Category: Fredzone

As you do not know the way of the wind or how the bones form in the womb of her who is with child, so you do not know the works of God.
Ecclesiastes 11:5

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One of my favorite movies is the silly 1985 comedy Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Directed by Tim Burton, the film tells the story of Pee-wee, a man-child who delights in goofy toys, Rube Goldberg contraptions, and his precious bicycle. When his bicycle is stolen, he begins the hilarious search to recover it. Just before the theft, we see Pee-wee visit the local bicycle shop to pick up his handlebar horn which he had left for repair. It’s returned to him by Dottie, a worker at the store who has a none-too-subtle crush on Pee-wee. The crush is not reciprocal. So when she begins to ask Pee-wee for a date, he cuts her off with mock seriousness: “There’s a lotta things about me you don’t know anything about, Dottie. Things you wouldn’t understand. Things you couldn’t understand. Things you shouldn’t understand.” Pee-wee snatches his horn from her hand and quickly exits the store, hiding a self-satisfied smile and leaving a confused Dottie staring blankly after him.

In 2002, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with weapons of mass destruction. His answer would have been at home in the pages of George Orwell’s Animal Farm:

“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Although easy to lampoon, Rumsfeld’s answer is, in fact, concisely meaningful and echoes a well-known proverb:

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.

For the Christian, there is much certainty. The scriptures lay out for us a number of sure things: that God exists and that he loves us, that he has made himself known in his son, that the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ save all who believe, that God dwells within all believers through his Spirit, and that Jesus will return to punish the wicked and reward those who trust and await him. There are many other biblical certainties as well, but they subsist within the grand arc of God’s work in Christ. As Paul reminds the Corinthians, No matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. This covers a lot of ground.

On the other hand, Christians know far less than we think we do—infinitely less. (Unbelievers, of course, know nothing at all, but I’ve discussed this elsewhere.) As Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” He might have included theology too. It’s not simply a matter of seek and ye shall find; some things are forever beyond our reach.

There are two kinds of inaccessible knowledge. The first is forbidden knowledge, that which we humans can know but should not. The great example is the knowledge of good and evil embodied as a tree in the garden of Eden. The Lord God commands Adam, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The prohibition is for the man’s own good, for if he eats from it, God tells him, “you will certainly die.” Not all forbidden knowledge is ominous. Just before his ascension, Jesus tells his disciples, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” This is a nice way of saying that how God runs his business is none of our business. But even at the most basic level there are things we are forbidden to know. James warns us against ignorant boasting: You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. God could tell us, but he’s not going to. The only reliable compass we have to negotiate such pervasive ignorance is faith.

The other kind of inaccessible knowledge is that which by its very nature transcends comprehension. God is forthright about it: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Recognizing this, King David exclaims, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain! Even faith cannot grasp such things. God informs the prophet Habakkuk: “I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” Moreover, although Paul insists that we now have the mind of Christ, he too exclaims: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! So high are God’s ways, says Paul, that we don’t even know what we’re supposed to pray for. If not for the Holy Spirit’s intercession, our prayers would be Jabberwocky. When it comes to God, the unknowns are definitely the biggest slice of the pie chart.

Of the things that we are not permitted and will never be permitted to know, the one shown to John about the triumphant Christ may be the most intriguing:

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.

No one in all creation will learn this mysterious name. Perhaps it is an eternal secret held between the Father and the Son. “No one knows the Son except the Father,” says Jesus, “and no one knows the Father except the Son.” Perhaps we could not grasp it if it were revealed to us. No matter. What we do know of Jesus defies understanding. For example, Paul tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. What are we to make of that? If a blunt known known such as this confounds us . . . well, just seat me next to poor old Job and we’ll call it good.

And so we have it: the fundamental inscrutability of God and the unsurmountable ignorance of humankind. Thankfully, figuring out God has never been the program. Besides, even if we could fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and had faith that could move mountains, without love we would have nothing. God’s love is all of God, and those who receive his love know all that need be known. This known known makes the unknown known. And so Paul prays that we may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. As John declares: God is love. And that, my friends, is the greatest known known of all.

Players and painted stage took all my love
And not those things that they were emblems of.
W. B. Yeats

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Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave is a metaphorical representation of the human journey toward knowledge and truth. It depicts prisoners chained in a cave who are able to see only shadows projected on the wall, which they mistake for reality. One prisoner escapes and witnesses the world outside. He returns to the cave to communicate his newfound understanding to the others, but they find his report unintelligible and will not abandon their familiar, if limited, experience. To them, the shadows are not ghostly outlines of real things; they are the things themselves.

This idea intrigued C. S. Lewis who imported it into his novel, The Great Divorce, in which a group of “tourists” take a bus ride to heaven. The narrator of the story notices that he and his fellow passengers are transparent against the heavenly landscape and that the grass doesn’t bend under their feet. He hasn’t the strength even to pluck a daisy growing at his feet. The narrator realizes that the tourists are the same humans as they have always been, but it was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison. Unlike Plato, Lewis affirms the substantiality of the world. Creation is no mere projection; it is indeed a real thing—but it is merely a thing and not to be mistaken for the creator.

