Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

On Christian Nationalism & 'the Bride of Babylon' - Bradley Jersak

Christian nationalism in any nation is what John the Revelator described as the bride of Babylon, 'the whore' in bed with the Beast (Rev. 17) ... It's an unholy alliance of would-be strongmen and whatever church cares to be bedded by them.

 

Christian nationalism is often comprised of political powers that seduce the church with a promise of moral reforms, harnessing a populist revulsion against hedonism (e.g., frequently distilled to legalized repression of the queer community) and some hated ethnic-religious other (e.g., Jews or Muslims) in order to harness and co-opt the Christian lobby as a political crony for its authoritarian and militarist goals. 

 

Here's a sample from a classic speech:

The National Government will regard it as its first and supreme task to restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and defend the foundations on which the strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis of our morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our state.

Adolf Hitler, 1933    

The need for authoritarian politicians to develop a religious base is especially true when they turn to expansionist aggression. It is very difficult to send one's children off to die in battle for nationalism or freedom or oil unless one can further sell such a sacrifice to the parents as a sacred religious endeavor (cf. Brian Zahnd, Farewell to Mars). It seems to me that whether Evangelical or Orthodox believers, Eastern or Western, we have in common this Achilles' heel for Christian nationalism, even in weaker states, wherever the Cross is wrapped in their flag.

 

It's rancid and, in fact, not truly Christian at all. It's a death-dealing cult of civil religion with a thin veneer of Jesus-talk, with ethics of moralism that have nothing to do with love for neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.  

 

The good news is found in a closer reading of Revelation indicates that, as in Ezekiel and Hosea, God's heart is to cleanse his adulterous spouse of every stain so that she becomes the spotless bride! This is doable, but apparently not until she experiences the grief of her lovers' fall (Rev. 18) and hears Christ's call to 'come out' of that Babylonian alliance. Until then, she's de facto disqualified herself as a representative and servant of the Prince of Peace. 

 

It remains for me to ask how I am complicit and how I might opt out of that system without simply flying headlong into the opposite ditch. It's always easier to point at the despicable 'them' than to see our own blindspots because we forget that we can feed any ugly tendency by signing on OR by opposing them in the same self-righteous spirit. On that note, I pray this line from Lent Prayer of St. Ephrem, "Lord, help me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother."

 

Lord, have mercy.   

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. 

“Wait a minute…!” Clarence Jordan’s “Inconvenient Gospel” – Review by Bradley Jersak

“Wait a minute…!” Clarence Jordan’s “Inconvenient Gospel”
Review by Bradley Jersak

Clarence Jordan, The Inconvenient Gospel: A Southern Prophet Tackles War, Wealth, Race, and Religion (Plough Spiritual Guides: Backpack Classics, 2022).

CLICK HERE TO READ A SAMPLE

“Wait a minute!” One day I may not be so surprised and delighted by the books Plough Publishing sends me, but they’ve done it again! Before I dive into the substance of Clarence Jordan’s Inconvenient Gospel, I must first commend Plough from a publisher’s perspective. The design and layout of the physical copy make for a beautiful product, bound on good-quality stock and a heavier-than-paper cover. More important, though, is that this particular book is a welcome addition to their “Spiritual Guides” series, which is a treasury of authors including:

• Dorothy Day
• Simone Weil
• Eberhard Arnold and Richard Foster
• Eberhard Arnold and Thomas Merton
• Oscar Romero
• Amy Carmichael
• Abraham Joshua Heschel

Seriously, contact Plough and ask for the whole set—it’s an incredible collection of great hearts and minds, and each work includes a distilled biography and introduction along with a treasury of primary source material from each author.

Now to Clarence Jordan's Inconvenient Gospel. The book opens with Frederick L. Downing’s fine biography of Jordan (1912-1969), his wife Florence, and their Koinonia community. Jordan is described as a white Baptist minister from Old South Georgia who broke every mold associated with that stereotype. The “Wait a minute!” moments on those first pages stack up quickly. Here we have a Southern Baptist-trained preacher (with a Ph.D. in NT Greek) who embraced nonviolence, racial integration, and communal living decades before the Civil Rights movement picked up steam! Utterly countercultural, monitored by the government, harassed by the Klansmen… his story is so gripping that when Martin Luther King Jr. heard Jordan was practicing what King was preaching, he said, “I went to Koinonia [Jordan's community] to see it for myself and couldn’t wait to leave because I was sure the Klan would show up and kill us both.” The Koinonia project, a gospel-centered, interracial, alternative economic project, struck me exactly as the title suggests—an “inconvenient Gospel.” 

After Downing’s biography, readers are treated to an Introduction by Starlette Thomas, titled “Reading Clarence Jordan Today.” Wait a minute! THAT Starlette Thomas? For those unfamiliar with her, Thomas is the director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative; she's a practical theologian and blogger, and a serious womanist preacher in ministry. When someone of her stature shares her perspective on Clarence Jordan and his “raceless gospel” (not to be confused with “color-blindness”!), I am arrested in the most important way. I.e., she had my attention.

But then we’re exposed to Clarence Jordan firsthand in a series of thirteen of his articles and sermons. It's worth sharing the chapter titles to catch a glimpse of key themes from this “wait a minute!” provocateur. I'm especially bearing in mind the religious and social cultures of his Baptist audiences (churches, journals, and conventions from 1941-1955) and later, his Mennonite listeners (Goshen College) in the 1960s. 

