An Affirmation of Life

At the beginning go each day, as part of our morning prayer, Brenda and I recite the Apostle’s Creed which includes the affirmation:

I believe in the Holy Spirit. . . .
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen

I refer to this as an affirmation, and so it is, but it is also something far deeper. The word “creed,” or “credo,” from which the phrase “I believe” comes, can be understood, when its Latin root is considered, as meaning, “I give my heart to.” It does not, therefore, suggest a highly literal and rigid intellectual agreement or mental assent with the statements made, but a commitment of all that we are and all that we can become, our will, our intellect, our depth of feeling, our spiritual passion to everything sacred and precious that has God as its true source. The English “I believe” is itself something more like “beloving.” So, we “belove” God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit, the Comforter; and, all those things God loves, approves, and wills––justice, compassion, joy, peace, and life.

When Brenda and I pray that next to the last line of the Apostle’s Creed we do not know precisely what the resurrection of the body means––evidently the Apostle Paul didn’t either because he wrote this explanation to the Corinthian Christians:

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed. . . . So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:35-44).

And Saint John wrote, “It does not yet appear what we will be” (1 John 3:2).

What we do know is that the resurrection is a sacred mystery, and the more we give ourselves to it the more it becomes that ever expanding, intricate, and luminous network of meaning and life that Barbara Brown Taylor thought of as a divine web of light. The more we give our hearts in solidarity with God’s eternal cosmic plan to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Christ through love, the brighter the woven pattern of light becomes. Creedal statements, like “I believe in the resurrection of the dead,” are then declarations of the truths and principles by which we live our lives. I grew up and was originally ordained in a denomination that claimed to be “noncreedal,” but the reality is that every church and every individual, acknowledged or unacknowledged, has a creed by which they live. Indeed, “belief,'” from “by lief,” can also be understood as that by which I live my life. Charles Tart’s “Western Creed,” which you should google if you have never read it, is an attempt to awaken North Americans, in spite of all their self-delusion and denial, to the beliefs and values by which they actually live. When Brenda and I say in our morning prayer that we believe in the resurrection we are owning Jesus’s teaching of the resurrection, with all its spiritual implications, as determinative for the way we live.

In our secular culture serious discussion of what lies beyond the threshold of death is casually dismissed as a sign one lacks the sophistication of a decent college education. “What remains,” as the liberal theologian John Cobb notes, “is a vague assurance that all will be well. Since no content is ever suggested for the imagination, the reassurance is, for many, not very reassuring.” Since I feel no need to defend my education––a Bachelors in Speech (rhetoric), with minors in Literature, History and Religion, a Masters in Counseling Psychology, a Masters in Religion, a Masters in Theology, and a Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Care; and, having experienced a call now decades ago to participate in expanding the awareness of “the mystery of the ages which is Christ us––the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26-27), I offer, without embarrassment, the following reason for the hope that lives in me.

A Relationship Stronger Than Death
In the Old Testament scriptures there is no real or unambiguous theology of an afterlife, immortality, or eternal life as there is in the New Testament. At best there are only a mere handful of references to what may lie beyond the threshold of death, over which both scholars and ordinary people have puzzled and speculated. However, what does exist in Old Testament theology, and in the deepest thought and feeling of the ancient Hebrews, is a powerful and explicit sense of covenant. Every society has traditions, a mythos, which explains and sustains its existence. For early Israel the central reality from which her institutions and identity came was the covenant between herself and God. This was unique with Israel in that for Israel’s neighbors identity and meaning were determined by a cosmic myth in which the visible order of things was determined by what had transpired and continued to transpire in the unseen world of wars among the gods. But for Israel it was her covenant relationship with God that determined everything. Covenants are frequently thought of as contracts, agreements, treaties; or as something like the metaphorical social contract theory of government –– the idea that people live together in society in accordance with an unspoken agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. In may ways Israel’s covenant with Yahweh is very much like the treaties and agreements that existed between ancient rulers and their subjects. But their covenant was different not in that it contained promises and conditions and vows, but in that it was a covenant between Israel and God. Like all covenants it established a relationship, except that it was not a relationship between monarch and subjects, or husband and wife, or conqueror and conquered, or one involving mundane affairs; but, rather an eternal and sacred relationship of committed love between a liberated people and their Creator, Sustainer, and Deliverer. Fixed deep in Israel’s spiritual consciousness was the conviction that her covenant with God was the direct result of her liberation –– the great exodus from Egypt. She had been chosen and had said yes to that choosing.

Now, what does Israel’s covenant with God have to do with the question of death and the life everlasting? Just this. The covenantal relationship between Israel and God is stronger than death. Israel has no comprehensive theology of life after death; it does have a profound conviction of a lived relationship with God that cannot be dissolved by death.

Constant Love
By ‘constant’ in this heading I mean continuing, unchanging, enduring love–– I mean hesed. Hesed is one of those biblical Hebrew words that is nearly impossible to translate. Depending on the context, it has been translated as loving kindness, mercy, compassion, love, grace and faithfulness. But none of these quite capture what is meant by hesed. It conveys feelings of kindness and love; yet, it is also far more than an emotion. It has been described as that sort of loyal or faithful love which will not let go or abandon the beloved no matter what. Found some 250 times in the Old Testament it expresses an essential part of God’s character. At the Burning Bush, God is described not only as “The One Who Is,” but also as “abounding in,” or “filled” with hesed, which is translated, depending on the particular English translation being used, as “loving faithfulness,” “unfailing love,” “faithful love,” steadfast love,” and “loyal love.” It expresses God’s loving faithfulness. The central idea of this term is that of loyalty or faithfulness within a relationship. It is, therefore, closely related to God’s covenant with His people, Israel, and expresses God’s loving faithfulness to them.

Faith in the Faithfulness
From the Christian perspective it is possible to speak not only of the Mosaic covenant of Mount Sinai and the new covenant in Christ, but of other covenants as well; there is the Garden covenant with Adam and Eve in which God promises that they will have everything they need for their physical and spiritual lives as long as they trust him. The story of the “fall” in Genesis is, then, the story of how Adam and Eve broke their covenant with God and instead of trusting in the goodness of God chose to rely on themselves. But notice this, neither the covenant nor its breaking is meant to be understood as something involving one or two individuals –– as something entirely private. The covenant with Adam and Eve is meant to be understood as extending to the whole human race, and their fall is meant to be apprehended as the fall of humanity; indeed, this blind self-will in which we choose to rely more on ourselves than to trust the grace and goodness of God is the great affliction of human kind. Every covenant between God and the human characters of the Bible is extensive rather than singular and individualistic. The eleventh chapter of Genesis begins the story of the Abrahamic covenant. God promises Abraham and Sarah that if they will trust God with their lives and journey into a strange and distant land, God will bless them –– their descendants will become a populous and strong nation, and by one of them the whole earth will one day be blessed. Whether we look at the covenant made in the Garden with Adam and Eve, the covenant made with Noah, the one with Abraham and Sarah, or, the covenant made at Mount Sinai, it is not made solely with and for the benefit of any single individual, but rather with and for a people.

