Imago Dei: Loving the Different

21 July 2015

This post is part of the July Synchroblog on gay marriage. 

Once upon a time — if time is an appropriate word — there was nothing. Not infinite empty space, just…nothing. Nothing but the triune God, dancing alone, complete and content. And then again, not alone, because there were three Persons together, each one distinct and quite different from the others, each one loving the other two. (If two other people love you, you’re hardly alone, right?) Lacking nothing and needing nothing, secure in the love of each Person for the others, God danced like nobody was watching.

There was nobody to watch, until out of the overflow of each Person’s love for the others, God made the heavens and the earth.

The Breath of God brooded over the primordial waters like a hen on a nest, until the Father spoke a Word.

“Be light!” And there was light. Having commanded the light into existence, He divided it from its contrasting element, the darkness, and gave them each a name: Day and Night. The Three gazed on what He had made. Seeing that it reflected the aspects of the Three that He wished it to display, He pronounced it good.

Then evening came, and morning, and God began to create again. For six days, the Three enriched the creation like a painter working on a canvas, pausing each evening and beginning work again the next day, and it was all good. He made the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below. He gathered the waters below the sky into one place, and brought up dry land out of the water. In the middle of the third day, the Three stopped naming things, but He kept creating. He populated the land with plants and set lights in the sky to give signs and seasons, to measure out days and years. He made great swarms of creatures to populate the water and the air. He populated the land with domestic animals, wild beasts, and an abundance of creepy-crawlies of every description. He seemed to have a great fondness for beetles.

All this reflected aspects of the Three, but when it came time to sign the canvas, God wanted to do something special, to put a particular representation of Himself on His creation. So the Three took counsel together: “Let’s make humanity in Our image, like Us, and let’s give them rule over the whole earth and all its creatures.” And God began to sculpt. He formed a man from the dust, and breathed life into his nostrils, and man became a living being named Dirt. Then God did something He had never done before. The Three Persons looked at the sculpture, which was just one person, and said, “That’s not good. Something is missing. I will make a helper comparable to him.”

God brought animals out of the ground and brought them to Dirt, and whatever he named them, that was their name — but while they all had mates, there was no comparable mate for Dirt. So God caused him to fall asleep, and pulled a rib out of his side, and from that rib, He made a woman. Different — so different from Dirt — and yet comparable to him, his match.

God woke him, and brought her to him. Dirt had never seen anything like her before, but he knew her for what she was: bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. The woman was him, she was part of him and one with him…but distinct from him, and quite different. God gave them to each other, and marriage was born. And He blessed them: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and rule over it — over all its creatures.”

God had signed His canvas, and He saw that it was good. And on the seventh day, God rested.

(Of course, it didn’t take us long to mess it up, but in Christ God is re-forming a new humanity that will one day inherit the earth, and once again be His perfected signature on the canvas of creation.)

That is the real story of how you came to be, and you are heir to all the considerable dignity that it implies. It is true of all people — all ethnicities, all creeds, all sexual orientations, all genders. As Paul would later summarize the story, “He made from one blood every nation under heaven.”

In the church, we have the nasty habit of treating certain people as if they don’t belong. Not just as if they don’t belong in the church — which would be bad enough —  but as if they don’t belong anywhere at all. Which distinguishing traits we decide to ostracize varies from culture to culture, from church to church, but churches that swear off this sin, and truly welcome whoever God brings them? Those churches are still quite rare.

We of all people should know better. The church is a hospital, not a country club. There’s no such thing as being too sick to go to the hospital. If you are here, then you were handcrafted in your mother’s womb for a purpose, and if you are still using the communal oxygen, then God hasn’t given up on you. Why should we?

Unfortunately, homosexuals are one of the groups that the church has too often given up on. We have preferred to ignore them, to pretend that they didn’t exist, to treat them as ‘other,’ rather than as part of us — people created by God with dignity and purpose. It was more comfortable to simply pass them by. But God is far less interested in our comfort than he is in leading us to fulfill our purpose: to be His signature on the canvas of creation. To that end, He has provided the Church in the USA with a situation that forces us to engage. Gay marriage promises to be quite a mess in the Church, and that is great news! The Church gets a lot of mileage out of messes — look at the Christological controversies or the Reformation.

