A Lover and a Fighter (a Christmas postscript)

The following is from pages 124-125 & 130 of C.S. Lewis' book Reflections on the Psalms:

[The Psalms' focus on the Messiah as a conquering hero] emphasizes an aspect of the Nativity to which our later sentiment about Christmas (excellent in itself) does less than justice. For those who first read these [messianic] Psalms as poems about the birth of Christ, that birth meant something very militant: the hero, the "judge" or champion or giant-killer, who was to fight and beat death, hell and the devils, had at last arrived, and the evidence suggests that Our Lord also thought of Himself in those terms.

[...]

The hero has come.

Read in this sense, the [messianic] Psalm restores Christmas to its proper complexity. The birth of Christ is the arrival of the great warrior and the great king. Also of the Lover, the Bridegroom, whose beauty surpasses that of man. But not only the Bridegroom as the lover, the desired; the Bridegroom also as he who makes fruitful, the father of children still to be begotten and born. Certainly the image of a Child in a manger by no means suggests to us a king, giant-killer, bridegroom, and father. But it would not suggest the eternal Word either---if we didn't know. All alike are aspects of the same central paradox.

Who is God? (The Lord's Prayer, Part III)

Priorities, son. Priorities.

"Abba, Father, all things are possible for Thee. Take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou will." Mark 14:36

The third and final thing Jesus does in His prayer is finish with the proper posture and attitude towards God, by concluding, "Not what I will, but what You will." If Jesus started His prayer with who God is, then He finished by acknowledging who He Himself is towards who God is: the Son obedient and subject to the Father. He ended by asserting God's position and His, stating the nature of their relationship.

Now, our relationship with God is manifold, but there is one facet of it that must be stressed here: God is God, and we are not. We make our requests known, and make them known boldly, but at the end we acknowledge that He is God and we are not. His counsel will stand, and He will do as He pleases (Is. 46:9-10). Of course, the wonderful news is that God's counsel is for our good (Rom. 8:28-39), and that it pleases Him to do good for His children (Matt. 7:9-11), and so we need not fear His counsel and pleasure. Nevertheless, we ought to recognize it as supreme. Though Jesus requested it, the "cup" did not pass from Him, and it was for good, both for us (Rom. 5:1-2, 6-11) and for Him (Phil. 2:5-11).

"But I still want authentic love!"

Recognizing God as supreme is not as easy as it sounds. It is always easier to put ourselves first, seeing God as (at best) an equal to us and our wants. My generation really has a problem with recognizing authority or some supremacy that is not ourselves, but we live within contradiction. We demand self-actualization but also real love, neither of which can occupy the same space. A relationship (if it is to be successful) must necessarily be a place where you lay yourself down out of love for another; communication is not possible if each party is not willing to learn the language of the other, whether that language is foreign or cultural and emotional. It becomes worse with our relationship and communication with God, because He is not only another that is outside of us, but He is also the supreme other, one who merits (and calls for) our recognition of and submission to His supremacy. We must recognize/submit to His supremacy, or else our prayer life (and whole Christian life) will become a dead-end, narcissistic affair.

Rejoice in your smallness.

If our requests are the meat of the prayer-sandwich, then who God is (esp. in relation to us) becomes the slices of bread. To put it another way, prayer begins and ends by recognizing the nature of our relationship to the One to whom we are talking. We do this in daily conversation as well: begin and end by recognizing who we are talking to in the light of our relationship with them, whether it be a friend ("Hey, you." "Until our next meeting."), loved one ("Hey, babe." "Love you."), strangers ("Hello. Can I help you?" "Have a good day."), or even enemies ("What do you want?" "Don't ever talk to me again."). Of course, our relationship to God is unique since, as I said earlier, it is manifold: He is our Lord and Creator as well as Friend and Lover, but the principle still applies. You can begin and end by acknowledging who God is to you (i.e., who He has revealed Himself to be in your specific life), and in between those acknowledgements you make your requests known unto God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

What Do You Want? (The Lord's Prayer, Part II)

"Abba, Father, all things are possible for Thee. Take away this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou will." Mark 14:36

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.... We are far too easily pleased." -C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

The second thing Jesus does in His prayer is to state His request(s) or desire(s), and He is bold and honest about them: He asked that the "cup" of the cross and God's wrath be taken away from Him.

"Ask and it shall be given?"

