Questions

If God is love, why is there hell?

How do I avoid hell -- by faith or through good works or both?

If I don't believe the right thing because I'm confused or misunderstood the message, am I still morally culpable before God?

Does salvation consist of simply mental acceptance of a list of propositional statements? If not, what does it consist of? If so, isn't that a stupid criterion for humanity's eternal fate?

Am I to blame for my depression or is God?

Does a loving God send those who commit suicide to hell without a trial?

Why did God exclude cripples from entering the temple?

Why are there two different accounts of Judas' death in the Bible?

Why, in the Greek, does Matthew say that Jesus wrote into Jerusalem on two donkeys?

Why doesn't God reveal Himself more frequently and to more people?

Why does God hold people morally blameworthy for not "being in personal relationship with him" when He often seems quieter and more distant than any other person I know?

Why did God love Jacob, but hate Esau?

Why did Jesus talk like a racist when confronted by the gentile woman?

Why does the gospel of John have the highest Christology if not because the church evolved Jesus into more and more of a deity?

Are the bounds of orthodoxy flukes of history? Are they arbitrary?

If God leads Christians by the Holy Spirit, then why do so many of them disagree on so much?

Why does Paul seemingly teach that Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime was ordained by God in Romans 13?

On what moral grounds did God kill Uriah? Is God above morality?

Why would God use a brutal, bloody process such as evolution to create the world into what it is today?

If Jesus came to bring the kingdom to earth, then why am I living in a hell hole?

Christmas is for Losers

The following is an abbreviated manuscript of a devotional I intend to deliver at the Free Methodist World Ministries Center tomorrow morning. My abbreviated manuscripts don't always read well (since I often improvise and interject extra material), but you must imagine it as the spoken word which it is intended to be:

Many will be familiar with Charles Dickens' classic book called “A Tale of Two Cities.” Today we examine the first chapter of Luke, a chapter we might call “A Tale of Two Characters.”

Without looking, who can tell me the two main characters in Luke 1?

Answer: Zechariah and Mary.

First we have Zechariah -- a man with an impressive pedigree, a priest, not only a priest but one in a line of priests going far back into Israelite history, a man who has married into Aaron's family. That's like marrying into the Van Valin family or something in our own church! And what are his moral credentials? We're told that he is upright in God's sight and obeys all the commandments. Where was he? The temple – the naval of the earth, the singular point of contact between God and man, the center of the universe for Jews.

Imagine being a first or second century Jew reading this account for the first time. You would think, “This is a good start, Luke. Here is a fine character to begin your narrative. Where else would you start your story than at the temple centered on a priest. I wholeheartedly approve."

But, to our shock, the unfolding story tells of this priest Zechariah’s failure. He doesn't believe or act in faith. He's punished. He hears the good news and doesn't accept it so he is struck dumb.

End of scene 1. This is not what we expected! We expected a story of piety – a story affirming the goodness of the priest!

Next scene 2 opens. It's location? Nazareth in Galilee of the gentiles -- a totally unimportant place. This is the opposite of the temple. Who cares about insignificant little Nazareth? It's like Filmore, IL where my wife grew up. Just a dot on the map that no one has heard of. And who's the new character? A virgin (probably under the age of 13) named Mary. Totally unimpressive. She has no pedigree, lives in the wrong place, and as a young female is at the bottom of the social latter. (Remember that this was pre-feminist movement. Young women were good for two things in those days: the sexual gratification of men and making babies).

As a reader, we want to stop the story and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Luke. Why on earth are you telling us about some no name little girl who lives in the middle of nowhere? Tell us about what MATTERS and what is IMPORTANT. Take us back to the TEMPLE and the PRIEST!” But Luke doesn't do it. As first time readers, we might even laugh at the irony of Gabriel (the highest of all angels) greeting this silly little girl with “Greetings, you who are highly favored!” The irony is just too much.

But what we find is that unlike Zechariah the priest in the temple, Mary responds correctly to the angel. She concludes, “I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said” (v. 38).

So what do we do with this? “What are you trying to tell us Luke? As a good Jewish upstanding religious leader, I think I find this a bit offensive. You're telling me a story in which a priest acts unfaithfully and a little virgin girl acts faithfully?!? Surely you're mixed up. That's not how we tell stories! You're messing with all my categories!”

And that is precisely what Luke is doing. He is messing up the categories. He's revealing something new about the heart of God that many Jewish readers may have missed: God “brings down rulers from their thrones but lifts up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things, but sends the rich away empty” (v. 52-53).

This story of two characters teaches us something: God loves outsiders. God loves losers. God loves the lowly, the humble, the insignificant, the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the silly little virgin girls who are thought to be worth nothing but baby factories.

This Christmas I want you to remember something: Jesus is for losers. Christmas is the great upheaval of all of our categories. Christmas reveals to us a God that humiliates high and lofty priests by making them dumb while greeting little virgin girls with shouts of "hallelujah!"

We stand today in the Free Methodist temple. This place is our denomination's Mecca. "We," the Tempter would have us believe, "are the center of the story. This is where the important things happen." But meanwhile we find Gabriel greeting little girls in India, starving boys in Somalia, beggars in Beijing, and alcoholics in the inner cities of America. That, my friends, is what Christmas is about. God with us. God with the losers.

Why Jesus?

You would think that among those who call themselves "Christ-ians" the question, "Why did Jesus come to earth?" would be fairly simple. Stop a moment and ask yourself how you would answer this. Surprisingly, I find a huge amount of confusion and downright bad theology among evangelicals when it comes to answering such a foundational question.

Read what Brian Fikkert concluded in his research: "We have asked thousands of evangelical Christians in numerous contexts this most basic question -- why did Jesus come to earth? -- and fewer than 1 percent of respondents say anything even remotely close to the answer that Jesus himself gave. Instead, the vast majority of people say something like 'Jesus came to die on the cross to save us from our sins so that we can go to heaven.' While this answer is true, saving souls in only a subset of the comprehensive healing of the entire cosmos that Jesus' kingdom brings and that was the centerpiece of his message" (When Helping Hurts 33).

In high school, I remember seeing a fellow evangelical wearing a t-shirt that said, "Born to Die" in reference to Christ's mission. And at the time I thought there was nothing wrong with that theology. But think of the ramifications of this view for a moment. What significance would there have been to any of Jesus' ministry? Why did he spend time healing, casting out demons, speaking prophetically to the religious power structure, and training disciples in his ways? Why did the gospel writers use so many words to write about such events? And, more importantly, does the resurrection even matter? I once heard a Sunday School teacher in a rural Free Methodist church say, "Jesus came to die for our sins. That was the only thing he did that mattered. Even if he hadn't been resurrected it wouldn't have mattered because what needed to be done was accomplished through his death." Our truncated theology has led us into unorthodoxy.

Perhaps we ought to allow Jesus himself to answer the question. Why did he come? Jesus believed his own mission could be summarized by the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19)

Objection, your honor! Jesus, that doesn't make any sense! Didn't you come to make an ETERNAL difference rather than a TEMPORARY difference? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, isn't it more important that you go about saving people's souls rather than making blind people see? What good is it for a blind person to see if he doesn't confess you as Savior and Lord and have a personal relationship with you and thereby avoid hell? Pardon my boldness, but isn't this "releasing inmates from jail" and "introducing the year of Jubilee" stuff LESS important than paying the price for our sins on the cross so that we can all go to heaven? Why didn't you say that THAT was your mission?

To put this another way, when Jesus encountered the blind man of Luke 18 who cried out for mercy why didn't Jesus say to him, "I am the fulfillment of all prophecy. I am the King of kings and Lord of lords. I have all the power in heaven and earth. I could heal you today of your blindness, but I only care about your soul. Believe in me." (Fikkert 35)?

I get the impression from some of my conservative evangelical friends who look from afar at my ministry in the inner city that they think much of what I do is a waste of time. I get questions like, "Why do you spend so much energy talking about things like healthcare? What does economics have to do with the gospel message (by which they mean the inculcation of information about Jesus' vicarious atonement)?" Some have even asked, "Why do you spend so much money giving people physical food when what they really need is spiritual food?" All this time I spend being a "do-gooder" is wasteful in their minds because the ONLY thing that matters in light of eternity, according to them, is the salvation of a soul which is accomplished by saying the sinner's prayer. Anything else is a distraction. Some are a bit more open-minded and are willing to tolerate social justice, but only as a means to an end. That is, yes, sometimes you have to feed people, but you do that only so that they'll listen to you when you share the real gospel with them.

