What Nobody Taught Me in Seminary That I Had to Learn the Hard Way

Excerpts from Sermons by Dr. John Huffman, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Eight Things Not Taught in Seminary Part 1, October 29, 2013
Eight Things Not Taught in Seminary Part 2, October 30, 2013

1. Seminary is the best place in the world to lose your faith.
2.  Maintain a daily devotional life independent of your studies and sermon preparation.
3.  The highest calling tin the world is not professional ministry.
4.  You will never be more in ministry than you are today.
5.  Get involved now in a covenant group and never be without one all through your ministry.
6.  A simple trust in God's Word is more important than a highly sophisticated intellectual set of answers for everything.
7.  Spend as much time in the newspaper as in the Bible, and vice versa.
8.  Be faithful to biblical moral standards now.
9.  Develop a physical exercise program now and treat it as faithfully as you do your devotional life.
10.  Ministry marriages are not exempt from the same problems other marriages have.
11.  Begin tithing now, don't rationalize that you will do it later.
12. If you mess up, claim God's grace, get help, and get up and get going.
13.  Pastors too come from dysfunctional families and can perpetuate it and even originate it.
14.  Because you are in fulltime Christian services does not mean you are exempt from catastrophe.
15.  Yours is the privilege of a "task within a task."
16.  Write out one sermon per week as your best effort and then claim God's help to come as close to possible to preaching without notes.

To download Chapel podcasts, visit https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/hamilton-campus-chapel-2012/id593878978?mt=10

Pastor's Roundtable Reading Lists

Wondering what to read next? Looking for a book for your reading group?  Try one of these titles*, read and discussed by the Pastors Roundtable Group the past 3 years. This group is  led by Dr. Ken Swetland and Dr. David Horn at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Hamilton campus:


2008-2009:
The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor by John Stott
The Shack by William Paul Young
Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship by David Peterson
Religious Affections by Johnathan Edwards
Let Go: To Get Peace and Real Joy by Francois Fenelon
Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to do About it by Julian Duin
The Surprising Work of God by Garth Rosell

2009-2010:
Christ and Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton
Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton
Jesus Through the Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth Bailey
Courage to be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Post-Modern World by David Wells
Christ- Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice by Bryan Chapell
Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old- Fashioned Way by J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett
Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp
Signature Sins: Taming Our Wayward Hearts by Michael Mangis

2010-2011:
How Then Should We Choose? by Douglas Huffman
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxes
Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck
Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic by Chris Castaldo
Judge Sewell's Apology: A Biography: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience by Richard Francis
Erasmus- Luther: Discourse on Free Well by Ernst F. Winter
Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes us Just by Tim Keller
Love Wins by Rob Bell 








*Book titles with a hyperlink are available at Gordon-Conwell's online bookstore, in partnership with Christian Book Distributors (CBD). Every time you place an order through the online bookstore, Gordon-Conwell will receive a percentage of the sales.  Within the last two years, Gordon-Conwell has received over $20,000.  These proceeds support the Seminary's educational services for students.

Pastors' Roundtable Reading List

Wondering what to read next? Looking for a book for your reading group?  Try one of these titles*, read and discussed by the Pastors Roundtable Group led by Dr. Ken Swetland and Dr. David Horn at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Hamilton campus:

The Pastor by Eugene Peterson
Ten Myths About Calvinism by Kenneth Stewart
Allah by Miroslav Volf
Worship and the Reality of God by John Jefferson Davis
Nearing Home by Billy Graham
The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
Technopoly by Neil Postman
Evangelical Theology by Karl Barth
Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton by Kevin Belmonte

*Book titles with a hyperlink are available at Gordon-Conwell's online bookstore, in partnership with Christian Book Distributors (CBD). Every time you place an order through the online bookstore, Gordon-Conwell will receive a percentage of the sales.  Within the last two years, Gordon-Conwell has received over $20,000.  These proceeds support the Seminary's educational services for students.

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Can you believe this?: In fifth grade Sunday School I had to learn them all: Genesis...

Exodus…Leviticus…Numbers…Deuteronomy…through those pesky minor prophets, Micah…Nahum…Habakkuk…and on through the New Testament books…all the way to Revelation. Not only did we have to learn the books of the Bible, we were also tested on a list of the kings of Israel and Judah and, of course, the prophets. Our hero at the time was our classmate, Peggy Corneil, who could recite all three lists backwards and forwards. Amazing mind, that Peggy!

By present standards, this kind of curriculum would be considered wholly inadequate. The measuring line by which we measure such things as Sunday School curriculum and small group materials is the degree to which it is considered “practical.” This is the gold standard question: “To what extent is there a life application attached to whatever we teach?”

Pastors and others in ministry know this all too well. The pervasive value behind whatever goes on in the church is its perceived practicality. Every time a sermon is preached, a bible study is taught, or a small group is administered, the pastor stands against the proverbial door and the congregation measures his or her growth against the standards of this one core value.

And, what goes on in seminaries is no exception. The current market, in fact, places traditional theological education up against para-church organizations whose central mission is cultural relevancy and a commitment to practical daily living. A whole cottage industry of manuals and CD/DVDs and three ring notebooks are geared toward ways in which biblical principles are linked to a myriad of life contexts, be it family life, or leadership situations, or relational complexities.

Seminary curriculum is increasingly expected to meet this litmus test of practicality. Did I hear an alum/pastor right a couple of years ago when she stated that her seminary failed her because we did not offer an entire course on developing church capital campaigns? Apparently, she was in the middle of funding a new building, and she felt inadequate with the pressures that were being placed on her by her church. Gordon-Conwell just did not measure up to her expectations.

There is much to be said about relating biblical and theological truths to daily living. A dynamic life of faith is nothing, if not connected to the warp and wolf of our lives. But, perhaps we need to rethink what we mean by “practical.” All of those lists of the books of the Bible, kings, and prophets certainly didn’t connect easily, in my fifth grade mind, to a life being played out at Garfield grade school. At the end of the day, I could not readily make out a life application related to my little world.

