On the Living Christ

Enough politics from the mustard seed. Let’s have a bit of faith.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to believe in a living Christ. Most importantly, it means that I do not have faith in the Bible, any doctrine, or any political stance. Of course, I do believe in all those things with greater and lesser degrees of certainty. But the bedrock of my faith is singular: the living Christ as Lord, now and always.

This sort of faith does not seem prevalent in America today. Liberal Christians, in my experience, tend to believe primarily in doctrines related to social justice. Conservatives come perilously close to worshiping the Bible, not the Christ it reveals.

Let me restate: I find both of those things radically secondary. Christ as Lord demands that we recognize his lordship. Our understandings of justice may change with context; the primacy of Christ will not. Likewise – and I’ll lose the conservatives here – Christ transcends anything written about him in the Bible. I believe the Bible is inspired but human; it is not perfect because only One is perfect. Moreover, the Bible can never totally capture the living Christ nor his work for a simple reason: It is written in human language. Human words may be inspired. We could even grant the fundamentalists that they are dictated by God. They would still, however, be expressed in language, a creation of human society. And because language is human, it can never fully describe the transcendent reality of God.

Certainly, the Bible points to the perfect One. But it can never contain the living Christ, who reigns over even it. That’s the Christ in whom I rest my hopes.

Evangelicals, I should add, are right in at least one major way: The most essential thing is a relationship with Christ. Is such a relationship "personal," as evangelicals claim? I just asked a professor of mine what he thought, and his answer seemed good. Certainly, we relate to God as a person because we can only relate as persons. But God in Godself transcends anything we can conceive by the world "person." In other words, God is not my co-pilot or my buddy. Christ is my Lord, who relates to me as person because I can relate in no other way.

As Christians, we thank God for that mercy.

Left Behind? Describing "Premillenial Dispensationalism"

I have just finished "Speaking My Mind," by Tony Campolo. For those of you unfamiliar with Campolo, he is a self-styled evangelical progressive, committed a personal relationship with Jesus, the infallibility of the Bible, and – more unusually – to social justice.

I’ll probably write more about Campolo later, but his chapter on dispensationalism – the fundamentalist framework for understanding history – was an eye-opener for me. Doctrines of dispensationalism lie behind everything from the "Left Behind" series to conservative evangelicals’ support for Israel. Journalist Bill Moyers recently gave a speech (a version of which has been widely circulated on the Internet) linking some evangelicals’ disregard for the environment to their dispensationalist beliefs.

Because dispensationalism is so powerful, yet understood by so few (including many evangelicals I know), I thought I’d outline its basic structure here. Later, I will explain why dispensationalism has major political implications.

The following account relies on Campolo (who is NOT a dispensationalist but a critic), as well as on my Christian history courses. A warning: this is long.

Dispensationalism is an eschatology, which is an account of the "eschaton," or the end of history. It begin in the mid-19th century with John Nelson Darby, a leader of a conservative British sect called the Plymouth Brethren. Darby’s doctrine first gained widespread acceptance among American fundamentalists through one major vehicle: the Scofield Reference Bible. Originally published in 1909, the wildly popular Scofield Bible supported (and supports – it still circulates) a dispensationalist theology in its study notes. That theology eventually gained widespread acceptance in fundamentalist and conservative Bible schools such as Moody Bible Institute and Fuller Theological Seminary -- institutions that, in turn, spread it further. Today, Dallas Theological Seminary, among others, is a leading proponent of dispensationalist thinking.

Dispensationlism claims that the Bible divides history into seven dispensations, each one characterized by a different relationship between humanity and God, each one ended by humanity’s failure disobedience. These dispensations are:

1) The Dispensation of Innocence: This dispensation begins at creation and end when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were, of course, innocent until they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

2) The Dispensation of Conscience: Having acquired the knowledge of good and evil, people may achieve salvation by following the dictates of conscience. Of course, they fail. The dispensation ends when God destroys wicked humanity with the great flood.