1. Impractical Christianity
2. The Meaning of Christian Fellowship
3. What is the Word of God?
4. White Southern Christians and Race
5. No Promised Land without the Wilderness
6. The Ten Commandments
7. Jesus, Leader of the Poor
8. Love Your Enemies
9. Jesus and Possessions
10. Metamorphosis
11. The Man from Gadara
12. Things Needed for Our Peace
13. The Humanity of God

Through his penetrating messages, Jordan presses some truly inconvenient "wait a minute!" facts. For example, the radical polarization around economic and racial issues that are right now tearing apart our frayed society are nothing new. He was there and underwent that reality directly, overtly, frequently suffering intimidation from the church, the FBI, and the KKK alike.

Further, his active opposition against white supremacy before the Civil Rights reached a critical mass was prophetic and intensely risky. Hatred from what we now call the “far right” was still the norm then,… and couple that problem with preaching a gospel of nonviolence that refused to hate domestic oppressors or wage war against foreign enemies. Well, call him crazy, call him communist, call him the devil... and many did. But we cannot call his nonviolence "complicity with injustice." His nonviolent witness was an active living martyrdom... as dangerously naïve as Jesus' foundation sermon, perhaps? I hope so, because so far, “the ways that make for peace have been hidden from our eyes.” Jordan has a word for us all, right now. He IS a prophet to speaking to the 21st century. 

But even if I can follow his call to radical forgiveness, enemy love, and anti-racism, that only gets me through the Matthew 5 section of his Sermon on the Mount example. Jordan ventures into the implications of a Matthew 6 life—I’m referring to how seriously he took renouncing personal wealthy and possessions and heeding Jesus’ command [?] not to lay up earthly treasures for ourselves. Jordan preached and practiced a communal gospel reminiscent of the church in those first chapters of Acts, where everyone shared, and no one was left impoverished. "Wait a minute!" That’s a “hard word” for those of us (I mean me) with mortgages and homes, deeply attached to our pensions and investments. Maybe now that middle-class wealth is being gobbled up by inflation and greed, and a home is no longer even an option for my children, Jordan has my attention—and after him, who knows? Might I listen to Jesus, too—but this time with fresh ears in Clarence Jordan’s Southern-seasoned voice. 

It's worth saying how closely aligned Jordan was with Tolstoy, Gandhi, Thurman, and King Jr., in that same Sermon on the Mount tradition, living its practicability in his own way. Even without the same global name recognition, he is surely due the same honor as these, his peers. 

Finally, one last bonus “Wait a minute!” Have you ever heard of the southern retelling of the Jesus story, The Cotton Patch Gospel? I had not realized Clarence Jordan wrote was the author! In fact, he was composing it when he departed this life for the next. One might have wished he had more time for that endeavor, but then again, what a beautiful way to complete one’s journey. 

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb: In Quest of Equity - Interview with Bradley Jersak

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb (www.rabbilynngottlieb.com)
is a Jewish Rabbi (of 50 years!), master story teller, folk artist and seasoned peace pilgrim.

See full bio below. 

Lynn Gottlieb, one of the first women to become a rabbi in Jewish history, is a pioneer Jewish feminist, human rights activist, writer, visual artist, ceremonialist, community educator and master storyteller.

Lynn has been a congregational rabbi since the fall of 1973, and founded the Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, NM, in 1980. Lynn engages in multifaith, intergenerational and multicultural organizing in solidarity with racial, indigenous, gender justice and Palestinian liberation struggles.

Currently, Lynn sits on the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and is board chair of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity. Rabbi Lynn is the author of several books, including Peace Primer II, She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of Renewed Judaism, World Beyond Borders Passover Haggadah and Trail Guide to the Torah of Nonviolence.

Rabbi Lynn is a Shomeret Shalom, a practitioner of the Torah of nonviolence.
To get in touch, click here.

 

Healing from and through Deconstruction - Felicia Murrell with Susan Carson

Thursday, October 27, 6:00 pm EST 
Susan Carson (Roots & Branches network)
will host a livestream fundraising event:

"Healing From and Through Our Deconstruction"
An evening with Dr. Bradley Jersak, Felicia Murrell and Wm. Paul Young"

CLICK HERE for Registration details

 

In preparation for this event, Susan Carson raised the following questions on deconstruction and the healing journey. Author, editor, and foodie extraordinaire, Felicia Murrell, responded beautifully, a great teaser for what we're in for:  

SUSAN: When we talk about deconstruction, what do we mean?

Felicia: I would say deconstruction means releasing our grip, attachment from ideas, beliefs and theories we once thought to be true; unknowing the things we’ve erected and built, dismantling all of our conceptual constructs. My teacher, Mirabai Starr would say, it’s “when the religious scaffolding crumbles and we are plunged into radical unknowing.”

My mind conjures images of Samson bracing the two middle pillars on which the house rested and bending with all his might, upending the house and all therein.[1] But for me, as it relates to deconstruction, the two middle pillars would be my pillars of arrogance and certainty upon which all my tenets of faith and belief and interpretations rested. For sure the image loses some of its relatability at the end because of the destruction, but I imagine for some, deconstruction may actually feel like a sort of catastrophic death.

SUSAN: In what ways have you experienced or observed deconstruction as destructive? 

