Theology for the Masses

Following is the text of my first sermon at Beavercreek Nazarene.  I used a lot of visual media to communicate along with what I said; some of it was not available here.  I’d appreciate your constructive criticism.  The audio is available here.

What does it mean to give?

Begin with the story of the Rich and Poor brothers.

King is very generous.

• Poor brother offers the Turnip because he recognizes that were it not for the King, he would not have this crop. It’s all he can do. Because of this, the king gives him gold and land.
• Rich brother sees this and offers the king his best horse and a gift of gold. He says it is because the King is generous and rewards his faithful subjects. King recognizes his selfishness and offers him the Turnip.
• Rich brother is put off, but King explains that the Turnip cost him much gold and a fine estate. Surely the rich brother could not think of a finer, more costly gift than this Turnip?
• The Rich brother is forced to take the Turnip and leave.

Why do we like this story? What about it seems right?

We like that the poor brother (who gives a gift of himself, even though no one really wants it) is given wealth because he gave honestly, while the rich brother (who gives a gift anyone would want but it’s disingenuous) gets nothing. I think we connect to the idea that it’s the attitude of the giver, not the quality of the gift that matters the most. But all too often, we give as the Rich brother. We don’t give out of a sense of gratitude or generosity; too often, we only give when it’s convenient for us, when it doesn’t hurt too much, or when we want something out of it. But the reason we take time when we gather for worship to gather up money is that we believe that God is the giver of all good gifts. And he gives to us so that we might have the ability to give in imitation of him. So please use this time to imitate the God we serve: practice giving your Self to each other by greeting those who have gathered here with you, and practice being a giver of good gifts by leaving your offering in the plates.

Offering

Talk: Earth

Introduce myself (Adjusting to OH – Float trips, Festivals every day, Sweetest Day)

Heaven recap

Wrong thinking about Heaven (it’s a far off cloud-and-harp type place) corrected (it’s the space where God dwells, it breaks into our reality)

Wrong thinking about Earth and bodies (it’s expendable and doesn’t matter OR a form of nature worship – elevating nature above even human life). And those of us in the middle still have a lot of different attitudes towards the created world. Some of us think we’re entitled to the world, that it’s ours to use and abuse however we want, without a second thought. Some of us are proud of how hard we’ve worked, and we feel that what we have is ours because we’ve earned it. And maybe a few of us look at what we have as a beautiful and precious gift from God. Today I want to explore the nature of the Created World – Mother Nature, the Earth, whatever – and I want to ask why we should care about it. In our time together today, I hope that we can learn to pray along with the famous theologian of the 1980s, Belinda Carlisle, “Ooo baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooo, Heaven is a place on Earth.” Are you ready?

I think one of the most profound statements of humankind and our relationship to the Earth is found in Genesis 2:15 – “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” Right here, we see that God expects us to be caretakers of the Earth, that part of what it means to be fully human – to be human the way God created us to be human – is this obligation to garden.

To till and keep the Earth.

To find the weeds and pull them up.

It seems that – according to the Scriptures – we were made to be gardeners in God’s garden. That God designed us with the capacity and ability to create great beauty.

In fact, according to Genesis 1, God gave us the whole blue ball. Remember what God said to us in the beginning: ” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’” The Scriptures tell us that God gave us the whole world, garden and all.

Of course, if you know the story, it didn’t take us long to ruin it. We chose the fruit of the wrong tree and we were exiled from God’s presence. And God told us that the ground was cursed because of our choice. That thorns and thistles – weeds – would grow up when we tried to work the land.

Some gardeners we turned out to be. Instead of cultivating life, we cultivate death.

So it’s on this Earth, full of all the weeds of the worst kinds, that Jesus taught us to pray, “May your kingdom come on this Earth, and your will be done here as it is done in Heaven.” Because it’s pretty easy to look around and see that God’s will is most certainly not done here. At least not yet.

(“Your Love is Strong” recording + pictures)

So what do we do with images like these (most powerful images: the meadow/wasteland, the bride/homeless woman, sell yourself to buy the one you love/prostitute)? As a people who have dedicated ourselves to following Jesus, and to praying as he prays, what is our obligation to the Earth? What does it look like to do God’s will on Earth as it is done in Heaven?

Let’s start out with Psalm 24:1-4: “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.“

Did any of you catch the odd shift in thought there? Have you ever been in a situation where you’re talking to someone, and then they switch subjects without telling you? One minute, you’re tracking perfectly well with your conversation partner, and in the next moment you’ll realize you’re on two totally different pages. I do this to my wife all the time – we’ll be talking about how much fun we had at dinner yesterday, which will make me think about how we need to go buy dinner stuff for the upcoming week, and so I’ll say something like this:

“Man, I really loved getting to hang out with Don and Val at dinner yesterday. We need to hang out with them more!” She’ll agree and ask when we should hang out with them again, and then I – now thinking about tomorrow’s dinner – will respond, “I think we need more roast beef.” Does anyone else suffer from this particular ailment?

Why does that happen? When there’s that sort of cognitive jump, I perceive A –> B –> C. But because I don’t voice B, Amanda only hears A –> C, and because that’s not a natural connection, I lose her and get a confused look. And that’s because there’s an unspoken connection that I perceived that she didn’t. And if you’re not clued into that unspoken connection, you’re probably not going to make the conversational jump in the thought flow.

That’s what’s happening here in Psalm 24. The author exclaims, “The Earth is Yahweh’s, and everything in it!” And then he goes on to lecture us about living rightly. Imagine that we’re walking in the woods together, and I point out a stream by saying, “Man, look at that gorgeous river that God made!”

I took this as we were walking in a forest outside Yellow Springs, OH.

Then I look at you and say, “While I’m thinking about it, don’t kill people.” You’d wonder what you’d missed, what unspoken connection between “God made the river” and “Don’t kill people” you missed, and that’s exactly what I wonder when I read this Psalm. What connection does the Psalmist see between creation and moral action? What am I missing here?

Paul helps us understand what’s going on in his letter to the Romans. We’re jumping into the middle of the part where Paul is demonstrating his conviction that every person has access to the character and nature of God, and therefore that every person can know who God is. Read with me, if you will, 1:19-23.

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him… and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.” (1:19-23)

Hear Paul’s words: “What can be known about God is plain to them. The ‘them’ in question here is pagans, non-Jews, people groups who live outside the covenant, who do not have access to the Scriptures. And a lot of people today use these verses to argue against atheists, to say, “Well, just look around you. Nature proves that God must exist.” But in the first century, everyone believed in some sort of God; in fact, guys like Paul were considered the ‘atheists’ because they didn’t believe in the Roman gods. So if Paul’s not arguing for the existence of a god, what is he arguing? Paul assumes you already believe in some kind of god. He is arguing, then, that creation reveals the character and nature of Yahweh, the god of Israel. According to Paul, all things that exist, exist to reveal God’s glory, God’s love, God’s character to us so that we might be pointed back to God himself and give thanks.

According to Paul, creation is one big gift to us from God, and he gave it to us so that we can know who he is better. Listen to his speech to the Athenians on Mars Hill in Acts 17:24-28: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things… God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”

What do I mean? Consider for a moment this question: why does food taste so good? Food could taste like dirt and we’d still eat it if it meant the difference between life and death (that’s the only reason I can figure out that people eat broccoli). Why is it when I bite into a medium-rare steak, I am immediately convince that God exists, that he loves me and that I my mouth has been transported to the very Throne Room of that God? According to Paul, it’s because God wants us to taste and see that He is a giver of good gifts. Delicious food is meant to teach us that God loves us and that he is worthy of our worship (that’s why cooking steak well-done is a Sin). The created world – trees, rocks, dogs, food, drink, even our own bodies, everything that exists points back to God and his character.

