I-YOUniverse

Drew Smith’s insightful piece James Dobson Misrepresents Barack Obama’s Views on Religion gets me. (You’ll find it at CC blogs.) Having lived all my professional life as Southern Baptist clergy in the warlock’s cauldron of “The Conservative Resurgence” or “The Controversy” (which it is depends on whose side you’re on like the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War), I have strong unhealed emotions about schism.

Lose-Lose Lose-Lose

The first is my profound belief that nobody wins, everybody loses. In denominational schism everybody’s a loser, especially outsiders who are weighing whether Christ makes a difference or not. Mike Warnke asks, if a 1000 member church splits in two, how many people will go to the two churches? Not 500 each, but maybe (if God forgives us) 100 each. Net loss of 800 little lambs and mothers with child, for each of whom we will give account to God.

Is there Any Sorrow like my Sorrow

The second is a feeling of sorrow. Dr. Ben Bruner, my deacon at First Baptist Church Richmond, was married to the great great granddaughter of one of the women who founded the Woman’s Missionary Union. She said, “It’s like an unending funeral.”

My wife Sandy and I went to only one annual meeting of the SBC, Dallas 1985. The news photographers were lined up to film the moderates walk out, if they lost the presidency. The moderates lost, and all the paparazzi got was a handshake.

R.I.P. S.B.C.

But that year the SBC died for us.

People crammed in the convention center two hours before the meeting began, shoulder to shoulder at 6:30 a.m. Someone began to sing “Amazing Grace,” “What A Friend,” all the old songs we loved. Then, the doors opened and we did a hardball political hatchet job or hated those who did it.

My parents gave money they didn’t have. They went to church every time the doors were open. Baptist churches raised my mom from alcoholism. My dad started a church in our home. I was baptized at age five. (Good thing we know we don’t practice infant baptism, or it might get confusing.) I got my college education at the Baptist Student Union, and two seminary degrees at SB institutions, much of the cost borne by the SB Cooperative Program.

Fifty Ways to Leave

Cut us, my wife and I bled Baptist.

From the national denomination, to the state conventions, to the regional associations, even to individual churches: whether you were liberal or fundamentalist mattered more than whether you were saved. Pastors’ get togethers were consumed not by prayer but by the latest rendition of who did whom.

At last, Sandy and I walked away. Left the only fellowship of men and women we’d known. Left the institutions we believed in, and were willing to give our lives to.

We couldn’t fight any more.

Not soon enough for our son, who now speaks of religion, if ever, with disgust.

Wherever You Lead, We’ll Go

I had to pray, “Lord, those who built the SBC built it for you: the foreign and home mission boards, the seminaries with their magnificent libraries, the colleges, the conference centers–all of it–even the Annuity Board. I took out my retirement savings and put the rest in God’s hands. I hope God knows how to deal with true believers. I never will.

But I prayed, “God bless them and use them  as you will for your glory.” It still is a very hard prayer, especially if them is specific, not general.

Now, Lord, I prayed, wherever You lead I’ll go. I never dreamed You would send me away from Southern Baptists. My wife is a United Methodist elder in full connection (I have rehearsed that, so I can say it easily).

My Church Membership’s in my Boots

Me? My heart belongs to Jesus. My church membership’s in my boots. That’s where the 16th century Anabaptists kept lists of scriptures that they knew by heart because carrying a copy of the Bible around could get you killed.

The Schleitheim Confession (1527) is one of the earliest Anabaptist confessions. A significant theme is Vereinigung, which John Howard Yoder notes can mean union, atonement, reconciliation. As a past passive participle it means, “to be brought into unity.”

Thus, the same word can be used for the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, for the procedure whereby [sisters and] brothers come to a common mind, for the state of agreement in which they find themselves, and for the document which states the agreement to which they have come.

trans. John H. Yoder (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1977), p. 20.

Vereinigung is Good Enough for Me

John 17 records Jesus’ prayer that all who believe (belive and belove) in His Name may be one as Father, Son and Spirit are one. I repeat His words, may all be one.

