With the Current, Not Across It

By Fred Sanders
The Scriptorium

I’ve stopped saying “Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission.” Here’s why:

When I teach about the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), I underline its importance by showing that these are the last words Jesus speaks at the end of the gospel of Matthew. I love to explore how ideas and motifs from the beginning of the gospel are fulfilled here: the angel tells us at the beginning of Matthew that Jesus’ name will be Immanuel, God with us, and here at the end Jesus assures us, “I am with you always.” I love to point out that the language of “the Father and the Son” in the Great Commission builds on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 11 (“No one knows the Father except the Son,” etc.).

The Great Commission, especially with its ringing trinitarian formulation, sometimes strikes us as a surprise ending to the gospel, but in fact it’s a fabulous consummation of leading ideas in the book. It’s how the gospel of Matthew ends with a bang. To see this is to see that all 28 chapters are part of the trinitarian gospel message that finally comes to articulation at the end.

Over the years of teaching on this passage, I have also developed a habit of saying that these are the last words that Jesus says before he ascends into heaven. It sounds more dramatic to put it that way: that his death and resurrection are behind him, he has spent 40 days with the disciples, and is now going to the Father. And his final words are the command to make disciples.

But here’s the problem: When I put it that way, I jump from Matthew to Luke. I cut the lines of argument that Matthew has carefully laid out, or I tangle them with the ascension story that is so crucial in another gospel, Luke’s gospel.

How bad is it to do that? I don’t know. 

No, I mean I really don’t know, it’s beyond me. I can name and describe a few of the dynamics of Matthew. But I can never be sure I’ve seen everything, because it’s holy, and deep, and written by two authors (one human, one divine) who are way ahead of me.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that Matthew does not end his gospel with the story of the ascension. His gospel is about God being with us in Christ, and it ends with… God being with us in Christ. He stands there and says, “I am with you always.” Wouldn’t it be a little silly if he had said this and then had flown away? Wouldn’t that be the wrong way to conclude? Wouldn’t that be a worse ending for a gospel that has emphasized how God is present among us in the person of Jesus? Doesn’t Matthew have to end with Jesus standing exactly there, as the narration just stops?

By innocently jumping from one gospel to another, I’ve been messing up the flow of thought of at least one of them. What I ought to do is be more careful about how I embellish the biblical accounts of things. I need to attend much more closely to what the Spirit is saying in the words of each biblical book.

I think of this as learning to trust the words and thought-patterns of scripture. I want to swim with the current that is flowing through Scripture, not across it. If I can stay consistent with Matthew’s way of thinking and talking, I can be in a position to pick up all kinds of momentum and nuance from what the Holy Spirit has planned and put in place in that book. If I jump from one frame of reference to another, my arguments may only be as good as I can make them with my own clever connection-making. But if I’ve got the current of Matthew behind me, I may say something that can hit an audience with a power greater than my own words or insights.

Of course by comparing the two gospels, we are able to say that, historically speaking, Jesus must have said these words and then later ascended. That’s how the end of Matthew and the end of Luke can be harmonized. That must be how it actually happened in history. But by presenting it that way, I am opting out of the stories told by both Matthew and Luke, and am preferring a historical reconstruction of my own making. Even though it’s a pretty good reconstruction, it’s not divinely inspired. So it could be faulty, and it will certainly be weak in comparison to God’s word.

Thinking about Thinking about Rap — Unexpected Thoughts over Thanksgiving

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

Over the past few days the evangelical community has been talking about the kinds of things you would expect — the meaning of Thanksgiving, the turn to the Christmas season, the fact that some stores were opening on Thanksgiving Day and the various issues of the season. And then came rap. Out of the blue, when least expected, the topic changed to rap and the Gospel. Over the last few days a great deal has been written and said, sparked by a panel discussion at an evangelical conference in which rap music was dismissed as unworthy of evangelicals and of the Gospel.

I recognize the arguments made by the panelists. I am tempted to make them myself. In fact, I have made them myself … in my head. I know the arguments well. Form matters when it comes to music, and the form of music is not incidental to the meaning communicated. The biblical vision of music grows out of the union of the good, the beautiful, and the true in the very being of God. That union of the transcendentals means that Christians should seek only those musical expressions that best combine the good, the beautiful, and the true.

In other words, Johann Sebastian Bach. In my view, Bach got it just about right, even almost perfect. His music is an exhilaration of proportion and purpose in which form and message are precisely, intentionally, even magnificently combined. Bach is never far from me, especially when I am working and particularly when I am writing. I should acknowledge Bach in my books. Karl Barth listened to Mozart, and I love Mozart’s music (at least, most of it). But Mozart is a genius in a way that Bach was not, and genius can easily get in the way of musical art. Add to this the fact that Mozart’s worldview was seriously flawed. That explains why his magnificent but unfinished Requiem Mass in D Minor is so moving, but so unsatisfying. Beethoven’s pantheism and Enlightenment sensibilities do not ruin his music, but they do make his incredible music rather inaccessible for Christian worship.

Bach, on the other hand, is perfect. It is also important to know that Bach was a servant of the Lutheran Reformation. In his brilliant new book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, conductor John Eliot Gardiner affirms that Bach saw himself extending the musical theology of Martin Luther, with the glory of God as his supreme purpose and the task of music “to give expression and added eloquence to the biblical text.” So we should just end the development of church music and Christian musical artistry with Bach.

But there is a problem with this proposal. Bach was writing music that was understandable to the culture of his day, and not just to the elites. As a matter of fact, many among the elites did not like his music, accusing Bach of using crude structures, lowly themes, and of borrowing from unworthy musical sources. And then there is the issue of his pounding music as found in his famous organ works. Those pedal sequences in his toccatas are jarring to the senses and physical in reception and impression. Hardly appropriate for use in church and the service of the Gospel.

And the people who would argue now about the unworthiness of rap music often think of Bach as the quintessential Christian musician. As I said already, I have made many of the same arguments myself. In my head. Thankfully not in public. Am I holding back?

No, I allow myself those arguments in my head when I want to absolutize my preferences and satisfy myself in the righteousness and superiority of my own musical taste and theology. The problem for me is that my theology of music will not allow me to stay self-satisfied on the matter, and by God’s grace I have not made arguments out loud that would violate that theology.

Rap music is not my music. I do not come from a culture in which rap music is the medium of communication and I do not have the ear for it that I have for other forms of music. But I do admire its virtuosity and the hold that is has on so many, for whom it is a first and dominant musical language. I want that language taken for the cause of the Gospel and I pray to see a generation of young Gospel-driven rappers take dominion of that music for the glory of God. I see that happening now, and I rejoice in it. I want to see them grow even more in influence, reaching people I cannot reach with music that will reach millions who desperately need the Gospel. The same way that folks who first heard Bach desperately needed to hear the Gospel.

The good, the beautiful, and the true are to be combined to the greatest extent possible in every Christian endeavor, rap included. I have no idea how to evaluate any given rap musical expression, but rappers know. I do know how to evaluate the words, and when the words are saturated with the Gospel and biblical truth that is a wonderful thing. Our rapping Gospel friends will encourage one another to the greatest artistic expression. I want to encourage them in the Gospel. Let Bach’s maxim drive them all — to make (their) music the “handmaid of theology.”

Bach’s English Suite No. 3 in G Minor is playing as I write this. It makes me happy to hear it. But knowing that the Gospel is being taken to the ears and hearts of new generation by a cadre of gifted young Gospel rappers makes me far happier.

Casinos, Pot and the Quest For Consistency

By Ross Douthat
The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

My Sunday column on “pot and jackpots” — that is, the march toward marijuana legalization and the spread of casino gambling — tried to widen the usual culture-war frame to encompass not just bedroom-and-altar hot buttons, but the way the broader logic of “consenting adults” is working itself out in other areas of American life. One point I didn’t get to, though, is the extent to which both of these issues, pot and gambling, illustrate what one might call the rationalizing impulse in modern American politics, which seeks perfect fairness and consistency at the expense of compromises rooted in the accidents of history, and which makes it hard for conservatives to defend older, inherently-arbitrary arrangements even when they make practical sense.

