More wine, more glory

24 02 2012

The story of the wedding at Cana in John 2, the account of Jesus turning water into wine, is one of the best known episodes in the New Testament, if not the whole Bible. The author, John, tells us that this was the first miraculous sign by which God revealed his glory (v. 11). Ever thought about what it means that the first sign God gives to reveal his glory, the substance of his character, is the production of alcohol?

Let’s set the scene. In the story, Mary, Jesus and his disciples are at a wedding. Some way through the celebrations, Mary alerts Jesus to the fact that the hosts have run out of wine, to which Jesus replies, “Woman, why do you involve me?” (v.4). I would love to know with what sort of tone Jesus said this, it seems like such a curious thing for him to say! Was he absorbed in a fascinating conversation that he didn’t want to wrench himself away from? Was he just generally tired of his mother’s interference?? I’m not sure, and we’ll never be sure, because his question is not answered. We don’t know why Mary involves Jesus here. She ignores his question, giving instructions to the servants simply to do whatever he tells them. They obey, filling some bath sized jars with water, which Jesus turns into fine wine.

How can it be that John associates this act with the revelation of God’s glory? I mean, seriously?? There’s a wedding. The party is in full swing, probably has been for days, and what started out as a copious amount of alcohol turns out not to be enough. The pressure is on the hosts to keep their guests fed and watered. Why should God help out?

Besides, by the time Mary intervenes, it’s quite likely that Jesus is surrounded by people who are drunk or heading that way. As the master of the banquet says to the bridegroom in verse 10, ‘Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink…’ The presenting problem in John 2 is that both the good wine and the cheaper wine have been consumed. It’s all gone. It’s in this context that Jesus says, ‘Okay, you’ve run out of booze. Why do you involve me?’

We don’t know why Mary thought her son should be involved in this domestic crisis. John merely tells us that this spectacular deed – turning water into wine – is the first sign through which Jesus, God in the flesh, revealed his glory. Basically, John is telling us that the glory of holy God is revealed first and foremost in an act of extraordinary, controversial and extravagant blessing, something designed not to put Israel on the map or tighten up the moral code; something designed to keep the party going, or perhaps to get the party truly started.

The wedding at Cana is not about taking care not to overdo it (that’s for another time and place). And it’s not a story to tell if you want people to believe that the emphasis in Christianity is on sin.

According to John, God’s first sign to the world, his first attempt to show people what he’s really like, is to give them more of something they really enjoy, more wine and more of the best, more goodness, more fun, more life, more reasons to celebrate. He gives them more when they thought they’d had enough. Not mindless excess, but the overflowing abundance of life.

Why did Mary involve God? We don’t know. But God got involved at her request. The wedding at Cana shows us not only that God isn’t afraid to associate his glory with something earthy, like wine, but that the divine Creator submits himself to be moved by his creatures. Jesus told Mary that his time had not yet come (v. 4) yet at her prompting, he acts. Wine for them, glory for him. In some mysterious way, God’s heavenly glory is intricately connected with good things on earth. Next time you order a bottle for friends, remember that.

Madi Simpson


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

The Fellowship of Runners

20 02 2012

When Rolling Stones magazine interviewed U2 singer Bono, and asked which kind of music turns him on, Bono answered in a surprising and self-revealing way. “The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”[1]

Music that runs toward or away from God. I would imagine Bono would choose songs by their rhythm, by their catchy chorus, by their ability to move a stadium with its melody. Maybe he would be attracted to romantic lyrics, peppered with sensuality and longing, or maybe to music that resounds in people’s hearts and influences a generation. Yet Bono goes for our existential core: our gut reaction before ultimate reality, our instinctive surrender to God’s presence or haunted flight from his face.

I, for one, am more of a surrender type of guy, but I’m fascinated by the fellowship of runners. You know, by that anguished avoidance of God, stubborn and defiant, which tries to outrun infinity and outsmart omniscience. I admire this kind of persistence – it feels almost like a little dwarf’s rebellion – and, if I may confess some sadistic impulses, I enjoy seeing people avoid the inevitable and fight until the last breadth against God. It is entertaining. It is like children kicking and struggling against a spoonful of chocolate, only to enjoy it the minute it enters their mouth. I’m not quite sure why I enjoy this final struggle, maybe because I see it s the final tantrum of sin before the flood of grace, but when I see someone running away from God, I smile, and try to stay around long enough to see God catching up.