The challenge before us is to mirror the Trinity as God has called us to do by showing honor to all people, by loving all sinners as Christ loved all sinners, by loving those who are different from us, by welcoming all who come as a hospital welcomes all who come. The challenge is to do all this faithfully, not out of sentimentality but because we are faithful to the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, who called us to be like Him.

This means that a gay couple who walks into one of our churches must be deeply loved, no matter how uncomfortable that might make some of the people in the church. We walk by faith, not by sentiment. It does not mean, however, that we should be performing their marriage ceremony. The exegesis is not in any way unclear here: the same story that tells me a gay man is part of me and has dignity and purpose just like I do, also tells me that marriage is a man and a woman given to one another by God. The rest of the biblical revelation repeatedly reinforces this (including some pointed instructions on divorce that most evangelicals have seen fit to ignore), and repeatedly says that same-sex unions are sin. We may struggle with why that would be the case (and I would suggest that the answers are in that same story, above), but again, we walk by faith, not by sentiment. If you are attempting to submit yourself to the word of God, there are some complicated interpretive problems that you will have difficulty untangling — but this isn’t one of them.

The practical question posed by the legal possibility of gay marriage is likewise pretty simple. “Same-sex marriage” is a contradiction on the order of “four-sided triangles,” and it won’t do for Christ’s people to dignify the sin with a four-sided triangle celebration ceremony. If we do that, we become a hospital that works against the patient, rather than helping him heal.

This issue is not hard for us because the text is unclear. It is hard for us because the demands of faith clash with the demands of sentiment. Some folks’ sentiment is that all things gay are icky, and they want to pretend the whole thing doesn’t exist, and make the “icky” people unwelcome in the church. Other folks’ sentiment is to be welcoming, but offer no call to repentance. The demands of faith cut against both these impulses, and require of us a response that is loving and welcoming while presenting God’s call to mirror His nature on earth. Doing that well — that is going to take a miracle. Let’s pray that God will work that miracle in us.

***

You may also enjoy the other posts in July’s Synchroblog:

Comments Off on Imago Dei: Loving the Different | Meditations, synchroblog | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

…but He never really does

21 July 2015

“Hey, do you think God could really speak today? Could He reveal Himself to someone with a thought, an impression, a circumstance?”

Sure. Shoot, He could do an audible voice if He wanted to. Nobody really thinks God couldn’t do it. He’s God, after all.”

“Great. Glad we’re on the same page about that. So last night, when I was praying, God said…”

“Wait. What do you mean, ‘God said’?”

“I mean that He talked to me, and I heard it. Look here in my journal — I even wrote it down.”

“Oh come on! How do you know that’s God?”

“Same way I know it’s my Mom calling when I hear her on the phone — I know what her voice sounds like.”

“You’re telling me you literally heard an audible voice, and you know it was God?”

“No, I’m telling you God spoke to me in my thoughts, and I know what it sounds like when He does that.”

“Don’t be silly! How could you possibly tell?”

*****

Interesting, huh? Here we have a conversation between two Christians, both of whom profess that God can speak to individuals today — to whomever He wants, anytime He wants. But one of them is certain, in advance of all the evidence, that He didn’t speak to this particular guy last night. This is the difference between theology on paper and theology in real life: only one of them actually expects it to happen. Last night, only one of them was listening in the expectation that God might speak. Big surprise — only one of them heard anything.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Thirty-Five Theological Notes

26 June 2015

(for old friends and new, who are trying to figure out where I’m coming from) 

Prolegomena

1.  I am an exegete, storyteller, and shepherd. My personal ministry focuses on helping people to pray, know God personally and directly, learn and live the biblical Story, retake lost territory the Church has ceded to the pagans, and use high-concept folk culture as a vehicle for reformation. Mostly in Englewood, Colorado.