3) The Dispensation of Human Government: God now requires humans to create a government that will ensure righteous living. We don’t. The dispensation ends with the "confusion of tongues" at the Tower of Babel.

4) The Dispensation of Promise: This 400-year period begins with the call of Abraham into the land that God eventually promises to his descendants. It ends when Moses receives the Law on Mount Sinai, after the Exodus. Here, Campolo says, "salvation belongs to the Jews and is contingent upon God’s chosen people living according to the covenant to ‘walk before the Lord.’"

5) The Dispensation of Law: Beginning when Moses received the Law at Sinai and ending at the crucifixion of Jesus, this period allowed Jews to achieve salvation by keeping the Law, or Torah. For sinful people, keeping the law proves impossible.

6) The Dispensation of Grace: We live in this dispensation, a period in which salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ and his saving act on the cross. According to Campolo, "this is considered a parenthetical period and was unanticipated in the broad scheme of history as understood by the ancient Hebrew writers of Scripture." In other words, the Hebrews expected the messiah to immediately usher in the "end times." The messiah came (but we still await) the reign of Christ.

7) The Dispensation of Kingdom: This dispensation begins when Christ returns to Earth, where he will reign for 1,000 years.

Sound complicated? There’s more. The parenthetical period – our current dispensation of grace – is subdivided into 7 smaller eras. These reflect seven distinct periods of church history, a division that Darby found in the seven churches described in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation. According to Campolo’s description, these subdivisions within our current, parenthetical dispensation are:

1) "Ephesus: The second generation of Christians, following the early church described in Acts 2."

2) Smyrna: The period of persecution under Rome.

3) Pergamum: The period when the church allied with Constantine (who made Christianity the Roman Empire’s religion).

4) Thyatira: The "apostate" church of the Middle Ages, who supposedly worshiped Mary.

5) Sardis: The post-Reformation church, characterized by "spiritual deadness."

6 and 7) Philadelphia and Laodicea: The churches of the last days. Philadelphia refers to the faithful remnant of true Christians. Laodicea refers to churches that are rich but spiritually bankrupt.

According to the dispensationalists, we are in the era of Philadelphia and Laodicea. This means that the end times are imminent. But what happens at the end times?

Dispensationalists agree that there will be seven years of widespread suffering, followed by the final return of Christ. This unpleasant period is referred to as the Tribulation. Many, but not all, dispensationalists believe that true Christians will be "raptured" before the Tribulation, and that non-believers will be "left behind" – hence the setting for the best-selling series of the same name.

After the Tribulation, Christ will inaugurate his 1,000 year reign on earth. Then, after a brief Satanic uprising, the demonic powers will be destroyed forever and the faithful brought into a new heaven and earth for eternity.

As Campolo points out, this belief system has major implications for political belief, which I will detail soon. A teaser: For some, prophecy reveals that the rapture can't occur until Solomon's Temple is rebuilt on Mt. Zion. There is, however, one small problem with this reconstruction project: it would involve removing a mosque. Get the idea?

On Schiavo: A More Profound Thinker than Me

The New York Times has a great column by a woman who faced end of life issues with her father. Read it, but here are some highpoints:

...I could not help but imagine how violating and inappropriate it would have felt if politicians had weighed in on our decisions about Daddy last November. There are a number of people I would trust to make informed and humane decisions about my father; neither the president nor any member of Congress is among them. ...

And then there is this bit, that addressed my earlier life-cycle argument better than I did:

For me, it all boils down to a simple question: when does saving a life mean stealing a death? For a year we allowed our father to be treated in hospitals for pneumonias that would have probably ended his life. But what life were we saving? Not one he would have wanted. We let our own emotions cloud our decision-making. Alzheimer's stole my father's mind, and it was wrong to let anything cheat him of the death he would have wanted, too.

Politicians should stop grandstanding. And Christians should keep all parties involved in our prayers.

