Category: Theology

The Gospel and Wheaton College

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I received my Wheaton Alumni magazine in the mail the other day. Usually I just flip through it and skip to the gossip pages in the back – who got married, who had a baby, who wrote what book, the fun stuff. This issue though intrigued me. It sought to examine why student activism is on the rise.

When I was at Wheaton in the nineties, I knew nothing about social justice. Oh there were a few activist groups on campus that would do things like picket abortion clinics, but the concept of helping the oppressed really wasn’t on my radar. I had friends who would go off about public health issues or American injustices in Latin America, but they were on the fringe. It took my own post-college personal study to realize that caring for the needs of others is a Biblical value.

So, to have student activism highlighted in the Wheaton magazine surprised me. Then I actually read the article. While it does applaud the students for their idealism, it takes a rather apologetic tone in doing so. The section on students for peace devotes a good portion of the space to how those students learned to understand the convictions of those in the army after a panel discussion on campus. The activism article was followed not so subtly by an article about Wheaton alumni serving as Chaplains in the military. Apparently the college wants to make sure that rich alumni don’t get the impression that the school officially supports these rogue activist students. (and before you tell me I’m too cynical, I worked for the Wheaton Advancement department for a few years and know the posture one must assume when wealthy alumni are involved.) But the equivocating and the apologies were nothing compared to college President Duane Litfin’s back page editorial.

Litfin addresses the rise of student activism by asserting that “we must never allow our activism to eclipse our verbal witness… the temptation to reduce the contribution of the church to the so-called ‘social gospel’ is always before us.” Apparently we are tempted to help others so that we can hear the applause and respect of the world, but they should be hating us because of Jesus. Litfin writes, “feed the poor, heal the sick, stand up for the oppressed and the world will often approve. But name the unique name of Jesus and it will often not be applause you hear.” Does he really think that students are following the command of Jesus so that they can be approved by the world? Apparently to Litfin, those commands of Jesus are insignificant parts of scripture that obedience to does nothing to proclaim Christ.

The editorial then goes on to quote and reject the famous saying of St. Francis, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Litfin claims that this saying is false, “the gospel cannot be “preached” nonverbally. The gospel is inherently a verbal thing. It requires verbal expression. Social activism can never take its place.” No wonder I never heard about social justice at Wheaton. All that is deemed acceptable there is the truncated gospel of Christ’s economic exchange. What matters is verbally confessing Christ so that we get into heaven when we die and not following the way in which Christ taught us to live. If Christ was sent to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God and all we focus on is his death on the cross (and condemn his actual message) there are some serious issues going on here. I am reminded of this quote I came across in a Christianity Today interview with Ruth Padilla DeBorst.

When Christianity came into Latin America, many of the indigenous groups simply changed the names of their gods: They gave them Christian saints’ names. But they really continued worshiping their original gods. Churches were built on top of temples. Seventy-five years ago, John Mackay wrote a wonderful book, The Other Spanish Christ, which asks whether Latin America could discover the Christ who was incarnate, who walked the streets and died and rose from the dead and is powerful today. This Christ was not widely portrayed in the first evangelization of Latin America. Christ was either a helpless baby, toward whom we feel affection and compassion, or a corpse, a dead body with no power or ethical demands. This is what happens when religion is too closely linked with power: The problem is not just that religion underwrites oppression, but that the gospel itself is lost. If Christ is just a baby or a dead body, I can keep on living and not allow Christ’s lordship to shed light on all dimensions of my life.”

So can the evangelical church and places like Wheaton College accept not just the Christ who dies, but the living Christ who makes ethical demands? Will the full Christ be allowed to be known within those institutions or will a hollow Christ used merely as God’s sacrificial pawn be all that is allowed to be taught? I know I’ve traveled a long way since my time at Wheaton, but I also know (as this article attests) that there are students at Wheaton now who are embracing the full gospel no matter what protestations the administration makes to the contrary.

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Blessings and the Divine

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Are all blessings truly only from God? We talk about being “blessed” and invoke God’s blessing on America (or the whole world if you are of a more generous bent), but are such blessings solely from the divine?

I was thinking about that today because something recalled to me a conversation I had with my best friend back in Jr. High. To give a bit of context to the conversation I should say that my friend was (is?) an atheist. She had grown up in India as her father did research on ancient Sanskrit texts. Having witnessed the effects of organized religion on creating such horrors as the Caste system, she refused to ever follow any religion. That soon led to a disbelief in God altogether.

