Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Prostrations: Empty Religiosity or Embodied Worship? Brad Jersak

"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”
James 4:6-8, 10

Embodied Worship

Among the unknown losses I experienced as a young Protestant was embodied worship. While we would certainly deny that our theology was gnostic, in many ways our disembodied worship betrayed us. With the exception of camp “action choruses,” we worried that any bodily movement might become either too worldly (if it strayed too close to dance) or too religious (if it reminded us of the Catholics). Even the "stand-up/sit-down" choruses were eventually banned at the Bible camp I attended because the provincial director noticed too many bouncing breasts. I'm serious.

The churches I first attended were often an exercise in sensory deprivation: nothing to look at, nothing to smell, nothing to touch, nothing to taste ... and squirming of any kind was particularly forbidden. "Sit still" was our highest moral value. The music could be very beautiful but the impulse to sway to Gaither music was always held suspect or at best, felt like a guilty pleasure.

The charismatics, on the other hand, would break those taboos, first with hand-raising, then dance, then a range of manifestations and later, what we called "prophetic acts," where we emulated Old Testament prophets like Ezekiel by bodily miming the Lord's message. All of these physical acts were now regarded as spiritual, though when unbridled, became excessive. At least by the time we began worship moshing, the Lord had mercifully created sports bras.

When I moved East in my Christian theology and practice, what struck me most was the sensuality of worship. Worshipers liberally kissed a heavenly host of brightly coloured icons, sneezed at the wafting incense, fondled their beeswax candles and drank actual wine infused with bread floaties. The sacramental worship was entirely embodied as the Spirit infused the elements with meaning and spiritual reality ... including our own bodies, living icons of the image of God. All our actions become spiritually significant, whether standing, sitting, kneeling or moving. Most foreign to me were the prostrations, especially since they were very similar to Muslim prayer ... so I'd like to interpret them for my Western readers.

Knecht and Dienst: A Probe - by Ron Dart

Knecht and Dienst: A Probe                         

Hermann Hesse, in the “Foreword” to the 1946 edition of If the War Goes On….mentions that “three strong influences, at work, throughout my life, have made me what I am”. He then lightly lands on such influences: his Swabian German pietistic upbringing, Chinese thinkers, and Jakob Burkhardt.  What might bind together such influences that made Hesse “what I am?” Perhaps, such a hint and pointer might be found in Book I of The Journey to the East.

The narrator in The Journey to the East has been part of a significant group called “The League”. The League is a conscious group of spiritual thinkers that have drawn together the best that has been thought, said and done in the history of the human journey into a grand synthesis of insight and wisdom. Each and all in the League are committed to, in a personal and communal way, understanding and living forth the wisdom and meaning of such insights. What, though, might be the core and centre of such an abiding vision?

The narrator in Book I encounters Leo who seems, at first glance, to be the servant and Sherpa of the league. Leo packs up the bags for the pilgrims, brings their food, does their dishes, carries the bulk of their belongings (and much else) that eases the material needs of those on the quest. Leo, for all intents and purposes, seems to be the hired hand for those with deeper, grander and greater spiritual commitments and longings. And yet? And yet? There is a telling conversation between Leo and the narrator that is a portal into Hesse core vision. Leo suggests that there is a law or structure at the heart of things that we ignore to our peril and those on the quest for meaning and life must learn it. What is such a law?

         “The Law?” I asked curiously. “What law is that, Leo?”

         “The Law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but

         He who wishes to rule does not live long”

There is much compressed into this compact and not to be forgotten insight of Leo, and such an insight can be found in much of Hesse’s writings as a counterpoint to other options.

Most of Hesse’s more mature short stories and novels probe, ever further and deeper, the diverse nature of the human soul, paths to take as a means of fulfillment, meaning and purpose and consequences of such choices. Some of the darker and more ominous novels such as Demian and Steppenwolf are more about indulging various appetites and desires, speculations and possibilities of life, much being liquid and fluid, willing wishes and living from such willed wishes. There is a sense in which Demian and Steppenwolf are must-reads for the simple reason

that inner and willed exploration (and the individual freedom to indulge such a journey) is at the heart and core of the authentic life. But, is this Hesse’s final word or merely a phase that, by day’s end, is a cliff’s edge and cul-de-sac? And, what might Hesse-Leo mean by the law of service?

Hesse had a tender and probing mind and heart and his notion of the law of service had both a core and radiated ever outwards. First, the inner law of service had much to do with serving, being attentive to,

heeding the deeper inner life and being part of birthing the real self rather than pandering to the inflated wants of the imposter ego (and its multiple addictions and erratic choices). It was in this attentive listening and responding to the inner depths (and living from such a place) that the ego could be seen for what it was and a more meaningful life might be lived. This is why, although Hesse explored a variety of identity options, he realized many were rabbit trails. Second, if the law of service was, initially, meant to be one in which the self was properly birthed, matured and grew, so service was meant to be front and centre in the communal human journey also. If, in short, the spiritual and religious quest bypassed service, the quest was an opiate of sorts.

