What to Read for Holy Week

This year, for Lent, I've been taking the advice of one of our other TTC writers and, instead of giving something up, I've added devotional readings. Like Renea, I've added children's readings from the charming and talented Sally Lloyd-Jones. I've been adding a chapter a day throughout Lent from her Jesus Storybook Bible to my morning routine.

If you're looking for something to do to remember Holy Week this week and if you love beautiful, simple storytelling, or if you have children and would like to find something the whole family can participate in, readings from this book are a great idea. If you started today and wanted one reading through Good Friday, you would start with the story of the prodigal son and end with the crucifixion. Then, you could take a break on Saturday and pick up the readings on Easter morning with the story of Christ's resurrection. A word of warning to purists: this book is more storybook than Bible, but that's why I love it so much. Lloyd-Jones's whimsical writing brings back my childhood delight and wonder at the Big Story of Christianity and helps me to see my faith from new perspectives and from old perspectives I thought I had lost. And if you're looking for a Christianity 101 primer, this isn't a bad place to begin, both for children and grown-ups.

Happy Holy Week.

Christians Hunted & Murdered in Egypt

Relatives of Christians killed near Luxor, where Muslim mobs invaded Christian homes and set them alight while besieging other Christians in their homes.

This sort of thing, sadly, happens rather regularly in certain parts of the world, though rarely do we in the West hear about it. This time, perhaps due to all the coverage already in Egypt regarding the ousting of it's former Muslim Brotherhood elected President, even The New York Times reported the violence that extremist Muslims perpetuate against their peaceable Christian neighbors.

According to Times reporter Sarah Mousa,

Since Mr. Morsi’s ouster on July 3, the activists say, a priest has been shot dead in the street, Islamists have painted black X’s on Christian shops to mark them for arson and angry mobs have attacked churches and besieged Christians in their homes. Four Christians were reported slaughtered with knives and machetes in one village last week.

You can read the whole report here.

That this kind of violent persecution happens everyday in various places around the world is something I would hope concerns everybody, not just other Christians. In the West, we view Christianity as the metanarrative---something to rage against and be incredulous toward. But these Christians in Egypt and elsewhere are the marginalized minority. We should be as concerned for them as we are for any marginalized and oppressed people groups.

Photo source: International Business Times

Lessons from Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" - Part 2

Yesterday, I shared three lessons people (especially Christians) should learn from Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (You can find that post here).  In celebration of Martin Luther King Day, here are three more important exhortations from Dr. King:

4. Be moderate.
Two of the strongest groups of African-American voices in the Civil Rights movement tended to argue at opposite ends of the spectrum.  On one side were the "do-nothings," who believed that they could never achieve justice in America, and should just let the issue go.  On the other side were those known colloquially as "black nationalists," who argued that African-Americans should stop at nothing to achieve their definition of justice.

Dr. King championed moderation: "I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist.  There is a more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest."

In most of our political arguments, there is this "more excellent way."  It demands that we advance our opinions and beliefs not with guns blazing, but in moderation.  No matter what the pundits and politicians tell us, not everything is worth going to political war over.

5. Don't be moderate in everything.
Not everything is worth going to political war over, but some things are.  "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion," lamented King, "that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the...Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

Some issues cut to the core of human life and dignity, and are clearly spoken about in Scripture.  On those issues, King called for people to abandon the cloak of "moderation," and to fight for truth and justice.  We should identify those issues in our day (and they are few in number), and do likewise.

6. Hold the church accountable...in love.
When the church is in sin (like much of the white Southern church was during the 1960s in regard to its treatment of non-white people), the church needs to be held accountable.  But the church in sin does not need another hateful critic from within; there are plenty of those from without.  It needs a critic who comes to hold it accountable...in love.  Listen to Dr. King, who had far more reasons to criticize the church than most of us do:

"I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church.  I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church...In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church.  But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.  There can be no disappointment where there is not deep love."

The next time your local church (or any other Christian) does something you believe is unhelpful, ill-conceived, or even flat-out sinful, consider this before you criticize: Do you love the church?  Have you wept over it?  If so, you might just be in the state of mind exemplified by King, and ready to write your own letter.

Lessons from Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" - Part 1

On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King sat in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.  King had been arrested for taking part in the Birmingham Campaign, a non-violent protest against intense segregation in Birmingham’s government and retail centers.  On April 12, the same day the Birmingham Campaign began, eight white Alabama clergyman (Christian and Jewish) published a public statement in opposition to these protests (you can find that letter here).  Although they agreed that social injustices existed, they also argued that local protesters should not involve leaders from outside “our metropolitan area,” (i.e., King) and should not participate in public civil disobedience.  Instead, they should be patient, and make their case for justice through “the proper channels”: “law enforcement officials” and “courts.”

Although King rarely responded to public criticism (because he received too much of it to directly address), this time, he made an exception.  On April 16, he wrote what has come to be known as one of the great documents of the Civil Rights Movement, and of American History in general: "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." (You can find King's letter here).

