The Crux of Faith

For Christians, the cross may be so familiar that we cease to see it and be shocked by it.

To help us, Bran Zahnd offers an untypical theology of the cross. As the author suggests, The Wood Between the Worlds is an exercise in theopoetics—akin to meditations on nineteen aspects or implications of the death of Christ. Since other excellent volumes cover the standard topics of atonement, substitution, forgiveness, and salvation, Zahnd turns his attention elsewhere.

We read, for example, that while humanity was exiled from Eden and the Tree of Life, now all are welcome at the cross, the true Tree of Life. We also find a profound chapter on Pontius Pilate, and how we are all at some level stained by skepticism and dirty hands. In addition, Zahnd offers a wonderfully clear explanation of Rene Girard’s important work on the social dynamics of scapegoating today and throughout history.

Insights and icons from Eastern Orthodox Christianity weave in and out of these and his other uncommon subjects such as Ellie Wiesel’s doubts, the harrowing of hell, and Mary’s ponderings.

Much of the book considers power and weakness. In this light Zahnd takes up uncomfortable topics such as capital punishment, pacifism, and James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

While today’s church often focuses on power, the gospel writers emphasize suffering, loss, and weakness. When Paul says, “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25), he “doesn’t mean that when God is weak, God is still stronger than human might. That wouldn’t be scandalous. It would be just a typical boast about power as conventionally understood. Rather Paul is taking us into the deep mystery of the cross, saying that God’s power is precisely located in the weakness” of the cross. [p. 29].

Power corrupts as the Ring of Power in Tolkien’s trilogy twists those who seek it. All our attempts to use power are likewise subject to corruption. Christianity is tainted when it aligns itself with government-sponsored violence as all sides did in World War I and as we still see today. We cannot justify such actions by misunderstanding the imagery of armies and destruction in the book of Revelation. For it is the slain lamb who is the central victor of the book.

Through mystery and metaphor, in this mind-provoking and soul-provoking book, Zahnd explores the literal crux of the Christian story.

Nietzsche Is Still Laughing

Deep in the recesses of Charles Taylor’s massive tome A Secular Age on the huge shifts that have transformed the Western world in the last five hundred years, he tells a story–a story of a friend visiting a political gathering:

A Buddhist acquaintance of mine from Thailand briefly visited the German Greens. He confessed to utter bewilderment. He thought he understood the goals of the party: peace between human beings, and a stance of respect and friendship by humans towards nature. But what astonished him was all the anger, the tone of denunciation, of hatred towards the established parties. These people didn’t seem to see that the first step towards their goal would have to involve stilling the anger and aggression in themselves. He couldn’t understand what they were up to.*

Taylor says that the person who would have been most delighted with the irony of this story was Friedrich Nietzsche. The late nineteenth-century German philosopher was famous for his idea of “will to power.” He thought, essentially, that there was no morality, no ethics. These were just thin, convenient covers for seeking to gain what we wanted—to impose our control on others!

Such a story would prove to Nietzsche that he was right, that people don’t operate by ideals, even the most high minded. It’s all a sham, a fake, a charade. Even a political party supposedly built on the foundation of peace with the natural world quickly degenerates into vitriol and violence.

We may think this view is cynical. Nietzsche just thought it was reality.

Like those pursuing progressive ways to make the world better, conservative Christians may also disagree with Nietzsche. But in a day in which some think that Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies is wrong or that it just doesn’t apply when it comes to asserting our political will, Nietzsche is still laughing.

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*Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 698.

Image credit: openart.ai photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche laughing.

Lessons in Stereotypes

Lessons in Chemistry (now an Apple TV series) is a fun and funny book that takes on serious issues. (The lead character’s dog is a special delight.) Set in the Eisenhower era before women were as prominent in the workplace, the story points out many of the foibles, fallacies, and injustices of a male-dominated culture.

The book highlights the unnecessary limits, the ill treatment, and the stereotypes so many once had and sadly still have of women. But an irony is that the book also seems to perpetuate certain stereotypes.

With one or two exception, men seem to be consistently portrayed as greedy, inept, sexually violent, selfish, domineering, and clueless. Those who adhere to religious faith are similarly derided. They are depicted as either charlatans or benighted souls who haven’t managed to make it out of the dark ages, carelessly damaging lives along the way.