Felicia: I think when we are as fundamental and certain about deconstruction as we are about religion, that can be destructive. Rene Girard spoke often about scapegoating, and when we find ourselves trapped in the need to blame our pain or our lived experience on someone, deconstruction can turn vengeful and destructive. But if we don’t understand this process as a path to infinite Love, we will lose ourselves in the terror and chaos of our unraveling which can be very harmful.

Drinking Well from Others Wells - Bradley Jersak

Drinking Well from Other’s Wells
Reading Sacred Texts – Four Invitations

Address by Bradley Jersak at the "Peace through the Reconcilation of Our Holy Books" interfaith conference on 9-11.

By Bradley Jersak

 

Your Excellencies, Sisters and Brothers in God’s expansive family,

Grace and Peace,

Today I would like to express my gratitude for our common commitment to peacemaking and to share four brief reflections about reading one another’s sacred texts with openness, respect, and wonder. I was personally raised in a tradition of religious certitude where we were all too convinced that our provincial faith and our particular way of reading our Scriptures defined the sealed boundaries of truth. Regardless of whether what I share in this paper resonates with others, I sincerely hope that you will hear my good-faith repentance for the narrowness I am still overcoming.

In my attempts to drink well from the wells of other Holy Books, I’ve developed four invitations that I will briefly clarify and illustrate. My sense is that reading well includes the following:

1. I invite us to read well from each other’s Scriptures with open hearts, attentive to points of connection.
2. I invite us to read well from each other’s Scriptures, seeing them as unique songs to the One True God.
3. I invite us to consider how others read their own Scriptures.
4. I invite us to consider how others read our Scriptures.

Interfaith Peacemakers Summit with Safi Kaskas & Friends - by Brad Jersak

“Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called children of God.”

—Jesus

I write this testimony of God’s grace while the events are still fresh in my mind and warm in my heart.

For the anniversary of 9-11, I was invited to participate in an international gathering of Peacemakers from the three major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), including various scholars, activists, imams, and rabbis from across the globe. The title of the conference was "PEACE through the Reconciliation of Our Holy Books"  

It was truly an amazing and beautiful day! 

I was so thrilled with each of the presenters and, just as much, their attentive and gracious responses to one another.

I was personally very moved by Dr. Safi Kaskas’ leadership. My Muslim brother and Qur’anic scholar spoke some very kind words about our first encounters that brought back precious memories. 

I was very impressed by the quality of the speakers that Safi assembled, and all on such short notice that we both recognized God’s hand in swinging open these doors to dialogue.

The speakers showed remarkable expertise and clarity about many pressing issues in the world today and an uncanny knack for addressing tender topics without condemnation of the Other. This was evident as we expressed remorse for the sins of our own movements, along with the willingness to advocate for the vulnerable.

Specifically, Muslim representatives denounced the violence done on September 11 by fellow radicalized Muslims, Christian representatives repudiated our violent response through the so-called “war on terror,” and Rabbi Lynn, for example, issued a clear call for the state of Israel to repent and practice equity toward the Palestinian people.    

In some ways, none of that surprised me, but I was delighted that several of the talks (back-to-back, unplanned except in heaven) brought into focus the injustices done toward indigenous people and the need for reparations. There was nothing in Safi’s invitation that indicated we should or could ‘go there,’ but I had the strong sense that it was a topic heavy on God’s heart and his people were tuned in.

All of that was very, very good. But I want to shift to the highlight of the day, when the ‘felt presence’ of God flooded our solemn assembly with joy and tears.

Our friend Mercy Aiken, a Christian peace activist and bridgebuilder, began to expound on Jesus’ words from Luke 19. She said, “On his way to the cross, we read about one of the few times that we hear Jesus wept. He is approaching Jerusalem, and the gospel says,

⁴¹ And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Mercy emphasized that phrase, “Now they are hidden from your eyes,” to lament the terrible spiritual blindness that has caused each of the Abrahamic religions to choose hatred, violence, and war over “the things that make for peace.” The fact that the way to peace has remained hidden to us is both tragic and obvious, especially when we consider Jerusalem as a geographical and symbolic center for millennia of conflicts… between the very faiths gathered at the conference.

Through those words, a powerful sense of sobriety descended and in my headphones, I heard quiet groans of awareness expressed. What are we to do? At just the right moment, Mercy began to spontaneously intercede that the Holy Spirit would mercifully open our eyes and draw us back onto the way of peace.      

And then I was stunned to tears, as were others, as she responded to her own challenge with a song of invocation—a Muslim worship chorus—“Open Your Eyes” by Maher Zain. I believe she sang these lyrics:

Open our eyes, our hearts and minds 
If we just look right, we'll see the signs 
We can't keep hiding from the truth
And let it take us by surprise
Protect us in the best way
Guide us every single day
Keep us close to You 
Until the end of time

(please watch the full song HERE and I have embedded it at the end of this article) 

Tears began to stream down my cheeks; I saw others wiping their eyes; an Imam posted Jesus’ words into the group chat; and as soon as Mercy finished, one of the Muslim men asked, “Could you also please sing a song for our Christian and Jewish brothers and sisters?”

