Family Radio Trying To Move On
May 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
While Harold Camping’s teaching increasingly resembles Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch, Family Radio (FR), the ministry that Camping leads, is averting its eyes.
According to the Christian Post, longtime FR employee Matt Tuter is saying that the ministry has more to offer than its #1 show. “Family Radio is a fine ministry. Other than Harold Camping’s program, the other programs are normal.”
Tuter is clearly frustrated, declaring that he is not a Camping follower, and that neither are most other employees. He portrays the board of FR as responsible for Camping’s hermeneutical enormities, and the article reports that board members have not shown up at the offices since last Thursday.
FR’s website has purged any mention of Camping’s judgment day claims, undergoing a redesign complete with a button saying, “What’s new?” The board is AWOL. Employees are pointing fingers.
This ministry is in profound denial.
The most illuminating comment Tuter makes is that Camping has predicted The End 10 times, only a couple of which have been announced publicly. “I was here for nine out of the 10,” Tuter says.
Why? What possible motivation could have induced Tuter and all the other sceptics at FR to stay beyond Fail #2?
People make silent agreements to ignore lunatic vanity in the service of some “higher cause.” I doubt the cause was high enough in this case. I doubt it ever is.
Harold Camping Actually Makes Another Prediction
May 24th, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Matthew Raley
According to the Christian Post, Harold Camping made a statement this evening that the end of the world will come in five months. He admitted being wrong about the rapture, but insisted that “judgment day” did indeed come on May 21st, as he had predicted. Apparently the judgment was a “spiritual” event.
Camping went on to insist that his other predictions have come true as well. The Post reports, “May 21, 1988, judgment came upon the churches; Sept. 27, 1994 , judgment continued on the churches but was also placed on parts of the world; then on May 21, 2011, judgment was placed on the entire world.”
This story defies any attempt at analysis, generalization, or satire.
Blood-Thirsty Thoughts On Bin Laden and Justice
May 2nd, 2011 § 2 Comments
by Matthew Raley
The killing of Osama bin Laden is being hailed as a thrilling feat of heroism. We are witnessing a rare outburst of vindictive jubilation that has swept young and old, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat — that, indeed, has revived talk of national unity. Justice, we feel, has concretely been done.
This is a good moment to consider the pressure of God’s justice.
To see why so many are jubilant, it might be helpful to peruse this piece from New York Magazine, “September 11 by Numbers.” It makes jarring reading even 10 years after bin Laden’s crime.
The total number of people killed in the twin towers was 2,819. I vividly remember an admonition from Walter Cronkite the next day, that journalists should cite the exact number and not use round figures. “Those are people.”
The estimated number of children who lost a parent in the attack was 3,051. Fully one-fifth of all Americans knew someone hurt or killed.
This magnitude of loss on a single morning, graphically recorded second by second, painstakingly studied by government commissions, and endured day after day ever since by the bereaved, cries out for recompense. No one should expect detached objectivity about justice from one of those 3,051 people who spent the last decade grieving a parent. We shouldn’t expect them to feel mercy toward bin Laden because the expectation is, among other things, inhumane.
Payback is their due.
But the fury of 3,051 children cannot actually be appeased by bin Laden’s death, much less the fury of an entire nation.
The man who took 2,819 lives at the World Trade Center only had one life to yield up in payment. And he took many more lives besides, including that of the wife he used as a shield in his last moments. His instant experience in death cannot balance the experiences in grief over lifetimes. Most tragically, his death does not restore life to those he killed.
So the imbalance remains. Even after all bin Laden had is taken from him, the losses his caused are still on the books.
Let’s add another complication.
Is there any basis upon which bin Laden could have repented? What could he have done to gain enough mercy to keep his life?
Perhaps a public apology, combined with a life of social work. Maybe a religious conversion. Or he might have liquidated his wealth to fund the education of all 3,051 children through graduate school.
Nauseated yet?
Assuming you could get 1,512 of those children the sign off on bin Laden’s repentance, you still wouldn’t be able to look the other 1,539 in the eyes.