Well, if such thinking is correct, then Jesus was off his rocker. Jesus should have been doing Billy Graham crusades instead of eating with tax collectors, giving sight to blind men, debating with the Pharisees about the Sabbath, and feeding a crowd of 5000 (with apparently more concern for their stomachs than for their souls).

This is the big gaping hole in most evangelical theology: they have become so obsessed with the King that they've completely forgotten about the kingdom. In fact, one pastor whom I deeply respect and want to emulate in many ways, shocked me by asking, "What exactly do you mean by always talking about 'the kingdom of God'? What is 'the kingdom of God'?" I wanted to scream! You mean to tell me you've been a pastor for how long and you don't know what the kingdom of God is!?! Well, it's only the central message that Jesus came to preach! It's only the reconciliation of all of creation including humanity into right relationship with the Creator! It's only the entire agenda of the the early church!

But I need to back up. For those who may not be aware, the kingdom of God, simply stated, is "the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces such that things are brought back under Christ's rule and authority and are restored to health, beauty, and freedom." (Timothy Keller, an evangelical who gets it).

Explaining why evangelicals have abandoned kingdom theology would take far too long and this entry is long enough already. Suffice it to say that they have bought into a false dichotomy between body and soul which was foreign to the Jews of Jesus' day (see my note called "What Does It Mean to Be Human?"). Furthermore, they have so emphasized their nice, neat "road to salvation" that they've completely forgotten about what Jesus did when he was on earth.

Why did Jesus come? It was more than just to die. It was to inaugurate a new kingdom breaking into the world in which all of creation -- humanity included -- would be liberated from decay in both physical and spiritual ways. It was to show humanity a glimpse of what the future kingdom will look like and to invite a new community called the church to participate in it ahead of time. It was to meet a blind man on the road, heal him, and leave it at that.

What does it mean to be human?

I began reading an excellent new book by Joel B. Green (my former Asbury prof) entitled Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. It occured to me as I read this that many of the theological and even political disputes I have with my fellow Christian brothers and sisters are rooted in a vastly different anthropology, or understanding of what it means to be human. Green points out the practical questions that are rooted in our how we define humanity:

- Given contemporary experimentation and innovation in the area of Artificial Intelligence, can we imagine anything about humans that our mechanical creations will be unable to duplicate?

- If, like sheep and pigs, humans can be cloned, will the resulting form be a "person"?

- On what basis might we attribute sacred worth to humans, so that we have what is necessary for discourse concerning morality and for ethical purposes?

- What view of the human person is capable of funding what we want to know about ourselves theologically -- about sin, for example, as well as moral responsibility, repentance, and growth in grace?

- Am I free to do what I want, or is my sense of decision-making a ruse?

- How should we understand "salvation"? Does salvation entail a denial of the world and embodied life, focusing instead on my "inner person" and on the life to come? How ought the church to be extending itself in mission? Mission to what? The spiritual or soulish needs of a person? Society-at-large? The cosmos?

- What happens when we die? What view of the human person is consistent with Christian belief in life-after-death? (Taken from pg. 20).

Obviously, these are HUGE questions and the answers to such questions are not agreed upon by all theologians. But there are two main schools of thought which will determine how we answer almost all of these.

The first is called the "dualist" mentality and this is certainly the most predominant view in popular evangelical theology. Dualism dates back to Plato who drew a sharp distinction between the body and the soul as two separate entities. Plato's legacy and influence lived on and strongly impacted early Christian thinkers like Tertullian, Augustine, and Justin Martyr. In modern circles it emerges in devotional literature that exhorts us to deny this world and focus solely on the next. I pick up on it strongly in Thomas A Kempis, Oswalt Chambers, John Piper, and so on. In fact, this dualism of body and soul so permeates our thinking that to question it is viewed by many as completely unorthodox and contrary to biblical anthropology.

The alternative to this view is called by many names, but more often referred to as "monism." In monism the body and soul distinction is a fiction. "We do not have a soul; we are a soul" as C. S. Lewis stated. Thus, the physical and spiritual aspects of our lives are intimately connected with one another. Monism generally values the here-and-now more than the then-and-there. I've come across holistic spirituality in the writings of Matthew Fox, C. S. Lewis, and even Rob Bell.

Above I highlighted one question because I think it is so critical to the many disputes I've had in person and online with fellow evangelicals about the nature of what God wants us to do here on earth. Does God want us to focus simply on "saving souls" or is it bigger than that? Is doing social justice among the poor an essential element of our mission or is it a distraction from what is really important (i.e. the work of the heart, the inner person)? What will heaven look like and are humans in any way responsible for the bringing of it? Is heaven far off or will it be here on earth? The answer to all of these questions will determine how we judge the importance of various Christian activities.

Furthermore, a question of human identity emerges. Most of my politically conservative friends assume a post-Enlightenment, modernist, western view of the self. Philosopher and theologian Robert Di Vito summarizes this view: Many understand the modern sense of the human in terms of "the location of dignity in self-sufficiency and self-containment, sharply defined personal boundaries, the highly developed idea of my 'inner person,' and the conviction that my full personhood rests on my exercise of autonomous and self-legislative action" (12). Wow! How often have I heard arguments from the right that swallows such a presupposition without even being aware of it!?

Di Vito offers an alternative he finds far more biblical: the person "1) is deeply embedded or engaged, in his or her social identity, 2) is comparatively decentered and undefined with respect to personal boundaries, 3) is relatively transparent, socialized, and embodied (in other words, is altogether lacking in a sense of 'inner depths'), and 4) is 'authentic' precisely in his or her heteronomy, in his or her obedience to another and dependence upon another." (Di Vito, "OT Anthropology," 221).

If this alternative anthropology truly is more biblical, then this has radical implications about the mission of the church, the goal of the nation-state, our ecclesiology, and our spirituality -- just to name a few.

I will post more on this later, but suffice it to say that we need to be better informed about the presuppositions we bring to the table as we debate theological and political matters. I embrace the monist position and, as a result, and holistic missiology. I am aware the my holistic missiology is unpopular and even offensive to those who have been raised in the church to believe that the soul and only the soul matters in light of eternity. Such people are well-meaning, but I believe ultimately misinformed about the nature of man as it is outlined for us in the scriptures. To name just a FEW implications of this anthropology: 1) it is ever bit as important to care for a person's physical needs as it is to care for his spiritual needs, 2) the mission of the church ought to involve the redemption of creation (i.e. "creation care") rather than treating it as though it's all going to burn soon, 3) among the various roles of the state is the obligation to care for the common good (even at the expense of the modernistic ideals of "autonomy and self-determination"), 4) "salvation" can no longer be viewed through purely individualistic and postmortem lenses; it must involve radical social change on the family, city, state, national, and global levels because the gospel is much, much bigger than "Jesus gets your butt into heaven."

Enough for now...

Op-Ed on Healthcare

I have recently worked with Sojourners to submit the following editorial to several important newspapers (see the list at the bottom). Whether or not they will publish it is to be decided, but here is a peek of what I've submitted for my blog readers to enjoy!

--------------

Despite what many may say, reforming our broken healthcare system is a moral issue. It is an outrage that nearly 12% of Indiana residents live without health insurance. Over 744,000 residents of our state are currently uninsured – that is almost the size of Indianapolis! By next year, in the richest nation to ever exist in the history of the world, fifty-two million Americans will not have health coverage.

Some have tried to say that the faith community should stay silent, clergy should stick to spiritual matters – but for me, it is immoral to stay silent.

As a minister, I believe this debate is much more personal than statistics about the uninsured. Statistics fail to tell the heartbreaking human story of suffering that I witness in my church every day. A report can’t reveal the anguish of a mother unable to afford a doctor’s visit for a sick child, or the pain of a husband ignoring a debilitating injury because missing work means losing his job, or the woman who spoke to me recently about her treatable form of cancer which is going untreated due to its unaffordable cost.

While the Bible does not outline specific public policies around the provision of health care, it does make it clear that protecting the health of each human being is a profoundly important personal and communal responsibility for people of faith. Throughout the Bible, God shows a special concern for the vulnerable and sick and acts to lift them up.

The Bible also teaches that society organize in such a way that all have genuine access to the resources needed to live a dignified life, as well as provide for those who are unable to care for themselves.

The Hebrew prophets consistently say that the measure of a nation’s righteousness and integrity is how it treats the most vulnerable. And Jesus says the nations will be judged by how they treat “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-45).
While all people of faith will never agree on every aspect of health-care reform, there is an overall agreement on a few key principles.

