aldenswan.com

Is it this place that makes me fall from you
Forget the words that once rang so true
Did we expect that life was ever fair, my god . . .
I sowed a field of rose and reaped a whipping rod
And everything I’ve held too tight inside
Could make a part of me die
And if my lips could only speak the name
The dam would break
- Glen Phillips, Dam Would Break

Doubt. Pain. Suffering. Loneliness. Failure. Despair. Disappointment.

This is not a list of demotivational posters, but rather “words that you should never say in church.” Or, at least that’s how it seems sometimes. Michael Spencer recently blogged:

The language of lament is not welcome in most contemporary Christianity. Evangelicals in particular must be held responsible for creating an atmosphere where a person in pain and loss cannot speak in the SAME LANGUAGE THE BIBLE USES (excuse the caps. Sorry.) without running the risk of controversy and heresy.
…
Ironically, Christians specialize in the language of glory and triumph, gullibly believing any report of miracles and healings must be true in order to prove that God is still doing what they’ve been told he should always do, but it is the experience and language of lament- disappointment and sorrow- that would tell honest unbelievers that we live in the same world as they do, yet still believe in God. Our proficiency in triumphalism backfires with the genuine souls who want to know if God is still there when he seems so absent.

While I do appreciate Kingdom theology, and believe that God is alive and well and that miracles still happen, the reality is that life is a struggle.  I mean, just look at Jesus - even he struggled. Read that Garden scene again.  David Hayward, one of my favorite cartoonists and bloggers, has addressed this issue of “happy Christianity” many times. One of my new favorites is here.

That’s not to say that everything Joel Osteen says is garbage; in fact, I find what he has to say about thinking positively and believing what God says very important, especially in dealing with the issue of suffering, doubt, and so on. You see, many of our problems are simply our own fault. Christians can be just as stupid as anyone else, and changing your attitude and approach to life can avoid many needless trials and tribulations. That, however, doesn’t mean that there aren’t real struggles to deal with.  People get sick, people die, bad things happen to good people (and good things happen to bad people). Life isn’t fair.  To paraphrase the old song, God never promised us a rose garden.  There’s a time to laugh, and a time to lament.

Paul says that creation is groaning in anticipation of redemption. So why should we be any different?

I find that I sometimes have issues with what Michael Spencer has to say over at internetmonk.com, but I do appreciate his willingness to think outside of his particular box. He comes from a Southern Baptist background, I believe, although he considers himself “post-evangelical.” As with all of us, it’s very difficult to completely shake off the grid we were raised in, so I think we would see the same thing still from very different viewpoints. But then, sometimes I find him very much right on.  In his post from yesterday, he makes some very good points concerning how many evangelicals approach evangelism, contrasted with how Jesus approached it:

I think it’s telling that the two most prolific evangelism programs in evangelicalism both approach their audience with questions that Jesus never used.

“Do you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”

“If you were to die tonight, and God were to asked you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would be your answer?”

He points out that Jesus merely proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven, which had very different connotations than our dangling Heaven on a stick (my terminology). Spencer continues:

Evangelicalism is a religion of decisions and transactions. Jesus proclaims the arrival of the reign of God. There are decisions to be made, but reducing the Gospel to a decision to accept “God’s plan for my life” or giving the right answer to the question of how to go to heaven seems to have moved well past what Jesus was doing in his earthly ministry.

He’s been reading NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope, which I think probably prompted the post, although the thinking is obviously his own. I don’t think what he says is necessarily new, but it bears repeating.

My own take

My own background, as my faithful readers know, is Lutheran. After being “evangelized” away from the Lutheran church in my early 20s, I have lived among the evangelicals for about 30 years, however I never really became one of them. I’ve adopted the term “Lutheran expatriate” for lack of any better description.

When I first found myself in college (actually, I didn’t really find myself until a few years later), I hung with various campus groups, including InterVarsity and Campus Crusade. I was terribly turned off by the CC bunch, who were bound and determined to get me to say their little prayer; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t convince them that I was “saved.” I stopped going there after a couple of weeks, and did my best to avoid them after that. So, from that time on, the line “Did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” became somewhat of a joke for me.

