On Being Too God-Centered
May 27, 2009 by iMonk
UPDATE: Interesting column on the paradoxes of Calvinism.
Udo Middleman on “The Islamization of Christianity.”
This post is, without a doubt, an experiment in exploration and articulation. Many won’t care for where it goes, but I think a basic question must be answered, not just for the sake of answering atheists, but for understanding our own faith as “Christian humanism.”
A Facebook friend just asked me if I wanted to become a “fan” of Jonathan Edwards.
Too bad there’s isn’t a “NOT a fan” option, because I’m not a fan.
One of my consistent critics- who is also a respected friend- called to mind a statement I’d made in the past about the problem of being “too God-centered.” He was obviously wondering it, with time and reflection, I’d thought better of that phrase and wanted to repent.
Answer: No. It still concerns me. Not whether all things are centered in, related to, dependent on, destined for and exist to glorify God, but whether some expressions of Christianity can become so God-focused that the significance of what is not God- including all things in human experience- are devalued and even distorted to the point of confusion in the minds of God loving/God believing people.
I’ve sensed, as long as I have been around my intensely theological Protestant (mostly reformed and evangelical) brothers and sisters, a kind of clumsiness with the subject of the significance of anything in human experience. By clumsiness I mean that these matters are handled, but the constant pressure to be singularly God centered and God focused makes it difficult to handle both God and human life at once without one overwhelming the other.
I have felt this clumsiness and awkwardness throughout my life. For example, as a young Christian, I found myself at a post-citywide crusade prayer meeting with people involved in a James Robison crusade. Robison was speaking about the kind of prayer needed to bring revival to our city. He used a very dramatic illustration of having a vision of an open grave, where God asked him if he were willing to give the life of his child in order for revival to come. In highly emotional terms, Robison enacted this prayer where he laid his daughter in this grave, thereby signaling his willingness to sacrifice for revival.
I bring this up after reading, just today, an account of a sincere, God-loving Christian processing an incredible tragedy involving the loss of a child, and seeing the significance of the child’s death as a necessary requirement for God to bring the Gospel to many people who would otherwise not hear.
These incidents- and many more that I could tell you- seem to be clumsy, awkward, painful attempts to hold together the glory of God and the realities of human life: love, family, loss.
Regular IM readers will have heard me express my admiration for the book The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism by Louis Bouyer. Bouyer was a Lutheran convert to Catholicism. His assessment of Protestantism is amazingly generous, being founded on the idea that what Protestants value most is best expressed in Catholicism.
Bouyer commends the solas of Protestantism and especially the idea of soli deo gloria, but then he begins a detailed examination of Calvin and Calvinism’s focus on the singular significance of the glory of God as compared to anything else. Bouyer finds that Calvin’s focus on the glory of God reduced worship to a shred of its Catholic self, eliminated the significance of the eucharist, replaced everything in worship with scripture alone and made the significance of human life consisting solely of eternal worship. Following this track, Bouyer suggested, the glory of God becomes the only kind of significance that “weighs” anything in the experience of these Christians.
I was deeply affected by this insight, and I feel its impact in my own experience of evangelicalism.
For example, were it not for the work of N.T. Wright on eschatology (See Surprised by Hope), I would be approaching a point of despair with the evangelical “eternal praise and worship concert” view of the afterlife. Wright’s recovery of the doctrine of the resurrection and the connection of this world with the new world to come has been a sanity saver and a faith expander.
As I listen to evangelicals discuss the significance of the church, I can sense the exact process Bouyer described. More and more churches are now nothing but music and Bible teaching. Discussions of other forms of the church that embody community, encourage incarnational ministry or embrace servanthood are under deep suspicion among the heirs of Calvin. Why? Because the glory of God is at stake, the Bible is not being given enough emphasis and there are too many dangers in these human-level activities.
Many Evangelicals see a frightening and dark world. They are suspicious of art, music, literature and the imagination. Books are dangerous. Culture- be it high or low- is of little value. Those evangelicals who are not of that mindset know full well what the arguments are: How is this serving the glory of God? What is the value of this activity as compared to theology or worship? What is any of this when compared to God?
The reformed doctrines of depravity and corruption are applied to everything, and the only answer is God. But can the world of being human gain and keep its significance in and through the glory of God, or must it give way to the glory of God? That discussion seems to be going on in many different ways and places, with varying levels of helpfulness.
I am sad to say this, but there is a point at which the relentless God-centeredness of some believers makes them into the adversaries and almost the enemies of much that is good in human life. They become the enemies of normal, especially in the lives of young people, creative people and people who feel that life in this world is good and shouldn’t be devalued by religion. My recent experiences regarding the rosary at solamom.net are a perfect example. Soli deo gloria was the only reason anyone can have for anything at all, and that is not to GIVE significance, freedom, liberty and beauty, but to question the purpose for anything other than the constant study of God, God and more God.
