Michael Utz

We are in crisis. Our governments are stalled under the pressure of public mistrust. The financial industry is built to profit from greed-fueled ignorance. News organizations create controversy and enmity because compromise and analysis are unprofitable.

We’ve woken up to find we’ve inherited a world where value can no longer be expressed in our familiar dollar signs.

The safeguards of democracy and the free market offer little protection. Instead, they have turned us against ourselves. It is fashionable behavior to insult first, and ask questions never.

This is a crisis of value.

Value used to come from having a nice job and pension, or an education perhaps. Also, a retirement portfolio was helpful. Along with a new car. A face-lift or six-pack abs were usually a good idea, too.

It is obvious now that the kind of economic and political value that we need comes only from humans solving problems. Fortunately, humans are problem-solvers. We take pride in overcoming challenges.

Today’s financial and political instability cannot steal that from us.

It is up to us whether we will set aside our responsibility to solve problems. We alone can decide to not create value.

We humans rally to meet the needs of the world every day. It doesn’t matter if those needs arise in Joplin, Missouri or Japan. We start companies and volunteer at non-profits. We struggle constantly to make life better for ourselves, our children, and the human race.

It is our within our power to overcome the challenges that face us today. Our strength grows from our vision of a better future. Our strength is in our tradition. Our strength lives in the clever and compassionate decisions we make daily—at work, at home, at play, and in worship.

Our debt and our duty is not to a government. It is not to a mortgage or an employer. Our debt is to our fellow problem-solvers. Our duty is to create value.

If any nation can lead the world in finding solutions to these problems, it is America. We can do so because we have the freedom to discuss problems. We are free to correct our mistakes and our parents’ mistakes. This freedom is a gift given to us by generations long dead. It is our greatest weapon against an uncertain future.

When Americans exercise our freedom to create value, we give a gift to future generations. It is a gift not just to our own children, but to the children of those with whom we disagree. It is a gift for Chinese children and children born in the slums of Chicago alike.

We are free to build a legacy of passionate dialogue and ingenious problem-solving that we can pass along to future generations—generations that will have nothing but for the value we create today.

Let us, then, solve problems. Let us create value. Let us remember our own value and each other’s value in passionate dialogue and dedicated labor. Let us become everything our forefathers hoped we could be: free to do good.

An Annoyingly Long and Greek-Sounding Phrase

The word “anthropophilic” is a mashup of two Greek words—anthropos, meaning “human”, and philos meaning “love”. (It has a use in biology for describing organisms that prefer human beings to other animals for various purposes and reasons. For instance, the mosquito is an anthropophilic animal.) For the purpose of this post, we’ll define this word to mean “focused on or preferential toward humans”.

Orthodoxy is also a mashup of two Greek words—orthos meaning “right”, and doxa meaning “opinion” or “belief”. Traditionally, “orthodox” is a term used in Christian circles to subtly or not-so-subtly separate or distinguish ourselves from one another. It is often these “right opinions” that act as the most effective wedge between fellow Christians. Huge, scholarly works have been produced detailing the precise nature of the differences that exist between various orthodoxies.

Anthropophilic Orthodoxy, then, is not a theological framework, but a re-centering of what it means to assume you have a “right opinion” as a Christian.

Apart Together

I’m writing this because I belong to a subset of Christians who are not fully represented by any of the denominational boxes that exist out there today. I believe this group exists as a layer within churches of many different denominations and traditions. It probably even exists within people who don’t subscribe to any denomination or attend any church.

This group’s defining characteristic is the significant weight that we ascribe to the Scriptural themes of loving the people in the world around us. It’s tempting, at this point, to assume that I’m referring primarily or exclusively to “social Gospel” or liberally-oriented Christian movements, but this is not the case. I am referring here also to those who perform the many impressive and touching examples of theologically conservative Christians living out Christ’s call to love others through evangelism, humanitarian aid, and empathic care.

The Anthropophilic Creed

The purpose of writing this is not to create another box into which one can settle in order to separate from Christians of differing viewpoints. Disunity of this sort is not germane to the nature of this group, anyways. Indeed, the purpose of writing this post is to identify and activate this group to influence the wider world in which they find themselves. If this group had a creed, it might look something like this:

I believe in all that stuff in those other good creeds.

I believe that God’s purpose in sending Christ to the world was not solely for my own benefit, but for the salvation of the world as a whole.

I believe that it is my duty as a follower of Christ to sacrificially defend the command to “love one another” before I defend any theological proposition, cultural presupposition, or stylistic preference.

I believe that differences in theology, political views, biblical interpretation, ethics and morality are of consequence, but are not to interfere with the command to “love one another”.

I believe that orthodoxy is Godly only so far as it empowers us to act out the unending love and grace of God toward each other and the world around us.

A New, Old Orthodoxy

In the last few dozen centuries, much effort by academics and leaders alike has been put into the creation and enforcement of various types of orthodoxy. These different manifestations of orthodoxy have been diverse in their substance and outcomes. Nonetheless, the shepherds of these various orthodoxies often defended them as though they were the only form of right-thinking about God available to the human race.

