The Whole World Is(n’t?) Watching

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

It looks as though we may need to update the old Zen koan: “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” The new version might go, “If I eat a sandwich but don’t write about it on Twitter, will I still be hungry?”

Now at this point I feel compelled to insert the customary, “Technology has lots of wonderful uses…” and the contractually obligatory, “like allowing people to read Every Thought Captive!” And technology does in fact have lots of wonderful uses. Encryption programs can allow dissidents to report on the atrocities committed by repressive governments with minimized fear of reprisal. On a less dramatic level, you can paste photos of your recent trip to Ethiopia on Facebook without having to email a bunch of people directly (let alone make actual prints and mail them, as we used to do in the late Bronze age).

But the Twitter-ization of communication in the last few years clearly represents the other side of technology’s two-edged sword. Life, I suppose, is always some mix of grandeur and triviality, but the difference now is that your trivia can reach a world-wide audience within seconds. Whether everyone is out there is anxiously awaiting your news (“im typing a thing for evry thot cptiv right now, how cool is that, then im snacking, prb a sweet ‘n’ salty nut bar, ill keep you posted!”) is of course another question altogether. Maybe the whole world isn’t watching.

But there is always the chance that it might be, and that is the problem I want to focus on. One of the most powerful forces that shapes our behavior is simply who we think is watching us. We try to get good grades to please our parents, we tailor our jokes to please our peers, we cut our lawns to please our neighbors. This is all natural enough, but the world-wideness of the Web adds a new dimension to the problem. I can begin to derive significance for my humdrum little life from the assumption that the Global Community is clicking like crazy to read about my latest thoughts about politics, religion, and what color shoes I’m thinking of wearing tomorrow. We speak of “death by a thousand cuts”; we might tweak that to, “life by a thousand tweets”. I came, I blogged, I conquered. I am read, therefore I am.

Most human enterprises end up slogging towards the swamps of idolatry, and the new communication tools look like taking that same sad path. The internet can serve as a surrogate sheltering sky, aglow with galaxies of fellow bloggers and tweeters; a Zodiac of sympathetic stars happy to guide our ways. But like all makeshift deities, it promises much more than it can deliver.

Because at the end of the day, we all live pretty ordinary lives, and continually blogging about them is not going to change that. What makes the difference is recognizing that your ordinary life is in fact lived out in the presence of a very extraordinary God, who knows every hair on your head and loves you limitless concern. With his eyes on you, you don’t need to worry about who else is watching.

Jesus as a Preacher of Repentance

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

In one of the most extensive and important studies of the “historical Jesus” John Meier makes a revealing comment regarding Jesus’ statement about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:12; Luke 11:4):

It is most significant that Jesus makes the disciples’ forgiveness of others in the present the condition of God’s definitive forgiveness of them at the last day…. Making God's final forgiveness of individual believers depend on their forgiveness of others in the present moment may create problems for Christian theology. But, since Jesus was not a Christian theologian, he seems sublimely unconcerned about the problem.[i]

It is a shame that Meier does not give more attention to the place of repentance in the message of Jesus (even doubting, it seems, that repentance played any significant role)[ii] since that is probably the key to explaining why Jesus’ statement was not a problem for him or for the Christian gospel writers, and should not be a problem for any other Christian theologian either. Recent research into the meaning and significance of repentance for the Judaism of Jesus’ day may shed important light on aspects of his teaching that have caused Christians to scratch their heads from time to time.[iii]

The Synoptic Gospels all agree that repentance was an important part of Jesus’ message (see Matt. 4:17; 11:20-21; 12:41; Mark 1:15; 6:12; Luke 5:32; 10:13; 11:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 16:30; 17:3-4; 24:47), as it was for John the Baptist (see Matt. 3:2, 8, 11; Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3, 8). The Old Testament background to the idea of repentance is found, e.g., in Leviticus 26:40-42; Deuteronomy 4:29-31; 30:1-6; 1 Kings 8:46-50 (paralleled in 2 Chronicles 6:36-39); Joel 2:12-14; Jeremiah 29:10-14; and what is known as the penitential prayer tradition (including the prayers of Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9 and several other prayers of the Second Temple Period[iv]). In these texts repentance is understood to be a prerequisite to forgiveness for the sins which led Israel into captivity (and the on-going state of oppression by foreign powers). Key terms or concepts that came to be associated with repentance (due to their presence in the Old Testament texts listed above) include turning to God (and/or from sin), confession of sins (), and seeking God.