Those lists were not practical in that immediate application sort-of-way. But, I have been feasting off of the knowledge of that fifth grade class for over forty-five years, all the way through my seminary education and into ministry in the church and the seminary. To be honest, I am sure I would miss a few of those kings and prophets right now, but the residue of those lists still cling to me. The larger backdrop of my life has been measured unconsciously against my fifth grade education.

And so it is with the seminary education you received at Gordon-Conwell. The seminary is just not going to be able to anticipate every practical ministry contingency you or I confront, including fund raising building strategies. The curriculum just couldn’t hold all of them. But, the aim is to be practical when measured against years, and not necessarily days.

Do Animals Have Souls?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Dedicated readers of this blog (and might the plural, let alone the “dedicated”, be rather optimistic?) will note that the question in the title is a follow-up to a previous post involving the question of human “souls” – and more importantly, the question of how words work. This present piece springs from close observation of my dog at work and play…or more precisely, at rest and play, with the occasional duty of barking at people who pass by the house, and enthusiastically greeting those who enter it.

Now, with respect to humans, I argued that while we cannot expect to isolate an entity called “the soul” somewhere in a Platonic heaven, the word “soul” does mighty good work addressing the interior dimension of our existence. Right from the start, then, we recognize that since humans don’t “have” souls in the same sense that they have bus tokens or a mole on their cheek, we would assume that animals don’t have them, either. This is a crucial point, since without it we can find ourselves split in two by a putative decision tree:

Do animals have souls?

No> Wantonly ridicule, kill and eat them

Yes> Refuse to make any use of them whatsoever, and set up animal focus groups with a view towards creating greater inter-species cooperation.

It doesn’t work that way.

The question about animals “having souls” is really a question as to whether they have an “interior dimension of their existence” that warrants the use of the word “soul”. And here the evidence is a bit mixed. The crucial element in determining the presence and nature of such an interior dimension is, generally speaking, speaking. I use “generally speaking” not only for the delight of having “speaking” appear twice in a sentence, but also because we can assume the presence of the interior dimension of a person who is unable to communicate with words. But generally we know what is in a person’s “soul” because they tell us about it.

Animals do not do this, Doctor Doolittle aside. They can’t tell us whether Eli Manning is an “elite” quarterback, or whether a beautiful sunset can reasonably be termed “sublime”. If the proverbial roomful of monkeys ever did bang out Shakespeare’s works on their monkey-friendly word-processors, it would only be by accident, not intent.

Even as I write this, I can sense the growing wrath of animal lovers. So I hasten to add that even if animals don’t communicate with language which reveals an interior dimension of life perfectly analogous with that of humans, they surely communicate in all sorts of other ways. Pain, fear, anger – a growl or a whine or a nip can get that dimension of their “inner” experience across quite clearly. And while dogged materialists will strive to tell us canines can’t really be sad, as a dog-owner and recent viewer of Benji the Hunted, I feel comfortable in affirming that they can…at least in some sense.

And it is with precisely such equivocation that I want to conclude this brief exploration of the animal soul. We can know quite a bit about what humans are like on the inside. We simply can’t know what is going on with animals with the same level of precision. So using the language of “soul” is probably not the most helpful thing to do. But that hardly establishes an unbridgeable chasm between the animals and us. The Scripture is quite clear that whatever unique qualities humans bring to the table, we are all of us, human and animal alike, part of God’s creation, distinct from the creator himself (Revelation 4, where humans are mixed in with the beasts in the persons of the “living creatures”, is a particularly vivid illustration of this fact). The Scripture also warrants using animals in labor and for food, so I eat my cheeseburgers with a clean conscience.

And if my dog ever questions me about that, I’ll just point out to her that she eats the hamburger, too.

What About Christmas Next Year?

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

What have we Christians done with Christmas? What might we do with it if we seriously wanted to honor the Christ whose birth we celebrate? My family and I just enjoyed a very nice Christmas together, but I confess that I would like my Christmas to be different next year.

Jim Wallis and Scott McKnight have reminded us that “Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” A CNN report from just the other day mentioned that they expect $46,000,000,000.00 (it stands out more with the zeros, I think, than to just write 46 billion dollars) worth of gifts to be returned after this year’s Christmas. That is, we will have spent more than twice as much money on unwanted gifts for each other than it would cost to provide clean water for everyone on the planet.

The Christmas we celebrate (and that so many seem concerned to “defend”) is the celebration of God sending his Son so that we might have life. Not so that we might have the most outlandish celebration of materialism possible… The time to start thinking about next Christmas is not next November, but right now. Of course we will buy presents for our children. But what if we decided that next Christmas we would celebrate Christ’s coming for us by giving much more money to those in need around the world, and to projects that would have a lasting impact, than we would give to friends and family who will still be more prosperous than most people around the world even if they receive much less under the tree, but are given the opportunity to join in with us.

The family of one of the couples in our church small group decided that for Christmas this year they would send World Vision enough money to pay for a home for orphaned children ($5,100), and they kindly invited the rest of us to join in with them. World Vision has a whole set of similar gift options that are “too big for a box and a bow,” things that cost between $300 and $39,000. Other organizations provide similar opportunities to make our giving about much more than, as Wallis put it, “a material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” Wouldn’t it be something if within a few years from now Christmas celebrations in American had begun to shift in their emphasis to such a degree that the new orientation was as ubiquitous as the latest Apple product? I realize such a change would have a huge impact on the US economy, but surely we could find a way to deal with that…

Luke 8:8-11 tells us that the first to get the news on that first Christmas morning were some shepherds out in their fields. The news was given to them rather than to Caesar Augustus or to Quirinius, governor of Syria (both of whom are mentioned in the first verse of the chapter) to remind us that the news of this savior is not news just for the top 1%, or even the top 20 or 80 percent, but “good news that will cause great joy for all the people”:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:8-11, NIV)

Reading and Other Matters

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Ever have one of those books you were embarrassed to say you hadn’t read but were afraid to admit it? You know, the kind of book you feel you would be caught with your pants down if someone asked you to weigh in on it for some reason: “You mean, you haven’t read such-and-such?”

