Author: scribblingtheology

Salvation is Liberation: Part I

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Christians are obsessed with the idea of salvation. Fair enough, salvation is essential. However, the problem is that everyone has different opinions on what salvation is. Different traditions tend to emphasise and even make exclusive claims to their own definition of salvation at the expense of others. So in this series, I aim to explore the different facets of salvation so that we may better understand what it really is. Here are the salvific themes we’re going to explore:

  1. Liberation and Exile
  2. Judgement and Sin
  3. Substitution and Sacrifice
  4. Recapitulation
  5. Vocation
  6. New Creation

Each motif plays a pivotal role in demonstrating what salvation is, how it is achieved and received, and how it is lived out by the believer. In this post, we will be exploring liberation and exile.

In Australia, refugees, asylum seekers and displacement are huge issues. People are fleeing their homes in search of a safer place to live and to flourish because of war, famine and hunger. A recent study suggests that as many as 70.8 million people worldwide have been displaced as they desperately seek to find greener pastures. However, this isn’t anything new. Being forcibly removed from one’s country by foreign powers has been a recurring theme throughout the history of the people of Israel, starting on just the first few pages of the Bible.

Exile begins with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24). Humanity sins by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and bad; they’re expelled from the presence of God as a consequence. They’re driven eastward, and as the archetypal figures of Israel and indeed of all humanity, they represent the state of us all, separated and exiled from our true home with God. Throughout the rest of the Bible, we see this theme recurring to highlight the consequence of sin, rebellion, and even God using exile for restoration.

  • God calls Abraham out from his own land into another (Genesis 12).
  • Abraham and his descendants are in the promised land, yet they trust in Egypt and are enslaved (Exodus 1).
  • Moses is driven from Egypt into the wilderness only to come back and set free God’s people (Exodus 2:11-22).
  • Israel is liberated from Egypt (Exodus 12-15) only to wander the wilderness before finally settling in the promised land, but not before they have to take it by force (Joshua).
  • The nation of Israel is formed, but because of their sin and idolatry, they are retaken into exile under the oppression of foreign countries (2 Kings 17:6; Jeremiah 52:28-30).
  • Eventually, Israel was allowed to return to their homeland, but it never was the same (Ezra and Nehemiah).
  • Israel was later taken over by Alexander the Great and became a part of the Greco-Roman empire (332 B.C.). Israel still dwells in the land, yet they feel like exiles in their own homes. This is not the perfect life the Old Testament Scripture seemed to promise.

As N. T. Wright says

Most Jews of this period, it seems, would have answered the question of ‘where are we?’ in language which, reduced to its simplest form, meant: we are still in exile. They believed that, in all the senses which mattered, Israel’s exile was still in progress. Although she had come back from Babylon, the glorious message of the prophets remained unfulfilled. Israel still remained in thrall to foreigners; worse, Israel’s god had not returned to Zion.

  • However, Jesus, God incarnate, arrives and preaches the coming of the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15). He fulfils (Matthew 5:17) and rightly interprets (Luke 24:27; John 5:39) the Old Testament, claiming that, in a sense, everyone is separated from the Kingdom because of their sin and is exiled regardless of where they live.
  • Jesus lives, dies and rises again to set us free from the greatest powers that truly keep us enslaved in exile from God’s Kingdom, sin (Romans 6:22), satan (1 John 3:8) and death (Romans 8:2; Galatians 5:1-15).
  • The Kingdom has come, the Spirit has been poured out onto God’s people (Acts2), and we’ve been brought out of the Kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13). Yet a strange tension remains. We await our King to return to bring history to completion (1 Corinthians 15). The Church wanders as exiles in the now and not yet (1 Peter 1:1, 2:11) in hopeful anticipation of a new creation where not only the penalty and power of darkness have been removed but its presence as well (2 Corinthians 5:17; Revelation 21-22).

