The Waking Dreamer: Truth

Showing posts with label Truth. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Confirmed

John 1:29-49[1]

These days the question of whom you believe can be a controversial one. People line up behind certain news outlets, for example, and draw a line in the sand to separate themselves from those “on the other side.” There are a lot of reasons offered up for why we as a people have become so “polarized” around this question. Some say it’s the influence of social media. And it’s true to some extent that we may be too quick to believe something we read on Facebook or someone we hear on YouTube without really checking the facts. Some say our problems are the result of fundamental differences among us regarding our attitudes toward education, patriotism, and the very nature of truth itself. Others trace the problem back to different groupings or “tribes” among us going back to the very beginnings of our country.

I’m not sure about all of that. Some of it seems like it’s “above my pay grade.” What I think is that the human family has always had a tendency to believe whatever confirms what they already suspect to be true. The phrase “that sounds about right to me” is one that we use to confirm what we hear. In many ways, that can be just an idiom. But behind that, there may be something more. For example, the spread of rumor and gossip is nothing new. It’s been around as long as there have been groups of people. It’s not a new phenomenon that we’re drawn to those who share our opinions, and we’re suspicious of anyone who dares to voice something “different.” If anything, I would say that the technology behind email and the internet and social media has only made rumor and gossip much more powerful. And it’s made it much harder for us to sort out fact from fiction. After all, the real question isn’t whether something “sounds about right to me.” The real question is whether something is true.

That’s a much harder question to answer. Especially when the truth is inconvenient, or challenges our long-held beliefs, or we simply don’t like it. Some of us use facts to try to answer the question of truth. What’s true is what is backed up by facts, by hard data. That sounds reasonable, but as many of us have learned the hard way, people can “spin” the facts to prove whatever point they want you to believe. Others rely on common sense. They trust what makes sense based on their life experience. Again, that sounds reasonable, but the problem is that our life experience is limited. That’s true for all of us. Nobody can know the lived experience of every member of the human family. Others rely on “gut instinct.” Basically, they go with what “feels right.” Again, that can work sometimes, but we all know that our feelings can lead us astray.

This problem with discerning truth in our daily lives also applies to our faith. When you look at the spectrum of churches out there and the different ways they approach faith, you may wonder why that’s the case. It has to do with how they answer the question of what is true. For many, the basis for truth is an authoritative book, the Bible. You might think that’s obvious for all Christians. But the problem is that the Bible can be difficult to read, and harder to understand. Between the Bible and every truth claim based on a Scripture text is the interpretation of the person reading it. And we’re all flawed and fallible Bible readers. I’m sure we’ve all heard of cult leaders who twisted the Bible to get people to carry out their bidding. But a more common problem is how to sort out all the different ways people can “spin” the Bible.

This issue with interpreting the Bible has been around from the beginning. That’s why many Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative church. Because we are all fallible Bible readers, they believe it takes the guidance of the “right” church and its leaders to know what’s true. Usually, the “right” church is their church, and other churches are judged to be right or wrong based on how they line up with their church’s teachings. But the problem is that every church that has ever been is a human organization, made up of flawed and fallible people. More than that, because every church is made up of fallible people, the more attention, the more power, the more influence someone has in a church organization, the more they are subject to the temptations of their own self-will. As one famous observer noted, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[2] He was talking about the church!

In the face of the fallible interpretations of the Bible by fallible church leaders, some Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative experience. They claim that in order to truly have faith a person has to have a dramatic spiritual experience, much like that of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road. Once again, however, whether or not one’s spiritual experience is “real,” and therefore a sufficient basis for faith, depends on how well it conforms to their experience. Those who insist on a particular spiritual experience tend to make themselves the yardstick by which they measure the faith of everyone else. And if it doesn’t match up closely enough with their experience, then it’s not “true” Christian faith.

If we can’t rely absolutely on an authoritative book, or an authoritative church, or an authoritative experience, some might be tempted to think that there’s no way to know whether our faith is true or not. In fact, I think there are many these days who harbor that thought. But I wouldn’t say we have to just throw up our hands and give up. As with many things in life, I would say that the answer lies in finding balance. We rely on the witness of the Bible as the foundation for our faith, and rightly so. But we also rely on the tradition of interpreting the Bible that has been handed down to us by the Church. And our own spiritual experiences serve to reinforce our personal faith convictions. I think that, at the end of the day, what all of this means is that it’s more honest to say “I believe” with much of our faith rather than “I know.” It’s not a matter of uncertainty, but humility, and I believe there is wisdom in that.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with the Scripture readings for today. In John’s Gospel, those who met Jesus expressed their faith that he was the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” the “Messiah … about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote,” and the “Son of God.” We might wonder what basis they had for making those claims. I would say it was based on their first-hand experience of Jesus, which they understood in light of the Bible, as they interpreted it through the faith they had been taught. I think the same is true for us today. We can affirm our faith in Jesus based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church.

That way of putting it may sound rather ordinary compared to the way other people talk about their faith. It lacks the appeal of a dramatic spiritual experience. It lacks the certainty of those who are supremely confident that their understanding of the Bible is undisputable. It lacks the assurance of those who are convinced that their church is the “true” one. But as it has long been observed, it takes at least three legs to make a sturdy stool. Affirming that our faith is based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church provides us with a solid foundation for faith. It doesn’t give us absolute certainty. We can’t look down our noses at those who believe differently as if we “know” the truth and they don’t. What we can do is humbly affirm our faith as one that is confirmed not only by our own experience, but also by the Bible, and by the teaching of the church. At the end of the day, I think that’s a faith that can withstand the challenges of life. And after all, that’s what faith is about.

