Do You Have A Problem With the Bible?

Brian Zahnd makes me think. I do not always agree with him, but he makes me think...and sometimes astounds me. Read this, and see what it does to you.

I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…

I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem.

One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.

Imagine a history of colonial America written by Cherokee Indians and African slaves. That would be a different way of telling the story! And that’s what the Bible does. It’s the story of Egypt told by the slaves. The story of Babylon told by the exiles. The story of Rome told by the occupied. What about those brief moments when Israel appeared to be on top? In those cases the prophets told Israel’s story from the perspective of the peasant poor as a critique of the royal elite. Like when Amos denounced the wives of the Israelite aristocracy as “the fat cows of Bashan.”

Every story is told from a vantage point; it has a bias. The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will. This is Roman Christianity after Constantine. This is Christendom on crusade. This is colonists seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement....

Much more at the link.

I Need All Saints

Love these "All Saints Day" Tweets from Brian Zahnd! (Twitter @BrianZahnd)

I need the whole church—the whole church in historical length and ecumenical width. #AllSaintsDay

I need my Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Evangelical, Pentecostal brothers and sisters. #AllSaintsDay

I need the accumulated wisdom of the church from every age. My congregation is 31 years old. My church is 2,000 years old. #AllSaintsDay

I believe in Jesus—the Hope, the Light, the Savior of the world. I trust in no other plan, program, or politician. Here I stand. Amen. 

A Cathedral of Astonishment

"If we reduce the Christian faith to only that which we can explain, we end up with a paper-thin, watered down, cheap knock-off of Christianity that no longer has the capacity to astonish...""

"..What we need in our faith, theology, and witness is to build a cathedral of astonishment. Or more accurately, we need to rediscover and preserve the cathedral of astonishment that is authentic Christianity when it is imbued with mystery and beauty."

   - Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity, pages 163, 165 (italics in the original)

I Am From the Future

"Jesus was telling the Pharisees 'You keep asking when the kingdom of God is going to come, but it's already here. You just haven't seen it.' Jesus was telling the Pharisees that the future had arrived with what he was doing and with what was happening among his disciples. But you have to be born again to see it. It takes new eyes. Those who have been born again and have new eyes have sen the kingdom of God - they have, in fact, seen the future.. .."

"...as a baptized believer, this is my confession: I am from the future. I have seen and tasted the powers of the age to come."

       -Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World, page 132-1333

Ugliness Abosorbed

"Jesus didn't take a pragmatic approach to the problem of evil; Jesus took an aesthetic approach to the problem of evil. Jesus chose to absorb the ugliness of evil and turn it into something beautiful - the beauty of forgiveness."

               -Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World, Page 21

Beautiful Truth, Beautiful Goodness

"Truth and goodness need beauty. Truth claims divorced from beauty can become condescending.  Goodness minus beauty can become moralistic. to embrace truth and goodness in the Christian sense, we must also embrace beauty...." - Pages 28-29

"...But when the beautiful is severed from the absolute (God), what passes for beautiful can be anything and everything - which is to say nothing.  There really is a profound connection between the loss of beauty and the loss of meaning..." - Page 30

""The cross is a beautiful mystery - a mystery where an unexpected beauty is in the process of rescuing the world from its ugliness. Beauty will save the world."  Page 31

From Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Beauty and Allure of Christianity, by Brian Zahnd

Prime Examples

"...nearly everyone admires St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa of Calcutta whether or not they are Christians. St. Francis and Mother Teresa are preeminent examples of lives shaped by the cruciform to a degree that their lives of co-suffering love have come to be universally recognized as lives of beauty."

 - Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Beauty and Allure of Christianity, Page 27

The Beauty of the Crucifom

More quotes from Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity, by Brian Zahnd, on what is means to live according to the pattern of the Cruciform:

"..the cruciform (the shape of a cross) is the eternal form that endows Christianity with its mysterious beauty. Simply put, the cross is the form that makes Christianity beautiful! The cross is the beauty of Christianity because it is at the cross that we encounter co-suffering love and costly forgiveness in its most beautiful form." - Page 6

The cruciform is the aesthetic of our gospel. It is the form that gives Christianity its unique beauty. ....,,,to those who have eyes to see, the cruciform shows for a transcendent beauty - the beauty of love and forgiveness. It is the beauty of Christ's love and forgiveness most clearly seen in the cruciform that is able to save us from our vicious pride and avaricious greed." -Page 7

"The beauty of the cruciform by which Jesus saves the world through an act of co-suffering love and costly forgiveness is the same beauty that must characterize the church if we are to show forth the glory of the Lord in our world." - Page 10

"The cruciform as a pattern gives us a means of evaluating our own form and how we present ourselves to the wider culture. With an eye on the cruciform, we can ask ourselves 'Does this attitude, this approach, this action, look like Jesus on the cross?' If our attitude, approach, or action cannot be reasonably compared to the image of the cruciform, we need to abandon it." -Pages 18-10

Beauty Will Save the World

I've been reading a unique, inspiring and fascinating book by Brian Zahnd entitled Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure &  Mystery of Christianity. Wonderful book!