I offer a prayer for my Anglican sisters and brothers, who are heading into the abyss. I ask God to forgive me the part I played, for it takes two sides. I’m not important enough to have done much damage. But if I did any, it’s way too high a price to pay for being right. And only God knows who’s right and who isn’t.

I believe, as we see one denomination after another cannibalize its own bleeding flesh, that we are watching the death throes of a way of life God has used in the past, and could use again.

If only we put God in the driver’s seat, and our love of power and preeminence and doctrinal purity in the trunk under the spare. But if we must do that, we’d better not have a flat. The spare will be eaten to bits in no time.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

  Wrongly accused of cutting telegraph wires, a young Sikh was taken from his home by British soldiers and flogged publicly. His friends called on C. F. Andrews, Anglican clergyman and friend of India, afraid the man would do violence to himself or others. Meeting him, Andrews realized words would not suffice. Instead, Andrews knelt and touched his feet, asking for forgiveness.

The gesture, familiar in the East, broke through his humiliation and rage. Through the conversation that followed the man reported that he had forgiven the injustice and his face lit up with joy and peace. 

This is an example of what Bonhoeffer meant by Christianity “from below,” Christianity that doesn’t arrogate power and privilege for itself.

It’s from Christ in the Silence [(London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1933), pp. 94-96], C. F. Andrews’ exposition of the Farewell Discourses of the gospel of John, the interior life underlying his years of service to India, Britain, and the world.

Wonder what such an approach could mean in the world today.

What God can do with open Bibles, open minds, and open hearts sometimes takes my breath away.

Here we are, four people–reading Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 4, 5 and 7. Lisa, her daughter Emily, and Linda, whose son recently returned from Iraq.

(We’re expecting my wife Sandy, Methodist minister, pastoral counselor, who visited a former client now in hospice. Having had a day from hell, she gets there an hour after everyone has left.)

Meet Up with Melchizedek

Melchizedek, king of righteousness, king of peace, blesses Abram, serves bread and wine, receives a tithe from him.

“It’s stupid, I guess,” says Lisa, “but I’m thinking, could this be Christ some way?”

“Many people think Melchizedek is Christ on earth long before his birth in Bethlehem,” I assure her.

We bat that around. I acknowledge others think he was a Canaanite priest, in whom Abram recognized a worthy servant of Yahweh.

My Favorite Four Letter (Hebrew) Word

Which brings us to Psalm 110.1, “The Lord said to my lord…” When you see Lord in small caps like that, it stands for the holy name of God which Jews won’t pronounce.

No one had ever noticed that. Which sparked interest in Exodus 3.13-15, and the holy name YHWH, now thought to be pronounced Yahweh, similar to verb forms of to be like hayah and ehyeh; influenced by German scholars, we used to pronounce it Jehovah.

People are intrigued, gonna take that bit of Bible knowledge home.

How come they don’t know this stuff?

I think, these women have attended Sunday School their whole lives. The last four Tuesdays Linda’s been doing committee work at her church. These are sharp people. Linda’s a nurse. Emily’s a college student. Lisa has a keen eye for people. Whenever Lisa says something about a stupid idea or thick skull, I get ready to jot down what she says because often she’s right on the money.

I’ve taught Sunday School most of my life, followed each week by a sermon. For a decade I wrote Bible study materials for junior highs, and I’m proud of the work the team and I did, grateful for the editors, and pissed at the politics at the top. I also believe the Bible study aids I’m familiar with aren’t doing the job.

®  People don’t know Bible basics.

®  People don’t connect Bible knowledge and a life-changing relationship to Christ.

®  People don’t take what little they know out of the classroom.

  BEFORE and AFTER BSing¹ in SS they’re NO DIFFERENT!

Compare your average SS class with an AA group. What a difference!

I’m a fan of a good study Bible, a systematic plan to cover the whole Bible appropriately in each age group, and teachers with access to commentaries, computer software, and other aids.

I’d be interested to know if anyone’s curriculum includes measuring knowledge and application.

