The Rebel God

God is love... Love keeps no record of wrongs

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 09:04:00 +0000

God is love.

If that's true, then Paul's famous hymn of love in first Corinthians 13 can be read like this:

God is patient, God is kind.
God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud.

God does not dishonor others, God is not self-seeking,
God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs.

God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

God always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.

God never fails.

Wow. God does not envy? God does not boast? That might make us reconsider some of the songs we sing to him on Sunday morning then. God does not boast.

God keeps no record of wrongs? Do we dare to just sit and let that be, without immediately protesting "yes, but..." Can we simply allow God to love all of who we are (and all of everyone else!), no matter how broken, ugly and helpless we may feel? God keeps no record of wrongs. Selah.

Why is it so hard for us to accept that this is what God is like? Is it that we do not really believe with Paul that "love never fails"? Do we think that we should try love... until it fails and then pick up our swords?

When Paul talks about us trusting, hoping, and persevering, what that means is that we are trusting in the way of love, hoping for the victory of love, persevering through the means of love, and we can have that hope, perseverance, and trust because love never fails.

That does not mean we sit passively and accept abuse. Because, as Paul says here, love always protects. But it protects through the means of love, by "overcoming evil with good, instead of being overcome by evil" (Romans 12:21).

Right after John declares that God is love, he tells us that God demonstrated that love for us in Jesus. That's our model, seen in God revealed in Christ. That's why we are supposed to have Jesus-shaped lives too. "Dear friends" John writes, "since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." (1 Jn 4:9-12). No one has ever seen God, but we know too that God looks like Jesus. When we love, we make the invisible God visible.

So don't listen to those toxic voices that say love is not enough, that promote fear. As John says "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." Fear and punishment here are set up as polar opposites of God's very nature. Sit with that a moment. It's so important that we get that deep down in our bones. There is no fear in love. God is love. God drives out fear. The closer you are to God, the further you will be from fear and punishment. To the extent that we embrace fear and punishment, we push God out.

"If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us" John says. God's love is made complete in us when we do not envy, because God does not envy. God's love is made complete in us when we keep no record of wrongs, because God keeps no record of wrongs. When we truly understand what love looks like, then we understand what God looks like. God is love.

So we trust in love, hope for love, and persevere in love. But since God is love that equally means that God believes in you, God has hopes for you, God relentlessly perseveres for you, and of course it goes with out saying that God loves you. And that love never fails.

Realistic Nonviolence #4: Why governments are not nonviolent (and how to change that)

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:58:00 +0000

This post is part of a continuing series on practical nonviolence. Read the first post here

Pacifism is often understood in terms of a refusal to commit violence and/or a refusal to kill. Pacifists then lament that governments refuse to adopt pacifism. I want to propose two of the main reasons why they do, and how we can get past them.

Reason #1: Viable Alternatives

The first reason is that we need to provide viable alternatives. If we don't, we can't expect anyone to listen.

Take for example corporal punishment in schools: This practice has been banned in most states, but was common in the past. You can imagine that at first teachers would have been at a loss for how to keep order in the classroom without the use of physical punishment. So what can they do instead?

If we are talking about little kids then you can give them a "time out" for instance However, educators found that this can also be harmful when it shames children. So they moved away from saying "you are bad" to addressing behavior. They learned to kneel down to eye-level when speaking with kids, say "following directions" instead of "obedience," speak with a calm voice instead of yelling, and started calling time-outs a "thinking chair" instead.

Now all of this constitutes a major paradigm shift: Most of us think the goal of discipline or punishment is to make the child feel bad -- to give them a negative and unpleasant consequence -- in order to "teach them a lesson." This is often the case, regardless of whether or not physical punishment is used. As a result, a time out -- even though it does not involve any physical violence -- can have the effect of making a child feel abandoned, rejected, and shamed. It still harms; it still damages.

So educators recognized the need not only to avoid violence, but to avoid harm. That meant re-thinking what the goal of discipline was. If it's not the goal of a time-out to make the kid feel bad, what is the goal?

The goal of a time-out is quite modest: It is simply a way to diffuse a situation, to get the kid into another environment so they can calm down. Once they are calm, depending on the situation, they might just go back to the group, or if there was a conflict then the teacher could help them to work it out with the other kid(s).

Long story short: If we want to ask people to stop being violent, then we need to provide a viable alternative. And here's the moral of the story: This will often involve more than just "less violence" (we stop hitting, but our goal is still to cause pain), and instead involve a paradigm shift that addresses the issue (a student disrupting the class in this example) in a way that does not harm them (either physically or emotionally).

The fact is, government has adopted nonviolent policies in regards to school discipline. So it just is not true that government wont ever adopt nonviolent policies. They already have in many many areas. This is a really big deal because for centuries it was common practice to beat kids in school.

Now, if we want our government/society to become less violent in other areas, then we need to provide viable alternatives that effectively address the needs involved.

Reason #2: The Wrong Medicine

This brings us to the second reason that government/society does not adopt nonviolence. We provide them with an alternative, but it's the wrong one.

When we think of the government adopting pacifism, the first thing that comes to mind is war, and the first pacifist method that comes to mind is turning the other cheek. Now if this is understood simply as "letting yourself be wronged" then it is clear why governments wont adopt it: It would be like saying to to a doctor "just let the patients die." We can't expect a society not to protect its people.

So instead we might appeal to how Martin Luther King effectively used nonviolent resistance (which is basically the application of turning the other cheek applied on a mass scale) in the civil rights movement as a way they could adopt. This was not just "doing nothing," it was a powerful means of exposing injustice. So could governments adopt this?

I would say no. Here's why:

In the situation of Gandhi and King, the power dynamics were of a weaker party being wronged by the one in power. Turning the other cheek here has the effect of exposing injustice in the eyes of the community. It humanizes the victim, making them visible, bringing the injustice into the open. It thus reveals that the one in authority is being unjust. The perception is shifted here so that the one in authority is shown to be in the wrong, and the weaker one is vindicated.

Now if we reverse this power dynamic so that the one in authority is turning the other cheek, this no longer works. It does not work because we already assume that the one in authority (the police, for example) is just, and the weaker one (the criminal) is in the wrong. So there is no need to shift perception in this way.

Now that does not mean that we can do nothing about this, but it does mean that we cannot simply adopt the "turning the other cheek" approach and apply it to crime or international conflict. We need to identify the harmful dynamic and act to reverse it.

For example with violent crime, the offender needs to learn to develop empathy. This can happen by them gaining insight into their patterns of behavior and thinking, teaching them to recognize the harm they cause from the perspective of their victims. Rather than seeing things from the perspective of self only, they gain insight to see the other.

This approach has been shown to be effective in reducing violent crime, and is increasingly being adopted within the prison system. In contrast, simply incarcerating a person actually increases their potential for violence once they are released. So again, this presents a viable and effective alternative to a system of punishment that not only harms them, but harms all of us because it fails to reform them, this making all of us unsafe. It is not wide spread, but it is currently being adopted by our government, and as people are seeing that it works, this is growing. Compared to corporal punishment in schools however, restorative justice programs in the criminal justice system are in their infancy and we still adopt a punitive model for the most part.

The moral here is that there is a real alternative to causing harm, but it is not applying "turning the other cheek," and instead employs principles of restorative justice.

With war, the application would be in helping nations to engage in conflict negotiation and resolution. Again, this involves a shift in perspective from "us/them" thinking to "us" thinking: What are our respective needs, and how can we work to meet them? This is also currently employed. Of course war -- and in particular war conducted by the USA's, which gets into issues of big money -- is beyond the scope of this post (the cover article of this months Sojourners addresses this, and is worth a read). But we can see that there are ways to address international conflict between nations nonviolently, and that this does not involve nonviolent resistance. Here I would refer readers interested in digging deeper in to this to the work of Glen Stassen and his Just Peacemaking criteria. Stassen proposes 10 strategies for addressing international conflict peacefully, which I have written about here.

Conclusion: Defining Nonviolence

Now I realize that there is much more that could be said here. This really only scratches the surface. For example, I have not addressed the question of what to do when an individual or a country is attacked. I'll need to leave that for a future post. For now I want to do two things:

First I want to again stress that pacifism must be practical.

We need to provide real working alternative to violence and harm. The world is willing to listen if we can provide them will real answers that address how to effectively deal with situations nonviolently. In fact it already does this in many areas of society. So when pacifists act as if government is simply "evil" this is simply unfair since we can see that in many places people working in the public sphere are already using nonviolent means -- including educators, health care workers, law enforcemvent. More importantly perhaps is the fact that thinking of government as evil creates an "us/them" divide which is the very thing we should be working not to do.

Second, I want to define nonviolence.

If you pick up a book on nonviolence, 9 times out of 10, its focus will be on nonviolent resistance, as practiced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King. As explained above, nonviolent resistance can be very effective when applied in the appropriate context, and it can equally be ineffective and morally irresponsible in others. So we need to understand how it works in order to understand how (and where) to effectively apply it. Likewise, we need to employ other nonviolent techniques where nonviolent resistance is inappropriate.

Because nonviolent resistance is a context specific technique among many, it is therefore a mistake to think that nonviolence is synonymous with nonviolent resistance. It simply is not. The larger principle of nonviolence is the desire to find ways to solve problems without causing harm. There are many ways to do this depending on the situation, however it is also vital to understand that nonviolence is not simply the refusal to harm, but also involves the alternative means to address the need.

The big picture here of how nonviolence works is one of de-escaltion, of reversing hurtful dynamics. My kids like to say it's about "turning bad guys into good guys." So nonviolence is a way to solve problems without causing harm which works by turning negative situations into positive ones. In short: it's about restorative justice, about fixing stuff that's broken, about acting to heal. It's not just the about not causing harm (that's a good start!), but actively doing good and working to repair harm.

So returning to the two reasons that government/society does not accept nonviolence, stated at the beginning of this post: (1) we need to present viable alternatives, and (2) we need to realize that this does not only mean applying the techniques of Gandhi and King, but instead will involve many different means.

This of course will involve a lot of work, but I'd propose that this is a good place to start. A big part of this is getting people to change the way they think. For the longest time we though that the only way to raise good kids was to hit them. Most of us don't think that anymore. But when it comes to crime we still do believe in punishment. Same with war. So there's a lot of work to do to help people to see things differently. We do that by showing better ways to solve problems and mend wrong. As messed up as our world is, it does seem to be getting betters slowly. All in all, we treat people more humanly than we did 100 or even 50 years ago. Nonviolent techniques are becoming more and more widespread and integrated into society. More and more people are seeing this. It's still in it's infancy, but baby steps are good when you're a baby.

Faith Based on Love Not Fear (Joshua Tongol)

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 06:07:00 +0000

My friend Joshua Tongol just made a new video on the critical difference between basing your faith on love instead of fear.

Really, really, good stuff. Give it a watch:

Realistic Nonviolence #3: Neuroscience and the Mind of Christ

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 06:19:00 +0000

This post is part of a continuing series on practical nonviolence. Read the first post here

In my previous post (post #2), I broadly defined the core of nonviolence and enemy love as a change from a self-focused perspective to a relational perspective. It's about thinking socially, about understanding ourselves as social beings, about the logic of compassion.

As I did last time, I'd like to give a practical application for how we can apply nonviolence and enemy love in our lives. In particular, I'd like to discuss how we can break out of a hostile and defensive mindset, and regain a social perspective.

That's particularly hard to do when we in the middle of a conflict. When we're in conflict -- whether or not that conflict is violent -- our perspective changes. It goes from a social orientation to a defensive one. It becomes me against you (or on a larger scale, our group/nation/religion vs. the other).

Think about what it's like when you're in conflict with a loved one: When we're feeling emotionally threatened, we go into defensive mode. When we're in the middle of conflict, all we can see is our own perspective, all we can think about is defending our "rights."

So even if the one we are in conflict with is someone we love, our thinking changes to be us against them. We go into "defense mode" and tragical and ironically end up hurting the very ones we love. Sadly we all know pattern all too well: When we feel threatened, we close off or say hurtful things we later wish we could take back.