[2] Lord John Dahlberg-Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

God's Truth

God’s Truth

John 17:1-24[1]

Long ago, the prophet who spoke in the book of Isaiah said, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter” (Isa 59:14). Unfortunately, we are all too familiar with the fact that “truth stumbles in the public square.” The lines between facts and opinions have become so blurred in our day that many good people fall under the influence of all kinds of “conspiracy theories.” This plays out in politics, in religion, and in family life. It seems that there’s no aspect of our lives that hasn’t been affected by this problem. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the falsehoods that prevail in our society lead to confusion and turmoil.

Part of the problem is that we all seem to have become much more rigid about what we call “Truth.” We hold fast to our own convictions, regardless of whether they may fly in the face of the facts. This can be a particular temptation for those of us in the church. We may assume not only that our understanding of “Truth” is correct, but also that we have God on our side. The problem with this approach is that when we’re not willing to admit that we may not know the “Truth,” we not only close ourselves off from any chance of learning, we also throw up walls that divide “us” from “them.”

Our lesson from John’s Gospel for today addresses some of these issues. In this section of the Gospel, Jesus is preparing his disciples for the fact that he would be leaving them soon. Not only is he “pulling out all the stops” in his effort to communicate his message to them. He’s also tying up all the previous hints and clues in John’s Gospel that he had been dropping all along about his purpose and his mission. In our lesson for today, Jesus uses the opportunity to pray for the disciples that they would indeed understand and follow the truth he had sought to teach them.

One of the most important themes in this Gospel is that the “Truth” Jesus taught his disciples is a unique kind of truth. It is not the truth of science or mathematics, where formulas and equations all add up. It is not the truth of philosophy seeking to come up with a rational answer to just about every question one could think. Nor is it the “truth” of of insisting that my opinion is “right” and if you disagree with me your opinion is “wrong.” Rather, the “Truth” that Jesus came to bring is the truth of a relationship with God whereby we experience God’s love and we embrace God’s ways and purposes in this world.

I think we see this reflected in our Gospel lesson today in several ways. First, the “Truth” that Jesus taught his disciples was something that Jesus had received from his Father. We see this in an interesting interplay between the “Name” and the “Word” and the “Truth” Jesus says that God had given him. The point of this is, as Jesus says, “Now they know that everything you have given me is from you” (Jn. 17:7). The fact that everything Jesus did and taught had come from his Father reflects the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It was such a close relationship that Jesus could say that he was doing only what the Father wanted him to do.

At the same time, the theme is expanded here to include the disciples in that relationship. Interestingly, just as the Father had given Jesus the “Name” and the “Word” and the “Truth, so Jesus says that the disciples were those whom the Father had given him. The reason why Jesus had taught them the “Truth” he had received from the Father was so that the disciples could share the joy of his relationship with God. Jesus said it this way: “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” (Jn. 17:13). The truth Jesus spoke was the kind of truth that was intended to draw the disciples into the same relationship with the Father that he enjoyed.

But there was more to it than that. The truth that Jesus taught his disciples was the kind of truth that would not leave them where they were. It would change them, and it would change them through and through. Jesus said that the ultimate purpose of this truth was that they may be “sanctified in the truth” (Jn. 17:17, 19). In the Bible, sanctification is one of those theological words that means to set something or someone apart for God’s purposes. I like the way the CEV puts it: “let this truth make them completely yours” (John 17:17 CEV). The kind of truth Jesus brought was intended to make those who followed it into people who belong completely to God.

When we receive and embrace the truth Jesus taught, we are changed so that we become people who belong to God and to God’s truth through and through. We enter into a relationship with God, that both brings us joy and makes a claim on our lives. That may not answer the problem of “Truth” in our world at large. The turmoil in our society is due in part to the fact that the people who lead us are driven by their own egos. Even though that turmoil is frightening, we have the assurance that no matter what may happen in the world, our lives are always in God’s hands. “Truth” may “stumble” in the “public square” today, but we can trust that God’s truth will prevail—if not now, then finally. And God’s truth prevails now in our lives when we embrace it to such an extent that it defines how we live. God’s truth is about a relationship, and when we embrace that truth in Jesus Christ, we are changed into people who put God’s truth into practice. Perhaps that’s the place to begin trying to solve to the problem of “Truth” in our world.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

What is Right?

Micah 6:6-8[1]

There was a time when, if asked the question, “What is right?” most people would give a similar answer. Love God and others. Go to church. Take care of your family. Work hard at your job. Pay your bills. Help out those who are in need. Live by the “golden rule.” There might be variations in the details, but the main outlines would have been the same. I don’t believe everyone actually did those things, they just all pretty much agreed on the “correct answer.” In part because of that contradiction between what we said and what we did, there came a time when it seemed at all notions of “right” and “wrong” were simply tossed out the window. There were no clear answers.

I think we have returned to a time when people will give you a definite answer to the question, “What is right?” Unfortunately, that answer might flagrantly contradict the answer of the person sitting right next to you. We’re convinced that we know what’s right, but we certainly do not all agree on what that looks like. I think part of the problem is that in the time when there were no clear answers, “truth” was replaced with “spin.” Everybody has their own perspective on what constitutes right and wrong. And we tend to listen to those voices in our culture that agree with our already-made-up minds. I would say we still have a great deal of confusion about what’s right.

Our lesson from the book of the prophet Micah for today contains a bold assertion: God has already made clear what is right and what is wrong. I like the way the CEV translates it: “The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: ‘See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God’” (Mic. 6:8). “Right” is defined by justice, or seeing that all people have an equal chance to live life the way God intends. “Right” is defined by mercy, which is genuine compassion for others put into practice. And “Right” is defined by obeying God. On the surface, it might seem clear. Unfortunately, we don’t all agree on what this means when you put it in action.

