Loneliness

“That you can be lonely in a crowd, maybe especially there, is readily observable. You can also be lonely with your oldest friends, or your family, even with the person you love most in the world. To be lonely is to be aware of an emptiness which it takes more than people to fill. It is to sense that something is missing which you cannot name.

‘By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion,’ sings the Psalmist (137:1). Maybe in the end it is Zion that we’re lonely for, the place we know best by longing for it, where at last we become who we are, where finally we find home.” – Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark

Who Should Be The First President of Europe?

As you may have seen in the news lately, Europe looks to be getting close to electing its first ever President. If the current Treaty of Lisbon is ratified by the last few remaining countries then there might soon be a unified President of Europe.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been unofficially campaigning for the position since he left office a few years ago and is currently seen as the only serious front-runner. While Blair may be a suitable candidate for the job their is another European leader who is, in my opinion, far more qualified and deserving to be the continent’s first president.

Who am I referring to you ask? Humor me for a moment and let’s just pretend that you did. Is it French President Nicholas Sarkozy or perhaps German Chancellor Angela Merkel? No. Out of all of the nations of Europe, only one woman is qualified to hold this high honor. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Tarja Halonen (pronounced Tar-ya). Not only is she the current and two-term President of Finland, she looks exactly like Conan O’Brien.

How fitting would it be, as Conan has been recently promoted as the new host of the Tonight Show for Tarja to be promoted as Europe’s first ever President. Join me in the campaign to elect the right candidate to lead America’s greatest ally. We can’t afford to have this new important office held by someone who doesn’t look exactly like Conan. For Conan’s opinions of Tarja watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpBGCoWfZlI

The Glass Man: A Prayer

Lord, I’m amazed at and by your love, your Euangelion. Lord, not only do I feel the evil and crap from my sin, but I’ve seen light expose the surface and have begun to get an idea of just how huge and deep it is. Like a big muddy rock at the center of my abdominal cavity. I don’t know if I can even guess how far down it goes, for the light only shows so much. God, how you’ve sought me out, pursued me, found me, grabbed a hold of me, knowing full well who I truly am, what I do, and what I don’t. How is it that you’ve never left? I look nothing like you and retreat from this thing you’ve called life. I cling to this old muddy rock instead of this new One that shines in front of me.

I don’t have the faith of the Roman Centurion, the blind man, or the leper of the gospels. I don’t have the trust that you can do what you say you can do. I take a few steps down into the pool and get a taste of life only to panic, stepping back up onto the hot but familiar concrete. I don’t have the answers nor am I the man I’d wish to project: a glass man, an image I’d like to be. It’s synthesized out of what I perceive what others would want. But this is not your way. We can’t pretend, trying to manipulate our brothers and sisters into liking or accepting us. Whatever image I construct will be false and hollow. No, this image is not your image. My image can’t last. It’s rooted in fear instead of love. God, my image tries to get others to look at me; Your image is solid, like an ancient Roman image of the king, announcing  and reflecting the king’s glory and reminding the world who’s really in charge. Lord, may I genuinely be. May my glass man fall and smash into pieces. Clean up my debris and mess, for I can only seem to hide it and it’s too exhausting to hide it. Continue to remake me into your image, genuinely human and whole. Help me know the truth that You’ve got me.

Our Lamb Has Conquered, Let Us Follow

 This summer, after a gruling month in Spanish, I took a Christian Ethics class here at Lee with Dr. Searcy. At the end of the class I delivered a presentation on Christian Nonviolence. While I had been exposed to some of this work in the past, largly thanks to my Pastor and the hooligans he hung around with in Durham, I was deeply gripped and amazed by this vision unfolded in my own research that painted such a beautiful and attractive picture of the King and his cross. There’s alot more I really want to post in the next week or so. I don’t think I can keep this stuff to myself. But here is my project as I delivered it. I don’t pretend to have figured all of this out, but if you have ever wrestled with the issues of politics, war and peace, and what these things mean in the context of following Jesus, I think you find something here to think about.