One day our botany class was outside tending the school garden and she happened to notice the school sign. In typical early nineties feel-good self-esteem public school parlance it read – “We Are So Blessed.” My friend took serious offense at it. She starting ranting about how it violated the separation of church and state to be proclaiming such a religious statement on public school property. Most of us around her were a bit confused. None of us had assumed that the statement had any religious connotation whatsoever. I figured it meant something like “we are blessed to have such great students.” But my friend argued that the entire concept of blessing was a religious one and that blessings could only come from deities. Since she didn’t believe in said deities that sign was forcing religion upon her. She left then to go complain to our teacher who happened to be a rather militant atheist. I don’t remember what happened after that, if the sign was changed or not, but I remember vividly the oddity of that conversation.

So I wonder now if I too trace all blessings to God. If I believe that all that is good comes from God, then all blessings no matter who bestows them are from God as well. If we have been blessed to be a blessing (as the covenant describes), we then are indeed God’s avatars. God’s mystery of working behind and within all things encompasses the goodness of blessing. As a Jr. Higher I brushed such an idea aside in favor of a secular interpretation, but my atheist friend saw the hand of the divine there nonetheless.

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Varuna, Paganism, and Numbers 5

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As I recently read Richard Foltz’s Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World’s Religions I came upon a paragraph that gave me pause. It was a short paragraph in the introductory section on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) influence on the ancient Near-East, but it connected me to themes I have wrestled with for some time now. The paragraphs reads –

One type of pact performed by the PIEs was the mithra, a covenant between two parties, the other being a varuna or individual oath… In keeping with their belief about the supernatural inhering in abstract notions as well as in material things, Indo-Iranians personified the spiritual qualities (mainyus) of these verbal pacts as powerful and important dieties. The veracity of one’s oral proclamations could be put to the test, through fire ordeal in the case of mithras ans water in the case of varunas, which may explain why Mithra and Varuna, who were responsible for sparing the truthful and punishing the unworthy, became such important gods.

Now I was familiar with Mithra – he only became a major deity in a number of the cultures influenced by the Indo-Europeans as they spread across the ancient Near-East. You know stuff like being subsumed into Zoroastrianism as the savior figure who was born of a virgin on December 25 in a cave witnessed by shepherds. But this was the first I had ever read of the ancient concepts of oath taking that evolved into personified deities. I was especially intrigued by the water ordeal to test the veracity of a personal oath. Apparently this ordeal involved either immersing a person underwater (if they survived they were innocent) or forcing a person to drink the “golden oath water” which brings out the truth by causing jaundice. An ancient practice common in the cultures that settled the ancient near-East, predating Zoroaster, Moses, and possibly Abraham.

Why did this brief paragraph give me pause? Because it addressed the cultural underpinnings of a Biblical practice that I have struggled to understand. When I first encountered the description of “the test for an unfaithful wife” as described in Numbers 5:11-31 I was appalled. Here is a ceremony that reeked more of magic than faith and seemed to be extremely arbitrary and unfair to the woman. I just could not understand how this was a God given law. To have a woman whose husband was jealous drink a strange mixture and if she was guilty she would waste away and if she was innocent she could have children didn’t fit even within the Old Testament worldview I knew. I recall being involved in numerous discussions about this particular passage a few years ago. Many people took the – “it’s in the Bible so God must have put it there so I can’t question (or be bothered by) it” route. Others tried to reinterpret it as being a completely meaningless ritual that could never work and would therefore always prove the women innocent. God obviously couldn’t change the culture and stop making men be jealous and possessive of women, or improve conditions for women who are thrown out or stoned for adultery (or suspicion thereof), so he gave the Jews this pointless test to protect women – just another way that God is actually pro-woman. But it still didn’t make sense.

So I find it helpful to see that this practice has its roots not in some God given new mandate, but in the common cultural rituals of the lands the Jews inhabited. Of course it seems magical and pagan because that is what it is. That leaves the issue for those who do think the Bible is inspired to understand why God would want his people using a ritual that derived from animistic deities. But even still, I find the ideas of this being a “redeemed” practice less disturbing than the assumption that this is a God given practice. But maybe that’s just me coming to terms with letting go of my evangelical conceptions regarding scripture.

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Historical Point of View

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“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

I have that quote on the water bottle that I carry around everywhere. It summarizes what I’ve been learning over the last 5 years or so and is a good reminder as to how I should be engaging with the world. Plus it’s a Star Wars quote (need I say more?).