So it is with Neil Postman’s Technology. I just finished it and feel guilty about having not read it a long time ago. I could not put it down. Now I can say to you, my readers, “What do you think of Postman’s view on the pervasive role of technology in American culture?” “What, you haven’t read it? You really need to do so.”

With this grand confession behind me, I actually don’t have a large quantity to say about the book itself except to say that, at its core, Postman reminds us of that most profound truth that the things that influence us the most in our day-to-day lives are the most subtle and evasive. We think we control our lives by sheer force of our own awareness of these influences. But like all things cultural, we are as much servants as kings of our own domains.

So embedded are our perceptions, in fact, in the “taken for granted” nature of the cultures surrounding us that we are rarely conscious of how these cultural phenomena affect us and the others around us. Like an iceberg in the North Atlantic sea, we may well be able to see and understand a small part of how our influences work and affect our lives, but it is the vast underworld beneath the waterline that is most telling. It is this underworld of culture that James Hunter says, in his book, To Change the World, that is most deceptively strong because culture is “most powerful…when it is perceived as self-evident.”

Such, says Postman, is the case especially with the technologies that fill our lives. We are often unconscious victims of the very tools we think we control. And by tools, he is not just speaking of the mechanical and electronic devices that fill our lives--computers, toasters, mp3 devices, and the like. Language, as we now use it, is a technological tool. How about polling? Think about how our values are being controlled now by the mere fact that we can almost instantaneously determine that 47% versus 53% now believe such and such is right. And, we now live in a world where we can know the most minute details of the most mundane set of facts immediately, all at our googled fingertips.

Our world is too much with us and we don’t even know it. I wonder how these technologies shape us ever so subtly? What is that Christian virtue of ‘patience’ you ask, for example? At one time, patience was that human enterprise that stretched out between spring-time when my grandfather farmer put his potato seedlings in and the fall when he pulled the potatoes out of the ground. For me, patience has been reduced to a milla-second as I pound on the side of my computer because it isn’t fast enough. Patience completely redefined and I don’t even know it!

Speaking of patience, I have got to end. I need to download my next book on my iPad.

December Faculty Forum

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

It’s always a dangerous thing to think when you are preaching. You start wondering why the guy in the fourth pew is staring out the window, or whether you have sufficient time to include the illustration about illuminated medieval manuscript, and suddenly you have no idea what you are actually saying at that moment. What’s even worse is the ensuing awareness of your dissociation: how is it that I’m talking and at the same time I’m aware I’m talking? How many “I”’s can there be?

I was reminded of this as I looked out my window at the bare branches of the winter trees outside my office. A few years ago I was preaching in a hall with large windows in the back, looking out on the same bleak tree-scape that greets me this morning. And as I was (at least supposed to be) teaching, I was struck by how human those particular trees were looking that day.

I had been set up for such arboreal anthropomorphizing for a long while. If the Wizard of Oz’ witch and winged monkeys set the standard for childhood terror, the malicious apple-flinging trees of the same film weren’t far behind. On the positive side of the ledger, I have always thought Tolkien’s Ents are just about the best thing Middle-Earth has to offer, hoom, hoom. I am one of the few people who thought the Two Towers film could have been vastly improved with a few more hours of Entmoot-musings from Treebead and his companions. I grew up on an acre of land that was almost entirely covered with tall pines, and spent much of my youth wandering through the woods down the road.

But what I saw that day, and this, was not simply the generic human-ness of trunks and boughs. These trees, it seemed, were doing something quite specific – stretching out their bare branches to the grey skies, crying out to God for the renewal of Spring, calling out for their own annual resurrection.

In the bleak mid-winter, on the cusp of Christmas, in the bareness and brokenness of our own lives, may we go and do likewise.

“The medium is the message”

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

I am actually going to quote Wikipedia: ‘"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.’[1]

I recently visited a church in which the medium used in the presentation of “worship” led me to think about this idea. When the service began, the lights in the auditorium were turned down, and spotlights on the stage and the worship team members were turned up. There was stage smoke billowing on the platform so that the spotlights created a visual line to the musicians. Four giant screens broadcast images, first of a meditation, then of the words of the songs the musicians were playing. As the singing progressed, a camera focused on each musician so that their image was projected onto the four giant screens as they played or sang. The background of the stage was composed of white and gray cutouts that were arranged in such a way as to resemble a house of cards stacked on one another. At first I did not notice the cross. But as I looked around me, I noticed that far above on the rim of the ceiling structure that held the spotlights was a cross. At the end of the set of songs, appropriately, the audience burst into applause. My husband leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m waiting for Tina Turner to appear.” It was quite a performance.

I have also attended churches where everyone was encouraged to “make a joyful noise.” Some have been so committed to this that I have heard choirs sing off key, singers sing out of time with each other, and been subjected to a variety of screechy trumpets and violins, all of which have so distracted me from the worship of God that I could not focus on why I was there. Clearly, the church I just described was committed to not allowing these kinds of distractions from attendee’s worship experience. The musicians performed professionally and the quality of both instrument and voice were excellent. And yet, it did not lead me to worship.

Worship. A most central activity of my faith, and yet so difficult to define, capture, and facilitate.

I have noticed a trend in churches to have people lead worship who have no training in theology, church music, congregational singing, and sometimes even musicianship. Sometimes they are songwriters. Sometimes they are singers. It seems to have become quite rare for them to be trained worship leaders. As a consequence, the experience I described above is becoming more and more common.

One of the challenges, of course, is that many people find themselves joining a church with people from many different backgrounds, church traditions, and preferences. What one person needs to lead worship is different from what another needs. This is one of the things I see valuable about the multitude of congregations we have today. The variety of church cultures provides the possibility of each of us finding a church whose leadership provides a worship context that leads us into the presence of God. But, can we get it wrong? My reflection is not about the “worship wars.” It’s not about contemporary or traditional or blended or whatever. It is about worship and how the media we choose influences our worship.