2.  I have tried to listen well to the Scriptures and be as faithful as I can be to what they say. Theologians tend to gather in herds like anybody else, and my particular set of emphases has not led me into one of the standard herds.

3.  The spirit of the day being what it is — postmodern ectoplasm that evaporates in a strong light — I am expected to reject herding and its attendant labels, and demand recognition as an absolutely unique snowflake. But no. Gathering in community and giving apt names to things are expressions of the image of God. Hence this explanation, which I hope will help.

4.  Much mischief comes of affirming something we ought to affirm, and then on that basis denying something we ought not to deny. We ought to have learnt this from the doctrine of the Trinity: if we believe in inerrancy, then sometimes we must submit to mystery.

5.  Mood is often more important–and harder to capture–than the standard talking points. For example, I have worked productively with postmil brethren with no problem, and had trouble working with some of my fellow premil folk. The practical difference is mood: when the kings of the earth conspire against Him, Yahweh laughs at them. Do we laugh with Him, or do we think the sky is falling? The difference is easy to see in real life, but it can be quite difficult to codify meaningfully in the standard form of a doctrinal statement.

Basics

6.  I believe the historic Christian faith expressed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the Definition of Chalcedon, and the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith.

7.  I believe in the biblically attested miracles — crossing the Red Sea, Joshua’s long day, virgin birth, water into wine, all of it, because the Bible says so. I believe in a recent, six-literal-day creation and a worldwide flood for the same reason.

8.  Since I don’t approach the Scriptures with the skepticism of a 19th-century liberal, I don’t approach the history of the Church that way either. Having been taught by the Scriptures to believe in such things, I believe in the miracles of the Christian Church, reported in the ministries of such notable saints as Augustine, Patrick of Ireland, George Wishart, John Knox, Charles Spurgeon, and Francis MacNutt. And I’ve seen some myself.

9.  I have personally experienced the exegetical bankruptcy, practical impotence, and willful historical ignorance of cessationism. Never again. That said, supernatural ministry can be mightily abused, as in Corinth. 1 Corinthians prescribes a solution; cessationism ain’t it.

10.  Just to get it out of the way, I am not a Calvinist, and still less of an Arminian. Both Calvin and Arminius did good service to the church, but they were both Calvinists, and shared a number of assumptions which the Scriptures do not support. Talking about “the theological spectrum from Calvinism to Arminianism” is like talking about “all the colors of the rainbow, from red to pink.” There were 15 glorious centuries of Christian theology before those two worthy gents came along, and a few centuries after them, too. For which all thanksgiving.

11.  I am Protestant, and happy to be. I am deeply in debt to the magisterial Reformation; it remains one of the finest creations of the Roman Church.

Prayer

12.  A strong view of divine sovereignty is necessary to the integrity of the Christian faith. The Scriptures require it, and there’s no point in praying for things unless God is in control.

13.  I believe that God’s hand moves in response to prayer, and sometimes we do not have because we do not ask. This is tough to square with divine sovereignty, but if we only know enough to be obedient, then we know enough. So I pray; resolving the mysteries can wait.

14.  I believe we should learn to pray by praying in the categories of the Lord’s Prayer, because Matthew says so, and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, because Luke says so. Many struggle to pray effectively because we do not honor our Lord’s instruction in this matter.

The Unity of Christ’s Body

15.   I am small-c catholic. Those who belong to Christ belong to me, and I to them.

16.  I believe in the unity of the Body of Christ. Unity is a cardinal doctrine and practice, essential to maintaining justification by faith (as Paul said in Galatians), and a crucial part of our witness to the world, not to mention being Jesus’ dying wish for His people. Our real convictions on unity are demonstrated in our choices of whom to eat with, pray with, worship with, and work with. If we don’t do those things outside the narrow confines of our home community, we might think unity is permissible, but we don’t think it’s important.