We can see, in Hesse’s novels, short stories and much else, those who seem to be overcoming the bourgeois and philistine way of life, in fact, are only reacting to it and, in reality, gorging the ego. So, what seems to be an overcoming is, in fact, a being caged by the ego. All this is so subtle and yet so real, the overcoming not a deeper overcoming. The real overcoming is when the self-overcomes the demands of the ego and this is best illuminated by the discipline of service and care for the self and others (at a variety of levels). We can see this worked out in most of Hesse’s novels: Peter’s turn to St. Francis, Siddhartha, Narcissus, Leo and Joseph Knecht but echoing the same motif. It is significant to note that, in Greek myth, narcissus (from which we get the narcissistic personality) is seen as a place not to go. The longing of Narcissus, of course, is the desire to know true identity—needless to say, the shallow surface of the water is not the place to look—only a surface reflection is returned as the answer. But, Hesse realized that the longing of Narcissus is legitimate, but the places gone to are the problem. Hence in his superb novel, Narcissus and Goldmund, Hesse highlights the nature of proper and genuine self-love and other love (community being the context within which such a reality is lived forth). The more Hesse’s pondering and reflections matured, the more he moved from the lone individual searching for a meaningful identity (in all sorts of convoluted and complex ways) to the role of persons in community and how community and personhood are, when properly understood, a hand and glove fit.

Narcissus and Goldmund, The Journey to the East and The Glass Bead Game embody and reflect Hesse’s notion of service within the context of community. Joseph Knecht, magister of the glass bead game, means the one who serves, knecht, in German meaning servant—the word also overlaps with the English word for knight (again, one who serves).

Leo is the servant of all servants yet he is the leader of the League. There are two words in German that embody layered ways of understanding the meaning of servanthood (Knecht and Dienst)and throughout most of Hesse’s novels, he is ever massaging the meaning of the words at a personal and political level. It is somewhat significant that in the passage quoted above in which Leo ponders the meaning of service, he uses the German word Dienst. Dienst, unlike Knecht, has decided political overtones and implications---such acts of serving the other can, of course, take place at the familial, friendship and social levels, but to serve, in a meaningful way and responsible way, at the larger public and political levels was also something Hesse and Leo were acutely aware of and the need for it. The obvious use by Hesse of the two German words of Knecht and Dienst walks the attentive reader into Hesse’s fuller vision of the meaning of faithful service at many-layered levels and such words incarnate and embody Hesse’s more mature notion of the true overcomer when compared to the more inadequate notion of the overcomer described in Klingsor’s Last Summer, Demian or Steppenwolf.    

In sum, therefore, the golden key that will open the door into Hesse’s novels and life is the key to the law of service and Hesse, again and again, returns to this core theme in his writings and life. If, therefore, we are to understand Hesse, we must return to such a persistent theme and be attentive to how Hesse understands it. I might add, then, by way of conclusion, that what Hesse’s German Swabian pietistic upbringing, his interest in Chinese thinkers and Burckhardt shared in common was an understanding of service as the portal into life and life abundant.                                  

My Soul is a Chiminea by the Sea - Jonathan Foster

My Soul is a Chiminea by the Sea

which helps me explain my evolving Christianity and the 5 reasons I still label myself as one.

 

 

My soul is a chiminea by the sea. Complexity flames up like the sound of cracking mesquite wood. The fire expands and glows, releasing energy that converts my approach to faith, hope, and love. And in doing so, re-converts my approach to Christianity.

None of this has been anticipated — as if real life ever is — but now that I’m here, I have choices to make. Will the fire consume everything I once held dear, or will it provide new ways of thinking about my faith? Yes.

I’m learning, again, that to get to the new, the old has to pass away. So, although much of my faith has changed, here are five compelling reasons I am a Christian and continue to call myself one.

1 Because I was born into a loving Christian family. Had I been born into a loving Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim family, I would likely identify as Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim. Humility compels me to say that Christianity was my context. I had no choice. That’s not to say I’m ungrateful. I’ve learned a lot. We are who we are due in large part to those who brought us into the world. People give us what we need, which is good. Well, as far as it goes.

Because people also give us what we don’t need.

Much of American Christianity or Christian America — I can never decide which is the modifier and which is the noun — is hopelessly caught up in a web of sacrificial rules and fear, the result of which is the sacred formation of religious hierarchies and scapegoating. We’re all contaminated.

Which leads me to the second reason…

2 Because Jesus names and reveals the sin of the world, that is scapegoating. It is, to borrow language from Gil Bailie, our seemingly never-ending effort to purge ourselves of our sins by offloading our animosities onto others.