It’s unfortunate, because when we debate about what practicing justice, mercy, and obedience look like in real life, we are missing the clear witness of Scripture. From Moses to Micah to Matthew, the witness of the Bible makes clear that God wants our undivided loyalty, and wants us to treat one another with kindness. When we recognize that foundational teaching of Scripture, we discover the “truth that sets us free.” These “demands” of the Lord (as Micah calls them) aren’t meant to restrict us, but rather to enable us to find fulfillment in life. And we find that fulfillment when we support what is just for all people, when we treat others with love and kindness, and when we recognize that we are not the masters of our own fate, but rather we belong to God.

Essentially, this verse from the book of the prophet Micah is an eloquent summary of the truth that saturates the Bible. There are other summaries: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5); and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). The prophet Isaiah said this: “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isa. 1:16-17). The Psalmist says this way of life is demonstrated in “Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart” (Ps. 15:2). And, of course Jesus said it in the “golden rule”: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12).

In all of these summaries, the same message comes through clearly. It’s the message that we find true freedom when we surrender our will to the will of God. It’s the message that we find what we’re looking for in life when we give ourselves away in kindness and compassion for others, rather than trying to take as much as we can get for ourselves. It’s the message that the only way we can guarantee our ability to thrive in this world is if we ensure that all people are treated justly and fairly.

Sadly, many of us would rather debate what all of this “really means” than act upon it with the choices we make in life. This is just my opinion, but I find the more elaborate the effort to justify one’s actions, the farther one strays from these fundamental truths handed down to us for generations. It’s not hard to see that many in our day prefer to take a different path than the one laid out in Scripture: living for themselves and their own selfish desires, treating others as a means to attain what they want from them, placing themselves firmly on the throne of their lives. It doesn’t seem that they care much about what the Bible clearly defines as “Right.” Many of us much prefer to follow our own desires.

Of course, life choices are rarely clear-cut. We often struggle to know what is right. We may work hard to justify following our own desires. And unfortunately, many of us really don’t seem to have time to be too concerned about others. But as I have shared before, there are some clear benchmarks that can guide us. “What would Jesus do?” is not just a sentimental cliché, it’s a very practical question. Another guide is that if what we are contemplating is inconsistent with love for God and love for others, then we’re probably headed in the wrong direction. Life’s choices are often difficult, but we can at least make a good faith effort to follow the clear teaching of the Bible about what is right: to treat others fairly, to practice kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Light Drives Out Darkness

John 1:1-18[1]

I’m pretty sure that most of us have lost the ability to appreciate the power of a single candle to bring light into a dark room. We don’t use candles for light anymore. We use them for decoration, or for the fragrance they give. We use electricity for lighting, and even a relatively dim 60-watt bulb is the equivalent of 70 candles. And we typically have much more brighter light going in most rooms of our houses. We have flashlights on our phones that easily overpower a single candle, and there are some spotlights that can be positively blinding! We don’t even use candles for emergencies; instead we buy battery-powered lamps. I’m pretty sure we don’t view a candle as a source of light any longer.

By contrast, all of the Bible was written in a time when there was no artificial lighting. Candles and oil lamps were the only sources of light in the darkness. I think it’s hard for some of us to relate to a world not filled with artificial light. We’re so dependent on flipping a switch and having instant light. I would say that many of us aren’t really comfortable with darkness. It feels oppressive, or depressing, or even frightening. But if you were to turn off all the light bulbs and try sitting in a room lit only with candlelight, you might be surprised at the effect.^{^[2]}

John’s Gospel presents the good news of Jesus Christ in terms of light shining in the darkness. Not only do I think that we have difficult appreciating the light, I think that many of us have a hard time grasping the darkness of our world. But make no mistake about it: we live in a world full of darkness. We’re surrounded by it—violence in our schools, poverty that reduces working people to living in their cars, and racism that sparks hate crimes against people of color and of different faiths. But the darkness is within as well. Many in this community live in constant fear. They struggle with loneliness, depression, and even despair. Then there’s the darkness that exists in our world on a broader scale, from the corruption of greed to the destruction of warfare. We live in a dark world.

The good news of our Gospel reading for today is that Jesus came into this world as light. The light that he brings is called “life,” and it’s for all people (Jn. 1:4). John’s Gospel wasn’t talking about “life” in terms of everyday, walking around, living-and-breathing life. The point was that Jesus came to bring a different quality of living. Rather than living in the darkness of fear and greed and hatred, Jesus came to bring a quality of living defined by God’s grace and truth (Jn. 1:14). God’s truth calls us to a life defined by love—the love Jesus demonstrated by giving his life for us all. God’s grace assures us that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less. This grace and truth offers us a quality of living that shines like a light in the darkness.

The phrase in this passage that sticks in my mind is the one that says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (Jn. 1:5). There are some difficulties with this verse, including even how to translate it.^{^[3]} But I think the more pressing problem we have to deal with is that Jesus, the light of the world, was brutally executed on a Roman cross. Despite the faith that Jesus was raised from the dead and lives even now, some still today would say that the light of God’s grace and truth and love that Jesus brought into this world has been extinguished by the overwhelming power of darkness in our world. I think those whose lives have been “overcome” by darkness may have difficulty putting their faith in Jesus as the “light of the world.”

