Take up your cross. . .

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” These are the word spoken by Christ to his disciples that are sandwiched in between Peter’s confession of Christ and the transfiguration if Christ in the gospel of Luke.  They are such powerful and gruesome words, imagine being one of the disciples who were with Christ on that day he uttered these words. First Peter announces that Jesus is “the Christ of God,” then Jesus tells them that this Christ guy that Peter speaks of is going to suffer, and that in turn his followers are going to suffer, and then it is revealed that He truly is the Christ through the transfiguration. It's quite an eventful time in the life of the disciples. But in finding the Christ, they are told that they are going to suffer.

Now think of what the image of the cross was in the minds of these disciples. To Christ’s Followers today, the cross is an image of love. To Christ’s Followers in 30 C.E. the cross was a gruesome image of death and humiliation. The disciples would have never been caught dead wearing a cross around their necks or hanging them in their houses. As someone once said, “To a disciple, seeing someone wear a cross around their neck would be like us seeing someone wearing an electric chair around their neck.” Maybe the image that Mel Gibson gave us in “The Passion of the Christ” can help us understand what the image of the cross would have been to the disciples.

Now fast forward to today, but the today that happened approximately 1,975 years ago (give or take a few years). The disciples had to stand by and watch their beloved leader being beaten, whipped, flogged, mocked, humiliated, and ultimately killed in one of, if not the most brutal of fashions ever available. I have a feeling that the words Jesus uttered back on the day that Peter confessed Jesus as Lord may have entered the minds of the disciples during all of the chaos. I also have a feeling that they might have thought something like this; “umm, this is what we are called to do on a daily basis!” Maybe they wanted to take the same approach that Lone Star and Barf took when they saw what they were about to get into in Space Balls.

Fortunately for many of us, the cross that we carry allows us to skip the physical atrocities that Jesus unjustly had to suffer from the religious and political powers.  Most of us get to carry a cross more similar to the one the apostle John carried, (according to Christian tradition, John was the only disciple not killed for his faith), one that will not result in physical punishment. Instead he was ostracized and sent to exile on an island. Like John, sometimes we are going to be ostracized for our faith. Sometimes it will come from secular sources, sometimes from other religious sources, sometimes it will come from even inside our own religious tradition. I remember getting angry with a group of Christ Followers who took out a page ad in my local newspaper urging for peaceful responses after 9/11. At the time I thought they were idiots, I am sure others thought the same, maybe they used other words. But the point is this, these men and women were ostracized for their faith. However, in retrospect, all that these people were trying to do was to follow the teachings of Christ to their fullness, thru loving even their most disliked neighbors (as the Good Samaritan did), and by turning the other cheek to their oppressors. For this group of Christ followers:  love was their cross, peace was their cross, and Christ was their cross.

 In short, the crosses that Christ Followers carry on a daily basis are the teachings and actions of Christ. We carry teachings and actions which are counter to the culture that we live in; teachings and actions which are seen by the culture as being foolish. Many times, by carrying and holding onto these teachings, others are going to ostracize us. They are going to call us names; they are going to claim that we are bad Americans, even bad Christians! And despite the old limerick, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” names do hurt. Names are painful. Names have a powerful effect on a person; they can make them angry, they can make them sad, they can make them hurt. But there is Good News!  A Good News that is unknown to those who continue to persecute the disciples of Christ. That good news is this; resurrection is just around the corner! 

Part four of: "In the Beginning. . ."

                        First off, sorry for taking so long to tie this up, I got distracted, it happens. Secondly if you want to see the first there parts click on them here: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Thirdly, I am currently reading a book called Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards, and I will write a book review on it and after that I will begin "reviewing" another more ancient book by the name of The Gospel of St. Mark. Finally, please, please, please comment your thoughts on this. You don't have to agree with me to post and I appreciate differing view points.

                   So a few months ago, I read an article from the religion section of the Huffington Post which I find quite enlightening, not the Huffington Post in general, but the religion section of the Huffington Post. Anyway, I don’t remember much about the article, but I do remember that it prompted me to post something on Facebook that went something like this, “Those who open their Bibles to find answers will find the answers that THEY seek. Those who open the Bible to ask questions will find the answers that HE gives. Just ponder that for a few moments.”

                What I meant by this is that when one searches for a certain topic in scripture, they can often find exactly what they want to find. If they want to find what God has to say about salvation they can find all the verses on salvation, then read each individual verse, and then pick out the verses that fit best their thinking on the issue. The result of this is that the person does find the answer that THEY were seeking. However, in finding the answers that THEY were seeking, THEY often force the Bible to conform to THEIR own view of the world and in doing so we end up with a distorted gospel.  