In a topic as complicated and emotional as war and peace, I need to express first that the terms Christian Pacifism, Christian nonviolence, or Christian Peace-making are not really good at describing the kind disavowal of violence that being a disciple of Jesus asks of us. Secondly, there’s more on the plate here that I have time to bring to you today. Let me begin by stressing what Christian Non-Violence is not.

While I am a huge fan of music from the 1960s & 1970s, especially the music created by those such as John Lennon and the Beatles, Christian non-violence is not merely founded in some sentimental call to just “give peace a chance” nor in the flowery love espoused by those of that era. It is not merely a plea that “if we could just get to know one another better we wouldn’t want to kill each other.” To realize the stupidity of that appeal, as a great theologian has pointed out, one has to look no further than one’s own family. Christian non-violence is also not simply about ridding the world of war, a point I will return to. Pacifists are often confronted with a quote attributed to Edmund Burke stating that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I want to suggest that the Non-violence as derived from the work of the tradition of John Howard Yoder is not about doing nothing, but says, that a very good man has done something and that we are called to follow him in the kind of life rooted in that very same kind of something, that is the hard wood of the cross.

Then what is Christian Non-Violence? John Howard Yoder has said in his book The Politics of Jesus that, “To be a disciple [of Jesus] is to share in that style of life of which the cross is the culmination.” To understand this approach, I draw attention to the vocation of Jesus. Rooted in the story of Israel, Jesus was given the task of fulfilling the role Israel had miserably failed, that is, of saving and redeeming all of creation from its degeneration into evil or sin; to use the language of N.T. Wright, he was sent “to put the world to rights.” Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as finally being within our grasps. Since the Babylonians had driven Israel into exile in 588 B.C., Israel had been under the dominion of pagan rule. Caesar’s face was on the money, and Israel was fervently waiting for someone to deliver them out of oppression, to give Rome the justice that she had coming to her, and for an anointed son of David to reestablish the Kingdom of God’s people.

This Kingdom, spoken of by Jesus, to be established was not meant to simply be a spiritual reality, off somewhere above the clouds, but to be as in the Lord’s Prayer found in Matt. 6:10, “on earth as it is in heaven.” But what we find time and time again in the Gospel narratives is that Jesus refuses the multiple temptations to take his world through violence. Continually, Jesus is presented with the option to rouse up the crowds around him, storm the Roman fortresses and reclaim the City of God. Yoder makes a convincing argument that what Jesus rejects in the temptations in both the wilderness and the garden is of both quietism and the attractive option of crusade. Jesus takes on a heavy mantle of love and becomes a servant.

Central to Christian Non-Violence is the unity of what Jesus said and who he actually was. In both the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus lays out his radical alternative for life in God’s Kingdom that turns on its head the wisdom of the world. Jesus announces that who God considers to be blessed are not those the world does.

There are six antitheses where he tells us that you have heard it was said such and such, but then goes on to say something very different. Many cases, he goes beyond what’s written in the law, appealing to the dispositions of our hearts. Ethicist and theologian Stanley Hauerwas is known for making the claim that the Sermon on the Mount is not Jesus’ ethic, but that it is Jesus. His teachings are not separate from the grace giving suffering love that is displayed in his death on the cross. Yoder notes on page 61 in The Politics of Jesus that,

“Here at the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives his robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who spitefully use him. The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, not is it even the way to the Kingdom; it is the Kingdom come.”

Sometimes advocates of war will point to the numerous times in the Old Testament where it seems that God has no problems with violent military actions by his people Israel. I don’t have time to articulate completely a pacifist understanding of the Old Testament. But I must quickly point out that the theme, again and again, of God’s attitude towards Israel in the Old Testament is for her to trust in God for her defense and victory over her enemies against trust in her ability to make war and kill.