But you don’t have to have been totally overcome by the darkness in this world to have known its effect in your life. I would say that most of us here today have experienced some form of darkness in our lives. Whether it’s the greed that deprives us of home or career, or the fear that violence in its many forms can instill, or the anger and even hatred we may feel toward those whom we see as a threat, we have known the power of darkness. I don’t think the promise of the gospel here is that we will never have to suffer from the power of darkness in our world. It is that the darkness, however powerful it may be, does not overcome the light. I like the way the Good News Bible says it: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.”

However dark our lives in this world may get, the light of God’s grace and truth and love in Jesus Christ always shines, and the darkness has never put it out. The faith, hope, and love that God’s love in Jesus brought into this world live on in our hearts, no matter what we have to endure. And the darkness has never put it out. The quality of living that Jesus brought to us through God’s love is like a candle that gives its light to all in darkness, and never stops shining. It’s a different kind of light than what were used to. Candle light is soft, gentle, and reassuring. We may have to look harder for it in the midst of all the other sources of so-called “light” in our world. But the light of God’s grace and truth and love is there, a light shining in the darkness. And that light will continue to drive out the darkness in our world until there is no more darkness. And the darkness will never put it out.

[2]I got the idea from Linda Geddes, “What I Learned by Living without Artificial Light,” BBC Future, April 25, 2018. Accessed at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180424-what-i-learnt-by-living-without-artificial-light.

[3] Some versions, like the King James, New King James, and New American Standard, translate the verse, “the darkness did not comprehend it.”

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Belonging to Truth

John 17:6-19[1]

The concept of “Truth” is becoming more and more challenging in our society. Part of the problem is that many of us seem to have a rather flimsy approach to “Truth.” It seems that everyone has his or her “own truth,” and that no matter what that truth may be, no one has a right to dispute it. This plays out in politics, in religion, and in family life. It seems that there’s no aspect of our lives that hasn’t been affected by the fact that everything seems to be up for debate. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this muddy outlook on “truth” has led to confusion and turmoil. If we can’t even agree on basic convictions that guide our lives, how can there be any stability in our society?

On the other hand, part of the problem seems to be that many of us have a rather rigid approach to “Truth.” We hold fast to the convictions we’ve always believed, regardless of whether the facts may fly in the face of those convictions. This has been a particular temptation for those of us in the church. We throw out some verse from the Bible and assume not only that our understanding of “Truth” is correct, but also that we have God on our side. The problem with this approach is that when we’re not willing to admit that we may not have it all down, we stagnate in our own personal growth, and we throw up walls against those who disagree with us and label them as “enemies.”

As I mentioned last week, the section of John’s Gospel from which our lesson for today comes contains Jesus’ teachings to prepare his disciples for the fact that he would be leaving them soon. Not only is he “pulling out all the stops” in his effort to communicate his message to them. He’s also tying up all the previous hints and clues in John’s Gospel that he had been dropping all along about his purpose and his mission. In our lesson for today, Jesus uses the opportunity to pray for the disciples that they would indeed understand and follow the truth he had sought to teach them.

One of the most important themes in this Gospel is that the “Truth” Jesus taught his disciples was a unique kind of truth. It was not the truth of science or mathematics, where formulas and equations all add up. It was not the truth of philosophy seeking to come up with a rational answer to just about every question one could think. Nor was it the truth of dogma, where scholars try to fit all the teachings of the Bible into a neat and tidy system. Rather, the “Truth” that Jesus came to bring was the truth of a relationship with God whereby we experience God’s grace and we embrace God’s ways and purposes in this world.

I think we see this reflected in our Gospel lesson today in several ways. First, the “Truth” that Jesus taught his disciples was something that Jesus had received from his Father. We see this in an interesting interplay between the “Name” and the “Word” and the “Truth” Jesus says that God had given him. The point of this is, as Jesus says, “Now they know that everything you have given me is from you” (Jn. 17:7). The fact that everything Jesus did and taught had come from his Father reflects the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It was such a close relationship that Jesus could say that what he was doing only what the Father had taught him.

But there was more to it than that. The truth that Jesus taught his disciples was the kind of truth that would not leave them where they were. It would change them, and it would change them through and through. Jesus said that the ultimate purpose of this truth was that they may be “sanctified in the truth” (Jn. 17:17, 19). In the Bible, sanctification is one of those fifty-dollar theological words that means to set something or someone apart for God’s purposes. I like the way the CEV puts it: “let this truth make them completely yours” (John 17:17 CEV). The kind of truth Jesus brought was intended to make those who followed it into people who belong completely to God.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Walking in the Light

Isaiah 2:1-5[1]

Living in a place like this, it may be hard to imagine that there are places in the world where there is so much light that it’s hard to see the stars at night. In most cities, the “ambient light” drowns out the natural light coming from the stars, or any other phenomena in the sky. It’s not just things like street lights. In major cities there’s so much light pouring into the sky at night from screens and neon and headlights and other sources that even for miles around it’s impossible to see all but the closest objects in the night sky. When the Hale-Bopp comet was visible in 1997, I had to drive my boys about 50 miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area so that we could get a good look at it.

I think there is a similar phenomenon in our culture today. We have so many ways to distract ourselves from the truth that resonates in the deepest parts of our existence—the truth that peace and justice and compassion are the meaning of human life and our real destiny. But, unfortunately, peace, justice, and compassion don’t always sell in our world that is so full of other “lights” that can capture our attention. In comparison with the glitter of our celebrities, the stimulation of the programs on our TV and movie screens, and the glare of our infatuation with power and violence, the light of peace, justice, and compassion gets obscured just like the stars in the sky.