The simple reason is that repentance without payment is worthless. That’s clear enough when the enormity of the crime is too ugly to whitewash.
Bottom line: one man’s payment is never enough to compensate for his sins, and no repentance will restore him if he cannot pay.
The pressure of divine justice is that the tabulation our sins is ongoing at God’s throne. If we admit today that justice demanded satisfaction in bin Laden’s case, will we also admit that it demands satisfaction in our own?
Such are the problems that lead to the cross.
The Pantheon’s Embrace
April 19th, 2011 § 5 Comments
by Matthew Raley
The Romans achieved cultural durability not through military force, but through the embrace of every god in their empire. They appropriated Greek culture wholesale, and affirmed the other traditions they conquered. While their broad piety was generous toward foreign gods, the generosity was motivated by shrewdness. If a conquered city could keep its gods, and if Rome could endow those gods with cosmopolitan nobility, then the city would be less resistant to control.
As a tool of empire, the pantheon works really well. Better than armies.
Time, the American century’s literary temple, gave its blessing to Rob Bell last week in the form of a cover story. Author Jon Meacham is both a journalistic eminence (the former editor of Newsweek) and a serious observer of our religious life. To whatever spiritual trend he devotes his keyboard, there is a higher order of national attention. The controversy over Bell’s teachings about hell might have remained a matter of small interest to non-evangelicals, but not anymore.
I’ll write another post about Bell’s book, Love Wins. I don’t want to examine his doctrine based on the blast of writing for and against him. Also, I won’t draw any conclusions about Bell’s teachings based on Meacham’s piece. The analysis belongs to Meacham, not Bell.
My interest here is in the Time artifact itself: how Time presents Bell, how Meacham frames the theological issues, and what sort of embrace is being offered to evangelicals by the American pantheon.
How does Time present Bell?
He is a rock star. The photo of him is edgy. Meacham describes him as “a charismatic, popular and savvy pastor with a following.” The message in this package seems to be, “Don’t mess with Bell. He’s way beyond other evangelicals in style. We embrace him.”
How does Meacham frame the theological issues?
Meacham treats heaven and hell seriously, being careful to say that Bell only claims to question theological rigidity, but also pointing out the implications of Bell’s ideas. Of Bell’s suggestion that everyone may end up in heaven, Meacham asks, “If heaven, however defined, is everyone’s ultimate destination in any event, then what’s the incentive to confess Jesus as Lord in this life?” Meacham accurately says that Bell is “more at home” within the “expansive liberal tradition” of Harry Emerson Fosdick.
R. Albert Mohler notes, “This may mark the first time any major media outlet has underlined the substantial theological issues at stake.”
So, hat-tip to Meacham.
What sort of embrace is being offered to evangelicals?
The American pantheon is opening the front door wide and proclaiming, “All ye who are weary of theological rigidity, come unto me and I will give you rest.”
The invitation is pointed. Meacham’s theological literacy has the effect of posing a clear choice to followers of Christ: keep your father’s Christianity (with no blessing from Time), or drop that traditionalism and be sprinkled with the holy water of sophistication. Bell’s Christianity is “less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient assumptions.” Adopting Bell’s attitude will get evangelicals the “seat at the table” they have coveted.
Further, the invitation is backed by power — the power of perceived cultural inevitability. Meacham asks, “Is Bell’s Christianity … on an inexorable rise?” Then he quotes Bell himself: “I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian. Something new is in the air.” Whatever that quote means, it at least signals that Bell is using March-of-Progress inertia to advance his ideas.
The heavily implied victory of the New stands behind Time‘s invitation to evangelicals. You know you can’t hold out forever. Bell is a plausible enough theologian for you and for us. Let us embrace you and be done with it.
The reason Jesus never entered the Roman pantheon, of course, was that his exclusive claims invalidated all rival gods and goddesses, and threatened the durability of Rome’s culture. The Jesus of the New Testament was never amenable to broad, cosmopolitan pieties. If he were turned into a statue, an abstracted symbol of Goodness, then he would have fit nicely. But 1st century Christians understood that accepting the pantheon’s blessing was a surrender to imperial control, and that the real Jesus did not need the emperor’s permission to rule.
