Theological Musings

ell, I finally am getting around to sitting down to write some of my own thoughts on this topic. Thank you to all of you who contributed such insightful comments in response to my question.

Much of what I would like to say has been said in one form or another in the comments that were posted previously. This has the net effect of letting me know ahead of time that my thoughts won’t be overly controversial to everyone in the discussion! But seriously, it is refreshing to see such thought being given to this topic. I likely will not address everything that was written in the comments, but they are there for you to read for yourself. Instead, I want to share my thoughts, some of which will overlap the thoughts of others.

It is easy, I think, for us to agree that whatever Jesus meant when he prayed for our unity, we’re not fulfilling it. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone who says that the body of Christ is experiencing unity at the level that Jesus prayed for. Part of this is because we don’t even agree on what the unity is supposed to look like!

Some options of interpretation that I have come across in my time of examining this passage include:

• Unity = Unanimity — Unity can only come when we fully agree on everything that is believed, practiced, taught, etc.
• Unity = Consensus — Unity means that we “agree to disagree”
• Unity = Anything Goes — Unity means that every person’s belief is valid, and we should never “debate” or try to convince others of our viewpoints
• Unity = Eschatological Perfection — The unity that Jesus prayed for is only possible, and will only exist, when Jesus returns and we are made perfect.

With that in mind, I posed the question, “What is the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 and is it primarily (or even solely) eschatological in nature?”

Let me first of all give my thoughts on the eschatology aspect of the question. I think determining the eschatological import (if any) helps us determine what the unity actually is. It also impacts what we believe to be our responsibility toward the unity in question.

In other words, if the unity is primarily (or solely) eschatological, we can easily assume that it is not attainable in this lifetime, and we will generally feel like it’s not even worth trying. If, however, the unity is a present possibility and reality, we will understand our own response to the prayer of Jesus.

As some have already commented, I do not believe that the unity for which Jesus prayed is eschatological. Eschatological unity is almost a given. Why would Jesus take the time to pray for what is essentially a guaranteed part of the future kingdom?

But more importantly, the words of Jesus in John 17 give us ample evidence that eschatology is not in view during this prayer. Verse 21 tells us specifically that the prayer of Jesus for unity is for this purpose: “…so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

Verse 23 expands on this by saying that the purpose of the unity is “…so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

In my opinion, these two statements of purpose that Jesus gave for his prayer for unity remove any eschatological implication from the prayer. The purpose of the unity is to demonstrate to the world that God sent Jesus and that God loves us.

If this is correct (and obviously, I believe it is), then this greatly impacts our understanding of what that unity is and whether or not we should actively be pursuing it. Since it is not a future unity (any eschatological implications must come from outside the text), there must be a present unity for which Jesus prayed.

Within this prayer, Jesus gives some indication as to what the unity should be. Namely, it should be a mirror of the unity that Jesus and the Father share. He compares the unity of us with his unity with the Father in verse 21:

…they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us….

Would we say that the unity of Jesus and the Father is manifest in “you go your way and I’ll go mine and we won’t bother each other”? Yet this is frequently what ends up happening among Christians.

You believe in infant baptism? Then I can’t fellowship with you. You believe in speaking in tongues? You’ll have to have church across town. You believe that the Genesis account of creation is metaphorical? I have nothing in common with you.

This cannot be what Jesus prayed for.

And with that, I will have to hold off on the rest of my thoughts because I am out of time. Comments are open, and I will return with a further post at some point.

Until next time,

steve

hil Hawkins has been doing some excellent commenting here on this blog of late. And sometimes comments are just too good to stay buried in the comments section of the blog. While I don’t seek to exalt any one person above another on this blog (save Jesus!), I just had to put this comment in its entirety up here on the front page for all to read.

To my dear brothers who are involved in the institutional church, please don’t read this so much as an “institutional vs. simple” dichotomy. But prayerfully weigh Phil’s words here and see what points of agreement might be had. Of course, dissenting opinions are welcome in the comments following this post, if one feels it necessary.

Without further ado, then, in my “Wish I Had Written This!” category comes this profound comment from (unwitting) guest blogger Phil on the recent “How (Not) to Judge Someone’s Orthodoxy” post:

Looking back at this whole discussion, I come back to this basic question–What is Christianity? Is it
(a) a set of activities in a sacred place on Sunday morning, with a list of tenets to be subscribed to as a condition of participation, coupled with rules for behavior, enforced by the official leadership

or

(b) a way of living, every day, 24/7, in relationship with Jesus Himself, and with others who also are in relationship with Him.

