Ministry Matters: Robert A. Ratcliff

BLOG: I Have Sinned

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:53:00 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

This week I changed my Facebook picture. I did so to support a political cause in which I believe. In what follows I want to explain why what I did was a sin, and why I am led to confess it and ask your forgiveness.

Let me start by saying I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe that the cause I supported is just and fair. Unlike most political causes, I see this one as a simple and straightforward matter of common sense justice. Most importantly, I believe the position I supported best comports with the mind of Christ. So what’s with all this sin talk? Here’s what:

First, I have to recognize that I have a fiercely partisan spirit. Every political cause to which I attach myself is at least as much about my side winning as it is about the right decision being made for our country or society. I am often proud and arrogant about my political opinions, believing that those who hold positions different to mine do so, not out of genuine conviction, but out of bad faith or intellectual inferiority. I have undoubtedly brought that spirit into this week’s debate.

But second, and more important, I want to admit that simply by holding to my position (irrespective of the way I’ve held it), I have fractured the Body of Christ and grieved Christian brothers and sisters. To see why, you have to understand the tragic nature of the human predicament. This universal flaw we call sin so manifests itself in human life that even our attempts at justice wind up causing others harm. This doesn’t mean we have to give up our search for justice, but it does compel us to see that no human justice will ever be perfect (you theological types know that this is no new insight; St. Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr have already explained it quite well).

In my case, aligning myself with that political position brought grief to other Christians, some of whom are my friends and family. My position violated certain of their deeply held theological convictions, causing them to worry about me. Many of those on my side of the debate would say that the folks on the other side think I’m going to hell for what I believe. But that’s not right, at least not for most of the folks I know. They don’t think that my beliefs endanger my eternal salvation; they think that I’ve fallen into serious error, that I’m compromising the cause of Christ, and potentially harming the consciences of Christians over whom my views might exert influence. The friends with whom I disagree, because they care for me, have been hurt by what I’ve done.

And for that I am truly and genuinely sorry. Would I do things differently? In this case, no. Like I said, I still believe with all my heart in the justice of what I have espoused. But I also know that I am a sinner, and that for every two steps forward I take there’s going to be at least one step back. So if you are a fellow Christian on the other side of this debate, please know that if I have violated your conscience, it is simply because the only alternative was to violate mine.

ARTICLE: What Makes Leadership Christian?

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:47:00 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

If you want to be a Christian leader, you'll have no trouble finding advice. The world seems awash in books, articles, web sites, videos, and more on the subject. Practically all of this literature suggests that Christian leadership is distinct from other varieties (and on that I agree); a lot of it assumes that figuring out how it’s different is a relatively simple matter (on that I’m not as sanguine). I wonder just how simple it is to discern those principles in the first place, and especially how easily leaders can apply them in their own life. So in what follows I’m going to try to talk about what makes leadership Christian without resorting to easy answers.

What do I mean by easy answers? For one thing, I mean taking garden variety leadership insights, wrapping them in the thin layer of a story from the Bible, and calling them biblical. Folks often point to Exodus 18, the day Jethro taught his son-in-law Moses how to delegate authority, as an example of a biblical leadership principle. But other than that one chapter, when does delegated authority ever figure in the larger story of Moses and Israel’s encounter with God? The rest of the story focuses on how good a job Moses and the Israelites are doing (or not doing) in following God.

That’s where easy answers fail us; they blind us to what is really going on in Scripture, and what that might say to us. The Bible does have things to teach us about leadership; it’s just mixed up with all that complicated stuff about following God, the Bible’s actual message.

So, if we want to know how leadership can be Christian, we can give up looking for quick fixes and easy answers, and focus instead on the heart of the Christian message: the gospel of the redeeming life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For leadership to be Christian, in other words, it must in some way embody the gospel. How does that happen? Let me suggest three places to start looking.

The Freeing Yoke

First, Christian leadership is about vocation and calling. In itself that’s an unremarkable statement, until you remember what a call from God looks like in the Bible. Although sometimes God’s call results in acceptance and a sense of mission (think Isaiah), more often it produces a “thanks, but no thanks” reaction (think Moses and Jeremiah), or even running the opposite direction (think Jonah). Why? Because the call from God is about God, not us; it’s about God’s redemption of the world, not our convenience. The call to Christian leadership should be received, not sought; it should be accepted joyously yet soberly. Like the call to discipleship, it is an enlivening burden, a yoke that frees us to discover ourselves by losing ourselves.

The Irony of Success

Second, Christian leadership needs to nurture a healthy sense of irony about itself. The gospel message is of a God who reaches down in grace to save us. But save us from what? Ourselves, mostly. According to the gospel, this sad lot of humanity partakes of a tragic flaw. In spite of the gifts with which we were created, and the ongoing presence of God in our world, we conspire daily to mess things up. And here’s the thing: the call to Christian leadership does not change that fact. Realizing this truth requires us to treat even our greatest achievements with a healthy dose of skepticism.

For example, pastors strive to expand the ministries and membership of their congregations. Pastors’ professional advancement depends, in large measure, on their success in doing so. Helping a church to grow is Kingdom work, and hence unequivocally a good thing. Professional advancement can involve healthy ambition, but let’s be honest; how often in this flawed and fallen world is ambition purely healthy? Do you see the irony here? In fulfilling our calling to help the congregation grow, we are at one and the same time motivated by zeal to build God’s Kingdom and, well, our own kingdom. What happens when we fail to recognize that irony? We tell ourselves that everything we do is for the sake of the Kingdom, that it’s all about God and not about us, and pretty soon we can rationalize any questionable behavior or improper decision by saying “I was doing it for God.”

The Emptying of Self

Finally, for leadership to be Christian it must get out of the way and allow the spotlight to shine on others. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is the early Christian hymn found in Philippians 2:5-11, in which Paul talks about how, in Christ, God emptied the divine self, taking on the form of a servant. This emptying, this setting aside glory for the sake of others, is one of the principal gospel values. Without it, leadership cannot be Christian. Leaders in the church must be about encouraging and facilitating the ministry of others. The most effective Christian leaders recognize others’ gifts and callings for ministry, and help them live into those gifts. When that happens, when those ministries succeed, the original leader should be nowhere in sight.

And that is no way to get your face on the cover of Christianity Today, or your denominational newspaper, or even your church’s web site. We should admit the powerfully countercultural aspect of this fact of Christian leadership. Leaders, as the world defines them, are highly visible. As I’ve written in another post, our culture is in love with the idea of the Person in Charge, the leader who is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the organization. But this is not what Christian leadership is about. Emptying ourselves, giving ourselves away for others, means giving away the attention and credit, too.

Do you want to be a Christian leader? Do you really? Well, good. It is a joyous and rewarding calling—as long as you keep focused on the “Christian” part.

ARTICLE: Three Old Sinners, Just Like Us

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:43:43 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners,
That this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners,
and miss our wives, our books, our dogs,

But have only the vaguest idea of why we are what we are.
To discover how to be human now
is the reason we follow the star.”

— W.H. Auden, “For the Time Being, a Christmas Oratorio"

If most people had to choose which of the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth and infancy they preferred, they would choose Luke, because that’s where the coolest things happen. It starts with all that crazy stuff about Mary’s cousin Elizabeth getting pregnant even though she’s too old to do so; moves to the Angel Gabriel announcing the birth to Mary and her exultant song about it; shows Mary and Joseph trudging into Bethlehem, not being able to find a place to stay, winding up giving birth in a barn; and concludes with the heavenly glee club appearing to a bunch of shepherds, of all people. Yep; when people think about the Christmas story it’s Luke’s version they think about.

By comparison, the story in Matthew’s Gospel is less triumphant, more violent, and harder to understand. It starts with the quiet drama of Joseph’s dream about not setting Mary aside. It concludes with the horrifying story of the slaughter of the innocents. And in the middle are those crazy guys, the Magi.

Although the Magi show up in most of our tellings of the Christmas event, we always get their story wrong. Essentially what we do is cut and paste them out of Matthew into the Luke story, having them show up on the night of Jesus birth along with the shepherds. But when you actually read Matthew, you see that they didn’t arrive just as Jesus was being born; they got there months, and quite possibly as much as two years, afterward. That means, of course, that their arrival wasn’t part of the story of Jesus’ birth at all. No, they drug into town after Jesus had been around a while, when the miracle of his birth had long since worn off and Mary and Joseph were exhausted parents of an infant or toddler.

And that whole thing about them being wise men? What is so wise about leaving your homes to trek across the desert with only the vaguest notion of what it is you’re looking for? What is so wise about going to Herod, that brutal old reprobate, to ask about where the new king was supposed to be born? What was so wise about showing up to a baby shower with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, when what Mary and Joseph really needed were a whole bunch of diapers?

No, from where I sit, the Magi have only one thing going for them, one reason why, on Epiphany, we read their story and remember them. They, like we, have taken the long expected journey of Advent. They, like we, have lived through the miracle of the birth of God Incarnate. And they, like we, stand now on the brink of bleak January still sinners, still uncertain, and yet . . . still seeking. Every year we arrive at Epiphany having thought that this year, this time, the Christmas season would magically transform us, bringing about peace on earth and peace in our hearts. Yet this twelfth night comes and we find ourselves no different than we ever were; no more loving, no more wise, no more certain of what it was that we were looking for in the first place. And it is in this state that we discover ourselves ready to meet the Christ child – who, in the end, is the one who finds us.

In many ways, Epiphany is the anti-climax of the Christmas season. By the time we get to January 6 the holiday has come and gone; we are, basically, sick of Christmas. All the false good cheer and phony happy feelings have long since evaporated. The magic, in other words, has worn off. But the truth of the incarnation is that God comes and meets us in the nitty-gritty, the down and dirty realities of life on this sad little ball of mud. We remember the Magi on Epiphany because, having shown up long after all the miraculous stuff was over, they discover the genuine miracle: a God who comes to us and abides with us just where we are and as we are. God grant us eyes to see this miracle as they saw it.

ARTICLE: A Mysterious God, a Tangible Christ

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:38:40 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

As Advent draws near, we spend a lot of time thinking, teaching, and preaching about the great Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In Christ, God comes to us, becomes one of us, "pitches his tent" among us. We talk a lot about why God does this, with most of those discussions orbiting the subject of our salvation. But I want to suggest another reason for God's gracious decision to come to us in Jesus Christ: the fact that most of us would rather be God's creator than God's creature.

I sense some head scratching at that last statement, so allow me to explain. Most of us understand that Israel's great temptation throughout the Old Testament is to idolatry; time and again they fail to center their hearts and their loyalty on YHWH alone, choosing instead to hedge their bets by slipping in the worship of other gods on the side. What too many of us don't understand is that this is a universal human tendency; we would all rather worship something lesser, something inferior, because we know that the Creator and Sustainer of all that is requires our full and final devotion, and on most days that just feels like too much work.

For Christians, though, the temptation to idolatry often takes on a particular shape: we want to use the word "God" to refer to some mixture of our own desires, perspectives, and proclivities. In other words, we want to remake God in our own image, creating for ourselves a deity who acts and thinks like we would if we were in charge. That is what I mean by saying that we would rather be God’s creator than God’s creature. Rather than the biblical God who always insists on upsetting our plans, sending us to places like Nineveh when what we really wanted was a new car, the God we create for ourselves baptizes our wishes and sanctifies our prejudices. This God loves what we love, hates who we hate, and calls us to work for peace, justice, and equality – for people who look like us.

In his excellent book In Defense of Religious Moderation, William Egginton explains that this particular form of idolatry is often the result of a false religious certainty. Any time we “know” beyond question who God is and what God wants, the God about whom we are so certain always winds up enhancing our group or personal power. The alternative to this idolatrous religious certainty, Egginton claims, is to admit and embrace the essential mystery of who God is. If God is who we claim God to be—all-knowing, all-powerful, Creator of all that is—then it does not lie within the power of finite human beings like you and me to grasp the reality of this God. Yet far from alienating us from God, this realization should bring us great spiritual joy. To say that God is God and we are not, to admit that the reality of God confronts us as a mystery, is to open ourselves up to a life of surprise and awe in the divine presence. With the idolatrous God created in our own image, we experience a false and self-defeating intimacy; with the true God we experience the reverential, overwhelming love of the creature for its Creator.

And yet, divine mystery by itself is not enough for us. We are, after all, created from the dust; the world we experience through our senses is always going to be most real. The mysterious God who dwells outside of time and space is an abstraction whose presence, no matter how beautiful, will always feel fleeting to us. And thus, God accommodates the divine reality to us. In the stories of Israel, and (for Christians) most especially in the story of Jesus, God chooses to reveal the divine character to us in terms we can understand. The incarnation itself—the infinite God becoming a finite human—will always remain a mystery to us. Yet the life that this God-become-human lived—walking, talking, eating, sleeping, laughing, teaching, preaching, loving—is no mystery. Because he was human just like we are, his story has become the story of God. In word and in deed he showed us how to abandon our false selves and our idolatrous deities in order to find our true meaning as creatures of the one, true God. In showing us the power of self-sacrificial love he completes the mystery of God. How he could love us will always remain a mystery, but that he loved us is as plain as the dust on his feet, and on ours.

Why is Advent so important? Because in Jesus of Nazareth, we encounter the mystery of God as mystery no more. We rejoice at the arrival of this season because in Christ we have discovered a tangible God, a God who, in becoming human, fully revealed the depths of God’s mysterious, yet undeniably real, love.

ARTICLE: Does the Bible Contradict Itself?

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:34:14 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

In the church where I grew up, claiming that the Bible contradicted itself was the second-worst thing you could say (the worst thing was to suggest that everybody, not just our little branch of the Christian family tree, was going to heaven). Our primary strategy for dealing with sections of the Bible that didn’t exactly fit with one another was to ignore the problem. But once in a while someone would violate the unspoken rule that you left such questions unspoken (“hey, did you know that John says the crucifixion happened on the day of the Passover feast, but the other gospels say it happened the day after?”), and we would have to scramble to come up with an explanation. When that happened, we expended tremendous amounts of energy to insist that the Bible didn’t really say what it seemed to say, that any apparent disagreements or contradictions within the text were nothing of the sort.

A few years and more than a few hours reading and studying the Bible later I’ve come to see that such tensions and disagreements between one part of Scripture and another are not problems to be ignored or explained away; they are invitations to deeper study and understanding. Sometimes the disagreements are trivial and of concern only to those trying to hold on to particularly stringent understandings of biblical inerrancy. But others are more serious, and when they are they open the door to genuine moments of revelation.