 This Teacher Needs a Little Mercy

Anyway, back to Tuesday. We read

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Heb 4:15-16 (NRSV)

That gives some juice to the potentially dry discussion of the order of Melchizedek in Hebrews, after which we return to psalm 110. Using typology we apply what’s said about Zion to our lives. “What does that mean to you?” I ask lamely.

I was struggling. I can think of many specific ways to apply Psalm 110.5-6:

The Lord is at your right hand;
     he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgment among the nations,
     filling them with corpses;
he will shatter heads
     over the wide earth.

But I don’t.

 Nail Prints N’ All

At the close the women note my wife Sandy’s not home. We get into a discussion of hospice. In the group two had mothers die recently in hospice. We talk about pain management, the patient’s looking forward to death, how relatives cope, how God blesses us when we need it most.

When people in a small group trust each other, and focus on God’s Word in their lives, amazing things occur, despite the group leader’s lame use of typology.

I don’t know for sure if it was Christ way back there with Abram. But, right there Tuesday night in my living room where two or three were gathered, for sure–it was Christ.

___________________________________

¹That’s “Bible studying.” In higher criticism aka “Bull Geschichte.”

Last night’s neighborhood Bible study was different. We didn’t focus just on a psalm, but on the mysterious Melchizedek, mentioned in Psalm 110 and elsewhere. 

Theological Fine Print

I don’t go in for biblical prophecy aka fortune telling, allegory or typology much. I’m a big fan of prophecy aka preaching especially unpopular truth. But perhaps because I’m re-reading Bernard Ramm’s Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3^rd ed., I felt like tackling Melchizedek the type. Ramm is much more conservative than I, but through the years I keep reviewing his principles of hermeneutics.

I’ve gotten clarity this trip around that in typology it’s “anti” with an i, not “ante” with an e. Which helps because the antitype (Christ) occurs later in time, not earlier, than the type (Melchizedek).

Most recently, a friend drove me to buy yet another copy of Ramm when he said (in holy sophisticated verbiage) that the Bible means whatever you want it to mean, like a Rorschach ink blot. Imagine what that’ll do to your Hebrew vowel points!

BS!

Now here’s the secret I-believe-the-same-thing-you-believe-about-inerrancy handshake.

Sick of this crap? skip the following two paragraphs.

2…I wish I was inerrant, but I keep making dumb mistakes. So even if the Bible is inerrant, I amn’t. My brain is errant. My cats are errant. My knights are errant. So I get the Bible, if it’s about my error-ridden kind of life and mere mistake making mortals like me. If it’s about nonexistent manuscripts of mystical perfection produced by zombie flautists, I don’t get it. Mystical perfection and I aren’t on a first name basis yet. As for zombie flautists, I get them green warranted for a 72 hour all-expenses-paid stay in the nearest psyche ward.

1…So why read Ramm, who devotes a whole chapter to inerrancy? It’s a good idea to read people whose ideas creep you out, even make you want to puke—although Ramm doesn’t rise to that level for me. 56.4% or more of the time he makes sense to me. Always he’s grounded, logical, and sane.

Restart reading here:

Despite my suave (rhymes with gave) breezy style, I do NOT disrespect error-free brethren and sistern. Ramm said it well in 1970 or earlier:

There is a prevailing danger to let differences in interpretation interrupt the unity of the Spirit. When differences are sharp, feelings are apt to run high. With foreboding storm clouds of oppression on the distant horizon, it is well for conservative Protestantism to discover bases of fellowship rather than divergence.  If we stand together in the great truths of the Trinity, of Jesus Christ, and of Salvation, let us then work out our interpretive differences in the bounds of Christian love and endeavor to preserve the unity of the Spirit. A hermeneutical victory at the expense of Christian graciousness is hardly worth winning.

Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3^rd rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1970), p. 289.

What were we blogging about? Oh yeah, actual Bible study

Anyway, I chose psalm 110 for our topic last night. Melchizedek’s always good for an hour or two.