It is a tremendous responsibility to stand in front of God’s people and lead them into his presence so that they may praise, honor, and glorify him in an act of worship. James writes “let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). This is the verse that drove me to seminary because I realized that if others were turning to me for leadership or instruction, I needed to be responsible about being adequately prepared to honor God and be faithful with the responsibility entrusted to me in the form of these people’s lives. So too should worship leaders be cautious and careful about how they lead others in worship. The medium through which we choose to express ourselves is a part of the message. It shapes the message. It is, as quoted above, symbiotic with the message.

I want to believe that the goal of every worship leader is to direct God’s children to enter into his presence and worship him. To do this, however, is not a simple task nor a small task. It is one that carries great significance, and requires much thought and preparation. If God gives you the responsibility of leading his people in worship, I pray that you will consider James’ words and ensure that your gifts and calling are strengthened and grown rich with adequate preparation. Formulate your theology of worship and ensure that it is consonant with your theology of God and church and spiritual formation. Use your theology of worship as a foundation for how you plan and lead worship, choose setting and context and instruments and songs and psalms, and everything other aspect of the experience you give to the people God has entrusted you to lead in worship. Anything less is a disservice to God’s people and disrespectful of the worship God as due.

---

^[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Giving Thanks for Our Alumni

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Just before Thanksgiving weekend I was at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature, all of which were held in San Francisco this year. I enjoy going to the meetings to meet old friends, make new friends, and have my thinking stretched by papers and presentations presenting new information, ideas, perspectives or approaches. I love coming back with some new things to chew on and to follow up and possibly incorporate into my teaching or research. But perhaps one of the things I like most about attending these annual meetings is the opportunity catch up with some of our alumni who also attend. I run into them between sessions, and also get to sit and talk with some of them during the GCTS Sunday breakfast and the dinner that we usually have for doctoral students and recent doctoral grads. It is such a joy to see our grads prospering in their studies (even if they struggle at times as well, of course) or teaching ministries.

This year I was able to chat with some grads studying biblical studies and others teaching missions, church history, and biblical studies. I’ve also had recent contact with grads who are faithfully ministering in the church ministries to which God has called them and who are using all that they learned while in seminary to minister to the people God has put in their care. Such quality people, doing such important things!

I am so grateful to God for the gifted and committed people he brings to Gordon-Conwell, and that I have the privilege to work with. Our students shape my thinking and inspire me to be a better Christian, scholar, teacher, and person. Our alumni do the same. And I know I am not alone, but that the whole faculty would heartily agree with me. This year as I think about the gifts of God for which I am grateful, you should know that alumni who are faithful to whatever calling God has on their lives (and who have left their marks on Gordon-Conwell along the way) are among the most precious gifts for which I give thanks. Psalm 106:1-5 reminds us that as we give thanks to God for his mighty works we are also to rejoice in the prosperity of his chosen ones and to glory in his heritage.

¹ Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. ² Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or declare all his praise? ³ Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times. ⁴ Remember me, O LORD, when you show favor to your people; help me when you deliver them; ⁵ that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that I may glory in your heritage. (NRSV)

I hope you are staying in touch with some faculty members, letting them know what God is doing in and through you. You can rest assured they are eager to hear from you and happy to pray for you, and are thankful for you and your commitment to advancing God’s purposes in his church and his world.

Day-to-Day Normalness of Life

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Everything changed. In little more than a month on that barren, floating shoal, their perspective on their lives was so radically altered. What they valued most in their lives up to that point--the tiniest pleasures that were their largest preoccupations, thought lives filled with what they considered “normal” things--all so quickly and unalterably became of so little consequence. In a relative moment in time, the “stuff” of their lives became the basic, unadorned preoccupations of survival. So little mattered of their old lives; so much rested on a new point of view.

If you haven’t read Alfred Lansing’s gripping story of Sir Ernest Shackelton’s ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antartica, I highly recommend it. It is a survival story of 29 men set adrift for five months on ice packs after their ship was crushed by ice, only to then suffer through a 1,000 mile voyage in an open boat across the stormiest ocean on the globe. It is a magnificent picture of persons pulled away from everyday normal life and forced to live and think in radically different ways.

Short of subjecting ourselves artificially to some form of fringe experience, I wonder what it takes for us to break through the day-to-day “normalness” of our lives? How do we who seek to bring freshness and new perspective to those to whom we minister keep our own lives fresh? How do the things that really matter from God’s perspective become our common, consuming passions?

I certainly don’t claim to know the answer to these questions, but if Shackelton’s story is of any help, it is that none of these men would have changed on their own. To a man, all of them were relatively comfortable with the make-up of their own lives. It was only as they were forced to change that they did change.

Certainly this is what is behind the joy we are all called to consider in the first chapter of the book of James. God makes trials and temptations part of the warp-and-wolf of our lives because He knows that we don’t have it in us to change on our own. Our faith grows, not from within, but from without as God works in and through the circumstances of our lives.

The Sea in My Hand?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Last night I found myself holding the sea in my hands.

Now, I first need to point out that it was only the Barents Sea, which Wikipedia describes as “marginal” -- “marginal” being a technical term for territorial waters, with no disrespect intended…though how the Barents itself feels about the description is another question. (Its former name, the Murmans Sea, has a certain allure, until one realizes that it translates to, “The Sea of Norwegians”.)

The second, and even more critical, thing to note is that I wasn’t actually holding the Barents Sea. I was actually holding a few plastic pieces from a 3-D globe puzzle one of my sons is working on. The pieces had fallen on the floor and I had slipped them into my pocket while cleaning up. The pieces represented the Barents Sea – they weren’t the sea itself.

And now for the inevitable lesson.

As we carry our Bibles about, in our hands or in our heads, we can sometimes imagine that the mere possession of the book magically sanctifies us. The words on the page, or the smart phone, or the brain cell, seem to possess a talismanic power to lead us on the path of blessing. We have God’s word, and thus to some extent God, right in our hands.