So I find that while I want to follow Jesus' way of enemy love, I can hardly manage to do this with my loved ones, let alone with a real "enemy." What's going on? Why is it that we can so easily "switch" from being relational to being self-focused when we're in a fight?

Part of the problem is that family is everyone's Achilles heel. There is no place that you are quite as vulnerable. That's good in the sense that we can receive a lot of love there, but it also means we can easily get emotionally triggered in that setting as well.

So it's understandable that we have very real conflicts with our parents, our kids, our spouses. Nevertheless, the question remains: How can we break out of those conflicts? What can we do to reverse those hurtful dynamics in our relationships? What can we do to get back to the social compassionate perspective, rather than getting instantly sucked into a "me-focus" when things get tense, and we feel emotionally threatened?

I'd like to suggest that new research in neuroscience can give us some really important insights into what's going on here, and how we can learn to break out of that destructive self-focus:

When we are triggered in an argument, feeling flooded and emotionally threatened, this activates the amygdala, which is the part of the brain involved in the processing of raw emotions such as anger and fear. The amygdala is essentially the brain's watchtower, and when it is fired up in alarm mode, it sends out neurochemicals which effectively shut down the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain associated with things like relational connection, empathy, impulse control, self-reflection, moral judgement and conscience -- in short, the part of your brain in charge of what we might call the social-self.

The brain's "shut-down" function has a practical survival function: It means that when we are in danger our brain kicks into alarm mode which can save our life. But it also means that when we get triggered in a argument with a loved one, the smart and compassionate part of our brain is temporarily turned off, which can make us do thoughtless and hurtful things.

So there's a very real reason neurologically that we become so self-focused in a fight. It's not a reflection of our character, so much as it is a kind of brain reflex based on a perceived threat. When we are unaware of this, we can get swept up in those feelings. But once we recognize what is happening, we can address what's going on in us. This involves a two-step process:

The first step is to recognize what is going on in our bodies. The part of our brain in charge of making good judgments has been temporarily shut down by our amygdala. Paul was very likely observing this dynamic when he contrasted the "flesh" with the "fruits of the Spirit." What we can now better understand from brain science is that this "fleshly" reaction of self-focused anger and fear in us is not something evil or bad in itself. It's a protective reflex of the brain. This can be life-saving when we are in actual danger, but becomes dysfunctional when emotional reactivity makes us see an "enemy" in a loved one. It's a good thing that is out of balance.

This brings us to the second step: We need to have the maturity and humility to recognize that because we are emotionally triggered, we may need to allow time for our social brain to come back online. We might compare this to having the maturity to recognize when you've had too much to drink, and handing over your car keys. Similarly, when we're "under the influence" of the amygdala, we need to recognize that the smart and social part of our brain is impaired, and consequently have the maturity so let it wait, to cool down first.

There's a temptation here to simplify the above equation, focusing on only one of the above two points: Some may want to stress the fact that the "flesh" of emotional reactivity is an involuntary bodily reaction which is not our conscious choice, and therefore argue that it is "not our fault." Others will stress the opposite point, arguing that we need to take charge of our ingrained behavioral patterns and feelings. The reality is that both are true at the same time. We therefore need to have a complex and integrated understanding of how these two seemingly opposed factors work in tandem:

On the one hand, understanding what is going on in our brains means we do not need to beat ourselves up about it. This is our body's unconscious involuntary reaction to feeling emotionally threatened, separated, insecure. Understanding what is going on in us can be comforting and normalizing. These are not bad choices we are making. In fact, they are not choices at all; they are involuntary reactions to a perceived threat. The thinking and social part of our brain has literally been shut down by our brain's panic center.

We can't help how we feel, but we can learn to mange what we do with those feelings, so we are not driven by emotional reactivity. Simply realizing that our thinking and social-self is impaired is not enough however. Instead, we need to learn to recognize when we are flooded with reactive emotion, and exercise the maturity, humility and responsibility to wait until we can cool off and think socially again.

Noticing when we are emotionally triggered is a really important step towards not being driven by our amygdala. It also helps to name what is going on in us, saying something like "I'm feeling really triggered right now, and need some time." When we do this we are engaging the thinking and social part of our brains, and the more we do that, the more our brain will strengthen those neural connections. This is a concept known as neuroplasticity, which refers the brain's ability to change itself based on our experiences. Paul tells us that as we walk in this way of the Spirit, we will be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" and that's exactly what our brain does. Amazingly, our brain actually structurally changes, based on the input it receives, creating new synaptic linkages and even growing new neurons. This means that, as we learn to engage our thinking and social prefrontal cortex in times of stress, our brain re-wires itself over time to be more naturally compassionate and social, and less driven by our "carnal" reactive emotions.

Of course it's never easy to change old patterns. It involves humility and hard work. But hopefully, understanding how our minds work can help us get a little closer to having the "mind of Christ" as we learn to follow in that way.

CONTINUE TO POST #4

Realistic Nonviolence #2: Enemy love as the heart of nonviolence

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:19:00 +0000

This post is part of a continuing series on practical nonviolence. Read the first post here

In my previous post I discussed the infamous "what-if" questions that people invariably raise when the topic of nonviolence and enemy love come up, and suggested that what we really need to do is hear the question behind the question: People have a legitimate concern that nonviolence entails inaction in the face of harm being done to oneself or a loved one. I stressed that this is not the case, and argued that we need to articulate in concrete and practical terms how nonviolence addresses these issues as a viable alternative to violence.

Some pacifists argue that Christians should simply follow Jesus’ way of nonviolence regardless of whether it makes sense to them. As much as I respect their commitment to nonviolence, I want to suggest that this is a potentially dangerous and harmful position to take. The fact is, over the years many people have done things that are really hurtful in the name of religion. For example, some have told women who were in abusive relationships that they needed to stay there in order to "be a witness of suffering love."

Now, I hope you'll agree that this is not what Jesus intended. Love of enemies is not about glorifying suffering or legitimizing abuse. But how do we know that? Fact is, if we are simply blindly following without understanding, we can't. Unreflected obedience has no way of identifying incorrect and hurtful interpretations. So we need to seek to understand nonviolence. There’s simply no way around this. Until we actually understand the “upside-down kingdom” perspective of Jesus, we will not be able to intelligently apply it to our lives and world. Obedience without understanding is not possible.

What consequently happens most of the time unfortunately is that Christians don't understand it, and so they don't practice it. I want to make the case that simply pulling the authority card on these people, and telling them they should follow this way because Jesus commanded it is a big mistake. The authority argument "don't question, just obey!" belongs to the way of religious power and violence. For those of us who believe in nonviolence it is inappropriate for us to use it, it is opposed to the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is about breaking out of the status quo, thinking for ourselves, respecting the dignity of the little guy. Asking questions and challenging things is good for your soul. It's an act of faithfulness. Suppressing those doubts and questions is not. So we we need to do the hard work of intelligently articulating what a healthy and life-giving understanding of nonviolence and enemy love looks like.

With that in mind, this time around, I'd like to take a shot at broadly defining nonviolence, and what it means to embrace the Jesus' way of enemy love.

For many the term nonviolence is associated with the political protests made famous by Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This is more properly referred to as "nonviolent resistance." Nonviolent resistance is a tool that can be profoundly important when dealing with oppression. I'll have much to say about it in a later post. However, I'd like to suggest that nonviolence entails a much larger way that is applicable in every area of our lives, whereas nonviolent resistance specifically is not always appropriate. That may come as a surprise to some of you that I say that, but it's a really important point. As I said, I'll return to it later in another post. But for now, let me simply say that when I speak of nonviolence, I am referring to something larger and more encompassing than simply nonviolent resistance. It includes the means of nonviolent resistance where applicable, but is a bigger, more encompassing concept.

For others, nonviolence is associated with pacifism, and means a refusal to kill. I agree that this is crucial. It's really the bottom line of nonviolence and enemy love. After all, it's pretty impossible to love your enemy when you're killing them! Whether it's in the form of political oppression, war, starvation, or abuse, violence is a profoundly important issue, and causes untold suffering in our world. Jesus spent his whole life caring for those who were suffering, speaking against abuse of power, and preaching the way of radical grace and forgiveness in the face of it. Looking around at our broken and hurting world, it's easy to see how vitally important it is that we deal with violence. Not just overseas where there is lawlessness, terror, and genocide, but also right here at home where we are plagued with mass shootings, rampant bullying in schools, and a polarized red/blue country that fuels the fires of prejudice and hate every night on the news which has become a reality show of biased angry pundits, and stories focused on shock value.

So I in no way wish to underplay the importance of dealing with the reality of violence and abuse. However, again I want to suggest that nonviolence involves a lot more that just what we refrain from doing. It also involves a way of positively engaging in conflict, and working to end suffering and hurt which operates with a different mindset than the way of violence and force. Nonviolence is not just a rejection of the problem of violence, it is an active solution to that problem.

While it's vitally important to address the question of how we should respond to a life threatening situation, and to struggle with the issue of war (and I will return to these topics in future posts), there are many conflicts in our lives that are non-lethal. After all, most of us go through our lives never killing anyone. In fact, most of the conflicts we deal with in our own lives do not involve physical violence at all. Yet those conflicts can be very real and very painful -- say for example an argument with your spouse, your parents, or your kids.

Probably the best way to really understand nonviolence is to put it into practice, and a great place to start is in those everyday struggles and conflicts that are a part of all of our lives. Once we can make sense of how to practically apply nonviolence here, we can much better understand how it might be applied in larger social contexts.

So what is nonviolence at its core about? Nonviolence is a way of transforming conflict, a way of turning hostility into friendship, a way of stopping cycles of hurt and violence, and instead sewing seeds of restoration and healing. I find this larger over-arching umbrella understanding of nonviolence is best expressed in Jesus' idea of loving our enemies.

The idea of love of enemies needs to be understood in the context of the normal way love works in our world: Normally, love is something that is given to those we feel are deserving. We love those who are kind to us, and we dislike those who hurt us. That's the idea behind the concept of an eye for an eye. You hit me first, so I hit you back. Jesus takes that normal idea of how things work by reciprocity, and flips it on its head: "You know that it says, 'love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' but I say instead: love your enemies! ... After all, if you love those who love you, why would that make you special? Doesn't everyone do that? So instead, go all the way and love like God does" (Matthew 5:43-48).

So enemy love is about loving people regardless of whether they "deserve it." God does not love us because we are good, God loves us because God is good. That's the way we should love to. When we do that, we can break the cycle of hurting and being hurt because love is transformative. Being loved changes us, transforming the hurtful dynamics we can get entangled in.

So what Jesus is doing is replacing the way of retaliation with the way of restoration. The way of an eye for an eye is overturned by the way of enemy love. Paul expressed this same idea when he tells us: "Don't be overcome by evil, rather overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21). This idea of overcoming evil with goodness is the operative principle of enemy love. The idea here is a restorative action which reverses hurtful dynamics, bringing us out of our self-focused antagonistic us/them mentality, and instead into a relational mindset thinking socially, compassionately.

Let me give an example of how this might play out in practice in our daily lives:

The other day our 5-year-old daughter had a melt down. She's screaming, and I'm triggered. I take her hand, and bring her to her room for a time out. When we get there she demanded that I hug her. I'm not feeling compassion, I'm mad. In my head I'm thinking, “I don't want to reward this selfish behavior with a hug.” I was tempted to pull away, thinking that it would be good for her to feel bad so she could “learn her lesson.”

Now if you're a parent you'll know how overwhelming and exhausting it can be. Being screamed at and hit can stretch you to your limits, especially if you haven't had much sleep. So here we are, both frustrated, both feeling antagonistic and blaming the other. We're both caught in retaliation mode. My instinct in that self-focused defensive state is to withhold love. In my mind I justify this as responsible parenting, as being "for her own good."

But something in me knew that -- as much as I didn't feel like doing it -- she really needed that hug. So I put my arms around her. As I did, her distress, panic, and rage melted away. My reluctant act of kindness was not reinforcing bad behavior, it was helping her come to her senses again. Making her feel bad would have only pushed her deeper into her self-focused panic. She needed that hug, and the sense of security it gave her, to be able to break out of the emotional fit she was in. It allowed her to be able to be social again. It was a simple act of kindness that broke the hurtful dynamic we were both caught in. That's the core working principle of enemy love: Do not be overcome by anger, but overcome anger with kindness.

