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empathy is for wimps?
Love demands more of us than any other thing. Because God is love, and man, can he be demanding! So why does an emphasis on love make some people of faith nervous?
I’m mystified by the occasional push back I get on this blog when I quote the golden rule: “”In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7: 12 Someone objected that this is not the gospel. Oh?
It is the law and the prophets, which in the context of the time meant, it is the Bible. The gospel is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Of course the gospel is an expanded expression (or would it be better to call it a particular expression?) of love: that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that we might have life (for starters) but isn’t the gospel grounded in God’s capacity for empathy? Isn’t the incarnation–a pretty essential aspect of the gospel–about empathy? God came into our experience so that he could understand our experience from within it. So wonderful was and is his love for us.
The golden rule–for softies, for wimps, not muscular enough? Why is it followed immediately by, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.” Matt. 7:13 Because the disciples were hoping that the Law and the Prophets was something other than this: “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you…” The married ones probably didn’t want their wives hearing that kind of talk.
The ability to imagine anything at all is surely part of what it means to be made in the image of God. God imagined a world and it came into being. His word, “Light!” was a product of his imagination, as are all words. Words don’t work without the capacity for imagination. You say “chair” and I picture a thing that can be sat on. Imagine that!
Empathy is Image of God Love
So a form of love that requires that we exercise our imagination would be a form of love “in the image of God” would it not? “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7: 12 How hard is that?
Try it sometime–it takes a lot out of you. It works your imagination overtime. Imagine how you would want to be treated and treat them in the same way. It’s a sneaky way of saying, “Imagine that you’re the other person being loved by you–how would you want to be loved?” Some of my most horrifying moments as as husband have come when it occurred to me to imagine that I was Nancy stuck with me as a husband. Oh this is something else, empathy. It’s the root of all compassion, the necessary precondition for all heroic, self-sacrificial love.
And it absolutely requires the Holy Spirit whose wings are aflame with love, straight from the roaring fire of the Trinity, to do this well. To do it at all, perhaps.
Why would Jesus make such a stunning statement, “this is the Law and the Prophets, this is the Bible” if he didn’t want to EMPHASIZE its importance? And why would he want to emphasize its importance unless there were a strong tendency within us not to accept it–to qualify it, to ease our way around it?
So much of what’s wrong with religion can be traced to our damnable tendency to nod our heads at this radical statement as if it’s a little quote on a Lipton tea-bag (back when Lipton tea-bag labels had such things.)
We Can’t Imagine That We Might Be the Pharisees
Why, for example is is so difficult for us to imagine that we are the Pharisees sometimes? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that there is such an emphasis in the gospels on the Pharisees precisely because the disciples of Jesus were (and always will be) subject to the powerful temptations that the Pharisees were subject to? That once we “get religion,” it’s actually easy to walk the path of the Pharisees…. It’s easy to be the older brother–eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because we can make those calls now–once you hang out in the Father’s house for a while. Didn’t we see this dynamic in the early church?
Just because we are dealing with different issues than whether or not Gentiles can have a place at the table without having to conform to the Torah as the Jewish disciples of Jesus did doesn’t mean we don’t have our issues.
All of this takes imagination–that part of our being that is “in the image of God.”
It’s at the heart of golden rule love.
What would happen if those who claimed to be followers of Jesus were people who specialized in this? Rather than protesting, “Well, he didn’t mean this and he didn’t mean that, and it’s not the heart of the gospel, after all….” we just set our hands to this plow and pushed without ever looking back?
What would be unleashed in the world?
Tags: empathy, golden rule, imagination, imagine, Jesus, love
April 16th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Hear, hear.
In my immersed-in-evangelicalism lifetime have heard far many more sermons on sin, sound doctrine, last-days eschatology, the darkening state of the world around us, the world’s assaults on “truth,” and the errors of worldly thinking than on core concepts like the beatitudes, love & empathy, loving one’s non-evangelical neighbor as one’s self, and what it means to be “poor in spirit” or to “walk humbly with” God.
I think that there is a reason for it. I think people have a deep-rooted tribal instinct to be proud of their tribe, to love those who are part of their tribe, and to be deeply suspicious of and hostile toward those outside their tribe. I see it in secular politics, and I see it in the church.
I’ve come to believe that all the “sound doctrine” in the Bible won’t help a person if that person doesn’t have love. That’s foundational.
Thank you, Ken, for your refreshing insights.
April 16th, 2009 at 9:26 am
“Just because we are dealing with different issues than whether or not Gentiles can have a place at the table without having to conform to the Torah as the Jewish disciples of Jesus did doesn’t mean we don’t have our issues.”
What are these different issues?
