Review of Ron S. Dart and J.I. Packer, Christianity and Pluralism (Lexham Press, 2019), 70 pages.
Christianity and Pluralism is a fresh and poignant new edition of a booklet first composed just over two decades ago, titled In a Pluralist World (Regent, 2008). The collection of essays was originally written in response to Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham's controversial pluralist manifesto, Mansions of the Spirit. Ron Dart and J.I. Packer, also both Anglicans (though of very different streams), each offer their respective and respectful critical analyses of Mansions as an entry point into the broader discussion of the various shades of Enlightenment pluralism.
This little booklet is just 70 pages long but astoundingly efficient and clear in its nuanced explication of the issues at hand. As such, it would provide an excellent primer for students and teachers who want to understand pluralism's various shades, strengths and pitfalls without the sort of reductionism that often plagues the topic.
After the prefaces (Dart, 2019 and Rev. Dr. Archie Pell, 2008), the book unfolds in three acts and an appendix.
Chapter 1 features Ron Dart's critique of Mansions, which he regards as both a "subtle syncretism" of the hidden agreement within mystical traditions across religions and "ideological liberalism" that in fact subverts Christian (and other religion's) truth claims.
Dart's review focused on laying out the content of Bishop Michael's book and offering ten points of rebuttal. He initially welcomes the book as a timely challenge, calling Christians to think carefully about what we believe and why. But ultimately, Dart's response boils down to three major deficiencies in Ingham's work: "it lacks a rigorous mystical theology, a radical politics and a high Christology-ecclesiology." Dart hints at a better and alternative framework for interfaith dialogue, which comes later in the book.
I welcome you to our conversation on President Trump, the evangelicals and what is unfolding in American political culture.
In this podcast I have the pleasure of talking with Professor Molly Worthan. She teaches history at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focusing on the intellectual and religious history of North America. She is also the Director of the Honors Program, an opinion writer for the New York Times, Slate and other publication. Her superb book, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism explores the intellectual history of American evangelicals and the culture wars since 1945.
A decade and a half ago I received an enquiry for an undergraduate student at Yale University. She was learning Russia and wanted to come to northern Alberta to spend the summer doing field research work in the Old Believer community near Athabasca. I first met this community in the 1970s shortly after they arrived. A bit later I spent sometime with my colleague the anthropologist David Scheffle who also did field research and published a book on the Old Believers. This community had its origins in Siberia to which their ancestors had been exiled following the reforms introduced to the Russian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Nikon in 1666. Some made their way into a remote region of China, live a reclusive life, and occasionally hunted Siberian tigers for European zoos. In order to avoid the reach of the communist government of China in the 1960s they moved again and eventually settled in Canada. It was not the sort of community I would readily suggest a young woman (or man for that matter) endeavour to engage.
I called the phone number on the correspondence and met Molly Worthen. She spoke easily about herself and her interests, mentioned growing up in Chicago, the city that entered my blood when I studied there in the 1960s. It was clear to me that she had the intellectual curiosity and formation, a spirit of hospitality and simple good judgment and determination suitable to her proposed work. Over the summer we got to know each other and her work in the Old Believer community flourished. That summer played a little role in Molly focusing her work on North American religious and intellectual history, particularly the ideas and culture of conservative Christianity. She is a professor of History at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Director of the Honors Program, an opinion writer for the New York Times, Slate and other publication. Her superb book, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism explores the intellectual history of American evangelicals and the culture wars since 1945.
I welcome you to our conversation on President Trump, the evangelicals and what is unfolding in America political culture. I welcome your thoughts on our conversation and may be reached at davidgoa@telusplanet.net.
One thing that is not appreciated enough is the difference between faith and an addiction to religion. Religious addiction follows the same vector lines as any other addiction. Religious addiction is certainly not the same thing as normal faith. It is learned behaviour for the most part, and often culturally imposed, or at the least has a cultural formation. However, as with all addictions, there is a certain predisposition toward addiction itself often accompanied by, or even a manifestation of OCD.