Take, for instance, the story of King Solomon in 1 Kings 10-11. The story celebrates Solomon’s great wisdom, and paints a rich picture of the material success that wisdom gained for him. In 1 Kings 10:14 we learn that “the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred sixty-six talents of gold” (close to 25 tons). Further we read that Solomon had 300 shields of beaten gold, an ivory throne overlaid with gold, and that every three years a fleet of ships would bring him “gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks” (10:22). What’s more, the king had 1400 chariots, with 12,000 horses to drive them. Clearly, Solomon was no slouch when it came to the swag department.

In chapter 11, we learn that, in spite of his wisdom and success, Solomon displeased God. How? By allowing his foreign wives (700 of them, plus 300 concubines) to set up shrines to their own gods, leading Solomon astray from the pure worship of YHWH. So 1 Kings’ picture of Solomon seems pretty clear, right? Solomon was wise, and God blessed him with success, until the king let his wives turn his heart away from worshiping God alone.

While I was reading 1Kings 10-11 recently, I experienced a moment of deja vu when I got to the part about all those chariots. “Where had I been reading about that?” I wondered. Then I remembered, and flipped back to 1 Samuel 8, where we find the story of Israel asking the prophet Samuel to give them a king. Samuel isn’t too keen on the idea, but God tells him to let the people have their monarch. While passing along this news, Samuel takes the opportunity to get in a dig: he says, in effect, “you can have your king, but don’t come whining to me when he takes your sons to drive his chariots and run in front of them (in other words, serve in his cavalry and infantry), and your daughters to work in his kitchen or his laundry.” Part of Samuel’s reluctance to establish an Israelite monarchy derives from the fact that kings take the sons and daughters people need to work the family farm and draft them into royal service, leaving their families destitute. In a small country with an agrarian economy, all those young people conscripted to work for the king–especially a king with 1400 chariots–could only lead to misery for a sizable portion of the population.

And when I was reading this again in 1 Samuel, I saw the note in my study Bible pointing back to Deuteronomy 17, which describes Moses’ instructions to the people of Israel on the eve of their entrance into the promised land. Moses tells the people that if they choose a king for themselves when they get to the other side, they’d better make sure that he doesn’t have a), too many horses (those critters that make the chariots go); b), too many wives; or c), too much gold.

Now, Deuteronomy 17 doesn’t quantify what it means by “too much.” But if column 1 represents “just enough,” and column 2 represents “more than enough,” I’d feel pretty confident assigning Solomon’s gold to column 29. And that, along with Samuel’s grumpiness toward kings and their habit of taking young people away from their families, sets up a pretty serious tension between Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel on the one hand, and 1 Kings on the other. Which leaves us with the question, “what are we going to do with that tension?”

Now, if this were my old church, we would deal with it by saying “what tension?” But you and I recognize that we owe Scripture more than that; we owe it an honest attempt to take this disagreement between two sections of the Old Testament seriously. Having admitted the tension between these parts of Scripture, a good next step would be to ask, “can the tension we experience between these biblical stories help us better understand them? Does one story shed new light on the others? Can the tension drive us back to the text, leading us to see things we’d missed?”

In the case of these three passages, we could ask whether any one of them feels different than the other two, if any of them make our “spider sense” start to tingle a bit. For the Deuteronomy passage, it’s easy to answer that question in the negative, because its advice is simple and easy to understand: don’t let the king allow being king to go to his head. For the 1 Samuel passage the question is a little more complicated. When the Israelites wanted a king, they were implicitly rejecting Samuel’s leadership–giving him a vested interest in criticizing the idea of monarchy. Nonetheless, his concern that the king and his elites would oppress the poor seems entirely logical.

That leaves us with the 1 Kings passage. Now, I don’t know about you, but something in that passage has always smelled funny to me. How could the ruler of a small, poor country like Israel amass that much wealth? Even if the king taxed the people unmercifully, the economy would collapse far before the king had time to gather all that gold. Nor does it make sense that other rulers would just give all that stuff to Solomon. In the ancient world that kind of money exchanged hands between kingdoms only when the smaller of the two wanted to bribe the larger into not invading–and tiny Israel never posed that kind of threat.

That discomfort with the story, along with the tensions between it and the other two passages, leads me to conclude the following: somewhere in the long process of writing and editing the book of Kings, someone who didn’t like the idea of monarchs lording it over their people slipped a comment into the back door of the Solomon story. While 1 Kings by and large remembers Solomon as a wise ruler, this editorial voice deliberately exaggerated Solomon’s material success in order to make a statement about kings in general — a statement not that dissimilar to the one we find in 1 Samuel. This voice is trying to tell us that maybe it wasn’t just Solomon’s wives who led him astray; maybe it was his wealth, which tends to lead all kings away from the path of righteousness.

And here’s the point: without the tension between 1 Kings on the one hand, and 1 Samuel and Deuteronomy on the other, we would not have been as likely to see this ironic element in the story of Solomon. If these two other passages had not, yes, contradicted 1 Kings, we might not have recognized the sly way in which 1 Kings comments on the abuse of power.

So, does the Bible contradict itself? In one sense, of course it does. The Bible is not one book after all, it is a library of books gathered, compiled, composed, and edited over the course of centuries. That one book or passage should disagree, even substantially, with another is only inevitable.

But in another sense we can say that when the Bible is contradicting itself it is at the same time conversing with itself. One text speaks to another, challenging it, probing it, shedding new light upon it. The internal conversation going on in Scripture creates some of the Bible’s most important messages. If the Bible speaks the word of God (and I believe it does), then it is above all a dynamic word. The truth of Scripture is not static; it is changing, it is growing, and where there is growth there is usually friction.

Do we find tension, disagreement, and even contradiction in the Bible? Yes. Is that tension there for a reason? Emphatically yes. Its purpose is to bring forth from these ancient texts the very word of God.

ARTICLE: Does That Muslim Have to Go to Hell So I Don’t?

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 21:12:29 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“I guess I’m not a Christian anymore,” he said, “since I can’t believe that people who aren’t Christian are going to hell.”

My young adult friend–let’s call him “Joe”–was telling me the outcome of a conversation he’d had with a couple of his friends. One of Joe’s friends came from a strongly evangelical background; the other, not as much. Nonetheless, they both insisted that to be a Christian you had to believe that anyone who did not possess faith in Jesus Christ was consigned to hell. Joe thought about his close friend from high school and his cousin’s wife, both of whom are Hindu. Taking this conversation to heart, Joe was led to conclude that the Christian faith in which he’d been raised no longer had a place for him, because he can’t accept that God would send good people like his friend and his relative to hell.

“Sad story,” you might say, “but not that unusual; kids from conservative backgrounds like that decide every day that they can’t be Christian any more for just this reason.” But here’s the thing: Joe isn’t from a conservative background. His family is theologically progressive. A couple members of his family are graduates of moderate-to-liberal seminaries, and they don’t accept the traditional, exclusivist understanding of salvation. His church is one of the few places in our county where you can explore other theological options on this issue without having your faith questioned. Nor is it the case that Joe hasn’t been paying attention; he’s a bright young man with an active curiosity and a lively interest in theological questions.

If a young man with Joe’s background can conclude that all Christians believe that non-Christians are by definition going to hell, then those of us who hold to a wider view of God’s mercy have failed miserably to make that view known. Joe’s story tells me that the exclusivist view–the belief that apart from an explicit commitment to Christ there is no possibility of salvation–holds near-total sway over the public conversation about this question. I know that the reasons for this fact are varied and complex, but I want to put aside subtlety for a moment and focus on just one: we who believe otherwise have lost (or never had) a sense of “evangelical urgency” about that belief.

That loss has rendered the world a poorer place. The last week has seen an explosion of violence in the Muslim world fueled in large part by a deliberately hurtful video misrepresentation of the life of Muhammad. If this tragic and senseless event teaches us anything, it’s that religious disharmony can travel around the world while healing and understanding are still putting on their shoes (to paraphrase Mark Twain). Am I saying that the traditional, exclusivist view of salvation is by definition hurtful? I am not. I am saying that this theological position does little to heal an already hurting and divided world. Is this a reason to reject that view out of hand? It is not. But if we question the exclusivist position already; if we believe that there are other, valid theological options; and if we think (as I do) that non-exclusivist understandings of salvation can dial back the religious disunity of this fractured world, if only a little–then why aren’t we making a bigger deal about them?

Why aren’t we telling the world that for centuries mainstream Christian theologians have held to the inclusivist view, which states that the world is saved by the grace of Christ, even when it doesn’t know that’s who’s saving it? Why aren’t we letting folks know about the pluralist approach, which believes that Christianity is one among many paths to the transcendent? Why aren’t we talking about Karl Barth’s conviction that all religions–Christianity included–fall short of the gospel, leading God to apply the grace of Christ to all? Why aren’t we talking about so many other theological approaches that seek to insist both on the uniqueness and centrality of Christ and on God’s determination to be reconciled to all God’s children, not just the members of the Christian club?

I’m not counseling that we turn our churches into theology seminars. But I know that the number of us who hold to non-exclusivist views greatly outnumbers the number of those who say anything about those views. In his excellent book When Christians Get It Wrong, Adam Hamilton points to Christian views of other religions as one of the top factors that alienate young adults from the faith.

That might be different if a few more of us chose to speak up and say, “I believe that the God we see revealed in Christ will not allow the majority of people to remain forever unreconciled to God’s love. I believe that the Spirit of Christ is abroad and at work everywhere, beckoning us back to God even when we know not the name of the One who calls us. I believe that, one day, Christ will fulfill his promise to draw all humanity unto himself. I refuse to believe, in other words, that if I’m going to heaven, that has to mean that Muslims, Hindus, and all the world’s other non-Christians aren’t.”

For Joe’s friends, as for so many in the church, the love of God seems to be a zero-sum game; I have to believe that non-Christians are going to hell if I’m going to get into heaven. If I’m not willing to accept their damnation, then the Christian faith isn’t willing to accept my salvation.

I’m no good at math, but I just can’t get that to add up. The gospel, it seems to me, speaks of the boundless, inexhaustible love of God in Jesus. Why wouldn’t we, the beneficiaries of that love, want to talk about it in return?

BLOG: There Don’t Have to be More Auroras

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:47:11 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

The recent horrific shooting in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater so fills us with anger and revulsion that our attempts to describe, much less understand, the event seem destined to fail. Yet the shooting plunges us into incomprehension and fear, and words are all we have with which to climb out, inadequate though they might be. As I read news accounts and analyses of what happened, the one word that shows up time and again is evil. Small wonder, that; if ever the word applied, it does so now. But what I’m reading about the evil perpetrated in Aurora that night contains a subtle message: because we can’t “fix” evil, tragedies like the one in Colorado are inevitable and unavoidable. While some parts of that statement are beyond dispute, others aren’t. I strenuously dispute the implication that because we can’t eradicate evil we can’t control events like this. To imply such is to let our government, our society, and ourselves off the hook.

Many have responded to the shootings by reviewing the classic arguments on the causes and nature of evil. When natural phenomena like hurricanes and disease bring about human suffering, the mystery of causation confronts us: who, if anyone, is responsible for this? But when it comes to Aurora, we know the answer to that question: it happened because an individual misused his free will to commit a violent and reprehensible act. In this case the mystery has to do with the depths of evil within the human heart: to what lengths, if any, will humans not go to hurt one another? The shooting in Aurora leads us to conclude once again that human evil is unfathomable, that we just cannot say what lies beyond our capacity to inflict harm and destruction.

Yet as we stare into this abyss, we must also admit that whatever was going on within the confines of the young attacker’s soul does not tell the whole story of this event, nor that of all the other similar tragedies in recent American history, from Paducah to Columbine to Virginia Tech to Tucson and beyond. All these events (and so many more like them) display two common features: First, individuals beset by dark and incomprehensible motivations–the “evil factor,” if you will. And second, use of those hand-held weapons that would inflict the greatest amount of damage on the greatest number of persons.

And here’s my point: Our inability to change the former does not carry over into the latter. We cannot wipe out human evil; all our attempts to do so have only resulted in more evil. Yet we can resist and contain it. Screwed-up young loners who are mad at the world, their parents, or their ex-girlfriends will always be with us. But must they always have easy access to assault rifles and tear gas grenades? To hear our politicians talk about this tragedy, you would think that 6,000 rounds of ammunition makes its way into the hands of a demented loser the way a tornado wanders into a subdivision: purely by chance. Friends, it just ain’t so.

Curing the evil that infects human hearts and leads people to kill and maim their fellow humans must await the consummation of history, when God will wipe all tears from our eyes. But we don’t have to wait for the millennium to reduce the number of Auroras our society must endure. It might be politically impossible in America right now to enact common sense restrictions on the sale of guns and ammunition. But as the example of other democracies with strong regard for individual rights demonstrates, it’s not impossible everywhere–which means it is possible here. And if we are Christian we know that with God, all things are possible.

ARTICLE: Keep Christ in Advent

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:46:39 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“Wait,” you say; “Didn’t you mean ‘Keep Christ in Christmas?’”

Well, no, I didn’t mean that. As we’ve all suspected and feared, there hasn’t been a whole lot of Christ in the American cultural observance of Christmas for quite some time. So, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to keep trying to remind the most consumption-driven society in history that there’s more to this holiday than piling up swag come December 25? Or are we going to remember that the church has always exerted the greatest influence on the culture around it when it has refused to let the culture dictate the terms of engagement? Perhaps we should give up trying to reform or spiritualize the orgy of materialism that runs from Black Friday to Christmas Day. Perhaps we should just let the pagans have that holiday (as Rodney Clapp suggests in his excellent book Border Crossings), and offer instead a genuine alternative, one that embodies and celebrates gospel values, rather than consumerist ones. Perhaps, so there’s no misunderstanding, we should call this season something other than “Christmas.”

“Wait,” you say again; “You’re talking about Advent, aren’t you?” Why, yes I am.

Think about it this way: the Christian Feast of the Incarnation celebrates the gift of God’s own self in Jesus Christ. It is the most astounding, grace-filled gift ever given (small wonder that the powers of this world have worked so hard to distract us from it). As an act of grace, the Incarnation takes place entirely at God’s initiative; it is something that God does pro nobis, for us.

In Advent we respond to this gift. In Advent we show the world what lives shaped by something other than the pursuit of more and more stuff look like. Advent offers us the opportunity to bear witness to Jesus Christ in ways that the Great Pagan Festival of Christmas will never do. Consider how many people feel alienated by that pagan festival, how many spend the holiday season looking for genuine meaning, purpose, and connection. To what are those folks going to be drawn: Angry fretting about the chain store signs saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? Or lives shaped by a quiet yet urgent hope, wonder, and love?

