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Death of Jesus: Part 4 of 4

// October 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // church, collected thoughts, theology

Obviously the metaphor of Christus Victor was born out of the context the early Christian church found itself in, facing directly into an unprecedented barrage of persecution. It was shaped by the struggles they were facing and the cultural context in which it was born. These early Christians were giving imagery and metaphor to help them articulate their fundamental belief that through Christ they had been reconciled to God.

This is part of the healthy way that the church has evolved throughout its history in a continual effort to find new and meaningful ways to talk about their faith. That process of cultural evolution has continued.

Substitutionary Atonement
The predominant metaphor that is heard today as the evangelical church talks about the atonement is one we call substitionary atonement. Sometimes we call it vicarious atonement or propitiation or judicial theory or penal substitution, but all of these subtle variants are a form of a metaphor that paralleled the development of the modern legal system. This framework focuses on the divide from the diagram earlier (see Part 1). Paul writes to the Roman church and says, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” and we are disconnected from God by those shortcomings. The theory of substitutionary atonement lines this reality up against the model of the developing legal system. We have transgressed the standard that God has set for membership in his social order much the same way a criminal transgresses the social order that society has set for itself. Similarly to when someone breaks rules and must be penalized through fine or imprisonment, God has set a penalty for our transgression, and that penalty is death. Now that is a bit of a kludge on the metaphor, which has been articulated much more eloquently to reflect the nuances of the relationship between God, law and sinner by better theologians. However, in its most basic form, substitutionary atonement is a legal picture of our relationship to God. The twist comes in because God sends his son, to pay that penalty for us. In his death he saves us from the consequence of our own actions by stepping into the gap for us.
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Death of Jesus: Part 3 of 4

// October 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // collected thoughts, theology

This brings us to our second major lens on the meaning of the death of Jesus

Moral Influence
CS Lewis, among others, wrote a lot about this concept I’m calling moral influence. Lewis described the very appearance of a moral objective standard as an argument for God. At the same time his belief was that this appeal to an objective moral standard could not be explained as mere instinct, because it does not always win out, nor as mere social convention, because it appears to transcend and is appealed to across cultural divides, nor as a law of nature because the very idea of morality is prescriptive for our world rather than descriptive of our world. Therefore he argued that morality, in and of itself, points us towards not only God, but his intervention into the human story. Jesus steps into that story to bring us a more full picture of what a human life can be. This divine example of humanity becomes an influence on us of unequaled proportion. In fact, Jesus demonstration in his life and in his death is so perfect, and so powerful that it has altering effect on the course of human history helping to point us towards God.
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Death of Jesus: Part 1 of 4

// October 25th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // church, collected thoughts, theology

I taught a session last week on the death of Jesus as part of our Backstory curriculum.

Since then a number of people have asked for the audio and/or notes so I figured I would rework the info into an article for the blog… then I remembered that I have my regular job/writing to keep up with. I still think it’s a good idea (for my own personal thought as much as anything else) but I need a bit more time to put the information into proper(ish) sentences… so I’m going to be posting it in pieces over the next week or so as I go.

Hopefully it can help shape a different (or at least broader) frame on Jesus life and death than the sometimes myopic view presented in the evangelical church.

Intro
There are a number of traditions in the family of the Christian Church and each of those have placed a different emphasis on parts of the life of Jesus. The Eastern Orthodox church has primarily focused on the birth of Jesus – his entry into the world as the focal point for their theology. The Roman Catholic Church has built much of their emphasis around the resurrection, that fact that he died and came back to life as their focus. The protestant tradition which is where Westside has come out of, by contrast, has primarily focused their attention around the death of Jesus. Of course none of things can really be separated off in a meaningful way, because they were all a part of the story of Jesus.
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un’writ.ten

// September 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // church, collected thoughts, quotes, theology

[transcription from the first message of our fall series at un'ed.i.ted spirituality]
Wikipedia – as far as I’m concerned, is the final store of all human knowledge

It is the intellectual equivalent of a flash mob for me

Hundreds upon thousands of individuals contributing their part to a story bigger than any person could write on their own
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Legions and Empires

// July 24th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // church, collected thoughts

[notes from my message last week at unedited]

This might be a story you’ve heard or read yourself before but hopefully we can look at it with fresh eyes all over again.

In the book of Mark Jesus is travelling with his disciples teaching and up to this point he’s been primarily teaching in Jewish areas of the Roman Empire. But at this point he decides to cross over to the other side. Now the “other side” is necessarily not the “dark side”. It has nothing to do with Emperor Palpitine and lightning bolt finger tips, although it might as well have for a lot of the Jews. The other side Jesus is talking about is the other side of Lake Kinneret, or more commonly called the Sea of Galilee.
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More Than Right

// February 24th, 2008 // No Comments » // collected thoughts

[This is an unedited manuscript for a message I gave last month a Westside. Sorry for the lack of proper sentence structure, I don’t talk in proper English]

I’d like to try to tell two stories with nothing in common to make a single point. So here goes;

Story number one:

About 20 some odd yrs ago

I found myself in grade 3, I think
Playing out in the freshly fallen, no so silent, shroud of snow, that covered the playground at school
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Some Christmas Thoughts

// December 31st, 2007 // 1 Comment » // church, collected thoughts

[This is a manuscript written from a message I gave a just before Christmas at Westside. If you already heard it don’t waste your time reading it]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
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Christmasy

// December 18th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // church, collected thoughts

We are putting together four mini monologues for Xmas Eve this year. This is my first draft of the first piece. If you happen to come to Westside and are planning to be here on the 24th – you might not want to read any farther, lest it be far less compelling when you hear it live. Then again you can always try to spot the edits… oh what fun.
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fierce_ decisions

// December 13th, 2007 // No Comments » // collected thoughts

[This is a manuscript written from a message I gave a couple weeks ago at Westside. If you already heard you probably don't want to waste time to reading it]

Would You Rather?

I was thinking about the game this week. Remember the game? The one where you are given two similar options, either both exceedingly fantastic or as exceedingly and creatively disgusting as can be imagined by the questioner and you simply choose, which you would rather.

The only rule to the game is this you have to choose. It’s a pretty simple game as games go.

Here’s an example
Would you rather receive $1000 a day for the rest of your life or $16 833 000 in a lump sum right now, which presuming I was to live to the ripe old age of 75 and die on my birthday would make the totals equivalent.

Now those ones are kind of fun. Would you rather choose lots of money or… lots of money. But then there are the other kind of would you rather questions. Would you rather lick the pond scum clean off a toad or have your toenails peeled back. It’s a tough choice.

And while the fantastical scale of the game that allows the walls of reality to become somewhat permeable; would you rather be invisible or able to fly, while that might make our ordinary daily decisions seem somewhat monotonous; would you rather mild marble or medium cheddar cheese, there is still that element of would you rather that runs through every decision we make.
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Chickens, Eggs, God and Causality

// October 13th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // collected thoughts, theology

Oddly, it came up in conversation at breakfast this morning. (then again he always knew it would) Not your usually morning fare but of late it seems to be a familiar point of discussion. (or perhaps he didn’t)

The question specifically, did God already know that my Eggs Benedict would be overcooked, almost dry, even before the chef rolled out of bed this morning, perhaps even before the proverbial chicken or the egg. The question in general, which is entirely more enticing than my eggs, is, does God know the future and then if that is true what does it mean for God to be outside of, or unaffected by our concept of time. Strangely of late I have entered into this same query in a number of conversations. Each time becoming more and more convinced that the standard response; “of course”, as most standard answers are, is entirely a product of its familiarity rather than its utility.
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