Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Death Penalty for False Prophecy Brad Jersak

JESUS CHRIST ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

I believe that when Jesus Christ said, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her” (John 8:7), he forever put to rest the question of the death penalty. This was his final verdict on the matter. Sadly, those who claim Christ as Lord are now statistically most in support of capital punishment. In fact, it’s odd that those who take the strongest stand on behalf of the unborn are, ironically, most reticent to abandon state-sponsored killing. That suggests to me that the rhetoric is less about saving lives than it is about partisan-identity.

Here’s what we know about God through the revelation of Jesus: our Abba is utterly opposed to the reign of death and his disciples will not participate in death-dealing of any kind. Until Christianity got in bed with Empire, the church heard these words of Christ as a mandate for all believers: “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

THE HOLY FUNCTION OF THE DEATH PENALTY

What then do we make of the Torah’s use of the death penalty? Did God issue those commands? Were they accommodations to ancient near eastern culture? Was that simply a projection of humanity’s default violence? Or part of the old covenant now abolished with the capital murder of Christ? These are complex questions worthy of much study and debate. No matter how we might finally answer them, I want to raise just one factor for thought.

I would propose that the pedagogical intent of the Law was to establish the measure of eye-for-an-eye justice. This has some implications, some of which may surprise readers:

• The Law sought to take vengeance out of the hands of the victim or vigilante and made justice the responsibility of the community.
• The Law sought to end cycles of escalation and retribution with a penalty proportionate to the crime.

So far, we’re still in the realm of the obvious. But as a rabbi friend of Lazar Puhalo pointed out, “If we Jews had taken the Law literally, eventually, the last surviving Jew would have had to stone himself to death.” The aphorism is humorous but also powerful in its implications:

• The Law established the measure of the seriousness of the sin. This is not the same as meting out the penalty for that sin.
• The Law established the weight of leverage behind the call to the true and higher justice of repentance and reconciliation.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT – REBELLIOUS CHILDREN

Let’s begin with an example of a rebellious child. In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the law says that a wayward son or daughter must be put to death. Seriously? Did they really expect parents to bring their children in to be stoned? No. That wasn’t the point.

The point was that the death penalty showed the children that the sin of rebellion is equivalent to death in its seriousness. Rebellion inevitably, ultimately costs lives. So, there we have the measure or gravity of rebellion. Was the point of that law now to mete out death to the child? No. Rather, by laying out such a serious penalty for the crime, the rebellious teen, the adulterer, or the murderer would be motivated to enter a thorough process of repentance and reconciliation. Instead of seeing the law as retributive justice to be exacted, it became the negotiating chip for restoration in families, between neighbours, and across communities.

EXECUTING FALSE PROPHETS

Now a word about those false prophets. You know who I mean, right? In recent context, we witnessed public ministers who presumed to deliver political prophecies prescribing partisan policies and people, issued divine threats, cursed those who voted for the other faction’s candidate, incited violence, proclaimed victory “in Jesus’ name,” and even now continue to deny that they were mistaken or lying. A very rare few have become repentant, grieving over their spiritual casualties, and owning their responsibility for creating fanatics. In God’s wisdom, some are even valued friends of mine for whom I feel compassion and can offer redemption.

Now given my personal commitment to the nonviolence of the Jesus Way and my opposition to the death penalty, you might find my proposal shocking.

It’s time to reinstate the death penalty for false prophets.

Yes, you heard me. And yes, my own missteps would surely put me in their company.

I am NOT saying that anyone should pick up stones to execute them.

Rather, I am urgently reminding those who purport to be prophets that these types of errors are not just a little “oops” that we play around with apart from consequences. Prophetic delusions and deceptions cost lives. Literally. Those lost lives have names: Brian D. Sicknick, Ashli Babbitt, Benjamin Philips, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, Howard Liebengood, and Jeffrey Smith. Today these folks are dead, in great part through the blasphemies of defiant prophets who gave spiritual sanction to the capitol siege. The biblical sentence for that is death.

Deuteronomy 13 ¹ “If a prophet or someone who has dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, ² and that sign or wonder he has promised you comes about, but he says, ‘Let us follow other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us worship them,’ ³ do not listen to that prophet’s words or to that dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. ⁴ You must follow the Lord your God and fear Him. You must keep His commands and listen to His voice; you must worship Him and remain faithful to Him. ⁵ That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he has urged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the place of slavery, to turn you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to walk. You must purge the evil from you.

THE LIFE-GIVER’S INVITATION

In light of the sobriety of such texts, we are grateful that God is a life-giver and not a death-dealer, and we would hope those who follow Jesus Christ emulate that commitment. We worship the Redeemer, not an executioner. But the fact that God has no intention whatsoever of taking the life of even one of the false prophets does not negate the measure of severity that the Law assigns their capital crimes.

That God applies amazing grace to sin rather than striking down the sinner does not at all diminish the seriousness of the sin. Rather, the Law is a tutor that illuminates the unfathomable grace already granted, ironically, through the unjust execution of Christ. And it reveals the corresponding depth of honesty, humility, repentance, and willingness to make amends appropriate to the offender. Irrespective of the world system’s retributive ideologies, Christ always, always opens a path to redemption and forgiveness. That gospel is powerful to generate our joyous response. But woe to those who receive the invitation and then double down in their insolence. Far better to take hold of the good news, and here it is:    

 “For we will surely die and become like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away a life; but He devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him” (2 Samuel 14:14).

So, once again, I invite those who prophesied falsely, whether knowingly or in ignorance, in good faith or in bad, to own their sin, recognize its seriousness, acknowledge due judgment, and then ask for the mercy already granted. Rather than putting prophets to death, these ‘prophets’ are to put to death the practices that set stumbling stones and snares in their disciples’ path. For some, it is already too late to abandon the lemming run to self-destruction. But to those for whom the wages of sin have not been paid, I implore you: open your hands to grace and start the trek home. I’ll meet you on the way.

Q&R: How Naive Violence Fantasies Endanger Your Family - Brad Jersak

QUESTION

Recently, I had been reading David W. Bercot's insightful book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. 

 

Our backstory: My spouse and I used to be "Preppers" and besides food, water, and other emergency supplies, we and all of our friends stocked up on guns and ammo. We claimed we were not doing it out of fear but to be wise and to have enough to share with others. In the past several years, I now see it as future-tripping and religious rationalization.

 

Apparently, the attitude among many conservative "Christians" is our need to fight for the right to bear arms and to be ready to defend property, self, or in these times, fight in a revolution.

 

For several years, I have been coming to terms with loving and blessing and forgiving my enemies. But a few chapters in Bercot's book, he shows via the scriptures that Jesus and Paul were nonresistant and never retaliatory. They never took up the sword or defended themselves verbally or physically.

 

My heart can believe Jesus functioning like that but we are having a hard time picturing ourselves acting without aggression if we found someone breaking into our home or doing some evil act against us. Any thoughts you care to share?

RESPONSE

Great question. There are a few ways to think about this.

 

I'll let Brian Zahnd address it briefly via a blog post. We think about this together a lot. https://brianzahnd.com/2014/07/hitler-invaded-house/

 

I would also recommend two other resources that show how preparing for violence is the real naive idealism versus Jesus' instructions, which are actually the higher realism:

 

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1tm7j16

 

John Howard Yoder, What Would You Do? - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12887640

 

I also respond to the question here: https://www.ptm.org/q-r-christ-in-violent-world-brad-jersak

 

What I mean by the naivety of violence versus the realism of non-violence is this:

Au-Delà des Excuses à la Va-Vite, et de L'atténuation de la Culpabilité - Bradley Jersak

AU-DELÀ DES EXCUSES À LA VA-VITE, ET DE L'ATTÉNUATION DE LA CULPABILITÉ

BRADLEY JERSAK
Trans. Andre Lefebvre

Dire que "je suis désolé" peut être une bonne chose, et même être nécessaire.

Mais comme le dit mon ami Paul Young, qui a lui-même survécu à des abus en série dans l'enfance, "Dire qu'on est désolé peut parfois dériver et emprunter des voies nuisibles".

Je trouve utile l'approche de l'amende honorable (réparation) adoptée par les programmes anonymes (12 étapes), et j'ai remarqué qu'ils font une distinction entre présenter des excuses, et faire amende honorable :

"Considérez les amendes honorables comme des actions qui démontrent votre nouveau mode de vie [...] alors que les excuses ne sont essentiellement que des paroles. Lorsque vous faites amende honorable, vous reconnaissez et alignez vos valeurs avec vos actions en admettant vos erreurs et en vivant selon vos principes."

L'approche par amende honorable, adoptée par les communautés de rétablissement, permet d'éviter certains pièges courants dans lesquels j'ai moi-même trébuché. Parmi ces pièges, j'ai fait l'expérience des erreurs dommageables suivantes lorsque j'ai présenté des excuses :

1. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme un moyen de manipuler les sentiments des gens à mon égard.
2. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme une expression d'apitoiement sur soi.
3. Lorsque j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour contrôler la conversation et l'issue de tensions ou de conflits.
4. Quand j'ai utilisé "désolé" pour essayer d'obtenir un "désolé" en retour de l'autre.
5. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour essayer d'obtenir le pardon de ceux qui sont en colère contre moi.
6. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" pour éviter l'examen de conscience, le repentir ou le changement réel.
7. Quand j'ai utilisé le mot "désolé" comme un mécanisme de défense ou un bouclier de déni.

Je pourrais continuer. Ce ne sont que sept des erreurs que j'ai commises. Ce sont des erreurs sociales que les colons du Canada et des États-Unis continuent de commettre avec les nations indigènes et ceux réduits en esclavage par les colons, surtout dans nos célébrations nationales du 1er et du 4 juillet, lorsque notre gratitude fait abstraction du coût payé par ceux pour qui notre arrivée est devenue si tragique.

Je dois/nous devons apprendre à relier le mot "désolé" avec le mot "affliction" ... ainsi, je reconnais que j'ai/nous sommes responsables d'avoir causé une profonde détresse, et je deviens/nous devenons disposés à supporter et à ressentir du chagrin pour nos actions, et nous voulons sincèrement réparer les choses.