People are complex. Heroes have flaws and villains have virtues. May the world abound with books that affirm the complicated value and dignity of all people and groups (even with sometimes deep imperfections) without having to drag any down to lift others up.

How to Know a Person

I was sitting around a table with some friends. How did the topic come up? I don’t quite recall.

We were talking about World War II, and Ralph said, “You can’t trust the Germans. Look what they’ve done in two world wars. And don’t say they’ve changed because skinheads and nationalism are on the rise there. We just should never have let them become an independent nation again. We should have carved up the country for good.”

I was a bit surprised to hear such ideas about a group of people who have little malice thrown at them these days. He didn’t sound angry. He wasn’t loud. He was outwardly calm, but I sensed there was emotion underneath.

I responded evenly by saying it seemed helpful to have them as allies, as a force for economic and political stability in central Europe. Clearly he still disagreed.

Then I remembered what I had just read in David Brooks’s new book, How to Know a Person. He told a story of being on a panel discussion with someone who had a very different view of the culture wars. Brooks responded not with anger or diatribe but by stating his side with a bit of cool dispassion.

Later Brooks realized this was the wrong approach. Instead he should have at least asked more questions about what the other person thought and why.

Taking Brooks’s lead, I decided I too was wrong and that the important thing in this moment was not to try to change Ralph’s mind, not to correct him, however wrong his attitudes might be. My job first was to listen to him, get to know him, and maybe love him a little better.

So I started asking some questions, genuinely wanting to know more: “What’s behind your thoughts here? When and how did you first start to think this way?” And quietly he began to tell us more of his story.

His father and uncles had been in the war. What they saw and went through was terrible. And his wife had been born in central Europe. Her family had suffered at the hands of the Germans for multiple generations.

Ralph was not speculating on geopolitics. For him, this was personal.

Brooks is a consummate journalist who is excellent at summarizing the best research of experts while telling stories of others and himself that move us and create understanding. While offering excellent material on how to get to know people as individuals, he reminds us that everyone is situated in a group, in a history, in a place. We also have to explore and appreciate those to truly hear others.

In a day of hyper reactions and extreme tribalism, we seem to have lost the vital art of conversation, of making friends, of connecting with others more than superficially. Brooks tells us how with practical, sensible wisdom.

I don’t remember the last time I had put the ideas of a book into practice so quickly as I did with Ralph. Before I would have just sat in stunned silence. But now I knew how to respond positively. How to Know a Person is that kind of book, a book worth rereading.

A Soul-Penetrating Picture

Tone is one of the most important and least understood aspects of writing. As discussed in Write Better, the tone of a piece can convey more power, be more effective in communicating content than the bare information of our words.

Usually tone is created over paragraphs and pages. But it can also be achieved in just a few words. Consider one example from Frederick Buechner’s Telling the Truth.

At the deepest level all hearers of the truth are the same hearer, and when I try to picture him or her, what I picture is the one who is famous for having asked to hear, who took a long drag on his cigarette and through narrowed eyes asked, “What is truth?”*

In this sentence, Buechner imagines Pontius Pilate in a modern-day setting. He has a tough job. Rome has given him a promotion, yes, but it is to oversee a troublesome backwater of the Empire. The locals are constantly causing trouble with their nationalist dreams and zealous, unorthodox spiritual beliefs.

Now he is irritated to have been awakened, early in the morning, by these vexing people to settle some arcane religious dispute. Pilate has seen it all—the deception, the grasping for control, the violence. He is under no illusions that people operate out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. They may talk a good game of morals but ultimately they are self-serving.

Pilate knows just what these leaders are up to when they bring this innocent man to him for judgment, and it isn’t truth. No one wants truth. They just want power.

And how does Buechner convey all this? Through his tone.

And how does he convey his tone? In a sketch drawn with just two telling details—a long drag on a cigarette and narrowed eyes—while asking “What is truth?” In just a dozen words Buechner evokes every scene of every hardened detective in the film noir genre that exposes the dark underside of humanity.

How much more effective this is than saying, “Pilate was a cruel, jaded, Roman administrator,” which merely invokes facts and explanation!

Through memory and emotion, tone can do what every writer wants. It captures readers with a fuller, deeper, more soul-penetrating picture of the truth—in this case a sense that at some level, we are all Pilate.