Religious addiction is generally characterized by rigidity and a need for absolutes, for black and white solutions or attitudes toward any given problem and toward morality in general. The need for absolutes impels addicts to seek to impose their own “orthodoxies” on others, even if it means by force and threats, using the law and contravening documents such as the Constitution of the United States or the Canadian Charter. Religious addicts are somewhat like florid schizophrenics. They sound very high and mighty and even convincing with what passes for a spiritual presence and position, but is, in fact, a manifestation of rigidity and a real lack of spiritual content – a spiritual content which has been replaced by a juridical mindset. In place of spirituality, they have only some concept of law or their version of law. They tend also to see our relationship with God strictly as one of imposed legal norms rather than any kind of spiritual transformation. Religious addiction should be treated like all addictions. There needs to be a sort of 12-step program to liberate people from religious addictions.
However, since their addictions are religious, they will inevitably think they are being guided by God or a god – by whatever name they know Him. There is scant difference between Christian fundamentalists – including those in the Orthodox Christian Church – and fundamentalist Muslims or Hindus. Their addictions can be dangerous for the rest of society, and particularly so since they deprive them of any serious access to realities. In general, they have a utopian nostalgia for a time and world that never actually existed except in nationalist mythologies and fantasies. We must bear in mind that religiosity is completely inimical to democracy, and it will always try to undermine basic principles of democracy and tend toward some degree of theocracy and autocracy.
Ron discusses 3 shades of secularism, political Gnosticism (a la Eric Voegelin's 4 examples), the clash between certain forms of pluralism and secularism in the public square, and the example of Bede Griffiths in interfaith dialogue that honours Christian distinctives while respecting the religious other.
Reflections on the Spiritual Vocation of the Family
With my voice unto the Lord have I cried,
with my voice unto the Lord have I made supplication.
I will pour out before Him my supplication,
mine affliction before Him will I declare.
When my spirit was fainting within me,
then Thou knewest my paths.
In this way wherein I have walked they hid for me a snare.
I looked upon my right hand, and beheld,
and there was none that did know me.
Flight hath failed me,
and there is none that watcheth out for my soul.
I have cried unto Thee, O Lord;
I said: Thou art my hope, my portion art Thou
in the land of the living.
Attend unto my supplication,
for I am brought very low.
Deliver me from them that persecute me
for they are stronger than I.
Bring my soul out of prison that I may confess Thy Name.
Psalm 141, from the Vesper Liturgy
The Psalmist David expresses the cry of the human heart. It is a cry in young and old alike, born of longing to be known in the depth of one’s being and recognizing that “there is none that did know me…none that watcheth out for my soul.” Gregory the Great (born in Rome c. 540), said that a friend is the guardian of one’s soul, custos animi.[1] Custos animi suggests that there are three elements that characterize spiritual friendship: responsibility for another person’s well-being and ultimate salvation, a knowledge of his or her inner life and, a spiritual dimension. Spiritual friendship undergirds my reflection and I will return to it in the latter portion of the discussion endeavouring to draw out its implications for the spiritual vocation of the family.
But first, I would like to begin this reflection on the spiritual vocation of the family at the heart of my personal formation, my mother and father, and in the life and sense of the world they sought to build together. It was in no sense an ideal. Yet I begin here because their stance towards me and my sisters, their nurture and initiation of us into the world, have come into relief and I see much more sharply how they have informed my thinking of family, the human spirit and our relationship with the stranger in our midst. They are my existential point of departure and, by implication, what I bring to this conversation.
[1]Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community, The Monastic Experience, 350-1250 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1988): xv. McGuire discusses Gregory the Great’s consideration of this theme and the seminal contribution to it by the Eastern Church Fathers in the first chapter of this book.
I marvel at the question Jesus asks the lawyer in Luke 10 and have for about 5-6 years.
It still touches something at my core, that God in human flesh invites this man (and us) into a communal reading of Scripture with him.
The lawyer starts by “testing” Jesus, seeking to justify himself, and Jesus asks:
“How do YOU read?”
It’s an invitation to read the Scriptures with God.
And later a final question for the lawyer after Jesus’ world-interpreting story: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (It’s a conversation!)
When Deacon Andrew, standing in the center of the congregation this morning, read the lawyer’s response—“The one who showed mercy on him”—I wept.
The expert learns a different reading of the Law and speaks now as the Word speaks.
Having been invited into the conversation, he is transformed.
Perhaps I have changed, or perhaps I was always this way (emotional) and did not know myself that well, or I suppressed or hid it better, but I weep a lot more in worship these days, especially when the Gospel is read.
‘This is what God’s kingdom is like,’ said Jesus. ‘Once upon a time a man sowed seed on the ground. Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without him knowing how it did it. The ground produces crops by itself: first the stalk, then the ear, then the complete corn in the ear. But when the crop is ready, in goes the sickle at once, because harvest has arrived.’