Israel’s Hope
What can be said at this point, then, is that Israel did in fact hope for an idyllic future; or as John Baillie put it in his book The Life Everlasting: “We might express the facts by saying that throughout its early history Israel indeed looked forward to a blessed immortality, but that the nation and not the individual was the unit of the immortality in which it put its trust.” Baillie went on to note this perspective was natural for the ancient Hebrews given that the nation as a whole, or in some cases the tribe or family, was regarded as the unit of moral responsibility, accountability, and spiritual connection to God. This is a difficult perspective for our Western minds to grapple with; however, Saint Paul’s word in Philippians 1:6 might frame it in a way that is more easily understood. Paul the Christian Apostle, but also a Hebrew of the Hebrews, wrote to the Philippian church saying: “For I am confident of this very thing, that the One who began a good work in you and among you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus.” Or, we might think of Paul’s words to the Christian community in Rome, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Hebrews of the Old Testament, with whom Paul was in continuity, could have said the same thing; except, they would have thought in more collective than individual terms. Everything good, true, and beautiful is eternal. The hesed of God is everlasting.

People Like Trees Walking
In Mark 8:22-26 there is an intriguing story of the restoration of a blind man’s sight that can furnish something of a parable of how the revelation of God in history is incremental, step by step, a progression in understanding. Jesus and his disciples arrive in the village of Bethsaida, and a sightless man is brought to Jesus. Jesus put a little of his spit in the man’s eyes and then asked him: “Do you see anything?” The man answered, “I see people walking around. They look like walking trees?” Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again and asked: “How about now? Do you see anything?” The man takes a good look and realizes he has recovered his sight perfectly. I have always found this an interesting story, a paradigm of how God works incrementally.

R. H. Charles in his classic book on this subject, Eschatology: Hebrew, Jewish and Christian: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life published in 1899, argued that biblical revelation is progressive. “As in nature, so in religion,” he said, “God is revealed in the course of slow evolution.” Charles was clear that this did not mean this “slow evolution” or “progressive revelation” was a merely natural development. It was a process, but it was a process in which God was truly involved. “All true growth in religion, whether in the past or in the present,” he said, “springs from the communion of man with the immediate living God. . .”

By the time of the apocalyptic movement (roughly from the time of the writing of the Book of Daniel, a significant step had been taken in understanding the afterlife. Guided by the teaching and work of the prophets, Israel came to a new evaluation of the significance of the individual. If we were to cast the change in eschatological thinking (the doctrine of last things such as death and the afterlife) that took place among the Jewish sages and people in more contemporary terms, we might cast it like this: They experienced a deeper realization of both the worth and the moral responsibility of the individual person. They saw, not that God was more loving or powerful than previously thought, but that in a living personality there is a value which is greater than all other values; and, that if what they had thought to be of the highest value, what they considered most precious, truth, justice, compassion, love of God and neighbor (Deuteronomy 6:4-10), was to survive as something more than abstract philosophical concepts, then the individual persons who are the carriers of that spiritual tradition must have everlasting life.

There was also during this period a second realization that fueled belief not only in life after death, but in resurrection. The prophets taught the people to interpret the promises of God’s bliss as applying to a future time of national blessedness that would be inaugurated with the coming of the “Day of the Lord.” This became known as the Messianic Age or the Kingdom of God. Among the important texts are Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3.

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead.
(Isaiah 26:19)

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
(Daniel 12:2-3

What is anticipated in these verses is not some sort of vague shadowy existence in the underworld, or even a happier state for the dead than that of a grey, ghostly, immortality in Sheol. What is looked for here is a return of the whole person –– body, mind, heart, and soul to a world of joy and vitality. Envisioning this as simply an epoch of world history, regardless of how peaceful or prosperous, was found inadequate. The resurrected life, the Kingdom life, filled with the presence of God had to be conceived of as heavenly or spiritual. We also now see an indivisible linkage between the community and its individual members. What is experienced is, first of all, hope for a future time in which a new way of life would permeate society –– a new order in which God’s will of peace and justice and grace would be a lived reality. And, second, there is the hope that those individual men and women who have immersed themselves in this new depth of life will, in the end, be raised from the dead to share in the eternal community of light, love, and bliss.

Before going further it is important to note that the basis for this hope of resurrection and eternal life, this longing for the kingdom of God, remains constant and can be summed up in the following premises:

• The core insight of spiritual religion is that the heart of ultimate reality is One who is supremely good and trustworthy.

• What is highest in spirit is also the source of the deepest values of our human nature –– our most cherished ideals and most sublime and noblest thoughts and practices to which we aspire.

• The ideal and the real are therefore inextricably and enduringly identified with one another, and the God of Hebrew and Christian Scripture cannot deny Himself––can do nothing incongruent with his own nature or character.

What the Hebrew prophets, poets, and sages believed, and what became ever clearer to them as they journeyed, was that all that is most precious and noblest about us as human beings, our spiritual consciousness, our sense and practice of justice, love, truth, goodness, and beauty is eternal, not as in an abstract philosophical idea or concept, but as something warm and living. God cannot scrap what is most precious to Himself. We are safe in the hands of God; in fact, it is only in God’s hands that we are completely safe.

Central to the whole of Jesus’s teaching, including his teaching on life after death, is the kingdom of God. It is a kingdom both present and future. The fullness of the genuinely religious life, of the spiritually transformed life, is known in the fellowship of the transformed community. Jesus held out to his people hope for the community, but he also believed and taught hope for the individual––hope that the faithful dead will rise from the grave to the joy of the eternal kingdom. Our present life is a preparation for the resurrection and entering the kingdom of heaven, but it is also possible to taste something of its fruit now. Eternal life is, therefore, both a present and future reality. Consequently, the Apostle Peter says to the Christian exiles: “You have tasted the goodness of the Lord” (1 Peter 2:3). And the unknown writer of the Book of Hebrews wrote: “Once people have seen the light, gotten a taste of heaven and been part of the work of the Holy Spirit, once they’ve personally experienced the sheer goodness of God’s Word and the power breaking in on us—if then they turn their backs on it, washing their hands of the whole thing, well, they can’t start over as if nothing happened. That’s impossible” (Hebrews 6:4).

The Trick Question
Some Sadducees, a religious group that denied any possibility of resurrection, approached Jesus one day intent on proving that he and the Pharisees, with whom Jesus agreed about the afterlife, were wrong. They had a good rabbinical argument in the form of a question no one had ever been able to answer. It was meant to reduce all argument for the resurrection to an absurdity––a technique still used by philosophers and debaters. The case presented by the Sadducees with its question is this:

In giving the law, the Torah, Moses said: “If a man dies childless, his brother is obligated to marry his widow and have a child with her who will then receive the deceased brother’s part of the family inheritance.” Now, here’s a case where there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no child, and his wife passed to his brother. The second brother also left her childless, then the third—and on and on, all seven. Eventually the wife died. “So here is our question,” said the Sadducees, “Since this woman was married to each of the seven brothers without ever having a child, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?”