Mercy responded, “Well, that sone really was meant for all of us… But I did think about that, too, in case it came up. So here is a song from the Jewish Scriptures that Christians also love to sing:

For Thou, O Lord, art high above all the earth
Thou art exalted far above all gods
For Thou, o Lord, art high above all the earth
Thou art exalted far above all gods

I exalt Thee, I exalt Thee
I exalt Thee, O Lord
I exalt Thee, I exalt Thee
I exalt Thee, O Lord

(you can see this song HERE and again, it's embedded at the end)

I could tell we were on holy ground, in a transcendent moment—we were encountering the heart of God as constructive dialogue gave way to worship in spirit and in truth, described and yes, prophesied by Jesus when he said in John 4 (MSG),

^{21 “}The time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

^23-24 “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

How did we get there? I believe it’s because God’s heart for peace and justice must be so broken that one whiff of that aroma draws his manifest presence in a heartbeat. So many of our religious meetings have not only ignored peace and justice—worldwide, our churches (I’ve seen it), synagogues, and mosques alike have been infested with hate, propaganda, and sermons encouraging vengeance and death-dealing. It’s an ancient problem.

The Jewish prophet Amos (5:21-24 MSG), speaking for God, prophesies,

“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image-making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

In my view, this conference served as an act of living repentance for just that problem.

This gathering exceeded my expectations, and I believe the individual recordings (forthcoming) will make a powerful series with the potential for long-term and widespread impact. Even better, I pray that our encounter would lead to lasting new friendships and created networks that extend beyond what we can ask or imagine... and that those who watch will experience the insights and wonder that were such a gift to me.

With love and gratitude,

Bradley Jersak

Conference Participants             

HOSTS:
Nahid Saiyed
Paul Armstrong

SPEAKERS:
Safi Kaskas
Brad Jersak
Samira Benturki Saidi
Mark Braverman
Muhammad Eissa
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Tariq Mustafa
Mercy Aiken
Dawud Abdur-Rahman
Rabbi Steve Weisman
Daisy Khan

 SONG 1 - "Open Your Eyes"

Song 2 - "I Exalt Thee"

Bradley Jersak, "Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction" (pre-orders)

Now available for pre-order!

OUT OF THE EMBERS: 
FAITH AFTER THE GREAT DECONSTRUCTION

by Bradley Jersak foreword by Brian Zahnd

CLICK HERE to order now

Description:

Deconstruction: Trendy brand name for falling away from belief in God? Or a process essential to authentic faith? Liberation or trauma? Prison break or exile? It’s complicated. Just like you. Christian history records a Great Reformation and a Great Awakening. But today’s “Great Deconstruction” will surely leave an equally profound impact.

In Out of the Embers, Bradley Jersak explores the necessity, perils, and possibilities of the Great Deconstruction—how it has the potential to either sabotage our communion with God or infuse it with the breath of life, the light and life of Christ himself.

In this collection of vulnerable memoirs, philosophical memos, and candid provocations, Jersak resists both the hand-wringing urge to corral stray sheep and the exultant desire to play the happy-clappy Ex-vangelical cheerleader. He employs the wisdom and expertise of the great deconstructionists—Christianity’s ancient influences (Moses, Plato, Paul, and the Patristics), “beloved frenemies” (from Voltaire to Nietzsche), and the masters of deconstruction (Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Weil)—to double down and deconstruct deconstruction itself. Where is faith after deconstruction?

The author’s heart is to engage and empathize with the bereft and disoriented, stoking the brittle ashes for live embers. In this quest for the resilient gospel of the martyrs, the marginal, and those outside the threshold...inexplicably, in this liminal space, life stirs.

A Light shines through the ashes. We find, often for the first time, that living connection Jersak calls “presence in communion.” There is a sea change occurring across the Western church and civilization. Whether we’re watching a radical course correction or a complete collapse remains to be seen, and how it pans out will likely depend on how we see what’s happening, who we are becoming, how we live in response—and, most important, where we find Christ situated in this storm.

CLICK HERE to order now

Foreword to Alvin Kimel's "DESTINED FOR JOY" - by Bradley Jersak

AIDEN KIMEL, DESTINED FOR JOY

Foreword by Bradley Jersak, Ph.D.

With great joy, I have for a decade followed Fr. Aiden Kimel as he forged a path of inquiry that unveiled answers, advanced an exploration that yielded discovery, and posited a hope that became deep conviction—for me and in many others. His biblical, historical, and philosophical posts have completely convinced me that the apokatastasis panton (the restoration of all things) is not merely a doctrinally tolerable idea—it is, as Kimel says, “the gospel of Christ’s absolute and unconditional love sung in an eschatological key.”

As he has faithfully posted his treasury of findings, I have come to believe without reserve in Christ’s bold claim that through his Passion he will indeed draw all of humanity and the entire cosmos to himself. For that reason, I now see apokatastasis as intrinsic and indispensable to proclaiming the ancient gospel in this fraught and faltering century.

In Destined for Joy, Kimel has gathered a “best of” collection of his insights that, together, paint a vista I cannot unsee, and wouldn’t ever want to!          

Even for those who follow Fr. Aiden’s posts regularly, Destined for Joy is well worth reviewing and having on hand as a definitive resource. The book faithfully and creatively reflects the faith of those great saints of the past (Origen, Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Maximos the Confessor, Silouan the Athonite, and yes, George MacDonald) and the boldest minds of our era (Sergius Bulgakov, Robert W. Jenson, Thomas Talbott, Ilaria Ramelli, David Bentley Hart, John Behr). It also offers essential and sometimes startling corrections, revealing, for example, how the fifth-century anathemas against Origenism—long thought to have decisively condemned universal salvation—were never conciliar or even synodal. Kimel demonstrates that they amount to nothing but an imperial edict that has no doctrinal authority. He has at last firmly closed the door on centuries of misconception, divorced the anathemas from the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and removed them from the Infernalist arsenal. 