Preaching Advent

If you’re a pastor looking for ways to help folks claim Advent as a Christian alternative to the pagan celebration of Christmas, Scripture provides, as always, a great place to start. Here are four portraits from the Bible of the “Advent-driven life.” The virtues and graces that these characters from Scripture display can be ours as well, if we open ourselves to the Spirit’s movement during this season of memory and expectation.

1. Waiting for God: Simeon and Anna

When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple shortly after his birth, they met there two people–Simeon and Anna–who had been waiting for the Messiah to show up. The pair, both of whom were no longer spring chickens (the text says this explicitly of Anna, and implies it of Simeon), rejoiced greatly that God had rewarded their patient expectation by allowing them to see this promised Son of David.

Any six-year-old will tell you that the weeks before Christmas are all about waiting. But the trouble with waiting for Christmas is that the thing we’re waiting for turns out not to be worth the wait, as another Christmas comes and goes and all our hopes for the “best Christmas ever” remain unrealized. Come to think of it, life itself can become a series of unfulfilled Christmases, as we nurture the (false) hope that we will somehow find peace and fulfillment if we can just get the job, or the spouse, or the kids, or the house we’ve always dreamed of. Simeon and Anna tell us that waiting only has meaning if we’re waiting for the right thing.

2. Seeking God: The Magi

The Magi show us that equal to the grace of waiting is that of seeking. Having seen the star that marked the Promised One’s birth, it wasn’t enough for them to hear news of this event some time in the future. They mounted up and followed that star to Jesus by way of Jerusalem and that snake, Herod. Using intel they gathered from Herod’s court they found the infant king, worshiped him, and then slipped out the back door lest Herod silence them as he was planning to do to Jesus.

Our search for God doesn’t have to take us across the wilderness or through the portals of power. In fact, we don’t have to go anywhere. All we have to do is genuinely open ourselves to God’s presence in our lives, and follow the Spirit’s leading. As saints and mystics through the ages have reminded us, in the end the God we find is the one who has always sought and is ever finding us.

3. Wonder at God: The Shepherds

In Luke 2 the shepherds react in three ways to the angelic announcement of the baby king: first, they are struck down by terror; next, they are overcome with curiosity; and finally they are carried off by wonder and praise. Unlike Anna, Simeon, and the magi, they weren’t looking to find God that night; their biggest priorities were staying warm and not losing any sheep. And yet before the night was over they had stood in the presence of the Incarnate One.

Why do we want to be around small children at Christmas time? Because we think the season is supposed to magical, and we believe that their short span of years best qualifies them to catch a whiff of that magic. But for us that’s going to be a manufactured and second-hand experience. The encounter with God during Advent is more than this; it’s the awe and joy of creatures confronted, as were the shepherds, by the mystery of their Creator.

4. Rejoicing in God’s Justice: Mary

That mystery is so far beyond our experience and comprehension that preachers and theologians have been trying to express in words what it means ever since. But have you noticed that the first, and best, of these attempts to figure out what the Incarnation means comes from Mary herself? Right there in Luke 1, after the angel has told her what’s going to happen and Mary has been to chat with her cousin Elizabeth about it, Mary breaks out into the Magnificat, that powerful account of her gratitude to God for what God has chosen to do through her. And at the heart of that song is Mary’s insistence that the coming of the Messiah is about justice, about God’s decision to exalt the humble and cast down the proud.

Now there’s something you don’t hear much about in the Christmas songs at the mall, do you? Why is that? Because while the pagan celebration of Christmas is about me, Advent is about others. Specifically, it’s about the least and the lost, those among whom Jesus was himself born, and to whom his ministry was so often directed. Advent allows us to see our connection to God’s hurting world, and know that God is at work in Jesus to heal that hurt.

ARTICLE: When Is It O.K. to Pray in Public?

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:49:01 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

If someone asked you to lead in prayer at a public school assembly, what would you do? What if it were before a public high school football game? That’s easy, you say; if someone asks me to pray, then by goodness I’m gonna do it! Didn’t Paul tell us to pray without ceasing? Isn’t such a prayer a form of witness to Jesus Christ?

But hold up there a minute, cowboys and cowgirls; you might want to think about one or two things before you accept that invitation. Obviously, a lot has been written from a legal or constitutional standpoint on this subject of public prayer. I have no expertise with which to join that side of the conversation, and I hence I’m not going to try. What I am going to attempt is to think with you about some of the specifically Christian issues involved when a follower of Jesus stands up to pray in such a situation.

The first thing to do is ask what kind of public gathering we’re talking about. In the first example above—a public school assembly—the question is whether a branch of the government has mandated, expected, or encouraged attendance. If that is the case, then here’s what’s at stake for Christians:

A branch of the state (the public school) has used the state’s authority to endorse (however mildly) a religious act. The individual’s acceptance of the validity of this religious act depends, however partially, on the coercive power of the state, rather than the free exercise of the individual’s conscience. The state has thus usurped a portion of that sovereignty over the individual conscience that belongs to God alone.
More importantly, Jesus calls all Christians to follow him by taking up the cross. While the way of the cross requires us to suffer on behalf of our faith, it forbids us to cause someone else to suffer, however slightly, because of our faith. If a child of another religion or no religion is confused or troubled by that prayer, we have departed from the way of the cross.

Let me be clear: I am not talking about a politically correct desire to avoid giving offense. The New Testament tells us that the gospel is an offense and a scandal. But neither does the gospel allow that offense to be based in any way on coercion. Using our status as the nation’s religious majority to dictate that prayer will be said in a gathering where people did not voluntarily come together for prayer is a form of coercion. This is true regardless of how “innocuous” or “generic” the prayer seems to us (a response I frequently hear from Christians who defend these kinds of prayers). And come to think of it, since when is entering into conversation with the Sovereign of the universe “innocuous”? Or at what point did we start serving and worshiping a “generic” God?

Which brings us to the second example above, prayer before a high school football game. Unlike the school assembly, this is a voluntary gathering; everyone gets to choose, without penalty, whether they will attend or not. You’d think, therefore, that leading the prayer at the beginning of the game would be no problem, right? But think about this for a second:

In the Bible, when God’s people pray together it is with the expectation that they will emerge from that prayer changed: blessed, convicted, commissioned, forgiven. Prayer involves entering the presence of God with an open and questing heart, seeking communion with our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
But let’s be honest: the purpose of the prayer before a football game, or the Rotary Club, or the state legislature session is to get God to shine upon (or at least benevolently neglect) our planned activity. Its intent is not to align our will with God’s, but to kindly dispose God’s will to ours. We don’t come asking that our hearts be strangely warmed; we just want to have a good time.

This represents a trivialization of prayer. Uttering a little feel-good incantation before a sporting event or political rally bears poor witness to the transforming power of God in Jesus Christ. It may not harm, but it certainly does not help.

So how about an alternative? How about we abandon our fruitless obsession with Christians getting to pray at public gatherings, and focus instead on praying for these events, and the institutions that sponsor them. Our decades-long fight to restore or institute prayer in the public square while neglecting to actually pray for the public good represents a staggering act of faithlessness.

In the early Christian centuries the desert fathers and mothers went out into the wilderness in order to devote their lives to praying for the world. They did so because they genuinely believed prayer to be the most potent force in the universe. Some churches (but not enough of them) devote the Sunday before the school year begins to praying for teachers, students, and parents. In state capitals there is usually at least one church that spends the day before the opening of the state legislature in earnest and prolonged supplication that God’s will be done during this legislative season. And yes, there are always some Christians (generally mothers of the players) praying for the football game.

Should we pray individually and in groups, in churches and on street corners, genuinely and sincerely seeking God’s guidance, blessing, correction, and protection, all for the public welfare? Or should we lead in public prayer among apathetic, distracted, or hostile participants?

Which kind of prayer do you think God prefers to hear?

ARTICLE: If You Love That Flag, Don’t Put It in the Sanctuary

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:31:22 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

Proving that my grandfather was right when he told me I don’t have the sense God gave baby chickens, I’d like to say a few words on the slightly controversial subject of flags in the sanctuary. Three words, to be precise: take them out. Or, leave them out. Whichever you prefer.

Having perhaps won that bid for your attention, allow me to elaborate. Many churches believe that displaying the American and Christian flags in the sanctuary honors both God and our country, placing love of country within the context of love of God. Flags in the sanctuary can also represent the freedom we enjoy to worship as we feel led, and they can help us remember those who died in defense of that and our other freedoms. All of these are unequivocally good and worthy goals. I want to be entirely clear on that point: when Christians display their country’s flag in the sanctuary, it is because they want to say things that we as Christians need to say.

We just need to find another way to say them.

Why? Because the sanctuary is where worship takes place, and we need to remember the reason we come together for Christian worship in the first place. Worship is that moment when we devote our whole selves to God, when we set aside the distractions of the week and focus our attention solely on God. For that period we seek God and God alone, forgetting all the other things that compromise our mindfulness of God’s presence the rest of our time.

When we decide what symbols to place in the sanctuary, we ask whether they will contribute to that mindfulness. Actually, the church has had a majority and a minority opinion on this question. The majority point of view—embodied in the great Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe—says that we place symbols of Christian faith in the sanctuary to help focus our minds and hearts on God. Elements like crosses, doves, and the various Trinitarian symbols serve as visual and tactile reminders of God’s presence in our midst. The minority view, represented by the spare and beautifully simple Puritan meeting houses of New England, claims that all symbols—including crosses and the like—function only as distractions from the pure worship of a holy and transcendent God.

Notice what’s missing from both of these perspectives? Symbols that point to something other than God. If the purpose of worship is to devote our minds and hearts to God alone, and the only purpose of symbols in the sanctuary is to help focus us on that task, then a symbol that points to a reality other than the divine is going to defeat the purpose of worship. The U.S. flag (or that of any country) represents a very specific reality: a particular sovereign nation. However much the history of that nation has contributed to our freedom to worship God, the fact remains that God is God, and the nation to which the flag points is not. And when it comes to worship, there are only two realities: God, and everything else. In worship, only God counts.

Have you ever had an emotional experience that involved the flag? I have. I get choked up all the time at events honoring our country and its heritage. Present the colors and play the national anthem and I’ll be there with you, every time. Why? Because if we’re allowing the flag to do its job, if we are honoring it the way we should, then it’s going to remind us of our love of and loyalty toward our country. I don’t know about you, but I have to respond to the flag that way; I can’t treat it as an object of indifference.

And when the flag fulfills that purpose during worship? In so doing, it has placed a competing loyalty alongside our devotion to God during the one time when all such loyalties should be set aside. The Bible has a word for this: idolatry. God, as we know from the Old Testament, is a jealous God–meaning that having gone to the trouble of creating us and redeeming us, God considers it reasonable to expect our full devotion. If, during worship, we lift our hearts up to anything that is not God, no matter how worthy, we are engaging in idolatry.

So placing the flag in the sanctuary presents us with two untenable options: either ignore the flag, and treat your country with disrespect; or honor the flag and commit an act of idolatry. I’m sorry, but this is not one of those times when we can have it both ways. The only good option is the third one: leave the flag out of the sanctuary.

If we love that flag, we won’t make people choose between it and God.

ARTICLE: It's Jesus, Stupid: Getting the Trinity Right

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:08:04 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

O.k. you preachers, gut-check time. Lift your hand if you’re not planning to preach on the Trinity this Trinity Sunday.

O.k., now lift ‘em if you didn’t know that Trinity Sunday is just a couple of weeks away, falling on June 3 this year.

So, now lift ‘em up if you’ve never preached on the Trinity during Trinity Sunday. Uh huh. Thought so.

In spite of the impression that paragraph has just given you, I’m not here to scold about this. It’s a simple fact that we don’t preach on the Trinity. We tell ourselves it’s because our people don’t want to hear it, and some truth resides in that claim. After I taught about the Trinity in a Sunday school class once, my friend Russell the cardiologist, one of the smartest people I know, said, “I don’t understand why anyone would care about this stuff; all it does it turn something that ought to be simple into something complex.”

But, let’s be honest; the main reason we don’t preach about God as Trinity is we’re not so sure we understand it all that well ourselves–or at least not well enough to say anything relevant or interesting about it. Our church history and theology professors in seminary did all they could to explain it to us, but the memory is a little fuzzy. I mean, the whole deal revolves around words like hypostasis and homoousias; what’s up with that? Two minutes into any sermon on the Trinity will find every first-grade graduate in the congregation figuring out that 1+1+1 does not equal 1, after which no one is going to listen to a word you say. Sounds like a great time to dust off that parenting series you preached at your last church, doesn’t it?

Except that we’re talking about the heart of Christian faith. We’re talking about the God who empties the divine self, takes on the form of a servant, and is crucified for us. In short, when we’re talking about the Trinity, we’re talking about Jesus.

To understand this, you have to start with the Old Testament (not the place you expected to go looking for help on preaching the Trinity, is it? Stick with me). What’s the one sin that comes up again and again in the Old Testament, that keeps getting the Israelites in trouble? Idolatry. As any Old Testament prophet can tell you, we always want a God who acts and thinks like, well, us. The temptation to remake God in our own image is as seductive as it is universal.

And what kind of God do we make for ourselves? A God of power, the Big Dog on the porch. Why do we want this kind of God? Because we wouldn’t mind having that kind of power ourselves, and since getting it hasn’t always worked out for us, we’d at least like to know that the Big Dog has our back.

The problem with this particular form of idolatry–the idolatry of power–is the same for all idolatries: sooner or later we’re going to turn them on their heads. To speak of God mostly in terms of God’s power is to imply that human power is a form of godliness, and that those with the most power are the most like God. And think about it; isn’t this what kings and despots throughout the centuries have said? “You have to listen to me because God wants order around here, and God has empowered me to make sure you stay in line.”

And this is where Jesus comes in. Because we can’t help but define the word “God” in terms of power, God decides to come show us what and who God really is, what God’s power is really about. God becomes incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and on the Cross paints us a picture of the very heart of God. Jesus shows us that for God, power means the power of self-sacrificial love. And because Jesus is God; the story of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross becomes for us the final, truest definition of the word, “God.”

This is why the early church insisted that God is Trinity. Yes, God the Father is the creator and sustainer of the universe, but to say that is not to say what is most important, most essential about God. If you ask who God really is, the answer is that God is eternally the Father of the Crucified One. If you want to know about God’s ongoing presence among us, the first thing to say is that it is the Spirit of the Risen Christ. Most important, if you want to know what all the fuss is about Jesus, it’s that in him and him alone we see and know God.