Unless we are completely tactless, most of us are pretty gun-shy in this area. We find it indecent to ask God for what we really want. Shouldn't pray be about others? About our family? Our friends? The sick, the poor, and the hurting? The world? Peace on earth and all that? There is nothing at all wrong with asking for those things. They are all needed, but do not lose sight of how brash and personally specific Jesus made prayer. It was about you asking for personal things (Matt. 7:7-11), even down to your most basic needs and benefits (Matt. 6:11-13). The Psalms are sung prayers to God, and every one of them is filled with specific personal requests ("cleanse me from sin," "make my work prosper," "save me from trouble," "destroy my enemies," etc.), and even the apostles saw prayer in terms of personal requests (e.g., Phil. 4:6).

"Prove it!"

Of course, there is a right and wrong way to go about this. The wrong way is the "adulterous generation seeking a sign" way (Matt. 16:1-4; Mark 8:12). The Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus to give them a sign to prove that He was the Christ. They did this to "test" Him to see if He really was who He claimed to be, which means that they didn't believe that He was who He claimed to be. Thus, their "request" was asked out of unbelief; it was like telling God, "Oh yeah? Prove it." Such an attitude is the opposite of Christ, whose own brother explained, "Ask in faith, doubting nothing" (James 1:5-7), which is how the apostles would ask when they cast lots to choose someone to replace Judas. They prayed beforehand, asking God to guide the lots (Acts 1:24-26). This was not a "Oh yeah? Prove it" moment. They asked in faith, believing that God would answer and would answer rightly, which is the essence of proper asking in prayer.

Prayer: the original "Safe Place".

As stated before, prayer is not about you; but there is a place for you, a specific, safe place. A place where you can make your requests known unto God, where you can be honest and speak your mind, where you can approach the throne of grace boldly. If your prayer life is based off of your specific relationship with God, then is not honesty good for any close relationship? Should not that person, the one you are drawn close to, should not they be the one to whom you can be unbashful about how you feel, what you want, and what you fear? Give God the same brazenness. Give Him the same trust, for He is your good Father, and He will hear the desires of your heart (Ps. 37:3-5).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Who Are You Talking To? (The Lord's Prayer, Part I)

"Abba, Father, all things are possible for Thee. Take away this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou will." Mark 14:36

Can you hear me now?

I have found that there is nothing on earth harder to do well than prayer. The potential for it to slide into pointless formality or mind-numbing list-checking is enormous. How often have we felt like we're talking to the air? To ourselves? We hear tales of prayer that is this wondrous, intimate thing with God, a time for real-life conversation with the Divine. Then we get to it (perhaps full of enthusiasm) and by the end we feel as if we've wasted everyone's time. Maybe moments do come where we "find the right words" and the communication and communion feel sweet and real, but those moments seem rare and fleeting at best, and we are unprophetic to both their comings and goings as well as the mechanisms that actualize them. Another clumsy session, immediately following a successful venture, makes the frustration even more acute.

There are many good books on prayer, but something must be said first over and against all books: there is no such thing as a singular "right way" to pray anymore than there is a singular "right way" to talk to your lover or best friend. Yes, there are things you ought to avoid in either case, like making the whole conversation about yourself (something Jesus spoke against in Luke 18:9-14); but to claim a singular "right way" to pray is the fastest way to make the whole thing empty and formulaic. Prayer is having a conversation with God, and it is built on the relationship you have with Him, and nothing kills conversation and stunts relationships better than sticking to formula every single time.

"I'm the map!"

So there is no one "right way" to pray, but that does not mean that there are no guidelines to help us out. Not having a "right way" to pray can be as big a problem as sticking to the same stale formula forever. Thus is our dilemma: we want our prayers to be sincere and organic, and yet we find articulation difficult: we hardly know what we really want, much less how to put it into words. A formula is no good, but some pointers would still be nice, and I think Jesus provides some good ones in His own prayer to God. There's a lot going on in this passage, but there are at least three practical things we can take away for our own prayer life.

The first thing Jesus does is acknowledge who God is. He calls Him "Abba, Father" and says, "all things are possible" with Him. The nature of God's Fatherhood and Omnipotence are topics in and of themselves, but the point here is that Jesus knows and recognizes God as those things. Again, this is not to be formulaic. This is not about picking a random divine attribute or two out of a hat and prefacing yourself with it. It is not about acknowledging who God is in general, but rather acknowledging who He is to you specifically. How has He made Himself known to you, in your actual life and experience? Remember: conversations are built on relationships, so what has your relationship with Him revealed Him to be?

