Education is Already Free

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.

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This is one of my favorite videos of the SWEAT pledge. Mike Rowe tells a great personal story about his time on QVC and uses it to make a great point. In his experience, he needed education; he realized education could be found anywhere, and it was his responsibility to get it.

To be clear, I love this video for purely selfish reasons. I have built most of my career on the premise of this particular conventional wisdom. To be fair, I did go to college and complete my undergraduate education, but I did it at an institution that was unbelievably affordable and not academically impressive. None of this, however, impacted the quality of education I was responsible for getting on my own.

I was able to study as hard as I wanted to study and access information from any field I so desired. My education was totally in my control, and my academic institution simply provided me with parameters for focusing that energy and proof of the work that I put in.

After graduation, I was able to use those tools to know how to study well. Not all information is good, academically vetted, or even scientific at all (when applicable), but college gave me the ability to know how to find resources and tools to educate myself.

After college I did not pursue graduate-level study, and to this day have no plans to do so. But I think it would be safe to say I have done far more education since I graduated from college than during my studies as an undergrad. There are some drawbacks: I don’t have letters after my name or degrees to prove the work I have done; I have had to exercise quite a bit of autonomy to accomplish all of this and doing so kept me from increased academic relationships and accountability, and my vocational career does not benefit from the academic network provided by a graduate-level education.

But I have been educated and seek to connect more and more of my students to the proper systems — oftentimes those are universities (sorry, Mike!) — and counsel them in pursuing their own goals. I have become an educated teacher and individual who can quote sources (not opinions) and talk about the larger academic conversations that drive my conclusions. I am not speaking of “rogue science” or self-published authors spouting nonsense. The same study from those fine institutions is available to me as a learner. Although the quality of this education is proportional to the money spent, and the oversight is minimal, the opportunity is still mine to seize.

But these goals are available to all of us. College students and high school dropouts, churches and think tanks, businesses and non-profits — we all have the opportunity to use the resources at our disposal to become better at everything we do. There is nobody who can keep us from this task. Some of us enjoy more opportunities and privilege than others, but all of us can work to become better versions of ourselves. It would also be wise to remember something Rowe hinted at in his video: there are many times when we are each other’s best resource. “Education” is not owned by an elite group of people or a system of institutions; it is a process we can all engage in, and the more we do so together, the better it will be.

It seems to me Jesus told a parable about people who were each given different amounts to invest in his Kingdom project (see Matthew 24:14–30). Some were given more than others, but all were expected to take what they had been given and use it to invest in more. Only the one who took the amount and buried it, refusing to do any more than keeping what was handed to him, was scolded.

May we hear the wisdom in this teaching and know we are invited to invest our blessings. May we remember much of this world’s education is already free, and it is our responsibility to pursue that learning.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Spiritual Practices

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Spiritual practices really are the center of everything I do. Organizationally, this is the spiritual DNA that Dean Trune instilled in Impact Campus Ministries (and me personally) years and years ago. You have seen me write about the importance of pursue in the work of ICM and I wrote earlier about our counter-intuitive definition of success.

Personally, this space in my life has been incredibly important to me over the last decade. I am thankful that my mentors (not only people like Dean, but also Steve Edwards and Bill Westfall) have invested in me to the extent that they taught me how to possess the same passion for pursuing God that they had. This was even more important when I met Ray Vander Laan and traveled to Israel and Turkey and was challenged to get the Text inside of me like I had never known. For years, I had gravitated towards the Text and struggled with our conventional understandings of prayer. ICM’s commitment to spiritual practices, combined with Ray’s passion for the Text, made for an experience that would change my life forever.

Emotionally, these practices have been a life saver. Being a person who struggles with anxiety, I find the daily rhythms of spiritual disciplines allow me to manage my anxiety in a way that is incredibly helpful — and healthy.

Vocationally, it is the center of the work I do with students. As we seek to make disciples through the art of mimicry and imitation, this is my starting place. With every student I have ever intentionally discipled, I have started with this premise: it all begins with your daily pursuit of God; imitate me as I show you how I make space for Him in my life.