Que pourraient provoquer mes amendes honorables quand les torts que j'ai/nous avons causés ne peuvent pas être facilement réparés, et risquent même de ne pas être pardonnés par ceux que j'ai offensés? Au lieu d'élaborer un déni, une attitude défensive et des fausses excuses, je peux/nous pouvons commencer par assumer ma/notre propre responsabilité et apprendre à vivre mes/nos amendes honorables.

À quoi pourrait ressembler le fait de vivre nos amendes honorables dans le cas des révélations de 2021 sur les tombes non identifiées des enfants autochtones, qui ont souffert des horreurs dans des pensionnats administrés par l'État et le clergé? Voici une clé pour vivre nos amendes honorables: nous ne décidons pas tout simplement des sacrifices qui ont un sens pour nous. Nous devons demander à ceux qui ont subi ces préjudices de décider cela et de nous en informer.

Une *véritable* réconciliation ne peut pas consister "d'excuses platoniques", sinon cela devient une autre offense que les colons imposent AUX peuples des Premières nations pour masquer leur propre culpabilité et manipuler les résultats. Une réconciliation ne peut certainement pas éviter de faire face à la vérité (et à la colère et au chagrin) du traumatisme générationnel des survivants. Et il ne faudrait surtout pas que ce soit un autre processus que nous "colonisons" juste pour rétablir le statu quo.

Nous pourrions au moins faire une prise de conscience: le Centre national pour la vérité et la réconciliation a été créé au Canada. Extrait de leur site:

Le CNVR sensibilise les Canadiennes et les Canadiens sur les profondes injustices infligées aux Premières Nations, aux Inuits et à la Nation métisse lors du retrait forcé des enfants de leur famille pour les placer dans les pensionnats indiens, ainsi que sur les mauvais traitements généralisés subis dans ces pensionnats.

Nous préservons la mémoire de ces violations des droits de la personne et encourageons la poursuite de la recherche et des apprentissages sur les séquelles des pensionnats indiens. Notre but consiste à honorer les survivantes et les survivants et à favoriser la réconciliation et la guérison en nous appuyant sur la divulgation de la vérité.

Le Centre national pour la vérité et la réconciliation (CNVR) est chapeauté par un Cercle de gouvernance. Le Cercle est formé de survivantes, de survivants et de représentantes et représentants de l’Université du Manitoba et d’autres partenaires. La majorité des membres du Cercle de gouvernance font partie des Premières Nations ou sont Inuits ou Métis.

Le Cercle de gouvernance est guidé par un Cercle des survivants, ainsi que par des aînés et des gardiens du savoir.

La mise en place de ces structures a été essentielle pour veiller à ce que les survivantes, les survivants et les partenaires se trouvent toujours au cœur même du CNVR et pour que le CNVR honore et fasse respecter le droit et les protocoles autochtones.

~ Eugene Arcand, No 781, survivant des pensionnats et membre du Cercle des survivants, Nation crie de Muskeg Lake.

En tant qu'immigrant canadien de troisième génération, je crois qu'il est à tout le moins de ma responsabilité d'explorer les 94 appels à l'action lancés et gérés par le CNVR... et au lieu d'un moment de silence une fois par an, je peux parcourir ces appels à l'action et m'informer ensuite de nos progrès auprès de mon député provincial et de mon député fédéral. Je peux également investir du temps à visiter ces liens dans le cadre de ma contribution à faire amende honorable, cherchant à comprendre, et apprenant à mieux écouter.

• Rapports et conclusions de la CVR
• En savoir plus sur le NCTR
• Explorez nos collections sur la page d'accueil du NCTR
• Explorez nos expositions
• Trouvez des ressources pour les étudiants et les éducateurs

"Désolé" ne dit pas vraiment grand-chose. Mais je le suis, désolé. Aujourd'hui, je suis présent à la tristesse des autres.

Je reconnais avec gratitude que je vis sur le territoire traditionnel et non cédé du peuple Stó:lō.

What Is GOD Like? Response to critics from a white children's author - Brad Jersak

What Is God Like? 

story by Rachel Held Evans and Matthew Paul Turner

illustrated by Ying Hui Tan

 

My response to this children's book is simple:

Thank you. Buy it for the children in your life.

 

My response to certain critics:

Some critics of this book have made a BIG deal of how inappropriate it is for white children's authors to illustrate their books with BIPOC children. Something about co-opting, something about exploitation, something about having no right to appropriate BIPOC characters for a book by white people.

As a white children's author, I employed an illustrator who generated three characters for my first book, Children, Can You Hear Me? Jesus ended up looking too much like me, and the children represented two bullied children--one because of weight shaming and the other for her poverty. The complaint I heard was that the characters were white. The people and the environment looked like they came from the neighborhood where my illustrator lives. My critics were right. I should have asked for more racial diversity.

I agree. It is very expensive for a self-published author to illustrate a book over again from scratch, but I was willing to do it. My plan was to have a middle-eastern brown Jesus, a rural African boy, and an Asian girl from inner-city Bangkok. But I ran into several roadblocks:

First, while in China and in Thailand, I was told by Christian nationals that if the book included a Black child, I should not expect to sell it to Asians. The racism I encountered was overt and presented as a factual reality to consider. I hope that does not represent a broad consensus, but it was the message I heard repeatedly. Then, when a Mongolian publisher licensed the book, I asked if we could hire a Mongolian artist to redo the illustrations appropriate to their people and culture. My rep. presented it to the Mongolians, who declined. They loved the illustrations and asked if they could distribute it 'as is.' I was disappointed but that was their preference. Okay.

Then, a representative from Africa approached me and asked if I'd consider employing an African artist to recreate the illustrations for their context. I was keen to do it, but when the sample artwork came back, the Jesus character was impossible to use. No smile. No life in his eyes. It communicated everything that screamed 'aloof and non-relational.' I was reminded just how good my illustrator, Ken Save, was at creating living characters, full of expression, whose emotional vividness transcended color. 

In the end, I decided I'd just let it go and create a new book, titled Jesus Showed Us. My illustrator, Shari-Ann Vis, used Eastern and Ethiopian Orthodox icons as models with a Jewish-brown Jesus and a more racially and ethnically diverse set of characters. Apparently, it resonates. But is that allowed?  

Some say no. With the publication of What Is God Like? the critics are decrying white authors using BIPOC characters. So here's the double bind:

1. White children's authors should not use white characters.
2. White children's authors should not use BIPOC characters.  

Conclusion? White people should not author children's books. Or is there some third option? 

I presented this problem to a BIPOC critic who I relate to on Instagram. When I presented the double-bind they were promoting and asked for a third way, they kindly suggested that if white authors intend to create children's books that include BIPOC characters, they should create the book in collaboration with a person of color. In other words, white people should not produce children's books unless they have BIPOC collaborator.

Some might object to this idea. I do not. I love collaboration and believe that working together with those who don't look like me greatly improves the outcome. I would not see such a plan as a limitation at all. The fact that my first attempts to do so failed doesn't exhaust the possibilities. I'm thrilled to take that route.  

Ying Hui Tan

Here's the thing: What Is GOD Like did exactly that! The author(s) DID collaborate with a Malaysian illustrator, Ying Hui Tan, who brilliantly captured diversity in terms race, culture, and ability. The characters include black, brown, and white children (including a character in a wheelchair). So my question is whether Tan's ethnicity doesn't count somehow, or whether illustration doesn't suffice as collaboration. Or what? Now there's the question as to whether Asians count as people of colour or not. Depends who you ask. Or when it's convenient. I'm of the persuasion that the BIPOC brand is inclusive of brown people. Let me know who wins that debate. 

At some point, one wonders what's really going on. In the end, I've learned that listening to BIPOC voices for the last word serves me well, and when they don't agree with each other, I'm best off looking to those I already trust. In this case, I defer to Austin Channing Brown, author of the bestselling book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Here was her generous assessment of What Is God Like?   

“This is how I want my child to be introduced to the concept of God. This is the divine presence I want my child to explore. This is the book I need for him, and it’s the one I need for me. Cuz sometimes I need to remember what God is like too."

 

Zacheus Makes Amends - Brad Jersak

Luke 19  Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² And behold, a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. ³ Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and he was unable due to the crowd, because he was short in stature. ⁴ So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Him, because He was about to pass through that way. ⁵ And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him,

“Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 

⁶ And he hurried and came down, and received Him, rejoicing. ⁷ When the people saw this, they all began to complain, saying,

“He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner!”

⁸ But Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord,

“Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I am giving to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I am giving back four times as much.” 

⁹ And Jesus said to him,

“Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Zaccheus’ story provides an excellent demonstration of how grace transforms the heart and life of a lost and alienated human being. The tax collector and the Shepherd engage in a mutual act of hospitality described in Revelation 3:20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. When anyone who hears my voice opens the door, I will enter and have supper with them, and they with me.” So, it was for Zaccheus. God’s grace filled his deepest longing and out of Zaccheus’ newfound sense of belonging, he was “saved”—from alienation to communion. Christ in his home, Christ in his heart—the living connection that changes us.

In Zaccheus’ case, the natural overflow of his encounter with Jesus resulted in a tangible response. He became a willing participant in his freedom and salvation, prompted by the Spirit to make amends. In 12-step recovery, making amends refers to personally addressing issues with people who have been harmed by our behavior or our treatment of them. Zaccheus had done great harm in his community. His complicity with Rome as a collections agent for the empire was a great betrayal of his own people. Indeed, he was their enemy in ways that Rome could not be.

The second kind of enemy comprises those persons who, by their activities, make it difficult for the group to live without shame and humiliation. It does not require much imagination to assume that to the sensitive son of Israel, the taxgatherers were in that class. It was they who became the grasping hand of Roman authority, filching from Israel the taxes which helped to keep alive the oppression of the gentile ruler. They were Israelites who understood the psychology of the people, and therefore were always able to function with the kind of spiritual ruthlessness that would have been impossible for those who did not know the people intimately. They were despised; they were outcasts, because from the inside they had unlocked the door to the enemy. The situation was all the more difficult to bear because the tax collectors tended to be prosperous in contrast with the rest of the people. To be required to love such a person was the final insult. How could such a demand be made? One did not even associate with such creatures. To be seen in their company meant a complete loss of status and respect in the community. The taxgatherer had no soul; he had long since lost it. When Jesus became a friend to the tax collectors and secured one as his intimate companion, it was a spiritual triumph of such staggering proportions that after nineteen hundred years it defies rational explanation. (Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 83).

