Category Archives: Theology

Return to Me

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Today’s reading in my Lenten devotional contained this oh-so-basic but oh-so-vital truth. It is precisely relevant to the season of Lent but generally applicable to the whole pursuit of God:

The very first Scripture reading of the Lenten season is from the prophet Joel. In it, God declares “return to me with your whole heart” (2:12). The purpose of Lent is not purification and penance for their own sakes, but in order to return to God, and re-establish the relationship with Him that we once had (or to establish the relationship we are called to have).

How forgetful I can be.  No act considered spiritual is to be undertaken for any motivation beneath “returning to God with one’s whole heart”, yet how easy it is to be driven by the lesser desire to “measure up” or appear impressive, to others or ourselves.

This is one of the killers of spiritual life, sold to us by religion and rebellion alike. Lent leads such ego to the gallows. And when the noose tightens, our souls will be on the verge of entering life, perhaps for the first time.

For those with music as a primary language (perhaps all of us!), Gungor’s song “We Will Run” has always struck my ears and heart as particularly powerful in this simple call. An abbreviated version is below for any who need a “Gungor orientation” this morning.

How Great is Our God

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How Great is Our GodA year ago, I posted about my intentions for a year’s worth of devotionals from this book. I entered 2012, fully aware that I had never succeeded in utilizing any daily devotional material for the entirety of a calendar year. Yet here I sit one year later, and that statement is no longer accurate.

A few things about this book were satisfying:

1) The readings were kept fresh by the sheer variety of contributors, spanning from church fathers just outside the pages of Acts through every century of Christian history right into significant representation of the last 200 years.

2) It was a pleasure to be introduced to a number of substantial devotional sources which were entirely new to me, and it was powerful to see these saints-through-the-centuries plotted right alongside people that I would consider contemporaries in striving to be Christ’s ambassadors in the world today.

3) Every day was not “mountaintop” inspiring. A handful of selections were documents directed at conflicts or heresies which felt distant from my life today. Others were so heavily rooted in specific historical circumstance that application was difficult to make. But these incidents were certainly the exception, whereas the rule was solid spiritual nourishment far more often than not.

4) The daily entries offering great variety in style, making this piece a great bit more interesting than the often formulaic devotional materials that fill many shelves.  While day-to-day reading could provide significant change-ups in tone and flavour, I found myself basking in the diversity, rather than begrudging it.

I would recommend this book to anyone seeking greater awareness of the wells of faith from which one might draw spiritual nourishment. I intend to let it age on my shelf before pulling it off for another go, a few years down the road.  Oscar Wilde has been quoted as saying, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

While it seems unlikely that Wilde would have ever picked up this particular book, I can confidently say that by his literature-measuring standard, “How Great is Our God” measures up well.

YOUR TURN: What devotional sources have you used that you’d direct people toward OR away from? What are your plans for 2013?  Your input makes this post better!

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Hell: A Reality Worse than the Imagery

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love-wins-setThe topic of hell has received an unusual amount of attention in Western theological discussion over the past decade.  Of course, the most popular strand of this discussion centered around Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins”, with denser strands weaving through the academic realms of publication and discussion.

Much of the conversation is built around distaste for the concept of never-ending punishment, particularly as it is wrapped in imagery of fire and burning.  This leads to several valid questions:

  • What depiction of hell is truly biblical, and what has been developed through the art and literature of the ages?
  • How literally or metaphorically are we to take what Scripture does tell of the final judgment?
  • What do biblical words like “Gehenna” really mean?

These are just a sampling of the sub-topics that factor into the larger discussion of “What do you make of the concept of hell?”  Certainly, this discussion matters; to some, it appears to matter immensely.

I am not among that number.

Part of that is due to the following quote from Timothy Keller:keller3

“To say that Scripture’s image of hellfire isn’t wholly literal is no comfort whatsoever—the reality will be far worse than the image.”

We can hardly be blamed for our flesh-fettered views. Nerves and neurons, skin and sensation, these are the means by which we experience our world. And in that light, it is easy to see why heaven’s depiction is golden and lavish, while hell’s is dark and despairing.

But what if our senses misguide us?

sensesWhat if the imagery–as vivid as imagery and language can formulate–fails to capture the intensity?

What if the most intense scenes of suffering that a human imagination can generate are pitifully poor metaphors for communicating the reality of a creature cut off from its Creator?

It seems easy to convince people that heaven will actually surpass an experience revolving around golden streets and massive mansions.  We recognize that the extravagant physical depictions fail to express even a sliver of the spiritual reality. We acknowledge that the core of that experience will center upon the overwhelming and unmissable presence of God and upon the river of life-to-the-full that will flood-flow from Him to His companions.

Humanity’s heaven imagery is pale and poor to communicate the intensity of the reality.

Yet seldom is an equivalent argument applied to hell.  And if the case is made, then it’s made only halfway.  It is one step to recognize the limitations of imagery and vocabulary.  One can say that without saying much.

But it is a big-as-a-beast statement to suggest that the imagery of hell, the metaphors that make us squirm, even buck against the entire concept, are actually too weak to communicate the magnitude of the reality.

If heaven is actually better than jewel-encrusted architecture, then the counter-statement stands too.

Hell is worse than burning.

C.s.lewis3C.S. Lewis used to speak of “the unsmiling concentration upon Self, which is the mark of hell.”  Unchecked and freely reigning within a life, self-centeredness consumes in ways sparks never will.  It scars the soul and warps one’s world.  And it appears that anyone who desires this path can have it. So powerfully are we created that our choices in the present life ripple through eternity.

But we’d be wise to make our choices, aware that the imagery is not nearly so fierce as the reality.

Hell is worse than burning.