Christianity bears a weight in this area, and not all forms of it have handled that challenge equally well. Bouyer would have some questions from me about celibacy and many other aspects of Catholic practice (especially the marriage of Joseph and Mary,) but I get his point.
I see the erosion of significance in endeavor after endeavor, area after area of evangelicalism. I see artists and servants being hounded. Standards becoming meaningless. Beauty and heritage tossed in the trash. Theological abstractions set up higher and higher as the goal of any genuine Christian.
I find myself wondering how Jesus lived a God-centered, God-glorifying life, and was fully, wonderfully, completely, healthily, human?
I see that humanity and love of God in the lives of many people, both past and present, but in the articulation and proclamation of the church, there’s the clumsiness; the disconnect. There is, sometimes, the outright adversarial attitude towards whatever is not God and God Alone.
What Bach was able to sign at the end of each piece of music….can it be signed on all of human life? Even what is not religious? What is ordinary? Normal? Merely human? When Piper says we can drink Orange juice to the glory of God, is he opening the door to finding a way for God-centered theologians and preachers to relax about people who want to do dozens and dozens of other things, in their own simple, human way, to the glory of God?
My thoughts are incomplete, but important to me at this point in my journey. I believe the glory of God preserves and fills human life with meaning and significance. I do not believe that meaning and significance only comes when we overtly, consciously allow our sense of God to make all things meaningless compared to Him.
Is our humanity validated? Or obliterated?
Something is wrong and I feel it. Perhaps my friend is right and I need to repent of what I’ve thought, felt and written. Or perhaps, as is so often true in these pages, I’m far from being the only one who’s noticed.
I came to a kind of peace with this issue when I noticed that “God-centeredness” isn’t part of a social programme called ‘Christianity’ but the reverse – the social programme of ‘God-centeredness’ is a rationalized distortion of Jesus’ life and journeys made emphatic by uncertain people – and that theology isn’t the ‘highest’ thing we do, but the lowest, most basic, undifferentiated aspect of human thinking on anything.
If Jesus’ humanity isn’t visible to you in the words of the Gospels, then whatever else you’re doing, it’s probably something you’ve made up to satisfy yourself without realizing it.
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If the solas cause you to fumble, drop them.
I’ve long thought that the God-time-all-the-time approach to religion is a product not of enhanced spirituality, but of a certain marriage of rationality applied to Scripture and rationality misapplied to life; we reflexively build ourselves ego defenses (and Towers of Babel whenever possible) out of logic and disposition to protect our slow-healing uncertainties from outside interruption. We cover our hurts with theology because we don’t have the courage to look at our own wounds.
Josh T.,
Kathleen Norris writes beautifully concerning the point you make in her little book, “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work”. I highly recommend it.
Christ came to make us more fully human and not less so.
grimtraveller, think of it this way.
You’re in love, so you want to spend every moment you can being with your lover – you want to spend all your time with them doing whatever, having and being had in every way possible, enjoying every moment and even though “nothing’s going on” there’s nowhere on earth you’d rather be.
Well, if you obey the commandment to love God through your life, you’ll certainly have noticed that you’ve been away from your lover for a long, long time – and time itself is a door closed when we die, leaving us in a room with only us and God. When our pale worship of God on this earth, our clumsy love songs and bad poetry, is forgotten or only remembered as a lovers’ joke, when intimacy with God is pure and complete and neverending and has been built up for your entire life! – there’ll be nowhere else you could rather be than with God, worshiping and being loved. All the memories of wan times you’d forgotten or regretted or doubted Him will bloom in you. Heaven is where you get to tell God you love Him and know that you mean it.
Christian Humanism has, in my experience, turned out poorly. It’s not long before it’s just humanism; Christian was just a screen for the transition.
Rant time here, and lots of material to work with. IMonk almost got me flashbacking like a Nam Vet with this subject.
For example, were it not for the work of N.T. Wright on eschatology (See Surprised by Hope), I would be approaching a point of despair with the evangelical “eternal praise and worship concert” view of the afterlife.
I’ve been there. The “Never-ending Church Service”; except the local variant was “The Never-ending Compulsory Bible Study”. When I wanted to wander the Timeless Halls of Eru Iluvatar or romp and play with the critters in Aslan’s Land. Makes Satan look like a liberator.
Bouyer commends the solas of Protestantism and especially the idea of soli deo gloria, but then he begins a detailed examination of Calvin and Calvinism’s focus on the singular significance of the glory of God as compared to anything else. Bouyer finds that Calvin’s focus on the glory of God reduced worship to a shred of its Catholic self, eliminated the significance of the eucharist, replaced everything in worship with scripture alone and made the significance of human life consisting solely of eternal worship.
The more I hear about how Calvin ran Geneva, the more he sounds like a Swiss Ayatollah Khomeini. Just like Khomeinist/Talibani Islam, except CHRISTIAN (TM).