As alarming as Jesus’ overture of friendship would have been to his disciples, his opponents, and to Zaccheus’ victims, no one was as staggered at the taxman himself. As Paul would say, “The kindness of God leads to repentance”—defined not as self-loathing or as a mere change of mind, but a reorientation of a life. Conversion from self-centeredness to the real-life expression of other-centered love. And this is where Zaccheus’ amends (and ours) come in. Zaccheus’ amends were substantial. Since he lays them out before Jesus, let’s call his intentions a proposal.

• First, he assesses his wealth in relation to the poverty he been complicit in creating. He decides to make amends to his community by giving half of his possessions to the poor.

This reminds me of a friend who made a habit of stealing from the church where she volunteered in order to pilfer money for her addiction. Years later, she needed to make amends to the church, not because they needed her money or would repay individual donors, but as a way to participate in her grace-transformation. She first apologized to someone in authority, then they worked out a plan for her to make restitution, whether by service or repayment.

• Second, with what remained of his wealth, Zaccheus identified specific people who he had extorted. He did not simply say, “Sorry, folks. I really messed up. But I’ve cleared it up with Jesus and I’m forgiven now. So, we’re all good now, right?” Rather, he actually calculated how much he had squeezed from them, repays them, and adds 400% interest. Why so much?

I can think of two reasons. First, Zaccheus sees that the harm he caused exceeds the cash he’d taken. The cost of his sin to those he’d robbed had compounded. What had they lost in potential income, time lost, additional hardships, and emotional impact? Real reparations take the toll to the whole person and their family into account. Rarely do we do that outside of civil lawsuits, but Zaccheus did so without being sued. Why? This speaks to our second reason for his generosity. The law may demand proportional amends: eye-for-an-eye, dollar-for-a dollar. But grace motivates us to pay forward the generosity we’ve received. So Zaccheus calculous went beyond the harm he had caused to the “how much more” grace he had received. The 400% was measured by the superabundant mercies we experienced. Principles

• An amends demonstrates that we own what we have done. No blaming. No sidestepping. Yes, there are reasons for our misdeeds, but when these are shared in an amends, they come across as excuses and justifications. Zaccheus names his sin: extortion. NOT “I was just doing my job” or “The Romans made me do it.” Instead, “I did this. I did it to you. That was wrong.” Amends are strictly about cleaning up my side of the street, even if those we wronged have also wronged us.
• An amends demonstrates that we recognize the harm we have caused. It should also include listening to those we’ve harmed to hear what they experienced. Zaccheus may have known that he extorted someone and impacted their financial stability. But he might need to hear how his actions also humiliated them, hardship to their family, and introduced fear and hatred into their hearts.
• Amends are NOT about extracting forgiveness from the other so we can feel better. Those we hurt may be years away from the healing they need to release us, if ever. Those we harm have experienced broken trust that may or may not ever be restored. Our amends need to be a unilateral expression of sorrow for the harm we caused, not contingent on any response, including forgiveness or reconciliation. We may hope for that, but must not use our amends with those expectations. Otherwise, we’re still guilty of manipulation.

This is why it’s good to submit our amends as a proposal to a mentor or sponsor before delivering them. When I make amends, I run it by my sponsor first to examine it carefully for ways I might justify, minimize, or manipulate. Just this morning I heard a lawmaker who was expected to apologize for a public racist slur directed at a colleague. It was horrid. There was blame-shifting, self-justifying, both sides-ism, and the horrid phrase, “IF I offended anyone…” He needed a course in Amends 101 and a chat with Zaccheus.

• Finally, amends are lived, not only spoken. Sometimes “sorry” doesn’t help. And even a cheque just seems like payoff. Maybe you’ve fallen a thousand times and any amends will lack credibility. No matter. As Zaccheus continues to be faithful, perhaps his sincerity will prove itself. Luke must have thought so.

So beyond specific words and acts of restitution, repentance and amends are a new way to live every day. While we may make direct amends with words, those events happen inside a new life empowered by grace and a grateful response to God’s mercy. Zaccheus’ amends were a real demonstration of the inner change that was occurring—of the new man he was becoming. Summary statement: Zaccheus’ story challenges us to undergo the impact of the gospel in our lives. Salvation is far more than a personal feel-good event. Jesus invites us to living communion that generates radical transformation. In this case, it includes courageously and joyfully making and living our amends.  

The Rhetoric of Unworthiness, the Wounds of Shame - Bradley Jersak

Question:

I am a seeker investigating the Eastern Orthodox faith. My background includes membership of a very conservative and legalistic Protestant church that advocated penal substitutionary atonement, so I am encouraged by what I find in the Orthodox tradition. The theology seems so beautiful, but I am having difficulty understanding something in the Divine Liturgies of Saint Chrysostom and Saint Basil.

In the Prayer of the Cherubic Hymn, we find verses that say:

• … No one bound by carnal desires and pleasures is worthy to approach, draw near, or minister to You, the King of Glory. 
• … Your sinful and unprofitable servant, and cleanse my soul and heart of a wicked conscience. 

Before Holy Communion, we find a verse that says

• I believe and confess, Lord, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. 

I find healing in thinking of God as a loving Father, but the above stanzas make me question that understanding of God. Can you please point me in the right direction? 

During the Trisagion, there is a verse that says,

• You have granted us, Your humble and unworthy servants, to stand even at this hour before the glory of Your holy Altar of sacrifice and to offer to You due worship and praise.

If we are children of a loving Father, then how is that compatible with thinking of ourselves as unworthy servants?

Finally, in the liturgy of Saint Basil there is a verse in the Trisagion Hymn that reads

• Your lowly and unworthy servants, 

I find that when I think of myself as lowly and unworthy, thoughts of shame come to mind. Since Christianity is about healing, this shows that I might not be understanding this verse correctly.

Response:

What a good and (ahem) worthy question. Truly worth thinking through. 

The Rhetoric of Unworthiness

As I think about the rhetoric of unworthiness, I am reminded not only of the Divine Liturgy, but of our Scriptures, and how even Jesus’ words have been misused as bludgeons. The following points are important to consider. I offer them for your consideration:

And Justice for All - the Work and Works of Wayne Northey - by Brad Jersak

Wayne Northey is among Canada's foremost activists and authors in the fields of restorative justice, prison reform, and international peacemaking. I first met Wayne in the early nineties when he was preparing me for an MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) observers trip to Haiti and Jamaica. His orientation to issues of Western political, economic, and military interference in Central and South America was a much-needed wake-up call for those who, like me, were raised on the "noble lie" of John Wayne world-police colonialism. 

Wayne's work included a long stint with M2W2, a ministry that creates one-on-one connections between incarcerated prisoners and caring folks on the outside. It's just one example of where he faithfully put his word to flesh on the ground, even while also continuing to do the historical and theoretical research required to bring a wise word to practitioners.

I speak in the past tense above, not because Wayne has departed, but because in his retirement (so-called), his focus has shifted to his written works. In addition to regular blog editorials and a magnificent novel, Chrysalis Crucible, Wayne is rolling out a substantive multi-volume series, Justice that Transforms, his collected and ongoing works specific to Restorative Justice. 

Wayne has regularly contributed to the Clarion Journal since its inception in 2003 but now also hosts his own blog at https://waynenorthey.com/category/blog/. Truth be told, I (Brad) cannot keep up with the opportunity to repost that Wayne offers, but we do our best to drive traffic to his powerful site. As an unwavering conscience, he can't be cubbyholed anywhere on the culture wars spectrum, whether politically or ideologically. This means on any given week, he could be holding feet from the left or right to the fire. Last week, he had both Donald Trump and Joe Biden in his sights, offering fact-checked examples of each leader's engagement in deception and violence across the globe. After all, Wayne is non-partisan in his revulsion over drone warfare--he doesn't care if a bomb is painted red or blue, or fired by an elephant or a donkey. And he says so.

To play catch-up, the following are direct links to some of his recent pieces, often editorial responses to the work of other journalists, excellent book reviews, and a lot of cross-referenced clicks for those who are ready for the deep dive. Enjoy:

Joe Biden’s War Powers: An examination of the president’s 50-year record on U.S. militarism, the CIA, and executive power.

Empire Politician: A Half-Century of Joe Biden’s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA.

Prolonged solitary confinement is torture. It’s time for all states to ban it.

Almost Everything Biden Said About Ending the Afghanistan War Was a Lie.

Out of Sight / Out of Mind. 

Book Review of: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Massacre Rescinded

Saving the salmon and Beauty: why the Gitanyow are creating a new Indigenous Protected Area; why Beauty Will Save the World

What white Christian support for Trump reveals about systemic racism: Exit polls suggest a legacy of white supremacy is still dividing the country. 

Hundreds gather to protest 13-year-old’s killing following release of body cam footage.

Everyone Belongs to God: Discovering the Hidden Christ. 

"The Gospel According to Hermes" by Ron Dart, Bradley Jersak, et al

New Book Release: The Gospel According to Hermes
Intimations of Christianity in Greek Myth, Poetry and Philosophy

by Ron S. Dart and Bradley Jersak

with Simon Oliver, Wm. Paul Young, and Abp. Lazar Puhalo

AVAILABLE NOW!
CLICK here to order from Amazon.com
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CLICK here to order from Amazon.co.uk

Note: While we recognize and respect the ethical reasons why readers avoid purchasing through Amazon, but their KDP self-publishing wing has allowed independent authors (like me) and small publishing companies (like St. Macrina Press) to earn significantly higher royalties on small-run books.

Description

Tertullian famously asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

Perhaps the title of this work will raise the question, “What hath Hermes to do with Christ?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out, by way of comparison, contrast, illustration, and prefigurement. Hermes, herein, represents far more than a particular figure in Greek mythology. Hermes functions as a placeholder, symbolizing the legacy of ancient Greek myth, poetry, and philosophy—and also the layered hermeneutics that classical Greek education contributed to both Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Scriptures, and the development of their theology, doctrine, and ethics.

Despite the unfortunate but popular assumption of a Jewish-Greek dualism among many scholars since Adolf von Harnack, the stubborn and happy fact is that the New Testament itself already demonstrates a profound integration of the Hellenized Judaism established in Alexandria. The first Christian theologians were not contaminating some imaginary pure Jewish Christianity with Greek accretions.