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*Thanks to Brian Zahnd for focusing my attention on Buechner’s quote in Zahnd’s powerful chapter on Pontius Pilate in his book, The Wood Between the Worlds. Among Zahnd’s many insights, he writes that when Jesus refuses to answer the governor, Pilate’s “fear gives way to anger: ‘Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ (Jn 19:10). And there it is! Pilate has answered his own question. What is truth? For Pilate the truth is nothing but power—especially the power to kill.” (The Wood Between the Worlds, pp. 73, 78)

A Book That Reorganized My Mind

Why was it almost impossible not to believe in God five hundred years ago, and now it’s almost impossible to believe in God? That is the driving question behind Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.

Having read a half dozen books which tout the significance of and make substantial use of Taylor’s magnum opus, I was convinced I finally needed to take the plunge myself. And indeed Taylor’s work reorganized much of the furniture in my mind—and even forced me to rethink the purpose of the rooms themselves!

One example: In the medieval age, not everyone was expected to live up to a spiritual or civic ideal. But society as a whole did so, encapsulated in the famous formula: “the clergy pray for all, the Lords defend all, the peasants labor for all.” Each group served the other two. As a result, the nobles and the peasants, for example, are not expected to live the same specialized spiritual life as the clergy, who in a sense made up in that department what the rest lacked.

All that changed with the Reformation after which all were expected to grow into the ideal, whether Catholic or Protestant. The aim is for all to flourish as God intended. Having read Taylor, I now see that expectation in every sermon, every book, every political speech, every commercial. We are all children of the Reformation. Whether from a democratic, totalitarian, conservative, liberal, religious, atheist, or consumerist persuasion—all aspire to have all people flourish (each with their own formula for what is “perfect”).

Which leads to an irony of our day: If this is the age of relativism and supposed tolerance, why are so many absolutely committed to their brand of Reform even to the point of anger and violence (witness the French Revolution, the tens of millions killed by idealist Communist and fascist regimes, and similar justifications for force and violence today)? And what can be done to disrupt the tendency to compel others to follow our agendas? How might we undo our bent to create our version of the “New Humanity” or “New Society” by paradoxically treating people as less than human?

And that’s what this masterful book does over and over—generates huge questions.

Another example: Taylor makes the case that we live in a world of so many possible belief options that everyone is haunted by doubt. (As Taylor puts it, we are all cross-pressured.)

The believer is haunted by, “What if God, heaven, the resurrection—what if it’s just not true? I’m pretty sure it’s true, but what if it’s not? Am I wasting my life?”

At the same time, unbelievers are haunted by, “What if God, heaven, the resurrection—what if it is all true? I’m pretty sure it isn’t true, but what if it is? What may I be missing?”

I could go on for pages about the provocative, game-changing ideas in the book. I haven’t even mentioned his concepts of our disenchanted world and the buffered self which many other books make first-rate use of (such as Alan Noble’s Disruptive Witness and Mike Cosper’s Recapturing Wonder).

Taylor’s book is not without weaknesses. It seems churlish to mention things that aren’t in a book that already has 775 pages of dense text. Nonetheless, though he describes step by step how the changes over the last five hundred years happened among elite thinkers, he doesn’t do much to unpack the causes or motivations behind those steps.

Besides generating a devotional focus on death, for example, how else did the deaths of one-third of Europe in the Bubonic Plague affect religious thinking? And how else might have the excesses of the papacy and Luther’s reactions led to the various developments Taylor identifies? Also, how might the discovery of the New World have affected the view of our cosmos and ourselves? And in what ways did the continuous religious wars of the sixteenth century spur the development of Natural Law (and the Enlightenment) in attempts to find ways to settle disputes that didn’t rely on religion? (Okay, maybe all that can be A Secular Age: The Prequel.)

Second, Taylor writes in an unnecessarily arcane academic style. For decades I have been an editor of academic books on philosophy, history, and religion. Even so I could only read about ten pages a day because I had to read most of his very dense pages twice to have any chance of decoding his prose. Luckily we have James Smith’s summary of Taylor, How (Not) to Be Secular, which provides some help with comprehension in a briefer package.