We’ve created a pretty exclusive club, us Christians, what with all the power we’ve created by talking about how all-powerful our God is and all. The exclusiveness has gone to our collective heads. (Myself included. I’m as culpable as anyone.) We’re so enamored with power that we endlessly create and recreate systems that spew out victims. I’d like to think we do this unintentionally, but I’m not always so sure. Jesus showed us a better way. He voluntarily stepped into our victimary machine and identified with the victim.

He became a victim to subvert the victimary machine.
He became a sacrifice to shed light on the absurdity of all our sacrificing.
He became a scapegoat to end all our scapegoating.

Considering the life of Jesus, and in particular, his at-one-ment with the victim challenged my assumptions of power. The implications spread out like embers and heat across the night sky. It changed what I saw, but even more, it changed me, for however one defines conversion or repentance it must be an inward move before anything else. And maybe never any more than inward.

Too much outward movement can lead to overzealously naming things bad, impure, defective, and lead us to exclude the other person which blinds us to the truth: the desire to live by the power of excluding the other person is something we learned well, from the other person.

Rene Girard taught us that the other colonized our desire before we even knew of its existence. In other words…

Jesus became one with the other to free me from my desire to kill the other!

Now I am free.
Free to live.
Free to love.

Everyone.
Myself.
Especially myself.

You see, I basically thought the point was to get all of us on the outside into the inside. And like I mentioned, I have been on the inside all my life. Remember, I’m a Christian first because I was born into the tradition. I’m not saying my interactions with Jesus weren’t authentic. As best as I can tell, they were. But I also don’t know where the authentic interactions began and where the desire to please my family ended. I was generally a pretty well-behaved kid, and like lots of children, I really just wanted to please my father. He said, “Be a Christian,” so that’s what I did. I made sure to be a part of the in-crowd.

Okay, fine, except, well, after I grew up, the more I watched Jesus, the more obvious it became that Jesus was hanging out with all the people on the outside.

The more I watched, the more the chiminea burned brighter. The fragrance of the mesquite wood triggered thoughts: If Jesus is out there (one might even say with the 1) who’s in here (one might even say with the 99)?

Who is in?
Who is out?

I continued to read the story of Jesus. And it continued to read me. I recognized my hypocrisy: I was claiming Jesus as my savior because of the cross, though it was my blaming obsession that put him on the cross in the first place.

So, the reason I’m a Christian now, currently, is because following the way of Jesus releases me from the burden of scapegoating and of the hell of putting myself in a position to tell others they are out.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite topic, it’s the next reason I am a Christian because believe it or not…

3 I think Christianity can actually redeem all of our anxiety-ridden, passionate, misdirected thinking about hell.

You are free to draw your conclusions, but I happen to believe that what we tend to think of as hell is something that has come to us by way of layers of unreliable shame-infested thinking over the generations. Like so many strata of sedimentary rock one might see if they excavate a section of earth, each layer contains elements initiated and propagated by theologians who meant well, but who were just too overwhelmed with their own guilt and shortcomings to come up with anything other than a fiery, burning, torturous, retributive, punitive place of judgment. (See guys like Augustine or Jonathan Edwards. And please don’t overlook the indelible burn mark that Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” left on the world.)

It appears that all their guilt resonated with all our guilt.

We were given an inch of ideas about a hellish afterlife, and we took it the proverbial mile. For some reason, we’re all wired to think pain, fear, and punishment more holy than health, love, and grace.

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to look into this a bit, I’m of the persuasion that it’s Biblical to push back against all the talk of hell.

One Biblical writer said, “He’s not willing anyone should perish.”
Another said, “He doesn’t count our transgressions against us.”
Yet another, “He came not to condemn the world but to save the world.”
Not to mention Jesus, who said, “Love your enemies.” (By the way, why would God expect us to love our enemies if he planned to burn his?)

So, yes, I’m suspicious of all the hell talk by the religious people. I happen to believe that Love is bigger than hell and will never stop working to connect and reconnect with us. This is true for this life and eternity. Neither the Scriptures nor my understanding of Love leads me to believe that all decisions about eternity must be made in this life. Actually, I don’t even believe that’s the right way to view eternity, for eternity isn’t something that begins later.

Eternity has already begun. It’s happening now.

Love invites all of us, right now, and all eternity to enter into its way. And for the life of me, I don’t know why it’s the Christians who are so hell-bent on promoting the idea that one day Love will just quit inviting.

Aren’t we the ones who are supposed to be forgiving?
Isn’t grace a Christian idea?
Doesn’t our sacred text say, “Love is patient.”?

Please consider what you might do if, upon entering into the heavenly dimension, you discover that one of your children is missing. If it’s me, there’s no chance — despite decades and centuries of theologians telling me otherwise — that I would be content knowing that one of my kids was out in the far country of darkness. I would cinch up the boots, pack the backpack, and go after them to the best of my ability.

What motivates me to do that? Love! Love always goes into that far country. I think that’s what Love will do with everyone who’s ever lived. It might take a long time. Ages even, but Love never gives up.

