"Pure Religion" is Messy

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”  James 1:27 KJV

So what does it mean to be “unspotted from the world”?

On the one hand, we read that pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows.  That seems rather straight forward.  It means to look after the most vulnerable.  It is not an instruction to “care” from a great distance and with the best of intentions.  It is not an invitation to join a cause.  It is to visit the fatherless and widows.  And not to visit them in their neatness and tidiness.  It isn’t to behold their purity and loveliness.  It isn’t so that they can do something for me.  It is to visit them in their affliction.

Pure religion is to enter into the messiness.

I don’t believe that the 2^nd part (the part about staying “unspotted”) is contrary to the 1^st part (visiting the most vulnerable).  They are one and the same thing.  So I can’t read this and think that keeping myself unspotted from the world is the same thing as keeping my distance from that which is messy.  The unspotted are those who visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.  This is the pure religion of the Kingdom of God that is not of this “world”.  Or to flip things around, the “spotted” are those who don’t visit the afflicted.

The righteous Pharisee keeps himself “unspotted from the world” according to the ways of the world:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week: I give a tenth of everything I get.  (Luke 18: 10-12 NET)

This is holiness-as-separateness. 

The Pharisee is spotted.

But Jesus is God with us.  His holiness is not like that.  His is a holiness that draws him into the mess, not away from it.  Jesus is the pure religion that is unspotted from the world.

The holiness of “the world” is the type of holiness that draws one away from the mess and the pain.  The holiness of Jesus, the holiness that characterizes “true religion”, draws him into the mess and the pain.  His holiness is not diminished.  Rather, in his self-giving love, it is made manifest.  It is enhanced.

True, we are not Jesus.  So this is not to minimize the complexity of life or our own fragility.  This is not a naive or arrogant self-righteousness that sees itself as the pure gift to all that is less.  In the waiting-for-all-to-be-set-right, that end that we long for but do not know, to follow Jesus is to follow him into the fray.  It is to get a little messy.  Or at least a recognition ultimate well-being is not tied to the avoidance of messiness.  Not only because this law of love that is the holiness of Jesus that is the holiness of God beckons us, but because of the metaphysical truth that “no man is an island”.  Fates are intertwined.  

Because I’m not separate from some abstract messiness that is “out there”.  Not really.

Our destiny, mine and yours, is the eternal Kingdom of God.  In the faith of this Kingdom lies a "pure religion" that is not of this world.

Paradox or Contradiction? Which is which?

Contradiction.  Paradox.

I see these two terms a lot, usually in arguments over the legitimacy of some controversial conclusion.  Despite the evidence, an apparent logical consistency, or appearances to the contrary, something is asserted to be true.  When it is pointed out that the evidence does not support that conclusion, supporters of the conclusion will generally call the equation a “paradox” while detractors will call it a “contradiction”.  And the conversation can go no further.   

It got me thinking, how DO we actually define these words?  How do we determine whether something is a paradox or a contradiction?

Paradox:

-a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory

-a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth

-a statement that seems to contradict itself but may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring that walking

Contradiction:

-a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another

-a difference in two or more statements, ideas, stories, etc. that makes it impossible for both or all of them to be true

-someone or something with qualities or features that seem to conflict with one another <a loving father as well as a ruthless killer, the gangster is a living contradiction>

-a statement or phrase whose parts contradict each other <a round square is a contradiction in terms>

This doesn’t clear it up at all.  It just highlights the whole dilemma all over again.  Both “paradox” and “contradiction” acknowledge that a given conclusion doesn’t make sense in light of the evidence.  A paradox says it is true.  A contradiction says it isn’t.  The word choice, then, is based on the preference of the speaker. 

So when is a conclusion wrong, and when is it right and it’s our own harmonization of the evidence that is lacking?  Forget the purely mathematical for a moment.

Take the example of “a loving father as well as a ruthless killer, the gangster is a living contradiction”. 

A person might argue that this is a paradox, not a contradiction.  Both personas exist – the loving father and the ruthless killer.  That they seem contradictory does not seem to negate the sheer fact of their existence. 

A contradictory take on this individual would assert that one of these personas is not true.  For example, if the gangster is truly a loving father then he must not really be ruthless killer.  What do we mean by “ruthless” and “loving” after all?  These are not binary terms, and the thought experiment is thus based on categorical errors.

So who’s to say?

My point is this.  We often don’t know how or why we come to the conclusions that we come to.  Very often we find ourselves believing things and we aren’t sure exactly how or why we came to believe them.  That isn’t to say that there isn’t a deliberative process, or that we are fully irrational.  It’s to say that there’s a lot that happens in our depths, below the levels of conscious choice. 