Rather, our authors will propose and demonstrate the confluence of both great streams in the development of the New Testament Scriptures, patristic theology, and hermeneutics. This collection of essays is but a faint echo of Simone Weil’s formidable work, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, and is certainly inspired by her insights. 

Table of Contents

Preface: Bradley Jersak, “What hath Hermes to do with Christ?” / 7 

FROM HERMES TO PLATO 

1. Bradley Jersak, “Pushing Back: Greek Thinking vs. Jewish Thinking is a Dualistic Error” / 11 

2. Simon Oliver, “The Role of Plato in the Development of Christian Theology” / 25 

FROM HERMES TO JOHN 

3. Bradley Jersak, “Descensus: Hermes, Hades, and Christ” / 33 

4. Ron Dart, “Water to Wine, Johannine Hermeneutics, and the Alexandrian Tradition” (part 1) / 51 

5. Ron Dart, “Water to Wine, Johannine Hermeneutics, and the Alexandrian Tradition” (part 2) / 63 

6. Wm. Paul Young, “Fish Pi: Gospel of John (21) and Archimedes” (153)” / 75 

FROM HERMES TO THE PATRISTICS 

7. Ron Dart, “Heraclitus, Aeschylus, and the Jewish Zeus” / 85 

8. Ron Dart, “Augustine, the Inklings, Myth, and Hermes the Trickster” / 93 

9. Ron Dart, “Homerian Epic, Patristic Christian Tradition and Spiritual Formation” / 99 

10. Lazar Puhalo, “Nous: The Concord of Gnosis, Theoria, and Theosis” / 109 

FROM HERMES TO THE 20th CENTURY 

11. Ron Dart, “C.S. Lewis and Hermes: Greek Myth and Till We Have Faces” / 119 

12. Ron Dart, “Thomas Merton’s The Behavior of Titans – Sixty Year Review” / 127 

13. Ron Dart, “Owls, Hegel, Castalians, Classical Myths, and T.S. Eliot” / 134 

14. Bradley Jersak, “Pythagoras, Plato, and Christ: A Cruciform Cosmology of Consent” / 141 

BEYOND HERMES 

15. Ron Dart, “Servant Leadership in the Public Square: Four Markings” / 167 

Authors / 172 

Brad Jersak's "A More Christlike WORD" - Review by Joe Beach

What kind of book is the Bible? 
How should we read and interpret the Bible?
How should we tell the Bible’s story with our words and our lives?

 

Pre-order now on Amazon

These are the questions at the heart of this marvelous book by Dr. Brad Jersak. (A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way is now available for pre-order: CLICK HERE). 

The fancy word for the art and science of interpreting the Bible is Hermeneutics. For the first twenty years of my adult life, during and after college and seminary, I devoured everything I could get my hands on regarding the interpretation of Scripture, the doctrine of Scripture, the nature and authority of Scripture, you name it. It remains one of my life’s passions. One of the things I discovered early on is that there is indeed an art to it. Some people are good at it and some people aren’t – regardless of how much academic training they had obtained. I’m not saying that learning the basic principles of good Bible interpretation isn’t important. They are invaluable. I immersed myself in studying the importance of genre, context, figures of speech, progressive revelation, redemptive trajectory, translation theory, and the editing, collecting, and canonization of Scripture. I also studied the use of Scripture in the liturgy of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. But beyond all of that, there remains an art to it. I guess you could call it a mixture of intuitive insight, Holy Spirit-led common sense, and the guiding, protecting, guardrail-like presence of the interpretive community, both past, and present. Ultimately, we interpret the Bible together or not at all. Having said that, however, there’s one more essential element to this whole enterprise. There’s something more to reading the Bible well. And that something more is what Brad Jersak’s book discusses and discovers.

In the 1980s, Clark Pinnock wrote a book entitled, The Scripture Principle, which launched me on that lifelong quest I mentioned. In the last twenty years or so, I began to encounter a cascade of writers and thinkers who were helping me understand what I now consider to be the crucial ingredient in Biblical Interpretation: that of reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. I knew in my gut that this was the right path. I learned that Jesus is the best place to start and the best place to end. I was reminded that Jesus is God’s Word in the fullest and truest sense. I was reminded that the best way to read the prophets and the poets and the apostles was to read them as Jesus taught us to read them: as being about Jesus, as pointing to Jesus, as witnesses to Jesus, as leading up to Jesus. In other words, the best way to read God’s Holy Bible is with Jesus Christ by our side: reading the Bible in Jesus, through Jesus, from Jesus, to Jesus, centered in Jesus, and beginning with Jesus. I began to learn that it is folly to journey into the Old Testament (or the New Testament) without Jesus as my guide. I committed myself to never venture into the Bible ever again unaccompanied by Jesus.

IRPJ.org Presents: Keys to Interfaith Dialogue – Safi Kaskas, Brad Jersak, Andrew Klager

The “Biblification” of Scripture: Ups & Downs of Canonical Technology - Brad Jersak

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan is most popularly known for the slogan, “The medium is the message,” which was his call to be mindful of the implicit impacts that come with the adoption of any new technology. He suggested four questions (labeled “the tetrad of media effects”), which helps us see the ups and downs of any new medium:

1. What does the medium enhance?
2. What does the medium make obsolete?
3. What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
4. What does the medium reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes?

Today, technology advances so rapidly that whatever you can imagine is likely already in development or patented somewhere. The pace of our lives and social obligation to keep up puts mindfulness in the back seat. Speed-of-light communication has drawn us into our smartphones and the parallel universe of social media without sufficient attentiveness to McLuhan’s questions. “The Social Dilemma” (2020) was a wake-up call to the alarming levels of algorithmic manipulation and privacy invasion to which we’ve assented… but had little to no effect on our practices. The world system simply does allow me to be a Luddite.

Prior to the digital age of computers and the internet, the greatest technological breakthrough was surely Guttenberg’s printing press. With the printing press, in concert with the impulse for Scripture translation, came the mass production and distribution of the Bible in the language of the people. It’s easy enough to see how Gutenberg’s gift could enhance, make obsolete, retrieve, and subvert the practice of Bible reading (and even literacy) wherever the Good Book became available. I suppose much ink has been spilled on that question.

The Bible as Technology

What fascinates me is how the Bible itself became a technology that repackaged and reframed the Scriptures, with real effects on the message itself. Scripture has always come to us through delivery systems: oral and written, scrolls and codices, liturgies and lectionaries. These are, in themselves, technologies. How might the medium—the way we package and deliver the scriptures—affect or become the message itself?

Said another way, the Scriptures were reframed with new and sometimes problematic assumptions when they became “the Bible.” The Scriptures as read by the church in the context of worship vis-a-vis the Bible as a bound book on my bedstand may have the same content, but their different shape and use may render differing interpretations. This is especially true when a hyper-individual reads the Bible as a “flat book” (every page has equal authority) versus when the community reads a collection of Scriptures serving as witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ.[1]   

The Biblification of the Scriptures

Using McLuhan’s tetrad, consider:

1. How does the Bible medium enhance Scripture reading?

We could say that the Bible gathers together the Scriptures into a single collection that clarifies which books our Christian tradition considers inspired by the Spirit. We give that collection priority in terms of authority in our lives and churches. The Bible, seen as a holy book, is set apart from other sacred literature and communicates the uniqueness of our Scriptures. We come to see that we are not only in possession of a library of independent and disconnected booklets but that the many books have converged into a coherent, grand saga.

2. What does the Bible medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?

I’ve moved McLuhan’s third question up to point out a corollary. Having the Bible in one affordable book and accessible in one’s own language retrieves the Scriptures so that we can once again hear them in our own languages. The authors who produced the Scriptures in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek meant for those who heard them to understand what was written. But through great stretches of Christian history, lay people could only hear the Scriptures read in foreign languages (e.g., Latin) through priests who might not understand it any better than they did. That someone can now hear and read John 3:16 in their own tongue is a grand retrieval.       

3. What does the Bible medium make obsolete in Scripture reading?

The above is all-too-familiar (and celebrated by Protestants) but there is also a downside. As a bound collection of books available to every individual in hardcopy, on a smartphone app, or online, what gets lost? What previous medium might become obsolete that compromises the message?

I would suggest that the liturgical reading of the Scriptures in the context of community worship and the lectionary cycles with its connections of linked texts provided an essential medium for understanding the message that both preceded the Bible, and which is not so obvious in the printed version. In other words, the “divine liturgy” of the church is a medium that functions to frame the Scriptures within the canon of faith—the message of the gospel—showing how they work together within the drama of redemption that inexorably points to Christ, crucified and risen. So too the lectionary cycles: these frame the Scriptures within the church calendar precisely in order to lead us to Christ and his gospel.

Fr. John Behr suggests that reading the Bible apart from its gospel framework, preserved in the liturgical tradition, may not even be reading it as Scripture. If I sit down with my Bible and flip it open to any page in the book, I’ve potentially removed that page from its specific role in its gospel context. One could study the Bible their whole lives and yet miss the essential reality to Whom all the Scriptures point. Certainly, Jesus’ opponents had.     

4. What does the Bible medium reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes?

This then suggests a terrible reversal if the Bible medium enters the extremes of bibliolatry: we see this subversion when the Bible is elevated to the right hand of the Father and honored with the title “Word of God”—the name that belongs to Jesus Christ.

Through a flat reading of the Bible, I have often seen particular Scriptures used to argue against the very teachings of Jesus Christ, justifying from the idolized text that which the Word himself forbade. When the Bible becomes our final authority, Jesus is demoted and becomes a mere episode in the Good Book. Ironically, the message of the Scriptures becomes lost to the medium we call the Bible when its Emmaus Way framework is subverted with the new technology.

I recognize this may be entirely new material to readers unfamiliar with liturgical calendars or liturgical services, but consider that our Jewish roots observed an annual cycle of feasts and fasts, that the Gospel of John is organized according to these events, and that Jesus consciously framed those festivals as prefigurements of his story.     

What then?

No, I haven’t thrown out my iPhone or canceled my online accounts. Neither will I discard my excessive collection of Bibles or cease all private study of its wonderful pages. But what I can commit to is submitting my reading of the Scriptures to their gospel context. I can read them in the way prescribed by the church, as the message concerning Jesus, the One who is the I AM whose day Abraham foresaw, the One of whom Jesus says Moses wrote, the One to whom all the Prophets and Scriptures bear witness. And I will see the Scriptures within the canon of faith before I imagine them within the Moroccan bindings. And I will read and hear the Scriptures as a product and function of the church, ancient and modern, that faithfully stewards them.    