17.  I believe in historical unity. All Christ’s people, everywhere and everywhen, are My People, more so than my family, my fellow Americans or the members of my martial arts club. In the second century, my Church was still finding her feet. In the eleventh century, my Church had suffered an unfortunate split that has yet to be healed. In the fifteenth century, my Church was hopelessly corrupt. She has always been headquartered in the New Jerusalem, no matter what some folks believed about Rome. If we celebrate Veteran’s Day but not Purim or the Feast of All Saints, we have an odd notion of where our primary loyalties lie.

18.  Today the Church lives with denominations and highly denominated nondenominational entities by the million. These tribal loyalties are a blessing insofar as they inspire greater love for God and our neighbors, but when we cease to act as one Body with others who belong to Christ but not to our tribe, we are failing in exactly the way Peter failed at Antioch.

The Church Service

19.  Every regularly held public meeting has some kind of liturgy to it; some churches are more conscious and competent at using their liturgies to achieve their goals. I prefer them.

20.  I believe that worship is about what God wants to receive, not about what we happen to want to give (cf. Cain), and still less about what’s fashionable this month. I believe God has told us to be a Psalm-singing people. If we sing the Psalms and follow the directions they give, we will experience richer worship than is typical in the American church.

21.  Having been taught by Psalm-singing, baptism, communion, and anointing with oil, I believe in physical expressions of worship. I believe that the arts have a strong place in the church’s worship. There’s nothing wrong with spontaneous worship, but I believe in the value of planned prayer, painting, and dance as I believe in the value of planned music and sermons.

22.  I believe in the use of the supernatural ministry gifts in the worship service, because the Bible says so. I also believe that if you’re serious about that, you leave space for it. If you have a 90-minute service time, and you plan 90 minutes of content, you don’t value supernatural ministry. If you schedule a move of the Spirit 27 minutes into the service, you are attempting to control something you shouldn’t. He blows where he wills.

23.  I believe the church service ought to end in communion, with its attendant implications of security and fellowship, rather than an invitation, with its attendant implications of insecurity and crisis. Invitations are fine for revival meetings, but have no place at family gatherings. Repeated invitations of the “Maybe you know a lot about Jesus, but have you ever really…” type have done much mischief to impressionable children who were unfortunate enough to grow up hearing them every week.

Sacraments

24.  I believe in baptizing believers immediately, like they did in Acts. Baptism is the New Covenant analog to circumcision. Of course, we circumcise the baby after he’s born, but since New Covenant members are born twice, we have to ask: “Which birth are we talking about?” If baptism is the new circumcision, then what is the new birth? Well…the new birth. Paedobaptism is a throwback to the days before Christ broke the power of the clan.

25.  I believe in weekly communion, but I also believe that weekly communion will be unbearable until it is celebrated as the feast of victory that it is, rather than observed as an orgy of ungodly introspection. It is vile for a shepherd in Christ’s flock to turn the Corinthians’ sin — which no one is committing today — into an excuse to torment the sheep with every imaginable doubt. Self-examination for the sins discussed in the passage is fair game.

26.  I believe that the wine in the communion cup should be wine, because the Bible says so. I also believe that it is foolish and wicked to divide the Body over how we conduct the Table, so when necessary, I drink my grape juice with joy and thanksgiving.

27.  It is not my Table; it is Christ’s. I am nowhere commanded to fence it; how dare I? All who are His are welcome; all who desire Him are welcome. Jesus did not stint to give Himself to the children, the outcasts, and those who did not yet believe. Of course giving the body and blood of the very Son of God to such people (to any people, for that matter) is blasphemy and sacrilege. But it is Jesus’ sacrilege, not ours. Who am I to argue?

28.  I believe we must speak of the Table as God speaks of it, without hedging. I believe in the real presence of Christ in the elements, without feeling a need to explain the details. I follow the examples of John Knox, John Williamson Nevin, and other stalwart Protestants in refusing to let vain Romish speculation ruin this for me, as it did for poor Zwingli.