1. Health, not sickness, is the will of God. We can see this from the story of the garden, in Genesis, where sickness never was, and from the vision of a city, in Revelation, in which death will be no more. When we are instruments of bringing about that good health, we are doing the work of God.

2. United we stand, divided we fall. The division between those who can afford adequate coverage and those who cannot is a threat to our unity and a threat to the health of our neighbors and our nation. 46 million in our country are uninsured and millions more who are, still can't keep up with their bills. The common good requires a system that is accessible to all who need it.

3. Patients not profits. No one should be discriminated against in their health care because they are sick. Our faith mandates that we give extra consideration and help to those who are sick, but every time an insurance company denies coverage for "pre-existing conditions," excluded ailments, or confusing fine print, their profits go up. Every doctor I know decided to pursue medicine to help people. The health insurance industry makes a profit by not helping, but our faith requires it.

4. Life and liberty must both be protected. The health-care system should protect the sanctity and dignity of life in accordance with existing law and the current rules; and the prohibition on federal funding of abortions should be consistently and diligently applied to any legislation. Strong "conscience" protections should be enacted for health-care workers to ensure they have the liberty to exercise their moral and religious beliefs in their profession. Evidence suggests that supporting low-income and pregnant women with adequate health care increases the number of women who chose to carry their child to term, so if we do reform right, we can reduce abortion in America.

5. For the next generation, health care reform should be based on firm financial foundations. Health care is a vital and wise investment for the future of our families and society. But, the way we pay for it should be fair and equitable and seek to lessen the burden on succeeding generations--both in bringing everyone into the system and by bringing the costs of health care under control over time. Our religious traditions suggest that social justice and fiscal responsibility must not be pitted against each other, but balanced together in sound public policy that is affordable for individuals and for society.

We need bold actions, political will and the moral urgency to pass comprehensive health care reform now. The guardians of the status quo will surely make this a tough fight. But inspired by faith and hope, together we can make whole that which is broken. The spirit of change is on the move.

Grace and Peace,
Greg Coates

Pastor, First Free Methodist Church of Indianapolis

This has been submitted to the following papers: Indianapolis Star, Herald-Times (Bloomington), Journal & Courier (Lafayette), The Star-Press (Muncie), The Courier-Journal (Louisville), Tribune-Star, Hoy, Daily Journal, Herald-Bulletin, Daily Ledger (Noblesville), USA Today, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, South Bend Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Kalamazoo Gazette, Chicago Sun-Times, Post-Tribune, The Journal Gazette, Elkhart Truth, The Herald-Palladium, Goshen News, Evansville Courier & Press, Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, The Gleaner, Vincennes Sun-Commercial

You all need to see this video. Wow! Quite eye opening.

Russ

He struck me as unusually clean-shaven and well-kept to be sitting week after week in our Monday food pantry. Upon introducing myself, I met a friendly, educated, and articulate young man probably in his late thirties or early forties. Not only does he speak well and appear to be responsible, Russ* is also white -- which made me all the more curious as to why he sat in this food pantry which typically attracts the uneducated and the disenfranchised minority peoples who are unable to thrive in our racist society.

Russ, it turns out, has a story. As we all do. He was abandoned as a baby and brought up in a state institution for most of his childhood. In his early teens, he found some foster parents who took him in and cared for him, but "we didn't always see eye to eye," Russ adds. Immediately after finishing high school, Russ found a decent job and eventually became the co-manager of his organization. But then Russ found Vicodin.

Vicodin was for Russ more appealing and addictive than any substance he'd ever come across before (and he had tried many). He told me, "I don't know why, but Vicodin just makes me feel happy. Alcohol never really did that for me like it does for some people, but Vicodin does. When I started to get sad and depressed, I would just take some and then I'd be okay. It became my best friend." Perhaps because of his feelings of abandonment having grown up as an orphan or perhaps because he just wanted to escape his depression, Russ started buying Vicodin off of the street for $3-a-pop. Eventually his habit grew completely out of control and he was taking up to 25 or more each day.

At first, it wasn't a problem. Russ could balance his work with his addiction and could manage well in both worlds. "It isn't like alcohol," he said, "you can smell it on the breath of someone who is drunk, but the one who's high on pills appears completely normal." But then the economy went south and his business folded. His one and only friend -- the other co-manager of his business -- became very depressed and blew off his head with a shotgun one night after they'd had a pleasant dinner together.

Russ turned to his old friend again for comfort. Without an income, soon he had to take out a second mortgage on his house, sell his big screen TV and his new car, and cut back on groceries in order to maintain his pill habit. But a year after this, Russ found himself evicted from his home and penniless. Desperate to find shelter, he came upon a group of Latinos who took him in and let him stay in one of their closets. Russ doesn't know Spanish and none of his housemates know English, but they've managed to work out a suitable arrangement: the Latinos let Russ sleep in their closet and, in return, Russ gives them all of his food stamps every month.

Which is why Russ comes to our food pantry. Without us, he would have nothing to eat.

I asked him, "So what do you do all day?" and he laughed, "I dunno. Watch TV. I give plasma twice a week and get 25 bucks each time. But I don't really do anything else." "And you're satisfied with that?" "I guess so. There ain't any jobs in this neighborhood and I ain't got a car. Besides, even if I got a job, I'd just spend all my money on Vicodin."

"So once you lost your job and your house, you had to cut back on your drug habit, right? What was that like?"

"Oh it was awful. I don't even want to talk about it. I just curled up on the floor for days all by myself, sweating from head to toe, passing out and going into seizures. I can't believe I'm still alive."

"Why didn't you call an ambulance and go to the hospital?"

"Well, I don't have any insurance and I don't have any money. I didn't want to go into debt for a trip to the ER."

"Do you still take Vicodin?"

"Yes. Whenever I get the money to, I buy some. Somedays I don't get to get any... like today (which is why I'm fidgety and scratching myself all the time). But usually I like to try to get at least three Vicodin a day to make myself feel better."

"Why do you take these things? I mean, they have ruined your life."

"Yep. They are my worst enemy, but they're also my best friend. When I have them, they make me happy and they are my best friend. When I run out, they turn on me and make me miserable. I guess they are a demon dressed up like a friend."

"So if you realize that, don't you want to get off of them?"

"No. Not really. I like them. I don't want to quit. They're the only things that make me happy and make me want to keep living."

"Have you ever thought of going into rehab?"

"My adoptive parents want me to do that, but I don't want to. You can't force someone to do rehab that doesn't want to go."

"Right. But are you happy living in a closet and giving away your food stamps and living like this?"

"No, but I can't get out of it. I'm stuck. So I guess I should just make the best of it and deal with it. I mean, I know I can't quit the Vicodin so why try, ya know?"

I sat there in silence for a long time, not sure what to say. I wanted to tell him that I could help him to get well, but here was a man who didn't want to get well. I thought of Jesus words in John chapter 5 to the invalid at the pool: "Do you want to be made well?" Here's a man who would look Jesus in the eye and say, "No. Go away." So what does Jesus do in that case?

I don't judge Russ. I mean, if I had no family and no friends and was raised as an orphan in an institution, I might be just the same. I might be willing to trade in my life for a few moments of happiness... a few hours of feeling like there's nothing wrong with the world. Like Russ told me: "For about 5 or 6 hours after popping some Vicodin nothing bothers you anymore. People can say mean things to you that would normally hurt, but they don't hurt. You just don't feel anything bad at all. You're just happy for a little while. Then it all crashes down later."

So I'll see Russ next Monday. Nothing will have changed. He'll still be sleeping in a closet and paying his rent with his food stamps. I'll still be a pastor trying to help people out of hell. And I'll sit down and ask Russ how his week was and he'll say the same thing he says every time I see him: "It's a tough world out there."

You're right, Russ. It is a tough world out there.

*Russ is not his real name, but I'm ashamed to admit that for a long time I thought his name was Russ until he corrected me a few weeks ago. God forgive me.

Podcasting

Just a short note to say that I'm now posting my sermons as podcasts. You can see them on the right column of this blog or go to the original source at http://gregcoates.podOmatic.com/.

Melancholy

What do I do with my melancholy? Do I embrace it? Do I turn it into a poem? Should I feel guilty for experiencing it so regularly? Is it compatible with my faith?