The way of nonviolence and love of enemies is about a change in our perspective, moving from a me-orientation to a we-orientation. As long as I was stuck in the self-protective perspective, hugging her seemed counter-intuitive. But later, when I was able to think socially again, it made perfect sense. So long as we are stuck in a me-orientation, the way of nonviolence and enemy love appear as foolishness. But once we can learn to think within a relational perspective, it makes perfect sense. It's the logic of compassion.

Next time I'll discuss how we can learn to move from that me-orientation to a we-orientation, which can be especially difficult when we are in the middle of conflict and feeling threatened.

CONTINUE TO POST #3

Realistic Nonviolence #1: Addressing the What-if Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:10:00 +0000

I just finished writing a new article on realistic nonviolence that will hopefully be published soon (more details on that later). Because this is such a huge topic, I was not able to cover everything in that feature article. So I thought it would be good to discuss these topics here on this blog over a series of posts.

Nonviolence is a huge topic. It can refer to everything from international conflict to how we raise our kids. There are different theories of nonviolence too, and different disciplines that address it. So what I hope to do over the next several blog posts is give a broad understanding of how these all fit together.

Most importantly though, what I really want to present is a way of understanding nonviolence that is realistic. It is often lamented that the vast majority of Christians do not follow Jesus' most radical and unique teaching to love our enemies.

I would like to propose that a major reason that this is the case is because people do not understand how to do this. More specifically, they think that it would be wrong and hurtful to do this. They think it would involve allowing themselves or those they love to be hurt, and so they reject it--not because they are immoral, but because they are moral.

Take for example the classic "what if" questions that people pose to pacifists: "What if Hitler broke into your house and was threatening your wife? Would you shoot him or do nothing?"

Now there are many things that are frustrating about questions like this. A pretty obvious one is that Hitler is dead, so I don't think he will be breaking into anyone's house. Also, why is it always the woman who is the victim, and the man who needs to save her? The biggest problem with this kind of question though is that it presents us with a no-win situation. It is intended to back you into a corner.

I think the best answer to this is to hear the question behind the question. When a person asks this, especially in an extreme form like this, what they are really saying is, "Okay I get that violence is generally undesirable, but surely you must admit that there are some situations where it is unavoidable! Surely you would not want us to stand by while someone we love is in need!"

This is a legitimate concern. So I'd like to clarify some important points that will hopefully set the stage for our future conversation, addressing some common misconceptions:

Love of enemies should not mean that we neglect self-love. On the contrary, it means that we widen the scope of who we love. We love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Jesus expands that love to include enemies too. The opposite of selfishness is therefore not self-neglect. The polarity is between self-focus and a relational focus which includes a healthy self-love. I am a part of we.

Any proposal of nonviolence therefore needs to present a practical alternative which addresses the needs of those involved -- in particular to protect and care for victims of violence. In other words, it is not enough to simply reject violence, but then offer no alternative solutions. We need to be shown a better alternative that is livable and realistic.

That involves moving beyond slogans and platitudes towards practical application. What does nonviolence look like when it is applied to real life situations? How does it address the very real problems we encounter in our world?

We'll explore all of that over the next several posts, beginning with how to apply nonviolence in our own personal lives. Right now what I want to stress is that when I am advocating for nonviolence I am not suggesting that we should do nothing to stop people from hurting others. I am not suggesting that we should not defend and protect ourselves.

On the contrary, the goal is to end suffering and violence, not to passively tolerate it. The core idea of nonviolence is that it prevents a better and more effective way of practically addressing conflict and ending harm in our lives and world.

So to those who pose the "What if" questions, I hope that you would recognize that we share the same moral commitments to defend and protect victims and to stop violence, and that realization would allow us to get past the polarized positions that we so often find just-war advocates and pacifists getting themselves into where each side digs in their heels, growing more and more extreme.

Behind those "what if" questions is a deeper reaction of fear. Those who ask this are voicing a perceived fear that we want to remove their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones from peril. That self-protective fear (which is a normal reaction to danger) can throw us into panic where we are not listening, not thinking. When that happens, the conversation is over. The way for us all to break out of that is to acknowledge the legitimate fear, to empathize with it. To let the other understand that they are heard.

Those of us who advocate for nonviolence will often respond defensively to these kinds of questions, responding with arguments and justifications. While the one asking the question is really saying "Surely you would not want me to stand by while someone I love is being hurt!" What we hear is "Surely there are some times where you would be unfaithful to Jesus!" and so like Peter we answer back "Never!" Part of the problem is that, while the question of how we should respond in dangerous situations is a legitimate one, it is often presented in the form of an argumentative trap that is not designed to open up a real conversation, but is rather intended to end it by creating a Sophie's choice situation.

It's not a question at all, it's a statement of exasperation. So what we need to do is respond to that before we can get to any kind of practical application. As long as we are both reacting emotionally, both feeling backed-up against the wall, we will not be able to get anywhere because the listening part of our brains gets shut off in this defense mode. The way to break through that is not arguing and debating, but by showing empathy. In other words, the way to break past those polarizing "what if" questions is to apply the principle of nonviolence to it rather than getting sucked into it. Once we recognize that we are all trying to get to the same place, then (and only then) can we begin to work out how to practically stop violence and hurt rather than perpetuating it.

There are real answers to those "what if" questions. We do need to know what to do when we find ourselves confronted with these situations. We need to present viable and practical alternatives if we want to be taken seriously on the world stage. But we can only learn this in an atmosphere of trust. So if you trust Jesus, I would encourage you to come and taste and see that Jesus' way of enemy love is good.

A great thing about a blog is that it allows for an interactive conversation. So I hope you'll leave your comments below. What keeps you from practicing nonviolence and enemy love? Have you been taught that following Jesus entails self-denial or that pacifism means not defending yourself or others from hurt?

CONTINUE TO POST #2

Soldiers Aren't Heroes, They're Humans

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 06:02:00 +0000

Soldiers are not heroes. They are not villains either. They are human beings; human beings who have been put in the middle of a horrific situation.

A ten year old boy holding a grenade approaches a group of soldiers. He does not respond to their shouts. One shoots him with his M-16 and the boy crumbles to the ground, dead.

Did he have a choice? It was do or die, kill or be killed. Still he killed a little boy, and those images still haunt him.

This is a classic example of psychological trauma: A person is put in horrific life-threatening situation where they do not feel they have control. That's the situation he found himself in. It was a no-win scenario -- kill a little boy or have you and your friends all die.

Soldier suicides have reached epidemic numbers. As the AP reports, More soldiers are taking their own lives than are falling in battle. Add on top of that the many who suffer from PTSD, and who as a result find themselves estranged from their home, their loved ones, and indeed from themselves.
This is about experiencing trauma, and, with multiple deployments, being repeatedly re-exposed to trauma. It's about people who have seen or done things that they can't forget, things that may haunt them for the rest of their lives. It's about people like you and me carrying the horrors of the reality of war, and often they are carrying those burdens completely alone.

The tendency in the media is to glorify war, to speak of "heroes" and noble ideals like God and country and freedom. But war is not about ideals. Our bumper stickers say "support our troops," but if we really care about our service men and women then we need to wake up to the very real fact that many of them have had their worlds shattered. On returning home they need more than just a parade, they need real support.

Regardless of what you think about the war, I'd like to suggest that we all should support our troops -- not as warriors, but as people. We need to get away from the rhetoric of either glorifying or demonizing soldiers, and instead treat them as fellow human beings like us.

Trauma disrupts a person's sense of security and connection to themselves and others. Consequently there is a deep need to make sense of the world afterwards, to recalibrate reality. For many soldiers that means bridging the disconnect between their experience of war, and the "real world" which can now seem so unreal. Simply "trying to forget" and bury the past is not enough.

That's why it's so important that we provide the soldiers in our lives with a safe space to work through what they experienced. We need to have the courage and the compassion to hear their stories, told in their own time and on their own terms. We need to listen, without judgment, to what they have to tell us. It's a difficult conversation, but one that we as a country need to be willing to have.

As a Christian this is a difficult issue because the church has tended to fall into those two polarized camps: either romanticizing it on the conservative side or condemning and demonizing it on the liberal side. Then there are the rest of us caught in the middle who simply fall silent. So I want to break the silence. I want to speak up from the radical center with a message of unconditional grace.

As soldiers struggle with feeling profoundly estranged and de-humanized by what they have seen and done, as they work through the fallout of this brokenness in their lives of divorce, depression, unemployment, and the crushing feelings of abandonment that accompanies all of this (including feeling abandoned by the military when they are denied benefits) what they deeply need to hear is a message of grace from the church. Soldiers need to hear that no matter how damaged or inhuman you may feel, you are loved. They need to experience that same unconditional grace that we all so desperately need. They need to know that we will stand beside them, even when it is messy and scary.

One of the best ways to understand something is to listen to people's stories. The trailer above is from the 2006 feature documentary The Ground Truth and in it veterans of the Iraq war speak of their experiences in war, what it did to them, and what they are going through now that they are back. It's a really powerful and eye-opening film, and I hope you will watch it. You can view the entire film either on Archive.org (for free) or on Netflix (instant download):

Watch The Ground Truth on Netflix

Watch The Ground Truth on Archive.org

Restorative vs. Retributive justice side by side comparison

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:09:00 +0000

Restorative and Retributive Justice Side by Side Comparison

(Source: "Justice Paradigm Shift" by Howard Zehr in Victim Offender Conferencing in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System)

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

Crime defined by violation of rules

____________________________

State as victim.

_____________________________

State and offender primary parties.

____________________________

Interpersonal dimensions irrelevant.

____________________________

Offense defined in legal terms.

____________________________

Wrongs create guilt.

_____________________________

Guilt is absolute, either/or.

_____________________________

Guilt is indelible.

_____________________________

Debt is abstract.

_____________________________

Debt paid by taking punishment.

_____________________________

Accountability = taking one’s “medicine.”

_____________________________

Blame fixing central.

_____________________________

Focus on past.

_____________________________

Needs secondary.

_____________________________

Battle, adversarial model normative.

_____________________________

Imposition of pain normative.

_____________________________

One social injury added to another.

_____________________________

Harm done balanced by inflicting harm

_____________________________

Victims’ needs ignored.

_____________________________

Restitution rare.

_____________________________

Sense of balance through retribution.

_____________________________

State monopoly on response

_____________________________

Encourages offender irresponsibility.

_____________________________

Offender denounced.

_____________________________

Offender stigmatized

_____________________________

Justice tested by intent and process.

_____________________________

Process alienates.

_____________________________

Proxy professionals are the key actors.

_____________________________

Win-lose outcomes assumed.

_____________________________

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Crime defined by harm to people.

____________________________

People and relationships as victims.

_____________________________

Victim and offender are primary parties.

_____________________________

Interpersonal dimensions central.

_____________________________

Offense understood in full context

_____________________________

Wrongs create liabilities and obligations.

_____________________________

There are degrees of responsibility.

_____________________________

Guilt removable thru repentance and reparation.

_____________________________

Debt is concrete.

_____________________________

Debt paid by making right.

_____________________________

Accountability = taking responsibility.

_____________________________

Problem solving central.

_____________________________

Focus on future.

_____________________________

Needs primary.

_____________________________

Dialogue normative.

_____________________________

Restoration/reparation normative.

_____________________________

Emphasis on repair of social injuries.

_____________________________

Harm done balanced by making right.

_____________________________

Victims’ needs central.

_____________________________

Restitution normal.

_____________________________

Sense of balance through restitution.

_____________________________

Victim, offender, community roles recognized.

_____________________________

Responsible behavior encouraged.

_____________________________

Harmful act denounced.

_____________________________

Reintegration offered to offender.

_____________________________

Justice tested by its outcome.

_____________________________

Process aims at reconciliation.

_____________________________

Victim and offender central

_____________________________

Win-win outcome encouraged.