That's not to say that a we let any old thing go under the banner of "paradox".  It's just to say that we’re not just mathematical models running on as-yet undetermined computer code.

We are blurry and, despite the importance and appeal of "choice", maybe we are not determined by our own sheer will power and rationality.  

Our complexity demands humility.  

We ourselves are walking contradictions.  Or paradoxes.  Which is it again?

The Single Disposition of God: Some Thoughts on Derek Rishmawy's Review of Brian Zahnd's "Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God"

Derek Rishmawy recently posted a long (in his own words, stupidly long) review of Brian Zahnd’s recently released Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.

I think everybody who cares about the issues germane to Zahnd’s book should read Rishmawy's review.  The review is wide-ranging, direct, and articulate.  There’s a lot of food for thought.  Much to agree with.  But there is much that I disagree with and a lot that struck me as presumptive, condescending, and is itself a gross caricature.

Rishmawy gets to the meat of his critique right off the bat by addressing (what he labels as) a false dichotomy:

“God is wrath?  Or God is love?”  This dichotomy printed in bold on the back drives the argument of Brian Zahnd’s new book, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.

True, Zahnd probably didn’t do himself any favors in the "dichotomy" area with that wording on the back cover.  (*** Correction, Brian did not write what's on the back cover....which makes more sense).  The thing is, I’m familiar enough with Zahnd’s work to know that his argument re: wrath is nuanced.  That’s why there’s a book.  As presented on the back cover, the “dichotomy” surrounding the usage of the word “wrath” has to do with the particular vision of divine wrath that’s exemplified by the infamous spider-dangling-over-the-fire analogy taken from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.  It is that definition that provides the dichotomy. 

But regardless of the context or my own background knowledge, it should be readily apparent that Zahnd is not operating from a place of wrath-as-dichotomy…once wrath is properly defined. 

The evidence of this?  Three things in particular:

First, the back cover of the book itself poses this question: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical?

We have that word primarily.  It’s an important word.  What is being asked or alluded to with that word primarily?  Does God have parts?  Is God just a bigger and better version of humanity, subject to warring passions?  Do justice and mercy war with one another in the eternal mind of God?  I wrote about some of this last year when the hypothetical question of God being “primarily angry” was posed in my church.  The 1st post in that series is here.  Of particular relevance might be the 3rd post in the series which looks at protology and impassability (my own disclaimer of ignorance as to “defining” Trinity is here).   Rishmawy has similar thoughts – God does not change and is not comprised of competing or contradictory “parts”.

Secondly, Zahnd provides a definition of wrath early on in the book.  His vision of divine wrath is clearly not that wrath is not a thing, but that it has been wrongly understood.

But here I need to make something very clear: that God’s wrath is a biblical metaphor does not make the consequences of sin any less real or painful.  The revelation that God’s single disposition toward sinners remains one of unconditional love does not mean we are exempt from the consequences of going against the grain of love.  When we live against the grain of love we suffer the shards of self-inflicted suffering.  This is the “wrath of God”. (p 18)

Third, Rishmawy himself spends ample time talking about Zahnd’s distinction between “passive wrath” and “active wrath”.  I thought Rishmawy had some great stuff to say in that section.  Lots to think about.  The thing is, you can’t really pile on Zahnd by saying that the wrath dichotomy “drives the argument” when the review itself spends a substantial amount of time critiquing Zahnd's definition of wrath, a definition that intentionally seeks to eliminate the dichotomy.  Can’t have it both ways.

Ultimately, Rishmawy doesn’t believe there’s truly a wrath dichotomy.  Zahnd doesn’t believe there’s a dichotomy.  And I don’t believe there’s a dichotomy.

So where is the disagreement? 

Well, in many ways it’s a matter of semantics.  What do we mean by these words “wrath” and “love”?  What is “justice”?  How do they relate to one another?  That is where the differences lie.  And those differences are significant.

Ultimately, Rishmawy’s review isn’t as much a “review” of the book as it is a defense of retributive wrath as occasioned by Zahnd's book.  Retributive wrath is very, very important to Rishmawy, and to lose that understanding of wrath is to lose everything – it is to censor and ignore the Bible, it is to misrepresent Jesus, it is to distort the Gospel, it is to portray God as indifferent to evil, and it is to lose the faith. 

It’s very, very important here to note that a retributive understanding of wrath does not automatically make one a sadist.

