Third Wave Theopoetics: Toward a Definition

16 October 2011

The word theopoetics has been in use since the late 60s or early 70s, apparently.  It seems it was originally coined by Stanley Romaine Hopper as part of a scholarly conversation, then independently coined a second time by Catherine Keller in the early 2000s to describe her own work.  As I presently understand them, these two uses are distinct streams of thought, but with a certain amount of overlap.  I’m still reading up, so I don’t know much about the previous uses yet.

The word was independently coined a third time (that I know of) last Sunday by me, to describe a conversation I was having with Jim and Michele.  It occurred to me at the time that it was a fairly obvious coinage, so I googled it and discovered the above history.  It’s probably been coined independently dozens of times over the years, but these are the ones I’m aware of.

Theopoetics is a wonderfully apt descriptor for a project I’m part of — a project quite unrelated to the two previous uses.  It’s too good to give up, so I’m keeping it, but in order to be fair to the other communities that are also using theopoetics to describe what they’re doing, I’m going to use the term third wave theopoetics.  Of course, I will also invest some effort in description and definition over the next little while.  I’ll begin by giving the rationale behind the coinage, then a brief definition of the project as I see it.  In later posts, I hope to fill in some of the gaps by articulating some guiding principles and looking at the project through a series of different lenses.

Why theopoetics rather than theology?  The -ology suffix generally refers to giving an orderly account of the thing to which it is attached.  Thus, geology, the study of Earth (i.e., rocks), zoology, the study of animal life, climatology, the study of climates and how they change, anthropology, the study of human societies.

A poetics, by contrast, is typically a treatise on poetry or aesthetics.  Rigor is not by any means absent from a good poetics, but it’s understood that the practice of poetics depends heavily on seasoned judgment and a trained and practiced eye and ear.  An -ology is a science; a poetics is an art and a craft.  It simply isn’t “objective” in the way that biology is.

Theology, in very simplistic terms, is the -ology, the giving of an orderly account, of God and the things related to him.  So far, so good, but to modern people, just the use of the -ology suffix causes us to catch a whiff of bunsen burners, test tubes, and fourth-grade frog dissections.  It’s impossible to use -ology without causing the odor of science to cling to the field.

On the other hand, -poetics carries none of those connotations.

Now some folks really like the scientific connotations, and want to practice their studies of divinity in such a way as to imitate the rigor of the chemistry lab.  They can speak for their own motivations, but I was once one of them, and I can certainly speak for myself.  For me, the attraction of dressing theology in the trappings of empirical science was the idolatrous regard our society attaches to all things “objective” and “scientific.”  I loved the praise of men rather than the praise of God, and God rewarded my sterility of spirit with a sterility of intellect and worship to match.  In His mercy, He also led me in due time to repent.  This to say that I’ve seen the case for “scientific” theology, and I’m not impressed with it.  I am even less impressed with its results: barren theology leads to barren living.

No, the New Testament itself teaches us clearly that if we want to understand what God says to men, we have to have eyes to see and ears to hear.  This is not an objective enterprise; it matters if the one looking and listening loves or hates God, if he is experienced or a novice, if he knows the One he’s listening to, or not.  It’s a relationship, and like all relationships, it’s an art and a craft.

With that preface, I’d like to define what I mean by (third wave) theopoetics.  Theopoetics is the appreciation of — no, the embodied luxuriating in — God’s words and works as art.  The same God wrote the Bible as spoke the world, so theopoetics extends from the exegesis of Paul’s use  of kosmos to the dancing of taste buds at breakfast this morning.

You could say that this is a supplement to theology.  That would be true, in some sense.  But I mean it as a rebuke for theology’s tin ear, glass eye, and wooden leg, a corrective to too many theologians’ bean-counting ways.

The artfully written Bible and the artfully spoken world are both revelation and rhetoric.  God communicates by feasting our senses, by engaging the whole man, the dust and the breath.  Theopoetics is about being God’s image, living as His likeness, and therefore will not advance itself by writing laboriously footnoted papers.  The medium is the message.

Away with the temptation to write scholarly papers!  Let no man say when he is tempted to write a scholarly paper, “I am tempted by God,” for God is not tempted to write scholarly papers, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.  If God ever inspired a scholarly paper, He had the mercy not to inflict it on His people in Scripture; let us follow His good example.  Let the scholarly paper’s laboriously footnoted pages be few and let another medium take its office.  Let there be stories, songs, poems, vignettes, parables, sculptures, tapestries.  Let there be dances!  Let there be great rigor, but let it be the rigor of Miriam dancing well and playing the timbrel in time, the rigor of David’s perfect songs, the rigor of Solomon’s fitly spoken proverbs and Jesus’ apt parables, well-driven nails given by one Shepherd.