I consider myself an Eph 4 Gentile. I don’t think anything has changed since then.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Yes, imagining what we sound like and look like to the unconvinced, the unchurched, the mission field right here, all around us here, is salutary. I recommend it. It is humbling. Seeking out atheists and agnostics and others and soliciting their impressions of us is an essential corrective to our practice. Jesus principally alienated the religious, the righteous, the saved of his time. He befriended all those who were rejected and treated with contempt by the religious, the righteous, and the saved. He loved them. It was these for whom he died. Getting past our judgment requires imagination. Empathy. Huge gobs of it. This means setting ourselves and our judgment and our egos aside and putting the scum of the earth–the beloved of our savior–in his place. We are here to serve them.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I agree that love and empathy are paramount and I certainly need work in these areas.
I also believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I have been exposed to branches of the church that tend to reduce the gospel to just the golden rule and they tend to basically toss out other vital facets of the gospel and just cling to an attitude that says if it doesn’t hurt other people, everything is permissible.
I can think of many morally objectionable behaviours that can be justified by the Golden Rule, but would not be things Jesus would approve of.
My point is that there is nothing wrong or wimpy about empathy, I practice it and have been blessed from others’ empathy towards me. But I think if Jesus made a point to stress the cost of discipleship WHILE loving folk (narrow way, few finding it, etc) then as followers of Him we should also keep it in mind to proclaim the whole gospel, not just parts of it that are universally non offensive. I mean isn’t there supposed to be a scandal to the gospel?
I really liked Don’s sermon a few weeks back stressing the difference between a Jesus admirer and a follower. Many should be drawn to Jesus through us the same way they were drawn to Him in His time walking the Earth, through His love, acceptance and care.
But I don’t think that if many reject Him or choose not to follow Him because of His requirements for discipleship, that is necessarily a reason to rethink things.
Remember that when He was crucified, apparently nobody but his best friend and mom stuck to Him. Should we expect any better for ourselves?
Jesus is loving, attractive, and full of empathy, but also offensive, demanding, and in some ways uncompromising. We need to maintain a balance there.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
…can we even imagine loving our enemies? loving terrorists? loving human traffickers? now, that is threatening…it takes true grit, real fortitude, and the abundance of sacrificial love that comes from the original Freak (Jesus) to overcome evil with good. that’s real strength. so if empathy is for wimps, then call me wimpy…
April 16th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Nice post – it makes me think of myself. I spend a lot of time reading and whatnot, and just when I think i ‘get it’, God shows me that I functionally do not get much of anything. I’ve found that living out my trust in Jesus as Lord means showing love to someone. But it’s in the day-to-day details and interactions that I catch myself not loving. I naturally want to make love an ‘event’ rather than a natural expression of my regular self.
I personally don’t see any evidence that God needed to become human, but I think there is plenty of evidence that God wanted to. I think there are clues in the OT (Isaiah comes to mind) that God already knew much too well what it would be like. And the fact that God still humbled himself into our human context – and no less into the lowest order of Jewish culture – shows incomprehensibly vast love.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Billabong you said:
“Jesus principally alienated the religious, the righteous, the saved of his time”.
Let’s not forget that He also alienated the Gentiles!
April 16th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Joao wrote:
“I have been exposed to branches of the church that tend to reduce the gospel to just the golden rule and they tend to basically toss out other vital facets of the gospel and just cling to an attitude that says if it doesn’t hurt other people, everything is permissible.”
Unfortunately, I have been exposed to the opposite — branches of the church that reduce Christianity to a tribal identity (i.e., we’re the chosen remnant; we’re saved but those outside are lost and enslaved to sin and false ways of thinking) and that at most, and only seldom, pay lip service to the golden rule or the concept of loving’s ones not-part-of-the-same-tribe neighbor.
That said, I agree a balance a better, but if I had to choose between the extremes (and in my small rural community, the extremes appear to be all I have to choose from), I think I would choose the golden rule group.
And we ought to renew that discussion … what are the “other” vital facets of the gospel? Do they include the following?
1. Belief in the literal inerrancy of scripture;
2. Salvation only by belief in sound dogma;
3. Pre-millenial eschatology;
4. Biblical creationism; and
5. Marriage only between a man and a woman;
Yes, in #2 I gave “sola fida” a pejorative spin. Sorry. But that also deserves a discussion. Just how much doctrinal right thinking does the Lord require of you?
April 17th, 2009 at 11:43 am
It is funny, I just blogged about this last week. From conversations with other Christian friends outside of Vineyard, I have gathered that many of them are taught Christianity from a more legalistic approach meaning follow the “do not” rules. They truly believe than in order to have a loving relationship with God you have to follow the rules. Some of them love inside the box, instead the outcasts outside the box. This has of course become a major problem for anyone who has been “kicked out” of a church for not “following the rules” because it does not know the Jesus kind of love of coming along side. I completely agree, if we all loved like Jesus loved, the world would be a much better place and the church would be embraced instead of avoided. Great blog Ken!