Soli deo gloria was the only reason anyone can have for anything at all, and that is not to GIVE significance, freedom, liberty and beauty, but to question the purpose for anything other than the constant study of God, God and more God.
i.e. 24/7/365 on your face in the mosque, continuously screaming “AL’LAH’U AKBAR! AL’LAH’U AKBAR! AL’LAH’U AKBAR!”
I am sad to say this, but there is a point at which the relentless God-centeredness of some believers makes them into the adversaries and almost the enemies of much that is good in human life. They become the enemies of normal, especially in the lives of young people, creative people and people who feel that life in this world is good and shouldn’t be devalued by religion.
Once you get outside the four walls of the Christian Punyverse, you find a grand universe. There’s a reason 90% of evangelical kids leave when they turn 18. They feel betrayed and stifled.
And the backlash attitude sets in:
Christians are The Enemy.
Christ is The Enemy.
If you want to have a life, get as far away from them — and Him — as possible. Over the Berlin Wall and into the West and Freedom.
see the erosion of significance in endeavor after endeavor, area after area of evangelicalism. I see artists and servants being hounded. Standards becoming meaningless.
SF fan since 1970, now trying to write the stuff. Linked up with Lost Genre Guild, a support group of Christian F&SF writers rejected by the ECPA/CBA/Christian authorities.
D&Der during the start of the Satanic Panic; need I say more? (Thank you, Mike Warnke.)
Beauty and heritage tossed in the trash.
Imagine the letdown from Cordwainer Smith (acknowledged as a Christian SF writer by everybody EXCEPT Christians) to the likes of Left Behind. There’s a reason we used to say “It’s gotta be Christian — look how shoddy it is!” and “It’s gotta be good — all the Christians are denouncing it!”
Theological abstractions set up higher and higher as the goal of any genuine Christian.
Until you become a Gnostic Pneumatic, so Uber-Uber-Spiritual that physical reality no longer exists. (Isn’t such detachment from reality usually called “psychotic”?)
The other shackle that sounds very similar to the one your are bringing up, Michael, is those who are always unsure if they are in “God’s will”. These shackles prevent us from running the race we are intended to run because we are too busy in our navel gazing. Am I in God’s will if I do thus and such? Am I doing everything for God’s glory?
Since we are created in God’s image, some of us also are small creators. If we deny this aspect of ourselves, we are negating that gift which God gave us. We need to relax and enjoy every good gift from our Father. It’s not a sin to enjoy life.
This is a big part of why I left religion. I was going through really hard times and I just felt like God didn’t care about me at all. Then one day I read Carl Sagan’s comments on the “Pale Blue Dot” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot).
I realized what could God possibly want with my life? with any human life? What could he possibly need or seek to accomplish when we mean so LITTLE in regards to the universe. — Andy D
i.e. The Cosmos is so BIG, God has to be even BIGGER, and we’re so small to be insignificant. Nothing compared to Deep Time and Deep Space.
A lot of Christians retreat from this big Universe into a comfortable-sized Punyverse — Earth and some lights in the sky, only 6013 years old, ending twenty minutes into the future.
You know the real kicker to this?
Christianity has an answer to this dilemma: THE INCARNATION. No matter how big the cosmos is, no matter how much bigger God has to be to be God, God remains on a one-to-one human scale through incarnation as Jesus Christ.
So why do so many of us, handed this solution to the dilemma of Deep Space and Deep Time, flush it down the crapper and wall up our Christian hidey-hole behind us?
Michael,
You are right on target. You really are.
Your first paragraph, and your discussion of Bouyer, whose book you cite I have just read: both are right. I have been feeling and seeing some of the same things. About NT Wright and Surprised By Hope, I sort of figured out some of the main points on my own a while ago. Probably from hanging around with Catholics, for whom this approach is not that far afield.
Disclaimer: I didn’t read the responses.
A related note: I wrote my dissertation in philosophy of education about coming to faith as an adult convert to Christ, and what all is involved for anyone, anywhere, anytime to make that transition. The truncated version of Christianity you refer to is something that doesn’t hold up to a good model of Christian formation. I’ll send a pdf of my dissertation to anyone who asks and sends me an email address. The paper is called “Practice Makes Perfect: Christian Education Viewed as Initiation into Christianity as a Practice.” My own email is bruce dot c dot meyer at gmail dot com.
Excellent post.
I gagged on that kind of extreme glory centered constant defense of God’s sovereignty a long time ago. It wars against the gifts God has given us. Not only that, but Jesus is subtly (or not so subtly) entirely removed from the center of church, worship, and our lives, and traded Him for a focus on “God”and His “Glory”
Annie Dillard once asked, “What’s the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab?”
She answered herself: “Aren’t they both saying, ‘Hello?’”
imonk, how can you see through OJ? It’s opaque.
Seriously, I agree with your analysis. I guess I interpret Piper wrong.
Not that I’m a fan of pendulum-swinging, but evangelicalism is lousy with Manicheists who could probably stand to think “more and more about God” without coming anywhere near the other extreme of being too God-centered.
