Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Stanley Hauerwas' "Jesus Changes Everything" - Review by Bradley Jersak

Stanley Hauerwas, Jesus Changes Everything (Plough Publishing), 2025. 

Review by Bradley Jersak

In prayer and meditation, I have given this month to asking the Lord, “Show me where I am being tempted to despair and where I am being invited to despair.”

In the current Great Regression—social, political, and religious—I am recognizing both aspects. First, the temptation to despair speaks of hopelessness, despondency, paralysis, and gloom. Many, especially vulnerable folks on the margins, feel afraid, under assault, traumatized. Despair lurks.

But conversely, I also sense Jesus inviting us to a despair of a different register. I suspect we should despair of imagining we can fix our world, our nation, and even the Christian brand through worldly ways via partisan politics, culture wars ideology, and religious nationalism. These have proven ineffectual and have increasingly mutated Christianity into something foreign to the Jesus Way.

What then? Enter Stanley Hauerwas. For a long time, he’s being urging the followers of Christ to be “resident aliens,” where the church is not trying to “take the seven mountains” of cultural influence and certainly not to found a theocracy as a political power. But neither is Hauerwas calling us into a Christian conclave as lumps of tasteless salt and bucket covered lamps.

In Jesus Changes Everything, Hauerwas asks us to despair of cultural control and political power. Like Jeremiah, we are not citizens of the empire, but strangers from another world, planted wherever we live as yeast in the loaf. In only that way, “a new world is possible.”

In this tight (133 pages and just $10), clear manifesto, the author reorients us to Jesus, in six movements as simple that they are radical and provocative.

• Part 1: Following Jesus
• Part 2: Good News
• Part 3: God’s Alternative Society
• Part 4: Kingdom Economics
• Part 5: Sowing Seeds of Peace
• Part 6: The Politics of Witness

Hauerwas makes it hard to be a Christian (because, of course, basics such as radical forgiveness and enemy love involve a kind of death to self), and he makes it hard to not to be one, as the person of Jesus and his story are intensely compelling. This book shows us how Jesus’ story can be my story, our story, and from that center, trust the ripples. A keeper.

Here is an interview with Dr. Hauerwas about the book (with Charles Moore of Plough Publishing).   

Jason Landsel's "BY FIRE: The Jakob Hutter Story - review by Bradley Jersak

Jason, Landsel, with Sankha Banerjee (Art), Richard Mommsen (Script), By Fire: The Jakob Hutter Story (Plough Publishing, 2025).

SAMPLE

By Fire: The Jakob Hutter Story is a graphic novel, Book 2 in Plough Publishing’s “Heroes of the Radical Reformation” series.

Like Book 1, By Water: the Felix Manz Story, we are introduced to key figures of the Anabaptist movement of the 1520s-30s. It is a gripping recollection of the lives and martyrdom of Jakob and Katherina Hutter, founders of the Hutterian Brethren (Hutterites).

Aside from Plough’s powerful truth-telling stories, beautiful art, and high-quality publications—this work is certainly all of that—as a reviewer, I’d like to share why this book is important to me and why I believe readers should consider obtaining a copy for themselves. I’ll begin with a personal note and then address a broader, more pressing need.   

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I grew up in Killarney, Manitoba (Canada) a half-hour drive from the Mayfair Hutterite colony. My first impressions as a child were that Hutterites were communities from another culture, another era—utterly foreign and insular. They looked and sounded strange to my eyes and ears, though similar to the Amish in Harrison Ford’s movie, The Witness, and to Old Order Mennonites I knew from Ontario. (I had not yet met the Bruderfhof, who I now love so dearly). On one hand, they appeared to live austere lives, yet as a highly efficient collective, also had cutting-edge farm machinery and large sections of fertile farmland. We weren’t afraid of them, but neither did we trust them. Strange rumours find purchase in the shadows of our ignorance.    

But my dad, Lloyd Jersak, couldn’t leave it at that. One day, he drove the gravel road to where their men were taking a coffee break out in the fields. Dad toted his baritone along and offered to play them a few hymns. The brothers were intrigued and amuses, and they beckoned my dad to bring a little concert to the women preparing lunch back at the colony.

This was a surprise to the old Prediger (the colony pastor) and at first, he didn’t know what to make of this stranger playing a musical instrument to his flock. For my father’s part, he was a stereotypical Baptist who wasn’t quite sure if these folks knew the gospel. But as repeated visits turned to friendship and trust, my dad received a surprise invitation to attend the Hutterites’ Christmas banquet, and eventually asked to offer a prayer, and later to be their banquet guest speaker!  

Eventually, Dad introduced me to these friends… just a tiny taste of the rich fellowship he had been enjoying for years. In fact, on my last full day with my father before he died of cancer, I asked him if there was anything we could do together for a final outing. He requested a surprise trip to the colony. They welcomed him as an honoured guest—almost a hero’s welcome—knowing it would be his last visit. They asked him to share some stories (which they found funnier than I did), fed us some soup, and sent us home with fresh bread and wine from their kitchen.

When I returned to Killarney just weeks later for my father’s memorial service, the Hutterites were there in force and Dad was buried in a gorgeous wooden coffin, hand-crafted and delivered by the Hutterites. I’ll forever be grateful and one way to offer thanks is to say, “I know these people. You should meet them. Or at least hear their powerful backstory of faithfulness to Christ.”

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But if you never meet a Hutterite or have the opportunity to visit a colony, now is the time to be inspired to faithfulness by the story of Jakob Hutter and his wife, Katherina. By Fire tells their story accurately, beautifully, and with stirring pathos. There’s a gravitas to reading about discipleship in an alternative society that had turned from state-church corruption and what we might recognize today as the cruelest forms of Christian nationalism.

Readers who have grown weary of politicized faith but long to follow the Jesus Way of the Sermon on the Mount will find the Hutter family’s testimony infused with courage, resolve, and confidence in Christ. Their resolve to demonstrate a nonviolent ‘third way’ was indeed tested by fire. And while none of us may literally have our faith tested by the water or fire of persecution, the Hutters fortify our commitment to resist the seduction of empire, the culture, and the false gospel of Christian nationalism—but to do so humbly and nonviolently.

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In addition to the excellent storytelling and artwork, I’ll mention that the Appendices of By Fire includes valuable historical archives including primary sources:

• The 1528 and 1529 Imperial Mandates against the Anabaptists
• A map of historical events
• Brief biographies of the key figures
• A timeline of events
• Jakob Hutter’s letter to the Governor of Moravia
• Jakob Hutter’s letter to his congregation in Moravia
• A description of the “Anabaptist Hunters”
• An account of Jakob Hutter’s capture, torture, and execution (1581)
• A bibliography of major sources

Addison Hart's "Confessions of the Antichrist" - Review by Bradley Jersak

After thoroughly enjoying "Patapsco Spirits: Eleven Ghost Stories", Addison Hart's marvellous collection of short ghost stories (it was my top fiction choice for 2024), I immediately raced to see what other books he had to offer. It turns out, quite a few (click here for his Goodreads list). Since I'm neck-deep in a stack of non-fiction works right now, I wanted another taste of his story-telling, so I used my remaining Christmas cash to pick up his novel, Confessions of the Antichrist.

Full disclosure, if I didn't already follow Hart's treasury of thought on Substack ("The Pragmatic Mystic") and hadn't known he's an elder brother to DBH (perhaps Mycroft to David's Sherlock?), I may have wrongly assumed from the title that Confessions was another fan fiction instalment of the Left Behind literary debacle. I'm glad I knew better! For while this short novel is very readable and moves quickly, it also boasts some wonderfully creative premises that left me pondering (as his ghost stories had in my essay here).

I'm wary of spoilers, and would even recommend avoiding the Amazon summary. So rather than offering an overview of the plot, I can hint at it by suggesting some pre-reading thought experiments to tempt you into Hart's treatment.

• Given the apostle Paul's claims in the Christ hymns of Philippians 2 and Colossians 1--that all things visible and invisible are "reconciled by his blood" and that every tongue in heaven and on earth and under the earth will confess (joyfully) the Lordship of Jesus--is it possible that even the devil (whatever that is) could yet repent and be saved? (an ancient debate, actually).
• If we were to image the devil seeing the error of its ways and trying to make amends, what would that look like? Would those amends look like a realignment with the fallen spirit's original design, or would the corruption of character continue to be manifest in his course corrections?
• If the devil were to prepare an Antichrist for the role, what type of man would he be? When or how would he discover his role? How would he be revealed to the world? Would the classical Antichrist of Christian imagination be his inevitable destiny or would God offers exit ramps? Could he or would he take them?
• Would the church recognize the Antichrist when he appeared? If they were to discover his identity, how would they respond and relate to him? Who would resist him? Who would bargain with him? And how do we keep doing so again and again in the realpolitik of our world. 
• And where does Jesus come into any of these questions? Is God the divine architect of a predestined outcome, or a passive observer in a cosmic dualism, or how would he participate in this plot as the Shepherd of humankind?       

The way Addison plays with these questions is well worth enjoying. The book has previously compared the book to a meeting of Through the Looking-Glass and The Divine Comedy. Yes, or I might suggest that it's the lovechild of The Grand Inquisitor and The Screwtape Letters because its relevance is a serious exploration in the nature of temptation and how we in 'the real world' regularly succumb to it in the name of our best ideas, which are precisely what got us into the current mess.

P.S. A few minor asides: I appreciated the very short chapters. It allowed me to snack on the book between tasks or at the end of the day and kept the book moving.

And I would also recommend pausing to look up Hart's incidental references to books, authors, history (historical figures, the Etruscans, etc.), and artworks (Goya)--worthy of pausing for sure.

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Joonas Sildre's "Between Two Sounds" - Review by Bradley Jersak

Joonas Sildre’s Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to his Musical Language (trans. Adam Cullen (Plough Publishing, 2024).

I confess that I had not recalled previously hearing of Arvo Pärt, the subversive Estonian musician and Soviet exile, nor of ‘tintinnabuli,’ the distinctive musical technique he created. It’s unlikely I would have happened upon him were it not for my friends at Plough Publishing, who graciously sent me a beautiful copy of a graphic novel about his work. That led me to a deep dive of reading the book, listening to hours of Pärt’s compositions, digging into his history as a dissident, and studying his technique. What tied it all together for me was his faith and the remarkable story told so creatively by Sildre and his graphics.

Please purchase your copy >> HERE. 

What worked for me so well: first, the 220+ page biography moves quickly because the various sized panels don’t bog down the reader with excessive text. The narrative flows smoothly through the well-written dialogue and clean artwork. The black, white, and greyscale was appropriate to the era and Joonas Sildre is a master of drawing music.    

The story itself caught my attention because of my own heritage—a family of faith that knew the communist era persecutions of Czechoslovakia and their musical resistance to the hammer and sickle with bow strings and brass. It was beautiful to hear how Pärt could proclaim the ancient themes of Emmanuel, the Nativity and the Passion in a new musical language.

When I first sampled Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli works, it sounded like a brooding form of classical songwriting. But there’s more to it than that. On one hand, it derives in part from early polyphony and Gregorian chant. On the other, tintinnabuli was truly invented by Pärt in 1976 (in a piano piece titled Für Alina. In a fascinating article, “Tintinnabuli – technique, style or ideology? Music In Movement,” it is defined as

… a distinct technique, which in essence unites two monodic lines of structure – melody and triad – into one, inseparable ensemble. It creates an original duality of voices, the course and inner logic of which are defined by strict, even complicated mathematical formulas…

Tintinnabuli music can also be described as a style in which the musical material is extremely concentrated, reduced only to the most important, where the simple rhythm and often gradually progressing melodies and triadic, so-called tintinnabuli voices are integrated into the complicated art of polyphony, expressing the composer’s special relationship to silence.