My reading over this past week has forced me to recall that quote numerous times. This sounds pathetic, but I really have never studied history outside of the Western/Christian mindset (and I majored in history!). My studies focused on European and American history or on other parts of the world as they related to Europe and America. Beyond that, most of my studies (academically and personally) were done to understand the roots and development of the Christian faith. That included studies of Egypt and the Ancient Near-East that were done only to gather trivia to shore up my belief that events in the Bible really happened the way the Bible presents them. My point of view determined what I studied and how I interpreted the facts once I encountered them. In all a very narcissistic approach to history.

Within my myopic interest in history, I recently started reading about the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism and Christianity (which is absolutely fascinating by the way, more on that another day). But in the process, I have started reading histories of Iran and the Proto-European Aryan tribes which is something I have never done before (honestly, what schools teach the history of Iran, the ancient history of Iran?). So in the process I am encountering history done from point of views that I knew were out there, but never took the time to explore before.

But beyond my being reminded of my narrow view of history, I have been amused by the historical points of views of others. Amused not in an attempt to ridicule others, but in seeing in other cultures the same ignorant syncretisms we find so common in our own. For while I have known about how most of our Christian holidays are just baptized versions of older Pagan celebrations (not that I find anything wrong with that), I never thought about that happening in say, Islam. While I am familiar with the story of my own faith and (some of) its evolution through time, I guess I always viewed Islam as more rigid and static. But to see cultural examples among Iranian Muslims of Zoroastrian influence took me by surprise (while it retrospect it should have been obvious). New Year festivities that have no root in Islam, wedding traditions that still involve fire ceremonies, and Mosques that have Zoroastrian symbols (this is Islam remember) on them – and all of them have been “baptized” with Islamic meaning. To them it is just another part of “orthodox Islam” and how dare anyone suggest otherwise (while the government continues to stamp out such practices…).

Our stories and perspectives on history are influenced by what we already believe and expect to discover. Our myths of nationality and religious superiority crumble under the slightest soundings of history. Not that it’s our faith that is changed (usually), but it is how our faith colors how we see everything else. As I continue to read about Zoroastrian influences on my faith (especially on the eschatological perspective), I am reminded that there are those out there who would be eager to discover “pagan” roots for Islam (in order to further criticize and dismiss it), but who will refuse to admit the cultural influences on Christianity. How we view our faith and how we view history depends greatly on our point of view.

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Speaking of God

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In the recent discussion on Women in the Emerging Church, the issue of gender pronouns for God arose and I was asked to clarify my thoughts on that topic. I’ve discussed this issue often over at the Emerging Women blog and my contribution to the Faith in a Dress edition of the Porpoise Diving Life ezine provided a brief overview as well. But I’ve never really addressed it here on my personal blog. Why? Because this is an issue that freaks a lot of people out. They think that to even discuss this topic implies that one has left behind any traditional construction of Christianity. I thought that way for a long time. But this is a topic that is a given for many in mainline churches and has started to become a serious issue for women from evangelical backgrounds. I’ve been forced to wrestle through it. So to add another long and controversial post to this week’s offerings (and in no way do I claim to even attempt a comprehensive treatment of this issue), here we go.

The issue at hand is the names we use to refer to God. The majority of the names we use as English speakers are gendered masculine. Although we are generally okay with some of the neutral names and metaphors for describing God, people often get very offended when God is referred to using the feminine names and images (even though such are present in scripture and church history). How we speak about God is a topic that has received a lot of attention recently. With Peter Rollins’ well known book How (not) to Speak of God and Bruce Benson’s lesser-known (but more in-depth) Graven Ideologies, the concepts of what we know about God and how we express that have become popular topics of conversation. The ideas those authors present (based on the implications of postmodern philosophers such as Derrida, Levinas, and Marion) revolve around the idea that any attempt to speak of God is idolatry – conceptual idolatry, but idolatry nonetheless. We are not God. To claim to know or understand (or even fully name) God is an act of idolatry. Since we cannot have absolute knowledge of God (that would in fact make us God), we attempt to describe God using the things we know (language, images, metaphors). All of those attempts at comprehending that which cannot be comprehended must be held lightly. Any attempt to assume that our names or metaphors for God actually define God become idolatry. We start to worship our idea (name, image, metaphor) for God instead of actually worshiping God. Of course we cannot not speak of God, so we must make use of metaphors and names. The Bible is full of descriptions for God – some we have turned into names but they are all simply descriptions of God – small attempts to understand aspects of the incomprehensible. Creator. Light. Shalom. Midwife. Provider. Father. Potter. Refuge. Sustainer. Mother. Healer… None of those names from scripture define God. To choose one as the God we worship is to choose to worship an idol of our own creation. But we use the multitude of names to describe God – to describe that which we cannot grasp but are compelled to worship.