A Secular Age is not for everyone. But I was glad I labored through this stunning book, giving me so much to chew on and appreciate.

Grateful for the Government?

I Must Betray You offers a dramatic window into the repressive nightmare that was the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Set in late 1989, the novel follows the story of Christian, a seventeen-year-old student in Bucharest.

The plot seamlessly introduces us to how the web of government informers and surveillance warped every aspect of life—school, family, friendships, romance, groceries, jobs, health, prisons, punishment, and protests.

A neighbor of mine who was in eighth grade in Romania when the revolution occurred, told me that this book was eerily like the life he led–food shortages, government-sponsored violence, fear of informers everywhere, restrictions on travel, jobs, and education. Like Christian in the novel, my neighbor even marched with the protestors while army soldiers with loaded weapons watched.

Some people in this country say our government is so bad it would be better to throw it away and start over. After all, things couldn’t get any worse. If we are tempted this Independence Day to think that we live in bad times, this story reminds us to be grateful for what we have—for things could be worse, much worse.

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Image by Larry White from Pixabay

“Just This Once?”

One of the many ironies of our marriage was that Phyllis thought (at least theoretically!) that the husband should be the head of the house, and I didn’t. As you have seen in the last several posts here and here and here, I thought we should be a team.

One time, however, about ten years into our marriage, some friends of ours were in a crisis. Phyllis was very distressed. Their situation consumed her. So I said, “Go over to their house. Be with them. I’ll watch our kids.” But she thought that might be presumptuous because even though we cared a lot about these people, we weren’t super close at the time.

“No,” I said, “it’s fine. They’ll be delighted to see you.” Yet despite how upset she was about what was going on in their lives, she wouldn’t go.

Back and forth we went. I encouraged her to go, and she refused.

She piled up reasons—she’d be intruding; there were probably many people with them already; it was too late in the evening. Yet I knew exactly what would help her even if she didn’t. Not only would she encourage them if she went, but they would be a comfort to her in a way I wasn’t able to. Their centeredness, faith, and peaceful strength would lift her up.

Finally, in joking desperation, I pleaded, “Phyllis, won’t you please submit—just this once!”

She laughed, brightened up, and then said with stern cheerfulness, “Okay, mister, but you’ve had your once!”

And that was indeed the only time in our years of marriage that I asked. But it was so worthwhile because she came back a few hours later thoroughly refreshed. Her mind and heart were much more at ease. Our friends were also very glad for her visit. And the friendship of the four of us began to grow more deeply after that.

All of that, however, didn’t stop Phyllis from reminding me regularly over the decades, “You’ve had your once, Le Peau!”

Paul’s Shocking Ideas about Marriage

My brother-in-law was fond of saying with a wry grin, “Wives are supposed to submit with joy, and husbands are supposed to . . . er, are supposed to . . . um, I always forget that part!”

Many have tripped over what the apostle Paul says in his infamous passage about marriage. That’s the one in his letter to the Ephesians where he talks about submission. What he actually says, though, may surprise some–including my brother-in-law.

First, Paul introduces this section on husbands and wives with, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Submission for Paul is mutual, not just something a wife offers her husband.

This is consistent with his whole letter which tells us that unity, oneness in Christ, summarizes the whole purpose and aims of God (Eph 1:9-10). One particular example of this is the unity that different groups of people, Jews and Gentiles in this case, were to have in Christ (Eph 2:14; 3:6). In fact such oneness is the key evidence for the principalities and powers that they are no longer in charge but that God is instead (Eph 3:10-11).

The next three chapters are about how this unity is to be maintained (Eph 4:2-3). Humility, gentleness, patience, and love are to characterize how all Christians relate to all other Christians. Pride, harshness, and domination are not how Jews and Gentiles, or men and women, should relate to each other.

Second, when it comes to Paul’s specific instructions, note that he addresses wives and husbands separately (Eph 5:22-24 and 25-33). What’s the significance of this? For one, Paul never says, “Husbands, make sure your wives submit!” The instruction is to wives, not husbands. It’s an issue between a wife and her Lord. Husbands need to leave Ephesians 5:22-24 to their wives and not use it as a weapon in their relationship. The same is true for wives regarding 5:25-33.

