Things I Think…
1. This Advent season I’m reading a devotional by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The real Bonhoeffer,not the caricature created by Metaxas to suit his own agenda. I digress…
“Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.
Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting—that is, of hopefully doing without—will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment. Those who do not know how it feels to struggle anxiously with the deepest questions of life, of their life, and to patiently look forward with anticipation until the truth is revealed, cannot even dream of the splendor of the moment in which clarity is illuminated for them. And for those who do not want to win the friendship and love of another person—who do not expectantly open up their soul to the soul of the other person, until friendship and love come, until they make their entrance—for such people the deepest blessing of the one life of two intertwined souls will remain forever hidden. For the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait. It happens not here in a storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting, growing, and becoming.”
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Bonhoeffer defines waiting here as “hopefully doing without”…and in doing so defines how a Christian should wait…not just for the coming of Jesus,but for all the things that we are asking Jesus to provide in the here and now.
We are to wait hopefully…recognizing our lack, but believing in His provision to come.
I’m not quite that spiritual yet…but I appreciate the exhortation greatly…
2. None of us like to wait…but especially when we’re waiting for the new or for the need to be met…
“Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them and people who look up with reverence to the greatest in the world. Thus Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself toward us—the Holy One himself, God in the child in the manger. God is coming; the Lord Jesus is coming; Christmas is coming. Rejoice, O Christendom!”
I will boast in my restlessness and confess my need…I know He is coming…
3. For some odd and blessed reason,right in the middle of this book of Bonhoeffer devotions the publishers placed one from Brennan Manning...I’m delighted they did…
“The lowly God-man is the scandal of pious people and of people in general. This scandal is his historical ambiguity. The most incomprehensible thing for the pious is this man’s claim that he is not only a pious human being but also the son of God. Whence his authority: “But I say to you” (Matt. 5:22) and “Your sins are forgiven” (Matt. 9:2). If Jesus’ nature had been deified, this claim would have been accepted. If he had given signs, as was demanded of him, they would have believed him. But at the point where it really mattered, he held back. And that created the scandal.
Yet everything depends on this fact. If he had answered the Christ question addressed to him through a miracle, then the statement would no longer be true that he became a human being like us, for then there would have been an exception at the decisive point…. If Christ had documented himself with miracles, we would naturally believe, but then Christ would not be our salvation, for then there would not be faith in the God who became human, but only the recognition of an alleged supernatural fact. But that is not faith…. Only when I forgo visible proof, do I believe in God.
The kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn’t have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn’t have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn’t have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn’t have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.”
4. “Only when I forgo visible proof, do I believe in God.” I believe,Lord…help my unbelief…
5. When I read the obviously Spirit inspired writings of other men I’m not only humbled by their intelligence and piety, I thank my God for the grandma who knew my life would be formed by reading and made sure I always had enough to read as much as I had enough to eat…
6. All of my objections to this season are mitigated by the fact that even unkind people are trying to be kind to someone for a day…
7. My favorite part of the Christmas narrative is that the announcement of jesus’s birth was first to the shepherds…the lowest class in the social structure of the day. They were the poor ones,the dirty ones,the ones people looked down on and avoided. The ones who heard the best news ever while working too hard to think about hope…and hope came to them first…may it be so again…
8. In related news…a presidential candidate talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country”… if you don’t recognize that rhetoric you’ve not read much history…and if you do recognize it, you know the pure evil behind it…
9. The Pope has decreed that priests can offer a blessing to same sex marriages… this Pope is bent towards kindness and inclusion…but I cannot bless what God does not…
10. I’ll give Bonhoeffer the last word…a word that we should remember going in to next year…
“Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.”
Love your thought number 7!
I am no longer able to say with confidence what God blesses and what he does not.
Thanks ,Dan!
Josh,
I understand that.
I cannot toss 2000 years of the churches moral teachings without a concrete reason or some support from the fathers…but I think I’m now a minority voice…
“I cannot toss 2000 years of the churches moral teachings ”
The pope and I can 🙂 🙂 🙂
Just kidding, thankfully for everyone, I am no longer in a position where my blessings or curses matter in the least. I can just love and accept all, and let God do the judging. I feel like another schism is coming soon to the catholic church though.