But by far, his most powerful contribution to me personally (by accumulated 'convincement') was guiding me to this very simple question: Does the New Testament foresee the salvation of all or doesn't it? Clearly, it does. Repeatedly. Unequivocally. And all the “But what about . . . ?” counterpoints fail to address these Scriptures directly. Regardless of the difficulties we have interpreting judgment texts or harmonizing them with ultimate redemption, Christ and his apostles tell us how it all ends: "God will be all and in all.” But nothing. Full stop. Amen and hallelujah!

The issue of 'the End' now boils down to these questions for me:

a. Do the Scriptures require a free and willing faith response to Jesus Christ? Yes! Many times.

b. Do the Scriptures forecast a final judgment? Yes! Many times.

c. Do the Scriptures foresee the salvation of all? Yes! Dozens of times.  

How can all three of these statements be true without marginalizing any of the pertinent biblical texts? They can only all work if: 

a. Death has been defeated so that a free and willing post-mortem response is possible.
It has been. 

b. The judgments of God are restorative and penultimate rather than retributive and ultimate.
They are.  

 c. The human will is healed and freed from its delusions so we can freely respond to perfect Love when we see Christ face to face. I call this a 'freed will' response. 
It will be.

While we can pile Scripture upon Scripture to verify these truths, I repeat, we have Jesus Christ's overt claim in John's Gospel: "If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself." 

And we have the End described in expressly inclusive ways . . . every eye shall see him, every knee shall bow, every tongue will confess, God shall be all and in all. What others regard as exclusive conditions to this outcome, apokatastasis enfolds as the necessary means. The Incarnation, the Cross and Resurrection, faith in Christ, restorative judgment according to the first Christians—these are the means by which the foretold glorious, all-inclusive End will surely come about.

I can make these audacious assertions without presumption because whatever warrant our faith needs to embrace them, Destined for Joy offers in abundance. Over to you, Fr. Aiden. 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER AIDEN KIMEL, DESTINED FOR JOY

Proclaiming the Unknown God (Acts 17) - Bradley Jersak at the Meeting Place (Winnipeg)

Symposium II: "If there is any excellence - a conversation on Arete" - with David Goa, Vladika Lazar & Eden Jersak

Symposium I: Morality vs. Moralism - Lazar Puhalo with David Goa & Bradley Jersak

God Cannot Fix This. But They Made a Way. Bradley Jersak

GOD CANNOT FIX THIS.  BUT THEY MADE A WAY. 

Another mass shooting motivated by racial hate.

Another elementary school massacre.

Another foreign invasion, escalating civilian slaughter, evidence of war crimes.

Another moment of silence, another flag lowered, another platitude.

Another thought, another prayer, another child in a body bag.

God cannot fix this.

I received an angry message from someone who lives near Uvalde, TX—directed at Christians in general, berating us for doing nothing and for making matters worse, demanding proof for our faith and lashing at the hypocrisy of the church. Where’s this miracle-making God of ours? Why aren’t we out there, performing signs and wonders, and raising the dead?

Why isn’t God fixing this? Why aren’t we fixing this?

I hear the grief beneath the rage. I feel it too.

We cannot fix this.

Not even God can fix this.

God is not a fixer.

And when we become fixers, just look at what happens! Yes, we make it way worse.

Fix it? How? With magic prayer incantations? With louder sermons? With more morality police? With political force? With more guns and bombs? That’s exactly how we broke it in the first place.

God doesn’t fix this because God is not a ‘fixer.’ God doesn’t control or coerce or impose his will on anyone. We know this—just watch the news tonight. God is not that kind of saviour. And when we demand that kind of saviour, or try to vote in that kind of a saviour, or choose to be our own saviour, we create the very problem we need to be saved from.

We hear, “I alone can fix it.” And then we watch the mess get deeper and smellier and deadlier.

If God can’t fix it, what good is our faith?

And this lie slips in—that if God doesn’t intervene to fix our mess, then God can’t save us. That God’s ‘saviour’ label is belied by God’s criminal negligence as heaven passively watches the world burn. The absence of fixes by force feel like God has abandoned us and is ghosting our cries for help.

That’s how it feels.

And now here is the truth. Not a truth or my truth or some theory. I don't have time to waffle with those who demand a fix or fell for the fixers. The truth is that God knows the only way to restore everything and redeem everyone that is lost, broken, damaged, or demented. And God has, in fact, sown that way into the world and shown that way in Jesus Christ.

God says, “You want this fixed? No. It can’t be. But I’ve made a way.”

God has made a WAY to live, to walk, to be, through which all things shall ultimately be made new. That WAY has already been forged by the One who has shown us the path and has sown the seeds that [die to] save the world. That One, Jesus Christ, says no to fixing and yes to following.

If we want to be free—not the ‘freedom’ that says, ‘It’s my right to live as I please’ but freedom from fear for our children from hatred, bullets, guns, and bombs—all we’d need to do is live the WAY Jesus taught us to live in the grace he’s given us to live it. If we trust him enough to actually follow his lead, he will free us from the fear that leads to the hatred that leads to the violence that we expect God to magically force-fix. Even in the midst of this mangled shit-show humanity has created for ourselves.