A few years ago, weary of the evangelical Sunday morning set piece, my wife and I made the hour-long trip to Portland to visit St. Mark, a conservative Anglican parish in the hip northwest part of the city. We were stunned by the historic red-brick basilica and the Romanesque style sanctuary with its stained glass windows, fine art paintings, Venetian statuary , and magnificent pipe organ. We attended high mass, which commenced with a tolling of the parish bell and the solemn procession of the robed officiants led by an attendant swinging a smoking censor of aromatic incense. The entire service was meticulously choreographed: we stood, we sang, we kneeled, we prayed, we recited. The priests bowed, and chanted, their elaborate vestments glimmering in the sacred dim. After a brief, surprisingly homey sermon, all were invited to the altar to receive the Eucharist: a wafer, hallowed at the priest’s invocation, and the wine of the Sacrifice, sipped from a chalice offered by his reverent hands. The service ended with the recession of the officiants and the explosive joy of the pipe organ. Smitten by the pageantry and Calvary-centric service, we returned the next Sunday—and each Sunday afterwards for two years.

Attending St. Mark was wonderful. All I had to do was show up and let the grand ceremony wash over me. It was like entering a poem. I was submerged in imagery and carried along by the precise, melodic diction of the ritual. At the end of each service, I emerged from the basilica’s protective womb infused with the sublime, which pleasantly waned during the drive home like the fading glory on Moses’ face. Eventually, however, the spectacle’s power to move me also began to wane; as it became familiar, I found that it no longer satisfied. The poem that at first had buoyed my soul Godward now thwarted me; the liturgy had become a lid. I began to see the elaborate rituals, not as sacraments, but as the pious inventions of men. As God spoke through Isaiah, “Their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.” The gorgeous displays promising me a feast seemed but empty gestures, and my soul grew lean at that table. I was starving.

This sense of paucity has extended beyond evangelicalism’s well-oiled mechanisms and the operatic theatre of high church liturgy. It has also taken root in unexpected soil: the carefully tended garden of the scriptures. Steeped in the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, I wholeheartedly affirm that the Bible is the final authority for Christian faith and practice, and that it provides the template for divine revelation. Even so, I have discovered—a bit disconcertingly—that the scriptures and all attendant explications are not enough. Contrary to evangelical assumption, I do not find the God of the Bible in the Bible. Yes, I am convinced that this book is essential to my understanding of God and his kingdom. I know that it is the utterly reliable testimony about Jesus Christ. I realize, too, that no amount of commitment or exuberance bears fruit apart from what is found in its pages. And yet I also know that I what I seek is not found within its fine leather covers. “You search the Scriptures,” said Jesus, “because you think that in them you have eternal life. These testify about me.” I don’t want the Bible; I want the Living God.

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“You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?”

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Human nature seems to impel us toward tangible spiritual emblems. We seem compelled to make the invisible visible, to somehow capture the transcendent within a fixed, visible thing. This is not only a pagan inclination. Even as the glory of YHWH churned upon Mount Sinai in full view of Israel, the people asked Aaron to make them an idol. They brought to him their gold earrings which Aaron then cast in the shape of a calf. When the people saw it they said, “This is your god, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” The terrifying deity hidden within the fiery cloud upon the mountain was too much to bear. The people wanted their deliverer safely encoded within an intelligible device, what T. S. Eliot might have called an objective correlative. Eliot used this phrase to refer to objects, situations, or chains of events used as formulas to invoke particular emotions or states of mind. Aaron’s golden calf was the knowable object signifying an otherwise incomprehensible YHWH, and, like all idols, it functioned as a physical prompt for worship and the associated feelings.

This is exactly what liturgy is: objects, situations, and chains of events as a repeatable formula to invoke mental and emotional states associated with worship. Liturgy isn’t only a feature of the high church; even the most casual congregations have their liturgies. The predictable order of service (welcome, singing, lesson, ministry time), the style of music, the specialized language—all serve to set a tone that congregants are to adopt. Creating this tone is the whole purpose of the liturgy and why so much attention is paid to its elements and their arrangement. The tone is so central that it becomes the measure by which we gauge the success of our worship experience. If we are able to achieve the desired emotional state—whether solemnity or abandon or something in between—we judge the event a success. If we are not able to internalize the tone, we consider the experience less than optimal. Thus, the elements ostensibly employed to direct us toward the invisible God become the very substance of our worship—the “thing” itself.

The problem isn’t liturgy per se. Structure of some kind is necessary for a meaningful corporate experience. In this way, liturgies are like table manners, shared behaviors that enhance fellowship and provide harmonious access to the food. But when protocol hinders eating or is mistaken for the food itself, we have a serious issue. Jesus hints at this when he denounces the Jewish religious leaders who doggedly impose the minutia of the Law: “You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Shadow though it is, liturgy (conservative or charismatic) should usher us out of the cave, not acclimatize us to it.

As Isaiah prophesied, Jesus came to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. All our devices of devotion—our Sunday services, our sacraments, our spiritual disciplines, even our Bibles—are, as Paul notes, a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. The incarnation, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus expose our religious ornaments as insubstantial and profitless. Christ is the reality; he is the real bread that came down from heaven.

I think of the many people who grew faint seeking God in the franchised caves of Christendom where they were offered shadows to eat, mere tokens rather than what the tokens were tokens of. I myself have offered such baubles to them, and for this I am deeply sorry. I think, too, of my own hunger, unsatisfied by earnest evangelical gyrations or by high church sheen. I’m famished. I don’t want to play; I want to eat. I want the real thing.

Maybe you do too.

“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold,
I am alive for ever and ever!”
Revelation 1:18

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—William Butler Yeats

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Martin Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, but he came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the view on indulgences. Luther attempted to resolve these differences amicably, proposing an academic discussion of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses. His aim was to inform people of his ideas and spark a debate about what he considered the church’s improper practices and beliefs. Although Luther intended a respectful engagement with the church leadership, Pope Leo X demanded that he renounce his writings. If Luther chose to recant and repent of his works, he could be welcomed back into the Church; if he refused, he would be considered a heretic and could be burned at the stake. At the tribunal, Martin Luther made his bold reply:

“I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.”

