Rick Warren does the right thing

There is controversy surrounding the inclusion of Senator Barack Obama as be part of an AIDS conference at Saddleback Church. Senator Obama is pro-choice and some evangelical Christians believe that it is inappropriate for someone with his beliefs to be appearing at an evangelical church.

Aware of the strong opposition to Obama participating in the summit,
Saddleback Church released a statement Tuesday stressing that the
speakers at the summit "do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of
Saddleback Church, its pastoral leadership or any of the other
speakers."

"We’re not making an endorsement of Obama or any of the other
speakers," continued the statement. "Rather by coming to Saddleback,
the Summit speakers are affirming and supporting the vital role of the
Church in fighting the pandemic of HIV/AIDS."

"Let it be made very clear that Pastor Warren and Saddleback Church
completely disagree with Obama’s views on abortion and other positions
he has taken, and have told him so in a public meeting on Capitol Hill."

"We do not expect all participants in the Summit discussion to agree
with all of our Evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic
cannot be fought by Evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of
all – government, business, NGOs and the church. That is the purpose of
this Summit."

Via

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Rick Warren for this courageous stance. If Christians refuse to work with those who do not share their world-view we will never get anything done.

Rick Warren did the right thing.

Open theist?

Yesterday over at the Boar’s Head there was a post that mentioned open theism. Now I must be honest and say that while I have heard this term before, I was never really sure what it meant. Fortunately, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to this very topic.

Open theism, also known as free will theism, is a theological movement that has developed within Evangelical Protestant Christianity as a response to certain ideas that are a part of the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Several ideas within Classical theism (a designation which is not to be taken as inclusive of all of orthodox theism) state that God is immutable, impassible, and timeless. Classical Theists also believed that God fully determines the future thus humanity does not have libertarian free will, or if free, that freedom must be compatible with God’s determining actions.

Practically, Open Theism makes the case for a personal God who is able to be influenced through prayer, decisions, and actions of people. Although unknowing of the future, God has predictive (anticipatory) foreknowledge of the future through his intimate knowledge of each individual. As such, he is able to anticipate the future, yet remains fluid to respond and react to prayer and decisions made either contrary or advantageous to His plan or presuppositions.

After reading the second paragraph I think that I am an open theist. I believe that prayer works. I don’t know how or why. God can and does do things without the input of people, however, I also believe that it is useful to pray for someone who is in need. Having said that, aren’t the vast majority of Christians open theists of one kind or another? I mean, haven’t we all prayed for someone?

As I researched the idea of open theism more, I found this website.

According to openness theology, the triune God of love has, in almighty power, created all that is and is sovereign over all. In freedom God decided to create beings capable of experiencing his love. In creating us the divine intention was that we would come to experience the triune love and respond to it with love of our own and freely come to collaborate with God towards the achievement of his goals. We believe love is the primary characteristic of God because the triune Godhead has eternally loved even prior to any creation. Divine holiness and justice are aspects of the divine love towards creatures, expressions of God’s loving concern for us. Love takes many forms-it can even be experienced as wrath when the lover sees the beloved destroying herself and others.

I believe that love is at the root of all things. As part of this love, when we were created by God we were given free will. In fact I am convinced that is what it means to be created in the image of God. I do not subscribe to the five points of Calvinism, specifically the points pertaining to unconditional election and limited atonement. This where the free will that God has infused us with comes into play (not to mention that I also believe that it is entirely possible that the sacrifice of Christ saved all humanity without any effort on our part, but that is fodder for another post).

What do those who oppose open theism say? Among other things they have a problem with the idea of God’s foreknowledge being limited.

Proponents of the classical view argue that open theism diminishes God by limiting God’s attributes, which is contrary to the beliefs of Scripture in both Judaism and Christianity.

When one reads the Gospels it becomes obvious that Jesus lacked certain knowledge of the future. There may be a couple of explanations for this happening that depend on what your view of Jesus and His divinity is. The easy answer is to say that Jesus wasn’t God. I don’t believe that. Jesus was God and man. Again, how that works I don’t know exactly. What I believe is that part of the process of Jesus becoming human was an emptying of certain Godly attributes. One of them being the foreknowledge of all future events. While He knew how many things would happen, He did not know when the last days would be.

Does any of this matter? If you happily count yourself as one who belongs to the Reformed school of theology than this question of open theism probably matters a whole lot. Brennan Manning, who has been one of the most important influences in my spiritual development once said something about our over emphasis on "the burning theological questions of the day. Many of which are neither burning or theological." In other words, we probably waste a lot of time discussing these ideas.