"I see you as no one else does."

This is not about uncritical subjectivism. Who God truly is to anybody will never go against who He has revealed Himself to be in His word. However, that does not mean that everyone will truly know or understand God the exact same way as everybody else, because we are all different. Personality and temperament and history and culture and other intangibles make no two people the same, and thus no two people ever like the same thing the same exact way. Thus, how you view God, what and who you understand Him to be, though it ought not to contradict His word (which is His authoritative declaration of Himself), it may very well contradict other people.

What relationship is at work here?

Who God is to us specifically will shape our prayer life, because it shapes who we think we're talking to. In day-to-day conversation, who you're talking to shapes how you talk to them, whether they're a friend, family, stranger, or enemy. Who they are to you shapes your conversation, even your initial acknowledgement ("Hey, you." "Hey, babe." "Hello. Can I help you?" "What do you want?" etc.). So who is God to you? Who has He revealed Himself to be in your life, in your daily relationship with and experience of Him? If you know, then you can begin by acknowledging Him as such. In a way, you're reminding yourself who you're talking to, which can help shape the conversation to what it ought to be. On the other hand, if you don't know who He is to you yet, or you're not quite sure, then that's a perfect thing to start praying for.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

In Defense of Church (a Matrix of Hard Things)

And it ain't just my opinion.

"If you keep My command- ments, you shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. [...] You are My friends if you do whatever I command you...." John 15:10-14

Q: What is the duty which God requires of man?

A: The duty which God requires of man is obedience to His revealed will.

Q: What does the preface to the ten commandments teach?

A: That because God is the Lord, and our God and redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments.

(Questions 39 & 44, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

There has been an issue come up every now and then about people wanting to "follow Jesus" but not go to church (i.e., for example). This is a strange dilemma, since Jesus expressly came to found a church (Matt. 16:18), and the apostles whom He ordained to carry on His work (John 15:16) understood this "church" to mean specific churches and not just a general "Church," which is why they spent most of the New Testament writing letters to churches (or pastors of a church) on how to conduct themselves as Christians and as a church. It has always been a part of Christian history, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy for believers to gather together in communal congregations, under the rule and leadership of pastors and elders, where they can edify each other, worship God, and feed on His word. It's been a clear and mostly consistent pattern for almost 2,000 years, so our current dilemma is strange indeed.

But maybe it's not so strange. Everyone (it seems) who wants to "follow Jesus" but not under the care, fellowship, and authority of a local church do so for two connected reasons: churches are so "mean," but Jesus is so "nice" (again, for example).

"Quit being MEAAAAN!"

Now, when people complain about churches being so "mean," they are referring to legalism and hypocrisy (as well as "hating" homosexuals or other currently fashionable groups). When they get starry-eyed about how "nice" Jesus is, they are referring to how He always dissed legalists and hypocrites and would have hugged homosexuals, if He ever met one (which we have no way of knowing if He did). These assumptions are understandable and not all-together untrue. Jesus did heavily rebuke those who stacked burdens on others while failing to keep those burdens themselves (Matt. 23:1-36), and He taught us to love our neighbors (Matt. 22:36-40), which includes anybody (Luke 10:25-37). But I can't help but sense a more anterior motive to all this, one informing all our talk of "meanness" and "niceness," one that has ruined the whole discussion.

That motive is this: we don't like rules. We don't like people telling us what to do. We like to follow our own inclinations and shape everything based on those inclinations. That is the real problem with anyone who wants to "follow Jesus" but not join a church. Outside a church, Jesus is in the void, becoming a mere word empty of meaning until we fill it as we please with a patchwork of biblical proof-texts, progressivist slogans, and humanist ideals. He becomes our own private "jesus," a ventriloquist dummy we hewed ourselves, and we can make it talk while we drink hipster beer.

I know, bunky.

Inside a church, however, Jesus is not in a void. He is set in a context, a context that we did not create, a context set down and enforced by authorities who are not us (i.e., pastors and elders), who in turn are meant to be under authorities that are also not us (God and His word and Spirit). There Jesus is not whatever we want Him to be. He becomes a solid, separate object, one that you have to deal with on its own terms, a stone that you break against and are crushed (Luke 20:18). He is codified and outlined by a myriad of creeds and confessions and doctrines, by orthodoxy and orthopraxy, by the witness and testimony of those who have gone before, and outside of those lines He is ultimately unknowable. Thus, you must submit yourself to those lines, to that context and its authorities. For my generation, such a submission is anathema.