There are lots and lots of ways people can create this kind of space. We are all wired differently and we gravitate towards different practices and expressions of worship. I have a teaching that I give every year to my students that you can find here. It describes many (but not all) possible ways we can create space for God in our lives. For years, I have been surrounded by people who are deeply committed to prayer. I, however, have always struggled to pray and gravitated to more structure in my pursuit. Having not been raised in a church experience of heavy liturgy, I have found structural disciplines to be life-giving.

Some of the books that have shaped me the most in this regard are Celebration of the Disciplines by Richard Foster, The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard, Sacred Rhythms by Christine Sine, The Contemplative Pastor and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson, Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and many other specialized works (like books on fasting or prayer).

No series on A Day in the Life would be complete without talking about the daily spaces I create to passionately pursue God with my time and attention. I made a video diary of my practices here:

MAKING AN IMPACT: Message

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

In the previous entries of this series, we’ve been able to cover the most important pieces of who we are. We have talked about our purpose at Impact Campus Ministries of making disciples, and we have journeyed through ICM’s mission of pursuing, modeling, and teaching intimacy with Christ with our students and others.

In 2015 and 2016, Bill Westfall (ICM’s previous president) returned from sabbatical and emerged from a season of pursuing a doctoral degree in global missional leadership. In his dissertation, Bill wrote about the importance of three key ideas: message, mode, and milieu (Mx3). Bill came back from a time of reflection on his leadership of ICM and encouraged us to think about and grow in these three areas.

To be sure, we are still growing. Many of these ideas are just starting to sink in and we feel as though we are charting new ground in these areas at ICM. We do believe in their efficacy and we continue to strive towards growth even as we learn. This is important to know as I begin to write on these concepts, because any perceived “wisdom” is yet to come from years of experience and application. This is all the passing on of concepts that we are beginning to experiment with.

These ideas are built around how to make disciples of these new generations effectively. Specifically, we are talking about bringing effective discipleship practices into the world of Millennials and Generation Z. These ideas will probably not prove to be timeless, but timely, so there is a sense of urgency to the learning curve that we seek to be on. I want to spend the next few posts talking about these ideas espoused in Mx3.

So today we talk about MESSAGE, and we have defined it as “the whole story of God and His invitation to join.”

The effort rests in the idea that our young generations experience life through the lens of narrative. They are used to the ideas of story — being surrounded by shows, movies, story-based video games, sound bites, YouTube, etc.

We believe God has been telling a story, as well. And yes, while we are talking about the Bible, what we have noticed is that our theological world (predominantly in the West) lacks a coherent understanding of how biblical history works as a narrative. Very few biblically trained ministry professionals can articulate the narrative arc of biblical history in less than five minutes. We just don’t have that kind of grasp of the Text. It wasn’t taught to us as a narrative.

What we are trained in is understanding systematic theology. We were educated insistently on a “biblical worldview” in a package that is becoming increasingly useless among a generation influenced by technology and online streaming narratives.

We need to learn how to convey what God’s been doing in the world in a compelling way. We need to be able to talk about how we got where we are now in increasingly honest avenues and to think critically about engaging the mission of God as a partner. In short, we need to be able to show students what God has been up to since the beginning of our world and what it has to do with them; we need to be able to show them that God is inviting all of us (including them) to join in His redemptive work all throughout creation.

Think about it. Could you give a synopsis of how the Bible works, from Genesis to Revelation, in less than two minutes? If you had a whiteboard, could you map out biblical history as a narrative arc? Could you identify the core elements of narrative in that arc? What is the conflict and plot? Who are the major characters? What is the moment of narrative climax? Is there a resolution? Where do you and I fit?

Our young adults are begging for somebody to make the biblical story compelling. Their postmodern world does not put such a high premium on resolving paradox or answering questions; in fact, these approaches seem shallow and irreverent to them. To “fix” this like it’s a problem is a gigantic adventure in missing the point — and the opportunity.