Can I share some scenes of my sadistic voyeurism? Let’s start with red meat, you know, a good sinner of old, a mighty oak falling down. Augustine narrates in his Confessions how he tried to run from God, and revels in the foolishness of it: “I would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee.”[2] Augustine’s is a fascinating journey, elaborated by a great soul-physician in the Confessions, until he comes to the decisive moment: “Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open by deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”[3]

Good stuff, eh? I like C. S. Lewis’ final struggles too, and the silent resistance he tried to muster to the last, even against a palpable sense of God’s presence. Lewis narrates in his autobiography:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps the most defected and reluctant convert in all England.”[4]

But let me acknowledge it too. Maybe I enjoy seeing these moments in others not much for the agony’s sake – though that is fun, I admit – but maybe, if I may face my own resistance, because I enjoy the moments when God finally wins me over, and overflows my opposition, and reluctantly I let myself kneel and pray. I like seeing it in others because I see that this reluctance is not only my own, and even a stubborn like myself is within the reach of grace. I see David trying to make his bed in the depths, and feel I’m not down there by myself – there’s God, and there’s David hiding too, who tells me to shush and go hide somewhere else. If these dwarves dared to resist God, my own short arms and legs don’t seem to so foolish either. I can rest, and open myself, and let God arrive, and thank him for seeking such a small-minded fool as I.

René Breuel

[2]     Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2002), X.II.2.

[3]     Ibid., X.XXVII.38.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (Orlando: Harcourt, 1955), 228-229.


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Madonna, World Peace, and Religious Pluralism

15 02 2012

World Peace was center stage during Madonna’s halftime performance at this year’s Super Bowl. For our Wondering Fair readers uninterested in American culture or sports, I will spare you the details of the well-choreographed and highly entertaining spectacle. This essay focuses less on the glitz and glamour of the Super Bowl than on the possibility of world peace in an age of religious pluralism. 2011 as we know was a year rife with protests, so is world peace in the way Madonna envisions possible? Can we all learn to “coexist,” as the trendy bumper stickers encourage us to do? Madonna’s halftime performance seems to suggest that we can achieve global shalom, but it’s hard to imagine such a world when our current economic, political, and religious differences are so severe.

On the religious front, one proposal to help establish world peace is to adopt a position called religious pluralism. Promulgated by academic theologians like Wilfred Cantwell Smith and John Hick, religious pluralism is the idea that all religions are essentially equal paths up the same divine mountain. Each simply recognizes Truth in a different way, though all roads lead to God. In Hick’s own words, “pluralism is the view that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real or the Ultimate from within the major variant cultural ways of being human….”[1] Here, in his desire to remain religiously neutral, Hick substitutes the word “Real” for God, a term which has a clear Abrahamic bias. The benefits of religious pluralism, it is thought, are that people may stop trying to convert or coerce others into their way of thinking and thereby live together in harmony.

Despite good intentions, there are several problems with religious pluralism. First, it is methodologically flawed. In an attempt to find what is common to all faiths, the pluralist is forced to ignore seriously important elements of each religion. The things that make religions unique—such as the Trinity for Christians or the prophecy of Muhammad for Muslims—are routinely trivialized and viewed as unnecessary additions. To suggest that Christians or Muslims willingly give up their core doctrines in favor of a far more ambiguous pluralist picture of the divine seems ill-conceived.

Second, pluralism is morally problematic. If the Real does not reveal Itself to people in history, then the religious practices of faithful Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Muslims are based on misunderstandings. Since the Real hides Itself from everyone (except for Hick and other pluralists!) and remains fundamentally mysterious to us, we are in the dark morally and cannot live in a way that pleases the Real. This deep agnosticism which runs through religious pluralism makes it especially difficult to discern right from wrong.

Third, pluralism is logically impossible. As many scholars have pointed out, the idea that all religions are true in their own way flies in the face of common sense.[2] All religions make exclusive truth-claims and prioritize their understanding of reality over against others. Religious pluralism, with its nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the Real, is no different. Ironically, the desire to create a universal religion for everyone only leads to the denial of all other truth-claims made by religious believers. How can Hinduism, with its claim to 330 million gods, be just as true as Theravada Buddhism, which has zero gods, or Judaism, which has only one?