Brendt:
I find that those people who don’t think about God are as likely to buy into this kind of dualism as anyone. In fact, it’s their decision that they can’t glorify God that contributes to why they don’t want to hear about or think about him.
Where are all the Calvinists? I would think that God’s great plan would have included sending a couple of them here to instruct everyone. That may sound sarcastic, but it’s not.
Maybe it’s been mentioned above, but another example of being too God-centered is the lack of tolerance for anyone who reads scripture differently. Calling anyone who believes in free will a heretic is not being God-centered, it’s being arrogant-man-centered.
Perhaps a related issue is denying that the Holy Spirit can change how we understand the Bible, or that God would never add anything anything useful to us beyond scripture, or seemingly contradict himself within it.
Isn’t it, in a way, being too God-centered when we take the Bible, which was inspired by God but written by men, as the literal inerrant infallible word of God alone?
There’s the world….and then there’s God and the Bible. God matters. The world is toast. Make your choice.
That’s evangelicalism in the main. — IMonk
An Evangelicalism Eager to Leave.
“For God So Hated the World he sent His only Son to Beam Us Up Out of It…”
We have a popular chorus that says “This world has nothing for me.”
I hate that line. — IMonk
Because of its corollary “Ergo, you mean NOTHING to me.”
Headless, there’s a reason mediaeval Christianity considered Islam to be a heresy, not a new religion…. — Martha
As did Chesterton’s bud Belloc. Chesterton wrote that Christianity is a dynamic balance between opposing doctrines, “any one of which could lay waste a world if taken in isolation”.
Communism took “Woe to the Rich!”, “Justice for the Poor!”, and “Judgement is Coming!” in isolation and ran with them; this was the reason John Paul II approached it as a Christian Heresy.
And Islam takes “God is One”, “God is Almighty”, “God is Soverign”, and “God’s Will Prevails” in isolation and runs with them, mixed with a lot of pre-Islamic Arab Tribal Culture.
Another great discussion which I came to late. I must violate my (and maybe Imonk’s) standard again (of reading all the comments)as there are just too many at this point. I did read Imonk’s article, I struggled through Udo’s book . . . I mean article (I do enjoy his lectures in person though). I have slimmed most of the comments and what I’m going to say has been alluded to.
As they say to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. With that said, I am a “Leary of Gnostic-Dualism” hammer and I see Dualism written all over this problem. The issue is not “Too much God, or Too God centered” but a failure of seeing the material as God-stuff. So the problem is being too God in the “spiritual” or immaterial centered. The new radical Islamic movement shares this obsession with the invisible. That’s why blowing up a bus full of (material) school girls doesn’t matter because it accomplishes something “spiritual” (immaterial) Enough said.
Great stuff as usual, iMonk. I came face to face with this in a dating relationship. I knew I was in trouble when my friend told me she was “having too much fun with me” and “allowing too much of her happiness to be dependent on me, rather than God.” Therefore, she “had to pull away from me and focus more on God.” Sigh
budster:
Oh my. I hear this all the time. A great lady in a church was gifted at doing children’s sermons. She quit because it was getting in the way of her walk with God.
ms
Someone whose depths we can barely touch at the best of times, and that’s it ? — Grim Traveller
St Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica shelf-full of volumes on the nature of God. He then was said to have a vision of God and afterwards called his books “things of straw”. That he hadn’t even scratched the surface of God.
Turning something the most brilliant mind of the Middle Ages couldn’t comprehend into a slew of Evangelical sound bytes and proof texts? Seems to me you’d lose a LOT in the condensation.
Falling down and telling him how great he is ? Forever ? Even life in poverty or in prison on earth has more going for it. — Grim Traveller
That brings to mind an image that is NOT pretty: God as Cosmic Kim Jong-Il and His Kingdom as a Cosmic North Korea. All Dance Joyfully with Great Enthusiasm before Comrade Dear Leader! Long Live Big Brother!
The weird thing is that by trying to present and articulate {and ultimately mark out the boundaries and then impose}what we see as God’s glory, it seems that all we’ve managed is to demonstrate that actually, by avoiding so much of the creator’s creative works represented by admittedly sinful creatures, we don’t really think he’s particularly glorious. That’s frightening. — Grim Traveller
Worm theology. “Since God has to have supreme importance, nothing else can be allowed to have any importance whatsoever.” A narrow, shrunken glory for a narrow, shrunken God who can’t share the glory with anyone else. Like a cosmic Lord Farquar from Shrek decreeing all in his realm shall have their legs amputated because nobody can be allowed to stand taller than their Lord.
Whenever I hear seminary students debating topics like this, you know, “how can I live totally for the glory of God” I always worry that they never help their wives bathe the babies or sweep the floor…because this would get in the way of “living totally for the glory of God” or because they don’t “have time”.
…12:38pm… “we reflexively build ourselves ego defenses (and Towers of Babel whenever possible) out of logic and disposition to protect our slow-healing uncertainties from outside interruption. We cover our hurts with theology because we don’t have the courage to look at our own wounds”……Patrick…will you come and speak at our AA meetings?….i think you “get it”.
