Eternal Perspectives

It is good that there should be creatures such as we are. Unless and until we can say that, we are condemned to an endless attempt to be something else – whether that something else seems to be ‘less’ or ‘more.’” – Gilbert Meileander, Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person

Recently, in one of the many media that now exist, I received a note informing me that I am jealous. I thought this to be a curious thing for the man to have said, he being a fellow believer and all, as well as being one who doesn’t know me except through what I have written here and elsewhere.

It is a remarkable thing to be human, but perhaps nowhere is it more striking than when it comes to the internal world we construct in order to being able to live in external reality. It is a predilection to which we all fall prey: somehow, through our internal dialogues, we believe we are able to see another, equally unique and complex individual for what they truly are. Those of us who are married are much too familiar with the feeling that, despite living with this other person thirty or forty years, we are caught off guard by something they say or do. When this happens, we are surprised and wonder if we will ever know them for who they are or are becoming at that moment.

To then assume, as we do, that we are able to make declarative remarks about the core qualities or motivations of others who are relative strangers is perhaps human folly at its best – or, more appropriately, its worst. Based solely on what we have read and our own, internal reaction to it, we are now quickly and firmly convinced that we now know a person for who he or she really is.

Psychologists would refer to this as assimilation, i.e., putting people in preexisting categories for the sake of simplifying our existence. In truth, however, each person is deserving of their own category; accommodation is the mental facility of creating new categories for information, events, experiences, and things that do not fit into any of the stereotypical files we already possess. But since we have limited processing capacities, we prefer to carry as few categories as possible in our neurological operating system.

For Christians, it is incredible that we should do this. We believe in a God who is a Master Creator, One who never creates the same tree, mountain, wave, or person twice. Each act of creation is unrepeatable, incapable of happening more than once. There is, has been, and always will be but one of you, and but one of me. That is true for all.

But it is also a bit astounding for Christians to force fit others into convenient molds so that we can escape the delightful but laborious experience of getting to know each person as they are. The more we come to know someone, the more we realize that they require their own category, and not merely a category in which no others fit but also one that is different from our own internal comprehension of the person. To begin to know someone deeply and intimately is a wonderful, rare, loving thing to do, but it also necessitates some mental work that many of us would prefer not to be bothered with..

At the same time, it is a form of passing judgment to make a declaration such as “You are jealous” to another. When we do so, we are criticizing God’s work in the other person and have lost sight of the work needing to be done in our own hearts and minds.

Finally, it is a failure to trust in the purposes, sovereignty, and wisdom of God. While admittedly we all fail to recall this to mind at key times, we do not know how God is working out His plan for each person. It may be that my (or anyone’s) act of “being jealous” is used by Him to do something in our own lives as well as in the life of the person whose life I want to live for myself. No small part of God’s unfathomable genius is revealed in His working out His purposes in billions of people over thousands of years, all of which ultimately are to be drawn together at the Eschaton.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” – 1 Cor 13.12

What is normal and what is fanaticism? When does a healthy awareness of our faith mutate into an unhealthy preoccupation or obsession? Does every minute of our day, every encounter with other people really count or are some meetings just non-events in the vast expanse of time and lives?

This is the point at which I wonder if I am a fanatic or am normal. By normal, I don’t mean what most people at most times in most places seem to think or do: that’s “average.” By normal, I mean what Scripture teaches about how we ought to live and what that teaching looks like if lived out in daily life.

Early on in my Christian life I heard someone say that Christians should not be so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good. I remember thinking that it was a catchy saying but also wondering how those two could be competitors. Even in the crawling years of my spiritual walk I concluded quite the opposite: the more heavenly minded one was, the more earthly good they would be capable of doing – or, for any nitpickers reading this, the more good Christ could do through me.

I tend to think everything involving eternal beings or eternal truth matters. I don’t know how to label one event as having eternal significance and another simply a temporal occurrence lacking everlasting repercussions. Perhaps it is a result of taking God’s omniscience, omniscience, or eternal plan to ridiculous, unbiblical conclusions. But I’ve never felt smart or discerning enough to treat some people or interactions as not important.

This gets me into trouble. I think words matter; worse, I think all people matter – especially those who are more sheep than shepherds, who count on others to protect, lead, and nourish them. I get protective. I went to seminary in part to learn how to take care of people but I often find myself trying to help people who don’t want help.