Summary

I'm seeing ever more clearly how the annual calendar of feasts and fasts, and the weekly divine liturgy, are the framework through which we see the Scriptures come together to tell our story of redemption both yearly and weekly. By stripping Christianity of the liturgical framework in which all Scripture has its role and place in the great story (in the name of breaking free from tradition and religion), we're left with a Bible organized only by genre, with no clue how Moses, the Prophets and all the Scriptures prefigure the Passion, and a randomized sequence of mini-series contrived by independent preachers.

 

The calendar is like an auger that cycles deeper and deeper through the clay to access the pure springs of a deep faith. Too often, we've opted instead to dig random holes throughout the yard so that when the rain comes, we're drinking from a selection of shallow, muddy puddles.

 

[1] Cf. John Behr, “Looking Forward, Reading from the End,” The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity (Oxford Press, forthcoming).

"Life in Christ: Ecclesia & Liturgical Function" Interview with David Goa - Brad Jersak

Brad Jersak: In a previous interview over breakfast, you late out a rich and layered definition of ecclesia. Prior to that, the chief critique of my own theology was its rather thin version of what I imagined (or overlooked) as "church." I'd like to review those. 

David Goa: Adapting Maximos the Confessor's rich understanding of the church and the cosmos, as I understand him, we might think of the ecclesia in six registers: 

David Goa:  Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology is highly layered.

1. The Ecclesia refers, first of all, to the great gathering, the cosmos. This is because the whole cosmos is saved by the Energies of God.
2. The second layer includes all those men and women, from all times and places, who have experienced grace and expressed mercy. They are Ecclesia we Orthodox like to chat with.
   
   
3. The third layer we call the Christian tradition, including the heretics. More specifically the Way of Christ that we’ve inherited.
   
   
4. The fourth layer is more textured. We think of the Eastern Orthodox Church in its gifts, its wounds, its limits and its capacities.
   
   
5. The fifth layer of the Ecclesia is my parish (where we gather to pray together, but also the locale where that gathering is situated).

6. Finally, the Ecclesia is the world I walk in, the people I meet—whenever I experience a moment of grace, wherever I am an eyewitness to the heavenly kingdom in the lives of those I encounter.

Brad Jersak: I have found this incredibly beneficial. It resonates with Fr. Christopher Foley said: "The Church is our life in Christ and should shape and inform every area of our life."

That posits the church as more than an event, an institution, or even a people. There's a verb to this notion--a way of being. Can you help me understand what it means for the church to be "our life in Christ."

David Goa: Yes, one sense of ekklesia is "our Life in Christ." Our life in Christ, as such, is attentiveness to Reality and our capacity to bless it. Not that everyone who has a vibrant life in Christ identifies with Jesus of Nazareth yet and many who do identify with Jesus today do not have a life of any sort.

Brad Jersak: I can see that. Certainly, Cornelius in Acts 10 is an example of a righteous man, accepted by God, and alive to both God and the poor. 

But in that case--if the church is our life in Christ--why gather for worship?

David Goa: Because the hyper-individualism of our culture generally leads those who fail to gather to become private and flaky mystics. So, why worship? And what is worship? I can tell you that many church gatherings I've attended would not constitute minimal 'worship' in any true sense.

Brad Jersak: Okay, then. What is worship as you understand it? And why do we worship?

David Goa: Worship has much to do with how our lives are being cultivated by the liturgy in a community of belonging.

The liturgy is first and foremost a spiritual discipline. It's something we 'work at,' like the discipline of developing skills we would need to participate in a symphony orchestra or in team sports. That takes time and growth. It includes the discipline of undergoing personal training, participating in team training, then playing together, and we spend time doing that on a regular basis. As with sports or music, the discipline of mind, heart, diet, and space bring worship together in excellence. And it is in playing together that we heighten creation's symphony.

Brad Jersak: I would struggle with how to communicate this to Evangelicals or charismatics who have a particular notion of 'worship' but are unfamiliar with 'liturgy' except as the repetitive rote prayers they regard as 'religious' in a negative sense. How would I communicate what liturgy is and does vis-a-vis their worship experiences and assumptions?

David Goa: In other words, how do we communicate the function of the liturgy to a Protestant?

First, the liturgy does not exist for itself. The liturgy exists for the life of the world so that when you walk out of the church doors and down the street, the world is made new to you. You see the world in a new way. The new heavens and the new earth are there … in the grace of walking the elderly person across the street or empty your wallet to a homeless person. The liturgy is meant to help us see the world as God sees it. And God sees it as delight.

Second, as a spiritual discipline, liturgical worship has two functions--both have to do with attentiveness. Liturgical attentiveness includes (1) an apophatic discipline of emptying and (2) a discipline of wonder and praise.

Not enough attention is given to its apophatic aspect, by which I mean, liturgy helps us empty ourselves of the things that aren’t real—e.g. our fears and desires.

All disciplines do this: they cultivate your capacity to become conscious of your dis-eases--your fears, your desires--which is why the liturgy is so repetitive: to fatigue the wall of denial between our conscious and unconscious mind… so the third or thirtieth time you pray, “Lord, have mercy,” some unrecognized uneasiness rises to the surface to be anointed and maybe even healed. So, liturgy is a spiritual discipline that helps us become attentive to something other than our fears and desires ... but they do need to be surfaced, offered up, and let go of.

In other words, the liturgy is an amazing way of offering the brokenness of our lives up so that we are resurrected to the fulness of our life again.

Brad Jersak: When we receive the Eucharist, we hear that it is offered up "for the life of the world." There's this outward focus through which we see our priesthood as a vicarious ministry rather than an exclusive, in-house activity. How do you see this? 

David Goa: For many, ecclesiology and liturgical theology is focused on how the liturgy and especially communion expresses the truth that we are all one. It is a symbol of unity.

But as a discipline, it is about our relationships to each other, to our deepest selves, to the life of the world in all its messiness, and to the triune God. We gather up the whole world three times in the litanies of the divine liturgy: at the beginning, in the face of the gospel, and in receiving the gifts. These call litanies call to attention how we may have become dull to the life of the world and call us to be present again in fullness, praying for everything and everyone, from travelers to weather to governments to crops. Like any practice, it has a purpose, which isn’t the practice itself, but the fruit of the practice in your everyday life in the world.

Brad Jersak: That is, we empty ourselves of those unreal cravings and fears and resentments that distract us and we dismantle the partitions we've created to life beyond our egoism. That's the emptying function. Now the wonder? 

David Goa: The other function of the liturgy is the deepening of our capacity, language, and sensorium to praise, express delight, to see the beauty and wonder of it all. The first is a language of therapy—outing you—raising the diseases to place them on the throne of grace where they disappear. And this side is the language of wonder.

Brad Jersak: Yes, in praise and gratitude of the Creator and the cosmos that 'spilled' out of Love's plenitude. 

I can see what Jesus may have meant, then, by God looking for those who will worship in s/Spirit and in truth. From Eugene Peterson's Message translation:

"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. 

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.” (John 4:22-24 MSG).

The liturgy of Spirit and truth is not merely a privatized ethereal spirituality. It is the practiced capacity to of attention to what needs flushing our and what incites wonder. 

 

BEYOND “HOPEFUL UNIVERSALISM” – Bradley Jersak

In recent years, I find myself sitting comfortably with friends who would self-identify as “hopeful universalists.” It’s not a label I am comfortable with, for a number of reasons, though I’m certainly fine with the spirit of their intent. The following clarifies why I resist the label for myself:

 

1. Until recently, I called my position “hopeful inclusivism” as described by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Kallistos Ware, but have discovered that people consistently misunderstand “hopeful” as if I mean “wishful” or “doubtful” or “maybe.” The upside of that misunderstanding is that they correctly infer that I am not “dogmatic” and this saves me a bit of grief.  And it’s true: I would not teach “ultimate redemption” (my conviction) as dogma or doctrine. But my position is actually a third critter:

 

I have always clarified that when I say “hopeful,” my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. That is, I use “hope” the same way Paul does when he refers to Christ as our “blessed hope.” He is completely convinced of something that is yet to come. For Paul, “the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13) is not wishful or doubtful. He holds a conviction that is anchored specifically in the faithfulness of Jesus. In the same way, I am personally convinced of ultimate redemption or the restoration/summing up of all things in Christ. I believe the New Testament anticipates this telos dozens of times. And in that sense, I’ve moved from Balthasar’s and Ware’s open-ended hopeful inclusivism (that leaves room for the possibility in principle, however unlikely, that some might forever reject the love of God) to a more confident conviction (as in St. Gregory of Nyssa or St. Maximos the Confessor) that meeting Christ face-to-face will so heal the soul and remove the dysfunctions of the fallen will, that an entirely willing response to grace will inevitably result (a la Paul’s conversion or the Phil. 2 confession of faith).

 

On the other hand, I call this a confident conviction, rooted, I think, in Scripture and good theology BUT am not permitted (by my conscience or my spiritual father) to teach it as doctrine. Simply put, the Nicene Creed (our dogma) says of eschatology:

• He will come again [doesn’t say how],
• to judge the living and that dead [doesn’t specify whether retributive or restorative],
• We look for the resurrection, and
• the life of the age to come.

There is no dogmatic statement about the destiny of unbelievers or the nature of hell.

There is no dogmatic statement that all shall be saved or that any shall be damned.

So while I hold a personal conviction that all shall be saved, and am even free to share my conviction and the reasons for it, I cannot impose it as doctrine, nor should the infernalists. To do so, in my mind, is technically a heresy (a mistake) because it violates the freedom of conviction of such mysteries as preserved in the Creed.

 

2. Despite my conviction in ultimate redemption and belief that the Scriptures teach that all shall be saved, I have also always resisted the word “universalism.” The reason for this is because the term has become so nebulous that using such a broad brush incites a lot of mistaken inferences and dismissive misrepresentations. But the problem is not only in those who misunderstand what I would mean by the term. It’s also a problem among those who use it. From my observations, today, the great majority of those who identify as ‘universalists’ have minimized some elements I believe to be essentials of the gospel. Specifically, MOST universalists now seem to downplay or negate:

• the seriousness of sin and its consequences,
• the necessity or even reality of the Incarnation,
• the critical importance of Christ’s death and resurrection,
• the reality of judgment and of a final judgment,
• the necessity of a truly willing faith response to Jesus.