I've never before read a book about an apologetic of beauty. He believes that the church needs to recover the form and beauty that are intrinsic to Christianity. He finds that beauty in the story of the Cross, expressed through believers living "cruciform" lives, that is, lives marked by grace, sacrificial service and forgiveness. Zahnd begins with this thesis on page 2:

"Christianity as the ongoing expression of the Jesus story lived out in the lives of individuals and in society is a beauty that can save the world." 

Or, as C.S. Lewis put it:

"We do not merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to  bathe in it, to become part of it."
          -C.S. Lewis, The Weight & The Glory

Expect a lot of quotes from this book in the next few days.
 

Escaping from the Spiritual Shallow End

Last year I read a great book by Brian Zahnd entitled Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness. . It was the best book I read in 2011. I have been following Brian's blog and Twitter feed and highy respect his ministry, even though at times I have disagreed with him.

I was intrigued to discover and read this interview of Brian Zahnd by Trevin Wax discussing Brian's theological odyssey, finding that some of his journey parallels my own. Wax says:

...I discovered how interesting his theological pilgrimage has been. One friend said Brian used to preach like Joel Osteen but now sounds more like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I invited Brian to the blog to talk about his journey and how it has affected his congregation.

 Trevin Wax: Brian, you’ve had an interesting theological journey in ministry – from Word of Faith type teaching to a celebration of Christianity’s core teachings throughout history. First, tell us about your ministry at the outset - what you were about as a preacher of God’s Word and the vision you had for your local congregation.

Brian Zahnd: I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the -60s and -70s but was most influenced by the Jesus Movement. I experienced a rather dramatic conversion when I was 15, and within a couple of years, I was leading a coffeehouse ministry; it was primarily a Christian music venue with an emphasis on evangelism. By the time I was 22, the coffeehouse ministry had become a full-fledged church (Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri).

From my earliest days as a teenage Christian leader, my passion was to call people into a life of following Jesus. That passion has remained consistent over the years. Because the Jesus Movement was closely associated with the charismatic movement, our church took on many of the aspects of charismatic Christianity.

By the late -90s, our church had grown to several thousand, and my primary emphasis in preaching could be described as “faith and victory.” Though I think I can honestly say I eschewed the more egregious forms of “prosperity teaching,” I was certainly identified with the Word of Faith movement. The common thread from the Jesus Movement to the Word of Faith movement (whether I was being influenced by Keith Green or Lester Sumrall) was a deep desire to bring people into a vibrant and authentic Christian experience.

Twitter Gleanings

Some more gleanings from my Twitter feed:

"The beatitudes aren't prescribing how to achieve a better life; they're describing what happens to those that God kills & makes alive." - Tullian Tchvidjian @PastorTullian

There are two paths in life: The path of discipline and the path of regret. One or the other - Your choice. And mine.

 We long for more & God's promise is that there is more awaiting us. More to delight us than we will ever exhaust. @CSLewisU

“All who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.” – Reinhold Niebuhr RT @TheIDShift

 "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it"- Chinese Proverb. RT @bcloritts

 "Religious people obey God to get things; gospel people obey God to get God." - Tim Keller RT @DailyKeller

 "Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier." --Kathleen Norris

Modern "statements of faith" lack the depth of thought & eloquence of language found in the great historic creeds of the church. @BrianZahnd 

We should be as generous & lavish in forgiving others as we want God to be generous & lavish in forgiving us.

Beatitudes Revisited

Brian Zahnd's paraphrase version of the Beatitudes. Very Interesting.

Blessed are those who are poor at being spiritual,
For the kingdom of heaven is well-suited for ordinary people.

Blessed are the depressed who mourn and grieve,
For they create space to encounter comfort from another.

Blessed are the gentle and trusting, who are not grasping and clutching,
For God will personally guarantee their share when heaven comes to earth.

Blessed are those who ache for the world to be made right,
For them the government of God is a dream come true.