What’s hiding in your garden?
What’s hiding in your garden? I didn’t plant this vine. I have never watered it. I haven’t even ever given it any notice. And yet here it is!
There are things in our life that we really have to work hard at, and it takes time, effort, probably counseling, and oh so much heart space. But there are other “things” that grow in our heart that just seem to spring up organically, with little or no effort. Why is that? Maybe because if everything cost us we’d be tapped out and would just despair of all the work. OR maybe because we need to remember and understand that it’s not ALL up to us. Some of our maturity and growth just comes with time. And some of it comes as gifts from others who cheer us on or deposit good seeds into our lives.
I encourage you to look around your heart’s garden today, take note of things that have been growing with little effort from you, and take it all in. Enjoy the fact that there’s something within that has risen without your efforts.
Ron Dart (UFV) discusses various nuances of exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, and syncretism. For more details, see his new release of "Christianity and Pluralism," originally co-written with J.I. Packer in response to Bishop Michael Ingham's work, "Mansions of the Spirit."
See the book description below this video.
Christianity and Pluralism is a collection of concise yet thoughtful essays by J. I. Packer and Ron Dart, interacting with and responding to the four traditional models used to answer the existence of multiple faiths (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist, and syncretist), but focusing particularly that form of syncretism which claims that all faiths find commonality through their mystical traditions.
Written in response to key events in the history of the Anglican church, Packer and Dart's analysis gives us a perennially relevant model for how the church ought to respond to our own pluralistic culture with integrity and kindness - and how to uphold the distinctiveness of the gospel. Christians directly or indirectly engaging our pluralist world will find their ideas enriched by this short yet powerful book.
Endorsement
"This unapologetic yet irenic defense of creedal Christianity deserves a wide readership and is a reminder of our continued indebtedness to faithful leaders such as Dart and Packer."
- Hans Boersma, Nashotah House, WI
About the Authors
Ron Dart (PhD, McMaster University) is associate professor of political science at the University of Fraser Valley (Abbotsford, BC). He is author of numerous books, including The Marks of the Church and Renewal and The North American High Tory Tradition.
J. I. Packer (PhD, Oxford University) is Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College (Vancouver, BC). He is author of many books, including Knowing God, Affirming the Apostles' Creed, and Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility.
Many persons will be murdered this evening, some of them for faith, and many will tonight die excruciating deaths from cancer and avoidable disasters, many of them children.
God does not will these things to happen, does not require any of this evil as part of some grand design to accomplish his good purposes, is not in a partnership with death, and much of history is because of the absence of God meaningless.
As David Bentley Hart says, it’s a very good thing that the death of a child is ultimately meaningless; that what God does with the death of a child, like all the children who died in the chemical showers of the Nazis, is to raise them from death in the world that does not end, wiping every tear from their face, and freeing their hearts from the terrors we imposed. What God does is resurrect. But I digress.
If the God revealed to us as Love, this Love revealed to the world at Golgotha, directly ruled over all things none of these horrors would ever occur.
There are many wills in the cosmos that oppose the will of Love and the Christian must make many prudential discernments (almost every day) and take actions (almost every day) to oppose with love what opposes Love, in ourselves, in other moral agents, and in nature.
The Christian is not given permission in this world to simply “pray and leave it to God,” though on one important hand that is indeed—in the end—all that we can do.
Contemplation of the person of Jesus Christ leads the Christian to proactive engagement with the powers of this world with weapons not known to this world, chiefly humility. Silence and listening and honest responses to what is heard from God in silence leads us to action.
As Martin Luther King Jr said: “The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.”
I would add that the more “privilege” we accumulate the further removed we *can* become from the urgency to engage fallen powers. The temptation is greater to say, in a form of disengagement disallowed to the Christian,” God has this.”
When the unexpected becomes the serendipitous we rejoice. We are glad and our hearts are grateful. When our spirits are fragile, the smallest of blessings can overrun us with their beauty and our sense of sentimentality boldly presents itself. Tears of gratitude are evidence of its effect on us.
And we are undone.
This is the beautiful thing that happens when Life touches us. The cords of death are discarded and forgotten in the midst of this passionate display of vibrancy and vitality. Life in the face of death is equal to light in the darkness, hope in utter despair.