Let us learn the lessons of the Tabernacle by sculpting one, even a miniature one, and the more detail and prayer goes into it, the better.  Let the plagues be painted on murals, complete with the crushed heads of the Egyptian gods.  Let dances be choreographed in honor of the Red Sea crossing.  Let beer be brewed in honor of Jael slaying Sisera.  Let bread be baked in honor of the feeding of the five thousand — and let it be given to the poor and homeless in the name of Jesus.  Let rattlesnakes be barbecued in honor of Moses’ bronze serpent (we can eat off St. Peter’s sheet; why not?)  Let vibrant old liturgies be revived and adapted in honor of the resurrection of the Son of God.  Let our grasp of the nature and character of God be embodied to the hilt — something we can eat, drink, watch, touch, feel, smell.

And yes, hear.

But let us cease to worry about what those with no ears to hear will say.  They will want proof in the form of footnotes and syllogisms; we will simply live the proof before them, and wait for God to open their ears and remove the scales from their eyes.  “To him who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance.”

God grant that all His people have eyes to see and ears to hear the glory of the Father, expressed in time and space by the Body of the Son through the indwelling power of the Spirit.  Amen.

7 Comments | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Theopoetic Reflection: The Body in the World

9 October 2011

Before someone else does the requisite Google search: yes, I’m aware that “theopoetics” is a pre-existing term, and as a field of endeavor has operated almost exclusively in ways that aren’t particularly amenable to conservatives.  I just discovered that fact this morning, after independently coining the term to describe a conversation I was having.  I mean it maybe a bit differently from the way it’s been meant up to this point, and I’m comfortable with that.  What, exactly, I mean may be the subject for a future post.  For now, the reflection itself, with many thanks to Jim and Michele for their part in shaping it.

The wicked devour God’s people as men eat bread.

From Jeremiah, we learn that God’s word is not just something that we should listen to and obey; it’s also something we should eat, and that gives us joy.

From John, we learn that Jesus is the Word made flesh.  He gathers great crowds, miraculously feeds them bread, and then tells them the next day that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no part with Him.  Many follow Him no more, and the ones that do continue to follow Him don’t really understand it either.

Later, He gathers those faithful few to the Table and gives them bread and wine: “This is My body which is given for you….This is the new covenant in My blood which is poured out for you.”  We who eat Christ’s body are what we eat: Christ’s Body.

The world hates us, because it hated Him, and as the world devoured our Savior, nailing Him to a cross, so the world will devour us as men eat bread.  In this way, the world will once again play into God’s hands and be saved in spite of itself, because those who sow in tears will reap in joy, because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, because in God’s plan, death is the precursor to glorious resurrection — for the one who dies, and often for the one’s he’s dying for as well.

In a lesser way, this plays out in the life of the Church itself, every time you forgive someone, every time you lay down your life for someone.  We die for them, that they might live, and in dying, we are (re)born to yet more abundant eternal life.  The more life we have, the more we can lay down, and the more we can lay down, the greater the resurrection, in an ever-growing upward spiral of eternal life.  Or in the language of Aslan: “Further up, and further in!”

3 Comments | Meditations, Physicality, Theopoetics | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Maginot Lines

2 October 2011

At the close of The Great War, the French were determined never again to suffer an invasion from Germany.  To that end, they constructed a massive line of fortifications, naming it after then-minister of war, Andre Maginot.  It’s not necessarily a bad strategy.  Worked pretty well for China, once upon a time.  It was state-of-the-art all the way — cafeterias for the troops, air conditioning, underground railways to connect different fortifications, and a vast number of blockhouses, turrets, shelters and observation posts bristling with the latest in machine guns, grenade launchers, and artillery.  The Maginot Line would, in fact, have been very difficult to breach…

…so the Germans invaded the Low Countries instead, and then came down into France from the north, sweeping the entire country in days and completely avoiding the irrelevant fortresses of the Maginot Line.

