Friday was a good day: I got the magenta tray at the cafeteria.
The cafeteria in our building at work has lots of gray and yellow trays, some brown ones, and a few blue ones, but there is only one magenta tray. Since pink is my favorite color, I always hope that I will get that tray, and when I do, I really enjoy it.
Maybe if you're reading this, you're thinking, "What's the big deal about what color your cafeteria tray is?" True, it's not a big deal. But I like to take pleasure in all sorts of little things. Savoring them makes my day more enjoyable.
The other day I once again came across a line in The Fellowship of the Ring that I really like. Gandalf the wizard has just told the hobbit Sam that he is going to accompany Frodo on his journey, which means that Sam will get to see Elves, something he's always longed to do.
"Me, sir!" cried Sam, springing up like a dog invited for a walk.
I love the image because it immediately conveys a great deal of excitement. Yet when we think about it, what are dogs so excited about? Just a walk! But they get a great deal of pleasure out of it.
My dog Hana waits every morning for me to sit down with my bowl of cereal, because she knows I will give her two pieces of it. It's only two pieces of cereal, usually Cheerios, so not a big deal, but to her it's a very happy moment.
Dogs are optimists, too. Every time I prepare a meal, Hana thinks, despite the mountain of previous experience, that this time, maybe the meal is going to be for her. And her tail is almost always ready to wag; she expects good things out of life.
I think that we can learn a lot from dogs' attitude. With God as our father, we can expect good things out of life, too. That's not to say that everything will always be rosy. But we can know that he is with us and will see us through any hard times. I found this out a year ago as I was going through cancer. God didn't make the cancer magically disappear, but he did sustain me as I underwent surgery, chemo, and radiation. I knew that in the long run, whatever the prognosis (mine ended up being good), God was going to be there in the end.
And then there were those little things, like the magenta cafeteria tray. God put a lot of them in my life, and when I looked for them, I found them. Things like the kindness of fellow co-workers, or a daffodil that the radiation oncology center gave me. It made a big difference to how I experienced a year of cancer treatments. I could have looked for the unpleasant, difficult things, or I could have just not looked for anything. But instead I looked for the little fun or nice things, and they were there to be found, and so my days were more pleasant and enjoyable than they might otherwise have been.
What's more, because I found those little good things, I was able to give thanks to God. I knew he was there helping me get through a bad time. In fact, I felt his presence more closely during that cancer year than I ever had before. That in itself brought joy to me beyond what I can describe.
I know it sounds silly to say I had a good day because I got the magenta tray at the cafeteria. But I have a fun life. And a lot of it is because I take pleasure in the little things.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Atonement is Good News
I've been thinking about the Atonement lately. The doctrine of the Atonement has been coming under attack in recent years. It shouldn't be surprising, since by many who hold to progressive theology, personal sin has been denied or its extent or gravity has been lessened, and the second person of the Trinity (Jesus Christ, the son of God) has been devalued (his divinity is denied, his actual resurrection is denied, and/or obedience to him is no longer sought). So in such a climate, an act by Jesus Christ that takes away the consequences of personal sin is bound to become a target for elimination.
For example, a recent attack on the Atonement occurred not long before Easter, when Canon Jeffrey John of the Church of England was slated to speak about it on BBC Radio. In his view, the traditional doctrine of the Atonement, in which Jesus takes the punishment for the sins of humankind, so that, when we acknowledge that he has done so, and submit our lives to him, we can be forgiven and live eternally with God, "makes God sound like a psychopath". Instead, he suggests that Christ was crucified merely to share in our suffering.
If that's all Christ has to offer us on the cross, it doesn't give us much hope. If he just hung there and died so that God could say, "There, there, I understand how much it hurts," I don't think I'd be all that grateful. I'd rather have a God and a Savior who could really do something about the mess we're in, and fortunately, that's what we've got, because of the Atonement.
People who see God and Christ in this way--people who deny the Atonement--necessarily have a vision of God as a weak God. This is because they're saying that the Bible got it wrong all these years when it described Christ's death on the cross as paying for our sins. So that must mean that God was not powerful enough to make sure that the Bible got written correctly. Unfortunately for him, it ended up written wrong and was misunderstood for all these long centuries, and he just wasn't able to inspire the writers to get it put right. But now, at last, people have come along who really do know what is right--they know that the Atonement is not true! This implies that we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are really intelligent people who at last know the truth. In fact, God should be grateful to these people who can finally correct the Bible and do what he has been unable to do all these years.
Of course, I disagree with this point of view. So let me attempt to answer some of the arguments that have been made against the Atonement.