Schiavo: Difficult questions, unclear answers

A friend of mine recently sent me two good links on the Terry Schiavo case (read one or the other). Both point to a number of inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the media circus that this woman's case has become.

My concern, however, is to simply show that the case is very difficult from a Christian standpoint. What follows is a rambling attempt to think through what a very difficult issue. I'm not quite sure what I believe, but let me at least attempt to raise relevant Christian questions.

Although my gut tells me that the merciful thing is to let the poor woman die, thinking that position through is harder. From my standpoint, Christian thought must begin with the belief that human life is sacred because it bears the image of God. That belief, however, only begs other questions: What consitutes human life? And what varieties of life can be said to bear the image of God?

The most clear perspective (but not necessarily the right one), is the "seamless garment" position, the "consistent ethic of life" sustained by the Catholic church. In this viewpoint, anything with a claim to human life should be protected, including unborn fetuses, death row inmates, and terminally ill patients. Apparently this position extends to Schiavo: her parents are Catholics, and the Atlanta Journal-Consitution reports that they have been supported by the Vatican.

Others might reply, however, that life per se does not bear the image of God. Some have argued that personhood, defined as self-awareness and the capacity for decision-making, is the only sort of truly human life with a right to protection. Such a position allows Schiavo's feeding tube to be ethically removed, but it would also allow, say, the killing of a 8-month-old baby and probably the killing of a number of severly mentally handicapped people. It seems doubtful that we want a society that so callous; certainly, Christians could not live comfortably in such a society.

Yet I also think that the "image of God" involves more than a few cells bearing human DNA. For example, when I skin my knee, I do not think that I have lot something sacred by losing a bit of my epidermous.

So I'll give this my best shot, with fear and trembling: Assuming that doctors are correct about Schiavo's "persistent vegetative state," I think her tube should be removed. Here's my incomplete thought process:

1) There is a conflict of Christian ethical goods in this case. Mercy, it seems to me, is in conflict with a presumption toward life. More specifically: Both Schiavo's husband and parents can claim to be acting according to the supreme Christian value of love. Taking both parties at their word, her husband wants to love Schiavo by allowing a merciful death that honors her wishes. Her parents are trying to love her by protecting her life (at least her biological life). This means that neither side has a clear-cut, uncomplicated claim. However, I favor mercy for reason #2.

2) Christians err when we consider life as anything but a natural cycle. Evaluating what constitutes "life" at any given point risks misunderstanding what life is. Life is not summarized in an instance, but rather is a blessed cycle of conception, birth, maturation, adulthood, decline, and death. Clearly, life remains sacred at the various points in that cycle, but the cycle itself must retain an integrity. In short, the cycle should remain fundamentally in the hands of God.

But this position puts me on dicey ground for several reasons. Certainly, it requires skepticism about abortion. I admit that I drift closer to the pro-life position with every passing year, although I am not quite ready to ban abortion and despise many pro-lifers' tone, tactics, and lack of concern for children after they're born.

More gravely, though, doesn't any medical intervention interfere with the natural cycle of life?

Yes and no. I think we can distinguish between temporary interventions that restore life's natural flow (heart bypass surgery, for example) and intervention that overwhelms and supercedes that cycle, as in Schiavo's case.

As I write this, however, I realize that this raises another problem: It suggests that conscious people who require constant life-support (think Christopher Reeve) should be left to die. Clearly, I can't advocate this life-cycle idea without qualification. So let me try a third argument.

3) Perhaps we can say that life bears the image of God when it involves personhood (self-awareness, etc.) or the potential for it. A newborn does not yet possess personhood, but life's natural cycle will see the child develop into a self-aware person. The same is true with most people requiring medical attention and with self-aware people who need of life-support, as Reeve did.

Now, however, I must face one of my earlier objections: Must we declare that severely mentally handicapped people do not bear the image of God (if they lack self-awareness?)

I confess that I can't think much further than this. However, I think it is possible to say that sacred life must involve consciousness or the potential for consciousness, if not necessarily full mental functioning.