We desperately yearn for our real home, that Garden that tugs at our heartstrings. Christian or not, every one of us has this deep sense of displacement. We know things aren’t what they’re supposed to be; we’re never truly settled. There is a constant lack of contentment, and the road beckons us, calls to us with glints of answers for our restless hearts. There’s a reason why the open road seems so compelling. Travelling and experiencing what the world offers are more popular today than ever. However, more often than not, we end up back where we started, perhaps with more questions and more discontentment than ever before. As the preacher in Ecclesiastes says, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14). Behold salvation. Salvation is liberation. It is liberation from our exile, from that which enslaves us (the powers of this world – satan, sin, and death), from that which unsettles us. It brings us into the light and gives us a grand hope for a settled and whole world with God dwelling in our midst.

Sins… were the chains by which the dark powers had enslaved the humans who had worshipped them. Once sins were forgiven on the cross, the chains were snapped; victory was won. – N. T. Wright

Systematic Theology vs Biblical Theology

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When I started to think through my Christian faith, I would do so in terms of fixed categories. For example, Calvinist or Arminian. The Trinity. Premillennial, Amillenial or Postmillennial. Baptist, Anglican, or Pentecostal. Cessationist or Continuationist and many, many more. These are all systematic categories, and they’re helpful because they help the Church to navigate the often muddied waters of theology (of what to believe and not to believe). This kind of approach to neatly defining the Faith is very Western. Starting with the early church fathers through to the reformation and into the modern age we often (not always) find systematicians heavily influenced by Western categorical approaches to Christianity. Despite the influence of deconstructionism, this has actually been a good thing. Faithful theologians like Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli have used systematics to both guards against heresy and to recover biblical Christianity. However, the use of these sorts of categories has not always been so helpful (at least in my experience.

Throughout my time studying theology and living the Christian life, I have encountered many people who have taken these systematic categories and formed an identity out of it. All of a sudden Calvinism or Arminianism is equated to true Christianity, and anyone else needs to repent and believe. Instead of one Faith, one body, one Spirit, other Christians become second class where they’re ostracised and considered unclean. Tribes within Christianity are formed, and instead of defending the walls, we turn on one another desperate for theological supremacy. Theology in many corners of the Faith has gone from serving the Church to destroying it all because of pride. I admit I have played my own part in this terrible ordeal and as I continue to move past it, I look back, and I can count three main things that helped me shed my theological prejudice and pride:

  1. Biblical theology
  2. Jesus’ commands to love others
  3. The opportunity to love others

For me, biblical theology saved me from possibly years and years of tribalism and systematic theology supremacy. While categories were helpful, I began to learn that the Bible isn’t a systematic textbook. Instead, it’s a narrative leading to Jesus Christ and the salvation of humanity. Sometimes categories like free will, God’s sovereignty, the trinity, and total depravity, while correct weren’t so cut and dry. All of a sudden, I went from neatly coloured boxes to colouring just outside of the lines which actually unified the Scriptures for me better overall than ever before. This is where I began to hold “tensions.” Yes, humanity is totally depraved, yet we have stories such as Noah or Abraham, finding favour in God’s eyes because of their faith. Yes, God is sovereign over every atom and movement throughout history, yet we see God hold people accountable for their own free actions. Things weren’t so neat anymore, and I loved it. It was freeing to not bind myself to any-one camp or tribe instead I now strive to commit myself to biblical Christianity (yes I see the irony in that statement, you gotta draw a line somewhere). Now I have genuine friends whom I love in all sorts of camps that I love to float to and fro from. Which leads me to my next point…

The second thing that saved me from my theological pride was to take the command to love others seriously. This is, an ongoing journey, but until recently, I just hadn’t obeyed this command. For me being an Arminian was more important than loving my Calvinist brothers in Christ. It was more important for me to defend human free will then it was to bear their burdens, to weep with them and to rejoice with them. I thought “if only I could convince them that Jesus really did die for every single person and not just the elect then they’d be better Christians” when in reality what they needed was someone to pray for them and to minister to them in love. God placed one such person in my life that until recently was an ongoing struggle to love and be a brother too. For the longest time, we took every opportunity to one-up each other, to flex our theological minds until the Spirit broke us and bonded us in love. Now we can’t stop talking to one another as we bounce off one another in love for each other’s benefits to the glory of God.