1. Argument 1: God wants to kill us because we wronged him. Why is it that God is supposed to be more merciful than we are, yet almost none of us wants to kill those who wrong us? Answer: God isn't out to kill us. This is stating the problem the wrong way. Here's the right way: God is out to keep us from dying eternally. The problem is that God is utterly, completely good, and evil cannot exist where he is. Once we have sinned, we are tainted with evil. Evil cannot live forever with God; it has to die, because it cannot be where God is. However, God loves us and wants us to be with him, and he is so merciful that he has worked out a way to make that happen, via the Atonement. God, as Jesus, takes the consequence--death--of sin, and we are counted as good if we accept what Jesus did for us.
2. Argument 2: God's killing his own son makes him the ultimate child abuser. Answer: This separates God and Jesus too much. God and Jesus are both separate and the same, as part of the mystery of the Trinity. Because God and Jesus are the same, God himself died for us when Jesus died. Moreover, Jesus did it freely, and not under compulsion. Jesus chose to die for us because he loves us and wants us to be with him forever.
3. Argument 3: Jesus' suffering isn't sufficient because it's not the worst suffering the world has ever seen; other people have suffered more. Answer: It's not the degree of suffering, it's who suffered. Jesus wasn't just a man, he was God. If God takes our punishment, it has been taken to an infinitely greater degree than if it were taken by a mortal. But also the degree of suffering must be greater than any suffering any other person has ever endured. At the moment when Jesus bore all the accumulated guilt and shame of our past, present, and future sins, he was separated from God's love, and that is suffering that is magnitudes beyond what anyone else has ever undergone.
4. Argument 4: It doesn't make sense that nobody is able to be perfectly good and that all people need salvation by God; why should all people be sinful and none be good? Or at least, aren't there some sins that don't need atoning for, that wouldn't keep a person out of heaven? Answer: God apparently didn't want perfect robots, preferring us to have free will. Thus we were left free to sin. But this is a mystery, and I assume that God's mind is bigger than mine, so I don't pretend to understand why we inevitably sin. But as for there being some sins that aren't so bad, and that shouldn't keep us out of heaven, I like what I heard our pastor Scott Dudley say once. He suggested thinking about what heaven would be like if people were let in with the sin that you think isn't too bad. Suppose you thought that irritability wasn't so bad and shouldn't keep you out of heaven. Would it still be heaven if irritable people were there? Maybe for some thick-skinned people it wouldn't be so bad, but for some others it might make it hell. Besides, all sin is a grave problem to God, who is perfectly good, and to whom we owe thanks for everything good in creation. When we commit even little sins, we repay God's goodness with evil, and by doing evil, we work against his good will for creation.
5. Argument 5: The Atonement requires a view of God as an angry, bloodthirsty God. Answer: Again, the Atonement is not something that God did because he's out for blood. It's true that sin makes God angry, but not in a bloodthirsty way. God is angry with sin because of the hurt that it causes people and his creation. Sin causes death, and God doesn't like death. So, to rob death of its victims, and give us a chance to be with him forever, God provided the Atonement. All we have to do is acknowledge what he did for us. He has made it very easy for us. Rather than being a bloodthirsty punisher, because of the Atonement, God is actually the most tender, merciful, loving God that can be imagined. (Of course, we want to respond to this love by obedience and service, but that's another part of the story.)
As I've said above, it is predictable that the Atonement should be targeted for disposal, since the doctrine of personal sin is also unpopular now among many people. This is a pity, because when we don't acknowledge our own sin, we miss out on being forgiven by God. And forgiveness is a beautiful and precious thing.
I thank God for the Atonement. Because of it, I will have life forever with God.
For example, a recent attack on the Atonement occurred not long before Easter, when Canon Jeffrey John of the Church of England was slated to speak about it on BBC Radio. In his view, the traditional doctrine of the Atonement, in which Jesus takes the punishment for the sins of humankind, so that, when we acknowledge that he has done so, and submit our lives to him, we can be forgiven and live eternally with God, "makes God sound like a psychopath". Instead, he suggests that Christ was crucified merely to share in our suffering.
If that's all Christ has to offer us on the cross, it doesn't give us much hope. If he just hung there and died so that God could say, "There, there, I understand how much it hurts," I don't think I'd be all that grateful. I'd rather have a God and a Savior who could really do something about the mess we're in, and fortunately, that's what we've got, because of the Atonement.