Finally, from a Christian perspective, religious pluralism fails to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. To be sure, this is unproblematic for persons of other faiths, but for Christians who want to be true to their historic beliefs, Jesus must be seen not merely as one manifestation of an unknown higher deity we call the Real. Rather, Jesus made known his identity in history by walking among people and saying things like, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and “I and the Father are one.”[3] His exclusive truth-claims, as we know, not only caused consternation and led to his crucifixion, but they were and continue to be fundamental to the Christian story. Despite its lack of Super Bowl glitz and glamour, it is this story, I would argue, that promises to end all protests and ultimately usher in real world peace.

Paul McClure

[1] John Hick, “Religious Pluralism.” Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. Ed by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, et al. (New York: Oxford UP, 2001), 565.

[2] For more resources, see Harold Netland’s Encountering Religious Pluralism, Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, Vinoth Ramachandra’s Faiths in Conflict, John Stackhouse’s No Other Gods Before Me, and Ravi Zacharias’ Jesus Among Other Gods.

[3] Italics added. John 14:6, 10:30 (NIV)

*Thanks also to Professor Ivan Satyavrata for his helpful lecture on religious pluralism.


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Flourishing in a Pill

13 02 2012

In the 2011 film Limitless, Eddie Morra is a down on his luck author struggling with writer’s block, unmet deadlines, losing his girlfriend, and a generally miserable life.  He is virtually at rock bottom when he encounters an old acquaintance that makes him aware of an experimental drug called NZT-48, which supposedly allows humans to access 100% of the brain’s power, as opposed to the usual 20%.  Morra is initially skeptical, but, considering things can’t really get much worse for him, he takes the pill.

Much to his surprise, it works!  Morra is instantly able to achieve a focus and intensity that would have been previously unimaginable.  He finishes the book he had been struggling with for months in four days.  He is instantly able to solve problems and to see possibilities with unprecedented accuracy.  He uses his newfound (or spectacularly enhanced!) abilities to reinvent himself as rich, powerful, and all that he ever wanted to be.  He becomes, in short, a kind of superhuman who is able to do anything and everything well.

It’s an intriguing idea.  After all, who hasn’t, at some point, wished that the ideal person we wish we could be were attainable through simply swallowing a pill?  Who hasn’t wished that the struggle and strain of changing things we don’t like in our lives could be avoided?  Who hasn’t longed for their own abilities and skills to be quickly and painlessly enhanced—or for the existence of new ones entirely?  Who hasn’t wished that everything important they had ever learned or experienced could be instantly accessed and productively employed?

Peter Singer and Agata Sagan recently explored similar ideas in a New York Times piece called “Are We Ready for a ‘Morality’ Pill?”  If all human decision-making is reducible to chemical combinations in the brain, then why shouldn’t we just tweak the chemistry a bit here and there to produce more moral people?  Or, undertake a massive overhaul if necessary?   We already do this with antidepressants and other drugs, after all.  Why not with morality?  It would certainly solve a lot of problems, after all.  Who cares if we have to medicate people into behaving themselves if the end result is good?

Whether we are thinking about pills to give us superhuman abilities, as in Limitless, or pills to make us moral, as in Singer and Sagan’s article, questions about the nature and extent of human freedom instantly come into view.  Is human freedom real or just a pleasant illusion that we like to perpetuate?  If we are popping pills to manipulate our brains into doing what we want, is it still us that is acting?  In what sense?  Have we crossed some kind of a line when the good things that we want in life come via a chemical alteration of our brain states?  We intuitively feel like our freedom has somehow been violated, but why?

These are difficult questions, to be sure.  The lines are fuzzy and not easy to discern.  But however we resolve these questions, from a biblical perspective it is clear that human beings are more than just brain chemistry.  We are created by God to freely reflect God’s image (or not).  Meaningful human freedom is presupposed on virtually every page of Scripture.  From Joshua’s “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15) to Jesus’ “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29), the exhortation (implicit or explicit) to choose where our allegiance lies, resounds throughout the biblical narrative.

While human freedom obviously depends upon and is exercised through brain chemistry, it cannot be reduced to this alone.  This does not do justice to our experience of freedom, our experience of moral striving, our experience of hard-won changes in our life, of skills and capacities deliberately cultivated and disciplined.  Most of us, if we are honest, think that if something is worth having it is worth pursuing and striving for.  If the kind of freedom that gives our lives meaning and accomplishment is an illusion, it is an illusion of the most necessary kind—an illusion we cannot live without.