John L. Cash,
I have a good friend that I was in a Navigator training center with (a couple of decades ago). He was the most “zealous for God” guy I had ever met (previous he was an Army Special Forces leader). He read Hudson Taylor and went off to China with his family.
He had to come back to the states in a state of mental exhaustion a few years ago. Now that he is no longer on missionary salary, his wife had to go to work full time to support them. He is so “in to God” he spends his days in prayer and meditation . . . over in a corner and she brings home the bacon . . . and cooks it up in the pan.
Budster, I think you have Joshua Harris to thank for that.
Andy, before ever Carl Sagan commented on the picture from space, Dante had gotten there before him:
Paradiso XXII:
With my eyes I returned through every one
of the seven spheres below, and saw this globe of ours
to be such that I smiled, so mean did it appear.
That opinion which judges it as least
I now approve as best, and he whose thoughts
are fixed on other things may truly be called just.
… The little patch of earth that makes us here so fierce,
from hills to rivermouths, I saw it all
while I was being wheeled with the eternal Twins.
Then I turned my eyes once more to those fair eyes.
(Other translations have “the little threshing floor that makes us so ferocious”, which I think is an even better image.)
It’s not our size or our pre-eminence or our importance that affects whether or not we are ‘worthy’ or ‘deserve’ the love of God.
Hello iMonk!
*warning, a bit of a ramble*
I love the exploratory nature of this post. You point out the problem some Christians have of using the awesomeness of God to excuse a debasement of human life. It’s almost as if they think they can glorify God by vilifying His creation.
The discussion made me think of this quote:
“…there have been, on the whole, two chief ways of approach to God defined in Christian thought. One, which is most familiar in the records of sanctity, has been known as the Way of Rejection. It consists, generally speaking, in the renunciation of all images except the final one of God himself…the other Way is the Way of Affirmation, the approach to God through these images…Neither of these two ways indeed is, or can be, exclusive.” From “Figure of Beatrice” by Charles Williams pp. 8-9.
Once we’ve decided that living a “God centered life” doesn’t mean throwing life away, I think this is the beginning of a possible description of how God-centeredness should play out in our lives. There are times, situations, or seasons where a sacrifice of something we’ve grabbed onto because we’re human can truly bring us closer to God and fulfill us, but the point isn’t to remove all that we do and desire as humans. The point is to refine our humanity and make us more able to enjoy our new physical bodies in the new earth.
I’m having trouble putting my thoughts to words, so here’s an attempt at an analogy: Humans love good food. Suppose there’s a taco hut that I’m eating at. Nothing wrong with eating at the taco hut, until a generous man invites me to his house for steak and wine. As long as I’m developing my humanity (love of good food) it’s easy for me to drop the taco and partake of better food. But if I’ve taken this part of my humanity and twisted it a bit, perhaps I’ve grown to like the taste of preservatives in my food, then a difficult rejection of the taco is still the right thing to do. It’s a rejection of something that I do because I’m human, but it’s rejected so I can participate in something that’s more fulfilling of my human nature.
Application of that sky castle? Good question. God made us to be human — to tend gardens, feed animals, burp babies, and drink beer. Trying to tie a direct link between those things and God seems to be an exercise in discontent. We can trust that as God’s good creation we’re not supposed to abandon, disparage, or even not develop those things that define us. Ehh, don’t think that’s good enough, but this is already way too long.
Guys, Sagan’s quote was not the ONLY thing that led to my deconversion into Atheism. It put things into a certain perspective, but it was many other things as well that have nothing to do with this post. I am confident in my Atheism as you are in your faith.
Thanks Mike. I’m just trying to get it in me, you know how it is.
“I am confident in my Atheism as you are in your faith.”
That, right there, is the most austere precipice of irony this blog has ever produced.
Your post was very thought provoking. It brought to mind for me John 1:17, “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” I’m more a think-abouter than I am a theologian, but I wonder if the issue you raised is not so much about being too “God-centered,” which sounds very righteous, as it is about new kind of legalism, or “Christian law.”
To overly simplify, I think we are always tempted to emphasize either grace or truth, but in order to be fully like Christ we need both in balance, just as they are in Him. When truth is distorted, it creates a Christian legalism of belief–”You must believe what I believe” (dogmatism). When grace is distorted, it creates a Christian legalism of behavior–”You must behave as I behave” (fundmentalism). But in Christ, the God-man (the truth-grace incarnation), living by the “Law” has been replaced with living by the Spirit. That is the only place to find the “fullness” (1:16) and freedom of life that we have received in Christ. But even God’s people can distort that freedom into legalism (Galatians), fracturing the fullness that we should find in the body of Christ.
I see being too God-centered as a distortion of truth. When a systematic theology becomes more important than the God it studies, so that you must believe the system in order to get to God the “right way,” then that (for me) has become a legalism of belief. And it is, in my view, a distortion of the gospel of Christ.