Anthropophilic Orthodoxy does not seek to replace the myriad theological frameworks that exist to describe Yahweh, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit. Instead, its origin is derived from the Old and New Testament ethic of love and the command to God’s people to serve as a blessing to the whole world. The sole purpose of Anthropophilic Orthodoxy is to inform and motivate Christians to see the world through the prism of God’s sacrificial love, thus humbling themselves to serve it in the unique way that God has equipped them to do so.

Truthfully, the love-driven ethic of Anthropophilic Orthodoxy has existed for as long as God has been at work in the humans that would listen to his call. I believe that it is abundant today as well, but that those who practice it are often drowned out by the defenders of the more formal differences that exist within Christianity and between Christians and non-believers.

A Call To Speak

In most Christian traditions, orthodoxy is a set of ideas. To the anthropophilic Christian, orthodoxy is a command to love the world as Christ did. This post, then, is really meant to encourage anyone who identifies with this love-driven orthodoxy to speak courageously and respectfully into our churches and to the world about what we believe. One of the core messages of the Gospel is that we should love God and love people to the exclusion of all else. No Christian who would demonstrate love toward a “sinner” or a “heretic” could possibly be in violation of that core message. And while those who adhere to sets of ideas would challenge us as cowards, relativists, or heretical, the anthropophilic Christian knows exactly how we are to respond to them, don’t we?

“Shall I crucify your king?’ Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

- John 19:15

Through the Easter season this year, I developed a strange fascination with a particular character in the story. That person was Pontius Pilate. Previous to this season, Pilate felt like more of a detail than a cornerstone of the story. After my recent ponderings, I’m not so sure. In the Apostle’s Creed, the Church affirms that they believe in Jesus Christ who “suffered under Pontius Pilate”, making Pilate the only non-messiah individual mentioned in the creed.

I find this fact to be very curious. In my opinion, the momentum of the events between Gesthemane and the Resurrection are described in the text like a cascading wave of events that crystalize the thoughts, attitudes, and internal motivations of the dozens of imperfect humans that make up the story. Pilate is only one of those humans—and he seems like a passing character at that.

So, why doesn’t the creed describe Jesus as “accused of blasphemy by the chief priests”? Or what about “betrayed by Judas Iscariot”? Or “survived by his mother Mary and brother James”? Or “denied by Simon Peter”? Or “buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea”? Or “or discovered resurrected by Mary Magdelene”? Of the entire cast of people who participate in the life of Jesus, Pilate was the only one who got billing in the Creed.

Governor Pontius Pilate of Rome, Servant of Caesar

Pilate was a Roman governor, which meant he was a man of power and ambition. He probably had a military background. As a governor, he was a defender of the Roman Empire, which proclaimed itself to be the light of the world because it brought ‘civilization’ to the ‘barbarian’ people it conquered. He was an employee and representative of the Caesar—a man proclaimed by the Roman propaganda machine to be a son of the gods and an heir to divinity. Perhaps most importantly, he was governor of a particularly troubled province of the empire that was prone to bloody rebellions and riots that had often to be put down by Rome at great cost to the empire.

Thus, when Jesus was introduced to Pilate by the Jewish leaders as one who would stir up crowds in rebellion against Rome, Jesus became a “person of interest” for the ambitious Roman governor, to say the least.

The Hazard of Being Messiah

When presented to Pilate for trial, Jesus was given a golden opportunity to speak evil against the oppressive reign of Rome face-to-face with a representative of that power. Yet completely unexpectedly, Jesus humbly submitted to the authority of the governor, recognizing that his authority came from God himself. This took Pilate aback. He then asked Jesus to defend himself, but Jesus said nothing more than that his kingdom was not of this world, and that Pilate should not expect his followers to take up arms to defend him and his movement.

This, of course, was a first for Pilate—and a first in the long history of conflict between the Jews and Rome. One gets the sense that Pilate might have been thinking, “This is a Jewish leader that I could work with…” In fact, after this conversation with Jesus, he attempted in a number of ways to return Jesus to the crowd as their Rome-endorsed king. If this political move had created lasting peace between Judea and Rome, it could have been a career-making move for the man. This fact was not lost on Pilate. Of course, it didn’t work, though. It only served to fuel the anger of the crowd because the last thing that the Jews wanted was yet another Roman puppet appointed to keep them under the thumb of the Empire.

Not wanting to kill the goose that laid his golden-egg, however, Pilate bargained with the crowd as to how he should handle the accusations leveled against Jesus. He asked the crowd if they’d rather have a violent revolutionary named Barabbas released, or whether they’d like Jesus to be released. The crowd enthusiastically chose Barabbas. This was not a good signal to Pilate—a man charged with keeping the peace in his province.

