Theologians of the cross, unite!

Pretension Busters: Challenges

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"

(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)

Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.

Romans 5:3-4

Back in a previous century when there was no vast array of communication methods to bring strange and unusual sights right into your home, you had to make an effort to have an unusual experience. So there was a mythical story about a 19th century Texas farmer going to the circus because he'd never seen an elephant. Driving his wagon load of produce on his way into town, what should he come across but the elephant he'd never seen. Of course, his horse had never seen one either, never wanted to see one again, and spooked, upsetting the wagon and destroying the produce. Protesting to be unconcerned with the consequences, the farmer declared: "I don't give a hang; for I have seen the elephant!"

Participants in the California Gold Rush popularized this expression. The anticipation of riches and the promise of exotic experiences lured multitudes to expend not only their life savings but often life itself to reach and explore the gold fields. When queried on whether or not it was worth it, they would often respond: "I don't care; for I have seen the elephant."

For many Christians afflictions, suffering and challenges are assumed to be transitory experiences; that is, they are experienced and then done with. Normal life resumes between various episodes of suffering or the occurrence of challenges. At the worst, life would be just one challenge after another; but, at best, the challenges would be few, far between, and always beneficial.

St. Paul--with Martin Luther following his lead--believed just the opposite: suffering was normal life. In fact, as St. Paul writes above, once you've been declared righteous by God and received the hope of his glory, you also have received eyes to see the reality of life: the only place we have to rejoice in this world is in the midst of our sufferings. Luther put it this way: the Christian life is a "passive" (as in the "passion of Christ) life; that is, it "suffers" the will of God to be done.

Suffering, endurance, character, hope--all these co-exist in the passive life of a Christian as the Christian "suffers" being done unto by the will of God. The word "character" here does not refer to adjectives like integrity, honesty, respectability, etc. No, it is instead the naming of a certain kind of person, specifically a soldier who has been to the front lines and met with the enemy--a battle-hardened veteran.

Having received the hope of the glory of God and formed by the crucible of living passively beneath God's will, the veterans of faith St. Paul and Luther could face the loss of all they had--even life itself--with an certainty beyond that of "seeing the elephant." They had the assurance of God's love given by the Holy Spirit.

And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Romans 5:5

Pretension Busterrs: Burnout

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"

(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)

" The Lord said, “You were upset about this little plant, something for which you have not worked nor did you do anything to make it grow.

It grew up overnight and died the next day"

Jonah 4:10

Burnout is that complex set of emotional symptoms that includes hopelessness, frustration, anger, despair, apathy, self-pity, and lethargy. Burnout is the result of labor that seems pointless--that is, the work is never completed; the work doesn't remedy the situation; the work has no tangible effect upon the situation; and the future promises no change in the situation. One definition of insanity is "doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result. If you accept that definition, then burnout is the only "sane" response to those kinds of working conditions.

The prophet Jonah "burned out." He knew something about his God: that the Lord was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment. (Jonah 4:2) Thus, when Jonah received a commission for the Lord to preach to Ninevah and declare its destruction, Jonah was confident that such destruction would never happen. Ninevah would repent and the merciful Lord would relent. This would make Jonah a "false prophet"--one whose prophecy failed to come about.

Sure enough... Jonah finally prophesied destruction to Ninevah, Ninevah repented, the Lord relented, and Jonah "burned out." He went off to a hillside and wished he were dead. The Lord had made a liar of him. He expected to be called into prophecy again; wherein the Lord would again make him a liar. Jonah expected this to be the pattern of his future. The only "sane" thing to do was to "burn out," if he didn't want to keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

Today's preachers face Jonah's dilemma: preaching wrath, destruction, and repentance when God is merciful, forgiving, and loving seems an exercise in futility, frustration, and no change for the future. Their prophetic voice is called into question; their work appears fruitless; and their preacher looks as if it makes no difference. Their "burnout" is imminent. If the only "sane" thing to do is burnout, their prophetic voice changes target. The preacher's task no longer is to name people's sin and call for repentance. The preacher now speaks to assure them of God's love for them, to affirm them in their chosen lifestyles, and to motivate them to the self-actualization of their favorite agendas--personal, social, or political.