To assume that God is gendered – that God is either male or female – turns God into an idol. God is neither and yet God can be described as both. Of all the ways that we speak of God this is the one that carries the most emotional weight. Rollins brushed aside this issue in his book, saying that it has already been addressed well by others. I found that infinitely frustrating because while this idea has been addressed extensively in mainline circles there is hardly anyone talking about it in evangelical and emerging circles. But to only see God as Father and to deny that God is also Mother not only ignores scripture and creates an idol in the form of a male, but it reinforces negative stereotypes about women. Why can’t we discuss God’s feminine characteristics? Is there something wrong with women? Are we inferior to men? Are we somehow more sinful or more sexual or less intelligent than men? If the metaphor of Father can be used for God what does it reveal about our underlying assumptions about women if we cannot also use the metaphor of Mother?

It is generally at this point that many people respond – “Of course God has no gender, and I see how feminine terms could be used to describe God, but I’m really just more comfortable continuing to use the male names and I don’t want anyone to think I’m into that whole Divine Feminine/Goddess worship stuff that’s so popular these days and it’s not hurting anyone right?” But, would it change things to know that there are many many women out there who have rejected Christianity because all they see represented is a male God? They do not see themselves relating to a male God and they do not see themselves as being created in God’s image if God is male. Then there are those women in the church who see themselves as inferior to men because they are female and are not made if God’s image. The logic goes – if God is male then male must be better. I just finished reading a book, When God Was A Woman (full of serious issues, but interesting nonetheless) that is a diatribe against the domination of the Hebrews and their male God over the goddess cultures in the Ancient Near-East. This book is over 30 years old and is still considered a classic among feminists. The gender of God is a big issue for a lot of people. My question is whether our comfort is more important than truth or more important than all those people who have rejected Christianity for unnecessary reasons?

This is a topic that I have personally struggled through over the last couple of years. I went from thinking that using feminine names for God was just a silly (and offensive) game for extreme feminists, to seeing the need to question my default names for God. This isn’t just about equality, this is much bigger than that. It is about avoiding conceptual idolatry and naming God rightly (while being aware of the tension that we can never actually do so). To default to male names for God limits my understanding of who God is and unintentionally excludes some from the communion of believers. It isn’t a game or a side issue or a red herring, it reflects the center of my faith – the God I believe in. It does take effort to not just use my default name for God (father). It isn’t comfortable to say mother or healer. But I’ve realized that I have to – for my faith and for the faith of others. It’s scary. It makes some people angry. But it also opens doors to those who have been left on the outside for far too long.

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Synchroblog: The Narrow Door

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Luke 13:22-30 (New International Version)

The Narrow Door
22Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, 24″Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

26″Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

27″But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

28″There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 30Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

When I preached on this passage last year as part of our journey through Luke, what struck me most were the wide variety of interpretations I encountered (and most everything here is gleaned from encountering and assimilating others). This passage is a battleground for drawing lines and telling the world who exactly is in or out of the Christian faith. The exclusivists rejoice that only a few will be saved (go to heaven) and the rest will perish (go to hell). But who the few are and what exactly comprises the narrow door differ from group to group. Some of the interpretations include to be a Catholic who takes Eucharist, or to invite Jesus into your heart, or to be saved in spirit and especially in Truth, or (for women) to bear children. Then there are the Universalist interpretations. They say that pretty much everyone gets into heaven. The narrow door for them is the way of love and universal acceptance. If you fail to love and think you get in because you belong to some elite club, you will be excluded – i.e. everyone gets in except the exclusivists. It’s a game – whose definition of the door will win? How inclusive or exclusive is our faith? Who can we point fingers at and say “you’re different, you’re wrong, you’re not welcome”?