At some level, we already know this. In the Church, we have Sacraments – Baptism and Communion – that are physical pointers to spiritual realities. When we baptize, we represent that you are dying to yourself and being raised by Jesus into his new life within the Church. When we break bread together, we are remembering that Jesus was broken for us, and that we are to imitate him by breaking ourselves open for those around us. We celebrate marriage as an Earthly picture of the relationship that exists between God and the Church.

But Paul goes further than a few Sacraments. According to Paul, the whole Earth is filled with signs and pointers to God and his nature – his love, his mercy, his justice, his holiness. According to Paul, every created thing is a Sacrament. Paul thinks that the Created world is a good enough sermon to convict you of sin, to teach you about who God is and your need for him. According to Paul, even you – a person created in the very image of God – are meant to be a Sacrament.

So let’s review what the Scriptures tell us: If Psalm 24 tells us that the Earth and everything in it belongs to God, Genesis 1-2 tells us that God gave us the Earth. It is his gift to us.

Why?

According to Paul, he gave us the Earth so that we might know what kind of God he is. That we would know that he loves us by giving us good, beautiful gifts. And that we would know that we were created to be grateful, generous imitations, images of that Creator.

So let’s bring it back to today. Is Earth today a place where God’s goodness, God’s holiness is known? A few weeks ago, I was in New York City for my brother’s wedding. And we were walking to the Staten Island Ferry to cross over onto Manhattan Island. We were walking past the shoreline and I looked over. This is what I saw:

I took this as I was walking towards the Staten Island Ferry

I immediately thought to myself, “Is this what God had in mind when he so lovingly and carefully crafted this shoreline?”

And then I thought, “I wonder if it’s hard for people who walk by this every day to believe in a God who gave us a good world to inhabit?”

Wouldn’t you agree that it’s hard to know that God is good if you’re one of the 2 billion persons in the world who lives on less than $2/day.

It’s hard to know that God is good if you’re one of 143 million orphans in the world, who don’t know what it means to have a loving Earthly mother or father.

It’s hard to know that God is good if you are suffering from disease. If you do not have a roof over your head. If you suffer from abuse or neglect.

It’s hard to know that God loves you if you constantly feel utterly alone and abandoned.

It’s hard to know that God loves you if you are the victim of violence.

It’s hard to know that God loves you if you live in a world that has been polluted by death and destruction. If you live in a world that bears the curse of Sin.

But we do. We all live in a fallen, broken, painful world. It’s full of all of those things we saw in the video and more. And in the midst of all of it, Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in Heaven, your Name is HOLY. Let your kingdom come to this world, and your will be done here the same as it’s done in Heaven.” See Jesus understood that there’s still a place where God’s will is done. It’s where God lives. But God does not live in Temples or Church Buildings. He lives in us.

When the Church comes together as the Body of Christ, something happens. Heaven explodes out onto the Earth. Because God is living in and among us. We are his body. And God is still looking for gardeners. He’s still looking for some people who will get down on their knees, find the weeds and pull them up by their roots. To eliminate them from God’s garden so that it may be beautiful again.

Weeds like poverty and hunger.

Weeds like pollution.

Weeds like abandonment, isolation and loneliness.

Weeds like violence and abuse.

Weeds like betrayal and divorce.

What does that look like in the Church? What does that mean for us who gather weekly to celebrate the Garden-maker? The short version is this: We have been given much. And we can understand it all as entitlement, earnings or gifts. What will you do with what you’ve been given?

<introduce Kia>

What will you do with what you’ve been given? Will you be ruthless in eliminating the weeds from God’s garden? What would it look like for our Church to pray together, “Father, your name is Holy. Let your kingdom come to this world, and your will be done here the same as it’s done in Heaven”? What would it look like for our church to be a place where Heaven is exploding out onto the Earth?

For starters, I think it’d look a lot like this:

<Be the Church video>

I was asked to prepare a call to worship for our Sunday EPIC gathering this last Sunday.  I read Ephesians 2

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.  All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.  But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  So then, remember that at one time you Outsiders by birth, remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us… that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

and then offered this prayer:

Our Father in Heaven, your name is holy. You are one God in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. Three persons but never divided. One God, creator of Heaven and Earth and Father of each one of us. You created us in your image, holy and perfect and in perfect unity with you and with each other.

We recognize that it was our sin, our desire to become like You that divided us, that separated us from you and from each other. And we confess that we have been making war with you and with each other ever since Cain struck down his brother east of Eden. We have fought and scrapped and striven with one another in quests to build towers for ourselves that stretch up into your heaven.

We confess that we’ve never really quit trying to be gods. We tell ourselves that we are each masters of our own destiny, that we each chart our own courses through this life, as though our lives were our own and not good gifts from You. We take your blessings and call them rights, and we fight to defend them, so great is our sense of our own entitlement.

We confess that we are often so busy trying to be like You that we forget that You became one of us. That even in the midst of all our kingdom building, you came and taught us to pray that Your kingdom come and that Your will be done here on Earth even as it is in Heaven. We forget that you gave yourself over to our Sin and that we divided Your body, we poured out Your blood.

Teach us to remember what you purchased that day. Teach us to remember that even when we were dead and alone – separated in our sins, you bought us out of that Death by Your own sacrifice. Teach us to remember that through the blood of Jesus, you made peace with us – your enemies – and reconciled all things to yourself. Teach us to remember all of these things as we come to Your table this morning.

We do not come as doctors or mechanics. As lawyers or teachers. We do not come as mothers or fathers or children. We do not come as students or co-workers or soldiers. We do not come to Your table as workers and builders of our own kingdoms, not on this Day you called us to rest from our labors. No, we come to your table as humans, children made in our Father’s image. We come hungry and thirsty – hungry for the Bread of Life that is your Body, broken for us. Thirsty for the Living Water that is your blood poured out for our forgiveness. We come and sit at your feet and confess that we need you first and foremost, above all other treasures and trinkets in this world you created.

We come and sit at your table – together – and we remember that You have brought us all together and broken down all walls between us. We are the Church, and in us you have restored our unity and our communion – with You and with one another.

We offer our Selves to you now in the name of Jesus, who is our head and in whom by your Spirit you have drawn us all back to you.

Last night Tom, Amanda, and I wrote a Labor Day confession prayer which I prayed this morning at his church. Here it is…

God, you made the world and everything in it. You are Lord of heaven and earth and do not live in temples built by labor, and you are not served by human labor, as if you needed anything, because you yourself give all humanity life and breath and everything else.

We confess that far too often, we do not remember that you are the source of every good gift, of every breath we take and of every calorie of energy we exert.

And we confess that in our darkest moments, we do not want gifts, handouts. Because to us, handouts are for losers. Handouts are for dropouts. Handouts are for beggars on roadsides. Handouts are not for us.

Because we are a people who labor. Our bodies labor to earn so we can eat, buy, sell and secure. Our minds labor with anxiety over all we must accomplish and all we leave undone. Our souls labor endlessly to win your affections – as though your heart could be won by the sweat of our brow. We labor, we produce, we strive, and all too often we consider ourselves worthy and deserving of that with which you have given us.

We confess that we often allow the labor of our hands to distract us from the work that your Spirit is accomplishing in our world – in your world.

Let us remember that you created us in six days, that at the end of your labors, you rested.