Which is good, because I’m going to need that perseverance in dealing with the next reason I’m still a Christian…

4 Because it provides a response to suffering. (Important distinction: a response, not an answer.)

It’s laughable I attempt to talk about the age-old question of suffering in a few short paragraphs, but here goes.

An atheist may say that suffering proves that there’s no loving God. So they turn away. Which is fine. It is their prerogative. I don’t even blame them. The problem is, ignoring God doesn’t do anything about the reality of suffering. Suffering exists whether you believe in God or not.

However, I’m more sympathetic to the atheist than I am of the Christian who wants to explain away suffering. As if there is an explanation. Look, if you could explain evil, none of us would be able to label it as such. So, most of us Christians should probably just stop explaining things. (Me too. I just gotta finish this post first!)

Job seems to be the most famous test case for suffering in the Bible. After forty-some chapters of Job’s misery, what does God do? Well, He certainly doesn’t explain.

He simply shows up.
He’s present.
God was with Job.

It’s the same thing all the New Testament writers insisted: God is with us. This may be the unique response to suffering that Christianity offers. We think we want answers, but what we really need is someone willing to be with us.

It’s solidarity more than solutions.
It’s entering into life more than explaining life.

For example, think of some of your favorite stories. There’s always a moment when the protagonist recognizes he or she is in over their head. But in spite of the odds, they choose to move forward. With the complexity of their chiminea roaring into the night sky, they take the proverbial leap of faith. Not because they have answers but because they have friends. And you love it. It’s why you call them your favorite stories.

Frodo and his Fellowship of the Ring,
Katniss and her former victors,
Dora with her monkey and talking backpack.

Solidarity is huge. Like fire being transformed into energy, it’s possible for suffering to be transformed into hope. I don’t know exactly how, I just know it can be done.

Which leads me to the last reason…

5 I’m a Christian because it gives me hope. I don’t deny death. Death is real. Grieving, lamenting, cursing, and suppressing are all understandable and appropriate ways to respond. (I’ve tried them all. It’s true. I think I even tried some this morning.) But ultimately, I need something more.

I need hope that this is going to get better.

The way of Jesus gives me hope. He alleviates my fear of death. It turns out that this was his mission all along. He wasn’t born to die — a trope one can hear in many a sermon this coming Christmas season. No, he was born to live. It’s just that the powers couldn’t take his commitment to life so they joined forces to have him murdered.

Jesus shows us how to be human in the middle of all the persecution he suffered. Even more, he empowers us to be human because he conquered death from the inside out. It serves to remove our fear of death. Hebrews 2:14 says, “By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.”

If the resurrection wasn’t real, then death would be over, “The End.”
But, if it was real, then I know there’s nothing to fear.
Actually, I don’t know anything, but I have hope. And that’s the point.

We don’t have to cower to despair. We can hold our heads high, live our lives, do the best we can, risk, love, laugh, and forgive. You do realize risking, loving, and laughing are all synonymous?

Death doesn’t have the last word. It isn’t the deepest sting.
The grave isn’t a dead-end. It’s a corridor into whatever is next.

Peter Kreeft told me a long time ago that as the baby is inside the womb, and the womb is inside of the world, so we are inside the world and the world is inside of heaven. Death isn’t the final act. It’s the initial contraction of being birthed into the new creation.

Behold, everything is being made new.

This gives me hope. And boy, do I need hope. It’s a major reason I still risk being labeled a Christian. Well, at least 1/5th of the reason. Throw in the thoughts about suffering, hell, scapegoating, and my family context, and there you have it.

Will the fires of complexity be stoked tomorrow? Will the chiminea be asked to rage brighter? Maybe. And maybe I’ll give it all up.

Or maybe the energy of the heat will reconvert me all over again.

---

ABOUT: Jonathan has a few books on Amazon including his latest, “Questions About Sexuality that Got Me Uninvited from My Denomination” which proves he cannot write a book with a short title. Also, find the first season of his podcast on any podcasting platform by searching for jonathan_foster.

"That God May Become Beautiful" - excerpts from Rudolf Bohren

In his book «Dass Gott schön werde» [That God may become beautiful], published in 1975, the Reformed theologian Rudolf Bohren (1920-2010) enters the battle for an aesthetic awareness among Christians and in the church. If this is to come about, we have to develop a better understanding of the Creation and the working of the Holy Spirit. Here (and in TUNE IN 313) follows a short outline in quotations from what is still a topical and also provocative book.
 