And yet, ironically enough, the Bible also describes the kind of flourishing we seek as something that comes apart from endless human striving (moral or otherwise). In Jeremiah 31:33-34, the prophet says this to a group of weary exiles who are well acquainted with the fruits of poorly exercised freedom:

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbors,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

 I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  Human flourishing is, ultimately, a gift of God.  It is a gift, however, that is given in concert with our own desires and efforts to align our desires and aspirations with what is good and right and true.  It is a gift that is given to those who seek to know God, who acknowledge their need of God, and who receive God’s gift of forgiveness.  It is, fundamentally, a gift that comes not via a pill but a relationship with our Creator.

Ryan Dueck


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

We are the same

10 02 2012

This is the third of three articles to encourage healthier dialogue between evangelical Christians and the homosexual community. As such, the purpose is neither to condemn nor excuse homosexuality, but to seek to find a “common ground” that we all share, in which to begin the conversation.

So often, it seems that Christians and homosexuals see each other as being entirely at opposition. While there are undoubtedly some major issues to work through, perhaps we should start with what we have in common. And there’s actually often a lot more similarities than we usually assume.

For many Christians and homosexuals, there was a terrific, horrific moment in your life. You had wallowed in confusion about who you really are. Then you realised that “who I am” had a name, and you embraced it. This seemed liberating, but it also was really scary. It meant you had to tell your friends that you were now one of “those people”. You knew your friends had all these assumptions about what “those people” are like, much of which were wrong, but they probably wouldn’t listen. You’d eventually lose some of your friends because of this.

Then you thought about your family. And it got even more scary.

See, it’s not just that being Christian or homosexual was something that you did every now or then. It was something that defined your lifestyle, and your identity. It affected your social life, your politics, and who you dated. And it wasn’t a “phase” (no matter how many of your friends or family tried to dismiss it as such). This was who you’re planning to be for the rest of your life.

In some cases, for Christians or homosexuals, you ended up having your family – brothers, sisters, even your mother or father – utterly reject you, because they couldn’t handle who you now were. Sometimes, they did something almost worse – awkward smiles at family gatherings, everyone trying to pretend there isn’t a gigantic elephant in the room.

Then, for Christians and homosexuals, there’s the sea of judgements that people around you subject you to. And they say horrible things. Sometimes, others like you, Christians or homosexuals, were beaten up, or even killed because of this. Part of you fears you might be next.

Sometimes, for Christians and homosexuals, the only people you feel safe to be around are others who like you. They understand you. Together, you feel much stronger than you do “out there” with everybody else.

See? We have more in common that perhaps you thought we did. I admit, sometimes the barriers and fears I’ve described have, for homosexuals, been created by aggressive Christians. But I might gently suggest, some Christians are starting to experience similar barriers and fears, because of aggressive homosexuals.

The other thing to realise is that Jesus actually experienced every single one of these things, too. He realised that He was not like everybody else. He was different. There was a name for Who He was – the Messiah. On one level, that was great, but it also came with some significant costs. It meant that many who He had called friends abandoned Him, even trying to kill Him (Luke 4:22-30). It meant that many in His own family – even His brothers and mother – thought He was crazy (Mark 3:21), tried to shut Him up (Mark 3:31-35) and ridiculed Him (John 7:3-5). It meant whole crowds of people rejected Him, and falsely accused Him of terrible things. Ultimately, the only thing that they could really “pin on Him” was His identity – Who He was. Then they killed Him for it.

But there are some differences between Him, and Christians or homosexuals. Firstly, while Jesus clearly understood the terrible costs His identity would bring, from His friends, His family, and wider society, He was virtually never afraid about those costs. He had a strength that none of us can fathom. Secondly, while He deeply valued spending time with those who had a similar view of His identity, He always had times for others. Always. And He never fell into the same false judgements that everybody else did. He saw them as they really are. And because He rose again, He still sees you as you really are.

Look, I’m not going to pretend that this article, or any of these articles, take away all the issues here. But hopefully, these articles can at least show some ways that we can approach these issues more effectively. Let’s come together, with Jesus somehow in our midst, and start the conversation afresh.

