Failure

Human history is the story of us trying to make God happy, to make our Father proud of us.  It is by the way the story of our failure.

What sorts of things have we done trying to make Him happy?  The two that show up in big ways classically are sacrifice and ethics.  Both of them come down to giving up something good to get something better.  We give up small things to get big things.  We give up "things" entirely to obtain ethical integrity.  We give up the temporal for the eternal.  Our whole life is an attempt to "trade up". 

Of course, we have Christianized all of our habits, which is the same thing as secularizing Christianity, making Christ and the world agree.  We don't sacrifice anymore we "surrender all", we don't become monks or take vows of poverty, we "live for God", We don't build temples, we do "kingdom work".  We don't put our hope in ethics anymore, after all that is Law.  We put our hope in believing something, in "being in a relationship with Christ", in "growing closer to Christ", in helping others "get saved".  We "get right with God", we "get in the center of His will", and mysteriously we think that this is something other than self-righteousness.

But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our RIGHTEOUSNESSES are like filthy rags Isaiah 64

 Our righteousness, the things we do to get closer to God: our faith, our prayers, our efforts, our church attendance, our charity, our servant's hearts, our evangelism are disgusting to Him(literally "bloody tampons").  We think that because we don't do them to please God, we do them "out of gratitude", or "because we are changed", or because we love people, that somehow they do please Him.  As if, being justified by grace we are sanctified by our own works.  But they are still self-righteousness, we have just put lipstick on our pig selves.  We have traded in God's Law for a new law that we call Christian, which isn't really new it is the same tricks we have been pulling since we stole that fruit in the garden.

I have spent so much effort describing this problem that you are probably expecting me to describe a solution now.  Well there isn't one.  It is always gonna be this way.  You would be better off going fishing than going to church.  Going to church makes our fool selves imagine we are making God happy when it really just pisses Him off.  At least fishing doesn't mean further involving ourselves in works righteousness.  If you can't pray without thinking that makes you a better person, in appropriately Christian terms of course,- and I can't- then you would be better off doing something that you know isn't good.  Am I telling people to sin?  No.  I am telling you that everything you do is already sin and it is better to have your eyes open than to be your own dupe.  It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of joy.  It is better to lose all hope, to despair, than to think that somehow, someday something you do will be good enough for God.  We aren't even good enough for me and I have pretty low standards.  Nothing you do is ever going to do any good, nothing you abstain from doing is ever gonna do any good.

This is the surprising context in which we hear something that IS new, that IS good.  The only thing that could ever please God is what His Son has done, and that pleases Him immensely.  Now before you get the wrong idea, our "imitation" of Him is just one more works righteousness that pisses God off.  I will say it again, we will never do anything, be anything that doesn't fail before God.  But what if when we keep doing the same dumb stuff, He instead sees His Son in our place.  Instead of seeing me going to church and deceiving all of my friends into thinking I am a pretty good guy; He sees Christ giving His innocent life to save His enemies.  Instead of hearing me praying my filthy selfish prayers; He hears Christ at His right hand interceding for my stupid self.  Instead of hearing my foul-mouthed, self-centered idea of evangelism, He hears "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."  Instead of seeing me thinking I am being like Christ when I act with completely different thoughts and motivations; He sees Christ perfectly revealing the true holiness, the glory of the Only Begotten.

Glorification doesn't consist of us being perfect.  It consists of us being covered by Christ.  All of the other parts of salvation consist of the same thing.  Only one more thing remains to be said.  That is that what God sees is the truth.  I don't have any sensation or feeling of being seated at the right hand of God; but, if Christ is, I am.  We are IN HIM.  We are, in a mystery-or in Latin in a sacrament-Christ.  You are what you eat.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.Genesis 2:24

Christ left His Father, joined Himself to my hopeless self, and now we are one.  Doesn't look like, doesn't feel like it, but that is what a mystery is.  It is bread, but it is His body.  I am a miserable sinner, but I am accepted in the Beloved.

Fruit Bearing Hall of Fame

It has been well said that the Christian army is the only one which shoots its own wounded.  I suppose we think that the importance of success in our mission justifies using the Law to pummel our hurting brethren.  Probably nothing has been used to create as much guilt and shame among Christians as the idea of bearing fruit, which we are told is the hallmark of all true Christians and how we can be sure that we really are.