For so many years I heard the testimonies in church: "My friend asked me, 'Why are you always so happy?' and I told him, 'It's because I have Jesus in my life and he fills me with such joy and peace. You can know him too if you'd like.' And then he prayed to accept Jesus." I knew I should rejoice upon hearing such a testimony, but instead I felt punched in the stomach. Tormented by guilt I asked myself, "What is wrong with you, Greg? Why can't you be that way? Why do you live life with such seriousness and such gravity? Why are you so melancholy? Is it because you yourself are not saved?"

Even as a young child, I can recall people asking me frequently, "What are you upset about, Greg?" and "Why so serious?" It annoyed me that they would ask me this. And then I would get annoyed at myself for getting annoyed. "Why am I angry?" I would think, "Because you think I'm angry when I'm not."

Here I am -- a 28 year old man, just as melancholy as ever. More than anything, I want to make my Daddy in heaven proud of me. I want to do something good for Him since He did so much for me. But do I have to be chipper every morning? Do I have to walk around with a plastic smile on my face each day? Do I have to tell everyone in my church that I'm okay when I'm not? Do I have to write facebook status updates like "Greg Coates is just so incredibly in love with Jesus today" even on the many days that I don't feel like it? And even if I could somehow magically change my personality so that I was funny and gregarious and bubbly and gleeful, would I still be Greg Coates? Would that make my Daddy in heaven happy?

I don't know. Maybe God made me melancholy and wills for me to be so. Maybe the naturally serious, dour look on my face is as natural as my pectus excavatum. Maybe it's a flaw or maybe God wouldn't want me any other way. But either way, I want to learn to be comfortable with who I am and I'm certainly not there yet.

The Letterman "Apology"

I'm not much one for celebrity gossip, but when I heard that David Letterman was making headlines on the front pages of newspapers across America, I checked out what was going on. Turns out that the Indianapolis native had had an affair with an intern several years before and that someone was attempting to blackmail him for $2 million with this insider information. So Letterman called the attorney general, wrote the man a fake check, and the blackmailer was caught, but Letterman still had to confess to his "sin." I watched a clip of Letterman's "apology" with great interest, wondering how this late night icon of television would present himself. I shouldn't have been surprised by what I saw, but I was. Here's the clip:

What a wonderful illustration of so many aspects of our culture. Notice the following:

1) There is no apology here. This story is just played off for humor.

2) Sex outside of wedlock is not considered "immoral" or "sinful" in any way.

3) Letterman expresses not even the slightest concern for his wife or child or others he may have hurt.

4) He communicates to all of America that sex outside of wedlock is funny.

5) The audience actually applauds his behavior.

This is all truly remarkable. America has not only rejected the old-fashioned notion of monogamy as normative, we have gone beyond this and come to applaud the failures and sins of one another. We do this because it assuages our own guilt. When we hear Letterman say, "I have had sex with women on this show," we do not expect a tearful penitence; we laugh. C. S. Lewis says that evil reaches its pinnacle when we not only accept it within ourselves, but delight in it when we see it in others in order to make ourselves feel less evil. I think he has pegged our nation perfectly.

Autumn

Autumn is here officially. Sixty was the high today and I reached back into my closet for a sweater I haven't worn since early spring. This is my favorite time of the year. October is hands down the best month -- carmeled apples, football, flannel, hot cups of java, hay rides, and love.

Why love? Because I fell in love in the fall nine years ago with a new freshman who had just arrived on the campus of Greenville College. I had overheard some guys in my dorm talking about who they were going to ask out and the name Courtney Probst popped up. "Not before I do" was my thought as I raced across campus to write a note on the dry erase board hanging on her door. I scribbled some nervous, banal comment like, "Hi, this is Greg. I hope you remember me. We should hang out sometime. Call me."

It all worked out in the end. We walked to the local Marathon station, drank some cheap pumpkin spice cappuccino, talked about our favorite books, and I fell head over heels in love. It's a good thing my classes were easy that semester in the fall of 2000 because I couldn't focus on anything but her. She made me chicken soup when I got a cold. I picked her up after her shift at Hardee's and we drove out to Patriot's park to look at the stars. It was a classic college romance that, if sprinkled with some unrealistic witty banter, would probably smell of a B-rated Jennifer Aniston movie.

Now nine years later I find myself with the same woman. We've graduated from college, lived in six different apartments/houses, taught English in China for a year, had two girls, weathered the storms of seminary finals, and moved to the inner city. But we're still going strong. She knows me very well -- too well -- since she's seen me at my worst. Yet she continues to love me. Likewise, I love her more than ever despite seeing her bad moments.

Autumn is upon us and as I watch the fall leaves change color and switch from drinking frapuccinos to cappuccinos, I fall in love again. And I thank God for my life partner that has been with me these nine autumns and counting.

Ex Nihilo?

As children of the Western Enlightenment and its subsequent devotion to empiricism and rationalism, we approach the ancient Hebrew Scriptures with certain presuppositions. Some of those presuppositions can be inbred so deeply within us that we become completely unaware of them. A prominent example of this appears in the way we speak about human origins. We ask a set of questions such as, "Where did the universe come from?", "Has matter always existed", and "Did God create the world we experience or did it come from the process of evolution?" Those who want to defend the authority of the Bible (and those who want to attack it) oftentimes approach the beginning of Genesis with similar questions since, Christian and non-Christian alike, we are all children of the Enlightenment.

However, what if these were NOT the questions of the ancient Hebrew people? What if their set of questions were entirely different? What if they didn't really even care about where matter came from? In his book The Lost World of Genesis One, Wheaton professor John H. Walton suggests precisely this. Walton, who has immersed himself in the original texts of the ancient near east, contends that Genesis 1 says absolutely nothing about the material origins of the universe. In fact, he points out, a close examination of Genesis 1:2 reveals that the author actually assumed matter (i.e. "stuff") already existed when God "created" the heavens and the earth. One wonders where "the waters" came from in verse 2. Answer: the writer didn't care about the question of material origins as we do. He was up to something totally different.

So what was he up to? Walton claims that the writers of Genesis 1 sought to explain the functional origins of the world, not the material origins as we would like to read the story. The question in their minds was not, "Where does everything come from?" but "How is there order and function in the world?" and "To what end is this world created?" This changes everything. If the writer of Genesis wanted to communicate how order was brought out of chaos (the literal implication of the Hebrew word bara which we translate "create") and did not intend to provide us with an orthodox doctrine of ex nihilo, then to ask the text to give us an account of material origins is a foreign imposition on the text and an anachronism.

So what does all of this mean? Well, its implications are radical. It means that when science produces an account of material origins (such as the "big bang" or "theory of evolution"), it cannot contradict the Bible since the Bible and modern science are addressing different questions altogether! It is perfectly rational to believe that evolution accounts for our material origins, but to also accept the authority of Genesis 1 as an account of the functional origins of the cosmos. The fundamentalist demand that we contort Scripture such that it answers our modern questions was an attempt made in good faith by people who wanted to cling to the Bible as a source for truth. Ironically, in their fervor for preserving the Bible, fundamentalists (and most evangelicals) actually did a great deal of damage to the Scriptures by making it less credible to the scientific community who came to believe that they had to choose between their scientific work and their religious beliefs.

To make this even more simple, Genesis one wants to tell us this: God made this world for a purpose and organized it to accomplish that purpose (which, by the way, was to serve as a temple for himself in which he could rest). Science, on the other hand, attempts to tell us where stuff came from. It's like we're arguing over which statement is true: does 2 + 2 = 4 or does a square have 4 sides? The answer is "yes!"

I find this liberating because I can accept the findings of modern science (yes, even evolutionary theory) and still hold to the authority, inspiration, and accuracy of the Bible. And doing so is not some sort of cop-out or desperate hermeneutical gymnastics. It is in fact being a faithful exegete of Scripture.

Now more questions come to my mind about theistic evolution such as "If God used survival of the fittest (a very bloody affair), then what does this say about God's nature?" or "At what point did evolving monkeys actually 'take on' the image of God?" But regardless of these quandaries, I am thankful to be able to read the Bible and accept it without having to turn off my brain and scream "you're wrong!" at 98% of the scientists in this world.

So the next time someone starts spouting off about how Christians who believe in evolution are subverting the faith and undermining Scripture, I will simply him them that "I believe you are imposing a set of foreign questions on a text which was never meant to field them. You've been handed a love letter from your wife and are reading it like a Toyota manual. Read it like it was meant to be read and you'll figure it out."

This post is a reflection on John Walton's book "The Lost World of Genesis One" which I highly recommend.