Matt Gray


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

The Grand, Multi-Color Story

30 01 2012

“Why is mythology everywhere the same?”  This may sound like a simplistic judgment – there are so many myths across history, from the Hindu Vedas to the Nordic tales and the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. But the person who raises the question is Joseph Campbell, a Columbia University expert in comparative mythology and, according to Campbell, no matter which folk traditions are surveyed, from the peoples of Congo to the legends of the Eskimos, “it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvellously constant story that we find…” [1]

Campbell’s major book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, plots these common themes in the universal figure of the hero, whose adventures follows similar steps even in the most varied cultural settings: he receives a call to adventure, and after initial reluctance, he crosses the threshold to his journey. Here he faces numerous trials and meets forms of gods or goddesses, who mentor him and help he understand his mission, until he returns to reality with a message to proclaim or a mission to fulfill, and saves the community from its perils. (When George Lucas crafted the story for Star Wars and its hero Luke Skywalker, he leaned heavily on Campbell’s reconstructed hero’s journey).

So why is mythology everywhere the same? To explain our common stories, Campbell uses the theories of psychoanalysis, especially the views of Carl Jung, to explain the common source of our kaleidoscopic but similar myths and stories. Myths are reflections of our social mind, of archetypal urges deep beneath our psyches. In Campbell’s words, “They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source.”[2]

Ok, these stories originate in our minds… but the question still begs itself: why? Why does the human mind keep producing these stories? Why are myths everywhere, and why are they so similar? What do these archetypes point to?

I believe a person’s journey will illuminate us here. C. S. Lewis was another expert in comparative mythology, and as he started to read the New Testament as an atheist, he was at once startled at how different and yet how similar the Gospels were to ancient myths. At first he was struck by how unlike they were to the metaphysical and fantastic shapes of myths: they smelled like real events, taking place in a specific place and a specific time, not like the pre-time, allegorical epochs of myths. “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this [the New Testament record].”[3]

Yet even as Lewis noted that the Gospels smelled like real history, he could not miss the common themes it shared with the great myths. Especially, he could not miss the central plot of “the Dying and Reviving God” common to so many folk traditions. Lewis’ initial reaction was dismiss the story of Jesus as another myth, but as the historicity of the Gospels bogged him, he was further disturbed by a comment he once heard. “The real clue had been put in my hand by that hard-boiled Atheist when he said, ‘Rum thing, all that about the Dying God. Seems to have really happened once’.”[4]

I agree. That hard-boiled atheist is just right. How else would you explain variations of same stories cropping up again and again everywhere? They must be reflections, fragments of the Great Story the human psyche captures and different peoples emphasize differently. They are echoes, daydreams that emerge in fantastic forms from the unconscious, but which articulate the central themes of the human drama – our ideals, perils and longings for our Savior –, packaged with the infinite creativity of the human genius and its multiform cultural riches.

For an expert in mythology like Lewis, the multitude of human myths were not contradictions, but preparations for the true story. They were early echoes of God’s thunderous arrival on the planet in the person of Jesus Christ. “In my mind,” wrote Lewis, “the perplexing multiplicity of ‘religions’ began to sort itself out… The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, ‘Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?’” And as Lewis surveyed the ages, and found a historical event that culminated all the best of human aspirations and longings, his conclusion could not have been different. “If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this… Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man.” [5]

So why are myths so similar? Because they resemble the history of the universe, the drama of our creation, fall, and God coming to rescue us. They sprout little curious buds, small insinuations in delicate poetry, that came to full bloom when eternity entered time, when God became man, and the grandiosity of the myths met the ordinariness of history, and the Dying and Reviving God really did die on a cross in a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem in the first century, and revived on the early hours of the following Sunday. The grand plot of myth took place in history, and our stories cannot help but echo the universe’s defining moment.

René Breuel

[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2008), 1-2.

[2] Ibid., 330, 2.

[3]  C. S. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism”, in Christian Reflections (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1967), 155.

[4]  C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (New York: Hancourt, 1955), 235.

[5]  Ibid.


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Categories : The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help.  He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us  us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4


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Categories : Making a Difference

Is Doubt the Enemy of Faith?

25 01 2012

Doubt gets a bad rap. We live in a world where we are not supposed to doubt, it is unhealthy—bad. Doubts, though, are like confrontations, which also have a bad rap. However, it is in confrontations that change can happen. Sometimes my wife needs to confront me, and at that point there is a back and forth until eventually one of us realizes our error (or often we both do) and we change. Today—we are so afraid of confrontations—we don’t have them. In a Facebook generation we just unfriend, ignore or avoid—but then we are depriving ourselves and others of possibly growing.