April 17th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Joao captured what I think has been the preoccupation of many evangelicals: “I have been exposed to branches of the church that tend to reduce the gospel to just the golden rule and they tend to basically toss out other vital facets of the gospel and just cling to an attitude that says if it doesn’t hurt other people, everything is permissible.”
This is the old (going on a hundred years now!) battle between theological “liberalism” (of the mainline protestant variety) and theological “conservatism” (the fundamentalist movement and it’s offshoot, modern American evangelicalism). If “conservatives” hear something that was emphasized among the “liberals” they get nervous and want to say, “but, but, but!” [and vice versa]
We can keep this argument going for another hundred years if we want, or we can turn our attention away from the in-house liberal-conservative argument and pay attention to our mission to a lost and broken world. The only thing we have to offer such a world is the message of Jesus, the gospel of the KINGDOM.
Not the conservative kindgom, not the liberal kingdom, the kingdom of God, the realm in which Jesus is King.
We are not the ones to get nervous when the King is talking to us. When he says, “Treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets [this is the Bible]” we don’t want to be the ones saying, “Yes but there are other things in the Law and the Prophets that surely we must attend to, Lord!” He says it to us in this provocative way, because he thinks we have a tendency to place our focus on other things [like our liberal-conservative argument] and he wants our focus to be on this thing.
Our response? YES, SIR!
April 17th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Ken, I have to disagree with your characterization of this ‘liberal vs. conservative’ argument, or at least narrow the scope. The following is a bit of a vent but it airs the turmoil I and many other ‘evangelicals’ are feeling.
Basic Christianity is not a liberal-conservative argument. It is a Christian-Non Christian argument.
Absolutely, it centers around the Golden Rule, but it is so much deeper than that. Jesus’s statement about how the law and the prophets hang on the Golden Rule was almost rhetorical. It served to focus on the questions: are we sinners? Can we earn God’s approval? Is Jesus even necessary? What is it that makes the Jesus movement unique if not what Jesus taught and died for?
I read Eric C’s # 2 item as placing doubts even on that central fact of the faith and calling it ‘dogma’. Yes, it is dogma, and the dogma is that none are righteous, not even one. We can’t follow the Golden Rule we are hopelessly lost without Jesus’s sacrifice for us. But once aware of our cleansing, there is sanctification, a general movement towards life change based on Jesus’ calling. Steal no more, kill no more, lust no more. Not all at once, but head in that direction.
My agnostic friend practices the Golden Rule better than I do but he has no room for Jesus in his heart. Do I even try to invite him to a relationship with Jesus, he sure feels no need for it.
He also has no moral issues with wife swapping, but only refrains from it because his wife doesn’t approve (good Golden Rule practicing). If his wife had no issues with it and they practiced it with other consenting adults, would our church have a place for him in membership as long as he also liked Jesus?
Why do I even bother to try to lead a small group of men trying follow Jesus’ example of purity as men? Maybe the term coined as a joke by one of my groups’ members; ‘christian porn’; is indeed applicable in these ‘post modern’ times as long as we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, ie indulge, but be sure to pay the porn purveyors a fair wage.
So again I return to my question on the earlier post, can’t we do both, be accepting and loving of all people and at the same time hold on to Jesus’ teachings, including His hard sayings that we all struggle to deal with and encourage the flock to walk towards Jesus’s example?
April 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Joao said, “So again I return to my question on the earlier post, can’t we do both, be accepting and loving of all people and at the same time hold on to Jesus’ teachings, including His hard sayings that we all struggle to deal with and encourage the flock to walk towards Jesus’s example?”
Joao, of course we can-must do both….but my point was that the golden rule IS one of the hard sayings, not a soft saying. That Jesus meant it to be at the heart of things by saying “it is the law and the prophets” and that we are to embrace it without apology or buts…. BTW, I didn’t read eric’s #2 (salvation only by belief in sound dogma) as you did. Salvation comes by trusting a living person, Jesus. One can accept a dogma and ignore a person, might have been eric’s point. And of course he was simply saying this needs to be discussed.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
The whole question of salvation — point #2 — requires a lot of unpacking, and it is, quite frankly, the issue (one way or another) most frequently raised (at least by my impression) by non-evangelicals.
I hear it asked all the time. Even George W. Bush, when he was running for president, was asked it. Do you believe that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., who die without affirming Jesus Christ as the Son of God will suffer an eternal hell?