***

We are God’s people in exile.  “Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.”  Despite the plain biblical revelation on this point, we persist in investing ourselves in the permanence of our Christian institutions–governments, cathedrals, seminaries, churches, mission agencies, charities and so on.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t build these things.  When the governors are Christians, they certainly ought to build a Christian government.  When the populace will furnish and fill a cathedral, they should build one.  When the church needs trained men and is incapable of training them as it ought to do, someone certainly ought to start a seminary.  When single churches can’t undertake the expense of funding a pioneering missionary on the other side of the world, a mission agency is a good idea.

But we can’t fool ourselves that we’re building something permanent with these structures.  The God-fearing governments of Christendom have given way to pagan states that acknowledge no god but themselves.  The great cathedrals, more often than not, stand empty, as do many of our large church buildings.  Most seminaries have managed to lose their effectiveness, often with in matter of a few generations.  Spirit-led mission efforts ossify and become self-serving bureaucracies that Spirit-led missionaries have to work around in order to fulfill the Great Commission.

All is mist, as the wise Preacher once said.

Having forgotten what it’s like to do without these things, we build new Christian political movements, new church buildings, new seminaries, new mission agencies.  Well-meaning Christian people scrimp and save and sacrifice to pour massive amounts of resources into these new institutions, constructed on the same principles as the old ones, and vulnerable to the same failings in the end.  History has not been kind to this strategy, but we have forgotten our earlier history, and don’t know what else to do.  Which is to say that when the enemy outflanks one Maginot Line, we build another.  And another.  And another.  The really awful part?  We have no continuing city to defend with all these fixed fortifications.

To everything there is a season, and this is not the season for building fortifications.  Defending Jerusalem is a nice thought, but unless the Lord guards the city, the watchmen watch in vain, and if you’re at Jeremiah’s point in the story rather than Hezekiah’s, the Lord isn’t interested in guard duty.  Christendom 1.0 was glorious, but in God’s providence it’s crumbling, and while Christendom 2.0 is rising, it will be a long time before we see more than foundations — far, far longer than I’ll live.  It’s Jeremiah time, and those who can’t see this harsh providence for what it is will die defending walls that can no longer even support their own weight, let alone protect anyone.

So where does that leave us?  It’s an interesting question.  We may have to find out as we go.

2 Comments | Chicken Bones, Ecclesiology, Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Reading John 17:3

14 August 2011

In the ongoing discussion of 3D Theology, our esteemed opponents have taken significant exception to the way we are using John 17:3.  The various objections mostly have to do with how our reading of the verse conflicts with this theological formulation or that one, and are being dealt with in the venues where they were made.   To my eye, one particular point of discussion has been notably absent: discussion of the immediate context.  I’d like to remedy that lack today.

In a sense, this discussion needs to start in 1:1 — and some of the issues that will come up in the ensuing discussion can probably only be resolved that way — but for today, let’s just work through the beginning of this prayer.

  1. Jesus begins by saying that the hour has come, and then makes His request:
  2. He asks the Father to glorify Him.
  3. The purpose for the Father glorifying Him is so that He can, in turn, glorify the Father.
  4. He will glorify the Father because the Father has given Him power over everyone.
  5. The purpose for the Father giving Him power over everyone is in order that Jesus give eternal life to all those the Father has given him.
  6. And what is this eternal life?  It is to know the Father, the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ whom the Father sent.
  7. Jesus says He has, in fact, glorified the Father, and finished the work the Father gave Him to do.
  8. On that basis, He asks the Father to return to Him the glory He had before the world existed.

It all hangs together nicely, doesn’t it?  (For those of you who want to talk Greek, some comments are already online here .)

This is to say that eternal life is not a thing.  It is not a widget that Jesus puts in your pocket and then you walk away.  It is not a ticket stashed at the Will Call window by the pearly gates.

Eternal life is knowing the Father, and Jesus Christ His Son.  Jesus is the Life (14:6); the Father has life in Himself and has granted to the Son to have life in Himself (5:26).  Eternal life is ongoing relationship with the One who is Life.  Because He is infinitely faithful and He loves you, if you want a relationship with Him, you’ll have one.  He guarantees it.

Over time, eternal life looks like this:  first, you don’t have it at all; you’re dead in your trespasses and sins.  Then you believe, and you do have it.  Then, as you grow, you have more of it, until you have an abundant life (10:10), and the living water Jesus gave you becomes a fountain of life to those around you (4:14, 7:38).  Stop believing, like Thomas did (20:27), and you’re still a part of the family (1:12-13).  You’re born again; you can’t get un-born (10:28-29).  Eternal life is, well, eternal.  But like Thomas, you can lose a blessing (20:29), and of course you can fail to be a blessing to others.