Living as a Christian

29.  Eternal life is knowing God. Salvation is irreducibly relational, and individual conversion is absolutely necessary; well-remembered crisis conversion is another matter entirely. Seeing a child on the playground, I can be sure the child is alive without knowing the moment of his birth. Striking up a conversation, I might find that the child himself does not know when he was born. It does not follow that he was never born.

30.  The new birth is a miraculous, gracious act of God which we receive by trusting God. Like any birth, it is the work of the parents, and not the child, that accomplishes it.

31.  The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Continuing to grow in Christ requires an ongoing miracle, and again, we must be willing to receive that miracle. But if we are, God will do it.

32.  It is the birthright of every child of God to hear and understand his Father’s voice, in the Bible and in his heart.

33.  Uncertainty is a poor foundation for a life of righteousness. Like any good father, God assures us that we are His own, and urges us to live on that basis. The accusations and doubts that cause us to question our place in the family come from the world, the flesh and the devil–or from our fellow believers, doing the devil’s work for him.

34.  Living as a Christian is a life of continual repentance. We always fall short, and God’s grace is always there to transform us and move us closer to Him. We need only be willing.

35.  Willingness is being open with God: openly communicating to Him what we think, believe and have done, openly hearing His approval and correction, and obeying.

4 Comments | Meditations, Theopoetics | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Reflections on Catalyst One-Day Conference

10 May 2015

I had the opportunity a few months ago to attend the Catalyst one-day conference here in Denver with Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel. A lot of good things were said, especially Andy Stanley’s ruminations on autonomy and why it’s a bad idea. I can think of a couple  whole movements of pastors and activists who need to hear that talk, and will refuse to listen to it. There were also some deeply stupid things said — CEO-think getting the better of following Jesus. I don’t intend to write a review of the whole thing, but here are some thoughts I wrote down just after the event.

By any biblically recognizable definition, these guys are not pastors. The organizations they lead are not churches — again, by any biblically recognizable standard. In some circles, that would be the whole critique. There was a time when that would have been my whole critique.

But these guys and their organizations are doing significant work for the Kingdom of God. They’re not pastors and not churches, but they’re not nothing either–so what are they? They are parachurch organizations that provide a variety of religious goods and services. For the purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, they happen to be organized as an entity called “church,” but let’s face it, the IRS doesn’t have the best possible grasp on spiritual reality.

Church happens within these organizations — in small groups, student ministries, other smaller cadres where there is real accountability, shared mission, and life together. And it doesn’t just happen by accident — quite often, those things are what they’re aiming for.

The organization itself, however, is not a church. It is a monastic order. Craig Groeschel is not a pastor, he’s the next Ignatius of Loyola, leading a militant, dedicated cadre of broadly Protestant monks and nuns in a rigorous program of spiritual discipline and leadership development to serve the Church and the world. It is impressive, admirable work.

There is an argument to be made, perhaps, that doing the work of a monastic order under the guise of being a local church muddies the water and causes trouble. I’ll let someone else make that argument if they can. For me, the issue is simpler than that: this is good work that ought to be done, and someone is doing it. The Lord of the Harvest has heard our prayer and sent laborers into His harvest, and we should thank Him and ask for more.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Eight Notes on the Art of Reading

27 April 2015

I had occasion to write down some reflections on the art of reading for a friend. Here are some selections:

The really big pieces of advice for readers are the same as for writers:

  1. Finish things.
  2. Figure out your process and stick to it.

Everything else is subordinate to those.

Accept reading into your life as a discipline that you will mostly practice in the interstices of your schedule, when other people are doing nothing. Most of my reading, prayer, and martial arts practice happens this way. It is amazing what you can get done when you attend to the “dead spaces” in your life, and put them to work for you over a long period of time. For example, I recently finished a book on spiritual direction. I read the whole thing on the toilet using the Kindle app on my phone. Took me two and a half weeks.