If most universalists find these elements optional or even unsavory, and if labeling myself a universalist causes opponents to infer wrongly that I don’t hold to them, then it’s not the right term for me. Far too often, the word creates a redline that simply ends the conversation. Far better if I create bewilderment that demands further questions. For example, if I say, “I’m a universalist” (hopeful or otherwise), the immediate response is “You’re a heretic.” But if I say, “I am not a universalist but I believe in ultimate reconciliation,” at least I get the opportunity to answer the question, “What’s the difference?” And to that I reply with the convictions above in this way:

 

Most universalists disregard the following but I am convinced that:

• the wages of sin is death and that its fatal consequences require a means of redemption,
• the means of our redemption is through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ,
• and if all shall be saved, only by his death and resurrection,
• and that by way of a final but penultimate restorative judgment,
• followed by a universal willing faith response (nothing is automatic OR coerced). 

For these reasons, I like to speak of judgment as penultimate (the age to come) and redemption as ultimate (“the end of the ages” when “God is all and in all”). That way I don’t need to skirt any of the dire warnings about a forthcoming judgment. But then I also insist that mercy gets the final word. 

 

In Her Gates Will Never Be Shut, I said that we cannot presume that all shall be saved or that any shall be damned, but rather, that the love of God obligates and inspires us to hope, pray, preach, and live for the salvation of all. That is the express will of God revealed in the NT. Now, I would add this follow-up question that simplifies things for me: does the NT foresee God’s will coming about? To that, I would offer my favorite catena of 32 Scriptures that dare us to “hope” and let the reader see if it speaks to their convictions.

PSA's Moral Monster - Brad Jersak with Lazar Puhalo

Abp. Lazar: "I'm afraid that Evangelicalism itself can ultimately lead a thinking person away from Christ altogether. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that fundamentalism and the right-wing can do this, and most certainly does. When hate is interpreted as love there is little chance for trusting Jesus Christ to take root."

 

Brad: Agreed.

 

Some people who believe in penal substitution say that they know how much God loves him BECAUSE he killed his Son instead of them. To sacrifice one's own beloved child instead of me shows how much he values me. BUT the problem with such a disturbing vision of "love" is exposed by the way it fractures the human heart in its call to respond to such perverted love. The questions arise:

 

If I don't respond, what will he do? He will burn me forever. I'd better respond then. What sort of faith is that? It is nothing more than terrorism. The sinner's prayer becomes a contrived hostage video.

 

If I respond, did I respond well enough that I can truly believe he won't turn on me as well? What sort of moralistic striving does this generate, with the constant fear of abandonment ever lurking at every failure to perform well enough?

 

Even if I respond, what does this say about the nature of a child-sacrificing Father? If my neighbor's child breaks my window, and in my fury, demand my pound of flesh, if I take out my wrath on my own child instead of the neighbor, will the neighbor be inclined to run to my house when they've broken another window? Or will they run and hide? Will they see me as their benevolent benefactor? Or will they perceive in me a monster to be avoided at all costs?

 

This is not the Abba revealed through the life and passion of Jesus Christ. What it is, such a god may only be held, as George MacDonald said, in bitter loathing.

"Postcards from Babylon: the Church in American Exile" -- documentary review by Brad Jersak

"Postcards from Babylon: the Church in American Exile"
Documentary review by Brad Jersak

“Come home. You’re better than this.”

—Daniel Dietrich, Hymn for the 81%

You had me at Brian Zahnd.

When the first seven days of 2021 had already trumped (sic) the insanity of 2020, and Christian nationalism had erupted in all manner of ‘prophetic’ blasphemies, I was neither surprised nor confused. That’s a lie. But I wasn’t bereft. That’s because I had already read the clear-minded social commentary of an actual national prophet—my friend and online pastor, Brian Zahnd. But what I pined for was that his sanity would be amplified for those whose heads are spinning. Cue the Postcards documentary.

A word about where I’m coming from. While I’m primarily known as a theologian, my Ph.D. was in political theology, exploring the intersection of political philosophy and our theology of the Cross. Politically, I’m a Canadian “High Tory” conservative who regards the entire American experiment (from far left to far right) as a violent exultation in freedom as self-will. That’s problematic for me as a Christian resident in a vassal state under the direct shadow of history’s most powerful empire.

But I don’t hate America any more than Jesus hated Rome. Indeed, most of my best friends are Americans and I find their enthusiastic hospitality and authenticity incredibly beautiful. It’s the ‘empire’ part that’s troubling—but particularly when faith is seduced by the powers “in the name of Jesus.” And that’s where Postcards is crucial. “Americanism,” says Zahnd, “is a rival religion to authentic Christian faith.” It’s an unholy harmonization of the American dream and some patriotic, nationalistic and militaristic aberration of the gospel.

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Q&R with Brad Jersak - "I struggle with prayers to the Mother of Jesus"

Question:

 

Hi Brad, I'm wondering if you would point me to some articles or resources that might help me better understand the prayers to the Theotokos ["Mother of God"]. As a pastor whose entire upbringing and training has been in the Evangelical church, I struggle most with any prayers directed toward the Mother of Jesus. 

 

Response:

 

When I think of Orthodox prayers to the Theotokos, some separate puzzle pieces come to mind that bear thinking about. Which pieces you use and how you assemble them is going to be personal to you.

Puzzle Piece 1 - John 19:25-27

And standing by the Cross of Jesus his mother, and the sister of his mother, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary, the Magdalene. Jesus, therefore, seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, said to his mother: “Woman, behold thy son.” Then, he said to the disciple “Behold thy mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own [home].

The historic/apostolic tradition understood this passage to mean that Christ gave his mother to become the mother of his church family. At other times (as in Shepherd of Hermes), Mary also represents the church itself, which serves as a mother to individual disciples. But the point is that the legitimate felt-need for a 'Mother God' in Protestant Progressive movements would be redundant for Orthodox and Catholic believers who already know the love of a mother in the Theotokos. They believe Christ himself directly gifted her to us for that very purpose. How we see this passage is a major puzzle piece in our theology of Theotokos.

 

Puzzle Piece 2 - "Prayer" and "Mediation" 

 

It's important to understand what Orthodox and Catholic believers mean by "pray" in its ancient English form, which simply refers to making a request. Think Shakespeare. "I pray thee." Pray in this sense is something we do all the time, particularly if we are sending out "prayer requests." I ask friends and family and even strangers to pray for me all the time. Granted, I am more likely to ask my wife to pray for me than most other people I know because of her love for me and her track record of faith-filled, fervent and effective prayers (cf. James 5). If I ask Eden to pray for me, I am not denying my own direct access to God. I can ask God for myself. So why do I invite her to join her prayers to mine? I don't know how it 'works' but I do see the apostles modeling that same request to their congregations (e.g. Eph. 6). And so we invoke help in presenting our requests to God. Pretty normal. 

 

So why would we not invoke the prayers of the Theotokos who is (a) alive, (b) with Christ, (c) has an earthly track record of making bold requests of him, (d) and is now glorified with divinized capacities to minister as an intercessor? To seek out the best makes sense to me and who has ever modeled a greater combination of surrender and boldness before God (Father, Son, and Spirit) than Mary? 

 

The fact that Mary is a living person (we believe she's alive, right?) who continues to intercede for the saints (as we all should) shouldn't stumble us, but somehow, Protestants got fixated on the problem of mediation. Paul said, "We have one mediator between God and man--the man Christ Jesus." True! But apparently, his unique mediation does not exclude intercession by a concerned third party mother at the Throne of Grace, nor does it disqualify any of us from ministering on God's behalf to his children. We have one mediator but many intercessors before God and many ministers from God.      

 

Puzzle Piece 3 - "Save us" 

 

When I chant hymns to the Theotokos, what I notice first is that they are primarily Christological affirmations that assert the deity of Jesus Christ. The whole reason we call Mary the Theotokos was a refutation of Arianism. The human Son in her womb is also fully God. So we call her the Temple, the Holy of Holies, and the Ark of the Covenant for this reason: to proclaim that the One who she bore in her womb is none other than the Shekinah Glory of God, the Living Torah, the Living Manna, the budding Staff of Aaron. As Christological affirmations that simultaneously fulfill the angelic call to bless the Virgin, I enjoy singing them.

 

That said, when I first chanted hymns to Mary from the hymnal we call the Octoechos, I found some of them jarring as they called on her to "save us." We have one Savior ... and so does Mary. The Virgin bore her own Savior. But I habitually think of salvation exclusively in its capital S soteriological sense. But again, there's a language issue. If we can just comprehend how God employs many servant-ministers to help us, to rescue us, to 'save' us when we are in dire straights, then we don't need to become confused or offended when we ask for Mary's help. To ask for her help or your help IS to ask for God's help embodied in his willing helpers.

 

I was once on the verge of drowning and called out to my friend Bob Ekblad to stretch out his hand to save me. Oddly, God did not seem to feel slighted, nor did Bob rebuff me for heresy. In fact, God actually seemed to empower Bob to save me. "Prayers" (requests) for the Theotokos to "save (help) us" are nothing more (and nothing less) than spiritual 9-1-1 calls to our loving mother. I've had a lifetime of making regular calls to my earthly mom, Irene Jersak, invoking her prayers and her help. Likewise, I'm grateful for a heavenly mom whom God dispatches on request. 

 

Still, on occasion, I read an odd hymn that is simply over the top. To read some of these hymns (very few) literally does seem idolatrous to me. To be generous, I could just read it as the poetic excess of an overzealous, adoring child of Mary. I've noticed that some such hymns are (1) clearly not as ancient, (2) smack of Mariolatry, (3) or obviously and inappropriately hyperbolic. I shake my head and move on, just as I move on in Protestant worship services when the songs spout heresies of God's wrath being poured out on Jesus or the Father having to turn his head away. Sometimes hymnographers screw up. It happens.    