Simple as that.  God is a Person–know Him.

6 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Understanding Works

7 August 2011

We are often fond of saying that justification is a gift, and sanctification is a lot of work, which is true in one way.  But what we often mean by it is that we do nothing in justification, and then sanctification is quid pro quo all the way.  That needs a rethink.

In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul says that salvation — by which he means being made alive with Christ, raised with Christ, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places — is not of works, lest anyone should boast.  Boasting is excluded by God’s grace.

Thing is, this is also true of sanctification, is it not?  We don’t buy our way into spiritual blessing in this life any more than we buy our way into the family to start with.  Everything we have  — everything — is given by God.  “What do you have, that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

Why, indeed.

God blesses us in sanctification, to be sure, but it’s not a quid pro quo type of transaction, any more than justification is.  Sanctification is hard — very hard, at times.  But it’s hard because we’re sinners, and it runs counter to our nature to cooperate with God instead of rebelling against Him.  God is seeking to give us His blessings, to pour out far more than we can imagine, but there are certain relational blessings He simply can’t give us without our cooperation. You can give a rebellious 2-year-old a hug whether he wants it or not, but you can’t give him the experience of a good hug unless he’s willing to receive it.  If he fights you, you may succeed in getting your arms around him and squeezing, but relationally speaking, it’s hardly the same experience, is it?

Sanctification is, above all, a relationship with the living God.  Like all good relationships, it requires that we be willing to receive the other person.

But is this so different from justification?  As long as a person insists on working, on taking his destiny into his own hands, on keeping Jesus out of the picture, then he cannot be born again.  “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called sons of God….”

The difference is in scope more than in kind.  But we ought to expect nothing else: “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?”

7 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Eternal Life is a Dimmer Switch

31 July 2011

When we begin to talk about eternal life (or for short, “life”), we often adopt binary language — you got it or you don’t, end of story.  Then, as a separate issue, we discuss the matter of sanctification. There is, of course, a reason for this.  In the End, there are only two places to be, and two sorts of people to be in them.  Those who have life will live on the New Earth, where God will dwell with His People, and those who have chosen death will die in the Lake of Fire, eternally quarantined away from the God they so despised.  Among the folks who live on the New Earth, some of them will be spiritual giants like Deborah or Peter, men and women who receive great reward.  Others will be…how to put it?…largely spiritual failures.  People who, like Samson, might have shown a great deal of early promise, but frittered it away.  There is a sense in which these are separate issues, the one decided in an instant of faith and the other worked out over the course of a person’s whole life.

In deference to that separateness, many folks will drop “eternal life” language entirely when they start talking about sanctification.  Growing up, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone use “eternal life” language in connection with walking with God: “life” was always about justification, never sanctification.

This gets into your hermeneutics, and you begin to read any passage that discusses “eternal life” or “life” as if it were talking strictly about the new birth, which is a serious problem.

But a growing number of commentators have begun to realize that Scripture doesn’t quite speak in that way.  In many passages, eternal life isn’t something you get when you die; it’s something you have now (e.g., John 5:24).  So there is a growing desire to respond to those passages, but at the same time a great fear of impairing justification by faith alone by confusing justification and sanctification, and the result is an odd blend.  These folks discuss the new birth in terms of having eternal life, and then discuss sanctification/growth in terms of experiencing eternal life.

This is a quantum leap forward from where we were, and we should applaud it.  However, it doesn’t quite go far enough to really be following the way Scripture speaks of the issues.

In brief, it’s not enough to talk about having/not having eternal life, and then, separately, experiencing eternal life.  That’s helpful, but it’s not the way the Bible talks.  The Bible talks about not having life, then having it, and then having more life (e.g., John 10:10).

Here’s the difference.  The “having/not having vs. experiencing” model is like a conventional light switch and a blindfold.  The light is either on or off, but how much you experience the light depends on something totally separate — the blindfold.  Maybe it’s on good and tight, and you can’t see a thing, even though the light is on.  Maybe it’s slipped upward just enough that you can see down along the sides of your nose.  Maybe it’s gone cockeyed, and you can see out of one eye, but not the other…and so on.  The light being on is one concern; the blindfold is another, entirely separate set of concerns.