In a final attempt to appease the crowd, he had Jesus beaten and mocked publicly in an attempt to save Jesus’ life. He hoped that this would satisfy the Jewish leaders’ thirst for the “justice” demanded in payment for Jesus alleged blasphemy. Of course, this does not satisfy the leaders because, as Pilate perceived, they were not hungry for justice—they were hungry for power and control over the religious ideologies of the Jews.

The Seat of Judgment

In a final climactic scene, Pilate sat down to make his final decision. He washes his hands in an effort to signify that he could not be held personally responsible for Jesus blood, which he knew to be innocent. Then he hands him over to be crucified. He didn’t base his decision on the ethical ideals of justice and peace of which Rome was the reputed champion and purveyor. Instead, he based his decision on the only real principle that successful empires can ever propagate: political advantage. But Pilate had one last symbolic protest about Christ’s treatment by the Jews: he ordered that a sign be affixed to the cross that proclaimed Jesus as the “King of the Jews”.

Our Own Judgment Seats

In this sense, the process of suffering under Pontius Pilate represents the journey through which anyone who encounters Jesus must progress. The Pharisees had their “Pilate” moment earlier in the story. Peter had his “Pilate” moment when he denied Christ. Paul had his “Pilate” moment on the road to Damascus.

At some point in the life of everyone who encounters Jesus, Christ submits himself below our own seat of judgment and refuses to take our power from us by force. He doesn’t storm our Governor’s palace with guns-ablazin’. He certainly doesn’t come with the recommendation of religious moralists or cultural imperialists. He stands alone—his own followers seeming to deny him publicly—and we are forced to make judgement on this man whose message of love and grace threatens the very foundations of our own personal sense of power.

By not defending himself at our judgment seat, he refuses to force us from our throne. Instead he gracefully asks us to resign our power for something even greater—a kingdom ruled by love where the greatest is the servant of all. Most of us do not listen for fear of losing that which defines us among our peers. But that is what we are called to forsake to pursue his kingdom.

Those Who Have Ears to Hear

Many of us religious people will miss the power of this message. We will think that joining “Team Jesus” gives us license to wage war on other kingdoms and ideologies through whatever means possible. We will enforce our view of what it means to be on “Team Jesus” by vigilantly stamping out any message that appears to weaken the exclusivity of our rhetorical claim to truth about God. We will exclude those who can’t live up to our community standards in the name of protecting the chosen people of God from sin or false teaching. We will be the goats, the older brothers, and the rich men of Jesus’ parables in Luke. And we will be excluded from the rewards we seek for our righteousness by virtue of the narrowness of the road on which we claim to be gatekeepers and guides.

Alternately, many of us non-religious people will see the message and be amazed as Pilate was. We will do our best to beat the message into our existing notions of empire, power, reputation, ambition, and economic mobility. We see the message as a potential ally in the race to the top, and we are prepared to cede portions of our authority to recognize Christ as the “king of our land”—as long as ceding that authority moves us “up the ladder”. We view accepting Christ’s message as an investment in our own spiritual asset base, instead of seeing it for what it really is: an invitation to sell everything we have to the poor and serve the weak.

Not Of This World…seriously!

But Christ will not fit in either of our boxes. The Gospel refuses to be confined by religion or empire. It is another thing entirely—“not of this world”, to borrow a phrase. It doesn’t demand part of our authority and identity; it demands total resignation.

This Gospel doesn’t create a new in-group where community standards are enforced by particularly well-behaved individuals; it creates a fluid community of people who understand that the strength of our faith does not substitute the imperative need to exercise the same grace we’ve been shown. It creates a community in which those who are strong are called to humbly and graciously serve the needs of those we perceive as weak. From an organizational dynamics perspective, it is almost infinitely inconvenient.

Yet, this is the family into which we who stand with Christ are called.

Thus, I propose in light of this recent Easter celebration, that we seek to find ourselves in the story of the crucifixion. Will we be the religious leaders who stand in venomous accusation of those with whom we disagree? Will we attempt to stuff the all-inclusive demands of Christ’s truth into a more manageable unit for our own gain?

Or do we have faith enough in the strength of our Lord to stand humbly with Christ before the accusation of the religious and under the judgment of the systems of this world? Will we allow ourselves to be crucified with the Son of God in the hope of being raised with him in his resurrection? Or will we simply wash our hands?

The War of the Worlds

In October 1938, an enterprising young radio drama director named Orson Welles took to the airwaves of CBS Radio with a special Halloween episode of his anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. This special production of Mercury Theatre would be a dramatic retelling of H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. (Brief summary of the novel: aliens invade earth, and lots of people die.) Welles decided that the best way to bring the drama of Wells’ novel to life would be to present the first 40 minutes of the 60 minute broadcast as a breaking news bulletin. Brilliant!

Needless to say, those who didn’t tune in at the top of the hour were unaware of how the information they were hearing over their radio had been framed. They didn’t realize that this terrifying narrative was part of a fictional drama meant for simple entertainment. The result of this miscommunication was a huge backlash against Welles and CBS as thousands of radio listeners were terrified and many claimed to have taken action as refuge against what they thought was an onslaught of hostile alien invaders.