Three years ago I clipped a blue hydrangea from my friend’s giant plant to take home and enjoy whilst it bloomed. It rooted while in the vase, so I planted it in soil, and now I have my own hydrangea plant with its own blooms. This was unexpected, and serendipitously so.
The roots grew from a stem that looked fully dead. The flower itself had dried and all its leaves had fallen off. The roots, though, proved that life still remained. Hope was built in.
There are times in our lives when all we see looks dead. There doesn’t appear to our hearts or our eyes to be any life at all. Hope feels lost, and without hope, we feel lost. Utterly so.
The one thing my time in darkness has proven to me is that hope is never fully absent. Life is never obliterated or extinguished. Even in the face of death itself, there is still hope and there is still life.
Our Jesus made this to be true. Our Father made this to be true. The end of this life is but an end, not the end. Serendipitously following the darkness of Jesus’ death was his beautiful resurrection. All hope was not lost, though every moment prior to his return to life felt wholly void of hope.
Today we live in a time not all that dissimilar to the three days before Jesus rose. We know our Savior will return, but when? We believe hope is not lost, but it can be so very hard to see. We pray for strength to believe in that distant hope, and to walk this present darkness in faith. We long for his return. We wait, sometimes patiently, sometimes restlessly, to see his face.
I do believe we have hope built in, just like the hydrangea, but it gets buried as life is drained from us in our daily struggles and seasons of loss. We need the Spirit’s gentle whispers to remind us of the hope that lives within us.
I hear these words echo in my soul just now as I write, “But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint” Is. 40:31.
And these words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” John 14:1-2.
Our hope is not in what we see or even in what our hearts can perceive, but in the character of our Creator. Rest in the knowledge of his plan for you and his devotion to you. If hope has eluded you, and if life has felt more like death, I pray that today you will be serendipitously blessed and your hope will be restored, at least for a day. And then tomorrow, may the sun or the wind or the flowers in your view, remind you of the hope that lives in the midst of death.
May each day and each face you see remind you of his love for you. May hope grow in the fecund soil of your heart. May your life become the serendipitous blessing of hope we all long for!
Excerpt:1 "Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you...
23-24 "But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
"Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified."
On goat-herding, politics, and Judeo-Christian principles
Allegations surfaced recently that one of our Canadian politicians, in a law class some years ago, argued that Canada’s Judeo-Christian foundation was incompatible with ‘goat-herder-cultures’. That politician denies making the “goat-herder” comment recalled by several of his classmates, though he confirmed describing Canada as a Judeo-Christian civilization.
It occurred to me that some Canadians might benefit from a refresher on the Judeo-Christian principles they are so fond of touting. Perhaps they are unaware that it was precisely care of animals, including herding goats, that served as the training ground for the greatest leaders of Judeo-Christian antiquity. Take for example Noah, Moses, Joseph, and King David. The early lives of each of them were intricately connected to the care of animals.
Both Moses and King David spent long periods of their lives as shepherds – herders of sheep and goats – before they became leaders of people. And in the case of Moses, his job as a shepherd came after his life as a privileged, indulged member of Pharaoh’s court. It was a demotion, and seemingly a necessary one. The humility, tenderness, and attentiveness of the good shepherd were prerequisites for the just exercise of power on a greater stage.
Judeo-Christian culture clearly articulates the difference between good and bad shepherds, distinctions as applicable to politics as they are to inter-species relations. Ezekiel’s “wicked shepherds” kill and gorge and enrich themselves at the expense of the flock. Their interest is in extracting for themselves the products, labour, and flesh of the sheep. The wicked shepherd has no regard for the weak, the sick, the lost, or the afflicted, only for power, self-aggrandizement, and satisfaction of their own appetites.
However much it has been ignored and misconstrued, the standard at the core of the Judeo-Christian ethic is embodied by “the good shepherd”. The good shepherd does not kill, but lays down his life for his sheep. Due to the constant threat of predation, good shepherds had to defend and assure provision for their flocks, even at the risk of their own lives, with special concern and attention reserved for the vulnerable – the young, the weak, the sick, the injured, and the marginalized. Good shepherds either naturally possess, or develop over time the sensitivity of soul and softness of heart that renders a person naturally attentive to the condition of the individual members of the flock.
Are these the Judeo-Christian principles some Canadian politicians like to extol and embody amid the frantic and noisy clamour for power? If not, perhaps a decade-long stint caring for the four-legged residents of an animal sanctuary would equip them with the requisite gentleness, sensitivity, humility, and genuine devotion to the flock that leadership demands. In the words of that other great leader of Judeo-Christian antiquity, King Solomon, “that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.”