More to say, but I’ll stop here. Great post. Thanks for stirring the waters.
………..amen
Andy, more confident than that, I trust!
But the point we were trying to make is that judging the likelihood of there (1) being a God and (2) that God being interested in humans, by the relative size of the Earth vis-a-vis the rest of the universe – that’s not how Christianity works. After all, if I were to say to you “Your fiancée is tiny and insignificant compared to Mount Everest, therefore I do not see how you can possibly care about her”, you’d tell me I’d got the wrong end of the stick.
But we’re not getting stuck into the atheists in this thread (that’s next week’s programme)
Dante again, from the “Paradiso”, and the Heaven of the Sun, where the glorified souls rejoice at the thought of the resurrection of the body because they will be *more* perfect and pleasing to God when once again they are in the flesh:
“‘When we put on again our flesh,
glorified and holy, then our persons
will be more pleasing for being all complete,
so that the light, granted to us freely
by the Highest Good, shall increase,
the light that makes us fit to see Him.’
… So quick and eager seemed to me both choirs
to say their ‘Amen’ that they clearly showed
their desire for their dead bodies,
not perhaps for themselves alone, but for their mothers,
for their fathers, and for others whom they loved
before they all became eternal flames.”
Peaches,
The Christian life is, I find, one that requires moving from one foot to the other and then back again. In order to affirm God, we must sometimes affirm men and women. In order to affirm men and women, we must at other times affirm God. We are reactive creatures who often overcompensate in one direction because we react to people who have behaved in ways damaging to us. But the truth is usually that they behaved as they did because they were themselves overcompensating against things damaging to them, but from the opposite direction.
Instead of choosing to fall on once side or the other, all God or all man, I find we must keep moving from one point of overcompensation to the other. Step off with one foot, land, grip, push off, lift up, touch ground with the other foot, land again, and so on. This means we will not often be able to settle long enough to get much rest. It is however, the only option I know of if I wish to remain anywhere near God and real people as they exist in this life This includes us as individuals as well. It is the only way I’ve found to remain human and also tolerable to others. I quickly become boorishly arrogant otherwise.
It seems the desert experience of the Jews is the best model for this sort of Christian living. This kind of existence is one of reliance on God, readiness to break camp when he moves, then setting up tents when he stops so the regular activities of life can continue.
If anyone knows of a better option than this, please let me know. I’d love to settle down.
I think that your perception has been tainted by a few. Most reformed people I know place a high value on the arts.
“When a powerful Christian or convincing teaching seems to somehow drain me of life, I am led to question its validity.”
I sat through teachings that made me feel like I was being drained of life, but I interepreted those feelings as proof that the teaching was GOOD, since we are suppsoed to ‘die to ourselves,’ ‘become broken,’ etc.
I think that Rob Bell touches on some of this in Sex God. It’s also something that Willard talks about strongly in “The Divine Conspiracy”.
The whole of creation was created by God, and it was good. Those who would use the introduction of sin to make everything earthly into something terrible and broken have bought far too much into the Platonic ideal of higher forms, and likely also believe that the only place we’ll ever be “true” is in the heavenly realm after this one.
Which Wright has strong words about as well.
I quite believe that Jesus came to redeem all of creation. The trees, the plants, the people, the baseball, the ferraris, whatever. The question becomes, how will this serve both God and creation, we being the stewards who are entrusted with this?
We can steward and care for creation without worshipping it, and instead find glory in it that points back toward God.
Those who would make God the point of all things, and the study of God the only meaningful thing, have no concept of love, and thus only a limited concept of God, sadly enough. But then, we can see plenty of examples of people who are experts on theology and doctrine, but have absolutely no clue about being created in the image of the divine to be a relational being.
Frank:
I don’t want to mention names here, but there is a huge difference between Calvin College and Reformed Baptists on this subject.
“Great stuff as usual, iMonk. I came face to face with this in a dating relationship. I knew I was in trouble when my friend told me she was “having too much fun with me” and “allowing too much of her happiness to be dependent on me, rather than God.” Therefore, she “had to pull away from me and focus more on God.” Sigh”
This happened to me, except I was the dumper instead of the dumpee. I was convinced she was an ‘idol’ in my life and that God was angry at me for going out with her. I really cared for her and she felt like I was just saying it as an excuse to break up with her, which wasn’t true. I did NOT want to break up. I really was hearing voices, and I attributed them to God. I was very afraid what would happen to me if I didn’t obey, eg, lose my salvation or something.
I realized, belatedly, that I may have been unclear.
God created all things, and said that they were “good”. but the word that’s actually used in the Hebrew can also mean “beautiful” or “delightful”.
And while God despaired of man’s wickedness when he brought the flood, there’s never a statement from God that creation itself stopped being delightful.
And, as is often quoted, “God so loved the world…”
So, God delights in his creation, human and otherwise. He thinks that it’s beautiful. Having communicated it in His word, one would expect that we would find creation, and ourselves, beautiful as well.