Repentance must be reflected in a changed living (just as new life reflects itself in those very same changes), and if there is no change of life there is no real repentance (or new life), but that does not mean the biblical teaching of repentance amounts to salvation by works or by moral effort or rigor. In the context of a call for repentance one’s obedience to God and rejection of sin are not understood as means of meriting, earning, or being worthy of salvation. Rather, it is a reflection of one’s understanding that God’s righteous judgment stands over against us and that we are utterly dependent upon God’s grace and mercy if we are to survive his that coming judgment. The confession of sins and/or request for forgiveness, the turning from sin and seeking after God may all be understood as interrelated manners of expressing one’s recognition of guilt. While a penitential prayer expresses one’s culpability and need for forgiveness verbally, “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:8; Luke 3:8) are non-verbal means of expressing the same ideas.

The Gospel of Matthew suggests virtually all of Jesus’ teaching might be considered under the umbrella of the theme of repentance. Matthew 4:17 says that “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (ESV). Both “from that time” and “began” suggest the message of repentance was a continuous and/or primary theme of Jesus’ teaching from that point on, despite the fact that the explicit language of repentance does not often appear in the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, or in the other gospels, for that matter. Matthew expects us to understand that virtually all of Jesus’ teaching is to be understood within that framework. This is the framework within which we are to understand the beatitudes (including, most obviously, Jesus’ references to being “poor in spirit” and “those who morn”) and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.[v] The petition for the forgiveness of sins in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer may well relate it to the penitential prayer tradition.[vi] While it does not contain a separate confession of sins, the very request that God would forgive us “our sins/debts” entails an acknowledgement of sinfulness and need for forgiveness. And that takes place in the midst of a prayer that is clearly focused on the coming of God’s eschatological kingdom. The reference to fruits by which God’s people can be recognized at the end of the Sermon (Matt. 7:16-20) is the first reference to fruit since John the Baptist spoke of the need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8-10).

In the beatitudes Jesus promises that the merciful will receive mercy (Matt. 5:7). This presumably presupposes the idea that the merciful are those who (in a repentant spirit) already recognized their own need for divine mercy and who extend similar mercy to others as a reflection of their own repentant attitude. This brings us back to the suggestion that “Jesus makes the disciples’ forgiveness of others in the present the condition of God’s definitive forgiveness of them at the last day.” Understood in the context of a theology of repentance, this hardly means people will gain forgiveness through their own merit or that they will be thought deserving of it because they happen to extend forgiveness to others. Rather, it means the person has come to realize their own culpability before God and their desperate need for his mercy and forgiveness, and has thus begun to live a life consistent with such a repentant attitude.

The Old Testament indicates the change in the lives of God’s people will come as a result of the heart surgery he will do in the eschatological time of salvation. Deuteronomy 30:6 says God will circumcise the hearts of his people so that they will love him. Jeremiah 31:33-34 says God will write his law on the hearts of his people so that they will all know him. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says God will give his people a new heart and put his Spirit within them so that they will obey him. So the changed life of the repentant believer is not a human achievement but a divine work. It is the work that God himself has begun and that he will bring to completion (Phil. 1:6). The Gospel of Luke makes it clear that repentance is something granted by God to both Jews and Gentiles (cf. Acts 11:18).

It is important that we not “explain away” Jesus’ teaching about the necessity of forgiving others (e.g., Matt. 6:12, 14-15), showing mercy (Matt. 5:7), etc., in order to make him say what we wish he had said. But it is also important to understand how it fits into a broader biblical-theological framework (in this case, the framework relating to repentance granted by God in at the threshold of eschatological judgment) which helps explain its coherence with the rest of biblical teaching about salvation.

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[i] John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Volume 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 301.

[ii] While admitting that the imperative “Repent!” is “hardly impossible in the mouth of Jesus” he agrees with other scholars that “sayings that mention repentance and that can be seriously attributed to Jesus are relatively few, if any” (A Marginal Jew: Volume 2, p. 431). In a footnote he suggests that E. P. Sanders “may be too skeptical about the matter” (p. 485 n. 152, see Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], pp. 106-13). For more optimistic appraisals and fuller discussion of this topic, see, e.g., Joachim Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History (Trans. Siegfried S. Schatzmann; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997), pp. 204-8; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 2; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1996), pp. 246-58; Steven M. Bryan, Jesus and Israel's Traditions of Judgement and Restoration (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 68-72.

[iii] See “repentance” in the subject indexes of Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, eds., Seeking the Favor of God: Volume 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Early Judaism and its literature, 21; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) and idem, Seeking the Favor of God: Volume 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Early Judaism and its literature, 22; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), especially Boda’s discussion of the theology of repentance on pp. 27-34 of the first volume. See also Bryan, Jesus and Israel's Traditions of Judgement and Restoration, pp. 57-72.