People who see God and Christ in this way--people who deny the Atonement--necessarily have a vision of God as a weak God. This is because they're saying that the Bible got it wrong all these years when it described Christ's death on the cross as paying for our sins. So that must mean that God was not powerful enough to make sure that the Bible got written correctly. Unfortunately for him, it ended up written wrong and was misunderstood for all these long centuries, and he just wasn't able to inspire the writers to get it put right. But now, at last, people have come along who really do know what is right--they know that the Atonement is not true! This implies that we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are really intelligent people who at last know the truth. In fact, God should be grateful to these people who can finally correct the Bible and do what he has been unable to do all these years.
Of course, I disagree with this point of view. So let me attempt to answer some of the arguments that have been made against the Atonement.
1. Argument 1: God wants to kill us because we wronged him. Why is it that God is supposed to be more merciful than we are, yet almost none of us wants to kill those who wrong us? Answer: God isn't out to kill us. This is stating the problem the wrong way. Here's the right way: God is out to keep us from dying eternally. The problem is that God is utterly, completely good, and evil cannot exist where he is. Once we have sinned, we are tainted with evil. Evil cannot live forever with God; it has to die, because it cannot be where God is. However, God loves us and wants us to be with him, and he is so merciful that he has worked out a way to make that happen, via the Atonement. God, as Jesus, takes the consequence--death--of sin, and we are counted as good if we accept what Jesus did for us.
2. Argument 2: God's killing his own son makes him the ultimate child abuser. Answer: This separates God and Jesus too much. God and Jesus are both separate and the same, as part of the mystery of the Trinity. Because God and Jesus are the same, God himself died for us when Jesus died. Moreover, Jesus did it freely, and not under compulsion. Jesus chose to die for us because he loves us and wants us to be with him forever.
3. Argument 3: Jesus' suffering isn't sufficient because it's not the worst suffering the world has ever seen; other people have suffered more. Answer: It's not the degree of suffering, it's who suffered. Jesus wasn't just a man, he was God. If God takes our punishment, it has been taken to an infinitely greater degree than if it were taken by a mortal. But also the degree of suffering must be greater than any suffering any other person has ever endured. At the moment when Jesus bore all the accumulated guilt and shame of our past, present, and future sins, he was separated from God's love, and that is suffering that is magnitudes beyond what anyone else has ever undergone.
4. Argument 4: It doesn't make sense that nobody is able to be perfectly good and that all people need salvation by God; why should all people be sinful and none be good? Or at least, aren't there some sins that don't need atoning for, that wouldn't keep a person out of heaven? Answer: God apparently didn't want perfect robots, preferring us to have free will. Thus we were left free to sin. But this is a mystery, and I assume that God's mind is bigger than mine, so I don't pretend to understand why we inevitably sin. But as for there being some sins that aren't so bad, and that shouldn't keep us out of heaven, I like what I heard our pastor Scott Dudley say once. He suggested thinking about what heaven would be like if people were let in with the sin that you think isn't too bad. Suppose you thought that irritability wasn't so bad and shouldn't keep you out of heaven. Would it still be heaven if irritable people were there? Maybe for some thick-skinned people it wouldn't be so bad, but for some others it might make it hell. Besides, all sin is a grave problem to God, who is perfectly good, and to whom we owe thanks for everything good in creation. When we commit even little sins, we repay God's goodness with evil, and by doing evil, we work against his good will for creation.
5. Argument 5: The Atonement requires a view of God as an angry, bloodthirsty God. Answer: Again, the Atonement is not something that God did because he's out for blood. It's true that sin makes God angry, but not in a bloodthirsty way. God is angry with sin because of the hurt that it causes people and his creation. Sin causes death, and God doesn't like death. So, to rob death of its victims, and give us a chance to be with him forever, God provided the Atonement. All we have to do is acknowledge what he did for us. He has made it very easy for us. Rather than being a bloodthirsty punisher, because of the Atonement, God is actually the most tender, merciful, loving God that can be imagined. (Of course, we want to respond to this love by obedience and service, but that's another part of the story.)
As I've said above, it is predictable that the Atonement should be targeted for disposal, since the doctrine of personal sin is also unpopular now among many people. This is a pity, because when we don't acknowledge our own sin, we miss out on being forgiven by God. And forgiveness is a beautiful and precious thing.
I thank God for the Atonement. Because of it, I will have life forever with God.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Trust
I have been dealing with some worry in recent months. My husband Jim works for a renewal group that has been fixated on by theologically liberal factions in the greater church as the root of all that they consider wrong in the mainline denominations today. They have built up a mythology about his group (IRD) that has taken firm hold among mainline denominational leaders, seminary faculty, the National Council of Churches, etc., and these people believe that Jim and his colleagues are actually not really Christian activists, but instead are ultra-right-wing political operatives bent on destroying the mainline denominations in order to silence their liberal social witness. These false ideas are spreading more and more widely. See www.talk2action.org for many examples.