There are many lessons in truth we as people (and as Christians) should glean from Dr. King’s letter, particularly in light of our own political conversations and  involvement.  I will share three with you today, and three tomorrow, on Martin Luther King Day.

1. Recognize the good will of those who oppose you

The opening paragraph of King’s letter asserts: “Since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”

Yes, people are sinners, and often have sinful motives.  But people are also genuine, and generally desire for good things to happen.  Rather than assuming that the person who disagrees with you wants an evil thing, try assuming that they actually want a good thing, but have a different perspective on what “good” looks like.  This will do wonders for creating humility in you and goodwill in your conversations.

2. Sympathize with your opponent before attacking them.

Not only do your opponents generally desire good things like you do, but they also, like you, have experienced pain, disappointment, and suffering in their lives.  Before you attack them or assume the worst, try and sympathize with the difficulties they have endured.

Dr. King urged the white clergyman who opposed his protests to do this.  “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

3. We are interconnected, whether we like it or not

One of the primary complaints the white clergyman and citizens of Birmingham had was that many Civil Rights leaders (like King) were “outsiders.”  People from outside the state, they argued, had no right or reason to be getting involved in their local affairs.  To this, King responded: “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Individualism, localism and libertarianism can be good, helpful, and even admirable qualities.  But Christians, of all people, should understand that we are bound together by more than blood or zip codes (see Ephesians 2).  We are bound together by beliefs, ideals, and most importantly, by Christ.  Our individualism (or conservatism) should not be practiced without reference to our connection to others.

Three more lessons in truth from Dr. King tomorrow!  (Read part 2.)

There's No Need To Be Afraid of Philosophy

I occasionally hear things like, "How do manage being both a Christian and a philosopher; aren't they incompatible?" A year or two ago my sister-in-law mentioned me to a Christian acquaintance—someone from her church, I believe. As I remember hearing the story, the person replied: "And he's actually a believer?"

The worry that Christian faith and philosophy are mutually exclusive is nothing new. In a book on Augustine, Carol Harrison explains the different attitudes of the Church Fathers towards philosophy (page 16). Some, such as Minucius Felix, embraced philosophy; but there were also those like Tertullian, famous for asking "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Many, including Augustine and Ambrose, took a balanced view, treating philosophy as a thing different from Christian piety but not fundamentally opposed to Christianity: something useful to the Church if studied properly.

The reason for this post is to provide TTC readers with a few loosely connected remarks suggesting that there is no need for Christians to be afraid of philosophy, and that there is even reason for Christians to study it.

We have to define philosophy first. I have nothing against the dictionary definition of philosophy, but my favorite definition of philosophy is the oldest: Philosophy is the love of wisdom. As Socrates explains in Plato's Apology and Symposium, this means the seeking of wisdom.

In other words, the story of philosophy is the story of the human quest for wisdom. So naturally it has everything you would find in the story of beings who were created in the image of God, fell into sin and rebellion against God, and then tried to rediscover the wisdom they had rejected. The story of philosophy involves sin and rebellion against God. It also involves the tragic hubris of noble pagans who reached for divine wisdom using the power of their own intellects, finding great and useful insights, but failed to achieve wisdom in the end.

But the story of philosophy also involves not a few philosophers who were, and are, believers in Jesus Christ. Some of my favorite characters in the history of philosophy are those like Anselm, who believe in Christian orthodoxy and, believing, make an effort to understand what they believe. Faith in Christ and the continuing search for wisdom are a harmony for these philosophers. So there need be no conflict between the practice of philosophy and the Christian faith.

In the past there were other Christians besides Felix, Ambrose, Augustine, and Anselm who practiced or at least studied philosophy. To name a few: Lactantius, Boethius, Aquinas, John Calvin, Oswald Chambers, and C. S. Lewis. Nor are Christians and philosophy strangers in our own day. In the past year I have seen a lecture hall packed for a lecture by atheist philosopher Daniel Dennet; I have also seen a much bigger room packed to hear Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga deliver the keynote address at an annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

I know "Lactantius" sounds like a breed of dairy cow. But he's actually a Church Father. He wrote this.

It is also significant that those of us who are Christians like to think we have some answers for the world; well, we might as well know what the questions are! There is no better place to explore those questions than the study of philosophy. For example, Socrates wonders about the health of the soul: What is a healthy soul like? How can I have a healthy soul? Is there an expert somewhere who can tell me how to have a healthy soul—is there a doctor for the soul? Christians know the answer is Jesus Christ; why should we be afraid of the questions?

Art as Mirror & Bridge

Art is extremely helpful to us as Christians. I see that look of incredulity on your faces. Hear me out. Learning how to understand and engage with art should be important to us because art serves as both a mirror of society and a bridge to the other. As a mirror, art serves as a finger on the pulse of our particular culture or subculture: What do we (as a society) believe? What do we value? What’s happening historically, and how is that affecting what we believe and value? Often, art can even answer the question: Where are we heading? Christians are regularly interested in these questions, but we generally ignore art even though art is a major informer of the answers Christians are looking for in these regards.