Luckily, this last decade has brought us some attempts at providing resources to these ends. There have been some books, such as The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew, and a few others. One of the most popular podcasts and video hosting sources is the work done by The Bible Project. Of course, this is also one of my own personal passions, so I have spent the last decade collecting and creating a body of work that I have been making available in different forms. I spent over four years writing a blog series that walked through the narrative of Scripture in detail; the series starts here and moves through the archives (navigable on the right sidebar) through the first quarter of 2017.

I also created BEMA Discipleship, which evolved into a “flipped classroom” that produces (in partnership with Brent Billings) the BEMA Podcast, which does the same thing as my blog and is intended to be used as a discussion centerpiece for students all around the country. I also have hopes to write a book in the next couple of years to put this discussion into a more concise and palatable format.

All that to say, this world of theology is trying to keep up with the very things Bill Westfall pointed out in his work. Would you join us in trying to become a better storyteller?

Top 12 of CiHD: #9

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We’ll continue our look at the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust by looking at my ninth-most-viewed post of all time. It doesn’t surprise me that this post made the list, and it is one of my favorite topics to wrestle with. The post discussed the book of Hebrews and the specifics of atonement theories. You can read the post titled “HEBREWS: Atonement 101” here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to it? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

There are two answers to this question in my mind. On one hand, this has been a growing conversation in the theological world for the last few decades. Many studied scholars, academics, and theologians have weighed in on a reexamination of the ideas that drive our understanding of atonement. This would discount voices that had been wrestling with these theories for decades before, but the larger conversation really took on a head of steam more recently. For those who could use a definition of terms here, atonement is the reparation for our sin and trespasses. It is the act of reconciliation — the explanation for how we are made right with God.

The other reason is much less academic and I mention it in passing in the original post. I think people who have been in the church for a while (or not) and are used to the theological conversation surrounding the cross and how we are forgiven by God have lots of questions about things that just never sat right with us — things that didn’t quite seem to fit. It didn’t work in our head, it didn’t work in our heart, and it seemed to betray the goodness of relationship (with God and others). Most of my observations assume(d) that my readers have their greatest exposure in the evangelical world and were exposed to an astutely articulated penal substitutionary atonement theory. If they were not raised in this world, they may not resonate with this post the same way.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

As is often the case, I hope readers found an explanation of how the conversation is bigger and wider than they were ever told. The more I study the stream of orthodox Christianity, the more I come to realize that there has been far more going on in this stream than I was told. This is incredibly comforting to me and I hope it is comforting to others, as well.

I also hope they found a conversation that didn’t discount the many theories discussed. While I sought to point out the limitations of each theory, I hope such a discussion did not discount or cause a reader to reject the positive attributes that each theory brings to the table. This stands true even for me, and you’ll notice I have a theory that I struggle with the most (penal substitutionary atonement) and a theory that is my favorite (scapegoat/mimetic theory). I have certainly battled on a personal level with the idea of rejecting PSA and then embracing Girardian thought without critique. Which leads me to some recommendations…

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I wouldn’t add much other than recommendations for further reading. One book that has really helped me in the personal struggle I describe above is a book by Scot McKnight titled A Community Called Atonement. In it, McKnight argues that all of the different theories should be seen (and used!) as a golf bag full of different clubs. Just as a golfer will pull out a different club based on the scenario, the circumstances, and the goal, so should we be prepared and willing to use different theories for different purposes. This metaphor has been very helpful and the book is very good.

I would also recommend finding anything by Rene Girard that is related to mimetic theory and atonement. It will be heady and academic, but it will have shaped more of this ongoing conversation than we realize. If you would like a summary of Girardian thought, I recommend reading The Jesus-Driven Life by Michael Hardin.

And of course, check out the books and authors I recommended in the original post. Look at the work of Greg Boyd on atonement to find a crucifixion-centric theology that reclaims a more modern form of Christus Victor. Find books by Tony Jones to examine the ideas that drive solidarity theory.

And while you study and grow, learn and wrestle, don’t ever forget that the main takeaway of any theory is that we can be made right with God. There is freedom available for anyone who would look to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the most liberating moment in human history.