 

Puzzle Piece 4 - Experiencing Mary

 

I had a great chat with Fr. Michael Gillis (a wise Antiochian archpriest) when I was first asking the same questions. His advice was something like this: don't give too much energy worrying about Mary until you experience her. When it's time, God may grant you a spiritual experience that involves her, makes sense to you and clears the path for the rest of these questions. In other words, the topic of Mary shifts once you meet her. Happily, in my case, prior to my move to Orthodoxy, I had already encountered her in the context of an inner healing moment. It's a long story but the punchline is that "little Bradley" (a child part of me) was feeling lost and scared. As fixed my eyes fixed on his voice, I felt him putting me in his mom's arms. I felt her holding me close and I felt her intense motherly love pour an indescribable balm of solace into my soul. The Beatles' "Let It Be" and the Catholic Rosary Prayer flooded through my mind:

 

"Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. [Yes, Jesus is with her, and therefore with me].
Blessed art thou amongst women, [As we read in Luke's Gospel]
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. [Because he is the point]
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, [Inviting her intercession]
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen." [As every 'letting go' is a tiny death].

 

And I so I came to understand Jesus welcome my invocations to Mary by experience.

But I also knew to continue holding my focus on Jesus' face, even while six-year-old Bradley relaxed back into Mama's healing arms. 

 

All that to say, don't worry about it. Keep your focus on Christ just as Mary does. Pope John Paul II's corrective to Catholic Maryolatry was simple: When you come to the Throne of the Grace, set your gaze on Jesus Christ. Don't be surprised if you see her at his throne, too. But if you see her, don't be distracted. Rather, let her disciple you by emulating her unwavering gaze on the Son of God.

 

And if he wants to give her to you personally--to say, "Behold, your mother,"just as when he gave her to John the Beloved--he'll get to it at just the right time for you.

 

But I will repeat this reminder and clarify: the impulse or longing in our heart for Mother God is holy. I experienced it when reading Paul Young's The Shack. To experience the Mother heart of God is a divine gift. Receive it! But also, understand how for the 'Mother

Church Tradition,' the Mother heart of God is most often experienced through the divinized empathy and affection of Jesus' own precious mom, whom he so generously shared with us from his Cross.

Consent & Participation in Democracy & Theology - Brad Jersak

“Let the Process Play Out”?

In a recent podcast from the pollsters at FiveThirtyEight.com, Galen Druke asked Clare Malone (the senior politics writer) about the values and dangers of a “Let the process play out” stance on court challenges to the 2020 American election. Her response was telling:

“What Divided the Electorate in 2020,” Fivethirtyeight.com (11-16-2020)

Galen Druke: “They’ve said, ‘Let’s let the process play out. President Trump has the right to bring these legal challenges, etc.’ and in some ways giving credibility to these conspiracy theories surrounding voter fraud instead of saying ‘all the secretaries of state said that this an election that has been conducted with integrity, a secure election, etc.’ Are there any long-term problems for small-d democracy in the broader Republican apparatus not forcefully rebutting this?”   

Clare Malone

Clare Malone: “For sure. Even though we all know to read through the lines that ‘he should get security briefings’ means ‘we think he won the election,’ there’s a big difference between saying that and saying, ‘He won the election; let’s move on.’” It’s not a healthy sign, it’s not a good thing. This is not me saying American democracy is over, but it is me saying, “In order to stay healthy, you eat well and exercise.” This is people, like, smashing hamburgers and shooting heroin into their veins.”

Later in the podcast, Clare Malone goes on to describe the essential problem as the necessity of consent in a democratic social contract, which I’ll restate and expand on here:

Consent & Participation: Essential to Democracy  

Political Science Fact: Consent is an essential pillar of small-d democracy. Refusal of candidates to concede an election is not merely an exercise in bad sportsmanship. It breaks a central feature of the social contract—rule by consent. Yes, we must do everything possible to ensure fair and legal elections. But opting to battle election results in court, based on unfounded claims of voter fraud, is not consent. Even when the losing party loses the election a second time in court, the ‘consent fundamental’ has still been effectively removed and democracy is crippled. Without consent, elections become just another form of coercion and there’s nothing exceptional about that.

Further, without consent, the outcomes of the election move from the electorate to the courts. In the worst case, the courts may overrule the will (participation) of the people. And even in the best case, the decision to confirm or veto the will of the electorate is still relocated to the judiciary. Participation of the people is subordinated to decisions by the gavel. Surely that is not what the founders imagined.  

One American commentator said to me, “We’ve reached the point where more than half of Republicans are just about ready to say it out loud: ‘We don’t give a damn about democracy.” That’s to be expected when one’s primary aim and political platform is reduced to securing power (by admission). At the very least, it’s a revisioning of democracy without consent, a phenomenon in other nations that Americans have historically called out, as in Russia and Iran for instance.

Please note carefully: democracy in America does not turn on whether Biden or Trump ‘won.’ What matters here is whether whoever loses (Trump, in this case) is willing to play their role to maintain democratic consent by willingly conceding. We see in retrospect why it was so important for Al Gore to concede to George Bush despite the kafuffle around Florida recounts in 2000. Gore’s concession meant that Bush’s presidency and American democracy were ultimately consensual. That didn’t happen this time.¹ And now it can’t—because even if President Trump concedes after losing in court, it’s no longer conceding by consent. It’s a downgrade for sure—so obvious to the rest of the world—but if that’s the future she chooses, we’ll have to accept and adapt to America’s new political reality. We’ll be okay.

Consent & Participation: Essential to Theology

Sadly, a (the?) dominant force in the erosion of democracy in the U.S.A. has come via the efforts of American(ized) Christianity to marry politics with faith. I think FiveThirtyEight saw this but what follows are my own conclusions.

 

Paula White

Yes, please, let your faith guide your political choices with integrity and truth. But when the President’s ‘spiritual advisor’ prophesies that God told her angels have been dispatched from Africa and South America to change election results—that victory has already been secured in the heavenlies—we’ve entered Christian voodoo territory. It’s a partisan political appeal to divine sovereignty sans the crucial (literally) doctrine of divine consent, and therefore a critical crack in Christianity’s theological foundations.  

 

How do consent and participation figure into Christian theology or our political theology? Simone Weil and George Grant (both political philosophers) saw the Cross as a revelation of divine consent and participation:

• The Cross reminds us of God’s consent in creation, making kenotic space for authentic otherness. Creation itself is a manifestation of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

• Thus, God consents to the reality of secondary causes, including natural law and human freedom, without direct interference in the shadow sides of tragedy and evil … or elections.

• At the Cross God even consents to our defiance as we reject and crucify Jesus Christ (or truth and justice) even while harnessing the great crime of deicide for our redemption.

• At the Cross (and really, beginning with Gethsemane), we see Christ consent to the will of his Father in drinking the cup of affliction for our sake, bearing the worst of human history in himself (to become the Lord of history).

• At the Cross, we come to the end of ourselves, fall to our knees and consent to the healing grace that flows from the wounds of Christ.

• The Cross reveals God as far different from that of the Deists who penned the Constitution. This is the crucified God who fully participates in the human condition, undergoing our limitations, our injustice, and even our death.

• The Cross reveals the path of redemption that calls not only for our consent but also our full participation in his project (‘the kingdom of God’)—God’s rule and reign by love (i.e. consent and participation) rather than by coercion.

In the end, it’s no surprise that when a nation-state becomes a global empire, we would inevitably see slippage away from democracy by consent and participation into partisan will-to-power. It may be disappointing, but apart from historical amnesia, not unexpected. But for Christianity itself to stray from the cruciform theology of consent and participation into theocratic delusions is simply tragic—and as I’ve said elsewhere, attaching Jesus' name to such ambitions is blasphemous.

It may be odd, then, to hear a word of hope. But those willing to acknowledge and abandon the lose-lose cul-de-sacs into which our culture has wandered may still find an exit. Alternative paths may present themselves, but they will look nothing like the powerplays of spectrum ideology or bastardized faith. Personally, I’m watching for cues from those on the margins who embody the Beatitudes of Jesus. Here’s hoping.   

NOTES:

[1] Barry Richard—George Bush’s top Florida lawyer in the case that went to the Supreme Court—denies any claims that the current barrage of 30+ lawsuits in 6 different states are in any way similar to 2000. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/politics/decision-2020/bush-v-gore-lawyers-2020-court-fight-is-not-similar-to-2000/2326866/.

Our Refiner's Fire - my foreword to Steve Stewart's "The Beatitudes for a Time of Crisis" - by Brad Jersak

“The Divine Life”

My full immersion into the Beatitudes as a daily practice began on the hiking trails of the North Cascades, where my mentor Ron Dart led me “up on a mountain,
me down, opened his mouth and taught me, saying” (Matt. 5:1-2),

The Divine Life is for those who die to the demands of the ego. Such people will inhabit the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Divine Life is for those who have lived through tragedy and suffering. Such people will be comforted at a deep level.

The Divine Life is for those who bring their passions under
control for goodness. It is such people that will inherit the earth.

The Divine Life is for those who hunger and thirst for justice. Such people will be fed to the full.

The Divine Life is offered to those who are gracious and merciful. Such people will be treated in a merciful and gracious manner.

The Divine Life is offered to those whose Home is clean on the Inside. Such people will know the very presence of God and see His face.

The Divine Life is offered to those who are Makers and Creators of Peace. Such people will be called the children of God.

The Divine Life is known by those who are persecuted for
seeking Justice. Such people will know what it means to live in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Divine Life is known by those who are mistreated and
misunderstood in their passion for justice. They will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. The prophets were treated this way in the past.

—Matthew 5:3-12

Ron’s translation of the Beatitudes gripped me from the start. I saw in Christ’s ‘words-made-fresh’ how the death and resurrection of Christ were transposed into the daily life of Christian discipleship. The ‘blessedness’ (Gk. makarios) Jesus describes is itself an ascent (by descent) into the ‘divine life’ (theosis) found on the Way of the Cross (kenosis). The irony of the Beatitudes (and the whole Sermon on the Mount) is that we become most human through self-emptying meekness that actually bankrupts the ego.

Christ overturns every grandiose notion of greatness—divine or human—revealing that the Jesus Way into God’s kingdom is a path marked by humility, meekness and peace. It is the counterintuitive Way for those whom the apostle Peter calls “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). A bold statement to be sure—a privilege afforded all those responding to the Lord’s “Follow me.”