Doubts are the same way. We often are afraid of them—or we don’t deal with them—but then we never grow. In fact they may actually help. How do I know? Look at the famous, but often misunderstood biblical story of Doubting Thomas often used to illustrate how it is wrong to doubt. It can be found at the end of the Book of John.

What does Jesus do when he approaches Thomas here? Two things: First, he calls him out for doubting clear evidence—the other apostles eyewitness accounts. Most people highlight this aspect of the story. However, the second thing Jesus does is actually gives into the demands of Thomas! Thomas demands to see Jesus, his pierced hands and side, and then Jesus—after rebuking Thomas, actually gives him exactly what he demands. Why would he do that?

Jesus is trying to keep Thomas, as well as the listener from falling into one of two camps prevalent in ancient and modern culture. The first camp can be called the blind faith camp.  This group of people thinks doubts are the enemy of faith. That blind faith camp never questions their faith, never ask hard questions, and never seeks answers for when doubts rise up. They say that the definition of faith, is you don’t know, so stop trying to ask questions and just believe. There is almost a fear if that if you do ask questions then you will lose your faith.

The second camp out there is what I call the persistent cynicism camp.  These are individuals who try to poke holes in everything and mock all truth statements, and undermine all claims of purpose. I know these people exist because I was one of them. Whose to say what is true? What is true for you is true for you, but what is true for me is true for me. In some respects these people are committed to the belief that there is no belief—there is nothing else out there.

Through his actions, Jesus wants to avoid both extremes. Notice he rebukes Thomas not for doubting in general—but for doubting clear evidence from his friends. In other words, he was in the
persistent cynicism camp. He was not seeking or trying to find answers, he made a blanket statement and he was not going to budge. However, on the other hand—Jesus actually gives into his demands, and validates and even answers Thomas’ demands. So it seems, from a fresh reading of the passage, doubts are not necessarily the enemy of faith, only if they stay in a persistent state of cynicism.

In fact, they may actually boost a faith/trust paradigm. How does Thomas respond after Jesus shows him the evidence? All the gospels have Jesus trying to show others who he really is, but the one person who confesses Jesus’ full nature is Thomas!  No other human being had a higher view of Jesus than Thomas. In verse 28 he says, “My Lord and My God.” This is a personal expression of intimate relationship that is accomplished through processing doubts. So use them, search them, and build off them.

Michael Keller


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Man Seeks (Straightforward) God

23 01 2012

Over the last decade or so, the conversation about God and religion in the public square has been dominated by the extremes.  Whether angry atheists convinced that religion “poisons everything” or defensive and dogmatic believers who condemn atheists in equally strong language, the impression often given is that there are two groups of fundamentally different people out there who can do little besides shout at each other across the huge and unbridgeable chasm between them.

But the picture sketched above does not tell the whole story.  In between these extremes exist more moderate atheists and believers, as well as a growing demographic of people referred to as the “nones”—a name derived from checking the “None” box on surveys asking for one’s religious preference.  Simply put, Nones aren’t sure about God and religion.  They’re not, by in large, atheists (93% claim to believe in God or a higher power), nor are they adherents of any particular religious tradition.  They’re searching, seeking, inquiring.  They’re open to God, but not in traditional forms and expressions.

Former NPR correspondent Eric Weiner speaks for the Nones in his new book Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine.  In a recent article, Weiner expresses his exasperation with the “true believers” and the “angry atheists” that have dominated (North) American religious discourse over the last decade or so.  Like many of us, Weiner sees the world as just a bit more grey than the black and whites offered by these two groups, and is open to a much wider range of questions and answers than they are.

According to Weiner, Nones

don’t get hung up on whether a religion is “true” or not, and instead subscribe to William James’s maxim that “truth is what works.” If a certain spiritual practice makes us better people—more loving, less angry—then it is necessarily good, and by extension “true.”

Nones are, apparently, characterized by an extremely pragmatic approach to issues of God and religion.  The fundamental question, according to Weiner, is not, “What is the good, the true, and the beautiful?” but “what works for me?”  Of course, there are numerous unstated assumptions about the nature of the good and beautiful embedded in Weiner’s assertion that if a spiritual practice makes us better people it is “true,” but this is, nonetheless, an undeniably human-centred approach to questions of God and religion.