I have struggled with this question since I was 5 years old. In high school, I studied the Scriptures intently and typed a dense, 15-page apologetic in defense of Christianity’s exclusivity. Years later, I purchased and read various evangelical books defending that position. But I was never fully satisfied with either my own arguments, or the arguments of my fellow evangelicals.
My anguish over this question — and my perception that my fellow evangelicals were too tribal-minded to share that anguish — were to the two main levers that recently pried me, after 30 years, away from a belief in inerrancy and conservative evangelicalism.
But I still think a lot about that question. What does the Lord require?
Right now, two of my favorite passages in all of Scripture are Acts 17:26-28 (God put every nation in different places and times “so that they might look for God, somehow reach for him, and find him”) and Matthew 7:7-8 (“…seek and you will find…”).
I believe that God wants us to seek Him … and not blithely live out our lives unconscious and incurious of the eternal.
I am beginning to interpret all of those passages in the Gospel of John about Jesus in a different light. Consider this provocative passage from John 6:53-58 (and my apologies to Ken if he has covered this in his book, which I have yet to read):
53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”
What was Jesus saying?
Here’s my present thinking. Perhaps Jesus was challenging the Pharisees’ conception of God. They saw and acknowledged God’s holiness, and they yearned for a warrior king messiah, but they refused to acknowledge an even deeper — dare I say it? — aspect of God’s nature — God’s empathy. An empathy so deep, personal, and incredible that God manifested it through the Incarnation, taking on flesh, walking with us, and experiencing our sufferings. The pharisees didn’t see God that way. For them, God was a God of law, a very exacting God, but not an empathetic God.
Jesus said those Pharisees couldn’t come to the Father but through Him. They needed to see God’s empathy. He not only made Man in his image, He took on human likeness himself. That’s how close and personal a God we have. And that’s exciting.
But I have a problem with seeing salvation as necessarily requiring a formulaic confession of faith or taking on any overly particular doctrinal content.
This is something that needs discussing.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
gem, In the time that Paul wrote Ephesians, he seemed to accept slavery as an institution. Maybe that’s saying it too strongly. He encourage slaves to obey their masters, that we know. Time passed, and the church, led by the Spirit, challenged the legitimacy of slavery. Now we would feel it to be wrong to encourage any slave to obey his master. We would instead urge slaves to seek freedom, and urge masters to stop coercing people to serve them. So I think there are always these kinds of issues. But more to the point of Gentiles: Now on the mission field, missionaries are grappling with what to ask of followers of Jesus who come from a Muslim background. To what degree do they retain cultural identity as a Muslim, which is a cultural as well as religious identity. There are many different approaches to this….some Muslim believers in Jesus worship on Friday, for example, other say, not you can’t do that. Islam didn’t exist when Ephesians was written. So I think the church always faces these kind of issues….things don’t get frozen in time.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I think that maybe Paul’s instruction, and then more forcefully when he said he was speaking with the Lord’s authority, was to focus on the issues which enslave us. He speaks of love and the sins which so easily beset us. I agree with Joao that these are not conservative/liberal issues. I believe these are the issues which should set us apart from those that do not claim Christ. We must have love, his love, and live lives free from the darkness we were set free from. Doesn’t Christ call us to this as he draws us to the cross and his resurrection?
I have lived as the Gentiles Paul is referencing. Then Jesus came in, Love Personified, and I was taught by his grace and mercy that I could now live free from the things that used to enslave me. It doesn’t matter what culture we are in, these issues are common to us all.
“I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
1. …must no longer live as the Gentiles do…
2. …darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God…
3. …given themselves over to sensuality… with a continual lust for more…
“You, however, did not come to know Christ that way.”
1. …to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires…
2. …to be made new in the attitude of your minds…
3. …and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness…
I now I still struggle to follow him and deal with… “to live a life worthy of the calling you (I) have received.”
1. …Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths…
2. …Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice…
3. …Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you…
April 18th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Yes gem, agreed. I was just making the point that we are not fixed in Paul’s time. God moves us forward into the kingdom–we are forward leaning. And a time came (after Paul’s time) when it was right–in fact it would have been immoral not to–set the captives free. Literally. As Jesus said in Luke 4, not just a spiritual freedom, but a literal freeing of the captives, which also freed their captors. Paul was faithful to the task he was given in his time, and our faithfulness is being faithful to the task given in our time as the kingdom moves forward. There will always be new issues and challenges to be addressed by the power of the gospel.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Hmm, this is an interesting discussion.
Per Eric C., “Just how much doctrinal right thinking does the Lord require of you?”
In my case, I hope not much. As I’ve grown older and I’ve done a lot more reflecting about my faith, I feel like the main things I’m sure of are that God loves me and that it is his grace that makes me his child. Everything else gets fuzzier and fuzzier, and that’s not just my eyesight as I approach 40!
