Pursuing Holiness

          The following is a post entitled "And now…on the other side (critique of extreme complementarianism)" by Roger E. Olson.

          Recently here I critiqued contemporary radical Christian Feminism while applauding egalitarianism. By “radical Christian Feminism” I mean the approach to theology that begins from women’s experience and resymbolizes God away from the predominantly male images of scripture to  female images treated as superior to male images for their social value (e.g., in promoting equality rather than hierarchy). I regard the theologies of Rosemary Ruether, Letty Russell, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza and Elizabeth Johnson as pernicious to biblical Christianity insofar as they reject scripture as normative and consider women’s experience (as defined by them) as normative for theology.

           Radical Christian feminism, however, is not the only extreme form of reflection on gender in theology that I criticize. Just as strongly (and from the “gut,” so to speak, even more strongly!) I reject so-called Evangelical Complementarianism as that is worked out, defended and promoted by some fundamentalist theologians. (Not all complementarians are fundamentalists; my objection here is mainly to those who seem fundamentalist to me in that they appear to adhere to “maximal conservatism,” elevate secondary matters of doctrine and biblical interpretation to the status of dogmas, and reject fellow evangelicals who disagree with them about biblical interpretation with regard to matters about which evangelicals have disagreed for the past century or more.)

         So what is Evangelical Complementarianism? I agree with the definition given in a news article by Bob Allen of the Associated Baptist Press published in Baptists Today entitled “Abandoned his leadership: SBC professor says Adam’s sin was in listening to his wife” (November, 2011, p. 8). The article says that “complementarianism” “holds that men and women are both created in God’s image but assigned different roles.” But this needs supplementation (just as a definition of “Christian Feminism” that mentions only gender equality needs supplementation). Mention “complementarianism” in any evangelical theological circles and most people know immediately it is more than merely the belief that “men and women are both created in God’s image but assigned different roles.” For example, even feminists believe men and women have different roles insofar as only women give birth!

          A complete (or at least more complete) definition of “evangelical complementarianism” (is there any other kind?) must mention that it holds that women, though created in God’s image, are meant by God to be permanently subordinate to men at least in the church and the family. From there complementarians go off in somewhat different directions, but on that they all agree. (Personally, I think “complementarian” is a misnomer because it does not sufficiently describe what these people really believe. The emphasis is not on males and females complementing each other but on females being submissive to males. Therefore, whenever I hear the label “complementarian” in an evangelical context I think of it as an example of “newspeak” as in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I put it in the same category as “Patriot Act”—a name for a very controversial law implying that anyone who disagrees with any of it is less than fully patriotic.)

          Some complementarians believe women should not hold jobs where they have to give orders to men. Others restrict female subordination and submission to spiritual contexts and the family. But all place the emphasis on female subordination and submission in such a way that adult women have pretty much the same role as children vis-à-vis adult men. So far as I know, all (or virtually all) complementarians believe women should not preach, should not be pastors (except perhaps “Childrens’ Pastors”), should not teach men in church settings or Christian organizations, and should obey their husbands unless they command them to sin. (I have heard some complementarians argue that women should obey their husbands even if they command them to sin, but that is, I believe, a fringe view among evangelical complementarians.)

          This has been, for the most part, a civil and respectful disagreement among evangelical Christians. “Christians for biblical equality” (whether members of the CBE organization or simply those evangelicals who believe that men and women should have equal roles in church, family and society) strongly disagree with Evangelical Complementarianism but, for the most part, anyway, embrace complementarians as fellow evangelicals. (I’m not sure they have any choice as complementarianism seems to be the “default” view among most evangelicals.)

          Increasingly, however, the views and language among some evangelical complementarians has become shrill and extreme. Some are making it a litmus test for biblical fidelity and orthodoxy. According to the article cited above, one evangelical complementarian  argued at a recent meeting of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood that Adam’s sin was listening to his wife. According to the article (and the statement is placed in quotation marks in the article) “Eve was cursed on her God-given role before the Fall. She is cursed on her role as a mother and as a helper.” Now this is something new; I have never heard anyone make such an argument until now (assuming the article is correct). Taken at face value, what that Southern Baptist theologians and seminary dean and professor is saying is that just being a woman is to be cursed by God. Also, apparently, insofar as the article quotes the scholar correctly, it is a sin for a man to heed the voice of his wife.