Third, Paul devotes three verse to wives but nine verse to husbands—three times as much. Why? In the typically patriarchal culture of Paul’s day, what he says to wives may not sound that new except for the key point he emphasizes—the motivation and means for being a wife is centered on Christ.

Everything Paul says to husbands, however, is very different from what they would have heard from their society. So Paul needs extra time to impress these differences on them. And what does Paul say?

He says husbands are to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Husbands are to die—like Jesus. Christ sacrificed his life, set aside his status and authority, so the church could flourish in holiness and union with God (Eph 5:25-27). The main job of a husband is not to rule, not to command, not to decide, but to die. If his career goals get in the way of the good of his wife, his ambitions must die. If the part of the country he wants to live in gets in the way of his wife flourishing in Christ, that must die.

Years ago my wife Phyllis felt stunted in her spiritual life by the church we were in. I took that seriously, even though I liked the church. I liked the people. I liked the music. I liked the preaching. It was great for me. After many months of discussion and prayer, however, we were not able to resolve the issue. Then I remembered that Ephesians 5 meant that my wife’s spiritual well-being came before mine. I had to die. So I told her, “It’s up to you. If you want us to go to a different church, we will. I want what’s best for you.”

The primary job of a husband is not to make sure his wife stays in her lane. Rather, if she has gifts in hospitality, generosity, leadership, evangelism, compassion, teaching, getting people organized, or more, my role is to support, encourage, and pave the way for her. After all, as Genesis 1:28 says, God’s design for men and women is to rule the created order together as God’s representatives.

My parents had a tremendously positive influence on me by modeling a marriage of true partnership. But throughout the five decades of my own marriage, Ephesians 5 had more. My love for Phyllis focused me on making sure she had every opportunity to grow closer to God and use all the many gifts God gave her.

Now if you are very good and very quiet and if you listen very carefully, in my next time installment I will tell you a story full of twists and turns, pathos and poetry (not to mention uproarious surprises) in which Andy tries to do something good for Phyllis, and she just won’t cooperate.

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Image: Wedding rings by Arek Socha from Pixabay
Image: Church from Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Warrenville, IL.

God Said to Them . . . Rule

My mom and dad offered me a wonderful model of married life (as I wrote here). They led our family as partners. Interestingly, my dad (though not a religious person) nonetheless related to my mom in a way that I later found was very consistent with a biblical perspective. And what did I find?

At the very beginning, Genesis 1 offers this picture:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (1:27)

Humanity, male and female, is created in God’s image. This is emphasized by repeating it in three slightly different ways. Together we bear God’s image. And what does it mean to do that? The answer is in the very next verse:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (1:28)

The image of God is not a character trait (like kindness) nor an innate capacity (like consciousness). Rather it is a role, a responsibility. God calls us to be his priests in the cosmic garden he has just made. We are to be his representatives, his vice regents for the world he has created. And note how this is to be done! Men and women are to rule together—“God blessed them and said to them, ‘…Rule over…’” They are to be a team.

This joint project, tragically, was bent by sin. The result was a disruption of God’s original design in two ways. First, instead of harmoniously ruling jointly, husbands would rule over women (3:16). Second, instead of enjoying their rule over “every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth” (1:29), “through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life” (3:17).

God’s project over and over through the Bible has ever since been to undo the effects of sin by restoring our relationship with him, with each other, and with nature. The primary means for achieving this was through the person and work of Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10, 13-16).

Much could be said about this theme throughout the Old and New Testaments, but consider just one remarkable passage from Paul. He writes, “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife” (1 Cor 7:4). In the new humanity that Christ creates, the effects of the fall are reversed so that husbands don’t only rule over wives. They rule together, over each other.

This would have blown the minds of the patriarchal world of Paul’s day. That’s just not how Romans, Greeks, or Jews commonly thought. Paul was instead calling on his readers to return to God’s original design of Genesis 1. And we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that such mutuality only concerned this one aspect of marriage. When introducing how husbands and wives should relate, he offers a very broad instruction to both, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

“Ephesians 5? The Ephesians 5 which notoriously says wives should submit to their husbands, you’re going to tell me that that Ephesians 5 is about mutuality and about ruling together?” I do in fact have a few more things to say about Ephesians 5. That will be my next installment in this series.

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St. Louis Botanical Garden image by Andrew T. Le Peau.