_____________________________

Chapter 1 of Healing the Gospel is now on iTunes as free audio book

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 03:10:00 +0000

If you're like me, you like listening to podcasts on your way to work. So with that in mind, I've made the first chapter of Healing the Gospel available on iTunes as free audio book for y'all!

Healing the Gospel on iTunes

Download the mp3 file (right click)

If you've already read the book, this is a great way to share it with your friends, and of course if you haven't read it yet then this is also a great way to get your feet wet.

Enjoy!

Podcast Interview on Beyond the Box for my Book "Healing the Gospel"

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

I just finished up doing an interview with the Beyond the Box Podcast where I talk about my new book Healing the Gospel.

With a heavy duty theme like the atonement it can be easy to get bogged down in dense and dry theological stuff. That's why I was so happy that we were really able to get down to what really matters, and focus on the heart of things--breaking free of all the hurtful ways we've learned to think about God and ourselves, really getting hold of God's healing grace and how we can know it and live it out in our lives.

For those of you who have not yet read the book, I think this will be a great way to get a hold of the heart of what the book is about, and why it matters so much. So give it a listen, and I hope you enjoy it!

Listen at Beyond the Box Podcast

Download on iTunes

Download Mp3
(right-click to download)

As always, I'd love to hear what you thought about it, so give it a listen, and then leave a comment below

God Loves Us F**k-ups

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 05:28:00 +0000

(Re-posted from Huffpo and RLC)

I recently discovered People of the Second Chance (POTSC), a group that describes its mission as:

A scandalous awakening of radical grace in life and leadership.
We exist to overthrow judgment, liberate love
and live a life that rebels with grace for everyone.

I love that.

POTSC has an ad campaign, called "Labels Lie," that draws attention to the ways that labels tell lies about who we are that can be devastating. The images are graphic, shocking, and deeply moving. They are the kind of images we tend to censor because our real lives can be shocking. It's not the kind of thing you want to reveal in polite company. They reveal the ugliness that we are all afraid to show. They reveal our deepest wounds, our failures, our fears, our brokenness. They are heartbreaking.

It is precisely into that place of woundedness, failure, fear and brokenness that Jesus wants to come. Faith is not about certainty; it is about vulnerability. It is about having the courage to let Jesus into our screwed up lives, the courage to be loved for who we really are. It is the outrageous hope that we would still be loved if God knew about all the things we try to hide.

We need to begin there in that place of honesty, and then we need to hear when God says to us: These labels are lies about who you are. God sees us, all of us, and sees someone beautiful, someone beloved. Not because love is blind. Not because we hide things well. But because love sees much deeper. That is the truth about who you are. You are loved.

These labels alienate us. They shut us out, they paralyze us, they destroy us. They are lies. That's why we need to be careful. It's good for us to be real, for us to admit our need and allow God to come in to those broken places in us. But we shouldn't let ourselves be defined by these hurtful images, nor should we define others by them. Jesus did not come labeling others as "sinners" and "whores," he came to write love on our arms.

Preachers are so afraid of that kind of radical acceptance and unconditional embrace. You probably know the story of the woman who was caught in adultery. The religious leaders wanted to stone her to death, but Jesus stands in their way and defends her, saying "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone." One by one they all walk away, and Jesus is left with her. He then turns to her and asks "where are your accusers?" She looks in his eyes and answers, "They are gone Lord." And then the one who was without sin, the only one who is able to throw a stone, says "Then neither do I condemn you. Go in peace, and leave your life of sin."

It's an amazingly powerful story, and I think every time I have heard it told in church the preacher could not resist stressing that last line "go and leave your life of sin." As if Jesus wanted to say "Now don't take this for granted. You need to pull your act together." These preachers are worried about behavior, but Jesus was worried about her. Yes of course she wants leave that life. Who wants to live in a broken identity when you have just met love? Those words were not an admonition (as if Jesus was having second thoughts about what he had just done). It was an invitation. An invitation to leave her hurtful and broken identity, and to enter into a new one.

That's what repentance is really about. It isn't about pretending we don't have these wounds, and it isn't even about merely changing outward behavior. On a much deeper level it's about not letting ourselves be defined by these hurtful identities, and instead living into a new identity where we are loved unconditionally. Being loved like that changes everything. As we begin to see that, we can have the courage to show that same radical grace to those around us too.

This isn't about religion. In fact, it is often religious people (especially the ones who have gotten hold of a microphone) who are the worst at using those hurtful labels. This is the kind of stuff that scares the crap out of lots of religious folks because it's messy and dangerous and real. It doesn't look presentable, respectable or dignified. But it is nonetheless beautiful. It's about trusting that if we know what it is like to be radically loved, and love others like that too, that can change the world.
And so I say: You are loved. Right now. No matter where you are at. No matter how far away you feel. You are loved. Don't ever forget that. There is always a second chance.

Hold On To The Good, Reject The Bad: Moving Beyond Retribution in The Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:56:00 +0000

I received this letter from a reader,

"I was first introduced to your writing with the Sojourners article early this year. Your blog has been very helpful and inspiring. Healing the Gospel was one of the healthiest theological books I've ever read. Even though I tend to agree with all of your sentiments in your book, I think it is even helpful for individuals who strongly disagree with you; due to your demeanor and thoughtfulness--your intentions and heart were apparent and that alone is capable of spreading light to others.

I enjoyed your treatment of Romans 1 and 6; and I resonate with the idea that God's wrath is essentially the natural consequences of sin, whether the sin is our own or other's. I was wondering if you have ever written on Hebrews 10:30 or 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7. In those verses, it seems as if the wrath/vengeance/payment is more of an active role, rather than a passive consequence. Those verses have been difficult for me to reconcile with my view of God's forgiveness and non-violence. I understand that justice is pain for the unjust, but the 1st Chapter of 2 Thess doesn't seem to scream out restoration and reconciliation. I want to take all of scripture in context, but now I find myself wanting to throw these verses out because they don't fit into my current theological framework (I don't see much Jesus in these words)."

- Geoffrey H.

It's a great question. For sake of space, I'll focus here on the passage from 2 Thessalonians. The key part Geoffrey is referring in verses 6-7 is this statement:

"For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you."

Here we have a classic statement of payback justice. An eye for an eye. Repaying hurt for those who hurt.

But didn't Jesus repudiate an eye for an eye in the sermon on the mount, replacing it with the way of enemy love?

So is this verse a contradiction to that? Is it promoting the very way Jesus rejected?

Let's take a look at the whole passage for context:

"We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, and is intended to make you worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." (2 Thes 1:4-9, NRSV)

Yuck.

The first thing we notice is the violent language. "flaming fire, inflicting vengeance... suffer the punishment of eternal destruction." However we understand the phrase "eternal destruction,"--whether we understand that to mean eternal torment, annihilation, or something else--it is pretty clear that the audience is supposed to feel comforted knowing that the people who are hurting them are gonna "get what's coming to them." This is about appealing to people's desire for vengeance. So why would they feel that way?

If we look at the beginning of this passage, we read that the church in Thesselonia was undergoing persecution and oppression, "all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring." From this context we can make a few observations:

First, this is not an endorsement of people seeking violent retribution. Unlike the Old Testament which does seem to endorse people committing violence in the name of God, the NT consistently calls on followers of Jesus to not retaliate, to not return harm for harm. This is no exception. This is a letter to a persecuted church that is practicing non-retaliation and suffering as a result, helping them cope with that, encouraging them to stay the course of nonviolence.

That brings us to the second insight: What is said here is intended to be a comfort to them in their suffering. It was supposed to make them feel better to know that their enemies would suffer. It may shock and disturb us now--That's important for us to recognize, and I'll return to that in a moment-- But it was originally intended to encourage them.

For us to wrap our heads around this, it's important to understand the broader cultural context of their time: This was a world where compassion and humility were not considered to be character traits, but immoral weaknesses. The idea of payback justice was self-evident both to Greco-Roman thinking as well as to the Jewish mindset. Today we live 2000 years after Jesus, and a lot of his values have sunk in. Love of enemies is still counter-cultural today, but back then it was literally unheard of. This was an idea that originated with Jesus, and it flew in the face of everything their Greco-Roman and Jewish religious culture told them. It was considered crazy, blasphemous, scandalous, foolish.

Consequently, to their thinking, to go from "I want to kill you" to "I will trust that God will kill you" was a big step foreword. However, for many of us today it seems like a step backwards now. Once we really start trying to love our enemies, praying for them, "blessing and not cursing" as Jesus says, this results in our developing compassion for them. We come to desire their good, not their harm. We come to have the heart of Jesus.

Jesus tells us in fact that this love is a reflection of God's heart who is our model for enemy love, encouraging us to "be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." God's "perfection" here, Jesus tells us, is seen in God's demonstration of enemy love. Paul says the same thing: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom 5:8).

So if we have a problem with this verse, it is not because we are rebelling against God. It is precisely because we have been following in the way of God in Christ, and because our heart has been changed to see things as Jesus does that we now stumble over this passage! What was intended as a way to help suffering people cope with their feelings of revenge, is now seen by us as making God look unlike Jesus. We have learned to embrace the way of Jesus, and believed that this was a reflection of God's true heart and character revealed in Christ. But this passage appears to say that God does not look like that, and does not follow the way of Jesus.

So we stop. We struggle. We question. And I think rightfully so!

After all, wasn't Jesus constantly questioning things like this? That's what got him in such hot water with the religious teachers. He even directly challenged commands like "an eye for an eye" (the very premise that this passage in Thessalonians is based on!) claiming that because God loves his enemies so should we. So, in contrast to what this above passage seems to say, Jesus says that there is not a double standard between how we are to act and how God acts. According to Jesus, God is the model for enemy love.

This passage also flies in the face of what Paul says. But wait a second, didn't Paul write this letter? Many scholars suspect that he did not, and one of the major reasons for this is that this passage just doesn't sound like something he would say. Typical for Paul is to present the "foolishness" of the gospel, to go against the cultural assumptions of payback justice, to promote the radical way of love over law, all in keeping with the message of Jesus. This passage doesn't fit with that. It doesn't sound like Paul, let alone Jesus.

But I don't think our criteria should be who said it. If we want to learn to read the Bible like Jesus did, this will involve questioning and wrestling with Scripture, no matter what the source. What I would propose is simple: We should evaluate all Scripture based on merit. As an example, let's look at something Jesus said and apply that principle:

Many people read the Sermon on the mount and understand it to be demanding us to do things that seem really hurtful: telling women to stay in relationships where they are being abused, telling people not to defend themselves, to not resist oppression, to not defend those who are being hurt or wronged.

As much as I believe in nonviolence and following that way of enemy love, I would say that if you are understanding the words of Jesus as wrong and hurtful and against your conscience, then you should not follow them. You should never do something that feels wrong or hurtful. Don't ever violate your conscience. That can cause irreparable harm.

Now I believe that I could intelligently articulate the application of enemy love in a way that would not mean submitting to oppression, but rather actively resisting it. Properly understood, enemy love is not about ignoring suffering, but actively working to alleviate it. But until you can understand this, understand how it is good and right, you should never simply blindly follow that way, even if it comes from Jesus himself. Because that can, and often has, lead to misapplying these principles, and thus promoting deeply hurtful things that are the opposite of what Jesus intended. That's what happens when we do things blindly. That's how the Pharisees read their Bibles, and why Jesus was so opposed to that way of reading.

Our priority needs to be on doing what is loving over blind obedience to commands. That is precisely the focus Jesus (and Paul) had. So we need to do things because they are good, and not simply because "those are the rules" or "the Bible says so" or even "Jesus says so."

Now let me stress here that I am not saying that we should simply do whatever we feel like doing. This is not a license for selfishness. My assumption is that we are trying to live our the way of Jesus the best we know how, not find an excuse to live out the values of Snooki from Jersey Shore. Paul councils us, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Rom 12:2). As we live in the Spirit, as we develop in our relationship with God, we come to have the mind of Christ, we come to think and see like Jesus.