Lisa Warden, Ph.D., is a communications consultant and independent scholar affiliated with the Animals & Society Research Initiative at the University of Victoria.
Notes from the Catacombs Sessions, the Water to Wine Gathering 2019
Something new is occurring, a new beginning. To name it is to reduce it, to flatten it, to deny some aspect of reality that we all experienced there. A Holy Spirit filled event of friends, which goes beyond names or definitions, gathered in St. Joseph, Missouri, over a 3-day period (June 13–15, 2019) to worship, to pray, to hear testimonies and amazing talks, and to fellowship.
This event occurred at World of Life Church by the invite of Pastors Brian and Peri Zahnd to call together their friends, and through them to their friends and family members, to the Water to Wine Gathering. This is the second year of the meeting of friends at the Water to Wine Gathering (W2W19). This year Brian and Peri Zahnd led the gathering with Joe Beach, Jonathan Martin, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Sarah Bessey, and Rich Villodas.
Brian began the gathering by speaking about “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”. Our challenge is to be lovers and not haters. Fidelity to Christ calls us to be lovers. The American Church is having a crisis of fidelity, especially in regards for many of their acceptance of religious nationalism in lieu of its rejection. To trade in your WWJD bracelet for a MAGA hat simply won’t do.
The credibility of the Christian witness comes not from dogma either, but from love. It’s not how orthodox your dogma is that truly matters. “Love alone is credible” as the great Hans Urs von Balthasar spoke and wrote so eloquently about. “Love alone is credible” points to the Way for us. We must love like Jesus. As authentic Christians, we must seek to bare that kind of love in the world.
On April 19, 2019, prominent Canadian psychologist and self-help author Jordan Peterson and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek met to debate Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism at Toronto’s Sony Centre. Fans of both Žižek and Peterson eagerly awaited this match between intellectual titans, each side hoping to see its contender deliver the intellectual blow that would knock the other’s ideas out of the realm of influence. A friend had mentioned the debate to me, so I found myself tuning in for the match with everyone else when it came up as a recommendation on YouTube.
Many of those who were separated along these ideological lines found themselves disappointed when neither opponent delivered that blow and the event became more of a discussion than a debate. Even so, don’t be fooled by some people’s disappointment, the agreeable nature of the debate is exactly the reason you should watch it for yourself. In a context when ideology can be weaponized against us—when we are either “bigots” or “social justice warriors”—should we not try to transcend the tribalism of our time to achieve a civil discourse? To better understand this in the context of the debate, let us look into the intellectual opponents, the drama that has enfolded them and a few highlights of the debate itself.
In the interest of being transparent about my biases, I have some concerns about Jordan Peterson and his personal politics, but now that I’ve disclosed them, let me put these concerns aside. I do not want to inoculate you against Peterson or de-platform him to silence his ideas. He rose to fame through his objections to Bill C-16, which proposed adding trans people and trans expressions to the listed prohibited grounds for discrimination. Peterson claimed that passing this bill would lead to a form of compelled speech, as it would force people to use trans people’s preferred pronouns even if average people objected to doing so on the basis of their personal beliefs. Peterson’s vocal concern echoed by some of his supporters prompted René J. Basque, president of the Canadian Bar Association, to write:
This is a misunderstanding of human rights and hate crime legislation… Nothing in the section compels the use or avoidance of particular words in public as long as they are not used in their most “extreme manifestations” with the intention of promoting the “level of abhorrence, delegitimization and rejection” that produces feelings of hatred against identifiable groups.
The ideology, call it theology if you will, of sanctified male domination over women, must be examined in the light of reality rather than mythology. It must be examined in the light of evolutionary biology, evolutionary neurobiology and social evolution. There is no other way to examine it with truth and integrity.
The impetus to breed and pass on one’s genes is an evolutionary construct which began to develop many millions of years ago. The creation narrative in Genesis is a meaningful allegory, but it is not history and it is not a true story. This much must be realised at the beginning. Women are not a spare rib from a man. The female gender existed before the male gender and the evolution of the male gender has far more to do with genetic variation in offspring than any other factor. In many instances in nature, the male of the species is a little more than a parasite which serves only to add genetic variation to the female eggs. We can trace such developments all the way back to primitive, single-celled eukaryotes – the precursors of all living things.