As New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays points out in his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, “If irreconcilable tensions exist between the moral vision of the New Testament and that of particular Old Testament texts, the New Testament vision trumps the Old Testament.” He points to circumcision and the dietary laws, and the New Testament’s superseding the Old’s permission of divorce. “So also,” he continues, “Jesus’ explicit teaching and example of nonviolence reshapes our understanding of God and of the covenant community in such a way that killing enemies is no longer a justifiable option.” In Matthew 6:43-48 Jesus says,
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.’
Hays notes, “that once those words are spoken to us, we cannot appeal back to Samuel as a counterexample to Jesus.”

The question that inevitably comes to us is what about World War II? Should Christians fight against Hitler? Hays responds with the question, “What if Christians had refused to fight for Hitler?” Advocates for Just-War often cite Romans 13 as a source for an understanding in being subordinate to the governing authorities, as Christians, including military service. Lest we forget, the good Lutherans of Germany used exactly these texts in fighting in the Gestapo, participating in the Holocaust, and killing for Hitler. What Just-War theorists often neglect is that Caesar is also among those who are called to repent. They also leave out of the discussion the verses immediately preceding Romans 13. In Romans 12:14-21, Paul instructs us,

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;* do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;* for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I quickly want to draw attention to Father George Zabelka, the Catholic Chaplin who administered mass to the squadron of men who bombed Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Repenting of his complacency he said,

“To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it…I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best—at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t. I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, “The Great Artiste,” was an heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, and prerogative violence, all in the name of our Lord….I was the Catholic chaplin who was there when this grotesque process that began with Constantine reached its lowest point—so far.”

As Christians, we must look at our enemies through the eyes of Jesus when he weeps over Jerusalem because “the things that make for peace” where hidden from their eyes. As Stanley Hauerwas has said numerous times, “the greatest sacrifice of war is not the sacrifice of life, great as such a sacrifice may be, but rather the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill. That sacrifice, that is, the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill, is why war is at once so morally compelling and morally perverse.”

As I know personally, in addition to returning from Korea with the scars and wounds represented in a purple medal that sits in my grandfather’s living room, men like my grandfather, who have seen the horrible reality of war, with friends blown to pieces at their side, know what it is to kill. It is a commonly attested experience that veterans rarely want to speak of their experience in battle. The silence that war creates in our fathers and grandfathers is an illustration that life is not ours to take; life, for Christians, is a gift. Please remember that Christian nonviolence is not about ridding the world of war, for we believe that when God the Father sent his only son to die a bloody death on the cross, that once and forever, war has already been abolished.

Making Mud Pies

I’m a liar. I think I’ve come to a place in my life where the substance of my deepest beliefs look like a man approaching from a distance upon a majestic mountain, only to move in close enough and see nothing to the right or the left but a heap of well packed trash. The covert ways I’ve use to protect myself from things such as fear of disappointment or fear of failure do nothing but cripple me. I see my own pantheon of gods, I worship so many things.

Bowing down with the rest of our country, I drudge on as a slave to the tyrant that we’ve ironically called freedom. Whatever direction my heart begins to wander is given more trust than I’ve ever placed in anything. Our Constitution mentions a right to pursue happiness, but what passes for happiness many times today feels hopelessly unfulfilling. If you’ve ever sat in a parking lot of a Krystal Burger at 1:30 in the morning you will witness a strange sight, a herd of unhealthily obese persons emerging from the darkness in search of crappy processed food. It’s kind of sad. They don’t need it. I certainly don’t either, but for a host of reasons we feel compelled to indulge in things we hope we will make us happy, satisfy us. Afraid of something new and risky, I settle for what is easy, quick. But the more and more I detach and escape the more I feel miserable, engulfed under the weight of crashing disappointment. The truth is we generally don’t know what we really want, certainly not what is best for us.