When we refuse to accept creation, to be true stewards of it, and make it more beautiful and delightful, we reject the gift of God, as well as our nature in God.
Hi Michael,
While I didn’t have time to read through all one hundred and some odd comments, I did see that you were careful to distinguish this form of Calvinism from its continental counterpart. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! As a Neo-Calvinist (i.e., a Kuyperian) who has embraced the continental Reformed tradition as it is refracted through the Dutch tradition (I attended Dordt College and recently graduated from Calvin Seminary), I was thrilled to move out of the Puritan form of Calvinism a number of years ago. Part of what was so attractive about continental Calvinism was its insistence that we are not disembodied spirits trapped in our bodies. Rather we are human beings called to work in the world.
By the way, N.T. Wright has been influenced by the Neo-Calvinist movement. He has connections with the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto (i.e., He’s friends with Brian Walsh).
Just thought I’d throw that out there for what it’s worth
I wonder if a parent would ever say to their child, “You may have gotten straight A’s and designed your own tree house and won the science fair, but those things do not matter because you’re saved in Christ and heaven is your home.”
That child may very well become an atheist to save his shredded self confidence.
Andy D…I am very glad that life is going so well for you and that you have so many loved ones. Your first comment sounded like you were maybe depressed, so I had actually read stuff into the comment that wasn’t there. Thanks for clarifying.
I desire to live a God-centered life, but it appears as though Paul’s desire dwarfs my own (1 Cor. 10:31). I delight in God’s Word, and seek to be led by it, but I doubt that I am in any danger of pricing it more highly than King David did(Psalm 19:7-11), if that indeed is a dangerous thing.
It’s not that I don’t find value in people. On the contrary, I find great value in people. God communicates through His Word, through His creation, and through His Son that we are very precious to Him, and I believe Him. And if we are precious to Him, than that gives us great value. And so there is also great value in loving people – in serving, celebrating, rejoicing with, mourning with, suffering for, praying for, and investing in people. In fact, the more convinced I am that my life is to be lived bringing glory to God, the more I am compelled to love others.
Reading the gospel of John makes it very hard to separate glorifying God and loving people. Jesus continually spoke of His drive to do both. He also continually spoke of how His ministry was a direct reflection of the words that God had given Him. His life clearly displayed that seeking to glorify God and to be led by His Word are in perfect harmony with emersion in “human-level activities”. I know that you are not saying that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with glorify God, but the dangers that you are addressing here are a perversion of that rather than a heightened form of it.
I have only had time to barely skim the comments, so forgive if this is repetitive.
Capon’s two major themes in all his books are 1)the radical nature of grace and 2) the sacramental nature of all of life. He repeatedly affirms that “creation is unnecessary” and that YHWH made it purely for the joy and delight of it. And then He made us in His own image. How then could we NOT delight in it for it’s own sake.
To delight in an olive we must only appreciate if for it’s beauty, it’s color, shape and especially it’s taste. To delight in the olive simply for what it is, is to delight in The One who made it. There is no need to draw a parallel between the olive, the oil and the Holy Spirit to justify our delight. Our delight is a priestly act, an offering of the olive back to God.
I spent my college days with Reformed Baptists. I spent my early married days with Calvin College alums. You are correct Michael. They are VERY different in their emphasis on what reformed means.
There are some good answers to some of these questions in Nicholas Wolters book “Creation Regained” I would also recommend Capon’s “An Offering of Uncles.” and “Bed and Board.”
“I wonder if we’ve simply platonized God’s creation.” – Jonathan Hunnicutt
I think Jonathan is on to something. I think this platonism includes not just ones view of creation but anthropology itself. If in plato’s world – inhabited by Augustine and many of the protestant reformers – human existence consists of a soul imprisoned in a mortal body, then it follows that everything tangible that our mortal bodies touch is insignificant. Human existence incorporates spirit, soul, and body. We are not fully human without a body; that is the significance of resurrection. A platonic view can’t incorporate God touching our senses – except for words on a page or words in our ears, which I think is still tied to a soul-centered platonic world view.
I also think iMonk makes a very profound observation concerning evangelical fear of art and culture. What then is the point of redeeming the culture? How can we be so atune to the culture and at the same time so afraid of it? I think the answer is that even the secular culture we are trying to redeem is steeped in a platonic world view, where creation has no meaning in itself and is subject to utilitarianism and pragmatism. Chop it down; dig it up; burn it down; drill, drill, drill. Melt creation down into stimulus to feed the bodiless soul. No real cultural redeeming is taking place, rather a cultural coup de ta. Creation has no meaning because human existence has no meaning.
As for distinguishing different kinds of Calvinists, I have to say I find it absolutely surreal that the same term can be applied to both Jerram Barrs and John MacArthur.