Pre-read. Get a sense for what’s in your “to-read” pile so you know what to pick up next. Flip through the book, skim a few pages here and there, just to learn what kind of book it is. Does it have short chapters or long ones? Are there section breaks? Books that break up into smaller chunks go into my toilet reading pile. Books that are going to take extended study mostly get saved for weekends.

Re-read. Don’t be afraid to go back and read a paragraph again, or a chapter. Or a whole book, for that matter. In fact, the whole-book re-read is often the most effective for comprehension. It’s easier to grasp the finer points after you have a rough idea where the whole thing is going.

If you drive places, use audiobooks and lectures. Even if you only live 10 minutes from work, that’s an hour and 40 minutes a week, just on your commute. You can finish a good-sized book in a few weeks that way — and if you use the rest of your drive time, it goes even faster. I use audiobooks while I’m cooking, too — my hands are busy, but it’s not complicated work, so I can listen well. I have an acquaintance who listens to audiobooks during his workouts. I can’t do that; listening takes up too much of my attention, and I’m prone to hurting myself when I get distracted during a workout. Figure out what works for you.

Read at night, before going to bed. I usually reserve that slot for popular novels or poetry, although I’ve done some heavy reading that way too. I have learned the hard way to stay away from Lee Childs at night — I wind up awake at 2 in the morning, telling myself, “It’s only another 75 pages to the end.”

One book or several? There are two schools of thought on reading in parallel. The single-book school says that your concentration is better if you focus all your reading time on a single book until you finish it. The other maintains that it’s more fun to read a few books in parallel. In case you haven’t caught it yet, I’m definitely in the latter school, but find what works for you.

Speed reading. Stanley D. Frank wrote a book about the Evelyn Wood speed reading method. I don’t do it the way they teach you to, but working through their exercises was very helpful to me.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Healing

12 April 2015

I had opportunity to speak recently on healing. You’ll find my notes below.

Our focus this month is on the resurrection.
Chesterton: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
Isaiah 53:4-5
Romans 6:3-4
1 Peter 2:24-25
Our job is to live out the resurrection.
Gal. 2:20
We can’t do it alone — it’s supernatural.
How the Western Church lost healing
How I came to understand healing
How God Heals — The Story of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-17)
Things to take away:
1. Naaman was a Syrian soldier in a time when Israel and Syria were at odds with each other. He was an enemy, and yet God healed him.
2. Sometimes God simply heals, but often He asks us to invest in our healing. This isn’t “God helps those who help themselves;” that’s garbage. How much help do you think Naaman washing himself could be? Think he’d never taken a bath before?
3. Healing is not usually a solo activity.
Luke 4:16-21
Jesus commissions us to follow Him. That means that He is sending you to do these same things.
Heal. Jesus bought it. Ask God for it, and see what He will give you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Story of John Mark

16 March 2015

I had occasion to tell the story of John Mark in a church service recently. Here it is.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Seven Hard-Won Lessons From the Youth Group Nerf Wars

4 January 2015

1. If you’ve never had a nerf war with your youth group, you should seriously consider it. It quickly reveals who you want on your team in the event of a zombie apocalypse. You never know when you might need that information.

2. A nerf war is a GREAT way to revive the kids after a movie at a lock-in. Especially if you have a balcony to shoot from. And it’s cathartic.

3. Every nerf battle has 2 stages. In Stage 1, you expend the ammo load-out that you started the game with. In Stage 2 — which lasts a lot longer — you are scrounging darts off the floor, hoping someone will shoot at you so you can collect the dart and shoot it back. At any given time, you only have a handful of darts, unless you’re a hoarder. This 2-stage dynamic is important because…

4. In Stage 1, motorized, magazine-fed blasters are the most fun you can have. Good news: with good fire discipline and a couple high-capacity magazines, this stage can last quite a while. Bad news: when it’s over, it’s over. In a typical every-man-for-himself scenario, you’re on the run all the time. Reloading a magazine with scrounged darts on the run takes three hands, and when you’re reloading, you’re not ready to fire unless you’re juggling two magazines (which takes four hands). It’s not a ton of fun. Having one as part of a three- or four-man squad would probably be worth it, but by yourself, it’s just a pain.