For this the pope excommunicated Luther from the Roman Catholic Church and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned him as an outlaw of the state. The punishments remained in force at Luther’s death.

It’s easy to romanticize Luther and his courageous stand, but the full import of such actions are rarely recognized in the moment. It is only in retrospect that we are able to measure the true significance. On April 17, 1521, there was no wide acclaim, no Protestant Reformation; there was only Martin Luther, an imperfect man who spoke the truth on behalf of the Bible and his beloved church. He saw how church leaders had abandoned the clear testimony of the scriptures and perverted the message of the gospel. Luther knew the price he might pay for it, but he could not remain silent in the face of compromise, presumption, and disregard. “Here I stand,” he told the tribunal. “I cannot do otherwise.”

Sometimes courage is nothing more than “I cannot do otherwise.” There is no bravado in it or, perhaps, even much hope. Courage doesn’t calculate the chances of success; it merely sees what must be done and asks, “If not me, who?” Courage is an imperative founded on conviction. Where there is little conviction, there is little courage. Courage is conviction made manifest.

For Luther, to recant or stay silent in the face of unbiblical teaching was tantamount to renouncing his faith altogether. He could not play the submissive churchman when the church was being misled by the ministerial powers-that-be. For Martin Luther, the plain testimony of the scriptures was the line in the sand across which no one, not even church authorities, must be allowed to cross. To quietly defer in order to keep the peace would be to exchange the truth of God for a lie and consign Christ’s precious flock to deception and slaughter. The misleading teachings had to be confronted and the drift from Biblical truth halted, so Luther took up the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. He could not do otherwise.

An unfortunate reading of the Protestant Reformation is that it offers the Christian conscience an easy out. If we don’t like a church for some reason—whether it be the pastor, the songs, or the carpet color—we can simply move to a different church down the block and leave the problem behind. (The Migration of the Saints should have its own Wikipedia page.) Luther would be horrified by the ease with which we walk away. For American Christians, however, it is simply freedom of worship with an exchange policy. We’re customers, not custodians.

Luther would also wonder at our reluctance to confront error and drift within our congregations. If our church leadership introduces questionable teaching, policies, or practices, most of us take a decidedly un-Luther-like approach. We may be concerned but keep to the pews with our heads down. Who are we to object? Is that not the responsibility of the elders and the board? If they don’t take issue, we reason, it must be okay. Our reticence is a flag of surrender. With quiet acquiescence we concede the field, and untruth goes marching on.

Of course, the threat of misleading teaching and congregational drift is nothing new. Peter warned the young church about it: There will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies . . . Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. Paul also recognized the church’s vulnerability to error and insisted that an overseer must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. He informed Timothy that opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth. But if gentleness is not effective, Paul counsels Titus to rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith. The point is clear: unsound teaching must be confronted so that the way of truth will not be brought into disrepute.

In John’s Revelation he who was seated on the throne declares that those who are victorious over Satan will inherit life but that the wicked will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. Predictably included among the wicked are unbelievers, the vile, murderers, the sexually immoral, practitioners of the occult, idolaters, and liars. But the transgressors who stand out most on this list are, in fact, named first. They are the cowards. We tend to think of cowardice as a weakness of disposition rather than as an out-and-out sin. The scriptures, however, view it quite differently. The scriptures regard cowardice as a form of treason, a betrayal of truth and duty. In his letter to Timothy, Paul notes that God has not given us a spirit of timidity. Timidity is not shyness; it is cowardice. It is counter to the very nature of God and, therefore, wholly ungodly.

The times call for conviction and courage. If not you, who?

This we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual realities with spiritual words.
1 Corinthians 2:13

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The stereotypical image of the Old Testament prophet is an indignant bludgeon of a man sporting wild hair, a beard, crazy eyes, and a ratty tunic who bellows denunciation and certain doom. He is a disrupter, an agent of agitation, an instrument of confrontation. He is possessed by divine fury and conscripted to expose the arrogance and apostasy of men. He is a clear channel for the Word of the Living God and, therefore, intolerable.

The New Testament prophet has been tamed. Since Jesus has perfectly revealed the Father and the Spirit has been poured out upon all believers, the prophet no longer holds his (or her) position as the privileged and exclusive mouthpiece of God. Unlike his Old Testament counterpart whose pronouncements were not to be challenged, the New Testament prophet submits his revelations to the congregation who are directed to evaluate them in light of the scriptures and the testimony of the Spirit. The church, not the prophet, is the arbiter of epiphany.  And although in very specific situations he might foretell events, the prophet’s primary role as part of the New Testament church is not to predict the future or enforce mandates but to provide timely insight and impetus.

The great and ongoing prophetic task is to express the inexpressible. The prophet must attempt to articulate an immanent transcendence that he himself cannot fully comprehend. The infinite must contract into a span. The mountain must become a molehill. The Word must become words. The prophet condenses the ethereal vapors of divinity into the cracked jars of language; he is a distiller of Spirit.