No doubt that there are various visions of divine wrath – those eschatological visions in which the saved delight in the misery and everlasting conscious torment of the damned – that are so twisted as to be thoroughly incompatible with the Gospel.  Full stop.  Delight in the misery of another is not a virtue but a defect, and does not reflect the perfection of God.  But while such extreme examples are far from being fringe and are important to acknowledge, a substantive discussion demands that we not linger on them for too long.  It is possible to proceed in good faith while leaving important discussions about the variety of ways that our understanding of divine wrath and “justice” influence our world for another time.  So let’s do that as best we can.

Zahnd’s book covers a variety of interconnected topics – the Bible, atonement, hell, etc.  I’m not going to dive into any of those issues specifically.  They are important, for sure.  Here, I simply want to state how I see the love/wrath relationship differing between the two lines of thinking exemplified by Zahnd and Rishmawy and to examine them in the light of “justice”.

To do that, however, we need a basic shared definition of love.  This should be achievable because the differences between Zahnd and Rishmawy lie more in the nature of wrath and the relationship between wrath and love than in the definition of love.  So for these purposes, lets define love as follows:

To love is to will the good of the other – to be devoted to, patiently work towards, and encourage the flourishing of the other.  It is to give one’s best to the other, being rooted in a deep affection.  It is to live with the loveliness, beauty, and worth of the other in view, always and forever.

This definition isn’t imposed on God from without, Hallmark card kitsch projected onto God because I happen to think God should be “nice”.  No.  Is this a comprehensive definition?  Of course not.  Full of analogy and anthropomorphisms?  Probably.  (I mean, what does it really mean for an eternal God to be “patient”?)  Is the definition overly simplified?  Sure.  But is it sufficient to identify the difference in the love/wrath relationship between these two approaches?  Hopefully.

Now, how does Rishmawy connect love and wrath?

Let me put it this way: Is God love?  Yes.  Is true love righteous?  Well, yes.  Is it not righteous to promote good and oppose evil?  To stand against evil?  To even hate evil?  Yes.  I mean, that’s what Paul tells us to do (Rom. 12:9).  So if God is the sort of love that is righteous love, will his love not include a white-hot opposition to evil?  Yes.  Well, there you go.  The love that God is involves God’s inherent, innate opposition to, hatred of, and will to oppose sin because the love that is the life of the Triune God is a love which is righteous.”

To Rishmawy, a God without retribution is a God of passive indifference.  It is a God who lacks justice and righteousness.  Righteousness is synonymous with retribution because “white-hot opposition” is conceived only in terms of retribution. 

This deserves careful consideration.  This is where the differences between restorative justice and retributive justice become quite apparent.

Notice Rishmawy's list of crimes and criminals.  Slavery.  ISIS.  Oppression of the poor by the rich.  Militarism.  Etc.  It is a sobering list and it could be much, much longer.  Such things warrant God's "wrath".  We hope for God's "judgment" on such things.  

But did you notice what is missing from this retributive version of justice?

The restoration of the victim.

Having provided their witness to evil, the victims themselves play no further part in the definition or fulfillment of justice.  So long as the sinner is punished, “justice” as "white-hot opposition" has been accomplished.  

While retributive justice is focused on the punishment of the offender, restorative justice is first and foremost focused on the victim.  Within a framework of retributive justice, the focus is on offenders getting what they deserve.  Within a framework of restorative justice, the focus is on putting right what has gone wrong. (The Little Book of Restorative Justice)

Back to Rishmawy's quote.  Let's look at his by way of two contrasting citations from Mark Driscoll and George MacDonald.

Compare Mark Driscoll from his infamous “Got Hates You” sermon:

“Some of you, God hates you.  Some of you, God is sick of you.  God is frustrated with you.  God is wearied by you.  God has suffered long enough with you.  He doesn’t think you’re cute.  He doesn’t think it’s funny.  He doesn’t think your excuse is meritous.  He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too.  God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.”

To George MacDonald:

“For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected--not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.”

“He is against sin: in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them--against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether and always for them.”

For Driscoll (as with Jonathan Edwards), “God hates you” is rationalized and justified by God’s love.  That is, God is vindicated as “righteous” in his hate because he is a God of love. 

For MacDonald, God’s opposition is likewise grounded in love.  God’s being “against you” is, paradoxically, God for you.  

Do you see the difference?  Each of these represents a “white-hot” divine righteousness, but they differ in fundamental ways.  

What does the "white-hot righteousness" of God look like, and what is it's ultimate purpose?  This is the form of the "wrath" dichotomy that needs to be addressed. 

Let’s go back to that definition of love.  If a person were to stop doing the things that constitute “love” – stop encouraging the flourishing of the other, lose patience, give up, only see the failures of the other, etc. – we wouldn’t continue to call it love.  We wouldn’t say that it’s a “different kind of love”.  We wouldn’t say that love, if it is to be a truly righteous love, requires that a person effectively stop loving another should the situation call for it.  This is abstract nonsense.  No, we’d just say that the person no longer loved the former beloved.