In other words, it’s all about Jesus. The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t an attempt to put God in a box, or turn something that ought to be simple into an incomprehensible mystery; it’s God’s way of telling idolaters like you and me to pipe down, pay attention, and focus on Jesus.

You don’t have to be a theologian with three PhDs in order to preach effectively on the Triune God come Trinity Sunday. In the end, all you really need is a cross and a finger to point at it.

ARTICLE: Being a Pastor in an Election Year

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:42:17 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

It’s hard enough to act like a Christian during an election year; trying to be a pastor while all this political hoopla is going on is downright hazardous. Because political campaigns stir such strong emotions in folks, because so many of us get “a bit testy” about our political opinions, it’s small wonder that a lot of pastors avoid any and all discussion of an upcoming election. The conventional wisdom certainly dictates that, as a pastor, you should treat election year politics with all the enthusiasm you would bring to the youth department’s request to re-enact Elijah vs. the prophets of Baal (sacrificial oxen included) behind the fellowship hall this Sunday.

As with most things, the conventional wisdom is half right and half wrong about this. In what follows, I want to explore when you should listen to the conventional wisdom about pastors and electoral politics, and when you should chuck it out the window.

1. Conventional wisdom says you shouldn’t support or denounce a candidate, especially from the pulpit.

You have to admit that sometimes the conventional wisdom gets it right–and boy, is this one of those times. Most of us know that directly endorsing a candidate will land your congregation in hot water with the IRS, and quite possibly lose its tax-exempt status. Federal law will not allow tax-exempt non profit organizations—including churches—to “endorse or oppose” candidates for public office.

Some groups and pastors have been pushing back against this restriction, claiming that it amounts to censorship. I say the restriction should stand. For one thing, it helps us recognize the real difference between policy and politics. Policy is about the laws and regulations that affect the lives of people. Often, policy decisions raise ethical and moral questions that churches should be free to address, and which the law freely allows us to do. But shift to supporting or opposing an individual candidate and we’ve crossed the line into politics, a different kettle of fish altogether. Electoral politics provides the framework necessary in a representative democracy to make policy decisions. But in a world made up of sinners like me and you, politics is also a morally ambiguous contest for personal and group power. Those who want to allow churches to endorse candidates fail to see that other, better ways to affect policy decisions exist, ones that don’t require politics’ ethical compromises.

2. Conventional wisdom says you shouldn’t answer when someone asks for whom you’re going to vote.

I’m more ambivalent about this bit of conventional wisdom. On the one hand, avoiding the question when it’s asked can become just another one of those games into which pastors get dragged. If you want to conduct your ministry with transparency and integrity, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to evade conversations, even difficult ones. Doesn’t the question represent a teachable moment, in which you can bring your spiritual and theological judgment to bear on important issues?

On the other hand, the situation carries with it certain dangers. Every congregation has its share of partisan warriors, who think everyone—or at least every “real Christian”—should share their fierce political opinions. Their “us vs. them” view of the world leaves little chance that your answer is going to meet their approval. But even if the questioner isn’t a member of this contentious tribe, the question itself is rarely a simple one. All kinds of feelings about you, your predecessor, the rest of the congregation, or life in general often come rolled up in that seemingly innocent query about what you’re going to do on Election Day.

Try to read the situation and respond accordingly. If you suspect that the question is motivated by anything other than a sincere desire for pastoral advice, then turn the question back by saying “I don’t know; what do you think you’ll do?” You will now have several minutes to plan your next move. If you’ve not yet developed the necessary pastoral skill of nodding, looking thoughtful, and changing the subject at the speaker’s first pause, it’s high time you did so, and here’s your chance.

If the question isn’t carrying a lot of baggage, you can say that you’re still making up your mind (and unless you are dead solid certain that nothing could possibly happen between now and election day that would change your mind, you’ll be telling the truth), and then talk about some of the issues and concerns that will figure into your decision–making it clear that you’re speaking for yourself, not for God. If you are open to hearing what your questioner has to say in response, you’ve been blessed with a genuine pastoral conversation, and just maybe learned something in the process.

3. Conventional wisdom says that pastors shouldn’t be politically active.

Here’s where the conventional wisdom just gets it wrong. This bit of advice, it seems to me, comes from the “don’t rock the boat, and try to keep everybody happy” school of pastoral leadership. Anyone who has been a pastor for fifteen minutes knows the futility of that endeavor.

Do you believe that God calls Christians to alleviate suffering and injustice in this world? Do you believe that the right kind of political leaders can make a difference in how well we can fulfill that calling? Then, just like every other Christian in a democracy like ours, you are at the least called to serve as an informed and active voter—and quite possibly more than that.

Successfully engaging in the political process as a pastor requires two things. First, that you constantly make it clear that your opinions are your own, and that you are acting as an individual. Second, and more important, let your congregation know that God calls all Christians to a similar service. You can tell them that, as their pastor, God has not and will not fill you in on which candidates and causes they should support; that is a matter between their individual consciences and God. But God has made clear that the divine will for them when it comes to politics does not include apathy, inaction, or cynicism.

Are some forms of political engagement better for pastors than others? Of course. For example, if you own your own home, putting a candidate’s sign in the yard counts as something you do as an individual. If you live in a parsonage, this distinction is much harder to maintain; better to just put a bumper sticker on your car. Better yet, forget about signs and stickers (which are often just about whose club we belong to), and instead stuff envelopes or make phone calls for your candidate. Even better, volunteer with the voter registration drive, a supremely important yet (largely) nonpartisan way to contribute to the political process.

For more information and advice on the dos and don’ts of pastors and politics, check out the Congregation Education Project sponsored by the Wake Forest University Divinity School.

This article is the third in a series of three by this author on living our faith during a presidential election year. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

ARTICLE: Being Christian in an Election Year, Part 2

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:55:30 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

To everyone except political junkies, presidential election years have all the charm of an extended toothache. Ask why, and the average voter will tell you it’s because the campaigns are so negative. If you live in a state with a presidential primary, chances are good that you’re already heartily sick of attack ads. In the two years since the Citizens United decision allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds to support or (more likely) attack candidates, the number, ferocity, and bad taste of these advertisements has increased considerably. The candidates have certainly grown no less fond of pummeling their opponents with whatever cudgel they can pull out of their bag at a given moment. Such assaults are blood in the water for the media, who know that every fact-bending, name-calling, hair-pulling political pronouncement puts more eyes on the page or screen, and hence more advertising dollars in their corporate owners’ pockets (the real “media bias”). Thus is the sausage of democracy made.

But then, you’ve heard all this before. Dissatisfaction with the caliber and tone of the electoral process is as old as America itself. In the early years of the republic, whisper campaigns about the sexual morality (or lack thereof) of the candidates’ wives were a frequent part of presidential elections. A hundred years later Mark Twain wrote a hilarious account of his short-lived candidacy as an independent for the governorship of New York. In the brief time he was a candidate, the Democratic and Republican newspapers tried to outdo one another in accusing him of every capital crime and mortal sin they could dream up. Knowing about the political history of the period makes it easy to forget that the story is fictional, because it sounds so plausible. In comparison to what our forebears put up with, we’ve got it easy.

Nonetheless, political campaigns today are dreary, unedifying affairs, tempting good people to avoid the political process altogether. As I noted in my previous post, such is not an option for Christians. We’re trying to point the world in the direction of the Kingdom; the quality of our political leaders will improve as we do so. But because we live in a democracy, we will only get leaders as good as the process by which they’re elected. If that’s the case then we’re in trouble, because the process is just so bad.

Can Christians make a difference in this situation? Absolutely. In what follows, I want to suggest some attitudes and behaviors to which Christians should be particularly suited, and which, if followed, might make this election business a bit more bearable.

1. We have to talk about ideas and issues, not bash people

Why do we love to complain about politicians so much? Yeah, I know; they make themselves such easy targets. They stand up, denounce their opponent as an agent of the devil, promise to cure all the nation’s ills while requiring no sacrifice of us in return, get elected, and proceed to accomplish . . . not much. To the voters they make promises they can’t keep; to the donors they keep promises they’re not supposed to make. They are, in short, easy to dislike.

But that’s not the reason we dislike them. We gripe about, make fun of, and generally berate politicians because it’s easier to bash them as people than to learn about their positions on the issues. We substitute ad hominem attacks on them for substantive engagement with what they say because, well, it’s easier, and we’re lazy. If I seem preachy here, it’s because I’m preaching to myself. Since she was elected to Congress a few years ago, I have never once spoken my representative’s name without appending the phrase “the Princess of Darkness” to it (having admitted that in public now, I’ll have to quit).

I don’t pretend to know all of what “speaking the truth in love” entails, but I’m pretty certain that a), informing your elected officials that their policy positions will hurt poor people or stifle small business is in bounds; while b), calling them a bunch of chuckleheads is not. Assaults on politicians’ character, intelligence, personal grooming, and the like are not only self-indulgent and unproductive; they are toxic to the body politic. They add to everyone’s cynicism, most especially our own.

2. We have to stop watching, reading, or listening to political advertising.

Nobody likes political ads; everybody complains when they start up again; so why do they keep coming back? Why do political campaigns spend obscene amounts of money on advertising, so much of it negative? Obviously, because it works. But let’s be clear on the way it works. Political advertising achieves its goal with all the precision and finesse of a wrecking ball. All advertising exists to motivate us to action; how it does so is immaterial. Political advertising follows this rule. Whether it’s manufacturing fear, pandering to prejudice, or stoking resentment, whatever gets the job done is good enough.

But where does that fear, prejudice, and resentment go when the election’s over; does someone stuff it back in the box? Of course not; it infects the hearts of the electorate. Campaign ads are deals made with the devil, deals that cannot be reneged upon when it comes time to govern a citizenry whose attitudes toward government have now been poisoned by negative advertising.

Are you and I smarter than to buy into the lies of political ads? Yes, we are (well, you are at least). Does that make us immune to their influence? No. Why do you think they run those blasted ads over and over again? So they can seep into our consciousness, affecting our perceptions of the candidates even when we think we aren’t paying attention.

“Worldliness” is a quaint notion, but it still makes sense. Christians have always held that prolonged exposure to demeaning, harmful, or destructive images and ideas (“the world”) are corrosive of the soul. The standard answer has been to stay away from such things (the biblical term is to “shun” them). If you ever wondered why God gave us DVRs with fast forward capabilities, TVs with mute buttons, or radios with on/off switches, now you know: so we can shun political ads. Use those God-given gifts, brothers and sisters! Shun those ads!

3. We have to treat politics as news—not entertainment or blood sport

If we want to find out what’s going on with the election at any given moment, thousands of web sites, t.v. programs, and publications are waiting to fulfill our wish. Too many of them, however, try to do so simply by confirming our predispositions and inflaming our prejudices. The Mark Twain story above confirms that this situation has been around for a long time. Personal experience indicates that it’s not getting any better.

As Christians, we believe that we are flawed and fallen creatures. Among other things, this means that our political opinions and perspectives are likely to be as messed up as everything else about us. Thus, it helps to listen to people whose job is to be objective, to present and analyze the news from as broad a perspective as possible. Too often, however, voices like that are drowned out by those with differing—and narrower—agendas.

That's right; I’m lookin’ at you MSNBC and Fox News. The problem with these networks is not that their reporting bears a particular ideological flavor; a lot of perfectly respectable news organizations tilt left or right. The problem is that they construct their reporting to grind a particular partisan ax, in the process ignoring or downplaying legitimate and important news items because they don’t match that agenda.

Let’s name some more names, shall we? Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly; these are but a few of the hundreds of commentators and pundits who discuss politics solely for the purpose of inflaming or confirming settled political opinions. Remember what we just said about shunning? All these folks who treat politics like it’s a circus or a fight between pit bulls provide excellent opportunities to hone your shunning skills.

So where should Christians get their information about politics? I'm glad you asked. Do your political opinions lean right? Then I suggest The Wall Street Journal and The Economist as publications with strong reporting and perceptive analysis from your side of the spectrum. If you lean left, then I’d say the same thing about the New York Times and NPR. But if you’re serious about making a positive contribution to the political life of your country, then I suggest you pick one from the other side of the aisle, to challenge and sharpen your thinking. I highly recommend Real Clear Politics as a web site that aggregates excellent political news and commentary from all over the political dial.

All of what I’ve discussed above are small steps, and they won’t, by themselves, revolutionize American politics. Because they require a reliance on God’s grace, as well as personal discipline, they just might change us. They just might make us a bit more worthy of this gift God has given us called democracy. And that just might be all the reason we need to try them.

ARTICLE: Being Christian in an Election Year, Part 1

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:05:01 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

For political junkies, a presidential election year is a joy; it's Christmas, the World Series, and a snow day all rolled into one year-long celebration of democracy. For the rest of the populace, it's something less than that; a year of annoying ads, shrill commentary, and obnoxious political partisans incessantly talking about how the fate of civilization as we know it rests on the election's outcome. Most of us would like to go to sleep for the year and wake up when it's all over.

Except, of course, that we can't. As Christians, we're called to do what we can to make the world look more like the Kingdom of God. The quality of our political leadership will affect how well we can fulfill that calling. For that reason, the electoral process cannot be a matter of indifference to Christians. While too many of us have made the mistake of trying to legislate Christian faith (or at least Christian ethics), that failed experiment doesn't change our responsibility be salt and light in the midst of this political season.

So how do we do that? We can start by thinking about some of the challenges and opportunities this particular election cycle presents to Christians.

1. Mormon, Shmormon

I’ve heard American religious historian Bill Leonard say that a hundred years or so ago you either were a Mormon, or you hated Mormons. The Mormons' particular adaptation of Christian faith has made them suspicious to mainstream Christians in the U.S. ever since their founding. Yet they have worked long and hard to enter the social and cultural mainstream of this country, a process that might have reached a tipping point this year with Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, as a major contender for the presidency. While some other Christians are still uneasy with the prospect of a Mormon president, most of the population seems to have decided that Mormons are “enough like us” to qualify for the country’s highest elective office.

To which I say, “you’ve reached the right conclusion for the wrong reason.” The issue isn’t whether a particular group has become mainstream enough to be acceptable; it’s whether a person’s religious faith should disqualify her or him for office in the first place. In the 2008 election, way too much ink was wasted on arguing whether or not to take Barack Obama’s word for it that he is a Christian, rather than a Muslim. The best thing that anyone said about this came from Colin Powell, who asked on a news program I was watching, “And what if he were a Muslim; so what?” The former general and Secretary of State spoke movingly of Muslim Americans with whom he had served in the U.S. military, and argued that their religious beliefs made them no less worthy to defend their country than anyone else.