A common misconception about the biblical prophet is that he is a passive recipient, that God downloads the message verbatim into the prophet’s awareness, and the prophet, in turn, records the words as delivered. This is how the devotees of the Koran believe their book came about. The biblical prophets did indeed often relay the very words of God as they received them. Thus saith the Lord signals that what follows is exactly what God has uttered, without interpretation or explanation. However, a great deal of the Bible’s prophetic literature is not a matter of mere dictation. Large swaths of Old Testament revelation and nearly all in the New Testament epistles involve heavenly visions and prophetic impressions that had to be rendered in human language. Prophecy is rarely an exact science; there is an art to the oracle.

The prophet’s primary asset is the gift of special sight. He has the ability to see things that the rest of us do not; he is a seer—or a see-er. Prophetic sight is not unlike that of any true artist. For example, what the rest of us would see as a simple, beautiful landscape, Vincent Van Gogh would see as a lusty explosion of color. Here is an except from a letter in which he describes a current project:

It is a view of flat green fields with haycocks . . . And on the horizon, in the middle of the painting, the sun sets in a fiery red glow. It was altogether a question of color and tone, the hues of a spectrum of colors of the sky: first, a violet haze in which the red sun was half-hidden by a dark purple cloud with a thin, brilliantly red border. Near the sun were reflections of vermillion but, above, a band of yellow that turned into green and, higher up, a shade of blue, the so-called “cerulean blue,” and, here and there, lilac and gray clouds catching the reflections of the sun.

This kind of sight cannot be learned; it is a gift. In the case of the prophet, God has granted him both the ability to perceive heavenly realities and the access to them. Ezekiel begins his book with the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. 600 years later, John prefaces his astonishing Revelation similarly: After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” The prophet has a special capacity to apprehend (if not always comprehend) the spiritual landscape, coupled with admission into it.

This does not mean that retrieving divine intelligence is easy. The prophet may be invited into the revelation zone, but fruitfully exploring it is another matter. Major exceptions notwithstanding, rarely is the prophet shown high-resolution images or handed a pre-printed scroll. More often he encounters a domain not so readily construed. I am not talking about some vacuous cloud of unknowing or dark night of the soul propounded by medieval mystics. On the contrary, the prophetic landscape gleams with light and revelation. The prophetic problem is not a lack of divine disclosure; it’s that there is too much. The prophet encounters a mind-blinding brilliance, a radiant roar of many waters that cannot be delineated because it is everything everywhere all at once. The first prophetic challenge is to recognize the particular disclosure. Peter alludes to the prophets who searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. The prophet must pierce the incandescent murk in an attempt to discern the distinct “this/now” that he is seeking. If he is persistent and alert, the epiphany—or a part of it—will coalesce like a figure emerging from mist.

The second prophetic challenge is to articulate what is seen. The seer must condense the raw vapors of his experience into the liquor of human words. This is a difficult task, even for a master of language. Jesus himself grappled to render spiritual truth into words that by nature are imprecise. “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like?” he pondered, “or what parable shall we use to describe it?” His stories and sermons of “what he has seen and heard” are the finest things ever spoken among men, and yet they are fashioned with words that fall short of the very spiritual realities they are intended to convey. The apostle Paul, who, excepting Jesus himself, is arguably the church’s most articulate communicator, also recognized the unbridgeable chasm between human language and the heavenly realities to which they point: The kingdom of God is not a matter of words, he wrote, but of power. Even so, Jesus and Paul did use human language because in this dispensation there is no alternative. Miracles may validate the message, but they do not articulate it. For now, at least, words are necessary.

And so the prophet holds the vision in his mind’s eye, sharpens his pencil, pulls out his lexicon, and carries out his impossible mandate. He scratches, crosses out, ponders, revises, erases, and revises again. He loves the way words can be selected, honed, and linked to intimate the Spirit’s lucent visions. He also resents the words for failing him as he hammers their dull metal into a sorry semblance of epiphany’s exquisite contours. The Spirit will guide but rarely override; he is the Spirit of prophecy, not the prophet.

When the prophet has done his best, he will offer the fruits of his labor for consideration. He has no say in how it will be received. His expectations are modest. Some might understand and take his prophecy to heart; most won’t. But that’s not his problem; he is neither enforcer nor judge. The prophet’s job is to see and then communicate what he sees. He is an artist, a translator, a distiller of divinity. He is no more than that—and no less.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
Psalm 46:4

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I said to the river,

Is it true what Heraclitus said, that no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man?

And the river replied,

I am one river from headwater to mouth. A man’s mouth is in his head. That is not much of a span, and certainly not, as Protagoras would have it, the measure of all things. For here I am, but where is Protagoras? Where is Heraclitus? The measure of man is his measure, not mine.

I said,

But you have been defined and your path charted by man’s instruments.

The river splashed my foot and said,

His maps are pretty, but they have no fish in them.

So I said,

But you are constrained, are you not? Must you not follow the path marked out for you by mountain and canyon and stone? Consider this valley. It is humble, but it determines your way.

The river seemed amused and answered,

I shaped this valley. I carved the canyon and exposed the stone. The landscape does not fashion me; I fashion the landscape. Even the mighty mountains appeared only at the waters’ retreat. Water was first. Water defines the land, not the land, water.

Then I said,

Sometimes you overflow your banks and destroy men and what they have labored to build. Why are you so angry?

The river replied,

A river will have its way. It is not anger that swells the flow or propels the torrent. It is justice.

I frowned—

I do not understand. How is this justice?

And the river responded,

Justice restores the balance of things, whether of too much or too little.

I said,

Surely not all those ruined by the flood are guilty!

In answer, the river said,

Justice is not about guilt. It is about right. The good is costly, even for the righteous, especially for the righteous.

I murmured,

This is a difficult thing.