In our lesson from Isaiah for today, the prophet has a different vision. It’s the vision of God’s light and God’s truth finally shining through all the glare of the lights that compete for our minds and our hearts. By the time that Isaiah carried out his ministry, the people of Judah had been through a long history of fighting enemies all around them just in order to survive as a nation. Although other prophets called for God to take vengeance on those nations, Isaiah had a different vision. Rather than a war to wipe their enemies off the face of the earth, Isaiah envisioned Jerusalem as a place that would become the center of a world dominated by peace.[2]

And as a result, the nations of the earth would be drawn to the light of God’s truth, God’s peace, and God’s justice. Isaiah’s vision of the end of history was one in which all the different people groups of the world—even those who had been enemies of Judah—would “stream” to Jerusalem as the “mountain of the Lord” (Isa. 2:2). And the reason they would come was “that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Isa. 2:3). Isaiah explains that the reason for this attraction is that Jerusalem would become a distribution node for the Torah, or instruction, of the Lord.[3] It would be a place where the word of the Lord would enlighten all the nations to “walk in his ways.”

One result of this universal spread of the knowledge of God Isaiah envisioned would be peace. Part of Isaiah’s vision of the destiny of the human family is an ideal that has inspired and fired the imaginations of people of faith throughout the generations. His vision is that when God’s truth becomes the light by which we all order our lives, then “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2:4).[4] It is one of the more powerful visions of the destiny of humankind, and it has inspired people throughout history to listen to the “better angels” of their hearts.

Ironically, Isaiah’s vision of this universal peace is one that includes judgment. In his vision, the peace that brings all the families of the earth together is one that results from the fact that God would “judge between the nations,” and “arbitrate for many peoples” (Isa. 2:4). Again, we might be tempted to view that judgment like some of the other prophets: as handing out punishments to the “enemies” of Judah as an act of vengeance for their evil deeds. But that’s not the kind of judgment Isaiah envisions. Rather, Isaiah envisions judgment coming at the hands of a righteous king, one who would “judge the poor fairly and defend the rights of the helpless” (Isa. 11:4, TEV). In other words, the kind of judgment Isaiah envisions is one that establishes justice for all people equally. In that day, no one will be left behind or left out. In that day no one will have to worry about whether their family is safe from oppression and injustice. As the prophet says it in a later chapter, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain” (Isa. 11:9).

We live in a world in which peace, justice, and compassion can be very fragile. It seems like it doesn’t take much to spark a riot or even start a war. Some of us may feel like justice has passed us by, whether or not that’s actually the case. What is true is that many in our world live in fear for their safety and the safety and well-being of their children. That kind of fear has the power to overshadow and obscure the light of God’s truth, even in the most faithful of believers. But it will not always be this way. Isaiah clearly articulates a different vision for the destiny of the human family: one in which peace overcomes all hatred. It is a destiny in which true justice means that the rights of all people are protected, not just the fortunate few. It is a destiny in which the compassion that is the essence of God’s truth defines all of life. Since that is the world toward which the Scriptures promise God is moving, it seems only prudent to align our lives here and now with God’s truth, and God’s peace, and God’s justice. I think that’s what the prophet had in mind when he issued the call to “walk in the light of the Lord.”

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3.55-56: “Time and again the Old Testament makes it unmistakeably clear that the covenant of Yahweh with the one Israel and Israel with the one Yahweh, that all that takes place in the covenant, …, is not at all an end in itself and does not exhaust itself in this particular relationship, but has significance, relevance and true and dynamic meaning for the relationship between God and all the nations.”

[3] Cf. Fredrick C. Holmgren, “Isaiah 2:1-5, Between Text and Sermon,” Interpretation 51 (Jan 1997): 62, where he says, “The way of shalom [peace] is the path of Torah whose teaching of ‘righteousness and justice’ is the foundation of God's rule in the universe.”

[4] Cf. Christine Roy Yoder, “Hope that Walks: An Interpretation of Isaiah for Advent Preachers,” Journal for Preachers, 25 (Advent 2001): 18, where she says, “The peoples will transform (literally, crush to pieces) their weapons into agricultural tools, reversing the age-old call to arms: ‘beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say, “I am a warrior”’ (Joel3:10…). Instruments once deformed to make destructive arms will be reformed into implements for tilling and keeping the earth. At the same time, the nations will cease military training (v. 4c). The result will be an enduring, worldwide peace in which Yahweh’s protection sweeps away the memories of weaponry and strategies of war.”

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The "Voice" is a Liar

The “Voice” is a Liar

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11[1]

Among the many voices that compete for our attention in this world, some of the most difficult ones are the voices inside us. We all have those inner voices. You know them as well as I do. There is the voice of fear that says, “There’s no place I can feel really safe.” Or the voice of condemnation that says, “No matter what I do, it will never be good enough.” Or the voice of shame that says, “I’ll never be worthy of love.” Those voices are drilled into us by our culture, and they’re incredibly hard to ignore, let alone unlearn. But those voices are all lying to us. Because the truth is that we are already safe in God’s hands; everything we do is good enough for the God who loves us without our having to do anything to be “worthy.”

There’s another voice that we all have faced from time to time. It’s the voice of temptation. It’s the voice that says, “You know you want it, so go for it.” It’s a voice that comes to us in situations that can be mundane as well as those that have life-long consequences. Essentially, it’s the same voice our original parents heard in the Garden. When the tempter came to them, he lied to them. But he did so in ways that made it really hard to recognize that he was lying to them. Notice how cunning the tempter was. First, he distorted God’s original instruction to them.[2] God’s voice said “you may freely eat of every tree of the garden” (Gen. 2:16), except for one.[3] But the tempter made it sound as if any restriction was unfair: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (3:1).