Our Lord has an unmistakable love for agricultural imagery.  More of His parables are set on a farm than perhaps anywhere else.  And this is where we usually go to talk about bearing fruit.  But I do not think that this is the only, or perhaps even primary scriptural picture that we should use to understand what is meant by being fruitful and how it happens.  Perhaps a few examples will serve better than much explanation, so without more delay, The Fruit Bearing Hall of Fame.

The first fruit bearer in human history is none other than Eve.  Yes Eve.  What fruit did Eve bear?  The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil obviously.  This was Eve's master plan to be more like God, closer to Jesus in our terminology.  She took the fruit in her hand and she bore it over to her husband and they ate.  The fruit of her religion was sin.  The fruit in fact of all religion is sin.  The harder we try the worse we fail.  The more determined we are to succeed the more we find ourselves in the miry clay of failure.  The fruit of Eve's plan to be like God is death.  But out of our first parents' death comes the human race.  How can sin create the human race?  Only because where sin abounds grace abounds more.  God doesn't respond to any merit in us; He responds to our need.  The more wicked we are, the better must be that which saves us.  So, Eve's religion bore the fruit of death, but Eve's death bore the fruit of life.  In the day that she sinned she died.  And in that death she received the promise of Messiah.  But before Eve could bear any fruit she had to die.

The next fruit bearer in our Hall of Fame is the very picture of the New Jerusalem, Sarah herself.   

²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, ²⁴ which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— ²⁵ for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— ²⁶ but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. ²⁷ For it is written:

“Rejoice, O barren, You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout, You who are not in labor!
For the desolate has many more children Than she who has a husband.”

²⁸ Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. ²⁹ But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. ³⁰ Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” ³¹ So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free. Galatians 4

Sarah didn't get it.  Her attempts to bear fruit through Hagar must have come near to wrecking her marriage,  as our efforts would if Our Divine Husband was such as to let that happen.  When it was finally time for her to bear fruit she didn't believe it.  It sounded like a joke to her, and if the day ever comes that I bear any fruit I think we will all be laughing.  Nobody believed Sarah would ever bear fruit.  Her womb is described by the Apostle as "dead".  And it is this in Sarah that we shall imitate, whether we like it or not.  The religious, like Hagar, have plenty of fruit to show.  They can produce fruit at the drop of a hat.  But the children of Sarah, bear little fruit and that very late after everyone has stopped looking for such a thing.  It will come without any effort or intention on our part, as I guarantee you that Abraham and Sarah were not trying to have a baby on their diamond anniversary.  We must be dead, like Sarah's womb, beyond all hope of success, off of life's hamster wheel, not even trying anymore at all before we receive the promise.  It is to the poor that the Gospel is preached, and it is to the least, the lost, and the last that Christ comes.  It is only the people who walk in darkness that will see a great light .

Which brings us to our Champion Fruit Bearer, Mary, mother of Jesus. And what did Mary do to bear such wonderful fruit?  She didn't do the one thing that she could do to bear fruit; she was a virgin.  The only thing that could ever cause her to bear fruit, she has conspicuously abstained from(not intentionally as she was planning marriage but I am concerned with the facts of the case not her intentions).  Virginity is literally the way of death.  It is the way of no fruit at all.  I need not point out that in traditional cultures, such as first century Galilee, bearing children was absolutely the measure of success of a woman, just as we have made bearing fruit the Christian's measure of worth.  Mary's passivity cannot be a cause of anything.  So what is the cause of Mary's fruitfulness?  Simply that she is, in the angel's words, "highly favored".  The cause of Mary's fruitfulness is not found in herself.  It is found in God's love for her.

I have tried to be very clear that death is the necessary precondition for bearing fruit.  I think that this is the point of Christ's resurrection, His acted out, last parable.  Jesus famously referred to the Pharisee's as painted up graves, full of dead men's bones, such is all of our religion and effort.  Accept it.  You are a tomb.  But in the mystery of the Gospel a tomb is a womb.  And that is our last entry in the Fruit Bearing Hall of Fame, the Garden Tomb.  I have called Sarah dead and Mary passive, but the Tomb excels them both.  We have exactly as much in us as a cause of fruit bearing as a tomb has as a cause of resurrection.

