Tuesday, December 15, 2009

“Do not be afraid”

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

Recently, I started attending a Bible study on the book of Esther. We were studying Chapter 4, where Esther responds to Mordecai’s request that she approach the king by telling him that if anyone approaches the king without being summoned, they will be killed. The discussion in the group turned towards the idea that Esther was probably afraid to approach the King. Someone said that the most frequent command given in Scripture is "do not be afraid." That certainly seems to be the case in the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth: when the angel approaches Zechariah, the angel says. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 1:13). When the angel approached Mary, he said the same thing, "do not be afraid" (Luke 1:30). When the angel appeared to the shepherds, Luke says they were terribly frightened and the angel said to them. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 2:10).
As I sat in the Bible study and heard this comment about the command to not be afraid, the psychotherapist in me sat up and took notice. We do not choose our emotions. Emotions are responses to our interpretations of events and experiences. "Emotions just are; it's what we do with them that matters" is something I say frequently to clients. Because Jesus commands us to love, I conclude that love is not just a feeling, but rather something we can choose. We can choose to put someone else's needs ahead of our own, to work for the benefit of another, for the welfare of another. So what does it mean that the most frequent command in Scripture is to not be afraid?
There must be a sense in which "do not be afraid." refers to something more than emotion. One of the other women in the Bible study commented that we are also told to fear the Lord, which led to a discussion about how fear in this context is reverence or awe, or to make God be the reference point, the most important person in our lives. So perhaps, we are commanded to not be afraid of anything but God because God wants us to see him as the center, and him only.
In the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth, the angels were bringing “good news of a great joy” to each person to whom they appeared: that God was coming in the flesh to redeem his people. The incarnation is an awesome thing: Divinity, the infinite almighty eternal God, took on our finite, limited human nature. "Vastness confined in the womb of a maid." If this God is for us, we need never be afraid of anything again.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Miracle Baby: the Wonder of the Incarnation

By John Jefferson Davis
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics

My wife Robin and I just returned recently from Washington, DC and a visit to get acquainted with our new grandson, Isaiah John Tobin, born November 14, 2009, weighing 7 lbs. 14 oz. ( and, coincidentally, Isaiah 7:14: “…. God with us”). Holding my new grandson as a proud grandfather (my third grandchild), I was so thankful to God for the birth of this beautiful new healthy child, and reflected on the amazing process of human embryonic development in the womb and live birth – things that we can easily take for granted because they seem so “normal”. The Old Testament Isaiah spoke about the birth of a “miracle baby” (Is.7:14), but there is something well-nigh miraculous about the formation and birth of any human baby, when seen in the light of modern science and embryology.
In his fascinating book The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, Gerald Schroeder reminds us that a normal adult human body contains 75 trillion cells, and all 75 trillion were grown from and encoded genetically in a single fertilized egg cell in our mother’s womb. One cell divides to become two … four … eight …. sixteen … thirty-two …. sixty-four … and so on, all the way to 75 trillion cells – and these cells must appear at the right time, in the right order, in the right spatial configuration, so that brain cells do not appear in our toes or fingernail cells in our liver, and so on. There are 3.5 billion base pairs to specify the human genome in each cell, and this genetic “script” is packed into a space in the cell nucleus that measures only 1/1000 of an inch in diameter – an amazing feat of divinely designed “nanotechnology.”
Each time one of our cells divides, the amount of genetic information that has to be copied without error is like a person xeroxing ten 400 page books per minute for ten hours - and this from the time of conception until we die. As one biologist observed, the process of human embryological development staggers the imagination: the human embryo is like a machine that can not only build itself, but has the “intelligence” to be able to make a copy of itself as well.
At this Christmas season, when we again remember the “Word made flesh” (John 1:14), we can again in all humility reflect on the miracle of the Incarnation: the Author of the genetic code became a zygote, then an embryo, and finally, a 75 trillion-celled human being – himself living through, for our benefit, the amazing process that he himself had designed. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift: Joy to the world … the Incarnate Lord has come!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

On Advent and Albino Hunting in East Africa

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Have you heard or read the horrifying story about albino hunting in east Africa (posted 11/27/09)? I read the story on the CNN website today (you can also read about it here) and have since been thinking about what it tells us about fallen humanity and about Advent. Here are just the first three paragraphs from the CNN story:
As many as 10,000 albinos are in hiding in east Africa over fears that they will be dismembered and their body parts sold to witchdoctors, the Red Cross said in a recent report.
The killings of albinos in Burundi and Tanzania, who are targeted because their body parts are believed to have special powers, have sparked fears among the population in the two countries, the report said.
Body parts of albinos are sought in some regions of Africa because they are believed to bring wealth and good luck. Attackers chop off limbs and pluck out organs to sell to dealers, who in turn sell them to witchdoctors.
What a horrific reminder of the wickedness that can be found in the human heart and leading to the most inhuman treatment of people created in God’s image. Human beings are willing to slaughter other human beings out of the most perverse and corrupt miscalculation about what is in their best interest. Of course disastrous miscalculation of what is in one’s best interest goes all the way back to the origin of sin. “Eating from that tree will be good for you! It’ll make you more like God!” If only such corruption of the human heart were limited to the most widely recognized manifestations of blatant wickedness as albino hunting, or were only found in strange and distant places like east Africa, and not clearly seen in my own heart (and yours!)!
I can more easily point the finger at people who unnecessarily abandon their fetuses, or infants, or grown children rather than making the sacrifices it would take to raise them. Or at those who are more concerned about how healthcare reform might negatively impact their health insurance in any way than they are about the millions who have been left without the benefit of any health insurance. Or all you other people who have ways (and fine-sounding rationalizations) for putting your needs and interests ahead of those of others’. But the same sin seems quite at home in my own heart. I may not be hunting albinos for their body parts, but I have more subtle ways of valuing my own happiness and prosperity over the wellbeing of others. And many of my ways are at least as culturally acceptable in my culture as albino hunting is (evidently) in albino-hunting subcultures….
What does any of this have to do with Advent? Everything, of course. First of all, Christ is the only perfect and pure model of what it means to put other people’s needs above his own (see, of course, Philippians 2:3-11). He became human and sacrificed himself so that we might find true life through his (true) death and resurrection. And his death and resurrection bring life, real and transformed life, that leads more and more people to tend less and less to feed (or, to use Paul’s metaphor, to “sow to please”) their sinful nature (cf. Galatians 6:8), thanks to the life of Christ that is in them by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20; 4:6).
Christ has come not only to model a different way of living as a human being and to bring forgiveness and salvation to those who, like us, were albino hunters of their own kind, but also to transform us into people through whom the love and righteousness of Christ might be seen.
Through our union with Christ the albino-hunter in each of us has been nailed to the cross, crucified with Christ, so that we are no longer to be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.
Now that I have used those poor albinos as part of an illustration of the ravages of sin and as part of a metaphor for our own sinfulness, I am tempted to leave them behind. They have served my needs and purposes for today. I don’t suppose they would feel any better knowing I was able to exploit them for the sake of writing an on-line faculty forum…. Their suffering goes on. For them, “physical survival is a desperate struggle.”
What might I do (and you), as a follower of Christ, to help those terrorized people, threatened with horrific violence? We can read more about it here and then decide the best way to act. My prayer is that followers of Christ will find concrete ways of demonstrating Christ’s own commitment to those in such desperate need. As the hymn says, Christ “comes to make His blessings flow. Far as the curse is found.” May those blessings flow to the albinos of east Africa this advent season.