But then we look at what Jesus actually says in the passage. The guy asked the question, then Jesus starts talking. Jesus starts off talking about a “narrow door” and about “many” who will strive to enter it and won’t be able to get in. His questioner probably would have liked where that was heading. He’s being invited to think of himself as an insider – a very select group of insiders. And those on the outside are left weeping and gnashing their teeth. The guy must be thinking, “This is sounding good.” Then Jesus flips the script as he is so prone to do. He talks about people coming “from east and west, from north and south” to eat in the kingdom of God. And he says that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”; and I’m sure the guy is thinking, “not so good”. He’s looking for an either/or answer and Jesus gives him a both/and, while at the same time not really answering the question the way he wants him to at all. In fact, Jesus didn’t at first give numbers. He essentially said “Bad question. The real question is whether you are striving to enter through the narrow door.” Essentially, to quote Jesus’ words on another occasion, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”

But what if this passage is not talking about salvation from sin and going to heaven when we die? What if it’s not about drawing lines and pointing fingers or deciding who is in or who is out? When the Jews of Jesus’ day talked about being “saved” it was in reference to being delivered from Roman oppression. They were looking for a Messiah who would come and lead a new Kingdom. The general idea was that the Messiah would use force to overthrow the Romans and establish a Kingdom of the Jews for the Jews and only the Jews. But Jesus’ recent comments as recorded by Luke didn’t really seem to support that idea. Jesus was calling for a way of peace and love – not violence and destruction. He made it sound as if his kingdom would be encompassing all sorts of people. And Jesus gave warnings that those who didn’t follow in the way of the kingdom – the way of love, peace, inclusion – would find destruction.

This passage, I think, is another of those warnings. The kingdom Jesus initiated is an upside down kingdom – it is counter-cultural. One has to be deliberate about following its ways – a better word would be strive or agonize. It would be easy to pursue other paths, to not care for what God cares about, to continue in the way of violence. But Jesus warns that the day of destruction will come and that for some it will be too late to choose the way of peace. Even if someone was a Jew who ate with Jesus and listened to him preach, they can’t be saved from destruction unless they enter through the narrow door and actually live in the ways of the kingdom. And he was right. The Jews didn’t choose the upside-down kingdom of love. They continued to rebel, and in AD 70 they saw their temple defiled and torn down, their city destroyed, and what was left of their people scattered. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The destruction of Jerusalem wasn’t a divine punishment. It was just the natural consequence of their actions (violent rebellion against empire). So were many or few saved from Rome? Jesus urged the Jew to strive hard to make sure he was saved – to fully follow Kingdom values. But because the way of peace was not chosen, the early Christian Jews were scattered and were able to bring the message of Christ and his kingdom to all the earth. So in the end many were saved and all the nations became part of the kingdom.

So instead of dwelling on who is in or who is our, instead of creating labels of exclusive or inclusive, why don’t we try to follow Jesus’ admonition to make every effort to enter in by the narrow door. To strive to live out kingdom values and to follow in the way of Christ?

Other Synchrobloggers on this topic:

Sally Coleman
Mike Bursell
Sonja Andrews
Sam Norton
David Fisher
Cobus van Wyngaard
Steve Hayes
Michael Bennett
Jenelle D’Allessandro
John Smulo

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Faith, Certainty, and Tom Cruise

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A few days ago Erin put up a great post about “Things I Learned From Church (That Didn’t Prove True And What I Am Learning Lately)” It was part of a new synchroblog stared by Glenn Hager. As he describes the purpose of this blog – “I am tackling this issue not because I have an axe to grind with church as we know it, not because I am bitter, and not because I think people who are into attending and supporting conventional churches are inferior. Rather, it is to help me to understand my own thinking…” I was intrigued by the concept and have appreciated some of the posts the participants have put up so far. Then after reading Scot McKnight’s post on certainty and faith yesterday I was reminded of an experience in my church background that I have since learned to regret.

I grew up in a traditional, conservative, Texas dispensational church (I’m sure they would merely call themselves a biblical church, but then again so would just about any church…). Most of my experiences there occurred in the youth group. But this was no games and cool music youth group. It was a sit and listen to hour long sermons, read lots of books, attend seminars, and make fun of those not like us type group. Being a Christian meant one crammed oneself with knowledge about the Bible (oh, and avoided sex at all costs as the youth pastor frequently reminded us by recounting his sinful youthful sexual exploits…). We had to know exactly how to argue people into the faith and how to show them that whatever they believed (be they atheist, pagan, catholic, or baptist) was completely wrong (implying we were completely right). I loved it. As an intellectual nerd who prided herself of getting good grades, this was a religion I could relate to. My “faith” was all about facts and knowledge. So while most of the youth group dreaded attending (their parents made them), I and my small group of friends loved being the know-it-all star Christians.