When this happens, I am often reminded that the internet or this blog or that forum is not the church. This carries with it an implicit freedom from responsibility, as though the host is not responsible if guests eat bad food brought by others to an intellectual and spiritual potluck. Forums are particularly prone to this: people are allowed to say anything, teach anything, and dismiss the writings of those who are experts in various fields.

What I want to do at this point is to describe a situation and ask for a response. The situation will not be any particular one but instead one that is an amalgam of several I’ve been involved in. And then you can tell me: Am fanatical or biblical? Do I take things too seriously or perhaps not seriously enough?

In a comment thread, a popular blogger begins to give her opinion about homosexuals in the church, the sinfulness of their behaviors, and what the church must do. She states that homosexual men are homosexual by deliberate, conscious choice and that upbringing has nothing to do with it. Further, she is certain that no real Christian can struggle with same-sex attraction: anyone who struggles is giving unmistakable and irrefutable proof that they are still dead in their trespasses and sins.

She further pontificates that what the church must do in order to remain holy is to excommunicate such people regardless of whether they are acting upon their feelings or not. They are to be publicly dismissed from fellowship and fellow members of the church are not to reach out to them.

My response in this situation has several facets. First, I disagree that all people wrestling with same-sex attraction consciously choose to do so. I also object to the notion that upbringing has nothing to do with it: the individual is responsible for cleaning up the mess, of course, but they did not deliberately create all of the mess. The response of the church needs to be love, not exclusion, and to suggest otherwise is to create an atmosphere of exclusion, not inclusion, for those who struggle with any sin.

I also object to the person speaking authoritatively when they lack training, possess no clinical experience, and have never done research concerning the issue. While it is true that she has a PhD in Biblical Theology, that does not give her the right to espouse her ignorance as though it were wisdom.

Whatever facts I might present are usually ignored. Part of the response I get is that the internet is not the church, that we need to be free to express whatever thoughts or convictions we have regardless of how it might affect weaker brothers, and that strugglers and weaker believers are not the responsibility of the author of the post, the poser of the question, or the own of the blog.

At this point I usually shake my head. Perhaps I took Wesley’s remark – “The world is my parish” – too seriously, but it is my conviction that church membership roles do not define or dictate the limits of our responsibility to one another. I will be held accountable for whatever careless words I speak, the deleterious affects they have on people, and that we have a responsibility to one another to correct, rebuke, reprove, admonish, and love one another.

I believe it is recklessly irresponsible to use authority or credibility gained elsewhere in an unrelated area. My graduate-level exposure to textual criticism, for example, does not earn me the right to question the findings of a Dan Wallace or Bruce Metzger. And my (limited) expertise in personality development and disorders, along with my facility to help others, does not make me someone to be listened to in matters pertaining to church planting or missions.

You tell me: am I a zealot? fanatic? overboard? How serious is our faith, anyway? Are we vitally and organically connected to one another in the Body of Christ or is that just a figure of speech used to convey a sense of unity?

I really want to know. Although I believe I am correct in this matter, I also believe that I am capable of being wrong.

The importance of the Gospel – in the broadest sense of the word – has never been lost on me since I was first saved and began to be saved 35 years ago. There have been times when I have briefly questioned myself over the depth of my commitment, but only briefly. It never lasts more than a minute or two.

I take no credit for this. God, I believe, orchestrated the events of my life and the nature of my character – introspective, somber, willful – from the womb. From being born crippled and all the emotional and psychological effects of that, to an emotionally unavailable father, to experiences and opportunities at every point in my life. My intense conviction about God and the Christian life could happen to anyone. Or everyone. I don’t know why it happened to me the way it did. I know, however, that it was and is an act of God in my life.

Part of it – and I have written about this elsewhere – is likely due to my experiences prior to coming to Christ at age 25, give or take a couple of weeks. I drank deeply at more than a few sinful wells, explored various religions and worldviews, and pursued most of the pleasures of the flesh that were available to me.

Nothing was worth living for until God drew me to Himself and saved me by His grace. I was a seemingly incurable nihilist, hedonist, and narcissist. Then the Holy Spirit enabled me to believe and, when that happened, everything changed. A few changed immediately, some took years, others are still in progress. But the direction of my life, abruptly detoured on a Tuesday evening long ago, has not changed.

From a world and existence that were devoid of meaning I suddenly found myself plunged into the most important thing. By comparison, the only important thing. The dreadful glory of the Gospel, the crushing weight of forgiveness, and the ineffable depths of God’s grace – the power of those truths uprooted me and shook me to the heart of my being.

