who is transforming the whole cosmos by His radical free grace in Christ.

Insider and outsider talk, the saved and unsaved, sinner and saved language are turned upside down as Young quickly sets forth his own understanding that hell, sin, and atonement flow out of the universal love of God.  The ongoing rescue of creation and salvation for Young does not end with death but continues on in both heaven and hell. What modern Christians do not realize is how the early church believed in praying for the salvation of people even in hell and that Christians with God in heaven will still go through a purging, growing, and evolving process towards perfection.  This does not diminish our earthly decisions but puts them in a cosmic-timeless perspective.

The earliest Christians believed in the timelessness of God and eternity and they did not have this huge separation between our sin and God's grace and the finality of death and the separation of heaven from earth as modern Christians often believe today.  Maybe this is the biggest lie that many modern Christians today believe that needs to be reevaluated by both history and a more cosmic understanding of the restoration of all things that the Bible speaks about and teaches.

Generous Orthodoxy or a New Vision of God

I have been reading Bradley Jersak's A More Christlike God.  Jersak tries to present a more generous orthodoxy from the vision he was given as a young Christian of God being an angry and violent taskmaster.  He rightly gives a powerful new vision of a Christocentric and cruciform theology where ones sees the Father by looking at the Son.

The two hidden questions behind Jersak's book are people want to know (1) Does God care? and (2) Does God care about me?  Jersak tries to give different snapshots and paint a coherent picture of what this Christlike God looks like to maybe some of the negative stereotypes and bad pictures people may have already been exposed to earlier in life. 

I am only a third of the way through his book but there are gems and pearls to be discovered in his writings throughout.  One point I wish he would have developed more that I found interesting is where he says, "God is Christlike in his secret presence within creation" (P.120).  I am thinking there is so much more to unpack here, especially as I am starting to study Teilhard De Chardin who goes into this more deeply than anybody else I have read to date.

Jersak allows for tensions and paradoxes to exist in his writing which I like but there are also some conclusions which Calvinists and Christians who hold to the traditional doctrine of hell will certainly make them squeamish.  I know Jersak is reacting to his past but I don't think the picture is as dark or ugly as he paints those who believe in a more literal hell than he does nor how he interprets the violent texts in the Bible. 

Jersak like a good apologist wants to defend God at times between direct and secondary causes but I'm not sure how persuasive these arguments really are in the end much less they often create as many problems as they solve.  He says "I don't believe the divine courtship involves wearing you down with his love until you give up."  This may be a nice tidy way to wrap things up but I believe things may be more messy than what Jersak says here,  I have met too many Christians who have experienced God boxing them into a wall or not giving them much choice.  One could debate the interpretation of the Hosea and Gomer story but it seems like this is exactly what God's love does, it wears you down until you give up in certain circumstances.

I believe Jersak gives a more beautiful picture of God in which I applaud him for.  I just believe underneath this picture, there can be a violence of the Spirit (figuratively speaking) which can be deeply disturbing and make one feel like they have very little choice because of God's powerful compelling presence.  In a day where there are many competing pictures of what God looks like, we certainly need at the forefront a more Christlike God.

Toxic Theology

I just received Bradley Jersak new book A More Christlike God.  I went to the jail today and preached about looking at God who is Christ like.  God is bigger and greater than all our conceptions of God.  I love how Jersak says, "Jesus alone is perfect theology" (p.9).  God overcomes us by love and not by force and manipulation.  Unfortunately there are so many people today who have a toxic view of God.  God hates or God is violent or we buy into the myth of redemptive violence.

Jersak is a recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy speaks about negative theology or apophatic theology.  This is speaking of what God is not.   God is not shallow.  God is not an idol of our making.  God is not the Devil.  We may not know or understand all that God is but we can know His divine energies.  God's revelation to us.  God's actions and activity in us and the world around us.  We may not know God's essence fully but we can be filled with the Spirit of God whose positive energy touches and penetrates all of our life.

There have been ten million people who have left churches in America in the last fifteen years.  This great exodus is by people who have had their minds and hearts broken usually by other people who make up God's church.  It's not the living God that is driving them away but our toxic faith and our toxic theology of God.  Its the many slogans and shallow ways we talk about God as we silence others who have questions we would rather not deal with at the moment.  Jersak suggests not only do we need a more Christ like God but we also need a more Christ like church (p.21).