The key here is that we engage our brains and hearts, rather than shutting them down. We don't do things blindly (as if we don't know Jesus, and are just following a book). Rather, we seek to develop the mind of Christ so that we "will be able to test and approve what God’s will is." Note those words: test and approve. In other words, we can evaluate Scripture on its own merit.

That means that while we should not follow something that seems hurtful to us, we should however stay open to understanding it in a healthy way. So if Jesus' way of love of enemies can be demonstrated to make sense and work (and I am convinced it absolutely can), then we should follow it. If it can be demonstrated that Jesus' way of restorative justice does a better job at addressing the deep problems we have than the way of an eye for an eye, (and again we are seeing tons of evidence that this is true too), then we should apply it.

It's a very simple exegetical principle: Evaluate on merit. Test and approve. Follow what you understand. Remain open to learn and grow. Honestly, that's how most of us already read the Bible. We highlight and underline the parts that speak to us, and skip over the parts that don't. The major difference is that rather than doing this unthinkingly (and perhaps pretending we aren't!) I am proposing we do it purposely and intelligently, and with the intention of developing the mind of Christ and following in his way.

Consequently, when we run into a verse that strikes us as wrong (especially ones that seem to fly in the face of what we have learned from Jesus and his way!) such as this one in Thessalonians or the one that says that women should never teach men (which lots of scholars also doubt Paul wrote by the way), then we should apply that same test that we did to the Sermon on the Mount: We should evaluate it on its own merit.

We ask: Is it compelling? Does it help us love better? To act more like Jesus? To open our hearts to God in trust?

As I see it, this passage in Thessalonians fails those tests. Perhaps it did all of these things in its original context, as a way to help people steeped in a culture of retribution to cope with their need for violence. But it seems to do the opposite now. It pulls me away from Jesus, and tethers me to the very broken way of seeing the world that Jesus was trying so hard to help us all move away from. It's a good step forward for those who are still stuck in the thinking of payback justice, but it pales in comparison of the God revealed in Christ.

If we can allow that the people who wrote the Bible were human like us, that they (like us) were not immune to their own cultural blinders, that they (like us) had different levels of insight into the depths of Christ's love and way... then we can look for the good in what they wrote, and pass over the not so good.

As Paul says in his (undisputed) 1st letter to the Thessalonians,

"Test everything. Hold on to what is good. Reject what seems bad"

(1 Thesselonians 5:21-22).

A Response to the Gospel Coalition's Review of my Book

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:44:00 +0000

Recently, the Gospel Coalition published a review of my book Healing the Gospel. The book offers a major critique of hyper-Calvinism and the violent and retributive image of God behind it, proposing instead that the gospel is rooted in the idea of God’s enemy love and restorative justice. So it will probably come as little surprise that they didn't care for the book much.

The review was written by Peter Gurry, a student at Dallas Theological Seminary. Peter begins by correctly identifying a central thesis of my book:

"That thesis, in brief, is 'restoration triumphs over retribution'—purportedly 'the central narrative of the New Testament'"(58). In other words, Flood doesn’t just argue that penal substitution is wrong, misguided, or unbiblical (though he claims all that); he argues that it’s antithetical to the true gospel because it promotes the very thing God saves us from—retributive justice"

He continues, correctly describing the harm that comes from our embracing retribution, which I outline in the book,

"Retributive justice, as Flood sees it, is deeply harmful. It leads to a battery of heinous ills such as “beating children, torturing prisoners and heretics, etc.” and culminates in even more destructive views of God and ourselves (8). Believers and unbelievers alike are affected. Unbelievers wonder how being saved by a vindictive God could be good news, and believers suffer a crippling sense of self-loathing. The result is a “faith motivated by fear, threat, and feelings of worthlessness” (3)"

His critique begins by making a number of unsubstantiated assertions: Peter claims for example that there is no problem in simultaneously claiming that we die with Christ, and that Christ dies instead of us. He offers no explanation however of how that would be logically possible. Nor does he mention that while the NT frequently says Christ died “for us” and also frequently says that we die “with Christ,” it never once says Christ died instead of us. This is why many Pauline scholars have suggested that the language of "participation" is more reflective of what Paul was expressing than the traditional Reform language of "substitution" is.

Similarly, Peter rejects several readings of Scripture that I outline in the book, but offers no arguments as to why they should be rejected other than to simply declare them "untenable." Considering that the arguments I make in the book are based on work done by some pretty major biblical scholars (James Dunn, Michael Gorman, Morna Hooker, to name a few), I hardly think that one can simply dismiss them out of hand as "untenable."

I make the case in my book that viewing sin strictly from a legal lens has led to a profoundly deficient understanding of sin that in fact trivializes the problem and offers no real cure, and in fact adds to the hurt. It is a view of sin that is out of step with everything we have learned over the last century about mental health, and out of step with the NT.

Peter completely ignores all that his review, and simply makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is no problem with viewing sin as crime. But there is in fact a huge problem. If I get a speeding ticket, that works pretty well at deterring me from speeding. So in cases like this, it seems to work fine. But our prison system has an enormously high rate of repeat offenders, and an alarming amount of people in prison are mentally ill or addicts. What we are increasingly finding is that punitive measures do not lead to their reform, they make them worse. In contrast, restorative programs have had great success at reducing violence in prison and bringing about actual rehabilitation (no repeat offenses). In addition to that, restorative programs also help the victims of crime to heal. Punitive programs do nothing to restore victims.

It’s important to also make clear that Peter does not think that retributive justice should have the function of restoring (or deterring for that matter). He thinks that the purpose should be to inflict hurt for hurt. When he says retribution, he really means it. We need to keep that in mind when he speaks about the "vertical aspect" that is allegedly missing in my book. What is missing is the idea that God must punish sin, and that God cannot simply heal it. In other words, in his view, even if God could heal us and make us loving, good, and holy in Christ, Peter thinks that would not be enough. Even if God could mend the hurt done by our sin to ourselves and others, that would not be enough. God (according to Peter) demands blood, demands hurt. I think that is a view of God that is completely out of step with the New Testament, and deeply troubling.

This brings us to Peter’s biggest objection which is that he feels I focus too much on the "horizontal" impact of sin—how it harms us—and not enough on the "vertical" aspect of how it offends God:

"[N]ot once does he angle his definition of sin vertically. He does not mention that the first commandment is always the first to be broken. He does not follow Joseph's or David’s concern that sin is fundamentally against God ... Because Flood provides no antidote to our idolatry, his cure turns out to be worse than his diagnosis. Much better to know that in Christ God has not only cured our idol-loving hearts, but he has publicly punished them, too."

In response I would say that this is simply not true. I do focus on the vertical aspect of sin, but the focus is God-down-to-us rather than us-up-to-God. In other words: God is not the one with the problem, we are. That's why God comes to us, while we were yet sinners, while we were God's enemies, and first loved us. Jesus continually draws our attention to how we treat others as a reflection of how we love God. "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me" Jesus tells us. When David says in Psalm 51 "Against you only, Lord, have I sinned" he is saying the same thing as Jesus. As the king he had thought that he could do whatever he wanted, and so he raped Bathsheba, and then had her husband killed. But now David has realized that in sinning against these powerless subjects of his, he had in fact sinned against the king of kings. The point here is not to say that God doesn't care about what David has done to that poor couple, and instead wanted to have all the attention. The whole point is that God wants us to care about the least, to care about each other. Vertical sin is inseparably connected to horizontal sin.

So if by a vertical focus we mean the notion that God is somehow “offended,” and needs to be mollified by us—that God can't love us until “satisfied” by violent punishment, then yes I do reject that idea. God is not some insecure monarch demanding his pound of flesh. God is the one who comes to us in Jesus, seeking reconciliation. God is not the one with the problem, we are. God does not need to be changed, we do. God does not need to be turned around (=repenting), we do.

If however a vertical focus means that we need to center our lives around God revealed in Christ, then this is in fact something I discuss at great length in the book. I see it as absolutely essential because it is through living with Jesus as our bottom line, as our Lord, and indeed as our friend in an intimate and growing relationship that we learn to love others just as Christ did. This is the "antidote to idolatry" Peter is looking for, found in a loving and transformative relationship with God. That vertical relationship with God naturally flows into our horizontal relationships with others because when we have truly experienced what it is like to be unconditionally loved by God, not based on our goodness, but based on God’s goodness, how can we help but want to treat others with that same grace and mercy we have known? This is not a heaven-ward focus, because a focus on God in Christ calls us not to look up, but to look down to the least. That's where we find Christ.

So the claim made here that I do not have a vertical focus is simply not true. On the contrary, I have a clear "vertical focus" in the book, but it is one focused on a loving and good God showing us enemy love and grace, rather than on an angry God demanding punishment in order to be mollified. That latter view sounds more like a primitive volcano god, and not like God revealed in Jesus Christ.

50 Shades of Grace: Restorative justice and the Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:23:00 +0000

A reader of my new book Healing the Gospel wrote and asked me this excellent question:

"You say that restorative justice is the solution to retributive justice. One question ... isn't the latter the position of the OT that was instigated by God under the law? If so then is God solving a problem that he has created? If retributive justice is not that of the law then where did it come from?"

I think the answer can be found in how Paul has come to read Scripture: Paul tells us in Galatians that the law was something that was given as a temporary thing until the real thing--the "promise" in Christ--comes and makes the law obsolete:

"Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian" (Gal 3:23-25).

The purpose of the law is to keep us in check as a "guardian". The purpose of en eye for an eye is to restrict the escalation of violence. it is 1 eye instead of the 7 times of Cain and the 77 times Lamech demands "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times!" (Gen 4:24). We see in the genesis account that vengeance is a sinful human response which quickly escalates into out of control violence. The law comes in and curbs this violence by saying "no not 77 eyes, just 1 eye." However, it is not God's intent that the law is the permanent solution. That's why Jesus overturns an eye for an eye in the Sermon on the mount, replacing it with the superior system of enemy love, and why he also reveres Lamech's declaration of extreme violence by making it that we forgive 77 times instead of 7 times (Matt 18:22). Now it is the escalation of forgiveness!

We are under a new way in Christ, the way of radical forgiveness and enemy love. Although it was good in that it curbed the escalation of violence, Paul says in that the reason the law was insufficient is because is cannot produce life:

"Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law" (Gal 3:21).

This idea of the gospel being life-imparting is one that Paul returns to frequently. Retribution and punishment are not life-imparting because they can only give a negative consequence for hurtful actions, but they cannot change our hearts, they cannot heal. Restorative justice can. It heals, mends, imparts life. The one gives restrictions, and the other is all about our being transformed by being in union with Christ, in a loving relationship where we are transformed by God's love as we spend time with Jesus and grow to be like him.

The law is limited in what it can do (it cannot impart life, it cannot make us holy) and thus is not God's ultimate plan (As Paul says, the promise is not the law), however Paul maintains that it has a good purpose. However, it has also through sin become something deeply hurtful, as Paul confesses in Romans:

"I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death" (Rom 7:10-11)

Anything good can become hurtful. In fact, the more good something is, the more potential it has to cause harm when it goes bad. Families are meant to be a place where we are safe and loved, but they can also be deeply abusive and leave devastating scars. Religion and law are also meant to be good, but can likewise become abusive. We see that abuse in the Pharisees whom Jesus is continually confronting. Paul was a Pharisee too before he changed his way and took up the way of Christ.

This is not about pitting Judaism against Christianity! Jesus and Paul were both Jews. It is about how we approach faith. Whether we use religion to justify hurtfulness (ranging from hurtful words that exclude and condemn, to actual acts of violence done in God's name) or whether we instead take up the way of grace, restoration, and love of enemies.

So, with all that under our belt, let's return to the original question: retributive justice (i.e. the way of seeking vengeance for harm done) is something that pre-existed the law. It is a human response to hurt that quickly escalates in to more and more hurt. The law of an eye for an eye was a temporary measure intended to curb violence. However, as Paul tells us, this was not God's ultimate plan. God's ultimate plan is seen in the superior way of restorative justice which is modeled by God in his act of restorative justice in Christ. That is how God loves us, and we are to likewise love like that too.