YOUR TURN: How do you handle the Bible’s imagery of the afterlife, in light of the thought that the imagery is actually light-weight when compared to the reality?

Become part of the conversation. Your voice makes this post better.

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page. As well, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) for 3-4 daily tweets daily of of insightful quotes or intriguing articles, sprinkled with occasional goofiness.]

When the Invisible One Makes Things Visible

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In Daniel 2, a deadly decree was issued.  The wise men of Babylon were collectively condemned and sentenced to death for their perceived failure to faithfully serve the king, Nebuchadnezzar.

Their shortcoming?

Dream of NebuchadnezzarThey were unable to make sense of the king’s troubling dreams.  But even that isn’t the whole story.  In a mistrust-motivated move, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that these sages do their work “blindfolded”–he would not tell them the content of the dream.  They were to provide him with both the material and the meaning.

Daniel learned all this, only once the arrest warrant was already at his door.  Requesting time to pray, he and his faithful friends–Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah–sought revelation from the God of heaven.

How would you prayer go if your life depended upon receiving an answer you could not begin to dream up?  (The next question might be: What keeps you from always praying with that sense? But that’s another post.)

Daniel and his friends pleaded for nothing less than divine revelation. And it was received!

Their rightful response:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,to whom belong wisdom and might.

He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. 

To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you,for you have made known to us the king’s matter.” (Daniel 2:20-23)

God’s role as Revealer is wondrous!  My experiences with revelation–albeit not exactly of visions interpreted–have astounded me in a couple ways:

  1. God’s provision is precise.

    Both timely and measured, divine revelation is not unlike the message Neo receives from the Oracle, in the Matrix.  On one level, it appears inadequate and inconsequential, even unhelpful.  On another level, it is exactly–and not a hair more–what he needs to take his next step.

  2. God’s means are many.

    A friend’s words, a Scripture message, song lyrics, movie lines, and more–sometimes it’s actual words expressed, other times the truth is found in the spaces between those words.  But the Living God has no need of language either.  To me, He has also revealed through insights I could not generate, emotions I could not ignore, dreams I could not forget, and circumstances I could not concoct.

And every experience of revelation leads one into a Daniel-mode of worship, though seldom so vividly verbalized, for who cannot enter a mode of wonder at a One who knows all things and shares them succinctly yet shockingly when we seek Him?

enlightenment

Revelation is one of the wonders of the Christian experience, undeniable and unexplainable, a glorious form of spiritual feeding.

Those moments of seeing are a most beautiful thrill in one’s walk with the Unseen One.

Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,to whom belong wisdom and might.

Grace is What Works

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There is a pragmatist within each of us.

Bent toward the rational and the results,this inner dweller unintentionally opposes some of God’s most profound movements in our lives.

This logic-loving, get-the-job done approach to life, a staple of the Western society in which I’ve grown up, struggles to grasp the life-Creator, who strangely–yet frequently–insists on operating in “obviously” impractical ways.

Grace is the finest of examples.

The careful reader of the New Testament will quickly observe the inadequacy of human efforts toward salvation. However, that doesn’t stop us from trying! Bent on saving ourselves, proving ourselves, and sustaining ourselves, responsibility and duty–praiseworthy qualities within themselves–kick into hyper-gear.  In the process, pride awakens and pressure builds, all the while we are unaware that we are building brick walls between God’s salvation and our souls.

Legalistic tendencies seem wired into the human hardware.

The hymn-writer called grace “amazing”. We call it “unbelievable”. We may never use the word, but we feel incapable of grasping the concept, and embracing it feels even less likely.  That is the pragmatist within us, speaking with conviction: “Grace is impractical.”  You hear it in the push back we feel obliged to offer against grace, particularly religious or responsible citizens: “What about discipline? Grace alone is too soft; it won’t take people where they need to be. It takes more than grace to transform a life.”

Grace is not practical enough for our liking.

Or perhaps we are not nearly practical enough.

The dynamic at work here is something like John Piper describes in “Desiring God”, a book carrying the subtitle of “Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”. Piper argues that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, is an attitude built into the very human nature. Other than spiraling our souls into self-destruction, this pleasure-seeking drive is what drives the soul toward God.  Paradoxically, Piper suggests that the reason we get lost along the way is that we are not nearly hedonistic enough!  Settling for watered down forms of satisfaction, our pursuit of pleasure is revealed as too weak, rather than too strong. We chase happiness like slackers, at the expense of our souls.

C.S. Lewis was developing the same thought when he famously observed:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

So back to where we began: We resist grace because it seems out-of-touch. “This won’t work in real life,” we critique.  Even more common might be the unspoken thought that Christ’s role in our lives is to provide a much-needed “reset” button. By his death and resurrection, he presses it and we sigh with relief.  We can take another kick at getting things right, in practical and reasonable ways, of course, powered by the fuel of self.

In this sense, we are part of a rich heritage of Christians who don’t get it.  Paul’s question to such folks:

Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? (Gal.3:1-3)

Beyond the Galatian goofballs, is anyone else’s “reset” button worn out from use?

“Seeking free-flowing forgiveness so we can take another futile kick at life on our terms”: Give me Impractical for $1000, Alex.

And there’s the rub.

Grace, in all its mystery and apparent irrationality, is the most practical of solutions to the human predicament.  The God we dismiss as idealistic or illogical actually, shock of shockers, knows what He’s doing, with His “power move” of offering freedom through surrender and victory through defeat.  Much to our surprise, perhaps chagrin, grace works.

In fact, it is only grace that works.

YOUR TURN: Why does humanity buck so hard against God’s grace?  What do you grasp about grace today that God has faithfully taught you over time?

Please leave your comment below, and enter the conversation.

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page. As well, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) for 3-4 daily tweets daily of of insightful quotes or intriguing articles, sprinkled with occasional goofiness.]