Roger Williams, a man of deep Christian convictions and the father of religious liberty in this country, spelled out how all this works way back in 1655. He said that as long as a group believes in and contributes to the common welfare, how or whom they worship should have no bearing on their status as citizens. Since in our democracy leaders are drawn from the ranks of citizens like you and me, this same principle applies to their qualification for elected office.

There are only two questions to ask about a candidate’s religious beliefs as they relate to the quest for public office. First, does the mainstream of the candidate’s religious tradition promote ideas or actions that fundamentally contradict the principles of the U.S. Constitution? (Notice that I said mainstream here; every religious body has fringe groups who don’t represent what that tradition is about. And your information about what a religious group believes must come from representatives of the group itself, not from outsiders with an axe to grind.)

Second, and far more important, what does the candidate say about how his or her religious convictions and civic responsibilities fit together? Will participation in a democratic government require her or him to violate personal religious convictions? If the answer to both questions is “no”–and I can’t think of a major candidate for national office for whom it would be “yes”–then you’ve just taken the question of a person’s religious qualification for office off the table.

The fact of the matter is, religious liberty has to work for everybody, or it works for nobody. It seems to me that religious qualification for elected office is one of the last battlefields in our struggle to live up to our Constitutional ideals. To be Christian in an election year is to defend the principle of religious liberty.

2. “Why can’t you find some nice Christian friends?”

In the 1980 presidential election, white evangelicals abandoned Jimmy Carter and, by and large, gave the election to Ronald Reagan. While Reagan almost certainly shared evangelicals’ beliefs on social issues like abortion, he did not share their urgency about them; his administration expended practically no political capital on legislation related to those issues. This fact set the pattern for the unbalanced relationship between evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party ever since.

Less often remarked upon, but certainly important, has been the dalliance between left-leaning Christians and secular progressives. Especially during the George W. Bush years, liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics made frequent alliance with certain progressive groups that want to relegate religious discourse solely to the private sphere, excising it from the public square. Wishing to give public voice to their religious convictions, these liberal Christians made common cause with folks who had little or no sympathy for the role of religious conviction in public life.

So in both cases, Christians have been played for chumps by those with whom they allied themselves. Am I saying that we shouldn’t enter into such alliances? No, because politics requires working with others, even when we don’t agree with them on everything. I am saying is that to be a Christian in an election year is to be smart about such alliances, knowing when our voices are being heard, and when they aren’t.

3. Hate the sin, love the sinner–but only if the sinner is a member of our party

This election cycle raises again the question of personal character and fitness for office. Major candidate Newt Gingrich admits that infidelity broke up his two previous marriages, for which he has more recently sought redemption as a committed Roman Catholic. The evidence so far indicates that we’ve learned little about how to approach this issue since it last roiled the body politic in the 1990s (a case in which Gingrich was the defender of morality). With the shoe on the other party’s foot, the responses to the question have fallen out along predictably partisan lines.

Do Christians have anything to add to this conversation? As people who believe both in forgiveness and personal responsibility, we should. Yet most Christians I know (me included) face grave difficulty in bracketing their political opinions in order to talk about it. Just like everybody else, you can pretty well guess what we’re going to say about the character debate by knowing whose bumper sticker we put on our car last time around.

This fact indicts us all. It proves that we are more attached to our political opinions than our spiritual convictions. I’ve struggled long and hard with this question, because I believe that personal character and public office is a subject on which Christian faith has a great deal to say. But if individual Christians are only going to generate more partisan heat about it, then the best thing we can say is . . . nothing. When it comes to the “character question,” to be Christian in this election year just might mean keeping our mouths shut.

For more on faith and politics from this author, see "Is the U.S. a Christian Nation?" or "The Gospel and Partisan Politics" on his blog, Think and Believe.

ARTICLE: God Didn't Say That

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:46:48 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“I don’t think it’s a good thing to kill children and babies, but God said to do it, so he must have had a good reason.”

Try to imagine a situation in which you would agree with the statement above. Try hard to come up with a scenario in which that sentence could be an accurate description of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Try as hard as you can to construct a plausible circumstance in which that could be a true statement about God’s behavior.

Can’t do it? Neither can I. Yet in a class I was teaching recently, somebody actually said that. More than one person said it. It was, in fact, the majority opinion.

The class was a study of the Old Testament, and that day we were talking about the book of Joshua. In case you spend as little time in the book of Joshua as I customarily do, I’ll give you a recap. The Israelites have completed their wandering in the wilderness. They cross the Jordan, do their dance around the walls of Jericho, emerge triumphant, and then settle down to the serious business of conquering the land of Canaan. They institute a blitzkrieg against the various Canaanite tribes, killing all the men, women, and children as they spread out to claim the land of promise. According to the text, this happens at God’s instigation, and with God’s blessing. Which led to my question: “Why would the Israelites do such a thing?” The answer: “Because God told them to do it.” I pushed back; “Really? God told them to kill children and babies?” At this some members of the class trotted out the traditional answers to this conundrum: the Canaanites were especially wicked and deserved their fate; God needed to guarantee the purity of the Israelites’ worship, and hence had them remove all Canaanite influence; the Israelites gave the Canaanites an opportunity to convert, which they rejected. But while most folks were unable to come up with a justification, they didn’t back down in their conviction that God had instructed the Israelites to do this thing, because the Bible says that’s what God did.

And here we arrive at the heart of the matter: the Bible says. The folks in my class believe, as I do, in the authority of Scripture. In this case their conception of how that authority works has painted them into a corner. They rightly recoil at the book of Joshua’s description of a leader who claims that God has instructed God’s people to “utterly destroy” another group of people. Put that claim on the lips of anyone else, throughout history or today, and the class members would say that the leader was at the very least grossly mistaken, and probably murderously sinful. Yet put it in the Bible and it’s o.k. because, once again, the Bible says.

By approaching the authority of Scripture in a simplistic, all-or-nothing, “God says it, I believe it, that settles it” manner, Christians lead themselves into such theological absurdities as divinely-sanctioned genocide. Like I said above, I believe that the Bible is the authoritative guide to Christian belief and action. Yet admitting that the Bible is a deeply complex book, we should be willing to recognize that biblical authority is a complex matter as well. The model for those who seek to place themselves under the Bible’s authority should be Jacob at the fords of the Jabbok. If we wish to understand Scripture we must be prepared to struggle with it (even all night!), and to emerge not only blessed, but broken by the experience.

So how then should we approach biblical narratives like the book of Joshua? Let me make just a couple of suggestions. First, we have to do our biblical studies homework. The authors and editors who compiled the book of Joshua lived during or shortly after the Babylonian Exile. They believed that God had allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed largely because of the Israelites’ failure to worship Yahweh alone. They wanted to make the point that idolatry was a big problem for God. They chose to put the book of Joshua together as they did to insist that God holds final and exclusive claim to our worship. Does this justify or excuse the book of Joshua’s depiction of the killing of innocents? No. Does it make it easier to see why the authors and editors put it there? Yes.

Second, when we come upon individual passages and books that raise difficulties like this, we need a vantage point from which to approach and consider them. Martin Luther said that for Christians the gospel–by which he means God’s grace as seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ– provides that vantage point. If a biblical passage or story doesn’t make sense according to what we know of God in Jesus, then we’ve got to ask other questions about how that story functions as God’s word for us. Simply put, if we can’t imagine Jesus condoning the mass killing of the Canaanites (and let’s agree that we can’t imagine that, please), then we have to give up trying to find excuses for why God would order such a thing; admit that God, in fact, didn’t say that; and then ask what the story has to tell us if this is the case.

When I said above that I believe in the authority of Scripture, I meant it. When we approach Scripture with an expectation that it will speak a word from God, I believe we will hear that word. How an individual verse, passage, or book speaks that word is going to differ. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” is pretty straightforward; this verse might challenge our commitment, but it doesn’t tax our understanding. But when it’s something like the book of Joshua, we’re going to have to wrestle the angel a good bit more if we hope to receive our blessing.

So, if the word of God from this biblical book isn’t “tough luck if you’re a Canaanite and God wants your land for someone else,” then what is it? Perhaps it’s this: The human tendency to mistake the “devices and desires of our own hearts” (as the Book of Common Prayer calls them) for the voice of God isn’t a recent development. It stretches all the way back through history, even into Scripture itself. Perhaps the word of God comes to us saying, “Shortly before the book of Joshua opens the Israelites had stood at the foot of God’s holy mountain and listened to God thunder out the covenant. If even they could make this mistake, then watch and pray that it not happen to you, gentle reader.” Perhaps this book speaks a powerful message about violence done in the name of religion, if we but have eyes to see that message’s contradiction to what lies on the book’s surface.

The Bible is a divine book because it is such a human book at the same time. It places all of human life–its highs and lows, its foibles and graces–firmly in the presence of God. It will tell us everything God has to say to us–if we’re willing to listen carefully.

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com.

ARTICLE: The Seductions of Leadership

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:22:10 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

The church needs leaders. The church needs good leaders. The church needs leaders who will make other leaders. Smarter people than me have written a lot (a lot) about that reality, so I don’t presume to have anything to add to the conversation. But because leadership in the church is so important, it might be a good idea to think for a moment about its shadow side, about the ways in which it can go wrong. Now here I just might have something to say, because my branch of the Christian family tree believes in sin more than it does God—which means that from a tender age I’ve been taught to think about the ways humans can mess up. The list of ways that church leadership can mess up is long, but let’s look at just three of them.

The first relates to what I’ll call movement-based leadership. Movements happen when an extraordinary need or opportunity arises, and people are drawn together, usually quite quickly, to respond to it. Sometimes the movement doesn’t need or want a single leader, but more often an individual serves as the starting point or eventual focal point of the movement’s energies. That person almost always possesses a charismatic personality, and the members are drawn to that personality at least as much as to the issues or insights the leader articulates.

When a new church start takes off quickly, or when sudden, rapid transformation of an established congregation happens, the leaders can often resemble the model described above. That explains why they are subject to the same temptations—principally, the mistake of starting to believe their own press. Surrounded by people who love us and believe so strongly in us, the temptation to internalize all that adoration, to think we really are that great, is strong. Next we start to believe in our secret heart that this movement is here just because of us, that we are indispensable to God’s plan. And that’s when we hang our toes over that thin little line that separates charismatic leadership from its demonic counterpart. This is the point when it becomes all about us—which doesn’t leave a lot of room for it to be about God, now does it?

The second temptation, which relates to what I’ll call institution-based leadership, is a problem with which more of us have experience. As the movements described above mature, they do one of two things: they disband or they institutionalize. In the latter case, the leaders of the movement realize that if they want the movement’s message and ideas to carry on, they have to start building structures to insure that will happen. So they raise money, hire staff, acquire permanent meeting space, and the like. In short, they hunker down for life in the long haul.

The congregations most of us serve are miniature institutions, and so our leadership situation falls into this category. We know, then, where the seductions of this kind of leadership lie. We know that the burdens of maintaining the institution, of “keeping the lights turned on,” grow steadily heavier. We know that almost inevitably every institution succumbs to the temptation to make its own preservation its highest, albeit unspoken, priority. If movement leaders are tempted to shift the focus to themselves, leaders of institutions face terrible pressure to relate everything they do to keeping the institution fed and healthy. Lost in the shuffle, of course, are the ideas and insights the institution was founded to promote in the first place. In church leadership those founding principles are called the gospel, which is about giving yourself away in service of others and God. Giving yourself away becomes a tricky business indeed when you’re spending all your time tending to the aggrandizement of an institution.

Speaking of the gospel, one of its central claims is that the last shall be first, that in the kingdom of God all our carefully-constructed hierarchies will be flipped on their collective head. This gets us to the final temptation of leadership I want to explore. Put simply, we come to enjoy the role of leader. The ability to sway the opinions and actions of others; the attention and approval of other members of the group; the sense that we are necessary, that important things and people depend on us; these are powerful things. But most powerful and destructive of all is the sense of being elevated above others. We like to be in charge, to feel that people are following us.

As good Americans we believe in the myth of the Solitary Individual carving his or her own space out of the universe. In this myth we exist alongside other people, but in the end there’s not much we owe them. Following on the heels of this myth is another, that of the Person in Charge. Persons in Charge stand at the pinnacle of their families, organizations, businesses, governments, what have you. They are the ones ultimately responsible for everything that happens within their sphere, the ones to whom ultimate credit or blame is due.

I was once a member of a congregation that talked about moving our staff from a senior pastor/associate pastor configuration to a copastorate, in which responsibilities would be shared between the two. During the discussions one question kept popping up: “If we do this, who’s going to be in charge? Where is the buck going to stop?” The question belied the assumption that the pastor is a Person in Charge, possessing decisive authority and responsibility for the overall life of the congregation. The bubble of this assumption was burst when someone else asked, “How much money can the pastor spend now without talking to someone else about it?” The answer: maybe a couple hundred bucks, out of a budget of several hundred thousand.

This conversation nicely illustrates the fact that pastors and other congregational leaders aren’t Persons in Charge, they are servants of the servants of Christ. Church leadership is by definition about discipleship; it’s about taking up the cross alongside other Christians doing the same. Yes, the church must have leaders. They just have to be people who wear that leadership lightly, as befits someone who is first and foremost a follower.

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com.

ARTICLE: Why Theology Isn't a Dirty Word

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:33:11 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

Lots of reasons present themselves for why you should ignore theology. It’s boring, it’s irrelevant, it stirs up needless controversy, it raises questions it never answers; the list goes on and on.

Only one reason presents itself for why you shouldn’t ignore theology: you can’t. It’s not possible.

Huh?

Theology is nothing less than looking at life through the lens of Christian faith. Any time you reach out in sympathy to someone who is hurting, recoil at the news of a senseless tragedy, or reflect on the joy of being alive, you are doing theology. Any time you wonder about what something means, why something happened, or why someone is the way they are, you are being a theologian. If “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” then any question about life is, inevitably, a question about God. And if that’s the case, then theology is unavoidable. As my very first theology professor told us, the question isn’t whether you’re going to be a theologian or not; it’s whether you’re going to be any good at it.

But theology isn’t just necessary; it’s desirable as well (or, at least, it can be). Elsewhere I’ve written about why we must never think we can substitute theology for personal experience of God. Yet it is equally true that theology clarifies, focuses, and makes that experience more real. Remember when Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and then, “Who do you say I am?” (emphasis added). Peter answered with a theological statement: “you are the Messiah, the son of the Living God.” This wasn’t simply repeating something he’d always heard, or spouting conventional wisdom; he was reflecting theologically on what he’d been experiencing as he traveled with Jesus. In so doing, he also shifted that experience to a new level. By making the theological judgment that Jesus is the Messiah, Peter was in essence committing himself more firmly than ever before to follow him.