Sharp words from the son of a pastor

The German writer «Gottfried Benn [1886-1956], an aesthetic mind par excellence, jotted down this line regarding the pastor’s house he grew up in: ‘Thought-world entirely without the Muses’, and this line characterizes not only a provincial minister’s dwelling but is also largely true of the house built by our theology. Even ‘thought-world’ already carries a negative connotation and suggests an existence without Gainsboroughs, without Chopin... If I speak Benn’s line as my own, ‘thought-world entirely without the Muses’ means a life in which the world of the Muses is not perceived as a sign of grace, a life which has lost the aesthetic dimension. It can hardly be imagined what power the church and theology have lost because the ‘thought-world without the Muses’ has become predominant. Here I am only generally indicating that, with this contempt for aesthetics, faith has lost its strength to create a style which could be representative of the gospel heard and lived in this time.»
 
The praise of God in the Creation – and in art

Not only is the Creation «good», it is also «beautiful». It praises the Creator.
«By praising his work himself, the Creator anticipates the purpose of his Creation, namely to be praise. The Creator intones what is to be echoed in every creature. (...) Art follows the lead of the Creator and praises, even when it ... complains and accuses. Art also follows the lead of the Creator in singing psalms when it does not know him or rejects him. Art justifies existence, even when it curses him – for, in the artistic use of its materials, of language, of colours and sounds, it concedes that the Creator is right, even when it denies or blasphemes him. The justification of art is that it justifies the Creation.»
In other words: Bohren says that in all cases good art points back to the Creation and to the Creator (God).
 
Without lilies and butterflies...

«Discipleship which no longer knows anything of blossom and butterfly loses the weightless quality of light. It can no longer shine as light. Without the lilies and butterflies, the disciples of Jesus all too easily become figures who certainly cast shadows, but from whom no light shines forth: they are zealots who confuse their earnestness with the Holy Spirit... He who no longer sees the flowers can dedicate himself to a ‘thought-world without the Muses’. (...) With this, I have already begun to suggest that Christianity loses its missionary power when it fails to take note of the Creation.»

«The church can no more exist in a world beyond culture and art than it can live in a world beyond nature.» «This is why we must lament the lack of theological aesthetics as the reason for the Christian boredom throughout the land...»
 
God’s beauty among the heathen

«God becomes practical and beautiful not only in those who know him, but also in those who do not know him... But his becoming beautiful among the heathen angers many Christians, especially those who have quite a conceit of themselves as knowing their God. Anger of this kind could be a sign that they are mistaken in their knowledge, that they do not yet know God in his goodness and greatness and therefore do not understand that God’s Spirit is a wind which blows where he wishes.»
 
The task of faith

«God’s becoming beautiful in culture and art remains hidden if it is not named; it does not remain hidden as beauty, but it does remain hidden as God’s becoming beautiful if it is not made known as God’s beauty. Such naming and making known is certainly always the task of faith...».

According to Bohren, then, faith has the task of interpreting beauty of every kind with reference to God. This also applies to works by non-Christians. In view of the fact that there is a «thought-world entirely without the Muses» in many Christians, such works may unfortunately be in the majority.

Hell: Reflections on the Recent Chatter - Matt Tebbe

I’ve been following the recent chatter concerning the nature of the afterlife, sparked by the release of That All Shall be Saved by David Bentley Hart. In my Christian circles there hasn’t been a book on eschatology this talked about - controversial and polarizing - since Rob Bell’s Love Wins released over eight years ago. My thoughts on hell have changed over the last twenty years; much of the recent discussion gives me language and frames in which to discuss with others what is emerging for me as the key questions surrounding what I think about the afterlife. I’d like to share a few of those shifts - and questions - with you in this short article. 

I spent the first 30 years of my life thinking Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) was the only biblical and historical Christian understanding of hell. Every single Christian teacher and book reinforced this; no doubt in my mind that ECT was concomitant with orthodox faith and practice. 

I first heard about what is described as Annihilationism or Conditional Immortality (CI) when I was in seminary (15 years ago). Some well-respected theologians (John Stott & Edward Fudge, among others) were beginning to ‘come out’ as Annihilationists and I thought they were becoming theological liberals; why else would one abandon the clear teachings of scripture and the consensus of the Church for 2,000 years? But I read and listened to CI defenders lay out their case and I was stunned: there is actually a solid biblical case for CI. 

A few years later I learned of Patristic or Christian Universalism (CU) (or Apokastatasis, the 'redemption' or 'restoration' of all things). My first blink on it was that this is just ‘all roads lead to heaven’ sort of New Age pluralism. This is how ensconced ECT was in my beliefs. But I began to read about Christian Universalism - Robin Parry, Fr. Aiden Kimel’s blog “Eclectic Orthodoxy” (https://afkimel.wordpress.com), Brad Jersak’s book Her Gates Will Never be Shut, and a smattering of Church Fathers and George MacDonald’s writings. I was surprised by the biblical and historical defenses of it. In fact, both CU and CI have historical and biblical warrant.

So after much reading, listening, and praying I'm no longer convinced that ECT is the only defensible eschatology for Christians. Incredible how 'safe' it's become in just the last 15 years to openly admit that? It seems more forgiving today to hold to Conditional Immortality. Almost no risk of losing your job or losing credibility. Perhaps less so if one wants to confess CU. 