In these months up here at Lee, God has confronted me. Like the pagan god Dagon faced with the presence of the world’s true Lord, exposed as the false pretender he is, falls flat on his golden face smashing into pieces. When I see how helpless and broken I am with my own self as the central most thing I adore, I fall apart. I feel his longing embrace waiting for me. A voice tells me to trust in him, to do good, and befriend faithfulness. I see an exciting adventure awaiting me, full of life, love, risk, and most certainly suffering. Here’s a kingdom full of purpose, hope, and calling, the kind of life experienced by people like Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I’m afraid of being disappointed. I’ve been running from it. It’s like being asked to reach your arm into a black whole in the wall with no promise as to what’s in there will do you a bit of good. “…like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” (C.S. Lewis). But here he is, saying “I will provide for you,” that delight in him will bring all the desires of my heart. He says to trust in him and he will act. I confess that my corruption runs deep; pray with me that trust and peace would run deeper.

Vote for Palin! But not Sarah

If you’re like me and apart of a relatively small section of society, when I heard several weeks ago that John McCain had named his VP choice as Palin, I was elated! Finally, I thought, I have a reason to vote for the GOP in 2008! Only to go to the Drudge Report and see some woman from Alaska that certain gentleman in my dorm refer to as a milf. Crap. False hopes dashed again. Of course the person I had in mind was the one and only Michael Palin, CBE. The master who brought us such cultural jewels as The Knights Who Say Ni.

Well, how excited was I today when I stumbled on this?

Finally! I’ve decided. Remember, supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses. Forget Obama & McCain, along with this false Palin. Go for the third choice. Vote for something completely different in 2008! Resist the violence inherent in the system. Vote Silly!

The Story So Far

Just shy of two weeks have passed since arriving here at Lee University. I almost can’t believe it. At this moment I’m sitting next to my Japanese roommate help a Nepalese guy get on Facebook. This transition is hard to explain, at times quite painful while others lush and full of life. Like trying to jump from the rocky shore onto a turbulent raft or attempting to overtake a horse running for its life, I’m picking up on how this all works. In an empty moment I find myself grasping for unknowns, “What am I supposed to do? What should I do? What am I made for?” All these fears churning underneath the flat out amazement of the scandalous love and grace that pours from my head, over my beard and on down to my feet. Why does God seem to love and give me all these things while others seem to be under a pile of shit? It’s funny when Biff from Back to the Future runs his truck into the manure, but not real people.

This Lord of the World, above all of the Caesars of the world, is here with me. I find Him wanting to spend all of this time with me, in such a deep way. I think that’s why I find it hard to come back to the “Christian Subculture” where most of Lee resides. So much of the words, rhetoric and attitudes that used to compose who I was are everywhere, it seems. I can’t help but view others that wear what looks like my old skin probably have the same thing going on under it. This is where I fight hard not to judge, but attempt to see as Jesus sees and not as Caesar himself. I feel for the atheists and the people struggling with the evil that is in the world and in the church. People announce things from the fabric on their chest like “God doesn’t believe in Atheists”. Are you fracking with me? Is that the message Jesus died on the cross for. Instead of speaking like a pimply kid in middle school trying to convince himself that what his Youth Pastor told him on Wednesday was true, let’s listen to man that is supposedly Lord of our hearts and “Love our neighbor as ourselves.” To paraphrase a quote from Arte on the Larry Sanders Show “When you sound like a jerk, people tend the think of you as a jerk.” God absolutely believes in atheists. Please, put your tongue back in your mouth.

But coming here has been great so far. I know God is preparing me here, much as he has over the last 2 years. But this is a new season, one where the leaves don’t seem to change as they always have. I don’t really believe the post-modern notion that time is circular. “All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.” No, God has irreversibly altered the cosmos. There is hope for new creation. God isn’t going to throw away what he’s made. Contrary to the hymn in Chapel this morning, this world will never pass away. He set up his tent 2,000 years ago and is here within everyone who allows him to embrace us in the midst of our shit.

To Quote Gob Bluth “Come On!”

I decided to contribute to an ongoing political discussion about McCain & Taxes on Facebook & was encouraged to put my response on here.