Let us remember that the work of our hands is to sow the seeds of our own destruction, not our salvation.

And let us remember that from those first days, you did not rest again until you laid in the Tomb, having accomplished in your work the redemption that all our labors could not purchase for us.

Let us remember that our salvation was a gift given out of the very depths of your love for us, and that it was given freely, graciously.

Let us remember that we are more than producers, more than the sum of our labors, more than our portfolios and purchasing power. Because at the foot of the cross, we are all beggars in need of the handout you so freely extend to us.

This is a weekend in which we break the surface of the sea of our daily toil to draw a collective breath to break from our many labors. So teach us in this time to rest as you created us to rest. Teach us to pause from our production. And in that rest, in that pause, give us eyes to see where your Spirit is already at work, that we may join into your labors. Because we confess that your work -

- proclaiming good news to the poor

- freedom to the prisoner

- healing the sick

- releasing those who suffer oppression

- and doing the hard work of justice

- these labors are what the Spirit anointed your Son to accomplish, and what we as his body are anointed still to do. Let us fill our brief lives with the work of your kingdom. Let the work of our hands become the work of your body, and your Son.

For in this hour together, we look to Jesus, through whom we know and receive your many good gifts and in whose name we gratefully pray.

**This is a story I told as a presentation of the Gospel at the MizzouBSU’s RealLife Thursday Night Live. I would be interested in your thoughts.**

If we can say anything at all about our culture, it’s that we love stories. Look at our movies, our television, our sports, our gossip (talk radio, celeb magazines, sometimes our ‘prayer requests’). We are captivated by the power of the Story. And so for just a few minutes tonight, I want to look at a story from the Gospel of John. It takes place the morning of Jesus’ resurrection, and involves Mary of Magdala, one of Jesus’ closest followers. She and a couple of Jesus’ disciples go to visit his Tomb and find it empty. The other disciples leave, and Mary stays, weeping. Here’s where we pick up:

But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?” “They took my Master,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn’t recognize him. Jesus spoke to her, “Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?” She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, “Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him.” Jesus said, “Mary.” Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” meaning “Teacher!” Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: “I saw the Master!” And she told them everything he said to her. — John 20:11-18

Why would Mary mistake Jesus for a gardener? Maybe it was still dark. Or perhaps we need to listen to the larger story, of which the Empty Tomb is the ending. I want to tell you God’s story as we have it in the Scriptures. Listen and see if you, too, can see what Mary saw.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

In the beginning, the Creator planted a beautiful garden. It was lush and fertile, overflowing with every kind of delicious fruit and vegetable imaginable, each one fully ripe, the flavors practically bursting through their skins before your teeth could break them. It was a perfect place. It was a wholesome place. It was a place where beauty was almost tangible, where you could see the health and perfection and wonder of the whole garden, just by looking around. And the Creator very much loved to take walks through his garden, to enjoy the subtle fragrances mixing together, shifting as he walked from one area to the next, to savor the sunlight as it played across the various plants, setting them on fire with reds and oranges or cooling them in deep blues and purples. As the Creator surveyed his garden, he sighed mightily, satisfied, and he said to himself, “This is good.”

It was so good, in fact, that the Creator wanted to share it beyond himself. And so he created the Man. How he loved those first days when the Man explored the garden, enjoying the sights and sounds and tastes and smells. One moment will forever hold a special place in his heart: He brought the Man to the center of the garden, where the trees were, those two trees. He stopped the Man there and said to him, ‘I have named you Adam because you are made of adamah, or dust. And just as I made this garden for us, I made you to take care of this garden with me. You will be my co-laborer, my gardener. You are going to work with me to keep this whole place beautiful.’ As the Man’s smile widened, the Creator turned to the trees to explain their nature to the Man: ‘Of all of the plants in this garden, these are the most important. One tree gives you life. You’ll live forever. This is tree I want to you eat from. I want you to experience life and this garden with me.’

‘And what of the Other?’ the Man asked.

‘The Other tree will give you the ability to choose your own way,’ said the Creator. ‘You will be able to decide your ways are better than my ways, that your plan for the Garden is better than mine. But you should know this: you cannot take care of the Garden without me. You are the gardener only because I am already gardening. You only know what to do because you have already seen me doing it.’

‘Hear me, Adam,’ the Creator said, ‘You can only eat from one of these trees. If you choose the Other tree, it means you’ll die. You can’t have life apart from me.’

I don’t know how many days passed between that conversation and Adam’s choice. I like to think that it was quite a while. I do know that the Creator made him a partner (but that’s a story for another time). I like to think that he and his partner were happy in the Garden with the Creator for a long time. And I don’t know why they chose what they did. I do know that eventually, Adam chose the Other tree. He chose to believe that his ideas were better than the Creator’s. That he could take care of the Garden on his own. And he died because of it. Oh not right away. No, actually, the rest of Adam’s long life was filled with the consequences of that fateful decision. I know he got to watch the beautiful Garden God had created consumed with violence and hatred and greed and all the other fruits that Other tree. And then, at the end of a long, hard and painful life, Adam and his wife, Eve, died. And they most certainly did not live happily ever after.

Now, as stories go, if that were the ending, it would make for a pretty depressing story, but also one that touches perhaps too closely to the truth of our lives. Because as Adam’s children, we all have made a habit of choosing that Other tree, of decided to go about life on our own, with little regard for the Creator’s desires for us and our world. To say it another way, we all think of ourselves as main characters in our own stories, rather than as characters in God’s story. And our world is proof of the truth of the Creator’s promise: our choice to tell our own stories has created a world that looks more like a grave than a garden. Adam’s legacy, our legacy, is death and destruction, not growth and goodness, not flourishing according to the Creator’s designs as he tells our stories. Our world of famine, rape, broken homes and broken hearts, of war and bloodshed, of children who die to young and old ignored and abused is a long way from that Garden, and we have lost the way back.

How fortunate for we sons of Adam and daughters of Eve that we were not left out here to wander in the dark and dead among the tombs! Because the Creator was not content to allow his children to destroy the world he’d created for them, nor to let them destroy themselves rather than live with him. Instead, God became human, one of us. And in doing so, he showed us what a rightly lived human life looks like. He showed us the Creator’s original plan for Adam.

He showed us a person who was more concerned about other people than himself. He showed us a person who gave his life over to the pursuit of Justice for all persons, not just those in power. And he showed us a person who did all of these things because he was first and foremost connected to the Creator, who only did what he saw the Creator doing, and – consequently – whose life was one long process of putting right the world we’d steered so horribly wrong.

And all of this culminated when he was in his early 30’s, during a holiday that celebrated the fact that the Creator is also the Liberator, that God not only brings about new life, but he restores that which was broken back to wholeness. During that holiday (called Passover), that God-become-human named Jesus took on the worst evils humanity had to offer and dared them to do their worst. We did what we have always done since we left the Garden – we killed. We brought about death. We slaughtered God and laid him in a Tomb.

The Second Adam had come to us that we might have life, that we might reconnect with God. That we might begin to fix what we had broken. He came into our darkness and offered to show us the ways of God that we had so long forgotten. And still, even after thousands of years of the pain of death, we chose the Other tree. We chose our own way. We killed the God made human.

And we declared it a Good Friday.

But as the Creator and the Liberator so often does, he redeemed us even from that choice. He set us free from that slavery to ourselves that we can’t seem to break. He took upon himself the first Adam’s death and destruction and offered us instead resurrection and restoration.