Where do I stand now? I am drawn towards a hopeful Christian Universalist position (ala Hans Urs Von Balthasar & Brad Jersak). Even more importantly on where I stand are the questions I think are key in this conversation. Below I list them, with brief excurses to explore relevant topics as needed: 

1. I believe *most* of how one conceives of hell comes down to how one understands human freedom and God’s goodness. CU posits that an ETC version of hell violates God’s goodness; ETC posits that CU denies human freedom. But what we mean when we say ‘good’ and ‘freedom’ determines a great deal of how one handles this apparent tension. 

Questions on human freedom:

2. What makes human freedom free? CU’s argue that only when God has defeated all the things that constrain one's will (death, sin, corruption, rebellion, etc) can a human have any semblance of true freedom to choose God or not. Libertine freedom, then, doesn’t exist for anyone enslaved to sin; it only exists when one has been freed from it at the final judgment by Christ.  

3. On the other hand, those who argue for ETC and CI argue that if God removes all barriers to God's will/love and human freedom - ie. the argument made by CU’s - then in a real sense God is ‘forcing’ you to choose him. It’s not true freedom if one can’t not but choose God. Both sides say the other compromise true human freedom. 

4. So a definitive question is: what is human freedom? Is it true that human freedom is an illusion until God frees us from that which keeps us in bondage, as CU’s argue? And if so, can we ever be said to ‘freely’ choose against God? Or is every choice against God evidence that we are not free? 

5. How we answer ‘what is freedom?’ and ‘how and when are humans free to choose faith in God?’ will determine which understanding of the afterlife is compelling to us, and which is unpersuasive or abhorrent to us. 

Now to questions of God's goodness and justice:  

6. Is retributive justice (which both proponents of ECT and CI contend) just? Is paying for temporal sin for an eternity through conscious and excruciating torment in any sense just? Is God glorified by retributive justice? Are the crimes and sins of finite, fallen humans against an infinite God deserving of unending punishment? And if we can proffer some system of justice in which this sort of retributive justice coheres, in what sense and by what measure can this justice be said to be ‘good’ or ‘loving’? Does retributive justice in this sense compromise God’s love or goodness?

7. How do we understand God’s wrath as an expression of his justice and love? Is wrath essentially God’s love experienced by those who don’t want it? (as the Eastern Orthodox maintain) Or is God’s wrath *different* than God’s love? Does God’s wrath, as an expression of his love, ever have a telos unto something other than restorative union? Is retribution loving? 

8. If God allows those who reject him to ultimately fall into un-being and non-existence as those who hold to CI maintain, does this in some way indicate that God loses? That God doesn’t get what God wants (i.e. “he desires no one to perish”)? That death and sin and evil (those things Jesus conquered on the cross) are allowed to win in some way - or - take down what God loves as they are defeated? 

9. Does the existence of an eternal hell in some way violate the 'restoration of all things' (Acts 3.21, Matt 17.11)  because not all things are in submission to Christ? Does ECT validate and ensure the eternal existence of rebellion and violation of God's will in his Creation? 

10. Back to God’s goodness: Why would a good God - not under any compulsion or need to create - create humans he knew would reject and despise him and spend an eternity suffering for it? In what sense is this ‘good’ for his Creation?

11. Why would a ‘good’ God (in any analogous way we would think of someone being ‘good’) create creatures for endless, excruciating torment? Is God more glorious and victorious and powerful and good if most of his creatures who ever lived remain in rebellion to him for eternity? Or if they all repent?

12. How could those in heaven know about loved (and unloved) ones experiencing never-ending conscious torment and a - still enjoy God and b - glorify God for that punishment and c - still in any way be called ‘good’ or ‘loving’ persons? 

13. *The existential angst of this question came into stark relief for me as I watched "White Bear" from the series Black Mirror on Netflix. This episode confronts us with questions of goodness, retributive justice, and whether redeemed (or any) human could enjoy and relish someone's hell for eternity.

To sum up:

1. If ECT torments your conscience don't abandon the faith over it. 

2. When I say *most* of it comes down to how we see human freedom and God's goodness, that is to say:

• Historically you can find arguments for all 3 positions; none have been deemed heretical.
• Biblically you can make a case for all 3. There are texts for each

One final exercise: On the importance of philosophical commitments for what we make of Hell. 

Those who hold a voluntarist philosophy (i.e. God’s goodness cannot be correlated to our own, it is something different altogether. Ergo: What God wills IS good by the fact he wills it) may not see the issues of God’s goodness being compromised by ECT. Most people who are voluntarists don’t realize they are - and - don’t realize it’s a foreign construct to Scripture and Church Fathers. A decisive point in my deconstruction of ECT was reckoning with the extent I had imported voluntarist frames into my theological position.