The “not having/having/having more” model is like your basic dimmer dial switch like you might find in a suburban dining room.  Turn the dial just a little, and you’ll feel the click as the switch goes from ‘off’ to ‘on.’  But there’s just a trickle of current flowing; you can barely see the light.  Keep turning the dial in the same direction, and the flow increases, the light gets progressively brighter.  On and off are still distinguishable states, but it’s all on one continuum, not two totally separate issues.

Jesus came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.  He gives us a gift in the new birth, and sanctification is, in this sense, a distinguishable, but not separate, affair.  It’s getting more of what you got to start with.

5 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union, Telos of the Gift | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Knocking the Bottom out of the Swimming Crib

24 July 2011

During the summer, people generally prefer to swim outside.  Although it is common to swim in pools these days, old-school swimming facilities usually depended on natural water features: ponds, rivers, and oceans.  An ideal natural swimming location would have clean water, a gradually sloping, sandy bottom, and very little current.  Such places existed, of course, but they weren’t as common as one might hope.  In response, waterfront staff developed a variety of work-arounds to allow swimmers to safely use the water in the absence of perfect conditions.

In situations where the water was very deep, or the current too fast-moving, one of those work-arounds was called a swimming crib.  The crib was basically a very large wooden crate, ballasted and tethered to function sort of like a ‘swimming pool’, immersed in the lake or river.  (You can see an example here.)  One of the most basic uses for a crib was to provide a shallow area for beginners to swim in water that was naturally very deep.  The lake bottom could be thirty feet down, but a 3-foot crib provided an artificial ‘shallow end.’

***

One typical take on eternal life is that it’s “living forever with God” — a simplification that I have certainly been guilty of, myself.  The focus is revivalistic, focused on a heaven-or-hell afterlife.  A person who ‘has eternal life’ is ‘saved,’ which means that he’s going to go to heaven when he dies…and that’s pretty much it.

Given that definition, the Gospel of John, which is very, very focused on eternal life, takes on the appearance of being all about whether people go to heaven or hell.  The purpose of the book, “that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His name” is understood to be about taking people who were going to hell and making it so they’re going to heaven…and that’s pretty much it.

This is the theological equivalent of building a 3-foot swimming crib in some very deep, very fast-moving water.  Problem is, what we’re protecting people from, in this instance, is God.

***

Eternal life has to be “living forever” — otherwise, as Zane Hodges aptly observed, “eternal life” isn’t a very good name for it — but is that all we need to say about it?  Jesus didn’t think so.  “And this is eternal life,” Jesus prayed to His Father, “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”

Eternal life, according to Jesus, is knowing God.  How?  Through Jesus, who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  That’s inexhaustible.  It’s far, far deeper than “going to heaven when you die.”  And while, of course, lip service is paid to this notion, in fact it is largely ignored.  We keep everybody in the 3-food swimming crib of going to heaven, when they could be diving deep into relationship with God Himself.

The solution?  We need to knock the bottom out of the crib.  This will undoubtedly be the occasion for much whining, but we have no right to speak in a way that stands between people and a living relationship with God.

35 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union, The Free Grace Food Fight | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Yahweh Laughs

4 July 2011

“The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us.”  The text is Isaiah 33:22, and it is often taken by David Barton types as indication of the biblical inspiration for our three branches of government.  Be that as it may, let’s not overlook the obvious: the Lord, and not the will of the people, is each of these three things.

God would have spared Sodom for 10 righteous men, but surely there were many times that in Habakkuk’s Judah, and they were carried away into Babylon.  Greater light calls for greater accountability.  Our fathers who founded this country were overwhelmingly orthodox, trinitarian Christians.  They possessed the Scriptures and a wealth of the knowledge of God.  Much has been given us, and much will be required of us.

Yet we have rejected the Lord.  The People are our Judge, The People are our Lawgiver, The People are our King, and therefore it is up to The People to save us — and The People, quite frankly, are not up to the job.

A government of the people, by the people, for the people, cannot but perish from the earth.  Only a nation intent on serving Christ and bringing its honor and glory into the New Jerusalem — only a nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.  We have not kissed the Son; how can we delude ourselves that He is pleased with us?  How can we expect that He will save us?

But then, being saved by Him would mean having to recognize Him as Judge, Lawgiver, and King, and at that price, we don’t want Him to save us.  And He won’t.  If we insist on saving ourselves, He will let us.  And then, when we take counsel together to break His bonds in pieces and cast away His cords from us, He will laugh, and His derision will ring from sea to shining sea.