          Now, I think there can be legitimate debate about women and men and their respective roles in the church and family, although I am settled about it on the egalitarian side. I can at least see where evangelical complementarians are “coming from,” so to speak, because of their literalistic approach to hermeneutics (which is never really consistently literalistic). I do think most of them are inconsistent insofar as they applaud women missionaries who, of course, evangelized, preached to and taught men in non-American contexts (e.g., Lotty Moon—a Southern Baptist saint!). And I suspect that in the privacy of their own homes many of them actually have functionally egalitarian marriages.

          The very ideas that Eve was cursed by God “before the Fall” and that Adam’s sin was heeding the voice of his wife (as opposed to disobeying God’s command not to eat of the tree) seem to me bizarre and weird if not downright unbiblical. They also seem dangerous to me. Such a teaching may be interpreted as giving men permission to be misogynists and to abuse their wives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the view itself is misogynistic. In preference to such a church (where this is taught) I might be tempted to run to the nearest “Women Church!” (Although I suspect I would find somewhat the same view, only reversed.)

          Back to the seminary dean and professor in question. According to the article, he claimed that he believes there cannot be “more important debate” (than the conference topic) (viz., gender roles) and “I contend that if we lose the battle over the gender debate, we lose a proper interpretation of God’s word,… We lose inerrancy. We lose the authority of the Bible, and that is detrimental to the gospel.” Others have said the same about: premillennialism, creationism, restrictivism…you name it. (This is how I identify a fundamentalists—as someone who takes one side of a legitimate debate among evangelicals and elevates it to the level of status confessionis.)

          So what is going on when an evangelical seminary dean and professor of theology makes such outrageous statements that go far beyond garden-variety complementarianism into outright misogyny? First, it seems to me there is a competition among especially Southern Baptist theologians (I’m not saying all SBCers are guilty of this, though, and SBCers don’t hold a monopoly on it!) to outdo one another in discovering and promoting conservative views on the pet issues. Second, conservative evangelicals are so driven by fear of liberalism that they tend to tolerate, if not applaud, extreme views that, even if outrageously nonsensical, are perceived as helping hold back the forces of liberal darkness. Third, many fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals have no sense of accountability to a larger religious, spiritual, theological context. Everyone outside the safe and narrow (not necessarily small!) confines of their own hermeneutical and doctrinal circle is unworthy of a hearing.

        I suspect such extreme views on the left and on the right have been around a long time. In fact, as a historical theologian I know it. (Not necessarily these particular views but extreme views on doctrinal subjects and matters of biblical interpretation.) Usually, however, moderating voices prevail. That hasn’t been happening so much in the last twenty-five years. People are de-populating the center and rushing (or at least gravitating) to extremes. I look to evangelical leaders, opinion-makers to condemn such extremes (as were expressed in that article in Baptists Today) and make clear they do not represent the mainstream of evangelical theology. I listen; I hear only silence.

         Gender. Is it a category which applies to divinity? Is God gender-less? Is God gender-ful? Controversy is hot over the 2011 edition of the New International Version of the Bible and it's use of gender-neutral terms to refer to God. From the midst of the conservative camp, I am sensing an emerging theological undertone that dares to argue that God is predominantly of one gender. Blogging on the topic has kept the debate fresh in my mind, and while this post is winding and slightly disjointed, it serves well to help me think through the issue.

          We must talk about God, but God is beyond language. The best we can do is image God through our language, and the ancient way to speak about God is metaphorically. The parables of Christ are crucial because they demonstrate that metaphor is an indigenous Christian language. One advantage to metaphorical theology is that no one metaphor has to illustrate everything. Deficiencies can be covered by other models.