Consider casinos, for instance. Was there any deep principle behind the old, pre-1990s dispensation, in which New Jersey and Nevada essentially served as the country’s designated outlets for the deep-seated urge to risk your money at lousy odds while a sleepless waitress refills your drinks? If such a principle existed, it wasn’t exactly obvious, and had I grown up in the general vicinity of Atlantic City or Reno I probably would have resented the set of accidents that turned my native city into the place where everybody else came to party, act out, occasionally ruin their own lives or their families, and despoil a community where they didn’t have to live. If casino gambling is socially destructive enough to be basically illegal in 48 states, I might would have thought, then why not in all 50? Or alternatively, if it’s okay for Nevadans to build gambling palaces, then why shouldn’t it be okay for Minnesotans or Vermonters or Oklahomans as well? If there’s a right to gamble, why shouldn’t it apply everywhere — and if casinos come with social costs, why not do the fair thing and spread those costs around?

So too, in a slightly different way, with the longstanding prohibition on marijuana. As advocates for legalizing pot have long protested, there’s no obviously compelling reason besides the quirks of history and culture that clearly justifies making alcohol a normal part of respectable socializing, while consigning weed to the extralegal fringe. If I prefer a toke to a drink, why should the law draw some spurious, culturally contingent distinction that makes my preference criminal, and consigns dealers to prison while bartenders walk free? If we restrict substances that can damage their users, why not do the fair thing and make the restrictions uniform?

The answer is … well, the answer in both cases is essentially contingent, historicist, tradition-minded. We have these inherited limits — geographic, legal — on certain vices, certain self-destructive activities. They are inherently arbitrary, yes — but they also may do useful work regulating how easily and casually and frequently people indulge in those vices, and they may strike a balance between puritanism and permissiveness that’s socially useful even if isn’t perfectly consistent or obviously fair. Whereas making consistency our north star requires either accepting an unsustainable level of repression (adding a reboot of Prohibition to the War on Drugs, say, or telling Americans that Vegas is closed and they have to fly to the Caribbean for those kind of thrills) or a damaging level of permissiveness … with the latter, quite possibly, being what we’re headed for today.

We’re headed there because these kind of tradition-based arguments don’t satisfy the modern mind, but also because in a society that doesn’t put much stock in arguments from tradition it’s hard to go just part of the way on a given social question and then stop. With casino gambling, for instance, I don’t think the “Indian tribe carveout” that brought casinos to a lot of states in the Clinton era was necessarily a good idea, but I could imagine someone arguing that it offered a better balance between restriction and release than the Atlantic City/Vegas model. But whether it was better or not, it was seemingly foredoomed to be temporary: Once the old taboos were broken and the process got started, there was no obvious stopping place, no obvious reason why states that had already conceded on the principle of welcoming casinos wouldn’t want to claim a large piece of the action for themselves. And that’s how we’ve ended up, not with the modest expansion of casino gambling that the reservation model seemed to promise, but with a race to the bottom by income-hungry states.

With marijuana, as I said in the column, I’m a lot more sympathetic to the steps toward decriminalization that have been taken to date, because I think the strict-prohibition model has been a pretty clear policy failure, with too many attendant injustices, in a way that the “only in Vegas” model of casino policy was not. But I also worry that we’re basically in the “only on Indian reservations” stage of the progression with pot, and that in a generation or so we’ll have passed from the plausible way station of decriminalization to the logical endpoint of full commercial legalization, because nobody will be able to adequately explain in principle why using a drug should be legal but turning a profit off it (with the attendant bounty of tax dollars for the state) should not. If I were confident that this process would be managed by, say, a wise policy mind like Mark Kleiman, who favors allowing small-scale production and distribution while maintaining a ban on commercial production, I would feel better about where we’re headed. But the Kleiman stopping point, however practically desirable, has some of the same arbitrariness problems as the old regime, and the logic of full legalization just seems like it may prove too powerful for a permissively-inclined, fairness-oriented, consistency-seeking society to resist.

Pot and Jackpots

By Ross Douthat
The New York Times

BASED on what stirs passions and wins headlines, it would be easy to imagine that the only cultural debates that matter in America are the ones that have to do with sex. 

There are good reasons for our intimate obsession: Desire is intertwined with identity, sex conceives the human future, the family is the place where all our ladders start. But to understand America’s changing cultural landscape, sometimes a wider lens is useful — because the same trends that have altered the way we think about sex and reproduction have wider repercussions as well. 

Consider two issues: casino gambling and marijuana. We’re used to the idea that attitudes on a controversy like gay marriage have changed with unprecedented speed. But both casinos and pot have gone mainstream over the last generation at a similarly remarkable pace. 

In 1990, casino gambling was still concentrated in Nevada and Atlantic City. Then came the rise of Indian-reservation gambling; then came casinos with no tribal fig leaf. Today 23 states have commercial casinos, and the old model of casino-going as a what-happens-in-Vegas excursion has given way to casino-going as routine entertainment. 

“In the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states,” a report from the Institute for American Values noted this year, “nearly every adult now lives within a short drive of a casino.” And after this Tuesday, that drive may get considerably shorter, because New York voters are expected to ratify a constitutional amendment allowing up to seven more casinos in the state. 

The marijuana revolution is arguably not so far advanced, since only two states, Washington and Colorado, are experimenting with outright legalization. But more such experiments are expected to follow soon, and medicinal marijuana is already available in 20 states. Meanwhile, public opinion on the issue has shifted about as fast as it has on gay marriage — from 32 percent support for legalization in 2002 to 58 percent in the latest Gallup poll. 

There are significant differences in the ways gambling and pot have won America. The spread of casinos has been more of a top-down phenomenon, driven by states seeking revenue and an industry that’s free with campaign contributions. The permissive turn on marijuana has been a more (if you will) grass-roots affair — driven by activists and artists, influenced by empathy for the terminally ill, and hastened by public exhaustion with the drug war. 

But both have been made possible by the same trend in American attitudes: the rise of a live-and-let-live social libertarianism, the weakening influence of both religious conservatism and liberal communitarianism, the growing suspicion of moralism in public policy. 

And both, in different ways, illustrate the potential problems facing a culture pervaded by what the late sociologist Robert Bellah called “expressive individualism” and allergic to any restrictions on what individuals choose to do. 

This is clearer in the case of casinos, whose consequences for the common good are straightforwardly disastrous. As the Institute for American Values report points out, the alliance of state governments and gambling interests is essentially exploitative, and the tax revenue casinos supply comes at the expense of long-term social welfare. Casinos tend to lower property values and weaken social capital in the places where they’re planted, they’re more likely to extract dollars from distressed communities than to spur economic development, and their presence is a disaster for the reckless and the addiction-prone. 

Pot is a more complicated issue, given its essential harmlessness for many users and the crying need to lock up fewer Americans for nonviolent offenses. But one can support decriminalizing marijuana possession, as many states have done, while still doubting the prudence of legalizing (and, of course, taxing) its open manufacture and sale. 

Whatever benefits legalization brings with it, it will almost certainly increase marijuana use, which has already risen sharply in the last decade. And as purely recreational as a joint may be for casual tokers, steady use isn’t always so harmless: it can limit educational attainment, and with it economic mobility, to an extent that mirrors the impact of growing up in a single-parent home. 

Perhaps these costs are just the price we pay for liberty, in the same way that certain social liberals and libertarians regard the costs of family breakdown as a price worth paying for emancipation from sexual repression. 

But liberals especially, given their anxieties about inequality, should be attuned to the way that some liberties can grease the skids for exploitation, with a revenue-hungry state partnering with the private sector to profiteer off human weakness. 

This is one reason previous societies made distinctions between liberty and license that we have become loath to draw — because what seems like a harmless pleasure to the comfortable can devastate the poor and weak. 

Or else, with pot and slots no less than bread and circuses, it can simply distract their minds, dull their senses and make them easier to rule.