Art as a bridge serves several purposes. As a bridge to other people, art helps us understand and empathize with individuals and people groups we don’t understand, whether because of long distances of time and space or because of long distances between their ideology and ours. This is huge. What we don’t understand we fear. When we act out of fear, we fail to live by faith and to act out of love. Conversely, understanding brings connection and the ability to empathize. Empathy, or compassion, or love-induced understanding, is a pillar of our faith. How can we show Christ’s love to people we choose not to connect to and empathize with (whether by willful choice or lazy neglect)?

Finally, art serves as a bridge to the Other, to God. We need imagination to envision the Kingdom of God, a world which Jesus said was here but not yet fully here. We need our God-given imaginations to pray, Father, make it on Earth as it is in heaven. Art helps us go there, helps us engage our imaginations. It can take us to otherworldly places like Narnia and Hogwarts and Middle Earth. In a painting, lovers can float happily above the world of cares and woes, as if in heaven. When art depicts light and life and love through colors and lines and shapes (and cinematography and dialogue and chord progressions), art is, whether we realize it or not, whether the artist intended it or not, pointing us to the Source of light and life and love, to Light and Life and Love himself!

Even when art shows us the shadows, when we’re forced to face all that is dark and dead and ugly in the world (and in our hearts), this too points to God and to Christ. Like the negative of a photograph shows us what should be fully there but isn’t, this kind of art shows us our fallen condition, often pointing to the reality that begins to take shape when God is taken out of the picture, when sin has pushed him out of the framework of our lives.

With these concepts in mind—art as mirror and bridge—let’s practice engaging with art with one of my favorite painters. The paintings of Marc Chagall are characterized by his use of rich, vibrant colors; floating, elongated figures; and life-bearing imagery and symbols: such as fruit, flowers, streams, trees, chickens, bulls, lovers... In 1914, Chagall was in his hometown Vitebsk, Russia with his fiancee Bella Rosenfeld, with whom Chagall intended to return to Paris, but was prevented from doing so when the Great War broke out. This war-affected stint in Russia resulted in a major shift in Chagallʼs paintings. Gone are the vibrant colors. Gone are much of the influences of cubism and the life-bearing images and symbols. All these are replaced with browns and greys, downcast figures, and a thematic and stylistic shift toward realism — Paris is exchanged for Russia, peacetime for wartime.

We can see this shift notably by comparing Chagallʼs Paris through the Window of 1913 to his work titled, Father, from 1914. Note in Paris through the Window the rainbow-like reds, greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. Note the fanciful and strange (but wondrous-strange) figures and goings-on: the upside-down train, the man floating down from the Eiffel Tower, the couple floating horizontally in head-to-head conversation, the colorful cat with the human face, the cheerful bouquet of flowers, and finally, the two-faced figure looking out the window into the city (and looking back, presumably to Vitebsk).


Paris through the Window, oil on canvas

All this vibrancy and fancy and glorification of the realm of imagination is abandoned as the weight of war forces Chagall, even Chagall who was so resilient against his contemporaries’ compulsions toward total abstraction, to morph from a bridge between reality and imagination—a soul connecting body and spirit—into a mirror of the reality of Chagallʼs war-burdened world, bringing the everyday and the ordinary into perspective.

Father, tempura on paper

In Father, three somber figures—man, woman, and cat—sit at a flower-less table, their backs to the closed window. Fanciful happenings aren’t happening. Laundry is. The cat and the woman, whose face is rather like the cat’s, look to the larger, principal figure of the father, leading our eyes to the father's own despairing and downcast eyes. Instead of wistful wildflowers, there is a nondescript, white cylinder which might be a plain, ordinary cup, perhaps even an empty cup. Grittiness of tempera on paper replaces the smoothness of the oil on the canvas of Paris through the Window.

When we look at Chagallʼs Father with 21st century eyes, the piece serves as a bridge: the gap is bridged between 21st-century America and early 20th-century Russia as we understand WWI Russia a bit better, as we understand Chagall a bit better (the painting is of his father and grandmother), and most significantly, as we empathize with the double burden of war and poverty. For many it no doubt also serves as mirror: we can see our own present economic struggles in the slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, and barren table. Contextual specifics do not cloud universal translation—that’s good art. Father is the two-faced figure from Paris through the Window looking back to itʼs own wartime context and looking out into our present one.

What's the Church Really Teaching?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the church is teaching and what Christians believe.

I can't speak for every church in the world, of course, but over the years scholars have agreed that the Apostles Creed is the best representation of the beliefs of Christianity. Sure, my church uses electric guitars and my old church used an organ, but that stuff doesn't matter and the church knows it. This is what matters. If you've never studied the Apostle's creed, I recomend it.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Can't think of much else to say. Just thought I would post something rather blunt. Here's what the church really does think. It's not about politics or social standing at all. And it shouldn't be.

(That picture is me and my wife in church.)