Jesus’s response is devastating. Instead of either throwing up his hands and walking away in confusion because he cannot logically solve the problem, or admitting that their case does indeed show how ridiculous any idea of resurrection really is, he says with perfect poise and confidence:

“You are mistaken. You understand neither what the Scriptures say, nor the power of God. What makes you think the heavenly life will be just like this life only better? In the resurrection people will not marry, but are like the angels. Furthermore, it would appear that you have either not read or paid attention to what has been spoken by God through Scripture––certainly you have not understood it. So consider this, the Lord God says: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ God is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 28: 20-33).

There are several things important to notice in Jesus’s response. First of all, notice one reason the Sadducees are mistaken in their interpretation of Scripture is that they see, or imagine, the resurrection and the Kingdom of Heaven as following the same physical, material and social processes as this world. In doing so they have actually limited God and the deeper reality of the after life by their own limited literal imaginations and thinking. Both very conservative and very liberal Bible interpreters frequently exegete Scripture with a literalness and an all or none orientation that leads them to believe they know far more than they know or can know.

Second, notice that in saying we will be like the angels Jesus is indicating we will have “bodies” but they will be “transfigured” so that we will be like the angels. His basic thought seems to be that we will not be like the grey ghosts of the Greeks in the nether world. In Homer’s great tale, The Odyssey, he has Odysseus visit Achilles in the realm of the dead. Achilles, you will remember, was the great and fierce Greek warrior who had chosen to die a hero in the battle for Troy rather than live a long, peaceful, and prosperous, but unremembered, life at home in Greece. But in this meeting in the underworld, Achilles tells Odysseus that he would “rather slave on earth for another man–/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down there over all the breathless dead.” His lament is that he is not truly and fully human and alive––not in the greater sense of those words. Saint Paul makes the same point Jesus does here in 1 Corinthians 15. To not understand this is, like the Sadducees, to not understand the power of God. To doubt the resurrection is to doubt the power of God.

Third, they and those who do not see the doctrine of eternal life in the ancient Hebrew Scripture, do not understand Scripture itself, because the essential presuppositions for the resurrection of individual men and women are present in Moses and the prophets.

Fourth, notice that Jesus’s belief in the resurrection is based on what he knows of the nature, of God––the God of Israel has always been, now is, and will ever be God of life. The poets had said it again and again in the Psalms:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom should I fear?
The Lord is the defense of my life;
Whom shall I dread?
(Psalm 27:1)

The Lord does not just do something to save me, but is mysteriously actually my salvation, does not merely defend me but is the defense of my life, and not only gives me light but is my light. In the same vein Jesus says that experiential knowledge of God not only informs me about life, but is life (John 17:3). If God is, as Jesus taught, the loving Abba Father, and the Creator in whom we “live move and have our being,” then as the Apostle also said, “Whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). To once more quote John Baillie:

If the individual can commune with God, then he or she must matter to God; and if the individual matters to God, then he or she must share God’s eternity. For if God really rules, then God cannot be conceived as scrapping what is precious in His sight. It is in the conjunction with God that the promise of life resides. This in Dante’s phrase is come l’ uom s‘ eterna.

Christ the Life Everlasting
Jesus taught his disciples that he himself would suffer, be killed, and rise again in three days; their experience of Jesus as alive and present with them after his crucifixion became for them the ground of their hope and of everything that makes life worthwhile. It is, of course, not possible to know two thousand years later the precise nature of their encounters with Christ after that first Easter Sunday morning. Nor, does it greatly matter whether the resurrected body of Jesus they saw was a physical flesh and bone body, or a transfigured body, or whether they had visionary experiences, which the popular Religion professor Marcus Borg claimed could include sense experiences like taste, touch, smell, and sight. Certainly, the biblical account itself leaves us wondering about such question.

According to the biblical text, Jesus tells Mary Magdalena in the Garden not to cling to him, invites Thomas to touch his wounds, and eats a breakfast of broiled fish and honeycomb when he first appears in the upper room. All of this seems aimed at demonstrating Jesus is no mere apparition, chimera, or glamour. But Jesus also appears suddenly in the upper room when the doors are locked and secured against surprise intrusions. What sort of corporal body can do that? And the appearance of Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus, which is counted as equal to those to the twelve, and which has the power and reality to change the whole course of Paul’s life, is undoubtedly entirely visionary. The question that presents itself, then, is whether a visionary experience is about anything real or is entirely subjective, symbolical, or a purely cerebral process. In short, was the resurrection of Jesus really real? I don’t want to allow myself to be drawn into a long discussion of that question here. So for now, I will only attempt to provide as simple and as much of a common sense response as I can. For most of us to say that something is real is to say that it actually exists or happened as opposed to being imaginary, illusory, or delusional. It is what is extant rather than an interpretation or reaction. We may not be able to give a definition of reality that would satisfy a professional philosopher or physicist, but most of us are perfectly capable of discriminating between the real and unreal.

In 1587, a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island just off the coast of what is now North Carolina to establish what would have been the first English colony in the Americas. A little later that year the governor, John White, sailed back to England in order to gather fresh supplies. White was delayed by the naval war that broke out between Spain and England. It was nearly three years before he returned. When White and his party finally arrived back at Roanoke they found no trace of the little colony––including White’s wife and infant daughter. The only clue to what had happened, if it was a clue, was the word “Croatoan,” carved into a wooden post. “Croatoan” was the name of a Native American tribe on an island south of Roanoke. They had vanished without a trace––a complete mystery that has never been solved to this very day. Now, while what happened to that little band of colonists, or how it happened, is entirely unknown, it was a real event. Something actually happened. In a similar way we can say that while no Christian can legitimately claim to know exactly what processes occurred (what happened) at the resurrection, as if the whole thing had been recorded in high definition video, he or she can reasonably claim that something powerful actually happened in the warp and woof of time and space.

In regard to the specific post crucifixion appearances of Jesus to his friends and followers, look at Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road. Paul, or Saul of Tarsus as he was known at the time, sets off for Damascus where he intends to arrest anyone who “follows the Way”––lives the teachings of Christ. As he nears the city there is a brilliant flash of light, and as Paul falls helpless to the ground he hears a voice. The voice, equating the persecution of members of the Christian community with harming Christ, asks: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Now blinded, shocked, and helpless Paul asks, “Who are you, Master?” The voice answers: “I am Jesus, the one you are hunting down.” The men with Paul could see the light but couldn’t understand the voice. “What do I need to do?” asks Paul, and is told to go into the city where he will be told everything. His companions take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. Here we have an appearance quite unlike that in the Garden of Gethsemane, the upper room, on the road to Emmaus; perhaps that is part of the problem, they are just dissimilar enough that it is impossible to get a grip on a single understanding of what it really means when we read: “He appeared to them.” On the Damascus Road the only physicality seems to be the flash of light and the sound understood only by Paul as a distinct and articulate voice. But it seems to me that what makes it real is not the light or sound, but that it is a genuine encounter, what at the very least is an interpersonal encounter but one far beyond what the great Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber called an “I –– Thou” encounter, a meeting of persons involving true presence to one another and mutuality.

What I propose is that if Jesus was truly alive and present in an appearance to his followers, if he communicated with them after his death as one person to another, if they knew him as one they had loved, then, regardless of any physicality or lack of it Jesus is truly risen. Nothing is more certain than that the disciples and the closest friends of Jesus believed that after his death on the cross and burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea he had appeared to them, not as a figment of their imagination or a symbol of hope like the mythical Sphinx, but as real and alive.