And we who are made in His image and charged with reflecting His likeness — we should not run about like Chicken Little, squalling that the sky is falling.  No, God laughs, and we should laugh with Him.

***

But perhaps we can hope for better.  Perhaps, if God is incredibly gracious, He will grant us repentance, and we will one day have nine Supreme Court justices who publicly acknowledge God as the Judge of the nation, a President who openly announces that Jesus Christ is King of America, and the best a President can hope for is to humbly serve as His vassal.  Perhaps we will have senators and congressmen who know and proclaim that God is the Lawgiver.  Perhaps we will have these things because God has given us a heart to insist on them.

I am not talking about some small, politically active evangelical cabal taking over Washington.  That would at best have a temporary good effect, and at worst lead to the Republic of Gilead.

No, I am talking about a reformation in our churches, so that believers will be one, shining forth the glory of the risen Christ so that our neighbors will see us and believe the gospel.  A reformation that leads to believers being commissioned and released for Spirit-led, loving ministry in their communities.  A reformation that loves our whole nation into the Kingdom, a neighborhood at a time.

It is in this way, and in no other way, that our nation can be saved.

***

On this day, of all days, let us not be puffed up with vainglory about how proud we are to be Americans.  (Grateful, sure.  Proud?  Maybe not the best idea.)  Let us not make delusional speeches about how wonderful we all are.  He who exalts himself will be humbled.

Rather, let us confess the sins of our people, that His grace might soon lift them all into the light.  Let us seek the kindness and forbearance of God for our people, because He promises that those who humble themselves will be exalted.

America!  America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

2 Comments | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Sins Corporate and Individual

19 June 2011

Consider Daniel 9, the prayer of the just man Daniel. Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait.

Did you notice that Daniel identifies fully with his people?  “We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His laws,” he says — although Daniel himself did, in fact, keep them.  “We have not made our prayer before the Lord our God” — although Daniel did so daily, even at risk of his life.  “Neither have we heeded your servants the prophets,” he says — although he himself was a close student of the prophets, especially Jeremiah.

How can Daniel say these things?  He can say them because “we” is a real category to God.  If the corporate body of which you are a part is mired in sin, you cannot simply say, “But I had nothing to do with that.”  No one knew this better than Daniel and the other righteous exiles.

Habakkuk’s Judah was wicked and required harsh judgment, and that was Daniel’s native land; the men of Judah in Habakkuk’s day were Daniel’s people.  God promised judgment, and Habakkuk passes on that promise. However, there were also just men living in Judah, just men who would suffer with the unjust when the judgment came.  Habakkuk also passes on God’s promise to them: “The just shall live by faith.”  Daniel suffered this judgment, as did his three friends.  They were ripped from their homes as young men, dragged into captivity, and destined to die in exile.  Yet they lived through peril after peril by their faith, as God had promised.

We are Christians.  We are required to think of corporate and individual, and the relationship between the two, the way God thinks of them.  As in Daniel’s case, Scripture shows us time after time that being part of a sinning corporate entity has consequences that a righteous individual cannot dodge, and the righteous thing to do is own the sins of one’s own people.  Simply saying “But I didn’t participate” – even if it’s true – doesn’t mean that “we” didn’t do it.  You can’t extract yourself so easily, which is to say that your people are your people.

What really brought this home to me was several years of pastoral leadership.  It’s one thing to be part of a group; even that is tougher to get out of than we think.  But it’s another thing altogether to be responsible for that group’s spiritual well-being as the one who gives account for their souls.  You can’t just leave because it turns out the sheep really need a shepherd — what are you there for, anyway?

***

Some commands can only be kept corporately.  If there’s a particular way to observe the Lord’s Table, for example, you can only keep it with other people – because the Lord’s Table is something we do together. A group can either keep those commands, or it can disobey them.

If you find yourself part of a group that is disobeying a corporate command, obeying the command individually is often not an option, and even if you can, you remain part of a group that is breaking it.  Like Daniel.  What ought you to do?

Like Daniel, you should walk with God.  Like Daniel, you should fulfill God’s will in those things that are up to you.  And like Daniel, you should pray, “We have sinned” without any riders, or addenda, or excuses.  These people are your people; their sins are your sins, and you can’t separate yourself from those sins simply by disapproving.  You may, like Daniel, find yourself suffering the corporate lack of blessing – or even punishment – as a result of corporate disobedience.  But like Daniel, you can trust God to watch out for you through the trial.