Trading Resentment for Gratitude

Which blade in a pair of scissors is more important? C. S. Lewis compares this question with one often posed in churches today: "Is salvation an act of faith or works?" He writes: "Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

How quickly I forget this simple, straightforward truth! Too often I find this cycle at work in my life:

1) I encounter divine goodness and desire to please God because I love Him and what He has done for me.

2) As an expression of this gratitude, I begin to do good works such as caring for the poor, spending time in prayer, visiting the hurting, etc.

3) Gradually I begin to focus on the works themselves and forget my original reason for doing them (i.e. the love of God).

4) I become unable to do enough good works and begin to feel guilty for my many failures.

5) I worry that I'm not doing enough to be loved by God.

6) I become resentful of a God who demands so much obedience from me.

I must confess that there have been days that I resented God's calling on my life. I start to think thoughts like, "Why did God have to call me to this difficult place and difficult job? Why couldn't he have called someone else? Why can't I just live a normal, comfortable life and why can't that be enough? This is unfair of you, God! Take back this calling!" Then something even worse happens. I start to resent other Christians who have not had the same calling and who do not make the same sacrifices that I make. I begin to look down on them, judge them, and think of them as inferior Christians. What a demonic thought!

But such thoughts creep into my mind because somewhere along the way, I start to think that my salvation is contingent upon my striving and effort. But I've got it all backwards. In my better moments, I don't do good deeds in order to be saved, but because I already am saved. In those moments, my worry, striving, and resentment are replaced with gratitude, joy, and adoration of God.

I must learn to accept the fact that God loves me. Period. End of story. And once I fully "get it," only then am I in a place to serve Him. Only then will I be able to look a fellow Christians who live differently than myself without a hint of judgment. Only then will I wake up in the morning and praise God for the wonderful privilege it is to serve Him in the inner city. Only when I realize that God would love me just as much if I were a parking lot attendant can I truly embrace my vocation of ministry.

A Manifesto for the Disenchanted Evangelical

I'm going to do something very bold that's probably also unwise. I'm going to attempt to speak for a generation. It's a foolish endeavor, I know, because every generation is composed of vastly different individuals who disagree on every subject under the sun. But, on the other hand, there is a sense in which a generation takes on a personality of its own and differentiates itself from the one before it. I'm currently reading a wonderful little memoir called "The Unlikely Disciple" by Kevin Roose who spent one semester as an undercover reporter at Liberty University, the brainchild of Dr. Jerry Falwell and Mecca of the religious right. As I read the book I notice that Roose speaks for a generation that ranges from mildly disenchanted to loudly furious with the evangelical church of our fathers' and mothers' generation. So, with fear and trembling, I present a manifesto on behalf of the young fringe evangelicals.

We don't think the most heinous of all sins is homosexuality. In fact, we're convinced that the Bible speaks much more about materialism and serving the poor than about how reprehensible it is to be gay. We take the Bible seriously, but don't think the Bible demands that we carry around banners claiming, "God hates fags." And when we read the story of Sodom and Gomorra we are quick to note that the sin of their materialism is mentioned more frequently by the author than their sodomy.

We don't think that global warming is some far-fetched conspiracy theory spread by liberal elites in a bid for power. In fact, we find it suspicious that the only scientists who deny global warming, do so from a particularly narrow theological persuasion. We don't think the earth was given to us by God to rule with an iron fist, but rather was given to us to care for in the same way that God cares for his creation.

We don't think God is a Republican... or a Democrat. We think he is above political ideologies. And we are offended when a large segment of the church tries to hijack our faith and use it as a tool to win elections. We believe in "family values" and we are still "values voters," but our values go beyond opposition to gays and blind support of the military.

We're tired of a church that has been loud, angry, and very vocal to American culture about things that really don't matter that much. We wish that instead of getting in a huff about the use of "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas," the church might actually get angry about hundreds of thousands of kids starving or the plague of AIDS in Africa or genocide.

We are slowly coming to see that things are not as black and white as our forefathers wanted to present them. We find it difficult to divide people easily between "good" and "bad" or even between "believers" and "non-believers." We see faith as a journey and a process that takes a lifetime. It doesn't end at a single trip to an altar nor does "saying the magic words" sum up the totality of the Christian experience.

We are very uncomfortable with a God who claims to love everyone, but who damns most of them to hell simply because the weren't born in a country where they never heard the name "Jesus." We think that's unfair and we find it hard to worship such a God. We prefer to cling to the hope that God's grace and mercy will extend far beyond what we have ever even imagined on this side of death.

We're so sick and tired of shallow, consumer-driven, superficial staged performances on Sunday morning. We're not drawn to a church because it has a slick band or nifty powerpoint graphics. We hunger for a place that is honest and genuine and that delves deep into the mystery and joy of community. We're not impressed by the mega-church, by the airport-sized buildings, or by the Starbucks lattes in the foyers. We long for someone who will love us, listen to us, and give us a place to belong. We're willing to overlook imperfections in the way church is "performed" if it offers us a place to be real.

We don't think the words of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, or Chuck Colson are infallible. We like to listen to a variety of perspectives and we're not convinced that the conservative, religious-right evangelicalism of our childhood is THE PUREST FORM of Christianity. In fact, we are drawn to a broad variety of traditions -- Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anabaptist, Coptic, and so on.

We think that the Christian story must involve more than individuals simply getting their butts into heaven. We want a Christianity that is relevant to THIS LIFE. We want a religion that can change us and that can change society. We don't want some hyper-inward, invisible faith; we want something tangible, something we can sink our teeth into, something more akin to what Paul described when he spoke of the "redemption of all of creation."

We're unsatisfied with the traditional means of spirituality that we've inherited. The whole "read your Bible and pray every day" thing is good, but we demand more. We want a faith that goes beyond just "Jesus and me" and instead enfolds us into a community that lives out a radically different, alternative ethic. We value meditation, fasting, time in nature, blogging, exercising, and chatting about Jesus over a cup of coffee. And we think that these things are legitimate ways to draw close to God -- just as legit as daily bible reading or individual prayer.

We want a faith filled with mystery. We don't respect a person that has all the answers. We're not attracted to someone who claims to be "the Bible Answer Man." Instead, we want someone who is willing to live within the ambiguities of life and embrace them. We want to participate in ancient rituals of the church that have been around for thousands of years and, no, we don't need to understand or dissect these rituals until all the mystery has been eradicated from them.

We want to be loved as we are and not judged. We don't want to have to measure up to a standard before we're accepted. We like Jesus. Jesus just loved people and healed them and gave them hope. He wasn't preachy (or when he was, he was usually preachy at the religious establishment of his day). He liked the down-and-outers and brought them into the fold. That's the type of guy we want to follow.

We get a little antsy when people start demanding that we "go out and evangelize people." Not because we don't believe in sharing good news, but because for so long the church has reduced people to projects. For too long we've been dogmatic and preachy and know-it-alls who stand aloof of all the pathetic unenlightened masses that don't know Jesus. We'd prefer to enter the world of the "sinner" on their own ground, get to know them, listen to them, hear their story, and have a conversation with them about life and death and meaning. We prefer to think of EVERYONE as having a spiritual journey and a story to tell. In fact, we think that we can even learn from non-Christians (gasp!).

We hate racism. We hate how Sunday mornings at 11 am are still the most segregated hour of the week in America. We long to meet other cultures, break bread with them, and cross the barriers that divide us. Seeing an all-white congregation makes us sick to our stomach because we have this sinking feeling that something is very, very wrong. We're comfortable in a multi-cultural context and wouldn't want it any other way.

We're tired of a religion that legitimizes violence against other people. Muslim children are children too... that God loves. We are angered when people in power utilize our faith for their warmongering. We follow the prince of peace, the lamb of God who refused to retaliate. We're tired of religious wars and we want to learn to (at a minimum) coexist with people of other religions and at best to join hands and party with them.

So there it is. A manifesto for the disenchanted young evangelical. Undoubtedly many of my own generation will disagree with how I've put things. But it was worth the risk. I don't think I'm alone in thinking these thoughts.

