In recently rereading one of my many theological notes that I jot down on whatever I can get my hands on I came across the following:

The essence of humanity is an eschatological reality called forth in Jesus Christ.

Related to this idea I came across a passage from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity where he talks about the new man, the man that God creates through what Lewis calls “the divine infection,” which, to put it simply, is Christ sharing his very life with us. And so, here is the passage:

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact, what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night’s sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

To get right to the heart of why I find the above ideas so provocative is that if our essential selves are embedded in a relationship with Christ and is yet to be manifest than ultimately none of us has the final say regarding what is most true about ourselves. We cannot turn to ourselves, our experiences and desires, to determine what is true regarding genuine humanity and within that larger umbrella, what is true about our individual selves, for such a truth would be firmly beyond us.

Salvation is not an individual affair. It is not a direct line from God thrown to the individual soul. Our salvation is located in the body of Jesus, for he worked out our salvation in his body through utter reliance upon the Spirit. And through reliance upon this same Spirit we are incorporated into the body of Jesus: the Church, the sphere of salvation. By pressing into the lives of the other members of the body, according to the pattern of love that Jesus has given, we release the gifts the Spirit has sown into each member of the body, and through this we are all built up into the knowledge and stature of Jesus, the fount of our sonship and salvation.

From all eternity was the Pouring, the Father forever pouring himself completely into the Son, and the Son completely pouring himself back unto the Father, the Father only knowing himself in the Son, and the Son in the Father. From all eternity the Father was perfect will and the Son was perfect response, and this perfection is the unity of love, a love so perfect that it is conscious of itself as Spirit. And this is the Pouring: the one God as Father, Son, and Spirit.

Before there was anything there was the Pouring and the Pouring poured in a new way, a way that brought forth all creation. And nothing that was or is has come into being but that the Father poured himself out by speaking the Son through the Spirit. And in the Son and through the Spirit the Father has willed that all creation should return to find its completion in Him.

When the time was right the Father willed that the Son through the power of the Spirit should fully pour himself into creation and live among us who turned away. Being among us he fully became one of us by taking our turning upon himself, so that within our turning away he may turn us back to God. And now, any who trust in him will find that where we have turned away he has turned us back, so that we may pour ourselves into the fullness of God, as he has poured himself out as an offering for us. And this is salvation: to trust him by fully pouring ourselves out for Him who fully pours himself out for us.

The Church in the flesh can love God for her own reasons and in her own ways, but ultimately she will betray him with a kiss.

The thematic thread running through today’s lectionary was forgiveness, which struck me as both apropos and challenging on this day, the day of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that fell the Twin Towers, that took down a plane in Pennsylvania, and that took out a wing of the Pentagon. It is challenging because though Americans are rightly angry about the events that this day commemorates, the Scriptures are quite clear that godliness requires people to forgive their enemies. It is also challenging because although God requires Christians to forgive their enemies, He does not want them to sit passively and allow evil to run unchecked and unchallenged in the world. So, my questions for this day are: how do we people of faith genuinely forgive and yet fight against an enemy who continues to perpetuate evil? What does this look like? Do we point our bombs and bullets in the direction of the enemy and pray for them as we pull the trigger?

From time to time I hear conservatives who profess Christ talk about the need to shrink or get rid of welfare programs because welfare supposedly enables the poor by undermining their initiative to seek a better life. I don’t doubt that to some degree this is true, and I am quite sure that there are many who abuse the welfare system, but even in light of these problems the proposals to radically scale back welfare to promote personal initiative strikes me as profoundly inconsistent with a Christian worldview. When a person confesses to being a Christian that person is essentially making the claim that he or she has been freely lifted out of his or her spiritual and moral poverty through the riches of Jesus Christ. Having said this I realize that I have to be careful in applying spiritual truths to the political realm. Consequently, I acknowledge that our dependency upon God is qualitatively different than the kind of interdependency we were designed to express in the political arena, and that our dependency upon God leads to sharing in God’s glory, whereas certain types of political dependency can actually undermine human dignity. So, my criticism should not be seen as a tacit endorsement of unbridled socialism, on the other hand it is meant to be a sharp criticism of the self-help ideology that seems to dominate the political thinking of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ.

Of course a big part of the debate regarding welfare is about the proper role of government in alleviating poverty, and honestly I am not sure how to respond to this matter except to say that in the Old Testament God did establish political structures to prevent people from going into poverty, and I am talking radical structures that completely trespass upon the sacrosanct principles of capitalism. In saying this I realize I am getting into hermeneutics, which is a relatively complex matter. Nonetheless, given what I know of human nature, and our capacity to be self seeking and acquisitive, I think Christians should factor in God’s willingness to curtail and at times undermine natural economic dynamics through the use of political structures.

I just love that scene in Star Wars where Dumbledore says to Frodo, “Do, or do not. There is no try”. You really get the sense that Frodo took it to heart when he used a time turner to go back in time to prevent the dark lord Voldemort from creating the Death Star so that the Shire would never even have a chance of being destroyed. Of course, such wisdom is to be expected from a wizard who died, ascended, and returned as a white wizard.

This is grace: to know that God stubbornly embraces you even though your heart pulses with the power to personally drive and twist the nails further into the body of the one who hung to bless you.

It’s 5:30 in the morning, but on other nights it’s been three, or four in the morning and I wake up reviewing my life, not as a matter of conscious choice, but as if my soul was already in the act and at the time of waking I am merely becoming aware of what was already in motion. On this morning as I mash upon and turn over the events of my life, as I jump from one image to another, looking at what I was striving for and what was driving me, it seems that all my life I have been fighting God for what he passionately wanted to give me. I wanted love and dignity, value and significance, and for some profoundly stupid reason I wanted to earn these things. I wanted to wear my deeds like a merit badge that I could sew on some kind of life sash across my chest. I have been stupid, and I am tired, perhaps tired like Jacob wrestling with the angel and I feel seconds away from having my thigh dislocated and becoming Israel.

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Blessed Father, May the dislocation come to pass that I may lean hard upon the staff you have given me.

Throughout this summer I have been primarily reading in the field of Christian Ethics in preparation for a class I will be teaching in the fall. In doing research for this class I was excited to discover a new anthology edited by noted theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, which is described as “an innovative exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.” This particularly excited me as it has been my developing conviction that Christian ethics is intimately connected to Christian spirituality, both of which should be centered upon and emerge from the worshiping life of the Church. In the academy, however, all of these fields are generally treated as separate fields of academic inquiry, which no doubt reflects our Enlightenment heritage through which knowledge was primarily constructed through rational analysis (analysis being that mode of understanding through which domains of inquiry are broken down, sorted, and categorized). This is a contrary method to more organic forms of knowledge which begins with the conviction that there exists in the whole of things features that cannot be properly understood when discretely analyzed. Anyways, given the thrust of my convictions about the organic relationship between these aspects of the Christian life, I found it fitting and perhaps providential to stumble across the following entry written perhaps ten or more years ago in a personal journal of  ideas that I periodically carry around. And so…

In the Christian faith ethics is not based upon some rational principle nor ideological construct. Rather it is grounded upon worship at the heart of which is sacrifice. First, and by far foremost, is the sacrifice of the One-and-Only sent from the bosom of the Father in the power of the Spirit. Upon this is our own sacrifice, which is first a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and second a sacrificial lifestyle where again and again we offer ourselves to the rhythm of crucifixion and resurrection in Christ. This rhythm is the heart beat of discipleship in union with Christ. In this light, Christian ethics is properly denoted a mystery since it is the product of a believer’s incorporation into Christ by the Spirit, whose life becomes an unveiling of the one to whom they are united.

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“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”