Josh,
Doing so assumes that all the spirit filled men and women who helped form that body of teaching were wrong about something fundamental to human behavior.
The fruit (no pun intended) of the LGBTQ movement has not been good.
I’ve looked for loopholes for a long time now, just because it seems like the nice and accepting thing to do…but I have not been persuaded.
I’ve had to adjust my view on divorce drastically in the last couple of years, because I ad no other choice. If I can find that grace for myself, it would be horribly hypocritical to withhold it from someone else.
Josh,
I can find ample support from a number of orthodox sources on various ways to look at divorce.
I cannot find any to support gay marriage.
I get ya. And like I said, thankfully, no one sees me in that light anymore. I’m a sinner, back slider, going to hell, probably wasn’t ever a Christian in the first place. You can’t believe how freeing it is for my belief to not matter to anyone.
I do wonder if sometimes ( maybe all the times) we should just be bringing people to Jesus and letting him teach them how to live, rather than telling them to live a certain way if they want to know Jesus. (not implying that is what you do).
“I do wonder if sometimes ( maybe all the times) we should just be bringing people to Jesus and letting him teach them how to live, rather than telling them to live a certain way if they want to know Jesus. ”
I agree…the friction comes with the fact that Jesus usually teaches them how to live through the teaching of the Scriptures by another fallen disciple.
My church is now completely online and by invitation only…being gay would not preclude an invitation to join us…
Bonhoeffer was one of the first Christian authors I read (right after becoming a Christian). I think I can truly say he “discipled” me as I read my way through his book on discipleship. I was either going to be a
“real” Christian, or not one at all. Bonhoeffer helped seal my commitment to Christ.
On being gay, I do not support the lifestyle or gay marriage at all. On the other hand we don’t accost people living together without being married the same way in which we accost gays. At some point, we need to be more welcoming towards gays who really are seeking the truth about Jesus.
The church has so many things that need to be corrected that I am afraid sexuality may be at the bottom of the list. I am not saying that this is correct, but I think that it is reality.
Michael,
By the way, love the selections from Bonhoeffer! But you know that…
“At some point, we need to be more welcoming towards gays who really are seeking the truth about Jesus.”
Completely agree, Linn…
Duane,
Sometimes all the noise around sexuality seems very tedious to me.
Especially when some of the same folks against gay marriage support adulterers in the church and state…
Bonhoeffer has become a close friend…a plumb line to discern how I’m walking and thinking…
I would love to get your feedback on my latest blog post on the topic of “The Gospel: Defined and Defended”. If this blesses you please share it with your friends. If you’d like you can also post comments on my blog itself.
https://zachuramblog.com/2023/12/19/the-gospel-defined-and-defended/
zach,
It is bad form to promote yourself on another blog without asking.
It’s worse form when you direct people to total misrepresentations of the beliefs of other Christians.
I reject Calvinism as a system…and I reject your ignorant thoughts about other Christian expressions.
Do better…
And of course no mention of Christ’s imputed righteousness, generally lacking in the so-called modern gospel.
“this Pope is bent towards kindness and inclusion”
I hope this doesn’t get me banned, but what the Pope declared this week is an example of why the Reformers (correctly in my opinion) declared the office of the Pope as the Antichrist.
Anyone who is a parent will understand that there is no love in affirming or blessing or condoning sin.
As a parent , if your child decides they are gay, you have to live and affirm them.
The Reformers never met Trump…
This is one of my least favorite subjects, because there is a certain amount amount of care that should be taken when we speak of it.
I will not publicly contradict the centuries of Christian tradition on this issue.
Pastorally, I will be far quicker to listen, then proclaim…everything and everyone in the creation is broken…
Michael speaks of 2000 years of church tradition as a foundation for his comments on the issue of blessing marriages… the matter is extended into 2000 more years of apostolic and prophetic writings that are the foundation of the church.
That we have any misgivings about this only evidence our belief that truth cannot be found except in the heart of human experience. It is nothing less than a denial of the possibility of divine revelation.
If we have only just discovered the sovereignty of human desire then we have acted rather universally evil for all of human history. But it is a denial of everything that is gifted to us by postmodernity and controls our corporate mind. Our pain is our captor.
So even the church denies everything she is entrusted to proclaim.