Finally, biblical theology and systematic theology needs one another (sprinkled with a bit of love). Without biblical theology, systematics become rigid, demanding and inflexible. Yet without systematics, biblical theology can easily be led down the path of liberalism. Our categorised theological traditions safeguard the Faith and have done so for thousands of years. So let us study theology to our heart’s content. Let us do so with discernment and wisdom, the love of Christ and a spirit of worship.

The goal of theology is the worship of God. The posture of theology is on one’s knees. The mode of theology is repentance.  – Sinclair B. Ferguson

Christian Deconstructionism: The Good and the Bad

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When I first became a Christian, I swallowed everything hook, line and sinker. I was taught premillennialism, young-earth creationism, and that the Bible was always meant to be read literally unless there was an excellent reason to read it otherwise. Of course, anyone else was wrong and against the purest form of our Faith. These days as I’ve gone through my own sort of deconstructionism, I find myself in a very different place. I’m now an amillennial, an evolutionary creationist, and I’ve learnt to read Scripture according to its literary genre and context. Some of these things might sound fairly mundane to some of you, but for me, even the most basic of these concepts set me on a trajectory that would radically shape the way I relate to God, the Word, humanity and creation. So, rather than walking away from Christianity (which so often happens with people who go through things like this) I pressed forward trusting that God would conform me to the image of His Son (Rom 8:29).

So what is Deconstructionism? Philosophically, it is the idea that there is no fixed meaning in a text. Instead, everything in any given text is subjective and open to rigorous interpretation (originated by Jacques Derrida 1930-2004). As all things often do, this idea spilt over into a popular Christian movement in the West where traditionally held to beliefs like I’ve listed above (among others) are challenged and pulled apart (deconstructed) and are held up to scrutiny. Once plainly understood verses and passages are now challenged, reinterpreted and reapplied. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. One author defines deconstructionism like this:

“Let’s say our faith was like a sweater. Yarn: our ideology. Weave: our tradition. This is how you wear it. Don’t change it, even if the sweater doesn’t keep you warm any more. Even if it’s too tight or the threads cut off oxygen at your neck. This is the way. Doubts and questions mean disrespect, and those are the seeds of evil, so just don’t.

But over the years, a thread comes loose and you try to just tuck it in alongside the others. You can cover the fraying up. You can pull the thread and think, ‘Oh, I don’t need this one, because it is harmful to me; it’s itchy and gets caught on corners.’ It comes out easily. And the sweater stays together. Then you pull another, and another, and soon you find all the yarn is gone. You have deconstructed the entire thing. You are left naked. People gawk and run away, and you feel two opposing things: the freedom of glorious nakedness, and the fear of the same.”

Lisa Gungor, writing in The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Seen (Zondervan)

I have to admit I have felt the freedom of being naked and the fear that comes with change and the judgement you often feel from the people around you who still hold firmly to their traditional beliefs (God bless ’em). Deconstructing one’s Faith is a beautiful, liberating endeavour where (at least in my experience) it has led me into a deeper faith than I ever had before. However, that hasn’t been true for everyone. Unfortunately, people stay naked and join a commune (if you’re still tracking with the metaphor) and never come back. Over the years, there have been a few famous people who have fit this category. Rob Bell started off fairly conservative/ fundamental went through his own deconstruction and now (as much as I love the guy) is hardly even a Christian. This process needs to be walked with wisdom and discernment. That’s ironically a little subjective I know, but my point is that the human heart, while we often mean well and strive for goodness, it’s quite deceptive and easily led astray.  Human nature is a chaotic mess that needs order which takes time and patience under the hand of God. Deconstructionism coupled with dedication for reconstructionism can be either a beautiful part of this process (which we usually call sanctification) or, if done without wisdom it can be destructive.