          There are many examples of metaphoric language describing God. In Deuteronomy 32:18, God is both the father and the mother who gives birth: “You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.” In Job, the writer talks about God both mothering and fathering: “Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens (Job 38:28-­‐29)? God is also described as a woman in labor and giving birth. He is seen as being in pain and crying out, gasping for breath. "For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isa. 42:14). Again the feminine imagery is found in Isaiah 49:15, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you." God is a comforting mother, “For thus says the Lord: 'As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you'" (Isa. 66:12-­‐13). Isaiah describes God as both mother and father in this hymn of praise: “Look down fromheaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The trembling of your womb and your womb-­‐tenderness? They are withheld from me. For you are our father” (Isa. 3:15-­‐16, literal translation).

          With such strongly feminine imagery used in Scripture as God-descriptive, why does the tendency lean so strongly toward the use of masculine terms for the Divine in liturgy, prayer, and worship? The forms of scripture, creed, and historical theology in which Christian tradition is carried are encased in and formed by male-dominance. Theology is a matter of language, and of finding the best language available to speak of the concerns of faith. Theologians are very aware of the nuances and sway of language. It is not just the naming that is at stake, but that the naming establishes the relationships, the gridwork through which faith is mediated to women and men.

          Roger E. Olson writes in his blog "Some Thoughts About 'Christian Feminism'" that "insofar as we use the Bible’s predominantly male imagery of God we teach people that maleness is closer to God than femaleness. Without doubt that has been the case throughout much of Christian history."

          Sexism, like racism, is an insidious disease that affects everyone in a world saturated in it. Christians should be at the forefront of the battle against sexism, resisting the blight that it spreads throughout God's created relational ecosystem. Supplementing predominantly male biblical imagery of God with female imagery, especially drawn from the Bible itself, seems to me to be a critical step in the movement toward biblical equality and restored personhood.

          In the introduction to Dorothy Sayer’s article titled “Are Women Human?” Mary McDermott Shideler raises an equally viable concern, “Male and female are biological categories. Masculine and feminine are cultural categories. Both are impersonal classifications with real but limited usefulness. We cannot live or think effectively without classifying our experiences, but always we must ask whether the categories we are using are adequate for the problem we are considering.”

         Are the categories male and female, masculine and feminine, "adequate" terms to describe the referent we are considering [God]? Is the God revealed in Scripture through both male and female, masculine and feminine terms classifying himself as one or the other? (Notice my use of the masculine reflective pronoun "himself". It is unnatural, coming from my tradition, to use any other English pronoun. Perhaps other languages serve this purpose better.)

          Olson's critical follow-up questions to the case for equality are my food for thought these days: "But does throwing out male imagery of God in favor of predominantly female imagery solve anything? Or does it simply reverse patriarchy?" That is the danger that I find in modern feminist theology. The point is not to undo the harm that has been done by centuries of patriarchy via reversing the crime committed, the point is to redeem biblical images of God and the biblical purpose of personhood.

          How is that to be accomplished? How do I move forward? I find that my tradition inhibits me from speaking of God in any terms but masculine ones. That is the great, almost imperceptible power of breakthroughs such as the new NIV translation. Slowly but surely, I will learn to speak of God as he speaks of himself. I will learn to see him as more than one gender or another.

          In conclusion, I can echo the words of Olson once more: "God has no gender, in spite of the predominantly male imagery of God in scripture. I promote teaching that both male and female characteristics are valuable but prone to distortion and that both genders need redemption without in any way destroying or even undermining their uniqueness as created by God. I promote Christian leadership without hierarchy. I promote liturgical renewal that is not ideologically driven. I promote teaching boys and men to be suspicious of our socially-driven tendencies toward patriarchy without demeaning maleness itself."

Occasionally, chinks of light make their way into a long day at work. One such:

"Thank you, dear. Your sweet voice, you allowing me to talk, you making it sound like I'm not one of the thousands of callers who are calling to ask you questions, let me just tell you... God will bless you for that."

~Anonymous caller

You Are More

Tenth Avenue North

Three habits... one hundred days. Click here to read.

Imagine the possibilities!!