Summary
Because of the growing constraints of space I will state as briefly as possible here why I think any reasonable person may place their trust in Christ and the hope of the resurrection; and, do so without any intellectual embarrassment whatsoever. First, the awareness of the extraordinary beauty and character of Jesus of Nazareth –– a sense of beauty and knowledge that emerges out of the perfectly plausible Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and teaching and by “living into” his life and teaching. Second, a belief in God adequately grounded in thoughtfulness and reason. Contrary to what you may have heard, some of the world’s most notable intellectuals, scientists and thinkers are Christian believers. Third, the conviction that God has conveyed a message through the prophets that finds its completion in Christ. And fourth, a careful rereading of the gospel stories in light of these first steps. This does not mean that no ambiguities, questions or puzzles will continue to exist for the believer in the Biblical text, but it does mean that he or she can hope in Christ with intellectual integrity.

Apart from faith in the reality of God –– faith in God as supremely good, loving, and trustworthy, Christianity offers no basis for belief in an afterlife. The New Testament does not make unassailable empirical evidence available so as to demolish every argument of unbelief. The resurrection of Jesus on the third day is not the basis but rather the content of the Christin faith. Spiritual truth is spiritually discerned by a trusting heart, not the stunning blows of logic or by God overwhelming the human ability to think. Those who live that ever deepening faith as profound trust and relinquishment know life as they live into the One who is life, those who don’t know don’t. “Those who have no Amen have no hold” (Isaiah 7:9).

Questions

Q. What do you make of near-death experiences? Do you think they provide evidence for life after death?
A. The question is well put because even if they are taken as evidence for life after death near death experiences still would indicate nothing about Christian eschatology––nothing about the doctrine of resurrection itself or any sort of assessment or accountability for how we have lived. Near death experiences may indicate nothing more than a physiological (neurological) process that occurs at the time of death. Marcus Borg, who was so skeptical about Scripture, thought that near death experiences did indicate something about an afterlife. He argued that people reporting “out of body experiences” during a near death incident have accurately described seeing things they could not have seen from where they were lying. My understanding is that there are experiments being conducted on this very question. But no, I am too much of a skeptic and there are too many other reasonable explanations available for me to think near death experiences say anything substantial about an afterlife.

Q. I have friends who tell me that they don’t believe in the Christian idea of resurrection, but they do believe in the doctrine of reincarnation. Do you think reincarnation gives us reason to hope for immortality?
A. The ever-returning wheel of existence, the concept of an endless round of birth, life, death and rebirth, has been embraced as a positive doctrine by some, particularly in America. I am not sure why that is, other than that for many in this country, life has been pleasant enough that they would not at all mind repeating it endlessly. But if you are among the poorest of the poor in this world, if your life is full of suffering, and you contemplate innumerable rebirths, the joy or pain of which each depends on how well you have lived this life (karma), and that many of your lives will be subhuman –– a mosquito in a fetid marsh, the bat that eats the mosquito, the crocodile whose reptilian brain is without thought other than an instinct for survival, or the abused dog you see on television–– then the doctrine of reincarnation may be more the basis for feelings of depression and futility than hope. Actually, this is the problem the Buddha sought to solve with his teaching on Nirvana–– how to escape the endless cycle of suffering occasioned by reincarnation. However, as I understand it when asked whether Nirvana was complete extinction, total oblivion, or a state of existence Gautama, the Buddha, did not answer.

Q. Well, billions of people believe that ultimately, when we have achieved enlightenment and die, we are absorbed into a cosmic consciousness like a drop of water absorbed into a vast ocean. Isn’t that immortality?
A. There are a number of religious systems which teach what is sometimes called reabsorption. The largest and best known is, of course, Hinduism. So I will respond only in very general terms here. As I understand it, what is suggested with some variations is that all human minds, along with those of all other sentient beings, are part of a single universal impersonal mind, and when enlightenment or full consciousness is attained, then at death that person merges, or is completely reabsorbed, into this cosmic consciousness like a drop of water absorbed into the ocean. For the Christian who believes that ultimate reality, that God, is essentially relational and personal, that everything true, good, or beautiful is a part of and comes from the Living God; and, that the personality of the individual person created in the image of God is of incalculable value, this simply does not count as eternal life in any meaningful sense. For Christians the value of the individual is inseparably bound up with personality. So the first thing I would say is that it is hard for a Christian to see reabsorption as anything but the end of the individual and all his or her loves, joys, compassion, honesty and virtue.

It also seems to me that if the individual disappears, ceases by all practical and common sense definitions to exist, then what we come to is that individual human personalities ultimately come to nothing––have no significant intrinsic worth. If that is true, then how I treat individual men and women either separately or in mass, or for that matter my relation with the whole of creation, is of no great consequence, and discussions of moral philosophy and theology, of justice and ethics, may sound sophisticated, but are quite empty.

Q. Doesn’t modern humanistic philosophy honor the worth of the individual and the higher values like justice, nonviolence, love, and compassion without the need for belief in an afterlife? And, isn’t the really important thing that we pass along these higher values? Isn’t this a kind of immortality?
A. I assume the question has secular rather than Christian humanism in mind. Secular humanism is a philosophy that rejects religious doctrines and beliefs in the supernatural and emphasizes reason as the basis for all ethics and morality. The value of the individual is, at least in part, in embracing and spreading the higher moral values like justice, nonviolence, and compassion for the poor and vulnerable. It is these values rather than individuals that are immortal. Individuals are immortal only in the sense that they teach these values and furnish a conduit through which these values pass to future generations. The Tom Hanks character in Forest Gump probably gave about as good a response as any to this perspective. Hanks, as Forest Gump, repeats several times: “Smart is as smart does.” The same can be said of any moral or ethical quality––justice is as justice does, nonviolence is as nonviolence does, compassion is as compassion does. William Ritchie Sorley, in the prestigious Gifford Lectures 0f 1918 put it like this:

When I say “love is good,” I mean that love as realized in the personal life is good, that justice as manifested in a person’s character or in a social order is good, I do not mean that the mere abstract quality, love or justice, is also good. The mere quality love, conceived abstractly and without any reference to its realization in personal life, is not good. . . . Good belongs only to the concrete. . .––to persons.

Q. Is there anything scientific that furnishes evidence for the Christian resurrection and an afterlife?
A. There is no empirical or scientific proof of the afterlife. Quantum physics, I think, suggests the resurrection is scientifically possible, but it certainly proves neither the certainty of Christian resurrection nor immorality in general. When I was a young boy I sometimes wondered how people who had been blown to bits, buried at sea, or perished in flames could be reassembled. I was, of course, not considering what Paul said about how our resurrected body would be a spiritual body. But I also obviously had no way of knowing how Quantum physics would change our understanding of what is really real. So, notice that the real me cannot be my material body, because my material body is actually changing all the time. Your body has very few atoms that composed it a few years go. The real you, in Quantum physics, is the immensely complicated ‘pattern’ in which the ever-changing atoms of the human body are organized. John Polkinghorne, the British mathematical physicist who helped pioneer the discovery of quarks, served as the President of Saint Mary’s College, University of Cambridge, was ordained as an Anglican Priest, and is a founding member of the prestigious Society for Ordained Scientists, wrote this in his book Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity:

The pattern that is me forms and grows as my experience accumulates and my character forms. It is not limited within the confines of my skin, but in some way, it must include also those significant relationships that do so much to constitute me as a person. . . . It seems an intelligent and coherent hope that God will remember the pattern that is me and re-create it in a new environment of God’s choosing, by a great act of final resurrection.