Anyone read CS Lewis’ “The Last Battle?” At the very end, there is a worshiper of Tash who ends up in the presence of Aslan, quite unexpectedly. Very interesting. There is also a dumb bear, who was slow and clumsy and isn’t really sure what happened but ended up in the right place.
Pretty sure I’m the dumb bear…
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:04 am
Cristy
A question comes up; should there be evangelism, missionary work?
Do all roads lead to God anyway?
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Joao,
Good question. I say yes — but I think that most Evangelicals have been evangelizing the wrong things.
Evangelicals evangelize the belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible — and IMO make that the core of their evangelism.
Many Evangelicals tend to evangelize doctrinal propositions more than relationships.
Proceeding from that belief in inerrancy, Evangelicals evangelize the legalistic doctrine of penal substitution and the dogma that wages of all sins — indeed, any sin, however finite — is death in an infinitely tortuous eternal hell from which there is no rest day or night. This presents the image of a very terrible God, a God — I think — that only Pharisees, Aztec human sacrificers, and like-minded people could love. This was not a concept of God that Jesus promoted.
Also proceeding from that inerrantist position, Evangelicals evangelize the Calvinist doctrine of depravity, the Biblical theory of creationism, premillenial eschatology, and that homosexuality is an abomination.
Today, Evangelicals have little more success in evangelizing their secular neighbors than the Pharisees did in their time. It is no wonder.
The Evangelical, hyper-propositional Bible-is-inerrant world view a whole lot to swallow. Just like the law, in the Pharisees’ time, was a whole lot to swallow.
I think Evangelicals would do well to emphasize the following in their witness:
1) There is a God.
God, in His divine mercy, sacrificed Himself not because God’s justice demanded it, but rather because wrong-headed, legalistic men with their non-empathetic conception of a holy, sin-punishing God demanded that Jesus die. It was as if the Pharisees were the Aztecs, sacrificing Jesus to the Pharisees’ own false concept of God. The real, true, loving God submitted himself to this humiliation and shame to show the depth of His love for us, His willingness to experience our own mortality, and to put an end, once and for all, to these terribly wrong notions of who God is.
2) We are His children.
3) He is not far from each of us.
4) He has given us many signs through natural and moral revelation.
5) He has given us his witness through human authors, who, although fallible, provide many inspired insights (i.e., the neo-orthodox view of Scripture)
6) He wants us to seek Him and pursue a relationship with Him. In fact, part of his design was to hide Himself — and only reveal himself in part — so that we would seek after Him.
7) God is such a relational, personal, and loving God that He humbled Himself, became Incarnate, walked with us, and experienced our sufferings, our sorrows, and even our false judgments.
These are my thoughts. I recognize that there are passages of scripture that seem to compel the doctrine of penal substitution. I have a problem with those particular passages, but a belief in inerrancy is not at the core of my faith, so I can live with it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Joao,
I agree that demonstating and speaking of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are what we are called to do. I’m not going to classify it as “missionary work’ or ‘evangelism,’ assuming that we would both agree that we are to do these things in our lives with or without a formal title to it.
In my more recent limited experience with the Catholic church, however, I have seen that they seem to emphasize these things less (as compared with my mainstream evangelical church experience) and other things more.
As far as “do all roads lead to God” I can’t speak to how God is going to handle end of time stuff. Although we would both probably agree that outward actions reflect one’s heart, the inward stuff is really hard to know for another person. It’s hard to know for myself, except that I have peace that Jesus absolves me in the sight of God. However that works.
I’m just the bear, remember?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Joao’s second question — do all roads lead to God? — requires some unpacking too.
First, what leads a person to God in the first place?
Listening to most conservative Evangelicals, you would think that one is led to God only by a “sound doctrine,” including a belief in the authority of the Bible and, more particularly, a belief in the penal substitution theory of the Atonement.
The Pharisees had a highly propositional understanding of God, a high respect for the authority of Scripture, a reverence for His holiness and righteousness, a strong conviction about God’s wrath against sin and blasphemy, and a belief in penal substitution through animal sacrifice.
But Jesus said that the Pharisees didn’t know God. I’m not sure that very many Evangelicals know God either.
Conservative evangelicals believe that there is only one road to God — and that road is through careful study of the Bible paired with an unquestioning belief in its authority.
Do “other roads” include neo-orthodox and liberal interpretations of Scripture and understandings of God’s nature, His Incarnation through Jesus Christ, and the meaning and significance of Christ’s death on the Cross?