I want to choose my words carefully hear, and assure the reader that my goals here are modest. I believe the Bible is God’s Word in a unique way. I am not getting into the question of whether the Scriptures simply contains the word, or whether it needs to be activated by the Spirit to become God’s word, or any of those questions which understandably keeps theologians up at night. All I am saying is that the words on the page gain their currency because they point to something greater than themselves: the reality of God and his kingdom.

Take the words, “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Five simple English words, with one English-ed Greek name itself derived from a Hebrew original. I hope you hear them as the stunning climax of the greatest story ever told. But that power comes not from the mere words, but from the fact that they point to the truth that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead.

The fact that the words are sign pointing to something doesn’t diminish their value; it establishes their value. My puzzle-solving son remarked the other day that we ought simply to print out endless barrels money so people can have whatever they want. (Note to government officials and presidents of large banks: this is not actually a good idea.) I tried to explain with my own feeble economic understanding that the dollar bills only stand in for, or mark out, value; the paper points towards one’s labor or one’s land. So it is with words, at least in many instances: they point towards reality.

This is no idle academic musing. When we focus merely on the words in Scripture, and not on the reality they are gesturing towards, we can end up deluding ourselves with a “faith” that is nothing more than the barest assent to a few propositions. We need to recognize that God’s word is there to throw us into the reality of his kingdom, with all the peril and promise that holds. The word is there to point us to a God who actually does hold the Barents Sea, and the whole cosmos, in his almighty hand.

Work and Pray

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

“. . . work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (NASB Php 2:12b–13)

Does having a business plan, using marketing strategies, or taking lessons on how to raise funds for a mission on ministry mean that we are not living in faith and trusting God? Several times in the last month, I have heard Christians indirectly talking about this question. I know people who land on both the positive and the negative side of the answer to this question. A new missionary wants to practice his “spiel” on me to see how it flows and if it will be effective in getting financial commitments. We have a discussion among faculty, and one faculty member asserts that marketing strategies demonstrate a lack of faith that we are engaged in God’s ministry and that he will provide. What are we to believe about this?

When I was a brand-new Christian, before I had read this passage in Philippians, my spiritual mentor encouraged me to “work as if everything depended on me and pray as if everything depended on God.” When I read Philippians, I had an aha! moment. I can work as if everything depended on me because God is working in me, both giving me the desire to fulfill his will and enabling me to do the work to accomplish his good pleasure.

So many times, Christians argue about whether the ultimate is one thing or another (for example, God’s sovereignty versus human responsibility, or here, works versus faith). When I read scripture, it becomes clear to me why it’s so difficult for us to reduce it to one ultimate thing. It is because the Bible teaches both. God is sovereign and we are responsible. Our salvation is by faith and we must do works as evidence of and response to that faith and salvation provided by God. We must resist the temptation to seek a single ultimate, bottom line assertion.

This verse is a great comfort to me because it assures me that I can step out in faith and use all of the gifts, resources, skills, and education that God has given me to plan, strategize, and execute these plans and strategies, knowing that it is a God at work in me, giving me these gifts, resources, skills, and education so that I may follow the desires he has implanted in me to accomplish his good pleasure. Of course, one of the gifts we must always exercise is discernment. I believe God guides us into what he would have us do, but also when and how and with whom. But as I plan and move forward, I pray and I trust God that I am moving forward in his plan.

When Dr. Sid Bradley, former dean at Charlotte and founder of the counseling program of which I’m the director, talked about utilizing psychology as a Christian counselor, he talked about the Exodus, and how the Israelites when they left Egypt, at God’s command, “plundered the Egyptians.” When we learn strategies and approaches from the world (compatible with biblical principles of living), we are plundering the Egyptians. We are taking the gold, silver, and precious jewels of the world and utilizing them for Kingdom work. So may I also encourage you to “work is if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God.”

Happy Reformation Day; May We Always Be Sempre Reformanda!

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

This week many Protestant churches celebrated Reformation Day, in commemoration of Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door on October 31, 1517, in response to the preaching and selling of indulgences. It is still worth reading those theses, both for their historical significance and for greater awareness of what Luther’s position was on the related issues at the time. Perhaps the key to the whole is found in the 18^th thesis, where Luther indicates his understanding that doctrines must be proved “either by reason or Scripture.” The actual positions affirmed in the theses reflect what is called the “early Luther,” before he developed his more distinctive understanding of justification by faith. The fact that Luther’s views on some key subjects evolved in time reflects the fact that the Reformation was not about the rejection of one completely agreed upon set of finalized theological positions for a new set of finalized theological positions, but about continual reformation (for the church to be sempre reformanda) in light of our best understanding of Scripture (see again that part of his 18^th thesis as the presupposition behind them all).

Of course, our temptation is always to think that our current understanding is the ultimate and that we are beyond a point where our understanding might still need further development through continued study of Scripture, perhaps from perspectives we have yet to consider, or that have yet to be formulated (perhaps due to our own cultural or interpretive blinders). That does not mean we’re prepared to turn our theology on its head at the first proposal to interpret Scripture in a way that conflicts with what we have thought to be true. It does mean that our confidence is not in our own doctrinal formulations, but in the Scriptures, and the more clearly our theological convictions are supported by the Scriptures the more likely any future changes to our convictions will reflect merely nuancing of views that passed the test of time and experience.

The question is not if Luther had it all right when he posted his theses, or later when he lectured on Galatians or something else, or if Calvin got it all right with the first edition or with later editions of his Institutes, or if Wesley got it all right at one point or another of his ministry. The question is, where might I still learn from others today, even from (or with) those with whom I might have serious disagreements, and especially from (or with) those whose experience and whose blinders are different from my own?

Reformation Day reminds us of our need to continue to be humble before God’s Word, recognizing our own perpetually limited grasp on the truth we have discovered so far and our need to go on being taught by Scripture, rebuked by Scripture, corrected by Scripture and trained in righteousness by Scripture so that we might “be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17; NIV). May the Reformation continue, to the glory of God and the blessing of his people!