I just think it’s really ridiculous how both the “left wing” media & the “right” have all of a sudden begun painting John McCain as this right-wing conservative, economically & socially. Whether McCain is “Bush II” or he’s the next Reagan, it just feels dishonest. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, McCain was never what he’s being made out to be today. Strictly speaking on taxes McCain may have decided that lowering them is a good thing (& by reading some statistics, he isn’t, he’s just for keeping them at their ridiculously high levels) but neither McCain nor Obama are going to be cutting government spending. While I’ve moved away from much of Ron Paul’s message, it’s true that we are, to use Tolkien’s language, like “butter spread across too much bread”. We simply can’t afford this mammoth beast known as the U.S. government, domestically or abroad.

We get served these silly false dichotomies by the news media & western pop culture in general. Liberals & Conservatives are really two sides of the same coin. I agree with Jim Wallis when he says that we need to rethink things outside of the political daimond of left & right. It’s more complex than that. But I guess what really annoys me the most is this notion that as Christians we should support the Republican party or the Democrat party.

Dating back to the Caesars of Rome, every leader makes the claim or promise that if you elect me or vote for this party that more or less utopia will come. That’s the promise of the Enlightenment, that if we can get universal suffrage we can finally be done with all that nonsense about Religion & through progress finally solve the world’s evils. Well, it hasn’t. When will we finally get it in America that it won’t. When Jesus claimed that he was Lord of the world, it was understood he was saying that Caesar was not.

In the Gospels, Jesus seems to be alot less interested in how leaders are put in power & more in how we treat them once they’re their. When Christians put their endorsement behind someone as Pat Robertson or John Hagee have, we loose the ability to hold the authorities to account. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for (and I really don’t) but let’s not pretend that whoever we do is going to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Let’s not get duped into jumping on Obama’s or McCain’s bandwagon, neither of them are God’s anointed & voting for them won’t solve the shit that that is in America or in the world.

We talk about America being founded in “Judao-Christian” principles, but the truth is we’re a product of the Enlightenment. Our founding fathers were emersed in the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson was a prime example. Let’s keep God separate from “public life”, religate him to your “private life” inside your heart. We don’t need the Church, religion, or God to solve the world’s problems, Man, progress, reason, freedom, that will eliminate evil. Yet we’re fools, how can we eliminate evil if we ourselves are.

The Enlightenment is dependent on the belief that we’re all really just good & equil people. Now in the generations after the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Hurricane Katrina & 9/11, we’re reminded what evil really is. Yet we still resist our own reflection, because if we see how screwed up we are that means we can’t really do anything & that’s my point. It all falls flat. Voteing in this man or that woman or group of people won’t solve anything of consequence.

I listened to a lecture online by N.T. Wright recently (in case you have yet to experience Bishop Wright, He’s my new favorite Christian author, next to C.S. Lewis) & he mention how in Britian more people vote for Big Brother than do in the elections. Because over there, as we’re begining to see here, that after all the debates & elections nobody can deliver what they promise. The Church & the World needs to realize that even if we get “God’s man” in the White House, like we’ve tryed, or someone like we have in Barack, it will be like running a Mac program on a PC, there’s two different systems going on here. You can’t separate God from public life. Again, I don’t know who to vote for & the lesser of the two evils thing is fine (whomever you decide is evil), but we Americans need to stop kidding ourselves. As Gob from Arrested Development would say “Come on!”

Redemption is Not Up There, But From Up There

I recently picked up a book by N.T. Wright Judas and the Gospel of Jesus to prepare for a paper for my New Testament class. I absolutly loved it. In this short offering, in what starts as a response  to what has been presented as a “new gospel”, the Gospel of Judas, suggested to shake the Christian world to its knees, Wright exposes the message of Gnosticism, challenging even what many of us in the West have let seep into our beliefs. Much of my paper is indebted to this book. I’ve recomended books before, but for me this goes close to the top. I can’t wait to read more of his body of work. Below is the first and what turned out to be the final draft of my paper on Gnosticism. So, here it is. Enjoy.