This is why all human zygotes begin life as female, and XY chromosome foetuses only develop into males through a rather complex procedure, which we will not discuss here.
You have, I am sure, run into persons that say, "God can do whatever he wants because he is God" as a defense for God behaving in ways that we would otherwise call sociopathic for humans.
This is often partnered with an accusation: that human "sensibilities" about what is right and wrong are not the same as God's: that his ways are higher than our ways.
Christians believe we know what we know about evil because of what is revealed about the eternal goodness of God in the flesh of Jesus Christ on the cross and by what is inherent in humanity, owing to our being fashioned in the image of our crucified Lord.
The image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is broken in us but not eradicated or absent—even in the "worst" of us humans.
If that doesn’t help, consider this also: there is now in Jesus Christ a human life that embodies all that God intended for our race, and his brilliant life—not mankind's broken collective aspirations about the good!—is our plumb line.
Christ’s self-sacrificial, co-suffering love is now alone the foundation, the human measure, of what is good and what is evil.
If Jesus would never do something, then by reason, revelation, and experience—grounded in the human and divine life revealed in fullness at Golgotha—we know that God would never do that something. We only know God as the one who is nailed to that tree.
If Jesus would never do x, we should never do x.
We know, for instance, that torture is always wrong on a gut level due to the image of God in us, unless our conscience is seared.
We know torture is always wrong because BOTH the divinity and humanity of Jesus, our silent, slain God, reveals it to be so.
Ditto with rape. Ditto with a lack of love for our enemies. Same with coveting what belongs to someone else. Same with worry about tomorrow. We know lives driven by fear and fallen hungers are wrong. And so on.
Human sensitivities about what is good and what is evil that flow from the image of God in us are baptized sensibilities.
Jesus has taken humanity into the waters of the Jordan, identified with our brokenness, drawn close to every human person in those living waters, and now the lamp of his charity illumines the whole human path.
Jesus reveals a God that subjects himself to his own creation, which laws reflect and praise his relational, gracious, and magnificent character, a character made known to us by the suffering, silence, and weakness of God in our Savior’s flesh.
Precisely in the poverty of Jesus Christ nailed to a tree, hung like a curse between criminals, the fullness of God is disclosed.
Christians are not projecting this God of mercy and charity and justice and compassion from an antinomian or "humanitarian" bias; we are instead seeking to bear God's revealed image in Jesus the crucified when we live and have our being by the Sermon on the Mount.
God is not a parent who says "Don't do as I do, do as I say." The saying and the doing are inseparable in our holy God. This is what makes the triune God different from all human projections and idols.
On the mount, as Jesus is transfigured, as the Spirit descends, we hear the majestic voice of the Father and what he says is: "This is my Son. I am pleased with him. Heed his life!"
Heed is life. Heed his silence. Heed his suffering. Heed his extreme humility.
If God shows up at the end of history as Pol Pot on steroids, as a General Sherman scorching the earth and everyone and everything in sight, then all of history is a tragedy and ISIS has it right and we are all fools to heed the life of Jesus.
Thank God that is not the case, that rather the whole creation sings his humility, his light, and his love.
And the room grew quiet and a gentle breeze wafted through,
the kind of breeze that tosses a leaf across the pavement,
It circled low at first but then wound its way up to brush itself against our faces.
It started out soft,
but it was thick,
it was hot,
it was gentle,
it was there,
and as we stood, we marveled,
each of us in our own way,
at the suddenness of this
encompassing gust of air.
We took it in, this wind.
We took it in so that every time we inhaled,
a piece of it entered us
and took flight within our hearts,
like a dove swooping low,
then soaring up and up and up.
And some of us wept,
for in the dove
in the wind
in the inhalation
we saw ourselves
not as these imperfect, stressed, frail statues,
but as carefree, safe children.
Yes, like children again.
And we wept because of the innocence, for we had lost it.
Some of us had never even known it.
But that day, as the wind blew, we all experienced it
and we found ourselves
saying things we never thought we’d say,
things like
freedom for all
equality now
gentle help
finally we gather as one
this is true power, true power is surrender.
And then...
A bubbling up,
a slow, steady stream of gibberish
from some of us,
but it was less gibberish
and more like secret languages
that we could only understand
with our hearts,
languages we all loved.
And though we could not understand with our minds
what we said
we did not care,
for the groans expressed
far more than words
ever could.