Nevertheless of his increase and government there shall be no end. He shall win and we will be astonished.
‘That we have any misgivings about this only evidence our belief that truth cannot be found except in the heart of human experience.”
Truth.
This does not invalidate the importance of experience, just places it in proper order.
I don’t want to argue with Alan at this point. I don’t outright disagree with what anyone here is saying. We are speaking more of how those beliefs play out in how we treat others.
That said, divine revelation can only be interpreted through human experience. 200 years of church history? 2000 years of human experience. Apostles and prophets? Human experience.
The pope is the head of the organization that made up most of that 2,000 year history, and he interprets things differently now. He too is an example of human experience trying to interpret divine revelation.
Josh,
You have a point.
My point about the tradition and witness of the church is that for 2000 years there has been agreement on what constitutes biblical morality.
It served humans well.
If I want to reject all those people who were supposedly led by the Spirt, I have to have more than just the fact that I know some nice gay people.
To be blunt, I think one not only can argue from apostolic tradition…but from basic anatomy.
I’m not sure it served all humans well. I think the blatant hypocrisy in matters of sexual morality for 2000 years is probably a good explanation for the mess we see today.
As for anatomy, I think that is obvious. Whether through creation, evolution, or however one chooses to believe we came to being, male and female are needed to further the species. For me the “blessing” isn’t so much an endorsement that the homosexual relationship is good and right, as it is an acknowledgement that we are all screwed up and wrong. Lets all freely come to Jesus with our screwed up sexuality and let him deal with it.
“Lets all freely come to Jesus with our screwed up sexuality and let him deal with it.”
I think what many Christians would say is that “Yes, I agree with you, and Jesus does deal with it.”
(1) He forgives our sin; (2) He renews us in his image; (3) He teaches us what God’s order is for human sexuality; and (4) He teaches us what is not permitted for the good of each one of us and our neighbors.
IMO, there is NO mystery or ambiguity in God’s Word regarding human sexuality in the Bible. There are male and female. God never said, “You choose” or “You don’t have to decide between the two” or “You can change your mind about your sex.” Similarly, God’s design for sex is that it be exclusively between a male and a female. For Christians who confess the Bible as the Word of God, these should not even be debatable questions IMO.
But Jean, you are still screwed up, despite how clear it may be. You probably aren’t screwed up like “they” are , and so it makes it easy to rope them off while enjoying grace for yourself.
“God never said, “You choose””
Sure he did, which is why we are where we are. If He had taken away the choice, we wouldn’t all be screwed up.
Josh,
The fact that we have abused the standard doesn’t mean the standard is wrong.
We have to raise the banner and try to live accordingly.
Pastorally, we do invite people to know Jesus…but we don’t change the standard.
Josh,
We don’t understand grace the same way. Paul wrote:
”The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.“
Grace is for the penitent.
Regarding your second opinion, can you show us where God said humans can choose their sex? Can you show us where God said human beings are permitted to engage in homosexual acts? Or that marriage can be between people of the same sex?
“The fact that we have abused the standard doesn’t mean the standard is wrong.”
But it should at least give us thought that it might be wrong. Or at the very least, how we handle those who we think are not living up to those standards, (when obviously, we ourselves are not living up to those standards.)
Jean – I hold Paul’s writing in subjugation to the things Jesus said and did in the Gospels. I would point to the story of the Prodigal Son instead, where the father celebrated the son, not based on any actions of the son at all.
“can you show us where God said humans can choose their sex?”
Yes, we see people doing it every day. If the almighty being did not grant that choice, we wouldn’t have it.
Josh,
The standard is “thou shalt not murder”…we break the standard, but I have no desire to change it.
Josh,
Your second comment is astonishing. According to your logic, Adam and Eve didn’t sin in the garden because God gave them the choice of eating from the forbidden tree. Was God wrong to exile them from the garden on account of their choice which God enabled?
Regarding your first comment, the father did not celebrate the prodigal son in isolation from everything else in the parable. He certainly did not celebrate the son’s sin.
Are whole society is screwed up because people are afraid, unwilling or unable to agree that there is right and wrong. You can’t raise kids like that. You can’t run a business like that. You can’t lead a church like that. You can’t govern a city, state or country like that. And IMO you can’t enjoy a good conscience before God like that.