Top 12 of CiHD: #12

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

As we begin our look at the Top 12 Blog Posts of Covered in His Dust, we’re going to begin as any good countdown does — at the bottom! Let’s start with my twelfth-most-viewed blog post. It happens to be “The Redemption Cycle,” a post I published on December 26, 2013. It discusses the big ideas undergirding the book of Judges, and I contest the idea that the cycle represented there should be described as a “sin cycle.” You can read the post here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to this post? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

To be honest, one of the things you are going to get every time we do this is a very cynical and objective look at why people hit this post. The truth of the matter is that most of these page views are coming from web searches from people’s favorite search engines. Chances are good that many of these views came from people who were doing an image search for “cycle in Judges” and happened to click on the image that is linked to my blog.

In a similar fashion, I think many page views came from a Google search that had to do with “cycle” and “book of Judges.” As people were looking more into this idea, they were looking for additional material. Particularly on Google searches, my Google-based blog host is one of the first hits, and away we go. So let’s work with this idea: the people who ran across my blog were studying the book of Judges and the idea that there is an ongoing cycle within the literature.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope they found an idea that challenged the assumptions they were being handed from other sources. By saying this, I’m not suggesting that I hope they heard the right answer in a debate against what they had been taught. I simply mean to say that I hope they encountered an even bigger idea and that it made them think critically about the implications of the theology that serves as the foundation to our biblical interpretation — let alone our doctrine.

When I was handed a worldview that focused on the sinfulness and depravity of man, I found myself stuck in a theology that wasn’t compelling and didn’t inspire me to take up the mission and partner with God. Instead, I found a lot of despair and hopelessness for humanity. The idea that God simply “puts up with us” and with a roll of His eyes He forgives us — yet again — was portrayed quite clearly.

There are many things I can applaud in what I was taught. The fact that Bible teachers were able to show me a literary tool being employed in Judges was fantastic. At that stage of my learning, I hadn’t been exposed to many literary tools; but being handed such a clear and noticeable example launched the beginning of a very critical journey in learning the skills necessary to examine the Text. It was all of the doctrinal assumption that I hope people found critiqued when they got here.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

This post really expresses things quite thoroughly and I can’t think of much I would add. I would say I have learned how much scholarship (progressive textual critics, in large part) sees the book of Judges as a parallel record of history to the book of Joshua. What they mean when they say such things is that a redactor later pulled these two stories together and made them read sequentially, but they probably preexisted as different takes on the same period of history. On the one hand, you have the book of Joshua, which tells the story of obedience (for the most part) and God’s help in absolute conquest. However, another historical perspective tells the story of disobedience and God’s incredible patience. These serve as two sides of the historical narrative. For some of us, this may be a bridge too far, but I have been learning much about these theories and find them informative in my ability to think critically about the Text and wrestle with authorial intent.

I would also be remiss to exit this post without recommending Make Your Mark, a book written by a fellow teacher and friend of mine, Brad Gray. While the book focuses on the story of Samson, I find its contents to be helpful as I wrestle with the implications of the stories found in the book of Judges.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 1650 thru AD 1800

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

As the Age of Enlightenment continued, our secular growth curve continued, as well. If the theories and science proposed and proved by men like Copernicus and Galileo rocked the very foundations of our assumptions about the universe, it was only just setting the stage for what we call today modernity (or the “modern era”).

This growth curve would continue through the contributions of men like Isaac Newton and John Locke. Famous for his “laws of motion,” Newton is considered the modern father of mechanics and all of my engineering students have Newton to thank for so much of the field they enjoy. While this was not his only major contribution (for instance, Newton did incredible work in the field of color and the light spectrum, among other things), Newton changed the way we think about physics — therefore setting the stage for technological advancement like never before.