This "contagion" of burnout sweeps across the ranks of preachers. The preaching of God's Word delivering Jesus Christ categorically as THE way, THE truth, and THE life fades into the background since it demands the death of sinners in repentance so the Christ can be the life of the newly raised-up saints. The Word of God that kills to make alive is exchanged for a sentimental word which affirms the status quo.

This "burned out" attitude is indeed deadly. Without the proclamation of Justification by faith in Christ which works death and new life, these preachers simply leave their hearers dead in their sin while helping them feel good about their sinful condition and exhorting them to accomplish their various agendas.

But...

Thanks be to God that his Holy Spirit still gives life to "insane" preachers who will indeed keep on doing the same things over and over but not expecting different results--That is, they preach Christ categorically again and again and again even when such preaching seems pointless, unending, and without visibly remedy. With no other word than God's Word of death and new life, these crazy prophets simply declare it over and over to the delight of sinners who know the truth about themselves and God.

"I love to tell the story for those who know it best

seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest."

LBW #390

Pretension Busters: Blogging

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"

(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)

“Where there are many dreams, there are many vanities, and words without number. Therefore, fear God!”

Ecclesiastes 5:7

As a blogger I certainly know about "the few" of the above caption. The struggle for "audience" often consumes bloggers--especially as they try to move into some sort of "pay" model. In most of those models "pay" is driven by the number of "hits"--visitors--the blogger's site obtains on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Various tactics are used by bloggers to drive up the "hit" numbers: 1) Networking--you join an increasing circle of friends who "scratch each other's back" by visiting each other's sites, as the number of friends increases so do the number of hits; 2) Branding--carefully choosing a theme and/or key words and/or specific topics that rate high on "search engine" priorities, this drives up hits which in turn earns higher ratings on the search engines; 3) Appeal--crafting the content of the message so that it "appeals" to people's sentimentality, their vanity, their popularity, etc.; 4) Marketing--simply using any means possible to "get the word out" so that there is "recognition" of the blog and therefore it draws attention and "hits."

As a preacher, I know as well about "the few." The struggle for "audience" often consumes preachers--especially since audience size is used as a measure of the preacher's success and determines the preacher's "pay." Preachers use every tactic mentioned above and then some to increase the size of their audience. The most insidious and destructive of those tactics for preachers is that of "Appeal"--crafting the content of the message so that it "appeals" to people's "itching ears:" For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. (2 Timothy 4:3)

The above caption is a parody of Winston Churchill's statement in his famous speech of 1940 wherein he pointed to the heroic defense of Britain by the Royal Air Force against the Nazi war machine by saying: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," The pilots and their crews of the RAF had a single-minded pursuit of purpose: to be the living shield between their homes and homeland and the enemy come to destroy them. Their single-minded devotion to that duty emptied them of concerns for personal success, profit, or safety. Time and again they took to the sky knowing that, live or die, they were all that stood between all they loved and its destruction.

While there are some similarities between bloggers and preachers--especially as they engage in strategies of audience maximization, there is one defining difference that really precludes a preacher's participation in said strategies. While it may be true for bloggers to use many words to say so little, for a preacher (unless they've surrendered to audience maximization) there is but one word to deliver but that one word says so much. That one word is a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. An all-encompassing word who said of himself: "And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all things to myself." (John 12:32) The preacher's single-minded pursuit of purpose: the proclamation "of Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2) empties such a proclaimer of concerns for personal success, profit, or safety. This preacher stands to be a voice delivering a living Word which is "lifted up" between all they love and the triumvirate of powers (the devil, the world, and the sinful self) seeking to destroy them.

