Gospel and Sociology

For my undergrad I studied Sociology. Sociology is basically the studied of human injustice at a macro-level. No other discipline has diagnosed and defined the system of darkness that results in oppression and violence better than sociology. When faced with the sheer magnitude of social injustice an automatic response is rage, passion begins to surge from deep within, passion that then is channeled most often into one revolutionary movement or another. Re-acting to rage through what is perceived to be positive social action such as resistance or revolution is often portrayed as the best response to institutional injustice. The problem with this perspective however is that it ignores completely the depths of darkness that resides within each of our own souls. Even if successful in overthrowing that which seems to be the source of evil we only become the new agents of injustice because all along we ourselves were driven by darkness.

In his book Miroslav Wolf explores the sociological issues of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation from a Gospel perspective. No other book has helped me to make connections between the things I learned in sociology and how they relate to the Gospel better than this book. Below is a quote on the miracle of forgiveness and its power to break the reign of darkness in society.

"For the followers of the crucified Messiah,the main message of the imprecatory Psalms is this: rage belongs before God, not in the reflectively managed and manicured form of a confession, but as a pre-reflective outburst from the depths of the soul. This is no mere cathartic discharge of pent up aggression before the Almighty who ought to care. Much more significantly, by placing unattended rage before God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self face to face with a God who loves and does justice. Hidden in the dark chambers of our hearts and nourished by the system of darkness, hate grows and seeks to infest everything with its hellish will to exclusion. In the light of the justice and love of God, however, hate recedes and the seed is planted for the miracle of forgiveness. Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion, without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that persons humanity and imitate God's love for him. And when one knows that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness." - Wolf, Exclusion and Embrace, 124

Keep it simple..

We read this quote by C.S. Lewis in our Sunday school class and I loved it..

"It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects- education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think that the State has a lot of different objects- military, political, economic and what not.

But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them like him. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time." (Selected from Mere Christianity for Devotional Classics)

just like us

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek." Heb 5:7-10

I read this last night and it rocked me:

"Speaking of Jesus' vocation brings us to quite a different place from some traditional statements of gospel christology. 'Awareness of vocation' is by no means the same thing as Jesus having the sort of 'supernatural' awareness of himself, of Israel's god, and of the relation between the two of them, such as is often envisaged by those who, concerned to maintain a 'high' christology, place it within an eighteenth-century context of implicit Deism where one can maintain Jesus' 'divinity' only by holding some form of docetism. Jesus did not in other words, 'know that he was God' in the same way that one knows one is male or female, hungry or thirsty, or that one ate an orange an hour ago. His 'knowledge' was of a more risky, but perhaps more significant, sort: like knowing one is loved. One cannot 'prove' it except by living by it. Jesus' prophetic vocation thus included within it the vocation to enact, symbolically, the return of YHWH to Zion. His messianic vocation included within it the vocation to attempt certain tasks which, according to scripture, YHWH had reserved for himself. He would take upon himself the role of messianic shepherd, knowing that YHWH had claimed this role as his own. He would perform the saving task which YHWH had alone said he could achieve. He would do what no messenger, no angel, but only the 'arm of YHWH', the presence of Israel's god, could accomplish. As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be. He was Israel's Messiah; but there would, in the end, be 'no king but God'.

I suggest, in short, that the return of YHWH to Zion, and the temple theology that it brings into focus, are the deepest keys and clues to gospel christology. Forget the 'titles' of Jesus, at least for a moment; forget the pseudo-orthodox attempts to make Jesus of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the reductionism that is the mirror image of that unthinking would-be orthodoxy. Focus, instead, on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, symbolizing the the Temple's destruction and celebrating the final exodus."
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 653

I hesitate to add anything. Only that I would invite you to think of Jesus in the garden on the night that he was betrayed. Meditate on the tears that he shed. Go deep into his agony and anxiety. That was real. That was familiar. The struggle of faith. The knowledge that one is loved by God and the risk and danger of living accordingly.

