Marginal Christianity

Even in the face of the ultimate human failing, we must be responsive to suffering and attuned to joy By Phil Klay DECEMBER 4, 2017 When I was a kid, I had a comic book called  The Big Book of Martyrs,  part of a series by Factoid Books that included such titles as  The Big Book of Thugs, The Big Book of Losers,  and  The Big Book of Weirdos.  Inside the martyr book were comic-book depictions of various saints and their horrible, horrible deaths—great stuff if you’re an 11-year-old boy. I know that Catholics like myself are trying for a more modern, nicer church these days, with less of the fire and brimstone and more of the let-the-children-come-unto-me, but I can’t help thinking that if  Game of Thrones  can be a smash hit, then the Catholic Church might make progress in the 10- to 14-year-old demographic by leaning more heavily on the decidedly R-rated tales from  The Big Book of Martyrs . I enjoyed these stories immensely, bu...

The Great Judgment (20:11-15) The Great Judgment Images of power introduce this scene. A “great white throne,” an undescribed but imperious “one” sits on it. Creation felling in terror but finding no place to hide. Even more terrifying, the dead are all over the place. Famous infamous, unknown, uncared about, they’re all there. From the sea and Death and Hades the dead come. Before the throne they watch as “books” are opened, full of the deeds of the deed (20:13). Death and Hades join the two beasts in the lake of fire. The sea too, after disgorging its dead disappears and has no place in the new creation. The dragon is already caged in the abyss. The powers that oppose God are defeated. Human beings still face a reckoning before God based on what they have done (20:13). And those who have not done enough to get their name written in the “book of life” join the evil powers in the lake of fire, “the second death 20:14). The first death, of course, is our physical dea...

Ch.6: The Divine Presence and the Forgiveness of Sins     God seeking a “place for his Presence on earth and among his creatures is the centerpiece of the Bible’s story. It develops throughout the story in different forms and moods.     The ark of the covenant is central to this theme. A special box covered in gold built to hold the tablets of the Ten Commandments Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai, it is not difficult to see why it was considered so special. The lid of this box, its covering, became the meeting place for God and his people. It signaled his presence and interest in being at the center of the life of his people. It served as the context for Israel’s sacrificial system which is all about God’s presence. It was housed in the Tabernacle, placed in shrine at Shiloh when the people entered the land, and David brought it to Jerusalem to inhabit the temple built by his son Solomon. The conversation between God and David is among the most ...

Stations on the Way to Freedom Discipline If you set out to seek freedom, then you must learn above all things                                                                  discipline of your soul and your senses, lest your desires                                                                         ...

Living in the Tragic Gap September 2, 2015 by Sylvia Keesmaat A sermon on Romans 8 preached at Wine Before Beer 21 July, 2015 How did they hear it those early followers of Jesus? The ones who lived in Rome, as slaves to the wealthy. The destitute stoneworkers, prostitutes, bathstokers, tile workers, women and men, some homeless, some housed, just. Jews from the ghettos. the few Greeks from the hillsides, with slaves of their own. How did they hear the gospel of Jesus? The words of new life, life in the Spirit? Read more at http://www.empireremixed.com/2015/09/02/living-in-the-tragic-gap/

Of course the obvious and most general answer is divine grace in Christ through the power of the Spirit. Let's take that as a given. But more specifically, what does Paul consistently point to as a necessary, or at least inevitable, shaping agent God uses in our lives? Here are the verbs he uses throughout his letters when when talking about this thing: rejoice in, complete, have courage in, imitate others in, not be ashamed of, share, endure. Paul clearly expects this to be active in his churches lives, expects it himself, even makes it a condition of our glorification with Christ! The answer, I believe, is found in 2 Cor.4:7: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” “Slight momentary affliction,” which as we will see is pretty heavy duty suffering, is what work in us an immeasurable “eternal weight of glory.” And whatever exactly the latter is, I gather it's what we want as Christians. Paul seems to make...