Or perhaps the focus on “roads to God” presents the wrong idea. None of us can build a road, or bridge the gap, to God. God reconciled Himself to us by becoming Incarnate and suffering death on the Cross.
Perhaps the only thing that God requires of us is to believe in a God who walked with us, who identifies with the weak, who is a friend of sinners, and who humbled Himself for us; and that we, in gracious response, should walk humbly with Him, love justice and mercy, and love our neighbors as ourselves.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
Eric,
So what do you make of the suffering Jesus endured on the cross? Is that just an accident of history because of the meanness of people? Was it necessary as the Bible implies?
I may be reading your point erroneously, but I feel that if followed to its conclusion, your line of thinking leads to a Christianity that is indistinguishable from other faiths.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Joao,
As a preliminary issue, thanks for continuing to engage in this conversation.
With respect to the atonement, I think that there is a lot of meaning and mystery to it. I just react strongly to the penal substitution theory and the teaching that, but for Christ’s substitutionary atonement and the believer’s acceptance of it, God’s wrath demands that any sin, however finite, be punished with an eternal hell from which there is no rest, day or night.
I really like a lot of what I recently read on http://sharktacos.com/God/cross_intro.shtml. I need to read it a few more times to fully absorb it all. The author purports to stay true to Scripture while disputing the Satisfaction Doctrine. I’m somewhat doubtful that it is possible to construct such a theology while remaining fully faithful to an inerrantist view of Scripture. But it doesn’t matter all that much to me (’cause I’m no longer an inerrantist).
But back to your questions.
Jesus’s suffering most certainly wasn’t an accident. He could have called 10,000 angels to his defense. He willingly laid down His life for us — identifying with the most painful of human experiences. That God would identify with Man that way because of His love — not because some warped view of divine justice required it — is deeply moving.
That God would allow Man to sacrifice Him — without knowing it — to their false and harsh concept of God — their concept of a God that demanded sacrifice, even death, for sins like adultery and blasphemy — is convicting.
Man, thinking that they were honoring God and vindicating His holiness by putting Jesus to death, was in fact killing God.
For generations, men have killed and persecuted their neighbors in the name of God, on the premise that they were defending God’s truth, holiness, and righteousness.
But in fact, such actions toward fellow men are tantamount to killing God.
By dying on the Cross, Jesus shows us the horror of mankind’s self-righteousness. Man crucified God out of self-righteousness, out of a misplaced confidence that in persecuting his neighbor, he was carrying out God’s law.
I don’t think this line of thinking would make Christianity indistinguishable from other faiths. It is a line of thinking that fully affirms both the deity and the humanity of Jesus; the Incarnation; His death; and His Resurrection. That’s still a very distinctive faith.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Ken, thanks for this. You are so right that we are often the Pharisees of our own time. I encourage you and your readers to take a look through the Gospels, as I did a year or so ago, looking specifically at to whom, and under what circumstances, Jesus directed the words he had to say about hell. I think you’ll agree with my finding that the hellfire he did preach was far more directed at the scribes and pharisees, than ever at the “unsaved.” I elaborate on this here (a series of four posts),if you want more.
Eric, while I know I would not land exactly where you do in all your issues (I still have some problems with affirming homosexuality in a Christian context), I want to strongly affirm the tenor of your questions and explorations. I, too, come out at a Christus Victor view rather than a Penal-Substitutionary one. But it has occurred to me recently that an understanding of the war between God and the Powers arrayed against him helps us to understand Jesus’ (non-penal) substitutionary death in an enriched way. It is the Powers who demanded blood, more than just Pharisaical men, and definitely NOT YHWH. In his incarnation and death, Jesus submitted himself to the Powers’ greatest weapon–death–so that he could vanquish it and them in his resurrection. More detail on that here.
And Joao, perhaps the question of love-vs-standards, if I may caricature it, should really be reframed as “which of our King’s commands do you have the toughest time with? Then work on those.” I scare myself as I type those words, but I think there’s some truth in them. . .
April 24th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Eric
I think that there are things of God that will offend our sensibilities and that instead of simply choosing to cast them out as wrong, maybe it would behoove us to wrestle with them.
I very much believe in the substitutionary aspect of Jesus’ death. There are plenty of biblical references to its necessity, including the pretty strong reaction Jesus had towards Peter when he implied that perhaps Jesus did not have to go to the cross.
We deserve death not because of little sins or great sins. The issue is not whether we lied or killed someone. The issue is the fact that we are by our very nature, God’s enemies. The issue is that God was not kidding when he warned that if we disobeyed Him in the garden, we would surely die.
We are hopelessly lost and all deserve eternal separation from God by our very nature.
If you doubt that, look at history, you or I are no better than Hitler or Stalin on a fundamental level, compared to God’s perfection and it is our fault.