In addition, tintinnabuli is also an ideology, a very personal and deeply sensed attitude to life for the composer, based on Christian values, religious practice and a quest for truth, beauty and purity.

In Arvo Pärt’s own words,

I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.

More technically, he adds,

“Tintinnabuli is the mathematically exact connection from one line to another…. the rule where the melody and the accompaniment is one. One and one, it is one – it is not two. This is the secret of this technique.”

For my own part, the graphic novel taught me how to listen (and ‘see’!) the importance and function of silence—both in the musical compositions and in the spirit/Spirit of faith-based resistance (external and internal). I’ll leave you with
a sampling here of Sildre’s art and then Pärt’s music below:

 

THE CO-SUFFERING CONSCIENCE by Bradley Jersak

THE CO-SUFFERING CONSCIENCE by Bradley Jersak

Awareness

1. I am aware of the gifts I’ve been given as blessings from God, family, and the body of Christ. I will use these where I’m able, let go where I can’t, and seek to use them in service of others.

2. I am aware of the harms I’ve done along the way, including those I hurt who are not yet in a place to forgive or to heal. I will co-suffer the pain I caused as a consequence, bearing it as I remember them in prayer.

3. I am aware of the prevailing culture’s aggressive commitment to retribution, humiliation, and public shame to cut off pathways to redemption of the sinner. I’m aware of the fear they have sown in me.

4. I am aware of the mercy I’ve received through healing communities who hold me accountable for my life and my obligation to pay forward that same mercy to anyone who needs it as God gives me the opportunity and within the limits God prescribes.

5. I am aware of the humility required to continually resist pedestals that those I help are tempted to erect, remembering the great suffering that occurs when idols topple. 

6. I am aware of the need to centering my redemption rather than my failures and to testify that God has removed our transgressions from us.

The Co-suffering Conscience

People with addictions who have harmed others live with the reality that some of those they’ve harmed are not healed and may never fully recover in this lifetime. Some of those they’ve injured cannot and likely will not forgive them or be reconciled on this side of eternity. Appropriate boundaries for their safety often mean that the opportunity to offer a direct amends is shut off.

For the addict with an awakened conscience, the daily torment of this reality can either lead to relapse or to such depths of self-loathing that they despair of life. Perhaps worse, the self-loathing is no longer about the pain they caused others but becomes focused on the pain they feel, making it all about themselves. The moral injury of their own actions energizes a new locus of self-centeredness in self-pity. The memory of those they hurt thus fuels the character defects that drove the addiction in the first place.

What to do? The solution is not found in the defensive posture of denial or of forgetting and simply moving on as if nothing happened. That's dangerous and it’s not actually forgiving oneself. It’s repression of shame that will resurface under pressure.

One possible way forward: “the co-suffering conscience.” The idea here is that instead of indulging in our own shame-based pain OR the panacea of denial, we allow the conscience to bear (to co-suffer) whatever pain our past actions continue to cause the other today and to offer that suffering to God on their behalf as intercession. 

ONLY in the act of praying do we allow ourselves to feel their pain because only there will it cease to be selfish or dangerous. Only there is it redemptive—only there is it love. 

We continue this practice for as long as we suffer the pangs of a stricken conscience and beyond that, for as long as we are aware that the people we hurt continue to suffer the harms we caused. A lifetime of intercession will be a lighter burden than a lifetime of shame and self-loathing and will be far more effective for our recovery and for theirs. 

We will discover that in centering the person’s well-being by praying for their liberation and flourishing, the transgression itself will be and has already been forgiven and removed. But now we will begin to experience the truth of infinite mercy by lifting our eyes to the throne of grace (the Cross) and surrendering ourselves and them into the loving care of the Good Shepherd, rather than forever lowering ourselves in ineffective self-debasement (which is still an obsession with the self).

I wonder if this approach can apply to anyone for the actual harm their conscience knows they have done—not just as addicts, but as parents and children, as pastors and teachers, as soldiers and police, as sinners. Wherever they have caused physical and emotional injury to another and moral injury to oneself—and where the wounds that persist cause ongoing dysfunction and alienation. This is one way we can be reconciled to our accusing conscience that saves us from self-centered shame, from denial, or from trying to control outcomes or extract forgiveness from our victims.

The active ingredients to the approach are (1) a strict adherence to consciously staying at the Mercy Seat, (2) surrendering the ones we have harmed into God’s care, (3) focusing the prayers on blessing their flourishing, and (4) encountering the love of God for ourselves.

Bottom line: coming with our tormented and tormenting conscience to the Mercy Seat of God, our suffering is transfigured into co-suffering intercession that liberates us from the machinations of the squirming self that seeks an exit from shame.

Generally, the person in this place has bottomed out on the compulsion to make everything right (they know they can’t), with their obsession over self-disqualification, and the delusion of manipulating others or managing God with their prayers. But the ego is sneaky… so even “doing this right” must be surrendered and, instead, offer our pain and theirs into the loving care of the Divine.

Parable of the Ten Virgins - What's the Oil? (Revised 2024) - Bradley Jersak

Parable of the Ten Virgins

Have you ever given time to ponder Jesus' parable of the ten virgins? It raises notoriously difficult questions about what Jesus meant, what the various symbols represent, and how the parable should be understood and applied. And we should take heed at the outset against trying to divine THE meaning... as if there's only one message for us to undergo. Parables are more subversive than that. They aren't meant to be dissected and mastered. They function more like alarm bells that are meant to wake us up. And speaking of waking up, let's begin by reading the parable: 

Matt. 25:1-13  

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves. But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. 

Questions

I wonder: What does Jesus mean by 'keep watch'? We generally associate keeping watch with 'staying ready' spiritually for the coming of our Bridegroom (Christ), whether (1) he comes at a future parousia at the end of history or (2) when we die, since all ten virgins 'fall asleep' (Jesus' favorite phrase for passing away), or (3) as Jesus continually reveals himself in our lives as the ever-present, ever-arriving One. 

But why virgins? Aren't we the Bride of Christ? And what are these lamps the virgins carry? What is the oil? Who sells the oil? And how do you buy it? Why is having enough oil the criterion for entrance through the door? Do we somehow earn our way into the wedding banquet? 

The more I study this parable, the less I know for sure, but I'm 100% certain that Jesus thinks that having oil is critically important. I also believe Matthew has given us some solid clues in this chapter about what that oil in question might be.  

What is this oil that we're meant to keep in full supply? I'm discovering a number of layers to the parable, as I had with the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Let's take them in order. 

I. The mercy of almsgiving as a heavenly investment

Warning: this first layer will involve something that sounds like buying your way into the kingdom of God or earning your salvation with good works. Stay with me; it's essential territory to cover and a prerequisite to understanding the parable. We mustn't miss what Jesus says or dismiss what Jesus wants by prematurely filtering his words through what we know about the post-Easter gospel of grace (though we will get there). 

In Second Temple Judaism, the mercy of almsgiving had become nearly synonymous with righteousness (tzedakah, also translated justice or charity). Jesus makes that connection in Matthew 6:1-2. Showing mercy to the poor through almsgiving was like investing in your heavenly bank account.

The Rabbis were riffing off passages like Proverbs 19:17, which says, "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed." Jewish teachers applied this to mean that when you give to the poor in this life, your investment is returned by blessedness in the next life. CLICK HERE for a good article on the details.

Some first century Rabbis also believed that those who suffered torment in the afterlife could escape hades or gehenna (depending on the Rabbi) after one year if (i) your family fulfilled the requirements of liturgical mourning through that year and (ii) if you had a good track record of almsgiving. For more details, see Her Gates Will Never Be Shut, 49.

Jesus was playing with the same idea of spiritual capital investments when he says, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven" (Matt. 6:19-20) by practicing the righteousness of giving alms to the needy (Matt. 6:1-4). And surely one layer of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus identifies treatment of the poor with one's postmortem destiny. So also, the parable of the sheep and goats at the end of Matthew 25.

The idea that acts of mercy are a heavenly deposit may also be what the angel meant when he said to Cornelius, "Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God." And it is certainly what St John Chrysostom meant when he said, "If you want more storehouses, you have them: in the bellies of the poor." 

What Jesus adds to the rabbinical discussion is his rebuke of those who practice almsgiving and fasting as an outward show of their religious pride. Here he stands in the tradition of the Major and Minor Prophets of Jewish Scripture. Isaiah, Amos and Micah spring quickly to mind. Jesus assures those who 'blow their own horns' that the kudos they receive comprise their full payment (Matt. 6:2) ... no future reward awaits. He also addresses the possibility that one could give their outward tithes and yet still completely miss the deeper matters of righteousness, mercy and faithfulness (Matt. 26:26). 

II. The Oil of Mercy

This background connecting almsgiving, righteousness and entering the kingdom leads us back to the parable. I would propose that in the first layer or immediate intent of Jesus' parable to his Jewish listeners and Matthew's readers, the oil he mentions (and the gold coins in the next parable) signifies 'mercy' -- and in that context, mercy was specifically merciful (practical, compassionate) treatment of the poor. I see this for textual and contextual reasons:

A. Textual clues: the linguistic connection between 'mercy' and 'oil.'

Hebrew and Greek scholars help us translate the Bible (because of complex grammatical rules and special idioms), but any curious layperson can now easily do a basic word study. Teachable moment: just type "NT Greek lexicon" + the word you want into your web browser. In this case, I've done a search for the Greek words that we translate "oil" and "mercy." The following details pop up on sites such as: 

http://classic.studylight.org/lex/grk or http://biblehub.com/greek

1. MERCY (noun): eleos 

1656	Original Word	Transliterated Word
	eáleov	eleos
	Translated Word
	mercy

2. Have / obtain /receive / show MERCY (verb): eleeo

1653	Original Word	Transliterated Word
	eÍlea/w	eleeo
	Translated Words
	have mercy, have mercy on, have mercy upon, obtain mercy, receive mercy, show mercy, found mercy, had mercy, has mercy, mercy, received mercy, shown mercy, shows mercy

3. OLIVE - olive berries, olive tree,  olives (noun): elaion

1636	Original Word	Transliterated Word
	eÍlaiða	elaia
	Translated Words
	olive berries, olive tree, olives, olive trees
1637	Original Word	Transliterated Word
	eálaion	elaion
	Translated Word
	olive oil

4. OIL - lamp oil, healing oil, anointing oil, olive oil (noun): elaion

Strong's Number:  1637

eálaion

Original Word		Word Origin
	eálaion		from the same as (1636)
Transliterated Word		Phonetic Spelling
	Elaion		el'-ah-yon
Parts of Speech		TDNT
	Noun Neuter		2:470,221
Definition
	olive oil for fuel for lamps for healing the sick for anointing the head and body at feasts mentioned among articles of commerce
Translated Words
	KJV (11) - oil, 11;NAS (11) - oil, 10; olive oil

Do you see the obvious similarity? Eleos, eleeo, elaion: mercy, show mercy, olive (oil), oil.

Similarities between words don't always mean anything; some words are just soundalikes with no connection. Other words have an original connection that is no longer relevant. Sometimes similar words are connected only by wordplay. But in this case, the ongoing symbolism of oil as mercy is both direct and very relevant. 

According to Lazar Puhalo, olive trees were actually named after mercy because the trees gave oil so abundantly and for so many goods that oil actually became an item of currency. The olive groves of the Palestinian region were and are glorious sources of provision, reflecting and symbolizing the generosity of God's enduring and abundant mercy. 