To show how this is related, let me offer two pushbacks often used when confronting the truthfulness of ECT: 

1. God’s goodness is wholly other than our goodness. We cannot make analogous assumptions from human goodness to God’s goodness. It may seem unfair or unjust that God would consign finite creatures who’ve committed temporal crimes to infinite suffering and eternal punishment...but that’s just because we have such a puny appreciation for how majestic God’s holiness is. 

I realized about 10 years ago that: 1- You have to be a voluntarist to make this argument and I wasn’t sure voluntarism was faithful and biblical, 2 - I essentially had to *gaslight my own Christian conscience* to hold this position, 3 - Jesus *repeatedly* makes moral arguments about how humans interact & analogously relates them to God.I.e. "Who among you if a son asks for bread will give a stone? How much more will your Father in heaven..." When Jesus teaches using an analogy from human love to God’s love, his point isn’t that it’s wholly different/other, but rather God’s love is like our love but better. Not discontinuous, but continuous and better, 4 - How can I trust a God whose morality is so unlike my own that I cannot understand the meaning of a word like ‘good’ or ‘love’? If God’s acts make these words unintelligible to me, how can I trust - or even know- such a ‘God’? 

2. ECT exists so God can more fully manifest his attribute of justice. The reality of ECT is necessary so God’s full glory can be on display. 

This position hinges on the idea that God is more glorified by creating billions of people who will never love him & consigning them to hell than if he'd never created them. God in some way *needs* or *chooses* hell to highlight his justice. Without ECT God is 'less-than-God' in some way. I argued and thought this for quite some time. But again, about 10 years ago, I began to question the assumptions that undergirded this belief. I came to see this reasoning has major issues. 

This can only be maintained if one has relegated God's love to a subordinate attribute to his glory/justice/sovereignty or love becomes an unintelligible faculty of God with no referent to human existence. And - one has to assume that billions of persons remaining in eternal conscious torment of God brings more glory to God than billions of the same persons worshipping and loving him forever. 

So, to say, "Hell exists to glorify God (i.e. bring more light to his justice/holiness)" is to abstract God's justice from God's Being/Love and to divorce our notion of justice from God's justice. Again we see voluntarism at work to make ECT cohere for Christians.

Conclusion

I no longer hold ECT as a conviction because I believe it doesn’t cohere with Scripture, it scandalizes my conscience as a Christian, and the only way to not be scandalized by it is to adopt an extra-biblical philosophical frame fraught with complications. As I said earlier, I’m happy to be a hopeful universalist but ultimately leave the final judgment into God’s gracious hands.

The Unvarnished Jesus - Brian Zahnd

I have a new book release! The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey. This is a book of daily devotions taking the reader on a journey with Jesus from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. I know we’re still in Advent, but I wanted to give you enough time to have The Unvarnished Jesus for the beginning of Lent on February 26. Let me tell you how this book came about…

In February of 2006, I was in New Delhi, India staying in the Imperial Hotel. I had just concluded a conference for a thousand pastors in Orissa and I had a couple of days to relax in my favorite hotel in one of my favorite cities before the long journey home. During my two days at the Imperial Hotel, I was working on a new sermon series. At this point, I was two years into a very significant spiritual and theological transition. After nearly twenty-five years of pastoral ministry, I was encountering Jesus in new ways that posed profound challenges to many of the assumptions I had grown comfortable with. The Jesus I was discovering in midlife was a challenge to the consumerism, Americanism, militarism, and individualism that had come to characterize so much of the Christianity I knew.

This period of my life is what some describe as deconstruction, but I never thought of it that way or used that term. I tended to talk about what I was experiencing as having new eyes. I told my church repeatedly that with my new eyes the Bible I had been reading for decades had become a new book. Or with a more brazen rhetorical flourish, I would say I was moving beyond easy-cheesy-cotton-candy-Christianity. Eventually, I settled on Jesus turning water to wine at Cana as my preferred metaphor. A re-engagement with Jesus caused a weak, watery, diluted Christianity to be transformed into something rich, robust, and intoxicating. In midlife, instead of the party being over, it was just getting started. It was like being born again again.

I was thrilled with the discoveries I was making, but I also wanted to bring people along with me on this exciting new journey, because that’s the vocation of a pastor. And so I was outlining a series of sermons where I would try to present Jesus in a non-domesticated way. I called the series “The Unvarnished Jesus” because in those sermons I was attempting to remove the layers of lacquer comprised of the cultural assumptions that prevent us from seeing just how challenging and compelling Jesus really is.

On my second day at the Imperial working on these sermons, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of anxiety. I knew the sermons would be good, but they would also be dangerous. Presenting Jesus without a certain amount of mitigating varnish to an American church is not safe. I was plagued with thoughts like: How will this go over? How will the congregation react? Who’s going to get mad and leave the church over this? I had to decide what I was going to do, so I left the hotel and went for a long walk through the streets of New Delhi, praying and trying to recover my nerve.