Of course, I'm walking an ethical tightrope. The simplicity and clarity of the Catholic position seem more appealing, and more convincing on the surface. Yet clarity sometimes ignores the truth that gray areas do exist -- or at least that sinful, fallen humans lack the ability to distill pure truth. Schiavo's case is difficult. Christ leads us to view life as sacred, but he also leads us to be merciful.

And if we believe in Christ's promises, we must concede that there are far worse things than death. If that's so, than allowing a merciful death seems an ethical option.

Mustard Seed in the Houston Chronicle

For those who are interested, my non-blog debut as an opinion writer occurred today in the Houston Chronicle. Feel free to check it out.

It's on the same bankruptcy bill I addressed earlier, and it argues that, according to the Bible, debt is a moral issue. It also points out that our newest bankruptcy bill is profoundly un-Biblical.

A self critique: How could I forget to mention jubilee in this article. Jubilee was the ancient Hebrew practice, detailed in Leviticus 25, of periodcally declaring a society-wide forgiveness of debt? The practice showed charity and helped level the social playing field in ancient Israel. It was profoundly relevant to my editorial topic. Oops.

Christians of all stripes -- evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant -- have also united behind the concept of Jubilee in the very recent past. This broad coalition has already successfully lobbied the governments of affluent nations to forgive some of the foreign debt that cripples many underdeveloped countries. To learn more, click here.

These Christians, from all over the political spectrum, convinced our leaders that caring for the poor was a Christian duty, and that caring for the poor required us to address the problem of debt.

I forgot that. I shouldn't have. It is exactly the sort of broad-based coalition that proves that our unity in Christ can be more than a hollow slogan.

Hopeful Signs: Evangelical Leaders Embrace Environmentalism

"I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created."

So says Rich Cizik, vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals, in a recent article in The New York Times. Cizik and a core of other evangelical leaders -- including editors of Christianity Today, the leading evangelical magazine -- have publicly supported increased environmental regulation.

Their reasons for doing so are theologically solid: As stewards of God's creation,we have a duty not to trash it. Secondly, climate change is likely to inflict the greatest damage on impoverished areas of the world. Christians truly concerned with the "least of these," evangelical leaders suggest, should therefore care about global warming.

Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say the mass of American evangelicals have become environmentalists. Thursday and Friday this week, the Times reports, a conference of evangelical leaders is meeting in the D.C. suburbs to seek consensus on an environmental statement. The power of evangelical opinion on the topic is such that both Sen. Joseph Lieberman and representatives of the Bush administration addressed the conference. The outcome is still uncertain.

Additionally, recent support for environmentalism comes from politically moderate evangelical groups -- the NAE and Christianity today count here. I have heard no signs that conservative evangelicals -- Jerry Fallwell, James Dobson, and Christian Coalition-types -- intend to jump on the environmentalist bandwagon.

Still, it can only be a sign of hope that some evangelicals' convictions are not held captive by the Republican party. Agreement on topics like abortion does not imply agreement on environmental issues. When political stakes are high, however, the temptation exists to support your party on all topics, even those where faith might suggest a different outlook. Both sides err here.

By embracing environmentalism on Christian principles, however, some evangelicals have shown that their faith comes before Republican ideology. And that is a sign of faith, as well as a sign of hope.

The Facts: For Sale to Highest Bidder

Allow me to be the last to comment on the fake and for-hire pseudo-journalists employed by the Bush administration and its allies.

For those of you who haven't been following the stories, there are three basic storylines here.

The first emerged months ago, when it came to light that the administration's Medicare office had issued video press releases about changes to Medicare's drug benefit plan. Forty television stations ran the press releases, which appeared to be independent news reports. The segment featured a "reporter" -- actually a public relations executive -- saying things like this: "All people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

The Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, determined that the segment broke federal law against government propaganda.