Blessed are those who give mercy,
For they will get it back when they need it most.

Blessed are those who have a clean window in their soul,
For they will perceive God when and where others don’t

Blessed are the bridge-builders in a war-torn world,
For they are God’s children working in the family business.

Blessed are those who are mocked and misunderstood for the right reasons,
For the kingdom of heaven comes to earth amidst such persecution.

My church is studying the Beatitudes (Mathew 5:2-12) on Sundays. I find paraphrases like this to be very helpful in pulling out all the meaning from Jesus' very pithy sayings.

The Gospel in Two Chairs

I greatly enjoyed Brian Zahnd's book Unconditional. - the best book I've read this year. This video from  BrianZahnd.com is the first time I have heard him speak.

Very interesting presentation.  Watch the video before considering my further comments.

Brian contrasts what he considers two versions of the gospel story:  the western legal version and a patristic (from the early church fathers) redemptive version. My response is to ask why we have to choose between the two versions? There is nothing fundamentally contradictory or incompatible between the two summaries of the gospel message,.  I believe both are essentially Biblical.  They expand and compliment each other.

The only problem I have with Brian's presentation is the idea that the first version pits Jesus against God.  No way, God forbid! I have never heard the gospel taught that way.  God was in Christ, bearing His own just wrath on our behalf. Both versions properly understood show God as being like the Jesus of the four Gospels.

I refuse to choose between two Biblical presentations. I believe both. What do you think?

The Economics of Love

From Brian Zahnd's blog:

Jesus didn’t teach capitalist economics or socialist economics, Jesus taught love economics. In this present fallen age the competition of a free market is probably the best way to arrange an economy, for the simple reason that the market is far more capable of fixing prices than any central committee. That being said, followers of Jesus must do what they can to make sure that competition is mitigated with copious amounts of compassion; because without compassion we turn the free market into a kind of vicious blood sport where those least equipped to compete are trampled underfoot and left behind. In other words, we must make sure that the losers in the game (and it is a game!) don’t lose everything. The Jesus way requires that love have a place in the economy and that competition be humane and not dog-eat-dog.

Source:  Love Economics | BrianZahnd.com
 
Brian is the author of Unconditional, my favorite book from all I have read in the past year.

More Zahnd Stuff

If you have enjoyed and benefited from the content I've been quoting from Brian Zahnd's book Unconditional: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, then you should check out his website for the book (unconditionalthebook.com) and his blog (brianzahnd.com).

Oh, you should also buy and read the book!

Ugliness Transformed to Beauty

"Don't miss this miracle! The miracle of the redeemed Roman cross! Ugliness transformed into beauty.  A miracle achieved not by erasing its history but be transforming its identity. The miracle of forgiving grace! And if the forgiveness of Christ can save a symbol from its ugly association with torture and death and transform it into a symbol of grace and beauty, then no sinner is beyond the reach and saving grace of God's love.  The history of the cross is not obliterated through forgiveness - it retains its history of death - but the identity of the cross is transformed by forgiveness."

 - Brian Zahnd, Unconditional, pages 193-194

Reading Scripture Cruciformly

"Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is." - Hans Urs von Balthasar.
--------------------
"...our reading of Scripture must be centered at the cross...So where shall we center our reading of Scripture? Where is the touchstone? What is the definitive lens for interpretation?  Where shall we point in Scripture and say, 'There is God! That is what God is like!' I agree with Hans Urs von Balthasar that it is the cross. It is in the ugly brutality of crucifixion that the beauty of God's love is most clearly revealed.

Of all the possible ways of understanding the nature of God, I insist that none is more complete than when we see Jesus Christ hanging upon the cross with his arms outstretched in a loving embrace of the whole world - an embrace that included his enemies.  To understand God best, we should look to Christ upon the cross forgiving a world that has rejected him.  This is the love that saves us."

   - Brian Zahnd, Unconditional, page 190

A Prayer for Enemies

The prayer below was composed during World War II in the Dachau prison camp by Nikolai Velimirovic, a Serbian Orthodox bishop who had been betrayed by friends and arrested for his anti-Nazi activities in Yougoslavia.

"Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.  Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.

Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends not enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless and do not curse them...

(Quoted in Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness bu Brian Zahnd, page 42)

Let me repeat: This was written in Dachau concentration camp!  This is only part of the prayer; there are longer quotes in the book referenced above (which I will be talking about more in future posts). This is a man who understood the meaning of the words in Lord's Prayer.- "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."  (Matthew 6:12 ESV)

Can any of us claim to have more of an excuse for not forgiving than this man?