Wrath can be understood as the consequence for sin (Paul describes it in terms of wages, inheritance, fruit which are all different ways at getting at this idea). So saying that wrath follows sin is a bit like saying that death follows a terminal illness. According to the laws of medicine, that is how sickness works. So the intent of the law is to warn people to avoid behaviors that are hurtful in the same way that a doctor would advise us to avoid behavior that would lead to sickness. At best it the law can give us a picture of what the ideal picture of healthy relationships should look like.

The role we see wrath playing in the OT is therefore primarily one of warning. Similar to those warning on the side of cigarette boxes, the prophets warn of impending disaster from sin with the intent of moving their hearers to repentance. That is, the desire is never for harm, it is always instead for people to turn from their hurtful ways and to live.

But what so we do with people who don't listen and get sick? What do we do with people who fall outside of that law, people who both hurt others and have been hurt themselves? (which, if we are honest would probably be all of us!) What do we do with people who are blinded by their pain, and who make dumb and hurtful choices? Do we just write them off? Do we wish pain on them? Not if we love them we don't. But we also cannot simply look on while the hurt continues.

That is where the idea of healing comes in. A doctor may warn you not to smoke, but if you get cancer, that doctor will nevertheless do everything they can to fight that cancer and save your life. This is exactly what we see Jesus doing: he does not blame or condemn people, he restores, heals, and forgives them, and calls them to follow. People thought that when a person was sick that this was a judgement of God due to their sin. We see this for example in the story of the man born blind where his disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). We can see this same thinking backed up in many parts of the Old Testament. Jesus does not affirm these "judgments," and in fact identifies this not with God's judgment, but with the work of the Satan, and declares that he has come to oppose that reign with his kingdom.

So we see some pretty radical shifts taking place here. A major take-away is that neither Jesus or Paul understand the Old Testament to be a perfect revelation of God's eternal way. There are many things about it that a provisional and limited. That's why Jesus says that it needed to be "fulfilled" (the Greek word means "completed") and then proceeds to amend and reverse things like an eye for an eye with love of enemies on the sermon on the Mount. In other words, his fulfillment does not mean he accepts everything (since we see him immediately reversing some things), rather it means he lovingly brings it to its full intended place, just as Jesus does not leave us as he finds us, but lovingly shapes us into Christ-likeness.

Consider Paul's story: He had read his Bible as a Pharisee and it had led him to a life of religious violence--persecuting the church, participating in the stoning of Stephen--which later led him to call himself "the greatest of sinners." Paul's great sin as he understood it was using religion as a justification for hurting people. After he came to Christ (which at involved an act of healing and enemy love), he had to go back and learn to read his Bible in a completely different way. He had been trained in the law, he knew the Bible inside and out, and yet it had lead him to that he describes as "producing death." The New Testament is all about confronting that legacy of toxic religion which is epitomized in the way of retribution and religiously justified violence and replacing it with the superior way of grace and God's restorative justice revealed in Christ.

Part of the consequence of that means that we need to learn to read the Bible like Jesus did, and like Paul learned to as well. That means that we learn to look for the way of Jesus, and recognize that, especially in the Old Testament, we do not always see that way reflected. So we need to learn to read Scripture Christocentrically, that is, we need to learn to recognize when Scripture reflects Christ... and when it does not. That's why Paul writes,

"To this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away" (2 Cor 3:14).

This is a huge topic (and this is a really long blog post already!), so let me end with some resources: My Sojourners article on how Paul wrestled with violence in the Bible is a good place to start. If you've read Brian McLaren's new book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? you'll likely recognize the same content in one of the chapters, which he based on my Sojourners article (he of course asked me, and I was thrilled). I'm in the process of working that article into a full length book for my next major project, but that will take a while. In the meantime, another helpful resource is the work of Eric Seibert. Eric has two books out on this topic: Disturbing Divine Behavior and The Violence of Scripture. Both highly recommended. Another great resource is the work of William Webb and his trajectory hermeneutics.

My book Healing the Gospel is now on Amazon!

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:54:00 +0000

UPDATE: News on Kindle, faster shipping, and discounts! (Details below)

I'm happy to announce that my book Healing the Gospel is finally out! You can order the book from Amazon or get it directly from the publisher Wipf and Stock / Cascade Books for a discount. Here's the description from the back cover:

Why did Jesus have to die? Was it to appease a wrathful God's demand for punishment? Does that mean Jesus died to save us from God? How could someone ever truly love or trust a God like that? How can that ever be called "Good News"? It's questions like these that make so many people want to have nothing to do with Christianity.

Healing the Gospel challenges the assumption that the Christian understanding of justice is rooted in a demand for violent punishment, and instead offers a radically different understanding of the gospel based on God's restorative justice. Connecting our own experiences of faith with the New Testament narrative, author Derek Flood shows us an understanding of the cross that not only reveals God's heart of grace, but also models our own way of Christ-like love. It's a vision of the gospel that exposes violence, rather than supporting it--a gospel rooted in love of enemies, rather than retribution. The result is a nonviolent understanding of the atonement that is not only thoroughly biblical, but will help people struggling with their faith to encounter grace.

As those of you who have been following my blog for a while know, this book has been in the works for a long time, and this blog has chronicled that process. So I am thrilled that it's finally available! It will certainly ruffle some feathers, as it takes on penal substitution as not only unbiblical, but also deeply harmful. But my hope is that it will be a vehicle of healing to those whose faith has been damaged by that hurtful understanding of God, and in some small way open up a way for folks to recognize and experience the truly good news of God's amazing grace and love!

I've gotten a lot of help and encouragement from others along the way. Brian McLaren, who wrote the foreword to the book, has been really supportive of the project from the get go. Michael Gorman gave his careful scholarly eye to the manuscript, offering lots of exacting challenges that were invaluable in sharpening the biblical arguments. And I've gotten lots of encouragement from many wonderful folks (see the endorsements section on Amazon for details).

So go get yourself a copy, and let me know what you think--both here on the blog and on the reviews at Amazon!

UPDATE: Get the book shipped right away! Because the book is selling so well on Amazon, there's currently a delay on shipping times there. Wouldn't you like to get it shipped right away? Of course you would, and you can! You can get a brand new version on Amazon shipped right away if you order it from the Windowsbooks seller. They are the official reseller of my publisher, so you can be sure the quality is perfect, and you have the Amazon guarantee too! Heck, they even do international orders.

UPDATE: 40% off for Bulk discounts! If you need to get multiple copies for your discussion group or class there is a bulk discount of 40% off the retail price when you buy 5 or more copies. To get this special offer all you need to do is send an email to orders@wipfandstock.com

UPDATE: Get Kindle and read it without the wait! In addition to the paperback version, you can also now get the book instantly on Kindle. Also you will find the search inside the book feature there if you wanted to browse through it a bit (I always like to do that).

(UUTPB9QGH7EU)

My Interview with Beyond the Box Podcast from the Wildgoose Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:42:00 +0000

UPDATE: Brian McLaren's new book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? has a rather controversial chapter in it that deals with wrestling with violence in the Bible.

The main arguments and exegetical arguments in it are based heavily on my Sojourners article where I show how Paul dealt with violence in the Old Testament, and propose that we should read our Bibles the same way.

In this podcast I discussed that article, while I was at the Wildgoose Festival and got a chance to sit down for an interview with Raborn Johnson from the Beyond the Box podcast:

Listen at Beyond the Box Podcast

Download on iTunes

Download Mp3
(right-click to download)

Ray and I actually got to spend a lot of time just hanging out together after that interview with Michael Hardin, Brad Jersak, and Kevin Miller, having these really wonderful in-depth conversations together where we would all just completely lose track of time, and our necks would all hurt from nodding so much.

If you are not familiar with Beyond the Box you really should check it out (and not just because yours truly is there). They have tons of really awesome interviews that I have really enjoyed listing to, so check it out!

Here it is in iTunes

Rethinking the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 21:01:00 +0000

In seminary we learned to interpret the doctrine using something called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral which looks to four sources: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The primary source of knowledge here is the Bible, followed by church tradition.

It all sounds quite reasonable, but as I really studied the New Testament what I found was that Jesus and the apostles used a very different criteria: The New Testament perspective is not based on a rigid adherence to Scripture or tradition. It is primarily based on their experience. The disciples had experienced God come among them in Jesus. They had experienced that the messiah had not come as a warrior as they expected from their reading of the Bible, but had instead given his life. They had experienced Jesus rising from the dead. And finally, the early church was now experiencing that salvation had been made available to all people, to gentiles!

All of this, it must be stressed, completely contradicted how they had all read their Bibles up til then, and completely contradicted the religious tradition that had inherited. They did not come to these conclusions because of a new discovery in exegesis, they came to these radically new views through experiencing what the Spirit was doing among them! This caused them to consequently go back and re-read their Bibles again, trying to make sense of what was happening.

Fact: If the apostles had taken the dogmatic approach to reading their Bibles that so many of us have, then they never would have accepted Jesus as messiah, and they never would have preached salvation to gentiles.

Both the idea of a suffering nonviolent messiah and God's mercy towards gentiles simply did not line up with what they had expected from their reading of Scripture. This is not conjecture on my part, it is something they explicitly state (see for example Peter's two exclamations of "Never, Lord!" first in Matthew 16 where he forbids Jesus to go to the cross, and again in Acts 10 where he resists offering salvation to gentiles). However, the apostles stayed open to what God was doing in their midst, even when it expanded their understanding of truth.

If we want to follow in the apostle's footsteps, then we need to move in that same trajectory, rather than tethering ourselves to a supposed "biblical" view that loses step with what the Spirit is doing.

Re-Thinking the gospel #2: The gospel and violence

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:56:00 +0000

Last time I discussed how a preacher in the park said that God would send you to hell for stealing a stick of gum. Now what would you say if a person answered,

"Well, I have never stolen anything. In fact, I have perfectly kept all of God's law. I have no problem keeping all of the commandments!"

Perhaps you would then quote Paul where he says, that no one can keep the law. Except that Paul doesn't ever say this. And guess who the person is who makes the above claim of being the perfect law-keeper? Big drum roll please...

It was the Apostle Paul.

That's right, Paul says in Philippians 3:6 that he has kept the Torah "faultlessly." He tells us that he was "Hebrew of Hebrews," and has no problem keeping the law perfectly. Yet Paul tells he considers all of this to be "garbage" compared to Christ. Why?

Because of what it did to him.

Despite this spotless record Paul considered himself to be "the worst of all sinners." Not because he had broken any commandments or laws. Again, he was "faultless" here he tells us. No, the reason Paul tells us is "because I was a blasphemer and a violent man." Paul had participated in the violent persecution of the followers of Jesus, and he did this because he thought he was being faithful to God.

When Paul says he is a "blasphemer" this does not mean he was cussing. It means that because of his hurtful actions, he gave God a bad name. Today we experience the same thing: people who preach hate and hurt in God's name drive people from God. They give God a bad name, they make God seem like monster. When people reject this abusive image of God, that is not the blasphemy. The blasphemy, Paul tells us--his blasphemy that he came to be ashamed of--was misrepresenting who God was. As he writes (speaking to people like his former self) "God's name is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you."

Now, the ironic thing is that when people like that preacher tell us that God will send us to hell for some minor infraction, they base this on Romans where Paul says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Because of this, we get the idea that God is the one with the problem. So we need to tell people that God is really mad at them for some trivial thing they did. It's a message completely detached from life that paints God as a petty legalist.

The thing is, this is not at all Paul's point in Romans. His focus when he says that above statement in Romans is on violence, and more specifically on religious violence. Paul is addressing a religious audience who want God to judge, who want wrath to be poured out on the hated Gentiles. Paul is telling them--and he knows this firsthand because he had participated in this religiously justified violence himself!--that this way leads to death. He is not addressing irreligious sinners and telling them to repent of law-breaking, he is addressing religious people who believe in divine retribution and telling them to repent of that.