Of course, you start a study of Melchizedek pronouncing names of kings Amraphel, Arioch, Chedorlaomer, and Tidal in Genesis 14. These guys wrangled with some other guys with equally jaw-buster names. They took captive Lot, Abram’s ne-er-do-well nephew hanging out in Sodom, capital Sin City of the Dead Sea metroplex.

Which kicked Abram into gear. He pursued them North to Damascus, and brought back Lot and all his haul, “and the women and the people.”

Abe meets up with Melchizedek king-priest of Salem, priest of El Elyon, the Canaanite high god, whom Abe swears to: “Yahweh El Elyon.” If you not a fan of syncretism, that’ll perk your coffee.

Not only does Abe break bread, cut a covenant, with Melchizedek, he allows this pagan priest to bless him (and thereby all Levi’s descendants squirming about in Abe’s DNA), drinks wine, and more to the point, pays to him a tithe of one tenth of everything. When you pass the plate, you’re in the Holy of Holies, right?

At least, Abe has the good sense to refuse the king of Sodom’s offer to share the booty.

So the $64,000 question is, who is this guy?

ª       A Canaanite priest who loved God heart and soul as he understood God

ª       An angel, but no mention of feathers, no reveal with special glow lights

ª       The Christ, or Holy Spirit, 1500 years ahead of the fullness of time, in some form or fashion beyond our normal ken

ª       An extra-terrestrial

Next: Lisa’s stupid ideas and thick skull (thank God!)

In the mid-20th century two British writers produced huge amounts of work. One is J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings created a genre and influenced generations. The other is C.F. Andrews, a British clergyman identified with Gandhi and the Indian poet of the age Rabindranath Tagore.

Today books, films, video games, websites influenced by Tolkien are legion. Andrews, however, is mostly out of print and unknown. Tagore is not hugely popular, as he was at the time.

Andrews wrote prolifically for magazines, journals and newspapers, recording and interpreting the struggle of India for independence from Britain. He introduced the English-speaking world to the thought of Gandhi. He wrote a number of books on Indian questions, and on his experience with Christ.

Tolkien has populated the modern imagination with balrogs, orcs, dwarves, elves, wizards and hobbits. His deeply held Christian faith provides the bedrock on which LOTR stands, but nobody I know sees it as an apologetic work.

So what?

I’m casting about for what to do with this wonderful tool called a blog. Shall I adopt a cause? Politics? God help us! Global warming? Justice in matters racial or economic? How about a devotional column about prayer? Or reading and understanding the Bible?

I really enjoy making the Bible come alive. Years ago I wrote a workbook called Touching Life through the Psalms, which pointed out the role of emotions in worship. Since then, a lot of my biblical teaching and preaching could be called Touching Life through the Bible.

In our culture we’re genuises at how? but, in George Buttrick’s words, we’re a “cut flower civilization.” We’ve lost our roots. That’s why I’m so interested in old literature and classics. We need answers to who? what? why? We need truth, not technology.

If I write about that, especially guided by the Word made flesh now Spirit, I won’t miss the mark by much.

BTW, if you are reading this, I’d love to hear from you either by comment or by email (see side bar).

I noticed C.F. Andrews, the Anglican missionary, friend of Gandhi, in the film about the great Indian leader. What struck me was his ability to get past the racism of his day and recognize in Gandhi the extraordinary leader he was, even before his world-wide fame began.

There’s a striking scene in the film where Andrews is preaching in South Africa, and several people walk out, but one woman listens with shining eyes to his defense of satyagraha, soul force, civil disobedience.

I’ve now read two biographies The Ordeal of Love by Hugh Tinker (1979) and Charles Freer Andrews by Benarsidas Chaturvedi and Marjorie Sikes (1950).

I’ve hunted down a couple of Andrews’ own works, but I’m going to take a break and finish Anglo-Saxon Spirituality before reading them.

(It’s a severe discipline to finish a book, which is not unlike a death to me.)

What strikes me most about Andrews is how contemporary he is. He was truly multicultural, almost becoming Hindu, certainly becoming Indian. He identified a key issue of his day as racism. So long as the church remained the White Church, its future in India was limited. He likened treatment of blacks in America to the untouchables in India.