Too often, I abandon my resolutions because I make too many of them and the ones that I make are too difficult to incorporate into my day-to-day.

So here's to starting small and actually attaining.

1) Project: one lesson of Daniel/Revelation a day.

2) Habit: one devotional reading or sermon a day.

3) Health: Candy-free, coffee-free workdays.

"It is the little habits that populate our lives that are character issues. These are the small ways in which we become monstrous or virtuous." - Dr. Rosalie de Rosset

"He's teaching me His way... His Son's way... and I love God."

One man's journey out of sex trafficking and into redemption.

Watch and share.

          “The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great–and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”

Revelations 11:18

God will destroy those who destroy the earth. Ever hear that one talked about in church?

A thoughtful and though-provoking blogpost on sexual purity from Timothy Dalrymple called "The Young Christian's Guide to Sex at Seminary".

Random ideas that the article sparked: 

1) The question is not "To have pre-marital sex or to abstain", but rather "Who God is and how he is best known and loved and served?"

2) Our faith is not primarily propositional ("sexual integrity is a mandate"), but relational ("day-to-day and moment-to-moment yielding-to and being-with Jesus" will yield an obedient and selfless sexual life.)

A thoughtful and thought-provoking response post from reader Christy Lang Hearlson:

          I served a church in active ministry for five years after seminary, and it was wonderful. It was also exhausting. Part way through I realized that much of the exhaustion of ministry comes from the realization that you really are always being watched. Theological reminders by those in the missional movement to be a witness didn’t help. I found myself wanting to hide if I ran into a congregation member at the grocery store. I sometimes didn’t leave my house all day if I could get away with it– anything to escape that feeling of being on stage. Not that I ever fully conquered that sense, but at some point mid-ministry I had to decide just to be myself, flaws and all, in ministry, and not worry so much about how I was influencing people. I had to respond to God, not to anxiety about whether my life was an appropriate model for others. The alternative was burnout.

         I’m convinced that if we define our role as Christians and as clergy always as witnesses on the witness stand, we’re likely to get exhausted in ministry. I think we need a concomitant emphasis on Jesus’ instruction to go into a closet to pray, or on Jesus’ own solitary excursions to the mountains, where he didn’t need to be “on.” This isn’t just so we don’t show off. It’s for our own freedom, our own release from the enslavement to anxiety over how others perceive us and whether we’re influencing them for good or ill.

          My point: if the problem of the mainline is that mainliners avert our eyes in instances of personal immorality, then the problem of evangelicalism is that we’re sure no one averts their eyes. It’s a kind of sanctified paranoia, or maybe unwitting megalomania: People are watching you. So behave well. Their salvation might depend upon it.

         But that’s exhausting, even paralyzing, and it moves the center of reflection and action outside of the person and her responsibility toward God and others and into the imagined views of everyone else.

          Into this mix we could use a good dose of grace– real, costly grace, yes– but grace. I’m not thinking of limp tolerance of whatever, but the grace of God that comes before all our behaviors– good or bad– and that should lead us to wrestle anew both individually and corporately with what constitutes a righteous and doxological response to God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.

          In other words, I think we need a motivation for ethical reflection and righteous behavior that doesn’t come from anxiety about influencing others for good or ill. Seminary life, for all its flaws, exposes the fact that a great many Christian behave well because they’re sure someone is watching. Maybe that’s a good thing, if we can use that realization as an opportunity to help people discern the range of motivations and experiences that led them toward church leadership in the first place and to find themselves anew standing in the grace of God.

Here it is, an update from the month of October, which I naturally did not get out until November 

          In her delightful and thoughtful little book called (don't laugh!) The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey writes about her experiences confined to a sick bed for many months. She began to observe a little snail that lived in one of her potted plants and found surprising affinity with its humble existence. She speaks of the shift in her pace of life so eloquently: "From where I lay, all of life was out of reach. As the months drifted by, it was hard to remember why the endless details of a healthy life and good job had seemed so critical. It was odd to see my friends overwhelmed by their busy lives...." I have become grateful for the odd quietness of my life as I continue to recuperateand limit my weekly activities. For the first time since I started my undergraduate, I have had hours on end in which to think. Ironic, isn't it?!