It doesn’t matter if I am an open theist. What matters is if I am walking with Jesus on a daily basis and learning from Him. As John Shelby Spong once said:

So in some sense, the very existence of love means that we participate in transcendence. And if God is the source of love, the only way I can worship God is by loving wastefully. Not setting barriers and counting costs and that sort of thing.

Amen.

Megadeth’s Gears of War – free download

Here

Emily Dickinson on the importance of church

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
I keep it, staying at Home—
With a Bobolink for a Chorister—
And an Orchard, for a Dome—

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice—
I just wear my Wings—
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton—sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman—
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least—
I’m going, all along.

Wise words

After this post last week Tiffany had some wise words for me.

"Who the hell are you to decide what happened and what didn’t happen?"

In response I asked her about all the rules that we don’t believe apply anymore. She had some more wise words for me.

"As time goes on rules change as we learn more. History does not."

Some wise words indeed. I am still not convinced of the historicity of the creation accounts in Genesis, but what Tiffany said does give me some food for thought.

THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing “intelligent design” to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.

Via

I think that there may be quite a few people that think like I do, that the creation accounts in Genesis are not historical. The tone of the article I referenced above is that if these accounts aren’t actual events, the truth of the whole Bible is called into question. I don’t think that is the case. Jesus often used parables in the lessons he taught. The fact that the stories he told weren’t actual events didn’t diminish the truth of what He was saying. It is possible for metaphor to stand alongside history in scripture.

The question still remains, who am I, who are we, to decide what is a factual event and what is not? As I noted, I still believe that the creation accounts are not literal events, this theory of mine also includes most of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I am beginning to think that section and the book of Jonah are the only sections of the Bible where this is the case. How about you?

The time-bomb that is Iraq

Great article in Newsweek about Moqtada al-Sadr. It gives many insights into the time-bomb that is Iraq.

More than anyone, Sadr personifies the dilemma Washington faces: If
American troops leave Iraq quickly, militia leaders like Sadr will be
unleashed as never before, and full-scale civil war could follow. But
the longer the American occupation lasts, the less popular America
gets—and the more popular Sadr and his ilk become.

The recent rise in violence in Iraq demonstrates that the country is headed towards civil war (if it isn’t there already). There are a variety of opinions on the best way for the United States to handle the situation in Iraq. These opinions range from pulling completely out of Iraq to the ideas of those who believe some sort of victory in Iraq is still possible.

There is no more hope for victory in Iraq. There also aren’t any readably apparent scenarios that will avoid civil war. The only hope I have for Iraq is to see the US work with Muslim nations to find a solution to this violence. Unfortunately, that could also open the door to a Taliban style regime taking power in Iraq.

Saddam was a bad guy, of this there is no doubt. Sadly, post-Saddam Iraq may be even worse.

Moving beyond the sex obsession

The Reverend elected to take over as president of the Christian Coalition of America said he will not assume the role because of differences in philosophy.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood’s Northland, A Church Distributed, said Wednesday that the national group would not let him expand the organization’s agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

Hunter, who was scheduled to take over the socially conservative political group Jan. 1, said he had hoped to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said.

Via

Rev. Hunter really deserves a round of applause for making this stand. The body of Christ must move beyond the obsession with sex, or at least move it to the back burner. There are so many people in need and we are dropping the ball on helping them out.

I was thinking the other day that as Christians, maybe the time has come for us to agree to disagree and begin to work together on the issues we do agree on. Poverty, for example is a regular subject of teaching in the Bible. As believers, we are taught to do what we can to alleviate the suffering of others. I am convinced that Christians of all stripes can get together on this issue.

The body of Christ is a diverse group. There are as many different ways of interpreting and understanding the Bible as there are believers. If we choose to, we will continue to argue amongst ourselves forever.

Home Front

Home Front is an excllent documentary about a soldier named Jeremy Feldbusch who returns from Iraq after being seriously wounded.

As an Army Ranger in the Iraq War, Jeremy was
blinded and left brain-damaged after being hit by a piece of shrapnel
that sliced into his head just above his right eye and lodged in his
brain.  HOME FRONT captures the human story of Jeremy’s return to
civilian life in his small hometown, and his subsequent readjustment to
family, community — and most importantly, his new, altered self.  The
result is an unprecedented and insightful view of how one family copes
with events that have changed them forever.