On the heels of that revelation came another: The Bush administration had paid conservative columnist and television host Armstrong Williams $240,000 of taxpayers' money to promote No Child Left Behind, Bush's education plan. Two less prominent columnists also received payments from federal agencies.

And then, finally, there was James Guckert, the $200-per-hour male escort better known as Jeff Gannon, the White House correspondent for "Talon News." Bloggers, followed by reporters, discovered that Talon had no employees with journalism experience, although it did have quite a few with GOP campaign experience -- as well as close ties to GOPUSA.com. Guckert/Gannon himself, who also lacked press experience, was exposed after lobby one too many blatant softballs to administration officials. In the last, he asked about Democrats who were "divorced from reality." In short, nothing about Gannon/Guckert or his employer qualified him to get a press pass, which government offices normally issue only to representatives if "independent, legitimate" news agencies.

Yet not only did Guckert/Gannon get in the White House under an alias, he also was called on to ask a question by both the president and his Press Secretary.

Now consider how White House Chief of Staff feels about the press. He recently told the New Yorker that the press doesn't ''represent the public any more than other people do,'' adding that the press has no "check-and-balance function."

What we have is a two-pronged strategy. On one hand, the administration seeks to undermine the credibility of the independent press, arguing that reporters are little more than ideological hacks. On the other hand, it disguises propaganda as news, pays columnists, and treats truly ideological non-reporters as if they were the genuine article.

The administration wants to strip away journalists to define the difference between fact and opinion. At the same time, it wants to hide its own agenda behind whatever aura of authority the press still retains.

The upshot is that the very idea of "fact" disappears. Hard truth becomes indiscernible from partisan spin. Honest debate becomes impossible, because the participants cannot even acknowledge the same reality. Or, as a Daily Show commentator once put it, they may simply claim that "the facts themselves are biased." That was a joke, but reporters feel it as true. When the cold, hard truth is hostile to a politician or party, they feel pressured to balance it with spin from the other side. To not allow distortion into their story would open them to claims of bias.

While he has had some successes, facts like the soaring budget deficit, the weakening dollar, and the continuing insurgency in Iraq could have been thorns in Bush's side. Instead, he has successfully (in a political sense) ignored those facts and asserted a set of contrary ones.

It no longer matters if that contrary set of facts is true. If the press doesn't buy it, just do what you always do: remind the world that they are biased.

In Washington, A Preferential Option for the Rich

Catholic social teaching advocates what it calls a "preferential option for the poor." The precept, derived from Jesus's teachings, asks believers to make social and political decisions in light of what would be best for the poor, not themselves.

Our nation, in the most blatant way, is institutionalizing a preferential option for the rich. This can only be called what it is: a demonic agenda blatantly contrary to the teachings of Christ.

On this blog, I've tried to maintain a balance, recognizing self-righteousness, rigidity, and hypocrisy by both the right and left. But recent events show that the rich, corporate interests that control our government are attempting to institute a double standard that favors the wealthiest over the "least of these."

Most egregiously, Congress is poised to pass a new bankruptcy bill (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/business/09bankruptcy.html) that will make it much harder for middle income people to find bankrupcty protection from overwhelming debt. While the stated aim of the law is to prevent abuse of bankruptcy laws, however, it does nothing to stop corrupt corporations like Enron from manipulating bankruptcy laws to swindle investors of billions. Likewise, it does nothing to stop wealthy families from creating special trusts to shield their assets. In facts, amendments to close loopholes for the wealthy were shot down during debate.

Here's the upshot: If you are poor, what little you have may be taken away. If you have a lot, it is perfectly acceptable to game the system.

Personal responsibility! It's a conservative rallying cry! But please note: consequences of personal failure apply only to the poor.

Critics of this bill have pointed out that most bankruptcy filings stem from severe personal hardship; Harvard researchers found that half the bankruptcies they examined stemmed from medical problems.

Considering the government's failure to make health care affordable for millions of Americans, the result is a double whammy. People too poor to buy health insurance can no longer seek legal protections from emergency medical bills they have no way to pay. Poor folks, take note: The price of treating that unexpected heart attack is a descent into a financial black hole from which there is almost no escape.