As the first disciples of Jesus lived and prayed for the Kingdom of God to be done on earth as in heaven, another belief and prayer had “sparked” inside some in Roman Judea. While I don’t have the space or ability here to give an exhaustive account of the interaction between Gnosticism (or the many Gnosticisms alive in the first and second centuries) and the New Testament, I want to focus on a just a few aspects of their beliefs and how they sharply stand against everything the writers of the New Testament wrote. Before we can do that we must look at these beliefs ourselves and where they came from.The Gnosticism I want to talk about and one that the New Testament writers and early Church Fathers fought against is actually a hybrid of sorts. Rather than Jewish, it comes from a Greek and specifically Platonic dualistic worldview of spirit and matter mixed and smuggled into the language of the ancient scriptures of the Jews. After the failed messiah in Simon Bar Kokhba and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Roman occupiers in 70 AD, it is not hard to see how some Jews would reject the promises found in the Torah and look elsewhere. To the Gnostics, the world of time, space and matter was an inherently bad and wicked place. Matter is evil thus men made of it and living in it are evil. Imprisoned within men, though, is something very different, not made of matter. In their writings, such as found in Nag Hammadi, the Gnostics portray the Jewish creator god as stupid and foolish, if not blatantly evil and malevolent. The god of creation is not the god of salvation. Another divinity, pure, wise, and good exists, detached and distant from this world. The main objective for any wise or knowledgeable person is to then escape from this wicked old world and be delivered from material human existence. Only then can one ascend to a higher plane, liberated from matter, space, and time, and enjoy the bliss of disembodied life somewhere in the heavens, inaccessible to those either clinging on to the physical world or mistakenly worshiping its creator. “Salvation” then comes from the revelation, by a “revealer”, of a special knowledge or “gnosis” of themselves as special “sparks of light”.

In many of the Epistles of the New Testament, John and Paul warn their readers against many of the different false teachers and new theologies entering the church. Multiple references in 1 John, for example, have been shown to be aimed directly against Gnostic or at least proto-Gnostic beliefs. From the Gnostic standpoint, creation was a mistake. There was nothing good about it to begin with, so the notion of a fall from perfection and goodness are completely absent. The world is evil but not because of our sin. One can almost hear them shouting out to their creator, “It’s not our fault, it’s yours. I’m done with it”. The Gnostics would either lean in two directions; they would become ascetics, looking with contempt at anything associated with the body, such as sex or food, or they would throw away all boundaries and restraint altogether because it didn’t matter. The body and world were irrelevant, for their “inner divinity” were going up to the clouds soon anyway. This is very important to understand in studying books like 1 John, as I have mentioned, where by the time it was penned Gnostic teachings were beginning to affect the church family he was addressing. John is condemning them when he says “Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him’, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.” (1 John 2:4-6) Which some Gnostics would even contend that Jesus never really physically walked here in the first place, but I’ll come back to that. There is even a reference in the book of The Revelation in the Letter to Thyatira to a Gnostic teaching going even farther spurning those who had attained “gnosis” to not only know that which is in the “light”, but also which is in the “dark”. Because of their superior knowledge they should know the very depths of evil, giving them almost an obligation to sin. The resurrected Jesus condemns this teaching and the woman teaching it (in Rev. 2:20-24) referring to those who had known the “deep things of Satan”.

Paul, with early Gnostics in mind, says in 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 that “we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.” Paul moves the whole thing from intellectual gnosis, to a different kind of gnosis. It is worth mentioning that the Greek word ginoskein (though a synonym for gnosis), throughout the Septuagint, usually represents the Hebrew word yada, which is also used in Genesis when Adam “knew” his wife. Paul and the other apostles preach a relational knowledge of God for the present earth, which, as we’ll see, is impossible for Gnostics.