HOME FRONT also chronicles the efforts of Jeremy
and fellow wounded vets, amputees Ryan Kelly and Health Calhoun, and
their work with the Wounded Warrior Project, to bring attention to the
plight of wounded vets and their families.

Via

Prophetic

If one grants that experiences of the sacred do happen, it seems obvious that the prophets had such experiences. Though I recognize that the accounts of their visions, ecstatic states, and calls serve a literary function, I no longer see them as simply literary creations. Though I am not sure that we ever have an exact transcript of prophetic ecstatic experience, I am convinced that the prophets had such experiences.

Taking such experiences seriously accounts for much of what we see in the prophets. It takes their words seriously. They regularly say. "Thus says the Lord," and they speak in the first person on behalf of God. I do not think that the words they use come from God. The prophet is "a person and not a microphone" as Abraham Heschel put it. In other words the prophet is not simply an amplifier for a divine voice but speaks out of his own personality and experience. But the words of the prophets suggest that they were speaking from their knowledge of God – not from their knowledge about God, but from their knowing God.
Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time Page 125

How far?

My post from yesterday has caused a bit of controversy and I feel the need to explain my thoughts in greater detail. Below is an excerpt from a chapter that was supposed to be in The View from Here. Instead this excerpt will be part of a totally different chapter that I am working on for my next book.

In grade four my teacher was a guy named Mr. Lamb. He was a nice guy who smiled a lot and he earned cool points because he played both guitar and bass. The year I was in his class a band he was in released an album. It was an actual album, not how we refer to a CD as an album today. It was a twelve inch disc of vinyl that spun at thirty-three RPM. I am really dating myself here.

That year Mr. Lamb taught us the story of Adam and Eve. We learned how they were the first people created by God to live in this place called the Garden of Eden. Eden was the perfect place, you always had enough food and you never suffered. Not only that, every day God would come and pay a personal visit.

Adam and Eve enjoyed this Utopian lifestyle until one day when the serpent enticed Eve into eating an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God had told Adam not to eat from this tree, but when Eve offered the apple he accepted anyway. After they ate the apple it was all down hill. As a result of this first sin, God banished Adam and Eve from Eden. Now they had to farm the land to survive and suffering was introduced into the human condition. Women had it especially bad because it was their fault that they ate the apple. Since Eve made Adam chow down, women would have to suffer through childbirth and be subject to men. 

As Mr. Lamb taught us these “facts” I came to the strange realization that the story of Adam and Eve was mythology and probably had very little to do with how people actually came into being. I call it a strange realization because I was somewhere around ten years old then. This is not the usual things that kids that age think about. Despite my being convinced that this was a mythological account it didn’t diminish the story for me at all. I knew that there was a lot we could learn from it about how to interact with God and how serious sin can be. I did, however, keep these thoughts to myself.

In our culture myth has become dirty word. As this quote from the Wikipedia page I linked above states:

In common usage, myth can mean a falsehood, or a fable — a story which is widely believed to be based on fact but which is not true. However, the academic study of mythology does not use these definitions. Mythography and comparative religious studies also acknowledge the cultural and spiritual value of all myth systems.

When I refer to a passage of scripture as myth I mean that with the utmost respect. I am not saying that the passage is a lie, what I am referring to is that it is a tale of events that may not have actually happened but that contain truth.

I believe that there is myth contained within the Bible. My belief is that this myth is confined to the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. There are some sections of it that read like stories that were handed down from generation to generation as a means of explaining why things are the way they are.

As the quote above shows, these ideas are not new ones to me. I have carried them with me from a very young age after I received what I believe was an insight from the Holy Spirit. Where else could a ten year old get ideas like this?

You may be wondering why I would bother even considering these ideas, or maybe you are just concerned for my eternal soul. I am really influenced by the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Many of them speak against Israel’s observance of religious custom while ignoring justice for people. I believe that we have done the same in our misunderstanding of certain parts of the Bible.

Our cultural idea that women are not equal to men has it’s beginnings, at least in part, in the story of Adam and Eve. Our churches have perpetuated this idea for millennia. I believe in justice and equality for all people, regardless of gender, race, or religion. I don’t believe this in spite of my Christian faith, but because of it.

How far is too far? How do we know when we have gone to far in our consideration of the mythical within our holy scriptures? We’ve gone too far when we have begun to doubt the divinity, miracles, or life of Jesus. There is no doubt that He is the Son of God. He healed the sick, walked on water, and forgave the sins of humanity. Not coincidentally, He also modeled equality and justice for all.