But if we repose our hearts upon the faith that he works in our death, we cannot lose. The astonishing graciousness of grace is that it takes the one thing you and I will never lack - the one thing, furthermore, that no one will ever want to beg, borrow, or steal from us - and makes it the only thing any of us will ever need.-Robert Capon Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment

Holy Crap

Anyone who follows the Reformed branch of Christianity knows that one of the things we really pride themselves on is our high view of the Holiness of God.  We often act as if this is what separates the real Christians, the holy ones, from the nominal Christians, those who are just like the world.  I would like to consider a few points on this subject though.

 Unapproachableness; the state of separation from, and elevation above, things common, profane, or sensual, first in a physical and external, and later in a spiritual, sense; moral purity and perfection incapable of sin and wrong. -The Jewish Encyclopedia

I don't think that I will get any major objections when I point out that the standard Christian view of holiness has no deep differences from the Jewish understanding of holiness.  Holiness means being separate, usually in the sense of moral superiority, from the world.  It is the division of the Universe into Him and Us and is usually developed in such a way that we find a way to be on His side against everyone else.

⁴⁴ For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. ⁴⁵ For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. Leviticus 11

Fully accepting the oneness of God is to accept that He is distinct from everything else. It would not suit God’s majesty and glory to associate the limited attributes of His creation to Him because He is not restricted in any way, while His creation is. He is the First with no beginning and the Last with no end. Everything in the universe was created by His will. He is not confined by space or time and He is the only One who is in control and provides for His creation. -from Whyislam.org

This concept is identical to what is known in Islam as Tawhid, or the Oneness(Uniqueness) of God.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the Muslims, the Mormons, and the Charismatics have generally gone much farther in behaving morally, and separating themselves from the world, than we ever have or probably ever will.   I submit that this is not because of superior moral effort but because Christianity has always had, and generally hid, deep suspicions about this sort of holiness.  Why have we hid our misgivings?  Because such a concept of holiness is obviously true.  It is clear that God is very different from us and the desire to be on His side is congenital, especially when paired with a fear of judgment for those who fail in this task.  But what is the source of our misgivings?

¹⁰ Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. ¹¹ And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
¹² When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Matthew 9

 ¹⁹ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by her children.”Matthew 11

I can't help but think that it is because of the almost complete lack of holiness teaching in the teachings of Christ and in the Four Gospels.  Almost without exception, in the Four Gospels the word "Holy" is used as part of a name, generally "Holy Spirit" or "Holy One of God" or "the holy angels".  There is almost no unambiguous teaching on holiness in the Gospels.  What we do find are very paradoxical hints about holiness such as those quoted above from Matthew.  Our view of holiness is that God is separate from Creation and especially from sinners.  But the "Holy One of God" is typically found to be very at home in their company.  Christ, quite deliberately, reversed the paradigm.  He snubbed the religious and preferred the sinners.  He clearly taught that God, both personally and officially, preferred the Sinners, the Last, the Least, the Lost.  I said above that traditional holiness teaching, of whatever flavor, is obviously true.  It is.  But this teaching misses half of the point, and I have to say it misses the bigger half.

  I have no objection to teaching the God of Philosophy.  I have no objection to teaching God as He appears to us in the Scriptures.  But I require that both of these teachings submit themselves to God as revealed in the teaching and practice of Jesus Christ.  It is not just we who are fallen, the whole creation is subjected to futility, and that includes reason and logic.  I will not say with Luther that, "Reason is the Devil's whore.", rather Reason has been to us a faithful companion and has fallen even as we fell.  Which means that not only are our ideas about who and what God is going to be wrong most of the time, but that they will be wrong in ways that we cannot explain or understand.  In fact, where we are most sure we are right is where we will be most wrong.  But we continue on, trying to shove Christ into our ideas of what God is like, rather than letting our ideas of what God is like be informed by the revelation of His Express Image.