Next the tempter made God out to be a liar. God had warned Adam that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die (2:17). But the tempter flatly contradicted that: “You will not die” (3:4). And, in fact they didn’t die the moment they ate. But they did bring death into that beautiful garden.[4] As if that were not enough, the tempter proceeded to call God’s motives into question, implying that God was trying to keep something great and wonderful from them: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:5).[5] The truth of the matter is that they were already “like God” in all the ways that mattered, because they had been created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27). But the voice of temptation always makes it hard to recognize that it’s lying. Just like the other voices that can trouble us, the voice of temptation is a liar. It’s always a liar.[6]

In our other temptation story for today, Jesus seems to handle the tempter’s voice with great ease, as if the temptations presented to him were no real challenge at all. And yet, if we were to think that, we would miss an important truth about this temptation story. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus is “one who in every respect has been tested as we are” (Heb. 4:15).[7] If we think that he didn’t want to turn those stones to bread after fasting for forty days and nights, it’s only because we’ve never fasted that long.

Interestingly, the tempter’s strategy was the same with Jesus as it had been in garden. First, he planted a seed of doubt about whether Jesus could trust the voice at his Baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17).[8] The tempter tried to get Jesus to doubt that declaration by talking him into indulging his hunger: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Mt. 4:3). But Jesus responded with the voice of truth from the Torah: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (4:4, quoting Dt. 8:3).[9]

Next, the tempter shifts to the strategy of distorting God’s voice. He took Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple and quoted from the Psalms: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone’” (4:6, quoting Ps. 91:11-12). But despite the fact that Jesus had the need for validation just like every other human being, he also knew that this wasn’t the way to get it. And so he turned again to the voice of truth in the Torah: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (4:7, quoting Dt. 6:16).[10]

Finally, the tempter goes all out and challenges not only God’s motives but also Jesus’ intentions. Jesus had come to transform the “Kingdom of this world into the Kingdom of our Lord” (Rev. 11:15) by stripping the power from evil on the cross. He knew this was the reason God had sent him in the first place. So the tempter offered Jesus an “easier” path: showing him all the kingdoms of the world he said, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (4:9).[11] As if they were his to give! And as if it was not Jesus’ destiny to become the one at whose name “every knee shall bow” as a result of his death on the cross.[12] But Jesus saw through the tempter’s ruse and again answered with the voice of truth from the Torah: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (4:10, quoting Dt. 6:13). As in the story of the temptation in the Garden, so here the tempter was a liar. In every scheme, every pretense, every aspect of the sham he tried to perpetrate, the voice of the tempter was lying.

That is true for us as well. As we enter the season of Lent, I think it would be helpful to take a look at how well we tell the difference between the voices that are lying to us and the those that speak truth. It’s never easy, because the lying voices play on our doubts and our weaknesses and our failures in an attempt to convince us they’re telling us the real truth. But in the end, those voices are always lying to us. The voice that speaks truth is the one that tells us we’re accepted and loved. The voice that speaks truth is the one that reminds us that we are precious and of inestimable worth in God’s sight.[13] The voice that speaks truth is the one that points us toward what is good for us, and right, and life-giving. That’s the voice we need to be listening for. That’s the voice that will help us recognize that the other voice is a liar.

[2] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, 47, where he points out that the interplay in this passage “serves to invert the realities ordained by God." He also says (p. 48), that in the tempter’s approach, “there’s just enough of a twist to miss the point” of God’s original voice.

[3] Cf. Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” New Interpreters Bible I:351: “To be truly a creature entails limits; to honor limits becomes necessary if creation will develop as God intends. Yet, while the language takes the form of command, the issue involves trust in the word of God.” At the same time, the freedom to disobey was also a part of the creation (p. 365): “The temptation to reach beyond the limits of creatureliness belongs to created existence for the sake of human integrity and freedom.” Cf. similarly, Brueggemann, 48: the matter of death in the original prohibition “was not a threat but a candid acknowledgement of a boundary of life.”

[4] Cf. Fretheim, “Genesis” NIB I:352, where he points out that they were already mortal beings, so “It may be that death (and life) has a comprehensive meaning in this story ..., associated with the breakdown of relationships to God, to each other, and to the created order.” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2.607, is more direct when he says at the conclusion of a long exposition that “the finitude of human life stands in fact in the shadow of its guilt. What else can death be for sinful man but the sign of God’s judgment, and therefore—if man is indeed not created to be a sinner or to suffer God’s judgment—not a divinely willed and created determination natural to his being, but an alien intrusion?” To be sure, Barth’s conclusions are heavily influenced by Pauline theology, and especially by Barth’s understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross.

[5] Cf. Fretheim, “Genesis” NIB I:361: “The serpent engages in no coercion here, no arm-twisting, no enticement through presentation of fruit from the tree; everything happens through words. The word of the serpent ends up putting the word of God in question.” And he points out that the question is whether they can trust that God has their best interests at heart in restricting them from this particular tree.

[6] Cf. Brueggemann, 52, who points out that the crux of this temptation was about trust in God. He says, “the God announced in this story is not a petty god who jealously guards holy secrets and who eagerly punishes the disobedient.” Rather the point is that “there is something to life which remains hidden and inscrutable, and which will not be trampled upon by human power or knowledge.”

[7] Cf. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 26, where he says that the “basic underlying temptation” that Jesus shared with all the ones we face is “the temptation to treat God as less than God.” Cf. also M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII:165: here Matthew depicts Jesus as “one who fully shares the weakness of our human situation (cf. Phil 2:5-11; Heb. 2:5-18). The picture of Jesus as the obedient Son of God does not abolish or compromise the image of Jesus as truly human.”