The preacher delivers in such a way so as to declare this into reality: "Never in the history of the world have so many owed so much to just one."

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

Philippians 2:5-8

Pretension Buster: Blame

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"

(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)

And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”

So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

Genesis 3:11-13

When confronted with the question: "Did you eat...?" notice how both Adam and Eve admit to eating. But... oh what bondage they are in. Not only do they confess to eating but they also confess to being helpless pawns to the wills of others. The two of them point accusing fingers of blame to the ones who caused them to eat: Adam points to Eve; Eve points to the serpent.

Lurking in the text is another object of blame--explicit for Adam; implicit for Eve. In Adam's casting of blame upon Eve, he explicitly names the woman as "the one whom you [God] gave me." For Eve--behind her naming the beguiling serpent--lies the implicit words "whom you created." Genesis 3:1 tells us that this serpent was the most shrewd of all the animals the Lord God had made. So our lapsarian parents both implicate their creator as responsible for not only their eating but also for their nakedness and all its attendant consequences.

Adam and Eve's pointing fingers of blame are inclusive: neighbor (Eve), creation (serpent), and Creator (God) are all responsible for the condition the fallen couple now suffer. No wonder Luther could say that after the Fall free will existed in name only (Heidelberg, #13). Certainly, after their fall, Adam and Eve claim to be helpless victims "bound" to the will of others.

This gives rise to the possibility of another perspective on the contrast between "blame" and "blameless." As demonstrated by this Genesis story, "blame" is that pointing finger--directed away from self and toward the other--that pointing finger declaring: "It's not my fault, it's yours!" "Blameless," on the other hand, has meant that one possesses nothing to which an accusation can stick--there is no place in you for "blame" to be affixed. Thus, as typically used in Scripture, "blame" and "blameless" are not the strict antonyms their structure would indicate. But what if they were?

If "blame" and "blameless" were strict antonyms, then 'blameless" would mean "one who does not 'blame.'" For Adam and Eve to have been "blameless" they would have said something like this: "I ate. It was my own fault, my own grievous fault. I ate." Now that sounds like a real confession.

Hans Iwand--a German theologian of the 20th century--once declared that the first justification that takes place in "justification by faith" is the "justification" of God. That is, sinners--rather than "blaming" God as the cause of their problem--now see that God is "justified" in his accusation (his judgment) against them. God is "just" in his judgment of them. These sinners--justified by faith--no longer "blame" God for their difficulty; they are "blameless." Presumably, then, these justified sinners no longer blame creation or neighbor and so are "blameless" before them as well.

However much we desire success, it will never be ours until that accusing finger of blame bypasses neighbor, creation, and Creator and points solely at ourselves. Then, abjectly and honestly confessing our failures we will come to know--not the success of our own work--but the success of God's work in us.

And you were at one time strangers and enemies in your minds as expressed through your evil deeds, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him – if indeed you remain in the faith, established and firm, without shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

Colossians 1:21-23a

Pretension Busters: Bitterness

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"

(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)

Let the prophet who has had a dream go ahead and tell his dream. Let the person who has received my message report that message faithfully. What is like straw cannot compare to what is like grain! I, the Lord, affirm it!

Jeremiah 23:28

Dreams versus the Word of the Lord... the situation there in Jerusalem during the time of Jeremiah pitted him--who had become known as "trouble all around" because of his steadfast proclamation of God's judgment upon the city and its people--the situation pitted Jeremiah against the tame prophets, the "pets" of the ruling class, who brought out of themselves "dreams" and delivered those "dreams" to the people. Now those sweet dreams were more palatable to the people than the "bitter" words of God's judgment delivered by Jeremiah. In a world more determined by "taste" (over which there can be no contention) than by "truth" (which always must be contended for)... in such a world "sweetness" wins.

I have observed my generation's adulation of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man's vision, determination, and martyrdom left a deep and abiding mark upon many and upon our nation as well. There is no doubt of the good which came of the Civil Rights Movement and King is its most enduring figure. Who--having once heard them from King's own mouth--can forget the inspirational words and rousing cadence of his "I Have a Dream" speech. The words of his vision were sweetness and life itself to those of the Movement.