[iv] See the texts discussed in the volumes edited by Boda, Falk and Werline,

[v] See Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 207.

[vi] “Penitential prayer is a direct address to God in which an individual, group, or an individual on behalf of a group confesses sins and petitions for forgiveness as an act of repentance” (Rodney A. Werline, “Reflections on Penitential Prayer: Definition and Form,” in Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, eds., Seeking the Favor of God: Volume 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism [Early Judaism and its literature, 22; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007], p. 209).

In Praise of Pastors

By Jeffrey Arthurs
Professor of Preaching & Communication and Dean of the Chapel

I value pastors. You should too. And if you are a pastor, please feel valued and receive my encouragement: You folks are the soldiers on the front line, and we professors are the support troops who live in an ivory tower (interesting mixed metaphor); you are the practitioners, while we generate theory; you are the communicators, disciplers, evangelists, and leaders, and we are your assistants. I consider your work more important than mine. By this I do not mean to denigrate my work or fly my Eyore flag; but I do think that you are the Church’s heroes. I’ve been on both sides of the fence as a pastor and professor, and what you do is harder than what I do. I admire you. Please stay true to the Lord so that you embody the life-changing and heart-wooing power of the gospel. And let us know how we can help. You might have to shout loud up the battlements of the Ivory Tower, but we’re here and many of us are listening.

Fun for the Whole Family?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

A large woman, couchbound for years, walks upstairs to the utter amazement of her family. A shy young man begins courting an inflatable doll named Bianca, and is affirmed in his relationship by a small town. A not-traditionally-beautiful little girl goes off to a beauty pageant accompanied by her bickering parents, her silent brother, her gay suicidal uncle, and her drug-abusing, foul-mouthed grandfather.

Film-goers may recognize the above as representative snippets from three films: respectively, Lasse Hallström’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993); Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl (1997); and Jonathan Dayton’s Little Miss Sunshine (2006). The cynical among us might look at the list (and indeed the films in their entirety) and think, “Fun family entertainment, Hollywood style.”

At one level, the critique would hold. The families in these films (if we can count Lars and Bianca as a ‘family’) put the dys- in dysfunctional, and none of them constitute “family fare” in the traditional sense of the word. A few moments around the dinner table with Alan Arkin’s ‘colorful’ grandpa in Little Miss Sunshine would give the proverbial drunken sailor pause, while even the generally sweet-tempered Lars and the Real Girl centers on a man and, um, an inflatable doll. Anyone thinking to gather the young kids around for Edifying Video Night with one of these films should un-think it pretty quickly.

We could go on and level a salient cultural critique as to why these films roll the way they do. They could be seen as the quintessential products of the postmodern ethos, where traditional values are there only to be shredded, and alternative life-style choices – whether it is affairs with married women (or unmarried dolls); septuagenarian heroin ingestion; or illicit water tower climbing (one of the many memorable scenes with a young Leonardo DiCaprio in Gilbert Grape) -- are there to be tolerated, if not indeed celebrated.

They could also be seen as a perhaps welcome salination of the sickly sweet family films of a bygone era: here comes Lassie to drag Timmy out of the neighbors’ cobra pit. Mom had told him a hundred times not to go in that thing, but we know he’ll learn his lesson and they will all live happily ever after. (“Gee, Mom, you’re swell! And you too, Lassie!” “Ruff!”)

And yet…I found myself moved by all these films, and wondered what it was that touched me. They are all well directed and well acted, but that only provides a lowest common denominator for enjoyment. What distinguishes them is that, for all their visible dysfunction and edgy behavior, they really are sweet at heart. The characters may find themselves lost in a jungle of pathology, but they eventually hack their way through the brush to find one another, and with that to find some kind of peace amidst the chaos of life.

The fact that they find it in the worst possible circumstances of ordinary life makes the grace of re-discovering one’s family all the more profound. In Gilbert Grape, a dropped birthday cake can rip your heart out, but the mother’s trudge to the second floor becomes a kind of ascent of Jacob’s ladder. Try to keep a dry eye as kindly Karin berates Lars for not recognizing what they are doing for him, “Every person in this town bends over backward to make Bianca feel at home. Why do you think she has so many places to go and so much to do? Huh? Huh? Because of you! Because - all these people - love you!” As for Little Miss Sunshine, all I can say is that you may never think about Rick James’ Superfreak the same way again.

I may be wrong about the merits of these films. But it is not because there is something strange about the idea of love appearing in the strangest of places, or of something – or Someone – pulling people together when everything seems to be pulling them apart. Whatever the filmmakers’ motives may have been, the films can function for us as parables of the divine seed of the gospel that flourishes in the most unlikely soil.