While we must be careful to protect the analogous nature of language when it comes to describing the being of God, we cannot allow language to become equivocal.

As John Stuart Mill said:

“To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology that God may possibly not be good?”

Or in the words of David Bentley Hart:

“When we use words like “good”, “just”, “love” to name God, not as if they are mysteriously greater in meaning than when predicated of creatures, but instead as if they bear transparently opposite meanings, then we are saying nothing.  And, again, the contagion of this equivocity consumes theology entirely.”

We cannot allow the word "love" to become so equivocal.  Rishmawy and Zahnd would certainly agree on this.

Where they differ, I think, can be best summed up in the following sentence from Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God:

The revelation that God's single disposition toward sinners remains one of unconditional love does not mean we are exempt from the consequences of going against the grain of love."  (18)

It's a point that Zahnd brings up again and again.  An axiom.  God's single disposition.

The entirety of what I've attempted to say is wrapped up in those three words.

Human sin does not thwart God's single disposition of unconditional love, for God is perfectly free.  Words like "justice" and "wrath" simply cannot be understood apart from that single disposition.  For a Calvinist like Rishmawy (who I assume holds to something akin to double predestination, or who at least believes that the damned are damned, in the end, because God simply does not will their salvation) this particular singular disposition is incoherent.  Perhaps he understands a singular disposition in terms of "God willing his own glory" or something similar.  Those are word games and dark theological necessities to which I reply:

"The glory of God is man fully alive." -Irenaeous

God's wrath can only be understood in light of God's single disposition.  And through all ages, God's singular disposition cannot be extracted from God's glory as man fully alive.

When 'Law and Order' is Intended to Create Mass Incarceration

Today I started reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

I'm not sure what to say about it quite yet.  Her erudition is impressive.  The way that she comprehends the American narrative against the backdrop of white supremacy and the racial caste system are....well...that's just it.  I feel like I've been slapped in the face.  There's a dark history that undergirds civilization.  Not just "civilization" in the abstract.  Not some people far away.  It's embedded in the history in which my own story has emerged.  It's in the American narrative.

I can't unsee that.  You can't really go back after reading this book.  And I'm only in chapter 1.

I mean, I generally knew how slavery came about, it's economic foundations, what Jim Crow laws were, what Reconstruction was, the 13th and 14th amendments, etc.  But I didn't really know.  I still don't, but I know more now than I did 2 hours ago.

I'm sort of reeling right now, and just wanted to jot down some thoughts while they're fresh in my mind.

Particularly important is this passage on page 31:

"The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution had abolished slavery, but allowed one major exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime."

This statement is given flesh and blood in light of the Black Codes written into Southern law in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

I'd never heard of them before.  Think of them as a precursor to Jim Crow.  Basically, the South wanted to keep slavery but they couldn't outright have slavery - not in the same form anyways.  So the South sought to establish a system that resembled slavery through the passage of certain laws called the Black Codes.

Closely related to (or perhaps a particular form of) these black codes were "convict laws".  While Alexander notes that convict laws were "rarely seen as part of the black codes, that is a mistake."

Convict laws were put in place to handle "convicted black law breakers."

Who were these law breakers?

After the war ended and slaves were granted their freedom, many simply walked away from their plantations.  Having nowhere meaningful to go and no means to get there, some simply roamed the highways.  Fears of an insurrection dominated the Southern imagination, not to mention that local economies would collapse without that slave labor.

Never mind all that.  What laws did they break?

Here's where it gets really crazy.

"Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws - which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks - and eight of those states enacted convict laws allowing for the hiring-out of county prisoners to planation owners and private companies.  Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay.  One vagrancy act specifically provided that "all free negroes and mulattoes over the age of eighteen" must have written proof of a job at the beginning of every year.  Those found with no lawful employment were deemed vagrants and convicted." (p 27)

Basically, if these freed slaves weren't working (I wonder where they could get jobs), they were deemed criminals.  Create laws, and then convict the law breakers.  What right has the federal government to intrude upon the sovereignty of the State to set constitutionally consistent laws that were good for their citizens (that's sarcasm)?  Law and order.  In any case, these former slaves were prosecuted and locked up - mass incarceration style.  Local plantations came to agreements to put these "criminals" to good social use.  The result?  The "criminals" ended up back on plantations, working for little or no pay, paying off their "debt to society".

It's staggering to me.

"Law and order" led to mass incarceration which was the means by which newly gained civil rights were denied and white Southern control was maintained.