A Troubled Glance

I know it's not the title of this blog, God, but I have to give you a troubled glance right now. I cry to you from the pit of despair and I ask for You. I need a Friend -- someone who can watch the kids for me or clean the house or write my sermon for me or go and visit all the needy people who depend on me. I need You, God, but I don't know where you are. If I did know, I'd spend my last penny to buy a plane ticket to get there. My girls are sick... again. More coughing, runny noses, and crying at night. My wife is burned out. Too much work, too little appreciation, not enough time off. She never gets a day off, ever. I'm overwhelmed too. I have people all around me who need me to counsel them because they're are so screwed up, but who's gonna counsel me? (I'm just as screwed up as any of them). I have sermons to write and practice, books to read and theological thoughts to think, board meetings to prepare for, vision to cast, staff members to keep happy, enemies who need to be reconciled, sour old ladies who need a word of rebuke spoken to them, a charity house across the street that is on the verge of going under for lack of finances. At home I have dishes to do, babies to bathe and change and discipline and wake up with early and make lunch for and clean up after and put to bed. When am I supposed to take time for my wife? When do we get to spend time just loving each other? Not this year, I guess. Maybe next. Most of all I need you, God, because when you are far off I am filled with emptiness and despair in my gut. Normally I can function and deal with all of the stuff as I run around a million miles per hour, but not when things aren't right with You. So where are you? Can you give me a call? I need someone just to tell me that it's gonna be okay and that I'm not a failure and that all my striving is not in vain. Well, I gotta go. Looks like I can't pray right now. My daughter is eating chalk. Have your people talk to my people and we'll get together sometime.

My 2 Cents on Healthcare

The hot topic recently in politics has been the question of universal healthcare. I thought I would take a brief moment to offer some of my own reflections on the issue.

THE LEAST WORST OPTION. I stand with many other Americans in their distrust of big government. I am concerned about the ever growing budget deficit and think we need some fiscal responsibility. However, we need to look at our options. The status quo is obviously not satisfactory with 46 million Americans currently uninsured. This includes many who have worked hard, paid into the system for years, lived honest lives, but have been laid off because of the recession. At the risk of oversimplification, I see two main options: 1) the continuing privatization of health care or 2) government-run healthcare. The former option leaves people's health decisions in the hands of CEOs and boards which ultimately only answer to their shareholders. Their primary concern is to increase profit margins and if they have to engage in practices such as denying coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition or utilizing recision, then they will do so. In my opinion, I would rather have elected officials who have been chosen by the public to look after the common good oversee healthcare rather than these CEOs from the corporate world. So although government-run healthcare may not be a great option, it is the least worst option.

THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE. When I met the middle aged woman on Monday morning who came to me and asked for prayer, I had no idea what a fire she would ignite in my heart for this debate. She looked me in the eye and told me that she was dying from a treatable form of cancer. However, she could not afford the medications or chemotherapy. So she wasted away day by day praying for a miracle or for a rich philanthropist who would intervene on her behalf. Looking into her eyes, I realized that healthcare is a moral issue -- it is not simply a cold economic calculus of supply and demand, guided by the invisible hand of the free market. To watch a woman die young because her nation refused to treat her is a tragedy that we might expect to happen in Niger or Congo, but not in the riches nation on earth. As we read the story of the good Samaritan, we are left with no doubt that a nation which leaves millions of sick people stranded on the side of the road with no help stands condemned in the sight of a merciful God. We are morally obligated to care for the poor. If even 1% of our nation was uninsured, it would be too many.

We might do well to think long and hard about this question: "Is it moral to make a profit off of someone's basic healthcare?"

IS UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE UN-AMERICAN? Interestingly many have argued that a "socialized" form of medicine is un-American and betrays our sacred ideals of rugged individualism, entrepreneurship, and total economic freedom. Well, I have several responses. First, is the idea that we care for our marginalized un-American? What about looking out for the common welfare (after all, we do ensure that every American can get a free education)? Is it un-American for us to create a system in which middle aged women don't have to die a death that could have been prevented? If the answer to these questions is "yes," then go ahead and call me un-American. I'd rather be labeled un-American than indifferent to those in need. Perhaps completely economic liberty is not the highest good. The Bible certainly seems to challenge such an assumption.

HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE. As our system currently stands, the wealthy of America have the best healthcare in the world. They can demand all the treatments no matter how crackpot they may be (provided that they can shell out the cash). The poor, on the other hand, get screwed. In other words, a young woman's right to life is dependent upon what class she is born into. If she's born into wealth, she has no worries; if poverty, then she may fall through the cracks like so many others have done. But I believe that the right to see a doctor and receive minimal medication and care ought not to be a privilege of the wealthy. Instead, it should be available to all regardless of economic standing. Think of the absurdity that we mandate the government to provide a school and education for all children, but don't guarantee that they can be made healthy enough to attend that school. Which is a more basic human right? I would argue that physical health is even more foundational than education. But currently we provide one and not the other.

Gran Torino: A Profoundly Christian Movie

Warning: This post contains spoilers. If you plan to watch Gran Torino and don't want the end ruined, then read no further.

Gran Torino tells the tale of a grouchy, hardened Korean veteran whose wife has just passed away. Mad at his kids, mad at his neighbors, and mad at life, Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) gradually experiences a conversion through his relationship with the teenage Hmong brother and sister who live next door. Seeking to payback a gang of ruthless thugs for beating and raping the young Sue Lor (Ahney Her), Walt Kowalski seems set on some vintage Eastwood payback. However, the viewer is surprised to find that Walt, who has struggled with guilt his whole live over his immoral behavior during the Korean war, chooses to instead stand before the gang and allow them to shot him -- ensuring that they go to jail (since there were many eye-witnesses) and effectively ending the cycle of violence which could easily have escalated beyond control.

I found this film to be profoundly Christian in that is serves as an excellent illustration of ancient theories of atonement. As he his riddled with bullets, Walt falls to the ground in the shape of a cross -- a clear allusion to the Christ story. Whereas movies abound which venerate the substitutionary view of the atonement (e.g. Denzel Washington's Man on Fire), Gran Torino points to a much more sophisticated understanding of what exactly happened at the cross. By allowing himself to be consumed by evil rather than resisting evil with violence, Walt attains a victory much more complete than mere retaliation could have ever provided. Christ also chose to remain silent before his accusers and to "absorb" evil, thus defeating it.

Cycles of violence plague our world. Israelites kill Palestinians who kill more Israelites who kill more Palestinian. Violence begets more violence. I must confess that deep down inside I was rooting for Walt to storm the gang's lair and blow off a few heads. And yet, unlike William Wallace in Braveheart or Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo, our hero "leaves room for God's wrath" by not seeking revenge. He stands as a model for us all who are confronted with evil. Shall we meet evil with more evil, violence with more violence, or will we walk in the footsteps of Christ and "absorb" evil, effectively opening a door to the deescalation of conflict and paving the path to peace?

I find such a theory of the atonement far more satisfying than the substitutionary view which Steve Chalk has called an example of "divine child abuse." To whom was the "debt" of the cross paid? Not to God who does not demand blood, but to the Satan which thinks it is gaining a victory but is in fact swallowing its own poison. Why did Christ die? Gran Torino and the early church fathers answer the question in this way: He died to show us how we might live. He died to bring "peace on earth and goodwill toward men." He died as a role model to all of us so that we -- humankind -- have an exit from the unending cycle of violence. He died to give us a preview of the shalom which is at the heart of God and which will one day become the Ultimate Reality. This is precisely why the apostle Paul commands us who claim to follow Jesus to "know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10-11).

Sadly, too many Christians have missed the point. They need to re-read the Scriptures through the lens of non-violent opposition to evil or, failing that, to at least watch Gran Torino several times. Followers of Jesus must cease imitating William Wallace, and start imitating Walk Kowalski.

Who would have thought it? Clint Eastwood teaching us non-violence and atonement theory!

Batter My Heart

I stumbled across this beautiful poem today. John Donne, my favorite poet, was a true mystic. Oh, that God would answer this prayer for me.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The First Abolitionist

The rise of modern ethical values such as tolerance, equality, and fraternity is supposedly rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries -- or so secular historians would have us believe. Not so, challenges David Bentley Hart in his masterful work "Atheist Delusions." The narrative of Western history which most of us have come to accept, which I had accepted before Hart opened my eyes, sounds something like this:

Once there were rich, diverse cultures that embraced polytheism. No god was seen as superior to another god and, therefore, no religious war needed to be fought. These happy pagans celebrated uninhibited sexuality and enjoyed fine food and wine. Unfortunately, a monothestic, exclusionary religion named Christianity emerged within the pluralistic culture of Rome and eventually began to extinguish all dissenting religious opinions through power, wealth, and corruption. This monster-religion wedded itself to kings and princes in the West and, as a result, scientific advancement was stunted, wars over miniscule points of doctrine were waged, and the freedom of ideas vanished into history. Christianity brought upon the West nothing but ruin -- the dark ages, the Crusades, the perpetual ignorace of the masses, the wars of religion, etc. Thankfully, a few brave individuals sparked a philosophical and rational revolution which would eventually overthrow the tyranny of the Church in what we today celebrate as the Enlightenment. Today's modern values concerning individual human life, ownership of private property, tolerance and pluralism, and the liberty to pursue happiness found their birth only after the tyranny of the Church had been overcome and unadulterated reason was allowed to prevail. In other words, today we celebrate the civil rights movement, the equality of women, the freedom of the press, and so on and so on because a few brave men snubbed the Pope. Or so the great scholars Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. would have us believe.

