Glocal Christianity

Myth Busting

It is often said that Trinitarian teaching was absent in the earliest, most ancient forms of Christianity, that it was a creation of the Council of Nicea. And yet, while you'll never find an explicit articulation of Trinitianian teaching in the New Testament, there are more than a few implicit reflerences for those with an open mind. Take this line for example:

"For though him [that is, Christ Jesus] we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." Ephesians 2:18

So, what's your take on Trinitarian teaching?

God of the dark and light

Do you think Christianity teaches two opposite and equal deities?

A word from Isaiah:

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

Where does Satan fit then?

Violence in the Old Testament

Some forgotten teachings on violence from the Old Testament.

Genesis 6:11
Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence.

Job 16:17
yet my hands have been free of violence and my prayer is pure.

Psalm 11:5
The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.

Proverbs 10:11
The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.

Isaiah 53:9
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Jeremiah 22:3
This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

Ezekiel 7:23
Prepare chains, because the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence.

Jonah 3:8
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.

Habakkuk 1:3
Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Zephaniah 1:9
On that day I will punish all who avoid stepping on the threshold, who fill the temple of their gods with violence and deceit.

Malachi 2:16
I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment.

Again, this is just a small sample from the Old Testament. But even from this small sample we can see that the living God associates the violence of humanity with corruption, impurity, wickedness, deceit, wrongness, evil, injustice ... things which are condemned by God.

How distant is your God?

Was the God of the Old Testament a distant God?

I find it instructive to read the prophet Jeremiah:

Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the LORD. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares the LORD.

This is not the generic god of enlightenment deism.

Is God mysogenistic?

From a conversation I had earlier: To whom did Christ appear first? Actions speak louder than words. In an age where the testimony of women was not trusted, the God we know through Christ entrusted the good news to women first. It was they who told the men. Is that the mark of a mysogenistic God?

God in the Old Testament and New Testament

Do you find the Old Testament and New Testament difficult to reconcile?

I don't know about you, but as a new Christian I found it very difficult to see the Old Testament as inspired in any way, let alone authoritative. I found myself asking, "How could the same God be so angry and vengeful in the Old Testament, yet so loving and compassionate in the New Testament?" I just didn't get it. I found myself wondering how any thinking Christian could ever equate the YHWH of Moses with the Father of Jesus.

So what happened? How come I see the Old Testament as authoritative now? How did I get from there to here? Well, an important part of my journey was learning that much of my understanding of the Old Testament and the God of Israel was deeply deficient; I learned that I had much to learn.

So, if you have ever struggled with this, if you have ever found the Old Testament and New Testament difficult to reconcile, I'd invite you to read and reflect on what the Old Testament says about God's mercy. Here is a sample:

Nehemiah 9:29-31
You warned them to return to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your ordinances, by which a man will live if he obeys them. Stubbornly they turned their backs on you, became stiff-necked and refused to listen. 30 For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you handed them over to the neighboring peoples. 31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

Isaiah 63:9
In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Hosea 6:6
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 7:18
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.

Zechariah
"This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.

Personally I find the prophetic instructions from Hosea and Micah particularly arresting. Their words are not so different from how Jesus summarized the Law, as loving God and loving others. Yet here it is in the Old Testament.

Is creation a done deal?

What is your understanding of the creative activity of God? Commenting on the difference between magic and miracles, some months ago Jarred suggested that:

The first important concept to understand is that creation is not a 'done deal.' While many religious traditions teach that God or some other Divine Source created the universe like a "master clockmaker" who assembled everything and wound everything up enough to last for the rest of its existence, a witch understands that the creative forces are still in progress.  

Now, the question I have for all of you is, do you think a master clockmaker God is compatable with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Personally I think the clockmaker God sounds kinda deist, not theist. For me the words of Jesus come to mind: "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." God may have rested on the seventh day but God didn't retire. I agree, the creative forces are still in progress. I would therefore contend that the difference between magic and miracles lies elsewhere.

Why was God so intolerant of Canaanite religion?

Given the value our culture places on religious tolerance it can be very difficult for us to accept the intolerance we find attributed to God in the Old Testament. Why was God so negative towards Canaanite religion back in ancient times? Why did he forbid Israelites to mix with it? Why did he pass the death sentence on those who practiced it within the boarders of the Promised Land? Surely a God who issued such judgements cannot be just?

We can find this God very difficult to understand. Surely these judgements, judged by our standards, were the epitome of injustice? But before we rush to judgement it is important to get the full story. Before we take offence at judgements cherry picked from the Old Testament it is important to understand the context in which they were written. For if time is taken to read the Old Testament more fully, one may encounter the following verses:

Deuteronomy 18:10
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft,

2 Kings 10-11
He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.

2 Kings 17:17 
They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger.

Psalm 106:37
They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.

Psalm 106:38
They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.

Ezekiel 16:20
And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough?

Why was God so intolerant towards Canaanite religion, and towards Israelites who indulged in it? Because, amongst other things, he wanted to smash the system of human sacrifice embedded within it. Unjust? Or just karma?

Is God knowable?