A Message Without A Home

Every piece of information that we communicate has an origin. It has an origin in the life of the person who communicates it and the culture in which that person was raised. It has an origin in the timing of the message, and it has an origin in the limitations of the author’s knowledge about the world, the future, etc. It also has an origin in the intention of the communicator. For instance, one might read a love poem with a different perspective than one might read the minutes of a Food and Drug Administration administrative regulatory hearing. When one applies their knowledge of a message’s origin to their understanding of that message, they are being faithful to the original communicator by taking the effort to really understand what that communicator is saying. This point of origin is part of what the word “context” means, and it’s vital for understanding the true meaning of a particular set of words.

It’s amazing how dramatically a misunderstanding of context can warp the meaning of a particular message. Orson Welles found that out the hard way. We make these mistakes all the time as human beings. It’s part of being fallible and imperfect. Unfortunately, our failure to be faithful to the origin of a message can have grave or even tragic repercussions.

A Controversial Discussion

I recently listened to a sermon from a pastor who lives in my area of the world. I used to listen to this man’s podcasts fairly regularly, as I think him to be a brilliant communicator and I agree with about 95% of the things that he has to say. However, on the 5% about which he and I disagree, I find him to be intolerably rude, stiff-necked, and close-minded. But, this is the liability of Christ creating a church out of people: they’re bound to disagree and upset each other. So, for the most part I simply stopped listening to him and I wish well of the people that attend his church. I think there are wonderful elements of what they do there and wish them the best. Really; I do.

However, a friend of mine recommended that I listen to this particular sermon because of how it related to a particular discussion we were having about the Christian idea of hell. I told her I would take a listen before I made any judgements inasmuch as her pastor had written far more extensively about doctrine than I had and is a renowned author and speaker. I decided to go into it with my mind open and my heart ready to be changed if I was shown to be wrong.

Lazarus and the Rich Man

The text of the particular sermon was in Luke 16, which is a story aptly titled “Lazarus and the Rich Man”. Of course, this story sits in the middle of a longer discussion that Jesus is having with a group of religious leaders called Pharisees (who were the teachers of God’s law in Jesus’ time). In this discussion, Jesus is saying things that are absolutely infuriating to these Pharisees. In fact, throughout the Gospels, Jesus’ discussions with the Pharisees regularly leads to them being entirely frustrated with him. That’s why they were the group that lead the charge against him which lead to his crucifixion.

The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man is one of the great passages wherein Jesus absolutely obliterates the need for systematized religion. You see, the Pharisees believed that a human’s status in life (health, wealth, intelligence, etc) was a direct indicator of how blessed they were by God. They believed that these status symbols were to be sought after and celebrated and relished.

Lazarus, on the other hand, was a beggar and a cripple. He would’ve been thought of by the Pharisees as nearly a non-entity. However, it’s interesting to note that the story starts with Jesus assigning the cripple a name (Lazarus, which means “God comforts”) and not even dignifying the rich man with a name of his own. The story goes on to describe how this rich man and Lazarus die around the same time, and that on the other side of death Lazarus is in the presence of God being comforted and fed, while the rich man sits on the other side of a chasm in torment and near isolation.

In this parable, the rich man can see Lazarus being taken care of by God. Lazarus is even feasting in the presence of Israel’s greatest patriarch Abraham. The rich man calls out to Abraham (still not recognizing the humanity of Lazarus) and asks if Abraham could direct Lazarus to bring water to the rich man. Even in fiery torment, the rich man fails to recognize that people do not exist to serve him! Abraham mentions the chasm that exists between the place of torment and comfort, and indicates that there is no way for either to get across to the other. Then the rich man petitions Abraham to have Lazarus raised from the dead to warn the rich man’s family about the place of torment he was in and to which they were no doubt destined. Abraham again refuses the request, noting that they already have the Law and the Prophets to warn them about taking advantage of the weak, and that even someone rising from the dead would not be enough to jog them out of this self-centered, self-righteous, and self-important existence.

The Metaphysics of the Afterlife: Adventures in Missing the Point

To be fair to the pastor about whose sermon I am now writing, he did mention in passing the cultural importance of the rich man being in hell instead of Lazarus. However, the thrust of his message was to dissect the passage in an effort to infer specifics about what the place of eternal damnation would be like. Unfortunately, he ignores the fact that nothing about the larger discussion indicates that Jesus was pausing to just let everyone know what hell was like for the non-believer. Actually, prior to that Jesus was berating the Pharisees for their legalistic interpretation of Scripture that they used to mistreat people. And after this story, he talks about forgiveness. All of these topics relate to the way that we are to demonstrate God’s love to people and not segregate ourselves into religious in-groups of people who “get it”. Not really a philosophical discussion of the temperature in the afterlife…

This pastor then went on to indicate that the rich man was “in hell” because he didn’t believe in God (or Jesus I guess??!) and that Lazarus was in comfort because he did believe in Jesus. This conclusion, however, is a complete fabrication as it relates to this text. It’s not anywhere to be found in the passage. Read it again; it’s just not there! The only mention at all of a decision to be made is when Abraham mentions that the rich man’s family “would not repent” of their ways. The question remains, then, what were their ways? Were they irreligious, entitled malcontents who didn’t have their lives together? (Read: “welfare recipients” or “lecherous liberal state employees”) Were they murderers and thieves and prostitutes? NO! They were good, church-going people whose lives appeared to be clearly “blessed” by God.