Seeing through the Mundane

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Perhaps poets have this perspective in a way that most of us don’t, poets and novelists. If they have taught us anything through the years, it is that in the smallest, mundane details often overlooked in our lives are revealed the greatest truths. It is in the linnet’s wings of Yeats, and the common spider web of Frost, and the mundane daily trek out into the ocean by Hemingway’s fisherman that we find the largeness of life and death exposed.

Profound truth embedded in the mundane: Perhaps this is why we miss so much of what makes our lives so rich and worth living. We look far out over the distant horizon to understand our lives and, in doing so, we overlook the meaning that is right there in front of us. We so often find ourselves tyrannized by the familiar, allowing the redundancy of time and familiarity of place to rob us daily of what is most important in our lives and souls.

All this crossed my mind the past three days as my colleague and historian, Garth Rosell, and I led a group of individuals from the west coast on a Spiritual Heritage Tour of the north shore of Boston. For those of us who live here in New England, chances are many days we walk unthinkingly over ground that Whitefield may have trod on his way to preaching to thousands upon thousands of his fellow colonialists. Or, without giving it a second thought, we pass by the place where the young D.L. Moody was converted in downtown Boston, a mere stones throw from where the five men fell during the Boston Massacre. Or, could any of us be accused of being more interested in window shopping the stores of Salem without a thought that the modern missionary movement was given birth right there on its shores?: Holy ground masquerading as common, everyday terra firma.

The privilege of leading the tour for these thirty some modern pilgrims involved, of course, the opportunity to point out the significance of places that have long since faded into the woodwork. To multiply our efforts, Dr. Rosell has written a self guided tour book, Exploring New England’s Spiritual Heritage: Seven Daytrips for Contemporary Pilgrims. Hot off the press, the Ockenga Institute has had the privilege of editing and publishing the tour book. For those of you who may be interested in purchasing a copy, please stay tuned to our website for further information in the coming weeks.

What Words Do and Don’t

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

“What is Conscience?” That was the question on the poster for a college roundtable discussion, replete with a picture of Homer Simpson flanked by Little Devil Homer and Little Angel Homer. (I still tend to speak of Little Devil Donald Duck and Little Angel Donald Duck…times change.) What interested me was not so much the question of conscience itself, but rather the way we talk, and therefore think, about things like conscience. (We are back, in other words, to the same concerns we raised in our previous Every Thought Captive posting.)

“What is Conscience?”, for instance, may imply that there is some absolute entity Conscience out there (where?), and that it is of the utmost importance that we figure out precisely what it is so that we use the word correctly. Academics serve as a kind of Truth in Advertising Commission, determined to make sure the product matches the label and the label matches the product. Granted that Conscience does not consist of two tiny spiritual beings atop separate shoulders, what is it…really?

But I am not at all sure that this is how words function – or at least how words like Conscience function. The picture of Devil Homer and Angel Homer might be silly, but it still effectively communicates the reality that we often find ourselves in inner conflict about what to do in a given situation. It is as if there are two voices inside me offering different counsel, and yet both those voices are somehow me. Devil Homer and Angel Homer provide a humorous visual expression of that reality; the word “conscience” just labels the same phenomenon a bit more efficiently. (The rabbis, for their part, spoke of the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination within people; so it is not as if this is a new issue.)

You could fruitfully explore how we get that sense of good and evil, or how it works out in various individuals or cultures, but it is not as if you were going to discover something you didn’t know a good deal about already. The reality gives birth to the word, and not vice versa. The word does not magically capture the essence of the thing and bury that essence within the letters. It simply points more or less effectively to what we know.

You could use another word to point to it, if you wanted.

We face something similar in recent discussions of “the soul”. There has been a raft of commentary both inside and outwith the evangelical world lately to the effect that we don’t have a soul. It would be more accurate, some suggest, to say that we are a soul. Now, there is certainly something to this. Many Christians assume that God is only concerned with invisible person within them, and not with the body they just happen to inhabit. But surely the Scriptures have their eye on the whole person as a responsible (or irresponsible) member of the community of faith, such that one’s actions are just as important as one’s inner thoughts and feelings. The fact that the Bible regularly uses psyche for life in general rather than just the “soul” gives added weight to these critiques. If we turn to everyday life, we can all cite examples of where physical illness precipitates a change in our “soul” – the kindly and patient grandmother turns crotchety in her old age; the learned and affable mentor becomes confused and depressed with the onset of Alzheimers. Was it their “soul” that changed, or their body?

But does that really mean that all this talk in Scripture and the church about a “soul” is completely misguided? Of course not. Just as “conscience” effectively points towards the idea of inner conflict, so “soul” crisply captures the reality that we have an interior awareness of things distinguishable from mere bodily functions (even if that awareness is admittedly enmeshed with bodily functions). We can make decisions to do things that our bodies don’t necessarily want to do, from leaving the last brownie on the plate to rushing into gunfire to rescue a fallen comrade. Everyone knows this, and “soul” is the way we point towards that thing we already know about.

The trouble only comes when we imagine that the “soul” is a “piece” of us in the same way that our gall bladders or our toenails are – that if we disassembled a human we would find the soul squished inside the chest cavity or tangled around their kidneys. Once we get past that, we can recognize that “soul” is a perfectly adequate way of speaking about that interior dimension of a person that we all experience – indeed, it is far more adequate than having to go around speaking of “that interior dimension of a person” all the time. We don’t need to give an exhaustive account of precisely “what” the soul is, or precisely how it functions – it could be the sort of thing that simply doesn’t yield to that kind of investigation. Scientific investigation and philosophical speculation might not be the right tools for thinking about “soul” or “conscience”.

But the words “soul” and “conscience” are pretty good ways of speaking about those realities in everyday life.

Creation Care and Environmental Justice

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

Yesterday, I was driving in my car listening to an NPR program called “The State of Things” which is produced by our local radio station at the University of North Carolina. They were describing the origins of the environmental justice movement, and interviewed the couple living in Warren County, North Carolina, who are credited with founding the movement. The story was an interesting account of their efforts to prevent their poor, predominantly black community from having a toxic waste landfill located in their community. In this story, the “environmental” aspect of the story is obvious. The “justice” aspect of this story is the way poor, and often predominantly minority, communities are exploited in this way. One aspect that caught my attention, however, which leads to this essay, was the couple’s rationale for their activism.