                However, when a person allows the scriptures to give then the answer that GOD desires, their view of the gospel there is likely to be distorted. In order for a person to do this they must attempt to attempt to take their worldview out of the equation. Now this can never be done completely, but it can be attempted, and in attempting to do so two things do occur. First, a person will be able to better recognize when they are distorting the scriptures with their own world view, and secondly they are more likely come out with a better understanding of scripture. But to do this, one must come at the scriptures with questions such as: what is the point of this passage? What did the author want to say?  Why did he say this? Why was it important for him to say this? What aspect of God is he trying to get at? To whom was the author saying this to? Etc.  The result of this is that the person ends up being formed by the scriptures in the way GOD desires us to be.

                Ultimately, I feel when we attempt to reconcile all of the different creation stories to agree with one another; we fall into the trap of making the scriptures say what we want them to say and in doing so we fail to miss an opportunity for God to reshape us. Or in other words we get the answer we were seeking at the expense of getting understanding from God. On the other hand, when we allow ourselves to see that each author was to attempting to tell us about the nature of God (as creator, savior, and sovereign) and our relationship to Him and the earth, rather than how nature was created by God, we come to a better understanding of who God is and when we understand who God is we can better understand who God wants us to be.

Part three of: "In the Beginning. . ."

            So I have discussed two of the most popular creation accounts in scripture in my last two posts on this series (Part One and Part Two). Now I want to discuss two lesser known accounts, one in Psalm 74 and the other in Job 38. These two accounts are similar in the fact that they are both part of a greater narrative. They are also alike in the fact that they both ascribe glory to God within their respective narratives. Despite their similarities we are presented these two accounts for differing reasons; Psalm 74 is presented in order to reminds us that salvation comes from God, whereas Job 38 is delivered to is in the hopes that we are reminded that God is God, and we are not.

First let’s look at Psalm 74. Here we are given a creation account that recalls how God created order in the midst of chaos rather than God creating ex nihilo (out of nothing). This whole creation/ordering of the earth begins with God subduing both sea creatures and Leviathan (some rather large sea creature). Now, last I knew, when God the creatures that dwell in the sea, that He described them as being good. So how could these evil creatures have been created by God? If they were created by God, why would God have to subdue both of these creatures if they were described as being good?

Now some could make two claims. The first these events occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, which is called the Gap Theory. Now, it’s a plausible theory, but I have yet to be convinced of its truth. Mainly because I don’t believe that the bible was dictated word for word by God, which means I do not have to struggle and find ways to reconcile the different creation accounts. Another possibility could be that it occurred sometime after the fall. Once again, possible, but it seems odd to include an account that occurred after the fall with events that are concerned with the creation/ordering of the earth.

What I find more plausible is that our psalmist really wasn’t taking care to be literal, after all we are talking about poetry. So instead of trying to put the event in the context of creation, we need to put it into a different context, which is the context of the psalmist, which in turn is utter chaos. In short the psalmist is reminding his readers that God has re-ordered chaos once before, and He can do so again.

Now, let’s fast forward Isaiah for a second. Here we are told God has control over the nations, even without the nations realizing that He has control over them. To the Israelites, God literally controlled all of creation, both the elements of the earth and the people of the earth. So if the psalmist views God as being in control of both of the nations as well as the elements of creation (which I think he does) our defeated friend is saying this, “God, we are in a time of chaos, please do not leave us in this situation. I know how great you are through the fact that you once ordered chaos at the beginning of time. Please God, don’t forget us and order chaos once again.” In short, the psalmist is saying, God you were once were gracious enough to be great for us before, please be great for us again by delivering us from our enemies.

Moving onto Job, we have a situation where God rather plants land and sets it into the waters. But as we know, in Genesis, land is created by separating water. So which is it? Or better yet, does it matter?

When we put the passage in context, it does not matter. The context in the book of Job is that Job feels as if God has abandoned him despite being upright. But rather than asking God to vindicate him, Job ultimately asks, "why me?" Now, the whole book of Job consists of Job turning back to the fact that he is sinless, while his friends tell him that he must have sinned against God and beg of him to repent of his sins. But finally after thirty plus chapters of this, our hero finally gets a response from God, which is essentially this, “Job I am greater than you, and although you may not understand everything I do, the fact is this: I have done things you could never do, I have been places that you have never been and I know things you could never know.” In short, our creation account here is once again not about how God created, but rather that God is great, partly due to the fact that only God created.

Both of these creation accounts are about the fact that God is great. In one account a psalmist acknowledges God’s greatness by recalling the fact that God has controlled chaos in the past and then asks for God to do it again. In Job we are reminded (by God Himself), that there are just some things we can never understand (perhaps one of the things we could never fully understand is how God created), and also that we need to remember to trust God because God knows what He is doing.

In the next installment, I will discuss why it is not important to reconcile the creation accounts and what we can miss out on if we do.