Behold the straw-man.

Of course, things don't always work out that way. The pastors and elders can all be legalists and hypocrites, poisoning the well with their arrogance and corruptions, and there have been some really nasty people named and things done in the "name of Christ." Those are undeniable facts, but there are two other facts that are also undeniable. First, the majority of Christian churches are not like that. (You don't hear about them because they don't make the news.) And second, abusus non tollit usum: abuse does not negate use. Nasty people and things do not suddenly negate the function of a church as a light of the world, and it is a light in a very specific way: by being a pillar and buttress of the truth (I Tim. 3:14-15), by holding fast and forth the mystery of godliness (I Tim. 3:16), by preserving and proclaiming the gospel handed down once-for-all from Jesus to his disciples and throughout all the churches (John 15:16; Galatians 1:1; Jude 3). If you join yourself to a local church, you are binding yourself to that same task, viz., to preserve, proclaim, and practice a truth from outside you, a gospel you did not make, a Jesus you cannot control.

"There is no life in the void...."

I think that last one is the real issue: we want to control Jesus. We want Him on-board our bandwagon, and we want His gospel to be whatever the party line is. We can do that by just "following Jesus," a jesus-in-the-void, a jesus unbound and unbeholden to any congregation or creed or council stemming from Him and instead bound and beholden to our own preferences and whims as we skip along from church to church (both high and low, conservative and liberal, Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox), enjoying our "freedom in Christ," a christ made after our own image. You can do that if you "follow Jesus" on your own, but you cannot do that inside a church. Not really. Not if you're doing it right. Not if the church is doing it right. There you are placed in a matrix of hard things, and it is hard to kick against them.

It is easy to follow the "jesus" of your own making. It is easy to follow your own preferences, your own wants and opinions. It is easy to follow your heart as it tosses you and your "jesus" about with every wind and wave of doctrine and fashion. It is easy to be homeless. It is easy to be a vagrant. It is hard to come home and stay home. It is hard to belong to things that you did not shape and have no say over. It is hard to love and then obey someone and thing over you that you had no say in. It is hard to be humble, to be a servant of the living Truth. It is easy to be king of your own "truth" in your own universe where your own "jesus" spews your own gospel that shores up your own self, and it is our self that is the problem. To follow Jesus is glorious; to "follow" him outside a church is narcissistic. A church is about others---other people and authorities---and there is no greater hatred of others than love of the self.

The "christ-follower" sings the song of his people.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Tread Softly (thoughts on the "historical Jesus")

But I, being poor, have only my dreams.

I have spread my dreams under your feet.

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats 

The so-called "quest for the historical Jesus" often rears its amorphous head every once in a while, with much excitement and little progress. The famous (or infamous) "Jesus Seminar" dominated the 80s and 90s and tried to create a historical picture of Jesus that differed from the approaches of the past (and met with little success). Bart Ehrman and N.T. Wright have made their collective popularity and careers out of the issue, though they both arrive at different conclusions. And recently it resurfaced again for a gasp of air after the kerfuffle with Reza Aslan on Fox News.

The "historical Jesus" question is complex (as most academic work is), but for we lowly laymen who feel tossed about by the waves, I think it may be good to provide a basic framing and approach to the whole issue. This is not some sort of slam-dunk response or solution to the problem the question raises. Rather it is a way to understand the problem so you can know where you stand and (hopefully) why you stand there. I have found this approach useful in my own thinking about the "historical Jesus," and it has solidified for me not only what's really going on in this issue but also what's really at stake.

It is believed that there is not one Jesus but two running amok out there. One is the "historical Jesus," and the other is the "theological Jesus". The "historical Jesus" refers to the actual flesh and blood person who lived in Roman-occupied Palestine around 2,000 years ago, while the "theological Jesus" refers to the theological doctrine and assertions made about Jesus by the early Church (and still held by much of the Church). One deals mainly with historical sociocultural contexts and facts while the other deals with philosophical and theological ideas and teachings. The whole "quest" for the "historical Jesus" is to try and focus on the former Jesus rather than the latter, to paint a portrait of the man himself devoid of any theological interpolations.

...and all I got was this lousy button.