Another striking thing was his concern about economics and labor. Without portfolio except his own personality and experience, he became a labor negotiator for Indian people throughout the world.

Through prolific writing he interpreted Gandhi and Christ to the world.

He commanded the respect of Indian nationals as few British, perhaps no other British person, did. This was in no small measure because of his pastoral concern. No one was beneath his compassion. He often emptied his pockets for the beggar in the streets, and lived with few possessions.

Today missionaries are often dismissed as imperialistic. No one who gets to know Andrews will ever be able to make that statement again, without holding him up as an exception.

The Indian friends had two nicknames for him. One is Deenabandhu, friend of the poor. The other, based on his initials CFA, is Christ’s Faithful Apostle.

He’s worth using Interlibrary loan if your local library doesn’t have a biography. I recommend the earlier one Charles Freer Andrews. It’s much more personal and readable, though it may not be quite as willing to expose his few weaknesses.

If you know him, or get to know him, I’d love to hear from you about him.

Working in a nursing home I met people who no longer read. Maybe they couldn’t, due to deteriorating eyesight or because of mental condition simply lost the capacity or interest to do so.

I resolved, then, to read all the books I could, especially the great books, so that if the day came when I also didn’t read any more, I would have read as many as possible.

Reading the great books

I have in mind some of the classics. Homer, whom I’ve never read. The existentialists Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski. The great Russians. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Of course, Shakespeare. I have him on audio CDs, and listen to one or two plays a week. Don Quixote has never held my attention for more than 100 pages, but one of these days…

I get distracted. I like biography. Bonhoeffer’s biography by Bethge is terrific. That led me to others of his works. The Cost of Discipleship. Life Together. Required reading for those of us who dream of a family-based monasticism. Mother Teresa’s Come Be My Light. Compelling, heart-breaking.

Distractions

At the moment I’m into C.F. Andrews. I noticed his character in the film Gandhi, and want to understand how this Englishman realized who Gandhi was and what was happening in India. So I read The Ordeal of Love by Hugh Tinker (Oxford, 1979), and I have Charles Freer Andrews (Harper & Brothers, 1950). The latter is more personal, lyrical, and more positive. I’m looking forward to two of Charlie’s books What I Owe to Christ, Christ in the Silence. These will shine light upon his religious quest, from High Church Anglican to some degree of Hindu and finally back to the person of the Christ.

I’m also reading Tagore. Gitanjali, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Sadhana: the Realization of Life. Selected Poems.

I also love liberation theology. We Drink Water from Our Own Wells I carry around with me. And I found Liberation Theology Resources Online.

Deciding what not to read

You realize that I don’t have all that much to do but read.

I’ve gotten to the time in my life when I realize doing one thing means not ever doing ten others.  Younger people think they’ll get around to everything. But decide comes from the same root as suicide, a root that means to cut off.

I feel conflicted. On the surface are the waves, the winds; in the depth is the Gulf Stream. You get to do both. Read the acknowledged classics and also read the blogs, some of which are emerging classics.

How do you decide what to read?

My family of origin was DYSfunctional. Like most of my blood relatives, Mom was an alcoholic. Dad chose to stay away from home a lot of the time. Having learned a little Freud, I blamed my mother for some of my problems. Though she was a dry drunk by my growing up years, she was difficult to live with.  I kept my distance.

A healing dream-vision

A few months after my mother died, I had a dream or vision, I don’t know which. I saw her as the woman clothed with the sun with a crown of 12 stars on her head (Revelation 12). She held me a baby in her arms and was singing “Mighty Lak a Rose.”

I actually remember a photo of me as a baby on the piano bench and that sheet music on the piano.

This vision healed the breach between my mother and me. I believe whatever was cruel or unpredictable in her is now gone, and she is the woman God created her to be. I feel very close to her.

Uncovering unwelcome truth

During my training in pastoral counseling I discovered some big sins of Dad’s. In the last ten years of his life, I lived across country. We talked on the phone now and then. When he was no longer able to live alone, my oldest sister and I worked together to get him into a nursing home of his choice.