The Glory of God

By Janelle Aijian
The Scriptorium

If God’s glory falls in the middle of the cosmos, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?

This was the question I used this week to begin discussions on Jonathan Edward’s The End for Which God Created the World. Scripture is full of discussions of God’s glory. It is God’s glory that motivates his action to redeem and save (Is 48:11), as well as to punish and exile (Ez 28:22). It is the glory of God that is always forefront in Christ’s actions and motivation (Jn 7:18), and it is the end of redemption (Eph 1:6-14). Everything God does, he does for his glory.

But what exactly does it mean for God to act for the sake of his glory? Think about a perfect gem, the most beautiful diamond imaginable, and imagine it sitting in a cave for all eternity, beautiful and perfect and never beheld by a single soul. It is certainly great, but is it glorious?
Or, as one of my students aptly suggested, think of Dash from Pixar’s The Incredibles. Now, Dash is fast.
That’s his superpower, that’s the thing that makes him who he is. But what if Dash existed in a world with nothing to run on? Of course, that wouldn’t stop Dash from being fast, but it might stop him from acting fast.

All this is to say, glory is a thing that we can talk about in three ways. We can talk about the intrinsic glory of a thing in itself, we can talk about glory as the manifestation of the greatness of a thing, and we can talk about glory as the recognition other beings give to the glory of the manifestation.

When we think of a culture that is invested in glory (some place like Homer’s Greece), glory is all about the revelation, manifestation and appreciation of greatness. Achilles gets glory by going out and doing mighty acts of war. He is capable of greatness even while he’s sitting in time-out on the shore, but he only gets glory once he goes out and does what he’s capable of. And it is intrinsic to Achilles’ glory that his glorious acts are perceived and appreciated by his fellow soldiers.

Edwards argues that the end for which God created the world was his own glory. God always had greatness, but the creation of the world allowed him to manifest that greatness for the sake of his glory. Let’s go back to Dash for a moment. What if, in the world where Dash is fast but has nowhere to run, Dash creates a track so that he can be, or act on, the thing that he is? The track is an avenue for manifesting fastness, and Dash makes it so that he can do the fast acts he’s capable of. (Now, of course, this analogy is limited. If we think of running fast as the analogy for greatness, then it sounds like God isn’t great if he’s not “running”, but as long as we keep thinking about running as God manifesting his greatness in a particular context, I think we stay with Edwards.)

Now, what if that track became self-aware (go with me on this), and started thinking about its relationship to Dash? It might be that the track would start thinking to itself, “Dash needs me to be fast.” Or even, “I’m the reason Dash is fast.” Of course, the track would have it all wrong. The track exists for Dash’s speed, but Dash doesn’t need the track to be fast. He doesn’t even need this particular track in order to act fast. The track’s only reason for existing is to be a place where Dash can be fast, but the track doesn’t add a whit to what Dash is or what he is capable of.

This is the problem with the way some people think about the question, “Why did God create the world?” Well, it must be because he needed us, or because we add something to his existence. But Edwards argues that God created the world only because it is good for him to display his goodness.

And, of course, it’s good for us, too. Not only do we exist because God is displaying his goodness, but we are also drawn by his goodness towards him. Edwards ends his work with a beautiful image in which each of us is like a shooting star ascending continually towards greater joy and union with God. The world isn’t created for us, God created us for himself, to manifest his glory and appreciate his glory and to participate in his goodness more and more throughout all eternity. In the end, the world isn’t for us, both we and it are for God. And that’s a good thing.

The Old Testament’s Message to Our Culture

By Dr. David Murray
Philosophical Fragments

What can the Old Testament possibly say to our culture? It seems a million miles and sometimes a million years away from our time, our generation, and our problems. How can something so old address all the new challenges of globalization, sex-trafficking, the digital revolution, etc.

There’s no question that the Old Testament is a challenging read; it doesn’t yield its wisdom quite as easily as fortune cookies. However, it does repay disciplined and prayerful reading and research. Remember it was the Old Testament Paul was referring to when he said: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

So let me give you five ways the Old Testament speaks profitably to our times.

1. It explains our culture
If you enter a play at the half-time interval you wouldn’t expect to understand the second half of the drama. You’d be left scratching your head at much of what followed, and make numerous false conclusions and judgments as well.

Similarly, if we only read the New Testament, we are coming in half way through the third of four acts, and can’t really have a hope of grasping where the story has been and is going.

The Old Testament unfolds the drama of a perfectly good and beautiful creation in Act 1 followed by humanity’s tragic fall into sin in Act 2. Act 3, which opens in Genesis 3, begins the story of redemption, and gives us hope of a climactic final Act 4 when all things will be made new for those who follow the story and don’t walk out to write their own ending.

We’ll never understand or be able to explain our culture without watching the whole drama from the beginning.

2. It supplies moral standards for our culture
Although there is much debate about which Old Testament laws apply in our own day, it’s not as difficult as it is sometimes made out to be.

God gave three kinds of law in the Old Testament. First, He gave ceremonial laws which focused on the kinds of sacrifices and worship Israel was to give to God. The New Testament makes clear that these were temporary laws which pictured and pointed to the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, and expired with His coming. To hang on to these laws is to embrace the shadow of a person when he’s standing right in front of you.

Second, He gave civil laws, which were tailor made to fit the unique historical situation that Israel was facing and to preserve that nation in the face of multiple hostile threats from within and without. While there are some permanent principles of justice at the core of these laws, the particular application and penalties were limited to the ancient state of Israel until its destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70AD.

Third, God gave his permanent and unchangeable moral law, summarized for us in the Ten Commandments., and confirmed for us in the New Testament. Again, there are culture-specific applications of these ten principles in the Old Testament, but it’s a relatively easy task to extract the principles and apply them to our own day which so much needs objectively true and reliable moral standards to drive away the fog of moral confusion and relativism.

3. It gives hope for our culture
While God gives us His law by which to order our lives and our culture, we fail again and again in implementing and obeying them, resulting in serious national, personal, economic, military, social, moral, and spiritual consequences, just as it did for Israel.

On numerous occasions, we find the world in general, and Israel in particular in the depths of depression and degradation. Think of Noah’s time, the Tower of Babel, Israel in Egyptian slavery, the times of the Judges, most of the Kings, Israel in Babylonian exile, etc.

The Old Testament paints a dark, dark picture of sin and its awful effects. And yet the Lord, in mercy, came again and again to raise up godly leaders, to revive His church, and to renew and re-create the culture. The darkest days often preceded the brightest dawn. What hope of renewal this grand historical narrative gives us in the midst of our own downward spiral.

4. It points our culture to Jesus Christ
The Old Testament contains somewhere between 300-400 prophecies of Jesus Christ. Of these, approximately 40-60 are startlingly specific. From Genesis 3:15 onwards, the hope of Israel and of the world was in a Promised Messiah, a coming Savior who would defeat evil and deliver those caught in its snares.

Jesus said that the Old Testament was all about Him (Luke 24: 27,44). When Jesus was encouraging the Pharisees to read the Old Testament, the reason He gave was, “They testify of me” (John 5:29). These books were speaking about Him, telling people about Him, drawing people to put faith in Him, even before He was born! “Moses wrote of me” said Jesus (Jn. 5:46). That’s almost 1500 years before Bethlehem! Traveling even further back to 2000 BC, Abraham “saw” Christ’s day way down the road of faith and rejoiced (John 8:56).

Jesus Christ is God’s message of hope and renewal to the world. Always has been and always will be. Our task is to use both Testaments to shine the spotlight attention on Him as the only way to God and the only Savior from sin.

5. It calls us to evangelize out culture
In some ways, the Old Testament seems very narrow. God appears to be focused exclusively on the tiny little nation of Israel and let all other countries perish. However, that’s to completely miss the point. It’s true that God chose Abraham and Israel through whom to fulfill His plan, but His ultimate purpose for Abraham was that through His descendants “all the families of the earth would be blessed.” And though Israel was blessed with unique favor and revelation from God, it was called to be “a kingdom of priests” through whom God would mediate His Word of salvation to the nations.