The controversy surrounding such a "quest" (at least for the more traditionalist side of the issue) is that all of the theological teachings about Jesus (the Incarnation, the Atonement, His divinity, etc.) seem to be thrown under the bus. The assumption of some is that all of the theological interpolations about Jesus are just that: interpolations, additions made by well-meaning but hyperactive followers. Thus, all kinds of aspersions are cast about in regard to the early Church, including the validity and unity of its teachings and structure. (Note: Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code tried to make much of this issue.) These aspersions can often frustrate and flummox those of us who are less than versed in early Church history and theology.

However, you don't need a doctorate in Church history or theology to understand a simple truth. At the beginning of the Church, Jesus left His ministry in the hands of the Apostles, who had nothing to go on except one objective, immutable fact: Jesus Himself. He existed, and He said and did incredible things, so now what? It is the "now what" that has driven Church theology. At the risk of oversimplification, everything written or interpreted or used since the singular fact of Jesus is simply commentary on that fact. The New Testament, the Church Councils and their Creeds, the "sacred" writings of the Church Fathers: all these things were and are commentary seeking to unpack and explain the fact of Jesus. (Even the Old Testament falls into this category, for Jesus changed the way it was read when He said it was all about Him; Luke 24:25-27, 44-48.) In addition, this commentary was originally a seat-of-the-pants affair for the Apostles: almost all of the N.T. letters are about hashing out what was and was not orthodox Christian teaching, and the "Jerusalem Council" of Acts 15 was about the same thing. There is nothing controversial about any of this, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something (most likely their latest book).

Obscuring? Or revealing?

The question, then, is not in choosing between the "historical Jesus" and the "theological Jesus". They are both true things: the flesh and blood Jewish man and the theological interpretation of Him made by his followers over the following years. Both the fact and the subsequent commentary are real. Again, the question is not about choosing between them. Rather, the real question is about the relationship between the two. In other words, does all that commentary obscure who Jesus really is and was, or does it reveal who He really is and was? Is the "theological Jesus" a threat or an aid in our understanding of the "historical Jesus"? Your answer to that question is paramount. Did the Apostles and Church Fathers and all Christians who followed them make up fanciful delusions or outright lies about Jesus? Or were they really moved by the Spirit to the truth (John 16:13; c.f. I Cor. 2:10-13)? The divide starts right there and nowhere else.

I believe that the commentary reveals who Jesus is (with varying approximation with regard to "sacred" tradition and councils). That may not earn me any friends, but it does give me grounds to say this to those who believe that it obscures Jesus: I request that you tread softly. I often feel that the "theological Jesus" is indeed too often and too easily thrown under the bus as irrelevant or incorrect. You need to understand that the theology surrounding Jesus is foundational to the lives of many, including me. We have built our lives (including our spiritual well-being) on this man from Galilee really being who His followers (and He Himself) said He was: God in the flesh, born to take away the sins of the world, coming again in righteousness to make war against all sin and evil and death. You may not believe in such a thing, but we do. Passionately and devotedly. So tread softly.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

We Can Be Heroes (for more than one day)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound...and they shall build the wastes of old, and they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations." Is. 61:1-4

"Oh? Were you looking for me?"

The best kind of hero is the one you don't expect. From the mysterious stranger coming out of nowhere to the unassuming bumpkin rising to the occasion (kicking and screaming all the way), the best heroes are always a surprise. They come into the midst of the darkness and turn the whole thing on its head, like some kind of anarchist of virtue or orthodox rebel. They do not fit into any of the categories laid out for them, neither from the people they came to save (whose presuppositions about heroism had long since stagnated and atrophied) nor the evil they came to overthrow (for darkness cannot comprehend the light).

That heroism is to be an exciting, topsy-turvey affair can be clearly seen in the life of Jesus. He walked right into the life of Israel and threw the whole place into an uproar. He confused and upset everyone, from skeptical Sadducees and dogmatic Pharisees to even His own disciples. He told devout Jews that their father was Satan rather than Abraham (John 8:31-47), that He came to save others besides them (Luke 4:16-30; John 10:11-16), and explained that salvation in such a surreal fashion that most of His followers abandoned Him (John 6:53-66). He was unexpected and unnerving, breaking the hearts of enthusiastic young fans (Luke 18:18-23), the backs of entrepreneurial shopkeepers (Mark 11:15-19), and the minds of His disciples (Mark 4:36-41). As Sayers put it, He passed through this world like a flame, and all who met Him were flummoxed to exasperation: "We have seen strange things today!" (Luke 5:26).