And sometimes serious, hard thinking about God and the world–in other words, theology–is the only proper response to a particular situation. Ten years on now I still remember a story I heard in the days immediately following 9/11. A middle-aged emergency room nurse, a grizzled veteran of inner city trauma units, was among the rescue workers trying to locate victims among the rubble. After a long and difficult day she happened upon a couple of the chaplains at the scene, a Protestant pastor and a Roman Catholic priest. Looking intently at the them she said, “I need you to tell me something. Those people who jumped from the Towers; was that suicide? I need to know the answer.” Behind her question was the widespread (and mistaken) belief that suicide is an unforgivable sin. In the midst of all that destruction, as she sought to care for the victims of the attack, she wanted to know what God was going to do about the ones beyond her care. Without hesitating the priest replied, “They were trying to save their lives, not end them. Right now God is enfolding them in his arms and wiping away their tears.” That answer remains one of the most profoundly pastoral and theological things I’ve ever heard.

Do people want to hear tired, trite, irrelevant theological platitudes? No. Do they want to hear a living word from the Lord? Yes. When they do, they need a good theologian. Want to apply for the job?

BLOG: After They Said "Brain Tumor"

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:05:57 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“Brain tumor.” Among the many words you don’t want to hear come out of the mouth of a doctor, these are pretty high up on the list. Even the mitigating words “non-malignant” and “operable” don’t make things a lot better, especially when you hear the news for the first time. We heard those words from my wife’s doctor in the ER less than 2 weeks ago. This morning finds us less than 24 hours on this side of what appears to have been a successful surgery to remove the tumor. In the days, hours, and minutes in between, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want from God in this situation, and what I can expect.

A good friend of mine who is a professional pastoral counselor let me in on the dirty little secret of times like this: “whatever happens, God will be with you” doesn’t cut it. When it’s your loved one being wheeled off to the operating room, that statement strikes you as weak and inadequate. You don’t want assurance or comfort; you want certitude. You want to know that everything is going to be o.k. You want God to say “I’m going to fix this,” meaning make everything the way it was, arrange things the way you would if you were in charge.

Except that doesn’t happen. Now, I’m a theologian, so it’s my job to ask why that’s the case–but I’m not going to do so. Much, much better theologians than me, going all the way back to the author of the book of Job, have tried and failed to answer that question adequately. More importantly, when you’re in the middle of a situation like this, knowing the answer wouldn’t help. For whatever reason, we cannot know without question or doubt that what we want is going to happen. God doesn’t work that way. Ask me why later.

Recognizing that fact, yet still wanting with all my being to know beyond question that God was going to make Joan all better, that nothing would go wrong, has been my struggle. Admitting that struggle has brought me the only modicum of peace I’ve known throughout the last couple of weeks. When I told God, “look, I know you can’t promise what I want, but I’m going to tell you anyway . . . ,” I felt better. Did that feeling last? No. Did I have to repeat that prayer time after time, knowing that God wasn’t the one who had to keep hearing it? Yes. Has God sustained me in ways that I will never understand and can only barely recognize? Unquestionably.

On the morning of the surgery our pastors Carol and Mark were sitting with us as we waited for Joan to go back to the OR. I thought about their care and concern for her, as well as my own and that of all our friends and family. Then I realized that “God is with you, whatever happens” means that God, too, felt all that love, concern, and worry for Joan, and so much more beyond. God is experiencing that same thing every moment for anyone who is going through pain, worry, or grief, all across this sad little globe. From the moment I heard those two ugly words, “brain tumor,” I wanted the anxiety and worry to go away. Yet God willingly accepts that same hurt for each of us all the time. We must be inexpressibly precious to God for God to go to all that trouble and grief for us. I cannot imagine how that can be the case, how God can take on the suffering of the world that way.

But sitting in a quiet room in ICU, with my bandaged and beloved one resting, I’m trying to learn.

BLOG: Harry Potter is Not Jesus

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:41:58 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

Or, "Why the World’s Most Famous Boy Wizard is Not a Christ Figure"

SPOILER ALERT: critical plot details discussed (or at least hinted at) below.

With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, the publishing and cinematic juggernaut that is the Harry Potter franchise reaches its (we mean it this time) final chapter. As the most anticipated event of the summer, the movie will garner considerable attention and conversation. As happens with such cultural phenomena, churches will want to get in on this conversation, to use it as an opportunity to share and explore the gospel. The coming weeks will no doubt see the list of analyses of the Harry Potter story in light of Christian faith (like this one) expand. After viewing the film many preachers will want to draw comparisons between Harry and Jesus, to suggest that the Boy Who Lived is a Christ figure.

To which I offer a one-word (two if you add “please”) reply: Don’t.

Wait, wait; put down that pitchfork. I am not among the folks who brand the series antiChristian because it imagines a world with magic in it. I’ve been recommending the books to classes I teach since 1998, when the first volume appeared. I’ve spent many a bleary-eyed midnight with my family at bookstores and theaters when the newest book or movie was being released. Like you, I’m a big fan.

But I’m also a big fan of Christ figures in literature and film, and I know that it doesn’t help the cause to say a book or movie reflects the gospel just because a) it portrays the conflict between good and evil, and b) a lot of people read or watched it. Not every act of self-sacrifice, not every (seeming) death and resurrection makes a character a Christ figure.

The folks who want to turn Harry into Jesus with a wand forget that being a Christ figure is a two-way street. To start with, some quality or action of the fictional character reflects or draws inspiration (intentional or not) from the Jesus story. Things happen in the Potter story that could lead a person to make this claim for Harry. But true Christ figures also reflect back on their inspiration; something about their story helps us understand the story of Jesus just a little bit better. This doesn’t happen in the Harry Potter stories. Squint as you might to see it, no new light shines from them on the gospel.

O.k., I see your hand reaching for the pitchfork again. Let me hasten to say that the Potter stories contain excellent lessons, ones that I was pleased for my children to learn. One of the best has to do with destiny, free will, and ethical choice. Harry is what you might call a Boy of Destiny, someone from whom everyone expects Big Things. Having lived in obscurity and neglect among the Muggles, he arrives in the magical world a celebrity, the child who survived and defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort. Most of the public expects him to become a great leader or protector; most of his enemies expect him to be overwhelmed by the powers of evil. Just about everyone think they know what’s in store for Harry . . . except Harry himself. While the rest of the world assumes that Harry’s path is predetermined by some great and mysterious destiny, Harry (under Dumbledore’s tutelage) discovers that he is creating his life one choice at a time, that the key to his story lies not in his stars, but in himself.

This lesson is one of the story’s central ideas. Its source, of course, is the Enlightenment. Now, I’m not among those who think that Enlightenment concepts and perspectives are of necessity bad or misguided; this one happens to make a lot of sense. It’s just not Christian, by which I mean that it doesn’t tell the whole story. Like the Enlightenment, the gospel rejects the idea that dark and inscrutable fate directs our actions. But unlike the Enlightenment, we believe that there is a Cross-shaped purpose behind creation and history, and that God works in and with us to bring that purpose to fruition.

Now, if you want to compare and contrast the Potter story’s Enlightenment teachings with the gospel, that would be a great way to capitalize on the teachable moment created by the release of the final film. The ideas and values that animate the world of Harry Potter are winsome, appealing, and unerringly right. They’re just not always Christian. Figuring out how those two statements can go together should provide much opportunity to preach, teach, and ponder.

And while you do, I’ll just put your pitchfork back in the barn.

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com/. Don't miss his other articles on religion and film, about Jesus movies and Christ figures in film.

ARTICLE: Jesus Goes to the Movies (Part 1)

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:40:39 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

I've been teaching a class recently on Jesus figures and Christ figures in film. That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but bear with me.

First, the term Jesus figure refers to a portrayal in film (or literature or theatre) of the actual, historical person of Jesus. Since pretty close to the dawn of the movies, film makers have been trying to depict the life of Christ; a short series of French films showing scenes from the gospels were made in 1902-1905, for example. Dozens of these cinematic portraits of Jesus exist, but over the years a few have stood out. Cecil D. DeMille’s last silent picture was King of Kings, in which the director brought his love of big-budget excess to the story of Jesus’ life (this film is not to be confused with the 1961 movie of the same title, sometimes known as “I Was a Teenage Jesus.”) 1965′s The Greatest Story Ever Told starred Max von Sydow as a calm, perhaps even slightly boring, Jesus. And in 2004 Mel Gibson wanted to make certain we all really understood the concept of blood atonement in his movie The Passion of the Christ.

The term Christ figure is a little harder to define. Christ figures are not intended to dramatize the actual life of Christ, as Jesus figures are. Instead Christ figures are characters within a movie (or novel or play) whose lives reflect in some way the life and character of Christ. Usually, Christ figures are not overtly religious, nor are the films in which they appear. The best Christ figures are flawed and fallen creatures like you and me, and hence don’t represent Christ’s fully loving life. Yet something about their story–often the way they die–mirrors Jesus self-emptying, self-giving love, and this is what makes them Christ figures.

To start with Jesus figures in film, we ask this question: what do these cinematic portraits of Jesus tell us about him? How are they helpful to someone who seeks to follow Jesus? How are they not helpful?

While film makers produce Jesus movies for a lot of reasons, their principal motivation, it seems to me, is to reveal something about the life of Jesus we hadn’t properly understood before, to arrive somehow at the “real Jesus.” This desire is hardly surprising, as it seems to be true for any movie about a historical person. Yet obviously more is at stake in a movie about Jesus. Consider the following:

Jesus is the most important figure in the lives of millions of people
The gospels leave out way more information about Jesus’ personality and inner life than they reveal.
The movies are our culture’s preferred way to explore the life of an individual.

These facts combine to mean that movies about Jesus are practically begging to be made. What better way to deal with the ultimate “larger than life” figure than this, our most outsized medium?

So why are the ones that have been made so bad?

Oh, they’re not all terrible (although some some are). Most of them are largely unobjectionable. As a whole they’re reverent, responding to their particular subject matter with dignity and decorum. They try really hard to account for Jesus’ humanity, while remembering his status as Son of God. At least the mainstream films try to remain faithful to the biblical picture of Jesus, while striving to shed new light on him as a person.

But as movies, they stink. In spite of their subject matter and inherent interest to the audience, they plod along, never managing to capture the drama, tension, or, well, weirdness of the gospels. The more mainstream (read: inoffensive to Christian sensibilities) they are, the more boring they become (King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told embody this problem). Paradoxically, the more they try to strike out and explore new facets of the Jesus story, the more arbitrary they feel, invoking difference for its own sake (think The Last Temptation of Christ here). I’ve made a search of several of the "top 100" (or more) movie lists, and not one of the Jesus movies appears on any of them. O.k, Ben Hur is on the IMDB top 250 list, but while Jesus appears in that movie, it’s not actually a movie about him.

So, the question becomes this: is it just that we’re still waiting for the really good Jesus movie to be made, or is it that a really good one can’t be made? I've got three thoughts on this subject.

First, there is tremendous pressure for Jesus movies to stick closely to the actual words of the gospels, due to all the experts out there in the theaters just waiting for the film makers to add or subtract something from the mouth of Jesus (and hence denounce the film). But doing so renders the film artificial and (frankly) boring because the words of the gospels were never intended to form a screenplay. Drama, tension, conflict; these all show up in the four gospels, but most of the time they are accompanied by long stretches (in the Gospel of John, very long stretches) of dialogue or monologue. This suits the gospels’ intended purpose well, but sadly, makes for a slow-paced movie.

This fact means that, second, if a good Jesus movie is to be made it will have to depart from the letter of the gospels, and seek instead to capture their spirit. We all know successful and unsuccessful attempts to turn well-known works of literature into movies. Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings suceeded because the director remained faithful to the spirit and the tone of the book, while feeling free to shift around and even remove characters and story lines. The 2006 film adapted from Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel All the King’s Men failed because, in spite of its terrific cast, it couldn’t find a shred of the original characters’ emotions and motivations.

I chose those two examples because a high degree of agreement exists on the books’ essential qualities, as well as on the movies’ success or failure in capturing those qualities. And here’s where the problem comes with Jesus movies. No such agreement presents itself about the message that lies at the heart of the gospels. Ask ten lifelong Christians what the the gospels are really about, and you’ll get fifteen answers. Toss in all the other folks who have heard this and that about Jesus over the years (which means just about everybody), and (once again) you’ve got an audience of experts, each with his or her opinion on what lies at the heart of the gospel story. No one could ever agree that a particular interpretation of the story of Jesus got it right, because when it comes to this story there is so little agreement about what “right” is.

Third, I don’t think a really excellent Jesus movie is possible because the source material defeats the movie’s purpose. As I mentioned earlier, the reason to make a movie about a historical figure ( as opposed to a fictional character) is to say something about that person’s identity and personality we’ve not known before, to shed new light on her or him, to show us the “real” Joan of Arc or Elizabeth I or Malcolm X. To do so, the movie has to access information that allows us to see that historical person in a new way. All we have to rely on regarding the historical Jesus is the gospels, and I don’t think they’re going to reveal any new information about him of the kind Hollywood is looking for.

More importantly, though, is the fact that in the end the gospels aren’t about Jesus in the way that a standard biography is about its subject. The point of the gospels isn’t to provide us in-depth information about Jesus; the early Christians already had all the information they needed. Following Peter’s confession they knew that he is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The point of the gospels–what they’re “about”–is to confront us, the readers, with what we’re going to do with this Jesus. A movie that faithfully captured the gospels’ true purpose would, in essence, be an evangelistic tool. And which of us pays money to see a movie we know is going to try to convert us?

So no, I don’t think movies about Jesus are such a good idea. Now when it comes to movies about Christ figures, that’s another story altogether. Read "Jesus Goes to the Movies (Part 2)."

What is the best--or worst--Jesus movie you've seen?

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com/.

ARTICLE: Jesus Goes to the Movies (Part 2)

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:55:57 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

“Jesus figures” in film are easy to define: they are depictions of the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. A little harder to nail down is the “Christ figure,” by which I mean fictional characters whose life or story reflects in some way the story of Jesus. Harder still is trying to point to particular characters in movies as examples of Christ figures.

Why is that? For one thing, you have to figure out what it means to be Christlike. Does it entail extraordinary wisdom, kindness, or love, and if so, isn't that the same thing as being an especially good human being? Or does it require a particular action, usually one of self-sacrifice? And if that’s the case, does every cinematic act of sacrifice qualify a character as a Christ figure?