I have wondered at times whether I was living the “normal Christian life” or was dancing on the line of fanaticism and insanity. My reason always told me the former; my experience and observation of others whispered the latter.

My zeal and passion for God and His purposes has not really waned over time; in fact, it has deepened. The more I have learned, the more convinced I become. And that strengthens my view of life.

When I consider how others live their lives and compare that to my own approach to living out what remains of my days, there seems to be a sharp contrast. Not always, of course, and not with every person: there are others no less committed than I and many perhaps much more. I don’t think I’ve ever been around someone who was actually much more committed than I but I must allow that the possibility exists.

Remember that I don’t take credit for this. I feel pulled and compelled to walk this path, reinforced by the emptiness of my life prior to God’s work in my life. Peter’s words have always been my own. When Jesus as the disciples if they were going to leave him just as the masses had, Peter replied, “To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” I’ve looked elsewhere and found nothing. If Christianity isn’t true or real, there’s nothing that is true or real.

I don’t think I have more faith than others – actually, I don’t think I have very much faith at all, maybe just enough to be saved – but my beliefs seem to have a tighter grip on me than most. The things about the Gospel, the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit of God – all these things a powerful, powerful truths. If these truths are deeply and stubbornly believed, life is different.

What I want to explore for awhile is why some see things differently and what happens when truth is practically or experientially believed. There seems to be a difference, for example, between believers who grew up in the church, came to faith at a young age, and remained on that path when they are compared with those who came to faith later after following a path of later regret.

That difference is connected to the “what” that I want to look at: the kind of life that grows out of having been forgiven of so much, so many things, so many times.

There are things associated with the difference that I know nothing about; I cannot write about them, obviously. But I want to talk about what I have seen, what I have thought about, and what troubles me daily. I’ll start that with the next post.

This is related to my last post but is different enough and significant enough to warrant its own post.

I spoke last time about too many people being unwilling to submit to the teaching or instruction of one more knowledgeable or qualified than themselves. This post is about people who believe that expertise or education in one area qualifies them to speak authoritatively in any area.

This has come up before; it keeps happening all the time.

People who will fight tooth and nail for the necessity of training in their own discipline act as though other disciplines don’t require the same. Someone with considerable expertise or experience in apologetics, for example, expects (rightly so) that others will defer or at least listen to him when he speaks. When the situation is reversed, however, they seem to believe one of two things.

First, they may believe that the other field of knowledge does not require special training or knowledge. Human nature, psychotropic medications, psychological disorders, neurological factors – these are all things that are self-evident, they seem to believe, and anyone who claims to know more than they is arrogant at best or a fraud at worst. Their own opinion is a valid as someone who has graduate training in that specific field.

Or, second, it could be that the expert in apologetics or theology believes himself to be an authority about whatever he turns his attention to. His stature in his own discipline somehow makes him an expert on all things.

This one concerns me more than a little. I think it is a grievous thing to be wrong about one’s exegesis and unwilling to admit it, but I think it is even worse to pontificate about something one is basically ignorant about or, at best, has only a passing and passive knowledge about. I’ve heard a lot of foolish things said about marriage, medications, depression, and what constitutes real help and treatment coming from people who either don’t know what they’re talking about or are in denial about their own issues.

The problem is that the followers of such people don’t always discern the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Just because someone is an excellent apologist or theologian doesn’t not automatically give them wisdom about life, brain function, or psychological disorders. But the followers, holding these self-proclaimed authorities in high regard, attribute to them a wisdom or expertise that is pretty much nonexistent.

I know what I know; more importantly, I know what I don’t know. That means I know when to speak and when to listen, when to teach and when to learn. Just because I am skilled at counseling or knowledgeable of human nature does not make me an authority on Greek or Hebrew, on apologetics, or on missions. It would be foolish of anyone to listen to me speak about anything I’m ignorant about. And it would be wrong for me to pretend to be something that I’m not.

It’s the difference between hubris and humility. If and when I get to the point that I stop listening, I will be proud and puffed up; if I remain hungry to listen and learn, then there is at least a spark of humility somewhere in me.

I hope the day never comes that I stop learning.

There is something going on in Christian forums and comment threads these days that I understand but don’t want to believe.

Having spent the better part of a year hanging out at one forum in particular - Theologica - and the blog closely connected with it – Parchment & Pen – I keep witnessing this something with regularity. And while I understand what drives and sustains it, I just don’t want to believe it to be true.