Now, there are some other ideas from the strange world of Quantum mechanics pointing in the same direction, but I am not a scientist and in attempting to explain them I am talking well above my head. But this is hopefully sufficient to honestly answer the question.

Q. When I was in college I took a religion class in which the professor, one of my favorites, said that Christianity is really about spiritual transformation here and now and not an afterlife––going to heaven someday for being “good” in this life. That made sense to me. What do you think?
A. That is a perspective that has asserted itself more and more in the last forty years. And I am familiar with it. There is a good deal of what your professor said that corresponds with Christian teaching, but it does so only partially––somewhat like a puzzle piece that looks like just the one you need to fill; a space, but does not quite fit. It is true that Christianity is far more about spiritual transformation than about a future reward for being good now. But it is pretty much impossible to read the New Testament without seeing and grasping, or perhaps I should say without being grasped by, its promise of eternal life. Perhaps, a little more difficult to apprehend is the intrinsic connection between its promise of eternal life and spiritual transformation. As a Christian you should be able to think of several such connections without even pausing here in your reading: (1) “Eternal life” refers not only to life without end, but also to a quality of life that begins now––rather like tasting a delicious piece of fruit before you have consumed it. (2) The Bible constantly connects entrusting our future into God’s hands with our ongoing transformation––both our present and future. (3) Relying on Christ to save us from death itself is an act of radical spiritual surrender and faith without which no real transformation is possible. The most sublime experience possible, is that which is known by a man or woman who at the moment of death is able to say in complete surrender: “Lord Christ, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (4) Eternal bliss in the presence of God is, in fact, that transformation which is beyond all the power of the human mind to conceive or imagine. (5) If you are suffering from a catastrophic injury or illness, and your thoughts are simple thoughts of comfort, and longing, and hope as you contemplate being completely and fully with the Lord in that place-less place we call heaven, where there is no suffering, or pain, or sorrow, or death, then you have been and are being transformed. I would far rather be where you are in my thoughts than with the “superior” intellectual whose transformation will end in a handful of dirt or ash.

Q. Doesn’t belief in the resurrection depend on faith?
A. Yes, I would say that the hope of the resurrection begins, and ends in faith. It begins with faith as mental assent or belief in the reality of God who is good, just, trustworthy, and loving; and, for want of a better term, personal. And it ends with faith as unfathomable trust. Without faith in this first sense, faith as belief in the God of the Bible, the logic which has been traced from Scripture and employed here falls apart. That is, it all begins with a certain assumption about the reality and nature of the Holy Trinity. Take that away and I have no idea why anyone would believe in the resurrection or afterlife. I think it important to also note that faith is, if properly understood, a kind of “energy” or “power”––the power of the Spirit of God (Mark 11:22-23). Paul Tillich, one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century said “faith is our passion for God.” Certainly, the more we open ourselves, the more we trust, the more spiritually receptive we become. And through the practice of the spiritual disciplines the more our ability to confront the forces of confusion and anti-life is enhanced. (Matthew 17:21). Trust (faith) and loving intimacy, are so closely linked that they are virtually synonymous. The more we rely on the love of Christ than on ourselves and empty ourselves in order that the Spirit may fill our hearts and minds, the more effectual our faith.

Q. I am wondering if the resurrection is somehow intimately connected to both Holy Communion (the Eucharist), and also to baptism?
A. You are absolutely correct in thinking so. The bread we eat is the body of Christ who died for us on the cross (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). The cup we drink is the blood of the New Covenant (Matthew 26:28); and, because we, though many, eat this one bread and drink this one cup, are one body––the one body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). And in baptism, we die and are buried with Christ, and resurrected to new life, to eternal life, in him (Romans 6: 3-4; 1 Corinthians 10:1-4). From earliest Christianity the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper and baptism have been known as “the mysteries.” Keep up this meditation on the mysteries of the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, contemplate them constantly and in the years yet to come you will see things more wonderful than you ever thought possible.

When I awake I will see your face! All I want is to see you as you are.
Psalm 17:15

The Story of Israel
Both Judaism and Christianity are historical religions, meaning, among other things, that if you want to truly understand them, or their God, you must understand their history beginning with Genesis. However, this is not a matter of inquiring into the dates and hard facts of particular events, but of entering yourself into the Hebrew experience of life as an encounter with the One who exists as both numinous reality and intensely personal presence. The story of the Old Testament is the story of the long relationship between God and the ancient Hebrews. It is a story that has been unfolding and developing for nearly two thousand years by the time Jesus is born in the town of Bethlehem. As the history of the relationship between God and the ancient Hebrews it involves stories of desire, need, argument, accusation, lament, disappointment, pleading, anger, praise, betrayal, faithfulness, great depths of insight and total blindness. We could even think of it as the story or history of a conversation. It is simply impossible to get at the meaning of any one text in isolation from the story as a whole. So, the texts with which we began part one of this post cannot be understood apart from the strange call of Abraham and Sarah to trust God, to leave the easy life of their home in Ur and make the arduous journey to live as nomads in faraway Canaan. They cannot be comprehended apart from the four hundred years of Jewish slavery in Egypt, or their astounding escape and miraculous liberation, and they cannot be felt without remembering the drama of cloud and lightening and fire and smoke on Mount Sinai as they receive the Torah and vow to be the people of God. And their formation as an ethnic group, political entity, and spiritual religion through forty years of struggle and danger in the desert wilderness, with God alone as their help, is essential in interpreting the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

What the patriarchs and matriarchs, the priests, poets, prophets and people discovered in this long journey into intimacy with God were the names of God––not the fuzzy and abstract terms for God used by philosophers and theologians who love participating in a vigorous game of intellectual gymnastics, but strong, concrete, active names that spoke of a real God with whom it is possible to have a real relationship. In the Old Testament Hebrew God is Yahweh, El or Elohim, El Shaddai, and Adonia. God is, then, if these names are translated literally: “He who is,” or “He who exists,” or “He who is the one being.” God is the strong leader who teaches the people how to work, shows the secret of the doing, by working alongside them, and nourishes and sustains them like a mother whose breast milk is sufficient to nourish her infant in health, strength, and growth. And as Adonia, “My Lord,” God is the one who defends, protects, provides and cares for the people––especially the poor and vulnerable. Each name for God is not just a tag for some nebulous concept or idea. For the Hebrews a name wasn’t simply what someone was called, but identified something essential about their character. For the Hebrew poets and worshippers to say, “My hope is in the name of the Lord, creator of heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8), was to affirm that their hope was in the very essence of who and what God is. Obviously Israel’s experience of God was of one who was for them, not against them. This raises the pertinent general question,  why if Dawkins’s assessment of matters is correct did the Hebrews God good and worthy of worship? It also raises a more personal question: Does something deep in your own soul resonate with and affirm the same discoveries made by Abraham and Sarah, by Moses, by Mother Mary and Jesus Christ; even while, at the same time, recognizing there are passages in the Old Testament that are neither worthy nor truly representative of God.