Because early on that Sunday morning, a new day began unlike any other in history. Jesus’ dead body was no longer dead. He moved; he sat up and removed his grave clothes, folded them neatly on the stone slab where he’d lain. And he emerged from the Tomb, from the place of death, from the consequences of Sin.

The Second Adam had defeated evil, death and sin. He had taken the worst we had to offer upon himself and by doing so placed himself between us and the death we’d called down upon ourselves and our world. And then he rose. He conquered. And so he walked out of the Tomb alive and well, ready to fulfill the work the first Adam had left undone.

So it’s not so great a surprise that, a few hours later, when Mary visits the Tomb to mourn, she mistakes him for the Gardener. Because he is the Gardener. But the whole world is his Garden, and he’s working towards the day when we’ll have no more Tombs. And no more suffering.

And if you’ll walk with him a ways, he’ll take you to that hill where he died. And he’ll point up to the tree on which they crucified him and say, ‘Child, if you continue to eat of this Other tree, if you choose to go your own way, you’ll die. Come with me and eat of the Tree of Life. Come join me once again in taking care of my Garden.”

Father,

we are children who have been given much. You have blessed us with an abundance of all things: food to fill our stomachs, every kind of entertainment to distract and occupy our minds, and every opportunity to adorn our bodies with things

stuff

the trappings of our culture that we think make us beautiful.

Father,

you teach us that the day will come when we are stripped bare of everything we hold dear, everything that we tell ourselves defines who we are, all the things we tell ourselves make us beautiful. And on that day, all you will see are those things that truly define who we are, those things that truly matter because they are the things that matter to you. And you will determine if, in fact, we are truly beautiful.

Father,

may you find on that day children who care really and truly for our brothers and sisters, your beloved creatures crafted so lovingly in your own image. May you find that we were never guilty of stealing from them those things they need to express that image fully.

Teach us to strip ourselves of the finer things of our culture that we may clothe ourselves with the finer things of your kingdom culture. Give us eyes that see the beauty that your eye beholds, that we may learn how to become beautiful in your eyes.

Once upon a time, there were two men who were similar in many ways. Both were powerful and creative. Both were kind and loving. Both were well-respected in their towns. Both were fathers. And both were exceptional artists. In fact, the artistic community argued all the time as to which was the greatest, and the general consensus was that their crafts surpassed mere human judgment.

The first man announced an art show to be held in his private gallery at his home. He invited all the most prominent artists and art critics in the world, and promised that the revelation of his latest work would surpass all he’d done before. The night of the show arrived, and the artist’s home was truly a who’s who of the art world – everyone who was anyone was there. As the evening progressed, everyone agreed that these pieces were truly astounding, that they far surpassed the artist’s previous works. Frequently, guests were found weeping as they viewed various pieces, so moving was his mastery of his craft.

Several hours into the evening, the gallery door swung open and the artist’s young son came running into the gallery, clutching a piece of paper in his hand and saying, “Daddy! Daddy!” The artist was in front of the central display piece of his show, and when the son ran up, he excused himself from his conversation and bent down to his son.

“Yes, my boy,” he said softly, “what is it?” The boy excitedly waved his paper in front of his father.

“Look, Daddy! I did it just like you!” The artist took the piece of paper and turned it over. On it was a finger-painting, clearly crafted with all the patience and skill of a five-year-old.

“This is very nice, son. You did a good job,” the artist said, with the patronizing kindness unique to parents. “Why don’t you go show it to Mommy?”

“Put it on the wall, daddy! Put it by yours!” the boy begged.

“Son, this is a serious art show,” the artist replied. “Your daddy is a very important person, and he makes art that is beautiful and praiseworthy. You’ve just done a finger-painting. It wouldn’t be right for me to hang it in here, with all these glorious pieces of art that I’ve created. To display anything you’ve created in here would demean and devalue all of the glorious things I’ve done. I’ll hang this in my office.”

Dejected, the child left, finger-painting now crumpled in his small, unskilled fingers. As he shuffled out of the gallery, the crowd – which had been silently observing – began to whisper their approval. It would be a shame, they agreed, to tarnish the obvious brilliance of this room with such amateurish work. It was clear that the boy would never be half the artist his father was.

Shortly thereafter, the other artist also announced an opening, and he too promised work to surpass all that he’d done before. And once again, the cream of the art community crop gathered in a home gallery to experience an opening of epic proportions. And, as promised, the pieces were brilliant… each more beautiful and breathtaking than the last. And the final piece, the grandest of them all, the pinnacle of the opening surpassed everyone’s hopes. It was quite clearly one of the greatest masterpieces ever committed to canvas.

And once more, several hours into the opening, the door to the gallery cracked open, and this artist’s young daughter ran in, also with a painting in hand. “Daddy, Daddy!” she cried, “Look! I did just like you!”

The father swept his daughter up in his arms and with a growing smile looked down at his daughter’s crude, unskilled finger-painting. “It’s beautiful, honey. Simply beautiful. I know just where I’m going to hang it.”

With that, he set her down and handed the painting back to her. Then he walked over to his masterpiece, the central exhibit of his opening. As he approached it, the whispers in the room – which until now had been muted – grew into a low hum. The father grasped his painting and pulled it down off the wall and cast it to the floor, then turned to his daughter. “Honey,” he called, “may I have your painting?” The child brought her paper over to him and handed it up. The father took it and mounted it in the place where his crowning achievement had once stood. As he did so, the murmering grew to a dull roar, the outrage of the guests clear as they eyed the abandoned masterpiece.

Still smiling, but eyeing the crowd with comprehending eyes, the Father picked his daughter back up. “My dear child,” he began, never taking his eyes off of her, but addressing the crowd with his voice, “you are my greatest creation, the crowning joy of my life. Nothing else I have ever or will ever create could compare with you.” As he continued, voice choked with love and… yes pride, tears filled the corners of his eyes. “You made something the same way I do, and you did it as well as you could. Nothing could make me happier, or bring me greater glory and fame than this beautiful, talented person you’re becoming.”

The girl never left his side for the rest of the evening. And the father never ceased to display his most glorious masterpiece.

“And in His teaching He was saying: ‘Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, and like respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues, and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers; these will receive greater condemnation.’ And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the multitude were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. And calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, ‘Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.’”

– Mark 12:38-44

The widow in this story is always held up as a model of faithful giving. Though she has almost nothing, she gives everything she has. In doing so, she give far more than all the rich whose monetary contributions were exponentially larger. And so we read Jesus’ statement about her as a commendation. But Dr. Rodney Reeves once asked me this profound question: did Jesus see her gift as admirable or tragic? Just the day before this, Jesus cleansed the Temple and proclaimed its destruction. He’s spent today in the Temple arguing with the religious leaders there. And now he’s criticizing the rich who oppress the poor, and even warns that they ‘devour widows’ houses’ while appearing religious (this of course despite the fact that God said true religion is caring for widows). Here is a woman who is a victim of a corrupt, oppressive religious system, and she’s so enmeshed in the hegemony of that system that she is giving everything she has to the very system that’s oppressing her. Indeed, this woman is tragic. We can applaud her act of giving, but we cannot applaud the object of that gift. We should weep that she’s sacrificing everything for a broken, corrupted system that Jesus has promised will fall.