One of the great tragedies of the conflict between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian people is the punitive destruction of centuries-old olive orchards that provide delicious meals, oils and soaps. Torching or uprooting olive orchards is a horridly unmerciful and wasteful weapon of spite in middle eastern culture.  Whether provoked or unprovoked, destruction of an olive grove is meant to demoralize a community and destroy an inheritance passed from generation to generation. CLICK HERE for an article on the importance of olive harvest production.

5. Polyeleos 

Back to the oil / mercy connection in Judeo-Christian tradition. The superabundant mercy of God is identified by another word: "polyeleos" -- literally, 'much oil' or 'much mercy.' 

Polyeleos also refers to part of the prayer services on Orthodox Christian feast days when all of the oil lamps in the sanctuary are lit (including a large chandelier) and the readers chant Psalm 134-135 (LXX; it's Psalm 135-136 in most Bibles). 

So, why 'many mercies'? Because after every line, Psalm 135(136) repeats, "His mercy endures forever." For how long? Forever! That line is sung over and over (twenty-six times), many mercies, under the many lights of many oil lamps. This is the high point of the service of the major Christian feasts because all of this mercy, all of this oil, all of those lamps, all of that light point together toward Jesus Christ and his gospel (present also in an Easter Gospel reading), Christ, the Light of the worlds and ultimate fulfillment of the Psalm's many mercies. 

For armchair detectives who want to dig a bit deeper, you might investigate what interesting paths might lead from the Jewish Feast of Lights (Chanukah) to the Christian polyelios ... rumor has it ...

B. Contextual clues: The contextual connection of the Matthew 25 parables

In addition to the textual clues connecting the virgins' lamp oil to the righteousness of mercy, we also have contextual clues in the two other parables in Matthew 25: the parable of the bags of gold (or 'talents' - Matt. 25:14-30) and the parable of the sheep and goats (Matt. 25:31-46). The three parables were grouped together by design, if not by Jesus then at least by Matthew. As different as they seem, they are strung together by the 'return' theme: the bridegroom returns, the master returns and the Son of Man returns. Various preterist interpreters (e.g. N.T. Wright) may be correct in assigning an initial fulfillment of Christ's return (his vindication, exultation and judgment) to Jesus' ascent and entry into Jerusalem, or to his resurrection, or to the fall of Jerusalem. But traditionally, preachers and commentators concentrate on applying the parables to Christ's final return, when he "comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead." 

If the latter interpretation is valid, then we can reverse engineer the passage for insight into the criterion of judgment. On what basis are those in the parables included or excluded from God's kingdom? In order, (i) having sufficient oil, (ii) having invested one's gold and (iii) having shown mercy to the least of these.

What if these three criteria are really one? If oil can represent mercy, if investing (laying up treasures) looks like almsgiving, and if giving ourselves to the least of these is really ministering to Christ, then all three parables establish the same criterion for entry through the door, for sharing in the Master's happiness and for entering the joy of the Lord: mercy, specifically compassionate care for the poor (whether the hungry, the naked, the sick, the refugee or the prisoner). Those who have acquired sufficient oil, made sufficient investments or offered sufficient service will be welcomed. Those who have not will be barred, excluded and expelled. And that raises a problem, doesn't it? Are we saved by our compassion or are we saved by God's grace?

Whatever interpretive gymnastics we do to make this fit our doctrine of salvation or our commitment to grace (don't go there yet!), I don't think there can be any doubt about what Jesus wants: he is passionate about whether or not we 'do mercy,' so much so that he frames it as an immediate life and death, in or out, right or left crisis (lit. judgment). And as much as we're about salvation by faith in Christ, we mustn't negate Jesus' own teaching about what he desires. 

Moreover, it's not as though Christ said those who receive God's mercy are empowered by God's mercy to then do merciful things. That's what I would have said. That's good theology! Grace initiates and then empowers. And Jesus did say things like that ("Those who have been forgiven much, love much" - Luke 7:47). But he also says, "Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall be shown (or obtain) mercy" (Matt. 5:7), as if God's mercy were contingent on ours. As if we "obtain mercy" by first being merciful. In this chapter, "obtaining mercy" is like "buying" the oil of mercy or "investing" the gold of mercy or "feeding, clothing, visiting, welcoming" those in need of mercy. And the result of "obtaining mercy" by "doing mercy" is that God responds with his affirmation, welcome and rewards. All of this obtaining-buying-investing-doing language seems loaded with trouble for those sensitive to the religion of works righteousness. How shall we navigate those treacherous waters?

III. Salvation by Works of Mercy?

In a religious culture that already understood earthly mercies as a ticket into the gates of paradise, isn't it odd that Jesus didn't just correct them? All he had to say was, "Not by works of righteousness which you have done, but by God's mercies you have been saved" (Titus 3:5). Sometimes I get the feeling we wish Jesus had been more Pauline! 

In fact, Jesus had already used other parables that proclaimed God's mercy as scandalous and indiscriminate, decidedly not based on righteous deeds but by grace alone. Remember the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-22)? Or the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16)? It's all about grace. Even the wasteful son and the last-minute converts get in. So, too, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: the poor man didn't arrive in paradise because he was more generous than the rich man. His poverty and his open sores--not his oil or his investments or his merciful deeds--were his only credentials into the bosom of consolation.

But in the three Matthew 25 parables, isn't Jesus teaching salvation by works of mercy? At this first layer of interpreting the parable, if we're honest, it seems so. Along with the prophets who came ahead of him, it is the righteous (i.e. the merciful!) who inherit the heavenly kingdom. Jesus wants the people of God to know, "Yes, God requires mercy, not sacrifice. God wants genuine compassion, not external shows of piety" (cf. Isa. 58; Jer. 7; Micah 6, etc.). Like those prophets, Jesus affirms and fulfills the heart meaning or deeper intent of the Law (loving God by loving each other) and rejects the hypocrisy of religious performance that whitewashes the surface of inwardly filthy vessels. 

Another detail arises here: notice that what they need is not found in the Bridegroom's house, or the Master's estate, or in the Judge's chambers. The virgins and the stewards alike need to head to the market ... the venues of opportunity where oil is bought and investments made. The third parable identifies these locales in their literal sense as hospitals, refugee camps, skid rows and death rows. These are the actual markets where mercy is given and received ... traded and obtained. Somehow, we not only prepare for Christ there (in the first two parables); we also meet him there in the guise of the least and lowest.

IV. The second layer: Christ the Bridegroom

But Jesus also takes another step, far beyond the Jewish prophets; a step we might overlook because we read as those who already believe in Jesus Christ. This move, however, would have jarred his original listeners. In the parables, Jesus increasingly identifies himself personally as the very Bridegroom they are waiting for, the very Master who they serve, and the prophesied "Son of Man" who will come with the clouds as Judge of the nations. The claim carried implications that alarmed the temple establishment.

Not only that, remember that the oil is also anointing oil--anointing the "king when he comes in his glory" or chrismating the Christos... the Messiah. And isn't this exactly what is happening next? His ascent and enthronement upon the Cross, already anointed for his burial.   

His opponents wonder, "Is Jesus claiming to be who we think he's claiming to be?" They're beginning to understand. His triumphal entry into the city and dramatic occupation of the temple site only raise the stakes, because now the crowds are seeing it too. And finally, Jesus is compelled to confirm it under oath at his trial before Caiaphas ... the final 'blasphemy' that seals his fate (Matt. 26:64-65). Are you the One? I AM.    

So yes, in these parables, the call for the oil and gold and acts of mercy are Jewish prophetic exhortations at their finest. We are to feel the pointed indictment of Christ wherever we are loveless, merciless or indifferent. But that is not what shocked Jesus' listeners. They were faced with the existential challenge of his claims. Will they or won't they believe the Bridegroom and anointed King who was to come is standing before them? How will they respond? Thus, the parables that make mercy a matter of eternal consequence bears this second, greater demand: belief in Jesus as the Messiah of God!

How odd, then, for Christendom to accept the latter as a theological matter of course, while puzzling over and even resisting former--often acknowledging the Judge while balking at his judgments! And fair enough, for we're wary of slipping into salvation by good works, no? Mercy is a great virtue, but as spiritual capital for access to the kingdom of heaven? That begins to sound like the old "social gospel" of liberal Christianity doesn't it?  

V. A third way, perchance?  

If classic liberalism lapses into a noble works focus for entry in the kingdom, and classic Evangelicalism embraces salvation by grace through faith alone (at the expense of Jesus' teachings), might there be a third way? Perhaps.

St Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833) raised an important fact in the parable that addresses this works/grace dichotomy. He points out that all ten of the women are called 'virgins.' That is, they didn't lack 'virtue' ... all ten represent people who have lived pure and pious lives in their thoughts and actions. That's not what's lacking. That's not the oil that ran out. What then? 

St Seraphim thought the parable was about "the acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit." What does that mean? He said,

"In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, when the foolish ones lacked oil, it was said: 'Go and buy in the market.' But when they had bought, the door to the bride chamber was already shut and they could not get in. Some say the lack of oil in the lamps of the foolish virgins means a lack of good deeds in their lifetime. Such an interpretation is not quite correct. Why should they be lacking in good deeds if they are called virgins, even though foolish ones? Virginity is the supreme virtue, an angelic state, and it could take the place of all other good works.  

"I think that what they were lacking was the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God. These virgins practiced the virtues, but in their spiritual ignorance they supposed the Christian life consisted merely in doing good works. By doing a good deed they thought they were doing the work of God, but they little cared whether they acquired thereby the grace of God's Spirit." 

(Lazarus Moore, St. Seraphim of Sarov: A Spiritual Biography, 172-174).

Thus, on one hand, it's not that we ought to ignore mercy. Christ certainly didn't. In Matt. 25, he brought it front and center. On the other hand, even a virginal life of outward righteousness and charitable works can be bankrupt of the grace of the Holy Spirit ... even a performance-driven replacement for it. How then can we ensure that our mercy is not devoid of divine grace—that our lamps do not run out? 

First, negatively, I would suggest that we avoid five errors of the Pharisees (the public pietists of Jesus' day): 

• They erred whenever they failed to do mercy.
• They erred whenever they did mercy for the benefit of the self-righteous ego (to prove they were 'radical' believers 'on fire' for God).
• They erred whenever their acts of mercy were not accompanied by the Spirit of grace to those whom they served (e.g., begrudging 'entitlement' and thereby actually feeding it).
• They erred whenever they forgot that they too were in need of God's mercy and failed to be grateful for it. 
• Most of all, they erred by dissociating their works of mercy from belief in Christ, the all-merciful Source of our mercy. 

One can see from this list how religion can 'get you coming or going.' That is, there is the religion of self-righteous deeds done for God (the so-called 'hard-core Christian') and there is the religion of self-righteous deeds done sans God (under the rubric of humanist activism). Without a doubt, good deeds done are often good. Compassion is a human virtue and Christians don't have a monopoly on loving-kindness. But not all good works or merciful deeds are necessarily spiritual investments in heavenly treasures. Christ alone knows what is or isn't. The parables of Matthew 25 contain a lot of mysteries and remind us that some will be surprised at the outcome when Jesus' renders his verdict. So what can we know? 

Positively, we can return to the parable and simply marry within our own lives the two things Jesus obviously wants: 

• Jesus obviously wants us to acquire the oil of mercy. That is, be merciful as he is merciful. Forgive as we have been forgiven. Show the kindness that the Father has shown us. 
• Jesus obviously wants us to recognize him as the Bridegroom we've been waiting for. The whole parable calls us to focus our attention on him. Our waiting is for him; our lives are for him; our acts of love, done  in faith, empowered by the Spirit ... all for Christ, or rather, Christ does them through us, as he is the actual source of mercy.

