Undeception

I’ve recently had the chance to introduce my children to a book I loved as a kid: it’s called Henry’s Awful Mistake, by Robert Quackenbush.

Here’s how it begins:

“The day Henry the Duck asked his friend Clara over for supper, he found an ant in the kitchen. The ant would have to go. Henry was afraid Clara would see it and think he didn’t keep a clean house.”

Henry’s Awful Mistake by Robert Quackenbush

So what does Henry do? Naturally, he picks up a frying pan and smashes the ant. Or maybe not — the ant is rather clever and evasive (or Henry’s just a really bad shot). The book progresses with Henry trying his best to dispose of the ant before his dinner date shows up. Unfortunately for Henry, he becomes more obsessed with killing the ant than he is about keeping his house tidy: as he strikes at the elusive ant repeatedly with increasingly destructive force, he carelessly begins dismantling his house!

Increasingly exasperated by the ant’s uncanny ability to elude him, he finally espies the ant sitting on a pipe that’s been exposed behind a wall he has just smashed a hole in. Henry misses the ant, but he doesn’t miss the pipe, which (spoiler alert) ends up flooding his now completely desolate house. In his attempt to destroy the ant and thereby prove his fastidious care for his home, Henry has utterly destroyed his house and profoundly proved the opposite.

As I pointed out in my last post, viewing God’s hatred of sin as fundamentally a reaction to its being a challenge to His authority that He cannot leave unpunished or a failure to live up to a perfect standard of righteousness that deserves the death penalty usually ends up conceptualizing God as in some way bound to condemn sinners because of sin. “But of course sinners are condemned because of sin!” That’s such a basic understanding of Christianity that it might seem odd to think that I would challenge it. But I’m not going to challenge it so much as nuance it properly: I don’t believe God “condemns” in the sense of irrevocable damnation, but He may well have an interest in “keeping after class” those of us who need to have our problems rooted out. Even this He does as a doctor cares for a patient, not as an irrational duck bludgeoning his walls with a hammer in an effort to win the Good Housekeeping Award.

The teaching that our sinful nature is an illness isn’t some post-modern rationalization: it’s found both in Scripture and in ancient church tradition. It’s even occasionally affirmed by those who also affirm the models I’ve been critiquing. Witness the Lutheran Augsburg Confession:

That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit. [emphasis mine]

My own “confession” is that the incongruity of this baffles me: why would any child born with a hereditary illness warrant “wrath” — apart, perhaps, from self-loathing for bringing such a child into the world? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater…bathwater that was dirty before you even put the baby into it.

If sin is the result of a sickness of the will, every one of us who sins is dreadfully in need of God’s saving power. But this salvation isn’t to spare us from punishment awaiting us due to His wrath: salvation is God’s simmering rage concentrated on burning away at the parasitical urge for self-destruction endemic to us all. Gradually, painstakingly, and in cooperation with the part of our will that remains functional, God through sanctification is curing the diseased part of our minds that prevents us from living as the healthy souls He wants us to be. Our salvation is about God loving us enough to pry from our grasp our characteristically human inclinations toward choosing the way of death; what it’s not about is God magnanimously exempting small selections of us from being collateral damage of His reckless war on sin.

As should be obvious by now, just because I don’t believe God is in any way obligated to damn us because of our sins doesn’t mean that I think sin or even divine discipline for sin are passé concepts. This seems to put me at odds with many of my more progressive friends. I’ll have more to say to them in my last post on this topic.

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This is Part 2 of a series. Here are the other posts:

Part 1: Sinners in the hands of a ____ God

Part 3: Is righteousness underrated by liberal Christians?

I’m very much disturbed to see how often it is that Christians are so devoutly interested in upholding their scriptures that they don’t mind if either God or neighbor gets black and blue in the process.

The trick to being an evangelical these days seems to be the willingness to maintain that evil is not necessarily evil when it comes to God. Besmirching His character under the ironic cover of defending God, what passes for good Christian apologetics is actually much more of a defense of prized doctrines such as inerrancy or Augustinian/Reformed soteriology than the only thing worth defending, viz. God’s character. Defending both our carefully constructed doctrines and God’s character cannot always be done simultaneously because they are often at loggerheads (or else many popular apologists would be without a job). Slick, ear-tickling apologetics serve the much-in-demand function of reassuring people that the Bible is everything they think it needs to be in order for their faith to remain comfortable and unquestionable.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more successful result if someone were consciously trying to relieve Christians of their responsibility to grow up into mature men and women of God. Unlike what I wanted to believe long ago, I do not find it so easy to believe that the truth can be discerned by looking for “that than which nothing more counterintuitive can be conceived.” Now I am convinced that we need to be willing to question things that conflict with our conscience. In some cases, we may have to disagree with Scripture; in many others, we may find that we have simply been forcing something unnatural onto the text.