Although Israel often failed in this mission through its nationalistic pride (Jonah being the prime example of this), God continued to hold out the vision of a multi-national, multi-racial, multi-ethnic church in the prophets and Psalms, an emphasis confirmed by Jesus’ great re-commission to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.

I hope you can see that though God gave the Old Testament to a particular people at a particular time in a particular way, that He wrote it in such a way that it is still powerfully relevant to us and our culture in 2013.


Dr. David Murray is Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and pastor of the Free Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, MI. He is the author of Jesus on Every Page and blogs regularly at HeadHeartHand.

When the Stars Vanish

By Peter Wehner
Philosophical Fragments

A recent interview in Relevant magazine caught my attention. In it, the journalist Peter Hitchens made this observation:

This is a period of great material wealth and the worships of economic growth and the century of the self, in which religious belief is going to be in trouble. The best metaphor for the state of mind in which we find ourselves is this is the first generation of the human race which doesn’t generally see the stars at night. It has blotted them out with street maps and car headlights and everything else. You simply can’t see the stars in most places where human beings are concentrated, and, in the same way, the triumph of consumerism and growth and the temporary joys of pleasure as a substitute for happiness blotted out the metaphorical stars of religious faith. It’s very hard to expect people who can’t see the stars to examine the significance of the stars or see their beauty.

This is an insightful and eloquently stated point. In acknowledging that, I need to insert a couple of qualifications, the first of which is that I believe wealth is better than poverty for all the obvious reasons – from mitigating human suffering to creating the conditions to foster human flourishing. (Among many other good things, wealth allows people to participate in uplifting cultural experiences, provides assistance to the needs of their children, supports worthy charities and funds college educations.) And my own situation qualifies me as wealthy, at least relative to most of the rest of the world and to those who have lived throughout history. Let’s just say no one will confuse my lifestyle with that of St. Francis of Assisi. (There is no record of him owning the 13th century equivalent of a plasma TV, at least after his pilgrimage to Rome in his early 20s.)

Still, one can appreciate the truth of what Hitchens is getting at. It’s no secret that often the danger posed to Christians over the millennia is less persecution than worldliness; that it is wealth and power that often undermine spiritual discipline and draw our affections away from the Lord; and that riches can be distractions, averting our gaze from what matters most.

The reason for this may be because every human heart is divided against itself, easily distracted, prone to waywardness. Living in the most opulent and consumeristic society in human history can magnify those tendencies; it can place in shadows and mist the understanding that this is not our true home, that we are citizens of another kingdom. That has been, at least for me, an ongoing challenge in my Christian pilgrimage. How do we die to self while living in a culture that so relentlessly celebrates the imperial self?

In his autobiography Pilgrim’s Way, John Buchan warned about his nightmare world. “It would be a feverish, bustling world,” he wrote, “self-satisfied and yet malcontent, and under the mask of a riotous life there would be death at the heart.”  He goes on:

Men would go everywhere and live nowhere; know everything and understand nothing. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. In the tumult of a jazz existence what hope would there be for the still small voices of the prophets and philosophers and poets? A world which claimed to be a triumph of the human personality would in truth have killed that personality. In such a bagman’s paradise, where life would be rationalised and padded with every material comfort, there would be little satisfaction for the immortal part of man. It would be a new Vanity Fair… Not for the first time in history have the idols that humanity has shaped for its own ends become its master.

That is, I think, what Peter Hitchens was getting at with his metaphor about the stars being blotted out, with us unable to examine either their significance or their beauty.

Now it needs to be said that every society has struggled with its own set of problems, many of them far worse than this one. But societies also struggle to identify their problems, to understand the challenges they present not just to national greatness but to the human spirit, to our capacity to perceive reality rather than getting caught up in alluring images and evanescent pursuits. 

Perhaps the most worrisome thing of all is not that we can’t see the stars, but that so many people don’t even seem to miss them.

They Must Have Trusted: Hebrews 11

By Fred Sanders
The Scriptorium

Here is the video, and below is the script, of a sermon I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, yesterday (Sun. Oct 13, 2014). I also got to preach a 30-minute version of it for chapel tonight at Los Angeles Bible Training School.  

They Must Have Trusted: Hebrews 11

Grace EVFree Oct 14, 2013  & LABTS Oct 15, 2013

Brothers and sisters, Hebrews is a great book. It’s not just a nice part of the Bible (though it is that). It is also a key that unlocks the entire Bible and takes you inside the meaning of the main things in all of Scripture. Hebrews is, among other things, a key that opens up the Old Testament.  It’s a key to the whole Old Testament, which is a great thing to have, because the Old Testament has some hard parts to it, some parts that need some unlocking. And we know, of course, that Jesus is the key to the Old Testament, to all of God’s ways and words in all time. As the opening words of Hebrews tell us, “God spoke in many ways and in many portions to the fathers through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through a Son….”  So Jesus is the key, God’s final word, the main thing God has to say. But we still need it spelled out for us a little more clearly, don’t we? Not just to be told, “Jesus is the key,” but to be shown in very specific ways how that works. So Hebrews tells us, with detailed discussions of the tabernacle, and sacrifice, and this once-for-all priesthood. So thankful for this! And still we want more. At least I do.

There’s a passage at the very end of Luke’s gospel, Luke 24:25. Jesus has risen from the grave, and two disciples are walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus when they encounter Jesus without recognizing him. And Jesus saunters up alongside them and casually asks, “Whatcha guys talking about?” And they say, “Man, we’re talking about what everybody’s talking about, this Jesus of Nazareth, our teacher: he was a great prophet, and he did great things, and we kind of thought he was going to be the Messiah, but the leaders crucified him, so I guess that’s it now.”

 And Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Talk about a Bible study you would like to have attended: starting with Moses… and all the prophets… he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself!” It’s the ultimate Jesus study Bible! Everything you’ve ever wondered about, right there, from the source itself, and you can’t say “whoa whoa whoa, Jesus, I’m not sure about that one, it sounds like kind of a stretch,” because he can say, “No, trust me, that was me there.”

The fact that we don’t have any further record of this Bible study actually used to frustrate me. I thought, “Luke, you’ve had 24 chapters… could you not have extended the book a few more chapters? I know you’ve got enough paper, because you added the book Acts to this.” Seriously, I’d look at the Bible and think, “It’s real good, but we really missed our chance to have the ultimate chapter in there, didn’t we?” Or I’d think, “What was this, a secret, high-level, disciples-only Bible study club? How come I’m not invited? I’m a disciple! I want the Jesus Bible study! I want the guided tour of the Old Testament from the Lord himself!”

But you and I both know that’s silly. In fact, the longer I’ve spent studying the Scriptures, the more I’ve come to think, “We’re not actually missing anything that we need. We’ve got it here.” In fact, I think if you read Luke and the other gospels carefully, you start to notice that they were written with that full, post-resurrection knowledge of Jesus and how he fulfills the Old Testament. I can’t promise that every single verse from Moses and all the prophets got interpreted and applied, but I do think that in the pages of the New Testament we have a re-opening up of the Old Testament and a re-reading of the whole thing in light of Jesus Christ the Son of God.  Because what else did Jesus do besides explain all those passages of Scripture to them? Luke 24:45 says “then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures….”  He opened the minds of the apostles so they could understand the inner meaning of the Scriptures, and how they testified of him, and how they had always pointed to him and the salvation he brings, and how he is the fulfiller of the promises of God. We have the promise, we have the fulfillment, we have the Bible written by the apostles whose minds were opened to understand, and we have the Spirit of God with us to lead us into all truth. Let’s pray together right now for the miracle of understanding:

Father, your word is truth. Sanctify us in the truth. Open our eyes that we may see great things in your law. Magnify yourself. So impress us with your holiness and faithfulness that we may see it everywhere. Will you condescend to be here among us now as our teacher, as the explainer, as the one who spoke these words at first and applies them individually to each of your children here and now. Give us alertness, interest, curiosity, delight, and accuracy in understanding. Awaken in us a desire to be holy as you are holy, and then satisfy that desire. Plant in us a longing to be pleasing to you, and then show us how that can come true. Lord, we need encouragement this morning so our faith can move forward with endurance. Will you please speak to us the words of encouragement that only you can speak? In the name of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the author of our faith, the finisher of our faith, Amen.