Lived Experience
I am going to suggest to you now that ultimately the only knowledge of God really worth having comes through this sort of lived experience. “Things of the Spirit,” Saint Paul said in his correspondence with the Corinthians, “must be discerned spiritually.” One of my favorite anecdotes is a little story William Barry the Catholic priest, Jesuit, clinical psychologist, Rector of Boston College, and distinguished author and spiritual director tells about his mother in his wonderful little book on prayer, God and You: Prayer as a Personal Relationship. He writes, “When my mother was dying of cancer, she said that she prayed every night that God would take her in her sleep. I asked her what God was like,” says Fr. Barry, “and she answered, “He’s a lot better than he’s made out to be.” Apparently when William Barry’s mother thought of God coming for her in the night, and gently taking her as she slept it was a comforting image. She had not been shaken by priests and teachers who pictured God as capricious, vindictive, or cruel. The heated rants and diatribes of atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens had not disturbed her faith in the One Lord of the Bible who is: “Father of all, over all, through all, and in all.” Nor did the imprecatory psalms or claims God commanded brutal holy wars seem to have lessened her confidence in the essential goodness of God. Barry says his mother had learned about God, and what God is really like, mainly from praying a lot. She read her Bible, recited the rosary, and prayed simple devotions. “One time I asked her,” he says, “what happened when she prayed. During her response she said something like this: ‘Sometimes while you’re saying your prayers, you go deep and you know he’s listening to you and you to him.'” However, I am not just talking about one’s solitary experience, but of entering into the whole experience of the people of God. Barry’s mother was not a solitary believer but part of a worshipping community; and, a participate in the sacred history that unfolds in the both the Old and New Testament..

The Threatening God
In both my work as a counselor and spiritual director I encountered many people who, particularly as a result of growing up in abusive or dysfunctional families, had formed such a distorted image of God that they could not walk into a church without it giving them the creeps. Here is another quote from William Barry that provides further insight. This one is actually from two different books, Paying Attention to God: Discernment in Prayer and his Finding God In All Things. In both he quotes largely from the British psychiatrist J. S. Mackenzie and the psychoanalyst Henry Guntrip:

The enjoyment of God should be the supreme end of spiritual technique; and it is in that enjoyment of God that we feel not only saved in the Evangelical sense, but safe: we are conscious of belonging to God, and hence are never alone; and, to the degree we have these two, hostile feelings disappear. . . . It is a common experience in psychotherapy to find patients who fear and hate God, a God who, is always snooping around after sinners, and who becomes an outsize of the threatening parent. . . . The child grows up fearing evil rather than loving good; afraid of vice rather than in love with virtue, Anyone who has done pastoral work can attest that this is a common experience among many Christians. And while sermons and homilies whose theme is the love of God may help, ultimately people need to experience that love. It will tax our ingenuity to develop the spiritual techniques or pastoral practices that will help people to have such a foundational experience.

If your aim is to logically figure out whether the God of the Bible exists, which is what this question of whether the Judeo-Christian God is good or malevolent is really all about, you should be able to find plenty of people willing to help you take that sort of head-trip. But if you want to know God intimately you will ultimately find such efforts to be an exercise in futility. Knowing God, knowing that God is and knowing the character of what God is, must ultimately be experienced rather than thought. You can think, and think, and think all you want, and while that may be somewhat helpful it will only take you so far. In the end you are either capable of sustaining a vital relationship with God and a believing congregation of sufficient spiritual vitality to undergo the transformation of metanoia or you are not.

A Boyhood Story
I grew up in the very conservative Churches of Christ. Actually, I grew up in a subset of the Churches of Christ that was more conservative than the conservative main body. I do not wish to disparage these churches in any way. It was in their fellowship that I came to faith, experienced my call to ministry, and learned much that has helped and sustained me throughout my life. Having said that, I also found many obstacles that had to be overcome; but, even that is not necessarily bad for it is in the struggle that growth most frequently occurs. One of the obstacles I struggled with was the idea that God is strict and demanding. God’s will must be followed with exactness in all things; and ignorance of what is required is no excuse. The smallest of infractions will send one to hell. At least, that was my childhood and young adult understanding of matters. One of the key texts often used in sermons to support this was Leviticus chapter ten–– actually it was just 10:1-2 that was read––the King James Version of course:

And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.

So the point to be made, as I understood it at the time, was extrapolated from the phrase, “and they offered fire which God commanded them not.” This, we were told, meant that God had not explicitly forbidden this particular incense so they thought, “Why not? This mixture smells pretty good so let’s use it. After all it’s not explicitly forbidden.” And the next thing you know they are knocked right out of their sandals by a bolt of lightning, as dead as dead can be (at least that’s what I imagined as a kid). The moral of the story is simple and certain: Even if you think God vague or ambiguous you had better get it right with precision or you could end up very much like a piece of toast––and the margins for error are more than exceedingly small. This is the sort of thing that might fall within Dawkins’s accusation. So note the following and try to look at them in the context of this post as a whole:

• Were Nadab and Abihu just two happy klutzes that didn’t read the small print in the Incense Guide? Or, were they somehow at odds with Moses and the Torah itself? At Sinai they had certainly shown a propensity for a religion of wild music, dancing, sex and booze. And the explicit prohibition in verse eight against drinking any fermented drink in the tent of the meeting implies that they were intoxicated––intoxicated, irreverent, and defiant. Some scholars think that they had not only arrogated for themselves the role of the High Priest but they were also initiating some sort of extra-cultic rite. I say they were irreverent because the text makes clear they were obviously unable to distinguish between what is sacred and what is profane. These are all clues that whatever was going on involved something significant for Israel as a spiritual nation and a light in a world where the religious celebrations of other states often included drunkenness, prostitution (both female and male), bestiality, the offering of infants in the fires of an idol; and, where the injustice suffered by the poor was codified in royal law and supported by the religious establishment. Notice how verses three through four seem to confirm this. Moses says to Aaron, who is both his brother and the High Priest:

“This is what the Lord spoke of when he said:
“‘Among those who approach me
I will be proved holy;
in the sight of all the people
I will be honored.’”