Responding to the Message

Those people who listened to Orson Welles’ radio drama and took action did the right thing with the information that they had. They were told by a trusted source that the world was coming to an end at the hands of alien invaders. Many of them took action — heading to the hills and hoarding supplies — in an effort to survive the terror of life as we know it coming to an end. It would be easy to call those people naïve or foolish, but I can’t imagine I would’ve responded much differently.

Likewise, the people listening to this sermon probably did the right thing with the information they received about the character of God as it was described by this pastor. The pastor regularly repeated the following phrase: “It’s my job to tell you the truth; it’s your job to make a decision.” I’m sure many of the people there — terrified by the threat of eternal torment in the fires of hell — did precisely what the pastor told them was the remedy. He told them that they simply needed to believe on Jesus as their savior, and then they would be spared from this torturous end. Likely, after hearing about the gruesome ends to which they were headed, they found a significant amount of psychological relief knowing that they had done the most important thing (which apparently was simply to change their mind about…wait, what were the options again?).

High Fidelity

The problem with this is presentation of the Gospel is that the pastor was almost entirely unfaithful to the message of the text! The message of the text indicates that “good, God-fearing” folk who think they are eternally secure because they’re on the side of righteousness might find themselves in danger of eternal separation from God’s comfort because they would not repent of their religious pride!!! Jesus is saying it’s not enough to “intellectually assent” to the right ideas and appear to be a recipient of God’s blessing! It’s not enough to have a systematic knowledge of the Scripture that allows you to treat people who aren’t like you with rudeness and near-total disregard! Believing that Jesus is going to save you from eternal damnation IS NOT equivalent to the type of repentance the rich man needed to manifest!

What’s so sad to me about this whole exercise of listening to this sermon is that Jesus’ message is nearly the complete opposite of the outcomes expected by this preacher. Those who don’t have their doctrine together or can’t get that sin problem under control or don’t have resources that prove their competence are not under God’s wrath. Surely Lazarus didn’t have the religious schooling that this rich man had. He didn’t discuss theology while feasting with friends every night. He wouldn’t have even been allowed into the temple to make amends for his sins because he was so “unclean”. Instead, he spent his nights laying outside the gate of the rich man’s estate as wild animals would lick the open wounds on his sick and tortured body. He waited there for even a sliver of charity from the rich man…the story says he was “longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table”.

The War of the Worlds

There is a spiritual “war of the worlds” going on today. It was going on in Jesus day and Jesus said it’d been going on since the time of Moses. In fact, the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man was the final shot in a battle that Luke records for our review in his retelling of Christ’s life. It is not, however, a war between two groups of people. It is a war between a group of people and God himself. It is a war between God and the entities that have hijacked God’s good news, using it to control people or build personal empires or solidify their own eternal security at the expense of the sick, the dying, and the poor. It is a war between those who find themselves in positions of power on earth yet don’t use that power to serve people’s needs, and the God who created those people and gave that authority in the first place.

It is a war in which I have only recently switched sides. In my life, this change has demanded everything that I had worked toward or held valuable. But God has been faithful to provide me with comfort and friends and resources as I repent from my religious ways, though I fear I do not yet live up to the love and grace that has been given to me.

Make no mistake, Christian reader: it is a war in which you are also engaged. Perhaps you are not actively engaged on the front-lines of dialogue or discussion. Nevertheless, it is easy for a church-goer to setup their camp on the side of the Pharisees without recognizing it. The question that this story of Lazarus and the Rich Man would put to us is this: in this story, are we more like Lazarus or the rich man? Are we sitting at the gates waiting for scraps of food? Or are we feasting every night, content that our life decisions and outcomes indicate that we are recipients of God’s favor?

And, if we’re more like the rich man, what are we doing for Lazarus? Because the story does seem to indicate that there will be a day when an impassable chasm arises between the religious type and those whom God comforts…and no comfort will be able to cross between the chasm. Perhaps a good name for that place is “hell”. I leave you with this passage from Luke 18:

     A certain ruler asked [Jesus], “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
     ”Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”
     ”All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
     When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
     When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy.

I read the Gospel of John the other night from cover-to-cover. In light of the recent controversies amidst various Christian groups about Rob Bell’s book, I thought it would be worth returning to the source material for a bit. Besides, I hadn’t read the Book of John in one sitting before, so it seemed like an altogether healthy idea. Surprisingly, it only took about an hour to get through its twenty-one chapters. If you have the time and inclination, I highly recommend the activity.