So here are a few thoughts and perhaps guidelines for people going through this or for people watching their loved ones going through it:

1. Christ-like humility. Whether your a black and white fundamentalist or a Christian who is wrestling with some of the hardest questions of our Faith, it all must be done with extreme humility. That is to say, if you’re worried about your friend going through deconstructionism, remember that at some point in your walk with God you didn’t have all the right answers either and I’m sure you still don’t. Don’t let your dedication to guarding that which you’ve been bought up in cloud your ability to love your brother or sister in Christ.

If you are deconstructing, remember that tradition is wisdom. There have been dozens if not hundreds of learned scholars and theologians throughout church history who have tackled the same things you’re wrestling with. You aren’t a lone wolf. Humbly seek the advice of the sages and saints who have gone before you and of those who are around you.

2. The centrality of God’s Word. God speaks, and He does so primarily through the Scriptures. If you’re watching your friend go through deconstructionism trust that God will work through His Word and through His people (even you). If you’re going through deconstruction, remember that God’s Word is trustworthy and good. You might be struggling with the idea of inerrancy (I’ve been there) or inspiration, but there is a reason why it’s the most popular book in the history of humanity.

The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

– Psalm 1:1–4

3. Finally, as you deconstruct your Faith do so prayerfully and with the expectation that God will work in you good things. Invite God along for the ride, continuously examine yourself, making sure that you’re deconstructing with the right intentions and attitudes. Some use deconstruction as a way out of the Faith, seeking to justify other lifestyles. Instead, let the Spirit move in you as you work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Oh and remember, take every question to God no matter how heretical or silly it sounds. God wants to work at it with you.

Chaotic Love

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I hate love stories, they always make cry, I’ve never even read a love novel. My favourite stories are love tragedies. Samson and Delilah, Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, The Titanic. The 2003 classic Love Actually has to be one of my all-time favourite love movies though. In particular, the scene where Andrew Lincoln stands outside of Keira Knightley’s door as he boldly declares his love for her all the while her new husband is inside watching T.V always makes me cry. Oh, what could have been? I feel for the guy. Completely in love with a woman he can never have. How long has he been thinking about her, imagining what life what have been like had he met her first? Then, finally, he spills his feelings in a romantic gesture to only walk away from it all, leaving us all wondering if there was a next? What I love about the scene is that he was, at least eventually, so forward with his feelings, yet it didn’t end up the way he’d hope despite his years of dreaming.

Presenting the unfortunate drama of love and life.

Personally, love has taken its toll. There’s always a cost with love, a risk that we’re usually blind to because we so desperately want to believe that a knight in shining armour will rescue us from our towers. Thanks, Dinsey. For a lot of people, we swipe right, meet, fall in love and get married. We spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a day where despite the vows, despite the promises made, despite the people cheering and wishing you well, nothing is assured. Meet reality.

Love is real, but Disney is a myth. Love is as whimsical and as magical as it is practical and painful. Love can happen in an instant, or it develops over time and can be gone the next day again. Love can make you giddy, content, or crazy. People have fought wars over love and swam across oceans, others have simply knocked on the door while being invited in for some ice tea, or they walk away knowing that may never get the one they want. Love binds and breaks, it enlightens and makes us stupid. It cannot be controlled, simply guided. For the Christian love is governed by the Bible, for others, it’s guided by whatever it is their worldview presupposes. However, even for the Christian, as much as we want to believe it, the Bible isn’t a sure way to cover us from the chaotic nature that is love. Love is patient, love is kind and Christian marriage should endure. Life though throws us a curveball, and when love comes crashing down around you in all of its forms, we must beg the questions what now?