• Did God actually strike Nadab and Abihu with lightening? I don’t know. It is, as I say, what I imagined as a kid but I don’t know. The text says “fire went out from the Lord,” which would seem to correct my childhood notion of a lightning bolt and suggest that something happened right there at the incense altar. I remember a college professor suggesting they got drunk and caught everything, including themselves on fire. Regardless of how an objective team of observers recording the event might have described it (a lightning strike, an explosion emanating from the incense altar, or the intoxicated Nadab and Abihu accidentally setting themselves on fire) the Hebrew’s would have said “fire went out from the Lord.” This is because they could not conceive of anything happening that God is not involved in, which leads to ways of framing things that does not fit easily with our Western way of conceptualizing matters. For example, Exodus in describing what happened when Moses pleaded for Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, says at times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and refused, and at other times that Pharaoh refused because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. In our Western way of thinking we want to know which it was. Did God harden Pharaoh’s heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart. The Hebrews simply did not think of cause and effect quite as we do, and we need to remember that in interpreting any given text. But we do understand consequence––well theoretically we do. Some, like those addicted to alcohol and drugs, have a difficult time with the concept, have a difficult time making the invariable connection between thoughts, consciousness, actions and results
• The rest of the story is informative. Moses tells his brother Aaron, the High Priest, that he is not to mourn Nadab and Abihu but to continue with the prescribed sacrificial ritual and ceremony. However, Aaron and his remaining priestly sons do not eat the sacrifice as stipulated but allow it to burn up. When confronted by Moses (verses 19-20) Aaron says that considering the tragedy that has befallen him and his family that day God will surely understand. And with that Moses is satisfied. When the rest of the story is told it does not prove the arbitrariness of God as I was told as a child, but that God’s understanding and mercy is broad, and the margins for error wider than many have thought. So here we have that balance the Hebrews saw in everything. In this instance there is the reverence required upon entering the presence of the Holy, and the gentleness needed in dealing with everyday human frailty if it is ever to be transformed into something more.

Punishment and Consequence
I will try to say something briefly here about punishment and consequences because I think it relevant to our overall discussion. First notice the balance just referred to above as the balance of compassion and justice in Exodus 34:7-8.

Yahweh! Yahweh! the God who is compassionate, merciful and gracious, always patient, extravagant in love, staying true to thousands in loving kindness, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet, he does not ignore their twisted ways. But visits the consequences of the parents’ sins on their children and grandchildren to the third and even fourth generation (My translation).

We are contemporary people, and contemporary men and women have a great appreciation for God as love and kindness, especially if that means whatever everything is all about it’s all about them and their wishes. As Charles Tart has it in his not entirely factious Western Creed, “What pleases me is Good, what pains me is Bad.” People are therefore adamant in their insistence that God, if God exists at all, is absolute and pure love. Their enthusiasm for the idea that God is the one to whom they are ultimately accountable and responsible is far less obvious. Yet, love and accountability for what we do with or to that love is integral to the cosmic balance.

The root meaning of the Hebrew word for punishment means “to shed.” It is used to refer to the removal of shoes (Exodus 3:5), an axe head slipping from its’ handle (Deuteronomy 19:5), and the fall or collapse of a nation (Deuteronomy 7:1). The prefix attached to this root word conveys the upward movement of the eyes. The purpose of what our English translations may render as “punishment” is to get us to lift our eyes, to look up in order to see where we have slid (literally shed or fallen) from. In Scripture punishment by definition is restorative and redemptive in nature, and if a punishment does not restore or redeem, (if it does not re-establish balance) then it has failed. Family and child counseling of course makes this distinction by using the term “consequence” rather than “punishment.” Allowing natural consequences to occur or applying logical consequence, as opposed to arbitrary punishment, is meant for redemption and restoration. What I am obviously suggesting is that much of what we view as coercive punishment in the Bible is really consequence.

A number of years ago William Gaultiere wrote a little book many found helpful. The title of Gaultiere’s book was, Mistaken Identity/Clear Up Your Image of God and Enjoy His Love. His thesis was that especially adults who grew up in dysfunctional families may have distorted images of God. The parent whose expectations are inconsistent or cannot be met, or who is chronically angry, who is demanding but never around to help with life’s tasks, who is harsh and authoritarian, who cannot be pleased, or is in some way psychologically abusive and “crazy making” may cause us to seriously mistake the identity of the God of the Bible. But if the lens through which we are looking is cleaned just enough that we can begin to see the connection between our thoughts, actions and circumstances we may begin, little by little, to glimpse God more and more as God is.

And a Final Prayer
In Genesis Jacob, whose very name means something like manipulative cheat, through trickery and deception steals both the birth right (the future inheritance) and blessing that belong to his older brother Esau. This enrages Esau who determines to kill Jacob who, with the help of their mother, then flees to the safety of their uncle Laban in Mesopotamia. Years later shrewd Jacob, who is now a wealthy man, decides to return home to Canaan with his four wives, children, large herds of goats, cattle, camels, and flocks of sheep. He is afraid that the fierce Esau will now take his bloody revenge. Emissaries he has sent ahead with gifts for Esaul come back to tell him that Esau is already coming with his warriors to kill him and take everything he has. As part of his strategy Jacob creates three groups. After he has gotten them all across the river with the livestock that evening, he goes back across the river for some unknown reason. There he encounters a mysterious stranger, some accounts say an angel, with whom he wrestles all through the night there beside the Jabbok. When the morning comes the stranger blesses Jacob and tells him that his name is no longer Jacob but Israel, probably meaning “God fights.” Jacob need not be afraid, his God will fight or contend for him. But God also contended, or wrestled, with Jacob himself that night––a struggle so intense that it altered Jacob’s very identity so that he was now no longer Jacob but Israel. That’s what I would pray for you––that you have the stamina to wrestle with angels beside the river of your doubts, fears and unknowing until morning breaks and you know the joy and confidence of transformation.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
(Richard Dawkins)

I don’t know from what inner turmoil, hurt, or mistaken ambition the venom for which Richard Dawkins has become somewhat infamous comes. Nor do I know why, if he truly believes the God notion to be utter nonsense he is so haunted by it––I mean he has said it loud and long enough for the whole world to hear, so why not get on with whatever he finds positive, good, and generative? Why doesn’t he find his own horse to ride instead of beating what he thinks a dead horse belonging to his neighbor? When I consider it from this angle, I find it sad that he is so troubled. But I feel no great compulsion to argue with him in some Quixotic effort to change his mind (or your mind if you share his same faith) which would probably be both disrespectful and futile. But I do want to say something I hope might be helpful and encouraging to those Christians who struggle with those Old Testament texts that render us confused about the character of God and leave us in a dark place––causing us to wonder whether the God of the Old Testament is indeed the loving God of Jesus Christ and Christian Scripture.

The Problem
There are too many disturbing passages to cite them all in a brief essay such as this, but here are three of sufficient terror to provide some orientation to the problem, and that call into question the character of God for anyone who possesses any feelings of tenderness, of human sympathy, or common kindness.

But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them––the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzite, the Hivites, and the Jebusites––just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and thus sin against the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 20:16-18).

So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kinds; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded (Joshua 10:40).

Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing Israel when they came of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare the them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey (1Samuel 15:2-3).

I want to say especially for conservative Christians who may find raising questions about the integrity and goodness of God more frightening than these texts themselves, that there is really nothing to fear in being honest to God. As strange as it may seem, the biblical model is one in which everything in real life gets used in building, strengthening, deepening our relationship, our connection, our communion, our intimacy with God––and that includes doubting, wondering, arguing, pleading, and even accusing God of not acting like God. And if you find yourself on a dark night journey such as this, you should know that the dark night journey, though difficult, is nothing to fear. If undertaken with genuine courage and humility such struggles in the night will serve only to deepen your consecration to God and to prepare you for some greater work of love.