So God’s substitutionary death on the cross is essential, needed and planned from His love for us despite ourselves.
To deny that I think is to cheapen Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
I agree that mankind is self righteous and much evil has been perpetrated by religious folk, but there are other sins mankind is guilty of besides self righteousness.
And Jesus’s sacrifice covers all of them, the only thing us sinners need to do is to accept our guilt and accept His offer of cleansing.
It’s simple, anyone can understand it, but it required humility on our part. I strongly believe if this is ignored, much of the heart of Christianity is gone.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Dan,
Thank you much for your post. Reading your blog — particularly your thoughtful posts on Scriptural Inspiration — made my day. I’ve been in a spiritual wilderness for years, so I’m deeply grateful to find this and other blogs so I don’t have to struggle with these theological issues alone.
Joao, thanks for your post too. There’s a lot to unpack there too. I don’t deny human depravity. 100+ years ago, liberals were supremely optimistic about the goodness of man and mankind’s inevitable progress toward a millenial-like future. WWI, WWII, and many murderous tyrannical regimes crushed that optimism.
We are reminded by history and news reports every day of how depraved we are capable of becoming. A person is foolish to think himself too good to cause a great harm.
Personally, I want there to be a hell for people like Hitler, Stalin, and others who have killed and tormented so many.
My problem is not with the abstraction that sin separates us from God, or the abstraction — posed by some Christian philosophers — that hell is, at its essence, nothing more than separation from God.
What I recoil at is the passages emphasizing endless and unimaginably intense conscious torment. And if one objects that this is not the mainstream view of Evangelicalism, take a look at the Wikipedia entry on Hell in Christian Beliefs: “Traditionally, the majority of Protestants have held that hell will be a place of unending conscious torment, both physical and spiritual….”
Joao, it’s not hard to say what you said: “We are hopelessly lost and all deserve eternal separation from God by our very nature.”
But can you say this: “We all deserve to spend an eternity of conscious, unimaginably extreme torment in hell”?
I noticed that you didn’t express it that way. But many evangelical statements of faith do express it that way, more or less.
My problem with penal substitution is that it is premised on the belief that death and hell were required to appease a wrathful God.
Do you think that the view of Atonement expressed by Dan would “cheapen Jesus’ sacrifice for us”? For me, that view doesn’t cheapen anything, but rather makes sense of Christ’s suffering and death.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Here, I want to address Dan’s very brief allusion to the issue of homosexuality, for I think it relates to the overall topic of “empathy.”
For years I have been deeply uncomfortable with the Christian response to homosexuality. As a teenager, I read and, for a short while, believed the rants from the American Family Association and other “Christian” organizations that (1) no one is inherently predisposed toward homosexuality, (2) homosexuals are utterly depraved because they reportedly have numerous partners simultaneously and are basically hypersexual, and (3) homosexualiy will inevitably lead to pedophilia and — or so some Bible narratives suggest — a Sodomite systematic-rape-of-everybody culture.
Since that time I have come to know some homosexuals and lesbians and — surprise, surprise — they haven’t been the monsters AFA and others made them out to be.
Thank God I never had those dispositions, because if I had had them, I am 100% certain that I would have taken my life. I can’t help but wonder how many people struggling with homosexuality have — after reading the Romans 1 passage and repeated failed attempts to change their orientation — given up, concluded that they were depraved beyond hope, and just taken their lives. (After all, there’s that other passage about if your hand offends you, cut it off. Only here, it’s in your head.) I also wonder how many fundamentalist parents have driven their children to suicide. Finally, I wonder how much these victim’s Christian family members and church friends cared when the victim took their life.
If there is any witness to man’s utter depravity, I find it revealed most in man’s tendency to demonize and falsely judge others, to think the worst of others, while falsely assuming the best of their own heart’s intentions. (Interesting, Jesus seemed to have the same perspective too, given His denunciations of the Pharisees).
I think thoughtful evangelicals should adopt the following approach to the issue of homosexuality:
1. We don’t know — and the Bible doesn’t tell us — all there is to know about homosexuality.
2. If there is a reasonable doubt about a matter — and I think there is room for a Christian to have reasonable doubt about whether homosexuality is depraved — then refrain from judgment. Let God sort out these unknowns. Yes, choose for yourself to abstain from homosexuality, but don’t judge someone with that orientiation — after all, you never had to bear that cross. (As far as I am concerned, giving homosexuals the benefit of the doubt also means giving them a wide spectrum of civil rights, including state-recognized marriage, while at the same time protecting the rights of churches, pastors, wedding photographers, DJ’s and others to refrain on religious grounds from participating in those ceremonies).