So too, today. I hear at least once weekly – usually in prayers – that we should be thankful for our soldiers fighting in Iraq who “are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice” because we remember that “freedom isn’t free.” But isn’t it? Isn’t that the point of grace? That we don’t earn any of it? And isn’t it “for freedom that Christ set us free”? In fact, our nation has cultivated a culture of violence and death. And we support our culture of consumption and irresponsibility in large part through our military action around the globe. Now, I’m not going to deny that the American armed forces do a lot of great things. But this does not detract from the fact that they also enact terrible acts of violence in order to support the American way of life. But we know that this life is unbiblical. We are called to use what we need and give the rest away. We are called to serve others first and think of ourselves last. We are called to extol the image of God in all of our brothers and sisters, not to dehumanize them. We are called to care for the poor, to welcome the stranger, not legislate against them. And yet we do the very things we were commanded not to do. And we know that no kingdom is eternal save the Kingdom of God.

And our soldiers are as much victims of this corrupt system as any of us. But they’re so enmeshed in the hegemony of that system (as are we all, I think) that they are giving everything they have to the very system that’s oppressing them (and so many others around the globe). Indeed, they are tragic. We can applaud their act of giving, but we cannot applaud the object of that gift. We should week that they’re sacrificing everything for a broken, corrupted system that Jesus has promised will fall.

Our service men and women don’t need to fight for our freedom. S/he whom the son sets free is free indeed. One man died for our freedom. One man made (literally) the ultimate sacrifice. And he did it that no one else ever need die to purchase what is already paid for.

May we learn what true freedom is.

My church hosted a community-wide prayer meeting. I was asked to deliver the prayer for the least of these. Here’s what I prayed:

God, our Father, we thank you that you are also Adonai Jireh, our provider. We thank you that you have been so good to us, that portion of your people who live in America. We thank you for our seemingly limitless resources, for safety as we go about our daily lives, and for a government that lets us follow you as you command. We thank you for all of these blessings and many more, and we pause to acknowledge that you and you alone are worthy of our love and allegiance.

But we cannot think on our blessings without recalling also those times when we’ve not been so blessed. We remember Egypt. We remember when we came there as immigrants. We also remember when Egypt made us to work as slaves. We remember how your mighty hand led us out from that place of slavery, and how you took us into the wilderness, where we learned that every good and perfect gift comes from you, that you are our source of all things – of security, of shelter, of food and drink. We remember how you led us into our Promised Land, and how you continued to provide for us even there.

We remember these things now, Adonai Jireh, God our Provider, because we must confess that we have often forgotten them. And so as we recount the ways in which you have blessed us, let us remember those in our community and in our world who do not experience the blessings you’ve given us. Let us remember that many around the world still groan under slavery to the power of Sin and Death; we remember that we must teach them how they may be free. Let us remember the poor among us: the homeless, the drug addict, the drug dealer, those trapped in generational cycles of poverty. Remind us that they do not have to earn our compassion or our mercy, just as we did not – indeed could not – earn yours. Let us not give with a spirit of patronage and paternalism, but with a spirit of love, of identification and gratitude. For we believe you when you tell us that by sharing with them, we are sharing with you. Thank you for allowing us to bless you, even as you have blessed us.

Let us remember the strangers among us, too. We remember when we were strangers in Egypt, and we recognize that, as your children, we are all strangers in this world. We confess that we have not shown the hospitality you’ve commanded to those among us whom we perceive to be different. We’ve sought to legislate against the immigrant because he doesn’t look like us. We have mocked the immigrant because she doesn’t sound like us. We have ignored that today, more of your most precious creations, those created in your image are in slavery than at any time in history, and many of them are children. Teach us to love the stranger among us even as you loved us when we were strangers to you.

We thank you for those among us who are involved in caring for the needy in our midst. We ask that you bless Morningstar Counseling, who provides affordable mental health for our community. We remember the Shepherd’s Basket and Central Missouri Food Bank, who share such basic necessities with the families of our community. Bless Open Arms, who ministers to women who are struggling to birth and raise the next generation. Bless Loaves & Fishes and the St. Francis House, who work to redeem the homeless our city ignores. Bless the Intersection and Urban Empowerment, who are committed to reach that part of town many of us fear and most of us pretend doesn’t exist. Teach all of us how to work alongside our brothers and sisters in these ministries. Give us eyes to see how we can get involved with them, and to see how we can love those our society has deemed unlovable.

Finally, teach us to be generous. We live in a world where over 2 billion persons live on less than $1 per day. Teach us to see that solutions the problems of this world are not beyond your people’s reach. Teach us to recycle. Teach us to live simply. Teach us to open our eyes to the poor around us. Teach us to use less and to give more. Teach us to be free from our lifestyle of consumption. We know that you are the God who suffers with the poor. We ask that you would teach your body to suffer with them as well. You have blessed us richly, so that we may be a blessing to the world. We ask that you would consume us, that your heart for our world and for your beloved creations would become our heart as well. Give us eyes to see your work, that we might join you.

Amen.

here’s a thought I had a few days ago…

…rough and unexamined, off the top of my head.

your thoughts/critiques?

“The Kingdom of God is the only state that will endure eternally. Thus, any war undertaken by any other state to preserve itself is unjust because that state will not endure anyway. The only kingdom we can justly defend is the Kingdom of God, and the final, decisive battle for that kingdom was fought at the Cross. We already won. Thus, any war we undertake to preserve the kingdom of God is also unjust.”

* this does not include, obviously, wars fought to protect the powerless (if that has ever actually happened).

from the hands and heart of a white, anglo-saxon protestant male:

Today is the day many in our nation have set aside to remember and honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream of racial equality. I often wonder how seriously we take this any more. After all, I’ve heard over the past several years countless Americans of European descent choose to speak of “reverse-racism”, bemoan Affirmative Action as outdated and unfair and of course rage against the swelling tide of illegal immigrants. This is nothing new in our country. In the immigration swells of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “white people” were just as racist. The difference was that ‘we’ were discriminating against Italian and Irish immigrants. In fact, the rhetoric used to describe those immigrants was strikingly similar to that used of blacks and now of the current tide of immigrants. Now, however, most every American considers Irish and Italian peoples to be nothing more than another flavor of ‘white’, and even black persons are welcomed by the white majority so long as they conform to white culture. [1]

No, America’s racism grows out of the same old problem – we are afraid of that which is unlike us. We have not become less racist; rather, we’ve managed to incorporate more of those formerly Other races into ourselves. We demand that you look like us (as much as possible), speak like us (English only, please), believe like us (liberal, Judeo-Christian) [2] and act like us (2.5 kids, nuclear family, share our values, etc.). So long as you conform to We, you may stay here, and you may thrive here. But if you do not, if you choose not to conform and instead to celebrate your distinctiveness, then you are a threat to We. You take Our jobs and You threaten to undermine Our values and Our way of life. So long as You demand that you be allowed to remain You, You will have no place among We. We will drive you out, and We will build walls to keep You out, where You belong.

And this is why Dr. King’s dream is still so far from reality. We are not yet a country where a person is judged by “the quality of his character”. We are still judged by the color of our skin, by the type of clothing we wear, by the words we speak (and the accent with which we speak them), by the god we worship (and the theologies to which we hold), and by the nation to which we pledge allegiance.

Of course most of you know that I hold no special love in my heart for America. What breaks my heart about our continuing racism this is that the Church is one of the biggest advocates of continuing racism in this country. Sunday morning continues to be ‘the most segregated hour of the week’. Many do not even see this as a problem; a leader at my church has said repeatedly when I bring up the idea of working for a more integrated congregation, “They’re more comfortable in their own churches.” Nearly every Evangelical with whom I speak about immigration thinks that a person should be required to learn English to even cross the border. And at the Crystal Cathedral’s ReThink conference this weekend, prominent Evangelical leader Chuck Colson made this statement: “Islam is a tragically regressive religion, because it has proven itself incapable of producing a great civilization.” Now, I’m going to blog about this more extensively later, but these attitudes pervade God’s Church. And we are not meant to be so.