She became his legal guardian. In court I stood beside his wheelchair, my hand on his shoulder, except for the moment when the judge asked him if he understood and agreed.

As we left the federal building in El Paso, the lawyer said, “Your father’s legally dead.”

Accepting and forgiving is a process

Dad’s mother was Mexican. He grew up in El Paso, speaking Spanish at home and hiding from the outside world his Mexican heritage. To this day the Hamilton roots are more prominent than the Mercado ones. I know a little of the Mexican story based on my Aunt Margaret’s remembrances.

Dad did some wonderful things. He was a Major in the Army, serving in World War II. He founded five Spanish-speaking missions in Juarez, Mexico, and one in El Paso. He was a lay preacher, and for awhile ministered among migrant workers. He was devoted to his grandchildren, rearing two.

I realize it’s not up to me to forgive Dad. It’s between him, those he wronged, and God. I’m certain he spent the last years of his life trying to atone for his sins.

Yet … I’m still in the process of accepting. On my graduating from Seminary Dad gave me an 1862 Greek New Testament, edited by Constantin von Tischendorf. On the cover leaf are the signatures of my great grandfather B. B. Hamilton, a Baptist minister, another Hamilton preacher, my father, and me. I have put this book away for now; though precious, it has very complicated meanings for me.

I am a Father, too

I’m a sinner, too. My sins aren’t like Dad’s. But nevertheless I stand in need of God’s grace.

I hope and pray my son, who will discover no surprises about me, has a Dad whom he can look up to, though not perfect. But one who loved him and loved his Mom more than life itself.

When I get to glory, I look forward to meeting the man God created my father to be.

Healing, blessing memories of Dad

For now, I have two memories:

One. As a ten year old I accompanied Dad to the San Juan Mission, where he preached in Spanish and English. One communion Sunday, I felt unworthy to partake. Dad noticed, stopped the service, and directed the servers to serve me.

Two. Dad and several fathers took a group of us boys camping in the desert. Early in the morning Buzzy Parks the PK and several of us set off on a trek by ourselves and got lost. I recall clearly seeing Dad coming toward us late in the day, red-faced, having searched for us in the scorching heat for long hours. That evening, I heard him on the phone with other parents defending me from being blamed for the misadventure.

So, my image of God is not of the waiting Father, but of the searching Father, who treated me in a no-fault way. In that as in many things he’s an example.

I love you, Dad.

I never take media storms at face value. Take, for instance, this controversy over Jeremiah Wright. 

His comments were inflammatory. His ministry has been remarkable, though. He is highly regarded by responsible leaders. What if you sweep aside the distortion of sound-byte reporting and statements made in the heat of accusation-innuendo and the glare of the 15-seconds-of-fame spotlight? What if he has something to say? What if, though you disagree with certain statements, you find truth in his overall message?

During my friend Jean-Emile Ngué’s visit we watched the film Gandhi. The independence of India through spiritual struggle is one of the great victories of the 20th century. I’m intrigued by the Anglican clergyman C.F. Andrews, who showed up in South Africa to support Gandhi. Few of the English supported racial equality.

How did this clergyman escape the racism of his age? How did he so effectively identify with the Indian people?

I believe in missions and in the contributions missionaries have made. Missionaries way too often proselytize, however, and make converts twice the children of  hell as themselves (Mt 23.15). I’ve come to believe we need to go meet Christ among the people we serve, for Christ is already there. Too often what we bring is our own narrow white North American consumer culture.

Especially today, although 9/11 has changed our welcome of international students, the best opportunity in missions we have is the international students here. Think of the impact we could have by adopting students in our churches. Many live on starvation rations. A home away from home, no strings attached, would constitute worthy service in itself as well as plant seeds of Christian compassion. If a thinly disguised program to evangelize, though, such an effort would be disingenuous and sure to fail. We need to leave the winning to God, and simply do the loving.