A little later, Weiner makes this even clearer:

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

“Straightforward,” “unencumbered,” and “absolutely intuitive.”  These are interesting adjectives to place alongside of the quest of faith, to be sure.  Historically, the pursuit of God has been one of great joy, self-discovery, and peace, to be sure, but also one of self-denial, struggle, and even periods of great doubt and suffering, as countless people of faith down through the ages would attest.  A prominent image of the path to God is one of ascent—an image evoking the long and arduous process of climbing a mountain.  There is exertion and pain and struggle on the path to the top.  Indeed, Jesus himself said that “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).  Evidently, faith isn’t supposed to always be easy.

We have just made our way through the Christmas season.  If the Christian story is to be believed, the light of the world entered the human predicament in a most unusual, unexpected, uncomfortable, and possibly even embarrassing manner.  Jesus’ arrival on the human scene did not nicely align itself with what human beings thought ought to be the case, with how they thought divinity ought to look, with the way in which they imagined a rescue operation ought to be undertaken. It still doesn’t, for many of us.  We have all quite likely imagined other, more “straightforward” ways for God to save than the way represented by the birth and career of Jesus.

But perhaps the truth isn’t always comfortable or unencumbered or straightforward or intuitive. Perhaps, in addition to our capacity to interrogate reality, the truth asks questions of us.  Perhaps it is we who must conform to what is real and true and good and beautiful, rather than adapting and adjusting these concepts and behaviours to fit our preferences.  Indeed, if truth really is something that exists outside and independent of human minds and hearts, then perhaps the first question to ask—for Nones and for all the rest of us—is not, “what works?” or “what seems to make the most sense to me?” or “what do I prefer?” but “what is true and how do I align myself with it?”

The Christian conviction is that the struggle of faith—with all of the wrestling and sorting through our embarrassment and confusion and discomfort as we align ourselves with what is true—is worth it.  And that the view from the summit of the mountain is spectacular.

Ryan Dueck


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Hope for the Marathon Life

20 01 2012

At a recent dinner party there was, unfortunately, far too much testosterone in the air when several ladies collectively expressed doubts as to whether the men present could run a 42km marathon. One man retorted “Well, of course, we could run a marathon, isn’t that right fellas?” The bro-code demanded our quick affirmation. The fallout: three men standing ill-prepared at a marathon starting line two months later.

The beginning of the marathon felt great! Onlookers lined up to cheer, free drinks were passed to us along the way, and every runner felt strong and cheerful! I felt like the boxer Rocky Balboa running up the stairs to sound of the “Eye of the Tiger” song. Yet it wasn’t long before the good cheer and humor ran short. My facial expression exposed my struggle as I raced past my wife three times on our circuit: First pass: happy face. Second pass: sad face. Third pass: “Call an ambulance” face. As the kilometers clicked by old Rocky Balboa (me) had taken a few hits. At the finish line I had run out of steam, my spastic legs worked independently though in a forward motion…some reported it looked like a really bad break dancer generally moving in one direction. Limping across the finish line I was embraced into the arms of my proud wife!

Upon completion of the race it occurred to me how many of our lives are similar to a marathon. We begin with strength and hope, loved ones cheering us forward. Yet as we go along we start taking a few hits. We slow down, burn up, tire out, and life can feel burdensome. By the end we may even look like Rocky after a long fight. Our eyes are red, bodies tired. Those around us shout demands to expedite their expectations. So many begin strong but the struggles in life add up and we find ourselves limping over the finish line hopeful for rest and peace.

Like a marathon story, the birth of Jesus began with hopeful promise and support of many around him. Many cheered, others jeered, but everyone seemed eager to see him meet their expectations. By the end Jesus, too, had taken a “few hits” in life. Jesus was abandoned by his closest friends, stripped of his clothes, beaten, mocked, and finally crucified. Upon the cross Jesus cried out lamenting his struggle while people spectated on the validity of Jesus’ claims of hope[1]. He then crossed the finish line of His mission with the words “it is finished”. [2]

Is there hope within our struggles today? The promise that Jesus made to his listeners is that there is hope. Limping across the finish line Jesus was embraced by God the Father, as the resurrection account concludes. The promise offered to all those who follow Jesus is that no matter what struggles add up in life we can run with hope. When we cross the finish line with we too will be embraced by the Father with the affirmation “well done”. That’s the Christian hope for our marathon life.

Ryan Vallee

[1] Luke 23.

[2] John 19:30.


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

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