Impressions

I have not been so blown aback by something that I’ve read in quite awhile. John’s style is frustrating and sometimes even seems scattered. He leaps past HUGE gaps in Jesus life and ministry like it’s nothing. In fact, his book starts at the beginning of time, and within a few sentences he’s already fast-forwarded to around the year 30 CE. He conveniently leaves out Jesus birth, childhood, and pretty much everything else that would suggest he’s writing a biographical novel. He seemed to be compiling and editing from a countless number of stories that could be told about Jesus in order to communicate some sort of message or theme.

This approach is not so much what impressed me, however. It was the message or theme itself that had me aghast at how much the church traditions in which I was raised seem to have almost entirely missed John’s point. And what really threw me for a loop was the fact that a primary theme of this book was about that very thing: religious people who completely miss the point.

Of course, that is not the only theme in the book. God’s love and grace and salvation for those He loves is woven throughout the work as well. Christ’s divinity is a pretty strong part of it. Perhaps surprisingly, the word “hell” is not mentioned once in the book (though, as I said, John seems content to leave a lot of stuff out of his retelling of Christ’s message), and the God’s wrath seemed not to be mentioned much. Those facts notwithstanding, there is a significant amount of conflict and confusion in Jesus message and words. The words of Jesus that John records leave a lot of people with a lot of reasons to be offended.

My Scandalously Brief Summary

This is my problem with the way that I’ve seen John’s Gospel wielded in debates these days: the people that Jesus constantly upsets and offends are the highly religious folks. Yet, many times when quotes from John are used in arguments about faith, they’re wrenched out of context to legitimize the public anger or rudeness of religious people who feel it is their responsibility to defend Christ thusly.

Without exception in the Gospel of John however, Jesus is merciful and uplifting to those who would’ve been considered outsiders. He graciously offers “living water” to a Samaritan (enemy of the Jews: strike-one) woman (not a man: strike-two) who has been sexually immoral (no self-control: strike-three). He heals a man’s blindness when the religious-types declared that the man’s blindness must be due to sin on the part of the blind man or his parents. He raises to life the dead son of a royal official in a political climate where royal officials were characterized by the religious folks as traitors to God’s people.

Again-and-again in the book you see Jesus challenging religious authority in favor of showing mercy to the “sinner” and the outcast. Of course, Jesus never says that everyone should become a prostitute or a greedy public official. But there is a distinct theme wherein Jesus legitimizes their personhood without reservation!

As the book moves along, the conflict between Jesus and the religious folks starts to heat up. But Jesus doesn’t let his followers turn into just another in-group formed to exclude religious folks. He challenges them with his teaching and example to be loving toward their enemies, perhaps most notably when Jesus rebukes his follower Peter for using a sword to defend Jesus as he was being arrested by the religious leaders. In so doing, he legitimizes the personhood even of the arresting guard by kneeling down to him and healing his wound. And when he is finally brought before the religious and political leaders to be tried, he doesn’t speak against them at all. In fact, he legitimizes their personhood by recognizing that the authority that they have was given to them by God.

Of course, the book comes to a bloody climax when the Roman governor of the province finally relents to having Jesus crucified––though he only does so after many, many rounds of negotiating with the religious types about a more reasonable solution to their perceived problem. In fact, when the governor has him executed, he puts up a sign declaring what seems to be his personal belief that Jesus of Nazareth must be the King of the Jews. He then gives Jesus body over to two closet-followers of Jesus–one a rich man and the other a religious leader who hadn’t the courage to depart from their lives of glory amongst men while Jesus was alive.

As the famous story goes, however, Jesus was resurrected from the dead. John glosses over a lot of the details of what Jesus did in the days after his resurrection. Of course, he tells one more story about what happened with Jesus that summarizes the nature of our task as believers in a risen Jesus Christ. In this story, Jesus asks Peter three times whether or not Peter loves him. Peter is hurt at the accusation implied by the repeated questioning, but Jesus goes on to tell him what it means to truly love him. It means being willing to follow him–even into death–if that means taking care of those whom God came to save.

Dying to Live

So much of what Jesus lived and died to prove was that the power of God is not expressed by political authority, religious ideology, economic resourcefulness, or self-discipline. The power of God at work in the people of God is most fully expressed by emptying oneself of selfish need for glory and filling one’s life with love for the people around us. Those people may be “sinners” or “enemies”. Those people may not “get it” or they may not fit in our pre-defined religious boxes. Those people may be heretics and criminals, governors or cripples, trusted friends or loathed oppressors. We are to love them just the same. Jesus perfect expression of this truth is one of the most striking proofs of his divinity.

“The World”

Finally, John speaks quite a lot about “the world”. In many Christian circles, it is popular to use this term to define everybody who is not a Christian. Those people are “the world”, and we’re something different and better because we “have” Jesus. However, in my reading of John, I came to realize that Jesus was not talking about “sinners” when he talked about “the world”. The world is all of us! But those of us who call ourselves “Christians” or grew up as “Christians” are in especially grave danger of being under God’s wrath because many of us have “wielded the sword” against those that would kill Jesus instead of “bending down to heal them”.