We are to welcome the alien, the stranger among us, because we were once aliens in Egypt. We are to welcome the Other into ourselves just as they are, for so has God opened Godself to us even while we were yet sinners. We are to offer love because we first were loved. I have a dream that one day God will teach God’s people what it means to be God’s children. Or maybe I should dream instead that one day we will have eyes to see the object lessons God’s placed all around us, and ears to hear the cries of the stranger in our lands, ears that will remember our own cries, and note how similar They are to We. Not because we speak the same language or worship the same way or look the same or believe the same. But because we are all children of the same God, and we all have equal need of the same redemption.

May God give us eyes of faith to see the reality of what it means to be human today. And may God give us ears to hear the cries of God’s children who are still in bondage. And may God teach us how to love the Other as perfectly and redemptively as God has.

“It’s a long way from the shadows in my cave up to Your reality, to watch the sunlight taking over. Take me over.”

– Switchfoot, “Home”

1. Consider sitcoms such as the Cosbys, Family Matters and Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, in which the family structure, economic status and weekly problems mirrored that of white suburban America much moreso than they reflected (primarily urban) black culture] [↩]
2. Not, of course, political liberalism, but true philosophic liberalism, which sees religion primarily as a private, individual concern rather than as a corporate reality/worldview. [↩]

May I present part 2 of my pictoral tour of the Creation Museum! You’ll remember that we left last time secure in the fact that we can trust God’s Word ™ over the evil, corruptive forces of Human Reason. We saw how God’s Word ™ had been preserved throughout the centuries, despite the fact that evil persons such as Jews and Catholics had tried to corrupt it. And so now we turn to the modern incarnation of this (apparently) ancient war: the defense of Creationism in the face of Darwin’s bastard step-children, the evil Evolutionists.

The First Four Days (In the Blink of an Eye)

The couple of rooms are pretty much what we expected. We were treated to “scientific” Old-Earth “theories” based on Human Reason (read: foolish atheism) claiming that Creation is more than 6,000 years old. We saw various computer models illustrating how Young Earth science made better use of the available evidence, and how (surprise!) the Museum’s understanding of this evidence is perfectly in line with God’s Word. (It’s so comforting to know someone has it all figured out!) And at one of the unfinished displays, we were treated to an example of the Museum’s ever-vigilant dedication to undermining the rhetoric of Human Reason.

Clever, no?

Oh, and in case you were wondering (I know I was), the reason you should care about this is that believing in an Old Earth undermines all Christian doctrine and theology. Apparently unless you believe that Genesis 1-11 is literal, historical fact, then you are an evil, pagan.

Day Six (because who really cares about plants and birds? no one. that’s who.)

Whew… two whole rooms without people? It was almost getting to be too much! Fortunately, by the time we got through the second room, we were treated to a documentary film that chronicled all six days of creation in a relatively short time period (even shorter than Six Days! man, these Museum people are GOOD!). Once we’d been properly prepared, we were shown into the Garden of Eden.

I learned so much in this room! Did you know that all animals were vegetarians before the Fall? True story.

Who’s going to blame this guy for loving pineapple? Not me, that’s for sure.

They were so tame you could feed them!!

Did you know that no animals or plants were toxic or venomous before the Fall? TRUE STORY. Did you know that before the Fall, Eve never looked Adam in the eye!?! TRUE STORY! Don’t believe me? Not only was it in the video we watched; I got photographs!

Let’s go to the film:

Note Adam’s strong, upward gaze. He’s in control here, folks!

Oh Eve! You’re so demure and feminine! Oh, by the way, while you were off frolicking, the Outdated Stereotype store phoned; apparently your model is being recalled.

Dinosaurs in the garden? That you can FEED WITH YOUR HANDS?!? I know, I know. You’re thinking, “This is too good to be true!”

Oh, and alas, you were right. All good things must end. And so we come to the one scene where Eve finally looks Adam in the eye: when she offers him grapes. Or a pomegranate. Or something. I always thought it was an Apple.

The Devil Made Me Do It (Sin and Fallout)

Surprisingly, the serpent (who was Satan) did not have legs. Before or after the Fall. I was disappointed. So, apparently Adam and Eve ate the fruit, got kicked out of the Garden and God showed them how to make animal sacrifices. I have this awesome picture of Adam and Eve wearing deer skins and standing behind altar on which are lying the two slain deer, fully skinned. I can’t find the pic, but I’ll keep looking. Consider the implications – God skinned these two deer and made Adam and Eve wear the skins, probably while the poor things were still dying. That is awesome because little kids come see this museum. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the theory that Genesis 3’s claim that God made them clothes of skin is actually God showing them how to sacrifice is actually rabbinic oral tradition. Yes, the same Oral Tradition that was condemned as evil about 4 rooms ago. What’s that? No, that’s not a contradictory display. You can only find something contradictory if you’re using Human Reason, and we’re not doing anything even remotely resembling something reasonable here at the Museum.

And I’m sure you were wondering, but the animal sacrifices were insufficient because humans and animals are unrelated. This was the one and only place in the entire museum I found them giving explicit reasons that Evolution allegedly undermines Christian doctrine. Apparently, if evolution is true, then we can all just do animal sacrifices. Somehow. But since the bible says that animal sacrifices weren’t sufficient (which, to their credit, it actually does, in Hebrews – though of course they don’t bother with such things as citing references) then apparently evolution can’t be true. Now, can someone please tell me where the Bible ever gives “we’re not related” as a reason animal sacrifice isn’t valid?!?!

Anyway, now we move onto the hall of Sin. This is the room I described from last post with the gray walls and the black-and-white photos featuring the consequences of sin. They were (in order): An African kid starving, A Wolf eating raw meat and looking menacingly at the camera/audience, A mushroom cloud, Bones from the Holocaust, A Woman screaming as she gives birth, A Tornado, Heroin (complete with a spoon and needle, WTF? exactly how educational is this museum supposed to be?! here kid, THIS IS HOW YOU FREAKING TAKE HEROIN!)* and A Graveyard.

Sin is bad. And don’t forget that it’s all because you forgot to listen to God’s Word and started thinking for yourself. Human Reason will pump you full of drugs, genocide you with radiation, make you have babies and take you to Kansas where a wolf will eat your heart while you starve to death.

Also, since you were curious, it was at this point that animals started eating meat and being venomous. Apparently God had build the potential for these things into various animals, but did not reveal them until after the Fall. In a rare fit of exegetical fantasy, the Museum presents Isaiah 11:6-9 (which is an apocalyptic passage) as proof of this clearly sound theory. I find it fascinating that this idea is so completely insane that even Museum realized that no one would believe this unless they could find a Bible verse to throw at it. Fortunately, we don’t need to pay attention to context when citing. Context sounds a little too much like Human Reason for our tastes. God’s Word is God’s Word! We don’t need no context!

What could possibly be next? Oh, we haven’t talked about incest yet!

The Fallen Community

Note in this picture (of Cain, Abel, Adam and Eve), that Adam and Abel are inside the wall, while Cain and Eve (who is pregnant, but not with Seth!) are in their appropriate positions outside the wall.

Also note that Mike’s arm is outside the community.