Hart debunks this mythology piece by piece. He demonstrates how Christianity has been a force for good in the West and how the grander ideals of our moral consciences are rooted in the biblical, Judeo-Christian story rather than in the godless Voltaires that Dawkins so admires.

One example. Much to my delight, I have recently discovered that abolitionism was born not out of the post-Enlightenment West. No, the earliest abolitionist is none other than Gregory of Nyssa. And the precursor to all the brilliant diatribes of Fredrick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth was preached during Lent in the year 379.

Hart explains: "Whatever it is we think we mean by human 'equality,' we are able to presume the moral weight of such a notion only because far deeper down in the historical strata of our shared Western consciousness we retain the memory of an unanticipated moment of spiritual awakening, a delighted and astonished intellectual response to a single historical event: the proclamation of Easter. It was because of his faith in the risen Christ that Gregory could declare in his commentary on the Beatitudes, without any irony or reserve, that if Christians truly practiced the mercy commanded of them by their Lord humanity would no longer admit of divisions within itself between slavery and mastery, poverty and wealth, shame and honor, infirmity and strength, for all things would be held in common and all persons would be equal one with another" (180).

Just imagine... the thought of abolitionism was almost unthinkable to most Unionists even during the American Civil War in the 1860's! (We are, by and large, incapable of thinking outside of our context. Hence we who read Western history are often aghast to find even the most powerful of intellects spewing forth prejudice and ignorant hatred). And yet we find sprouting up within the fertile soil of post-resurrection Christianity a single shoot already reaching to the sky and crying, "Free all slaves! Slavery as an institution is vile!" Abolitionism does not date back merely to the mind of William Wilberforce; it can be found over 1300 years earlier in the mind of a Christian mystic and theologian.

This is but one example of Hart's demolition of the atheist's narrative of history. But I revel in it. I glory in the rich, life-giving, beauty-embracing ethic of my faith. David Hart gives Hitchens the academic middle finger and I applaud it and laugh with delight as he does.

The Medium is the Message

"The medium is the message" was a famous statement made by Marshall McLuhan and I am reflecting on its veracity. Having been raised in the evangelical tradition, I have always been taught that the media we use to present the gospel does not have any significance -- the unchanging message is the only thing that matters. But does something about the message of the gospel become cheapened or compromised by plastering it on a billboard or summarizing it in a pamphlet or blaring it on the radio or broadcasting it on TV? Evangelicals have always been at the forefront of harnessing new technologies for the sake of "winning souls." Whether it was the dawn of the printed page or the radio or the TV or the internet or Facebook, evangelicals have had no hesitations about adopting such media for their cause.

But something within me fears that our uncritical inculcation of new forms of media has actually changed the message. Let's take Jesus for example. What were Christ's media? First, it was the spoken word and the telling of stories. Second, it was in eating; the bread and the wine communicated the gospel to people. Both of these methods are what I would call incarnational. They meet people where they are in the flesh. They are personal, intimate, and community-oriented. Contrast this with the new "Drive-thru churches" or "e-churches" popular in our day. Such media communicate that the gospel is essentially about information rather than relationship, about abstract propositions instead of community. The spoken word and food seem to be the preferred media of God because the form of media that we use is not morally neutral. Media itself communicates a message and can either strengthen that message or undermine it.

When I preach on Sunday before a small, intimate audience of hurting people who are haunted by fears and anxieties and I declare, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!" this is a very different experience than a televangelist impersonally pleading for money before a video camera and persuading his listeners with the words, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!"

I believe that it is no coincidence that teens and twenty-thirty somethings are flocking to churches which use liturgy, symbols, proclamation, and ancient forms of worship such as the Eastern Orthodox Church. In an age so saturated with multiple forms of media, young people hunger for intimacy, community, and incarnationality. Perhaps we would do well to return to the ancient practices of the church rather than trying to innovate by planting churches in hollowed out movie cinemas. Let's trust Christ's preferred media and assume that he knows what he's doing by offering us Word and Sacrament.

(Credit to Warren Cole Smith, author of A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church, for inspiring me to write this post).

Prayer for a Friend

God of Love,

You have existed in an eternal circle of self-giving from the beginning. Your nature is to love, to submit, to please the Other instead of the self. Because you wish for humanity to join in this unending dance, you teach us to love in the same way. We often fall short, but you stubbornly love us anyway. Like a whore, we wander away and sleep with false gods. We squander your wealth in hedonistic wild living. Yet you remain faithful.

My dear friend wants to be reconciled in his marriage. But she does not seem interested. Give him the strength to imitate your love. May he love her as stubbornly as you love us. Give him a supernatural power to love even when she spits at him, insults him, and crucifies him. And in the process, make him your disciple.

Stamp your image on his life. And pursue her until she cannot resist your grace any longer. Reunite these two in a passionate embrace. Work your miracle of peace as you so love to do.

Amen.

Greg Coates is not an evangelical any more.

Tonight I went to a good ol' fashioned evangelical camp meeting. It's not quite the same as it once was when the holiness people would congregate in tents for a week and walk “the sawdust trial.” Today we've exchanged tents for miniature houses complete with cable TV and Wi-Fi, sawdust trails for carpet, four-part harmony for modern generic praise choruses played by a slick college band, and open-air worship for A/C. But one thing has not changed: the altar.

The preacher this evening spoke about the need to give all to God, stop living an ordinary life and start living an extraordinary one, and replacing our comfort zones with radical, dangerous obedience to Christ. Although the man spoke with a far too polished preacher voice, his message was decent and one that I agree with: stop your mundane existence and be a radical for God. In fact, I've become so convinced of the the necessity that a Christ-follower ought to leave comfort, that my family and I have rejected a middle-class neighborhood, a middle-class house, and a middle-class income in order to do just that.

But I was waiting for the preacher to put teeth on his sermon, to unpack for us a bit what it means to live an extraordinary life. And instead of him suggesting that we sell our possessions and give the money to the poor, or go to Africa and try to stop the violence in Darfur, or reject the upward mobility of American culture and embrace solidarity with the marginalized, or enter the world of the drug addict, or stand up against the military-industrial complex of our nation -- instead of saying anything like that he basically said, “So come to the altar tonight and give your heart to Jesus.”

But what does “giving your heart to Jesus” mean? You see, I am convinced that when conservative evangelicals speak of “giving yourself to God,” they are speaking of a very inward, personal, “spiritual,” change of attitude. They are talking about saying a few words between an individual human and God in heaven. In other words, they are offering a hyper-spiritualized message which might have implications for our inner thoughts, but certainly will not involve something like rejecting middle class American values and ways of life.

I don't mean to downplay the significance of inner spiritual experiences. I've had many and they make me who I am. But at what point do these inner experiences cross the line and enter in to how we really live. At what point does my spirituality start to impact my budget, or the car I drive, or the way I eat, or the people I choose to spend my time with?

It is this hyper-spiritualized gospel which has now led me to officially reject the name “evangelical.” Before this night, I had never shed that descriptor. But I am convinced that I am a different animal than the evangelical. When they use terms like “being born again” or “asking Jesus into your heart” or “making Jesus your personal Lord and Savior,” I think that they are almost always talking purely about an inner, mental/psychological, hyper-spiritualized shift in attitude. Well, I want more than that. I want a religion that reshapes societies, that redeems all of creation, that works tirelessly to bring justice into this world on a social and political level. I want a religion that goes beyond the inner heart of Greg Coates and instead offers an alternative way of living which is a foreshadowing of the Ultimate Reality to be revealed in the last day. Yes, I do want the inner transformation of my own heart, but only because I too am part of a creation needing to be redeemed, and not because the main plot of it all it to get me out of hell and into heaven.