It is very fashionable these days to question whether God is - not only unknown - but even unknowable.

I think it's a valid question, it's the sort of question I like to ask myself, and I think it's good for humility, but I wonder how many have followed this question to it's logical conclusion?

One of the most prominent proponents of this theology of unknowability is Pete Rollins, author of "How (Not) to Speak of God". If you drop over to Pete's website you'll find him suggesting, "we endeavour to speak of that which manifests in our world as a no-thing, as an absolute mystery which infuses our world with light and life." Is that all we can say of God?

Many people I know have taken that line of thinking to it's logical conclusion: they've asked, how can we even be sure that God exists? Or that God is good? Or that God is transcendant? Or even that God is one? Could God be pluraform, many, polytheistic even?

Again, good questions. But before we get to carried away I think it's worth noting that Dionysius the Areopagite, the father of negative (apophatic) theology, was also a proponent of positive (cataphatic) theology. Dionysius saw a need for synthesis beyond thesis and antithesis. Dionysius only explored apophatic theology having already affirmed cataphatic theology. I think there is a lesson here, if we can hear it.

Pontius Pilate once asked Jesus, "What is truth?" I ask, have we no more insight than Pilot?

Mother's Milk

YHWH's word is mother's milk

Little one, drink deeply

The Sacred Marriage in Pagan and Christian Dialogue

Is YHWH unbalanced without a wife?

I recently had a conversation with a number of Pagans and Christians that was very helpful for me in crystalizing my thinking on gender and God and why Pagans and Christians often end up talking past each other on God and gender issues. I now think a significant piece of the puzzle is the way Pagans and Christians draw on sacred marriage motifs in very different ways. About half way through the conversation I summed it up this way:

Try this as a summary. As I see it one of the crucial points of difference between Paganism and Christianity is that Pagans employ the sacred marriage motif "horizontally" whereas Christians employ the sacred marriage motif "vertically".

The Pagan understanding leads Pagans to speak of balance between gods and goddesses (in a way that conflicts with the deepest principles of monotheism). The Christian understanding leads Christians to speak of the coming together of humanity and divinity as a kind of wedding feast (in a way that conflicts with Pagan understandings of justice, divine immanence and the direction of history or lack thereof).

An important challenge we Christians face, I think, is coming to terms with the power relationships suggested by this vertical use of the sacred marriage motif, living, as we do, within a culture that emphases male-female equality, which is a very different situation to that which the writers of the Bible found themselves in. As part of this I think it is important to recognize that, within the terms of this vertical usage, all divinities (including goddesses) are effectively masculine and all people (including men) are effectively feminine. So, we are not talking about literal gender here, only metaphoric gender within the terms of one metaphor. Even the most patriarchal Christians generally recognise that. As the husband-wife metaphor is one of many metaphors that Christians have at their disposal for exploring divine-human relationships I do have to question whether we'd be better off bringing altenative metaphors to the foreground in our context. The parent-child relationship is an obvious alternative from scripture that is not nearly so intrinsically gender based. That is something I would throw up for further discussion.

Later I followed that up with these comments:

The marriage metaphor is just a finger pointing at the moon. What is being pointed to is more important than the metaphor itself, which is why I am suggesting that Christians need to explore alternative metaphors in an egalitarian age like ours where this one doesn't communicate so well, and why Pagans need to allow us the space to do so.

Your confusion here [this is something which was explicitly expressed by the person I was responding to] is a case in point. God as husband has great explanatory value in a patriarchal culture, where vertical understandings of marital relationships are taken for granted. God as husband is an utterly confusing metaphor in an egalitarian culture where they are not, where marital relationships are understood more horizontally. It leads to communication breakdown. It leads to unintended and incorrect messages about how we [Christians] understand God. It leads to conclusions that a monotheistic God needs a Goddess wife and so forth. The finger is no longer pointing at the moon.

Now, the confusion you are experiencing above [there was a question about whether Jesus was the bride and God was the groom] is a consequence of mixing metaphors. Taken separately they work. God as husband, Israel as wife. Christ as bridegroom, Church as bride. Church as temple, Christ as foundation. Christ as vine, Church as branches. Christ as head, Church as body. They all speak of living community and life source.

Where the confusion comes in is where you introduce the metaphor God as father, Christ as son. That speaks of an entirely different relationship, of God eternal relating to God incarnate, of YHWH above us relating to YHWH among us. The metaphors break down instantly when you try and mix them together like that.

Crucial to any attempt to relate these two sets of metaphors - the God-God metaphors and the Creator-Creation metaphors - is the introduction of a third set of metaphors. Being both fully divine and fully human, Jesus embodies the divine marriage within himself. Within the terms of this metaphor Christ is both husband and wife. Forget that for an instant, then forget the whole exercise of trying to integrate it all.

No doubt this will leave some of you with your heads spinning, so I'll return to my earlier suggestion: we need space to allow alternative non-gendered metaphors to come to the foreground when discussing Christian understandings of God. Personally I like "messianic community as temple, messiah as foundation". Temples generally only have one foundation. There is no compelling need to invoke a second "opposite-gender" one. The gender of the messiah is quite incidental within the terms of this metaphor. The messiah could be male or female without it changing the essential relationship. It allows much more space to talk of the God we know through Jesus in gender neutral ways. The other one I like, and which I suspect may work better in conversations with people like yourselves, is Christ as vine, community as branches.