While we are working so hard to maintain the transcendence of God, we forget the way in which He transcends us the most-His immanence.  The holiness of God in Christ is greater than the holiness of God qua god.  The glory of God is best seen and best understood in the glory of the Only Begotten-full of Grace and Truth, that is Immanuel.  If that is true then what we really need to see in this world is not a Glorified Holiness such as we imagine, but a Militant Holiness such as Jesus Himself practiced.  What does that mean?  It means that holiness is not separate from the world, it is in the ditch with us.  It not only parties with the drunks and loves the hookers, it gives the drunks something to celebrate and the hookers someone who loves them.  It isn't concerned with its own holiness but with making the unholy holy.  It has been well said that cleaning is the task of transferring dirt from the thing being cleaned to the one doing the cleaning and that is certainly true here.  Cleaning us is a job that made God Himself sin(noun not a verb as in "He became sin who knew no sin.).

And that is a nice theology, but here's the rub.  What does that say about sanctification, about personal holiness, about a relationship with Christ?  It at least suggests that such things have nothing to do with an advancement in moral living.  If we begin to live more moral lives as a result of being with Jesus, and based on the lives of the Twelve Apostles we could certainly make a case that we don't, it is at most a side effect, an unintended and possibly undesirable side effect.  Then what does being more like Jesus mean?  What does it mean to be closer to God?  It doesn't seem to have anything to do with being approved of and liked by the religious.  In fact, it involves deliberately pissing them off and doing things that they consider sinful, sometimes just to make the point that you can.  It involves drinking enough wine that fair minded people don't hesitate to call you a drunk.  It involves considering almost all charitable activities hypocritical shows that God despises.  I am simply describing the man you say you want to be more like.  If this doesn't sound like something you want to do, then you are right.  You won't like it.  I don't like it.  It is called a cross for a reason.  It is even a foolish and offensive cross.  I am not going to try and make a case for living this way, or try and make it more palatable.  All I am saying is that it is the way Jesus lived, and it is the only kind of holiness that we will ever see in this world.

The Anti-Tract

So, the story of the Anti-tract began last Friday.  Cheyenne and I were at the Post Office and there was an old couple in the parking lot handing out New Testaments.  I don't know exactly why I went over to them boredom, curiosity, something like that.  They were very nice and I didn't feel the need to explain all of the ways that I think that they are wrong or to push my junk on them at all.  The Gospel can save people who don't get it.  Just look at me.

So, on the ride home I am looking through the Bible and it has various information that fits under the category of "What must I do to be saved".  The main one is this fine tract put out by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.  I want to emphasize that there is a lot of good in this little tract and especially in the nice people who gave it to me, but it inspired me in my own sick little way.  And the result is my creation of the Anti-tract.  Below is presented the tract with my suggested alterations in the appropriate places.  The first half of it needs no edit and so I have suggested none.

Our Response: Despise Christ

We hate and have hated Christ all of our lives.  After 25 years of being a Christian I still find new things to be pissed off at him about every day-especially Sunday.  I don't trust Him, because to be honest the things He does seem completely crazy.  Do I want to invite Him into my life?  Obviously not, He is unimaginably dangerous- a huge threat to everything I want.

What if I don't receive Jesus Christ right now, or ever?  Is the Gospel good enough and powerful enough to save a completely unrepentant jackass?

  Any day of the week - and twice on Sundays, often enough - we will labor with might and main to take the only thing that can save anyone and reduce it to a set of theological club rules designed to exclude almost everyone. -Robert Capon Kingdom, Grace, Judgment

1. When I admit my need it is really a load of bull.  I say I am a sinner because I think saying it will get me something I want or keep me from something I don't want.  But truth be told, I still think I am right.  I still think my way is gonna work out if I just try it one more time.

2. I am not willing to turn from my sins.  I like my sins.  Hell, I love them.

3. I have tried to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.  But I have a better chance of convincing myself I can fly.  If there is one thing I am dead certain of in my heart it is that dead men don't rise.  I am tired of trying to believe something that makes no sense at all.

4. I do not want Jesus Christ to come in my life and control anything.  I don't want anybody to control me.  I don't even want to control myself.

5. Chill out with all of this salvation crud.  Jesus has got it all covered.  He isn't waiting on you to finish His work with a decision or anything else.  He already finished it.  Nothing you can add, nothing you can take away, nothing you can screw up.