No, God cannot fix this. But God made a Way. What is it?

The Way is not simply a vague, theological “faith in God and do as you please.”

It’s an actual, prescribed program for a completely nonviolent social revolution that establishes peace on earth (aka “the kingdom of God”).

It IS the grace of God revealed in Jesus' blueprint for the salvation of the world.

If we’re willing. [spoiler alert: we currently aren't]

Essentially, the blueprint is simple. Live the golden rule. “Treat others as you want to be treated.”

The golden rule is so basic to being human that it needn’t be a such a profound revelation—but I guess we needed one, because it appears across the teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and more. You’d think we’d give it a try.

But Jesus also knew that to get there, we’d need grace to transform us from the inside out. Jesus knew that conformity to external laws without a renewed heart always leads to workarounds and loopholes to skirt God’s eternal law of love (which is all the Jewish Law and Prophets were about, according to Jesus). So to internalize the love rule, in his Sermon on the Mount, the Rabbi from Nazareth added five ‘commandments’ that deepen the ten given at Sinai.  

In chapter six of his foundational book, What I Believe (1884), Leo Tolstoy summarized and explained the five straightforward requirements of the Jesus Way manifesto—what ‘follow me’ meant to Christ, specifically, in practice:

• “Be not angry, do not judge”—hatred in heart and on the tongue are the germ that leads to murder. (Matthew 5:21-26)
• “Do not lust”—coveting another person’s spouse leads to adultery and divorce (5:27-32).
• “Do not swear oaths”—which is a pledge to obeying the disobedient powers (5:33-37)
• “Resist not evil”—retaliation by violence is itself the evil we thought to resist (5:38-42)
• “Love your enemy”—Christ erases boundaries of hostility to the other, from personal animosity to xenophobia against foreign peoples (5:43-48)

Fix this? No. Follow this!

Tolstoy concluded,

If men abstain from practicing any one of these commandments, peace will be violated. Let men practice all these commandments, which exclude evil from the lives of men, and peace will be established upon earth. The practice of these five commandments would realize the ideal of human life existing in every human heart. All men would be brothers, each would be at peace with others, enjoying all the blessings of earth to the limit of years accorded by the Creator. Men would beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and then would come the kingdom of God.

So, no, God does not fix this world, if that means restoration by coercive or magical forces that suspend and thus violate human freedom. God cannot fix this way because God is love.

Instead, God has sent a parade of messengers of peace, including the great prophets in many faiths, and ultimately Jesus... and continues to do so even now. As a would-be follower of Jesus, I can see and say that he established his peaceable kingdom and showed us, in a human life, the Way to bring it about.

Sadly, humanity continues to rush for the opt-out door—and worse, my critic is right: Christians are barging out the exit at the head of the mob-herd. Humankind, including his own movement, continues to reject the Jesus Way and the tragic results are observable.

Yeah, but…

If the Jesus Way requires my participation, what should I do if no one else signs up? If Jesus says, for example, NO WEAPONS OF DEATH, but everyone else says, “I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” then is it foolish or naive to be the sole exception? What happens if I'm the only unarmed person in the bunch? If everyone else is packing heat, aren’t I defenseless? Don’t I need to be the “good guy with the gun,” just in case? Otherwise, am I not throwing away my life?

You know, like Jesus?

Jesus responds in his sermon, “The wise person hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. It’s the fool who ignores them or justifies disobeying them. Take up your Cross and follow me, because only this narrow road—this minority report—leads to a social environment conducive to life and peace. Follow me because the broad road—the way of the herd—inevitably leads to death.” The way we’ve chosen has been falsified in this escalation of death—of racist massacres, school shootings, and military invasions. The militarized masses have not made us safer—any such claim is falsified by the blood of children.

Only the Jesus Way can lead to life and peace and freedom, even if you’re the only one who takes that path, even if that path includes losing your life to find it (Matthew 16:25).

The problem today is exacerbated by those who claim to follow Jesus while rejecting the requirements he describes as ‘following.’ We’re seeing a public phenomenon where those who retain the Jesus brand are the primary public lobbyists against the Jesus Way.

No wonder my critic lashed out.

I get it. And I can’t fix it.

But I’ve heard there’s a Way.

So now, I begin with the mirror, asking where I’m still walking the Jesus Way and where I’m not. I have my own eye-planks to deal with, starting with malice.

As my friend Jarrod says, “It’s easy to call someone out. Harder to call someone in. But it begins with confession.” So today, I confess. I have not followed Jesus well. This morning, I have stewed on some hate and called my brother “Raca” (lit., worthless, fig., asshole). I have already violated the first of Jesus five amendments to the Decalogue. 

Lord, have mercy. Don’t fix me. But please save me.

Religious Particularity & the Cultural Canopy - Beyond Multiculturalism - David Goa w/ Brad Jersak

The words of Jesus Christ, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes unto the Father except by me” frame the backdrop for this conversation on particularity and universals.

The Jewish patrimony accents the gift of particularity. Christianity, like Islam and Buddhism, treasures its revelation and sees its significance for all times and places, a “universal” insight.