Now that is a sin that matters! If our only problem is that we tell a white lie or cuss when we stub our toe, then that is really pretty trivial. Many people would argue that God ought to be able to just overlook trivial things like that. After all, they would say, why can't God forgive like he tells us to? But what Paul is dealing with here is hatred, murder, and violence. People killing each other in the name of God and justice. Now we are dealing with some really serious heavy stuff that does real damage, devastating families, destroying lives. God cares about this because he cares about us. God cannot just overlook that, because it is really hurting people he loves. Paul is not talking about trivial infractions, he is talking about sin which devastates and destroys. Paul is talking about violence.

Not only is this a very serious thing Paul is addressing, it is also quite subtle: It's pretty easy to recognize that alcoholism is bad (indeed it is a very serious sin that causes real harm). It's also easy to recognize that criminal behavior is bad (and it certainly is). But it's a lot harder to recognize the kind of thing Paul is addressing, because this is violence and hurt done in the name of God and justice. What Paul shows us is that you can be religiously "faultless" and still cause severe harm, still spread hate, still advocate for violence, but do it under the cover of God and country, do so while justifying your actions with the Bible! That was Paul's sin, and that is precisely what Paul is addressing in Romans.

Paul is telling us that the gospel is about breaking out of that way of hurting others in God's name, breaking out of the logic of retributive justice, and entering into God's way of restorative justice demonstrated in Jesus Christ. That's an understanding of the gospel that is not only a much more accurate reading of what Paul is actually saying in Romans, but is also an extremely relevant message for us today.

Re-Thinking the gospel #1: Sin and Chewing Gum

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Yesterday, I was walking through Dolores Park and heard a street preacher, saying "If you've ever stolen a stick of gum, then you are guilty of sin! If you've ever looked at Facebook at work, then you've stolen from your employer, and that's sin!" Of course we all know where he was headed: If we have sinned--even with a trivial infraction like a stick of gum--then God who is holy must punish us for all eternity in Hell unless we accept Jesus right now.

I mean, seriously, gum? Why can't God just get over it? Is God less moral than all of us are? This is not a picture of holiness, it is a picture of a petty tyrant. Aside from the horrible picture of God that this gives us (and honestly, who could ever love, trust, and feel safe around a God like that?), what this ultimately does is trivialize sin. It makes sin into a petty infraction of little consequence.

We live in a world with real hurt. All you need to do to see this is read the headlines, and you will see story after story of terrible injustice, violence, and suffering throughout the world. So much so it can overwhelming. If you spend the time to really listen to those around you, and will hear stories of deep hurt, broken families, broken people. We do not need to make up fake problems about chewing gum. There are plenty of real problems and hurt in our lives.

Jesus does not focus on gum, or even going too far with your girl friend in Jr High school, or dropping an F-bomb when you stub your toe. His overwhelming focus was on things that have deep and devastating effects on people's lives--the alienation and estrangement that can come from poverty, sickness, and injustice. That's what Jesus spent the majority of his time focusing on. They matter more because they have more profound consequences. If you feel worthless, condemned, cut off, this is devastating in a way that affects the whole course of your life.

And here's the thing: Jesus did not tell people that this was a sin. He did not tell them to repent of this. Instead, he demonstrated the care and nearness of God to them. He healed the wounded and embraced the untouchable. The biggest problem, as Jesus saw it, was not that we had done things that were wrong and needed to seek forgiveness from an angry God. Our biggest problem was that people felt cut off from God, forsaken.

This, I would propose, is the #1 struggle that people have with God today. What drives so many people to atheism is not selfishness or hedonism, but the experience of abandonment in the face of suffering, grief, and injustice. In fact, it is a problem that touches us whether we are people of faith or completely secular. In the face of debilitating illness or tragedy we can feel isolated and alone. Similarly, those who have experienced violence know as well that this can make you feel helpless and abandoned.

These are things that can bring us to act in hurtful and destructive ways, but the root problem is not this hurtful behavior (this is a mere symptom), our problem is separation. Our problem is relational.

Now, of course where there is hurt and injustice, there are not only victims, but also those who have hurt others. Surely it is right to call people on their hurtfulness, but the focus needs to be on helping these people to develop empathy, and all the more, our main focus really needs to be on caring for those who have been hurt.

This was the clear focus of Jesus. Yes, he confronted those who hurt others (especially those who did so in the name of religion). Yes, he taught us all to walk in the way of compassion and empathy (which he referred to as "love of enemies"). But the majority of his time Jesus spent caring for those who had been shut out and wounded, his focus was on victims.

Yes, you heard me right: when we place the focus on sinners in need of repentance we do not share the focus of Jesus. That is simply not how he understood his mission, how he understood the gospel.
It is part of it, but when we make it primarily about this we shrink the gospel, and make it irrelevant to those who are not struggling with this particular issue. In focusing on defining ourselves as "sinners in need of repentance" we have placed the focus on redeeming those who harm others (which includes us), often ignoring the needs of those who have been harmed (which includes us, too). This is simply not the focus of Jesus.

It is good to seek to redeem those who harm, but this cannot mean that we neglect to care for those who have been harmed. That's why Jesus cared so much about issues of poverty, sickness, and a host of other social issues tied to self-worth which can separate a person from God and life which we as the church have so often overlooked. Read the gospels and note that Jesus spends the vast majority of his time demonstrating God's love to those who feel cut off due to suffering and injustice, and relatively little time telling people to repent. In fact, when he does tell people to repent it is almost always addressed to the religious people who were shutting out the poor and the least!

Again, the point here is not to condone sin, not to say "we have grace so let's do whatever." Far from it! The point is to recognize that the problem is much bigger than rule-breaking, and the gospel actually addresses that big problem in a very deep way. We don't need to make up fake problems (like chewing gum). There are very real problems that we all experience right now, and Jesus clearly addresses these problems. This is what we need to deal with.

That means that the gospel is not some irrelevant problem that we need to convince people they have (God is mad at them for some minor infraction or because of original sin), but rather it addresses our real need in a real way. That includes hurtful behavior (what we call "sin") but it goes way deeper than just the outward behavior--it deals with the heart.

God is not a petty legalist who is angry about every stick of chewing gum. It's just the opposite: God wants us to care for the other. God wants us to care for those whom we value the least. If God cares about sin, it's because God cares about you and me. "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." God cares because God loves us, and wants us to stop hurting each other. So what we need to learn is how to love like Jesus does. That has nothing to do with rules and everything to do with relationship.

The focus therefore is not about how "good" you need to be in order to make it into heaven, or on whether God can overlook that bad thing you did. It's not about using Jesus as a legal loophole so you can get your ticket to heaven. That ultimately leads to self-focus, and we need to instead be relationally-focused. We need to care about hurting each other, we need to be active in making things right. Because, to paraphrase Jesus on the sermon on the mount: You are worth much more to God than chewing gum.

Next time: Paul's view of sin as religious violence in Romans

A Christus Victor presentation of the atonement [VIDEO]

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:09:00 +0000

I don't normally like these kinds of skits, but this is just beautiful. It really captures the gospel, both in how it captures the real depth and harm of our brokenness, and also in how it shows how God in Christ acts to break us out of our hurtfulness and restore us into a loving relationship. I can't watch this without crying.

How to Read the Bible Like an Anabaptist: A Jesus-shaped hermenutic

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:06:00 +0000

(re-posted from RLC)

How does a “Red Letter Christian” read the Bible? From the name, you’d think it means that we focus on the red letters of Jesus. This is certainly true. But does that mean that we ignore the regular black letters of, for instance, the Apostle Paul? Some would say yes. They would argue that we need to prioritize the Gospels over Paul’s epistles because we have put too much focus on believing the right things about Jesus, and not enough focus on actually following Jesus. After all, Jesus clearly says in John “If you love me, keep my commands” and then adds “This is my command: Love each other as I have loved you.” Believing stuff about God doesn’t matter much if you don’t live it. As the saying goes, they will know we are Christians by our love. Our most powerful witness is when we show Jesus to people by our lives.

Nevertheless, I’d argue that this does not mean that we should stop reading Paul. Rather, we need to read both Paul’s letters and the Gospels with a focus on living the way of Jesus as part of a loving relationship with God where we grow to look and act like Jesus, rather than with a focus on abstract doctrine. Paul’s letters are in fact full of pastoral advice to churches about how to live Jesus-shaped lives. So the focus is not on reading just one part of the Bible and ignoring others, but on reading all of the Bible with a focus on following Jesus. As Tony Campolo writes in his book Red Letter Christians, “We emphasize the ‘red letters’ because we believe that you can only understand the rest of the Bible when you read it from the perspective provided by Christ.” In other words, all of the Bible needs to be read and interpreted in a way that points to its ultimate focus–which is Jesus.

So what does that Jesus-shaped focus mean practically? How does it change how we read the Bible? One consequence is that it means leaning to read our Bibles in the same way that Jesus did. Folks often quote the passage from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” and take this as a blanket approval of every part of the Old Testament. What this rather obviously ignores is the fact that after saying this, Jesus then immediately proceeds to say all sorts of things that throw the traditional reading of the Old Testament on its head–loving your enemies instead of seeking “an eye for an eye” and so on. His point of course is not to be unfaithful to the Bible, but to be more faithful to it. But we simply cannot do that if we read it as a flat book. We need to learn to read it like Jesus did, leading us to find the same loving Abba he did, and to love like he did.

The fact is, Jesus had a reputation among the religious folks of his day of interpreting Scripture in a way that seemed absolutely scandalous to them. He broke the Sabbath, touched the unclean, and so on. His clear focus in all of this was on caring for those on the margins, on prioritizing people over rules. We need to learn to read the Bible like that too. That means we need to ask whether a passage reflects Jesus or not. For example, once when some people were insulting Jesus, his disciples asked him if they should “call down fire from heaven, in the same way that Elijah had?” Here they are citing a clear biblical precedent set by the prophet Elijah who had demonstrated by this that he is a “man of God,” and they are asking Jesus if they should follow that example. This wasn’t just a theoretical question. We know that, before his conversion, Paul took part in the stoning of Stephen. So lots of people really thought back then that killing people was an act of faithfulness to God. That’s how many folks read their Bibles then, including as we can see here some of his disciples. But Jesus rebukes them and says “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s lives, but to save them.”

Here we have Jesus showing that if something does not reflect Jesus, we need reject it like he did. That’s pretty radical, but we follow a radical savior. Really making Jesus Lord means we need to prioritize Jesus as the ultimate and superior revelation of God’s nature and way. So we can look back in this way and see that the whole Bible including the Old Testament ultimately points to Christ, but we cannot simply read the Bible as a flat book. It is a book that is only properly interpreted when it reflects and leads us to Jesus and his way. That’s why Paul writes, “To this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.”

Now, let me stress that all of this is my own perspective, my own humble proposal of what a Jesus-centered reading of the Bible should look like, and should not be taken as any kind of “official statement” by Red Letter Christians. I say all of this as part of a community of people who are all trying to live out a Jesus-shaped life, and believe that the best way to do theology is in conversation and community. That brings me to a second principle which involves the balance between reading the Bible personally vs. reading it through the eyes of tradition. Protestants emphasize personal interpretation, while Catholics emphasize tradition. I’d like to propose a third way which, again, puts Jesus at the center:

First, the key factor in a personal reading is that it must be Spirit-led. Again, Tony Campolo stresses that “Jesus can be alive and present to each and every person, and that salvation depends on yielding to Him and inviting Him to be a vital, transforming presence in our lives.” Anabaptists refer to this as the “hermeneutics of obedience” meaning that you can only properly interpret the Bible when you are living it, when you are really following Jesus. Note the Jesus-focus here. That focus does not lead to us wanting to side-step difficult parts of the Bible. In fact, the opposite is the case: The whole impetus of the RLC movement is that many of us felt that we needed to take the words of Jesus more seriously than we had seen it being taken by the larger church. Some clear examples here are taking seriously Christ’s call to love our enemies, or to care for the poor and the least. Red Letter Christians have seen this being neglected by their tradition, and are calling to more faithfulness to Jesus. That’s what it looks like when a person is lead by the Spirit to faithfully speak out against the status quo tradition.