Locke is often referred to as the “Father of Liberalism.” While many in my circles in the rural northwest see the word liberal as something close to a swear word (I jest, I jest), it would be foolhardy to make assumptions about Locke. In its most basic and earliest forms, liberalism referred to a line of political philosophy that believes in liberty and equality. Locke’s influence, for instance, on the Declaration of Independence is unmistakable, and one of the reasons American democracy even works (on its good days) is because of the tension and balance held between liberalism and conservatism — one philosophy bent toward complete freedom and the other philosophy bent toward maintaining a constant ethic. Outside of our modern American context, Locke greatly impacted other major thinkers and players in the next century.

This secular growth curve should not convince us there was a lack in the theological department, by any means. The Protestant Reformation was finally cooling down. The Edict of Nantes (signed in 1598) had determined Protestants were granted civil liberty and equality, meaning they no longer had to run around as heretics under the oppression of the Holy Roman Empire. This freedom of thought had two results.

On the positive side, this newfound freedom allowed people to think for themselves, study, publish, and teach others their theological beliefs, theories, and systems. The negative side would be that Protestantism no longer had a central system holding it together. As Europe became more and more splintered and migration went on the rise, we would see mass division and splitting of Christian thought that seemed to increase exponentially for the next 200 years. Not that such diversity is a bad thing, but it has its struggles, as does anything else.

One of those new movements was led by John Wesley. While certainly not the first to do so, Wesley argued adamantly against the premises of Calvinism. Having broken away from the Anglican faith, Wesley became the father of what we know today as Methodism and the Methodist Church. Wesley preached vehemently about personal repentance, confession, and the power of our personal will to be transformed and to pursue the holiness of God. Christianity has been unbelievably impacted by his influence on Christian thought and practical applications of theology.

But we can’t forget all of this progress is happening in a world that is quickly changing. The writings of John Locke influenced another major secular voice in the eighteenth century: Voltaire, a French writer and philosopher who was widely praised for his satirical attacks on the Catholic Church (and some would say on established religion in general). Using his wit and cutting sense of humor, he argued for the freedom of religion and speech. His thoughts and writings shaped tremendously the ideas we know as the separation of church and state. Voltaire was quick to point out (accurately, I might add) the danger of religion when mixed with the power of the state.

Much of this had a major impact on public and educated opinion, and much of this opinion ended up changing culture in a way that radically affected history. The movement in France would ultimately lead to the French Revolution and ushered in what we now call the “post-Christian” era. The Church would continue to see a decline in its influence, both politically and culturally, as well as a loss of privilege over the centuries to come (something much of the Church is still in denial about to this day).

As far as my American context (as most of my readers are such), it would behoove us to realize that the great migration to America has been happening during this period. The cultural tenor has certainly set the stage for the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. With thinkers like Locke and Voltaire, the pump had been primed for the ideals that led to European revolution, and the independence on our shores, as well.

CHURCH HISTORY: Telling a Story

We left our last conversation (and finished our study of the Scriptures) with this nagging question: What happened?

Now that we are done with our study of the God-breathed Text, we are entering a very sticky and dangerous realm of my own personal thoughts and opinions. While my thoughts and opinions have certainly been at work in the previous discussion, I have taken solace in the fact that we were working on a discussion centered around the life-giving biblical narrative. But this question is incredibly important, and as a Bible teacher who works with college students, I’m deeply convicted that if we don’t wrestle with these questions, we have done a great disservice to our study of the Text.

One of the things we talk about at Impact Campus Ministries is what we call “Message, Mode, and Milieu” — an idea introduced to us through the dissertation work and leadership of my personal friend, mentor, and former ICM president, Bill Westfall. When we speak of Message, the idea we are trying to communicate is that we need to have an understanding of “the whole story of God and His invitation to join” that story. There is no way we can adequately address this invitation if we don’t have an understanding of what happened in between the world of the Bible and the world you and I traverse today.

Because of this, I would like to wrap up our study by engaging that now. It is important to know a few things.

1) I am not a historian or an expert in the field of church history. Have I studied church history considerably? Yes. Am I an expert? Not at all. I am indebted to the work of real experts, some of whom I’ve been able to study with personally, and some I have only read from a distance. Please don’t quote me as a source in this regard. I am simply trying to take some of the things I have learned and think critically with all of you. Nothing more; nothing less.