I'm sick of associating with a group that claims to “surrender all” to Christ and yet lives almost completely and entirely like the culture around it. It seems to me that today the ONLY defining characteristics of most evangelicals are that they attend church once a week and are perhaps a bit more judgmental than the average person. I've had enough of being part of that group. I hereby renounce the name evangelical and prefer to instead be called a follower of The Way – something much more radical and exciting than the diluted, neutered message I've heard from evangelicals for so many years.

Remembering Robert McNamara

I've had a fascination with the brusque and articulate Robert McNamara since I first saw the documentary "The Fog of War" in 2004. McNamara served as Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and LBJ administrations and, as such, was perhaps the key architect of the Vietnam War. McNamara died last week.

The reason I find him so fascinating is that he was known for being the hawk of all hawks during his time as defense secretary. He stubbornly insisted that if we were to prevent world war III from taking place, it must involve containing the spread of communism in Vietnam. For this reason, McNamara constantly advised his presidents to escalate and continue the war -- making him the icon of scorn by all anti-war advocates. Although he denies it, many believe that McNamara issued the infamous order to use Agent Orange as a chemical weapon. Those facts alone would not make him a very interesting person, but it is what happened later in his life that fascinates me.

Robert McNamara changed his opinion. In 1995 he wrote a memoir detailing his time in office and basically repenting for his role in the escalation of the Vietnam conflict. After several visits to Vietnam, he had seen the devastation of the war and became convinced that sending more and more troops would be futile -- an opinion he kept to himself until 1995. In his final days, although never embracing pacifism McNamara became a harsh critic of uninhibited war and offered the following eleven lessons that we can learn from both WWII and the Vietnam experience. These are taken from the movie "The Fog of War" and each lesson is followed by a quote by McNamara:

LESSON #1: EMPATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY.
"Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying 'Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba.'"

LESSON #2: RATIONALITY WILL NOT SAVE US.
"I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war."

LESSON #3: THERE'S SOMETHING BEYOND ONE'S SELF.
"I took more philosophy classes - particularly one in logic and one in ethics. Stress on values and something beyond one's self, and a responsibility to society."

LESSON #4: MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY.
"In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children."

LESSON #5: PROPORTIONALITY SHOULD BE A GUIDELINE IN WAR.
"[I]n order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way. LeMay's answer would be clearly 'Yes' . . . Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve."

LESSON #6: GET THE DATA.
"I was present with the President when together we received information of that coup. I've never seen him more upset. He totally blanched. President Kennedy and I had tremendous problems with Diem, but my God, he was the authority, he was the head of state. And he was overthrown by a military coup. And Kennedy knew and I knew, that to some degree, the U.S. government was responsible for that."

LESSON #7: BELIEF AND SEEING ARE BOTH OFTEN WRONG.
"We spent ten hours that day trying to find out what in the hell had happened. At one point, the commander of the ship said, 'We're not certain of the attack.' At another point they said, 'Yes, we're absolutely positive.' And then finally late in the day, Admiral Sharp said, 'Yes, we're certain it happened.' So I reported this to Johnson, and as a result there were bombing attacks on targets in North Vietnam. Johnson said we may have to escalate, and I'm not going to do it without Congressional authority. And he put forward a resolution, the language of which gave complete authority to the President to take the nation to war: The Tonkin Gulf Resolution."

LESSON #8: BE PREPARED TO REEXAMINE YOUR REASONING.
"Were those who issued the approval to use Agent Orange: criminals? Were they committing a crime against humanity? Let's look at the law. Now what kind of law do we have that says these chemicals are acceptable for use in war and these chemicals are not. We don't have clear definitions of that kind. I never in the world would have authorized an illegal action. I'm not really sure I authorized Agent Orange. I don't remember it but it certainly occurred, the use of it occurred while I was Secretary."

LESSON #9: IN ORDER TO DO GOOD, YOU MAY HAVE TO ENGAGE IN EVIL.
"How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."

LESSON #10: NEVER SAY NEVER.
"One of the lessons I learned early on: never say never. Never, never, never. Never say never. And secondly, never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you. And quite frankly, I follow that rule. It's a very good rule."

LESSON #11: YOU CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE
"We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: 'the fog of war.' What 'the fog of war' means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily."

Welcoming the Stranger

This article was written as a submission for the magazine Light and Life.

Each Monday roughly eighty residents of my community crowd into the little sanctuary of our church in order to receive a few bags of groceries from our food pantry. Increasingly, we have noticed that many who are coming look and speak different from us – they are Latinos who have come to our city of Indianapolis in order to find a new life and escape the destitution of their homeland. Each week I look into their smiling eyes, wishing my Spanish were not so poor and wondering what story they have to tell. What could have brought them here to the inner city? How horrible must it have been to leave your culture, language, and family for a strange land?

You don’t have to be a news junkie to figure out that immigration is a very heated topic in today’s culture. With over 70,000 foreigners arriving in the States each day and projections that by 2042 white Caucasians will be in the minority, it is no wonder that many people have strong feelings about the issue. As the left and right debate over better immigration policy, what ought to be the Christian’s response to immigration? What does the Bible teach us about the alien within our midst?

First and foremost, we must recognize that immigration is not just about policy; it’s about people – people that God loves dearly and calls his own. God has always had a soft spot in his heart for those who are stranded in a foreign land. God intended for his people to be renowned for their hospitality and compassion for those on the margins of society. The Lord commanded his people in this way: "'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Indeed, such demands to welcome, respect, and care for the physical needs of the immigrant can be found consistently throughout the Old Testament. In fact, as one Free Methodist bishop recently pointed out, the Bible has much more to say directly about the issue of immigration that it does about the issue of abortion.

The New Testament is equally clear. It is no coincidence that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were themselves migrants in a foreign land. The threat posed by Herod necessitated their flight to Egypt. For this reason, according to the Roman Catholic Church, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus “are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.”

Perhaps the most fundamental principle of the New Testament which calls Christians to radical love and acceptance of the foreigner is the second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus consistently redefines neighbor as anyone who is in need – not simply those of our own ethnicity (Luke 10:30-37). The lavish love of the Father which sends rain and sunshine on both the righteous and the unrighteous must be imitated by those who claim to be his children.

But what if the foreigner in our midst is here illegally? Some will object that caring for illegal immigrants is immoral since they stand in violation of the laws of the land. But as Christians we answer to a higher authority and when the laws of a nation conflict with the laws of God, there must be no doubt in the believer’s mind which should take precedence (Acts 5:29). Unfortunately, many politicians and pundits have capitalized on mankind’s natural fear of those different than ourselves. But believers must see through such ploys – when we look into the eyes of an illegal immigrant, we do not see “one of them” or “a national security risk.” Instead, we see a woman or man created in the image of God for whom Christ died.

Illegal immigration has often sadly been construed as a national security issue. But for the Christian it must primarily be seen as a human rights issue. Instead of focusing on how we can care for the poor and destitute, our voices have sometimes been subverted by a militant nationalism which demands building up walls instead of tearing them down. Bill Mefford, a graduate of Asbury Seminary and United Methodist leader, stated it clearly: “When the focus of the church is blurred from defending the rights of immigrants and their families, to also defending the rights of the State, we come dangerously close to forfeiting our prophetic call to hold the State accountable for its treatment of immigrants. When the church loses its prophetic calling, our mission becomes little more than societal maintenance by assimilating the vulnerable into their assigned place at the bottom of the social, economic, and political order, no matter how unjust that order may be. This is a skewed and unbiblical missiology.”

It is high time for us as a church to set aside our political differences and with one voice proclaim to the immigrant (legal or not): We are on your side! God loves you and so do we! Following the law of love will lead us not only to show extra concern for the alien who might live next door, but also to advocate for them on a political level. Currently thousands of Christians around the nation are signing a petition created by the advocacy group Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. I believe the words of this petition are consistent with the heartbeat of the first Free Methodists:

As a Christian, I believe my faith calls me to view all people, regardless of citizenship status, as made in the "image of God" and deserving of respect; to show compassion for the stranger and love and mercy for my neighbor; and to balance the rule of law with the call to oppose unjust laws and systems when they violate human dignity.

These biblical principles compel me to support immigration reform legislation that is consistent with humanitarian values, supports families, provides a pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers already in the U.S., expands legal avenues for workers to enter the U.S. with their rights and due process fully protected, and examines solutions to address the root causes of migration.

Let us set aside our fear, resist being duped by the politicians, and, as the people of God, stand in solidarity with the aliens in our midst.