While I appreciate the point Michael Spencer is making, I now have to say that I think the question is valid; not only that, but years later it became one of my basic messages. I think that it is absolutely true that God loves you and does indeed have a wonderful plan for your life. The problem is not in the question, it’s in the application.

God’s plan is not just to get you into Heaven (or saved from hell). Have you ever noticed that while Jesus definitely emphasized the spiritual kingdom rather than Earthly interpretations (as the Jews did), his plan was to get people into Life, not into Heaven. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within reach.” That didn’t mean that they’d all be dead soon, it meant that you could reach out and touch it; it was here, it was now, it was happening.

With Jesus’ death and resurrection, he didn’t just buy us tickets to Heaven; he began the re-creation of the world. Everything changed. The reality of the resurrection (for everyone) was one thing that became reality. The second was the “pouring out” of the Holy Spirit “upon all flesh.” It’s a brave new world. We don’t even realize it, but we can’t comprehend a world without the Holy Spirit (and I believe that applies to non-Christians as well). God’s plan is for us to step into the ongoing re-creation of everything, where “with God, all things are possible.”

Live the resurrection! God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. … If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. - Paul, 1st Corinthians 15

Easter (at least the Western Easter) is this coming Sunday. Knowing that, I’ve been thinking about the resurrection of Jesus for a few days. Of course, I also happen to be reading NT Wright’s new book about resurrections and what happens after we die. Good timing, I guess.

The Resurrection, is of course where the whole defeat of Satan, evil and death happens. If Jesus had stayed dead, then Christianity never would have happened, the Disciples would have gone back to their day jobs, and some of us would be Jewish, and the rest would be heathens. That’s what Paul is really saying; if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we’re all fools, wasting our time believing in a future that ain’t there.

As NT Wright talks about in Surprised by Hope, until Jesus actually did it, no one expected the Messiah to resurrect before the one and only future resurrection of the dead. The theories about the disciples faking the resurrection are therefore ridiculous; they simply would never have dreamed that this was to happen.

The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. As Wright wrote a few years ago:

Christianity began as resurrection movement. As I have already remarked, there is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edge. It was the central driving force, informing the whole movement. In particular, we can see woven into the earliest Christian theology we possess—that of Paul, of course—the belief that the resurrection had in principle occurred and that the followers of Jesus had to reorder their lives, their narratives, their symbols, and their praxis accordingly (see, classically, Rom. 6:3-11).

There are still many people who disbelieve the whole resurrection thing, as if it is beyond credulity. However, the historical case for the resurrection is quite good; in fact, noted atheist-turned-deist Anthony Flew has stated that he finds the evidence for the resurrection “compelling.” So much so, in fact, that he has asked NT Wright if he can join him for one of the stops on his “The Resurrection – Fantasy or Fact?” tour. Flew stated,

“I am very much impressed with Bishop Wright’s approach, which is absolutely fresh. He presents the case for Christianity as something new for the first time. This is enormously important, especially in the United Kingdom, where the Christian religion has virtually disappeared. It is absolutely wonderful, absolutely radical, and very powerful.”

Is it wrong to expect proof of the resurrection? I don’t think so; remember Thomas needing to see for himself. We tend to think of Thomas as having little faith, but recall that Jesus had already appeared to the others; they had their proof. Jesus never chastised Thomas, but obliged him as well.

We, of course, have not had that kind of advantage, but neither are we left with no proof; the historical testimony is “compelling,” even 2,000 years later.

The Resurrection of Jesus is not a problem, it is possibility. The possibility of the Resurrection is not that it is possible to have happened; it is what is now possible because it happened. The hope that we have as Christians is right here. And, it doesn’t matter if Easter used to be a pagan holiday, or if the correct anniversary should be some other day. It’s not the day that’s important, it’s the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, defeating death and opening up a whole new way to live.

Easter - the Resurrection - is something that we should celebrate and live every day.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
- Bill & Gloria Gaither