2) Every historian, whether they are an expert or not, tells a story. There simply is no such thing as an unbiased rendering of history. Each one of us sees history through the lens of our own culture, language, experience, opinion, and conviction. I want you to know up front that I will be taking the parts of history I believe tell the story in the most useful manner for our culture in this place and in this time. It is completely intentional and biased. But please, do not ever believe anyone who doesn’t affirm that. All renderings of history have a story to tell, and all historians are storytellers. We should not run from that, but embrace it. And we should allow it to challenge us to think critically about our past(s).

3) My intent with this last portion of our study is not “the history of the church.” I will not even begin to deal adequately with any portion of church history in a comprehensive way. I will not be doing a study on the reformers, or the desert fathers. I simply want to take a broad look at where we’ve been and how our Christian world has been shaped. This means I will be overgeneralizing at times. I will try my best not to do this in a misleading or disingenuous way, but I want to stay within the scope of my intent here.

In this regard, there are many, many great sources for church history. I would recommend books like Constantine’s Sword and Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain Language. These recommendations do not mean I agree in full with these works or their many nuances, but they are a great way to get started.

Now, as I pointed out, the early Christians seemed to believe the return of Christ was imminent. Were they wrong? I don’t believe they were.

As I said earlier, I believe Jesus taught us about a proper three-part understanding of the coming of the Age to Come. I do not believe there is a fixed date for which Jesus’s return is set. On the contrary, I believe God is inviting us to partner with Him in restoring a broken world. At some point, as this “redemptive arc of history” is bent closer and closer to the intent of God, God will snap the last few pieces into place — maybe just as the apocalyptic prophets paint the picture, or maybe differently.

This understanding runs congruent with the Jewish understanding Peter seems to promote in 2 Peter 3.

You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

Apparently the “day of God” is not fixed, but stands in relation to us. Our obedience somehow speeds up its coming. And just as we saw in the end of our study of the New Testament, this commitment and radical obedience by the early believers was working. I don’t believe they were wrong to think the coming of Christ and the new heaven and new earth — prophesied by Isaiah, re-announced by Peter, Paul, and John — were speedily approaching.

But then something happened…

We seemed to lose the plot. I want to look at what that something might have been. Join me as we begin to walk through the last 2000 years.

REVELATION: A Book for Its Time

Brace yourself. The time has come.

For some, getting to the book of Revelation has been something you could not wait for. The anticipation of studying Revelation can be stifling. For others, they avoid the conversation of Revelation like the plague. They find the whole conversation far too tense, loaded with problems, confusing, and discouraging. My mother (who actively reads my blog—hi Mom!) is convinced that this isn’t a conversation she has to figure out.

On some level, I can appreciate that. This world (and the Church) could use a lot more of the humility that comes from being okay with not knowing.

But alas, I think we often let ourselves off the hook far too easily, plugging our ears and not wanting to engage a conversation which makes us uncomfortable. The truth of the matter is that what we believe about “where this is all headed” or “what’s going to happen at the end of the world” has more of an effect on what we do day to day than many of the other things we believe. What we believe about the narrative of scripture shapes how we live within it — and nothing shapes a narrative more than the ending.

Before we get started, let’s remind ourselves of the incredibly important aspects of the context surrounding the literature of Revelation. We have a lot of very destructive assumptions that need to be deconstructed.

So, first of all: The book is called ‘Revelation’ — not ‘Revelations.’

Now that we have that out of the way…

It is incredibly important to identify the genre of Revelation as “apocalyptic literature.” Once we settle that in our consciousness (which is typically an easy leap), we need to go back to Zechariah, which gave us a primer on apocalyptic literature; this will be much more difficult to settle in our consciousness.

Third, we need to go back to our study of Zechariah yet again, because this distinction is that important.

Having said all that, it’s essential to remind ourselves throughout the story about the hermeneutic we attempt to use when studying the Bible. We seek to learn “authorial intent,” which means we want to know (as much as we can) what the writer meant when he wrote it, and what the audience understood when they read it. This is the inspired conversation.