I. They Must Have Trusted
“Beginning with Moses and all the prophets” is a good summary of our chapter, Hebrews 11. It’s about faith, but in praising faith it walks us through the full range of the Old Testament, beginning with Moses: “by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God,” that’s the book of Moses, Genesis 1; “by faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice,” Genesis 4, “by faith Enoch was taken up,” Genesis 5, etc., Noah, Genesis 7, and Abraham starts up in verse 8, to Moses himself in vs. 23, then going all the way through v. 32, to “Samuel and all the prophets.” So there it is, “Beginning with Moses…. and all the prophets.” And what it says about them all is that they did what they did “by faith.”

So here, after all, is our special post-resurrection Bible study, and it’s our big chance to find out the secret things that the Lord told his disciples about what was really going on all along in the Old Testament. In fact, I think the author of Hebrews takes a special kind of delight in using our fuller, New Covenant knowledge of salvation to shine a light on previously unsolved mysteries of the Old Testament. I hope that doesn’t sound too much like a cable TV show, “Unsolved Mysteries of the Old Testament,” next on the Mystery TV. But first, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. But here’s what I mean by a mystery of the Old Testament:  Haven’t you always wondered why Cain and Abel offered sacrifices to God, and God accepted Abel’s but rejected Cain’s? I know I have. Ever since the first time I puzzled over this story in an illustrated childrens’ Bible, I wanted more information. And usually childrens’ Bibles are glad to provide more information. But just listen to the words of the story itself, from Genesis 4, verse 2:

“Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

Now I think it’s safe to say that the way the Bible tells this story, some information that we would like to have is simply not given to us. The gigantic question this story poses to us is, “why?” Why did the Lord have regard for Abel and his offering, but no regard for Cain and his offering? Is it something about Abel and Cain, or something about their offerings? Maybe it was Abel’s idea to bring an offering, and Cain was just a copycat who was sort of shamed into it against his will. But no, the text doesn’t tell us whose idea it was, and if anything it gives Cain the initiative: “In the course of time Cain brought an offering… and Abel also.” Or maybe it was the type of offering: perhaps God is not a vegetarian. He wanted mutton, not salad. Perhaps God prefers the sacrifice of the animal to the giving of the vegetable. But again, there simply isn’t that kind of information here in these few verses. In fact, what little the text tells us sets us up to think that each man brought forth and offered God what was appropriate from their own livelihood: the farmer brought the fruit of the ground, the shepherd brought the firstborn of the flock. Possibly God had already made known to both Cain and Abel what kind of sacrifice was appropriate, but the text doesn’t help us out with that information. Next Image.

If it wasn’t the type of sacrifice, perhaps it was the quality of the sacrifice. Maybe Abel brought a high-quality lamb, but Cain brought some really mediocre fruits and vegetables. Look at what’s on the red brick altar in this image: a sheaf of wheat, some tree nuts, maybe some melon rinds and a couple of moldy gray turnips. The first children’s Bible I ever had was definitely committed to the “couple of moldy gray turnips” interpretation, and I have to admit that the pictures in that kids Bible set my young mind at ease. After all, the violence level in this story escalates pretty quickly. In most depictions, Cain kills Abel with a rock, a giant jawbone, or a farming tool of some kind, but in this one Cain savagely leaps on Abel and tears out his throat with his teeth. It is a story of murderous rage driven by envy. But if Cain tried to get away with moldy turnips, or didn’t want to make the sacrifice in the first place, or wasn’t following the rules, or something, then it all makes more sense. He does, after all, turn out to be a rageaholic, the first murderer, a fratricide. And the Lord, throughout, is remarkably tender toward Cain, talking to him almost like a spiritual director or a life coach: “If you do the right thing, will you not be approved? Sin is out to get you, but you must rule over it.” And we know that God is righteous and merciful; “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” God must have had a good reason for not regarding Cain or his sacrifice. Next Image.

So we can vaguely work out a solution, but we have to admit that as the story is told in Genesis 4, the Cain and Abel story is a bit of an unsolved mystery. We can say that God and Cain and Abel are behaving in sensible ways, though we have to conjecture that the reason this is true is because there must be some missing information that would have made it plainer to us.

Along comes Hebrews to the rescue. Hebrews 11, verse 4:  “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

Now the author of Hebrews has not been given any new information about what happened to Cain and Abel. There is no reason to think that God has supernaturally revealed to him any events that took place between these two brothers east of Eden. But what the author of Hebrews does know is the ultimate answer to the question, “How can any many be commended by God? How can any sinner ever have anything to offer to God?” The answer is found in the entire book of Hebrews up to this point: The absolutely holy God, who is a consuming fire, must make a way of atonement for us, through the work of a high priest who offers once and for all a perfect, precious, costly, effective, sufficient sacrifice for sins. We don’t have time to trace the entire argument, but you know it from chapters 1 through 10: On the one hand, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. On the other hand, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So the great high priest had to come in the fullness of time. The whole transaction had to be carried out in the true tabernacle, in the very presence of the eternal God. Christ had to offer himself through the eternal Spirit to God the Father, the whole Trinity had to get involved for us and for our salvation. That’s what had to happen, that’s what did happen, that’s what God says happened, and that is how peace was made and sinful humans have been rendered acceptable to God, so that he commends us. He receives us and our offerings. The Holy One makes us holy. God promises, he gives his word, he swears it is true. And we hear that promise and trust it. We believe him. We have faith.

And that’s how Hebrews solves this unsolved mystery of the Old Testament, with the first two words of ch. 11 verse 4: “by faith.” If Abel and his sacrifice are acceptable to God, if Abel is commended as righteous by God, then he must have trusted. He must have had some word of promise from God that he received by trusting it, “by faith.” To put it doctrinally: If justification by faith is true, it must have always been true. Abel may not have known the name of Jesus, or the details of atonement, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or any priesthood of any kind, but he was righteous the only way a human can be righteous, so he must have been justified by faith. God must have promised something, and Abel must have trusted.

Notice, by the way, that Hebrews is apparently not interested in the question of why God did not accept the sacrifice of Cain. Hebrews has a very high view of God’s holiness and a very realistic view of the sinfulness of human sin. God is very holy and sin is very bad. It is obvious that the two cannot go together except by some great sacrifice that God initiates. If you bring your own stuff and pile it on the altar and give it to God as if … as if it is good enough, unstained by your sin, unpolluted by your mixed motives and mercenary spirit, unpoisoned by your desire to set up your own self-sufficient foundation of personal righteousness that you can be proud of and have grounds for boasting… forget it, Cain. Forget it, Fred. Forget it, _________.  Forget it, ______________. That’s not how it works, and if you know God and if you know yourself, you know better. You pile your best on the altar of self-sacrifice and self-righteousness, you light your own fire under your own best bits and you blow with all your might on the flames, and you’re just blowing smoke. You’re blowing up a smokescreen. Smoke gets in your eyes. You cough, you can’t see, your eyes tear up, it smells like hell, and you hope, with no good reason to hope, that God likes that god-awful stench. That’s our offering.

When I lead students on tours of art museums, one of the tips I give for understanding a painting better is to put your own body in the postures you see portrayed in the painting. It gives you sympathy with the characters and a better, more somatic feeling for how hard it is for them to get into those poses. Try it next time you’re staring at a painting. When I look at these pictures of Genesis 4, I want to identify with righteous Abel, not that monster Cain. But I have to admit that of these two postures I have a lot more immediate understanding of the posture of Cain; hunched over, trying too hard, blowing harder and getting more smoke. I just want God to like me; is that too much to ask? I want him to approve of me, to commend me, to be pleased with me, I want him to be proud of me. I want to be a God-pleaser. On my own terms, with my own stuff, in my own time, from my own initiative, when it suits me, of course, and not when I want a little time off for sin, in the religious part of my life. That is a lot to ask, it turns out. It’s asking the absolutely impossible. It’s asking to be acceptable to God without faith.