Conclusion

Defending the truth of the Gospel does not mean bearing a sword against a hostile world. It does not mean criticizing immoral people or defending Christianity to people with other beliefs in public debate. It does not mean giving the right ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers in a questionnaire about adherence to doctrinal statements. It means being willing to not fight for what you believe, and instead to die in service of others (especially if those others have called themselves your enemies). It means being willing to lose religious word-games in favor of legitimizing the personhood of so-called “sinners”. And it means accepting the fact that “the world” (especially the religious world) might just kill you for it.

After writing that last big blog about imperfection, I ran across this TED talk…coincidental? Perhaps. Probably not.

It’s been a long time since I’ve contributed any lengthy thoughts to the web-o-sphere.  My knee-jerk reaction in starting this post is two-fold: to apologize for the delay since I’ve posted last, and to promise to increase the quantity of content I provide moving forward.  Upon reflection, however, such a statement feels so much like the New Year’s resolutions that most of us have bludgeoned and buried in the backyard of our subconscious at this point, and I catch myself from initiating this post with such a trite, unoriginal, and hollow motive.  Also, it presumes an audience that has been clamoring for my work, and I’ve always found presuming to be presumptuous…so I refrain.

But this illustrates succinctly the reason I haven’t written much recently.  If I can’t think of the perfect thing to write, then why was it worth writing at all?

Creation vs. Perfection

When I was younger, I was fascinated with the process of creation.  It didn’t matter if it was observing a natural processes or invention, music composition, graphic design, manufacturing, building houses, or whatever.  I loved it.  And I loved making things.  I used LEGO’s and K’NEX toys to construct elaborate inventions.  I built models of internal combustion engines; I wrote poetry.  I composed concertos and tried to build websites with HTML.  I constructed political and religious worldviews.

But one-by- one, each of these passions began to fade.  My passion for creation was subsumed by a more ambitious ideal: perfection.  As I delved deeper into each of these pursuits, it was no longer adequate for me to understand concepts well enough that I could contribute to the creation process.  I had to create the PERFECT thing.  If I felt that attaining perfection in any of those fields was beyond my grasp, I would abandon it.  After all, it’s not difficult to determine logically or empirically that perfection is highly subjective.  And while subjective perfection is a fine enough goal, it’s nothing in comparison to the ideal of a true, objective perfection, right?

Some reading this might already be thinking what it took me decades to discover, however; “What arrogance this young man has to assume he could attain perfection?”  I agree.  Using perfection as a ruler is an extremely convenient way to alienate yourself from your fellow, imperfect man.  In fact, it’s a great way to alienate yourself from yourself through disappointment and unwarranted self-criticism.  As Freud said, depression is simply anger turned inward…and what better way to turn your anger inward than to measure yourself and to come up short?

A Crash Course in Perfection

So, I thought back to the one guy that people in my cultural heritage have ever really called perfect: Jesus of Nazareth.  It turns out, Jesus has a lot of criticism for people like me.  I don’t like this.  I think about how easy it would be to write Him off––to write him out of my life forever.  ”You’re not immune to criticism either, bub,” my heart lashes out.  But I pull myself together and think about this man that so many people have called the only perfect human, and I recalibrate for another look at what makes this guy so great.

But my inspection of this man and his life lead me to an unanticipated outcome.  Many Christian friends of mine maintain that Jesus’ perfection is based on perfect obedience to the God’s Law, but this is demonstrably untrue.  He violated the Sabbath and disobeyed his parents.  In fact, He was quite a rebel in his time.  Of course, the nature of these “disobediences” are dependent on your view about whether or not he was God as a man.  Nevertheless, it became pretty clear that Jesus wasn’t necessarily a “by the book” kind of guy.  Thus, I revised my approach…

The “He’s A Nice Enough Fella” Approach…

Many of my friends maintain Jesus’ perfection is a function of his unbridled magnanimity toward the poor, the broken, the sick, and the hurting.  And yet, a simple examination of his life and ministry and death indicate that there were, in fact, boundaries to these mercies.  If he were endowed with the power of healing the sick, why did he wait until he was 30 to start?  Were there no sick before that point? or after He left the earth?  And what about the time that he let Mary break the bottle of expensive perfume to pour on his feet?  Weren’t his disciples simply exercising the logic that he taught them about how those resources should be directed to the poor?  And why did he keep wandering off by himself instead of sticking with the people and meeting their needs?  And what about all this talk of hell?  That didn’t sound too magnanimous…

Of course, these limitations on Jesus are quickly explained by the doctrine that Jesus was fully God, but also fully man.  Man gotta sleep.  Man gotta eat.  Man gotta be alone sometimes.  But then the whole idea of coming as one who is “fully man” seems like a silly and imperfect strategy in the first place.  If His perfection is backed by his infinite mercy, then why didn’t he just come in his infinite form?  I estimate it would’ve saved a lot of hassle for everyone.  It seems that this couldn’t have been His real goal if He was to be, in fact, declared perfect.