Closing: The death and resurrection as the punchline of every parable.

Elsewhere I've cited Benedict XVI, who has said that the punchline (and final layer) to every parable is the death and resurrection of Christ. In the spirit of early Christian interpretation, if I were to preach this passage, I would point to the Cross (i.e. Christ crucified) as the polyeleos, the abundant Olive Tree of many-mercies.  

How do I acquire the oil of the Spirit that gains me entry to the Kingdom banquet? At the Cross. How do I receive God's mercy? At the Cross. How do I become merciful, in my deeds but more so in my character? At the Cross. 

Just as the True Vine pours out the wine of the blood of Christ, so the True Olive Tree produces the oil of many mercies and the grace of the Holy Spirit. These parallel pictures--the wine-bearing vine and the oil-bearing olive tree--are images of the one Tree of Life, the Cross of Christ. While we await the some-day return of the Bridegroom-Master-Judge, we also encounter him in the now-day markets, dispensing the oil mercy and grace to and through those on the margins, behind the hedges and on the street corners. They are invited in, no matter how battered and broken ... and so are those graced by the Spirit to serve them. May we be virgins found faithfully filling our lamps with Jesus' oil and becoming familiar with his face now so that he's no stranger then.  

 

How Still We See Thee Lie? Bethlehem Then and Now - Bradley Jersak

In 2012, I visited Bethlehem, where I attended the Christ at the Checkpoint conference. He would not remember, but it was there and then that I met Dr. Munther Isaac. Little did I know that one day, we would become colleagues, as he is the Academic Dean of Bethlehem Bible College, a partner school of St. Stephen's University, where I now serve as Principal. Munther is a beloved pastor and peacemaker, who is a leading voice for Palestinean Christians and nonviolent resistance to the oppressive policies his people experience in his homeland. He works tirelessly to advance the message, "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

For those who are confused about what is happening in Israel/Palestine right now, and especially those who feel, misinformed, powerless and despairing, please get a copy of his book, The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope.

First, I wrote a series of reflective reports about my experiences and interviews. HERE is one that survived. Then, months later, my first Christmas after Bethlehem, I composed a Christmas article. As I read it now, I see everything I saw then amplified exponentially, and all the Advent feelings of hope, grief, and despair are magnified.

I don't have the heart to update that article with current news items that would be even more poignant, urgent, and extreme. But I repost it now to illustrate that which is timeless. A backstory to today's headlines, a history leading toward October 7th and the destruction of Gaza.       

Dateline Bethlehem – Circa 6 BC
Royal Birth in Bethlehem

Eyewitness accounts of a royal proclamation are trickling in from Bethlehem tonight. Details are being pieced together around what initially seemed like bogus reports of alien lights over a shepherd’s pasture. One bystander captured this audio of a ‘flash mob’ recording a choral announcement of the birth of Israel’s Messiah:

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger… Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:8-14)

King Herod denies any involvement in the spectacle, but inquiries are under way. What was the source of this pyrotechnic broadcast? Can rumors of an unexpected royal birth be true? Israel’s chief priests and scribes, combing the national archives, have issued a press release about the location of the Messiah’s expected birthplace:

“In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matt. 2:4-6)

Dateline Bethlehem – Circa 4 BC
Weeping in Ramah

In a shocking turn of events, the King launched Special Forces into Bethlehem last night. The house-to-house raids were part of an operation to detain suspects purportedly plotting a coup d’etat to depose the king. Herod’s increasingly erratic policies have led to violence again. Every male under two years old in the Bethlehem vicinity was slaughtered by dawn. Funeral processions fill the streets, with family members parading tiny shrouded bodies while chanting the lyrics of Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning,
 Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted,
 because they were no more.” (Matt. 2:16-18)

Peace on Earth?
Bethlehem then and now

The advent angels’ song of joy and peace notwithstanding, the major news items immediately after the birth of Jesus were grievous – bloody reports of infanticide in Bethlehem at the hands of a paranoid ruler. Joseph’s family flees into Egypt as refugees with no right of return. The stubborn fact is that the birth of Christ did not end hostility the David’s birthplace or across our world to this day. Even the traditional site of Christ’s birth has seen waves of repeated violence since Herod’s famous crime against humanity. If Jesus was indeed the promised Prince of Peace, where is the peace?

"The One True Church" - Bradley Jersak

My ecclesial journey has included 20 years with the Baptists (via my parents), 10 years with the Mennonites (via marriage), another 10 years with renewal movement folks, including a church plant focused on the margins (mainly people with disabilities, addicts in recovery, etc.), followed by a slow journey into Orthodoxy (via my monk mentor, Lazar Puhalo). Over the years, I have learned to retrieve and appreciate the gifts I received from each of these communions. I am committed to both interchurch fellowship and interfaith charity.

 

So when I run into some Eastern Orthodox believers who insist they are the "one true church," I confess that I sometimes struggle to be kind. My pushback at that lingo includes the following points, which I stand by as I write this:

 

1. People claiming to be the "one true church" are obviously sectarian. Indeed, a pair of them knocked on my door this week. Is that what we're doing now? Are we a cult?

 

2. My great-uncle Karl was a faithful Baptist minister in Czechoslovakia. He was arrested and tortured for his faith. Meanwhile, Orthodox priests were in active collaboration with (or actual members of) the KGB and other Communist secret police forces across Eastern Europe. Please don't presume to tell me Uncle Karl wasn't a "true Christian" or brother in Christ.

 

3. The current Patriarch of Moscow (the world's largest Eastern Orthodox community) is currently in bed with Putin's imperial agenda. During his homilies, he has promised absolution and eternal life to recruit soldiers for the invasion of Ukraine. This is the very definition of anti-Christ.

 

4. I also follow the Orthodox maxim, "We know where grace is. We do not know where it is not." I.e., We believe that we encounter Christ and experience his grace in our communion. We do NOT believe Christ limits his grace to our communion. He is the Light of the world.

 

5. I say all of the above as an Orthodox believer. Relatively speaking, we have too many priests and not enough prophets. I love our liturgy, our theology, our spiritual fathers and mothers, our Psalms and hymns, and our icons and incense. BUT we follow Jesus, not ANY hierarch, canon, or trend that exults ourselves and creates an us-them division with other followers of Jesus Christ.

 

Why? Because to exclude and belittle other believers is an act of direct defiance to the express will of Christ revealed in his High Priestly prayer (John 17). That prayer reveals his deepest desire: that we would be one as he and his Father are one. To defy his will is rebellion. 

 

I know the counterarguments around so-called "false unity." I've heard them all for 20 years now. Every one of them is nothing other than an excuse to narrow Christ's new commandment ("Love one another as I have loved you) to the point of willful disobedience. In the earliest days of my catechism, I was taught that to turn away from love is heresy. It is not to be Orthodox. And if faithfulness to Orthodoxy requires a turn from love, then Orthodoxy is no longer Christian. So please, let us all choose our path most carefully. 

 

What I've said here feels like more than just pushback. Perhaps it is even a shove against the anti-ecumenical rhetoric that once alarmed me but now bores me. So I suppose I'd better get my heart right. And in the meantime, I'm happy for any friends who promote and nourish the unity in the Body of Christ.

 

Here is what I have learned in the Orthodox Church and a good reason for me not to wash my hands of it. I'm quoting word for word:

 

"The one true Church is found wherever we see moments of communion--even between a Hindu and an Atheist. It is visible in this world, not as an institution, but in these exchanges of grace with the Other. And it is incarnational because we meet Christ in them as the Holy Other.

 

"The problem, then, is not so much people leaving 'the church' as it is trying to avoid the discipline of gathering in the mess of a liturgical family, where we encounter those in whom we see our own limitations and stupidity--where we share the same Cup with other sinners, 'of whom I am the chief.'" 

 

That challenge will keep me busy for a lifetime.  

Q&R: "The Tree of Knowing Good from Evil" - Bradley Jersak

^Question

<sup>I just finished Bradley Jersak's June 4, 2023 article: "The Devil...from the Arche." My wrestle is then how the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could exist in Eden if there was no sin yet. If sin originates with humankind, what was the serpent in the garden? Neither the tree nor the serpent were "created" by humankind.

I am just an unschooled follower of Jesus who loves how relentlessly our triune God loves all of his creation. He's been deepening my awareness of His loving character daily as I wrestle and am humbled daily by my hip being left out of joint.</sup>

^Response

^{These are good questions from your close reading of the passage and some common sense observations. Well done.}

^{First, remember that the story of Eden was not written as factual history but as a poetic parable of the human condition, describing what we all experience.}

^{This is the question of genre. When interpreting the Bible, it is critical that we read poetry as poetry, parables as parables, visions as visions, letters as letters, legends as legends, history as history, etc. But if we forget that and read inspired myth (which is an important way truth is revealed) as if it were ancient history, we will miss the truth the myth was revealing.}

^{Legged Serpent - Ishtar Gate}

^{In this case, we have the story of a man called (literally) 'man' or 'human,' a woman called (literally) 'life,' a tree called 'life' and another tree called 'knowledge of good and evil' and then a talking serpent with legs (at first), like the ones on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon that Daniel would have seen... now on display in the Pergamum Museum in Berlin).}

<sup>What does the serpent represent in the story? It is the wily voice of temptation, the impulse to question God's wisdom, the suggestion that we can be gods without God. Later, Jesus will be confronted by this same temptation, resist and overcome it.

For more on this, read the article by Brian Zahnd and me titled "Q&R: What is Satan? Who Tempted Jesus."</sup> 

^{THE TREE}

^{Now to the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." The tree in and of itself was not evil. The tree describes knowledge or discernment, sorting out or even deciding what is good and what is evil. That's actually good.}

^{Further, evil is already intrinsic as a possibility in the combination of God's command ("Don't touch") and God's gift (human agency). How so? By misusing our agency to disobey the command... Disobedience is not only possible for humanity, even in an untainted world... it almost seems inevitable. Adam and Eve are not presented as perfect (meaning mature) but innocent (as moral toddlers).}   

^{Early Christian teachers suggest that Eden's couple would eventually be given that gift (discernment) as partakers of that fruit as they matured through their walk with God. Through fellowship with God, they would receive the fruit from God's generous hand... when they were ready.}

^{The actual problem, then, was that they wanted to eat the fruit (determine good and evil) for themselves without consulting God or submitting to God's commands. They disobeyed. And human disobedience is the fatal poison that ushers death (as alienation) into the world. I see it in the news every day.}

^{THE STORY OF US}

^{Now how is this story about all of us? We are all born innocent but immature, yet at some point, we are confronted with choices about what is right. It is not only a question of whether we'll do the right thing or not. But the first question is whether we'll take our cues on good vs. evil from God or will we act out of our own self-will and choose to determine for ourselves what is right or wrong... without God?}

^{We often think we know what's best for ourselves and act as if we are gods without God. Then what happens? Things don't go so well. We stumble into shame and alienation, then project our self-loathing onto God, reshaping our image of God as angry and punitive. Someone to hide from.}

^{The good news is that the story continues. God is not like that. Even as we leave the Garden of Paradise, God goes with us and has promised to make it right through the Seed of Eve (Jesus), the One who knows and lives what is right by rejecting the temptation to radical autonomy and instead, overcomes evil through perfect submission to his Father in the second garden (Gethsemane).} 

^{The Great Tradition (ancient church) saw in the Cross of Christ both trees in Eden! First, they saw in the Cross the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil through the responses of the two thieves. One rejects Jesus (and perishes in his defiance), and the other receives Jesus (and enters Paradise). Paul will later say that for some people, the gospel is the fragrance of life and, to others, it is the stench of death. The same Love revealed in Christ can be experienced either way. How so? By turning toward the Cross in surrender or away from the Cross in self-will.}  