When the interviewer asked them what motivated them. They unabashedly declared, we are Christians, and we must take care of God’s creation. It is our duty. This was their motivation . . . . in the 1970s. As the story unfolded, their Christian commitment and how it motivated them to care for God’s creation wove in and out like a golden thread. It was a spiritual battle they were waging. It delighted me to hear this couple innocently declaring how their faith in the Creator God led them to engage in resisting the pollution of their community with toxic substances and in doing so gave birth to the environmental justice movement. All of that on NPR!

Today, I am more likely to hear evangelicals and other conservative Christians express criticism of environmental activism, and promoting development of all stripes. I’m always surprised by this, and that led me to reflect on why I find conservation issues so compelling. In my mind, it starts with the creation account. God created us in his image and gave us dominion over the creation. He placed us in the garden he had made and gave us the responsibility to tend it and cultivate it:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . .Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” [1]

When I was an undergraduate, I learned about ecology as a biology major, I became a Christian, and I learned about creation. The juxtaposition of these three experiences intertwined to set me on a course to be a Christian who believes in conservation, and what today has come to be known as “creation care.” Ecology taught me about the complexity of the world and the utter interdependence of each element on every other element in the environment. We cannot survive without each other. You eliminate all the wolves and the deer population grows explosively. They overgraze the forest until all the trees die. They get hit by cars and people are injured or die. They starve to death. We protect designer species like the tiger by setting aside great tracts of land, which protect all of the creatures who live in that environment, not just the tiger. As our environment goes, so goes the planet, and so go us.

As a young Christian, I learned that God made the world. Not only that, but he made us stewards of it. He gave us dominion, but that dominion was a stewardship under his sovereignty. God still is the creator of it all and the sustainer of it all. As a Christian, therefore, I realized that someday I would stand before my Lord, my God and the Creator of all that is, and account for my stewardship of the creation over which he gave me dominion. I have, therefore, always been confused by the opposition I have encountered among so many evangelicals and otherwise conservative Christians to conservation or any aspect of the environmental movement. Granted, taken to its extreme, it can be both idolatrous and ultimately destructive to the environment it desires to protect. Furthermore, our dominion as the only creature made in the image of God, includes cultivation of that creation. Therefore, my environmentalism is not a blind “leave it alone it does best when left to itself” view of the creation. God gave us the stewardship of the creation in order for us to care for it, cultivate it, and use it responsibly, knowing that ultimately we will have to give an account of our stewardship to the true owner of everything that exists. To do anything less seems to me to be both disobedient to the God who created us for this purpose, and destructive to the creation of which we are stewards and to our witness to the God we serve before the unbelieving world.

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^[1]New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ge 1:26–28; 2:9-17). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

What Would It Mean to Err on the Side of Life?

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

In a recent debate between Republican presidential candidates, one of them defended their executive order requiring (with a parental opt-out option) adolescent girls of his state to receive the vaccine protecting against the human papilloma virus and thus some forms of cervical cancer by saying, “I will always err on the side of life.” That’s an argument that would normally resonate strongly with traditionally pro-life evangelicals. In this case it didn’t really work that well for the candidate. But it does raise the question again of what it would look like if Christians did consistently tend to err on the side of life.

But when it comes to the death penalty there is no recognition that a consistent commitment to erring on the side of life would mean recognizing that there has been a history of erring on the side of death and that that reality will continue as long as we deal with imperfect legal systems and imperfect evidence or witnesses. Why would one be prepared to err on the side of death in these cases?

In the constant attacks on the EPA one hears that the agency has a negative impact on businesses and the economy. But the EPA estimates that the changes that have been proposed “could save up to 2,500 lives,” not to mention that other negative impacts on human health and the health of the environment. Perhaps their number is inaccurate. But anyone who is committed to always erring on the side of life would have to weigh how much 2,500 lives (and further damage to the environment) might be worth in business expenses.

One presidential candidate has excoriated “Obamacare,” arguing that if his care had been entrusted to Obamacare during his recent fight with cancer he would be dead today. I confess that I find this argument (repeatedly used) outrageous, deceptive, and outrageously misleading. The point of Obamacare is not to make people who can afford better care to “settle” for something less than what they now have available. Those of us who already have good healthcare can continue to use what we have. The point is to find ways of making healthcare affordable for millions of Americans who are currently without any healthcare at all (a 2008 estimate put the number at 45.7 million people). So instead of contrasting his care under his high-end healthcare coverage with his imagination of what it would be like under Obamacare, the only appropriate comparison is one between the treatment that 45 million people would receive right now with no healthcare, and what those same people would receive under Obamacare (see the informative article on healthcare in the US on Wikipedia, where it is pointed out that ours is the “only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have [some] coverage”). How many millions are more likely to survive under one of those scenarios than the other? In this case, what would it mean to consistently err on the side of life?

The abortion issue, which monopolized so much evangelical political involvement in recent elections, has hardly been mentioned at all this time around. But it is fascinating to me to notice the strange way in which evangelical-focused rhetoric (and rhetorical coming from some evangelicals) on various political issues relates to profound issues of life and justice. Three years ago Tony Campolo (and others) argued for an approach to consistently erring on the side of life:

[W]e should be consistently pro-life, which means that life is sacred and should be protected not only for the unborn but also for the born. This requires that there be commitments to stop wars, end capital punishment, and provide universal healthcare for all of our citizens—in addition to stopping abortions.

He referred to this as a “consistently pro-life position.” Unfortunately, in my view, Campolo’s approach to erring on the side of life hasn’t found much traction in many Christian circles either. Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” That should be enough to motivate us to think carefully about what we do or do not say (and the critical assessment we give to what any politician says) about topics that have consequences for the lives (and deaths) of people in our nation or another.