So, Cain kills Abel (who was apparently the first prophet, more rabbinic Oral Tradition!) and then takes his sister as a wife. But isn’t that incest? Isn’t that something the Bible forbids?! Oh silly. Genetic drift hadn’t happened yet, and God’s Laws are pragmatic, not moral. So calm down. Plus, you’re gay. What’s that? Oh, well on a display called “Who did Cain Marry?”, we find this statement (reproduced verbatim):

“Since God is the One who defined marriage in the first place, God’s Word is the only standard for defining proper marriage. People who do not accept the Bible as their absolute authority have no basis for condemning someone like Cain for marrying his sister.”

Were you paying attention? If you don’t conform to our white-middle-class-fundamentalist view ::ahem:: we mean, our biblical view of marriage, then you don’t have any room to talk. So take your liberal Reason and go home.

The Flood was a cool display. Apparently Noah hired a bunch of guys to help him build the ark, but they all thought he was crazy. We know this because the displays were animatronic and talked. Yeah, they were that creepy. Some pictures:

They actually showed all the people dying. Again, I’m impressed. There are babies on that rock. At least they’re not shying away from the implications. Of course, these are also all pagan evolutionists, so… well… they probably deserved to die in the first place. I mean, they helped Noah build the ark. So they don’t have an excuse.

Sadly, not life-sized. Even sadder, not biblically accurate. Apparently the biblical specifications don’t build something that would actually float. So a Navy simulator came up with this version. However, and we would like to make this very clear: using a Navy simulator to fix something in the Bible is not using Human Reason to augment God’s Word. What we at the Museum are doing here is completely different from what we’re criticizing everywhere else in the Museum. Somehow.

Fun fact: because we can’t account for how rapidly species have changed after the flood, we are going to tell you that “these differences suggest God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.” No word on what those special tools were, but my guess is Craftsman. Also, if you were curious how the various animals got to the different continents, it turns out that they used rafts made of dead trees (killed in the flood) that float on the ocean currents. No, I am not making this up. The Museum people made it up. And they have a video simulation to prove it:

The Museum concludes with videos of college students who don’t believe in God. These are the victims of the Enemy. Given that the Museum’s primary demographics are Elderly persons and parents with young children, this is a brilliant piece of propaganda to encourage giving. The Elderly can fight against the ever-more secular Universities to get us back to those mythic “good ole days” and parents with young children can fix the problem before their kids get there. The final station is a well-produced, well-acted and (relatively) well-written 20-minute video gospel presentation. At the beginning, a guy compares a T-Rex tooth to the Bible, apparently because both are old and cool. Other than this, nothing from the Museum’s previous 2.5 hour tour appears or is referenced in the video. Somehow this is meant to prove that the Gospel is dependent on a literal reading of Genesis 1-11.

Oh Those Terrible Lizards!

I was getting pissed – we’d gone through the whole museum with almost no reference to Dinosaurs! Fear not! They had their own separate exhibit, complete with Job quotations and models!

A great question! And one we were exited to have answered.

The Leviathan and Behemoth in Job were both dinosaurs. Yes, really. Go ahead and go read their descriptions in Job 40-41. Yeah. They could breath fire (at least Leviathan could). Don’t you know that’s where dragon legends came from? No, we’re not joking. Why are you laughing? I mean… consider knights…

See?! Knights in the middle ages hunted dragons to extinction. We even watched a 10 minute video (of which I purchased a copy) explaining all of this in lucid, rational terms. Why are you laughing?

And with that, we left. We managed to doge most of the museum people, who all wanted to know what we thought. I’m sure they thought those were tears of joy.

Here is a visual tour of the Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum in Kentucky. I went with my dear friends Tom and Mike in August 2007. I’ll walk you through our experience exhibit by exhibit with my commentary.

Arrival

We reached the Museum in a caravan of three vehicles. Mike and I were heading on to St. Louis from there, and Tom had to return to Wilmore. I was driving a U-Haul

I was forced to park our U-Haul behind the Museum… can you guess why?

This was entirely a coincidence. Or providence. I prefer providence.

We entered the Museum and purchased our tickets – only $17 if you sign up for their email list! While I was in line, I overheard a family (the right proper nuclear family ™ – mom, dad and 3 boys) announce to the ticket-seller that this was their third visit to the Museum (open since Memorial Day 2007) and that they were seriously considering buying lifetime passes (a mere $1,000 per person, presumably adjusted for inflation). Once inside, we milled about looking at various odd displays before venturing into the bookstore.

The entrance to the bookstore… this was not, unfortunately, animatronic.

Inside the bookstore, we found this on top of a tall bookshelf:

Notice that it looks more like a dragon than a dinosaur. This is important for later.

On the way out of the bookstore, we saw this:

Now, you can’t really tell, but it’s a bust of St. George slaying a dragon (maybe the bookshelf dino’s sister or something?). Above it is inscribed a text from the St. George legend (myth?).

We left the bookstore (to return afterwards). On our way into the Tour of Biblical History, we passed an animatronic cave-girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel while anamatronic velociraptors drank from a nearby stream:

Who is that?! Eve? Lilith? Surprisingly, we found nary a scripture-bearing-placard to explain this bizarre scene.

And so, on that note, we began our journey.

Entering the Tour de Exhibits

Immediately upon entering into the Museum Proper, we were faced with a series of displays that forced the singular question upon which the Museum’s entire theology rests: Do you trust in Human Reason or God’s Word?

(we were unaware that the two are mutually exclusive).

Tom’s choice is clear. And if you guessed that the book at the bottom of the stack is Origin of the Species, then give yourself a prize!

You heard it here FIRST folks… the Bible does in fact speak about fossils. Buy this display, take it home and amaze your friends and family! (All rights reserved. Museum employees and their families are not eligible. Batteries and actual Scripture verses not included)

Awww! Look how cute he is! Are you sure we’re not related?

The choice is clear… we must follow either human reason and God’s word. But what’s the worst that could happen if we don’t choose God’s word? So glad you asked! Walk this way!

The Consequences of Following Human Reason

We next enter into an exhibit that displays the consequences of choosing Human Reason. First, a twisted hallway painted all black with news clippings pasted all over the walls. What news, you ask?

It’s a bit small, but you should be able to make out GAY and STEM CELLS.

Yes, this was the “the gays are going to clone themselves” wall (abortion wall not pictured). Apparently the only possible outcome of using your brain is that you become gay, then clone babies and kill them before they reach term. Clearly, brothers and sisters, human reason is evil and bad. How are we to stand before the terror of their cultural onslaught? Fortunately, we were then able to see some heroes who preserved God’s Word for us so that we could have good and true guidance that in no way requires us to think:

Here we see Abraham (who apparently carried around a huge scroll, or maybe it’s Noah?), Moses (with the original form of the 10 commandments in Hebrew complete with vowel pointings) and David (the wussy artist, sitting and playing his emo Psalms on his lyre – see how pensive he looks?).

I felt obliged to hop in along with these greats. Notice that my weapon of choice for delivering revelation from on high is a composition book. Is the color too gay?

This is Methuselah. No word on why being outrageously old counts as preserving God’s Word. Maybe they just put him in for the shock factor. Dude looks like the Cryptkeeper. If this is what being insanely old is all about, count me out. I want to go while I’m young and beautiful, not scaring little kids. (insert joke here)

According to the next display, the Jews are evil because the added Oral Tradition to God’s Word. Jesus (who, I guess wasn’t a Jew and didn’t use Oral Tradition) tried to tell them how silly they were, so they killed him. And then the Catholics came along and messed up Jesus’ teachings by adding a bunch of silly Church Traditions to it. So, last but not least, we are presented with the man who, according to the placard in front of him, saved us from the Jews and Catholics. Ladies and Gentlemen: Martin Luther himself!