Now, I am not sure how many of you follow that but my basic argument is that the sacred marriage is not the most helpful framework for explaining the Christian understanding of God. It is not intuitive for egalitarians, it is not where they're at, it is not Christianity 101. Understanding it requires a reasonable grasp of biblical context and Trinitarian theology. Being scriptural it's not something Christians should shy away from, but it’s a more advanced teaching that we should treat with more caution. Very interesting in light of the fact that many emergents seem to be blogging on Song of Songs at the moment.

So to return to the original question, is YHWH unbalanced without a wife? My answer is, YHWH is balanced within himself, YHWH's primary relationship is with his people, and if ancient marriage metaphors aren't helpful for seeing that, find another metaphor that is.

Trinity in the New Testament

Although the New Testament never defines the Trinity explicitly, there are a number of New Testament passages take us their implicitly. For example:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." (Galatians 4:6)

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. (Ephesians 1:17)

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)

I have to say, the last is my favourite. What's your understanding of the Trinity? How do you prefer to explain it?

Is the God of the Old Testament Christian?

Strange question you think? Let me explain. One of the stumbling blocks I find coming up again and again in interfaith conversations, particularly with Atheists and Gnostics, is the difficulty they experience in reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament.

I am sympathetic to this. I had similar difficulties myself before I experienced my rebirth, but it does lead me to pose the question in this way: Is the God of the Old Testament Christian?

And you know my answer? Not necessarily so.

The Old Testament in Other Religions

You see, what I am very aware of is that there are many non-Christians who also look to the Old Testament as scripture. Most obviously there are the Jews (who call it the Tanakh), but we should also remember the Muslims and the Mormons. They all affirm the Old Testament as scripture, yet understand God very differently.

This should not surprise us. Even in ancient Jerusalem and Galilee there was disagreement over how scripture was to be interpreted. The Pharisees and Saducees and Essenes had very different ideas, very different understandings about what God had revealed and how he called them to act. We are not being particularly original in asking questions like this.

So how can people come up which such different understandings about God from reading the same writings? Well, it is important to consider what else people read as authoritative scripture.

• Christians affirm the New Testament
• Jews affirm the Talmud commentaries
• Muslims affirm the Quran
• Mormons affirm the Book of Mormon and other texts.

Quite simply, the question of revelation needs to be explored more holistically than Atheists and Gnostics are used to doing, and therein lays much of the confusion.

I find the movie Sixth Sense provides a good analogy. If you have seen that movie, starring Bruce Willis, then you’d know that the ending of the movie has a killer twist. In the final moments Bruce Willis’ character has a revelation that reframes everything that was going on up to that moment. He realizes what he thought was going on was not what was really going on. The realization affects his identity and transforms his entire story.

The Old Testament in Christianity

For Christians the coming of Christ is, similarly, a killer twist. Jesus transforms our understanding of God, and hence, our understanding of the Old Testament and how we read it. Reading the Old Testament in isolation from the New Testament is like watching Sixth Sense but walking out fifteen minutes before the climax. You’ll never understand Christianity by viewing it that way, and you’ll never truly understand the Old Testament by reading it that way.

Jesus said if we had seen him we had seen God. That means if we read the Old Testament and don’t see him then our reading is off base. We have not understood, the deeper mysteries remain hidden. If you think I am just pulling this out of thin air I invite you to read the New Testament stories of the Road to Emmaus or Philip and the Ethiopian. Both point powerfully to how the resurrection of Jesus reveals hidden depths in the Old Testament. 

The Old Testament and You

Now if you are an Atheist or Gnostic, the question I have for you is, are you open to exploring the deeper truths and hidden depths of the Old Testament? Or are you content to continue reading it at a surface level? If you can't understand the Old Testament as a Christian would, you can't claim to be critiquing a Christian document, for the Old Testament is not intrinsically Christian. If you truly seek truth and knowledge I invite you to know more.

Who is God for in Gaza?

Mary, one of the new readers of Glocal Christianity, recently drew my attention to a video she's made on the Gaza situation.

I must admit, I had mixed feelings watching this. I felt uncomfortable with the images calling for solidarity with the Palastinians. Not because I support Israel, but because I find it difficult to side with either side. But then I thought, who are the Palastinians? Should I directly equate them with Hamas? Did the babies in the firing line get to vote? Its not that simple. I suppose what I can say honestly is that I side with anyone - Palastinian, Israeli - who renounces violence as a solution to violence. Still pondering this one, its got me thinking.

Nothing But God

To Have Nothing But God

God be with you and give you
True knowledge of the methods of love;
May he enable you to understand
What the Bride says in the Song of Songs:
I to my beloved, and my beloved to me!
If anyone allowed love to conquer him,
He would then conquer love completely.
I hope this will be your experience

Hadewijch of Antwerp, Letter 19