In modern liberal democratic societies the particularity of cultural gifts and the civil striving for universal rights and responsibilities is often confused and entangled.

David Goa and Brad Jerak, in conversation, walk into the thickness of religious particularity and think about the importance of the civil canopy of “universals.” The danger of absolutes and the importance of holding with care our ultimate concerns are tempered with and through friendship.   

“YOU ARE GODS” – A COIN FROM HART’S TREASURY – Reflection by Bradley Jersak

 David Bentley Hart, YOU ARE GODS: On Nature and Supernature 
(Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2022) – Reflection by Bradley Jersak

Based solely on repetition in every one of David Bentley Hart’s books, articles, lectures, and podcasts, his most scathing condemnation of any opposing argument is that it’s incoherent—i.e., confusing, incomprehensible. Given this savant’s comprehensive genius for language, philosophy, theology, history, mythology, literature, music, and baseball (a shortlist of his expertise), it’s not inexcusable if he seems to be the offender-in-chief of incoherence. But bear with me (and him)…  

HART’S UNINTELLIGIBLE PATOIS

In his efforts to reteach peons the English language, Hart’s penchant for using precise, inaccessible, archaic, and invented vocabulary can seem self-defeating, if not self-indulgent. That’s aside from the dozens(?) of foreign languages he can use.

But I want to learn from him, so I keep track of words and ideas he thinks I should know. I’m reading You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature right now. I’ve recorded the following terms for further study since I could only guess what they meant and wouldn’t dare define, much less use in polite company. Please, repeat them aloud:

These are just from the Introduction and Chapter 1: dessicating, repristinated, recrudescence, fustian, theogonic, contrapuntal, fugal, pleonasm, patiency, goetic, leporine/leporinity, rapitude, ship of Theseus conundrum, mereological, deictic, patois, asperous, necrophile, adventitious, velleity, cyclophoria, inchoate, conduced, irrefrangible, aetiological, proleptic, incommiscible, quiddity.

Even my spell-checker was bewildered by seven in the list! But so what? My omniscient cell phone is within arm’s reach. Using a dictionary isn’t just time-consuming; it’s educational—learn or do not! If discovering new words and new ideas is not your thing, Hart’s not your guy and theology is not your passion. Far better to bypass this gibberish about God and get right to talking directly to God. And please pray for us while you’re there.  

HART’S INCOHERENT OPPONENTS

Hart’s assaults on opponents’ ideas and reasoning can also feel convoluted, but from my vantage point, that’s largely because he’s right—whether their logic is incoherent or morally repugnant (Hart’s other big slam). His main targets, Calvin/Calvinism and the Manualist or Two-Tier Thomism are a case in point.

I’m not so sure the sane man is to blame when diagnosing a disorder. Sometimes the doctor must enter the fantasy world of his patients to beckon them out. Remember how the prisoners in Plato’s cave of delusion ridiculed their newly freed companion when, compelled by love, he returned from the sunlight back into their world with good news. He was judged as deluded and disoriented, when really,… well, you get it.    

HART’S INCOMPREHENSIBLE TOPICS

But aside from their disagreements, Hart and his interlocutors are debating topics that can seem obscure, irrelevant, and a bit silly all on their own. Eye-rolling is not always out of order. Yet Hart’s concerns may also have pastoral consequences, especially where the gospel has been perverted by errors (e.g., eternal conscious torment, limited atonement, original sin) and the flock suffers spiritual abuse under toxic teaching. So, what he does kind of matters, if indirectly, even to the casual ‘believer.’

That’s where we rely on the patient souls who will wrestle through his words, debates, and topics (and even enjoy it) to bring back a sample coin from his treasury. Distilling Hart can be as hard as understanding him, and when one presumes to interpret him, the odds of misrepresenting him are high. Nevertheless, I occasionally dare to give it a go because he’s worth it and so are those who can’t read him. I can bear the guilt of saying it wrong. Or better, I’m happy to offer an imperfect reflection that makes sense to me.

For today, I’ll share just one coin, but it’s good and important. I hope readers find it helpful. If so, credit to Hart. If not, my bad.

ON “FINAL CAUSE”  

 In You Are Gods, David Bentley Hart advances five premises (p. xvii), the first of which reads,

“The sole sufficient natural end of all spiritual creatures is the supernatural, and grace is nothing but the necessary liberation of all creatures for their natural ends.”

The essays in his book expand on this thesis, which, once you see it, shouldn’t be unseen.

To begin with, let’s take a moment to learn about “final cause.” The Greek philosopher Aristotle thought about different ways we talk about “cause.” He named four types of cause in our world:

• Material cause: that from which something is made. The material cause of a wooden chair is the tree from which it is crafted.

• Efficient Cause: the agent that interacts with the object to change it. The efficient cause of the chair is the carpenter, who makes the chair what it becomes.

• Formal Cause: the essence or form of a particular object that makes it what it is. This would be like a blueprint or design that makes a chair a chair instead of a table.

• Final Cause: the ultimate end (telos) or purpose of the object, what the object is made for. The final cause of a chair is to be something we sit on.

I want to focus on this fourth type of cause. The wonderful thing about “final cause” is that the end goal of a thing actually causes its creation. Chairs allow for sitting, they don’t create sitting. The desire to sit causes and creates the chair! That’s how the end can cause the beginning.