This isn’t to say the Spirit doesn’t move as we read the Text today. This isn’t to say there aren’t many applications of a Text throughout history, including today. This isn’t to say Revelation doesn’t have anything to offer about the future or that God won’t do things in the future that line up with the things described in Revelation. But…

Revelation is not written primarily about the future. Revelation is not primarily about the end of the world. Revelation is written to a first-century church being persecuted by the Roman Empire, and to a people who are running for their lives, standing up to the narrative of Empire, watching the execution of their brothers and sisters, and wondering if it’s all worth it.

To them, John uses apocalyptic literature to communicate a clear message: It is worth it. You have to overcome, because we know how this story ends.

Throughout our study of Revelation, I am going to assume Revelation is written during the reign (probably the later reign) of Emperor Domitian, who led one of the most brutal persecutions in history. There are other theories about the date of authorship, but this is mine. To learn more about these conversations, I would recommend reading Christ and the Caesars by Ethelbert Stauffer, the two commentaries on the early church by Roland Worth, or even A Pinch of Incense, which happens to be the second volume of a four-volume series.

Once we can keep our commitment to an appropriate hermeneutic in biblical interpretation, the writing of Revelation will begin to come alive. I can state this with confidence because I have watched this time and time again in people as I take part in study tours through Turkey. The ride through Revelation is a wild ride of deconstruction, but one that can change us in untold ways.

And so to end, let’s start where John begins:

The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

John,

To the seven churches in the province of Asia:

Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

1 THESSALONIANS: Parousia

Paul also pens two letters to the church in Thessalonica. There are plenty of commentaries that deal with the context of Thessalonica and, to be honest, I haven’t had the opportunity to study the context of Thessalonica as much as I would like. While I have heard different explanations for it, it would seem that the people of Thessalonica had a clear misunderstanding of the proper response to the “return” of Christ.

One thing that becomes abundantly clear (again, addressed in NT Wright’s work Surprised by Hope) is that the early believers had a definite understanding of Christ’s very close return. This may not be as far-fetched as it sounds to us from where we sit, but I’ll deal with that theology at some other point. At any rate, it is safe to say that early Christians in the Roman Empire believed they might see Christ’s return in their lifetime, or the lifetime of their children.

Apparently this had impacted the Thessalonian community in such a way that it led to their disengagement. If Christ was about to return and make the whole world right, why should we spend all of our time working? Paul addresses some of these misunderstandings by talking about the need for the believers in Thessalonica to work, for “the man who does not work, does not eat.” It is also to this world that Paul speaks of parousia.

Parousia is the Greek word we often translate as “second coming.” While this is actually a very accurate translation, the term is loaded with historical context we usually miss. These details can be found by studying NT Wright, Ethelbert Stauffer, the early church commentaries by Roland Worth, and others.

Parousia referred to the second coming of an emperor. In a Roman world that had experienced the havoc of multiple earthquakes (as we mentioned before), the emperor would make a visit to the city (you could think of how a modern-day leader might visit a disaster zone). After surveying the extent of the damage, the emperor would leave behind a large sum of money that the people of the city were to use to rebuild. Everyone knew the emperor would return one day and you would have to give an account for what you did with his deposit.

This return was called a parousia, and we know Thessalonica experienced at least two of them in the first century. According to historical record, there appear to be common themes experienced in any given Roman parousia.

The emperor would arrive to the sound of a loud trumpet. As soon as the lookout saw the emperor’s entourage (more like a small army) arriving in the distance, the call would go out. The city would not want to be caught with Caesar banging on their front door.

When the emperor arrived at the city, he would pay the obligatory respects to the dead. In the ruins of ancient Greco-Roman cities, I have always seen the graveyard just outside the main entrance to the city. It was their way of honoring the dead and those who had gone before them.

After the emperor had paid his respects, the people of the city would go out to meet him. This meeting was referred to in the Greek as eis apantesien. The goal is to go out from the city, meet the emperor with joy, and take him by the hand to show him the city and the great work that had been done — in his honor, of course.