The river replied,

Neither are men the measure of justice. They do not control the river.

I pointed and cried,

Not so! Behold this towering dam! By it men protect themselves from your caprice and harness your current for their industry. They redirect your waters for their profit. You power their hospitals and sweatshops and casinos and churches and whorehouses! You enable their enlightenments, their entertainments, and their engines of war!

The river grew stern and rumbled,

Men do not control the river.

Unnerved, I whispered,

I am thirsty.

The river showed me a quiet pool.

Drink.

I bent to the still surface and sipped. The water was cool and sweet.

I said,

If only all might find this place and drink.

The river then lifted me up. I rose higher and higher, above the valley, above the mountains, beyond the clouds, until I could see the whole of the earth.

Astonished, I exclaimed,

It’s all river!

The river did not respond, but its voice was everywhere.

“And behold, you are to them like one who sings lusty songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it.”
Ezekiel 33:32

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Prophets have a tough job. Their boss is insistent and generally unsympathetic to complaints about working conditions. They’re on call 24-7 and, at the drop of a hat, can be dispatched anywhere for any reason. Their material is a schizophrenic mix of divine reassurances and threats of certain doom, and they are often required to augment their message with acts of dubious nature. They are rarely welcome but instead are greeted with fear, suspicion, or hostility. No wonder. When a prophet shows up, it’s a safe bet that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Hecklers and tomato tossers come part and parcel with the job. In fact, the more antagonistic the audience, the more evident is the prophet’s case. That’s the whole point. The prophet appears in order that sin might be recognized as sin, that by his allegations and antics sin might become utterly sinful. The prophet is an instrument of divine correction, and he knows that only when sin is acknowledged can there be hope of salvation. As the author of Hebrews notes, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. The crowd may not enjoy the prophetic performance, but some may take it to heart, own up to their iniquity, and find forgiveness.

But the toughest crowd isn’t the hostile one. The hostile mob know that the prophet’s message is meant for them, and so there’s at least a chance that his burlesque will find its mark. The most difficult group to face are the insiders with their box seats and backstage passes. Unlike their hostile cousins, these folk love the show. They know the script by heart and are well acquainted with the elements of prophetic performance. For them it’s a form of religious Kabuki theater, with its elaborate costumes, stylized acting, and dramatic stagecraft. For them the spirit of prophecy is the drama and the dance. The plot is determined by tradition; the prophet is a stock character, and his message is what a prophet is supposed to declaim. For the religious insiders the point is entertainment, not enlightenment. For them, the play’s the thing.

Not long ago, I was hanging with a small group of Christians. We were discussing the scriptures (I don’t remember the topic) and I went off on one of my periodic harangues—an energetic monologue of sorts, or rant as some wryly refer to it. I do remember that it was about the need to shrug off our carefully calibrated Christianity and take seriously the call of the gospel. When I had depleted my supply of brimstone, I awkwardly retreated to my own spiritual territory, and we moved on with our general discussion. As we were disbanding, one of the group paused to privately affirm the gist my outbreak but noted, in so many words, that it wasn’t exactly breaking news. The person pointed out, “You’re preaching to the choir.” We parted amicably, as friends do.

Even so, there was something about the comment that didn’t sit right. There was a trace of presumption in it. A choir member, I thought, would never say such a thing. He would never except himself from a biblical assessment or admonition. He might not like what he hears or understand the personal implications, but he would never consider himself beyond the scripture’s comprehensive reach.

It dawned on me that most American Christians are convinced that they are card-carrying choir members. Those of us who still attend weekly church services sing our songs and then listen (politely or raucously, depending on house rules) to the sermon. But no matter how well-crafted the message, no matter how powerfully we are moved by the speaker’s words, we have no intention of actually heeding what we hear. We are immune to the scripture’s unsettling diagnoses and harsh prescriptions. We are in the club. Sunday after Sunday we gather—whether it be in a traditional church building, a gymnasium, at home, or online—to receive our regular doses of spiritual Serotonin. Some of us prefer a mild hit of intellectual uplift; others crave a soul-shaking, hallucinogenic shot of holy ghost agitation. Still others want a more balanced experience—moderation in all things. It doesn’t matter. We have come for the show. We desire to be charged, not changed.

And so we have gathered around us a great number of teachers to say what our itching ears want to hear. Give us the reasonable or the rabble-rouser. Give us the hip and culturally savvy. Give us the chatty or the spiritually sublime. Give us a sweatshirt or a suit and tie. Give us a pulpit-pounder or tattooed troubadour. Give us a shaman! Give us a showman!

Whatever.

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Later on, after the performance, the prophet retreats to a sparsely furnished room. He sits on the edge of the bed. All is quiet except for the muted ticking of the clock on the wall. Tomorrow’s another day. With a sigh, he folds his damp shirt and wrinkled pantaloons and lays them on top of the others in an old, battered suitcase. The crowd was enthusiastic this evening, he thinks. They seemed to anticipate and applaud his every pronouncement. It could have gone worse.

But the prophet’s been around. He knows. He sees the worm at the root of the rose. He remembers his job. “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” He adjusts his camel’s hair coat, tucks the well-thumbed script under his arm, and heads toward the station. A voice whispers in his ear: “When this comes—and come it will—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

Yes. But until then . . .

“Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.”
Acts 3:19

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My wife is an avid and skilled knitter. She regularly masters complex patterns demanding multiple yarn colors, and she often employs up to five needles at the same time. Many times she has discovered errors in published pattern charts or has modified rows and stitches to customize her project. Her closet is a trophy case of beautiful scarves, cardigans, sweaters, leggings, and seasonal decor. Her socks are favorite gifts for family and friend alike. Every Wednesday evening she hosts “Knit Night” for a group of women who spend a couple of hours each week chatting and working on their own projects. She’s a yarn Yoda.

Every so often, however, she will discover that her row or stitch count is off. When that happens, she pauses with a frown, checks the pattern, and tabs with her finger backwards through the stitches until she locates the problem. Sometimes her friends will bring to her projects gone hopelessly awry and beseech her to search out where they went wrong. My wife will study the problem, then carefully backtrack through the knits and purls until she discovers where her friends got off track. Once she has found the starting point of the problem, she will determine if all it needs is a quick surgical fix or—the knitter’s great dread—if the project will have to be unraveled back to the mistake and begun again correctly from there. More than once my wife has had to unravel one of her own nearly completed projects and to start over from the very beginning. Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.

This is the whole idea of repentance. To believe in the good news means not only to turn away from unbelief itself but away from all the acts that come from it. When the crowds came to John the Baptist, he insisted that they “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” This fruit is the reckoning and righting of sinful acts as the evidence of a new life in Christ. The first act of saving faith is repentance.

Not all repentance is created equal, however. It is true that whatever is not of faith is sin. Unbelief is unbelief no matter what it looks like. Even so, salvation does not always demand that we revisit the past. There is the famous (added) account in the gospel of John of the woman caught in adultery. After her accusers leave, Jesus asks her, “Has no one condemned you?” She replies, “No one, Lord.” Jesus then tells her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” The woman’s past is now irrelevant; she need not go back to make things right. The Lord has mended her soul and restored the pattern of the woman’s life.

But some repentance does demand that we revisit the past. Zacchaeus, the diminutive chief tax collector who climbs a tree to see Jesus, is a delightful example. Overjoyed that the Lord should visit his house, Zacchaeus exclaims to Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus announces, “Today salvation has come to this house!” Unlike the woman caught in adultery, Zacchaeus is able to rectify his notorious history. He does not consider Christ’s grace leave to simply walk away from his past actions but as the motivation to redress the wrongs he had committed.

Repentance is not always a merely personal matter. When transgressions are of a corporate or even national nature, the righteous reckoning can be severe. There are many examples found in the scriptures, but perhaps one of the harshest is recorded by Ezra, the spiritual leader of the Jewish exiles who returned to Jerusalem around 467BC. Ezra confronts the male exiles for breaking the express commands of God by marrying foreign women from the idolatrous and immoral peoples in the land. In spite of this great sin, Ezra acknowledges that God has granted them an opportunity. “Now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery.” Ezra understands that it is God’s unwarranted grace that now makes repentance not only possible but desirable.

According to the record, the great assembly of exiles weep bitterly over their breach of the covenant, but they also recognize the opportunity for genuine repentance. They address Ezra:

“We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law.”

After three months, the community of exiles finish the extensive and painful task of dissolving all marriages to foreign women.

To our modern sensibilities this seems inexcusably draconian. To sever marriages and families for the sake of corporate integrity seems graceless and cruel. The lead pastor of a large conservative evangelical church in my area recently insisted from the pulpit that Ezra was wrong. The pastor argued that Ezra struggled with fear, legalism, and pride, and that it was out of fear (not zeal for the broken covenant) that Ezra put up boundaries to prevent the Israelites from being influenced by the people around them. The pastor lamented that all this came at the expense of Israel’s influence among the peoples of the lands. It seems that he would not have made the same mistake had he been in charge. No doubt many in his congregation are relieved that their pastor won’t be pulling an Ezra at their church.

Charges of pernicious piety aside, the examples of Ezra, Zacchaeus, and the woman caught in adultery teach us something about the nature of authentic repentance. If repentance marks the end of the transgression, there is no need to address past sin. If it provides personal absolution but does not end the transgression, then repentance requires making amends for past actions. (Of what import is Zacchaeus’ salvation if his victims remain defrauded?) And if the transgression is pervasive or systemic, like that of Ezra’s congregation, real repentance can sometimes demand extraordinary action and hurt like hell. Those who ply a shallow grace offer absolution without alteration. True grace heals the offender and, whenever possible, redresses the offense.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.”
Revelation 3:19

“I am the Living One; I was dead,
and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!”
Revelation 1:18

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I’m not a big fan of Good Friday services. Jesus did institute the Lord’s Supper as a remembrance of his death, of course, but he did not designate a special day for it. My problem with Good Friday is that churches tend to “celebrate” it with a funeral. Sanctuaries are often draped in dark colors and congregations are led through somber hymns, stations of the Cross, meditations on their sinfulness, and sermons about agony and abandonment. It’s an annual ritual of mourning, not unlike the “weeping for Tammuz” ritual mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel. And although the apostle Paul tells us that Jesus died to sin once for all, Good Friday services seem to insist on crucifying the Son of God all over again every year. To put it rather harshly, and at the risk of offending my devout brothers and sisters, Good Friday observances often seem to me a kind of soft-core Passion-porn.

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Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

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My Scrooge-like aversion to self-flagellation notwithstanding, the death of Jesus cannot be minimized. It is at the Cross where God held humanity fully accountable for its sin and satisfied the demands of incalculable justice. Christ’s sacrifice cannot be reckoned by somber contemplation, exquisite explications, or stylized reenactments. 700 years before the Cross, Isaiah descried an unfathomable mystery: He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. The bumper sticker is indeed true: Jesus died for our sins.