At one point when I was in high school (here comes the Tom Cruise part), the youth pastor choose a new motto for the group. Taken from the popular movie A Few Good Men (back when Tom Cruise still had a career and wasn’t the Hollywood freak of the week), our rallying cry became – “it doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what I can prove!” We were treated to sermons about certainty and correct hermeneutics. We were told that if we do not have 100% certainty about our faith then we are not real Christians. Forget saying a prayer and accepting Jesus into one’s heart, this was the gospel of intellectual works. Knowledge, evidence, and proof were what got one into heaven when we died (the whole point of Christianity of course). Belief and faith meant nothing, all that mattered was proof.

When I mentioned the new motto to a friend at school, he looked at me quizzically and asked me if such a stance undermined the whole idea of faith in the first place. I’m sure I parroted something about rationalism and absolute truth back at him at that point, but over the years since then I have come to see that he had a better conception of true faith than I did. I was Thomas demanding proof and not accepting that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I cared more about CSI style investigations and converting people to creationism than I did about actually serving others or following Christ.

Now as the idea of certainty or absolute knowledge seems so utterly impossible I laugh at my arrogance in assuming I could ever grasp them. But it was a long journey to move to that point. My grip on certainty held me tighter than my grip on Christianity itself. I couldn’t tell if I was more afraid to give up my philosophical system (which defined my religion) than I was to question my faith itself. Or perhaps, I just assumed that they were one in the same. That if I gave up trusting in certainty and empirical proof, I would no longer be a real Christian since I would then have doubts and incomplete knowledge. So the process of letting go was exceeding difficult, but I had to let go in order to discover faith. To discover the mystery and the trust that it takes to believe. To walk by faith not sight.

Now I am sure there are those that will mock me for not being a rationalist. Others who don’t see room for doubt and faith in the Christian faith. Perhaps their experiences work for them. This is just my experience of what I learned from church that didn’t prove true.

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On Sacrifice, Repentance, and King’s Cross Station

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Warning, Disclaimer, etc… I waited a week. Exactly a week. If for some strange reason you have not yet finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows stop reading now. This post contains my thoughts on the themes present in the final book and therefore contains spoilers. Consider yourself warned.

As we finally hold in our hands the complete saga of Harry Potter what we find is not just an entertaining story of young witches and wizards coming of age in a parallel world to ours, but a beautiful story of repentance, love, and redemption. A lot has been said about these books not being great literature, but that really just misses the point. They are good stories that tap into the mythic nature of life and give us an imaginative retelling of the most common (and hence most visceral) story known to man – the sacrificial death and resurrection of the hero.

At one point in the book, Harry visits Godric’s Hollow, his birthplace, and goes looking for the graves of his parents. In the graveyard he stumbles upon the graves of Dumbledore’s mother and sister. On their tombstone is the verse “where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” Rowling deliberately refuses to explicate its significance at that point, but in it I see the theme of the whole series. What is a person’s treasure? What is their heart’s desire (as the Mirror of Erised revealed in the first book)? This is the theme that is repeatedly returned to throughout the series. We see characters that are hungry for power and wealth (Voldemort, the Malfoys) or for personal safety (Dumbledore’s brother). Those “treasures” define their entire life. In Harry we see a boy who starts out desperately wanting a family and a place to call home gain and lose that over and over again. And it is only when he let’s go of his desires (for family, for revenge, for home) and places the needs of all others before his own that he sees clearly what must be done to save the world. It is this overcoming of selfishness that marks the process of redemption for many of the characters in the book. In small ways they let go of selfish treasures they had been hording and take steps towards loving others more fully. Lupin overcomes his lifelong fears of hurting others to give Tonks and their child the love they need. The Malfoys, hurt and discarded in their attempts to gain prestige, money, and power, find that what really matters is family (a sentiment they had always ridiculed the Weasleys for). Even Dudley Dursley moved from being utterly self-centered to acknowledging that he needs Harry. They all had to sacrifice a part of themselves to become better people.