Perfection Defection Inspection

And then it strikes me: perfection can perhaps only be defined as the sum of our best efforts and the grace of our efforts’ judge.  Even Jesus Christ can be picked apart with “objective” criticisms that can be bickered about for all eternity among scholars and fundamentalists.  But Jesus was considered perfect because everything that he did was submitted to the judgement of His Father with a spirit of grace, love, compassion, and humble obedience.

I’ll admit…I shudder at that brand of perfection.  It demands so much more from us than any other system I can imagine.  The rules-based perfection assumption can turn into a big game that can be twisted to the advantage of the most cunning or forceful.  The magnanimity-based perfection assumption can be twisted by the charismatic or duplicitous to derive higher status for those who demonstrate that they “really care about” or “are working hard for” those in need.  Indeed, submitting the notion of perfection to God requires a level of reliance on God for our sense of self-worth that implodes the petty human games that saturate religious life.

Imperfection is the new Perfection

Later in the New Testament, church-leader Paul talks about how he has a “thorn in his flesh” that he has asked God to remove multiple times.  We don’t know what this is precisely because Paul doesn’t care to let us in on this secret.  Apparently it embarrasses him enough that instead of telling us about it, he’s content with letting millennia of Christian followers wonder endlessly about what he means.  Nonetheless, he relays to his readers God’s message to him: “My grace is sufficient.”  God says to Paul, “You be imperfect you, and I’ll be gracious Me, and that will be enough.”

This blog has been quite long––perhaps an imperfection worth editing at some later date––and yet I feel as though I have left so much out.  I’m sure some of the references to Scripture that I’ve made are imperfect or can be regarded as sloppy or imperfect.  But these imperfections publicly displayed––this confession of inadequacy and imperfection––is my participation in Christ’s offering of grace for the sins of the world.  By subjecting himself below all men in torment and death, He joined His human imperfection with the boundless grace of God and gave us unencumbered access to that grace.  And by subjecting ourselves with Him, we alter the formula by which we measure perfection permanently.

So, as it turns out, I now believe that perfection is subjective…or at least that it involves subjection to grace.  But that’s okay because, after all, His grace is sufficient, isn’t it?  Well, it’s going to have to be for this post…

Maybe the world is under the skies,
        or maybe they’re more like passers-by,
Maybe the sun is a fiery moon,
        or maybe the moon is a sun that’s cooled.

Maybe this thing is black or white,
        or maybe its shade changes with the light,
Maybe the truth will set men free,
        or maybe the lie is all they need.

Maybe the things I see are real,
        or maybe they’ll be proved vapor. Still,

All I know is what I choose:
        that life, with all its shifting hues,
                means nothing without loving you.

It’s been 138 days since that day I was last employed. I never really thought that I would be out of work for this long. Four months of looking for work, finding leads, hoping, hoping, hearing “no”, and starting over has worn down my psyche to a dull node.

The typical response I receive from prospective employers (if I receive any at all) goes something like this:

“Thank you for your inquiry. We have received an overwhelming number of responses for this posting, and we intend to fill the position with the person whose education and experience most closely fulfill the requirements of the job. Good luck on your search, etc…”

Since I’m only 23 years old and a music graduate, you can imagine that they’re not just handing out jobs to people like me. I don’t know if you heard, but it’s pretty rough out there.

So I’ve been doing an unpaid internship with an internet startup to try to increase the “experience” portion of my résumé. I’ve still been looking for work, but the last three weeks has offered me the added sense of purpose that an extra 30-ish hours of work per week can afford the male ego. I am working from home, i.e., my bedroom, and it is interesting enough work.

But the last two days have introduced a threat that I was not ready to tackle: I’m going insane.

As an introvert, I am not usually afraid of being alone. In fact, to a certain extent, I thrive on the little windows of time I get to process the social information of my day. When I don’t get those windows, I get cranky and emotional–it’s not pretty. I have spent the last few years, actually, learning how to regulate myself properly to avoid those situations. I’d gotten pretty good.

Working from my room, however, I have experienced a level of solitude and isolation that I didn’t know was possible. Today, I came home after grabbing breakfast at Starbucks and kind of freaked out in the house. I was drumming all over the walls in my apartment whilst jumping around and grunting at sporadic intervals. It felt really animal and really visceral and really foreign and kind of comical. This continued for about 20 minutes until I had extinguished my energy and regained some equilibrium.

I believe in people and I love people and I am terrible with crowds but I don’t mind small groups and I need one-on-one interaction. To be deprived of involvement in the lives of people has brought me to a new ledge from which to peer into the chasm of insanity to which I seem to make a regular return.

All that to say…I love all of you who might read this. I may be hard to approach and a little bit tough to figure out, but I really do like you and I really do think you’re amazing. Y’all are not just my favorite part of life; as demonstrated by the events of today, y’all are the link to my sanity, too.