Perhaps we've gained enough generational distance to admit that there has been some bad with the good; that some of the "sweetness" has become "bitter." John, in the Apocalypse, ate the little scroll received from the angel who promised him that the scroll would be sweet and sumptuous in his mouth but bitter and vile in his stomach. Indeed, that is exactly what came to pass (Revelation 10:9-10). So, too, is the way of dreams: their good is in their proclamation, not in their enactment.

Whenever what "could be" becomes what "must be" through the coercion of legislation, then the freedom of possibility becomes the tyranny of certainty. Forcing your lambs to lie down with lions will only give you fewer lambs and well fed lions.

Theologians of glory have no patience. They can't wait upon God to deliver upon the promises of his Word--especially as those promises are preceded by judgment. Theologians of glory--full of the dreams and visions they bring out of themselves--rush in, take charge, and through radical redefinition, seek to bring about what was promised but without the judgment. Martin Luther (the original) knew something of this. In his Heidelberg Disputation he contrasted theologians of glory with theologians of the cross: "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." Eventually he would conclude by saying: "The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it."

Man... humanity... the world loves that which is pleasing to it--especially the sweetness of dreams, the things they could make of themselves--what they "could" be. God loves what God creates out of the bitterness and nothingness to which we are driven through his judgment. Only then, when I am solely the work of my Lord, am I pleasing to him. And that... that is better than anything I could have dreamed up.

Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead,

who turn darkness into light and light into darkness,

who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.

Isaiah 5:20

Pretension Busters: Beauty

www.despair.com --"Increasing success by lowering expectations" (so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)

Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present

unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work

--Martin Luther

(Heidelberg Disputations, Thesis 11)

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.

Matthew 23:27

Those in love with their own moral beauty can't see past it and delude themselves as to the condition of their hearts. Even Job protested that he was not like other men (or even Adam himself) who covered their transgressions by hiding their iniquity in their heart (Job 31:33).

Sometime ago as we were studying Psalm 51 ("Create in me a clean heart, O God!"), one of the group asked: "What do we pray for after we've received a clean heart?" i.e. what's the next step, how do we make 'progress' in the Christian living thing? I had to have some help with this one so I asked around my circle of theologians. The answer: "You pray for a clean heart." There is no 'progress' to made after receiving a clean heart.

Such reasoning can be traced back to Martin Luther who--when expounding on the petitions of the Lord's Prayer--made this comment regarding "Thy will be done...": Of course, God gives you a free will. Why do you want to make it yours? The very act of "making it yours" destroys its freedom. In the same way the very act of claiming a 'clean heart' demolishes its cleanliness. According to Luther the only progress is to begin anew--that is, to be returned by confession and repentance to your baptism wherein your sin is forgiven and the life of Christ is yours.

Yet there are those who persist in boasting and claiming: "I gave my heart to Jesus!" As if Jesus would want such a dirty and corrupt piece of garbage. No, Jesus is going to put it and you out of your misery: in his mercy you're going to die but thanks be to God that you'll rise with Christ to walk in newness of life. Now the heart at the center of you is no longer yours but Christ's. As long as it stays his, it's the most beautiful, free, and joyous thing imaginable; but--as soon as you try to make it yours--well, the very act of claiming it destroys it.

Moral beauty is no deeper than our deeds and ugly goes clear to the bone--for it's out of the heart. But those--who through the Word of God--have been put to death and received the life of Christ--have Jesus' heart and can never be truly ugly and possess a beauty beyond that of morality for it is of the Holy Spirit---they no longer live but Christ lives in them (Galatians 2:20). But... try to affix the possessive "mine" to such life and beauty and immediately it evaporates, thrusting one right back into the need to plead: "Create in me a clean heart, O God!"

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12