Forums thrive on discussions and exchange of information on whatever subject is in view at the moment. These subjects range from doctrinal positions to understanding particular verses or passages to defending one’s theological tradition. And what keeps happening is this:

People are more interested in stating their own opinions, observations, and beliefs than discovering what might be the truth – or at least closer to the truth – about an issue.

Whether in a forum or a comment thread, people go back and forth espousing what they think things mean or what they believe a passage to say or what they understand as the truth. Not only do such people not do research for themselves, they also are uninterested in listening to someone else who either does do research or is a more knowledgeable person in the field.

At Theologica, for example, Marv is quite knowledgeable of and proficient with New Testament Greek. When others make unsubstantiated or just plain wrong claims about what a passage is or isn’t saying, Marv is usually there to help any and all understand things better. I always look forward to his comments.

But not everyone wants to hear him or consider what he says. There are some – thankfully – who do listen and consider what he says. But many, many others act as though it’s just Marv’s opinion and therefore can be ignored. Or they consider their own grasp of the language – usually via Vine’s or Strong’s – to be equal to his or even superior. So they don’t listen.

There are some Reformed people afoot at Theologica, too, who are quite knowledgeable about the Reformed tradition and its doctrines. But their understanding of their own belief system is often ignored because a critic has his or her own understanding of what Calvinism is really about and what Calvinists really believe.

In a word, what seems to be lacking is humility. By humility I do not mean some smarmy self-deprecation meant to demonstrate just how humble they truly are. I mean knowing who they are and who they are not, what they know and what they don’t know.

Teachability is symptomatic of humility. When someone is willing to listen to someone else who knows more or understands more, and will go so far as to reconsider their own position, humility is present.

But I don’t find that much.

And I don’t want to believe that people want to maintain and puff up their own ignorance because, well, it’s their ignorance and not something that someone else told them. It’s as though they would rather be wrong and original than right and indebted to someone else.

This kind of thinking is a death knell for growth and maturity. It pretty much guarantees that people will remain at their present level of understanding – or ignorance – as long as they refuse to listen or allow that they might not know as much as they think.

It does not bode well for them individually or for the church in general. God help us all.

NOTE: I recently wrote the following series elsewhere and thought I should bring them over here, too. They are in inverse order here for the purpose of making reading through them easier.
___________

In the erudite and ethereal discussions that tend to pop up around here now and then, people use terms such as “historical-critical method,” “form criticism,” “source criticism,” and “redaction criticism” – phrases that exclude most of us from the essence of the conversation. We are left on the sidelines like eunuchs in a harem, knowing that something is going on but not sure exactly what.

Hoping to expose the mystery of so-called higher criticism (at least for myself), I have undertaken to shed some light on the matter by answering a simple question: What if we treated one another’s written statements in the same way many people treat the Bible, i.e., through the lenses of higher criticism? I am not saying that higher criticism is bad – far from it! – but only that more pedestrian documents and writings should be able to enjoy the same scrutiny and privilege as does the Bible. It could serve to further our understanding of both higher criticism and what is actually being said. But what would that look like?

Well, let’s see. Let’s take something said elsewhere on Theologica and subject it to higher criticism, perhaps thereby ennobling the common to the glorious and correcting the misleading to the truth.

I will use the following petition of Rey to clarify my point:

I might conclude from this unexamined passage a number of things: Rey is hungry, it is late, Rey is afraid of the dark and dislikes cold weather, he likes to eat catfish after cooking them, he has no catfish recipes of his own other than those that require a grill, he has strange hopes. But without closer inspection or the corrective lenses of higher criticism, I could be perilously wrong. In fact, in the opinion of more than a few higher critics, I definitely am wrong.

There are three primary types of higher criticism: form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism. I’ll give a quick explanation of each before applying them to Rey’s cry for help.

Form Criticism (FC) examines the previous forms a document might have been in prior to what is now in front of us. We know, for example, that prior to the synoptic Gospels being written they existed in an oral form. FC looks at the effect previous forms have upon the final product.

Source Criticism (SC) seeks to find other documents, both real and hypothesized, that might have been used by a writer in producing the text we have. Again, with the synoptics, it is believed by some that Matthew and Luke may have used Mark as source material for their own gospels, and/or relied upon an unknown source (Q) for information.

Redaction Criticism (RC) tries to determine the theological purposes of the writer by looking at how they used the materials to organize or otherwise emphasize things in their books. It assumes, rightly, that each author has a particular perspective and purpose in writing that is not limited to historically reporting what has happened.

We’ll begin our search for the true truth about Rey’s catfish petition in the next post.