^{In Christ's death, we also see the Tree of Life. Christ overthrows death and alienation, and he restores life through his resurrection. He welcomes us back to Eden's Tree of Life (the Cross, which is to say, to himself) so we can partake of HIM (think of the Eucharist as the fruit of that Tree) and experience the eternal kind of life that Jesus describes as knowing God and his Son.}

^{A RADICAL TWIST: GROWING UP}

^{Before I share a radical second reading, let me just explain that there is a long Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation called "midrash," where their oral tradition read between the lines and playfully elaborated on the text to explore ethical or theological questions. Midrash would create sermons and parables from the text and apply them to contemporary concerns.}

^{To modern literalists, Midrash can be charged with "playing fast and loose" with the text, but the New Testament examples abound, with the apostle Paul leading the way. See for example, "The spiritual rock that followed them was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4) or the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4:21-31. And yes, Paul calls it an allegory.}

^{As this concerns the Eden story, there are loads of midrash to draw from, both Jewish and Christian, which I've gathered into a CWRm article, "Mary: the Second Eve." Some of these go well beyond the first author's words or intent, which biblicists find offensive. But this is the Tradition I would hope we commit to conserve and learn to emulate. My favorite modern midrash on the story, drawing together midrash from the great Jewish rabbis, is Wm. Paul Young's novel, Eve. Highly recommended! With that in mind, two examples come to mind, one old and one new.} 

^{GREGORY: GROWING PT. 1}

^{In works such as Life of Moses, the great fourth-century Cappodocian teacher, Gregory of Nyssa, discussed the inevitability of 'the fall.' He is my source on the idea of 'Adam's' (human) moral immaturity. He reasoned that in Christ, the creation of humanity will ultimately grow into the fullness or maturity or perfection God intended. But at that outset, while innocent, we were and are immature.}

^{He also saw that in our immaturity, being thrown into a world with the power to choose makes a fall inevitable. Sure, you can obey for a while. Maybe even a long while. But eventually, we're bound to stumble. Learning to crawl, then walk, then run, ride a bike, then drive a car is risky business and not one of us gets through without bumps and bruises.}

^{Gregory extrapolated that for God to throw humanity into a situation where falling in inevitable, then condemning us for it would be unjust. But God is NOT unjust. God is the eternal perfection of justice, which is always restorative. So the only just response to the inevitable fall is mercy. And that is precisely what God has revealed in Christ. God-in-Christ is Mercy Incarnate. So by Genesis 3:15, the ultimate victory of divine mercy has already been announced ('gospeled') to Eve.}    

^{ANDRE: GROWING PT. 2}

^{Again, we're doing midrash here. We're not claiming authorial intent or 'the one meaning.' We're reading between the lines and playing with the text in ways that make sense of our own journey. The Bible itself gives us permission to do that by example, including Jesus!}

^{Bearing that in mind, playing with the myth, my friend Andre responded with his own radical, non-literal but relevant twist on Eden as growing up:}

^{Maybe God didn't 'send' them out. Maybe they had to go and grow up. Like a parent who knows their child has to spread their wings. Like a child who says, "I need to figure this out" or "I can figure this out"... only to come back home with a stronger ability to appreciate and love. I know that was me (although the world outside the garden I grew up in was a step up, sadly).} 

^{I gave two children, two entirely different spirits, both beautiful. And as a parent, I want them to own their journey while also valuing others. The ultimate expression of love is silently crying as they venture away, scared or excited. They're not with you but you're always with them, despite their joys or pains.} 

^{It has to be the same for God. We are made in God's image. And there's that God-shaped vacuum in all of us... in Adam and Eve or like my kids and me.}

^{It would be a tragic irony to rush into a critique or feel the need to point out how Andre's midrash departs from the literal sense of the text. That's the point of midrash. The astute student instead asks, "How is this revision of the text true? True to life? True for me?"}

^{But the advanced student will, I hope, also pick up on Andre's snot-so-subtle clues... that we may discover a connection between the Garden of Eden story and Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son(s). Especially in the actions of departure and return, and seeing these parables in our own stories as children and parents. For those who want to dive deeper, that's a good path to travel.} 

^{By the way, I would welcome students to pursue these questions with me in the SSU School of Theology and Culture. Check us out, come and play, online or in person. Here's your homework for today:}

1. ^{Compare the Serpent's temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden with Satan's temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.} 
2. ^{Compare the stories of the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane,}
3. ^{Compare the two trees in Eden with the one Tree (and three Trees) on Golgotha.} 
4. ^{Compare the story of Eden with the parable of the Prodigals.}   

^{Watch for similarities, for differences, and most of all, how these stories are about how the Good News of Jesus meets the human condition as told in your own story.} 

Q&R: What is Satan? Who tempted Jesus? Brian Zahnd & Bradley Jersak

Question:

How are we to understand “Satan” or “the satan”?

Brian Zahnd:

I don’t know that we fully can, but I understand the satan to be a cosmic spiritual-psychic phenomenon arising from idolatry and accusation, reaching its ultimate form in anti-human empire.

Thus, for Isaiah, Lucifer is the King of Babylon who falls with the fall of Babylon. The satan is more than a metaphor, but less than a person; by that I mean the satan, though a very real and dangerous phenomenon, does not actually possess ontological being. The satan, like evil itself, is parasitic in nature. It cannot exist independently because it is not created by God. The satan can only exist by colonizing a host. If there is no host for the satan, the satan ceases to exist at all. Indeed, the devil is presented in Revelation as having “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.”

Though the satanic is properly a phenomenon and not a person, the satanic phenomenon is so real, so powerful, so deadly, so destructive, that we cannot help but personify the satanic as Satan. This is probably a necessary and helpful move.

And if we associate the satanic with a fallen angel, surely it arises from an instinctual understanding that the very worst is nothing but the diabolical corruption of the very best. 

Question:

If the satan is not a person, who or what tempted Jesus in the wilderness?
What are Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12, Luke 4:1-13 all about then?

Bradley Jersak:

That is a great question and—full disclosure—involves theological speculation. Nothing we can dogmatize. But let's start with a few aspects of the story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, seven points about which we have some confidence:

• We know that Jesus faced and overcame a three-fold temptation in the wilderness.
• Oddly, all three Synoptic Evangelists describe the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by "the devil" or “the satan.”
• When Jesus resists the devil, Matt. 4 quotes Jesus as saying, "Get away from me, Satan."
• We are confident that Jesus was there alone without other human witnesses.
• Therefore, we know that Jesus himself reported the temptations to his disciples, whose testimony the Gospels later record for us to read.
• In his account, Jesus personifies the devil or Satan. He believed this was the best way to tell us the story.
• We know that sometimes when addressing Satan, Jesus was not literally talking to a being called Satan, but specifically to any person or idea that tries to tempt him to bypass the Cross. E.g., He says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan" (Mark 8:33, Matthew 16:23).

Again, Jesus is not at all averse to describing the works of the devil using personification... and this is why the claim that Satan is less than a person is still speculation, even if well-founded theologically. We don't make a dogma of it. We are, rather, challenging whether the assertion that the devil IS a literally a person, a fallen angel, or a sentient being should be taught as doctrine.

But now to your question. IF Satan is less than a person, what was Jesus dealing with? Michael Hardin, who wrote a booklet called "The Satan" (https://www.clarion-journal.com/files/fb-posts-on-the-satan-e-book1.pdf) suggested to me that we might think of the Satan in Matthew 4/Luke 4 as "Jesus' potential shadow side." What does that mean?

Romans 8 tells us that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful human flesh," and Hebrews 2 and 4 insists that in the Incarnation, Jesus’s humanity was in every way like ours, tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Similarly, Gregory the Theologian said that Christ assumed every aspect of human nature in order to heal every aspect of human nature.

SO, if the temptations of Jesus were real (they were), we might speak of his temptations as approaching him externally (as the devil or satan). Jesus talked that way. But we might also think about temptation as an authentic part of the human condition—suggestions from the flesh or passions calling us to grasp our destiny autonomously (as with Adam and Eve). As part of the human condition, Jesus had to face and overcome those impulses personally and on behalf of us all. Why? (1) For him to be fully human and (2) for salvation to extend to every aspect of our humanity.

Hardin’s description then needs to be read VERY carefully. Did Jesus have a 'shadow side'? Michael doesn’t say that. He says *potential* shadow side... meaning (1) the temptation was authentic, (2) temptation is intrinsic to human nature, (3) but Christ faced it fully and overcame it entirely.

IF Satan is not a person, Jesus nevertheless felt personifying his struggle was the best way to describe it, exactly like my alcoholic friends describe "wrestling with their demons." They aren’t claiming to be “possessed,” but recognize how externalizing the temptations can be helpful in resisting them.  

Again, if Jesus used personification, he recognized it was as a good way to describe our battle with temptation. Why? From contemporary counseling practice and addition recovery, we have learned ways to resist temptation by externalizing destructive impulses and disowning as a false self, rather than wrongly over-identifying with it and assuming the shame of the temptation (e.g., “I am evil”).

On the other hand, the main reason to proceed to demythologizing the devil's personhood is when people skirt their agency and responsibility, saying, "The devil made me do it," as if giving in to temptation is not something they need to own. So says Paul, “By one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). 

For more on the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness: https://brianzahnd.com/tag/satan/

"The Devil... from the Arché" - Bradley Jersak

Brooke Quist, a new friend of mine through Open Table Conference, blew my mind. He was asking for my thoughts on who or what Satan (the satan) or the devil is. After sharing a few of the thoughts I’ve gleaned from René Girard, Michael Hardin, Brian Zahnd, and especially my son Dominic Jersak, Brooke was eventually able to get a word in edgewise with his own discoveries.

He told me how he had been praying for illumination on two texts from the Johannine corpus (John's Gospel and first epistle):

John 8:44  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

1 John 3:8  The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.  

I’ve spent a fair bit of time on these texts, pondering how the New Testament regularly describes all people as God’s children—most overtly in Ephesians 3:15 and Acts 17:28, but also assumed in the parable of the prodigal sons (Luke 15). How, then, do John and Jesus himself, think of Christ's opponents as children of the devil? Elsewhere, I’ve concluded that they’re referring simply to children-by-imitation, rather than by nature.  

But what jumped out at Brooke was in a different register. In the Gospel passage, Jesus describes the devil as “a murderer from the beginning.” And in 1 John, the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

As Brian Zahnd has pointed out, John 8 is reflecting on the first murder at the foundation of human civilization—Cain’s fratricide in Genesis 4. And he was there in humanity’s foundational sin: “through one man (Adam), sin entered the world” (Romans 5:12).

But wait. The devil has been this way for how long? A murderer and sinner since when? From the beginning—ap’ archē (ἀπ’ἀρχῆς). That word, arché, is the same “beginning” as in Genesis 1:1 (Greek Septuagint — In the beginning, God created…) and John 1:1 (John 1:1 — In the beginning was the Word). It’s a far fuller expression than from the start (protos). It’s more like from the very foundations or from the ground up.        

And suddenly, I saw the implications for Christianity’s dominant “Satan origin story.” By way of review:

We believed that the Devil or Satan began as Lucifer, God’s principal archangel and worship leader, but through jealousy and rebellion, fell from heaven with a third of the angels, who became demons. But the truth is that the biblical basis for that storyline is extremely thin and often requires dubious leaps. The tradition is funded more by intertestamental Jewish literature (especially Enoch) and Babylonian mythology, amplified in medieval Christianity, perfected in William Blake's Paradise Lost, to where we inherited and assumed their demonology as dogmatic truth.

But contra that narrative, Jesus tells us the devil has always been a murderer from the beginning, the arché. Further, Jesus says, the devil’s native language (literally, “he speaks out of his own” — ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ), and his first tongue is lying.     

In other words, these texts suggest the devil did not pre-exist in the beginning as God’s highest archangel. Lucifer was not a holy angelic leader who rebelled and fell into the archdemon existence as Satan. The devil, satan, has always been a murderer and liar from the beginning. So says Jesus.

This discovery creates new questions that require fresh wrestling on the following points:

1. This beginning cannot be the same beginning as the foundational arche of the cosmos, because Genesis 1 and John 1 agree that God-through-Christ-by-the Spirit created ALL things and that God declared the whole of creation “Good.”

That’s partly why the Lucifer mythology seemed necessary. God created all things and did not create anything evil, so if the devil is an evil creature, then it must have first been good and then become evil. So we developed a war in heaven / angelic fall narrative to squeeze between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. And it works until you read John 8 carefully.

2. But we’ve already seen where Jesus, John, and Paul identity the devil’s arché. The foundational act or moment ascribed to the devil is in the first lie (“you shall not surely die”), the first sin (turning from the Light of God), and the first murder (Cain killing Abel).

From this perspective, Satan has been evil from the beginning, and that beginning is founded on human sin. In that sense, the devil or satan or evil is not so much a sentient creature of whom God once said, “Let there be…and it was good,” but rather, the monstrous personification of human sin.

As the early church said, evil has no being as such, but is a privation of or turning away from the Good. As Dominic Jersak once said, “...created by people out of the ashes of war, tears of those who are afraid, and the stuff that people want that doesn’t belong to them—and takes on a ‘life’ of its own, turns on us, and torments us.” Or, as Brian Zahnd has so helpfully said,

The satan is more than a metaphor but less than a person; by that, I mean the satan, though a very real and dangerous phenomenon, does not actually possess ontological being. The satan, like evil itself, is parasitic in nature. It cannot exist independently because it is not created by God. The satan can only exist by colonizing a host. If there is no host for the satan, the satan ceases to exist at all. Indeed, the devil is presented in Revelation as having “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.” Though the satanic is properly a phenomenon and not a person, the satanic phenomenon is so real, so powerful, so deadly, so destructive, that we cannot help but personify the satanic as Satan.

Brian thinks that personifying Satan is probably necessary and helpful. Certainly, the Bible talks about it that way, especially in the fall narrative, the prologue of Job, and the temptations of Jesus, Peter, and Judas.

Allow me an illustration of why this is so. I interviewed a counselor who works with children who molest other children and asked her, “Does anything work?” She described one approach that can help, which experts call “externalization.” She helps molesters identify their experience of an overwhelming impulse to assault other children—an impulse from within that arises from factors such as genetic dispositions, previous traumas, and/or broken propensities. And while the children are held accountable for their own acts, they are also seemingly powerless to resist those impulses.

So the effective counselor will begin by externalizing and personifying the impulse by asking,

“Can you feel it coming toward you before it happens?”

Yes.

“If you could imagine it coming toward you, what would it look like?”

e.g., A dark angel. An ugly monster. 

“And if you gave that monster a name, what would you call it?”

e.g., The devil. Freddy.

“And if we could see it coming, what ‘weapons’ would you need to resist it?”

e.g., a shield, a sword, angelic warriors, an unbeatable Champion.

My counselor friend was describing the basics of “spiritual warfare” that we’ve learned in Ephesians 6—but now discovered through therapeutic practice outside the Christian worldview!

The balance here is that, on one hand, the child doesn’t get to say, “The devil made me do it,” and absolve themselves. But it also distinguishes the heart of the child from the evil impulses themselves. This creates a breakthrough because it both empowers the child’s agency (you can resist the devil and it will flee from you). But it also begins to wash away the shame that comes by identifying themselves with (and empowers) the impulse.  

To me, that’s a powerful reason to personify the satanic forces at work in this world, while also owning humanity's role in generating them. And while I’ve thought through much of this for years, Quist’s prayerful exegesis of Jesus’ view of “the devil from the beginning” feels like a clincher to be taken seriously.

Some humble caveats: (1) these are speculations about mysteries, insufficient to be regarded as doctrine; (2) these are not the only relevant texts in Scripture or interpretations in the tradition; (3) this is one perspective on the demonic, which does not exclude other phenomena, including the diverse realities or experiences of angels, righteous or fallen, actual or symbolic.

"BY WATER: The Felix Manz Story" - A Graphic Novel - Review by Bradley Jersak

"In a city astir with dangerous new ideas, the son of a Catholic priest becomes a leader of a nonviolent revolution." –back cover

Five hundred years ago, Europe was set ablaze by the violence and wars of the Catholic-Protestant schism, where priests and reformers alike aligned with the magisterial powers to attain political and religious dominance over the continent. Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli hived away from the authority of the spiritual corruption of the Pope and his armies, only to employ their own forms of violence and coercion to take control.  

While theological debates over grace vs. works offered a doctrinal smokescreen for church-state powerplays, one had to wonder where, if anywhere, the peaceable kingdom of Christ, described in the Sermon on the Mount, was to be found.  

Enter the "Radicals" (aka the Anabaptists), a third way that proclaimed the prophetic vision of peace, sharing, and freedom. They took the "Jesus Way" of nonviolent revolution of real discipleship as a life-and-death matter, and that great Anabaptist history, The Martyr's Mirror, describe the many thousands who perished by water, fire, or sword at the cruel hands of both Catholic and Reformed "Christian" inquisitors. The blood of these martyrs, who perished without retaliation, became the seed of great networks of communal enclaves and mass movements, many of which survive today (e.g., Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and as though born out of time, the Bruderhof). Trying to snuff them out proved as useless as taking a hammer to mercury.

But how did it all begin? By Water: The Felix Manz Story is the gripping adventure of the first generation of Anabaptists and their first martyr, Felix Manz. This is the true story of a conflict between a young man and his own spiritual father, Ulrich Zwingli, wrestling with new ideas that finally cross into bold acts of faith and defiance... beginning with a baptismal pledge to follow Jesus, even unto death. Ultimately, Manz's mentor will ironically have him drowned, and church history will never be the same. As Christ said, in this order, "Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called children of God," which then leads Manz and his company to be among those "Blessed ... who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God... for so they treated the prophets who came before you."

I have found the current era of politicized religion, from Russia to America, so disheartening that one wonders where The New Radicals will arise with a revolution that doesn't involve the right to bear arms or the religious lust for state-sanctioned power. We desparately need to hear these inspiring stories of peaceable courage, histories that move us and call us to a real heart-change like what we see in Manz.

Plough Publishing, one of the great gifts of the Bruderhof Communities, has produced this stunning story in the form of a graphic art non-fiction, By Water, created by Jason Landsel, Sankha Banerjee, and Richard Mommsen. The script, the art, the colors, and layout represent Plough's typical over-the-top quality in 141 gorgeous pages. The price seems unreasonably low for its exquisite quality, but I'm not surprised given the Bruderhof's track record of high-end generosity. I like leaving my copy where guests will stumble on it and become hooked in short order, engrossed in the storyline, the visuals, and the conversation to follow. Even the most cynical will surely consider Manz's interpretation of Christian faith and its demands compelling.

P.S. This is first of three volumes. Next to come, By Fire.

With gratitude,

Bradley Jersak 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IRPJ.org Presents: "The Experience & Practice of Mutual Respect Across Faiths"

IRPJ.org Presents:
"The Experience & Practice of Mutual Respect Across Faiths"

The Institute for Religion, Peace & Justice (IRPJ.org) hosted a conversation on the topic of "The Experience & Practice of Mutual Respect Across Faiths."

The Hosts, Bradley Jersak and Andrew Klager welcomed guest lecturers from Jewish, Muslim & Christian traditions, including Safi Kaskas, Nahid Saiyed, Mark Braverman, Dawud Abdur-Rahman, and Mercy Aiken.

Each speaker shares their own perspective on developing mutual respect in the work we do as peacemakers in the world. Students of the IRPJ Certificate program then responded with questions for our guests.

For those who want university-accredited training in the work of Peace & Justice, IRPJ.org offers one-year certificates (online - BA or MA levels) and an MA in Peace Studies. See our website for more information.

Mark Braverman with Bradley Jersak

Mark Braverman is a Jewish author, activist, and organizer for Palestinean rights in Israel. He is the executive director of Kairos USA.

In this interview with Bradley Jersak, he discusses his journey as a young Zionist, through deconstruction, and through his engagement with Palestinean Christians in the West Bank, forward to becoming the Jew he always wanted to be. He describes his "Damascus Road" experience in the context of the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau.

His ministry is as a Jew, speaking to Christians: "I know what it is to be a follower of Jesus. You know what to do when you see the naked man, beaten and laying in the ditch. You know what you need to do when you see injustice and inequality and suffering. Step up, whether it's in your backyard or in another continent... Stand up for the oppressed... And I pray for the day when you don't need a Jew's permission to be a follower of Jesus."

In this interview, he shares his story, addresses political and theological questions, including three questions:

• Is challenging human rights abuses in Israel antisemitic?
• Are the New Testament Gospels antisemitic?
• Is Christian Zionism antisemitic? 

Recommended links from Mark:

https://kairossouthernafrica.wordpres...

https://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/...

https://kairosusa.org/wp-content/uplo...

https://www.palestineportal.org/

http://markbraverman.org/

Deconstructing Deconstruction – Felicia Murrell (w/ Bradley Jersak)

Deconstructing Deconstruction – Felicia Murrell (w/Brad Jersak)

Editor’s Note: The following interview is a partial transcript of one for four forthcoming podcast interviews on “deconstruction” at Stephen Backhouse’s Tent Theology Podcast. Bradley Jersak will be serving as co-host in interviews with Brian Zahnd, David Hayward, Felicia Murrell, and Judith Moses (recorded in that order).  

 

Bradley

Definition: First, the word “deconstruction,” popularly used today, has become a catchphrase for a range of experiences from voluntary to involuntary, from liberating to traumatic, from personal to social, that involve a dismantling or restructuring of one’s belief systems (religious or ideological). Understood this way, one may experience a process of disorientation and reorientation that holds its own perils and possibilities.

In your world and your story, what other words or metaphors might best describe this phenomenon? What might that look like in the communities you work with? Examples of both the pitfalls and breakthroughs are most welcome. 

 

Felicia

My work is largely one-on-one spiritual companioning and it’s the work of accompanying, of listening, of sharing and bearing witness, being human in the presence of one another with all of our eff ups and complexities and beauties and joys.

In carrot on a stick religion that uses your imperfections to keep you chasing healing, chasing wholeness, chasing blessings, too often we hand our power over to something outside ourselves. We are always looking for external validation, external permission. Led by the opinions of others — what others think, what others say is true and right…how others say we should live, dress, talk…who we should love or sleep with…what we should read, what movie we can watch…what we are to believe— it feels natural to “let someone else control us,” to unconsciously hand over the reins and allow someone else guide us externally. Honestly, it’s not something we often question because most of our lives, whether our parents, our religious leaders, our coaches, or our bosses, someone outside of ourselves has told us what to do and how to be. So, it feels natural …until it doesn’t. Sometimes this rupture, this process of deconstructing, happens naturally and sometimes unnaturally, sometimes by way of invitation, sometimes by way of force.

But I’m struck by the portion of Psalm 32:8, “…I’ll guide you with my eye.” And for me, it seems like an invitation to be led from the inside out instead of the outside in. So the process of deconstruction becomes something like allowing the pillars of certainty and arrogance to collapse so we can join Love in a dance of unknowing that requires humility and trust. This in itself is its own homecoming, moving from an external guide to internal guide, the eye of Love.

"Out of the Embers: Faith after the Great Deconstruction" - Ron Dart interview with Bradley Jersak

"I can only get to Alyosha via Ivan": Confessions of a Grumpy Universalist - Adrian Lovegrove w/ Bradley Jersak

The following was a conversation via email between Adrian Lovegrove and Bradley Jersak over the final weeks of 2022. 

 

ADRIAN LOVEGROVE

I began formal theological study back in 2011. I could no longer buy the evangelical package deal, but I hoped there might be a theology for a good God somewhere. I guess I've now reached the place of "grumpy universalism."

By "grumpy," I mean in the sense of Ivan's argument in the Brothers Karamazov about the acquisition of truth not being worth the cost of the little child's suffering. Or, put another way, David Bentley Hart's argument concerning the moral implications of creatio ex nihilo, pretty much leaves God with the obligation to bring all he has freely created to its telos, if we're going to call him "good." Consequently, I'm currently finding it hard to feel grateful to God for sending Jesus to rescue everything because it currently seems to me it is entirely God's responsibility to fix the problem he – as the first cause – literally created. 

I appreciate I'm talking as a blinkered and broken creature "looking through a glass darkly" at the inscrutable purposes of the Ground of all existence. I imagine if I were a proper Christian, I could do the "how long, O Lord," and "come quickly, Lord" without losing my temper. But right now, God just pisses me off, and -- though it is a denial of metaphysics since there can be nowhere where God isn't -- I'd really rather not be around him. I have sympathies with the one-talent guy. I guess I have a trust issue.

It's not that I don't like Jesus. It's not that I don't think (from all the ideas I have been exposed to) he has the best things to say about the most important stuff. It's not that I don't think his incarnation was infinitely costly. It's just that it currently seems to me that the things Jesus ultimately rescued us from – satan, sin and death – are all things of his own making.

Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to being a decent human being again?

Peace

Ade

 

BRADLEY JERSAK

Hi Ade, 

What a good and important question. 

Let me boil it down to your two punchline points...

1. It currently seems to me that the things Jesus ultimately rescued us from—satan, sin, and death—are all things of his own making.

 

2. Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to be a decent human being again?

On the first question, I see your point. And this is where Simone Weil saved my faith through her honesty and her cosmology. 

First, she says that we are faced with two contraries... the Goodness of God and the affliction of humanity.

The two are a real contradiction. There's an infinite distance between the two. We'll come back to that. 

In terms of cosmology, she does something similar. She speaks about (1) gravity and (2) grace or (1) the necessary and (2) the good.

And she regards these pairs as ways that God governs the cosmos. She says that ultimately, gravity and grace are both aspects of the GOOD, but humanity cannot conceive of their union. It's not possible from a human perspective. The GOOD transcends knowing. All we have is our experience, and in our experience, they appear as virtual opposites. To define them...

1. Gravity / the Necessary: refers to the necessary and unbendable pre-conditions for Life and Love, which are why and how God creates the cosmos. Life and Love are the point, the arche (foundations), and the telos (endgame) of the cosmos. God is the first and final cause of life and love. But for life and love to be possible, he must make space (kenosis) for their secondary causes, without which, they cannot be. The necessary pre-condition for life is natural law. And the necessary pre-condition for love is human agency. Without natural law and human agency, there is no possible outcome where life and love come to be that reflects God's life and love.

From these preconditions, all beauty emerges. Beauty as such is manifest in natural law and human agency to such a divine degree that we are tempted to worship them. They are, after all, appearances or images of the God in whom they have being. 

But there is a shadow side. For God to be Love, rather than coercive force, he cannot and does not violate natural law or human agency. If God did so, God would not be Love. And if God does so, God is lousy at it. The arbitrary violation of natural law or human agency would be a Deux Machina that would make all of creation an illusion and all God's creatures puppets. 

The shadow side of natural law is tragedy. The tectonic plates that keep us from sinking into magma rub together and create earthquakes and tsunamis that wipe out cities. The gravity that prevents us from flying to our deaths in space also pulls us to our death when we step off a cliff. This is necessary. But it is not beautiful. It is tragic. 

The shadow side of human agency is evil. The same freedom through which I can willingly turn toward love can be misused to turn willfully from love and toward indifference or hatred or violence. And we exercise this misuse of our passions all the time. That God makes space for this is necessary. In love, he consents to our freedom, and with our freedom, we defy him and wreak havoc. 

This is necessary, but as Weil says, there is an infinite distance between the necessary and the good in our real experience.   

And if we were to stop there, we would just be Deists and to be greatly pitied. Such a God offers consent without participation, and that is not love. So she continues:

2. Grace / the Good: refers to God's willing participation in our world through the mutual consent (surrender, participation) of willing human partners. I explain all of this in more detail in A More Christlike God, but basically, God does not wind up the clock and leave us to our tragedies and evils. He enters the scene in the Incarnation and undergoes them to the nth degree (at the Cross), through which, enters the shadowy abyss, not as an intervention that violates the secondary causes, but as the divine Lover who participates in their healing at every level.

And there on the Cross, he spans the infinitive distance as our affliction and his goodness intersect in his own wounds. Is God the cause of tragedy and evil? Yes and No. He is not the direct cause of any tragedy or evil (that derives from the shadows of secondary causes), BUT because he is ultimately responsible for secondary causes, his only just response is full participation and unfailing mercy, revealed on the Cross. Further, it means that WE are completely responsible to participate in the restoration of all things through our willing surrender to that same cruciform life, as feeble and foolish as it seemed to Paul's opponents in 1 Cor. 1.     

Ivan Karamazov gives what I think is the very best case against Christian faith. 

But for Dostoevsky himself, co-suffering love is the only adequate and completely sufficient response.

I suppose Weil's theology is a metaphysical expression of Alyosha's kiss, for which Ivan could offer no real refutation.  

This leads us to your final question:

Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to be a decent human being again?

Only by willing surrender to the cruciform way one day at a time, which for me has required a program of recovery outlined in the 12 steps. Which is to say, on some days. Which is to say, I have a lot of grumpy days but fewer days where I try to overcome through self-will, which is how I (we all) got into this mess in the first place. And I'm still pretty damn grumpy.

All of the above is an explanation of an experience.

I have not found the explanation satisfying, but I did find the experience transformative. 

Thanks for reaching out. 

 

ADRIAN LOVEGROVE

Hi Brad,

Thanks so much for having the grace, and for taking the time, to lay this out so clearly, fully, and candidly in response to my last rant-o-gram. In the wilderness wandering of de/reconstruction, it's always reassuring to encounter folks who have already been there, and who know what it is to score highly on the grump-o-meter.

It seems to me that Ivan and Alyosha represent the only two sane responses to the insuperable contradiction (from a creaturely perspective) of a good God and the suffering of his creation and its creatures. I can take Ivan's place of accusation – which was rather the tenor of my last email to you – or I can take Alyosha's place of faith.

I hesitate to use the word "faith" because I think what we are talking about here is deeper than anything I have heard presented in my Christian experience. I've never read Simone Weil, but here is how I think I now understand faith from your description of her helpful thinking. It is no blind thing. It stares down the barrel of the gun of the suffering of creation without denial or dissociation. It makes no trite claims about God "being in control," or "moving in mysterious ways," or "working all things for good." Instead, it anchors itself in the character of the God-with-us revealed to us in the Christ-event, and on that basis is willing to give that God the benefit of the doubt on the inscrutable question of whether it would have been better not to have created given the risks involved.

Of course, such faith also goes further: choosing to adopt the ways and means of love shown and taught by Christ as the only meaningful approach to existence, within one's small sphere of influence, for whatever short time one has. And in that mustard-seed-sowing, yeast-kneading way, it finds its rest – "the easy yoke." But I'm not sure this "going further" to the place of Alyosha is possible without having settled "the character of God" question. And I'm not sure it's possible to settle this question without going via the place of Ivan, because until we have been there we have not really seen what is at stake.

Two things strike me.

First, having been to Ivan's place, it is very hard not to be a universalist. If this journey doesn't ultimately end well, for everything that the Creator has freely brought into existence, then I can currently see no moral justification for it having been embarked upon in the first place. That is essentially Dr. Hart's argument from creatio ex nihilo again. Perhaps I am still bargaining with God here, rather than simply surrendering to his infinitely better judgment. But I would prefer to love a demonstrably good God than grudgingly comply with an apparently amoral one.

Second, in terms of "demonstrably good," I used to think "the cross as a demonstration of God's character" was one of the weaker Protestant theories of atonement. As it happens, I'm not especially enamoured of such theories now, given the grander vision of salvation that folks like you and Dr. Hart have exposed me to. But for what it's worth, I'm currently feeling like it is the most important "theory" of all. When one bottoms out to where Ivan is, the only hope one has is in the character of God in spite of everything. I'm not privy to the pros and cons of to-create-or-not-to-create. I'm no longer academically interested in what was administratively or legally accomplished on Good Friday. What my heart needs to know is that God is good and that I can trust him. Now. In my actual life.

Wishing you and yours a peaceful and grump-free Christmas,

Ade

 

BRADLEY JERSAK

Thanks Adrian,

I feel like you've made some important points here that I will reflect on. 

First, YES, you are hearing me right re: Weil. Please read Weil, Awaiting God, chapter 2: "The Love of God and Affliction."

Second, she is my best example of your assertion that we only get to Alyosha via Ivan (a brilliant statement) and that this is precisely what she has done. Your restatement of how she does that is beautiful and it works. In a way, she represents the hypostatic union of Ivan and Alyosha (though I guess Dostoevsky already did). 

Third, exactly this: "I would prefer to love a demonstrably good God than grudgingly comply with an apparently amoral one."

And therefore, "having been to Ivan's place, it is very hard not to be a universalist." 

If God is good and good means anything at all other than evil, it simply can't be otherwise. And it isn't. And Jesus said so. "If I am lifted up, I WILL draw all people to myself." How? Via the Cross. 

And finally, "What my heart needs to know is that God is good and that I can trust him. Now. In my actual life."

YES. He cannot just be 'caring,' but somehow must be a real 'caregiver' in real life.

In light of the real affliction that we witness and experience, arriving there is inexplicable... yet somehow, I did. And that involved seeing the mystery of the union of my affliction to his. Not an explanation or theodicy. A Mystery. But real. 

Speaking of grumpy, I remember at one of my low points, mainly not functioning, binge-watching "House" with Hugh Laurie... my word of the year, stolen from him, was "Idiot!" 

My son called 2008 "the year Dad became harsh." I had to make my way via Ivan to Weil, as my path followed from defiance through decreation to acceptance and surrender. 

Blessed by your name,

Bradley Jersak

 

ADRIAN LOVEGROVE

Hi Brad,

You credit me with too much brilliance since, while I did originally write something like "I can only get to Alyosha via Ivan," I didn’t end up writing it quite so succinctly to you. Instead, I thought I had better explain what I meant by that. What I came up with was more long-winded, but that is the kernel of thought that you still picked up on, thankfully. It represents a take on the insight of Weil’s which is currently giving me hope in what I have euphemistically called my "grumpiness."

She has effectively stood, like me, in the place of Ivan and admitted that all he says is true. Yet she has also seen it is not the whole truth. Human suffering is real, and must be reckoned with, if any theological discourse is to have any credibility. But, to use your phrase, "self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love" is also real, and also has to be reckoned with, as God's response in and through Christ, and in and through those trying to follow him. It can probably never provide the explanation my head needs, but it can provide the experience my heart needs, as you have found.