This is Bell’s moment. He mounts a rostrum of significant cultural authority, and what he does with this moment tells what he believes most deeply. Is Christ alone the Savior? From what exactly does He save us? The American pantheon has always been willing to embrace Jesus, so long as Jesus’ followers do not deny the other gods their place.
What is Rob Bell’s creed?
Audio: Two Sermons On Suffering
February 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
During a time of prayer a few weeks ago, the elders and I felt impressed that the congregation needed some teaching on the role of suffering in the Christian life. The result of that meeting was two sermons from 2 Corinthians 1. I hope the audio files below will be an encouragement to you.
The Cosmic Vending Machine
January 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
Americans, pragmatic as they are about everything, tend to evaluate God the same way they evaluate their congressman: What have you done for me lately?
There shouldn’t be any question on God’s part about whether to keep our blessings coming: the financial windfall, the narrow escape from an accident, robust health, and above all, fun. He knows we’re not perfect. He knows we try — at least when we feel like it. And he ought to know that, despite our limitations, we’re doing a pretty darn good job with life.
So, when we put a prayer in the heavenly slot, we have a right to hear some clicking, a whir, and a final clop as the item we requested appears. Fair is fair.
The biblical word holy intrudes on this fantasy.
When Isaiah sees God enthroned in the temple (Isaiah 6), some of the more threatening aspects of the vision are the seraphim. These creatures have six wings apiece: two pairs to pay deference to the Lord by covering face and feet, and one pair to fly. The verb stem of fly is intensive, meaning not merely that they hover, but that they dart around the high throne.
All the while, they call warnings to each other: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” These calls are loud and deep enough to shake the foundations of the temple.
The root idea of holy is separate, or unmixed. To say that God is holy is to call him Other.
But that is not all the seraphim are saying. The Hebrew language is built on repetition; to repeat a word is to compound its force. “Holy, holy” would be the maximum imaginable Otherness. The seraphim are calling, “Holy, holy, holy”: the Otherness beyond your ability to imagine.
No wonder Isaiah says, “I’m dead!” He and his people are unclean — that is, mixed and corrupt, unable to survive the presence of utter holiness.
America pragmatism doesn’t work well. We resent that the cosmic vending machine won’t deliver on demand, and that heaven is silent when we pound it. If Isaiah’s vision is true, then we are operating on a theory of God that is disastrously wrong.
Pragmatists have no category for holiness. This omission means that we not only can’t understand God’s judgment but, even worse, we can’t understand his grace. The Lord says the same thing to us that he said to Isaiah: “I will make you clean.”
God’s holiness means that every single blessing we receive has crossed the infinite chasm between us and the purity of his being. It means that his extension of cleansing to us is life itself.
The Debt I Owe When I Cannot Repay
December 23rd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
We tend to associate gratitude with being polite — or worse, being respectable. And I suspect our view of Christmas is tainted as a result.
In our point of view, I show gratitude to avoid giving offense. After all, if someone helps me out, I don’t want to take the help for granted, as if I were entitled to it. That would foreclose the possibility of being helped again. So I show gratitude for the same reason Americans are polite generally: pragmatic vigilance.
The lower form of this pragmatism is to tend appearances. I don’t want someone to think I’m ungrateful, so I express gratitude to maintain respectability.
This kind of gratitude is alien to the Bible.
Here’s one of the Bible’s most important, and most neglected, verses (Romans 1.21). “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
To explain the depth of human perversity, Paul says that we did not “honor God as God.” God is the creator of all things (vv 19-20, 25). He has a rank that is infinitely above ours: creator to creature. Honor in this case is not a matter of politeness, but of profound, inflexible, eternal indebtedness.