Going through the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospels, I cannot find anything that leads to (a); in fact, he often rebuked the leaders of the (a) system of the day. I grew up in churches, have been in churches all my life, and my conclusion now is that in most situations, the more of (a) you have, the less you have of (b); in fact, (a) tends to replace and eliminate (b)!

How did “Abide in me” come to mean “Be at the church building every time the doors are open”?

If you want to improve your relationship with someone, say your wife, do you go off to an auditorium and sit while someone who claims to know her better than you do lectures for half an hour? Or would the time be better spent going somewhere alone with your wife and conversing with her for half an hour? Which really builds the relationship with her?

I’m afraid most humans are too lazy for their own good. We’d rather have a list of rules to keep than try to walk in the Spirit. We want a doctrinal statement to assent to rather than trying to learn to hear His voice ourselves. The Hebrews started it at Mt. Sinai–they wanted Moses to hear God for them.

And for those who would say “It’s some of each, both (a) and (b)” my question is How can it be both, when (a) eliminates (b)? I think, and I suspect [frequent commenter] ded would agree (based on what he’s written here), that they are two different things, coming from two different sources. If God meant it to be a symbiosis, it would be a stable symbiosis, not constantly drifting in one direction.

To look at it another way: What has been the “fruit” of (a) in this country? Do we have a vibrant church that is transforming its culture? Are non-believers coming to Christ in droves? Are believers “turning the world upside down”?

Or is the picture more like this: “Our bookshelves are full of Christian books and videos. We have churches on every major street, more staff workers than ever before, large Sunday school departments, cell systems, mega- and meta-church seminars. We have Christian bumper stickers, political action groups, huge parachurch ministries–and in the midst of it all, we have lost every major city in North America.” Back in 1999, Wolfgang Simson included that quote from Ted Haggard in his book “Houses that Change the World”.

Maybe we do need to lay aside everything that’s been written since and go back to the New Testament for our original instructions.

Way to go, Phil! And a hearty “amen” to that.

Until next time,

steve

everal times in the past, the subject of orthodoxy has come up on this blog. And quite honestly, I’ve taken a lot of flack over my hesitancy to write some people off as being “heretics”.

This evening, while perusing some blogs, I spotted this paragraph from a commenter:

It seems to me that the wrong way to identify whether someone believes the Bible is to ask them if they do.
Better to find out what they believe on a variety of subjects which the Bible teaches us about, and then determine for them whether or not they really believe it.

That, my friends, is apparently how we are to judge others.

Forgive my bitter cynicism, but I fail to see the justification in this kind of approach. It could easily be paraphrased as such: “Don’t give your brother any benefit of the doubt. Give them, rather, a theological quiz, and grade it based on your own inerrant, infallible, and complete knowledge of the truth.”

No, thank you.

Until next time,

steve

heesy title for this post notwithstanding, I find nothing amusing or cute about an AP news article that was released today.

When the news about Ted Haggard’s resignation amidst confessions of “sexual immorality” broke last year, I opted not to blog about it in specifics. (I can’t even remember now if I wrote anything at all about it.) My choice to not use his name or specifics was for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that I didn’t want a bunch of Google traffic based on his name.

I also wanted to be extremely reserved in passing judgment. Not that I didn’t think that what he admitted to was pretty serious. And not that I didn’t think that the way he handled it was extremely inappropriate for a man of his position.

In the midst of the fallout from that scandal (what a cliché that is, eh?), I had concerns about the way his former church handled it, as well. I thought about writing some posts about that and comparing it to some of my own personal experiences with how churches often deal (or don’t deal, as the case may be) with sin amongst its leaders.

Today, however, I find myself not feeling so reserved. And I find myself torn between feelings of tremendous sorrow and harsh anger. I’m trying to err on the side of sorrow here, but it’s difficult.

So, what was the news that came out today? Well, it appears from this news story on Yahoo (HT: Kansas Bob) that Mr. Haggard is asking for support for the next two years because he doesn’t think that he and his wife have “adequate earning power” and won’t for at least two years.