The Refiner’s Fire

So it was that I began to pray the Beatitudes daily, inhaling and exhaling alternating lines, modulating between the cruciform blessings and the resurrection outcomes intrinsic to each Beatitude. Over years, my prayer was that in God’s mercy, the repetition would internalize Jesus’ words—driving them deeper than mere behavior modification, finding their way into my character, and bringing about the transformation (lit. transfiguration) Paul describes in 2 Cor. 3:18.

Whatever self-awareness I do have tells me I’ve barely begun that ascent. But what I have noticed is that the Beatitudes sharpen anyone’s discernment if they’re willing to let Christ install these verses in their hearts. Here’s what I mean:

The Psalmist says that the word of the Lord is pure, like silver refined in the furnace seven times (Ps. 12:6). Can you imagine having that level of discernment? What if every alleged ‘word from God’ you heard, whether directly or through the mouth of God’s self-proclaimed spokespersons, were to pass through the Refiner’s fire (Mal. 3:3) seven times? What if that fiery furnace were so hot that no false word could survive its purifying flames?

I believe these Beatitudes comprise that furnace to the n^th-degree. By praying them in the Spirit over and over until they become a sort of spiritual respiration within you, I believe the Lord will install these words as an oven in your soul that devours all that cannot pass as God’s word.

I mentioned grandiosity earlier. I can honestly say that most of the prophetic words I received during the charismatic renewal appealed to my fleshly cravings to achieve greatness—and with God’s rubber stamp of approval. My ego loved to hear God say, “Ask me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance” (forgetting that Ps. 2:8 prophesies the kingship of Christ!). I just knew it was my time for a fresh passport to spiritual fame! Meanwhile, I still haven’t perfected the art of kindness to everyone on my own cul-de-sac.

But what if we were to pass my anticipation of glory through the Beatitudes? Blessed are the poor in spirit (sparks ignite and smoke begins to rise). Blessed are those who mourn (crackle, sizzle). Blessed are the meek (phht! Up in smoke!). And without further ado, I am humbled and maybe just a touch more Christlike. Far better that than climbing my own pedestal for impending humiliation (speaking from experience).

So I am very grateful for the little death of self-centeredness and the resurrection life of Jesus in each Beatitude. And I’m glad for this little furnace of discernment that our Lord provided each of his disciples—a shield of protection from self-deceit and delusion.

Steve Stewart & Impact Nations

That said, doesn’t “Impact Nations” sound a little ambitious? It would if Steve’s Stewart’s growing army of world-servants were hoping to make their mark for themselves and in their own way. Instead, what I see is a company of cruciform disciples who’ve given themselves to self-giving love. The Holy Spirit genius of their mission derives from the tears they weep, their hunger and thirst for justice (dikiosune), and their deep commitment to mercy. They are peacemakers who can rightly be called ‘children of God,’ not because they said the right prayer, believed the right creed, or made the right claim. These are ‘children by imitation’ of the Father who is risky in his generosity and indiscriminate in his kindness.

I say this for hermeneutical reasons: First, if you want to understand the Beatitudes, I commend to you the lives of the Stewart clan and their rowdy entourage. And if you want to understand what makes Steve Stewart and company tick, dive into the life of the Beatitudes. But now I pass the baton for that journey to my dear friend, Steve. He’s a good guide up the mountain because his eyes are ever watching the footsteps of our Rabbi. 

 

Let's Stop the Political Blasphemy - Brad Jersak

Election(s) 2020: Four Convictions Upon Reflection
(with a P.S. interview from Brian Zahnd)

I. Vote your conscience.

I did in our recent election. Most people do. That's also a good invitation to reexamine the health of your conscience. Ask honestly where your vote ignored, offended, or violated your conscience. If your conscience comes to complete peace with ANY party's political platform across the board, then it has lost its capacity to discern or distinguish the gospel of the kingdom from the kingdoms of this world. Our politics have effectively disabled the God-given Nathan within. That should alarm us. It signals a call to repent and return, to fast from political idolatry until your baptismal allegiance to the "kingdom not of, like or from this world" is renewed and unconfused.

II. Be loyal to truth.

When we are so invested in our team that we blindly grasp at party propaganda without fact-checking, the fundamental Christian commitment to upholding truth (and therefore justice) is compromised. The second fateful step—wilfully perpetuating misinformation in the pursuit of power ("winning" or sulking if we don't)—is not merely a foray into character assassination. It is an act of moral self-harm. Character suicide. Once we make the third move—confronted with the truth, we respond, "I don't care"—we're now officially lost. What is the supposed "win" when someone displays a manifest desire to be duped? At that point, the pursuit of truth is over and enforcing healthy boundaries is likely the best we can hope to achieve.

III. Let your principles shape your politics.

The previous two points apply to every person, in any party, from any political system, in any nation. They ought to apply especially to Christian believers who risk their souls by entering a voting booth or posting to social media. But the dominance of dubious content and the hateful tone that has climaxed in a cold civil war south of my border has exposed the disease—the idolatry—of partisan amoralism and spectrum ideology that I addressed in A More Christlike Way. 

I rightly worry about the marriage of deep moral convictions and political bias in our attempt to persuade. But to ask, "How can you vote for them when they [insert your greatest moral outrage here]?!" is not out of bounds. Our moral and ethical principles should never be overlooked when wading into the political arena. Indeed, that's half the problem I've addressed in my previous points. It's critical that we know our sense of right from wrong and let that inform our politics and shape how we seek to persuade.               

IV. Let's stop the prophetic blasphemy.

“Any attempt to use the Spirit to leverage political power is blasphemous.” 
—C.E.W. Green

Okay, we get carried away, we get passionate, we slip. It happens. But for Christ's sake (literally), could we at least demand that our 'Christian leaders' cease with the political blasphemy? I am not speaking here metaphorically. Any of us might be guilty of abandoning Christ just by voting. That's not it. No, we have to say this directly and specifically: those who call themselves 'God's prophets' (literally) and then direct their flock to vote for a particular man or party because God says so (literally) are false prophets (literally).

I have watched our broader political idolatry escalate dramatically to overt blasphemy over the course of the last 20 years in certain (not all) wings of the evangelical-charismatic world that was my home.     

Please hear me: men and women of good faith who I love and trust wrestled and reasoned their way to cast their vote for President Donald Trump. Some described it to me as plugging their nose and voting strategically for a conservative Supreme Court. Others were enthusiastic about America's retreat from the world stage. They applauded the death knell of American exceptionalism on his watch. In any case, that is NOT what I'm talking about here.

I am specifically condemning what liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, have fairly called "the cult of Trumpism."¹ It can be defined as abusing the name of Jesus Christ and declaring falsehoods "by the Spirit" to establish Donald Trump as "God's candidate," without regard for truth, facts or observable outcomes. Three examples: 

• Identifying the President as or with the Saviour.
• Declaring a false victory via divine and angelic intervention.
• Demonizing the opposition as cursed opponents of God's will.  

Am I overstating the case? Perhaps you saw these viral debacles?
First, from Paula White, "spiritual advisor to the President":  

 

Or the MAGA prayer warriors on their knees, interceding at the Clark County election offices:

 

I can't in good conscience post the examples I think were far less tasteful. The boiling point here is not who we think should ascend the imperial throne. What I'm addressing is not a partisan political problem at all. This crisis concerns the reverse transfiguration of prominent Christian streams (who think they have the President's ear) into a dangerous sect. Dangerous to democracy, if that matters. Discrediting to Christian conservatives, certainly. But fatal to faith, and that does matter.  

So, yes, please: vote your conscience, be loyal to the truth, let your principles shape your politics. But for the love of Christ, most of all, let's say an emphatic no to political blasphemy and invite estranged and disillusioned friends of Christ back to the Altar. 

P.S. Postcards from Babylon

But it's not as though this took us by surprise. After posting his Feb. 14, 2017 article, "Cyrus Candidate or Charismatic Catastrophe," Brian Zahnd felt compelled to write his warning/rejoinder to politically compromised faith (of any brand) in his book (and forthcoming documentary) Postcards from Babylon. 

The following interview with Brian covers many of the book's themes. It may leave a better aftertaste than the bitter pill I've offered. If we're seeking our national prophets for Christlike clarity, BZ is a far better candidate::

Notes:

1. Cf. among the dozens of articles (and one edited book by 20 psychiatrists), Andrew Sullivan, "With Trump, the Pathology is the Point," The Intelligencer, 05-22-20; Joe Jobanaski, "The Cult of Trumpism," The Recorder 8-7-20; Ali Breland, "Cult Experts Warn the Trumpism Is Starting to Look Awfully Familiar," MotherJones.com 04-04-20; Sean Illing, "Is Trumpism a Cult?" Vox 01-26-20; Bandy Lee (ed.),The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (Thomas Dunne, 2017).  

"We Are All Revenants" - Bradley Jersak

 

Out of chaos, Good News today: the great gift of the Jesus Way is not so much the Church’s ability to survive its own self-inflicted death. Rather, we marvel at how it can continually die and rise again.

In the midst of the storm, Hope today: even in the great darkness of the Church’s imperial aspirations and its corrosive choices to become the idolatrous escort of state power—even after the deep disillusionment of the Great Deconstruction—inexplicably, a Light shines. A Voice from elsewhere speak. A gift of faith that defies reason persists.

Watch for it. Wait for it.

I am reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s prescient words a century ago, describing the Church, not as an all-powerful institution, but as an alternative society that rises Phoenix-like from its own ashes, because against our better judgment, Christ has never abandoned or divorced her:

"What is this incomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying civilization and yet force it to a resurrection from the dead…?”

“There is an answer: it is an answer to say that the energy is truly from outside the world…”

“All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization ought to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnorak of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all revenants; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

So, once again, what we called ‘Church’ has, once again, largely imploded—its hypocrisy laid bare, its motives exposed, a victim of the Kool-Aid it served and drank in exchange for the true Vine. Those who fled the sinking ship frequently forget their complicity and continue to imbibe in the same contempt they condemned in their Mother. Selective amnesia, perhaps. The disillusioned may have emerged from a religious nightmare but can’t perceive they’re still twitching through the dream paralysis of ideological possession. Woke? Oh no, my dear.

So whence this hope? Just watch. Just wait…  

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them, Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” ― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Memoricide: Conservative & Progressive Amnesia - Ron Dart (with Brad Jersak)