Giving thanks is the payment. The gratitude is not about being appreciative, as if we were supposed to say, “Wow, it was so nice of you to make me and all my stuff!” The gratitude is what we owe God when we cannot repay the debt. “You gave me life. I can never repay what I owe you. But I can live for your glory in humble gratitude.”
I understand this best as a parent. When my sons spontaneously say, “Thanks, Dad!” for something I do, I am repaid in the coin of honor. More than the thing I provide, they value me.
How does this concept of gratitude relate to Christmas?
Christ Jesus came to this world to give his life for our redemption. He did so when we were still ungodly — still expressing ingratitude for created life, giving no honor to him as God (Romans 5.8). So what we celebrate in this season is the double-gift of life that is doubly beyond our ability to repay.
We are celebrating our debt of gratitude.
This ALWAYS Happens To Me!
December 16th, 2010 § 3 Comments
by Matthew Raley
Bitterness is a conviction that your life is filled with unfairness. It is one of the most common spiritual conditions I come across, and it is debilitating. Here are some characteristics of bitterness that I’ve noticed in myself and others.
1. Bitterness is a story.
When someone expresses his bitterness, it has characters and plot. “First they took my lunch money. Then they stole my invention — which would’ve made me rich. Then they cut off my unemployment. And now you want a tip! This always happens to me!”
Here is Jacob’s response when his oldest son Reuben needs to take the youngest son to Egypt to buy food during a famine (Genesis 42.36): “You [Reuben] have bereaved me of my children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has come against me.” Jacob has been telling himself a story about Reuben.
A good start at dispelling bitterness is to notice the stories you tell yourself.
2. The bitter story is deceitful.
The story usually lumps disparate people into one category. They stole my lunch money, my invention, and my unemployment benefits. You want a tip. Ergo, you belong with them. Time to challenge the composition of they.
Also, the story interprets actions as if they are about “me.” Life is unfair because people are always against me, stealing from me, dissing me. But, reality is, no one thinks about me as much as I do.
Jacob’s story leads him to blame Reuben for events that were not Reuben’s fault. But it makes total sense to Jacob because deception wears a cloak of plausibility.
Another way to dispel bitterness is to challenge your own assumptions.
3. Bitterness ignores God’s story.
Because I am the center of the bitter story, and my point of view dominates, I can edit the parts that confuse the plot. The part where, for instance, someone gave me a sandwich after my lunch money went missing. The part where my invention that was going to make me billions didn’t actually work. Or the part where I started a new job after my unemployment ran out. These scenes mess up the story, so out they go.
In Genesis 42, Jacob doesn’t know yet that Joseph is alive, that it was Joseph who arrested Simeon in Egypt, and that it is Joseph who will save the family from starvation and bring reconciliation. And Jacob has conveniently forgotten how God protected and provided for him before.
God is busy working his agenda for our lives, and he is not going to adjust it to our preferences. Nor should he: his agenda is good. So, in addition to forgiveness, the most helpful single way to dispel bitterness is hour-to-hour gratitude, which prevents the bitter story in the first place.
The Fearsome Nature of Forgiveness
November 17th, 2010 § 2 Comments
by Matthew Raley
The word forgive has fallen into disuse, and we’ve substituted the phrase move on. But the two actions we describe are different.
The object of my “moving on” or “forgiving” is a wrong someone has committed against me.
To move on is to leave that wrong behind on life’s road. I strive to put my relationship with the wrong-doer on a new course. I also strive to prevent my emotions returning to the wrong, so that I stop feeling angry, resentful, or grieved. And I strive to think of myself as no longer defined by the wrong: I am not a victim.
The wrong is still there. I am choosing to ignore it.
"Prisoner," Christian Rohlfs, 1918, Museum of Modern Art
To forgive is more radical. The New Testament word aphiemi does have the idea of “letting go,” but with a greater specificity. It came to be used as a legal term for debt cancellation and divorce. A creditor’s claim no longer adhered to the debtor; a husband’s claim no longer adhered to the wife. In forgiveness, what is owed is zero.