Regarding the atrocities of the Canaanite conquest: do you think it’s better to worship a God whose morality requires exceptions and redefinitions of key concepts than to live with the uncertainty that perhaps even the biblical authors were not fully aware of the depths of God’s grace? Are you content to excuse even the worst charges against God if by any means it vindicates your Bible and the comfortable theological confidence it gives you?

Regarding the destiny of unbelievers: are you willing to accept lying down the damnation of your unbelieving brothers and sisters, shrugging it off with a mere, “Like it or not, that’s what the Bible says”? Forgetting the examples of Moses and Paul, are you content to cling to that ill-founded defense in assurance that your own fate is secured? Search your heart: are you nursing a strong prejudice against the idea of inclusivistic or universalistic Christianity in order to ensure the relevance of your religion’s special claims? I beg you to reconsider your priorities. As with the brutalities described in the Old Testament, if the Bible truly does unequivocally aver that some souls can never be recovered (which I doubt), it should be the fervent hope of every lover of God that the Bible is wrong about it. Where is the passion for what is right and compassionate that motivated the characters of Job, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and Paul to contend with their Maker over their understanding of His words? “The Bible says it” simply isn’t good enough.

I’ll be blunt: Holy Scripture or “historic, orthodox” doctrines notwithstanding, the only way God is worth worshiping is if He’s good and loving through and through. I will not subjugate love to scarcely warranted glory or petty retribution disguised as justice. My faith is in a God whose soul is more lovely than ours, who has a higher, more wholesome sense of love and justice than we are able to walk in as humans. My hope is built on nothing less than this!

Amidst the current controversy, some are pointing out that, despite being maligned as though they were novel signs of our wayward times, current trends of Christians questioning the negative attributes of God sometimes presented in Scripture, attitudes like jealousy and vengeance that we find intolerable in other humans, are hardly novel in church history. To underscore this, here’s a voice that most influential believers throughout church history have apparently tried to ignore:

That we should imagine that anger, wrath, jealousy or such like have anything to do with the divine Nature is something utterly abhorrent for us: no one in their right mind, no one who has any understanding (at all) can possibly come to such madness as to think anything of the sort about God. Nor again can we possibly say that He acts thus out of retribution, even though the Scriptures may on the outer surface posit this. Even to think this of God and to suppose that retribution for evil acts is to be found with Him is abominable. [p. 162-163]

It is not (the way of) the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction (in punishment) for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, (aware) how they would turn out when He created them – and whom (nonetheless) He created. [p. 165]

Just because (the terms) wrath, anger, hatred, and the rest are used of the Creator, we should not imagine that He (actually) does anything in anger or hatred or zeal. Many figurative terms are employed in the Scriptures of God, terms which are far removed from His (true) nature. And just as (our) rational nature has (already) become gradually more illuminated and wise in a holy understanding of the mysteries which are hidden in (Scripture’s) discourse about God – that we should not understand everything (literally) as it is written, but rather that we should see, (concealed) inside the bodily exterior of the narratives, the hidden providence and eternal knowledge which guides all – so too we shall in the future come to know and be aware of many things for which our present understanding will be seen as contrary to what it will be then; and the whole ordering of things yonder will undo any precise opinion we possess now in (our) supposition about Truth. For there are many, indeed endless, things which do not even enter our minds here, not even as promises of any kind. [p. 171]

[from Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian). ‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV-XLI . Translated by S. Brock]

St. Isaac the Syrian (image via Wikipedia)

For more discussion of these and other related thoughts by Isaac the Syrian, the seventh century ascetic and Orthodox saint, see this good discussion, whence the above quotes.

It is surely significant that although very little of the first-hand writings of heretics and dissidents from early church history (such as Marcion or Arius) were permitted to be transmitted to us, Isaac’s and the still earlier voices of Origen and (Saint!) Gregory of Nyssa were never silenced. In other words, the Church never said “Farewell” to these men. By all means, let’s “reform” — back to a time when belief in an eternal hell wasn’t a litmus test for the right hand of Christian fellowship!

And now, like it or not, these ancient voices are being joined in one way or another by more voices every year.