What Hebrews is amazed by is the fact that God accepted and commended Abel and his sacrifice. With his jaw dropped open in amazement, the author of Hebrews says in vs. 2, “By faith the people of old received their commendation,” and vs. 4, “through faith he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.” Wow, says Hebrews: God must have arranged it, and Abel must have trusted. Because, verse 6, “without faith it is impossible to please him.” Abel and his offering were acceptable to God. He brought a firstborn from among his flock and sacrificed it to God, and we know God accepted it, so we know for absolute certain that Abel must have trusted. “And the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart,” “That smells good. That smells like trust. I smell faith. Now you’re cooking.” God commends him, is pleased with him and says so to us… when God decides, speaking through the book of Hebrews, to do a little boating about his righteous ones, he boasts to us about Abel. God is proud of him, he pleased God, he must have trusted. Mystery of Genesis solved.

Hebrews 11:4 adds, “And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.” Well, I think righteous Abel, righteous by faith, has instructed us this morning. But what if Abel actually had the microphone this morning and gave the sermon? That would be a great sermon, another one I wish we had. Back in the 1800s, the preacher Charles Simeon dared to give a little taste of the actual words Abel would say if he addressed a modern congregation. Want to hear it? I’m a little scared to quote a teacher as great as Charles Simeon, and I’ve very scared to put words in Abel’s mouth. But here’s an excerpt in more modern English:

Brothers and sisters, though I have been dead at least six thousand years, I would speak to you as though I had died but yesterday. I am concerned that you should profit by my experience. You all came to church to worship and serve your God, and you may be thinking that by coming here you are giving God an acceptable service.

But I must declare to you that you are dead wrong. Your external forms are of no value in the sight of God. Your act of religious sacrifice may be an abomination. God looks not at the act, but at the heart. Of all this you may be assured from what is related concerning my brother Cain and myself. He, as you have been told, was not accepted, whilst I was. What was it that made the difference? Why did God look on me with pleasure, and with abhorrence on him?

It was because I approached him as a sinner, whose hopes were founded solely on the sacrifice of his Son, whilst my brother approached him without any such exercise of repentance and faith. And so it is with you. He looks with delight on those who draw near to him with a broken and contrite spirit, and with their eyes fixed on the Lamb of God to take away their sins; he will even give to them sweet tokens of his acceptance, and testimonies of his love.

But on the proud and self-righteous formalist he will look with scorn and indignation. I warn you then not to deceive your own souls: for assuredly, whether ye will believe it or not, God will before long make the same distinction between you that he did between me and Cain: the contrite and believing worshippers shall have a testimony of his approval before the whole assembled universe; but the impenitent and unbelieving shall be marked out as monuments of his everlasting displeasure.

As for you who worship him in faith, he may for the present leave you in the hands of the ungodly, who from envy may be incensed against you. He may even leave you even to be put to death, and to suffer martyrdom for your fidelity to him. Don’t let that deter you from confessing him openly before men. I have never regretted the sufferings I endured for him; nor will you ever regret any thing which you may be called to sustain. Even the testimony of your own conscience will be reward enough; but what about that testimony in the day of judgment, when God shall say, “Well done, good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your Lord?” Go on then without fear, and “hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering.”

Well, I wanted to devote more attention to the other figures named here in Hebrews 11, but if you’ll forgive the pun, I wasn’t Abel.  Get it? 

But look down the verses with me and I think you can see that this Bible study that finds faith everywhere “beginning with Moses and all the prophets” is played out over and over, as Hebrews solves mystery after mystery of the Old Testament.

Here’s a mystery from Genesis: What is the deal with Enoch? Genesis 5 is zooming along with a genealogy, and falls into a predictable and somber pattern: So and so begat so and so, who lived x number of years, “and he died.” So and so etc, “and he died, and he died, and died.” But then it gets to verse 21, introduces us to Methuselah’s dad Enoch, and instead of ending properly with the stock conclusion “and he died,” it takes an unexpected turn with “he was not, for God took him.” As with the Cain and Abel story, it leaves out all the interesting details and ignores the question that presses itself on every alert reader. And that perfectly reasonable question is something like, “Huh?” You mean like he ascended physically into heaven? Maybe. Did a fiery chariot come down for him, like with Elijah? Doesn’t say. What does “He was not” mean? Not what? Is there a word missing here? Nope. What did Mrs. Enoch and little baby Methuselah think? Doesn’t say. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Hebrews is always very interested in the mysterious bits of the Old Testament (think Melchizedek), and while he never claims to have any special, supernatural revelation of extra information, he is quite confident that in Christ he has the answer. So Heb. 11:5 says:

5By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

You already knew what the answer of Hebrews was going to be: Enoch had faith. He must have! Because “he walked with God” means he pleased God, and since God recorded it in Genesis we have God’s own opinion in print, God’s own commendation of Enoch. In Heb 11:6 we have the statement “without faith it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews states this axiomatically, like an axiom. It’s like a line in a proof in geometry: you can use this statement to construct further true statements. There’s still so much we don’t know about Enoch, but we know this: He must have trusted. Mystery solved.

By the way, if you want to tell the story of faith in the entire Old Testament, who is the earliest Bible character you can name? There may be ways in which Adam and Eve exercised faith, but Hebrews steps over the first generation of humans and picks up the faith story with their children. Did Adam trust God? Maybe. If we’re just speculating, we might even be able to hope that Adam and Even repented, humbled themselves before God’s righteousness, and believed the words of promise that the Lord spoke to them even as he brought down the curse upon them. But notice that Genesis does not say so. At no point does God speak up and commend Adam or Eve. And while Hebrews is very brave about applying New Testament clarity to Old Testament mysteries, Hebrews never speculates. What we get in Hebrews is always a nose-to-the-text comment on what God said right here in print. God commended Abel, God commended Enoch. They must have trusted. Since God did not commend Adam and Eve, we cannot draw that conclusion.

2. The Structure of Faith
Now Abel and Enoch are the hardest mysteries to solve with the answer “by faith,” because in neither case do we have a report of God giving them direct verbal promises. From here on, though, the case for faith is easier because God spoke to the people involved. So the mysteries are easier to solve. And faith really comes into its own element when the words of the promise are explicitly recorded.

A minor mystery from Genesis: Was Noah really straightforwardly righteous? He is introduced in Genesis as the only righteous man on earth. But the Psalms say, and Paul reminds us, that “there is none righteous, no, not one.” Hebrews affirms the righteousness of Noah and adds that he must have trusted, that he had “the righteousness which is according to faith,” verse 7. It’s a wonderful phrase, a New Covenant phrase, a Pauline phrase: “the righteousness which is by faith.” How was Noah righteous? Mystery solved.

Another mystery from Genesis: How did Abraham have the fortitude to offer up his only son, Isaac? Here, in verse 18, we get to watch Abraham’s faithful mind at work: On the one hand, he has the promise from God, “through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” On the other hand, we have the demand to bind this same Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. What did Abraham think? Verse 19: “He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” Watch Abraham carefully, because he is the father of faith, and we can learn a great deal from him. God did not promise him a resurrection of Isaac, but he promised him offspring through Isaac. And when death itself seemed to intervene between the promise and its fulfillment, Abraham applied logic, he reasoned on the basis of the promise, and came to this conclusion: there must be a resurrection. God said there would be offspring through Isaac, so that is absolutely, unshakably true. Death, terrible death, the going down in flames of every possible hope for the future, is a minor complication. I look forward to seeing how God will work it out, but it will apparently involve a power greater than death itself being unleashed for the fulfillment of the promise. In the meantime, I have the promise and I await the fulfillment.

Thus reasoned Abraham.