Form Criticism (FC), you will remember, examines the previous forms a document might have been in prior to what is now in front of us. We know, for example, that prior to the synoptic Gospels being written they existed in an oral form. FC looks at the effect previous forms have upon the final product.

Our text under consideration now is a petition that Rey made recently:

According to Carson, Moo, and Morris – which is not a law firm – there are a half dozen assumptions made by FC scholars that we will adapt and apply when possible to Rey’s text.

1. “The stories and sayings . . . circulated in small independent units.”

2. “The transmission of the material can be compared to the transmission of other folk and religious traditions.”

3. “The stories and sayings . . . took on certain standard forms . . . for the most part still readily visible [in the text].”

4. “The form of a specific story or saying makes it possible to determine its Sitz im Leben (”setting in life”) . . .”

5. “As it passed down the sayings and stories . . . [the] community not only put the material into certain forms, it modified it under the impetus of its own needs and situations.”

6. “Classic form critics have typically utilized various criteria to enable them to determine the age and historical trustworthiness of particular pericopes.”

Such is the nature of form criticism and how it enables us to better understand the otherwise completely incomprehensible text provided by the Rey Community.
___________

Next we will further our understanding of Rey and catfish through the lens of Source Criticism.

I earlier defined Source Criticism as a discipline that seeks to find other documents, both real and hypothesized, that might have been used by a writer in producing the text we have. It has its own unique contributions to the study of our text,

We have already demonstrated through the use of Form Criticism that Rey’s missive did not suddenly appear in its final form as a result of him sitting down and simply typing the text. It was the result of a collaboration of his community with various members providing their own oral traditions that resulted in the text as we now have it. Those oral stories would eventually have come down in written form, and Source Criticism will help identify the sources the author must have used in putting together his own retelling of the accounts.

When studying something like the Synoptic Gospels, which allow us to compare and contrast the differing accounts of the life of Christ, it is easier to identify various sources. Such is not the case with the text in front of us, which means we will have to rely on what we already know about use of sources by authors.

The text reflects disparate sources connected by transitions such as “and” and the use of punctuation, particularly “.” (period). It is safe to say that Rey had before him at least five sources: (1) information about the time of day, (2) some sort of weather report, (3) a meteorological report showing both sunrise and sunset times for the date of the incident, (4) evidence from an unknown source about the status of the grill (whether “turned on” or not), and (5) a document or portion of a document revealing the existence of something called “online,” which is apparently a state that human beings can enter into and become.

It is very likely, however, that later collections that included some but not all of the aforementioned fragments were extant at the time and available to the author. These may be referred to as S (for “Situation”) and P (those documents pertaining to the “Petition” itself). A Two-Source Theory (no longer held by conservative scholars) maintained that Rey had at his disposal S and P but none of the other source materials. A more recent and thus truer theory-become-fact position is known as the Two-Plus-Some-Others Theory. This position (held by most at Theologica) reveals that the author relied on S and P, plus an unknown number of specific fragments (ranging in number from 1 to 43,234).

Whatever the number of sources, however, the priority of S – which simply means that it was written first – is maintained by all. It was the first source to come into the author’s possession and served as a template for all additional information, even though some of the later sources might have been earlier.

Equally obvious to the Source Critic is the absence of any sort of search engine that the author might have used to discover recipes for his family’s meal that did not involve time, weather, astronomy, grills, or “onlines.” It goes without saying that, had the author had such information or access available, he would have utilized it and we would not now have the text we have. Rather, it would have taken the form of “Hey, I found a cool recipe for boiling catfish” or some such thing.

With the enlightenment of Source Criticism, therefore, we can now understand that Rey relied on written documents no longer in existence to compile his account as we now have it in the text. The individual sources, upon with the author heavily relied, contributed to the final form of the passage.
___________

Finally, we will look at Redaction Criticism to further enhance our understanding of the text. Only then will we be able to say with confidence that we understand the story, whether historical or not, as written by Rey.

The final stage of composition for our text -

- necessitates our discovery of the influence of the individual author upon the account. This is the realm of Redaction Criticism, which “seeks to describe the theological purposes of the [author] by analyzing the way in which” sources are used. “Redaction” is a jargon term meant to exclude the hoi polloi from understanding something simple.¹ A redactor is an editor; redaction criticism examines the editing done by the author in the course of telling his story.

Again drawing from CMM (Carson, Moo, and Morris), we can apply Redaction Criticism to the text. There are five basic elements to RC, but I’ll only address four. The last one isn’t really worth the time. Here goes: