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Centre and Circumference: Thoughts on an “Atheist Minister”
The United Church of Canada (UCC) has the difficult decision to eject a minister, Gretta Vosper, who claims that she is an atheist but deserves to still exist within the UCC. She has abandoned all language of God, providence, Jesus or faith. It seems like her church is merely a social organization promoting good character and social progress. That is not terrible (in fact the world would be a better place if more people attended an organization like that), but the question is whether that is “Christian”?
The notion of an “atheist Christian” is a contradiction in terms, which has caused the UCC to essentially become a laughingstock by Christians and non-Christians alike. Even worse, many conservatives now have stereotyped the UCC as a denomination full of atheists masquerading as Christians, disregarding the fact that Vosper will be removed and has only a small fraction of those sympathetic to her interpretation of the tradition.
The UCC has a difficult road ahead. They will have to think more about the bounds of orthodoxy and the limits of inclusion. Ironically, to be inclusive you do have to take a stand on some things. That is for them to think more about and us to pray for them with brotherly and sisterly love.
As my father used to say, “Don’t point fingers at people. You will have four fingers pointing right back at you.” I think this situation calls us, evangelicals, to think further about what the limits of what our faith is, who is included, and to realize that we have done a terrible job understanding the bounds of orthodoxy in the other direction.
In seminary I have heard the statement between two students in the cafeteria, “You’re not a premillennial dispensationalist? I don’t how you can be in the Truth!” (If you don’t know what “premillennial dispensationalism” is, don’t worry; you’re only proving my point).
I have seen evangelicals divide congregations and denominations over women in ministry, evolution/creationism, nature of the scriptures, nature of the atonement, treatment of sexual minorities, eschatology, and everything in between.
The silliest division I have ever head about was the “one-cupper” movement of the Stone-Campbell tradition (they are an off-shoot of Baptists). Apparently a major schism happened over whether to drink from one cup or use individual cups in communion. Apparently some felt that everyone drinking from one cup was the apostolic pattern and to fail to do so would be one small step down the slippery slope to oblivion. So… Yes…Christians have actually divided and condemned each other over that, and I have heard these kinds of “slipper slope” arguments for all sorts of, frankly, stupid stuff.
One thinks of this comic here:
Now, the one-cuppers is not my experience or context. Mine has been over women in ministry. I was once a devout complementarian, but after going to seminary, I found that the position was wanting. At the time I was pastoring in a very conservative Baptist denomination that saw the affirmation of women in ministry as unbiblical. And make no mistake: to be called “unbiblical” is synonymous with apostasy. I might have well have been an atheist!
Eventually I was sat down and told that if I wanted to continue to pastor, I would either have to shut up, leave, or have my funding cut. An “ultimatum” is too light a term. I remember begging that particular leader, arguing that we need to understand our lines of unity and diversity through who God is (Jesus, the Trinity, his love) not stuff like how we do ministry. However, the devil is in the details. Practical matters oddly are more divisive than doctrinal questions sometimes. His response was flabbergasting. I was literally told by that leader that when it comes to what is most fundamental about how the denomination operates, “Gender roles [i.e. complementarianism] is more important to the Gospel than the Trinity.” Ironically, those who use the “slippery slope” rhetoric the most have their own slopes.
I have since moved denominations to one that affirms women in ministry, but the question now presents itself: would I seek to push out someone who is against women in ministry if they arose in my association? A part of me that wants to promote an atmosphere where a woman is not discriminated against in her vocation. But, in good conscience I wouldn’t. I believe in changing minds with good exegesis, good reasoning, and good character. I fundamentally believe there ought to be liberty on secondary issues like that. Christ comes first; the Gospel comes first; the Kingdom comes first; then everything else.
One should note with the sparing between liberals and conservatives is that, ironically, every liberal is a conservative and every liberal is a conservative also, in some way. The UCC now faces the question of what essential aspects of classical Christianity it will conserve as the core of its faith, lest it loose particularity of what it uniquely is.
Conservatives snicker, but the same question presents itself to them, they have just answered without realizing their own revisionism. No conservative I know promotes the institution of slavery, despite it being in part responsible for the division between Northern and Southern Baptists in the 1800’s (Southern “conservatives” defended slavery as biblical; Northern “liberals” appealed to conscience; the result was messy). However, now, no conservative I know promotes slavery. Most abstract slavery passages to apply their fundamental principles to employer-employee relationships, which is obviously not the same. No conservative, not even a young earth creationist, holds that the earth is flat, the sky is domed, or that the Leviathan or Behemoth are real creatures. No conservative holds that heaven is literally up in the sky or hell is literally down in the ground, despite that being the language of Scripture. Do conservatives deny Christ’s ascent and descent, which is bound to that cosmology? Most don’t, and the reason is because they have unwittingly revised what they think is essential to the Christian faith from what is not. They take the Copernican revolution for granted and separate the core doctrinal substance about creation and Christ’s ascent and descent from its pre-modern cosmological form. All Christians have the task of asking what is form, what is substance, what is essential, and what is incidental.
You see, all Christians have the task of faithfully revising their faith and conserving what is most essential. Thus, every liberal is a conservative and every conservative is a liberal in some way. The question is not whether one does it, but rather, what is the limits? Conserve too much and you have fundamentalism, revise too much and you have… well… Gretta Vosper. Most Christians do not look at an earthquake and think God is angry with the citizens of that place. All Christians have revised a more naïve understanding of providence to one that recognizes that sometimes the weather, by the laws of nature, just happens. Is Vosper completely deluded to then say let’s scrape the whole idea of providence altogether? It is not that she is not allowed to revise her faith, it is the question of whether it is simply too far.
Having questions about the limits and circumference of our faith reminds us what is the centre. The New Testament is quite minimal in its central statements of faith: “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2) and “Confess ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). False teachers in the Bible, far from being equated with sincere liberals or people with doubts and moral imperfections, were those that taught for selfish gain (1 Peter 2:1-3). In this regard the New Testament was quite refreshingly simple: Love Jesus? Do you following him sincerely? We’re good!
The early church composed creeds to express this core with more substance. The creeds are great summaries of the biblical story, by which the faithful can be instructed. They can be used as prayers of confession in worship. They can also aid as a doctrinal minimum for unity between all orthodox Christians, but of course, these articles of the creeds will find different interpretations, so they are not blueprints to unity. Their minimal nature suggests that Christians do not all share a common systematic theology – never have, and until eternity, never will. Yet, all Christians share a common story and common relationship with a person, and we must never forget the simplicity of our faith, or forsake the liberty of the Spirit in making the church diverse, when choosing our bounds of unity.
Paul warns that those who perpetuate “quarrels, divisions, and fractions… will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:20-21). In some evangelical circles I have walked in, there is an arrogance over the idea that we are the true church and everyone else is wrong that is so unsettling, I wonder, “Is Christ really in this place?” Who is Christ more likely to admit to the kingdom of God: A humble atheist or a hypocritical Christian? I don’t have an answer as to whether it is obviously one or the other – Scripture gives as much assurance to people who reject Christ as those who claim to know Christ and flagrantly sin. That is to say, not much.
Where does that leave Gretta Vosper and the UCC? I commend her for believing what she believes sincerely, and so, I don’t think anyone should demonize her. I know a lot of Christians who are completely nominal. They have no sense of Scripture’s truth or obedience to God’s will, but they like the idea that good people like them obviously should land up in heaven. I wish more people were sincere atheists and come to terms with that, then living the lie that they have a relationship with God. Such people are flames that offer neither light nor heat.
Thus, I do think Vosper should be removed, since it is a primary issue of doctrine. I don’t hold it against her for wanting to stay. Longing for inclusion is a basic human desire. Also, exclusion hurts, no matter the situation. No one likes being told they don’t belong, even when it is true. So, the most anyone can ask is whether is it in fact true. She has explicitly abandoned language of Christ, not just radically reinterpreted it. I admit, if I held the views she holds, I don’t think I would hold it against anyone for seeking to remove me. However, that admission comes with the sadness that I know how it feels to be pushed out of my own faith community for not being “biblical” enough. A moment like Vosper’s removal should and will be always a cause for lament.
Whether she goes or stays makes no difference in one sense: Christ’s body is still broken. My point: we cannot look down at the UCC for its lax borders while most evangelicals share a highly problematic understanding of our own limits. The evangelical lust for control and propensity for division should be equally as troubling as the UCC’s disregard for orthodoxy.
May we all cling to Christ and love one another.
Questions about Communion
Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf. – 1 Cor. 10:16-17
What is happening in the bread and wine when it is called the “body” and “blood”?
Some call communion a “sacrament” (a means of grace) and others call it a “ordinance” (a command). I don’t think there is a zero sum game here. God’s presence and grace should be expected when we obediently gather for worship. The grace is intimacy with Christ, which should be expected when we draw close to him in remembrance.
Roman Catholics have taken a rather literalistic view that states that the bread and the wine becomes the body and blood of Jesus. This is called, “transubstantiation” and it has an interesting development. Christianity has always held that Christ is real in communion, and thus, the language of “this is my body/blood” has always been used unabashedly. However, it was only later that Roman Catholics used Aristotelian philosophy to talk about the substance of the bread and wine changing while remaining bread and wine in its accidents: “trans-substance.” This causes an obsession about the material bread and wine that is unhelpful.
This breeds all sorts of weird concerns. What if we spill the wine? Are we spilling Jesus? What if there is bread left over? Are we wasting Jesus?
Protestants, sadly, go to another extreme. The Reformers resisted transubstantiation and talked about Christ being spiritually present in the bread and wine, called “consubstantiation.” This commits a kind of dualism where Christ is spiritually but not physically present, as if the physical is not where he is found.
Further reformers got increasingly more extreme in their anti-Catholic prejudice. They started saying communion is strictly a memorial to the point of saying Christ is not in communion at all. It is just a remembrance. That is too far. How could we not expect Christ to be with us in the fullest real sense when we worship him?
Now, let me go on record and say that I don’t like any of these schemes of thought. I think obsessing about what is going on in the bread and the wine is foreign to Scripture’s concern. We need to just remember Christ, thank him for what he has done for us, enjoy his presence, and commit to living it out. Yet, 1 Cor. 11:16 uses the term “participation in the body of Christ.” Christ is very real in communion, but saying “this is my body” is merely a way of affirming Christ is with us in this entire act.
Why do I say this? While, think about it this way: “For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them,” says Matt. 18:20. If we gather to worship Christ in his name, we are already the body of Christ. That is why the metaphor cannot be stretched too far.
The entire act has to be taking into account for an understanding of his presence that is not an abuse. Christ shows up always in his surprising grace, but that can never allow us to eat refusing to thank him, remember him, and commit to living out the new covenant. Any theology of communion that allows us to be at one with the cross without having to take up our own crosses (Matt. 16:24) is a perversion.
Also, the language here is important, “one loaf, we, who are many, are one body” (1 Cor. 10:17). Eating is an act of unity. To eat and drink in the time of the fractured church, the time like ours in which we are profoundly aware that there are authentic believers found in churches not of our own, is to eat and drink, hopefully in a way that does not further add to division. So, this leads me to the next question…
How is it practiced?
Well, we should distinguish this question from “How was it practiced?” I say that because the original way the church practiced communion was part of the meal of the “love feast.” Acts 2:42 states that, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Meanwhile, 2 Peter 2:13 and Jude 12 allude to the agape meals. 1 Cor. 11 has the abuse of the Lord’s Supper. The reason it is abused is because it is a love feast. The believers in the church are gobbling up all the food and even getting drunk off the wine, all while the poor, who have not arrived yet, go hungry. Communion was originally practiced as a meal, but the church today has ritualized it
It should be insisted, however, that because communion was a meal, that basic act of eating together, fellowshipping as a church, should be considered spiritual. God means us in the midst of life, and that means acts like eating, especially in the community of the church, should be a place where we see God.
Today there are all sorts of modern ways to practice communion. Some use one load and one cup, still with wine rather than juice, to maintain symbolism; others use pieces of break and individual cups. Some give just the bread in lieu of both; others insist on dipping the bread into the wine, rather than having a cup. Some use a priest figure that dispenses the sacrament; others do so without an official person presiding. The point is not the precise “how.” Whatever way we practice it, it must be loving and conducive to remembering the Gospel.
Baptists tend to avoid hierarchical displays. He hold to the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5). So, while the pastor typically presides, the emphasis is on the equality of all believers to encounter God together.
Who can take it?
Our church is constituted that “All who confess Christ is Lord may eat.” We do this for a few reasons. First, we are careful to say that communion is the Lord’s Supper not the church’s supper, much less the baptist supper. The Eucharist is the symbol of unity in the church, and if we were to exclude other followers from Christ from it, we would be celebrating it in the sin of division.
Second, because it is “open communion” this means the unbaptized individuals may eat. This is important as to keep in the unity intended in the first reason. If Baptists are the only ones that baptize adults by immersion, and we see this as the only true baptism, it would be getting exclusion in the back door. It would be rather hypocritical to say, “Come, all Christian are invited to the table!” but then say in the fine print, “By the way, we believe that only we are the true Christians!”
This creates some interesting and messy situations where you don’t know who is coming up and where they are coming from. We leave that up to God and that person, but we also hope that as the worship with us we will get to know all our family members better in the church. It should be stressed that communion can only best be appreciated by a disciple, who has committed to walking with Christ, and thus, has been baptized, but again, the age of a fractured church simply does not allow us to vet individuals as the partake. The table is not a place for vetting who should properly be there, it is a place of welcoming the misfits that don’t have a proper place.
There are some who, like John Wesley, that would even allow communion to be the given as an evangelistic opportunity: come and eat and accept Christ. So, for him, it is not just Christ-followers, but those that are accepting Christ in that moment. I think this possibility is valid. It might not have been the normative practice of the church through the years, but we are not bound to tradition in that way when we see opportunities in the Spirit.
After all, the prefigures of communion in Jesus’ teaching are him eating with tax collectors and sinners as well as feeding the crowd of 5000. These prefigure communion because communion represents God’s love to sinners and our vocation to feed the hungry. So, with that in mind, we can never be too regimented in who is in and who is not.
So, all who confess Christ may eat, and perhaps, some will need to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” (Ps. 34:8) accepting Christ as they are invited to eat.
Can you eat of it when you are in sin?
Many Christians practice communion stating that you cannot “eat in an unworthy manner” (1 Cor. 11:27). They take this to mean that no one with an active sin in their lives may eat of communion.
The problem with this theology is legion. First, everyone has sin in his or her lives. We are all imperfect this side of eternity. All believers are waiting the day when God fully restores us. If you remove all the sinners from church, you would not have a church. Learning to have grace on each other as sinners is apart of the grace of the fellowship of the church.
Second, this warning was a communal warning. The passage leading up to this was Paul noting that the Corinthians were eating and getting drunk before the poor could arrive and be fed. This was despicable because communion was meant to be a sign of God’s love to the poor, not an act of exclusion. Paul reminds them that they should soberly examine themselves, then eat. He is referring, however, to the way the church eats together, not the individual sins of the people.
A contemporary example would be the instances where the Catholic Church barred a church from communion. One church during the civil rights debates, in their racist ignorance, barred black people from taking communion. The Catholic church, rightly I think according to their polity, removed their power to serve communion because of the unloving manner their racism caused. Baptists don’t have a hierarchical authority that revokes the power of communion, but I think the sentiment is correct.
Third, all that considered, we should use communion to examine ourselves personally. We cannot do otherwise when coming into the presence of God and remembering what he has done for us. However, notice what is being done there. When I eat at communion, I come to the table, not because I am perfect, but because I seek Christ’s perfection for my life. I do not refuse to eat until I am healed as a sinner, I am invited by Christ as a sinner to come to his table and be healed. The notion that we need to fix ourselves in order to be in God’s holy presence is extremely contrary to the way of the Cross, where God in Christ, in all his holiness, became sin to offer us new righteousness and life (2 Cor. 5:21).
If you ever feel like you are unworthy of eating the bread and the wine, that is probably a good indication that God welcomes you all the more to his table.
How (Not) to be Patriotic (Part 2): Citizens of a Different Nation
Peter writes,
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:9-12)
Here is another thing about living in Canada. We are obsessed with identifying with our countries of origin.
My grandfather on my dad’s side was a Dutch immigrant. My grandmother on my dad’s side was from Georgia. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a fourth generation Canadian, whose family came over from Scotland over a century ago. My grandmother on my mom’s side was, I believe, born in Canada, but her family was polish immigrants that moved from Poland to England then to Canada.
Yet, for some reason when people ask me, where does your family come from, I say, “I’m Dutch-Canadian.” My last name is “Boersma,” which means “farmer” in Friesian Dutch. I can’t speak that language. I have never been to the Netherlands, let alone to the province of Friesland. I can really only claim this ethnicity in a minimal way at best.
This year my wife and I got the long form census from the government. Personally, I was very excited to get it. I want to be represented in the statistics. Then my wife filled it out without me. I felt cheated. Anyways. If I were to fill that out, I would say: Ethnicity: White or Dutch or something like that; Citizenship: Canadian; Religion: Christian.
This is how our secular-cultural mindset has taught us to think. Religion is just something that effects this small area of your life. It is compartmentalized. It is something that goes on in your head. It only relates to one aspect of your identity.
That is not how the Bible sees it.
There is something powerful about what Peter is saying here. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation… Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
According to Scripture here how would we fill out the census?
What is your citizenship? I am a citizen of God’s holy nation, the kingdom of heaven.
What is your ethnicity? I am a descendant of Abraham. I am a member of his chosen people.
What is your religion? See questions (a) and (b).
What Peter is saying here is that because of the work of the cross, we are not just one religion. We are a new nation, a new people, a new ethnicity, a new family.
There is a fascinating dynamic in the Sikh religion that I think Christians could take a lesson from. When Sikhism as a religion broke off from Hinduism and Islam (it is essentially a kind of hybrid of the two), the began to forge their own identity.
Now if you know anything about Hinduism, it had a strong insistence on the caste system. You were born into a family associated with a particular profession of varying importance: At the top were nobles and priests, then soldiers, then various working classes. These classes were highly prejudicial. If you were born a farmer, you had to be a farmer, and you had to marry a farmer’s daughter. You could not become a priest or marry a priest’s daughter. Of course, priests entailed a level of respect that farmers did not get.
The Sihk religious leaders saw the oppression of the Hindu leaders over the people and tried to liberate their people from the caste system. They believed, similar to Christians, that all people are equal under God. In an effort to do so, they started removing their last names, which indicated what caste you were from, and replaced it all with the same last name. So, today, all Sikh men have the last name Singh (which means “lion”) and all women have the last name Kaur (which means “princess”).
Kind of neat in my opinion. I am not suggesting we all change our last names, but think about it this way:
What if on my driver’s license it did not say, “Spencer Boersma,” but rather “Spencer Redeemed-by-Christ,” (hyphenated of course), or “Spencer Christian.” Or something like that.
It would reiterate that our identity in Christ stands first and foremost.
In Revelation, Christians who preserve, it says, will have the divine name on their foreheads. That is a way of saying those that follow God are at one with his identity; they are extensions of his being, one with him.
Think about our identity that way.
Before I understand myself as Spencer Boersma, I understand that I am at one with the God who calls himself the I Am that I Am.
Before I understand myself as human, I understand myself as God’s creation.
Before I understand myself as male, cis-gendered, I understand myself as one with Christ.
Before I understand myself as White, Dutch, and all the other ethnicities a descend from, I understand myself as a child of the promises of Abraham, incorporated by faith not by works.
Before I understand myself as Canadian, I understand that I am a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.
In an early church letter, the Letter to Diognetus, Christians were described this way. “Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.”
Every homeland, a foreign land, and every strange land, a homeland. That is how Christians live.
When you realize that you are first and foremost a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, you take the good parts of our culture and your leave the rest behind. You are ready to do anything, go anywhere, and be anything for the sake of Christ.
Amen.
How (Not) to be Patriotic (Part 1): Understanding Culture and Faith
My wife and I, on our honeymoon, did a Mediterranean cruise. We saw Malta, Naples and Pompei, Rome and the Vatican, Florence and Pisa, and finally Cannes, France.
Florence was a gorgeous city. We toured the city’s cathedrals, and through the streets we saw statue after statue, all by walking along very picturesque cobble stone roads.
We came to the city center where the Duomo was. This is a massive cathedral constructed by the same architect that did the St. Peter’s Basilica. The baptismal chapel on the one end of the Duomo has gold gates, called the “Gates of Paradise,” lined with plates of biblical artwork.
I remember thinking, we really don’t have stuff like that in Canada. We don’t have the depth of history like a place like Florence does.
The tour took a break and so I want to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, one of the other people on the tour started talking to me. Apparently it was acceptable to talk to others in a bathroom in his culture.
“Are you enjoying the tour?”
“Yes, the gates were awesome,” I said.
“You’re an American, yes?” he asked.
Of course, I replied, “No, I’m Canadian.”
To which he replied with one of the most insulting things you could say to a Canadian in that instance: “Oh, same thing!”
If this was hockey, the gloves would have come off!
So, I turn to him and asked, “Your ascent – its Irish, isn’t it?”
“No, I am from London.”
To which I replied, “Oh, same thing!”
Now, since then, that story has caused me to reflect on what it is to be a Canadian. What does it mean to be a Canadian? Are we, as John Wing joked, “Unarmed Americans with healthcare”?
This is not as obvious a question as it sounds. Yes, I was born in the area in between the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans, North of America and South of Greenland, but that does not tell us much about what it means to be a Canadian. That’s geography. However that may tell us something or two.
“Canada [geographically] is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine what it’s doing in the Maritimes.” – Tommy Douglas
My apologies to all the Maritimers in the room.
Anyways, what I am talking about is being a “true Canadian.” Is there such a thing?
Do Canadians have a particular culture? We love hockey. We love camping. Outdoor sports in general. Everyone in this room knows what it is like to walk out of your house in the winter and breathe in -45 degree Celsius air.
Canadian food: Maple Syrup, bacon, Nanaimo bars, poutine with globs of gravy and cheese curds, beaver tails, etc.
We like to drink unhealthy amounts of coffee, double double. We get our milk in liter plastic bags, not jugs.
Our money is all sorts of goofy colors, and for some reason, the Canadian mint is slowly turning all our bills into progressively larger coins. The 5 and 10 dollar coins are coming, people. What then? I think eventually we will have 20 dollar coins the size of frisbees and eventually 100 coins the size of manhole covers!
We have iconic figures like beavers, moose, the Canada goose. We are apparently really proud of our wildlife!
We sort of go to those kinds of things in order to understand ourselves, but those kinds of things are pretty surface level and outward. That does not tell us a whole lot about us. Hopefully there is more to us than that.
The fact that we have receded into those kinds of cutesy notions of who we are shows what the Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan said decades ago:
“Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.”
McLuhan was the man that stated, “The medium is the message.” Canada had these brilliant culture philosophers like George Grant and Northrop Frye that no one really remembers today. It’s kind of sad.
Anyways, we are a pluralistic, multi-cultural society, not a culture but a set of cultures, and that leads us to feel a sense like we don’t have a uniform set of values. We often don’t feel like we know who we are deep down as Canadians.
However, interestingly enough, while many Canadians are unaware of it, there is a bizarre consensus in Canada on values.
In college I read the book, Fire and Ice: Canada, the United States, and the Myth of Converging Values. It was a bit of an eye opener. Canada, according to sociologist Michael Adams, is becoming very different from its American counterparts. We are similar to Americans, but as far as values goes, the presence of America to the South of us as caused us to be increasingly different form them on lots of stuff.
That is one way of saying who we are, isn’t it? Canadians are not Americans. Whoever we are, we ain’t that. We are proudly not that.
We always define ourselves in terms our brothers and sisters to the south. Pierre Trudeau once likened North America to a bed where Canada was a beaver trying to sleep next to a raging Elephant (the US).
And while Americans assume they have a more uniform melting pot kind of culture and Canada has a multi-cultural, diverse culture, Canada is actually far more uniform from sea to sea than the US. That’s ironic.
In values of Authority vs. Individuality and Survival vs. Fulfillment, American regions are very diverse: the Deep South is strongly Authority-Survival, South Atlantic is Individuality-Survival. Some states were closer to Authority-Fulfillment while others closer to Individuality-Fulfillment. Meanwhile, all Canadian provinces fell within the Individuality-Fulfillment quadrant.
What does that mean? Here are some of his statistics: Only 20% of Canadians attend church weekly versus 42% for Americans. Only 18% of Canadians feel that the father must be Master of the house versus 49% for Americans. 71% of Canadians felt that a couple living together were family versus 49% for Americans. Only 25% of Canadians were prepared to take great risks versus 38% of Americans. Only 17% of Canadians feel a widely advertised product is probably good versus 44% of Americans
Adam’s said, and I think this sums it up well: Americans would be more likely to brag about a new car; Canadians more likely to brag about the trip they went on.
Adams feels that “an initially conservative society like Canada has ended up producing an autonomous, inner-directed, flexible, tolerant and socially liberal people. On the other hand, “an initially liberal society like the US has ended up producing a people who are materialistic, outer-directed, intolerant and socially conservative.”
Now, here is the important question for today. Does that make our culture the right one?
According to the news, people from both American and Britain have been googling “How to move to Canada” at record rates, but I think that is short-sighted.
I don’t think anyone of them is necessarily bad or good. I see things like and things I am concerned about in those statistics. Sure there are cultures that have strong education or have less crime or promote religion. However that can all have good aspects and bad aspects.
Of course, if we said that Canada’s culture was the best, we would be saying that out of bias, and we would also be failing to cultural arrogance, which is not good.
The fact is that you can take your culture in a good way or a bad way. You can’t blame your culture for stuff you know is wrong. Any culture has upsides and downsides. The point is to be aware of it. There will be extremes. Culture is not necessary a thing to be opposed in faith, but is something to be understood critically, placing our faith and discernment first. We need to celebrate the good and work at eliminated the bad.
Christians have usually two dangerous responses to our cultural identities:
(1) Isolation: Churches that Retreat from Culture
This is very common of fundamentalist churches. Our culture is bad, impure, evil, so lets huddle in our faith bunker where it is safe.
Churches that get isolated don’t use the goodness the Spirit of God has planted in the culture to use to communicate the Gospel. Paul knew this when he spoke to the people at Mars Hill.
There is no such thing as a culture-less church. No church is free from culture. God did not intend it that way. The Bible was written within a culture of its own, but the Word of God speaks to all cultures. The church should be working to promote the best of culture. The point is discerning the good from the bad.
It is not weather we will have a Canadian culture within us or not, the question is will we be aware of it and response appropriately.
Canadians are more skeptical about consumerism and war, and more hospitable to immigrants. That’s good. I think Jesus was too!
Canadians are individuals that value strong relationships over institutions and programs. That is something we can work with.
Canadians might be skeptical about religion, but they are open to talking about justice, spirituality, ideals, and values. In a round about way, that sounds religious!
Lots of people want to lament that our culture is becoming less Christian. That is true in one way, but that does not mean the Spirit has stopped working in our culture to make opportunities for the Gospel.
(2) Accommodation: Churches Claim All Culture for their Own
The worst example of this in history is when Emperor Constantine in the third century made Christianity the state religion. To be Roman was to be Christian. To be Christian was to be Roman. Roman law was ordained by God. The church went to war against Rome’s enemies.
We saw horrific examples of this in Nazi Germany where the state church proclaimed Hitler to be chosen by God to bring glory back to Germany.
We see the same in the British Empire. Where the Anglican Church sanctioned colonialism. The British colonized half the world and now complain about immigrants taking their identity!
We see this also in America today, sadly. American wars for oil have become evangelical crusades against Muslims. The American motto of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is preached as gospel in some churches.
We Canadians can do the same.
I think ours is a culture of apathy and skepticism. We have allergic reactions to organized anything, except organized sports. We have trouble committing to community. We are terribly afraid of offending people with the truth. We are individualists that don’t know who we are and don’t want you to tell us.
That comes out in our religion.
We say stuff like, “I believe Jesus in my Lord and Saviour, but that is just my personal opinion.” (A joke often made by the ethicist, Stan Hauerwas).
We are multi-cultural, which is great. But also we have allowed tolerance to go a bit too far. There are two kinds of tolerance, by the way. One kind says, “You are different from me, so please help me understand you, and let me make a space for you, so that we can have peace.” That’s good.
There is bad tolerance that says, “I don’t know you, I don’t care, you stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours. If we bump into each other at Foodland, lets have a shallow conversation about the weather or local sports team, but not anything meaningful, let along religious.”
We are terribly afraid of speaking truth and very afraid to commit to organization and community. That fear has caused us to shrink back from opportunities to encourage people with the Gospel. We are so afraid of offending people that we miss opportunities to encourage.
When we think about our nationality, we have to be critical. We are called to be “in the world and not of the world”
We need to understand that there is good and bad in our culture. We need discernment to that we do not fall into nationalism. Being Canadian can be a good thing, but not necessarily.
This is why we look to how we are apart of another nation: the kingdom of heaven…
Peeing in Peace: A Sermon on the Transgender Bathroom Laws
“I did not even know theologically that these people could exist.”
This is what a pastor told me as we sat chatting at his house for lunch after service several years ago. I spoke at his church and my message was on drawing close to the love of the cross. Recently a friend of mine then had came out to his church and was driven out. He went suicidal, and seeing the whole thing, I was outraged at those Christians. One of my points challenged them to stop their hatred and conditional love of sexual minorities and thus to truly embrace the fact that we are all justified by faith not by works.
I thought this would be a controversial sermon, but it was met with unanimous approval. One lady even came up to me and said, “Pastor, what a fine sermon. One day you will become the next John MacArthur!” I choose to take that as a compliment.
At lunch the pastor turned to me and expressed that he also felt challenged by what I said. He told me that he was doing door-to-door evangelism one day – God bless him! – and a person greeted him and let him come in. As he started talking, the person shared startling information. This person appeared female, but was actually “intersex,” meaning that while she appeared mostly female, she had both male and female genitalia. Neither she nor the pastor I spoke with shared specifics beyond that.
She turned to him and said, “Do you honestly think that if your church knew this about me that I would be welcomed in your church?”
The man sheepishly tried to respond, and as he did he looked around and saw the pictures of her family. She apparently had a lover, who was female, and they had a child.
Overwhelmed, he turned to her and said, “Honestly….nope, my church would freak out.”
So, he thanked her for her time and dejectedly left. And as he turned to me, he uttered a statement indicative of the grand mess the church with its uncritical beliefs has gotten itself into:
“I did not even know theologically that these people could exist.”
For him, he believed that there was male and female and that was it (which is a pretty bad way to read Genesis 1-2). If you don’t fall into those comfortably, it’s your choice, your fault. However, in doing so, his beliefs prevented him from not only reckoning with the basic facts of life: that intersexed people (and this is something different than transgender) exist and they were born with both genitals in some way. It also prevented him and his church from having grace on people it should have been showing grace to. He admitted to me with deep shame that his church was not prepared to love the unloved.
The way we talked about this person was a matter of ministry: is this person loved by God? Is there a place for her in our church? Those are the important questions of us as a church. However, people are talking about this issue in regards to politics…
Once upon a time our laws were blissfully naïve to the existence of the full range of the children of God. Women went to the bathroom that had a person with a dress in it; men to the one with a person in trousers. We are told that trans-people have always been around, and it seems like these people used the bathrooms that best corresponded to how they looked, and the watching world was none the wiser. If they did go to a bathroom that did not correspond to how they looked, they did so at risk of ostracization and even being beaten up.
Lawmakers did one of two things: institute laws that prevented trans people from using bathrooms of their current gender or institute laws that protected them, giving them the right to use the bathroom of their current gender. Either way, people were not happy.
Now, I am going to talk about a sexual topic today, which we have to say always makes people squirmy. Sexuality is a dimension of the human person that is closest to who we are at our most vulnerable. Therefore, we are the most guarded and sensitive about those topics.
Obvious proof of this: how many couples here even go to the bathroom while their spouses are in the bathroom with them? I don’t like to even with my spouse being near me, let alone another man, let alone anyone else. Thank-you very much.
There was an East Side Mario’s in Hamilton. In the men’s washroom, there were urinals. Anyways, I went to the bathroom there, and I found that the urinals were only about a foot apart. No barriers. Another guy came in. He obviously had to go. Came up to the urinal beside me, and started going. Our shoulders were touching. I couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. It was very traumatic for the both of us.
All of that is to say, matters like sexuality, we are more sensitive to. People naturally will get upset about these kinds of things no matter what people say. People make knee-jerk reactions based on their sexual-disgust feeling. Evangelicals are particularly susceptible to this. They are ironically “liberal” reading their experience of bodily shame into Christian ethics. Where guilt and shame-based preaching abides, evangelicals fixate on matters of sexual disgust as their core political concern, forgetting far more grievous social sins. I have heard evangelical pastors say really idiotic stuff like, “I am not homophobic; I just think the whole gay thing is disgusting.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted this when we visited the U.S. He thought evangelicals resembled gutter journalists, obsessed with what people did with their genitals to the neglect of all other ethics. I think that is more or less true.
So, keep that in mind, and now let me sketch out a timeline of this kerfuffle.
Most people don’t even know that the legal battle in Canada is a done deal. A transgendered person can use any public bathroom that they feel corresponds to their gender.
In Canada, in 2012, the NDP proposed Bill C-27, which amended the criminal code to protect other “gender identities.” If you remember the Conservative party was in power at the time. Over the next few years, it went through various readings, eventually being fully passed in 2013. What is interesting about his (and you can look up all the transcripts of debates and votes on the internet) is that the bill would not have passed if 30 some odd votes were not given by conservative MP’s. On most of the votes that happened on Mar. 20, 2013, the bills were passed by 150 to 130, give or take. The 20-30 votes that were needed to tip the bill into being passed came from the conservative party.
This means the party could have prevented the bill if its leader demanded uniformity (which he often did). This to me smacks of the lip-service conservatism that says it is pro-life but does nothing about it (Harper actually quashed his own MP’s from trying to talk about it), or in this case, says it is against a bill, but lo and behold, supplies just enough to get the bill passed, but not enough for it to look like the conservatives supported it.
I say that because I am very weary of any political party claiming to be the “Christian option” in this day and age. At least as far as I understand the conservative party in Canada, it does not seem like the definite traditional-Christian party anymore. It seems like a house divided at best. This does not mean the liberals are “the Christian” option either, or the NDP. Christians are called to affirm that Christ is King and all other politics authorities are secondary.
I find in politics there is very little integrity. Politicians refuse to admit their faults. They will argue their points, even if they know they are wrong. They will demonize their opponents to win. They often have ulterior motives: making a corporation rich or appealing to a voter base. For that reason, Christians should always keep politics at arms length. Only the kingdom of God will restore society, not a liberal utopia or conservative nostalgia. We are not going to build the kingdom of heaven by who we vote for.
At any rate, the Bill was met with interesting protests from trans individuals. Take for example, Brae Carnes (first picture below), who posted in male bathrooms, exposing the obviously problem of making all transgendered people go into bathrooms that did not match their identities. I don’t think any conservative would want a person that looks like the next two individuals in women’s bathrooms either.
The issue changes when it has a face doesn’t it?
I think intuitively when you see just how far transitioned these people are that it would not be a good idea to force them to go to the bathroom of their birth gender. But there are lots of transgendered people that do not look that much like their transitioned gender. For them, going to any public bathroom will still be dangerous.
Many conservatives did oppose the bill under the notion that it put women and children at risk. Potentially a predator could come into a woman’s bathroom and claim to be a woman, and refuse to leave. There are a handful of examples that show laws the protect transgendered people have been manipulated by sexual predators. For instance, a man claimed to be transgender, and used it to living in a woman’s shelter, committing acts of sexual assault. There are those examples.
Certain places in Canada installed gender-neutral, co-ed bathrooms. I remember using one of these bathrooms at University of Toronto. Apparently these bathrooms were quite unsafe. They certainly were awkward.
Then HB2 hit. While Canadians dealt with this debate rather quietly and civilly, as we often do, for good or for ill, but when things happen in America, it happens like singing a bad campfire song again: “Second verse same as the verse, a little bit louder a little bit worse!”
North Carolina passed the law allowing organizations liberty to enforce that a person ought to go to the bathroom of their birth-gender.
The company, Target, refused. They said, if you are trans-gendered, you can use whatever bathroom you feel meets the gender you feel. Note that they are merely exercising the rights that HB2 gave them.
Conservative family values lobbying organizations protested this and organized a boycott of Target of almost 1.1 million signatures. I think organizing a boycott like that is foolhardy. Even if you are morally outraged at Target, there are so many more immoral companies out there that Christians are not boycotting, so by doing this to Target, this portrays that Christians really have uneven standards.
Also, think about it this way: Would you appreciate a company refusing to sell to you if it knew your religious convictions? Lets say an atheist bakery refused to bake bread for church communion? We would be outraged at the pettiness. Yet this is why I cannot see those conservative Christians they would refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding as anything but petty.
In wake of this, two particularly disappointing things happened:
First is that there is a story of a woman, who had short hair and was athletic, was followed from the woman’s bathroom and harassed by Christians in a public place because they did not believe she was a full woman. Now Christians are the ones straight people need protection from!
Second, the leader of one of these family values political lobbyist groups, Sandy Rios of American Family Association, admitted in an interview that her organization actually sent men into women’s bathrooms to scare women and children into agreeing with her agenda. That is the height of hypocrisy. Her organization claimed to be about protecting women and children from men in their bathroom, yet they are the ones sending men into said bathroom all for the sake of their political agenda. What if one was, as they argued, a woman that was raped? Again, there is this odd necessity to now protect bathroom from Christians.
We should note that if this is true, the American Family Association has very likely put more men in women’s bathrooms than there are instances of sexual predators abusing transgender laws. While there have been instances of sexual predators abusing transgender laws, these instances are very rare. With good reason: How many times do you think a predator can get away with doing that? Predators need absolute secrecy, and it seems like only the really stupid ones would try to do that.
But given the whole debacle, the whole thing is really quite sad. Just plain sad.
Personally, I find the conservative politics the most abhorrent. It is mostly because Christians often back conservative politics, so there should a higher expectation of moral integrity, which is not there. But perhaps it is my own disappointment with the party I was raised to support. While liberalism worships sexual liberty in a problematic way, Christians who support conservative politics routinely come off as condescending and apathetic towards others. Evangelicals routinely ignore basic science on matters of gender. The persistently make one issue about another. Do conservative evangelicals really care about transgender people? Or do they just want their political sensibilities validated and codified?
They sound like they just want the church to flex its muscles and the world to bow down to them and wave fans at them for being so right. That’s probably most sad part.
Personally, I would rather say, “I don’t know but I care,” then be obsessed with have all the right answers, and coming off like I don’t care.
I know Christian pastors that harp on this issue and don’t even know a single transgender person. These pastors are not acting like the priests of Christ but acting like pharisees of the law.
Those that do this forget some very important facts. They read their Bibles, but not the book of nature. This much I do know about the science: There are people – less than 1% but that is still quite a bit – that are born with different configurations of gender. Some are born being physically male but have within them ovaries. Some are born physically female, but have within them testes. They often don’t discover this till years later, and then they understand why they feel “different.” Some are born with both genitals, believe it or not. Some are born physically male or female, but their brains are hardwired to be the opposite. There are all sorts of other examples like this.
When I hear of unique cases like this, I turn to God and reaffirm the strange but blessed diversity of God’s image in humans. He made us all; he loves us all; he claimed us with the dignity that belongs to his children. The more we lovingly draw close to others different from ourselves, the more we see the divine image.
If they are born that way, there is the unsettling truth that I could have been born that way too. So could you. We can’t control the circumstances of our birth.
I could have been born feeling like a female within, and being drawn to “girlie” stuff as my parents looked on with confusion and concern.
I could have had a disappointed father that always made me feel like half of a “true man.”
I could have been the one mocked in gym class change rooms as my peers invented new insults.
I could have been married with kids, trying to live a normal life, but never feeling like “myself” around them, or anyone else for that matter.
I could be the one dying of confusion, despair, and even self-hatred of why I am the way I am.
If this could be any of us, we must follow Christ’s command to “love our neighbor as ourselves.”
How would I want to be treated in public? Hopefully just to be left alone. What kind of world would I hope there be for me? Hopefully a just one. What kind of church would I hope there be for me? Hopefully a compassionate one.
What they go through could be what any of us could be going through, and therefore it is our obligation to care and do something.
I am amazed at how many people don’t get this.
I often ask myself: Why cannot people be more rational? Why can’t Christians particularly have empathy? Or at least discuss things with a least a drop of honesty and integrity. So, let’s try to do that.
Note that there are two major responses to this debate:
(1) Liberals have made it their goal to proclaim that all gender is fairly fluid and that choosing the gender that one feels is the best approach. This usually involves hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery. How that works, I am not going to get into here.
(2) Conservatives tend to ignore the existence of true intersexed people, and emphasize that there are many others that are plainly gender confused because of the break down of the nuclear family. It is nurture not nature. The person had an unstable childhood, so their gender is unstable. In those cases, recommending gender reassignment surgery is a bad option. It causes more harm to an already unstable person. The best thing a society can doe is get back to the stability of the “good old days.”
Who is right? I don’t think either side has it completely. Let’s admit that. When issues polarize, there is very rarely one perfectly right side.
Christ forbids the notion that there ought to be an “us” versus “them.” Eph. 6 :12 warns, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” I worry about those Christians that excel at making enemies of the people they are called to preach reconciliation to.
At least as far as I have read, gender reassignment surgery has been shown to relive the anguish of some transgender people, but also in many cases create whole new problems. I am not a psychiatrist, so that is all I can say. Whatever a transgendered person is going through, we know it is going to be difficult. We should be honest about that.
Now, bring in politics. What do you do when a person identifies as a woman, but was born a man, and wants to use a woman’s bathroom? Some say, “Let them if it helps them feel some modicum of security and peace.” Others say, “I don’t feel comfortable with a person of the opposite physical gender being in that bathroom. The laws can be abused by predators.” Again, both have a point, but neither side have it all.
There seems to be a bunch of concerns here that all Christians should have:
- Transgendered people are valued and should be kept safe from harassment.
- We need greater awareness for the existence of transgendered people and what they go through.
- However, the concern is also that in doing so, society promotes the notion that our genders are fluid, which could cause physiological harm to some that need more structure.
- Women and children could be put at risk by sexual predators abusing transgender laws
You will notice that liberals tend to prioritize (1) and (2) while conservatives prioritize (3) and (4). But, if you can admit that both sides are trying their best to uphold justice some way, I think we can have a better way of thinking about his whole debacle.
We cannot be satisfied with any law that does not protect all vulnerably parties. We don’t get to choose who we defend the dignity of, one way or another. We are called to defend all people’s dignity. All people, not some, not just your kids, not just transgendered people either – all are made in the image of God. Everyone is. We don’t get to choose who to care about. All deserve our love in how we talk, think, feel, and write policies.
So, what should a Christian do? Should we advocate for the laws to stay the same? That did not happen, and there should be a law that protects trans people. Should we advocate for the bathroom laws to pass uncritically that can be abused? No. I think there needs to be further criteria to how the bathrooms are used. Should we advocate new ones that can further allow transgendered people to get beaten up and harmed, protecting the churches prerogative over others? No.
Many say we should move to installing gender-neutral bathrooms that are fully enclosed. That is probably the way things are going to go, but that sounds expensive. I don’t think companies can accommodate every public bathroom being converted that way. There does not seem to be a good answer here.
I think the obvious response for Christians, when the law of the land does not reflect the perfect justice of God is to pray and trust and hope.
I recently read through 2 Peter. Peter is encouraging a congregation with the hope that Christ will return and one day the world will be ruled by God not people. So, he says,
“We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13)
We are to live like exiles in a strange land, for we are citizens of a different kingdom.
This admits that the current situation does not have a comfortable solution that Christians should be happy about. If any law leaves a vulnerable party unsafe, we should not be happy about it. We need to continue to rethink, listen, and pray.
What does that mean? I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to many things in life. But as I said, I would rather say that I don’t know but care then that I know but come off like I don’t care.
I don’t know if I have a position, but I do know the posture: Christ. I don’t care much for politics, but I do care about the people. That is what we should focus on: the posture of Christ and the people in need of love.
I look at this world, and all I know is to cling to the love of Christ, the love he showed me, and the love I ought to extend. True religion is, according to the prophet Micah 6, “To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” The more I befriend people that much different me, the more I see Christ working around me. That is a humbling thing.
I know that politics is not the vehicle of the kingdom of God. The Gospel of our God loving all people, forgiving all sin is. Our world is broken, so we need to walk graciously in Christ, for our sake and others. There are broken people in it, like ourselves. If we are to love our neighbors, we need to listen to them and walk with them.
May you walk in the peace of Christ in this broken world, on this matter and all things.
God’s Empathy, Our Hope: Finding God in Despair (4/4)
I wish there was shorter way of saying that fourth point. However, this is the matter of application where life is not a one-size fits all:
4. God sometimes removes sadness, other times he doesn’t, but either way he does offer empathy, comfort, and hope.
I know some people that have confronted illness that claimed their lives without being phased. I can only say that these are special gifts. They happened. I visited a person in the hospital one time, who had his legs removed from infection. We were worried that his faith could be shaken. But, we walked into to the room and were greeted by a warm smile. “Oh, pastor, I have been praying for you. How are you doing?” His first thought was on me, not his own condition. Nurses in that ward marveled at the obvious grace beaming from him.
However, I also know faithful saints that struggle with depression. You would not know that they do, often. Many learn to manage it. They learn their bodies well. However, the depression never leaves. They just learn to walk in faith with it. It is like Paul when he realized that when he was weak then he was strong.
So, there are others that feel despair and it does not go away. They carry it the rest of their lives.
I know some people that will feel the burden of mourning a loved one the rest of their lives.
I know people that suffer depression or illness, and it gets them down.
I know people who feel wounded in their faith. Their confidence in God has been shaken, and they don’t know what to do with that. They sincerely wish they had more faith, but they do not know what to do.
There are all sorts of examples where people carry these burdens.
We might ask ourselves is this all there is? Did the despair have the final say?
Like I said, some are given beautiful gives in this life of the “peace that passes understanding.” Yet some don’t have their sadness lifted in this life. I don’t have an answer why some get that gift and others don’t. You hear of how good it goes for some people and you cannot help but feel angry about those that got nothing.
Of course, Jesus cared a lot about those that got nothing, and he tells a story about a rich man that did nothing while a man named Lazarus died on his doorstep. If we don’t use our blessing to extend it to others, our “blessings” will be our downfall.
That still does not fix the problem of why some suffer so bad in this life. I am reminded that one author said that the problem of tragedy and evil was not a intellectual problem to be solve but a mystery to be lived.
Still, we might ask ourselves “Does God care about them? Did God forget them in this life?” The answer, the promise against lies in the cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Only a suffering God can save us.” That sounds counter intuitive. A God who suffers sounds like he is trapped in this world. He sounds weak, not all powerful. But we know a lot of powerful people that do not care at all about those suffering.
So, if God chooses to feel our suffering, then God promises to end our sufferings. Why? Love empathizes. If you have ever empathized with another person, you feel their pain. You love them so much that you would then be moved to do something about it. Love feels the pain of another. Love yearns and hopes for pain to end. Love motivates us to change pain into peace. That is why only a suffering God will save us.
If God feels our pain, do you think God will allow that pain to continue forever? No. God does not change, therefore he loves. God loves, therefore he suffers. God suffers, therefore he promises to end suffering. And since God is powerful love, he will.
Jesus died on the miserable cross to be resurrected on the third day, defeating death. That is our hope: the pain and death of this world does not have the final say. Hope does.
And so, if God did not abandon us, we ought not to abandon each other. Seek out those hurting around us. Be with them, near them. Listen to them, and care for them. Be the body of Christ broken for thus world around you. Be the light shining in the darkness.
And then we will see resurrection.
Amen
Christ in the Darkest Places: Finding God in Despair (3/4)
We move from the liberty to express hurt, understanding that the saints often feel the absence of God. But now we must draw close to God himself.
3. Christ is with us in our darkest places.
When we start to be honest with God, we realize that God is with us through the pain. We know this because of what he showed us in Christ.
God, the God of the universe, came and dwelt in Christ, Immanuel, God with us. He died on a roman execution cross. On the cross he cried out, “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” Which is the lament of the Psalms. Jesus is God with us in our darkness moments.
The cross is a rare kind of anguish. It is the slow death by bleeding out from the torture and nails. Hanging on the nails meant one’s diaphragm would be stressed, causing the person to gasp for air. The subject would hang there starving to death, slowing hallucinating in a delirium of despair as people stand there and mock. Nailed there, few pictures of the atonement render it accurately: few picture the victims unclothed and naked, exposed to desert sun that would blister exposed skin. (Ironically, no crucifix renders Jesus naked – an accurate depiction of the cross is still too scandalous, even Christians!) And the nakedness of exposure was more than physical: hanging there naked, the victim was exposed to the scoffers, jeering, removing whatever dignity remained. Jesus had the added pain and humiliation of a thorn crown pressing into his head and a sign above, mocking his claim to the throne of David.
He did that to show that God is with us even in our darkest moments. When we feel abandoned by God, Christ is actually closer to us all the more.
So we have beautiful Scriptures like Romans 8:
If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, this is important. Christians can get depressed. Christians can feel terrible anguish in their lives. That does not mean they don’t believe enough or anything like that.
But if you do find yourself in that sense of sadness and you wonder if God actually loves you. Whatever power your mind has, turn it to the cross. Our brains can trick us into feeling extreme worry or sadness. That is clinical, and we need to get ourselves looked at by a doctor when that is the case. But the truth is no matter what we feel, Christ will never ever let us go. He died for us. He feels our sadness with us. He loves us too much to leaves alone.
He gave his life to tell you that you mean the world to him.
Do you think he would give someone up that he paid for with his very life?
Did I Do Something Wrong? Finding God in Despair (2/4)
As we already covered, God wants us to be honest with him. However, many people feel ashamed at how they feel sometimes. So we have to remind ourselves that…
2. Sometimes good people of faith can feel like God is not there
Sometimes we think Christians always have to be happy and have it all figured out. But the example of Scriptures shows that there are great saints that have gone before us have felt pain and anguish, confusion and even anger toward God, and they invite us to express those feelings to God. We miss that in the Bible.
In fact, in the book, The Day Metallica Came to Church, a pastor records how he once quizzed his congregation by giving slides from either the laments of the Psalms and Jeremiah or non-Christian, intentionally sacrilegious rock music. They were quizzed as to who could identify the lyrics of sacrilegious rock music from the Psalms. His congregation couldn’t tell the difference!
We covered some of them in the previous post, but consider also a passage that is often mistranslated in Jeremiah. Jeremiah is sent on his difficult errand to prophesy against his people. He sees his whole world turning from God and God turning to judge it, and he is overcome. He accuses God:
You deceived me, Lord, and I was seduced,
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the Lord has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
(Jer. 20:7-8)
It is important to note that “You overpowered me and prevailed” are euphemisms for rape. Jeremiah feels raped by God, seduced into becoming the scorn of a nation.
Can you imagine yourself accusing God of raping you? I have been taught to think that is unthinkable. I would feel like I was blaspheming the sinlessness of God, but then again, it is not like Jeremiah didn’t know that.
We don’t recite these laments. We don’t sing enough lament songs. We feel sometimes like we should only be happy before God and that we can never doubt him or feel disappointed with God. And when we do we feel ashamed, like it is our fault. But the Psalmist are saying these things because they are spiritually immature, are they?
It fact, it is precisely sometimes because they are mature in faith that people experience these things. If is those that walk with God the closest that are reminded the most bitterly that this world displays the absence of God.
Job didn’t do anything wrong…He was doing something right!
In the drama of Job, Job is tested to see if he will truly love God selflessly, whether or not he will love God for no benefit, so Satan destroys all the good in his life, every reason he has to trust God. His livelihood is destroyed, his children die; he is stricken with painful sores. Satan hopes that Job will finally curse God and renounce his faith, but God trusts that his servant Job is a person after his own heart, who loves and trusts for no benefit to himself.
However, before Job is vindicated in the final chapters, Job hits a low point. Job is in such despair, he cries out wishing he had never existed. He is functionally suicidal. Most people don’t read this part in the drama. They only get to about chapter two and stop there, and sing lighthearted songs with lyrics like “you give and take away.” Little do they know that Job said this after. His words are chilling:
“May the day of my birth perish,
and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’
4 That day—may it turn to darkness;
may God above not care about it;
may no light shine on it.
5 May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more;
may a cloud settle over it;
may blackness overwhelm it.
Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child,
like an infant who never saw the light of day?
“Why is light given to those in misery,
and life to the bitter of soul,
21 to those who long for death that does not come,
who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
22 who are filled with gladness
and rejoice when they reach the grave?
23 Why is life given to a man
whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
24 For sighing has become my daily food;
my groans pour out like water.
25 What I feared has come upon me;
what I dreaded has happened to me.
26 I have no peace, no quietness;
I have no rest, but only turmoil.”
His friends see this and are so mortified by his condition that they insist Job had to have sinned. Much of the book of Job is Job defending his innocence in the face of their accusations. God appears, and in the final chapters, Job is vindicated. Job in the face of his despair still refuses to curse God, defeating Satan’s accusations against God’s faithful. Satan suspected that Job would only love God insofar as God blessed him. Satan was wrong. In the moment, Job does not know what is going on, and he is in pain, and he thinks God is against him, but he still refused to curse him.
Dark Night of the Soul
Job did not do anything wrong. In fact, it is because he was righteous that calamity came on him. God used him to overthrow the accusations of Satan. What he is experiencing like other mature saints of the faith is what the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross calls a “dark night of the soul.” He realized that there are times when we feel the absence of God and it is not because of our sins. It is actually because we are coming to grips with a deeper more authentic and more mature relationship with him.
Perhaps you are going through a dark night of the soul. Perhaps you wonder why you feel lukewarm yet you try you best to be faithful. This is important. Some of the greatest saints don’t “feel” God’s presence 24/7. Their faith is complex because life is messy.
The best example is Mother Teresa. One of the great saints of the last century often felt like God was not there. She experienced powerful visions early in life, which one day stopped. She turned to self-blame. She felt extreme anguish over not feeling God there.
“Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me–The silence and the emptiness is so great–that I look and do not see,–Listen and do not hear” she wrote. In one of many dark moments she wrote,
If there be God –please forgive me–When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven–there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul.–I am told God loves me–and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
Yet, she continued to pray, to love, to serve the dying on the streets of Calcutta. When we look at her heart, we see the heart of Christ.
We sometimes have the expectation that the true saints have this perfect happiness and spiritual fuzzy feeling of God’s presence all the time, but then what do you do with the fact that one of the most common prayers in the Psalms, the prayer on the lips of God’s prophets, is the feeling like God isn’t there.
Notice something important here. Our culture (even our bad theology) tells us if we don’t feel God here, he must not be here, so give it up. The psalms do the opposite. If the psalmist did not feel God there, this drove them deeper into prayer. Where are you God? Why is this happening? Don’t reject us! How long O lord till you return to set this broken world right again?
What is important is that when we pray these things, something powerful happens. It happened to Job. When we pray wondering where God’s presence is, as faithful members of Christ’s body, the truth is that we are participating in that presence. We don’t feel it, but we do it. As we serve the least of these, as we pray for this broken world, for our brokenness too, as we pray and worship not for what we get out of it, but because we love as God loves in Christ, we are embodying Christ in dark places. Oddly, when we are in anguish wondering where the light is in darkness, caring enough to do something about it, we end up being the light in those dark places. We are like flashlights oblivious to our beam. Or better yet: we are like mirror blind to what we are reflecting.
You might not feel like you have light in your life, but as we walk with Christ, your light shines in the darkness.
God Wants to Hear Your Hurt: Finding God in Despair (1/4):
Attawapiskat, a reserve up near James bay, had seven teens brought in who have attempted suicide.This was a bad night, but not an uncommon night in Attawapiskat. The small town of 2000 people has a hospital of about 15 beds, but it sees nearly 30 attempted suicides a month. Most of these are kids under the age of 14.
The result is that this has gathered national attention, and something like a state of emergency has been declared.
I don’t know what do say or do about this state in Attawapiskat. I can’t imagine how bad it must be for those kids to be in such a level of despair.
This is not to diagnose the problem with life on reserves. I don’t know enough about it. I can’t judge it. In assuming we know enough has caused non-native Canadians to try to fix the problem, which in turn has made the problem worse.
The government throws millions of dollars trying to fix these situations, but money is not going to do it. But my thought is not about the politics, my thoughts go to the kids. Whatever they are going through, it must be terrible.
But, what is happening to these children is the same thing that happens to all humans that face despair.
According to the Canadian Children’s Rights Counsel:
“Suicide has accounted for about 2% of annual deaths in Canada since the late 1970s. Eighty percent of all suicides reported in 1991 involved men. The male:female ratio for suicide risk was 3.8:1. In both males and females, the greatest increase between 1960 and 1991 occurred in the 15-to-19-year age group, with a four-and-a-half-fold increase for males, and a three-fold increase for females.”
Two in every hundred. That seems steep doesn’t it? I ask myself, why have I never been to a funeral for a person that committed suicide? The answer is I probably have. This kind of thing is kept silent. Or often people who commit suicide have no family. They are buried without a funeral.
This situation reminds us that we are facing a pandemic of despair. Many people feel like life is pointless. Their lives are too painful for them to want to continue. They feel like God, if there is a God, has forsaken them.
More tragically, I know a lot of Christians that face these feelings too.
So, we are going to go through some ways to understand despair and hope in the Christian life.
1. God wants us to be honest about our feelings
There is this inaccurate, stupid, destructive, assumption that if you are a Christian, you have to be happy all the time.
I remember someone actually arguing that if they are sad, they have not actually put their trust in God. You can imagine that guilt that can put on someone who is clinically depressed.
Not only is that unhelpful, it is also biblically inaccurate. The Bible records the laments of the great saints who walked before us. Believers, even and especially the best believers, can feel like God is not there sometimes. In fact, look at the Psalms. Psalms were written by David and other great holy men. It was the hymn and prayer book of Israel. About 50% of all the Psalms (75 out of 150) are sad, lament songs. This is what Walter Brueggemann called the worship in “disorientation.” Often the Psalms cry out, Where are you God? Why is this happening? Have you forsaken me? Let me give you some examples:
Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? (Ps. 22:1)
My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” (Ps. 42:3)
Why, my soul, are you downcast? (Ps. 42:9)
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning? (Ps. 43:2)
Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression? (Ps 44:24)
O God, why have you rejected us forever? (Ps. 74:1)
Lord, where is your great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? (Ps. 89:49)
Psalm 88 is the low point of the Psalms. It is the Psalm expressing the full lament of the people to God. The people are being sent into exile, their homes have been destroyed, and so, all they can do is weep, feeling God has judged them. Here is a selection:
1 Lord, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths…
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief…
13 But I cry to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, Lord, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbour—
darkness is my closest friend.
This is in the worship book of Israel. Can you imagine singing that song on a Sunday morning? It almost sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it.
Then we read a Psalm like this, and we don’t know what to do with it.
It shocks us. Why is this in the Bible? Perhaps God wanted us to know he is listening when we feel hurt, confused, discouraged, even angry at him. He cares so much about us that he will listen to us even when we are angry at him.He wants us to know that we can be honest. That is what love demands.
I am reminded of a time when I was the coordinator of a soup kitchen down in Toronto. I knew a homeless person that came in week after week. In the winter, since he was too messed up to receive shelter, the man would pan handle for enough money to buy really strong alcohol. He would down it before a night where it went down really cold. He learned that if he consumed enough alcohol he would not freeze to death, his blood would be basically anti-freeze, and he would be too drunk to care about how cold he felt as he slept in the streets.
You wonder what brings a person to that low? How much abuse and despair?
I inquired about him to the other drop-in centers. One, a Church ran center, told me that one night they had an open mic, prayer night. Anyone could come up and pray. After a few people, this man, wanted to come up.
He walked up to the microphone, and said, “God if you are there, F*** you, I hate you.” And carried on from there. I was shocked. I asked if they escorted him off the premise for that. The manager of that soup-kitchen said, “No, I realized that he needed to tell God that. He needed to get that off his chest.”
It is odd but true: one of the great gifts I experienced in that ministry was hearing the hurts of others, their hatred for religion and God. I encountered gay people that were badly abused and abandoned by pastors. Women abused by priests. Children assaulted by parents and friends. It seems odd, but one of the greatest gifts was sitting and listening, allowing them to vent their anger at a pastor that cared. Many of these people after they did that started to heal. They stated to heal because a person of faith was Christ to them, a person that listened and recognized their hurt, feeling broken for their brokenness.
That person came to our soup kitchen a few times, as I said, but then I did not see him. I worry the cold got him one night like so many others in Toronto. I have asked God where he was for that person. I have not gotten an answer, but I trust one day I will.
So let me ask you. Is there pain in your past or present? You might not thankfully be as hurt as this person, but hurt is still hurt. Are you ready to ask God those difficult questions: Where were you? Why did that happen? Did you forget me? It is okay. God wants you to be honest. Love demands honesty. God loves you too much for him to want you to put on a face for him.
If you feel hurt by God or abandoned, tell God that.
Martyr’s Mirror: Living the Cross: Dirk Willems
“For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” – Phil. 1:21
Like good Protestants, but bad students of church history, we are going to have to jump 1500 years into the future, to the dawn of the Reformation. In this room here, I imagine we have Christians from different denominational backgrounds like Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, Mennonite, Pentecostal, even some Catholics as well. And some of you even know what those words mean! Those words tend to mean less today not just because we don’t know our church history, but also I think because we have a deeper recognition that we are all one in Christ Jesus, despite minor doctrinal differences in how we interpret our Bibles. It was not always so…
The first Baptists, called by their enemies, the “Anabaptists,” were radical Protestants that saw all the wars of religion, killing between Protestants and Catholics, and the concluded that faith has to be free and voluntary. They were committed to non-violence and refused to let the government legislate religious belief one way or another. This is what Baptist call the separation of church and state – more accurately it is the separation of faith from power.
Again, most Christians now affirm this in one way, shape, or form, but back then, the Baptists who preached freedom of religion and conscience, something we take for granted now as our un-revocable right as a citizen. However, back then, they were deemed enemies of the common good by the established churches and their governments, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. And so, authorities hunted the Anabaptists. This was a dark moment in European history, Catholics killing Protestants, vice versa, Protestants killing Protestants. Christians who all believed in the same Jesus, executing other Christians. What were they killing over?
Baptists held to believer baptism, Reformers and Catholics to infant baptism. In hind sight that is a terrible thing to fight over, let alone kill. It was petty. Yet, where state-religions were strong, so also was the need to control people to get them to believe, and so the Anabaptists, who dissented from this, were chased. Their punishment: they were often dragged to bridges and lakes and flung into the water to drown as a kind of ironic punishment for being re-baptized.
One man was arrested by the Dutch authorities for his Baptist convictions. His name was Dirk Willems, and he was imprisoned purely for saying he no longer believed what other Christians of his day believed. He never hurt anyone. The accounts say that he managed to escape the prison, slipping out of an unbarred window. It was winter time, and so, in order to evade his pursuer, he ran arose a frozen lake neighboring to the prison.
The guard chasing him, being a bigger man, fell through the ice. Dirk was home free. But then he stopped. What would Jesus do? His conscience pricked him, and he was moved with compassion on his persecutor. At great risk to himself, he dragged the man out of the icy water, warming him with his own body heat. Dirk carried the man back to the prison, accepting that if he retuned, he would be re-arrested. Sure enough, some prison guards did not care about his very obvious compassion and bravery, let alone the injustice of his charges to begin with, and sent him back to his cell.
For being a Baptist heretic and because he refused to let his own enemy die rather than escaping, Willems was burned at the stake 16 May 1569.
Can you imagine his thoughts? Turning to save the man that would imprison him, knowing that it mean confronting prison and the death penalty?
It seems difficult to imagine, but that is what Jesus did for us. While we were still sinners [still his enemy], Christ died for us.
Father, we pray for Christian unity, as Jesus prayed “May they be one as we are one.” Empower us to end our petty squabbles and focus more on you. Remind us that the only way we will show the world your son is by having the same reconciling love Willems modeled for his own pursuer. You teach us to love our neighbors as our selves and may we love even our enemies the way Christ loved us, counting their lives more important that our own.
Amen
Spencer Boersma 