[8] Cf. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew 1-7, 367: the question at issue in the temptation is “How should Jesus exercise his power as Son of God? The answer is, In obedience to God.” Cf. also Hare, Matthew, 23; Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 92-93.

[9] Cf. Hare, Matthew, 24: unlike Israel in the wilderness, this “Son of God” “refuses to give way to mistrust.” Cf. also Davies and Allison, Matthew 1-7, 362.

[10] Cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew 1-7, 367: “The Father in heaven is not to be compelled; rather should every deed be an obedient reaction to what he has willed, a submissive response to divine initiative.” Cf. also Hare, Matthew, 25

[11] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, 260-63, where he points out that all the temptations were intended to persuade Jesus to violate God’s purpose. Cf. similarly, Moltmann, Way of Jesus, 93: “Filled with the Spirit, Jesus becomes the messianic Son of God; but through the temptations into which this same Spirit leads him, he is denied the economic, political and religious means for a ‘seizure of power’. Here, that is to say, his passion in helplessness is prefigured: his victory comes through suffering and death.”

[12] Cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew 1-7, 369-70: Jesus rejects this temptation because “Only after the passion, and then only from the Father in heaven, can Jesus accept all authority.”
[13] Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 187: "Human life has eternal value because it is loved and accepted by God."

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Defining Truth

1 Jn. 5:1-6[1]

It seems to me that our culture is locked in a battle over truth. Unfortunately, in our debate over truth, we are simply talking past each other rather than actually discussing our differences. I think part of the problem is that we have very different views on “truth.” We differ greatly over the central idea that shapes us, forms us, and defines how we live our lives. Is it that we are a society governed of the people, by the people, and for the people? Or is it that common people have to be supervised by the millionaires and billionaires that have the money to buy out our government? Is our defining truth that we are a beacon of freedom and compassion for the whole world, seeking to help those who are suffering and struggling? Or is it that we are the world’s only remaining superpower, able to exert our will wherever and whenever we please? Is our defining truth that we are an increasingly diverse people, and that diversity is our strength? Or is it that we are a people who insist that everybody conform to the same ideals—mine!

We might call these central ideas our “defining truths.” Defining truths are very powerful. They determine a great deal about us—from what we think about political and social issues to how we relate to others and ourselves to what we hold as our faith convictions. Unfortunately, many of us were instilled from childhood with defining truths like, “you’ll never do it right,” or “you’ll never be good enough to be worthy of love,” or “you don’t deserve to be here.”[2] These kinds of statements may have been imposed verbally on us by parents who couldn’t handle their own feelings. Or for some of us, our childish minds came to the conclusion that they must be true based on the way we were treated. Sadly, those defining truths have a way of controlling our whole lives. From work to family to money to faith, our defining truths have a way of running our whole lives. And they can have a way of ruining our lives.

Our lesson from 1 John for today tells us that our faith gives us victory. [3] I think part of the victory that our faith gives to us is to expose the lies that masquerade as our defining truths. As we discussed last week, the Christian Gospel is that in Jesus God somehow came among us to walk in our shoes, to experience the fullness of our suffering, our struggles, and even our loneliness. One of the most important reasons why God went to all that trouble was to make it clear that we are not worthless, rejected, unloved people. Rather we are—all of us and every single one of us—the focus of God’s unconditional and irrevocable love!

Some in our day will debate whether this version of “faith” as a “truth” that defines our lives is really all that helpful. They will point instead to the idea that faith is simply a matter of trust. I certainly would not want to minimize trust as an important aspect of our faith. And I agree that when our defining truth becomes “THE defining truth,” we can do great harm in the name of that truth. But that doesn’t mean that we should discard the notion of truth entirely from our faith.[4]

One of the most important facets of Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, and resurrection is that all of it is a magnificent demonstration of a defining truth. It is the truth that God loves us all, and will stop at nothing to reach us with that love. It is the truth that there is no depth to which God will not go to embrace each and every human being with that love. It is the truth that even death and hell itself cannot prevent God from reaching us with that love. When I think of faith as the “victory,” I think of it as not overcoming the “world,” so much as overcoming the fear and the shame and the pain that the defining lies we have lived with have inflicted on us all. I think our faith that Jesus shows us God’s love for us all is a “defining truth,” an idea that sets us free to live the lives we were meant to live.

And when we can embrace that defining truth so completely that it frees us from the lies that have kept us bound—some of us for decades!—then we can also take that freedom and share it with the people around us, most of whom also have their own lies that defined them and have kept them bound and chained. Then we can become the kind of people who love one another like Jesus loved us, by laying down our lives for our friends (Jn. 15:13).[5] And when we embrace the truth that God loves us all unconditionally and irrevocably, then we can understand that there’s nobody out there who falls outside the definition of a “friend” we are called to love by laying down our lives for them.[6]

[2] Cf. Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, 20. She calls this “the trance of unworthiness.”

[3] Cf. G. Strecker and H. W. Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 182; cf. even more definitively Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 271: faith “ amounts to a ‘confession,’ or ‘acknowledgment,’ about Jesus as both divine and human.”

[4] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 20: “We all need a ‘way,’ I am not denying that, but I deny that anyone has the authority to Capitalize their way.”

[5] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:835, where he defines the “victory” of faith in terms of the love that St. Paul describes in 1 Cor. 13:7 as “bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.” He compares it to “the victory which takes place in and with the fact that love cannot waver, tire or cease in relation either to God or the neighbor …. It bears and believes and hopes and endures.”