Consider the context of the church in Thessalonica and the following words from 1 Thessalonians 4:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Paul describes the second coming of Jesus like the parousia of the emperor. To a church that is having a hard time understanding the need to engage in the work of the Kingdom (or physical labor, for that matter), Paul describes the second coming as aparousia, communicating to the people of Thessalonica that they have work to do, because God left them with a deposit and expected them to use it to restore and reconcile, heal and rebuild. In Paul’s picture, there is a trumpet sound, the dead in Christ rise first, and we are caught up to “eis apantesis” Jesus in the air.

The irony runs thick here, for the theology that loves to quote this verse as backing for the idea of the “rapture” is the same theology that commits the sin of the Thessalonians. Far too much Christian theology espouses an idea that we are all going to leave this place someday. If this is true, then our goal is to have as many people “on our team” as possible before “some glad morning, when this life is over…”

But this is the exact idea Paul is teaching against. Paul is not arguing for a disengaged theology; he is arguing for a theology of complete and urgent engagement. Jesus is going to come back. He left us with the deposit of the Holy Spirit, and we’re going to have to show him what we did with the place.

You see, we are caught up to meet Jesus in the air as he is “coming down from heaven” for his parousia.

To quote one of my favorite teachers, “I get worried that too many Christians are going to be on their way up and out of here as Jesus is coming down, and they’re going to pass in the air!”

This is not a theology of disembodied evacuation; it’s a theology of physical participation. 

May God remind us that we have work to do here — today. May He remind us that Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” May we look forward to the day when the trumpet might sound and we might go out (or up) to meet Jesus on his way down, in order to joyfully take him by the hand and show him around at the things we were able to accomplish with His help.

And when He shows up, I pray we might have something to show Him.

ROMANS: Buried Alive

We were left wondering if Paul’s assertion of the supremacy of grace was a dangerous license to sin. Paul now turns his attention to that nagging question:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Paul takes this fallacious line of thinking and shows it to be flawed. This amazing grace cannot be construed as a license to sin, for the very awakening to that grace was also a death to the kind of worldview that leads us to sin in the first place. Once we truly come to grasp and embrace this gospel of acceptance, we die to that former way of thinking — acting out of fear, preservation of self, and our unharnessed desires are replaced with a spirit of peace and a life of self-sacrifice. We die to that old way of thinking.

Paul then uses baptism as his picture and teaching point (to understand why Paul might use baptism at this point in his argument, I would recommend reading Elementary Principles by D. Thomas Lancaster; we will study this further in our upcoming look at the book of Hebrews).

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Paul says that this baptism we undergo is a physical picture (among other things) that teaches us about the transformation taking place. Just as Jesus died, was buried, and then brought back to life, so there is a part of us that has been put to death so the truest part of us might live on. Baptism is this watery grave, an image of burial and resurrection, teaching us about this new life.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

We left our “old self” in the watery grave; it died a death and can be put to rest. We, however, live on. The part of us that lives on is the part of us being shaped into the image of Christ (and you might notice all of the language of “joining” and “with him” and “united”).

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

This is where it really starts to sound like we are reading the culmination of one single narrative. This exhortation from Paul is nothing new at all. It takes us all the way back to the beginning of the story, where we meet Adam and Eve in the middle of the garden and are told about their temptations, their desires, and their invitation to demonstrate they are made in the image of God. They are invited to know when to say enough.

And so are we. Paul makes sure we know our invitation has not changed since the dawn of time; the language is incredibly similar to the language of Genesis. We are invited to trust the story, to master our desires, and to demonstrate self-control.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Finally, Paul circles back to the question at hand. If grace is this good, should we just continue in our sin? Absolutely not! The truth is we will offer ourselves to one of two realities. We can live out our lives in service to fear or we can live out our lives in the service of trust, faith, and love. But a life of bland neutrality is not an option available to us. This gospel has come to rescue us and set us free from a life of servitude to fear and self-preservation; it has come to set us free to tzedekah — to righteousness, generosity, and self-sacrifice.