I recall visiting a lovely SBC church in Gary, Indiana. It had a commercial style kitchen, fellowship hall, sanctuary to seat 300. But only four people attended, and there were bullet holes in the windows. Why? I asked the local Baptist leader. He said, “The problem is, you have to be converted twice to get into our churches. First, you have to become a Southerner, then a Christian.”

The great issue we face (perhaps not the greatest, but close), is racism. So many churches demand converts to be white first. I cannot speak for black churches.

What’s required is for us as individuals, if churches will not, is to become part of the lives of people in our cities, which are not whites only, to care about the issues people care about, to offer unconditional love. I’m afraid what most of us love unconditionally is our comfortable lifestyle. We live in a balloon of white privilege.

I’m still poring over The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (NY: Oxford, 1979) by Hugh Tinker. I found a used copy on Amazon. I’ve also found the two volumes of his Christian witness What I Owe to Christ and Christ in the Silence, which I will be reading soon. I’ve also found a terrific site for liberation theology reading at Liberation Theology Resources Online.

I feel like a sap, writing about heaven. Hard-headed realists do without it. People with the purest motives do without it.

Not me. I need heaven.

What the mind cannot conceive

I grant you that words about heaven are language that can’t be put into words, the chick breaking its shell.

So I’m not into streets of gold and all that jazz. It’s metaphor.

The same goes for hell. Literal fire and brimstone etc. etc. belong to another age or another mindset. I’m not attacking or belittling it, just admitting it’s not my point of view.

Heaven’s where God is

The psalmist wrote:

You guide me with your counsel,
     and afterward you will receive me with honor.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalms 73:24-26 (NRSV)

 I’m not exactly where he or she is, because on earth I love my wife and my son, and others, too. On a lighter note, books and chocolate make my list. (Not necessarily in that order.)

For here and now a taste

It’s the other lines of the psalm that get me. You guide me here and now….God is the strength of my heart. God is present in the moment, not some far-off future or distant past.

Yet, my heart longs for a deeper, truer union with God. It’s like what I have now is just a taste. But what I have now is enough to persuade me that God’s promises for the future are true.

Sandy made this scrumptious blueberry cheesecake for my birthday. She came into the living room with a spoonful of blueberry topping. “There’s too much, do you want a taste?”

Some questions don’t need asking!

Youth without acne

What prompted me to write this piece was an Aha! moment. I waste a lot of time looking back to my youth. I wasn’t much to look at back then, either. But 20 vs. 60?–you get it! And, it occurred to me that looking forward to the resurrection body is a lot more fruitful than looking back at a lost youth.

Funny, you don’t recall the acne.

I don’t have a clue what the risen body will be like, except that it will be like Jesus’:

He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.

Phil 3:21 (NRSV)

Perhaps it will be some flesh-and-bone chasis, or an energy imprinted with my transformed personality, or a memory in the heart of God.

For a long time, I’ve thought of heaven and hell, too, as relationship rather than place. Being one with God or being cut off from God.

Seeing through glass darkly

Language shatters reaching for truth of this kind.

But we can take the shards and make a window of stained glass. You can’t see out of it like ordinary glass. But you can see light, beauty, truth.

You can’t see the literal reality of heaven. Neither can you grab for it. God alone knows the number of days God has allotted each of us on earth. Gandalf reminded Denethor, authority is not given us to order the hour of our death (Lord of the Rings, 1994, p. 835). None in that epic is more selfish and petulant than Denethor, blinded by his own vanity.

However glorious the future may be, the present partakes of it already here and now. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heaven begins here and now

I need to know that, when my flesh and heart fail, as now when they function (more or less), God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I once preached a sermon entitled “Hometown: Heaven” about Abraham. “He looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Heb 11:10 (NRSV)

The point is not pining all the time to be someplace you’re not. Born and reared in El Paso, I’ll always be a paisano–think of mountains as bare granite jagging up into an endless clear blue sky above red land that grows prickly pear and yucca, listen for the melody of Spanish, admire the might of the Maya and Aztecs, and love Mexican food.

The point is being citizens in two dimensions at once, finding heaven now and here.

I suppose living on both sides of the border makes me a sap.

But then I’m in pretty good company.