This is the word Jesus uses when a paralytic is brought to him (Mark 2.1-12). He says to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” He is not saying, “God has moved on from all of the wrongs you have committed.” He is saying, “The claims against you are canceled.”
The enormity of Jesus’ statement is obvious to the religious leaders listening. “He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” To zero-out the moral debts we owe is an action only God can take. Jesus heals the paralytic to verify that he does indeed have the authority to forgive. And in doing so he is claiming to be God.
The basis of Jesus’ authority is that he “gives his life as a ransom for many,” a payment to redeem sinners from their debts (Mark 10.45).
Our “move on” method of repairing personal harm doesn’t work.
For starters, it doesn’t deal with the nature of wrong-doing. Harm leaves a debt. Unpaid debt is loss. Every time I hear someone say he has “moved on,” the very next words out of his mouth reassert the loss he bears. At one moment he pretends the loss is negligible, and at the next he proves how heavy the loss remains.
Deeper, “moving on” never discharges the wrong-doer. His wrong is still back there on the road. Let two people’s road cover ten years, and let the road be covered with harm’s wreckage, and then see how free and honest the two are after all their moving on.
We’ve probably stopped forgiving not because we don’t know what it means, but because we do know. We have no real basis for canceling debts, and we refuse to lie. We move on instead.
What would happen in our relationships if our own debts were canceled, and if we canceled each other’s debts on the basis of Christ’s payment? Christianity would happen.
Anniversary of Hard Blessings
September 30th, 2010 § 7 Comments
by Matthew Raley
Five years ago this morning I awoke to a new reality. I had slept at my parents’ home, with my then 5-year-old son Dylan in a trundle bed below, and my infant son Malcolm across the hall. My 35-year-old wife Bridget was in ICU unable to see, walk, or even sit up. She was on morphine to control pain that had left her hyperventilating the night before.
I learned that afternoon what we had suspected the previous day: Bridget had had a stroke. It had occurred in her brain-stem, which technicians had not bothered to scan at first. I was told that someone who has a stroke there usually isn’t alive to need a scan.
So, five years ago today, I was wondering what sort of a life God had blessed us with. Maybe the dreams Bridget and I had treasured for life and ministry would not be realized. Maybe the scale of life would shrink radically.
My immediate concern was for Dylan. He had seen his mom collapse while getting him ready for school, and had watched her crawl to the telephone. I couldn’t give him any assurance that she would get better.
Lacking any other approach, I simply told Dylan what her condition was and asked him what specific thing we should ask the Lord to do first. Dylan asked for her sight. The next morning, Bridget could see. Then Dylan asked for her relief from pain. The next day, she was given relief and the morphine dosage was lowered, soon to be eliminated entirely. Then Dylan prayed that she could walk.
The next day, she got up with the aid of walker and took new steps. I was there. It was one of the toughest moments for me, because it was clear progress in a brutal reality. So much had to improve for her to take those steps at all. But Bridget’s command of her legs had been broken. She was holding herself with her arms to walk like a ninety-year-old.
I can’t say whether any of these answers to prayer were miracles, or just God’s normal providence through bodies he designed to heal, and the skill with which he has endowed human beings. I can say that all of these blessings were hard.
Over the next weeks, we were confronted with enormous bills that inadequate insurance had dropped in our laps, all of which were paid by the Enloe Foundation. During Bridget’s hospitalization and physical therapy, many people came forward to help care for Malcolm while I was at work. We received meals, help cleaning the house, and ongoing aid while Bridget regained her balance and strength at home.
Bridget and I in Penang, Malaysia last July
All of this blessing came little by little, one day after another. Now, after years of difficulty, Bridget is free from medications, though not totally free from stroke-related pain. She has all of her abilities, but not all of her old energy. Dylan has a tremendous faith, which he is building on from these experiences. Both boys have their mother.
I call these things to mind today because the difficulties of ministry are crushing. Though we are crushed, we are not destroyed. Though the blessings are hard, our hope is greater. And this hope in Jesus Christ does not leave me disappointed.