And after a while it died down.
But we all looked at one another and knew
we were not the same,
we would never be the same,
we did not want to be the same
as we were
before the wind came.
Jessica just published her first poetry book, Sea Between: A Collection, with themes of relationships, love, processing pain, and discovering Presence in unlikely places. Learn more about it and read her journal online at https://jessicacotten.com.
Excerpts from Sunday of the Blind Man – Homily by Abp. Lazar Puhalo
(See video for the full homily below)
Some people are blind in spirit. They cannot see our Lord Jesus Christ. Or if they see him, they see him as an image of themselves, not of themselves as ones who should become an image of him, but out of the fullness of their own hearts but still spiritually blind…
In a word, Christ closed up the false teaching of ‘original sin’: “This man was not born blind because of his parents’ sin. In fact, he was not born blind because of any sin of his own.
Here also, he healed the false teaching that God punishes people through natural disasters or through the conditions of their lives.
For God never harms his creature, neither in this world nor the world to come.
Do you see how much darkness there was on the people who were supposed to be the custodians of the promise given to Abraham? … not realizing that the whole law of God is comprehended in the love of God and the love of neighbor.
They could no longer see the Light of Jesus Christ but could only see the darkness of law, of rules, of regulations. And they could not perceive mercy, forgiveness, compassion.
They could only perceive the image of their own selves, which they had superimposed between them and God.
They could not see God because they only saw a reflection of their own predilections, their own passions, their own hatreds, their own anger, their own selfness, their own desire for vengeance, their own lust for power.
And even when Christ enthroned himself on the Cross, they could not see the awesome truth that God is meek and lowly of heart and filled only with compassion, even twisting the things that had been revealed before times to make God look like a heavenly terrorist.
Brothers and sisters, hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,
“I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Go and learn what that means.”
The God who shaped man from the dust of the earth from the beginning is the God who so loved mankind that he came down and endured all the difficulties of our life, to co-suffer with all of our suffering, to endure together with us all the things we have to endure, and to raise us up one by one by opening the eyes of our hearts.
If the eyes of our hearts can be opened … we can see our Lord Jesus Christ, not as a reflection of ourselves—we can see God, not as a reflection of our own passions, our own prejudices, our own hatreds, our own malice—but we can see the loving Father, who sent to find the lost sheep, even at the price of the life and the suffering of his only begotten Son.
Brothers and sisters, when we desire to see God, let us not look in a mirror, for if God is consumed by passions, he cannot be God. If he desires vengeance, if he even desires justice, if consumed by human passions, how is he God? But justice, as St. Isaac tells us, is like a grain of sand cast into the vast sea of God’s mercy.
Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice in the risen Christ. Let us rejoice as we celebrate the Ascension into the heavens where our Lord Jesus Christ takes our redeemed human nature, the body of our humanity into the heavens together with him and sits that humanity at the right hand of the glory of the living God.
We hear the Gospel so often, we hear the Apostles so often and yet we wonder so many times, “What does that actually mean? What is the revelation given to us?” Do we understand it out of the fullness of our own hearts?
If you understand it as heavy, as legalistic, as juridical, as full of judgment and condemnation, then you need to purify your own hearts with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you see a God who would punish mankind for every, even smallest, transgression; if you see a God who needs vengeance, compelled by some immutable law of the universe which God himself has no power over, that he must demand justice, and what kind of justice… but it is not even justice that people are talking about. For is it just to condemn a person for something over which they have no power? Is it just to condemn a person for something they are compelled to do, whether by passions, whether by political structures, whether by thoughtfulness or forgetfulness? How is it just to punish people for these things? That is not justice. That is vindictiveness.
Brothers and sisters, let us lift up our eyes to the heavens and see our Lord Jesus Christ and see the fullness of his divinity, not swallowing up our humanity but raising up our humanity, for he remained God and man that man might become god—that man might share in the divine nature, for he desired that we should be one with him, he desired that we should be his brethren, and he was not ashamed to call us brethren.
If only, brothers and sisters, in all our relations toward other human beings, in all our prayers and all of our worship of God and all of our hymns, and all of our seeing miracles of God, should be consumed in the love and compassion of God, and not fear him but love him, as St Antony the Great say in the scroll of his icon says, “I used to fear him but now I love him.” Because we fear the unknown. When we do not know God, we fear him. When we know God we only have love for him, knowing that he has nothing but love and compassion for us, knowing that he does not seek vengeance, knowing that he does not count the sins of an ancestor upon the children who are born later, knowing that he does not need a substitutionary sacrifice to ease his own lusts and passions. This is not Molech. This is not Baal. This is the living God.