Two characters in the book though chose to give up everything for the sake of others. Like his mother before him, Harry realizes that in order to save those he loves he must be willing to give up his life. So to answer the question of whether Harry lives or dies, one can only answer yes. Harry, fully aware of the only way Voldemort can be defeated, willingly gives himself over to be sacrificed by the enemy. In a scene that recalls Aslan at the Stone Table, if not Golgotha itself, Harry offers up his life for the salvation of others. This sacrifice out of love stands in direct contrast to how Voldemort “sacrificed” parts of his life. Voldemort gave up parts of his soul (for Horcruxes) in desperate attempts to cling to power and overcome death. His sacrifices sprung from selfish ambition and not love and so each subsequent sacrifice made his life more miserable and helpless. So much so that even in the end, when faced with death and offered the chance to repent, he chose to cling to evil and power and remain in that misery.

But what of our sacrificial hero? Here we are treated with a scene that seems to come straight out of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce or The Last Battle (Rowling has said all along that Narnia was her inspiration for these books). After being attacked by Voldemort, Harry awakes to find himself in a dark wood a mystical version of King’s Cross station (talk about amazing metaphorical allusions) where he encounters his mentor and guide Virgil Dumbledore. Here he discovers that what Voldemort has killed in him is the evil part of Voldemort’s own soul (represented as a crying baby). So instead of taking the heavenly Hogwart’s Express further up and further in on the next great adventure for the organized mind (as Dumbledore had once referred to death), Harry returns to life to finally defeat evil once and for all. What I love is that it is at this point that Harry having already demonstrated sacrificial love offers Voldemort the opportunity to repent and feel remorse. As Harry offers him a choice and seeks to merely disarm Voldemort of his evil intentions, it is Voldemort’s ultimate arrogance and refusal to repent that destroys him as his own killing curse rebounds. Our hero has sacrificed himself, conquered death, and lives happily ever after.

Oh yes the book held other gems in storytelling and was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. I applauded Snape’s vindication. I cheered audibly as Mrs. Weasley took on Belletrix and Neville proved himself to be a true Gryffindor by pulling Godric’s sword out of the sorting hat to slay Nagini. I cried as beloved characters died at Hogwart’s last stand. Rowling crafted an entrancing story and amazingly managed to tie up every loose end. I love this series as a story, but I resonate with the themes of sacrifice, redemption, and love that tie the stories together. Having defended the books for years to Christians who feared the magic, the wands, and all the “trappings of a world in which they do not believe” (who all the while promoted the “Christian” values of Narnia and Middle Earth), I restate my opinion that they owe Rowling an apology. For while the Harry Potter books aren’t just Christian books (they can be enjoyed by people of all faiths or no faith), they echo the most central tenets of our faith. The allegory of the resurrection, the call to sacrificial love, and the reminder that for where our treasure is there will our hearts be also are themes that all Christians should be able to embrace. It isn’t perfect theology or a one for one allegory, but it is a good story. For in the retelling of our deepest and most mysterious truths Rowling has ultimately cast a goodspell.

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The Good Shepherd and his Dinosaurs

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So I got to hang out with the kids in church today. We only have a handful of kids that are all pre-school age and we take turns in the kid’s room during church. There are many many things I dislike about that system, but at the moment its the best we can do. But from what can tell, the kids generally like it.

We usually don’t have “lessons” for the kids (it hard enough getting people to help much less teach a lesson – one of my issues with the whole thing). Basically whoever is in with the kids get to chose what to do – generally that involves free play time or watching a movie. I went with a lesson today based very loosely on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. We didn’t have any toy sheep or a shepherd really. But we had a whole set of toy dinosaurs. So we did the story with dinosaurs. The kids thought it was funny, but it worked.

Well my idea was to do the story thing using the toys then move on to sing songs about how God takes care of us. The kids had a different idea. They wanted to have the shepherd let the “sheep” out of the pen and count them coming back in over and over again. They wanted to make sure all the “sheep” were safe with the shepherd. Repeatedly. The songs full of abstract principles about this God person were fun, but they understood the shepherd counting the sheep.

I loved that. Fur a bunch of kids who (although loved dearly) hear most often through any given day to stop doing whatever it is they have chosen to do and start doing whatever the big people want them to do – to be counted and safely cared for is a big deal. To know that they are wanted no matter what is the ‘God thing” they need.

And so went my lesson on the good shepherd and his dinosaurs.