[6] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 117, 120-21, where he defines this attitude as “open and total friendship.” Cf. also Brach, Radical Acceptance, 301, where offers an excellent definition of “friendliness” when she says, “We only need to pause, see clearly who is before us and open wide our heart.”

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Unable Not to Speak

Acts 4:5-12; Mk. 4:1-9[1]

The Christian message is one that ought to be shouted from the rooftops: God loves us all unconditionally, accepts us all unreservedly, and is working to transform us all completely. Unfortunately, in practice this maximally inclusive message has been turned into something rigidly exclusive. Which is why, I think, that most of us would rather be shot that have to actually say anything about our faith to another human being. We’re very comfortable with being “a sign in and for the world” of the “new beginning for human life” that has occurred in Jesus Christ.[2] But not when it comes to our calling “to tell the good news of salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.”[3]

Our lesson from Acts for today serves as a kind of double edge regarding our verbal witness. On the one hand, after being thrown in jail for speaking about Jesus’ death and resurrection, it seems that the Apostles can’t wait to speak their message to the very ones who had Jesus killed in the first place. And after being threatened with further punishments they responded by saying to the Jewish leaders, “we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20) and by praying for God to enable them to “speak your word with all boldness” (4:28). So far so good—courageous testimony that inspires us to go and do likewise.

But when you look at what Peter says to them, the problem of exclusion comes up. The crux of his message to the Jewish leaders is this: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Now, on the surface of things, that sounds pretty exclusive. In fact, it may sound downright offensive. That’s where our problem lies—not that we don’t want to share our life with others, but that we are embarrassed by some of the ways the Gospel has been put out there. Hence, we’d much rather do the whole “living as signs of the new reality” thing than have to actually speak about our faith to anyone, anywhere!

But let’s not forget what is going on here—Peter is under arrest for having healed a man in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The very ones who were responsible for Jesus’ death are the ones who arrested Peter. And they are insisting that he not do any more healing or speaking in the name of Jesus. In response, Peter is explaining why he “cannot keep from speaking”—because he has experienced the salvation that God has given in the name of Jesus.[4] Peter wasn’t even thinking about other world religions at the time. It doesn’t sound all that bad when you put it that way. Unfortunately, over the years, what started out as a defense speech delivered to authorities trying to suppress the witness of the early church to the resurrection of Jesus has turned into an exclusive view of the Christian faith as the only, absolute, final truth.

When I hear people speaking about the Christian faith in those ways, it sickens me. In my mind, nothing that we fallible human beings think or say or believe can ever be absolute and final. I think finality is too absolute for us fallen human beings.[5] And if our premise is that God is really the maker of heaven and earth and Jesus is really the Savior of the world then it has to be the whole world that benefits and not just a small portion of it, or else the premise is a sham.[6]

There are some implications, however, that we should be clear about. Peter is convinced that Jesus is not just another wonder-working rabbi. Peter is convinced that Jesus is unique as the “author of life” and the one who brings God’s “universal restoration” to pass. But there’s a difference between uniqueness and finality.[7] The point of Peter’s witness to Jesus is to affirm that there truly is salvation in the name of Jesus—which is what his opponents were disputing. He wants to insist that it is in Jesus’ name that God is making all things new, not in Peter’s name, or Moses’ name, or Caiaphas’ name.[8] It seems to me that is a conviction we can hold while respecting the faiths of others around us.[9]

So, what can we learn from the early church about actually speaking our faith? We must lay aside our embarrassment about the fact that the inclusive Gospel of Scripture has been turned into an exclusive-sounding ideology. The message of acceptance, of new life, of hope in and through Jesus Christ is one that needs to be heard in the midst of all the other messages out there. We don’t have to speak it in such a way that we rule out those other messages in an arrogant way. Notice that even as Peter is speaking fairly boldly to his interrogators, he rather politely says they are the ones to judge whether he should obey God or them (Acts 4:19)! We can speak our faith, listening respectfully to others, while holding to our conviction that there is something unique about Jesus Christ. When we do so, then perhaps we too will be unable not to speak.

[2] The Book of Order 2007-2009, G-3.0200.

[3] Book of Order, G-3.0300.

[4] William Willimon, Acts, 49.

[5] Cf. John Hick, “A Pluralist View,” in Dennis Okholm and Timothy Phillips, ed., Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, 50; cf. also Willimon, Acts, 98. Cf. similarly, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 118-111.

[6] See Hick, “A Pluralist View” 38-39. Cf. also Clark Pinnock, “An Inclusivist View” in Four Views, 98.

[7] Cf. Alistair McGrath, “A Particularist View: A Post-Enlightenment Approach,” in Four Views, 163-170; cf. similarly, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “Witnessing to the Gospel in the Acts of the Apostles,” Word and World 22 (Summer 2002): 238-45. It seems to me that without this Christianity is ultimately emptied of meaning! I think John Hick makes this error in “Christology in an Age of Religious Pluralism,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 4-9. On this issue, see further Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 150-163.

[8] Cf. Julia Ching, “No Other Name?,” Japanese Journal of Theological Studies 12:260-61. She suggests that Peter was simply “spelling out the meaning of the saying: ‘Yahweh saves.’”

[9] Jaroslav Pelikan, “The Man Who Belongs to the Whole World,” The Christian Century (Sept. 25, 1985): 830, says it this way: “The universality of Jesus … does not establish itself in the world through the obliteration of whatever elements of light and truth have already been granted to the nations of the world.” Cf. also Moltmann, The Church in the Power, 161, where he points out that this is the way to “testify to God’s openness” toward all humankind, as well as “God’s passion” and “God’s vulnerability.”

The Waking Dreamer