In the Bible, as a matter of fact, God does so many ungodly things - like not remembering our sins, erasing the quite correct handwriting against us, and becoming sin for us - that the only safe course is to come to Scripture with as few stipulations as possible. God used his own style manual, not ours, in the promulgation of his Word. -Robert Capon Kingdom, Grace, Judgment

How to Pray:

Jesus, I don't think I am a sinner, and I don't really care if what I do upsets you, because that doesn't really affect me.  I would like to believe that you rose from the dead, but that seems like kind of a pipe dream.  I have tried all of this salvation stuff before and it didn't work.  The only thing that has changed is that I am sick of trying and sick of pretending.  I am never gonna change.  I may hate my life, but changing doesn't interest me at all.  I want to trust you but we are so much different that I don't think that that will ever happen.  But if your Gospel means anything at all, it means that none of that matters.  Your plan isn't about saving people that want to be saved, but saving people who really don't care at all.  You deliberately picked fights with all of the religious people and spent your time with drunks and hookers.  Your best friends weren't any better than me and yet you set them up on twelve thrones right below the throne of God Himself.  They didn't do any of this crap.  I am never gonna do any of the stuff you want me to.  Have you really done it all for me?  Can the Gospel be that good?  If it isn't then I have no hope at all, cause I am never gonna change.  It isn't that we want to go to Heaven and you are standing there to see if we measure up.  The truth is that we have zero interest in Heaven and you drag us there kicking and screaming, because you love us with a depth and passion that I don't get at all.  I have lost all hope.  There is nothing that I can do.  My only hope is that the world is as crazy as you.  I think I am right, but I really, really want to be wrong.  I want dead men to rise, I want your plan to not be the same old shit that everything else is, I want a Gospel that will save me just like I am.

The law of relationship between us humans and God is as follows: Major Premise: There is an infinite, radical, qualitative difference between God and humans. This means that we can achieve absolutely nothing; it is God who gives everything. It is he who brings forth a person’s faith, and so forth. This is grace, and this is Christianity’s major premise. Minor Premise: Although we can merit nothing, unconditionally nothing, we can, in faith, dare in all childlikeness to be involved with God. If the major premise is everything, then God becomes so infinitely great that there can be no relationship between God and the individual human being. The life of the single individual never gets off the ground. It can be fraud to elevate God so high. The difficulty is to have an infinite conception of God’s majesty and of Christ’s glory and then the childlike openness to become involved with them in your own personal life in a wholly childlike way. -S. Kierkegaard

God's Assurance: His Word

Even if you didn't pray this prayer, or you prayed it and it was bullshit, the Bible says...

"You have been given a gift that changes everything.  It has nothing to do with anything you do or don't do.  There is nothing you can do to get it and nothing you can do to lose it.  It is like that so that we all have to shut up and stop acting like we are something we aren't, [especially the religious jerks]." Ephesians 2:8-9  King Jon Bible -bracketed section doesn't appear in some manuscripts

To become an awesome Christian like me you should:

1. Fall asleep on the rare occasion that you actually read your Bible.
2. Only pray when you are pissed off at God and want to let Him know what you really think.
3. Be too much of a wuss to ever say anything about Jesus.
4. Hate church.  You should be kicked out of at least three or four.  Tell all the religious people how lame they are.  I should add to that generally be a smart mouth jerk who doesn't care about anybody else, especially their feelings.
5. Demonstrate your complete apathy and dislike of everyone around you.
6. Exist in a universe ruled by a God who saves people just like you and just like me, a God who smashed His own awesome Law and with it everything else that we could ever fail at, just because it wasn't on our side, who threw all the rules out the window and set us unbelievably free.


We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of heaven and grown older than the oldest angels before we feel, even in its first faint vibrations, the everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world. -G.K. Chesterton Manalive


 When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to preach. Among “Christian nations,” however, the situation is different. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be debunked. But since this vain conceit, this illusion, is to the effect that we are all Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity amounts to taking Christianity away. Nevertheless this is precisely what must be done, for the illusion must go. -S. Kierkegaard

 


But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise! -George Macdonald Lilith