Impassibility has had a rough time for about thirty years. But it's making a comeback. Legitimate critiques of the “suffering God” have been made. Fresh articulations of impassibility have been proffered that creatively address some of the concerns that gave rise to the “suffering God.” Yet for my money, any doctrine of God that foregrounds impassibility, even one that does not necessarily lead to the notion of the aloof God who does not genuinely care about his creatures' suffering, leaves an impression about God that does not well serve the Christian faith. I have never thought my way through to a viable alternative, however. Open Theism does not do it for me. It seems but an alter-ego to the Calvinistic rationalism it rejects. It's still plays in the same ball field when, in my judgment, a change of venue is required. Moltmann, as much as I like much of what he does, seems weakest just at this point. Building off a critique of the church fathers' alleged capitul...

[A version of the following piece was published in The Living Church after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It's still my best attempt at making some sense of such things.] The earthquake in Nepal raises with fresh urgency the perennial question of belief in God in the shadow of suffering. The magnitude tragedy and its seeming randomness is awe-inspiring and dumbfounding. What can one say to make sense of such a catastrophes? Where is God in all of this and what kind of God would allow such things? Christians should be wary of nice and tidy answers to such questions. But, it is also unsatisfactory to allow ourselves to slip into a speechless agnosticism. What, with due caution and humility, can we say? Among other things, it is good to remember that removing God from the equation does not resolve the mystery of suffering. The flipside of the question, “How can there be a good God when there is so much suffering in the world?” are the questions, “If there is no G...

5 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.   You only really know a person, heir character, when you know what they’ve suffered.   So goes a popular aphorism.   And I think it’s true.   More importantly the apostle Paul seems to think it’s true as well.   In Romans 5:3-5 he explains why. As we saw in the last post in this series Christians can “boast” in their sufferings for Christ’s sake because these kinds of distress assure us we are standing w...

5 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.   “We even take pride (“boast,” same Greek word as in v.2) in our problems” (better, “sufferings,” the difficulties we encounter for Christ’s sake).   “Boast is our distress for being faithful followers of Jesus” (see also James 1:2)?   Are we to be spiritual masochists?   Martyrdom seekers?   Here we get to a frequently misunderstood one of the deep roots of Christian existence. To make matters worse, in...

  by christena on August 17, 2014 [ Content note: discussion and photos of lynching and other forms of brutality ] Young protestors lighting and preparing to launch a Molotov cocktail at Ferguson police Can you see the Imago Dei in these young men? Can you see the suffering Christ in their rage ? This morning at church, the black female preacher said aloud what many of us have been thinking: that Ferguson could have happened in our community. It could still happen in our community. Our north Minneapolis neighborhood is so much like Ferguson, it’s scary. Both communities are lower income and predominantly black. Both have overwhelmingly white police forces. Both have a history of police misconduct toward people in the community, especially lower income black men.  And if you hang around long enough, you’ll feel the rage that many blacks carry in response to long-standing injustice. Yesterday, my neighbor broke down while we talked about the realities of police b...

www.brianvolck.com/art/beauty-and-suffering/ I learned today, via the UK’s Telegraph , that I share with newly-elected Pope Francis a favorite painting: Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion . We also share an appreciation for the film, Babette’s Feast , his favorite, though I’d place Gabriel Axel’s masterpiece just behind Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Roland Joffe’s The Mission in my personal cinema trifecta. All of them stand at the intersection of beauty and suffering, and while Babette’s suffering – and that of her two patronesses – may be subtler than others, we nevertheless feel it through the medium of art. Pope Francis and I may find meaning in these works for very different reasons, I don’t know. Perhaps one day, after the fuss, scrutiny, demands, and accusations now directed his way grow routine, if not necessarily manageable, he’ll share some thoughts on art and film. I, for one, am interested in the aesthetics of this highly educated son of an immigrant...