Pulling a Sting

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

When he said it, not many of us really thought that much about it at first. In fact, it sounded a bit odd. We were all sitting around the Ockenga conference table—the thirteen of us as we do every month at our Pastors Roundtable—and one of our group told us very innocently that the thing that finally was bringing his congregation back to life was his fledgling little Junior High ministry.

This pastor had been racking his brain for years, trying to motivate his church toward some sense of vitality. He had given his congregation the big vision talk, followed quickly by the even bigger envisioning process, leading to the development of a vision statement. He had read all of the books. He had preached all the sermons about perishing without a vision. Nothing seemed to pry his congregation from the grips of years of lethargy. Nothing…nothing seemed to be working.

And then, out of no where, with hardly a strategy in mind and certainly beyond the scope of his own best intentions, the right volunteer couples from his little church in Maine, with the right giftedness and sincerity in their hearts, connected with the right junior high students. And it was this that brought new life as families began to be attracted to his little church. Broadsided with the simple and unintended! Imagine that; the life and vitality of a church resting on the narrow shoulders and low riding jeans of a group of adolescents. The church took off.

In subsequent conversations with this and other Pastor Roundtable groups, similar stories began to surface. In another of our New England churches whose pastor had a cup of coffee on a pro sports team, the church’s sports ministry to the community became the place of new growth and excitement for the congregation. For another pastor, it was their children’s ministry. Imagine a church whose annual summer focus on Vacation Bible School became the spark that has brought genuine excitement to the entire congregation the year round.

I wonder sometimes if we miss the forest through the trees for those of us who are committed to breathing new life into our places of ministry. With our best intentions in tow, we place five thousand pounds of vision and strategy down on a five hundred pound church. It is utterly crushing.

I admit it. I have done the same thing periodically when asked to do church consulting. Frankly, it is not that difficult to diagnose the problems within most churches. The real difficulty lies in churches having the resources and the will to respond to the solutions offered. The economics of the situation work like this: The smaller the church, the bigger the problems to be solved. But, alas, the smaller the church, the less resources there are to respond effectively to proposed solutions. The solutions sometimes almost become more onerous than the problems.

To be considered healthy, why must every church have a thriving small group ministry and thriving youth ministry and thriving evangelism ministry and thriving hospitality ministry and a thriving community outreach ministry and so on…? Rather, what if we looked at our churches more organically than systematically? It takes some investigative work, but where is the place—sometimes ever so small—of vitality in your church? Where is there evidence that God is working, and how can we come along side of that place(s) where He has decided to work uniquely in your setting? Where is the thin thread in your church that, if pulled, could unravel into whole new possibilities for your church?

I am convinced that every church has these areas, sometimes in the most surprising of places. As one pastor of a church that is filled with the currently perceived deadly demographic of elderly people told me the other day, the point of excitement currently in his church is a small group of his elderly couples that have found new excitement in their faith. The fragrance of their newfound excitement has wafted across the rest of the church. Go figure, old people and junior high kids: places where God is doing His best work in His church. There must be a God.

Watch Your Language

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Most readers of this piece will already know that the word “theology” consists of the Greek words for “God” (Theo’s) and “word/speech/account” ((logos). What we sometimes forget is that this logos is our account of God, and not God’s account of himself. Theology walks down the path of human language. Trouble, as it often does, lies on either side of this path.

On the one side, we may be tempted to despair that we can say anything meaningful at all about God. This sentiment has been around for ages, but it is particularly popular in the modern non-Christian world. All our words about God, to cite the popular fable, are just the gropings of blind men describing an elephant. (The twist, of course, is that the enlightened tale-teller knows it’s an elephant – but this never seems to get noted.) Christians, who have experienced God’s Word in the deeds and words of Jesus the Messiah, can steer clear of that danger pretty easily.

The other trap is one to which evangelicals are perhaps more prone; and that is imagining that our language about God is simple and exhaustive, and thus – unlike all other human speech -- needs no qualifications. Indeed, for some people the search for just this kind of unequivocal speech about God constitutes the essence of the theological task.

The first sign that God himself does not seem to endorse this sort of talk comes from the nature of Scripture itself. If the goal of theology is to give a perfectly straightforward, reasonable account of God, we have to admit the Bible does a pretty poor job of it. We have compilations of stories from a distant place in a strange language, none of which explain themselves very much. We have commandments which are rather more straightforward…but while some of them make instant sense (“don’t mislead a blind man on the path”), others remain obscure (“don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk”). Even the clearest summary statements about God can raise some questions even as they answer others: “The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, showing mercy to thousands and judgment to threes…” So, yes, he is more merciful than judgmental: but how does he decide when to be which?

In response to this we often try to be clearer than Scripture itself. “The most important thing to know about God”, some will assert, “is that he pursues his own glory.” Now, there are any number of Scripture passages that back up this assertion, and thus every Christian ought to heartily affirm it. But as soon as we put the thought into a specific language, and speak it to actual people, problems arise. To take the most pressing one: the idiom “to seek one’s own glory” in modern English carries overwhelmingly negative connotations. The bare statement, “God seeks his own glory”, is in danger of painting a portrait of God as a megalomaniacal dictator, the Kim Jong-Il of a cosmic North Korean kingdom. Surely we must do better than that.

But what can we do? We can’t simply shrink back and refuse to speak about God. He has said and done too much in our presence to make that a viable option. We have to speak. But if we take the Scripture as our guide, we will be liberated to speak of him in a fully human language comfortable with paradox and qualifications. We will be happy to let God’s speech about himself provide the model for our speech about him.

We will also embrace stories as meaningful forms of theological discourse, not mere tales to be moralized or theologized before they are of any use. To return to our example of “God seeking his own glory”: we could rightly devote an entire tome to explaining that God’s pursuit of his own glory is a world away from our pursuit of our own glory, that his pursuit involves embracing those lower than himself rather than annihilating them. Those would hardly be wasted words.

But we could also simply read the story of the crucified Messiah, “lifted up” upon the cross, and see it all in a moment.