Docetism is the heretical belief that Jesus was not really human but that instead he only appeared that way. A clever and convenient disguise that God put on so that he could lay the smack down and teach us pithy moral maxims and timeless theological truths. The degree to which my own understanding of Jesus' humanity has been influenced by a pseudo-orthodox docetism is perverse.

"We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." 2 Peter 1:16-21

Jesus heard that voice. He knew that he was loved. He knew that his life pleased God. But on the night he was betrayed his agony was such that he shed tears of blood. The 'word of the prophets made more certain' that Peter speaks of is Jesus. The dark place, that he speaks of is this world, this present evil age. The word rendered dark place is the word αυχμηρος and this is the only place in the NT that it occurs. That does not make it significant, but I love the way that it describes the world in which we live. The world that is subjected to the reign of Sin and Death. Where truth and especially the knowledge of God can only penetrate the thick darkness like shafts of light descending into the ocean. The NET Bible translates αυχμηρος as murky place. When Jesus humiliated himself and became one of us, part of his humiliation was subjecting himself to living in this murky place. We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, who doesn't understand what it is like to live in this murky place, where the knowledge of the love of God is distorted, so let us look to him for encouragement and let us "draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Hebrews 4:16

love this

Whitney got this watch for my birthday, and never have I been so crazy for an "accessory". It's automatic so the movement of my body powers the watch. Who thinks of such things? It ticks, and it has windows so you can look inside at the intricacies of the movement. In the Sky Mall magazine I have seen adds for watch cases that resemble humidors. I always thought, who owns a bunch of watches and needs a case to store/display them. Now that I own one I am beginning to feel the itch to add to my collection. Never would have guessed that.

the medium (you and me) is the message

I guess it is dangerous to quote out of context. I wanted to post the previous quote because I felt that it expressed a very pastoral scholarly sentiment that I not only agreed with, but was very encouraged by. The reality is that when it comes to speaking about Jesus historically, it is very important that we be honest about the data as it exists. When we press it further than it is intended to be pressed (for example no one saying of Jesus or teaching of Jesus in the Gospels ever claims to be word for word what was spoken at a given time or place) we run the risk of misrepresenting the data and ultimately misrepresenting our Lord.

For many evangelicals historical inquiry is considered useful only so far as it can be used as a club with which we can bash the heads in of all who dare to suggest that the words and stories that are contained in our text are not the actual words and actions of the Lord. In order to explain discrepancies in various accounts then we are forced to flatten and bend the text in ungodly ways to make sense of the data. It is much better to receive the texts as they were intended to be received, traditions/memories about Jesus the God-Man who actually existed, and who's life and ministry provide the example for all subsequent communities of faith, communicated through the memory and voice of ordinary un-educated men.

Not factual literal accounts, not audio recordings, not transcripts, not video evidence. If Jesus felt it were in important for us to have word for word accounts of his life and teaching surely he would have included scribes and not fisherman as his confidants. Heck he would have even written stuff down himself. The fact that he didn't seems to suggest that he had faith that the Spirit would recall all that really mattered, and that the voice of the uneducated ordinary men who followed him would be better than his own to communicate his message. Interestingly this seems to follow a pattern found elsewhere in scripture of God choosing ordinary men, empowering them by his Spirit, and then using them as the primary means by which he makes himself known among the nations.

We worship a holy God who lives in unapproachable light and who desires to be known but who chooses to make himself known through the fallible ordinary lives of sinful man. That God created man pre-Fall to be his image bearer on the Earth is easy to accept (apologies to those who find even this ridiculous/unbelievable), that he remains radically committed to them as his image bearers, and primary defenders of his reputation despite them being completely corrupted by Sin is miraculous. Why did he not come in our day when we could have recorded his teaching and miracles in High Definition and mass produce exact copies on Blue Ray DVD's? For real impact we could have even enhaced some recordings with 3-D technology so that those who watched could feel as though they were actually present. I would suggest that it is because the testimony of the Spirit of God breathing life into that which was once dead (me and you) always trumps texts, audio recordings, video etc. as an effective means of communicating the Gospel.