This has worried me in many ways. I'm afraid that these untrue things will become widely believed and that it will become impossible to refute them. I'm afraid that my friends who are politically liberal will hear about it and will start looking at us askance. I'm afraid that if Jim ever wanted to leave IRD and do something else, such as return to pastoral ministry, he would be unhireable, because working for IRD would attach a stigma to him and everyone would be suspicious of him. And my worries go on.
Yesterday I was thinking about it more intensely due to a letter sent to all SMU faculty in which some other website had been falsely attributed to IRD. We had been to Maundy Thursday service, and I was getting to bed late. I usually read the Bible every night before bed, but last night I thought I might skip it, since I'd read Scripture during the Maundy Thursday service. But I kept getting this nudge feeling that I ought to read it anyway. So I decided that if God was telling me to read the Bible, I would. And here's what I found: I'm currently reading through the Psalms, and in the Psalm I had gotten to last night, the Psalmist was writing about people lying about him, and how God would eventually make sure that justice would be done about that, and that meanwhile God would bless those who had been lied about. Wow! How appropriate was that? I was very grateful to God for nudging me into reading that Psalm and showing me that he cared about our situation.
However, today I was still in worry mode. Tonight, though, during our Good Friday service, during the last of the seven meditations on the seven last words of Christ, our senior pastor was speaking about "Into your hands I commit my spirit." He talked about how Jesus was trusting God, and about how God could be trusted even when the situation felt the least like God was trustworthy. And I started remembering how trustworthy God has always shown himself in my life. He has seen me through breast cancer in a wonderful way, and has done many other good things for me all throughout my life.
I realized that I have been being very inconsistent. All my life, I have always trusted God that I would never lack for anything I really needed, and so I have never really worried about money or jobs. So why didn't I trust him in this situation? And when I started thinking of it that way, the burden lifted. I realized that I can trust him to be with us in this just as much as I have trusted him in any other situation. He's big enough for this problem, too. What a great feeling that was! It's still going to be hard to deal with all these slanders and lies that are being told about IRD. God isn't going to make it easier all of a sudden. There may be rough times in store for us. But I know that I can trust that he is in control, so that it will all come right in the end, and that means I don't have to worry.
Thanks be to God for his great mercy in showing us how he cares for us!
This has worried me in many ways. I'm afraid that these untrue things will become widely believed and that it will become impossible to refute them. I'm afraid that my friends who are politically liberal will hear about it and will start looking at us askance. I'm afraid that if Jim ever wanted to leave IRD and do something else, such as return to pastoral ministry, he would be unhireable, because working for IRD would attach a stigma to him and everyone would be suspicious of him. And my worries go on.
Yesterday I was thinking about it more intensely due to a letter sent to all SMU faculty in which some other website had been falsely attributed to IRD. We had been to Maundy Thursday service, and I was getting to bed late. I usually read the Bible every night before bed, but last night I thought I might skip it, since I'd read Scripture during the Maundy Thursday service. But I kept getting this nudge feeling that I ought to read it anyway. So I decided that if God was telling me to read the Bible, I would. And here's what I found: I'm currently reading through the Psalms, and in the Psalm I had gotten to last night, the Psalmist was writing about people lying about him, and how God would eventually make sure that justice would be done about that, and that meanwhile God would bless those who had been lied about. Wow! How appropriate was that? I was very grateful to God for nudging me into reading that Psalm and showing me that he cared about our situation.
However, today I was still in worry mode. Tonight, though, during our Good Friday service, during the last of the seven meditations on the seven last words of Christ, our senior pastor was speaking about "Into your hands I commit my spirit." He talked about how Jesus was trusting God, and about how God could be trusted even when the situation felt the least like God was trustworthy. And I started remembering how trustworthy God has always shown himself in my life. He has seen me through breast cancer in a wonderful way, and has done many other good things for me all throughout my life.
I realized that I have been being very inconsistent. All my life, I have always trusted God that I would never lack for anything I really needed, and so I have never really worried about money or jobs. So why didn't I trust him in this situation? And when I started thinking of it that way, the burden lifted. I realized that I can trust him to be with us in this just as much as I have trusted him in any other situation. He's big enough for this problem, too. What a great feeling that was! It's still going to be hard to deal with all these slanders and lies that are being told about IRD. God isn't going to make it easier all of a sudden. There may be rough times in store for us. But I know that I can trust that he is in control, so that it will all come right in the end, and that means I don't have to worry.
Thanks be to God for his great mercy in showing us how he cares for us!
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