But if, say, your investments underperformed so badly that you cannot make payments on the yacht, the vacation home in Aspen, AND pay your Manhattan rent ... don't worry! Relax. Grab a latte. Stick what you have in a trust and hit the spa. You deserve a break from all that stress.

What hypocrisy.

Jesus said that what we do to the "least of these," we do to him. Our congressmen just kicked him in the teeth. How's that for moral values?

Marriage, money, and social duty

David Brooks, a conservative New York Times columnist who I like, had an article a couple days ago about the increased use of seperate checking accounts among married couples. Brooks thinks this is basically a bad idea, as it threatens the "communal ethos of the home" with the "individualistic ethos of the market."

That seems fair enough. But what I found most interesting were Brooks's assumptions about public life in general:

Public life is individualistic. It's oriented around goals like self-development, self-advancement and personal happiness. ... The goal of family life, on the other hand, does not revolve around individual choices but around the unconditional union of souls. When we get married, and then when we have kids, we learn, sometimes traumatically, to say farewell to the world of me, me, me.

The assumption here is that public life IS about "me, me, me." Our society is a market, and all of us must scrap for what we have. In a market, others are not primarily "neighbors," as Jesus might might say. They're competitors.

In one sense, Brooks is right. Our society does operate like a cutthroat market. It would be hypocritical of me to say that I'm always looking out for others in my public life. Of course I'm not -- I'm trying to figure out how to get by. But I'm also a sinner.

As Christians in such a society, we should ask how we are called to be witnesses to it. It's not only Jesus and the New Testamtent writers who call for an ethic of sacrificial love of neighbor (think of the Good Samaritan, for example). The prophets -- and here Amos is particularly strong -- condemn market practices that allows individuals to become ludicrously wealthy while neglecting the poor. A quick note from Amos 8:

Hear this, you who trample upon the
needy,
and bring the poor of the land to an end,
saying, "When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
That we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small,
and the shekel great,
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
that we may buy the poor for silverand the needy for a pair of sandals,
and sell the refuse of the wheat.
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
"Surely I will never forget any of
their deeds...."

In other words, the Bible doesn't present public life as a place of a merely "individualistic ethos." The public sphere is where we act out sacrificial love, remember the common good, and remember that our competitors are human, too.

I feel Amos prophesying to me, as well as to our society. May we listen.

No Death Penalty for Kids - Amen.

The Supreme Court ruled today that executing juvenile offenders -- those less than 18 years old -- violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. According to The New York Times, that means we no longer share with Somalia the dubious honor of being the only countries to sanction the execution of teenagers.

And to that we can say, "Amen."

The court's reasoning, though, is interesting. As a society, the court argued that we find juveniles "less culpable" of their crimes than adults. It used similar reasoning in an earlier case that banned executions of the mentally retarded. Put another way, children, adolescents, and the mentally retarded are not as aware as adults of the consequences of their actions.

In this, the court is probably right. But for Christians, I don't think it's the whole issue.

Christians should oppose the death penalty for ALL people. As punishment, it violates Jesus's admonitions to mercy, enemy-love, and radical forgiveness. Jesus did not preach an eye-for-an-eye justice; he preached mercy. We ignore that teaching at our own peril.

From a practical point of view, it's also irreversible -- a troubling fact given the wave of convictions reversed on DNA evidence in recent years. Additionally, there's no evidence the death penalty deters crime.

More importantly, our fallenness - brought into sharpest contrast by the holiness of our redeemer - reveals as fallible both individuals and society as a whole. Our wisdom is not God's wisdom. Our justice is not God's justice. This is nowhere as clear as the cross, where our God died as a victim of capital punishment, a sentence judged just by the devout and powerful.

We are no less disposed to crucify than Pilate and the Sanhedrin.

A society must punish its lawbreakers, but that should give us pause.