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Linguistic History and Biblical Interpretation

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A conversation with friends the other night on the nature of Biblical interpretation and the evolving nature of language led me to this linguistic activity. Of course I had to play along, looking up the etymologies of the words –

“The following paragraph is logically incoherent if all the words are understood in their current meanings. But if we take each of the italicized words in a sense it once had at an earlier stage of English, the paragraph has no inconsistencies at all. Your job is to determine an earlier meaning for each of the following italicized words that would remove the logical contradictions created by the current meaning. ”

He was a happy and sad girl who lived in a town 40 miles from the closest neighbor. His unmarried sister, a wife who was a vegetarian member of the women’s Christian Temperance Union, ate meat and drank liquor three times a day. She was fond of oatmeal bread made from corn her brother grew, that one night, when it was dark, she starved from overeating. He fed nuts to the deer who lived in the branches of an apple tree that bore pears. He was a silly and wise boor, a knave and a villain, and everyone liked him. Moreover, he was a lewd man whom the general censure held to be a model of chastity.

Historical meanings of the words in question –

Sad – full, sated
Girl – child, youth (of either sex) (it wasn’t until the 14th century that it came to refer to a female child).
Town – homestead, enclosed farm
Wife – woman
Meat – food (as contrasted with drink)
Liquor – liquid
Corn – grain
Starved – die (the sense of die from hunger didn’t exist until the 16th century)
Deer – general animal or beast
Apple – generic fruit
Silly – good/pious (The word’s considerable sense development moved from “blessed” to “pious,” to “innocent” (1200), to “harmless,” to “pitiable” (c.1280), to “weak” (c.1300), to “feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish” (1576).)
Boor – peasant farmer
Knave – young male servant
Villain – farmhand
Lewd – a lay person (not clergy) (Sense of “unlettered, uneducated” (1225) descended to “coarse, vile, lustful” by 1386.)
Censure – judgement

So to re-write the paragraph –

He was a happy and sated youth who lived in a homestead 40 miles from the closest neighbor. His unmarried sister, a woman who was a vegetarian member of the women’s Christian Temperance Union, ate food and drank liquid three times a day. She was fond of oatmeal bread made from grain her brother grew, that one night, when it was dark, she died from overeating. He fed nuts to the animal who lived in the branches of a fruit tree that bore pears. He was a pious and wise farmer, a servant and a farmhand, and everyone liked him. Moreover, he was a lay man whom the general judgment held to be a model of chastity.

I find the history of language fascinating. I discussed here recently how most of our taboo curse words were just the common speech of the vulgar (poor) folk (and not magical sinful spells). So many of the words we give negative connotations to were just originally simple words to describe the poor and uneducated. There was so much derision for such folks that the words used to describe them became pejorative words used to ridicule and condemn those who are different (such as vulgar, pagan (country dweller), lewd (lay person), and heathen (one who lived on the heath).) To use those words as negative descriptors just reinforces centuries of socioeconomic prejudice.

In this exercise what is commonly demonstrated is how words that once held a broad or general meaning have over time developed into only having a specific meaning. So these days “meat” does not include vegetables nor does “girl” refer to males. One can even see from this example how this could affect biblical interpretation. The generic “apple” which once referred to all fruit was used to describe the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, which has led to the specific fruit “apple” being what most people assume Eve took a bite of. That is a simple and in most ways harmless example, but it demonstrates how the evolving nature of our language affects how we understand the Bible (especially when it is only read only in 500 year old English). We read the passages with our modern cultural assumptions and vocabulary, but often the very words in English do not mean the same thing now as they did 500 (or 100, or 50…) years ago.

For example, “Suffer little children…to come unto me” (Matt 19:14). In KJV English “suffer” means “to allow, or permit” as opposed to the modern meaning of “to endure pain.” Most modern translations have done away with the use of the term “suffer” in favor of more common terms like “allow,” but there are large segments of Christians who only read the Bible in the older language (interestingly, many modern translations say “let the children come.” But originally in English “let” meant “to hinder” not “to permit). I assume that most people are aware enough of the older usage of terms to understand that passage, but there are scary and twisted exceptions. There are groups that insist that for a child to be saved (come to Jesus) they must be made to suffer (endure pain). For them, it is only through beatings (of various kinds) that these children will repent, subject themselves to authority, and be saved from sin. That is messed up.

And this is just English. This doesn’t take into account translating from languages for which we don’t even know the definitions of all the words (and so make educated guesses). Once again, I really don’t get how anyone could possibly believe that there is no layer of interpretation that goes into how we understand the Bible. Or that all people at all times in every culture and language have the exact same (correct) understanding of scripture. There is no way that I have enough faith to believe that. There’s too much evidence to the contrary.

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