The second point involves the positive role tradition plays in this. The key question is: what tradition? As we all know, Christian tradition has taken some pretty horrible turns over the years–burning people at the stake, holy wars, torture, and so on — and remember: these were practiced by both Protestant and Catholics alike! So what we need is not to base our reading on some central religious authority that claims to hold the keys to the truth (whether Catholic or Protestant). Rather, we need to read our Bibles communally as part of a body of disciples who are all actively seeking to embody and follow Jesus. Note again the Jesus-focus here: It is a Jesus-following tradition. We need to interpret Scripture both in community with others who are really living it, as well as hearing from those who in the past have walked the same narrow road we are on. This is crucial because learning how to live out the way of Jesus happens best when we can learn from the wisdom of those who have walked that way before us — who have built on the foundation of Christ, and demonstrate with their lives a sophisticated vision of what following Jesus looks like. As Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Put all of that together and what we have is, in the words of Stewart Murray Williams, (1) a Spirit-filled disciple, (2) confidently interpreting Scripture within a community of such disciples, (3) aware that Jesus Christ is the center from which the rest of Scripture must be interpreted.

New Article: The Abolishment of Retribution in the Church Fathers

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:56:00 +0000

In 2010 I wrote an article for EQ entitled "Substitutionary atonement in the Church Fathers" (you'll find a link in the Articles section to the right) where I argued that the "substitutionary" aspect of the atonement was not understood by the Fathers in the terms of retributive justice (as the Calvinist doctrine of penal substitution holds) but in terms of God's restorative justice.

Recently, Garry Williams has written a rebuttal of my article in EQ where he argues that the Fathers did understand substitution in terms of the fulfillment of retributive justice. After this came out many of you wrote to me and asked for my response to his critiques. Well, today is your lucky day! I've written a response entitled:

The Abolishment of Retribution in the Church Fathers

In this new article I decided not to reply to every point Garry made in his article (which I thought would just be self-indulgent and tedious to most folks). Instead, I decided to take the strongest points he made, and address those in a deep way. So I've focused the article on two big figures: Athanasius and Augustine.

I dig in deep to their respective understandings of the atonement, getting into a lot of the Greek for Athanasius, but also (and I think perhaps more substantially) using my artist's eye to recognize the broad narrative themes they both paint of God's struggle to save humanity. So there's lots of good stuff for you theology nerds out there to sink your teeth into!

At the same time, I wanted to go beyond my first article and ask some more probing questions of the Fathers: Beyond their understanding of the atonement--which I maintain are clearly based on a model of God's restorative justice--do the Church Fathers also embrace the way of restorative justice as it applies to our lives together? In other words, is their understanding of God's restorative justice only applied to our individual personal salvation, and the rest of life governed by retributive/punitive justice? Or does that understanding of God's restorative justice inform how we should act in our world--including how we understand the role of civil authority? Considering the history of violence and religion that still shapes our thought today, these are difficult but critical questions to ask.

So give it a read and let me know what you think in the comments below!

In memory of Walter Wink

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:44:00 +0000

I was sad to hear about the passing of theologian and peace activist Walter Wink this week (May 10, 2012). The news came as a shock to me because he was only 76 years old. That is far too soon to go. I really hate death.

I never had the pleasure of meeting him but his work has had a profound effect on me, and deeply shaped my theology more than I can say. Wink really opened my eyes up to the Christus Victor understanding of the atonement through his trilogy on the powers, taking an idea that seemed foreign and strange in the writings of Paul and showing how it has profound relevance for us today as we struggle with evil and violence in our world and in our hearts. On top of that Wink really helped me to make Jesus' third way of love of enemies, which can be so hard to grasp with my backwards thinking brain. Wink has really helped to shine light on that third way, as I stumble my way towards it.

So I just really wanted to express my deep gratitude for the work of Walter Wink, and extend my prayers and sympathies for his loved ones. Walt, thank you. You were one of the greats, and the world is both brighter because of your life, and poorer with your passing. You will be missed, and I hope one day we can still meet face to face. I pray you are in a place where love truly rules now, where there are no more tears. Give Jesus a hug from me when you see him.

What Does Jesus Think About Homosexuality?

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:43:00 +0000

(Originally posted on Huffington Post and Red Letter Christians)

Is homosexuality a sin? It's an age-old question, and there are people on both sides of the debate, each quoting their Bibles. How do we know who's right? What would Jesus do if he were here with us today? Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, so can we really say?

I'd like to propose that we can. Perhaps we wont be able to settle the debate over what the Bible says about homosexuality (least of all from one little blog post!) but I think there is one thing we can be sure of -- Jesus loves every one of us. In fact Jesus was especially known for loving the very people that the religious people of his time had condemned and cast out. Let's consider some facts:

There has been story after story in the news of LGBT teens committing suicide because of bullying. We have also seen a surge of news stories of kids being harassed, threatened, and even physicality assaulted. No one's child should have to endure that. No one should feel afraid, hated and rejected like that. These are not just a few shocking exceptional cases either. As their voices have begun to be heard, we have seen story after story of how gay and transgender kids have felt hated, at times even hating themselves. We have heard how life for them can be a living hell, so bad that it makes some of them want to end their lives.

That really should be a wakeup call for us as Christians. Regardless of where we stand on the rightness or the wrongness of being gay, none of that matters much when people are dying. We can argue over what the Bible says about homosexuality, but one thing is utterly clear: Jesus clearly teaches us to love people, not to hate them, not to make them feel hated, and not to stand by while that is happening. From the perspective of the New Testament there simply is no room for doubt on this. We know exactly where Jesus stands. He stands on the side of the least, the condemned, the vulnerable.

John's Gospel tells the story of a women caught in adultery who was brought before Jesus. The religious leaders say to him, "The law commands that she should be stoned to death, what do you say?" Jesus bends down and draws with his finger in the dirt, and then says to them "Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone." One by one they all leave until he is there alone with the woman. Jesus says to her "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she answered. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared.

Now, many preachers are quick to point out that Jesus next says to her: "Go and leave your life of sin." But the real point here is that even though Jesus did consider adultery sinful, he still was the one who defended her. In fact, he was the only one there who was "without sin" and yet he did not cast a stone and did not condemn. So again, even if we think homosexuality is wrong, we know what Jesus would do in our shoes. He has drawn a line in the sand, and we need to decide what side of that line we will be on. Will we be on the side of Jesus and the one who is being condemned and threatened? Or will we stand with the religious accusers on the other side of that line? Maybe we were not the ones actually throwing those stones, but did we stand on the side of the accused and condemned and actively defend them like Jesus did? Did we actively defend and love "the least of these"? Because Jesus says that the way we treat them is the way we treat him.

Jesus never says a word about homosexuality, but there was one kind of sin that he spoke out against all the time. There was one kind of sin that got Jesus really mad. This was the sin of religious people who shut out those in need of mercy. This was the sin of people who used the Bible as a weapon. You hear Jesus saying this on page after page of the gospels. Why? Because this type of sin has the potential to damage people like few other things do. It is particularly damaging because they claim to be speaking for God. So if we really want to speak out against sin, we as Christians need to speak out against the kind of sin that Jesus did, and side with the kinds of folks he did.

What this all comes down to is we, as Christians, acting like Jesus. It's about discerning what Jesus would want us to do right now, and the answer is clear: We need to change our priorities and focus on the critical issue of communicating love and acceptance to people -- especially the very people our society so often ostracizes, condemns and rejects. Because that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus was known for hanging out with "sinners" and was frequently accused of being a sinner himself because of it. But that did not stop him because he cared more about those people than he cared about being judged.

If we want to follow Jesus, then we need to have that same reputation of loving to a fault. We need to be so radically accepting that we are misunderstood and judged like Jesus. If we really do love Jesus, then we need to love like he did, so much so that it seems "scandalous" in the eyes the religious folks of our day, just like it did in his day.

We have spent so much time being "balanced" in the other direction, so much time worrying about "giving the wrong impression" that it is time to shift our lopsided boat the other way. Because as long as our priority is in looking moral rather than in showing compassion and grace to those on the outside, we simply do not have the priorities of Jesus. And when we do not reflect Christ, we are giving the wrong impression.

Now you may have noticed that I didn't ever say what I thought about whether homosexuality was wrong or right. I didn't say because this is not about me and what I think. It's about us as Christians learning to care about what Jesus cares about. This is not about gay rights. It is about about human rights, and that starts with the least. It is about us having the courage to stand with those who are vulnerable. It is about us saying "no" to hate, even when it is done in the name of God -- no, especially when it is done in the name of God. It's about having the guts to draw that line in the sand like Jesus did. Even when that means facing that mob ourselves.

So let's stand alongside of LGBT individuals. Let's let them know they are loved, they are welcomed, they are not alone. I think when we do, we will find that Jesus has been there with them for a long time now. It's time we joined him.

Ending Poverty in Our Time

noreply@blogger.com (Sharktacos) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 06:11:00 +0000

(cross posted from Sojourners)

Hearing about the injustice and suffering in our world can be overwhelming. The problems seem so insurmountable. Is it really possible to make a difference?

Well, here's some good news. We already are making a big difference.

Consider these statistics cited by Dr. Scott Todd from Live58:

"We used to say that 40,000 children die each day from preventable causes. In the 1990s, that number dropped to 33,000 per day. By 2008, it dropped again to 24,000. Now it is down to 21,000. That means that in a generation we cut that number in half.

1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty today. That's a staggering amount, but let's put those numbers in perspective: In 1981 52% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today it's 26%. Again, that means we have cut the number in half, and we did it in one generation."

Now, if you are anything like me then your reaction to poverty is a mixture of compassion and helplessness. If you're reading the Sojourners blog, then I assume that you already care about the least like I do, and that you know how big the problems are. I often find myself asking: What can I do? What can anyone do? We've heard the bleak statistics before. It's not news that there is a problem. The news is that there is actually hope for real change.

Jesus said "you will always have the poor among you." He was quoting from the Torah, "You will always have the poor among you. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land" (Deut 15:11). It's true that there will always be people in need around us, and the clear point of Jesus is that we need to therefore live in generosity and compassion. However, there are many definitions of what poverty means. Specifically here the above statistics deal with what is known as extreme poverty which the World Bank defined as living on less that $1.50 a day (this assumes you are paying US prices for those goods). In other words, it means that you can barely afford to get water and maybe some rice to eat, and is therefore associated with a host of other problems including malnutrition and disease. It means that the most vulnerable among us--little kids--die of hunger and sickness.

That is a huge and devastating problem that experts say we can actually eliminate in the near future. So while we will probably always have people who are struggling around us (whom we should of course care for), this does not mean that we always need to have children dying of preventable diseases. That we can stop. In fact, as the above statistics show, we are already moving in that direction. As Scott Todd explains, there are many reasons for this unprecedented progress,

"Over 600 million people gained access to safe drinking water since 1990. This, along with an increased awareness of the nutrition in breast milk and the use of oral rehydration therapy, explain why water-borne diseases are no longer the leading cause of death for children under five. We are simply executing the practical strategies that work.

Vaccinations are another example of a practical, life-saving strategy. 733,000 children died of measles in 2000; but, that number dropped by 2008 to 164,000–a 78% reduction in only eight years. Simply using the vaccines that we’ve had for decades is saving hundreds of thousands of children every year."

As you would expect, lots of folks are joining in. 189 Heads of State and governments have committed to the UN Millennium Declaration. This is deeply significant because it means the involvement of governments, and the folks who hold the world's purse strings, including the World Bank, the IMF, and increasingly, the membership of the WTO. The One Campaign is another prominent example, involving some of the biggest humanitarian organizations in the world including Bread for the World, CARE, Oxfam, and World Vision. A more recent group is Live58, also comprised of several big players like Compassion International, International Justice Mission (IJM), and others. The specific aim of Live58 is to help mobilize folks like you and me to get involved, to live out the "true fast" of compassion described in Isaiah 58.

We have an amazing opportunity before us. What was at one time unimaginable is now within reach. It is possible, but it will only happen if we all get involved. If we use our intelligence, our money and our influence to make a difference. It will only happen if we are willing to make some sacrifices in the name of compassion. So check out the video below, and then head over to Live 58 to see some ways you can get involved.