But that is not good news. It is, in fact, the worst news possible. The death of Jesus did not save humanity; it killed us. God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering, writes Paul. And so he condemned sin in the flesh. The cross is not a pardon but a condemnation. The dark before creation is nothing compared to the horrifying darkness that swallowed the world when the Son of God gave up his spirit.  Although death had reigned over humanity since our first parents’ disobedience, in his forbearance God had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. The Cross was the end of that divine forbearance—and the end of humanity. Christ’s death did not deliver us from death; it delivered us over to it. Jesus did not die so that we don’t have to. As Paul contends, his death is our execution: one died for all, and therefore all died. No one survived the Cross; at the Cross all died, and for three days there was no life in the world. Good Friday is not good—at all.

And so we come to Easter. For many, the resurrection of Jesus is a bonus. The Cross, we assume, is where the real work was done, and so the resurrection is an added benefit. Not so. Paul makes it clear: If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. Without the resurrection, the death of Jesus brings only certain doom. But as Paul also declares, “God raised him from the dead.” The blood of Jesus is made effectual by his resurrection. Easter gives meaning to Good Friday, not the other way around.

The resurrection is the defining feature of the gospel. It is by his resurrection from the dead that Jesus is appointed the Son of God in power and enthroned as Christ our Lord. As such, the resurrection, not the Cross, is the guarantee of salvation. If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. The resurrection is the whole point of the Cross. As Paul tells the Corinthians, We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. Christianity is about life, not death.

And it is the resurrection of Jesus that defines what it means to be a Christian. His life becomes our life, and though we embrace the Cross, it is as the crossover from sin to salvation, from everlasting death to eternal life. Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, exhorts the apostle, who also tells us, He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. The Cross destroyed us; the resurrection defines us.

Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection are not two separate events but one redemptive reality: the CRUCIREXION, if you will. To be sure, Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many. But he is risen from the dead, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. On that day, whatever remains of the Cross will be swallowed up in victory and life. Death shall die.

He is risen, my friends. He is risen indeed.

But for you who fear my name,
the sun of righteousness shall rise
with healing in its wings.
Malachi 4:2

So then, the word of the Lord to them will become: Do this, do that,
a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there—
so that as they go they will fall backward.
Isaiah 28:13

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One of the Bible’s most poignant admonitions is found in the Revelation’s letter to the church at Ephesus. After commending the congregation for its hard work and perseverance, the glorified Christ then declares, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” It is a devastating indictment with significant implications. In spite of the many noteworthy things these believers have done, their fall from true devotion jeopardizes the very existence of their church.

The Old Testament is the history of a stiff-necked people. In their misery the Hebrews would turn to their God—who would then save them—only to lapse back into their sinful ways. The whole of Psalm 106 is like an AI generated summary of their persistent folly. The psalmist sums up 1500 years of Jewish history in a single verse: Many times God delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and wasted away in their sin. Bang. The circle of strife.

It’s easy to reprove the wayward Hebrews; we are meant to. Theirs is a cautionary tale. Paul informs us that these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. The kingdom of God has indeed come, but the potential to drift away from our first love is no less real and far more consequential.

Jesus warns his disciples of a coming apostasy: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” His prediction is literally chilling. Jesus warns that the rampant sinfulness of the world in the last days will cause most—underscore most—to lose their spiritual passion for the Lord. The author of the letter to the Hebrews is justifiably concerned when he exhorts the church, See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. In light of these cautionary statements, it seems wise to consider how the dwindling of devotion might come about.

Ironically, spiritual enthusiasm can often lead to its own demise. When fervor is its own objective, it’s likely to veer into the ditch. Zeal without knowledge is not good, quotes the proverb, and hasty feet miss the way. I have known too many Christians whose enthusiasm was based on a shallow understanding of the scriptures and fueled by charismatic cheerleaders and incessant self-talk. They seemed to me like sailors blowing their own sails. Some of them, desperate to keep the hype alive, careened from fringe to fringe seeking strange winds. Others floundered on reefs of disappointment and discouragement, and their fragile zeal eventually gave way to apathy or unbelief. The shipwreck sagas of the flaky and the deflated are cases in point that pure and lasting devotion does not feed upon itself.

Unmoored enthusiasm isn’t the only danger to devotion. The fall from first love can also follow another trajectory, one that begins with the scriptures themselves. I remember my first experience with the Bible after my saving encounter with Jesus. The words exploded off the page with palpable power and glory. I was astonished at the sheer beauty of the scriptures and the way they opened my eyes to the presence of God. My soul exulted with the psalmist: I delight in your commandments because I love them. Many believers can bear witness to this Bible-born rapture.

But for many the Bible has become a benign burden. It is the book we know we’re supposed to love, but it has become as clinical as the medication guide included with a prescription. The words that were once charged with light are now dim and tired, reflecting the overall state of our listless hearts. More, this spiritual stupor even drains away concern. We don’t actually care anymore—and we don’t care that we don’t care. What started as delight decayed into doctrine, doctrine decayed into dogma, and dogma decayed into dullness. We’re sleepwalkers, miming a form of godliness without power. As the John Mellencamp song goes, Life goes on long after the thrill of livin’ is gone. The most we can muster is that it is what it is.

Of course, the best way to keep the fire of first love burning is never to lose it in the first place. Never be lacking in zeal, Paul tells the Romans, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. This exhortation reminds us that lasting devotion is not a self-feeding enthusiasm loop but is an informed, relational commitment to serve the Lord. Jesus himself is the fuel for the heart fire, not some vague notion about being fired up.