            For anyone who has undergone surgery, you already know that recovery can be long and tough.  You are well-aware that recovery is not over when the steri-strips have fallen off of your incision. While my health and strength have gradually and steadily returned, the emotional drain of the operation has been catching up with me. Often I reproach myself for these feelings of frustration and loneliness and uselessness… I am startled by how these “endless details”, to borrow Bailey’s words, can seem so important. After all, I’m alive. What do I have to be sad about? But the daily grind of changing dressings, cooking bland food, taking walks and going to work wears me down and leaves me feeling irritated and hurt.

Once,after a long, tearful conversation with my sweet husband Jake, he told me something so comforting (I wrote it down): "He [the suffering God] experiences it all just as we do. So what you can do is look back on your lifeand remember every single hard time and know that God experienced that very trial with you. And that’s how He delivered you. We learn from Christ that He becomes what He redeems."

            There are many times when I am tempted to marginalize suffering and persuade myself that it's "not that bad". The amazing thing about serving a God who suffers as we do and *sympathizes* with us is that it makes our experience of pain legitimate. It makes pain important... not just something to endure or to "get through" or to pretend is "not a big deal". It is a big deal. Big enough for God to go through it with us. The endless details of life are significant because God values what is important and monumental to us.

            There are surprisingly precious lessons that I’m learning as I go through this healing time. Lessons that I heard during my time of study at Moody are now being solidified and fired through this experience. God lets hard things happen, and He doesn’t hold it against me when I get hurt, frustrated, and angry. Is it right for me to be angry? In the heat of this moment, I simply don’t know. God will patiently wait for me to figure that out… after all, He was more than happy to wait for Jonah to sort himself when he was unsettled.This series of surgeries is a “strange providence”, and I cannot make sense of it. God does not hold that exasperating limitation against me. I realize now that I am closer to understanding God’s work when I am honest with Him than when I am not. Knowing the suffering God does not offer convenient answers for the problem of pain, but knowing that He understands is a tremendous comfort. Knowing that He has been here in this painful place… that He has felt all of this… that He has endured it in order to be the perfect comforter and the perfect intercessor. Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help... (Hebrews 2:18).

Oh fear not in a world like this,

And thou shalt know erelong,

Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.

-“TheLight of Stars” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

May you discover warmth and solace in the suffering God who waits to comfort you. He empathizes, ever so deeply, with your pain. Christmas is around the corner, friends… in the midst of being overwhelmed by our busy lives, we commemorate the painful Incarnation. We are reminded in our suffering and His, to find hope in the Morning Star of our still-distant dawn. Even so, Lord, quickly come.

          This prayer is titled “You with Ears Bent Close to our Lips” and it comes from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 2003), 12. I include it here without comment. It requires none.

You, you are the one we address,

always you,

only you… who has given us life,

who waits for us to answer.

We, toward you, speak and remain tongue-tied,

for we lack words that are honest enough,

and dangerous enough,

and fierce enough to match you.

We do not speak first, but after our mothers and fathers,

who knew cadences of honesty about our troubles,

who knew cadences of danger about your presence,

who knew cadences of fierceness to fit our rage and loss.

So we speak to you words that we have always spoken:

words of praise and adoration:

…into your gates with thanksgiving

into your courts with praise…

words of confession and remorse:

…against you and only you have we sinned…

words of thanks and astonishment:

…you have turned our mourning into dancing…

words of rage unabated:

…dash their heads against the rocks.

So many words we need to speak

to you from whom no secret can be hid,

you beyond us, you with us, you for us,

you with ears bent close to our lips,

You…and our woes turned toward you, always you, only you,

yet again you.

Amen.

         Surfing Craiglist for free items is always an adventure. It would be fun to make a list of all the bizarre things that people post...

"Recycliner" -- Evidently, a used recliner... to be recycled?

"Free And Table!" -- Wow! Sounds like a deal! Ummm, end table, anyone?