Now let’s take a living thing, like an acorn that grows into an oak tree. The final cause of the acorn is… the oak tree! That is, acorns are created to produce and become oak trees. And so oak trees cause acorns so that acorns grow to maturity as oaks. It’s like the ultimate purpose or end of a thing (the oak) is calling what it causes (the acorn) to become what it will finally be.        

Further, Aristotle taught that the ultimate purpose or telos of a thing (the oak) is already somehow internal to what it has caused (the acorn). That is, the properties of the oak tree are already there in that little acorn, intrinsic to it. We now know this to be true from DNA and genome studies. The longevity of an oak tree is already baked into the DNA of the acorn.

ON “NATURAL ENDS”

What Aristotle called the “final cause” is, therefore, also the “natural end” of that thing. The natural end of an acorn is the oak. The end is there in the beginning, so that acorns don’t magically become something else… they become what they were always to become by nature.

Now Hart turns to spiritual beings, such as people. What is your natural end as a spiritual being? To discover this our final cause, we look to the Scriptures. Paul says that we are being “transfigured from glory to glory into the image of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 3:18). Peter says that we are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). John says that when Jesus appears, “we shall be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2).

Paul called this transformation metamorphosis (transfiguration). The church fathers called it theosis, divinization, or deification. Their formula was, “God became human [Incarnation] so humanity could become divine [deification]… that’s right: in Christ, we are prospective “gods.” Hence Jesus striking claim that became Hart’s book title: “You are gods” (Jn. 10:34/Ps. 82:6).   

Shocking, yes, but here’s the math: Jesus is, by nature, the image of God (fully human, fully divine). You are, by nature, created in that image, and by grace, being transformed into that same image (fully humanized, fully divinized). And what you will become (your natural end) is intrinsic to who you are now. You are, in the words of Gary Best, naturally supernatural. Your “final cause” is calling you into this transformation, from acorn to oak, caterpillar to butterfly, natural to supernatural, because that is your natural end.

A NECESSARY LIBERATION

Now back to Hart’s premise:

 “The sole sufficient natural end of all spiritual creatures is the supernatural, and grace is nothing but the necessary liberation of all creatures for their natural ends.”

If I understand him, Hart is saying that as a spiritual creature, your natural end can be nothing less than supernatural. That by necessity, grace will free all creatures, all people, you and me to our natural ends, without fail. In fact, in premise 3, he says,

“No spiritual creature could fail to achieve its naturally supernatural end unless God himself were the direct moral cause of evil in that creature, which is impossible. Conversely, God [since God is good] saves creatures by removing… impediments to their union with him.”

In other words, your transformation from acorn to oak cannot not happen in a universe where God is good and not evil, because saving grace removes every impediment to that end. A God that could, but would not, so free us, would be immoral and not a savior at all.

Note too that Hart further specifies our natural end and final cause: the final cause of our supernatural end is union with God. Union with God inexorably draws humanity (and all creation) to its telos (end) where “God is all and in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). And that ultimate union is, again, intrinsic to our humanity because God has already united Godself to humanity in Jesus Christ—(1) from the creation of the cosmos, (2) in the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, and (3) through his Passion and resurrection.

See for example Colossians 1 (the italicized all and everything are my emphasis):

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; allthings have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

THE HUMANITY OF GOD

Now with the words of Jesus, his apostles, and the church fathers behind him, Hart’s radical 4^th premise may resonate:

“God became human so that humans should become God [a la Athanasius]. Only the God who is always already human can become human. Only a humanity that is always already divine can become God.”

Wait, what? I was ready for the first and third elements of this premise. If our natural end (divinization) is intrinsic to humanity, then it follows that something divine already appears in us now in seed form. Hart identifies that seed as our natural desire for the Transcendent Good (even when our desires are obviously disordered). He argues that we cannot have a natural desire for transcendence unless that desire is internal to who we are—spiritual beings whose first cause is our supernatural, divinized end.

But what does Hart mean by saying “Only the God who is always already human can become human?” Very odd, right?

Yet maybe no more odd than John calling Jesus Christ “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).

The key here is the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, the God-man—in eternity and in time. Where “through the Passion, Jesus Christ, as man, becomes that which, as God, he always is” (Fr. John Behr). As Behr teaches it, it’s not that there was an eternal "pre-incarnate Word" who was not human, then later became human. Rather, we must always start with the One Lord Jesus Christ, human and divine, crucified and risen, and then we say, “This One, the cruciform Lamb, is the eternal Word and Son of God, Creator of all things, whose image was the pattern for humanity, and in whose image, humanity is becoming.”

Why? Because eternity is not “before” anything. Eternity is not on some “before and then later” everlasting timeline. Eternity is timeless and every point in time is immediately present to the eternal now.

When Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” who is talking? The human God who descends from above time, from eternity, from outside of time. And eternity is forever indivisibly and directly united with time through the Cross. On this, see John Behr, The Mystery of Christ.

So in Hart, perhaps the humanity of God “is already” as for Behr, “As God, he always is,” as for Jesus, “Before Abraham, I AM.” The grammatical clue is the present tense of eternity (as in "Christ IS risen), the union of the eternal God to his human life in space and time, so that God always IS the human Lamb slain from both the foundations of the cosmos and outside Jerusalem, at once.

This is a Mystery. Don’t worry. Be at peace. If I sound incoherent, be gracious. I’ve been reading David Bentley Hart. We’d covet your prayers.