Anna:
I get nervous about explanations that involve the emotions so heavily. Not particularly because I’m getting more and more cerebrally Reformed as the years go by, but because as a person who struggles with major depression, I got totally burnt out on the kind of church that put so much emphasis on feeling the right way. You had to feel really, really, scummy, then really, really sorry, and then really, really happy- and it’s just not possible (not to mention not healthy) to live at that extreme of emotion all the time. And when I’m seriously depressed, of course, I can’t feel much of anything at all. If the only way I can eat ice cream to the glory of God is to feel really extraordinarily happy and grateful about it, then I’m going to be failing very often.
Probably you weren’t saying that at all, and I’m just reacting to it out of my own history of church-inflicted despair.
Relating this to evangelism….
Just sat in a Starbucks for two hours tonight, with an elder from my church (a new church plant in the suburbs). Our aim was to do evangelism, in an organic/incarnational sort of way. So we prayed, tried to be aware of some open doors, but we ended up just talking to teach other the whole time about evangelism, and what we actually meant by that word.
We’re both guys who are more comfortable in a more urban/crowded/city type environment, were people can be approached and you can strike up a conversation about spiritual things. So the starbucks-in-the-burbs thing was a bit out of our element. It’s just hard to intentionally talk to people, in a gospel context, with sincerity, without them thinking you’re insincere. And there’s not much room for preachiness.
But as far as what we were hoping to accomplish, we both agreed that we had a distinct *interest* in people. We shared some war stories about preaching the gospel to people, and the best stories from each of us revolved around times when we did more listening than talking, more praying than preaching. When people’s experiences were validated, and we were able to communicate how exactly Christ loved and related to needy and hurting people.
We agreed that the best apologetic for the faith, and the one that Jesus often used, is the human heart.
And we’re both Calvinists. Maybe we’re poor Calvinists, I don’t know. But for me at least, holding firmly to something that monergenistic (sp?) regeneration tells me that I cannot change people’s hearts; only God can. I cannot draw people; only God can. But I am to herald the Gospel and take a profound interest in people and count them as desperately important, more important than myself. Their stories, their interests, their struggles- all important.
So as a guy who reads “God-centered” theology, and talks a big game about being “God-centered,” and is more comfortable preaching to a group of people as a means of evangelism than the relational approach, it’s been my uncomfortable yet satisfying experience that the Holy Spirit works most through love and care and concern for the individual- which is messy and time consuming and slippery. But the Gospel flourishes in this context.
So we’re committing to hang out in starbucks intentionally at least once a week, just to talk. Along the way, we’ll hopefully be able to pull some people into our conversation. So we can get to know them, love on them, live life with them. You know, community. So they can meet Jesus. That’s to the glory of God, right? That’s “God-centered,” I hope. If not, we’ll fail anyhow.
I don’t know if this was the place and time to share, but it’s just my story. So…
/ramble
you dont have to live like this.
Is God-centered the same as brahman-centered? One trait which separates Christianity from particularly eastern mysticism is that we are not absorbed into the divine but enter into relationship with the Divine while remaining His distinct creatures. I think Christianity drifts toward eastern mysticism when in our efforts to defend the glory of God we annihlate free will.
But again, the reformers’ view of the glory of God was associated with the cross – an act of ultimate weakness from a mere human perspective. I think once we redeem the word, glory, the return of incarnational living and serving won’t be far behind. If God-centeredness could be viewed in terms of the Son of God taking up the basin and towel, it could help us recover a Christian humanism.
Some years ago, I experienced what I would describe as an “anthropolical shift” brought about by reading scholars like Bruggemann. Thanks to their work, I started to really pay attention to the details of the OT stories and their oddness (a term Bruggemann uses very frequently). Gradually, because of the biblical witness, I was sort of sent back into the “real world”. That is, I was able to grant myself the permission to reclaim large chunks of my humanity (raised a nominal catholic in a french-speaking home in Québec, I had a conversion experience at 15 in a context where many people seemed to have lost part of their humanity simply by virtue of trying so hard to live “in the Bible” and for God, instead of living life with God, guided by the Bible ).
I take from this experience that, unknowingly, several streams in the Christian church seem to be playing host to a defective and imbalance (and implicit) anthropology. It is defective and imbalance because it tends to underplay if not outright deny the presence and the importance of many facets that make human life…human. They seem to imagine man as a sort of a floating spiritual entity with no real history, no real connection to society, no real connection to the environment,etc.
The OT frankness about the messyness and ambiguity of life, its witness to the “thickness” that caracterizes the human experience (the fact we exist through being connected to a wide variety of realities and spheres (social, cultural, historical, economical, ecological, etc), and how God achieves his saving design through all this, is one way to correct this defective anthropology.
The OT as a witness to this complex and deep anthropology also forms the larger context we need to read and understand the New Testament. In short: too weak an appropriation of the OT may lead to a docetic view of christian life.
And what is truly tragic is the fact we live in a culture (specially here in Québec) where it is more and more about the here and now. So evangelicalim’s mesage about what it means to be saved (I submit that it is a very narrow and overly spiritual perspective) seems more and more irrelevant and foreign to my fellow Québécois.