3. One thing we can be sure of is the command to love our neighbors — including our homosexual neighbors — as ourselves. Empathize with them. Put yourself in their shoes. See them as eternally significant beings made in the image of God, and don’t let that love be diminished by their sexuality.
With #2 I am rejecting the popular refrain of “judge the sin, not the sinner.” For I don’t think Christians should presume that it is, in every imaginable circumstance, sin.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Sorry for a 3rd post in a row, but it turns out my concern about homosexuals committing suicide is no idle speculation.
In Dec. 2008, the Journal of Pediatrics published an article about it — and the results are deeply troubling. Here’s a link to the abstract: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/123/1/346. I wish the whole article were free.
Fellow christians, I have two questions:
1) Do you care?
2) Is defending our notions of truth worth the cost?
April 25th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Eric C.
I struggled with homosexuality for 13 years of my life, seven of those years fully embracing a gay identity. When I was a gay man I had no great love for Christians. They were the people who were the most demanding of me as a server and they left the worst tips. In the gay community I heard that Christians hated us and that I was destined to be gay the rest of my life.
A waitress I worked with showed great empathy to me and loved me regardless of my sinful life (and I’m not necessarily talking about my homosexuality here). She loved me and shared her faith in a non-judgmental way. She wasn’t like the people I had been warned about. I ended up coming to Christ within a short span of time. Rosie had NEVER mentioned my homosexuality as an issue related to my salvation.
The months following my salvation experience were times of deep examination of my heart and of the scriptures. I never heard one sermon about homosexuality during that time. When I read Romans 1 I didn’t feel like killing myself at all. I was challenged, but not suicidal.
It was while reading 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 that I had my epiphany. This scripture listed many of the sins I struggled with (lying, being a drunkard, homosexuality). I thought to myself “Hmmm, that’s not so good for me”. But then I continued in the scripture and it said “such WERE some of you”. “Were”! Past tense! And I knew that there were former homosexuals in Corinth and hope came into my heart.
Now I will confess that the road has been difficult and painful, but it has also been joyous and beautiful beyond description. I wouldn’t trade my life or my former struggles for anything.
So empathy changed my life!
April 25th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
What a profound post and conversation! Eric, I am contemplating this:
“If there is any witness to man’s utter depravity, I find it revealed most in man’s tendency to demonize and falsely judge others, to think the worst of others, while falsely assuming the best of their own heart’s intentions.”
Yes, yes, and YES! It’s internalizing the whisper of the snake, isn’t it? “Did God really say…?” We not only demonize and falsely judge others, when we do so, we also are thinking the worst of GOD. This is the very essence of blasphemy. We set ourselves up to be “like God, knowing good and evil” when we can know and be absolutely nothing apart from Him.
April 26th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Eric,
Lots to think about. We may be in more agreement than it seems. Maybe word usage, semantics and context makes the difference in our thoughts seem larger than it is.
One example. I think you insinuated you prefer the separation from God description of hell over the torment forever idea.
I believe that actual separation from God equals torment forever, no better than the torture and fire you are uncomfortable with.
Maybe the punishment part of hell is not so much applied by an angry God, but is a result of His absence.
Happylad, thanks so much for your vulnerability. I very much struggle with the homossexuality issue because a good friend of mine, one who was key in my early Christian development, struggled with homossexuality and now has delved into the lifestyle.
So it is certainly true that if an issue affects you close to home, it becomes more difficult to just dismiss it or simply condemn it callously.
I think the key (not that I practice it well), is to walk that balance of loving the sinner, yet rejecting the sin. I know…this phrase is so maligned this day and age, but if you unpack it, it is pretty well descriptive of how Jesus acted. He openly accepted and loved the sinners around Him and did not constantly bash whatever sin they struggled with. I think most of the time, the phrase he used after healing or showing kindness to a person, no matter the sin, was: go and sin no more.
So maybe we can take this as an example to love the people God puts in out path, no matter their struggles, and yet, not also embrace their sin. But putting the greater effort in loving them as they are, not necessarily obsessing on their sin.
Lord knows, I am glad the people who love me don’t constantly harp on my sins.
April 26th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Dan, you said:
And Joao, perhaps the question of love-vs-standards, if I may caricature it, should really be reframed as “which of our King’s commands do you have the toughest time with? Then work on those.” I scare myself as I type those words, but I think there’s some truth in them. . .
Pardon my ignorance, but I am fuzzy as to the connection you are making.
April 27th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for all the responses. Very interesting discussion.
On the topic of “Just how much doctrinal right thinking does the Lord require of you,” I found John Calvin’s perspective to be interesting:
http://www.evangelicaloutreach.org/ashes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus
This is new to me. I didn’t previously know this piece of Reformation history. Hurrah for Wikipedia.