5. Your best bet for Stage 2 is something small and VERY easy to reload. (Which is fantastic, because the little blasters are pretty cheap.) Single-shot is okay, but it’s better if you have the capability for at least one fast follow-up shot. For my money, a hammer-action revolver like the Hammershot is best. It shoots and cycles one-handed, leaving the other hand free for picking up darts and reloading (or wielding a sword, but we’ll get to that). It carries 5 darts in an open-front cylinder, so you can reload as you go, and you’re almost always ready to shoot.

6. In an all-out melee, nerf swords are much more useful than you’d think. You’d be surprised how much ground you can cover in a charge while your opponent is struggling to reload. There’s a serious shock-and-awe factor, and it’s mad fun. The swords are probably going to get destroyed, so get cheap ones.

7. Close-range hostage crises are best resolved with a sword. True story.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Taking It Literally

7 December 2014

So I had occasion to talk with a feller — well-educated Christian and all — who was a bit unsure about various Old Testament miracles — Joshua’s long day and so on. It got me to thinking.

As I observed in another post earlier this year, allegorizing your way over the first eleven chapters of Genesis at 30,000 feet is downright common. Once you get past the flood, most people who would think of themselves as theological conservatives settle down and swallow the supernatural texts. There are some Red Sea doubters and like that, but it’s pretty uncommon among self-professed conservatives.

By the time we get to Jesus feeding the 5,000 or doing miraculous healings, pretty much everybody has landed the plane and is prepared to take the supernatural doings quite literally. And of course, you have to land the plane sometime before the resurrection and ascension in order to remain a Christian in any meaningful sense.

But if you have the sort of sensibilities that are offended by miracles, the resurrection is just as much an offense as any other supernatural text. Once you’ve conceded the need to land the plane, is there any reason not to land it earlier? Why is the resurrection of Jesus plausible, but turning water into wine is not? Why are Jesus’ miracles plausible, but Joshua’s miracles suspect? Why believe the Red Sea crossing, but doubt the Flood? Why believe John 1’s account of creation, but doubt Genesis 1’s account of it?

If you’re going to swallow the resurrection, what’s so hard about reading the whole Story as sober history from end to end?

This is far from the only area in which we balk at the Bible because it offends our sensibilities in some way. I have begun to feel generally that taking it literally — far from being a bonehead hermeneutical move — is in fact badly underrated.

I hope to explore this idea more in upcoming posts.

3 Comments | Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

The Kingdom Has Come

15 October 2014

In the theology I grew up with, the kingdom of God is future, period.

We were aware that Jesus said the kingdom was near, in passages like this one, for example:

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

We interpreted that the same way you interpret a guy on the street corner with a sign that says, “The end is near.” In other words, “near” meant that it was still future, coming soon.

There’s an obvious way in which that was true. The consummation of the kingdom promises is still future. Obviously, the knowledge of the glory of God has not yet covered the earth like water covers the sea.

I’m aware that people have issues with the eschatology, but let’s not get sidetracked onto that at the moment. For the sake of discussion, let’s grant a future literal kingdom of exactly the kind envisioned by pre- and post-mil theologians.

Granting that, is the kingdom entirely future?

No.

We know it isn’t, because it wasn’t entirely future even in Jesus’ day. Notice what He says in Matthew 12:

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

“Has come.” Not “will come” or “is about to come.” Has. In other words, when Jesus cast out a demon, the kingdom came right there. And this is what Jesus meant all along when He said that the kingdom was near. The old King James translation, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” is exactly right. “At hand” is where you keep your cell phone–close enough you can reach out and grab it.

The message of Jesus, from the inception of His ministry right down to the present day, is this: the kingdom of God is close enough to you, right now, that you could reach out and touch it. Do you want to?

2 Comments | Kingdom of God, Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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