John again says in 1 John 4:2-3 “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” One of the major heresies contended with later in the second century by the church fathers and here by John is the rejection of the Incarnation, Docetism, that Jesus only seemed human. Another related position was that of Cerinthus who was a known sworn enemy of John in particular, who taught that the Christ-spirit came on Jesus as he was baptized and left before his crucifixion (Gundry 493). Here Jesus has been split by the Gnostics into two separate entities: the spirit “revealer” Jesus and the worthless physical human Jesus. In one of the Gnostic scrolls found in Nag Hammadi known as the Apocalypse of Peter, perhaps written somewhere during the second century, tells a narrative of the “real Jesus” laughing at the crucifixion mocking the mere fleshly “Jesus” who is hung up on the cross. In another Gnostic text known as the Gospel of Judas, where Judas is actually the “beloved disciple” and hero of the story, Jesus approaches him saying “Truly I say to you, Judas, those who offer sacrifices to Saklas (the Gnostic name for the Jewish God meaning “foolish”)…everything that is evil. But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me” (Gospel of Judas 56). “The man that clothes me”, not only conflicts strongly with the canonical Gospels but is illustrative of the Gnostic’s view of Jesus, as well as that of themselves to a certain extent, that the only relative part of a person was his inner soul or “spark of divine light”. Countering this underlying Platonist view, St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, would contend that “the state of the soul is more perfect embodied than disembodied” (Invitation to the Classic 94.) I think the writers of the New Testament would agree. But John continues still in 1 John 5:6 that “This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood” denouncing any notion that the divine Jesus was not the Jesus that suffered crucifixion. John even begins the epistle in 1 John declaring that that which was in the beginning, has been heard from his own hears, seen with his own eyes, and felt with his own hands.

Upon reflection of these Gnostics, their beliefs and later texts, who were busily trying to reform and assimilate these ideas into the church, a notable shift comes to light. An underlying feeling, coming from these false teachers and Gnostics, surfaces. In rejecting the Kingdom promises of the Jewish God to judge and restore, bringing the world to rights, they seem to give up. Compounding a little of bit of everything from Jewish tradition, oriental mythology, Iranian theology, and complicated astrology they, in Platonic terms and concepts, relinquish any hope for the redemption of the world and life here and now and look up for escape. In Paul’s Letter to the Philippians he says “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Which could sound very much like the escapism of the Gnostics but he doesn’t finish his thought with that. Paul continues “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” The Gospel of Jesus and that of Paul is not that redemption is “up there”, but that redemption comes from “up there”. The message of the New Testament then is this, YHWH, the Creator God of the Torah, who loved the world so much, calling the man and nation of Israel to bring restoration and salvation to the world, at the fullness of the times sent the Jewish Messiah to implement that purpose in his actions, teachings, and ultimate death and resurrection, the perfect love, that of a father for his only son, breaking his impending new creation into the present, here on earth as in heaven. The lie, I believe, that the Apostles in the New Testament fought so hard against, for their beloved churches, is that of the escapism of the Gnostics. To quote N.T. Wright, on this “good news” of the Gnostics, “Unlike the challenge of Jesus, this message doesn’t tell you to deny yourself and take up your cross, but to discover yourself and follow your star” (Wright 144). In light of all of this, an annoying and perhaps burning question comes out to us, a question that deserves a reflective response. To whose vision do we gravitate closer, that of the escapists Gnostics, or that of the returning Jesus?

First Entry

There is a something deep within myself that so wants others to understand and validate that which is bubbling up under the surface. A strong desire to share what I have been shown and come to see. Perhaps out of self-indulgence or vanity, I’ve decided to start a blog. With pretensions hopefully pushed aside, I strongly wish that whoever stumbles here, while not necessarily finding anything original, can see a little of where I am as God’s light and rule breaks into my current state and begin this journey down a road that many have traveled before. So, enough of my heart, I would like to now close with a quote from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 2 v. 9 to 21 “And St.  Attila raised his hand grenade up on high saying

       “O Lord bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow

       thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy. “and the Lord did grin and

       people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies

       and orang-utans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats.”

Amen and Cheers. (Yes I like adopting British colloquialisms into my lexicon.)