Let us also not demand vengeance and justice of one another, because justice is best expressed in forgiveness.
Today, Apostle Paul is cast into prison, as everyone is in a prison of darkness, as everyone is blind—soul and spirit. Today, Jesus Christ will heal that blindness. Today, he will open the prison and allow his followers out of the prison. He calls upon us to leave our prison, to leave the prison of the bitterness of our own hearts, to leave the prison of our own ignorance, to leave the prison of our own judgments and condemnation of one another. Brothers, let us learn what it means, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.”And from the depths of our hearts, seek to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ through forgiveness and mercy.
Brothers and sisters, if the fullness of our heart seeks darkness sees darkness in God, if the fullness of our hearts sees a God who needs vengeance, who needs the sacrifice of a human being before he can forgive, then our hearts are darkness indeed. Let us see the Light of the Living God who was not averse to come down in humility and meekness, and enthrone himself on the Cross and suffer in so many things to reveal to us the power of his love.
Why was he nailed to the Cross but that we might see with our own eyes the sacrifice that he was willing to make for us; so that we might see with our own eyes the victory over death; so that we might be embraced by his great and powerful co-suffering love, and that our hearts might be lifted out of the darkness of the passions and that we might not ascribe such passions to God.
You’ve been invited to take on a master at chess, they have trained, and have the skills, they’ve worked hard and earned their place.
But so have you. You make your way to the table sit before them, looking them in the eye. The judge officially initiates the game.
You are evenly matched and you look forward to the challenge. You look to the audience with expectant family members cheering you on.
You look down at the board and realise with horror that you’ve only got half your pieces to play with. Your opponent has a full compliment of pieces to work with.
Your challenger and the judge seem oblivious to your lack of pieces. You complain and hear boos from the audience telling you to get on with it. The clock is ticking your family are willing you on, you move your black in response to their white.
Introduction [Sarah Fung]: The 5 and 2 Ministries is a non-profit organization that focuses on relationships and meeting people where they are at. As a group, they conduct services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I had a chance to sit down with Ward Draper, the founder, executive director, pastor, and my adopted father. We have had numerous conversations about the organization over the years, but this time the conversation was focused around his development of the organization and what pieces stood out most for him. Below is some of our conversation:
Fung: Was there a specific moment that was the catalyst for you to begin The 5 and 2 Ministries? If so, what was that moment?
Ward: April or May 5, 2004. There was a church that had burnt down, and the pastor was quoted in the newspaper saying, “We really don’t want people camping on our property.” I responded to this statement, saying “I have a hard time believing God would be mad about his people sleeping on his property.” This caused everything to erupt and I was getting tons of messages and phone calls. After this, I began The 5 and 2 Ministries.
Fung: What was one of the most impactful moments for you shortly after you began The 5 and 2? (A moment that confirmed for you that you were doing the right thing and going about it the right way.)
Ward: The growth, and the fruit that is immediate and continues to grow from this work. Recently, I was at the gas station and saw Alea, a woman I had met years ago going through garbage cans. Today she asked me how my kids were doing, because they’d all grown up going to her camp. Our conversation ended with her saying “I love you, and coffee soon!”.
Fung: What would you say kept you going for so many years?
Ward: Dedication to serving Christ, whatever way that looks like. Commitment. Isaiah 6:8 0 that’s why I have it tattooed on my arm.
Fung: What are 3 of the most important lessons you’ve learned over the years?
Ward:
1) Christ first – whatever it looks like/means.
2) Every problem is a result of a relational problem.
3) Respond with relationships.
Fung: What advice do you have for future generations?
Ward: Consistency and commitment. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Do what you say you are going to do and do it with humility.
Also, don’t be afraid of anything. Less fear, more do.
Summary [Sarah Fung]: While I could have fleshed out our conversation more, this way of presenting the conversation gave the real, raw tone to our conversation. Raw and real are what anyone will get from The 5 and 2 Ministries. Sometimes it’s tough to stomach, but they are there speaking truth as it is. It’s a refreshing reality to check. It challenges us to live our faith in action, and not only in words. In the words of Ward Draper, “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Do what you say you are going to do and do it with humility.”
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