Jesus' ability to turn everyone's world upside-down can only mean two things: either He is a villain stepping into a good world, decimating its peace; or He is a hero stepping into an evil world, agitating its corruption. There are some who hold to the former, but Christians hold to the latter. In either case, however, it cannot be said that He was boring or predictable or "run-of-the-mill". His good works suggest His heroism, but His unexpectedness confirms it completely, for true heroism is full of surprises, being a surprise itself.

There is, however, one last surprise that Jesus' heroism delivers, and that is in regard to those He came to save. We who have been saved and are being saved were the helpless ones, the captives and prisoners, slaves to Sin and despair and destruction. Jesus released us from those chains but not into the empty air. He did not pluck us from dungeons deep, dust us off, set us on the road, and bid us farewell as we wander wherever we please. Rather, He brought us out so that He might bring us in. He delivered us from darkness so that we might be translated into light (Col. 1:13-14). He "reconciled" us so that we may be given His "ministry of reconciliation" (II Cor. 5:18-19; Col. 1:19-20). The hero did not save us to live unto ourselves but to live like and for Him (II Cor. 5:14-15). In short, the hero saved us and has called us to be heroes as well.

It is a surprise worthy of any adventure story. The hero, being the person you least expected, comes and calls to heroism others whom you expected even less. Jesus' disciples were like this. He called fishermen, tax collectors, and other dregs and nobodies, pulling together and to His side a bunch of hot-headed, fearful, overly-ambitious, greedy pack of clods. They were the epitome of a rag-tag band, yet they turned the world upside-down (Acts 17:6). And it is to this same band we have been called.

"Samwise the brave...."

It is alright to call it strange. God's logic is strange to us, but it is only the same strange logic of every great adventure: use the weak and foolish and despised to upset and overthrow the great and mighty (I Cor. 1:26-31). Every great hero is a bumpkin, like a nobody carpenter from Nazareth whom everyone thought was crazy. And God calls all bumpkins to His side, the broken and abused and forgotten and weak, so that we can be heroes, so that He can continue to do great and surprising works through us.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

My Almost Atheism (the confession of an orthodox rebel)

"He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. [...] Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief." Is. 53:3-10

I have seen a trend in mainstream Christianity, in all denominations and traditions. It has (perhaps) been an ever-present shadow to the substance of orthodoxy, but our modern realities of media and celebrity have made it more acute. It is in books, podcasts, T.V. and radio programs, blog posts, and even a few movies now and again. It is the siren song of our generation, and I call it "Syrup Christianity," an overly sweet, congealing parody of the traditional Faith. It is a "Christianity" of uncritical optimism, whose marshmallow God of warm fuzzies and easy explanations always makes sure that his real children are tolerating each other and having their "best life now." Yes, Osteen is a popular variant of this strain, but he is hardly alone. There are many others.

There's the "happy church" variety (whether Catholic or charismatic or fundamentalist) where every sermon or homily and every congregant or parishioner has been greased with fake smiles and forced exuberance because everything should be right if you're "right with God." There's also the "comfy doctrine" variety, where either serious reformed types tell you that Calvinism gives us no grounds for tears or anguish (for surely Calvin was not a man of sorrows) or serious radical types tell you that "love wins" in an unqualified, hazy way (for surely our versions of Hell and damnation are the scary concoctions of old curmudgeons).

Then there's the "culture of simplicity" where every Lifeway special or Cloud Ten production shills its cartoonish versions of light and dark, where the good is of the conservative Southern Baptist variety and the evil is some kind of New-Age atheism (and always a real jerk). And there's the "politics of triumphalism," where on the Right an American theocracy is trumpeted with jingoistic fervor, and on the Left the Kingdom of God can only be brought about by a socialist progressive agenda; in either case, legislation and activism are our only salvation.

I have rejected those answers, rejected them because they are all, at bottom, the same thing: "Syrup Christianity". They are all of the faith of easy answers and the eternal sunshine of spotless minds. Theirs is that world called "Perfect" that Walgreens always warned us about. Sorrow, fear, doubt, darkness, despair, death, loss, the insidiousness of evil, and fighting long defeats: these things mean nothing to them, nothing but irritations to be ignored, misrepresentations to be cleared up, or sins to be repented of. It is the religion of Job's friends, and with all due respect to its many adherents, I say a plague on all your houses. I want nothing to do with any of you. You are so unlike Jesus.