Many of you know my story, many of you may not. This isn’t a sceptical reaction to love. I love, love. I thrive on it, and I think you do too. If I can offer any wisdom or advice on the topic of love, it is this:

  1. Love is a chaotic force that can bring a lot of peace and order to your life. It is not to be taken lightly, yet there is something about it that’s magical.
  2. How love works depends on your choices, yet it can’t be controlled.
  3. Let love take you places, yet be wise in your dealings with it.
  4. Never, ever give up on it, despite its fickle nature, it doesn’t give up on you.

Politically Christian

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Australia is on fire, and the Greens are to blame, or maybe Scott Morrison is. Trump ordered an assassination on the Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani which, as Iran promises, guarantees severe consequences and international backlash. Climate change, LGBTQI, international trade and globalisation, human rights. The world is in rapid flux. Peace one day, on fire the next. Politics are unavoidable.

I never thought I’d admit it but to be Christian is to be inescapably political. Here’s why:

  1. Christians live in a kingdom with a king who rules over every other system of government and power (Psalm 2, Daniel 2:21, Matthew 28:18, Revelation 1:4-5).
  2. Christians, therefore, are inherently monarchists who bow the knee to King Jesus. This is a political stance. We’re saying every other government is on borrowed power and time from a higher power which reigns over them eternally.
  3. Therefore, whenever we vote for a leader or a policy, we do it with Jesus in mind. We must ask ourselves if what it is we’re voting for is aligned with God’s kingdom revealed in His Word (Matthew 5-7 is a great place to start).
  4. Whenever we do vote, whenever we get involved in politics, as citizens of God’s kingdom, we are declaring something about who God is. If we vote for climate change policies, we are saying God cares about the environment. If we vote against abortion, we’re declaring that God cares about all life. If we vote for religious freedom, we’re showing that God, at least in this age, gives everyone the freedom to decide who they will worship.

In the ever-intensifying geopolitical climate that we all live in, we must prepare ourselves for what is to come. Politics is unavoidable, and because of the Gospel we preach, and the King that we worship we’re already involved in politics anyway. Let’s hold up a minute. Before we go gate crashing the government and rioting for change, Christian, change happens first within the Church itself. If you haven’t already go and read Awaiting the King by James K. A. Smith, one of the best books I read last year among others. In it, Smith argues that

  1. Being political is actually worship
  2. Worship is actually political
  3. That influencing the political world happens first in and through the Church.
  4. When we do inevitably engage in the political sphere, do so with hopeful reservation.

Which begs the question, what is worship? Singing? Yes. Reading the Bible? Yes. Prayer? Yes, though worship is more. Worship is loving one another as yourself. It’s actually everything you do every day for the rest of your life to the glory of God. Why? Because as a Christian, you are in Christ, the temple, the place where worship happens, where communion between God and His people meet. You cannot escape worship, and you cannot escape than being political because we don’t worship only God but a King of Kings and a Lord of Lords. So here are my easy steps to being a healthy political Christian in 2020:

  • Go to a sacramental centred church. As Smith argues, it is through the liturgical means of the church that the people of God are transformed. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper demonstrate the Gospel, and the Word proclaims it (these are the three sacraments given to the church by Christ).
  • As the Word transforms, as the Supper of the Lord’s death seeps into your soul and Baptism brings you life, love one another fiercely, so that the rest of the world looks on with jealousy and awe. This means that you need to meet other’s needs. Meet them in brokenness, forgive them when they sin against you.
  • Go out and proclaim the Gospel, which is the power of God to save. Before any political reform happens, hearts need to be changed, and only God can do that through the Good News proclaimed by the Church.
  • Engage in the public sphere with a now but not yet mentality. What we do and vote for matters in eternity, however, remember that Jesus is still to return and make all things new at His second coming.

This 2020 be wise in your engagement in the political sphere. Love, worship and rest knowing Jesus reigns and the world is indeed running on fumes.

 

The call to follow Christ, the call to desire his kingdom, does not simplify our lives by segregating us in some “pure” space; to the contrary, the call to bear Christ’s image complicates our lives because it comes to us in the midst of our environments without releasing us from them. – James K. A. Smith