"Free Diabetic Socks" -- Not sure if I can afford the insulin :-/

"Dating and Seduction Books" -- From years of collecting.

Let us, in Heaven's name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction.

Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore--and this in the Name of One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which He passed through this world like a flame.

~Dorothy Sayers~

Read here: 10 Reasons Why the New NIV is Bad for Women

by Mary Kassian

A brief response:

          The 2011 NIV uses gender-inclusive language to apply Scripture to men and women. It NEVER uses gender-inclusive language for God, a much more controversial issue. I think that the comments on this blogpost reveal (esp. early on – see Pam Trowbridge and Mary Kassian’s response) that many readers aren’t aware of that. It would have served your audience well to point that out that huge difference, Mary.

          Gender neutrality is readily demonstrated in this verse, 2 Corinthians 5:17:

NIV 1984: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation ; the old has gone, the new has come!”

NIV 2011: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come : The old has gone, the new is here!”

          Mary, in your own words: “Gender inclusive Bibles imply that women are too stupid to figure out that in the Bible, the words “man” and “brothers” are inclusive terms.”

       Indeed, “man” and “brothers” are inclusive terms. Unlike your implication that the inability to understand that is equivalent with stupidity, some Bible readers simply do not have the luxury of a biblical education behind them, filling in the gaps that are left by certain theories of Bible translation. Not every reader, new to the faith and picking up the Bible, will understand gender inclusivity as readily as you seem to think they should. As students of the Word, well-aware that the lack of knowledge is deadly, we should applaud this effort to make biblical and linguistic scholarship even more accessible to the Bible reader.

          Your eighth point was particularly confusing to me: “Poor God. His bad. He needs our help. He wasn’t smart enough to get the words right. He obviously isn’t as enlightened as people living in the new millennium. We have to step in and update His image, to make the Bible more palatable to woman’s modern sensibilities.”

          God did get the words right, and he entrusted them to us to render them in the most ACCURATE manner in modern languages. Yes, translations of the Bible are conditioned by culture… and our current culture is rich in unprecedented linguistic research and biblical scholarship. God gifted us these blessing in order to execute faithfully the Word of God in English. This is not to say that God is unenlightened or incapable. It merely states that God bequeathed us with a task. All translation is lexical interpretation. All translation is the translator’s interpretation of what English word or phrase best captures the meaning of the equivalent word in the ancient text.

         Zondervan issued a statement in response to the Southern Baptist Convention’s criticism of the NIV that said, in part: “First, we object strongly to the accusation that the NIV ‘alters the meaning of hundreds of verses …’ Our concern is always, in every decision we make, to represent God’s unchanging Word accurately and naturally in modern English.”

        This is not stepping in and updating God’s image. This is called translation and it is a sticky theoretical and philosophical web that you would do well to investigate more thoroughly before throwing the Book at the NIV.

          You claim to have done this: "If you haven’t yet considered their arguments, you might want to check out these Gender Neutral Bible Articles." However, this evidently links not to a website about Bible translation or linguistic interpretation theories or even Hebrew/Greek scholarship but a website about GENDER. This is very telling of what is driving YOUR interpretation. Do not let your zeal for what you perceive as biblical manhood and womanhood cloud your judgement overmuch.

       An excellent response to an article similar to your own by the COMMITTEE ON BIBLE TRANSLATION.

Will the Real Audrey Hepburn Stand Up?

By Rosalie de Rosset

          Many years ago when the actress Audrey Hepburn was alive, an Audrey Hepburn look- alike contest was held which actually included a photograph of the

actress herself. She finished fourth. Writing about this phenomenon at the time,

Professor Merold Westphal noted that how often it is the case that the real thing finishes

last while imitations take the win, place and show slots. As he says, “It isn’t just that the

good is often the enemy of the best; all too often the not-quite-so-good and the not-verygood-at-all seem to us to be the best. Thus, we miss out, not just on what would be

really good for us but also on what we really want; and this is not because totalitarian

evil oppresses us but because blind freedom cannot recognize the real thing.”

          He goes on to note that “the issue, of course, is religious. There are a lot of lookalike gods out there, and the Maker of Heaven and Earth is often lucky these days to

finish fourth.. ..It is ever the task of theology to prove the existence of God, but the much

more pressing task today is to distinguish clearly between the living God and the lookalikes.” He continues, “But God is not the only nice guy to finish last. If we think for just

a moment about the movies that are box-office hits, the products we buy in the malls we

love, or the politicians we elect, the people we admire and give unreflective loyalty to,

we would notice that the real thing is an endangered species.” What, we must ask

ourselves is real in general.

          Figuring out what is real is based in solid moral and biblical education, something

that has often gone by the wayside. But, that is not the whole story because even some

prominent biblical educators and students whose moral and biblical understanding

seems fool-proof, make poor choices and dangerous decisions. It takes more than the

cultivation of moral virtues and biblical principles; it takes, in Westphal’s words, the

development of the intellectual virtue of informed attentiveness.

         Attentiveness: Think about that word. It’s what a skilled carpenter has when he

knows that the detail in a seemingly beautiful new condo has been forsaken though the

cosmetic appearance is intact. It’s what my sister, Karin, an expert seamstress (only

one of her many skills), has when she looks at even expensive clothing and sees

crooked seams and mismatched fabric. It’s what a mother has who instantly can tell

between her identical twins when not another person knows which is which.

On my first trip to Europe, Audrey Hepburn was on my plane between Geneva,

Switzerland and Rome, Italy. Filing out through first class, I saw the thin shoulders, the

aquiline chin, the gorgeous eyes. I was sure it must be her, and it was. But if she had

been placed in a line-up of look-alikes, how would I have known? If I had, it would have

been some tilt of the eyes I had seen in one of her movies, a way of moving her hands,

a wistful smile on her lips. I would have known through the smallest detail.

          Attentiveness is not in vogue today—the broad sweep of generalized impression

or feeling is. So, we make choices that are dangerous, that end up contradicting the

very moral virtues we claim to be the center of our life. It doesn’t make for good

carpentry, sewing, or for substantial faith.

That’s the way I look at it.

For Moody Broadcasting, this is Rosalie de Rosset

What is Radical Faith?

"Just don’t assume God wants you to live in the middle. Be open to the possibility — of something radically different."

Posing as righteous

even to myself I lie.

You are Otherwise.

~Richard Baukham

          I just read an entire book on humility... it was good, but not good enough. The instruction was sound but the application fell flat. "Be humble." Forgive me for being the irritating student who asks the obvious, but... ummm... how??

"Well, be like Christ."

Right. It's all so much clearer now. Thank you for that.

          So I tried another angle. If I don't have a good idea of what it means to be HUMBLE, at least I can avoid being PROUD. After all, the opposite of pride is humility, is it not? Perhaps so. Knowledge is an interesting counterpart to pride... the acquisition of knowledge has the potential to puff us up, and it has the potential to humble us deeply. Surely pride and ignorance must go hand-in-hand... in order for me to be truly consumed with myself and think of myself as "something", I must be blissfully unaware of how deeply corrupted I truly am. How many times does the book of Proverbs warn us of the connection between pride and "folly", a devilish sort of ignorance that revels in being stupid? A humble person is knowledgeable: they know who and what they are and they know who and what Christ is.

         In order to live humbly, I really do need to be like Christ. Just like the book said. But at the root of my inability to be like Christ is my ignorance of who He is. From this innate folly in which my mind wallows, I must be rescued... rescued by the knowledge of the Holy.

          Knowing Christ is the pursuit of a lifetime. It is a slow-ripening fruit. Ecclesiastes 7 says that patience is better than pride. Perhaps this is where I see my pride most clearly: not in my "lack of humility" but in my impatience. I am impatient for results. I want to be humble, but I want to be made humble in the course of the few hours I spent reading a "humility book". No humility book can replace the slow ripening fruit of knowledge... intimate, deep, relational knowledge of the Humble One.