Unfortunately, Luther was not animatronic.

Now that we’ve rescued the Bible from all those who doubt, what does God’s Word say about how we got here? Stay tuned for the next installment of pictures guaranteed to be more outrageous than the first!

Check out The Fuerst Shall Be Last.  This guy has some fantastic insights on Trinitarian theology.

It’s an excellent starting point for some discussion.  And, I think, a cogent argument for the supremacy of Love over sovereignty as God’s defining attribute.

“[Your dream to become great] is the dream of every living creature, the desire that is the very root of life itself. To grow until every space is a part of you. It’s the desire for greatness. There are two ways of fulfilling this, however. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up until and destroy it until there is nothing left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, “Only I will be great, and to make room for me, all the rest of you must give up even what you already have to make room for me.” – Ender Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

“⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. … ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.” – John the Elder (1 John 4)

What does it mean to say that God is Love? For much of our history, Christian theology has spoken of God’s central attribute as existence or glory or something of the like. But John is claiming something all-together different. John tells us that “God is love”, and another writing from that same community defines Love as Sacrifice: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). But what then does it mean to say that God is Sacrifice? To sacrifice is to give up that which we value. Giving up that which is not dear to us is hardly sacrifice; rather, to sacrifice is in a very real way to give of ourselves, to give that which comprises our identity. So imagine a God who is defined not by self-glorification or –gratification, but by self-emptying, self-sacrifice. Imagine a God existing in three persons who are engaged in an eternal dance of joyful, selfless giving. This sort of God finds glory not in self-aggrandizement, but rather in selfless giving. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. It is this sort of God who, out of the overflow of joy and sacrifice, the overflow of Love, creates a world filled with being who, like himself, have a will that they can willfully sacrifice (for one cannot be selfless if one has no Self to give).

But here, of course, is the steep cost of Love. Beings created in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, can choose to sacrifice, or they can choose not to sacrifice. We can choose to give of ourselves or we can choose to preserve our Selves, to fight and to battle until we have created a space in which only We exist. This is the essence of Sin: that we would choose to preserve I at the expense of the Other, rather than to give I in service, in sacrifice to the Other. This tendency to think first of ourselves, to work for self-preservation, has been at work in us since the beginning, and we are nothing if not creatures of habit.

This Self, this Sin has infected us all since the beginning. We Self-full beings see the beauty of creation through the lens of Self; we tend to ask only “how can this serve my needs?” Rather than work with God to cultivate his Garden, we have chosen instead to do as we please, and in doing so, we serve to unmake that which God called good (Genesis 6). In choosing not to serve God even as God gives himself to us, we have become captives in our own minds, unable to see or care for anything beyond that which is good for I. We have lost what it means to abandon our Selves, to live for something other than I, and so have been cut off from God, unable to enter into his Garden of giving, of true Life anymore.

Thanks be to God that he did not leave us in this sorry state! Rather, he gave once more of himself, emptying himself of his divine nature and taking the form of a slave. He came to We who could tolerate no Other and he refused to be one with us. Rather, he offered us a different way to live, a way that did not demand the preservation of the Self, but rather offers the Self in acts of Love, of Sacrifice. We could not tolerate his Otherness, his difference, and yet still he gave himself to Us, and let us have our way with him. We did what any Self does when it feels threatened. We lashed out and destroyed that which threatens. He knew this, and yet he still gave. He gave and gave, until it killed him.

And only then was the power of Love revealed. For we were made to see that in the end, all of our attempts to preserve I will only end in destruction, for we were not created to take. We were created to give, in imitation of the Self who gave himSelf for us.

“A careless leper too comfortable in his own world to notice the older wounds have new infections with new intentions.
Darkness settled in behind me, tapped me on the shoulder singing shivers to my spine from the corners of my mind,
“I’ve been wanting to remind you of everything you’ve left behind and wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.”

She’s there when I’m alone and she always seems to know the stories that’ll take me back to where my comforts sleep.
A caress with velvet paws that hide her sharpened claws along the walls that time has built high searching for the blemishes.
And i know she’s breathing murder, that it is folly to endure her. But there is sweetness in her whisper,
“When you’ve had enough, I’ll be waiting. Wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.’”– Stavesacre, “The Two Heavens”

In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus equates hate, insult and name-calling with murder. For a long time, I just accepted the common explanation that Jesus is “reinterpreting” the Law, pushing for a “deeper” understanding of “what God really meant”. As I blogged several days ago, however, I am beginning to see that Jesus was reading the Law through the lens of love defined as self-sacrifice. Thus, all commandments must be reexamined through that lens. And so what of “Thou shalt not murder”?

What is murder, exactly? In his compelling analysis of the Cain and Able myth, Volf argues (quite persuasively) that Cain murders Abel because he refuses to redefine himself. Able is the quintessential nothing – he is the second son, he is a shepherd, even his name means something like “vapor”. Cain, on the other hand is strong. He is a farmer, the first son, strong and able (hahaha, get it?). For no good reason we can see, God chooses Abel. God. Chooses. Abel. Cain cannot accept this; the very fact of Abel’s existence now calls his own understanding of himself into question. And, rather than reevaluate himself, Cain chooses to remove that which caused him existential dissonance. He strikes down his brother, the Other, thereby allowing him to maintain his identity unchanged.

If we allow this story to be paradigmatic for understanding the process of murder (and I know it’s not going to be 100%, so let’s agree not to get caught up in the details), I think this sheds some interesting light on Jesus’ comments. Murder arises from a challenge to the integrity of our Selfs. So too I suggest do hate, insult and labeling. Rarely do we hate something that does not affect us; apathy is a much commoner response to these nonentities. Our hatred arises from that which is a challenge to our Selves. Consider, for example, racism in the States – the races that bore the brunt of race-based hatred (Irish, Italian, African, etc) were always those races whose proximity to the dominant culture forced those in power to question and to reevaluate their assumptions about what made them human. We have a tendency toward self-preservation and stability; it seems to be human nature to lash out in anger against that which threatens us. Insult and labeling are public means by which we can consign the Other to safe categories that no longer threaten us.

And so I can see why Jesus considers murder, hatred, name-calling and labeling to be related. They are really all symptoms of the same problem: our tendency to objectify and dehumanize that which threatens our Selfs, our identities. Jesus calls us to lay down our Selfs in favor of embracing the Other. If we cannot allow the Other into our Selfs, to challenge and reshape us, then we will never be able to allow God, who is entirely more Other than any human, to enter into us, to shape us and to change us. Perhaps this is what Jesus means when he teaches us a few verses later to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and then follows that with, “If you do not forgive sin here on Earth, neither will your Father forgive your sins in heaven.” We are not in a place to accept God’s forgiveness, to repent, unless we can learn how to do the same down here. Only the peacemakers are called children of God.

And let’s not reduce this to cause-effect. We miss the point if we pull a magic formula, a one-to-one correlation between forgiveness on Earth and forgiveness in Heaven. Rather, we learn to be forgiven, to live as the forgiven, in the kingdom of Heaven that is coming to Earth, even as we learn to forgive sin here on Earth.

“Dead man, is it being high that makes you alive, that makes you leave behind three boys and a wife? …As the track marks work their way up your arm, my mother taught my brothers and I not to call you ‘Daddy’, but to call you ‘Father’. And I believe there is something here to be learned of Grace, ’cause I can’t help but love you.”
– “The Widow”, As Cities Burn