But here’s the rub: Mr. Haggard reportedly received a severance package which included $138,000 in salary, he made $110,000 + an $85,000 bonus (?!?!) last year prior to resigning, he continues to collect royalties on his books (although I imagine the market for them has declined a bit), and lives in a close-to-3/4 of a million dollar home, which is on the market.

So, Mr. Haggard apparently thinks that he needs people to support him, despite all of that. Why? I can’t think of any good reason, either logically or scripturally, why Mr. Haggard should be entitled to financial support from others.

I will still refrain from passing judgment in a strict sense, but I think that perhaps Mr. Haggard got a little too comfortable asking people for money, expecting financial support to an extreme level, and living off the generous gifts of others who quite likely have a much lower standard of living than he.

Lord have mercy.

I’ll just leave it at that.

Until next time,

steve

t’s no secret that one of the very natural tendencies of humankind is toward legalism. And it’s no secret that Christians face the temptation quite often to become legalistic. Even when we attempt to explore liberty, we run the risk of becoming legalistic about our liberty! Ironic, isn’t it?

Usually, the danger in legalism is seen as being too restrictive. In other words, if someone is being legalistic about a certain issue, they are usually drawing a tighter line around something than needs to be there.

But what about the times when drawing that line causes us to miss the point entirely? What if it causes us to completely permit other thoughts/behaviors while focusing on particular thoughts/behaviors that aren’t even relevant?

Such, I fear, is the case with a particular Old Testament commandment.

Someone put together a series of billboards posing as messages directly from God. I’m sure you’ve seen them somewhere along the line. Stark white letters on a solid black background. Things like “Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game. — God” or “Don’t make me come down there. — God”, etc.

Apart from the constant theological problems in most of the messages (i.e., God’s ‘house’ is not a church building and, ummm, He already did “come down” here and has sent His Spirit to remain here with us), there was one that really jumped out at me and caused me to think about this particular issue.

“Next time you curse, use your own name. — God”

A similar one said, “Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer. — God” Yeah, that’s exactly the type of God we serve, right? Ahem. Anyway, back to my point…

We are all familiar with the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And many of us believe that we know exactly what it means, right?

So I got to thinking, what does it mean to take God’s name in vain? I mean, I know what I was always taught it meant.

Be honest. Most of us were taught that this meant not saying things like “Oh, my god” as a careless expression. I was even taught that it was wrong to say “Thank God.”

And then, of course, there were the “substitution words” that were equally sinful. Gosh. Gee. Geez. Golly. Because these were all substitutions for the word God or Jesus, I was told, they were equally sinful.

Now, contrary to what you might be expecting, the point of this post is not to actually defend the use of any of those words or phrases. I’ll leave that up to the reader to draw his own conclusions.

But, my thought process went something like this: By focusing so much on the casual phrases and “substitution words” that are used, have we missed a bigger point? More frightening, are we actually condoning behavior and thoughts that are in violation of this command while believing that we are innocent because we “don’t say those things”?

And so I began to mull over what it means to take God’s name…

Wait a minute. What is God’s name? Is it “God”?

We use the term “God” (with a capital G, of course) as the name for the god we worship. We rightly believe that our god is different from all other gods, and so we distinguish him by calling him “God”. But is that his name??

It’s almost sad that we don’t actually use his name. And while I have no evidence for this, I believe that the reason we don’t actually use his name is a derivative of the Jewish tradition of not speaking his name for fear of violating this commandment.

However, one must be truthful and acknowledge that we do use the term “God”, even with a capital G in other ways. As was pointed out in a post on another blog (a blog unfamiliar to me, and one I only found in looking for some other information about this topic after I had already decided to write this), many Christians say “God bless you” just as casually as the phrase “Oh my god” is used. Is that offensive? To most people, no. At least not in my experience.

But, and here is the rub: How many times do we invoke the authority and blessing of our God on the things that we are doing, teaching, saying, thinking, desiring, exhorting, preaching, etc.? And how many times do those very things that we are doing, teaching, saying, thinking, desiring, exhorting, preaching, etc. go against the very nature of what we have revealed about our God, yet we claim his backing and authority for them anyway?

Is that not a greater offense to our God?

Or when we claim to represent Jesus (which if we believe that Jesus is divine, than we must treat the name “Jesus” as a name, if not the name, of our God) and yet live a life that does not reflect his character and work, is that not an offense to our God? Are we not “using [his] name” in a vain manner?

Think about it, and feel free to discuss or dispute it below.

Until next time,

steve