At least from a creaturely perspective, Ivan's place is legitimate. But so is Alyosha's place. And that was the hope that arose in me as I read your summary of Weil. I don't have to deny what Ivan sees in order to affirm what Alyosha sees. I don't have to disconnect myself from what is presently intolerable to also attach myself to what is ultimately restorative. And it is in that tension that, for me, the OT "how long, O Lord," and the NT "Our Lord, come," now makes better sense. They can only be prayed from the place of Alyosha, not from the place of Ivan (but only after having been there). And therein is my hope.

Peace

Ade

 

C.S. Lewis, Atonement & Universal Salvation - Bradley Jersak

UNIVERSAL SALVATION

While I am convinced of the NT promise of ultimate redemption, I continue to be reluctant to identify myself personally with the label 'universalism.' That is mainly because its opponents typically assume they know what that word means, and have falsely accused me of not believing in the gravity of sin, the necessity of the Incarnation is necessary, the centrality of the Cross, the importance of a faith response, or in the dire warnings of a forthcoming judgment. I have found it difficult to convince them that I believe these are all crucial to the apostolic gospel, despite affirming each of these essentials in my published books and blogs over the past twenty years. At some point, the slander should be regarded as willful, and I do believe infernalists should join me in taking 1 Corinthians 6:10 to heart.   

But one reason that Evangelical and Orthodox universalists of good faith continue to be maligned is that so many pop-universalists have lived down to the caricatures of which we're accused and have readily dispensed with the gospel altogether. So for me, "universalism" is too big an umbrella term. At the very least, in needs the parameters of a limiting adjective, such as "Patristic Universalism." As for me, I opt to drop the -ism altogether and prefer to cite the many biblical texts that announce a gospel of "ultimate redemption" or "apokatastasis" (the restoration of all things) by "the Saviour of the world." 

I'm inclined to say, "I am not a universalist (by your definition), but I do believe in ultimate redemption." Then inquirers who hear that as a contradiction at least have to ask me what I mean. Some (okay, many) who ask come from traditions of zealous biblicism (as I have), so I am pleased to cite Scripture upon Scripture (in context), beginning with Jesus Christ's promise, "If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself" and remind them that God's plan has been revealed in Ephesians 1 (the summing up of all things in Jesus Christ) and 1 Corinthians 15 (that God will be all in all). I can go on for dozens of verses on that, but then I also like to add, "I am a conservative on these things, opting to conserve the Tradition as we see it in Macrina the Younger, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, and especially the hymnology of the Great Tradition..." Then I show them many many samples of weekly songs from the Octoechos. At that point, I may say, "You may still believe in the hell of eternal conscious torment, but I believe ... [and I cite the Symbol of Faith, aka Nicene Creed], which means we may disagree, but any charge of heresy is above our paygrade. 

A HEALING TORMENT

"So you don't believe in hell?" Sigh. Of course I do. See, for example, my book Her Gates Will Never Be Shut or my many blogs affirming divine judgment and the importance of talking about hell (better). It's just that when the Bible speaks about hell, there's a powerful case to be made from the Bible itself that it's not describing infernalism (eternal conscious torment)... including the 'gotcha' verses in Jesus' parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25.

One friend (who I'll take the heat for), talks about "Gehenna" (the word often translated as "hell" in the NT) this way:  

"If Gehenna is the torment of the conscience, then it should be a healing torment that works for redemption, 'the restoration of all things,' as the apostle Peter says, the end to the alienation between the human nature and the Divine nature." 

LEWIS ON ATONEMENT & HELL

At the roots of the controversy are two very different understandings of God's nature. In the Orthodox tradition of which I am a part, we see nothing in the nature of God that demands retribution through violence. This has implications for our understanding of both the atonement and the Day of Judgement.

"But," I am asked, "if God doesn't satisfy his wrath through the death of his Son, then why did Jesus die?" It's a fair question until it extends to another common accusation: "Then you believe Jesus didn't need to die and that the Cross is dispensable." An odd leap, and hurtful, considering the centrality of the Cross in books such as Stricken by God?, A More Christlike God, and From the Cave to the Cross. 

Now CS Lewis is an interesting case, both on the atonement and on the topic of hell (both following the man he called his 'master,' George MacDonald).

Re: the atonement, Lewis retrieves the theology of the early church (especially Athanasius), and he refutes standard penal substitution theory (especially as wrath-appeasement), which he explicitly rejects in both Mere Christianity and in his letters to Bede Griffiths. And he sets up the Patristic alternative in his Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you get the combination of biblical themes--the ransom paid for freedom AND the plunder of the strongman's house, both reflecting the Hebrew Exodus narrative. Readers might enjoy this 1-page article I wrote about that: 

https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2016/03/god-is-not-the-witch-cs-lewis-on-the-atonement-brad-jersak.html   

On the topic of hell, The Great Divorce was amazing. My favourite Lewis book. He leaves the door open (as does Revelation 21-22) to human agency and the perpetual possibility of a response, without dogmatizing the redemption of all (even if Paul does so in Eph. 1, Phil. 2, Rom. 5, Rom. 11, 1 Cor. 15, etc.).

But beyond that fictional classic, it's worth pondering and responding to Lewis' claim that "The doors of hell are locked from the inside" (from The Problem of Pain). 

First, he is obviously refuting literalist readings of texts where Christ or his angels are represented as actively casting the damned into the lake of fire or outer darkness. Those texts are obviously in our Scriptures, sometimes coming from Jesus. But I don't believe Lewis is ignoring them to get God off the hook. More likely, he is clarifying that such language is limited to the symbolism of visions, parables, and metaphors that, in the end, Lewis affirms human agency and describes self-inflicted consequences.

BUT...  I like to go a step further, and leave you imagining Lewis in conversation with Christ, like so:

Lewis: "The doors of hell are locked from the inside." 

Jesus' answer #1 at the Cross - "Doors?" as he tears the veil of the Holy of Holies, which has represented paradise locked to us.

Jesus' answer #2 on Holy Saturday - "Doors?" as he shatters the gates and stands on them, pulling us up by the wrists (as in the resurrection icon). 

Jesus' answer #3 on Easter Sunday - "Doors?" as he passes through them as if they are mist, as he did in the upper room.

 

 

"Out the Embers" - OTC conversation (Jersak, Young, Fee, Murrell, MacMurray)

My Journey "Out of the Embers" - Nicky Martini

Bradley Jersak's Out of the Embers caught me by surprise. I thought my time to look back was done. At the beginning of this year, over a whole month, I experienced a creative miracle where, by the end, I knew God had healed my PTSD. Within the pages of Bradley's book, I can feel more waves of release and healing. 

 

From the “Prodigal Test” 

 

“God gives us the dignity of finding our own bottom. Once that happens, we might truly come home in a way that the elder brother apparently never did.”

 

It’s taken me days to get through the sections on Nietzsche and Simone Weil. Within those pages, I revisited the worst days of my deconstruction, primarily the grief that had consumed me. 

 

I never said “God is dead” but some nine years ago, the second part of my deconstruction came as what I can only call a wrecking ball. I remember the moment it happened. I was in church, mic in hand, about to blissfully share some grace encouragement. And before I could get a word out, God popped my bubble. It was like I had rose-coloured glasses on... and then I didn’t. All I could see were faces in the pews who were not interested in my wonderful grace words. They were suffering silently in a place where suffering was not allowed, or at least not talked about. Ours was a toxic positivity church of happy grace clappers, and I was one of them. I put the mic down, grabbed my husband and my children, and ran like a madwoman. I never went back.

 

Immediately after, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. She was in Greece with my dad and my brother, so the family flew her and my dad back to Australia. 

 

She survived another six weeks. I prayed for more time with her; I prayed for her healing, and when it became evident that that was not going to happen, I prayed that I would be there with her when she took her last breath. I lay on the floor next to her bed so as to be with her. It was important to me because we hadn’t had a great relationship when I was growing up. I was a terrible teenager. But for years, I had longed to live close to her and to have the opportunity to love on her as she deserved. To make up for lost years. 

 

The moment my mumma took her last breath, she was surrounded by her whole family. Except me. I was on the toilet. 

 

My faith at that moment collapsed. The wrecking ball hit with no mercy. Didn’t we learn in church that "all God’s promises were yes and amen" and that He gives us the desires of our hearts? Not only did God no answer the desire of my heart that I had hoped and prayed for over many years, but He took Mum home while I was on the toilet, shitting. It was like He had taken a knife, jabbed me in my heart, and twisted it to drive it home. I wasn’t angry with God; I was deeply hurt. I felt like the only One who I could trust had hurt me in the worst possible way. I can’t describe the pain in my heart. 

 

One morning after her funeral, I got in my car to go to work, and I said out loud, “God, you and I are done. Don’t talk to me anymore. I won’t be looking to hear from you or to feel you. I won’t be in any relationship with you. I won’t be loving you and certainly won’t be waiting to receive any love from you. You can leave me alone now.”

 

I said it and I meant it. I would repeat this many, many times over the next two years when I was alone. For the first time in my whole life, I stopped talking to God. I didn’t question his existence. I knew He was real and I knew He was with me all the time. But I chose deliberately not to be in relationship with Him. 

 

Still, my mumma’s death was not my rock bottom. It happened over the two years of ripping my heart out day after day. It was the numbing myself and not allowing myself to love and be loved by the God who had once swept me off my feet.

 

My rock bottom came when I had so shut myself off from God out of deep hurt that I could no longer feel Him. I don’t know how to describe living without God except to say I felt dead. I starved myself to death. I went about my days mechanically. No joy; just deep, deep sadness and inconsolable grief for my loss. I cut myself off from whatever few friends I had left because I somehow felt like my darkness would contaminate them, plus there was no room in my despair. 

 

Two years passed. My hubby Brett and I were driving a long distance and he had his music playing on random. What used to be my all-time favourite God song came on: Lifehouse's “Everything.”

 

Find me here and speak to me
I want to feel you, I need to hear you

 

I started to cry and Brett asked what was wrong. I told him that the hardest thing for me, doing this life without God, has been that I’m no longer moved by Him. Every time I used to hear this song, it was like every cell in my body would be caught up into some ecstatic place of joy indescribable but now I am not moved by Him anymore. Brett laughed and said, "Well, that’s an easy fix! You just have to let Him." 

 

And so I prayed, “Lord I miss you, I still feel hurt by you, but Lord, if you never answer a single prayer of mine it doesn’t matter. If I see no miracles but only pain and suffering in this world, nevertheless, I don’t want to do it on my own anymore. There’s no life for me apart from you. I need you, and I want to be moved by you again." And so He did. Once again, I fixed my eyes on the Lover of my soul for no other reason than to be loved and to love.

 

Reading Embers today, specifically Simone Weil's words about coming home, God reminded me of a recurring nightmare I used to have after my mum had passed. In the dream, my mum and I were lost and both of us trying to find our way home. Somewhere in the dream, I would lose her and desperately try to find her so we could find home together. The dream would always end before I found her and before we found home. 

 

Today, God spoke to me about how my mumma suffered from terrible grief in her life, something she never got over. Both my sister and I would say we don’t ever want to be like her, always grieving. For my sister, it stopped her from being able to grieve. And for me, I seemed to grieve immensely. I felt God saying, “Your mumma is home now with me and she no longer grieves. And you know I am always with you, and I am healing this grief." 

 

I think I read somewhere that Out of the Embers is like the healing balm of Gilead. Indeed it is.
I know it will bring much healing to many.