What will not help you is a strict literal reading of the Bible. Angry and militant atheists like Dawkins and Chris Hitchens are entirely enthusiastic about a fundamentalist reading of Scripture since it enables them to caricature, parody, and attack Judeo-Christian belief as illogical and ridiculous. They are more than happy to use a literal reading of the Bible as a weapon against people of faith. But there is also a larger problem to a literal, legalistic, and one dimensional reading of Sacred Scripture; and, it is this: Spending our time trying to explain away the difficulties created by a more literal reading, distracts us from the deeper, spiritual, meaning of the text.

Assumptions
When we read the Bible we always read it with many assumptions––some of which are true but many which are false. But we seldom question our imagination, and think that the thought picture in our mind has captured the gist of the text. When you read: “And God said. . .” what do you assume? Do you imagine Abraham, or Moses or Isaiah, or Deborah hearing a baritone voice from heaven; or, are you sufficiently informed by Scripture itself to know that it was or may have been what came to them in a dream, or vision, in a mystical experience, as an epiphany, or as a moment of insight or enlightenment in which there were no audible or inaudible words at all––a moment of sudden spiritual clarity. What we have in Scripture are not the actual and irrefutable words of God, but the assertion of a given text that here is what God communicated to an Abraham, a Sarah, Moses, Isaiah, or Mother Mary. And have you ever noticed that questioning and testing whether a message is from God is not only tolerated in the Bible but encouraged––does what is communicated resonate deep within, is it rooted in justice, does it prove over time to be true, is it consistent with reason and the long tradition of wisdom? “Beloved,” Saint John writes, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” What I am suggesting is that the next time you read or hear the assertion that God is a monster commanding genocide that you ask not only what the Biblical text they are referring to says, but whether in testing the passage you believe God really commanded such a thing––even if a biblical writer sincerely thought God had commanded a war of extermination the question remains as to whether that writer got it right or not.

The Norm of Interpretation Is a Person
Jesus in his controversy with the Pharisees regarding Sabbath observance said something rarely noted or emphasized but highly significant. It occurs in Matthew 12:6. Although a fascinating line you could remove it from the text and never know it was gone. Jesus says there, “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.” For the Christian Jesus is Lord of all. Christ is greater than the temple, greater than institutional Judaism or organized Christianity, greater than the Law of Moses, the prophets or the writings, and greater than the Apostles, martyrs, saints or the canonical documents of the New Testament. Classical Christianity believes that everything, absolutely everything, is to be interpreted in the light of Christ. Every text of the Bible, every word, thought, and action of every individual and of the church, every doctrine, prophecy, and teaching is ultimately validated or invalidated by the light of Christ’s love, wisdom, and grace. The final criterion of whether a passage of scripture is God-breathed or inspired is the person of Christ.

Inspiration
Our quandary has, of course, a great deal to do with our assumptions regarding the inspiration of Scripture. The question here is not just whether we believe Scripture is inspired, but what we think inspiration means, and how that informs our further assumptions about the Bible itself and the kind of book it is. For some reason it seems difficult for people in general to grasp the idea that the Bible is both a human and divine book. To say that it is divine does not mean that God took control of the hand of each writer to compose Scripture according to  exact specifications, but that God’s Spirit, or literally God’s Breath, went out and moved in such a way as to energize the hearts, minds, and writings of the writers so that through their writings we are able to discover God as the chief glory of our lives. Yet, the Bible is also a human book with human flaws. To say, that Scripture is inspired simply means that God was somehow involved in its creation so that it  speaks to us, speaks into the great mysterious depths of our being.  If someone believes that every word, comma, semicolon, and period is there in the Bible because God determined it should be there, then they are stuck with explaining what is horrifyingly inexplicable. If on the other hand there is no God, or no God who speaks intelligibly to our souls, we are indeed lost and alone. But, I believe there is another way. It is not a way that I alone have discovered and on which I have proprietary rights, rather it is the understanding of inspiration that runs back hundreds of years in Christian thought––back through the patristics (the early great leaders, saints, and teachers of the church) to the apostles. It is the perspective which sees the Bible as both a human and divine book. This view acknowledges God’s involvement in the creation of Scripture, as well as the strong and independent human element that is ever so obvious. This means that morally problematic statements or actions attributed to God need not necessarily be accepted or defended as such.

Or, I can put it this way: Not every statement in the Bible needs to be accepted as inspired Scripture. Look at the 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (KJV). It is the primary text for any discussion on the doctrine of biblical inspiration:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

I have quoted 2 Timothy 3:16-17 from the King James Version, not only because it was the version I grew up with, and was the one which was most often used in Bible studies, but because for many conservative Christians, although no longer their preferred translation, it remains, even if somewhat in the background, the source of a basic misunderstanding of inspiration. I will explain further in just a moment, but first let’s try again with a different translation––this one by the famous scholar and Bible commentator William Barclay:

All God-inspired scripture is useful for teaching , for the conviction of error, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

And here is my own:

Every God-breathed writing is profitable for instruction in this way of life, for producing a change of heart, for amending character defects, and for training in kindness.

Notice Paul does not say all scripture, (literally all writing) is inspired (literally God-breathed), but that every scripture or writing inspired by God is profitable or useful in learning how to practice the Christian faith. What Paul says has a number of implications. One is certainly that there is writing or scripture that is not God-breathed, or, if you prefer, inspired. In his own writing, which Christians recognize as Scripture, Saint Paul distinguishes between his own advice and the command of Christ ( 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12, 25). I therefore have no difficulty, when someone like Dawkins uses the Old Testament to indict God as a genocidal maniac in replying, “That I cannot believe!” I know full well of course that such words were in fact said, but I don’t think they come from God. I know they are there in the text, but I do not believe they are the words of God.

Animated and Warmed By The Breath of God
Anyone who wants to know the God of the Bible, the one God of both the Old and New Testaments, will need to embark on a long journey. You might imagine J. R. R. Tolkien’s four fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as somewhat analogous. To really understand each character as a person who is growing and being changed by events, for insight into Tolkien’s understanding of good and evil and spiritual struggle, you have to, in some sense, enter the adventure with them and participate in the rushing and receding tide of their conversation––of their life together. It has to be read with an awareness of fictional Middle Earth’s history for that is key to understanding the present crisis, and with the consciousness that it is all going somewhere, moving toward a great unknown climatic event and resolution. In much the same way, the Biblical story is the story of the developing spiritual consciousness of ancient Israel that went through a number of stages over a period of nearly two thousand years between the arrival of Abraham and Sarah in the land of Canaan and the Advent of Christ. Later stages and developments do not nullify or make the earlier untrue, but rather reveal their deeper meaning and something about the trajectory of the whole story. Sometimes, as Thomas Cahill notes in his book The Gift of the Jews, these developments occurred slowly and at other times in great spurts. Given the quilt like nature in which Scripture is put together, its errors, and contradictions, it is difficult to believe that every single word is inspired. But given the beauty of its coherent pattern we can believe it reveals a meaning deeper than words. And, as Cahill goes on to say, “We believe that the experience on which this story is based is inspired––that the evolution of Jewish consciousness taking place as it did over so many centuries, was animated and kept warm by the breath of God.”