Maybe, if God is kind to your people, you’ll be given a chance to call them to repentance.  Maybe not.  Sometimes it’s not your job; God will raise up someone else.  There were many in Israel who walked with God in the days of Jeremiah, but only one was called to, well, be Jeremiah.  Other times, the season for repentance is past, and God is moving in a different fashion, as He was when He called Isaiah.  Many times, there is nothing you can do but hunker down and wait, trusting in the faithfulness of God.

Regarding such times, I once heard an experienced pastor advise praying in this way: “Lord this is sin.  It is wrong.  Please bless it; the only alternatives available right now are far worse.”

Amen.

3 Comments | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Driving Nails with a Moonstone

12 June 2011

I have a moonstone sitting on my desk.  It’s an ordinary-looking hunk of milky-white rock, smaller than a quarter, and a little investigation confirms the ordinariness of it.  Moonstone is feldspar, which is arguably the commonest rock on the face of the earth.  Maybe 60% of the earth’s crust is feldspar.  Even the name indicates its commonness: it’s from the German feld (field) and spath (rock without ore) — in other words, “worthless field rock.”

Which is exactly what it looks like…unless the light hits it just right.  As I sit at my desk, the moonstone is sitting at just the right angle so that the light from the window makes one end of it glow a brilliant blue.  If I hold it up, domed side toward me, I’ll see a reddish-orange plane deep inside the stone, if I can catch the light just so.  The effect, in both cases, is called adularescence, and occurs because two different types of “worthless field rock” have intergrown in layers, internally reflecting and refracting the light.  But you have to get the angle just right to see it–any little movement makes the colors change and shift like a tiny aurora borealis, or vanish altogether, and it’s back to being an irregular milky-looking lump of rock.

So that’s the answer to the question, “What is it?”  But…why is it?  What sort of world do we live in, where God takes two different types of the commonest rock on earth, and combines them to make a gemstone?

Heh.

What sort of world is it, where God takes two different types of ordinary people and combines them to make a reflection of Christ and His Church — a marriage?

The sort of world where the ordinary stuff was spoken out of nothing, is sustained by that same Word, and is, well, magical.  It’s the sort of world where an irregular lump of white rock is a means of grace, an aurora borealis that I can carry in my pocket to remind me how I should treat my wife.

***

Hematite is not as visually interesting as moonstone.  Even with a high polish on it, it’s still a uniform, opaque, reflective grey.  But if you can get it hot enough, you can separate out the impurities, and shoot air through it to make steel.  Steel makes all sorts of useful things: springs, hinges, hammers…you name it.  I have a little hammer I inherited from my grandmother.  It can’t weigh more than 5 or 6 ounces, but she was a small woman, and she wanted something she could keep in a kitchen drawer for small household tasks: driving a tack, tapping in a small nail to hang a picture, like that.  I also have a 20-ounce Estwing straight claw hammer with a steel shaft and a blue rubber handle.  It was a birthday gift, back when I was doing construction work.  I wanted something that would suit the type of work I was doing, and that was it.  That hammer swung like it was part of my arm, and I could sink 16-penny nails, tap-Bang-BANG.   If I’d had to use Grandma’s kitchen hammer, I could drive maybe five nails a day.

It’s the sort of world where having the right tool for the job makes a difference.

***

I still have that blue-handled Estwing.  I’ve owned it for more than half my life, and it’s stained and a little rusted from use and abuse, but it still works as well as it did the day I first picked it up.  It lives in my tool kit, which lives in my bedroom closet.

Suppose I’m out somewhere without my tools and I need to drive a big nail?  A quick inventory of my pockets turns up a cell phone, notepad, two pens, wallet, pocketknife, and that little chunk of moonstone.  Not promising, is it?

Suppose I decide, well, rock is hard like a hammer, let’s give that a try.  So I try to drive a 16-penny nail with that little piece of moonstone.  How is that going to work out?  When I’m done, the nail won’t have moved very much.  On the other hand, the stone will be chipped and cracked at least, if not shattered into pieces, and its value as a gemstone lost.

It’s the sort of world where trying to substitute one means of grace for another often doesn’t do the job, and damages your ability to enjoy what you do have.

6 Comments | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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