When I returned to the hotel I had made up my mind — I would preach the unvarnished Jesus as honestly as I could, come what may. I knew it was a pivotal moment. I even took a picture of my Bible, notes, and laptop sitting on the desk to memorialize the decision I’d made to preach Jesus without varnish. I often look at that picture, and when I do I feel the thrill and anxiety all over again. Those two days in the Imperial Hotel were a crucial turning point for me and our church.

On the long flight home, I read Step Across This Line — a collection of essays by the Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie. In his essay on the Taj Mahal, I came across this paragraph.

“The problem with the Taj Mahal is that it has become so overlaid with accumulated meanings as to be almost impossible to see. When you arrive at the outer walls of the gardens in which the Taj is set, it’s as if every hustler and hawker in Agra is waiting for you to make the familiarity-breeds-contempt problem worse, peddling imitation Mahals of every size and price. This leads to a certain amount of shoulder-shrugging disenchantment. Recently, a British friend who was about to make his first visit to India told me that he had decided to leave the Taj off his itinerary because of its over-exposure. If I urged him not to, it’s because of my own vivid memory of pushing my way for the first time through the jostling crowd of imitation-vendors, past all the myriad hawkers of meaning and interpretation, and into the presence of the thing itself, which utterly overwhelmed me, and made all my notions about its devaluation feel totally and completely redundant. The building itself left my skepticism in shreds. Announcing itself as itself, insisting with absolute force on its sovereign authority, it simply obliterated the million million counterfeits of it and glowingly filled, once and forever, the place in the mind previously occupied by its simulacra.”

That was it! That was exactly what I wanted to do with “The Unvarnished Jesus.” I wanted a Jesus who had been overlaid with so many accumulated meanings as to be impossible to see to once again announce himself as himself with the absolute force of sovereign authority and obliterate the million million counterfeits!

Over the next two months, I preached “The Unvarnished Jesus” sermons and wrote an Unvarnished Jesus blog post every day for sixty-one days. It was a turning point for our church. We were headed in the right direction, but it would be a difficult road; as Jesus said, “the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.”

We lost a lot of people over the next few years because an unvarnished Jesus who refuses to be a spokesperson for the assumed cultural values of Americanism is deeply unsettling for many American Christians. But the water turned to wine and we eventually arrived at a beautiful place. And if I had it to do all over again I wouldn’t change a thing.

This book of daily Lenten reflections is not a replication of those sermons and blogs from fourteen years ago, but they are written in the same spirit.

Lent is a forty-six day period prior to Easter (forty days of some kind of fasting with six Sunday feasts) during which we follow Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem where he establishes the kingdom of God through his death, burial, and resurrection. To help you make the most of the season of Lent I’ve provided a Gospel reading and a brief reflection on Jesus for each day. The Sunday selections are taken from one of the Gospel readings in the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. The other forty readings are my own selections, all taken from the second half of Jesus’ ministry — first from Mark, followed by Matthew, Luke, and John. Then there is a two-week journey through the fourteen Scriptural Stations of the Cross. Our Lenten journey concludes with daily readings and reflections through the events of Holy Week. Each Lenten reflection concludes with a brief prayer addressed to our Lord.

I invite you to join me on a pilgrimage — a forty-six-day journey from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday in a quest to encounter The Unvarnished Jesus.

BZ

(Here’s the picture I took in my hotel room when The Unvarnished Jesus was conceived.)

Advent: Sometimes Waiting is Hard - Brad Jersak

Waiting

“Advent” is a word I was unfamiliar with as a child growing up in my Baptist tradition. But in my years with the Mennonites, I became familiar with the ritual of lighting candles on the Advent wreath in anticipation of Christ’s nativity. Advent, I learned, meant arrival but intrinsic to that word was the waiting, the anticipation and the longing of God’s people for his appearance and especially his deliverance. As a little boy, I relived that expectant hope as the calendar slowly edged forward to Christmas.

Sometimes Waiting is Hard

I think most children find waiting for the climax of Christmas morning difficult … but they may also enjoy the waiting itself as they experience the whole season as a wonderland of lights, sweets and intoxicating anticipation. Still, in our culture and in our lives, waiting can be very hard. On top of the frenetic pace and exhausting demands of our 21^stcentury society, the Christmas season adds a new dimension of scurrying. I become more sensitive to long traffic lights, slow download speeds and snail-paced line-ups. I become more demanding of others—where’s my fast-food order? Why hasn’t he replied to my text yet? When is she picking me up? Checking my watch every two minutes. Beyond these trivialities, waiting for important news can be excruciating. Applications are brutal … applying for jobs, applying for housing, applying for school, applying for work permits or scholarship funds or debt forgiveness. Waiting! And then there’s waiting for medical results. What did the lab say? A second opinion? How long? Three weeks? Good grief! Waiting can be very hard.