But what if, like the church in Ephesus, we have already fallen from our first love. What if the cares and allures of this world have choked out the life we once knew? What if we are even now bogged down in the torpor of a shallow, lifeless faith? Can these dry bones live again?

And if I were to answer yes, would it make a difference? Would another book or sermon provide the vital information? Would a hand on your shoulder and a reassuring word bring about a resurrection? Have they before? Instead, this from the prophet Isaiah:

Brought low, you will speak from the ground;
your speech will mumble out of the dust.
Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth;
out of the dust your speech will whisper.

And what will it whisper?

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

Then, and only then, will you know. Only then.

My eyes are dry
My faith is old
My heart is hard
My prayers are cold
And I know how I ought to be
Alive to You and dead to me

But what can be done
For an old heart like mine
Soften it up
With oil and wine
The oil is You, Your Spirit of love
Please wash me anew
With the wine of Your Blood

—Keith Green

We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end,
so that what you hope for may be fully realized.
Hebrews 6:11

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A story is told about an artist who was famous for his simple but exquisite sketches of roses. One day a man came into his studio and told the artist that he had long admired his work and would like to commission a sketch as a gift for his wife on their anniversary. The artist placed a fresh sheet of paper on his easel and, with a few confident gestures, rendered a beautiful image of a rose. The man was delighted. It was exactly what he had wanted. But when the artist informed him of the steep price, the man blanched. “That’s outrageous!” he cried. “It took you only moments to finish!” The artist sighed and led the man through a door into a large room. The walls were covered with thousands of sheets of paper. Upon the floor towered stacks upon stacks of canvases. On each sheet and canvas was a meticulously wrought sketch of a rose. “This,” said the artist quietly, “is where I have labored to perfect my art.” He gazed kindly at the astonished man. “The rose I created for you has taken me a lifetime.”

Stephen Curry is one of the best professional basketball players of all time. He lights up the court with his ball handling and shooting skills. Curry is a four-time NBA champion, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, an NBA Finals MVP, a two-time NBA All-Star Game MVP, and he’s the first player in NBA history with 4000 career 3-pointers. The apparent ease with which he razzle-dazzles fans and players alike is misleading. Curry practices hard. “I take hundreds of shots in a single workout,” he reveals. “It’s about muscle memory and consistency.” His ball handling drills include figure 8s, behind-the-back crosses, and one-hand behind-the-back movements up and down the court, over and over and over. On Mondays he works his chest (push-ups, nautilus presses). Tuesday is back day (pull-ups, seated rows). Wednesdays he focuses on his shoulders (Arnold presses, lateral raises). On Thursdays he works his arms (bicep curls, tricep press-downs). His practice sessions run anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours, day after day. What the fans see is a game-time superstar putting on a show.

That’s the way of it. Whether it’s success in the arts, in sports, in business, or even in the kitchen, most of us see only the finished product. We wonder at a Michelangelo, cheer a Muhammad Ali, admire a Steve Jobs, or rave about Mom’s apple pie. What we do not see, however, are the hours or days or years that it took to make it happen. It is true that many who are at the top of their various fields have special gifts. No matter how hard we might try, we will probably never out-Mozart Mozart. Even so, rarely is the gift alone enough. (The road to success is littered with the failed husks of the gifted.) As the parable of the talents teaches us, the wise know that they must invest their gifts if they hope for a return. There is no guarantee that the investment will bring the desired results—Stephen Curry does have a bad game from time to time— but disappointment is indeed certain if the gifted do not put their gifts to work. Without guts there is no glory.

For over 25 years I have headed up a small nonprofit organization called Burning Bush Ministries. Whenever I am asked what it is we do, I usually reply that our primary role is teaching church leaders but that we also support Christian missionaries and aid community development around the world. This answer usually suffices. If they are interested, I can relate tales of dramatic visitations of God or unnerving manifestations of evil. I can show photos of me preaching in India and Africa and Brazil or wading through monsoons in Bangladesh or trudging through the Russian snow. These are the exploits that we showcase in our newsletters, emails, and campaigns, the highlight reels that I hope will justify my vocation.

Every so often, though, a curious someone presses further and asks what I actually do during a typical day. I hate that question. It’s not that I don’t know the answer; it’s that I’m actually kind of embarrassed by it, mostly because, for many people, it would appear that I don’t do much of anything. And so before I answer, I consider who is doing the asking. If it is an unbeliever, I will say that each morning I have a meeting with the CEO of my organization. That meeting, I tell them, may last an hour, the morning, or even the whole day. After that I will attend to the projects at hand, whether it is studying, writing, or planning. They tend to nod with understanding, and I’m generally off the hook.

But if the curious questioner happens to be a passionate follower of Jesus, one who is acquainted with the dynamics of the heavenly realms and the alien mechanics of the Kingdom of God, if I deem that person a kindred spirit and faithful servant of our common Lord, I may tell him the undisguised truth: what I do is pray. For over a decade prayer has been my primary daily activity. It is ground zero for everything else I do. When I am in prayer I am at the center of all things and all times. In prayer I reach across oceans, lift up the weary, bring down the proud, demolish lies and pretensions, hold back the tide of wickedness, and establish sanctuaries of grace and peace. In prayer I carry my brother’s burden, believe for him when he cannot, and clear a path for his steps. In prayer I take up the great cause of righteousness. I cry out for mercy, for justice, and for truth. In prayer I am advocate, ambassador, and avenging angel.

The real work happens there, in the trenches. All else is razzle-dazzle.