Brothers and sisters, that is the structure of faith. Faith arises when you have a promise and you await the fulfillment. Faith is an in between thing, between a promise made and a promise kept. When the kingdom of God comes, there won’t be any more faith, because all promises will be fulfilled, and faith only lives in the arc between promise and fulfillment. If the promise-maker is trustworthy, then the fulfillment is certain. You can reason on its basis, you can reckon on it, you can take great risks because of it, you can put up with delayed gratification and frustrated expectations because you trust the one who made the promise. You can endure. As Hebrews 11 makes painfully clear, you can even die without seeing your dreams come true. In Hebrews 11, faith almost always means dying well, but dying without seeing your dreams come true. Nobody in Hebrews 11 was living their best life now. All of them banked on their best life later.

Faith is the name for that condition that arises in between a promise and its fulfillment. That’s the only environment in which faith is possible, and faith makes no sense at all outside of that context. Far too many preachers, especially of the televised variety, are so loose and sloppy with their use of the word faith that it bears no resemblance to biblical faith. They exhort you to have faith so you can have success, fulfillment in relationships, prosperity, happiness, health, stability, security, respect and honor from those around you, favor with the powers that be, a Ted talk or a spot on Oprah, a big car or several of them, upward mobility, a smoking hot wife, 2.5 children who will have even better lives than yours, 7 grandchildren from your grateful kids, and 27 great grandchildren who you will live to see, and you will dandle them on your knees if you only have faith!

But not a word of that is in Hebrews 11, or anywhere else in the book called the Bible, which is the holy book of the Christian religion. The healthy-wealthy, happy-clappy,  namey-claimy thing is another religion. It likes to keep company with the Christian religion. It uses a lot of the same vocabulary, especially the word “faith.” But none of the sentences it makes with those words come out right. None of them make sense of the faith we see in Hebrews 11.

If you’re around people who make a lot of noise about this kind of faith, ask them point blank: where is your promise? Show me the promise you are having faith in. If you don’t have a specific promise, you have no business having faith. Without a promise, you are not having faith, you are having a fantasy. Faith doesn’t live in a vacuum, it lives on the oxygen of the promise. God doesn’t make any promises that he doesn’t keep, but we have no reason to think he will keep promises he doesn’t make. If God does anything good for you that goes beyond a promise, what you’re experiencing is what old fashioned theologians called “uncovenanted mercies.” And whatever we may say about uncovenanted mercies, we cannot say that they are the ground of confidence. You can’t plan on them. You can’t hold God to them. You probably only thought of them because you plagiarized some ideas from  God’s covenanted mercies and then pretended you didn’t know any better.

(Two unscripted illustrations, to be delivered more naturally and with more eye contact:)

One: I like to play a “trust drop” game with my kids, where I let them fall over and I catch them. (explain)  But I also teach them that I won’t catch them unless I say so. They need to make eye contact and get an explicit verbal agreement with me that the game is on. Otherwise they’ll play it when I’m unprepared, and I won’t be able to catch them. I may throw a foot out there to soften their impact, who knows.  Etc.

Two: Susan and I invested in some real estate and the deal went south, what with the global economic downturn and all. Very tempting to say that God had promised us success on this deal, and that he was letting us down. But no: he had made no promise.

3. Commended by God
Biblical faith, on the contrary, is solid. It has all the power and all the certainty of the one who makes the promise. This is the big picture of the whole book: the first part of Hebrews was a massive exercise in learning to hear God speak.  The second part of Hebrews, especially chapters 9 and 10, gave us the message of God: he announces in the person of his Son that the new covenant is here, the sacrifice is made, and God swears that Christ’s work is accomplished, our sins are atoned for. The third part of Hebrews, starting in the final verses of chapter 10 and moving through all of 11, encourage us to have faith in what God has spoken. You know the truth, and you know God is trustworthy. You’ve heard the divine oath by which we are saved. Now, as it says in 10:36, “You have need of endurance.”

The message of faith is the answer to the question, “How can I be right with God?” We keep returning to the Heidelberg Catechism’s expert summary of biblical faith: “True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in His Word. At the same time it is a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me,[3] God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits. This faith the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the gospel.”

Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter, and the whole thing is illuminated by the claim made in verse 2 – “they were commended by God.” They had God’s approval. He boasted about them, spoke well of them, praised them down through the ages and in front of the audience of the cosmos. How is it possible that these humans, frail as we are, messed up as we are, careening from or toward a disappointment, like we are, as unreliable as we are, were pleasing to God?

They must have trusted. And if you are pleasing to God, it’s by faith. But can you imagine this truth? Can you conceive of yourself being the object of God’s attention, approval, affection, admiration? Becoming part of his advertising? It’s true, but can you picture it?

We have heard the word of God. We trust what he promises, we have faith. But now we have need of endurance, of perseverance in that faith.

So here is the hope to hold on to; the promise to hang your faith on.

When you get to heaven, God will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done. Well done.” And all the angels and all the saints that have gone before will look at you and see you struggles, your failings, your petty rebellions, your repentance, your shame, your besetting sins, the nagging temptation that you fought all your life and that they finally buried you with, your blown opportunities, the love you’ve given and the love you’ve received and the disproportion between them, your doubts, your life long history of desperately clinging to a word of promise, and with all the good you’ve been able to do, and all the filth and selfishness that still clings to even your good works, they’ll hear the almighty voice of God commending you… commending you… speaking commendation to you, and about you, in front of God and everybody, and echoing through heaven and earth the public confession that you, the real you, purified and remade, forgiven and fixed up for certain, but nevertheless still you with your whole history, the you that’s from that family you’re from, from that culture you’re from, the whole you, even you, are an element in the divine pleasure. And the saints and the angels will see you take your place among them there, and draw the only possible conclusion: 

You must have trusted.

Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

By Erle C. Ellis
The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

BALTIMORE — MANY scientists believe that by transforming the earth’s natural landscapes, we are undermining the very life support systems that sustain us. Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences. Disaster looms as humans exceed the earth’s natural carrying capacity. Clearly, this could not be sustainable. 

This is nonsense. Even today, I hear some of my scientific colleagues repeat these and similar claims — often unchallenged. And once, I too believed them. Yet these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain populations well beyond the capabilities of unaltered “natural” ecosystems. 

The evidence from archaeology is clear. Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies and tools of stone and fire to extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible. And, of course, Homo sapiens went much further, learning over generations, once their preferred big game became rare or extinct, to make use of a far broader spectrum of species. They did this by extracting more nutrients from these species by cooking and grinding them, by propagating the most useful species and by burning woodlands to enhance hunting and foraging success. 

Even before the last ice age had ended, thousands of years before agriculture, hunter-gatherer societies were well established across the earth and depended increasingly on sophisticated technological strategies to sustain growing populations in landscapes long ago transformed by their ancestors. 

The planet’s carrying capacity for prehistoric human hunter-gatherers was probably no more than 100 million. But without their Paleolithic technologies and ways of life, the number would be far less — perhaps a few tens of millions. The rise of agriculture enabled even greater population growth requiring ever more intensive land-use practices to gain more sustenance from the same old land. At their peak, those agricultural systems might have sustained as many as three billion people in poverty on near-vegetarian diets. 

The world population is now estimated at 7.2 billion. But with current industrial technologies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has estimated that the more than nine billion people expected by 2050 as the population nears its peak could be supported as long as necessary investments in infrastructure and conducive trade, anti-poverty and food security policies are in place. Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? The important message from these rough numbers should be clear. There really is no such thing as a human carrying capacity. We are nothing at all like bacteria in a petri dish. 

Why is it that highly trained natural scientists don’t understand this? My experience is likely to be illustrative. Trained as a biologist, I learned the classic mathematics of population growth — that populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments. Not to think so would be to misunderstand physics: there is only one earth, of course! 

It was only after years of research into the ecology of agriculture in China that I reached the point where my observations forced me to see beyond my biologists’s blinders. Unable to explain how populations grew for millenniums while increasing the productivity of the same land, I discovered the agricultural economist Ester Boserup, the antidote to the demographer and economist Thomas Malthus and his theory that population growth tends to outrun the food supply. Her theories of population growth as a driver of land productivity explained the data I was gathering in ways that Malthus could never do. While remaining an ecologist, I became a fellow traveler with those who directly study long-term human-environment relationships — archaeologists, geographers, environmental historians and agricultural economists. 