“According to your logic, Adam and Eve didn’t sin in the garden because God gave them the choice ”
Nope, you missed it. You said God didn’t give the choice. I said that he idd, just like he gave Adama and Eve the choice…as you affirmed above.
AS far as the actual words on the page from the Prodigal Son story…yeah, father just runs to meet him and throws a party for him. You’d have to read into from your particular slant to see anything different. Which we all do.
Michael – I think murder would be under a different category. It is obviously wrong to all people at all times in all cultures. Even before Moses brought the tablet down the mountain, murder was already obviously wrong. Two adults choosing to be in a same-sex relationship would be more akin to the fun little sins we all enjoy every day, like lust, greed, or gluttony.
“Are whole society is screwed up because people are afraid, unwilling or unable to agree that there is right and wrong. ”
This is interesting, because we said up thread that we all agreed on right and wrong for 2,000 years…but somehow we got more screwed up.
And for the record, I’m not at all afraid to say that some things are right and some things are wrong. That doesn’t mean I have to go along with the dogma of any particular institution.
I already said murder is wrong. Controlling religious environments are wrong. .. I could literally go on all day. I think your concern is that some of the things you are sure are wrong, other people don’t think are wrong. Not that people don’t belive in right and wrong.
Josh,
I disagree.
I’m beginning to believe that the greatest demonic lie of the last few generations is that there are no sexual standards.
What has resulted is that image bearers are full of confusion about their God given identities…and this leads them to question the reality of God.
Young people have a hard enough time in modern society…now they are questioning how they were created and how they relate to others.
All this has been a contributing factor to the collapse of community and family.
Yeah, we definitely disagree on that. Sexual standards have been a farce since the beginning of time. If any of those who were preaching it for the first thousands of years had lived by it, maybe their words would hold some weight. But they didn’t – just read the old testament.
I am willing to admit that human sexuality is broken. It is broken like much else in the human experience and, therefore, requires grace. What I am less certain about is the need to codify or regularize the broken aspects of the human experience. That being said, we have codified and regularized what one can only call “serial monogamy” which affects about 50% of the marriages in the United States. Additionally, cohabitation prior to marriage has become the norm in both Europe and the United States. We have failed to develop a moral theology which is free of hypocrisy…
The reason young people are drawn to LGBTQ+ stuff (in my opinion) is specifically because of community. They don’t pass the community litmus tests at our churches because they are too liberal, too gay, too confused or whatever…and guess who is waiting with loving, open arms? So it may be the downfall of our communities, but those communities are thriving. It should make us take note that they do loving community better than the church, but it won’t. Because we will keep some standards ( any that don’t apply to us specifically).
Duane – I’ll add a sad yep to that.
Josh
As someone who has served a church in New York City which had a large gay contingent, I think it’s important to point out that there were many aspects of that community that were broken, abusive and less than loving…
Josh,
There is some r]truth to what you are saying…but the damage these young people will endure is massive…
Josh,
Here is what the father said:
”It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”
What killed the prodigal son? What did it mean for him to be lost?
Conversely, how was he restored to life and what does it mean that he was found?
The father is merciful and forgiving. That is clearly a major theme. But the magnitude of those things (which is great) is drawn out by the magnitude of the son’s sin. The parable paints the character of the prodigal son as an evil sinful son. The parable does not sugar coat it and even the son realizes that and confesses his sin.
When I say “God doesn’t give human beings the choice to choose their sex”, I don’t mean he makes it impossible to be disobedient, which 90% of people would understand. When God gives a choice, I mean that man can choose from among alternatives which do not run contrary to God’s law.
God does not say yes and no to the same thing.
Duane,
It is broken, and the only way to restoration will be the way of Christ…I know you see this as I do, but made the point anyway. 🙂
Duane – yes of course there are bad aspects to that community. In general, they are loving and welcoming to people whop feel weird, ostracized, or different. I do not claim they are a bastian of virtue.
Michael – There will be damage for the young people. Will it be more than the RCC sex scandals? IFB? SBC? I don’t know. I do know that those scandals mute whatever good we may have to say about sexual morality.
Josh
From my experience, the gay community is every bit as broken as the straight community and often more so…
No doubt.