Much of the answer lies in the eye of the beholder, of course; someone I would include in my list of examples might never make it on to yours, and vice versa. One of my professors in college talked about those Christians who want to see a foreshadowing of the Cross in every stick of wood in the Old Testament. In much the same way you can discover a reflection of Christ in any film character if you look hard enough.

In what follows I want to look at some different kinds of Christ figures in the movies. First, though, let me lay out some rules for how to find them:

The best Christ figures are the least obvious ones. Luther talked about Jesus as the “deus absconditus,” the hidden God. Christ figures are often similarly hidden from our sight, which is why the title character from Cool Hand Luke is a better choice than Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, largely because the latter is just so unceasingly noble.

Conversely, the more a writer or director intends to create a Christ figure, the less authentic and effective that portrayal often becomes.

The best way to recognize a genuine Christ figure is to look for transformation. Whether it's one person or an entire community, Christ figures change the lives of others decisively.

Oh, and one more thing: No. Star Wars. Ever.

Types of Christ Figures

A. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”: Movie Messiahs

I’m using the term “messiah” here in a specific sense, as a figure with a particular destiny to fulfill. Often when somebody violates my second rule above a movie messiah is the result. Sometimes the movie messiah just shows up out of the blue, as in Superman and Superman II. Other times the character is much anticipated, as was happened with Neo in the Matrix trilogy. In both of these cases the focus falls on the characters’ special status or extraordinary abilities; these are what render them messiah figures.

But the gospels don’t focus that much on Jesus’ special status as the Anointed One (although, to be fair, they do mention it); rather, their first concern is to tell the story of his exemplary life, sacrificial death, and miraculous resurrection. The gospel writers make it clear that everyone who focused on Jesus as the “promised Son of David” pretty well missed the point of his ministry because they brought along a lot of false assumptions of what that ministry should look like. Likewise, when movie makers set out to portray a “Chosen One,” they do a lousy job of pointing to the Jesus story.

B. “To lay down one’s life for one’s friends”: Sacrificial Christ figures

Perhaps the most recognizable characteristic of cinematic Christ figures is a sacrificial death. This brings up the problem mentioned above of whether any act of sacrifice makes a character a Christ figure. It’s often a hard call to make; laying down one’s life that others might live is the supreme act of charity, and it stands at the heart of the Jesus story. But a difference exists between purchasing another’s continued existence at the expense of one’s own, and doing so in a way that the other might “have life, and have it more abundantly.” The key is redemption; does the sacrifice renew or transform the lives of those who are left?

One of my favorite Christ figures is the title character from The Iron Giant, a story about a huge robot who falls to earth and befriends a young boy and others in a small Maine town. Set during the Cold War, the robot’s presence inspires an escalating fear and paranoia among many in the secluded community and beyond. At the climax, the giant machine chooses his own destruction in order to save the humans from the consequences of their fear, opening their eyes to that fear’s pointlessness. I see in this story an echo of one of the classic explanations of the Atonement, in which God must become incarnate and die in order to shock us out of our frozen indifference to the divine love.

C. “The substance of things hoped for”: Hopeful Christ figures

In spite of the fact that prisons are the last place you want to be, directors like to make prison movies because “life inside” reminds us that life itself can become a prison, a place where hope goes to die. When Christ figures show up in these hopeless little worlds they do so as incarnations of hope. Such is the case with Luke Jackson in Cool Hand Luke and Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. Both characters refuse, in their different ways, to give in to the prison’s despairing world view; both remain free in spite of their chains and walls. More importantly, both communicate that sense of freedom and hope to their fellow inmates: Luke through his death, and Andy through his “resurrection” in the world outside the prison walls.

D. “This is my body”: Sacramental Christ figures

If you were paying attention that day, at some point in a high school English class you learned that most of the world’s stories can be boiled down to a handful of story “types.” One of these is known as “A Stranger Came to Town,” in which someone from the outside shows up in a community and, for good or ill, changes the social dynamics of the place forever. The Jesus story bears resemblance to this story type (“he was in the world . . . yet the world did not know him.”), so it’s no surprise that a couple of cinematic Christ figures show up as strangers coming to town. In Babette’s Feast and (the better known) Chocolat, the main characters are women who arrive in small communities, each bringing along a mysterious past and extraordinary culinary skills. Both wind up using that skill to prepare marvelous gifts of food for their new neighbors, many of whom start off as deeply suspicious of the extravagance and self indulgence of these meals. Yet in the end the food serves as a powerful means of grace, breaking down barriers and creating fellowship among those who partake. These Christ-figure cooks remind us that the Jesus story is not simply in the past, but continues in Christ’s sacramental presence throughout the world, most especially wherever we accept his invitation to table.

Did I miss your favorite Christ figure? Did you see one of mine and say “No way!”? Let us know about it in the comments.

And don't miss "Jesus Goes to the Movies (Part 1)."

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com/.

ARTICLE: Is the U.S. a Christian Nation?

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 20:58:43 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

Is the U.S. a Christian nation? This question comes up so often, especially when patriotic holidays and election seasons draw close. As with most questions, I don’t have the answer. But, unlike many times, I do have an answer.

But before I can get to it, we have to look at the two main answers that are floating around out there already:

The U.S. isn’t a Christian nation, but it should be; and
The U.S. shouldn’t be a Christian nation, but it is (or at least it’s starting to look like one).

The first answer comes from folks who believe our society to be guilty of various grievous sins that have moved us away from the vision of our nation’s founders, who intended America to be a country that honored the God of the Bible. The second answer comes from folks who aver that most of those founders were Deists, not Christians, and that they built into the Constitution a wall of separation between church and state–a wall in danger of demolition from folks in the first group.

While differing over whether the U.S. should be a Christian nation, they seem to agree on the possibility that it could be one (the former group yearns for this outcome; the latter fears it). But here’s where I want to propose a third answer:

3. The U.S. can't be a Christian nation.

This answer has nothing to do with whether the Constitution allows the U.S. to be a Christian nation (it doesn’t, but that’s not the point) and everything to do with whether a “Christian nation” could even exist. To call an individual a Christian means that she or he has experienced the grace of Jesus’ saving life, death, and resurrection, and that he or she has committed to follow Jesus. But organizations are not individuals; they have no “soul” to save. A group--be it a knitting circle or a nation state--can only be Christian to the extent that its rules of group behavior base themselves on the way of Jesus.

At the heart of that way is self-sacrifice, giving oneself away on behalf of others. As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr has noted, this kind of self-sacrifice is possible (albeit difficult) for individuals, but practically impossible for organizations or institutions. Why? Because inevitably in the life of organizations, the (unspoken, yet overriding) desire for self-preservation becomes the highest priority, trumping all other goals and values. This is true even in organizations founded to promote Christian ministries, like the one where I work. As Niebuhr said, the larger the organization or group, the more powerful the urge to self-preservation becomes, and the less likely altruistic or sacrificial behavior. And what organization is larger than a country? When it comes to nations like ours (or anybody’s, for that matter), we are going to pursue and promote our self-interests; there is no other choice. You can call that common sense, you can call it realism, but you can’t call it Christian.

Actually, there is one organization or institution explicitly committed to following the sacrificial way of Jesus: the local congregation. Yeah, I know; neither your church nor mine is doing the best job of this. But they are the only places that make the way of Jesus their explicit reason for being. So, why don’t we spend less time trying to create a logical impossibility--a “Christian America”--and worry more about strengthening the witness and authenticity of that flawed, yet genuinely Christian organization, the local congregation?

ARTICLE: Teaching When You're the Expert

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:26:54 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

One of my professors in seminary provided the best definition I’ve ever heard of an “expert”: a fool fifty miles from home. Regardless of how far you are from home, if you’re an ordained minister you are automatically the congregation’s expert on the Bible, theology, and Christian tradition. Now, we’ve all known clergy who wear their status as “experts” on their sleeve, lording their superior knowledge of all things theological over the congregation (and in the process proving my professor right). None of us wants to be that person. Yet the fact remains that your training places you in a unique position as a teacher within the congregation. Your challenge is to use that position to make your teaching more authentic and effective.

Let me start by pointing out that while I am not the pastor of the church I attend, I am ordained, and have seminary and graduate degrees in theology. Thus I am at least an honorary expert, and in that capacity do a good bit of teaching in my church and elsewhere. I’ve tried to make that status a tool in my teaching, seeking to understand how it both helps and hinders the learning experience of those in my classes. Here are a few things I’ve learned.

First, being the expert opens doors to conversation and discussion if you work to make it so. Eschewing the “expert as jerk” model mentioned above doesn’t mean you should deny the fact that people have questions about theological and spiritual matters, and they want to hear what you have to say about them. The trick is to make your comments the starting point, not the whole, of the conversation. Regardless of your preferred teaching style–lecture, moderated discussion, roundtable conversation, or something else—engage the members of the class early and often. Always respond to a question or comment as soon as it is presented, even if it’s only to ask that the person hold that thought while you complete what you were saying (then make certain you get right back to them). Make room for their questions and comments, either by asking for them explicitly, or by pausing a few moments to let someone else speak.

Second, use your authority in the setting to praise and encourage the members of the class. Can’t most of us remember that time a cherished teacher singled us out with a word of congratulations or appreciation? “That’s an excellent question”; “that’s good; I’ve never thought of it that way before”; “I wish I’d thought of that!”; statements like these, coming from you, will reinforce their interest in the subject and increase the impact of that discussion on their own spiritual and theological formation.

Third, if at all possible, find something in their questions and comments to affirm, even when they come from out in left field. In a class I was teaching shortly after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, someone offered the opinion that God had sent the earthquake in response to “all that voodoo down there.” My first reaction was to disagree with this idea, marshaling all my “expert” theological arguments to prove this person wrong. But instead I noted that the comment demonstrates the desire to believe that the world is in God’s hands and under God’s care, a desire I certainly share. Then I drew on another class member’s earlier concern about the earthquake’s toll on Haiti’s children to note that we also want to believe in a God who is more, not less, compassionate than we are. From there I moved the class into a discussion of how we deal with the tension between these two aspects of our belief in God. Anyone who was paying attention would have known what I believed about this alleged punishment of the Haitians. But in spite of disagreeing with the person who made the initial suggestion, I tried to respond in a way that included him in the ongoing conversation.

Sometimes, of course, this doesn’t work. Sometimes folks show up in your class who monopolize the conversation, asking questions that go on too long and that display an agenda other than what the class is about. Onerous as it can be to deal with this situation, yours is the best setting in which to do so. Other classes that share responsibility for leadership usually can’t deal with members like this, at least not without creating trauma for all involved. Your status as the expert gives you an authority to deal with problem individuals that others lack. Use that authority compassionately, yet firmly. If all else fails, suggest to the person privately that he or she bring questions to you outside of class.

In the end, what you know and can teach about the Bible and theology isn’t your best gift to the class. Rather, it’s that your standing as the “professional theologian” provides a context for them to think about, talk about, wrestle with, and encounter Christian truth in ways they wouldn’t have done otherwise. It’s possible to misuse this gift, but the worst abuse is to fail to use it at all.

Bob Ratcliff is an editor and teacher living in Franklin, Tennessee. He blogs about theology, the Bible, and other curious stuff at http://thinkandbelieve.wordpress.com/.

ARTICLE: On Theological In-Laws

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:14:18 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

Quietly, the professor uttered a statement that silenced the raised voices, arrested everyone's attention, and changed my thinking about theology forever. We were arguing about something in a theology class; what it was has long since faded from memory. No doubt we were divided into our usual camps: the forward thinkers on one side, courageously pursuing the search for knowledge (actually, just engaging in a bit of post-adolescent rebellion); the traditionalists on the other, staunchly defending the faith once delivered to the saints (actually, just repeating what they'd always heard). There was one guy sitting behind me who always had to disagree with everything I said. Whenever he wanted to make it clear that he really didn't care for my ideas, he'd preface his remarks with, “Unlike my dear brother here …” (meaning, “unlike this idiot sitting in front of me …”). He and I and everyone else were going at it hot and heavy that day. Voices grew louder; splinters of irritation sounded in every remark.

That's when the professor stepped in and said, “You know, when you take a theological position, you're not just marrying a spouse; you're getting a set of in-laws as well.” Huh?

He explained. “Theological ideas,” he said, “have consequences. Every time you affirm something, you are implicitly denying other things. The more specific your position on a theological question, the more likely it is to carry baggage that you hadn't necessarily intended, but from which you can't escape. Take something as simple as 'God is merciful.' To say that God is merciful—and leave it at that — is to deny justice, because if God is simply merciful to the oppressor, then the injustice done to the oppressed will go unanswered.”

“O.k.,” we said, “So you've got to say that God is both merciful and just.”

“Ah, but that's an easy one.” he said. “Here's another. How many of you believe that salvation depends solely on God's grace, that it is God's business, and God's alone?” Being good Protestants, we all nodded yes. “Now,” he said,” how many of you believe in free will?” We all nodded at that, too. “So God comes along and offers you the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Some of you accept it, some of you reject it. In the end, what determines the outcome of that encounter between you and God?”

“Our choice,” a class member said. “The exercise of our free will.”

“And if your free will is what finally determines the outcome of the whole encounter between you and God, can you really say that salvation takes place solely at God's initiative, that it is God's business, and God's alone? Aren't you, through the exercise of your free will, contributing significantly--perhaps decisively--as well?”

“But the only alternative,” someone objected, “would be to say that God doesn't just offer us salvation; God makes us accept it, whether we want to or not.”

"Bingo!” he cried. “You've just seen how insisting either on the primacy of God's grace in salvation, or the importance of human freedom--both solid, scriptural ideas, as it happens--leads you to affirm as well things you probably didn't wish to say.” (John Wesley, by the way, understood this particular theological conundrum well. His doctrine of prevenient grace is arguably the best answer ever given to it.) “In taking a spouse, you've gained a set of in-laws, too."

We sat, blinked, … and erupted into argument again.

In the years since that class, I've thought a great deal about the value of “theological in-laws.” It turns out to be the most effective guarantor of theological humility I've ever discovered. It is, in fact, far more fruitful than its better-known cousin, the appeal to personal fallibility. Oh, sure, we're all ready to admit the possibility that we might be wrong, when we're doing so in the abstract. But when an actual theological argument comes along, how willing are we to admit it then? When was the last time that, finding yourself in heated theological discussion with your version of the guy who sat behind me in that class, and having lined up Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience in support of your point, you said, “no, wait; I just remembered that I could be wrong?" Can't recall? I didn't think so.