The science of human sustenance is inherently a social science. Neither physics nor chemistry nor even biology is adequate to understand how it has been possible for one species to reshape both its own future and the destiny of an entire planet. This is the science of the Anthropocene. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history, and most likely the future. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. 

Two hundred thousand years ago we started down this path. The planet will never be the same. It is time for all of us to wake up to the limits we really face: the social and technological systems that sustain us need improvement. 

There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future. There is no need to use any more land to sustain humanity — increasing land productivity using existing technologies can boost global supplies and even leave more land for nature — a goal that is both more popular and more possible than ever. 

The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it. 

Erle C. Ellis is an associate professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a visiting associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Christian Battleground

By James Kushiner
The Fellowship of St. James

Psalm 3 is the first of six psalms recited each day during Matins in the Orthodox Church. It may seem a bit strange to pray so early in the day: "Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of me, 'There is no help for him in God'." Am I praying the words of a paranoid person?

No, for in the Christian frame of mind, there are at least two connections or identifications here. First, the mocking statement that "there is no help for him in God" reminds me of those mocking Jesus upon the Cross. In carrying our crosses daily, we are to identify with our Lord, the Suffering Servant.

Second, these many foes are those identified by St. Paul: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but principalities and spiritual powers" bent on harming us or at least distracting us from our faith in Christ. 

We all face an unseen spiritual warfare each day in the form of countless temptations and choices--sounds and images designed to entice us to think about comfort, appetite, or sex; numerous personal interchanges in which one may respond out of ego, self interest, or irritation; cares and anxieties to be fretted about. The visual attraction of (some) immodest dress.

Our witness to Christ is not often public, or necessarily even made to another human being who might perceive it. We witness to Christ before the angels and the spiritual powers every time we resist temptation--whenever we reject unseemly thoughts, or quietly say a prayer for the safety of a driver who has cut us off rather than curse him. Every act or thought in Christ bears witness to Him who is "Pantocrator"---Ruler over all: All authority in heaven and earth is His; our obedience renders His Rule present, against the present age.

Even these small efforts throughout the day make a difference, for cursing, selfishness, lustful thoughts and looks--even if kept "private"--drive out better thoughts and prayers, and render us susceptible to further descent into darkness.

Such opportunities to live, think, and act with "the mind of Christ" seem countless once you become aware of them. At the beginning of the day, I foresee that the temptations will return and multiply. But with the Psalmist, I call upon the Lord, "Arise, deliver me, O my God," while confessing, "Deliverance belongs to the Lord." Each small victory makes a difference, not only for you, but for those around you.

How Do I Learn From Experience If I Don’t Have Any?

By Matt Jenson
The Scriptorium

Earlier this summer, I got an email from John Buchanan, a current student in the Torrey Honors Institute:

Hello, Dr. Jenson.

As you may be told from time to time, you are the mentor that seemed sensible to talk to regarding the subject of this email… Probably because you are a younger male but who knows for certain. I wrote this email in the same form as I would talk to you about something in an office hours, but as there is no more time for office hours, I am hoping an email will suffice. I wrote quite a bit at first, which was probably just for my own benefit, and have condensed it to the core. I understand if you do not have time to reply, and thank you for your time and wisdom.

Am I supposed to be learning about how experiences happen before I experience them? I feel robbed of my experiences. The knowledge I am gaining from Torrey is undoubtably invaluable, but I am young and full of energy and ideas. I do not feel qualified to talk for three hours (or write a paper) about sex, or love, or being old, or being even twenty-years old (because I am not yet), or ruling, or being ruled, or dying, or so many other themes. I do not even feel qualified to talk about friendship because I have only since beginning college started actually being in completely healthy friendships.

What is the expectation of me as a young student? Am I to bring experience of truth into discussions or learn about truth from words while in a chair? How am I supposed to know what beauty is if I am trapped inside all day?

If you have any understanding of this to pass on to me (through written words, ironically) I would appreciate them.

I cannot wait for the summer.

- John Buchanan

What a great question. To learn about something, it seems we’ve got to know about it already to some extent. This was the quandary Socrates considered in the Meno. If I don’t know something, I can’t begin to search after it; if I do know it, there’s no need to. Here, John’s asking a particular form of this question with reference to the knowledge that comes from experience. We learn best through cycles of action and reflection–but what if, as John suggests, we don’t have broad or deep enough action on which to reflect? Who knows, maybe we should just postpone college till, say, age 40. Give people some basic skills, get them out living life, then invite them back in middle age to reflect on their lives so far.

Maybe, though I suspect there’s more to it. Here’s what I wrote in response:

Hi John,

Thanks for this email from back in May. It was a hectic time, and since then I’ve mostly been in email hibernation mode. Now I’m yawning, though, and slowly waking from a long email nap. I hope this is helpful in response, though I’d imagine you’ve got plenty of new thoughts on this topic by now. One thing I smelled in your email was that combination of exhaustion and exasperation that comes at the end of the semester, and particularly the end of spring semester, when the thought of being outdoors, able to touch grass and ground, to be relatively untrammeled and simply live sure sounds a lot better than yet another book, paper or test. I feel the same about that time of year.

In one sense, you’re right. You don’t know much about sex or love or being old or king. In light of that, you might think of your education as a time to gain categories for the big features of life that you have yet to meet and to glean from the hard-won experiential knowledge of others. You may not know about growing old, but you can watch Lear lose his focus and grip on reality and succumb to decades of selfishness, taking a kingdom along with him. That does a couple things: It expands your imaginative sense of aging. We experience reality through our imaginations; we paint scenes and tell stories in our minds of what our growing older, say, will look like. But our imaginations are limited to what we’ve seen and heard, to a great extent. Others’ lives–even in fictional ones–can expand our sense of what is possible, for good or ill.

Now, that’s no substitute for living, of course. Books are meant for lots of things, certainly including fun and diversion, but the greatest of these is to aid us in living well. We don’t only read Lear for fun; we don’t even read it just to learn about aging. We read it, in significant part, so that we may live, and age, well. One big mistake Torrey students make is thinking that, because they’ve got a rich conceptual grasp of reality, they have figured out life. Far from it. Once we get the conceptual tools in place–and, of course, those tools need sharpening throughout life, and often enough replacing–we have to try them out on life itself. I can’t count the number of times I have learned in my heart and gut and with my hands what my head has long known. And that’s not a knock on head knowledge. In fact, I think the head knowledge has helped me recognize truth with my heart, gut and hands; but there’s no replacing that knowledge that I know from the inside because I have lived it. There’s also no shortcut to it. So while I wouldn’t worry about your relative lack of experiential knowledge at this point, and while I still think reading all these books does you a world of good, don’t let anyone fool you by telling you that critical mastery of Lear is as good as gaining the wisdom of aging.

One more thing, though: Don’t sell yourself short. You know far more than you know. Twentyish years is a lot of years. What’s more, those are formative years, years that will stick with you even after your twenties are a blur. You may not know about [cue sweeping orchestral music] LOVE!, but you’ve had a crush on someone. You’re known a crush unrequited. You’ve probably been on a date, squirmed with awkwardness, not been able to think about anyone else, thought your life wouldn’t go on without them, etc. Sound cliche? Well, I suppose it is; but maybe it’s better to say it’s common, in the best sense of the word. We all know something of that experience. And it doesn’t take that much work to draw an analogy from, say, the crush of a 15-year-old to, well, just about any of the relationships in Pride and Prejudice. Same goes for any number of topics. It may just be that you have yet to tap your experience as you run into what seem like more regal accounts of life in our curriculum. I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that most of the authors we read would feel far more ‘common’ in person than their sometimes-vaunted language would suggest.

I’m glad you’re in Torrey, John. I hope you’re enjoying life this summer, living it to the full. See you in a few weeks.

MJ