I have no patience for any system (either "secular" or "sacred") of life or thinking that makes no room for darkness and evil, real darkness and real evil. I am never more frustrated than when staring into the eyes of bald-faced optimism, with its naive temperament and clueless disposition. Do I believe that all shall be well? Of course: you can't be a Christian and believe otherwise. What I do not believe is that the road to redemption will run smooth or straight from our end, that things are somehow going to get better and better. It is all a lie. "Evil-doers shall wax worse and worse," and the Kingdom of God comes, not with rainbows and rays of summer, but with fire and thunder, and the violence of violent men, and blood pouring from the winepress of God's wrath. Christ will come indeed, but in righteousness to "judge and make war." All weapons will be beat into plowshares, but not until the final slaughter, of which Canaan was but a type and shadow. Apocalypse is our final eucatastrophe.

I am not morbid, and though I carry about a healthy does of pessimism, I am not a pessimist. What I am is someone who takes evil seriously, seriously enough to want real answers for it and solutions to it beyond childish dismissals or excuses. You cannot explain it away, nor is it reducible to soundbites about homosexuals or capitalism. Evil is real, evil hurts, and evil finds a way in. We are called to hate it ("abhor" it), not ignore it. God certainly hates it. As a man, He wept in anguish at death, met corruption with an almost reckless violence, and always carried a note of contempt in His words to not only the Pharisees and Sadducees but even the devil himself in the wilderness. I ask you: is your God big enough to hate evil? Hate it enough to do something about it? Mine is. He has to be.

My stake in this is neither political or even philosophical. Rather, it is deeply personal. For fifteen years, I lived in the same house as a chronically ill person. My mother's diabetes had somehow spawned a mysterious neuropathy that doctors have yet to explain adequately. All they know is this: it is eating away at her nerves, leaving her hands and feet in a paradoxical state of ever-increasing agony and ever-growing numbness. For fifteen years I watched this evil work its malice upon her. For fifteen years, I have seen the tragedy and the horror of the Fall. I've seen her lose everything she loved: teaching, playing the piano, hosting parties, seeing friends, attending church. All was swallowed into the void, and now all she can do is sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. And I do not like it, not one little bit.

How can you dwell in the presence of such suffering and walk away with easy answers about evil? I couldn't. I prayed for her healing everyday, but it never came. She only got worse. I prayed she'd be healthy enough for family events so she could get out and enjoy herself, but she often didn't (and still doesn't). God seemed to abandon her to this fate, and no smirking sentimentalism from the prophets of progress could come close to touching such a thing. In truth, I took them all to be one massive, monstrous joke; or worse, an insult straight at my mother and my heart. The religion of Job's friends is an affront to all Jobs, including my own.

Yet there is one more thing I must say about my Job: she has kept the faith, neither has she charged God foolish with her lips. I can remember, years ago, driving her to one of her numerous doctors. Her foot was in danger of collapse (again) and it needed to be set right. On the way home, I expressed to her my thoughts about her condition. I ended by saying that if anything could make me an atheist (I feared), it would be if she died without ever being healed. She listened to me patiently, sipping on a drink from Sonic, and when I finished she told me that she too had her moments of dark despair and doubt about God's purpose for all this. But she concluded with these words: "God has a plan. Even for pain. Don't let my pain shake your faith. It doesn't shake mine."

From that moment, I knew I could never be an atheist. There could never be an argument good enough, and I defy any skeptic to try. I have found a Faith that faces pain, that can face pain. Without fear, without a blink or flinch or shake. And that is the Faith I want. That is the Faith I love. Not the syrupy "faith" of Modern American Christendom, all pathetic smiles and perfect (or nebulous) explanations, but a Faith whose God has a place and plan for evil and pain. The Faith acquainted with grief and sorrow. The Faith of my mother. The Faith of Jesus, who was stricken, smitten, and afflicted, enduring the cross and its shame, who humbled Himself even unto death. My Jesus knows death, knows pain, knows darkness. He did not deny the dark but walked right into it, screaming up and out into its night like a flare burning blood red, and the darkness could not overcome Him. It has overcome all else except this thing, this one true thing, this new thing, this God-man who heals with His stripes, and was pleased to be bruised, crushed, and put to grief.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013