Remembering the principle of “theological in-laws” helps because it doesn't require us to admit that we're wrong (although it wouldn't be a bad idea every now and then). Regardless of how right we are, our theological beliefs are going to carry with them baggage that we hadn't intended. To remember our theological in-laws is to admit what that baggage is and to recognize the limitations of our grasp and articulation of God's truth.

Rarely are theological in-laws as onerous as they are with the issues raised in this edition of Circuit Rider. Interpreting John 14:6 confronts us with the question of the religious “other,” for whom Jesus is not the way to God and even “God” is not the designation for ultimate reality. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, there are any number of ways to approach the question of what this passage means. But for purposes of simplicity let's boil the responses to John 14:6 down to two positions and ask, not “which is right and which wrong,” but rather “what are the theological in-laws of each?”

Start with the position that John 14:6 does not speak of the way to God in absolute, or exclusive terms. This position holds that, while relationship with Jesus is the way we Christians experience God, others journey to God by paths different than ours. The strengths of this position are two-fold. First, it makes room for our experience of virtuous, compassionate persons--the kinds of people we'd be happy to spend eternity with--who do not name Jesus as Lord. But more importantly, it takes seriously our experience of the loving forgiveness of God and insists that this kind of God would not, in the end, reject those who sought God by means other than ours.

The principal theological in-law with this position, it seems to me, has to do with the question of ultimacy. Those who hold to this idea are likely to say that, while Jesus is the final and ultimate way to God for them, they cannot say that this is or should be true for everyone. Yet if I say that God became human in Jesus of Nazareth, in order to make it possible for me to live the fully loving, fully human life for which I was created, how can that be true for me (or my tribe) alone? To say that Jesus is of ultimate importance to me, but not necessarily to you, is to make him an idol, just another household god who belongs to me, not the other way around.

The other position, of course, recognizes that ultimacy well. This position insists that belief in Jesus Christ and acceptance of his lordship over one's life is the only sufficient means to achieve reconciliation and unity with God. Clearly, this point of view succeeds in taking the redemption offered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus seriously. God's incarnation in Jesus, according to this view, has unavoidably universal consequence. It confronts the world with its need to accept God's offer of salvation in Christ. Moreover, it confronts God's followers with the requirement that we live our lives in such a way that those who don't know Jesus are drawn to him.

But this position has theological in-laws too, chief among them its compromise of the freedom of God. Just as surely as the Bible speaks of God's covenant with Israel and the followers of Jesus, it reminds us that God chooses to step outside that covenant to reach out to those whom we, the insiders, would just as gladly have written off. The book of Jonah is but the best example of God's “strange work” of offering mercy and redemption to the religious “other.” Consistently, God exercises the divine freedom to call whomever God wills, by whatever means, into that loving embrace we so foolishly thought was meant for us alone.

So, where does this leave us? Does it mean that we just throw up our hands and declare that we can't say anything about what this thorny passage means? Hardly. It does mean, however, that we ought to utter two prayers. First, a prayer for the honesty to seek out and understand the theological in-laws in our own notions about God, regardless of how much we cherish those notions. And second, a prayer of gratitude for anyone who, like the contributors to this issue, take the time and care to help us understand God's truth.

ARTICLE: Finding God in Prison

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:14:17 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

For a number of years, Christ United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tennessee, has had an active and transformative ministry to prisoners. The driving force behind that ministry is Jerry Nail, a lay member of the congregation. I spoke with Mr. Nail about his congregation's ministry to this particular group at society's margins.

How did you get started in prison ministry?

A former pastor of our church, Rev. Bill Miller, was deeply involved in the DISCIPLE Bible Study program. He told us that he had attended a DISCIPLE training event in North Carolina where he met the individual in charge of the North Carolina Department of Corrections, a deeply involved UM layperson who was spearheading the introduction of Disciple classes into the prisons in NC. I had just finished taking my fifth DISCIPLE class, and knew what it meant to my own spiritual journey. I knew that the folks in our local prison-Riverbend Maximum Security Institution-needed a program like this, too. I felt that God wanted me to do this, so I contacted the chaplain at Riverbend, who allowed us to leave one of the DISCIPLE videos so some of the inmates could take a look. When the word came back that the inmates were impressed with what they saw and wanted to participate in a group, I started one, along with my friend Harry Boyko, also a member at Christ UMC. That was in 2001. Harry, I, and a growing number of other members of our church have been going out there ever since.

What are the different kinds of ministry to prison inmates in which your church engages?

We do four main things. The first of these is mentor relationships with individuals. A few members of our church go out to the prison on a regular basis to meet with inmates who have signed up for a mentor . When the mentors and inmates get together, they talk about what's going on in the inmate's life, what's happening with his family, and similar things. They pray, read Scripture, and share in each other's Christian walk. At the prison where most of our ministry takes place, this happens in both the lower and higher security areas. On the “high side,” where prisoners spend 23 hours each day in their cells, the mentors bring small stools so they can sit down and speak to the prisoner through the slot in the door their food comes through.

Second, we lead DISCIPLE Bible Study classes at the prison. We now have a group of guys who have been through DISCIPLE I-IV, Christian Believer, and Jesus In the Gospels. There are a number of folks from our church who lead these classes, most of whom have now led more than one class. Third, we lead a communion service every Sunday morning in which clergy and laity from our church and other congregations participate. Finally, when inmates who know us through these ministries are released, we help them find jobs and places to stay through our reentry program. Many of these folks wind up coming to our church, along with their families.

What is different about the way your church does prison ministry than other churches?

Most of what goes on in other prison ministry programs in our area focuses primarily or solely on converting the inmates. That's an important ministry for us as well-especially so in our mentoring relationships-but we've realized that there has to be a lot more. As one of the inmates told me, “So many of the other churches come to bring God to us, not realizing that God is already out here.” Many of the inmates we work with have come to know Christ through the ministries of our church or others, and some of them have a previous relationship with God that they've fallen away from. These are Christian brothers who desire, and benefit from, fellowship with other believers as they seek to live a Christian life in an environment not particularly friendly to that life. So our goal has been to give them opportunities to worship, take the sacraments, study, pray, and simply hang out with other Christians.

We understand that inmates have joined your church while still in prison. How have you made them, part of the life of the congregation?

Actually, they're the ones who've made themselves a part of us. Even before they join the church (currently we have five members with Riverbend as their address), they become active in a number of ways. Some of them tithe the small wages they're paid; some have pledged and contributed to the building fund; last year a couple of them wrote articles for our Advent devotion book; they frequently send other members birthday cards; and they pray for the church. One of our “outside” members who teaches Disciple at the prison comments on the fact that, through the newsletter and correspondence, they often know more about what's going on in the church week-to-week than he does!

Tell about some of the individuals whose lives have been touched by what you do.

As a way of letting you see how our church has responded to this ministry, I'll mention Frank (not his real name), a person who had little or no spiritual experience but got involved with our mentoring program and found a new life in Christ. Not long after he was released, he went through a serious car accident, one that involved the danger of permanent paralysis. A couple in our church volunteered to let Frank stay in their home while he recuperated from this accident. Others in our church have supported Frank emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Then there's John, (also not his real name), who had a reputation, both in the prison and out on the streets, as someone not to be messed with. Yet he found out about what we were doing, entered into a mentoring relationship with our pastor, Rev. Tom Gildemeister, and came to know God. One day after he had gotten out of prison, he was sitting in our church. One of our pastors announced that John would be joining the church that day, having come to know us through our work at Riverbend. “I thought that was it,” John says; “nobody would want to know me or speak to me then. But everybody turned around and smiled at me, and came up and shook my hand at the end of the service. It's been that way ever since.”

What advice would you give other churches thinking about starting a prison ministry program?

Before you take any step, give it prayerful consideration. You have to be able to commit for the long haul. Our chaplain at Riverbend, Rev. Jerry Welborn, has told me that so many individuals, groups, and churches get into prison ministry, but then quit after a short time. If you want to make a difference in someone's life, however, you have to stay with them. When we arrived at Riverbend we discovered that these are people who need support. We found there a Christian community that is longing for fellowship with and affirmation from a Christian community on the outside. On a practical note, I would suggest that churches call their annual conference office to ask about the corrections committee, which most conferences have. Find out what other churches in the conference are doing, and speak to their leaders. Finally, you need to ask yourself “Am I ready to work with these people when they get out of prison? Is my church ready to welcome them into our fellowship?” Apart from their families, there just aren't that many support structures in place for these folks when they rejoin society. They're going to need your help.

ARTICLE: Confronting Evil

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:14:17 GMT

By Robert A. Ratcliff

It was one of those quintessential parental moments. My son, who was thirteen at the time, and I were seeing "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the first movie in director Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic fantasy trilogy. We had arrived at the film's climactic moment. Gandalf the wizard had just defeated the balrog, a malevolent creature of fire and old magic. Just as it seemed that Gandalf's victory was complete, he fell victim to the demon's final, desperate act of violence. Overwhelmed by the movie's power, I was taken back to the time when I had, as a teenager myself, first read Tolkien's novel. Just as then, I grieved for the loss of this wise protector and guide, and I wept openly and gladly. My son, casting a sideways glance at this display, hissed, “Dad, stop it! It's embarrassing!”

What would lead a normally undemonstrative, middle-aged male such as me to cry in a movie (other than to enjoy the guilty pleasure that all parents of teenagers secretly experience when they embarrass their children in public)? Why have I, across the course of my life, read this book so many times that I have lost count? What is it that draws me, and millions of other readers and now moviegoers, back to Middle Earth, the setting for Tolkien's tale?

For me, part of the answer lies in Tolkien's moral vision of the confrontation with evil, and the true nature of power. To explain what I mean, I have to tell you a bit about the story. As the novel begins we meet Bilbo Baggins and his adopted son Frodo, members of a race of half pint dreamers known as hobbits. A ring that Bilbo had found during an earlier adventure turns out to be the One Ring, an evil talisman created by the dark lord Sauron. Thought to have been destroyed, Sauron is on the rise again, and is seeking the Ring to use its power in enslaving the free peoples of Middle Earth. Frodo takes the ring to a council of the enemies of Sauron, which debates long and loud about what to do with it. Some would take the Ring and wield it themselves, using its power as a weapon against its master. Yet the wiser members of the council recognize that the Ring would corrupt anyone who would try to use it, bending his or her will eventually to the will of Sauron. In the end these wiser heads prevail, and the council decides that its only course is to take the Ring into Mordor, the realm of Sauron, and destroy it by casting the Ring into the fiery mountain in which it was forged. Rather than commissioning a powerful wizard or elf to undertake this task, the council gives the job to Frodo, the last person anyone would expect.

A question has plagued Tolkien's interpreters since he first published The Lord of the Rings: Why would a convinced and devout Roman Catholic like Tolkien create a literary world that makes no mention of God? The novel is all about goodness and evil, yet where is the transcendent? I don't pretend to have a good answer to these questions (but I would recommend Ralph Wood's book The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings as a place to look for one). I do, however, have a hunch. Tolkien's Christian convictions appear, however obliquely, in the council's decision to confront Sauron's evil, not by using his own weapon against him, but by trying to destroy it. In entrusting the Ring to a hobbit, the lowliest member of their company, the council has engaged in a profound paradox: to combat the power of evil, they must eschew power itself, putting their trust in the powerless.

Martin Luther, who reveled in paradoxes, would surely have recognized this one as the theology of the cross. The theology of the cross tells us that God operates according to rules that we simply can't understand. Luther knew that at its heart, the gospel is about God's decision to confound the powers of this world by being born the baby of peasant parents in a dusty little country tucked away in the corner of the Roman empire. Likewise Paul understood the Incarnation as God's emptying the divine self of power, “taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness (Philippians 2: 7). Even more, the climax of the gospel story—the crucifixion—demonstrates God's decision to confront evil, not by overpowering it, but by laying power aside and accepting an ignominious death. In so doing God in Christ reveals the true nature of God's power: the power of God's love to compel the recalcitrant human heart to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the neighbor as oneself.

The theology of the cross is something that North American Christians would do well to remember these days. As has happened periodically throughout the church's history, we find ourselves awash in speculation about the Second Coming. Best-selling novels and countless nonfiction titles all tell us that God's final confrontation with the powers of evil is at hand. The problem with much of this discussion, however, is the way it glories in depicting the confrontation as a violent one. Having apparently learned a lesson the first time 'round, this time Jesus is here to do battle with the principalities and powers on their own terms: through the use of coercive force. This picture of the Lion of Judah returning to clean house loses sight of the Lamb of God, slain for the sins of the world.

Even more important is the fact that the events of September 11, 2001 have resurrected the language of evil in our culture in a way not heard since the second, and possibly not since the first, world war. Along with the other citizens of the United States, Christians have been confronted with the reality of a hatred so strong that it sought to destroy thousands of innocent lives. More's the point, this hatred was devoid of all possibility of mitigation or mercy because it was felt in God's name. Confronted by such monstrous hatred, we had no choice but to dust off the ancient language of evil in an attempt to comprehend it. Living comfortably in an affluent society, we had become uncomfortable talking about evil. We had preferred the psychological language of “inappropriate choices” and “unhealthy environments” to the theological language of a power that infests the nooks and crannies of human hearts and societies, opposing itself to the will of God. September 11 made us realize that evil is probably the only way we can name the horror confronting us.

Yet in our use of the language of evil Christians must not forget the theology of the cross. As Andrew Park's article reminds us, evil wounds its victims in a way that can lead them all too easily to wound others. Let me be clear: the events of September 11 require that we as Christians confront the powers of evil. Whether a proper Christian response to that evil can or should involve the use of coercive force is something that the proponents of just war theory and pacifism must continue to debate. Yet surely both would agree that the exercise of power—especially military power—will not finally defeat the powers of evil. Unfortunately, that is just the presupposition that seems to fuel much of our national debate about how to respond to terrorists and rogue states who threaten the security of our country. Having emerged from the last fifty years of history as the most powerful nation on earth, we have become infected with the attitude that we can use that position to bend the course of human events completely to our liking—whether others in the world like it or not.

Christians must remember that at the core of our faith lies God's decision to overthrow the power of evil, not by exercising power as the world understands it, but by laying that power aside. The paradox, of course, is that in so doing God demonstrated the depths of God's power–and taught us what true power is all about. Our calling at the present moment, then, is to remind the culture in which we live that the usefulness of power, especially the power of coercive force, is limited at best. The confrontation with evil will require more, much more, than a violent response to violent acts. It will require Christians to recognize that, in the words of John Howard Yoder, “The cross is not an obstacle to the Kingdom; it is not the way to the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom come.”

Oh, by the way: As of this writing, I haven't seen Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second movie in the trilogy. I think I'll ask my son to come with me–and tell him to grab some Kleenex as we head out the door.